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No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

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Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#231

Post by boomlinde »

cercatrova wrote: post #132
3pt14159 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

That's just a proprietary license, just write the license like that if you want as I don't see how anything is stopping you from creating or using such a license. Just don't make the assumption that it's open source, it's just another form of a proprietary license like much of the paid software currently present. However, don't complain later on that you can't modify software or run it on your own device like you can…

> That's just a proprietary license, just write the license like that if you want as I don't see how anything is stopping you from creating or using such a license

It would be nice with a license template for this purpose, vetted by a lawyer to be reasonably airtight. Encoding that intent in a way that's not easily avoidable is probably harder than most people think.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#232

Post by 3pt14159 »

roenxi wrote: post #161
3pt14159 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

> I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That is an arbitrary criteria, and you'll end up with software being written by Apple Development LLC, the loss-making shell company that Apple uses to do all it's development. If you want something other than the GPL you can use it but don't be surprised when people commercialise your software at scale,…

Nope. Because the loss-making shell company has a stakeholder worth more than a billion USD.

The core issue here is all these lawyerly lawyers try to parse words and contracts and it's all bullshit. The core point about OSS isn't to hyper-centralize wealth. The core point about OSS is to enable people to create a common good. A common wealth for the people. I'm not against the core function of capitalism—the feedback loop that allocates resources to those that produce things that others want—I'm against some of its outcomes. Namely, a class of hyper-wealthy people that make out like bandits and incorporate in places like Cyprus to pay as little back as possible to the very communities that enriched them in the first place.

It isn't just. And quite frankly, I consider it to be a disease that hurts the billionaire class as much as it hurts the rest of us. This never ending dick measuring contest while the world burns. Ferraris driving past over-packed women's shelters. People ashamed that they "only" drive an Audi. Like, in bayesian free energy terms it's the equivalent to holding onto ninety tons of fat and still trying to eat more. Of course Bezos went ballistic when his phone got hacked. Security concerns sky-rocket when you're holding onto this much energy and power.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#233

Post by a10c »

echelon wrote: post #60
MaximumYComb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Australia the streaming options for music/video are better than our previous options for CD's/cable. A three month subscription to Spotify costs less than a single album would cost me 20 years ago.... not even account for inflation. A monthly Netflix subscription is 20% of the price that cable would cost here 5 years ago.

> Spotify You don't own the music. You can't share it, use your own software to analyze, shuffle, remix it, etc. > Netflix subscription But now there's Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, Showtime Anytime, Peacock Premium, etc. Except now instead of one easy to use interface to access it all, it's spread out all over the place and inconsistent as hell. And more expensive!

> But now there's Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, Showtime Anytime, Peacock Premium, etc. Except now instead of one easy to use interface to access it all, it's spread out all over the place and inconsistent as hell. And more expensive!

Back in my younger days in Australia I remember we had to get the "Entertainment Plus" pack in order to get the sports channels on Cable. That included 65 other non-sport channels for a minimum of $110 a month. Now I pay $15 a month for a sports-only subscription service.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#234

Post by AllegedAlec »

jgilias wrote: post #163

So you've made something cool and it's time to release it. These seem to be the options at hand: 1. Release under a permissive license (MIT, BSD) and: - Have everyone and their grandma use it. - Die poor 2. Release under a copyleft license (GPL) and: - No company is going to use or contribute to it, unless they can somehow clearly separate it from what they see as their intellectual property. Or just hide it where no…

5: Don't release the code and sell your product. Taking pride in your work also means valueing it properly.

- 95% chance you die poor. 4.999% chance you make a decent living out of it. 0.0001% chance Facebook buys it for enough money that you can buy your own island on Mars.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#235

Post by elcritch »

wjnc wrote: post #169
arthurcolle wrote: post #102

On Twitter, he claims that he was recently made homeless due to an apartment fire, and asks the community to send funds to help him avoid homelessness, which seems reasonable enough. He later goes on to describe "fake news written by the NY Post." I searched for this, and found an article that might be the article he describes (timing fits) [0] Pretty crazy story, all in all! He seems to be in some pretty dire strait…

If the police would ransack my family home after a fire you could probably write the same article. Charred RPi's and lots of computer parts, enough wiring for a new house, lots of chemicals (cleaners, fertilizers, other chemical agents with regular gardening use cases), ultimate survival guide and related parts ("This guy was prepping for something!"). The naming of suspects is just adding insult to injury. If he's i…

Yikes, what you describe could easily be a decent portion of HN people’s homes. Don’t forget the anti-social, unpopular with the neighbors bit either. And of course the NYPost appears to thrive on drumming up scandal.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#236

Post by 3pt14159 »

ntucker wrote: post #71
3pt14159 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

So write the license this way. I think it's a fabulous idea.

I actually did write a license at one point, but I realized that the core issue here was buy-in from the rest of the hacker community. It's like trying to end slavery. Until there are enough of us willing to work an underground railroad the best strategy is evangelizing the issue and collectively coming up with something that works for all of us. I also think that there are good billionaires out there, like Bill Gates and Paul Graham, I don't want a war. I want something that the existing billionaires that are pro-social will sign onto and we need their input and ideas too.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#237

Post by cercatrova »

boomlinde wrote: post #231
cercatrova wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just a proprietary license, just write the license like that if you want as I don't see how anything is stopping you from creating or using such a license. Just don't make the assumption that it's open source, it's just another form of a proprietary license like much of the paid software currently present. However, don't complain later on that you can't modify software or run it on your own device like you can…

> That's just a proprietary license, just write the license like that if you want as I don't see how anything is stopping you from creating or using such a license It would be nice with a license template for this purpose, vetted by a lawyer to be reasonably airtight. Encoding that intent in a way that's not easily avoidable is probably harder than most people think.

Probably true, someone else mentioned that Apple could simply make a shell company that is technically only worth a small amount of money in order to fit into the "under 1 billion dollar valuation" stipulation. I'm not a lawyer so you'd have to take up the specifics with them.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#239

Post by robinduckett »

arthurcolle wrote: post #102

On Twitter, he claims that he was recently made homeless due to an apartment fire, and asks the community to send funds to help him avoid homelessness, which seems reasonable enough. He later goes on to describe "fake news written by the NY Post." I searched for this, and found an article that might be the article he describes (timing fits) [0] Pretty crazy story, all in all! He seems to be in some pretty dire strait…

I mean if we're sharing stories: "I started a project to learn javascript and node.js through rap," Nodejitsu co- founder and New York expat Marak Squires"

I think he is terrible at being frugal, spent all his money, and is now begging for handouts.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#240

Post by ajuc »

krasin wrote: post #91
3pt14159 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

Unreal Engine license is along these lines: it's free if you are small / no significant revenue, and it's 5% of your revenue otherwise. That said, not every shared-sources project would be used, if its license requires to pay royalty.

Games using UE wouldn't work without desktop client so it's easy to licence it.

A lot of business code can just as well run on server, and that works around basicall all the open source licences.

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