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FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

lucumr.pocoo.org

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Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#181

Post by tzs »

growse wrote: post #48

The definition of "harmful free-riding" is not good, and its use to justify the license is problematic. > Consequently, the common pool resource may be under-produced, overused, or degraded. Additionally, it has been shown that despite evidence that people tend to be cooperative by nature (a prosocial behaviour), the presence of free-riders causes cooperation to deteriorate, perpetuating the free-rider problem.” Soft…

> Software doesn't wear out, or degrade through use. The analogies offered to other, physical common services are nonsensical.

But latent bugs are discovered at a rate that is roughly proportional to use, and for application software running under general purpose operating systems on personal computers or servers the operating systems and hardware gets updates which can cause problems for applications.

That imposes a maintenance and repair burden if you want to keep applications working that is very similar to the burden imposed by wear and degradation when you want to eep some physical thing running.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#182

Post by jen20 »

WJW wrote: post #113
jen20 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of the source being available but software not being “free” is fine by me. I want the source so I can fix bugs instantly instead of trying to convince some mid-tier product manager having gone through 5 tiers of support. That is a huge benefit over source-unavailable proprietary software, or (heaven help us) SAAS.

"I could fix it myself if needed" quite often comes up on HN and other programmer forums but I honestly have to wonder how many people could actually fix deep issues in production grade software. For example, there are plenty of bugs open on the issue trackers of (say) postgres or kubernetes yet despite the source of those being available I'm willing to bet a vanishingly small amount of users would be willing or capa…

Perhaps many would not. I regularly do.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#183

Post by em-bee »

arp242 wrote: post #173
k__ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems some kind of dissonance for me. You create a new license to keep competitors artificially in check. Doesn't this hint to a flawed business model?

A few days ago there was a story about some lady creating a new kind of coat-hanger that you can fold so it takes up less space.[1] Pretty simple idea once you see the finished product, but getting all the details right so it actually works well isn't always easy, and it took her about three years(!) Presumably she wasn't working on it full-time for 3 years, but clearly a lot of effort went in to this "simple" idea.…

I know lots of people here don't have a lot of love for patents

the coathanger is the kind of case that patents were intened for.

software patents are different.

as far as i am aware most people dislike software patents specifically and are fine with other patents.

and even with software patents the problem is not the idea of patenting software, but the broad scope and timeframe. for software 20 years are just to long, and many patents are to broad.

if software patents could be reduced in scope and more importantly reduced to a lifetime of eg no more than 5 years, they would be much less of a problem.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#184

Post by em-bee »

zeeg wrote: post #166
James_K wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: actually, you couldn't be more blatently lying about this. https://open.sentry.io/ > We're Open Source The title of the page. You really thought you could sneak that past me. You cannot seriously make a reply like this when you have an entire domain name dedicated to the tile "We're Open Source". That is the most obvious of obvious lies. Even the page title "yes, we're open source" is a kind of passive-aggressi…

https://github.com/getsentry You suggesting we are anything but what we are just makes you look like you have an agenda at best, or foolish at worst. All you're doing is harming the broader community by arguing about nonsense which is factually proven to be untrue. You came in here trolling as best you could, making false statements without reading or educating yourself on any components. Making statements as if you'…

FOSS is not Open Source

sorry, what?

All Free Software licenses are also Open Source licenses. so how can FOSS be not Open Source?

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#185

Post by plorkyeran »

WJW wrote: post #113
jen20 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of the source being available but software not being “free” is fine by me. I want the source so I can fix bugs instantly instead of trying to convince some mid-tier product manager having gone through 5 tiers of support. That is a huge benefit over source-unavailable proprietary software, or (heaven help us) SAAS.

