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Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

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Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#121

Post by eeZah7Ux »

hendzen wrote: post #115
karmakaze wrote: post #104

The problem isn't really here. The problem is that everyone wants a permissive abusable license when AGPL would be just fine. If everyone here complaining just used AGPL then we wouldn't have this Amazon situation. People want to have their cake and eat it too. They started with an MIT license because it gets more uptake then whine when the license terms are being followed. But then it wouldn't be widely used. The so…

Mongodb already used AGPL prior to switching to the SSPL...

The problem is that only MongoDB did it, not the majority of the FLOSS ecosystem.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#122

Post by bonzini »

luckylion wrote: post #48
danShumway wrote: post #38

We have two contrasting terms that work perfectly well right now: Open Source, a set of licenses that allow users to run and modify software for personal or commercial purposes without your permission. and Source Available, a set of licenses that allow users to see and modify your source code provided they meet some kind of criteria you set up, such as not using the code for commercial purposes or not doing things yo…

> and Source Available, a set of licenses that allow users to see and modify your source code provided they meet some kind of criteria you set up, such as not using the code for commercial purposes or not doing things you don't like with it. GPL is source available, then?

Nope! GPL puts conditions on redistribution, not on modifying or running the code.

AGPL does stretch the definition though, and people have argued indeed that it is not open source.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#123

Post by jeena »

mwfunk wrote: post #89
toomuchtodo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you’re not going hungry while one of the most valuable companies in the world doesn’t extract value from your work.

If someone gets into writing open source with the goal of making money off of it and gets pissed when others “extract value” from their work, that person never should have gotten into open source to begin with. In fact, for their own sake, they should probably get right the fuck out of open source pronto, because they are seriously missing all the points in spectacular fashion.

I don't agree. Open Source has always been about making money. What you might mean is Free Software, which is quite different from a philosophical point of view.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#124

Post by eeZah7Ux »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #60
mavelikara wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is, in effect, bringing attention to this issue and I am glad that they are. > What you say ("The whole point of choosing a permissive license is that you want others to have the right to profit off of your work and give you nothing in return.") is obvious in hindsight, and should go without saying if you start a project with the express intent of commercializing it. Even if you do thoughtfully choose a licens…

Are you saying that choosing a permissive license is like "pissing-in-the-pool"? As if do so contaminates the market for everyone?

Yes. The whole AWS problem stems from having too much software under "permissive" licenses and now enough under reciprocal licenses.

Reciprocal licenses work like herd immunity: you need a large enough ecosystem to effectively keep freeloaders at bay while rewarding those who cooperate often.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#125

Post by ForHackernews »

adamson wrote: post #117
ForHackernews wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an idealism that has given us software such as Linux No, Linux is GPL licensed, it's not a naive permissive license.

Yes, but you’re still free to turn around and sell Linux as part of a SaaS offering as Amazon does. It saves you from someone surreptitiously forking your project and selling the fork without contributing back improvements to the public, but it doesn’t totally sidestep the issues in the article.

True, but SaaS didn't exist at the time Linux was invented, so it's hard to fault Torvalds for not foreseeing this particular issue. The broader point, I'd argue, is that the idealism behind many successful free software projects was tempered by realism in choosing licenses that compel contributing back to the community.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#126

Post by detaro »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #124
paulryanrogers wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that choosing a permissive license is like "pissing-in-the-pool"? As if do so contaminates the market for everyone?

Yes. The whole AWS problem stems from having too much software under "permissive" licenses and now enough under reciprocal licenses. Reciprocal licenses work like herd immunity: you need a large enough ecosystem to effectively keep freeloaders at bay while rewarding those who cooperate often.

How would less permissive software existing have helped e.g. MongoDB with their "AWS problem"?

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#127

Post by eeZah7Ux »

prepend wrote: post #90
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic argument is that Amazon is Free Riding because they get massively more out of the resource than they put in, by virtue of their scale alone. The free-rider problem occurs when those who benefit from resources, public goods, or services do not pay for them, which results in an underprovision of those goods or services. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem

It’s impossible to free ride with a permissive license like the one used. It’s like complaining because Seattle sets up a free subway that supports infinite riders at $0 marginal cost and Amazon has all their employees ride it instead of making google buses. There’s also an issue that Elastic’s district was actually worse than Amazon’s new distro due to license confusion.

> It’s impossible to free ride with a permissive license like the one used.

On the contrary, permissive licenses has been quietly pushed by companies, together with replacing Free Software with Open Source, in order to exploit it.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#128

Post by Drdrdrq »

tolmasky wrote: post #119
Drdrdrq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And sure, maybe its as simple as "are you profiting from it" -- but then we get into weird edge cases of me using your software on my router that I use for my real estate business or something. Just to be clear, if you are referring to Commons Clause, you can freely use the software for real estate or whatever, you just can't sell the router itself, software itself, or offer paid consulting / support / hosting for…

> Exception is when you are selling the software itself, or the services that base on it. I think we're agreeing here: no one actually knows the boundaries of this. I'm simply not interested in being the guinea pig of where the line is of "the services that base on it". In my experience the actual deciding factor for this is when you become successful enough and worthwhile to sue. Then it's up to some judge in Texas…

Yes, I think we are in agreement. Except that MIT is not as well understood as most people think it is (Kyle Mitchell wrote about it, can't find the link right now), so you might want to lawyer up for opensource too. :)

I just think a solution that better aligns incentives of users, businesses and developers is needed, because opensource doesn't do its job good enough. But time will tell which licenwe will get enough backing to succeed in dethroning it.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#129

Post by evrydayhustling »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #20

I don't understand this sentiment. The whole point of choosing a permissive license is that you want others to have the right to profit off of your work and give you nothing in return. If you don't want others to have that right, then choose a different license. But don't grant the right and then complain when people exercise it.

Yeah, this strikes me as someone trying to legislate a business model into working: engage open source contributors for all features but also have an exclusive rights to sell them in an Enterprise offering without competing with Amazon.

The stronger part of the argument is that Amazon is being anticompetitive by using their privileged role as AWS' hardware operator to compete with app providers in on higher layers. Maybe in a few years we will have a lawsuit related to the one Apple is facing now about ios apps.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#130

Post by jchw »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #108
jchw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly an interesting point of view. Take something that's commercial, for example, like Microsoft's docx format. If Open Office/Libre Office implements support for docx, is it hijacking proprietary formats, and siphoning customers off of proprietary projects? (edit: as it has been pointed out, .docx is a bad example, because it was standardized, but the point stands, I believe.) I hate that this stuff hits H…

> It worries me that we're developing a culture where I as an individual must adhere to some moral framework when writing code, lest I violate some social open source norms. To me, this is deeply poisonous to the spirit of open source. Every culture or community has norms, and many of those norms generalize to universal moral principles, like: participate fairly in a community, not exploit it. "Spirit of Open Source"…

Our disagreement about the spirit of open source is fundamental.
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