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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

#211

Post by jeena »

wolco wrote: post #158
jeena wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. Open Source has always been about making money. What you might mean is Free Software, which is quite different from a philosophical point of view.

Open source has been about protecting open software going forward.

That is simply not true with permissive licenses like MIT, BSD, Apache, etc. which emerged out or got embraced of the Open Source movement.

The Free Software movement on the other hand created licenses which try to prevent the kind of behavior and thus are protecting the open software going forward.

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

#212

Post by jeena »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #154
jeena wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. Open Source has always been about making money. What you might mean is Free Software, which is quite different from a philosophical point of view.

Open source isn’t particularly about making money. The making money is orthogonal and potentially harder if the source is available with a permissive license. Free software is about freedom of the user to make copies and distribute the source code and again money is orthogonal. But I think in practice both open source and free software are hard to monitise. Often the open source software is a marketing platform for a…

I still disagree, open source from the start was designed with companies (and it's developers) in mind and companies are particularly about making money. It's about the underlying values, open source is about making development easier, cheaper, etc.

Btw. I'm not comparing open- vs. closed-source but open-source-software vs. free-software.

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

#213

Post by tolmasky »

koonsolo wrote: post #203
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'…

I do not believe Windows has more users than Linux, nor does iPhone. Android has more users than iPhone, and Linux has more users than Windows in the server space. Open source browsers are so successful they’ve now officially eliminated closed source browsers on the desktop (arguably on mobile too if we’re just counting engines). So I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that open source is failing miserably at maximizing people using it.

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

#214

Post by tolmasky »

blub wrote: post #198
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…

And who do you think you are to dictate to others what something as deeply personal as their goals should be? This must be one of the most arrogant things I've read on HN.

If OP feels it is there place to insist what the OSI should label as open source, then they open themselves up to the should game.

Also, this is meant more as a “if you do X, expect Y” statement. If you open source, expect high uptake not profit. The same way someone might say “If you’re using a hammer, your project should have nails.” I would be surprised to have someone retort “who are you to dictate whether my project should have nails?!”. Similarly, if someone complained in an Ogre forum that the framework wasn’t helpful in making a spreadsheet app, I might say “if you’re using a physics game engine, you should be writing a game not a utility app”.

You can set whatever goal you want, but as the author of this very article agrees with, open source is not going to be good when one of those goals is maximizing profit. Unless of course, if we change the definition of open source.

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

#215

Post by tolmasky »

roenxi wrote: post #192
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. Dangerous ground telling people what their goals should be. There is no reason a person shouldn't try to maximise their profits from open source strategies. The Linux example is not a strong one - lots of the kernel devs are for-profit and Linus Torvalds made a fortune [0] - likely linke…

The question is not whether the author made a fortune, but whether they were upset that tremendous more value was captured by others. I’m sure Amazon has made way more money on AWS last year by leveraging Linux than Linus has in his entire life. Now the analogy is exactly 1-to-1 compatible: Amazon offers Linux as a service, Amazon offers MongoDB as a service. If you want another analogy: more value was captured by Github (and Microsoft) from Git than Linus. Again, from offering the software as a service.

It is fine to try to leverage the properties of open source to make profits, just don’t be surprised when it doesn’t, on its own, do so. That is what is meant by my first statement: “open source will absolutely help you gain traction, it will not necessarily help you capture value”. As such, if you use open source, the goal best served is gaining users. Don’t be surprised when it doesn’t make you a ton of money.

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

#216

Post by GordonS »

samcodes wrote: post #170

When I open source code, I use MIT. I have introduced open source strategies at places I work, and guided teams through the process. Ok now that I've established my OSS cred: I'd be really interested in a license that is effectively MIT, _except_ for the 20 largest software companies, for whom there is no license and any use is restricted (you'd need to clearly define what makes a company a software company, and what…

I quite like what TimescaleDB have done here - their TSL licence prohibits you from selling TimescaleDB as a service, but allows you to build new services that use TimescaleDB as a backend. I'm not sure how applicable this model might be outside of databases though.

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

#217

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Hello71 wrote: post #176
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but leadership is needed to coordinate that change. The OSI needs to stand up and say "hey, the widespread use of permissive licenses is a threat to the open source community; please try to avoid them, and here's some ways you can accomplish your goals without a permissive license." Most open source projects aren't monetized, and most monetized projects won't be picked up by Amazon, so without a coordinated pu…

the FSF have been saying that for longer than the OSI has existed. people mocked them for saying that they were idealistic and unreasonable.

The FSF takes the more extreme stance that general adoption just doesn't matter. If big companies ban libraries using their recommended viral licenses, that's not a problem they're looking to solve; it just means the people writing free software will have an advantage.

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

#218

Post by hollerith »

samcodes wrote: post #170

When I open source code, I use MIT. I have introduced open source strategies at places I work, and guided teams through the process. Ok now that I've established my OSS cred: I'd be really interested in a license that is effectively MIT, _except_ for the 20 largest software companies, for whom there is no license and any use is restricted (you'd need to clearly define what makes a company a software company, and what…

>that's what lawyers are for

One of the reasons the standard open-sources licenses such as the GPL and the permissive licenses are as popular as they are is the lowness of the probability that lawyers will ever be involved.

There was widespread use of GPL software in the 1980s and early 1990s for about 15 years IIRC before the first lawsuit involving GPLed software. Stallman and his legal advisor Eben Moglen did a great job in reducing ambiguity when writing the text of version 2 of the GPL and in explaining the ramifications of the license to developers and prospective users.

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

#219

Post by karmakaze »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #191
karmakaze wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, wonder if there's something we can take away from this. Let's say the latest major release is AGPL (or newer dominant copyleft) and the previous major release is more enterprise friendly licensed with those offering paid support handling the security and maintenance of them. This means that the community can continue to develop and use the latest and greatest. Not perfect but it might work in some cases.

Sounds like an interesting idea. How about taking it even further and say what you say above but then also provide the latest and greatest release also as a commercial version. Then companies who want the latest will pay for it and OS community gets the latest with AGPL, while companies who prefer MIT license get a version that works but is not the latest or greatest. That would be much like paying for support, getti…

I wondered about combining it with dual licensing, but I don't even know how people do that today. Say if a whole community contributed to an AGPL project and it has a dual commercial license, who controls and profits from it?

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

#220

Post by mgfist »

bhickey wrote: post #26

More whining from Sunil Deshpande. He's upset that no one on license-discuss was dumb enough to fall for the Commons Clause or SSPL. It'll be a happy day when he gives up his anti-open source abuse campaign.

I wonder what your opinion is of Kyle Mitchell https://writing.kemitchell.com/
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