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Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

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Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#121

Post by bsnnkv »

wmf wrote: post #113
8organicbits wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trademark law should handle this (at least in some countries). Register a trademark and then send a cease and desist to the fork as they are creating confusion in the marketplace by distributing something they created using your registered name. Perhaps consider using Apache 2.0 license, section six has language that specifically addresses trademarks.

A lot of open source devs are allergic to promoting their work so owning the trademark won't help them. For example, the above developer could have created their own official GUI and put it in the app store but they won't. Realistically the value is in GUIs, SaaS, marketing, etc. not in backend code.

Replying to both parent comments here:

I do a fair bit of promotion on YouTube[1] which has resulted in a vibrant community around the software, and I am now creating an official, free GUI[2].

In this specific case even if there had been a trademark in place, the person in question had not used the name of the project at all, but had decided to aggressively market it in community spaces.

Ultimately after much reflection and experiencing first hand how easy it is for people to abuse (in my opinion) the option of deliberately hard-forking and introducing breaking changes to funnel people towards a paid piece of software (in this case, a GUI) that will _only_ work with their hard-fork, I concluded that preventing this kind of ecosystem fragmentation is more important to me than an "OSI-approved" badge.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/@LGUG2Z

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZKjBMt4kZ4

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#122

Post by jprete »

jackthetab wrote: post #59
twojobsoneboss wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a business. It will by default do the easiest and least riskiest thing to make as much money as possible.

> ~~It’s a business. It~~ will by default... They're humans. They will by default...

Individuals almost always have values beyond monetary gain. Businesses usually don't.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#123

Post by matheusmoreira »

busterarm wrote: post #120
matheusmoreira wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen quite a few of these people become very bitter over the years. Taken for fools and exploited. They were supposedly "fine" with it at first. At some point it must have hit them. I don't blame them. Their reaction is understandable. I blame whoever came up with this "permissive licensing" psyop.

That's not correct though. Charity is a valid thing. Expectations-based giving should honestly always be frowned upon. Once you give something up it's no longer in your control. If somebody has a problem with that, it's actually them that's the problem. I think a lot of folks don't think through the licenses they choose before they use them. They never really thought about if they'd be mad if somebody else commercial…

Who's doing this out of charity though?

I'm willing to bet almost everyone who does free and open source software is secretly hoping it will come back to them somehow. Usually as an actual job, maybe as a consultant for the software they created, maybe custom feature work. These days it's often a patreon or github sponsorships which are ethical ways to make money. Maybe it's the prestige of having one's full name attached to some major project that drives them. Maybe it's the enthusiasm for computing freedom and the copyleft ideals: sharing your work and benefiting from the work of others in return, knowing that you're adding to a commons and that your freedom is ensured.

Expectations can be as low as basic respect and acknowledgement. But they do exist.

You're absolutely right that most people don't seem to think through the licenses that they choose. That's my point though. That's why I came here. To tell everyone that it makes no sense to choose anything but AGPLv3 or proprietary. If you agree with me, then upvote the comment so that more people will see it and hopefully avoid falling into the permissive licensing trap.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#124

Post by busterarm »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #123
busterarm wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not correct though. Charity is a valid thing. Expectations-based giving should honestly always be frowned upon. Once you give something up it's no longer in your control. If somebody has a problem with that, it's actually them that's the problem. I think a lot of folks don't think through the licenses they choose before they use them. They never really thought about if they'd be mad if somebody else commercial…

Who's doing this out of charity though? I'm willing to bet almost everyone who does free and open source software is secretly hoping it will come back to them somehow. Usually as an actual job, maybe as a consultant for the software they created, maybe custom feature work. These days it's often a patreon or github sponsorships which are ethical ways to make money. Maybe it's the prestige of having one's full name att…

Most of my open source contributions were because I was a user and had a problem to solve. Usually in the course of doing my paid job, but not always.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#125

Post by tzs »

OT: if the author of the article sees this, there's an error in a quote. You quote HN user skywhopper as saying

> HashiCorp already did a great job pre-draining all their flavor

but their quote actually says [1]

> HashiCorp has done a good job of pre-draining any flavor it once had

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40135686

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#126

Post by Macha »

pjmlp wrote: post #100
jillesvangurp wrote: post #94

Most successful open source projects are actually backed by companies and most of those projects are of course alive and kicking. The entire fortune 500 runs on software and the most of that consists of massive amounts of open source with some sprinklings of proprietary stuff mixed in. Linux would have stayed a silly hobby project without the possibility for this. What's dead, or rather was never really that much ali…

Which hard way? None of those forks are relevant enough to matter.

The Jury is still out. I suspect in 5 years, Valkey and OpenTofu will be more popular than Redis and Terraform, at the very least for new products, but probably also for most actually maintained products. There's a good chance OpenSearch will also displace Elasticsearch.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#127

Post by geerlingguy »

tzs wrote: post #125

OT: if the author of the article sees this, there's an error in a quote. You quote HN user skywhopper as saying > HashiCorp already did a great job pre-draining all their flavor but their quote actually says [1] > HashiCorp has done a good job of pre-draining any flavor it once had [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40135686

Ah sorry about that, was paraphrasing for the video, but the blog post should have the direct quote since I don't have a snapshot. I'll update the page when I'm back at my computer later!

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#128

Post by matheusmoreira »

busterarm wrote: post #124
matheusmoreira wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's doing this out of charity though? I'm willing to bet almost everyone who does free and open source software is secretly hoping it will come back to them somehow. Usually as an actual job, maybe as a consultant for the software they created, maybe custom feature work. These days it's often a patreon or github sponsorships which are ethical ways to make money. Maybe it's the prestige of having one's full name att…

Most of my open source contributions were because I was a user and had a problem to solve. Usually in the course of doing my paid job, but not always.

Then you do have expectations.

Of continued maintenance.

I hope whoever was maintaining the software had their expectations fulfilled too. We've all seen what can happen when they aren't.

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#129

Post by Pannoniae »

sangnoir wrote: post #119
Pannoniae wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would you want to restrict reselling? Depends on what your philosophy is. You believe in the software commons and the free sharing of software? You would want software to remain as a public good so no one can profit from it exclusively. Are you a business who made some software? You don't want others to resell it because it's your work, you made it and you don't want others to freeload. >If you don’t want resell…

> Depends on what your philosophy is. You believe in the software commons and the free sharing of software? You would want software to remain as a public good so no one can profit from it exclusively. > Are you a business who made some software? You don't want others to resell it because it's your work, you made it and you don't want others to freeload. I cant help but notice that you assume everyone uses money as a…

If money is not important, what's the harm in making it available as open source, but with a non-commercial clause?

Re: Jeff Geerling: Corporate Open Source Is Dead

#130

Post by sangnoir »

Pannoniae wrote: post #129
sangnoir wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Depends on what your philosophy is. You believe in the software commons and the free sharing of software? You would want software to remain as a public good so no one can profit from it exclusively. > Are you a business who made some software? You don't want others to resell it because it's your work, you made it and you don't want others to freeload. I cant help but notice that you assume everyone uses money as a…

If money is not important, what's the harm in making it available as open source, but with a non-commercial clause?

Because I don't mind people using my software commercially if they are respecting the license. I wouldn't want to be charged for all my commercial usage of Linux, Git, Postgres, zsh, the rust toolchain, etc.

I believe if everyone in our industry tried to capture all/most of of the economic value of their work, we'd all be poorer for it, metaphorically and literally since a huge part of high SDE salaries is due to high productivity enabled by the open source ecosystem. We are all freeloaders, to varying degrees. Without FL/OSS, most of these source-available companies would never have gotten off the ground.

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