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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

341–350 of 509 posts

Re: Bear is now source-available

#341
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license disallows use of the software for what it is intended: setting up a multi-user blogging system.

No, the license disallows use of the software for seeing up a multi-user blogging system as a paid service . You might say, "well wouldn't that be most of what people might want to do with it?" And you might be right, but so what? No one is entitled to build their business on the back of someone else's work, not without their permission anyway. That certainly makes software like this no longer Free Software. But I'm…

> No, the license disallows use of the software for seeing up a multi-user blogging system as a paid service

This is incorrect.

https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/master/LICEN...

> You may not provide the Software as a hosted or managed service that offers users access to substantial features or functionality.

It does not make the distinction around a financial transaction.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#342
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is completely wrong. Free/libre software is distinguished from "gratis" software, such as demos or shareware. Any software that is freely available for users to legally modify and redistribute however they see fit, under the same license or some other, is free software. Examples of non-free software are shareware like WinRar, software only available for non-commercial use like OMNeT++ [0], and (slightly more…

It's not completely wrong ... how rude. Shareware isn't even open source, generally, and it certainly isn't gratis--you have to pay for it, or at least should, and there are often restrictions or time limits if you don't. Again, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedom, not free beer. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html > “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughl…

That definition, and Richard Stallman himself, completely agree with me. A BSD license also guarantees "that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software".

Here is Stallman spelling it out explicitly:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/bsd.en.html

> The two major categories of free software license are copyleft and non-copyleft. Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL insist that modified versions of the program must be free software as well. Non-copyleft licenses do not insist on this. We recommend copyleft, because it protects freedom for all users, but non-copylefted software can still be free software, and useful to the free software community.

> There are many variants of simple non-copyleft free software licenses, such as the Expat license, FreeBSD license, X10 license, the X11 license, and the two BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) licenses.

So, I stand by my assertion. You are completely wrong in saying that only copy left licenses are free/libre software, even according to Richard Stallman himself.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#343
Maybe unfairly but quite disappointed at this development.

This sentence crystalises open source:

> "Unfortunately over the years there have been cases of people forking the project in the attempt to set up a competing service."

You make something for everyone. And they may use it as they please. This is what open means. Did the author make something open source with the hope that nobody would actually use the gift that they made?

Mataroa [1] also started with MIT license (directly inspired by bear blog) and it subsequently changed as well but to Affero GPL instead.

[1] https://github.com/mataroablog/mataroa

Re: Bear is now source-available

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once we start talking about the kind of software large corporations (like AWS) will have an interest in I'm not sure why someone who is spending their limited free time building software to give away for free would want Amazon as a downstream consumer Do you enjoy spending your nights and weekends dealing with CVE reports, while a high-6-figure BigTech engineer nags you that they need it fixed?

> I'm not sure why someone who is spending their limited free time building software to give away for free would want Amazon as a downstream consumer Are you kidding? This is the dream scenario for many open source projects: Getting adopted by a major company is a claim to fame like none other. > Do you enjoy spending your nights and weekends dealing with CVE reports, while a high-6-figure BigTech engineer nags you t…

Having been upstream of this problem (I was engineer at Amazon for ~5 years), they will typically not do any of those things.

The amount of paperwork they have to jump through just to send you a patch makes it not worthwhile. They might fork in extremis, but to do that they first have to justify to management that it's worth ongoing effort to support. Hiring a maintainer really only happens for truly foundational projects like the Xen hypervisor.

What they will do is use the public nature of the CVE process to pressure you to patch with the SLA - and that's generally pretty effective. Only a few open source groups (for example, the npm team) have enough public clout to reject CVEs without reputation damage.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon offers lots of AGPL software, and they fully respect the license in all cases. Ultimately the GPL is about protecting users' rights at the expense of developers' rights. So as long as AWS can offer a better/cheaper managed version of a software service, while still giving the users all details on how to run the same service if they chose to, then the AGPL is completely achieving its aims, even if the original…

> protecting users' rights at the expense of developers' rights. Protecting the user's right to compete with the developer is not sustainable. Protecting the user's right to run the software for free on their own or in their company so long as they don't resell it is perfectly salient and should be enough for anyone. That's really all the freedom a user needs. If you're asking for more, it's because you want to take…

> Protecting the user's right to compete with the developer is not sustainable.

