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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#381

Post by account42 »

jen20 wrote: post #212
swiftcoder wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd The original stance of the open source crowd was more along the lines of the GPL -> GPLv3 -> AGPL, which expressly prevents this kind of thing. The proliferation of "give everything away for free" MIT/BSD/Apache licenses seems to me to have been an intentional campaign by corporate interests to undermine free software ideals

> The original stance of the open source crowd was more along the lines of the GPL -> GPLv3 -> AGPL, which expressly prevents this kind of thing. s/open source/free software/ None of those licenses prevent Amazon-style freeloading though.

Amazon isn't freeloading anymore than users hosting the software themselves. They are providing a service and getting paid for that. This is only a problem for the original creator because they would rather get paid for the service himself but that desired vendor lock in was never something compatible with an open source license that ensures user freedom.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#382

Post by account42 »

8organicbits wrote: post #249
jakelazaroff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is of course the correct way to proceed as an affected user but does not mean the bait and switch cannot be criticized.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#383

Post by account42 »

_puk wrote: post #209
jakelazaroff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like we need a "forever open source" license. A commitment that any significant derivative retain the original (or some later version) of the original license. "Free to do whatever as long as it retains this license. A commitment that this license will not change, even by the original author". No special cases, just a blanket license for all derivatives. If it exists, what are the barriers to adoption? Why don…

Maybe this makes more sense as a change to trademark law than a license thing. If a name OpenSourceProject has gotten popular due to being open source then I would say it's in the interest of the public to ensure that OpenSourceProject keeps referring to an open source project an isn't misappropriated for something else. It's a kind of bait and switch fraud that I think should be generally illegal. On the other hand I don't see why we should care about the creator not being allowed to re-license his own work as long as no one has been mislead about what they are getting.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#384

Post by account42 »

Aurornis wrote: post #274
bachmeier wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If you aren't interested in open source, that's your option, but open source has had a clear meaning for decades. You can use/write your software and people that believe in open source can use/write open sour…

> If you aren't interested in open source, that's your option, but open source has had a clear meaning for decades. If I’ve learned anything from reading HN comments, it’s that “open source” means different things to different people, including those who believe themselves to have specific knowledge of the history of the topic. There are half a dozen different claims about the original meaning of “open source” in thi…

Not at all. There are some people who want open source to mean something else than it does because they want the positive publicity that comes with the term without the commitments to user freedom. Those people should not be given any weight.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#385

Post by zvr »

phkahler wrote: post #77

Naive. Guy picks a license that allow anyone to do anything they want with his code. Later realizes that was not appropriate when he's trying make money. Changes to an obscure license that on the surface seems to fix the problem. Your options are: MIT / BSD, GPL, LGPL, AGPL. All others are unnecessary and create needless incompatibility.

Open Source is not a business model.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#386

Post by account42 »

jaredklewis wrote: post #104
NoahZuniga wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, many developers publish their code not because they want to specifically make a successful open source project, but because they made something that was useful to themselves, and like the idea behind open source. In that case it makes more sense to do a copyleft license because it will legally require all derivatives to also follow that open source idea.

Yea I think stuff like this is great and will have some impact around the edges. Perhaps particularly in the realm of end-user software, like a window tiling manager. But once we start talking about the kind of software large corporations (like AWS) will have an interest in, projects have to be successful to be useful. Software requires maintenance so the maintainers need to be able to devote their time to maintainin…

AWS doesn't seem to have an issue with using copyleft software.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#387

Post by account42 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #353
happymellon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem that these folks have is that AGPL still allows other people to host the software. They want to seem altruistic but want to also be the only provider. GPL would have been a better initial license, and AGPL would have been the next logical step to ensure that changes that hosted services make can come back to the original version. I'm not entirely sure what they were hoping to get by making an extr…

> They want to seem altruistic but want to also be the only provider. Some people pick the AGPL because the license itself acts like garlic to commons destroying IP vampires and are disappointed that those vampires still found a way to drink their IP milkshake. Has nothing to do with altruism and everything to do with not wanting to be taken advantage of for free labor and IP by powerful entities that would deny them…

Except AWS is not an IP vampire in this case, they are providing a hosting service. There is no conflict between AWS's use and the spirit of the open source license.

The conflict is entirely between the original developer wanting to be the sole service provider and the open source license that lets people host the software themselves. The software as a service business model is the problem here, not AWS hosting.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#388

Post by 4ad »

jotaen wrote: post #242
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.

The copyright holder (the author) is solely responsible for choosing how they want their work to be distributed, and is not bound by any other sort of constraint. They can choose any license at any time, and change their mind however often, and it whatever direction they want. Any previous licenses used (MIT here) bear no effect whatsoever. There is no license in the world (and cannot be) that would prohibit the copyright owner from changing it. It makes no sense, the license terms only apply to the licensee, not to the licensor.

Of course, the author cannot retroactively change the license of any previously distributed work. Anyone is free to fork off Bear from its last MIT code and do whatever they want with it.

So no, the MIT license does not "explicitly allow to relicense a project at any point" (emphasis mine). The MIT license allows licensees to license their derived work however they see fit, it has no effect on the relicensing by the licensor (the copyright holder).

Re: Bear is now source-available

#389

Post by account42 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #26
ahartmetz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought so, too, at first. But there's a crucial difference: With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying. With the Bear license, Bear's competition just cannot offer the software as a service. It feels mostly in the spirit of FOSS to me, but Stallman would disagree. He has made it clear that there should be no restrictions on use.

> With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying. Technically true, but in practice almost every tech company forbids GPL code. I bet if you re-read your employment contract closely you'll find that you agreed not to introduce any GPL code into the company's codebases. (Edited for clarity).

Companies not wanting GPL code in code bases they want to keep proprietary should not be surprising to anyone. I fail to see how that is relevant to the comment you are replying though.

Some companies subscribe to FUD (aka lawyers covering their ass) and forbid use of AGPL, GPL and sometimes even LGPL software outright even though they allow proprietary sofware that has even more restrictions, but the big elephant in the room that is usually cited for these open source to "proprietary but we still want the publicity of open source" license changes (AWS) is not one of those companies that put fear over profit.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#390

Post by philipwhiuk »

0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #329
NiloCK wrote: 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…

> screen readers

Good screen readers will definitely pronounce capital letters differently by way of emphasis.

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