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I feel open source has turned into two worlds

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Re: I feel open source has turned into two worlds

#11

Post by ItCouldBeWorse »

KingMob wrote: post #8

The current attitudes and licenses of FOSS, while good in many ways, have also enabled a ton of exploitation and free-riding, and people need to acknowledge that. Nobody should be giving Bezos free work.

Especially when Bezos uses that free work,to sabotage the free eco-system wherever he can. Building moats and garden walls, embracing, extending and extincting.

And you can tell by the way they move, they do not want to hurt each other- a cartel of toe-owners. Otherwise, what happened to gaming with the steam-deck, could have happened with linux to the desktop world years ago. Especially now, where the owner describing his intent, transfers to scripting glue code.

Re: I feel open source has turned into two worlds

#12

Post by _vere »

It's also notable that these companies often dont respect the terms of foss software at all. Anyone worth their salt can tell you that training your LLM on gpl3 code would make it a derivative product, as it is able to reproduce large parts of that code. LLMs that are currently earning Google, Facebook, Openai, etc, billions, while they obviously dont make "their" products available under gpl3.

Re: I feel open source has turned into two worlds

#13

Post by watwut »

polotics wrote: post #6
jsnell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd note that the only thing Apple, Google and MS are said to have done is to use the software. The bug has no actual example of them making demands, "leeching" or acting entitled. The security issues would be security issues just the same even if the library was only used by Linux desktops. (And if the library is unfit for use in other operating systems like the author suggests, feels like it probably is equally unf…

It's high-time for a "reasonable compensation" clause in hobbyists' open-source software licenses I think. Something to the effect of: "if you're using my labour of love to make millions, gimme one of these millions..."

You can make such license, there is no issue with that. You just cant call it "MIT License" after that.

Re: I feel open source has turned into two worlds

#14

Post by jsnell »

altairprime wrote: post #9
jsnell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd note that the only thing Apple, Google and MS are said to have done is to use the software. The bug has no actual example of them making demands, "leeching" or acting entitled. The security issues would be security issues just the same even if the library was only used by Linux desktops. (And if the library is unfit for use in other operating systems like the author suggests, feels like it probably is equally unf…

Uncompensated use for unshared reward is, by definition, leeching. The BBS use of the term referred to leeching in the context your upload/download ratio, the torrent use in the context of your seeded/downloaded ratio. ratio = (contributions - demands) : earnings If you contribute nothing, demand nothing, and earn nothing, carry on. “Nothing” is loosely defined as “near enough to zero in the context of a specific pro…

> If you contribute nothing and demand security fixes, then you’re not a leecher — you’re a parasite, because your demands exceed your contributions;

There's the "demand" word again. Who is that demanded something from the maintainer, and where? I saw no indication in the original bug of any demands from big tech companies.

(Just the act reporting a security issue is not a demand. A verifiable bug is a bug whether it was reported or not, and reporting one is a contribution.)

When the demand part of your torrent-inspired equation is zero, how is it leeching? It's just zero, no matter what the earnings are.

Re: I feel open source has turned into two worlds

#15

Post by prymitive »

politelemon wrote: post #4

> This policy will probably make some downstream users nervous, but maybe it encourages them to contribute a little more. This is an understated but brilliant framing. Oh I know they won't contribute, users will continue to apply pressure through issue threads saying that their clueless security teams are breathing down their necks. But at least you'd hope this gives pause. The linked issue is worth a read, it's a sh…

I think a lot of people, when they see an open source project that somehow fits into their current challenges, read it as the person realising the project saying “I alone now own this entire problem space” and so that GitHub repo is now just an extension of your jira board.

Re: I feel open source has turned into two worlds

#16

Post by karmakaze »

> They're not in open source as a cooperative venture, they are using it to make money

> Existing open source licenses, practices, and culture don't draw this distinction

I disagree for the most part. Corporations avoid copyleft licenses like the plague. It's the term open-source that includes 'free beer' licensed software that created this confusion.

Re: I feel open source has turned into two worlds

#17

Post by MichaelZuo »

karmakaze wrote: post #16

> They're not in open source as a cooperative venture, they are using it to make money > Existing open source licenses, practices, and culture don't draw this distinction I disagree for the most part. Corporations avoid copyleft licenses like the plague. It's the term open-source that includes 'free beer' licensed software that created this confusion.

It does seem like a strange claim to make…

Re: I feel open source has turned into two worlds

#18

Post by ndiddy »

I feel bad for the libxml2 maintainer. The project was originally intended for parsing GNOME configuration files, but then a bunch of corporations started using it to parse untrusted data with much higher stakes. I hope that both the decision not to prioritize security issues and the new notice in the README saying it's foolish to use the project to parse untrusted data will encourage corporate users to either switch to a different project or do more to improve its security than dumping security reports onto an unpaid maintainer.

I will say that all of the comments saying that open source licenses should change to formally prohibit this behavior are a bit naive. Ever since the Open Source Initiative was founded in the late 90s, its express purpose has been to boost the adoption of free (now "open source") software by pitching it to corporations as a way to cut costs. This means that they'll never approve a license that requires certain users to contribute to the project, monetarily or otherwise. Of course anyone's allowed to license their project any way they see fit, but they'll have to call it something other than open source and accept the limited distribution and userbase they'll see as a result.

Re: I feel open source has turned into two worlds

#19

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

polotics wrote: post #6
jsnell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd note that the only thing Apple, Google and MS are said to have done is to use the software. The bug has no actual example of them making demands, "leeching" or acting entitled. The security issues would be security issues just the same even if the library was only used by Linux desktops. (And if the library is unfit for use in other operating systems like the author suggests, feels like it probably is equally unf…

It's high-time for a "reasonable compensation" clause in hobbyists' open-source software licenses I think. Something to the effect of: "if you're using my labour of love to make millions, gimme one of these millions..."

Yes, it's called "becoming proprietary software" because what are you going to do to get that oh so reasonable compensation? Create your own billing department and manage tax payments on your revenue? Hire a legal team to create and enforce your license? Sic the BSA (apparently they still exist after all these years!) to threaten to audit organizations who aren't paying? Fend off lawsuits from users, competitors, and patent trolls? (Once you start collecting money, other people inevitably want a piece of it.)

Re: I feel open source has turned into two worlds

#20

Post by GardenLetter27 »

KingMob wrote: post #8

The current attitudes and licenses of FOSS, while good in many ways, have also enabled a ton of exploitation and free-riding, and people need to acknowledge that. Nobody should be giving Bezos free work.

> Nobody should be giving Bezos free work.

Just use the GPLv3 or AGPL, problem solved.

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