open source is charity. I believe in it, I contribute to it, but I recognize it is unlikely to lead to a sustainable livelihood
Bear is now source-available
51–60 of 509 posts
Re: Bear is now source-available
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought so, too, at first. But there's a crucial difference: With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying. With the Bear license, Bear's competition just cannot offer the software as a service. It feels mostly in the spirit of FOSS to me, but Stallman would disagree. He has made it clear that there should be no restrictions on use.
> With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying. Technically true, but in practice almost every tech company forbids GPL code. I bet if you re-read your employment contract closely you'll find that you agreed not to introduce any GPL code into the company's codebases. (Edited for clarity).
This can't possibly be true, since the Linux kernel's code is GPL and approximately every tech company uses Linux.
Re: Bear is now source-available
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought so, too, at first. But there's a crucial difference: With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying. With the Bear license, Bear's competition just cannot offer the software as a service. It feels mostly in the spirit of FOSS to me, but Stallman would disagree. He has made it clear that there should be no restrictions on use.
> With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying. Technically true, but in practice almost every tech company forbids GPL code. I bet if you re-read your employment contract closely you'll find that you agreed not to introduce any GPL code into the company's codebases. (Edited for clarity).
I'm self-employed in Germany, and when I was employed, what was in the contract went more in the other direction: it was explicitly allowed to contribute to FOSS projects. Of course, it still would not have been OK to randomly add GPL software to a closed source customer project. If anyone had been stupid (uneducated, really) enough, somebody else on the same project would have noticed.
Re: Bear is now source-available
#54I’d like to see a “no jerks” license. It’d be MIT by default, but call out specific bad actors as being disallowed from using the software. That way your average corporate user wouldn’t need to consult a lawyer before adopting
It will be as useless in terms of enforcement as "shall be used for good, not evil." https://www.json.org/license.html
Re: Bear is now source-available
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Skimming your links, it seems you target the AGPL, but you take issue with CLAs. You should be vocal against CLAs, not the AGPL. CLAs with any license is a risk of seeing the code closed up.
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People saying wrong things about the AGPL isn't an AGPL problem, it's an issue of people saying wrong things.
AGPL allows competition. Any free software license does. It's rule 0 of free software.
> it's chosen to to be a non-compete.
Well, too bad for them, because I can still fork this AGPL software and compete. So what's the issue?
The issue would be for contributors contributing for to this code under CLA seeing their contributions closed up. If that's not your thing, don't contribute to software under such CLA. I avoid it myself.
Re: Bear is now source-available
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's one of four licenses linked on the front page of the FSF.
And it's the most abused license in the history of open source [0] [1]. [0]: https://keygen.sh/blog/weaponized-open-source/ [1]: https://keygen.sh/blog/whither-open-source/
> Author's note: the above thoughts are for how the AGPL is used in startup-land alongside a CLA — not for AGPL in general. The AGPL is a fine open source license for libraries and other infrastructure.
The whole piece is about CLAs, the AGPL has absolutely nothing to do with signing over your copyrights. See Canonical for the same behaviour without the AGPL, the AGPL just requires that you allow your users to also see the code they are using, even if it is accessed over a network.
> Many, like Google, have flat out banned the AGPL.
Yeah, but that's because Google hates sharing what they have built on the shoulders of giants.
Re: Bear is now source-available
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bear has no VC investors: https://herman.bearblog.dev/manifesto/
edit: I thought this HN thread was about the Bear app never mind
If you read the link you just posted you can see that this person invested in a different product called Bear:
> Its portfolio includes Bear, the Apple Design Award winner notes app, …
Re: Bear is now source-available
#58> This license is almost identical to the MIT license but with the stipulation that the software cannot be provided as a hosted or managed service
Note that while the original change was an additional clause to the MIT license, it was quickly changed to something completely different.[0] Since it no longer permits sublicensing and restricts "remov[ing] or obscur[ing] any licensing, copyright, or other notices in the Software," I believe it's closer to GPL now?
[0]: https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/commit/89c3f346ef...
Re: Bear is now source-available
#59As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source, and they'll get very upset at you if you claim it is. I'd like to see some recognition from this crowd of the "free-ride competition" problem as this author puts it. What Herman is doing is a service to us all, and we should find a term (better than 'source-availa…
Wait, you’re saying open source shouldn’t exist just to be free labor for billion dollar companies and hustlers? Or to dump free product on the market to make it impossible to compete with said billion dollar companies?
Re: Bear is now source-available
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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People saying wrong things about the AGPL isn't an AGPL problem, it's an issue of people saying wrong things. AGPL allows competition. Any free software license does. It's rule 0 of free software. > it's chosen to to be a non-compete. Well, too bad for them, because I can still fork this AGPL software and compete. So what's the issue? The issue would be for contributors contributing for to this code under CLA seeing…
> Well, too bad for them, because I can still fork this AGPL software and compete. So what's the issue?
No legal department will ever allow it due to the FUD. That's the whole fucking point.