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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#221

Post by ezekg »

jraph wrote: post #208
ezekg wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's so bad with this? It's lying. It's an open source project and a business model built on deceit. I guess I care about clear rules, clear intentions, and I care about integrity above all. The AGPL is ambiguity; unclear rules, veiled intentions. And these same people will relicense without a thought, too. I think we should care about these things, otherwise we repeat history over and over again.

> It's lying. I don't see how it can do this. The AGPL is a license text. It states what people can do with the licensed code. What is lying in this text? > I guess I care about clear rules, clear intentions, and I care about integrity Me too > The AGPL is ambiguity; unclear rules, veiled intentions That's where I don't agree: The rules are written in the license text and I see no ambiguity there. Where is the ambigu…

Here's a thread from a couple hours ago on X: https://x.com/_m27e/status/1962563736142565882. Read the images and follow the quoted posts.

The example comes straight from the mouth of a COSS founder.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#222

Post by LeFantome »

swiftcoder wrote: post #144
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…

> the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd The original stance of the open source crowd was more along the lines of the GPL -> GPLv3 -> AGPL, which expressly prevents this kind of thing. The proliferation of "give everything away for free" MIT/BSD/Apache licenses seems to me to have been an intentional campaign by corporate interests to undermine free software ideals

As I recall, Open Source was about developers collaborating to make better software. It was a pro-developer philosophy vs the Free Software movement which was all about the rights of users (and developer hostile in my view). GPL and its children are from the Free Software Tradition.

Open Source provides the same “4 freedoms” as Free Software so most Open Source licenses qualify as Free Software as well.

If the goal is developer collaboration, permissive licenses are often the best choice. If you want maximum user entitlement, copyleft licenses limit developer freedom in exchange for a guarantee that future code will also be released as free software.

Cloud hosting was a challenge that did not exist when either philosophy first emerged.

With hosting, you are able to become the preferred source for software without adding much value to the code itself. This is what the author is complaining about.

The AGPL tries to address this in the GPL family but I don’t think it quite gets there. For permissive licenses, we see these “no hosting” exceptions.

If you read the early writings from the Free Software Foundation, they do not care if devs can make a living. The goal is user freedom. I think it is this philosophy that objects to the hosting exceptions.

Perhaps a better solution will be found in the future.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#223

Post by heavyset_go »

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…

> 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.

There are factions in open source advocacy, ranging from laissez faire views of freedom to views of freedom as something that needs some limitations to conserve it and prevent abuses/tragedy of the commons/etc.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#224

Post by Skunkleton »

levkk wrote: post #182
happymellon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGPL is exactly the spirit of open source. The license used by bear violates freedom 0. AGPL ensures that freedom 1, 2 and 3 are allowed even in hosted services scenarios. Freedom 0 the freedom to use the work Freedom 1 the freedom to study the work Freedom 2 the freedom to copy and share the work with others Freedom 3 the freedom to modify the work, and the freedom to distribute modified and therefore derivative wor…

Gotta love these are zero-indexed. Written by an engineer for engineers.

Its weirdly incorrect to zero index stuff like this. The zero index refers to the start of the first thing, which is not what numbered lists are supposed to indicate.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#225

Post by tombert »

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…

I'm not 100% convinced that these licenses actually work. How hard would it be for a BigCo to have an intern to modify the code enough so that it's not an easily detectable violation?

I mean this stuff isn't just theoretical, there have been video games where we only find out they violated the GPL after a major code breach. [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20129285

Re: Bear is now source-available

#226

Post by johntash »

I vaguely remember seeing bearblog before. While I can't comment much on the actual article, I do want to applaud how simple it looks. It makes me want to migrate away from ghost to bear or hugo or something without javascript/etc.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#227

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Bear is now source-available

#228

Post by nickpsecurity »

The author released it under a do-anything-you-want license. Then was hurt other people used the code for commercial and competitive reasons. The first paragraph showed the root cause was not thinking through licensing in the first place. Now, they've seriously considered it, decided their goals, and re-released it with a mix of generosity and self-interest.

We should probably remind people that licensing is an agreement between them and the other party deciding what can and can't be done. Make sure you've considered things like profit, competitors, source redistribution, etc ahead of time. Then, pick the license that suits your goals best. For many, that's source-available licenses instead of open source.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#229

Post by graemep »

apgwoz wrote: post #215
anikom15 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, open source was definitely more leaning toward the GPLv2 than the BSD-style licenses.

…until businesses decided that the GPLv2 was legally risky and businesses started to avoid it.

Software businesses. Other businesses do not care.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#230

Post by LeFantome »

tsimionescu wrote: post #179
swiftcoder wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd The original stance of the open source crowd was more along the lines of the GPL -> GPLv3 -> AGPL, which expressly prevents this kind of thing. The proliferation of "give everything away for free" MIT/BSD/Apache licenses seems to me to have been an intentional campaign by corporate interests to undermine free software ideals

Amazon offers lots of AGPL software, and they fully respect the license in all cases. Ultimately the GPL is about protecting users' rights at the expense of developers' rights. So as long as AWS can offer a better/cheaper managed version of a software service, while still giving the users all details on how to run the same service if they chose to, then the AGPL is completely achieving its aims, even if the original…

Agreed. The AGPL does not care at all about those writing the code. It is all about users.
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