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Generating Income from Open Source

vadimdemedes.com

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Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#121

Post by kiba »

rerdavies wrote: post #86
kiba wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very confusing when someone said it's open source when it isn't actually open source. I quite literally grew up with the specific definition. If people decided to redefine open source software, then I'll need a new specific definition, because it's no longer useful or fit for the purpose.

Not sure that the definition was fit for purpose in the first place. A perfectly reasonable understanding of Open Source is that the source is open (whether conditions are attached or not). And if you then object to conditions being attached to how you use it, perhaps you should also consider the onerous conditions imposed by the GPL license.

It wasn't reasonable to me that open source software just means only source code is available. If people insists that the way it should be used, then I would abandon the term for something else.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#122

Post by kiba »

godelski wrote: post #94
memefrog wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Source available" is not open source and has nothing to do with open source. Open source never confused people until bad-faith actors started intentionally trying to confuse them by labeling things that aren't open source as "open source". Open source has a precise definition and it has had it for decades . If you describe your software as open source and it is not available under an open source license then you are…

> "Source available" is not open source and has nothing to do with open source. Open source never confused people until bad-faith actors started intentionally trying to confuse them by labeling things that aren't open source as "open source". I do not know how one can say such a thing with a straight face. The confusion does not require bad faith actors, but just the ability to speak English. LITERACY is what causes…

Dictionaries/thesaurus just describe how words are used or were used by someone. It doesn't prescribe the correct usage of words.

The issue is that open source is a clear technical term that has a certain usage within the community. This caused confusion, especially since that is a specific definition that I grew up with, and existed before I was even born.

Calling it 'source available' caused none of the confusion.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#123

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

lamontcg wrote: post #102
TheNewsIsHere wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider it a feature that some FOSS licenses are effectively bound to their licensed code forever but don’t necessarily prohibit forking and relicensing in future. I do think moving the goalposts or being dishonest about your intentions are wrong. What I’d like to see when this happens is honesty about relicensing with a view toward profit (or whatever you’re after), and not attempting to scrub your more liberally…

> I do think moving the goalposts or being dishonest about your intentions are wrong. > If you think you might one day make money on it, just say that up front and don’t be greedy when you finally do. You're implicitly assuming that they're doing a deliberate bait and switch instead of just realizing after the fact that they screwed up. There seems to be an open source fundamental attribution error here where someone…

My comment doesn’t apply to every situation.

There are certainly cases where there has been an intentional (or effective) bait and switch, but I’m not laboring under the assumption that this is always the case.

I’m not applying any assumption of malice to initial licensing decisions.

The idea I was communicating was that in some cases developers _do_ have intentions that are incompatible with FOSS licenses from the start. Not that this is always the case.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#124

Post by cttet »

memefrog wrote: post #118
godelski wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Source available" is not open source and has nothing to do with open source. Open source never confused people until bad-faith actors started intentionally trying to confuse them by labeling things that aren't open source as "open source". I do not know how one can say such a thing with a straight face. The confusion does not require bad faith actors, but just the ability to speak English. LITERACY is what causes…

Open source isn't a literal term. It doesn't mean "the source is open". That isn't how the English language works. It is a compound term with its own meaning just like any other.

So the questionis: how to determine the meaning of the words?

A. If you mean that there is some authority that can do that, what authority other than a dictionary?(not rhetorical question)

Alternatively, B. if you mean that there shouldn't be any authority that can define the meaning of the word. In this way you can't stop people to understand it as it's literal meaning and blame them.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#125

Post by cttet »

kiba wrote: post #122
godelski wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Source available" is not open source and has nothing to do with open source. Open source never confused people until bad-faith actors started intentionally trying to confuse them by labeling things that aren't open source as "open source". I do not know how one can say such a thing with a straight face. The confusion does not require bad faith actors, but just the ability to speak English. LITERACY is what causes…

Dictionaries/thesaurus just describe how words are used or were used by someone. It doesn't prescribe the correct usage of words. The issue is that open source is a clear technical term that has a certain usage within the community. This caused confusion, especially since that is a specific definition that I grew up with, and existed before I was even born. Calling it 'source available' caused none of the confusion.

'source available' also implies the case the source is only available upon request. e.g. Microsoft provided the full source code of Office to China, it is also "source available".

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#126

Post by tm-guimaraes »

noirscape wrote: post #82
tm-guimaraes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sourcehut seems to be an exception here, Drew not only has a profitable open source business, he not only contributes upstream, but also donate to open source projects.

Sourcehut is a bit of an oddball though - it's mostly profitable because it's not a free service. As in, if you want to host your product at sourcehut, Drew expects (but doesn't force) you to pay for it[0]. Contributing is free though. Also helping sourcehut is that it's actual deployment process is uh... Interesting? It's expecting to run on Alpine (and not dockerized Alpine) and you need to be able to supply an ema…

> it's mostly profitable because it's not a free service.

I don't understand what you mean from this. What service doesn't charge? Either demos/trial versions, or they are actually charging someone else for your activity.

> Interesting? It's expecting to run on Alpine (and not dockerized Alpine)

there's still pleaty of admins who do preferer to not use containers. Conterners shine on "cattle" deployments, if you can get away with pets, that's not really something weird out of the enterprise or new age stuff.

> and sourcehut relies a lot on email.

well, it's literally a service to contribute by email, it would be weird if it wasn't like that.

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