Live data from Hacker News

Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

101–110 of 509 posts

Re: Bear is now source-available

#101

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…

If it's source available like this then it's clearly not a "community project"

Re: Bear is now source-available

#102

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…

It reads perfectly clear. It is designed to be a platform and mit license makes it too easy for other people to create competing services and they don’t want that. Maybe it was a mistake on their part to make it initially open source or it is bad that there are people looking to steal other people’s work

If you don't want your work to be "stolen", and instead want to force the people to contribute back, use the AGPL

Re: Bear is now source-available

#103

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”

Re: Bear is now source-available

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can license their software however they want, but it is worth reflecting on why almost all open source authors go with a permissive license like MIT: because it is basically a "buyer's market." When choosing a database, distributed queue, blogging platform, or whatever, companies usually have a choice of at least several high quality open source options. If one of those options places restrictions on the users…

Well, many developers publish their code not because they want to specifically make a successful open source project, but because they made something that was useful to themselves, and like the idea behind open source. In that case it makes more sense to do a copyleft license because it will legally require all derivatives to also follow that open source idea.

Yea I think stuff like this is great and will have some impact around the edges. Perhaps particularly in the realm of end-user software, like a window tiling manager.

But once we start talking about the kind of software large corporations (like AWS) will have an interest in, projects have to be successful to be useful. Software requires maintenance so the maintainers need to be able to devote their time to maintaining and improving the project. So this will select for projects that are successful enough that the maintainers can focus on it fully (either because some company hires them to work on their own project, they can charge high consulting fees because of their association with the project, or whatever).

I think "the code" (the thing covered by copyright) in most cases is not as valuable as "the project:" the leadership, the contributors, the users, the norms and practices, the commitment to ongoing maintenance, and so on. So just lots of individuals all putting pieces of their code out there with GPL probably doesn't make a lot of impact (though there is nothing wrong with it), because most users don't want "code" they want a "project" they can rely on.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#105

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. If you aren't interested in open source, that's your option, but open source has had a clear meaning for decades. You can use/write your software and people that believe in open source can use/write open sour…

Whether they contribute back their changes to their users.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#107

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…

> we should find a term (better than 'source-available', which is cold and doesn't capture community projects accurately)

it's not copyleft, it's a version of freeware license

Re: Bear is now source-available

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Technically true, but in practice almost every tech company forbids GPL code. I bet if you re-read your employment contract closely you'll find that you agreed not to introduce any GPL code into the company's codebases. (Edited for clarity).

Note that this is about source code, not binaries, or nobody would be working with docker (and more.)

Of course a company must forbid copy/paste of GPL code, because that would GPL the codebase and that's hardly what they want. But one should ask the Legal office (and/or other offices) about adding any MIT, BSD or proprietary library: credit must be given (how?), licenses must be available and compatible with the way the software is distributed. There are so many licenses out there, everything should be vetted.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#109

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 conside…

Well I disagree. My take: they wanted their cake and to eat it too. They wanted to be able to say they were free/open source, but really didn't want anyone to be able to utilize the code in any meaningful way. The hobbyist will be turned off because it doesn't look like there is any way to even try it out themselves on their own VPS or hardware. That seems intentional. And now, they change their license so that anyone smart enough to figure it out and make money with it, they not gonna allow that either now. Feels like we know how they really felt from the start, which is they didn't really want anyone to run this code on their own to begin with, but they wanted to still be able to claim "fully open source." IMO, even “disingenuous” is actually a somewhat kind word to how they come off to me.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#110
Silly. Globally over half of smartphone users have Android phones. Bear was actually the only thing that kept me in the Apple ecosystem for so long, was really bummed when I switched to Android to have to move to another notes program.

IMO - you are charging money for your app which makes you a business. When you don't listen to the market you forfeit any right to complain when you get your lunch money stolen. Sounds hard but most lessons in business are expensive!

Post reply on HN