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“Open source” is not broken

nadh.in

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Re: “Open source” is not broken

#31

Post by IceDane »

Did this guy really just write a rebuttal to an article that he didn't bother to read well enough to understand?

They are literally arguing the same things. The article he is arguing against is not trying to shit on open source. It's trying to explain how insane it is that so much open source development is so critical but so massively underfunded.

The original article isn't saying that the idea of open source is fundamentally broken. It's the consumers of open source software whose morals are fundamentally broken.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, just spend like 5 extra minutes reading what you are arguing against next time. This is so embarrassing that I'm feeling the second-hand embarrassment.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#32

Post by sidlls »

Open source is most certainly broken, and not just due to the various financial, freedom and security issues these two articles focus on. My biggest peeve: documentation is often minimal (e.g. API docs only) or filled with useless toy examples that are effectively just rephrasing of API docs.

The entire underpinning of free and open source software is silly: software in this context isn't an academic pursuit producing knowledge that should be freely shared to our collective advancement as a civilization. It's a hammer, a wrench, a table: in short, a product. That fundamental category error made by our community is the source of all the problems with F/OSS, financial and otherwise.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#33

Post by candiddevmike »

I recently looked into open sourcing Homechart (https://homechart.app). It's free to use already (for self hosting), but some users wanted it to be open source (almost entirely for auditing purposes, but I doubt they'd even read the code). I don't want anyone using it for commercial purposes, and I found a few licenses that would prevent this-- namely Commons Clause, but at the end of the day I didn't see a benefit to having it OSS aside from appeasing some OSS purists. The app is already free, and I don't need the added burden of responding to issues and pull requests (and supporting the code they add).

EDIT: I also don't want folks redistributing custom builds or effectively reselling it somehow. I'm a solo dev, I don't have the resources to litigate and enforce any kind of restrictive license.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#34

Post by inops »

goalieca wrote: post #17
js8 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why when you already have GPL? Most companies do not allow GPL software to be used for products.

It becomes murky when you don’t actually ship software and use it as a service in the backend. GPL is from the olden days when you actually distributed your software. Now it’s only the front end and that ships as source still because wasm and the rest haven’t taken over yet.

AGPL then. It extends the meaning of "distribute", but is still FSF/OSI-approved

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#35

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

judge2020 wrote: post #10
api wrote: post #2

FOSS is the victim in a way, but that means it must defend itself. OSI needs to get off their asses and acknowledge the problem and work with the community to develop licenses that limit SaaSification and other forms of appropriation in a way that is compatible with the principles of open source and lacks the optics (FUD) problems of the GPL approach. I’m not holding my breath since the OSI is funded almost entirely…

This would be solved if people were educated on dual-licensing - no new license needs to exist if you go GPL and have a paid commercial license.

Probably AGPL if SaaS is a concern.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#36

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

candiddevmike wrote: post #33

I recently looked into open sourcing Homechart ( https://homechart.app ). It's free to use already (for self hosting), but some users wanted it to be open source (almost entirely for auditing purposes, but I doubt they'd even read the code). I don't want anyone using it for commercial purposes, and I found a few licenses that would prevent this-- namely Commons Clause, but at the end of the day I didn't see a benefit…

If you want to allow audits but don't care about Open Source, just do a source available / shared source license like tarsnap.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#37

Post by NavinF »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #8

Its probably time for the next generation of open source licensing to make the code not usable for profit making purposes, thus ensuring open source is either funded by the companies that use it or forms its own separate community away from corporations.

All open source licenses allow commercial use. That’s a major part of the definition of “open source”: https://opensource.org/faq#commercial

“Source available” licenses that don’t allow profit do exist. See all the anti-cloud licenses that came out when AWS started selling open source databases as a service. It’s just that hardly anyone touches code licensed like that. Hell, even Linux used to have a “can’t have money change hands” clause until Linus realized that was stupid. See his debconf talk where he talks about it.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#39

Post by dnautics »

bigbillheck wrote: post #27
gtsop wrote: post #7

Re the author of "open source is broken": The irony of bashing open source on a websiate using systems/code/infra containing thousands of open source lines of code which I am sure he hasn't paid for... has probably escaped his attention. Honestly, I am not sure why there is an argument anymore. Let people write or use free or proprietary software as they see fit. You all know the pros, you all know the cons, make a d…

> The irony of bashing open source... This is literally the 'yet you participate in society' argument.

Sure, you don't have the option of not using open source software for some of the cisco and arista switches and routers on nexthops over the internet, but you certainly CAN use paid-for closed-source software (from operating system up to webserver) on a server that you set up, in a colo that you pay for, to run your blog.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#40

Post by mrweasel »

It feels like we moved from a world where open source software was develop by a community, to one where most of us are just consumers of the code. I don't know if where actually more contributors 20 years ago, relatively speaking, but much of the code was also less complex.

Open source is still remarkably successful and the only reason why the whole Log4J RCE is such a big deal, is because the library is hugely successful. The failing isn't in the work of the author(s), but those of us who been consuming the code. We don't need to fund the main developers, what we need is for the project, and projects like it, to be true communities. That mean that all the companies who have been relying on open source need to allocate time to community work.

We pay for open source software by helping build it and that goes beyond creating an issue on Github or complaining about missing features and poor documentation. We all part of the open source community, but we seem to have forgotten how it works. Now we believe that we can throw money at the problem, but that still leaves a single developer with the responsibility for a massive code base. OpenBSD was right: "Show us the code or shut up".

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