It's not okay to pretend your software is open source • Hacker News Board

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#121

Post by gammagoblin » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #5

I believe I'm in the minority when I say this. Ultimately, if I choose to, I will license my project however I want. If I want to restrict others from selling my product I will do so. Calling it Apache 2.0 + Common Clause makes sense, it's an extremely well known license and it's easier to start there and then say "but with some restrictions". That said, I do see the issue that people may use this software and not un…

I went into this thread expecting to find Commons Clause apologists, and you did not disappoint.

>Calling it Apache 2.0 + Common Clause makes sense, it's an extremely well known license and it's easier to start there and then say "but with some restrictions"

And that is exactly the problem. You are not interested in the Apache 2.0 license, so stop attaching your own terms to it and undermining it like a parasite. Find another license that has the terms you're interested in or write your own.

You don't want a FOSS license, and you aren't interested in writing FOSS software. You do not care about the Apache 2.0 license, you just want to slap it on your software as if it was a brand. You are interested in the marketting opportunity that branding your project with such a license brings to you, not the actual terms of the license itself. That is exactly the point of the blog post, and so you should stop using it.

You are undermining FOSS. These licenses were written on the good faith assumption that people would not go and add restrictive terms to them that are directly opposed to the principles and ethics of the license. You are doing that, and that means you are undermining the license and the efforts of all FOSS licensing by legitimising this kind of parasitic behaviour.

Just fucking stop, and write your own god damn license.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#122

Post by Bartweiss » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #112

Bartweiss wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they get to sell the software, but nobody else does... what you're saying is, you want other people to contribute code, and you want to be able to benefit financially from those contributions, but you expect it to be a one-way street. It seems like a lot of the positive responses to the Commons Clause have missed or skipped past this entire concern. People are understandably touchy about "AWS profits off this free…

> Pay if you profit" has real potential, and as you say has been achieved in the past via dual licensing. But, often, that involved straight-out lying about a FOSS license, though, and presenting the dual license scheme as if it were the near-equivalent of Commons Clause. (E.g., the old MySQL GPL or commercial license scheme.)

Would you be willing to elaborate what's wrong with the MySQL GPL scheme?

I'm far from an expert on that whole debate, but my casual understanding was that they offered the same code under GPL or proprietary licenses. And, that doing so had been found legal and had even gotten (somewhat grudging) approval from Stallman and the FSF as a way to ensure monetization and adoption of GPL-covered code. His justification has a weirdly deontological logic that I don't particularly accept ("you're not making proprietary code, just causing it to be made" is pretty thin), but I think I'm fine with the result.

More generally, though, I completely agree. Misrepresenting FOSS status to dual-license isn't ok, and has all the same problems as the Commons Clause. I think there's a strong case for restricting proprietary use via a single new, non-FOSS license (probably derived from an existing FOSS license) rather than via dual-licensing or worse, added clauses.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#123

Post by Klathmon » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #118

Klathmon wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like all good arguments, this one comes down to semantics! I'm not going to argue about what a word or phrase "should" mean, but I am going to say that I think the FOSS community could benefit from being more open to different views in this area. I think this is a case of dogmatism (that might not be the right word here, in this case i mean overly adhering to definitions) that is causing the entire community to be wo…

If the concept of the term "open source" changes, I feel nobody will be really impacted for the worse. Of course it does. It dilutes the concept, making it less relevant and useful. Currently I know that I can sell something I make using open source libraries; tomorrow, I won't. At each dilution, the concept is rendered less useful and more irrelevant. But what will happen is we will see more experimentation with mon…

>It dilutes the concept, making it less relevant and useful. Currently I know that I can sell something I make using open source libraries; tomorrow, I won't.

I'm not trying to twist your words, but that point has already been crossed in my opinion. You can sell some code, but it comes with a lot of extra work that you'll have to do in many cases (if it's copyleft), and all licenses have additional restrictions or aspects that must be followed.

Just because you can categorize many of those licenses into some umbrellas doesn't mean you can wholesale ignore the details of each since it's under some category of "open source".

