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Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

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Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#151

Post by pabs3 »

lolinder wrote: post #102
pabs3 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a lot of effort and money to enforce copyleft open source licenses, a lot of companies just violate them regardless. Some companies even violate permissive licenses, for eg my router violates the microhttpd BSD license. The latest GPL lawsuit I saw was only possible due to a large grant from amateur radio hobbyists. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/press/qand…

Even so, I'd assume that a company that knowingly infringes on the GPL is much less likely to demand free support, lest they draw attention to their violation. So at the very least it should free maintainers from having to deal with bug reports/feature requests/entitled demands from corporate entities that refuse to give back.

None of the Apache PLC4X users asking for free support on behalf of their companies mentioned the company name nor used a company email address. I expect it would be pretty easy to keep the gratis support requests and GPL violations fairly separate.

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#152

Post by pabs3 »

hda2 wrote: post #86
pabs3 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a lot of effort and money to enforce copyleft open source licenses, a lot of companies just violate them regardless. Some companies even violate permissive licenses, for eg my router violates the microhttpd BSD license. The latest GPL lawsuit I saw was only possible due to a large grant from amateur radio hobbyists. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/press/qand…

Damages. Offer two licenses. One GPL and the other commercial. Make the commercial license as costly as possible, even Oracle grade by charging per core. Include language stating that the licensing agreement falls back to the commercial license if the GPL is violated and the violation is not remedied according to the provisions set in the GPL. Any licensing fees collected get poured back into the open source project.…

Most GPL projects aim for a diverse copyright holder base, with the code solely licensed under the GPL, so that no one entity can escape their GPL obligations by paying money. In that scenario it becomes harder to enforce the GPL, unless you have a principled copyright holder base with deep pockets. Hopefully the Software Freedom Conservancy lawsuit mentioned upthread will change that, they aim to set the precedent that anyone who receives GPL violating binaries can file GPL violation lawsuits.

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#153

Post by stjohnswarts »

chrisdutz wrote: post #108

Hi all, geee ... a friend pointed me here and I have to admit that I'm quite overwhelmed by the wave my post generated. But very happy it seeded some good discussions. However I should point out that only I said that I would stop providing free community support. I am only one of the contributors. Even if I am probalby one of the most active ones, there are still others probably going to step up and tackle the one or…

Having dealt with complaining users (of FOSS) for a much smaller project than yours who want free fixes by and angry comments about I can definitely see why you are going the route you are going, best of luck now and in the future! :)

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#154

Post by stjohnswarts »

phoronixrly wrote: post #21

Developments like this one and the faker.js and colors.js fiasco from last week have made me rethink my position about licensing. Now it seems to me that releasing code you wrote for free under a permissive open-source license is somewhere between ill-advised and unethical. On one hand it will not benefit you in any way, on the other, it will be incorporated in a company's proprietary project thus lowering the expens…

There are 10s of thousands of open source projects out there going smoothly, please don't make any drastic decisions based on anecdotal evidence.

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#155

Post by jpfr »

p_l wrote: post #61
jpfr wrote: post #28

There's quite a bit of OPC UA bashing across this project. So let me chime in to keep the "balance in the universe". OPC UA is a protocol to interact with an object-oriented information model. Basically CORBA done right to use object-oriented principles and reuse software components in industrial automation. Since OPC UA is a protocol, its performance depends mostly on the implementation. Some PLCs may be crappy. But…

First, a bit of off-topic, but do you know we keep #open62541 open for you on Libera.Chat? :D I think the biggest issue I encountered with OPC-UA is the rather random nature of implementations from vendors. For example, I had S7-1500 PLC deployed on a project, and we used OPC-UA to talk to it as well as to expose internals of the program that was talking to it. We also had WinCC HMI, and while it could do basic read-…

> First, a bit of off-topic, but do you know we keep #open62541 open for you on Libera.Chat? :D

Ahh, that's you! I came in to say hi on the channel whn you announced. But the channel was rather unresponsive. Will do that again with a bouncer to keep the connection open over night.

Ada and Lisp are both really nice languages. Much success with that!

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#157

Post by prmoustache »

mason55 wrote: post #72
zozbot234 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case of industrial control, database tech, and other high cost fields it would be dubious to pitch an open source product and then abandon it. Why? Open source projects are released with "NO WARRANTY", which includes the possibility of dropping maintenance at any time. If you want continued support you either fork the project and DIY, or pay someone to support you.

And that is not something the companies using the software are interested in. This isn’t like a software company taking over some abandonware tool that they rely on. Building and maintaining software is not in the wheelhouse of these companies. They’d rather spend more or have fewer features in exchange for lowering risk.

It is the ethical problem of those companies, not of the people writing the original code.

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#158

Post by prmoustache »

zozbot234 wrote: post #71
lumost wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of industrial control, database tech, and other high cost fields it would be dubious to pitch an open source product and then abandon it. Getting a high adoption OSS project takes more than putting a repo on GitHub. In some cases like this one, it’s possible that the underlying cost of these activities is much closer to the licensed proprietary software than the OSS variant (aka free)

> In the case of industrial control, database tech, and other high cost fields it would be dubious to pitch an open source product and then abandon it. Why? Open source projects are released with "NO WARRANTY", which includes the possibility of dropping maintenance at any time. If you want continued support you either fork the project and DIY, or pay someone to support you.

So Google liberated kubernetes under the Apache License 2.0. Many companies are now relying on it for their workload and we see contribution from other big companies as well.

Are you saying that it would be unethical if Google find out they'd now rather work on something newer/better, and stop having engineers contributing to it?

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#159

Post by rbanffy »

akerl_ wrote: post #150
rbanffy wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I question whether allowing unethical behavior is, in itself, unethical, when you have the option of not allowing it at all. I didn't mention software licenses anywhere in the question. To use a situation common these days, knowing people wearing masks are less likely to pass COVID to others wearing masks, is it ethical to have a restaurant that allows clients not to wear masks? Is it ethical to operate a whore house…

This is a thread about software licensing. If you’re looking to have a theoretical debate about whether in general unethical behavior is unethical to support, I guess that’s a fun debate, but it’s not really relevant to this post or comment tree.

If it is unethical to support unethical behavior in a general context, why would it be different within the narrow contexts of software licensing?

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#160

Post by akerl_ »

rbanffy wrote: post #159
akerl_ wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a thread about software licensing. If you’re looking to have a theoretical debate about whether in general unethical behavior is unethical to support, I guess that’s a fun debate, but it’s not really relevant to this post or comment tree.

If it is unethical to support unethical behavior in a general context, why would it be different within the narrow contexts of software licensing?

I’ll copy my questions from above:

Do you (and the other commenters in this thread) believe that closed source software is unethical? And if so, why?

And do you believe that MIT-licensed software is also unethical, because it allows for closed source usage? If so, why?

You just keep repeating that it’s unethical to support unethical things. Since that’s amazingly general and you’re commenting on a thread about software licensing, I assumed you were attempting to comment on the ethics of closed source and/or MIT licensed things. If you don’t think those things are unethical, just repeating overarching premises about ethics seems irrelevant. If you do think the things being discussed here are unethical, it would make for a much more engaging conversation if you’d say so and elaborate on why, vs just driving circles around the discussion repeating the kind of slogan I’d read on a picket sign at a philosophers march.

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