FUSE for macOS is no longer open source • Hacker News Board

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#331

Post by dmitriid » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

laughinghan wrote: post #296

dmitriid wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux Foundation is an obvious example of big corporations paying for the development of a project they rely on: most money comes from huge corporate membership fees, most code comes from salaried programmers at those corporations. Most devs though would balk at the idea of paying for Linux.

Yes, big corporations like Google, who is perfectly capable of paying for osxfuse, too. Balk? You think the MBAs at those big corporations are pushing them to pay for Linux over the objections of the devs? No, devs don't balk, devs are the reason those companies are paying for Linux. What in the world do any of your points have to do with the discussion at hand? My parent, pjmlp, claimed that (1) open source can't be…

- There are very few sustainable opensource projects.

- Of those which are, such as Linux, they are sustainable not because community cares about them (they might or might not) or because community pays for them (they might or might not), but because corporations find enough vested in them to support them (through money and/or people). I highly doubt Linux Foundation is sustainable without corporate sponsors.

- If you ask a typical dev to pay for a Linux distribution, they will balk at it. A one-off donation? Maybe. And that's Linux, a major and a clearly expensive project. How many projects are there that we take for granted? How many of them are sustained by the oh-so-great-and-generous open source community? Dozens? Less?

There's a very clear division:

- Strategic projects with vested interests get picked up my huge corporations (or started by them).

- A few lucky projects get enough traction to be able to live off donations whole working on them full time.

- The absolute vast majority of all the rest can and do survive only because devs can afford to work on them. As soon as they can't, good bye development and support.

Edit: fixing some autocorrect mistakes.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#332

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #286

pjmlp wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like LLVM, which everyone is using to replace GCC, so that they are able to profit without contribution thanks MIT?

First, why should they contribute? You make it sound like a problem for the FOSS guys being exploited, but the choice of license is usually made explicitly to allow third parties to profit from their project without the burden of contribution. Second, despite not having to contribute, license while, LLVM has still seen so much contribution from big companies (Apple for one) that the whole argument is moot. Third, I m…

The niche commercial compilers I tend to love, happen to have a positive income of several decades, allowing their employees happy lives.

Hardly something that most LLVM FOSS contributors not on university research budgets can enjoy.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#333

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #314

larodi wrote: post #95

this quite reminds of the openssl saga, but on a smaller scale, with single developer more or less responsible for world's encryption for decade. it's a pity, it's a shame that companies who use FOSS benefit, but do not understand (or do, but ignore) the idea of FOSS, which is to give back to community. this also includes other FOSS companies, etc as everyone uses openssl, zlib and sqlite. to base a project on FOSS r…

If a large software company had to pay 0.1% of its profit (revenue?) to each foss dependency they wouldn't have any left. And contributing back is not as easy as lobbing code over the wall, you have to spend a lot of time and energy coming to agreements on what makes sense to share and how to organize it. It would probably be a full time job for Mr Benjamin to vet external contributions even if everyone could agree t…

Why? That is how everyone else does business, paying their suppliers and tooling.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#334

Post by floatingatoll » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #112

floatingatoll wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One does get to make that complaint. Disagreeing with someone is no excuse for saying their freedom to exercise the rights of an open source license should be restricted, nor for declaring they have no right to speak their mind openly. Open source grants them this freedom, unpalatable as it may be to you. There is no legal reason preventing their complaint from being made. It may not be well-received by those who dem…

This isn't a question of rights. Most people understand in English that "can't complain" means "you can complain if you like but won't be taken seriously or regarded as a valid complaint".

Non-disparagement agreements are a common thing in business. They restrict your right to "complain". I regret the conflict between my understanding of English and that of others, but I stand by my statement.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#335

Post by dylan604 » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

nicky0 wrote: post #275

toadkicker wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't count how many times I've submitted a patch only to hear my supervisors complain that I made a contribution to the thing that makes the business profitable.

