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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#121

Post by zitterbewegung »

cinericius wrote: post #3

As 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…

Why use the MIT license when the AGPL is the better choice? I don’t understand why developers choose MIT and or Apache license and then figure out that they now have a competitor cloning their product .

Re: Bear is now source-available

#122

Post by themerone »

phkahler wrote: post #77

Naive. Guy picks a license that allow anyone to do anything they want with his code. Later realizes that was not appropriate when he's trying make money. Changes to an obscure license that on the surface seems to fix the problem. Your options are: MIT / BSD, GPL, LGPL, AGPL. All others are unnecessary and create needless incompatibility.

MIT & BSD don't include a patent grant, that's a good reason to go with the Apache license.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#123

Post by captainmuon »

athrowaway3z wrote: post #47

I certainly get the hurt feelings, but i'm not clear on the license at all. >Limitations: You may not provide the Software as a hosted or managed service that offers users access to substantial features or functionality. Where on the spectrum sits an average cookie-cutter VPS provider that comes with an OS package manager that installs the program? Does the VPS provider have to screen the package manager? Does that c…

I think users applies to end-users here. So you must not run the software as a service (either paid or for free) for other users. You are free to use it yourself.

Crucially, I think what is banned to offer accounts. Offering turnkey-hosting is probably banned in spirit, but the person offering the turnkey-hosting is not in violation, rather the person booking the turnkey hosting and offering the accounts on the instance to third parties is in violation.

I think the wording is originally against somebody like Amazon hosting e.g. database instances for other people to use, and then giving you an account in that database. It's still OK to rent a VM from them and use the package manager to install it.

In any way, it is really confusing, in a way a license should not be. And I don't really understand why someone builds a blog platform, which is not monetized, open sources it, but doesn't want other people to host it. If I open source my stuff, I want people to use it. If I want to share the code but don't want people to use it I'd just put it somewhere it with no license at all (all rights reserved).

Re: Bear is now source-available

#124

Post by [deleted] »

brookst wrote: post #103
cinericius wrote: post #3

As 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…

Perhaps a better term would be “limited use open source”

[deleted]

Re: Bear is now source-available

#125

Post by [deleted] »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #21
cinericius wrote: post #3

As 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…

Most people have no problem with non-open source software. The gnashing of teeth comes in when projects like Terraform become successful specifically because they're open source , and then the maintainer changes to a closed source license that would have prevented the project from being successful in the first place. Doubly so when they relicense outside contributors' work with a closed source license because those c…

[deleted]

Re: Bear is now source-available

#127

Post by nothrabannosir »

ezekg wrote: post #71
jraph wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I won't cry for corps big enough to have legal departments because they elected not to benefit from my software. They have too much power for me to worry about looking to accommodate them and their fantasy. I don't mind them not using my code. They are doing themselves here. They have the human power to rebuild it anyway and I actually believe it should cost them. it's actually them who are spreading the F…

My point is less about the AGPL license itself and more about the people who choose it. If the OSI came out and made a statement on the ambiguities in the AGPL, and cleared the FUD in such a way that all companies agreed and could reference it, I'd wager that the AGPL would over time become much, much less popular for commercial open source. But I'd wager that they won't do that, because they win when COSS wins. But…

But why wouldn’t they change their minds if those big corporations actually changed their ways? Is there a similar sentiment against red hat?

I now understand where you’re coming from but I am not sold on your prediction that the agpl would crater if Google started complying with it. It would mean that Google open sources everything which is derivative work. That sounds like it would buy a lot of good will amongst precisely those people who are mad about how Amazon screwed redis (to put it bluntly).

Re: Bear is now source-available

#128

Post by drdaeman »

ahartmetz wrote: post #90
gr4vityWall wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should find a term (better than 'source-available' [...]) That term already exists: it's proprietary software. If you're going to restrict what users can do with their copies of the program, please do not try to label the program as Free Software / open-source.

Maximalism and lack of nuance aren't going to fix the world. Though, neither is lack of thinking things through. I'm not sure how people, including myself, would feel about the situation if the company using a "Bear-like" license was, say, Oracle or Microsoft.

Using the well-established terms according to their intended definitions is surely not maximalism or lack of nuance.

(I have no objections against the “source available” though - it’s a pretty unambiguous and useful term, that isolates one specific property.)

Re: Bear is now source-available

#129

Post by fsflover »

ahartmetz wrote: post #19
omnicognate wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As 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 Isn't this what the AGPL is for? That's an OSI approved "open source" license that places restrictions on people making the software accessible as a network service.

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

Any examples when AGPL was used successfully by competitors? Typically every company prohibits using this licence.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#130

Post by adastra22 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #114
adastra22 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you want free software (a subcategory of open source).

Free Software and Open Source have definitions that are both on their face and in practical application by the bodies responsible for each almost entirely identical. Neither is a subset of the other. If you are concerned about mandating users provide modifications by a similar license to the one they received material under, what you want is copyleft .

“Free software” means copyleft. The free software foundation manages copyleft licenses. The term open source was explicitly coined to differentiate from the more restrictive free software / copyleft.

All free software licenses are open source licenses. Not all open source licenses are free software licenses.

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