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FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

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Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#111

Post by arp242 »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #28

> It also enables contributions by the community for the latest version and not old source code. I have no interest in contributing to a code base that where my contributions wouldn’t be open source for two more years. You’ll find naive developers out there, but my free time won’t be spent contributing and my company would never allow me to contribute.

> my company would never allow me to contribute.

So your company would rather spend significantly more time and effort to work around problems? Because that is what 100% closed source usually means: "I found some problem, the vendor can't be arsed to fix it, the solution probably isn't too complex, and now I need to do some complex stuff to work around it".

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#112

Post by jen20 »

CM30 wrote: post #101
geerlingguy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the philosophy of wanting to use open source and gain the community / benefits of it... but using a proprietary sales model. It just doesn't work, and once you start calling users of your software who contribute nothing back anything resembling "freeloader" (whether or not you use that word), you've lost the whole concept of why most of us care about true open source. We can use it, we can learn fr…

This. I'm not sure why it's so difficult for people to grasp that open source in of itself is not a business model. It can make money sure, but for the most part that's neither guaranteed or likely. If anyone can take your code and resell it as a competitor or use it for free, then by definition you're not going to be able to monetise the way traditional software businesses can. All the attempts to block large corpor…

The idea of the source being available but software not being “free” is fine by me.

I want the source so I can fix bugs instantly instead of trying to convince some mid-tier product manager having gone through 5 tiers of support. That is a huge benefit over source-unavailable proprietary software, or (heaven help us) SAAS.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#113

Post by WJW »

jen20 wrote: post #112
CM30 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I'm not sure why it's so difficult for people to grasp that open source in of itself is not a business model. It can make money sure, but for the most part that's neither guaranteed or likely. If anyone can take your code and resell it as a competitor or use it for free, then by definition you're not going to be able to monetise the way traditional software businesses can. All the attempts to block large corpor…

The idea of the source being available but software not being “free” is fine by me. I want the source so I can fix bugs instantly instead of trying to convince some mid-tier product manager having gone through 5 tiers of support. That is a huge benefit over source-unavailable proprietary software, or (heaven help us) SAAS.

"I could fix it myself if needed" quite often comes up on HN and other programmer forums but I honestly have to wonder how many people could actually fix deep issues in production grade software. For example, there are plenty of bugs open on the issue trackers of (say) postgres or kubernetes yet despite the source of those being available I'm willing to bet a vanishingly small amount of users would be willing or capable to dive in and fix the issue themselves.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#114

Post by cxr »

arp242 wrote: post #107
geerlingguy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the philosophy of wanting to use open source and gain the community / benefits of it... but using a proprietary sales model. It just doesn't work, and once you start calling users of your software who contribute nothing back anything resembling "freeloader" (whether or not you use that word), you've lost the whole concept of why most of us care about true open source. We can use it, we can learn fr…

What Sentry objects to is people setting up "super-error-reporting.com" with an unmodified copy of the Sentry software without contributing anything back, which undercuts their SaaS business model. This is not a "user" in any common-sense definition of the term. And yes, these people are "getting a free ride" (i.e. "free riding") because they get software with zero cost to them. That's on its own is not really a bad…

> Simple saying "your business model sucks then", as the previous poster did

Their comment doesn't say that. Did they edit their post, or are you just shamelessly throwing around made up quotes?

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#115

Post by WJW »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #74
growse wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire justification of the existence of the license talks about the problem of the "harmful freeloaders".

> "harmful freeloaders". The phrase you quoted "harmful freeloaders" does not appear in any of our texts. The word we used are "free-riders" and that does not refer to our users. Our users are free to use the software without contributions in any matter they want. What is not acceptable is to use it to run a competing SaaS business.

> in any matter they want.

Then the next sentence immediately goes into ways in which it is not intended to be used. Make up your mind guys.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#116

Post by growse »

arp242 wrote: post #100
growse wrote: post #48

The definition of "harmful free-riding" is not good, and its use to justify the license is problematic. > Consequently, the common pool resource may be under-produced, overused, or degraded. Additionally, it has been shown that despite evidence that people tend to be cooperative by nature (a prosocial behaviour), the presence of free-riders causes cooperation to deteriorate, perpetuating the free-rider problem.” Soft…

> If your business model relies on no-one else using your software to compete with you, don't open-source the software. So you would rather have completely closed source instead of Open Source-but-for-one -detail? That's some puritanical ideology-driven nonsense. Be against this license if you wish, that fine and I'll happily debate anyone about it. But this is not a position I consider valid because obviously "more…

> So you would rather have completely closed source instead of Open Source-but-for-one -detail?

Yes, because it's more honest about its intention. "but-for-one" is not open by definition, and trying to draw an equivocation is, ironically, free-riding off the virtue and benefits of actually open source projects.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#117

Post by James_K »

joshuaissac wrote: post #94
James_K wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No license can prevent you from making alterations to your private copy of a piece of software.

> No license can prevent you from making alterations to your private copy of a piece of software. The right to make alterations to someone else's intellectual property does not exist except as granted by licence or fair use exceptions.

Copyright is about copying. For instance, if I buy a book, I cannot distribute copies of that book. But I can write whatever I want in the book, change any of the text in it, provided I don't then copy the modified text. They own the copyright to the intellectual property, not the physical item you are given or the bits in your computer's RAM, which you are free to do as you please with.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#118

Post by James_K »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #96
James_K wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I already explained elsewhere in this comment thread why. Your explanation seemed to be predicated on the idea that you would have to stick to the terms of your own licence. This isn't true. A license only describes what other people can do. As the copyright holder, you can do whatever you want. For instance, you can offer a dual license, or offer different licenses to different people. An FSL-GPL is perfectly feas…

> This isn't true. A license only describes what other people can do. As the copyright holder, you can do whatever you want. In the future. A copyright holder can’t change the artifact you are already holding. > The FSL also depends on this. Someone releasing FSL code could easily switch to a different license at some point Sure. At which point it no longer is FSL licensed. The code drop of today is fully open source…

> In the future. A copyright holder can’t change the artifact you are already holding.

Yes, but you can literally just copy the GPL into the bottom of the FSL and you have a valid license.

> The code drop of today is fully open source two years from now. Nobody can take that away.

If you open-source the code-drop from two years ago, no one can take that away. There are two cases here:

If the code isn't FSLed and the dev decides to stop distributing source, a fork will have to be made using the outdated source that has previously been released under an open license.

If the code is FSLed and the dev decides to drop FSL, a fork will have to be made today using the old code, or can be made later using code that's just as out of date.

These aren't substantially different.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#119

Post by anonacct37 »

I wish Sentry would stop free riding on Free Software movement by pretending their product is part of it.

Their product isn't Free Soft anymore. They feel that they can increase revenue with a more restrictive license, a business move that doesn't require this cathedral and bazaar white washing.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#120

Post by James_K »

bentlegen wrote: post #99
James_K wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why don't you switch to a fully progressive license? What you're saying here is "we're putting our competitors at slightly less of a disadvantage, and that's good", so why not release under a free license and not put your competitors at any disadvantage? Either you want competition or you don't. What's offensive about this to some people is that you're trying to have the best of both worlds. Pretend that you welco…

All of this is covered in the article.

I don't think it is.
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