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Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

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Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#201

Post by Too »

webmaven wrote: post #3

> "It hijacks open-source APIs and places them on top of its own proprietary solutions, thereby siphoning off customers from the open-source project to its own proprietary solution, as it did with the MongoDB APIs." Basically, there is no such thing as an "Open Source API". APIs are not software, and we've already seen the damage that treating APIs as software (for copyright purposes) can do. The proper abstraction f…

The API situation is interesting because they allow using MongoDB inside your application as a backend [1]. So what happens if you make a wrapper for the API and distribute your wrapped API as a service? How thick does that wrapper have to be before it is considered a different application. To take the most extreme example, what if i just rename find() to query() making it no longer a "MongoDB Service" but a "AmazongoDB service"?

[1] https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license...

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#202

Post by oytis »

There is an elephant in the room, and the elephant is called dual licensing. In my opinion, this is a more severe abuse of open source than what Amazon does.

When RMS introduced GPL the idea was to make everyone share their code, and make the world a happy place full of free Software. Dual licensing abuses this sincere intent to induce fear in commercial users and make them pay.

So using a dual-licensing scheme prevents people from considering authors of SSPL the new leaders of the open-source community.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#203

Post by koonsolo »

tolmasky wrote: post #47

If you make your project open source, your goal should be maximizing people using it, not maximizing how much you profit from it. I know they may seem identical, but they aren't: Apple makes a lot of money by making software that has huge roadblocks to using it. And as many people are now realizing, open source has the ability to not make lots of money by making it incredibly easy for anyone to use. We all benefit gr…

> If you make your project open source, your goal should be maximizing people using it, not maximizing how much you profit from it.

Then it has failed miserably at it. For almost each open source project, there is a closed source that has more users. Windows, iPhone, Photoshop, etc.

Making money is a great way to invest in marketing, and reach a broader audience.

Remark that I'm typing this on my Linux desktop, so I'm definitely not opposed to OS.

In my opinion, the biggest benefit is that you have more ownership, because you're able to make modifications and improvements without being blocked by 1 company. I for one, will always avoid closed sourced libraries. I had way too many blocking issues in the past, so I prefer libraries where I can fix things as fast as I want to.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#204

Post by bradrydzewski »

oytis wrote: post #202

There is an elephant in the room, and the elephant is called dual licensing. In my opinion, this is a more severe abuse of open source than what Amazon does. When RMS introduced GPL the idea was to make everyone share their code, and make the world a happy place full of free Software. Dual licensing abuses this sincere intent to induce fear in commercial users and make them pay. So using a dual-licensing scheme preve…

You might find it interesting that Stallman supports selling exceptions to the GPL (i.e. dual licensing). You can read more about it on the FSF blog [1] but the post ends with the following:

> I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed.

[1] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#205

Post by pritambaral »

detaro wrote: post #126
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The whole AWS problem stems from having too much software under "permissive" licenses and now enough under reciprocal licenses. Reciprocal licenses work like herd immunity: you need a large enough ecosystem to effectively keep freeloaders at bay while rewarding those who cooperate often.

How would less permissive software existing have helped e.g. MongoDB with their "AWS problem"?

MongoDB did not have an "AWS problem". AWS did not release anything related to MongoDB until after they stopped making open-source releases.

MongoDB had a "We gave others freedoms we didn't like" problem, so they rescinded those freedoms. Freedoms that they'd given in the first place to profit off of the reputation of Open Source Software. If they'd never given those freedoms out, they'd never have had any problems.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#206

Post by imtringued »

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #146
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGPL is vulnerable to certain workarounds in the same way that GPL was. The CC class of non-commercial licenses might be more applicable, but that may harm adoption. EDIT: honestly not sure why this is so heavily downvoted (-7 as of the edit), the whole point of SSPL and other licenses is to address the "workarounds" that Amazon and others have discovered in AGPL

Would you mind elaborating on that? I am interested in a super-copyleft license for my next project and thought that AGPL was the "best" option out there. In what ways can it be bypassed?

Someone with more money than you can do a proprietary clean room reimplementation.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#207

Post by oytis »

bradrydzewski wrote: post #204
oytis wrote: post #202

There is an elephant in the room, and the elephant is called dual licensing. In my opinion, this is a more severe abuse of open source than what Amazon does. When RMS introduced GPL the idea was to make everyone share their code, and make the world a happy place full of free Software. Dual licensing abuses this sincere intent to induce fear in commercial users and make them pay. So using a dual-licensing scheme preve…

You might find it interesting that Stallman supports selling exceptions to the GPL (i.e. dual licensing). You can read more about it on the FSF blog [1] but the post ends with the following: > I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed. [1] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions

OK, if RMS approves it, it's not an abuse, who am I to argue? Still, the goal of open-source, copyleft and permissive flavours alike, is to "get programs freed", not to establish a fairer distribution of the cash flow. So when someone introduces a new superrestrictive license and starts selling exceptions right away, their earnesty can naturally be questioned.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#208

Post by vorg »

imtringued wrote: post #206
AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind elaborating on that? I am interested in a super-copyleft license for my next project and thought that AGPL was the "best" option out there. In what ways can it be bypassed?

Someone with more money than you can do a proprietary clean room reimplementation.

@AnaniasAnanas: And someone with less money than you can use your software source code "as a reference" when writing their own open source reimplementation. They won't put your name in the copyright notice because they didn't use any of your code, they only used your code "as a reference" when writing their own.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#209

Post by ryukafalz »

tango12 wrote: post #164
karmakaze wrote: post #104

The problem isn't really here. The problem is that everyone wants a permissive abusable license when AGPL would be just fine. If everyone here complaining just used AGPL then we wouldn't have this Amazon situation. People want to have their cake and eat it too. They started with an MIT license because it gets more uptake then whine when the license terms are being followed. But then it wouldn't be widely used. The so…

This is true. We had to change our license from AGPL to Apache to make sure enterprise adoption was frictionless because there’s often a blanket ban on AGPL. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20064281

I would like to suggest that companies have such blanket bans precisely because they want to be able to take advantage of free software in this way without contributing back. If you really don't care if they do or don't, fine, use a permissive license. But I think it's becoming clear that people do care about contributions, and that's part of what copyleft licenses are for.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#210

Post by ace_of_spades »

mikedilger wrote: post #187
TeMPOraL wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It worries me that we're developing a culture where I as an individual must adhere to some moral framework when writing code, lest I violate some social open source norms. To me, this is deeply poisonous to the spirit of open source. Every culture or community has norms, and many of those norms generalize to universal moral principles, like: participate fairly in a community, not exploit it. "Spirit of Open Source"…

My take on "Spirit of Open Source" is basically: (1) I need this software, (2) I wrote this software and it has satisfied my needs, (3) I'm a nice guy so anyone else who wants to use this can use it free of any requirements whatsoever. Hence I use the MIT license. I don't care if Amazon or Facebook gets rich off of it. I don't care if Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton get elected based on it. I don't care if the Russia…

What’s really interesting for me is that you really seem to have a disgust for people trying to add restrictions to “open source” software with the goal of keeping it open but seem to be totally fine with for profit enterprises adding restrictions to software and services, often trying to extract as much value as possible out of you. Doesn’t that seem to be somewhat of an arbitrary double standard?

Why can’t or shouldn’t the “Spirit of Open Source” be able to include exactly the things that you complain about? I would love to hear your grounding for your position :)

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