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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#241

Post by vova_hn »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #121
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 use the MIT license when the AGPL is the better choice? I don’t understand why developers choose MIT and or Apache license and then figure out that they now have a competitor cloning their product .

A lot of people are scared of GPL and other copyleft licenses, mostly because of how most big corporations treat GPL.

Also, MIT license in particular is much shorter and easier to understand for a non-lawyer, than most other software licenses.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#242

Post by jotaen »

lispisok wrote: post #131

"I released source code under the MIT license and people are now using it to their financial benefit. Who could have possibly seen this coming?" Why does this keep happening? Why are so may developers blind to this obvious outcome?

Why would this be surprising? The MIT license explicitly allows to relicense a project at any point. In this case, the Bear maintainer decided to start off with a permissive license and now exercised their rights to change to a more restrictive license due to changing requirements. To me, this seems actually quite reasonable.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#243

Post by riffraff »

rozab wrote: post #160
moralestapia wrote: post #134

>It hurts to believe in open-source and then be bitten by it. No, you don't believe in open source, hypocrite. Open source means anyone can use it, even for commercial purposes, and you knew this from day zero. Honestly, no sympathy for these people, as this happens over and over again, they actually exploit the very few good intended OSS people. They portray their project as open source initially, to gather sympathy…

In this case it's kind of unbelievable how quickly the flip happened. Their 'manifesto'[0] was published only at the start of the year, where they vowed to be an incorruptible bastion of stability in a selfish society focused on short-term thinking. They want Bear to be around in 50 years. Then in the last couple weeks or so[1] it seems they saw a bit of a spike, and immediately pulled up the ladder. They even critic…

ironically, Wordpress is still licensed under the GPL even after the kerfuffle.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#244

Post by didibus »

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

AGPL doesn't prevent others from reselling your software no? I thought it only mandated that they also release their own source modifications.

He seems to claim 3rd parties are offering bearblog commercially without modifications (or with useless modifications, like just a changed name).

Re: Bear is now source-available

#245

Post by kstrauser »

sunshowers wrote: post #151
darkwater wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because between 15 and 20 years ago the BSD zealots won that culture war. I would really love to see a simulation where GNU licenses won that culture war and which landscape we would have today.

There are good reasons the so-called "BSD zealots" won the so-called "culture war", such as the definition of a derived work being largely uncharted territory. Did you know that there's a compelling legal argument that the GPL attaches to programs talking to each other via JSON data structures? I think MPL 2.0 is the ideal kind of copyleft, because of its scope being very clear.

There is no such compelling legal argument. That’s an extraordinary idea with zero precedent or support.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#246

Post by sunshowers »

kstrauser wrote: post #245
sunshowers wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are good reasons the so-called "BSD zealots" won the so-called "culture war", such as the definition of a derived work being largely uncharted territory. Did you know that there's a compelling legal argument that the GPL attaches to programs talking to each other via JSON data structures? I think MPL 2.0 is the ideal kind of copyleft, because of its scope being very clear.

There is no such compelling legal argument. That’s an extraordinary idea with zero precedent or support.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugins

> When is a program and its plug-ins considered a single combined program?

> It depends on how the main program invokes its plug-ins. If the main program uses fork and exec to invoke plug-ins, and they establish intimate communication by sharing complex data structures, or shipping complex data structures back and forth, that can make them one single combined program. A main program that uses simple fork and exec to invoke plug-ins and does not establish intimate communication between them results in the plug-ins being a separate program.

JSON data sent over the wire, particularly data with nested arrays and maps, and especially a bidirectional communication protocol, can reasonably count as "intimate communication" with "complex data structures" shipped "back and forth".

This is nonbinding guidance, but it is from the FSF, and it is legally untested afaik (not a lawyer). There's sufficient legal risk here that I'd be wary of using rich communication protocols with GPL programs, particularly if there isn't an explicit exception for that protocol.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#247

Post by jraph »

ezekg wrote: post #221
jraph wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's lying. I don't see how it can do this. The AGPL is a license text. It states what people can do with the licensed code. What is lying in this text? > I guess I care about clear rules, clear intentions, and I care about integrity Me too > The AGPL is ambiguity; unclear rules, veiled intentions That's where I don't agree: The rules are written in the license text and I see no ambiguity there. Where is the ambigu…

Here's a thread from a couple hours ago on X: https://x.com/_m27e/status/1962563736142565882 . Read the images and follow the quoted posts. The example comes straight from the mouth of a COSS founder.

Sorry, but this yes-answered AI slop subtly makes no sense, it just reads comfortable to you. You should not delegate writing your opinion to the llm and even less use it to shape your opinion, this is my main takeaway from your screenshot. The AI answered your biased question in a way that pleases you, it's well known that they do this. This stuff is actually scary, and that clever people like you rely on this and don't notice the glaring issues is even more.

The agpl is ambiguous because users may choose not to fully use the freedom they were given? Sorry but this is bullshit. I'm glad I haven't started using this stuff yet (for other reasons). I'm sure I wouldn't notice such issues in topics I'm not at ease with and I can see how easy one can be seduced by this stuff.

Now, I'm convinced AGPL can be misused. What's more, I'm certainly quite happy that a side effect of the AGPL is that Google won't touch it, to mirror the comment you point to (whose author is wrong by the way, the intent behind the AGPL was not to exclude big tech, but to promote/protect user software freedom). All the fud around the AGPL actually comes from companies like Google, so respectfully fuck them all. Nobody could possibly have weaponised the AGPL against them had they not started spreading all the fud in the first place.

But even considering that picking the AGPL to scare big tech away is bad and weaponizes it (which I can hear, and let's assume), I believe you are wrong that nobody chooses the AGPL for the user freedom genuinely. There are a lot of examples of software under AGPL in good faith seemingly to me. Examples: Nextcloud, Joplin, CryptPad, Overleaf, Passbolt, Univention...

I doubt any of these commercial projects from friendly (?) companies choose the AGPL to fuck the world. I don't know the numbers, maybe it's a minority. You may not have numbers as well. Are you against the AGPL when used in good faith? If so, what to you suggest as an alternative?

I'm with you with the wish people were altruistic. But the system we live in doesn't exactly help being altruistic. Not being altruistic is certainly not a trait of people using AGPL, it's virtually everyone in a commercial setting (although some of us try to do their best to be good humans and virtuous). If anything, the AGPL was born from a ideal and that was certainly driven by something like altruism. All this blame towards the AGPL because people are out there to make money really feels weird to me.

Anyway, I don't think we'll reach an agreement here and that's OK. Thanks for the discussion, despite the strong disagreement it is/was stimulating.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#248

Post by digdugdirk »

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…

I've long thought there needs to be some sort of "cooperative source" license. With DAOs and whatnot, there's even the possibility of an automated global common fund for contributing and supporting. There's definitely a big opportunity to rethink things in this arena.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#249

Post by 8organicbits »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #21
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 c…

The trick is not to get attached to a project name. `Terraform` is a trademark of IBM (previously Hashicorp). Terraform used to refer to an open-source IaC project, but now it doesn't. OpenTofu, https://opentofu.org, is probably the most accurate name for the continuation of that open-source project.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#250

Post by didibus »

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…

What's wrong with "source-available" ?

Open-source normally means there's no use restrictions, but there could be some requirements in order to do so (like attribution).

Free software normally means there's no use restrictions, but modifications can mandate maintaining the modifications also free to use, retaining the same freedoms.

And if you fray from those, you can call it source-available and the specifics of what usage restrictions exist are per-license.

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