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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

191–200 of 509 posts

Re: Bear is now source-available

#191
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To underscore the point here: the FSF 1) hasn't/doesn't publish a free software definition that describes copyleft as a precondition to free software 2) hasn't/doesn't claim in any of their non-normative commentary that the definition has that precondition 3) readily and regularly refers to projects published under permissive licenses like the BSD, MIT/X11, and Apache licenses as "free software", despite not being co…

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html Linked to from here: https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software Very explicit about open source being different from free software. Also if what you say is true, there would be no reason for “open source” to exist. It was coined by Christine Peterson explicitly because the term free software conveyed a different ideal than the BSD/MIT license crowd was aiming for.

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#192
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To underscore the point here: the FSF 1) hasn't/doesn't publish a free software definition that describes copyleft as a precondition to free software 2) hasn't/doesn't claim in any of their non-normative commentary that the definition has that precondition 3) readily and regularly refers to projects published under permissive licenses like the BSD, MIT/X11, and Apache licenses as "free software", despite not being co…

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html Linked to from here: https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software Very explicit about open source being different from free software. Also if what you say is true, there would be no reason for “open source” to exist. It was coined by Christine Peterson explicitly because the term free software conveyed a different ideal than the BSD/MIT license crowd was aiming for.

> nearly all open source programs are in fact free.

You are just wrong, and your first link proves it. The definitions are essentially identical. The philosophies behind them are different.

It's like the "Gulf of America" vs. the "Gulf of Mexico". You are talking about the same territory in either case, just expressing a different viewpoint about it.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#193
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct ... the other responses to you are not. "Free software" as in the FSF is "free as in freedom, not free as in free beer", which is why copyleft was invented, to establish such a distinction.

No, this is completely wrong. Free/libre software is distinguished from "gratis" software, such as demos or shareware. Any software that is freely available for users to legally modify and redistribute however they see fit, under the same license or some other, is free software. Examples of non-free software are shareware like WinRar, software only available for non-commercial use like OMNeT++ [0], and (slightly more…

It's not completely wrong ... how rude. Shareware isn't even open source, generally, and it certainly isn't gratis--you have to pay for it, or at least should, and there are often restrictions or time limits if you don't. Again, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedom, not free beer.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

> “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.

And

> “Open source” is something different: it has a very different philosophy based on different values. Its practical definition is different too, but nearly all open source programs are in fact free. We explain the difference in Why “Open Source” misses the point of Free Software.

etc.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#194

As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source, and they'll get very upset at you if you claim it is. I'd like to see some recognition from this crowd of the "free-ride competition" problem as this author puts it. What Herman is doing is a service to us all, and we should find a term (better than 'source-availa…

> the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd The original stance of the open source crowd was more along the lines of the GPL -> GPLv3 -> AGPL, which expressly prevents this kind of thing. The proliferation of "give everything away for free" MIT/BSD/Apache licenses seems to me to have been an intentional campaign by corporate interests to undermine free software ideals

The original stance of open source is to cater to "free-riding" businesses. That's like, why the term "open source" even exists. You're thinking of the "free software" crowd.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#195

As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source, and they'll get very upset at you if you claim it is. I'd like to see some recognition from this crowd of the "free-ride competition" problem as this author puts it. What Herman is doing is a service to us all, and we should find a term (better than 'source-availa…

> if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source

That's because then it isn't. Sorry, but you can't just take terms with an accepted meaning and decide they mean something else, without any conversation or consensus from there people using that term.

The OSI has a specific definition of what "open source" means[0]. Restricting what users of the software can do in this way is in direct opposition to parts of that definition, so no, if you do that, then it is no longer open source.

I'm not saying you aren't entitled to set up your licensing that way. I think it's disgusting when the likes of Amazon decide to take someone's hard work and use their massive oligopolist position to trivially outcompete anything the original author might try to do to make some money.

But that doesn't mean it's open source. I think people need to stop being so afraid to call their software something else. They seem to be really attached to the idea of being an "open source developer", and don't want to drop that moniker even after changing their licensing away from open source.

People also need to stop licensing their software under true OSS licenses, building a community of regular, significant contributors around it, and then changing their licensing (which they can do because they've [IMO shadily] required contributors to reassign copyright). That's a huge bait-and-switch, and people are right to be upset when that happens.

In the case of Bearblog, it seems like the author is really the only significant contributor, so I think what he's doing is totally fine, for the record. Frankly I think he did this the right way: his announcement email is entirely reasonable and sympathetic, and he doesn't try to breathlessly claim that his software is still open source.

[0] https://opensource.org/osd [1]

[1] While I don't love how the OSI folks basically just decided they own the term "open source" and that they get to define it, I think they've been pretty good stewards over time, and having clear-cut definitions of things is a good thing.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can license their software however they want, but it is worth reflecting on why almost all open source authors go with a permissive license like MIT: because it is basically a "buyer's market." When choosing a database, distributed queue, blogging platform, or whatever, companies usually have a choice of at least several high quality open source options. If one of those options places restrictions on the users…

> licensing your project GPL or the like usually means relegating it to obscurity Subjective. Sure if you are talking about percent of market share, but it's a huge market, you don't need to capture even 1% of users to have a viable business. The vast majority of the GNU ecosystem is GPL. Bash, git, Apache, Gimp, Blender, Libreoffice. There are also a lot of projects that are dual licensed, allowing commercial softwa…

Neither Apache nor LibreOffice is GPL. Apache is permissive whereas LibreOffice is MPL (a sort of middle way between permissive and copyleft).

Re: Bear is now source-available

#198

Naive. Guy picks a license that allow anyone to do anything they want with his code. Later realizes that was not appropriate when he's trying make money. Changes to an obscure license that on the surface seems to fix the problem. Your options are: MIT / BSD, GPL, LGPL, AGPL. All others are unnecessary and create needless incompatibility.

Naive. Users who think a project that is Open Source will remain Open Source forever. Authors gave the right to change license to a proprietary one. Users being surprised by this are as equally naive as developers who think you can make money writing Open Source.

Well, the versions that were published as open source will remain open source forever. That's never a guarantee for new updates by the same author, for any licence.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#199
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MIT and BSD licenses predated the GPL. People have a choice as to which ethic to follow ... it's not the result of a corporate conspiracy. (And I'm a social democrat, not a corporate simp.)

I'm not so clear the choice was made consciously. There's a big swing away from the GPL and towards MIT/BSD around the time that Apple starts adopting a bunch of open-source projects for inclusion in MacOS X, and it accelerates when various big companies announced that they would be forbidding GPLv3 adoption. Fast forward to the cloud provider era, and basically no new software is being placed under the GPL (at least…

The problem with GPL was "tainting." It was never clear in what cases you could use GPL without it dragging all your code into being freely available. LGPL was supposed to help with that; AGPL made it even worse. The lawyers were terribly confused and recommended you just not use anything with "GPL" in the license.

The reason why MIT/BSD licenses flourished is that they were easy to understand. As long as you didn't sue the original author or try to claim the code was written by you, you were free to do almost anything with it, including mixing it in with other for-profit code.

Whether that's an abomination or a blessing depends on your corporate vs. free software politics.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#200

>It hurts to believe in open-source and then be bitten by it. No, you don't believe in open source, hypocrite. Open source means anyone can use it, even for commercial purposes, and you knew this from day zero. Honestly, no sympathy for these people, as this happens over and over again, they actually exploit the very few good intended OSS people. They portray their project as open source initially, to gather sympathy…

Or... maybe they actually need money to keep maintaining the project? Not everyone is out there living a life of leisure. If open source purists can't accept that, they'll find their cause gradually shrinking into nothing.

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