Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source

danb.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 57 posts

Re: Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source

#31

Post by ssddanbrown »

Tomte wrote: post #27
ssddanbrown wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, this submission's title was changed from "Gumroad Did Not Become Open Source Today" to "Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source"

For whatever reason. It was the original title and is descriptive. Are the mods having a bad day?

I'm not sure, maybe they don't want to take a hard stance on the issue either way (to indicate how open source is defined on HN). Dang has been receptive to input and updated (what I believed to be) misrepresenting "open source" titles in the past though.

This post also seemed to be thrown off the front page for some reason.

Re: Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source

#32

Post by skrtskrt »

ssddanbrown wrote: post #28
redkoala wrote: post #21

Open source licenses as they exist today aren’t sustainable to run a business. We’ve seen with the cloud providers how easy it is to launch a competitor if you don’t have protective licensing. Gumroad’s licensing is still small business friendly and protects another Gumroad clone from being launched.

I would argue it is possible to run a business and be sustainable on open source, it's just harder and is not so compatible with the growth that many want. I don't have an issue with this kind of license being used where open source does not suit, but I don't think we should change/widen the definition of "open source" to suit the sustainability needs of those that open source isn't compatible with, at the impact of…

The problem is that if you're not already differentiably the best at hosting your service right when you launch, someone else that's better at hosting can just do it and take all your business.

And hosting while keeping your prices down is not just a whole different skill set, anyone that's already a big will have pricing deals with AWS so they will beat you even if you host in the exact same way.

It's probably less differentiable in the case of something like Gumroad which is less likely to have big scaling problems, but for things like a distributed database, you run a serious risk of someone who is paying AWS half of what you are per compute hour just deploy the Helm chart and undercut you completely.

Re: Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source

#33

Post by xboxnolifes »

redkoala wrote: post #21

Open source licenses as they exist today aren’t sustainable to run a business. We’ve seen with the cloud providers how easy it is to launch a competitor if you don’t have protective licensing. Gumroad’s licensing is still small business friendly and protects another Gumroad clone from being launched.

Which is fine. Not everything needs to be defined to be suitable for businesses. It's even fine for things to be defined to be explicitly not suitable for a business.

Re: Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source

#35

Post by tomhow »

ssddanbrown wrote: post #31
Tomte wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whatever reason. It was the original title and is descriptive. Are the mods having a bad day?

I'm not sure, maybe they don't want to take a hard stance on the issue either way (to indicate how open source is defined on HN). Dang has been receptive to input and updated (what I believed to be) misrepresenting "open source" titles in the past though. This post also seemed to be thrown off the front page for some reason.

It's customary on HN to avoid a repetition of a topic that's already being actively discussed. The original post is still on the front page and the licensing issue is being heavily discussed there. I've linked to your post from that thread.

Re: Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source

#36

Post by ssddanbrown »

tomhow wrote: post #35
ssddanbrown wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure, maybe they don't want to take a hard stance on the issue either way (to indicate how open source is defined on HN). Dang has been receptive to input and updated (what I believed to be) misrepresenting "open source" titles in the past though. This post also seemed to be thrown off the front page for some reason.

It's customary on HN to avoid a repetition of a topic that's already being actively discussed. The original post is still on the front page and the licensing issue is being heavily discussed there. I've linked to your post from that thread.

Ah, okay, thanks for explaining and cross-linking!

Re: Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source

#37

Post by tomhow »

ssddanbrown wrote: post #36
tomhow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's customary on HN to avoid a repetition of a topic that's already being actively discussed. The original post is still on the front page and the licensing issue is being heavily discussed there. I've linked to your post from that thread.

Ah, okay, thanks for explaining and cross-linking!

No worries!

Re: Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source

#38

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

p_ing wrote: post #24
byyll wrote: post #15

Again with the pointless discussion about what the "widely regarded definition of open source" is. The source is there. That's it.

IMO the distinction is important; it tells me, broadly, what I can and cannot do with the source code. Heck, the .NET Framework source has been available for eons (referencesource.microsoft.com), but you can't go compile it and build your own .NET Framework distro (Mono is a different story).

there was some guy on hackernews whose post I had read who had actually compiled .net entirely from source.

Like the issue I think becomes that .net itself was written in .net and so you needed the earlier proprietary versions right?

But Gnu also had a .net compiler and he had actually used it on guix (basically like nix) to really create sort of reproducible .net , I am sure that some reader of this comment will attach the post on which I am talking

Re: Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source

#39

Post by ivanmontillam »

redkoala wrote: post #21

Open source licenses as they exist today aren’t sustainable to run a business. We’ve seen with the cloud providers how easy it is to launch a competitor if you don’t have protective licensing. Gumroad’s licensing is still small business friendly and protects another Gumroad clone from being launched.

> Gumroad’s licensing is still small business friendly and protects another Gumroad clone from being launched.

That's fine and dandy, but that doesn't inhibit me from rewriting the code from scratch and creating a clone myself by just matching Gumroad's existing feature matrix.

RoadGum.py, here I come!

Re: Gumroad’s license wouldn’t meet the widely regarded definition of open source

#40

Post by ameliaquining »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #38
p_ing wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the distinction is important; it tells me, broadly, what I can and cannot do with the source code. Heck, the .NET Framework source has been available for eons (referencesource.microsoft.com), but you can't go compile it and build your own .NET Framework distro (Mono is a different story).

there was some guy on hackernews whose post I had read who had actually compiled .net entirely from source. Like the issue I think becomes that .net itself was written in .net and so you needed the earlier proprietary versions right? But Gnu also had a .net compiler and he had actually used it on guix (basically like nix) to really create sort of reproducible .net , I am sure that some reader of this comment will att…

I believe this was https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2024/adding-a-fully-bootstrappe.... It was submitted to HN but only got a few comments.
Post reply on HN