Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by jimktrains2 » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 12:47 AM UTC

msbarnett wrote: post #230

jimktrains2 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why should Amazon be prevented from running said software? "Because I don't like it" isn't a good reason.

They shouldn’t, per se. But if they’re not going to be good citizens by contributing back to the project they’re profiting off of, while simultaneously attacking and undermining the ability of the project to fund itself , that’s a massive Free Rider problem that in the long run ends in the loss of a lot of important Open Source projects. We can attempt to solve this free rider problem, or we can shrug our shoulders a…

Isn't everyone who uses mongodb or Linux or any f/oss but doesn't contribute in kind or monetarily a bad citizen? If you license code under a f/oss license you have to accept that this will happen.

There is no "free rider" problem. There are companies competing and one of them out competing the other. Are you as vocal about every company who failed because they didn't have a good business plan?

Now, should companies (or anyone) who use f/oss contribute back in kind or monetarily? Yes, of course they should; no one is arguing that.

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

#232

Post by mikedilger » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 8:29 AM UTC

ace_of_spades wrote: post #210

mikedilger wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shoul…

Adding restrictions to "keep it open" is oxymoronic. Folks can do whatever they want with their software licensing, but please don't deceive people by pretending it's FOSS if it's not.

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

#233

Post by karmakaze » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 12:05 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #189

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…

Most companies use open source because the permissiveness gives them optionality that they value highly, and will even invest resources in supporting, but don't expect to exercise in most cases. If you eliminate that optionality (e.g. AGPL) then it erodes the value proposition of open source for companies and thus their interest in supporting it. This is the reason many companies will not touch AGPL, it eliminates mo…

> eliminates most of the value

Is this really true or just perceived? How often is that optionality actually exercised? And I don't believe that most of the value is in it. The benefits to using good software that continues to be maintained by those using or supporting it is immediate.

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

#234

Post by karmakaze » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 12:28 PM UTC

Reelin wrote: post #184

ryukafalz wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> “storage software and hosting software” changed to “host orchestration software” >seems to be fairly reasonable though, unless I've misunderstood things once again? It's better, though note that the terms in the list referenced there aren't strictly defined. >> If this version is approved by OSI, we plan to apply it to the next release of our MongoDB software, which is currently available under version 1.0. >so it…

This is all really disappointing - they ought to mention it up front in their FAQ. I hope they (or someone else) submits a v3 with tighter definitions that can close the SaaS proprietary source code loophole without introducing a compromising level of overreach or ambiguity. > the fact that they haven't switched over by now signals to me that they're not yet confident in the newer version of the license; if they're n…

> overreach or ambiguity

Specifically overreach ambiguity and as mentioned compatibility with other popular copyleft licenses are valid reasons for me.

It seems reasonable for anyone that cares to switch to AGPL now and to an compatible stronger successor, perhaps SSPLv2 but it will take a bit of time. It's great that some are starting to test this.

Remember when there was a ban on any type of open source? We now have to take another step to the left together. The only ones that would truly miss out are the ones serving proprietized and not just using community software.

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

#235

Post by sbmccarth » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 3:45 AM UTC

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #152

infinity0 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SSPL "debate" was indeed a shit-show hijacked by people either abusing permissive-license ideologies with a corporate interest in mind, or so blinded by that ideology that they are unable to grasp the idea that freedom is an inherently contradictory concept, and that to maximise overall freedom across space and time it is necessary to restrict freedoms that result in a restriction of more freedoms. Good on these…

>I still consider SSPL to be "free software" very much within the ideals that movement, regardless of what the OSI says. SSPL is less free than most of propertiary EULAs. It is literally impossible to comply with the section 13 of the license. SSPL requires the user to release the source code of everything they are using to host their service and license it under the terms of SSPL. Everything, that even includes oper…

Full Disclosure, I work for MongoDB. Please check out the SSPL FAQ (https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license...). Section 13 is focused only on entities that wish to offer MongoDB as a public third party service. They are free to do so under the condition the hosting company offering MongoDB as a service makes "service source code" open source. For nearly all MongoDB users, this has no impact.

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

#236

Post by webmaven » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

mikedilger wrote: post #232

ace_of_spades wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shoul…

Adding restrictions to "keep it open" is oxymoronic. Folks can do whatever they want with their software licensing, but please don't deceive people by pretending it's FOSS if it's not.

Oxymoronic? Perhaps in a strictly literal sense but first of all there are two slightly disjoint goals: Maximizing user freedom, and maximizing developer freedom.

We can maximize user freedom by having developers put code into a commons, reject the freedom-to-restrict-users, and deny other developers the ability to enclose that commons in those sort of restrictions (ala copyleft).

This has an even more broadly applicable analogy, Popper's "tolerating intolerance" and related paradoxes.[0]

Another way of looking at this is through the frame of positive and negative freedoms[1][2] (often described as "freedom to" vs. "freedom from"). It is often not possible to maximize both. For example, when the goal is maximizing human freedoms for the most people, it is not unreasonable to disallow making any people un-free, which includes denying people the freedom to sell themselves into indentured servitude.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/#ConTolPar

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_liberty

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty

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

#237

Post by webmaven » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

mikedilger wrote: post #188

momokoko wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might want to look into, if you have not already, a topic referred to as "gift culture"[1] The hard reality, that someone like myself believes, is that open source works because most actors try to be considerate of others. It falls apart when everyone acts selfishly. I personally believe the world is better off because we have open source software(as generally defined by the OSI and other groups). So my c…

> "So my concern... is about losing open source as we know it today." Open source was born out of a closed source world. It couldn't possibly have been a "gift culture" at that time, and yet it birthed and blossomed and amazingly so. To seriously believe open source would go away requires a belief that the forces that birthed it in the first place no longer exist or have significantly diminished. I'd be interesed to…

That's a rather ahistoric view. Software was initially very much a gift culture in the mainframe, mini-, and micro-computer eras. Even proprietary software licences were often thrown in gratis by vendors trying to sell high-margin proprietary hardware. Proprietary software was largely developed in-house for a company's own use, and regarded as a trade secret, not published as object code and licensed to others.

This state of affairs continued through the initial phases of the workstation/PC era. It was when IBM PC clone hardware (with their narrower profit margins) started to dominate that proprietary software gained more attractive margins, and the ISV era really took off.

It was this growth of proprietary software cutting into and threatening the existing gift-culture during the 80s that prompted the formation of Free Software and Open Source philosophies (the latter named in the 90s but existing all along).

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

#238

Post by galaxyLogic » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

galaxyLogic wrote: post #222

karmakaze wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Maybe all (registered) contributors would have to sign agreement that they give rights to publish also with commercial license to the corporation or non-profit that is in charge of the distribution. Would they be willing to do so? Well maybe they should get a cut of the profits. That gets complicated managing all the payments, but I can see a single company using this model for their own benefit. Build momentum with…

"previous major release is more enterprise friendly ..."

Previous major release would not have the latest features but it would have the latest bug-fixes. That would be enterprise friendly.

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

#239

Post by webmaven » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

Too wrote: post #201

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 "Amazong…

I'm reasonably certain that a lawyer (that is: your lawyer) would tell you not to do that, since it would be pretty obvious that the wrapper is only being used in an attempt to evade the terms of the license.