Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Single vendor is the new proprietary

opensource.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 98 posts

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#81

Post by gumby »

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…

> why does open source need to "win" (why can't there be multiple options) and re: things being produced as their exclusive property, what is the issue with this?

Part of core infrastructure should be in the commons (consider the roads) to lower friction. There are many road builders but to a great extent anybody can drive on any road with any cargo without asking for permission. And that being the case unlocks more innovation.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#82

Post by kube-system »

growse wrote: post #61
tensor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see how it’s bait and switch. You can still used and develop against the last open version. In fact, we’ve seen recent examples of that in Terraform and Redis. Open source does not mean you are entitled to all future improvements unless the license says you are, like the AGPL. Personally, I’m grateful these project made their source open for so long. The alternative would not be AGPL terraform, it would be co…

The bait and switch is the community and social elements, not the code. Inviting the local community to come and improve your space that you opened up for everyone to exist in, and then suddenly locking the doors is both entirely legally justified and a crappy thing to do.

I think this point of view is greedy. FOSS is about sharing code, not enslaving other developers or organizations indefinitely into the future.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#83

Post by [deleted] »

doctor_eval wrote: post #67
outop wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because it's a name that was made up then to try to rebrand something that had already existed for decades, but which has a name that those guys didn't like.

My memory from the time was that the OSI was mostly about trying to characterise the various licenses that were floating around, and about legitimising the use of freeish software in industry. Today the majority of free software that I use seems to be Apache/BSD/MIT - and GPL for Linux - but back in the 90s everyone seemed to make up their own “free” license, and there was a lot of confusion around GPL. My recollecti…

[deleted]

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#84

Post by QuantumG »

amarshall wrote: post #79
SpecialistK wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Chromium is still useful but it's not Chrome.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#85

Post by Spivak »

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)?

In order to get interest in your product among people who believe in the mission of OSS, you do actually have to be OSS.

I could agree if we were talking about something unrelated that OSS folks also happen to like but yeah, your product does have to not have meat if you want buy-in from vegetarians.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#86

Post by outop »

doctor_eval wrote: post #67
outop wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because it's a name that was made up then to try to rebrand something that had already existed for decades, but which has a name that those guys didn't like.

My memory from the time was that the OSI was mostly about trying to characterise the various licenses that were floating around, and about legitimising the use of freeish software in industry. Today the majority of free software that I use seems to be Apache/BSD/MIT - and GPL for Linux - but back in the 90s everyone seemed to make up their own “free” license, and there was a lot of confusion around GPL. My recollecti…

GPL does not impose conditions on use.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#87

Post by growse »

lolinder wrote: post #64
growse wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bait and switch is the community and social elements, not the code. Inviting the local community to come and improve your space that you opened up for everyone to exist in, and then suddenly locking the doors is both entirely legally justified and a crappy thing to do.

This analogy falls flat because it makes it sound like the community is locked out of the improvements they made to your space. But there's no scarcity here: once HashiCorp locked the doors all of the improvements that the community made were still there, and the community could and did organize a new space for continued improvements.

It’s not perfect, I agree, because code is trivially copied (unlike material things). But like I said, this is not about the code.

The wider point about subverting expectations still stands. Yes, we re-organised into tofu/valkey/whatever but that’s come at a _cost_. It’s perfectly reasonable to say that this is open source working properly, the license lets them do this etc. I think it’s also perfectly reasonable to feel a little bit embittered towards a copyright owner pulling the shutters up and forcing everyone to move.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#88

Post by circuit10 »

amarshall wrote: post #79
SpecialistK wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the differences are configuration though, or at least I didn’t notice any significant differences other than that using an unbranded build

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#89

Post by doctor_eval »

outop wrote: post #86
doctor_eval wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My memory from the time was that the OSI was mostly about trying to characterise the various licenses that were floating around, and about legitimising the use of freeish software in industry. Today the majority of free software that I use seems to be Apache/BSD/MIT - and GPL for Linux - but back in the 90s everyone seemed to make up their own “free” license, and there was a lot of confusion around GPL. My recollecti…

GPL does not impose conditions on use.

Sure it does. If you modify GPL code, you have to give your changes back in some circumstances.

If you modify it and don’t give your changes back, you can be sued.

Re: Single vendor is the new proprietary

#90

Post by bandrami »

My quaint dinosaur view is that all of the single-vendor stuff I can think of is aimed at data farming at a scale that is itself presumptively evil. The need to do what these pieces of software do at the scale they do them is a filter for the kind of organization you get becoming involved with them.
Post reply on HN