"Open Source" already means many different things. Copyleft, permissive, are patents or trademarks included? Can you give a warranty? What form of distribution counts? How do you need to make the source available? All of these things vary wildly among OSI licenses, and in the end it's not causing any massive issues because the overarching term isn't used as a technical term, it's used as a colloquialism.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#124

Post by icebraining » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

hoaw wrote: post #114

icebraining wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. You're free to use another definition for the same term, but if you don't make it extremely clear to you're departing from the most commonly used, don't be surprised if people treat you as any other sleazy salesperson. The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as s…

> A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. How open something has to be, to be called open source is a matter of opinion, so is to some degree what open means in the context of open source. Otherwise they would have to call it "unconditional open source" but then a number of, if not most, licenses wouldn't qualify. > The patent grant is…

You're asking why should it mean X or Y, but my argument is that regardless of why it came to have the current definition, with its specific idiosyncrasies, changing it (to anything else) - and especially expanding it - is itself bad, because it makes discourse more confusing and therefore the term less relevant and useful.

There's nothing special about it, they're just two English words. What makes the term special is its origin and history - specifically, how it was coined and spread by the OSI and its members.

So, they should make their own history with a new term. In time it might be more relevant than open source, and that might be great. But don't mix them up.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#125

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #123

icebraining wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the concept of the term "open source" changes, I feel nobody will be really impacted for the worse. Of course it does. It dilutes the concept, making it less relevant and useful. Currently I know that I can sell something I make using open source libraries; tomorrow, I won't. At each dilution, the concept is rendered less useful and more irrelevant. But what will happen is we will see more experimentation with mon…

>It dilutes the concept, making it less relevant and useful. Currently I know that I can sell something I make using open source libraries; tomorrow, I won't. I'm not trying to twist your words, but that point has already been crossed in my opinion. You can sell some code, but it comes with a lot of extra work that you'll have to do in many cases (if it's copyleft), and all licenses have additional restrictions or as…

[deleted]

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#126

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #122

dragonwriter wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pay if you profit" has real potential, and as you say has been achieved in the past via dual licensing. But, often, that involved straight-out lying about a FOSS license, though, and presenting the dual license scheme as if it were the near-equivalent of Commons Clause. (E.g., the old MySQL GPL or commercial license scheme.)

Would you be willing to elaborate what's wrong with the MySQL GPL scheme? I'm far from an expert on that whole debate, but my casual understanding was that they offered the same code under GPL or proprietary licenses. And, that doing so had been found legal and had even gotten (somewhat grudging) approval from Stallman and the FSF as a way to ensure monetization and adoption of GPL-covered code. His justification has…

> Would you be willing to elaborate what's wrong with the MySQL GPL scheme?

For quite a while, MySQL AB purported on the website and elsewhere that commercial use of MySQL required a paid proprietary license, and that the GPL did not allow commercial use, only non-commercial use.

Eventually, they stopped doing that, but it took a while.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#127

Post by yebyen » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

slededit wrote: post #102

yebyen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the model that AGPL was designed to combat, right? Under the AGPL, Amazon would be free to do that, as long as they released the code for their managed deployment systems. (This doesn't get you any money, but it saves you from the sense that your FOSS-work has been exploited by a commercial entity that doesn't give anything back, so long as it's actually enforceable.)

AGPL says nothing about monetization. It only says Amazon would have to open any modifications they made. Unless Amazon becomes the new primary developers it does not solve the problem of paying the people actually doing the work.

Right, what it does potentially solve (comparing GPL to AGPL) is this:

Amazon takes your work and solves the "service layer" story, but having never distributed any binaries, they are not obligated to share their modifications in any way.

Under the AGPL, if you solve the core issue, and they borrow your solution adding a proper service layer to it, that would need to be released as source code, in a way that users could repeat the deployment on their own.

