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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#11

Post by phoronixrly »

indigodaddy wrote: post #7

From their GitHub: Obviously you could self host it (and I guess plenty have figured out how to and even created competitors with the code if they are making this change?), but they discourage hobbyists from trying with this unhelpful statement. So what was the point of even being open source? Their whole statement kind of comes off as disingenuous to me because of this. "Bear Blog has been built as a platform and no…

You shouldn't look a gift horse in its mouth. Anything being open-source does not entitle you to be able to easily run it yourself. You are given the source as-is with no warranty. It is up to you to be competent enough to do anything with it and not the responsibility of the authors of the code.

If this doesn't suit you (as in, if this is a project you can't run, let alone maintain yourself), then you should consider paying someone (preferably the authors) to do so. I know this is novel to many people here who are used to exploiting the free labour of open-source maintainers, but it's been a decider in tech choices I make lately.

'Can I/anyone else at the company debug an issue and create a bugfix for this cool new open-source tech I want to introduce?' If no, then we are not qualified to run it without external help.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#12

Post by echoangle »

omnicognate wrote: post #5
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 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.

AGPL doesn't really prevent Amazon from making it an AWS offering unless they want to modify the program and don't want to share the modifications.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#13

Post by rbren »

I’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

Re: Bear is now source-available

#14

Post by ozgrakkurt »

Curious what author would think of separating the service and the core parts and leaving core as open source.

This way someone could create a competing service but they would have to write the entire service layer themselves and a single user would be able to self host the core part.

Also curious what they think about the thiefs not caring about the license and copy pasting it anyway. I don’t think the kind of person that copies your code and tries to sell it would really care about the license

Re: Bear is now source-available

#15

Post by redwood »

It's great to see the open source crowd particularly in Europe is finally turning corner here.

You know something's broken when Microsoft gets to claim to be the biggest backer of open source.

Meanwhile they'll break your back and steal all your trust and credibility if they can

Re: Bear is now source-available

#16

Post by simjnd »

I really believe this is the best model or licensing. I care about seeing the code and being able to modify it to suit my own preferences, but I also care about the project being healthy and the maintainer being able to earn from their efforts without worrying about cheap competition.

Even better when a project starts with this model so it doesn't feel like a rug pull or doesn't get messy with forks overshadowing the original product. But I don't feel like Bear had the kind of scale to face this type of reaction.

I use mataroa.blog periodically which is in the same nice and I wish the Bear maintainers fulfillment with their project.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#17

Post by cinericius »

omnicognate wrote: post #5
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 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.

Not a lawyer, but my understanding is there is a strong feeling that AGPL can be roughly ignored if a service provider provides some level of indirection (e.g. a proxy) between the user and the software. Then, the software is somehow not being accessed over a network and thus they are not required to release the source.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#19

Post by ahartmetz »

omnicognate wrote: post #5
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 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.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#20

Post by ezekg »

threemux wrote: post #4

I suppose this is the move if you're looking to foreclose all possible competing usages. Kudos for using correct terminology as it is no longer Open Source. However, I still believe AGPL is a better alternative in most cases and functionally prevents large enterprises from touching your code due to typical internal policies.

Shame on the people who recommend the AGPL to effectively be an OSI-approved source-available license.

This is a grievance against the spirit of open source.

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