Bear is now source-available • Hacker News Board

Re: Bear is now source-available

#21

Post by jakelazaroff » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 3:19 PM UTC

cinericius wrote: post #3

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…

Most people have no problem with non-open source software. The gnashing of teeth comes in when projects like Terraform become successful specifically because they're open source, and then the maintainer changes to a closed source license that would have prevented the project from being successful in the first place.

Doubly so when they relicense outside contributors' work with a closed source license because those contributors signed a CLA.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#22

Post by supriyo-biswas » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 3:19 PM UTC

cinericius wrote: post #3

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 weird part is that these companies/individuals will use proprietary software with no qualms of the sort they express for these "source available" licenses.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#23

Post by jdxcode » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 3:20 PM UTC

echoangle wrote: post #12

omnicognate wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Isn't this what the AGPL is for? That's an OSI approved "open source" license that places restrictions on people making the software accessible as a network service.

AGPL doesn't really prevent Amazon from making it an AWS offering unless they want to modify the program and don't want to share the modifications.

Another reason is that copyleft licenses are kryptonite in large organizations.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#24

Post by tptacek » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 3:20 PM UTC

poulpy123 wrote: post #18

I understand the reasoning and I also understand the interest of still providing the sources. I'm however curious why the MIT license was chosen instead of the AGPL if competition was a concern

Presumably it wasn't a concern when they started and became one later; after all, they changed the license.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#25

Post by edu » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 3:21 PM UTC

indigodaddy wrote: post #7

From their GitHub: Obviously you could self host it (and I guess plenty have figured out how to and even created competitors with the code if they are making this change?), but they discourage hobbyists from trying with this unhelpful statement. So what was the point of even being open source? Their whole statement kind of comes off as disingenuous to me because of this. "Bear Blog has been built as a platform and no…

What I find amusing is that it's built on top of Django and of course uses a few other dependencies[0], and without them the project wouldn't even exist...

0. https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/master/requi...

Re: Bear is now source-available

#26

Post by jakelazaroff » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 3:21 PM UTC

ahartmetz wrote: post #19

omnicognate wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Isn't this what the AGPL is for? That's an OSI approved "open source" license that places restrictions on people making the software accessible as a network service.

I thought so, too, at first. But there's a crucial difference: With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying. With the Bear license, Bear's competition just cannot offer the software as a service. It feels mostly in the spirit of FOSS to me, but Stallman would disagree. He has made it clear that there should be no restrictions on use.

> With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying.

Technically true, but in practice almost every tech company forbids GPL code. I bet if you re-read your employment contract closely you'll find that you agreed not to introduce any GPL code into the company's codebases.

(Edited for clarity).

Re: Bear is now source-available

#27

Post by happymellon » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 3:21 PM UTC

omnicognate wrote: post #5

cinericius wrote: post #3

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…

> 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 Isn't this what the AGPL is for? That's an OSI approved "open source" license that places restrictions on people making the software accessible as a network service.

I think the problem that these folks have is that AGPL still allows other people to host the software.

They want to seem altruistic but want to also be the only provider.

GPL would have been a better initial license, and AGPL would have been the next logical step to ensure that changes that hosted services make can come back to the original version.

I'm not entirely sure what they were hoping to get by making an extremely permissive licensed piece of software, but competition doesn't appear to be it.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#28

Post by omnicognate » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 3:21 PM UTC

echoangle wrote: post #12

omnicognate wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Isn't this what the AGPL is for? That's an OSI approved "open source" license that places restrictions on people making the software accessible as a network service.

AGPL doesn't really prevent Amazon from making it an AWS offering unless they want to modify the program and don't want to share the modifications.

Why would I want to stop them making it available as a network service except as a way of circumventing the copyleft by effectively distributing it without actually distributing it (which AIUI the AGPL fixes)? If you want to place restrictions on how people are allowed to use the software then A) I don't see the relevance of AWS as a special case, and B) go ahead but don't imply the "open source crowd" are being unreasonable by not considering it open source.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#29

Post by Spivak » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 3:22 PM UTC

cinericius wrote: post #3

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…

Why the scare quotes, the first freedom of both Open Source and Free Software is the right to run the software for any purpose. It's not some little unimportant detail. It's arguably the most important property of Open Source.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#30

Post by tptacek » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 3:22 PM UTC

ezekg wrote: post #20

threemux wrote: post #4

I suppose this is the move if you're looking to foreclose all possible competing usages. Kudos for using correct terminology as it is no longer Open Source. However, I still believe AGPL is a better alternative in most cases and functionally prevents large enterprises from touching your code due to typical internal policies.

Shame on the people who recommend the AGPL to effectively be an OSI-approved source-available license. This is a grievance against the spirit of open source.

It's one of four licenses linked on the front page of the FSF.