I agree with you, actually - but Richard Stallman and the Free Software movement more generally really don't. They exactly and explicitly believe this right exists and should ideally be a legal right, and the AGPL quite explicitly maintains this right.

Ultimately the Free Software movement is predicated on the concept that ideas can't be owned. They generally oppose both copyright and patents, and not just for software. Their licenses are meant as a stop gap solution. Ideally to them, or at least to some of the more die-hard members, laws would be changed such that what the GPL grants would not be a license predicated on copyright, but instead a legal requirement for all software, while copyright would be entirely abolished.

In addition to their general opposition to copyright and patents, Free Software people also view software as having a special role in terms of privacy and control - that, even more so than books and other copyrightable works, you have a right to know what the software in your house and business is doing, and to modify and fix it if it's doing something you don't like. This is related to privacy rights on one hand, and also anti-monopoly, right to repair concepts on the other hand.

This is all very different from the Open Source movement, even though they basically use the same kinds of licenses. The OpenSource movement is more of an industry group that believes competing on building much foundational software is a waste of resources. Instead, they believe the best way to build this foundational software is in collaboration with other commercial or non-commercial entities, building it in the open such that all may benefit from contributions and add their own contributions. However, the Open Source movement is completely fine with, and even expects, then making a proprietary product on top of this open source base.

To them copyleft licenses are a tool to make sure others don't keep their improvements for themselves, but have the downside of making it harder to build your proprietary stuff on top. Conversely, software that takes your contributions but then doesn't allow you to use it in commercial offerings is completely unacceptable, since the whole goal of the movement is for different companies to build a common infra on which they can then build their own commercial products.

Ultimately, both the Free Software and the Open Source movements will agree that a core part of open source is that anyone should be able to compete on delivering the original software, even if for entirely different ideological reasons.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting how the world have changed. The so called GPL preference, or GPL > GPLv3 > AGPL among Open source crowd is a recent thing. Arguably in the last 15 to 20 years. Both BSD and MIT dates back before GPL. And you will see far more people prefer BSD and MIT in the 90s and 00s. Back when I was getting started in the mid-90s, GPL and LGPL were kind of the default. BSD and MIT were used for certain projects, lik…

As a BSD developer from the 90s, that does not reflect my experience. We wanted our code to be as widely used as possible. It’s really not any more complicated than that. There was always tension between the folks that shipped GPL software and folks that shipped BSD/MIT software, but the dividing line was not whether or not we were “commercial programmers and startup bros”. It has always come down to questions of wha…

Yep. This tinfoil conspiracy theory about these licenses being a scheme by VC backed startups is insane. Only a relative newbie to the scene could fall for that narrative. If you've been on the scene for 15-20 years, you know this is just the ethos, and these various licenses arose out of specific needs, but not opposing ideologies.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#348
post #314

[flagged]

Have you considered that some people listen to text rather than read it? Do you think screen readers, non-native English speakers, or anyone else listening to these are able to reasonably differentiate between “Open Source” and “open source”? Most readers won’t notice the difference or disregard it as meaningless and if you have to explain to everyone your position on a matter of communication it’s likely that you ar…

Impractical as he is, he is still technically correct, and I suspect, courts would back this stance were it ever to be tried in court.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon offers lots of AGPL software, and they fully respect the license in all cases. Ultimately the GPL is about protecting users' rights at the expense of developers' rights. So as long as AWS can offer a better/cheaper managed version of a software service, while still giving the users all details on how to run the same service if they chose to, then the AGPL is completely achieving its aims, even if the original…

> protecting users' rights at the expense of developers' rights. Protecting the user's right to compete with the developer is not sustainable. Protecting the user's right to run the software for free on their own or in their company so long as they don't resell it is perfectly salient and should be enough for anyone. That's really all the freedom a user needs. If you're asking for more, it's because you want to take…

Open source means surrendering your monopoly over commercial exploitation:

https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/20/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your...

The hyperscalers are contributors to FOSS, both in code contributions and funding. They could easily far better though.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#350
Why is there no support for compression?

  $ URL=https://herman.bearblog.dev/
  $ curl -v -H 'Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip, br, zstd' $URL 2>&1 | grep --text ^' Accept-Encoding:'
> Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip, br, zstd ...
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