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Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

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Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#11

Post by aborsy »

kevingadd wrote: post #4
leetharris wrote: post #3

Source available from the beginning is ethical. Open source that becomes something else is shady. I am glad they tried. I know there's lots of cynical stuff on the internet, but realistically the open source progress on stuff like Terraform or similar wouldn't have happened if these companies didn't try an alternative. I'm not sure what people want these companies to do. If there's no money, if the idea didn't work,…

If you do actual open source and your product is any good, somebody else is just going to repackage it and sell it, either as SAAS/IAAS or as a boxed product. So why not get there first? It's depressing. That's been my experience every time I gave code away, at least. Somebody else made money off it.

That’s guaranteed to happen. Even beyond that, how are developers going to earn a living with FOSS, at least with open licensing?

We have seen maintainers burnt out. It takes work to write code.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#12

Post by kevingadd »

adrianN wrote: post #8
kevingadd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do actual open source and your product is any good, somebody else is just going to repackage it and sell it, either as SAAS/IAAS or as a boxed product. So why not get there first? It's depressing. That's been my experience every time I gave code away, at least. Somebody else made money off it.

You could make it AGPL if you don’t want that.

Not unless all the contributors signed an Evil CLA first so I can relicense it :-)

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#13

Post by kube-system »

kevingadd wrote: post #4
leetharris wrote: post #3

Source available from the beginning is ethical. Open source that becomes something else is shady. I am glad they tried. I know there's lots of cynical stuff on the internet, but realistically the open source progress on stuff like Terraform or similar wouldn't have happened if these companies didn't try an alternative. I'm not sure what people want these companies to do. If there's no money, if the idea didn't work,…

If you do actual open source and your product is any good, somebody else is just going to repackage it and sell it, either as SAAS/IAAS or as a boxed product. So why not get there first? It's depressing. That's been my experience every time I gave code away, at least. Somebody else made money off it.

Why is it depressing? It was your choice to share it.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#14

Post by TheRealPomax »

shkkmo wrote: post #6

So the TLDR; is don't trust any corporate open source that requires a CLA and don't contribute to those projects unless you are prepared to fork if the rug gets pulled.

Any project with a CLA was already subject to that stipulation. You get to do work for a company for free with the added benefit that you're now also on the hook for any legal problems that might arise from the code you contributed.

What a deal, you get to put in the time and effort AND potentially fight a legal battle when a patent troll decides to go "wouldn't it be fun if" all on your own!

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#15

Post by 1oooqooq »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #9

"Corporate Open Source" is many things. Look at how many companies are paying for membership on the Linux Foundation Board: Platinum costs $500k a year, gold is $100k a year, and silver is $5-20k based on size: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members

Linux foundation was never about Linux or open source. quite the contrary.

the foundation started as a way for companies to band Against gpl. and they won the day Linus have up and allowed tainted kernel be the default and every device distributor moved their proprietary code to modules and rejoiced.

their focus then was on gpl3 fud because google et al have much more money than modem vendors.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#18

Post by TillE »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #10
kevingadd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do actual open source and your product is any good, somebody else is just going to repackage it and sell it, either as SAAS/IAAS or as a boxed product. So why not get there first? It's depressing. That's been my experience every time I gave code away, at least. Somebody else made money off it.

It's why things like Captura no longer exist. You make something fantastic with an open source license, someone else renames it and sells it in app stores, and the people running the app stores go "the license allowed for this, we see nothing wrong". It's well past time for getting rid of licenses that say "you can do what you like with this software", and replace them with licenses that allows you to sell as long as…

There is absolutely nothing wrong with making and selling proprietary software. If you want to make money, you should probably just do that.

I'm very happy to have created a mildly popular permissively-licensed library. It's a contribution to a community with zero intention of profit. That is, for the most part, what open source is all about.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#19

Post by matheusmoreira »

Always remember: It's either AGPLv3 or proprietary all rights reserved. Anything else means you're giving your labor away for free to the beggar barons. Biggest wealth transfer in history, from developers and straight into the pockets of billionaires. It's just irrational.

Also remember: Whoever owns the copyright gets to do whatever they want. The licensing security of free software, defined here as the likelihood of free software remaining free software, is proportional to the number of copyright owners involved. Changing the license requires agreement between all copyright holders, once a sizeable number of them has built up it becomes all but impossible. Therefore, anyone who asks you to assign your copyright to them should be viewed with suspicion. A true proponent of free software would want to maximize the number of copyright holders involved, not centralize the copyrights under a single entity.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#20

Post by kleiba »

leetharris wrote: post #3

Source available from the beginning is ethical. Open source that becomes something else is shady. I am glad they tried. I know there's lots of cynical stuff on the internet, but realistically the open source progress on stuff like Terraform or similar wouldn't have happened if these companies didn't try an alternative. I'm not sure what people want these companies to do. If there's no money, if the idea didn't work,…

> Source available from the beginning is ethical.

Not to rms.

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