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Paying people to work on open source is good

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Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#131

Post by lolinder »

palata wrote: post #124
lolinder wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, though—you're fighting for the moral integrity of a term that was explicitly coined to try to buck the moralizing that was associated with the Free Software movement and make the new concept of Open Source more appealing to corporations. The BSL isn't the first sign of the bastardization of the ideal behind Linux. The bastardization started as soon as the OSI decided that they needed to appeal to corporations,…

> condemning the BSL Are they "condemning" the BSL by saying "it is bad, don't use it", or are they just saying "BSL is not open source"? Because my understanding is that BSL is not open source. Rather it is a commitment of becoming open source (GPLv2) at a point later (maximum 4 years). So BSL is effectively source available until GPLv2 is added. Which does not make BSL open source: GPLv2 is.

> Are they "condemning" the BSL by saying "it is bad, don't use it", or are they just saying "BSL is not open source"?

Fair enough, others condemn it on the grounds that the OSI says its not open source.

> Because my understanding is that BSL is not open source. Rather it is a commitment of becoming open source (GPLv2) at a point later (maximum 4 years). So BSL is effectively source available until GPLv2 is added. Which does not make BSL open source: GPLv2 is.

See TFA and my comments above. A substantial number of people believe that we need to reevaluate what counts as "open source" in the post-cloud era, which I see as a completely reasonable discussion to have given that the term "open source" was specifically coined to be a pragmatic and business-focused alternative to "free software".

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#132

Post by snowpid »

lolinder wrote: post #130
snowpid wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mentioning the American govt once doesn't make 'the goverment' instead the American government. This is specially discussions about such general topics and this particular case THE GOVERMENTs of france and Germany e.g. pay people to make open source.

And what about the fact that I close with this quote? > Each year, the U.S. government spends over $100 billion on information technology. ... I get that people outside of the US wish that US residents would not assume that everyone on the internet lives in the US. I get that it's a real problem. But picking this comment on this thread to make your point just comes off as pedantic because there was no ambiguity withi…

Why is so hard for you just to write "the US government" or "the American government" instead the government?

Also lots of people are annoyed about US defaultism but it doesn't mean they will complain.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#133

Post by [deleted] »

snowpid wrote: post #132
lolinder wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about the fact that I close with this quote? > Each year, the U.S. government spends over $100 billion on information technology. ... I get that people outside of the US wish that US residents would not assume that everyone on the internet lives in the US. I get that it's a real problem. But picking this comment on this thread to make your point just comes off as pedantic because there was no ambiguity withi…

Why is so hard for you just to write "the US government" or "the American government" instead the government? Also lots of people are annoyed about US defaultism but it doesn't mean they will complain.

[deleted]

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#134

Post by skybrian »

acdha wrote: post #129
skybrian wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood “use restrictions.” I interpret it as “anyone can use the software built with this source code themselves.” The GPL and MIT license don’t have any use restrictions. (In the case of the GPL, there are restrictions on distribution, but that’s different.)

My freedom to use a GPL-licensed library does not include the ability to link it into a proprietary application: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic Now, I suspect that what you had in mind was the kind of restrictions like “you can’t use this if you work for the military”, but that’s exactly the point he was trying to make: there are a lot of opinions and interpretations swirling around, and…

You can do that, actually, for your own use. You can’t distribute the result. (Freedom 0 in the FSF four freedoms.)

Yes, there are always new people who get this wrong and the only thing for it is education.

Telling people that they don’t have to learn anything about how the software licenses they use work, that it’s just a matter of opinion, is not helping.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#135

Post by palata »

lolinder wrote: post #131
palata wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> condemning the BSL Are they "condemning" the BSL by saying "it is bad, don't use it", or are they just saying "BSL is not open source"? Because my understanding is that BSL is not open source. Rather it is a commitment of becoming open source (GPLv2) at a point later (maximum 4 years). So BSL is effectively source available until GPLv2 is added. Which does not make BSL open source: GPLv2 is.

