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Let's celebrate relicensing from an open source to a proprietary license

dirkriehle.com

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Re: Let's celebrate relicensing from an open source to a proprietary license

#21

Post by dirkriehle »

totetsu wrote: post #3

>Most commentators view the licensing away from open source as a negative event. I’d like to argue that it is a milestone to celebrate. By licensing away the company signals that the product has achieved a mature state and that the help of an open source strategy is not needed any longer: The company has proved to the world that the software can be built and that the economy at large cares and thinks this software is…

> Is "open source strategy" purely an economic tool? I though there was as much societal and political motivations involved as economic.

There are many different types of open source projects. Those created for purely commercial exploitation usually don't care about the societal benefits much (but they are still there, fortunately.

Re: Let's celebrate relicensing from an open source to a proprietary license

#22

Post by dirkriehle »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #15

> These complaints were only justified, if the company had promised open source forever and had anchored altruism and minimizing profits as their reason of existence. And if they had done that, who would have believed it and would the company been able to achieve its goals? The answer is obviously: No, non-profits don’t get venture capital (VC) funding, and VC funding is critical to building the software in the first…

> So close to getting it right... Consider the countercase, where the company says up front that the product is only open source temporarily. Would anyone use them? Maybe, but they'd have a way harder time getting any buy-in.

You cannot retroactively remove the open source license, so what the vendor is doing is to stop supporting and developing the open source version. If the software is relevant then, as we can see, those who can still exploit it for commercial purposes (hyperscalers and distributors) are likely to come in, fork it, and pay for its continuation.

Re: Let's celebrate relicensing from an open source to a proprietary license

#24

Post by dirkriehle »

js8 wrote: post #8

I was just thinking about this. I think LGPL was a great idea, but unfortunately, business rejected it, because contrary to free market ideology, they are interested in having control over their users (and don't want to show others their code). But assume alternative timeline where LGPL is not rejected and sharing the source code with users of software becomes the norm, just like say, nutritional labels are the norm…

> I was just thinking about this. I think LGPL was a great idea, but unfortunately, business rejected it, because contrary to free market ideology, they are interested in having control over their users (and don't want to show others their code).

There is not just "one uniform business". Companies who use open source components in their products reject copyleft for obvious reasons. Other companies with a commercial open source strategy usually use copyleft to keep competitors away. The irony of the copyleft effect today is that it does close to the exact opposite of what Stallman wanted to achieve.

Re: Let's celebrate relicensing from an open source to a proprietary license

#25

Post by dirkriehle »

Spivak wrote: post #12

> They are called fake open source companies, betrayers of the spirit. > As the product matures, the open source strategy often becomes less valuable to them, and many, if not all, will license away from open source to a more restrictive license. "I released my product as OSS as a growth hack because no one would touch it if it wasn't OSS and I wanted to feed off the community good-will that comes with people contrib…

> Either this guy is high off his ass and I want some, or has reached the astral plane of scamming VCs.

Really just work, 9 to 5, and rather mediocre cafeteria food.

Re: Let's celebrate relicensing from an open source to a proprietary license

#27

Post by fao_ »

ninkendo wrote: post #5
fao_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is "open source strategy" purely an economic tool? Yes, because the only thing a good company cares about is economics -- namely, money. This is, very literally, what the Cathederal and the Bazaar was about. Exploiting people's labour. ESR (i.e. the founder of the Open Source movement) very literally made an argument in the latter half of the book that goes "You get better performance out of people when you don't p…

In what universe is ESR the founder of the open source movement? He wrote that book, and… fetchmail. Do you have him confused with RMS?

lmao you're mixing up Free Software and Open Source Software, which are not the same thing.
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