I know you are deploying irony but due to competing interpretations I can't figure out its intent. Do you mean the supervisors do complain or they don't?

Company A and Company B both use the same FOSS application. Company A has internal devs that add/fix the FOSS, but keep those updates internal. This gives Company A an advantage Company B does not get. Company A managers recognize this, and feel that since the updates were made on company time, they do not have to provide that to the rest of the world. Company A devs commit their updates to the repository, and now Company A mangers feel like they have given away work product for free. Lots of way pointy hair bosses to be upset in this scenario.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#336

Post by upofadown » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #258

upofadown wrote: post #233

The article makes this out to be more complicated than it is. Apple makes it very difficult to use 3rd party kernel modules. That is the whole thing. The open source thing is a complete red herring for everyone except the current maintainer who just happened to use some code that might be open source in a different context. The source for the module that could end up in the Apple kernel was never open to begin with.…

> Apple makes it very difficult to use 3rd party kernel modules. That is the whole thing. The open source thing is a complete red herring I would argue that the Apple part is the red herring. It’s boring; it’s common knowledge that they don’t particularly like kernel extensions and it’s somewhat difficult to develop them. > No one else could actually use the result of compiling the code. So the source was not ever op…

Simply being able to see the source code does not make it "Open". You have to be able to use it for what it is intended.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#337

Post by monocasa » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

ithkuil wrote: post #215

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The footnote says Google are using their own fork. Now we don't know when they forked and how much they diverged, but it's quite possible that were going to maintain their own fork, anyway. It's also noteworthy isn't the "original author of osxfuse". In fact, Google is. So while I can empathise with the general complaint about commercial use, one doesn't get to make that complaint against the one company that origina…

Do you know whether Google installs their own signed kext kernel module, or do they rely on this project (and the fork is only for user space bits)?

Google has a full fork of the kext. It's at least different enough that you can have both running simultaneously.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#338

Post by robocat » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #316

lonelappde wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you offered equity shares or options to your FOSS providers, as you do for your direct employees? If not, why not?

Because I think that owning a tiny shareholding in a business is more hassle than it's worth for everyone involved. Options is more of a possibility, but again, more hassle than just cash. And involves more explanation to non-techies who won't understand, and will possibly intervene. I can just put "software licence" as a budget line item and make a payment, and everyone's happy, no questions asked.

What's the legalities of donating ownership for smear campaigns?

What prevents me from making Microsoft a 1% shareholder of my company Cockwombles Inc?

Or giving them a specific exemption in my license for the cockwomble software library?

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#339

Post by whydoyoucare » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

His project, his rules. Period.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#340

Post by angry_octet » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

ohithereyou wrote: post #224

angry_octet wrote: post #174

We need something like carbon credits for open source. As in, if you contribute to open source you earn credits. If you make lots of use of open source but don't contribute back you need to buy open source credits. How we would value open source is a tricky question. Would AWS owe a gazillion credits for all the hours of linux and apache they've burnt? Probably doesn't make sense. Maybe a logarithmic scale. But the r…

To me, this is the root of the difference between Free (libre) software as defined by the FSF and open source software as popularized by the OSI. The primary case for open source is business and money - money is more efficiently spent on supporting open source, and all of the businesses that spend money on open source get to benefit from contributions from others. In this model an open source economy is desirable bec…

I agree to some degree, but I don't think an open source economy is fundamentally opposite Libre/FSF style objectives, in that they are not opposed to people getting paid for their efforts, but that binary only distribution and restrictive licencing are bad in a variety of ways.

If we consider a company like Oracle, which seems antithetical to open source principles on many levels, it would be possible to treat them as an open source debtor. Transactions between Oracle and open source economy participants would incur a tax, making their products less competitive with others, until they started contributing or bought open source offset credits. This provides the dual benefits of funding open source and penalising non-sharing. Things that really cost companies nothing, like publishing their Android patches, become valuable, and keeping them private becomes a cost.