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Single vendor is the new proprietary

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Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#71

Post by josephcsible »

Centigonal wrote: post #54

Single-vendor is not proprietary because I can fork VSCode and I can't fork Microsoft Word. Single-vendor open source is the balance some companies have found between sharing their software with the community and capturing the value of their employees' labor. It's less free than openly developed FOSS and more free than proprietary software. It's unrealistic to expect all software to be openly developed FOSS with toda…

> I can fork VSCode

Well, sort of. You lose a whole bunch of stuff (e.g., Pylance) by doing so.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#72

Post by tyingq »

lolinder wrote: post #65
tyingq wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably feels like bait and switch for the folks that created or used lots of open source in the time period where there was less opportunity/temptation to move the license from GPL/BSD/MIT to something proprietary. In our minds, we attached some altruistic intent to those licenses. Things have changed now, of course.

Why do the actions of HashiCorp and company have any bearing whatsoever on your decision to release and use unrelated open source software?

I'm not trying to rationalize my emotional reactions and say they make logical sense. Just explaining why they are there.

But, if there was a long time period where almost no open source software went commercial...you would be conditioned to not worry about the risk of depending on it. Then when things change, you feel differently. I don't know why that's controversial.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#73

Post by hn_acker »

For what it's worth, speaking in terms of free software rather than open source (since the author of the featured article might be receptive to the moral ideals of free software rather than merely the business-pragmatic ideals of open source): if the vendor lets you download the source code of free software already in your possession without an excessive burden (one valid option being letting you download a zip/tar.gz of the entire necessary codebase; one invalid option being forcing you to copy files one at a time) then the software is free software regardless of whether the vendor accepts any third-party contributions.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#74

Post by zem »

Pannoniae wrote: post #50
zem wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> re: things being produced as their exclusive property, what is the issue with this? They did the work to make the thing, therefore it's their property (unless they choose to release it otherwise). the issue is that they also want the benefit of not being ignored, so they claim to be less proprietary than they actually are while trying to build mindshare

not gonna lie this sounds like a borderline cultish view on things (only OSI-approved open source projects should get recognition, rest should be damned to obscurity and ridicule) having the source available is a huge benefit compared to proprietary software as you can view, introspect and patch your tool - having a permissive licence is a "nice-to-have", not an entitlement.

i didn't say anything about OSI approval, or even about "should". the fact is that a lot of people (myself included) have significantly less interest in a project if it is proprietary, and especially if it looks like the proprietor is going to exert control over it as a means of extracting value. and other people are fine with it, and might even prefer a project controlled by a company they trust to do a good job. and there's nothing wrong with either one! live and let live, with nothing to ridicule either way.

what is wrong is when companies entice the people who would otherwise just have ignored them by claiming to be open, and then turn around and try to exert control once they already have mindshare. that makes people feel baited and switched and leads to a very natural amount of resentment.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#75

Post by zem »

rglover wrote: post #43
zem wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> re: things being produced as their exclusive property, what is the issue with this? They did the work to make the thing, therefore it's their property (unless they choose to release it otherwise). the issue is that they also want the benefit of not being ignored, so they claim to be less proprietary than they actually are while trying to build mindshare

> the issue is that they also want the benefit of not being ignored So in order to get any interest in your project, you have to be open source (and align with the ideology absolutely)?

you don't have to; you could seek interest among fans of proprietary software instead, using whatever marketing techniques work there. apple has had a fair amount of success with that approach e.g.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#76

Post by kmeisthax »

rglover wrote: post #23

> You should be on board if you want Open Source to win against proprietary software. But those companies are still doing what is, essentially, proprietary software: like the proprietary software companies of the 80s, they very much consider the software being produced as their exclusive property. They still intend to capture all the value that derives from it. And thanks to copyright aggregation or permissive licens…

>re: things being produced as their exclusive property, what is the issue with this? They did the work to make the thing, therefore it's their property

The more the world is built out of "other people's property", the less freedom you have. And the specific property-like law Congress chose to make people pay for software is incredibly strict within the narrow range of its scope - i.e. perfect if you want literally anything to do with technology to become a coercive monopoly.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#77

Post by lolinder »

RyanHamilton wrote: post #3
Pannoniae wrote: post #2

The author completely neglects the "non-open-source/open collaboration" quadrant as if it didn't exist. Best examples are games with easily accessible modding communities. While development is centralised and you definitely don't have any kind of open source licence, collaboration is generally open in terms of releasing mods to the game. They also bash the Commons Clause purely using the definition (zero mention on w…

OSI isn't the software industry. It's sponsored by Google, amazon then ms via github in order of sponsor donations. It's financed by the hyperscalars. https://opensource.org/sponsors

Bloomberg, Capital One, Cisco, Intel, Meta and Red Hat all are sponsoring at the same level as GitHub. FerretDB, Perforce, Tidelift and Salesforce join Microsoft at the next level down.

That's a much more diverse crowd of sponsors than I thought I'd see based on your comment.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#78

Post by oefrha »

ec109685 wrote: post #42
phoe-krk wrote: post #39

> On one axis, the license used is either Open Source (as defined by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), which I would summarize as coming with all freedoms necessary to enable the permissionless innovation I mentioned earlier) or it’s not. On the other axis is the development model: it’s either developed as a commons, by a community working in open collaboration, or it’s developed (and ultimately owned) by a single en…

That’s why the fork that is more open for contributions is gaining momentum: https://github.com/tursodatabase/libsql

You mean the "single vendor" fork from Turso, the VC funded startup [1]? Thanks but no thanks, I'll stick with D. Richard Hipp.

[1] https://turso.tech/investors

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#79

Post by amarshall »

SpecialistK wrote: post #56
devdao wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't forkvscode...

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/forks 27,000 people seem to have done so.

That repo is not actually VS Code. What you get when you download compiled VS Code releases includes proprietary, closed-source components. If you build “VS Code” from OSS components, you do not end up with VS Code.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#80

Post by Nullabillity »

SpecialistK wrote: post #56
devdao wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't forkvscode...

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/forks 27,000 people seem to have done so.

microsoft/vscode is not the same as the VS Code you download from MS. The latter has a bunch of DRM stuff that many MS plugins require.
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