> Are they "condemning" the BSL by saying "it is bad, don't use it", or are they just saying "BSL is not open source"? Fair enough, others condemn it on the grounds that the OSI says its not open source. > Because my understanding is that BSL is not open source. Rather it is a commitment of becoming open source (GPLv2) at a point later (maximum 4 years). So BSL is effectively source available until GPLv2 is added. Wh…

IMO it's all a moot point. If people condemn the BSL because it's not truly open source as per the current definition of open source, changing the definition will not change their opinion. So yeah, changing the definition can trick a few people into believing that BSL is open source, and then maybe we will invent a new word to define what we currently call "open source". But that sounds ridiculous. Just invent a word for "open source + BSL" if it really matters to you...

It's not a philosophical question at this point, it's really just a definition.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#137

Post by acdha »

skybrian wrote: post #134
acdha wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My freedom to use a GPL-licensed library does not include the ability to link it into a proprietary application: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic Now, I suspect that what you had in mind was the kind of restrictions like “you can’t use this if you work for the military”, but that’s exactly the point he was trying to make: there are a lot of opinions and interpretations swirling around, and…

You can do that, actually, for your own use. You can’t distribute the result. (Freedom 0 in the FSF four freedoms.) Yes, there are always new people who get this wrong and the only thing for it is education. Telling people that they don’t have to learn anything about how the software licenses they use work, that it’s just a matter of opinion, is not helping .

I don’t think anyone is saying that you shouldn’t learn about the licenses you use, only that he’s taking a big-tent view of open source focused on getting more people paid to contribute to the commons so we don’t have so many projects depending on a handful of people choosing to contribute unpaid labor.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#138

Post by skybrian »

acdha wrote: post #137
skybrian wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that, actually, for your own use. You can’t distribute the result. (Freedom 0 in the FSF four freedoms.) Yes, there are always new people who get this wrong and the only thing for it is education. Telling people that they don’t have to learn anything about how the software licenses they use work, that it’s just a matter of opinion, is not helping .

I don’t think anyone is saying that you shouldn’t learn about the licenses you use, only that he’s taking a big-tent view of open source focused on getting more people paid to contribute to the commons so we don’t have so many projects depending on a handful of people choosing to contribute unpaid labor.

I think we should have a big-tent view of software and software licenses. There are good reasons to use a non-open source license. If you want to block Amazon from running your code on their servers, an open source license is not for you, and you should choose something else. There are other licenses that make source code available under more restrictive terms.

The fact that there's a clear definition for what an open source license is, and some licenses meet it and others don't, means I can make a statement like that, talking about a bunch of licenses as a group.

If it just means "licenses that make source available with whatever terms" then it's a less useful way of classifying and discussing licenses.

Most terms in the English language are fuzzy that way, but this one has a clear definition and I would like to stick with it.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#139

Post by simonw »

palata wrote: post #125
wslack wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is it fine to work on open source projects at Meta, or is it bad because Meta is bad? I think OP would say its better to work on open source at Meta than closed source at Meta, and we should celebrate someone being paid to write open source. We can also condemn their specific employer while not denigrating their open source compensation. re your second point, looking at this thread, "what is open source" is taking…

> re your second point, looking at this thread, "what is open source" is taking up a lot of the brainspace. A lot of those discussions are not about the definition of open source (but something closely related, like "does it suck that it is difficult to get a new open source license OSI-approved?" or "should the JSON license be OSI-approved?", etc). But "open source" is defined, has been for a while, and those who di…

"in my book" in that post didn't mean an actual book, it meant "in my opinion".

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#140

Post by palata »

simonw wrote: post #139
palata wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> re your second point, looking at this thread, "what is open source" is taking up a lot of the brainspace. A lot of those discussions are not about the definition of open source (but something closely related, like "does it suck that it is difficult to get a new open source license OSI-approved?" or "should the JSON license be OSI-approved?", etc). But "open source" is defined, has been for a while, and those who di…

"in my book" in that post didn't mean an actual book, it meant "in my opinion".

Oh, so it would make it even easier to just accept that the toot had some "unfortunate wording" in that respect.

Again, I do understand the other points. I have a lot of frustrations as a maintainer of (much smaller) open source projects (e.g. all those people that believe I work for them for free and who can come complain and pressure me because of a missing feature they don't even consider contributing). But I think that redefining "open source" is not the solution. On the contrary, IMO we need people to understand the meaning of those licenses better.

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