I say "potentially solves" because nobody is solving 80% of the problem better than anyone else can and releasing their 80% solution as AGPL, saving "Amazon jobs" for the Amazon people. And if they were, it would be easily circumvented; Amazon would simply never take the bait. Best case, they would figure out what makes your solution so much better and then implement those ideas for themselves in a clean-room.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#128

Post by Bartweiss » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #126

Bartweiss wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to elaborate what's wrong with the MySQL GPL scheme? I'm far from an expert on that whole debate, but my casual understanding was that they offered the same code under GPL or proprietary licenses. And, that doing so had been found legal and had even gotten (somewhat grudging) approval from Stallman and the FSF as a way to ensure monetization and adoption of GPL-covered code. His justification has…

> Would you be willing to elaborate what's wrong with the MySQL GPL scheme? For quite a while, MySQL AB purported on the website and elsewhere that commercial use of MySQL required a paid proprietary license, and that the GPL did not allow commercial use, only non-commercial use. Eventually, they stopped doing that, but it took a while.

Ick, that's part of the story I hadn't heard; my awareness of the whole thing mostly started with the Oracle acquisition. Yeah, that's way different that just offering dual licenses, and not at all ok.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#129

Post by BonesJustice » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #31

I agree that if you've labeled your software incorrectly as open source and you've been corrected, it should be re-labeled and the problem shouldn't be ignored. I will say, though, that personally I feel "free" software has a labelling problem. I'm not heavily engaged in the open-source movement, and a lot of the terms and wording and licensing confuses me to the point where I don't want to use it because I'm not sur…

Labeling is a problem, and I think the accepted defintion of "open source" is not a very good one. We have "free" software, "open source" software, and "free and open source" software, but I feel these terms are too amorphous and overlap needlessly. It would be easier to describe some of these "kind of open source" licenses if "free" and "open source" had more disjoint definitions.

Free software gives you the freedom to do whatever you want with the software: run it however you want, modify it, redistribute it, whatever. It should be possible to have "free" software that is not open source, i.e., software that requires more roundabout hacking to modify. You'd have the right to redistribute your modifications, even if they were made without the benefit of having the original source. I would expect most free software to also be open source, but it needn't be required

Open source software ought to simply describe software that is 'open' in the sense that you peer into it, see how it works, tinker with it, and otherwise extend it with the benefit of having the original source code. It shouldn't necessarily imply the same level of freedom as 'free' software. The right to resell, for example, need not be guaranteed.

Free and open source would combine the rights conferred by being both free and open source, just as it does today: you can use, modify, and redistribute the software and/or its source code (which is freely available) however you like, give or take some licensing nuances like reciprocity.

On a side note, I agree about the ambiguity of 'free' and the the confusion regarding "free as in speech" and "free as in beer". I will also note that I misunderstood "free as in beer" for a very long time. I'd originally assumed it related to the fact that no one 'owns' beer (in the IP sense): everyone is free to make and sell it.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#130

Post by hoaw » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #124

hoaw wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. How open something has to be, to be called open source is a matter of opinion, so is to some degree what open means in the context of open source. Otherwise they would have to call it "unconditional open source" but then a number of, if not most, licenses wouldn't qualify. > The patent grant is…

You're asking why should it mean X or Y, but my argument is that regardless of why it came to have the current definition, with its specific idiosyncrasies, changing it (to anything else) - and especially expanding it - is itself bad, because it makes discourse more confusing and therefore the term less relevant and useful. There's nothing special about it, they're just two English words. What makes the term special…

I think you are missing my point. An organization like the OSI might define what open source is. But that doesn't make their definition the meaning of open source. The meaning becomes what open source is. Since you have many different licenses under the term open source, some of which contain the non-absoluteness I described earlier, the meaning of open source becomes "software that you can modify etc. under certain conditions". That is why you have open source under a permissive license, under a copyleft license, under a patent granting license etc. That is the historic president. There is therefor no reason why you couldn't have open source under a non-commercial license, other than that this doesn't meet the OSI definition, but these other exceptions do.

But as I said I would still prefer "non-commercial open source". I grants you the right to modify etc. but only if you don't exploit it commercially. Just like copyleft open source grants you those rights, but only if you also distribute the source code.

Apparently though I guess if there was something that was a red herring it is this whole discussion as someone pointed out that common clause doesn't even call the license open source.