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Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

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Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#31

Post by LukeShu »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #7

> By working on a project with a CLA, where you sign away your code, you're giving carte blanche for the company to take away your freedom to use their software. Ok it's been a while so I don't remember the details or how it played out, but when Linux introduced a CoC, there were people who contributed to the kernel in the past that threatened to withdraw their code from the kernel, which would've been a nightmare to…

Without a separate CLA or copyright assignment, the contributor retains the copyright to their code, and licenses it to the project under the terms of the GPL (or whatever license).

The license is basically a legally-binding promise not to sue, as long as you follow the rules in the license. So the general consensus is that they can't terminate the license unless you violate the license. (Though there are dissenting opinions on that.)

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#32

Post by davisr »

kleiba wrote: post #20
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.

You must read https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#33

Post by skywhopper »

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,…

Just because they’re failing doesn’t mean switching licenses will help. HashiCorp did not increase the popularity of Terraform Cloud by clamping down on the ability of other companies to host Terraform services.

There were any number of things HashiCorp could have done to improve revenue generation from their products without changing the source license. When they realized they weren’t building the best SaaS version of their products, they didn’t try to improve their service. Instead they tried to run the competition out of business.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#34

Post by nrawe »

ergonaught wrote: post #22

Products aren't projects, which has confused people for decades. If open source products retreating from some of the "freedom" elements bothers you, then you should be focusing your ire on the megacorporations and overfunded startups who simply refuse to contribute to the financial viability of the products that sustain them. For some reason "we" celebrate the exploitative, though, so I guess that's out.

Yep. The author complains that there used to be plucky startups with Open Core business models who've now gone "extinct", while simultaneously sharpening their pitchforks because those same companies got successful and _slightly_ amended their licenses to prevent loosing revenue against IaaS giants so that they can, in turn, continue innovating. I guess money grows on trees where they live.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#35

Post by twojobsoneboss »

skywhopper wrote: post #33
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,…

Just because they’re failing doesn’t mean switching licenses will help. HashiCorp did not increase the popularity of Terraform Cloud by clamping down on the ability of other companies to host Terraform services. There were any number of things HashiCorp could have done to improve revenue generation from their products without changing the source license. When they realized they weren’t building the best SaaS version…

It’s a business. It will by default do the easiest and least riskiest thing to make as much money as possible.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#36

Post by TheRealPomax »

TillE wrote: post #18
TheRealPomax wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you read me as saying making and selling proprietary software was wrong, you read a very different text from what I wrote. Making and selling software is perfectly fine, and building that software on top of libraries specifically released for that purpose is equally fine.

Open source licenses that in perpetuity lock you out of any form of gains from your own work, even when that work is the very backbone of someone else's non-open-source, for-pay product, are morally objectionable licenses.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#37

Post by twojobsoneboss »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #19

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 o…

Those “robber barons” are also the source of most tech jobs and how most of us here earn a living

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#38

Post by kevingadd »

kube-system wrote: post #13
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.

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

I think at this point it's undisputed that modern society relies on a lot of permissively licensed software, and the people who maintain that software aren't getting paid enough (or at all) to do it. xz is only the most recent example, NTP and OpenSSL come to mind.

I used to do OSS development full time, but it wasn't financially sustainable for me.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#40

Post by ahartmetz »

1oooqooq wrote: post #15
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.

Unfortunately true. I like to call the Linux foundation the megacorporations LUG (Linux user group). They want to use Linux alright, but they would prefer to do with it whatever they want, so they are not really friends of the GPL and a few other things.
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