"I could fix it myself if needed" quite often comes up on HN and other programmer forums but I honestly have to wonder how many people could actually fix deep issues in production grade software. For example, there are plenty of bugs open on the issue trackers of (say) postgres or kubernetes yet despite the source of those being available I'm willing to bet a vanishingly small amount of users would be willing or capa…

I rarely fix bugs in my dependencies, but I have found having the source available to be very useful in working around bugs in them. It's frequently the difference between a workaround that appears to work but I don't know why and might just cause different problems and a workaround that I know is correct.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#186

Post by cxr »

arp242 wrote: post #126
cxr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simple saying "your business model sucks then", as the previous poster did Their comment doesn't say that. Did they edit their post, or are you just shamelessly throwing around made up quotes?

Eh? > the "harmful freeloading" problem is not the license, it's a badly-thought-through business model.

So that's a yes.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#187

Post by reedciccio »

reedciccio wrote: post #135
arp242 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your business model relies on no-one else using your software to compete with you, don't open-source the software. So you would rather have completely closed source instead of Open Source-but-for-one -detail? That's some puritanical ideology-driven nonsense. Be against this license if you wish, that fine and I'll happily debate anyone about it. But this is not a position I consider valid because obviously "more…

Open Source is what allows developers to make their choices without having to ask for permissions. You can apt/pip/npm etc install and integrate pieces written by others in your own solution stack without having to call a lawyer. These non-open source licenses force you to stop and think, ask your lawyer before you build on top of them. What's the advantage of these "semi" almost but not all the way open licenses?

I mentioned apt, pip etc because Sentry, Elastic and everything is built by integrating hundreds of packages. Nobody builds 100% of the code they ship to users and customers. These non-open source licenses make things like pip impossible to exist. This is why people and organizations familiar with Open Source react so vehemently against them.

Re: GPL, the license is 30 years old, it (used to be) well understood and has an extensive FAQ. It has 2 main flaws: it's unappealing to SilVal VCs and ostracized by big tech. And it's promoted with one single-minded organization. Both things made it unpopular in the past 10 years and it became suddenly obscure.

Re: shareware/shared source code owned by a single corporation. History shows that the possibility to fix bugs locally is only a theory. None of the projects using that license scheme still does or exists. Think Eucalyptus, read their conflict with NASA and how that led to OpenStack. At best, you will have to maintain your fork.

The proper place to find ways leading to a sustainable business is not creating new licenses but iteration on business practices.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#188

Post by frognumber »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #129
frognumber wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can’t dispel your interpretation that my writing is “confused” but I can assure you that a lot of thought went into the license. That doesn't contradict what I wrote. The thought shows. What it doesn't show is understanding or (and I don't mean this aggressively, but I'm worried it will read as such) competence. To give an analogy, if a lawyer came learned programming and wrote a very clever piece of code, but wi…

It's very hard to read your comment and take anything away but a "holier-than-thou" attitude. If you take issue with Open Source developers having opinions about Open Source licenses and similar ones, then I'm afraid you will run into many more folks like me.

> It's very hard to read your comment and take anything away but a "holier-than-thou" attitude.

If that's the case, you will have a very hard time selling to folks like me.

That's bad business.

Even if I'm wrong, you need to figure out how to reach customers like me.

> If you take issue with Open Source developers having opinions about Open Source licenses and similar ones, then I'm afraid you will run into many more folks like me.

I have not found this to be the case. Most have more curiosity and less ego.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#189

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

frognumber wrote: post #188
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very hard to read your comment and take anything away but a "holier-than-thou" attitude. If you take issue with Open Source developers having opinions about Open Source licenses and similar ones, then I'm afraid you will run into many more folks like me.

> It's very hard to read your comment and take anything away but a "holier-than-thou" attitude. If that's the case, you will have a very hard time selling to folks like me. That's bad business. Even if I'm wrong, you need to figure out how to reach customers like me. > If you take issue with Open Source developers having opinions about Open Source licenses and similar ones, then I'm afraid you will run into many more…

> If that's the case, you will have a very hard time selling to folks like me.

I'm not even sure what I have to sell to you? What do you think I'm selling to you?

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