Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

sf.gazetteer.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–16 of 16 posts

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#11

Post by beekaywhopper »

swatcoder wrote: post #10
wppick wrote: post #5

> Pretty much every big tech company you could think of uses some type of open source software, including Apple, Google, and Facebook. These companies contribute massively to open source. The article would have more impact if better examples were chosen. I think the model of open source works fine as is. Maybe people will write open source out of passion to work on cool project, and maybe to build a name for themselv…

I agree that those are bad examples in this context, but the underlying problem is real. As a trade community, developers have come to treat open source projects as commercial vendors that they simply don't have to pay for -- they place support and roadmap demands on maintainers and regularly whip themselves up into a fury of frustrated entitlement when maintainers don't abide by those demands. For passionate volunte…

Does this actually happen? Can you help me find some examples of commercial vendors (who don't contribute to the project substantially) putting support and roadmap demands on maintainers and then let loose on those maintainers when it doesn't meet a deadline? I'm having trouble figuring out if this actually happens regularly.

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#12

Post by diggan »

_mlbt wrote: post #8

This is childish and counterproductive. If companies are complying with the terms of the license it has been released under, they aren’t doing anything morally or legally wrong. If you want companies to pay for your software, place it under a different license.

> they aren’t doing anything morally or legally wrong

This is true, today. The group seems to want to change at least the moral part of the question. Not sure if that's good or not, sounds like a new thing instead of FOSS.

> If you want companies to pay for your software, place it under a different license.

I think this is a group of companies that want other companies to (also) pay for FOSS even if they don't have to.

So it's a bit like those religious groups that try to get others to not have abortion, in a way, that you think you know what's morally right for others, and now you want to try to enforce that somehow on the others that don't necessarily agree with you.

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#13

Post by bdcravens »

theturtletalks wrote: post #6
greenavocado wrote: post #3

What is the desired end goal of this? Shaming companies into paying for something?

You'd be surprised how many people don't know that tech companies are standing on the shoulders of giants (maintainers of popular open source projects). Most people not in tech legitimately believe tech companies were built from scratch. On the flip side, FB could put up a billboard talking about how they built and open-sourced projects like React and GraphQL.

Many open source contributors are employed by big tech. A lot of modern open source was born out of proprietary offerings. (for example, AJAX, which built the foundation for modern Javascript apps was built for Outlook Web)

To say nothing of the fact that Microsoft owns Github and NPM. An entire class of modern applications, for better or worse, came out of Github's Electron.

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#14

Post by DamnYuppie »

diggan wrote: post #12
_mlbt wrote: post #8

This is childish and counterproductive. If companies are complying with the terms of the license it has been released under, they aren’t doing anything morally or legally wrong. If you want companies to pay for your software, place it under a different license.

> they aren’t doing anything morally or legally wrong This is true, today. The group seems to want to change at least the moral part of the question. Not sure if that's good or not, sounds like a new thing instead of FOSS. > If you want companies to pay for your software, place it under a different license. I think this is a group of companies that want other companies to (also) pay for FOSS even if they don't have t…

I am deeply saddened that people are so comfortable stating that there is no moral issue with murder, aka abortion. Or that people should not have strong beliefs around it.

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#15

Post by [deleted] »

diggan wrote: post #12
_mlbt wrote: post #8

This is childish and counterproductive. If companies are complying with the terms of the license it has been released under, they aren’t doing anything morally or legally wrong. If you want companies to pay for your software, place it under a different license.

> they aren’t doing anything morally or legally wrong This is true, today. The group seems to want to change at least the moral part of the question. Not sure if that's good or not, sounds like a new thing instead of FOSS. > If you want companies to pay for your software, place it under a different license. I think this is a group of companies that want other companies to (also) pay for FOSS even if they don't have t…

[deleted]

Re: Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source

#16

Post by sumuyuda »

theturtletalks wrote: post #6
greenavocado wrote: post #3

What is the desired end goal of this? Shaming companies into paying for something?

You'd be surprised how many people don't know that tech companies are standing on the shoulders of giants (maintainers of popular open source projects). Most people not in tech legitimately believe tech companies were built from scratch. On the flip side, FB could put up a billboard talking about how they built and open-sourced projects like React and GraphQL.

A big difference between running/promoting your own projects vs paying external developers of FOSS software the company uses/depends on.
Post reply on HN