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No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

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Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#111
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[this comment was deleted as HN doesn't pay me to contribute to the discussion]

What? You opted for Spotify model when you sign up for the service. I am pretty sure you are still free to purchase the music or album in iTunes.

You’re even still free to just go buy the CD and rip it, as odd as it sounds.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#112
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[this comment was deleted as HN doesn't pay me to contribute to the discussion]

What? You opted for Spotify model when you sign up for the service. I am pretty sure you are still free to purchase the music or album in iTunes.

What happens with your iTunes music if your apple account would get locked? Sadly the only option nowadays would be purchasing hard discs, and hope theres no protection on the disk as you are not allowed to break it

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#113
post #52

I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately. Years ago software was fully build on the backs of a multitude of giants within their niche domain. But for a while now large companies have been adopting a model of taking from open source contributions and raking in billions. The original social bargain of "pay it on" has been broken by the Bezos of the world raking in billions. And yes, as o…

you mean the good ole days when Microsoft paid 50k for quickdos before making billions from it?

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#114
post #28

I empathize with the sentiment, but if you want to get paid for your open source work, surely it would work better to set up a Patreon and point people to it, rather than write "send me a six figure contract or fork this!" in a GitHub issue. It's also weird to use a license that explicitly lets Fortune 500 companies use the code for free, and then write that you don't want them to do so in the issue. Just change the…

I think a better approach is make some of the corporate users making requests admins on repo and take a break from the project. Companies would rather not maintain a private fork, but there are ways other than saying "pay up" to get them involved.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#115

Certainly his right; his project (though it has a very permissive license), his time. It sounds like he's tired of working on it, and he requires sponsorship to make it worthwhile. Let's say he doesn't, and the project is forked. This begs an interesting question: does he own the npm name? "faker" has mindshare, not just in JS; if he's unwilling to work on it, would it make sense for the NPM organization to reassign…

Which corporation sponsoring the fork gets to be declared the active fork?

It seems simplest to keep his original version and whatever updates he feels like doing as his own thing, and if a corporation feels like forking the project to add some feature they can add their name to it. If others prefer that version they can switch to it.

It's reasonable given the people doing it are well versed in this stuff. He keeps doing what he's doing without being as annoyed, the project stays on trajectory, and individual users can switch if they feel like it to an alternative option.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but this is not the right reaction. It won't improve anything. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? You are free to adjust the license to prevent this. But then tomorrow everybody comes and rants about that the GPL is too restrictive. That's the price we pay for this. It's the license that keeps…

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

What is wrong with saying “all rights reserved. You are free to use this software for educational and nonprofit purposes but once you start to make money off it you must request permission in writing” - I’ve seen a few licences like this. I guess the down sides are it might send some people elsewhere and you might be on your own trying to enforce it in court.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#117
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

Unreal Engine license is along these lines: it's free if you are small / no significant revenue, and it's 5% of your revenue otherwise. That said, not every shared-sources project would be used, if its license requires to pay royalty.

Unreal isn't open source

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#118
post #7

I'm curious what the motivation was for doing this now after supporting faker.js for 8+ years. Also, isn't faker.js a completed project? What is there to maintain?

I am guessing it's the usual, either money or time problems. Could also be burnout I suppose.

Or the apartment fire. See the comment above.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#119
post #67
post #21

Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? Apple is telling us we can't run our own software on their goddamned devices, yet they built their empire on open source. Look at Facebook, Google, Amazon. They've extracted all the blood they can and given us back scraps. AWS is repackaged software you pay more for. Yes, it's…

That is what happens when the hipster folks attack GPL and push for MIT like licenses. Had Linus not chosen it for Linux and I bet I would still be using a mix of Solaris, Aix and HP-UX on the server room. Dual licensing is the only true path, it was already so in the shareware days, and it will be back to be the daily reality. Bills have to paid.

How does dual licensing works? Got a prime example simple to understand?

Asking for a friend...

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#120
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPLv4 needs to address a number of new problems: * "any user data serviced by this software must be easily exportable; no attempt must be made to block other 3rd party companies or services from consuming this data" * "if this software is itself sold as a service, any automation or tooling built in service of this system must also be made available as open source" * "any devices using this software must not actively…

GPLv4 cannot exist . The GPL was a clever hack the first time it became popular, but it is fundamentally a singleton that cannot be instantiated more than once. Not like we didn't try.

Which is why we have three versi…oh, wait.
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