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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#391

Post by account42 »

omnicognate wrote: post #28
echoangle wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGPL doesn't really prevent Amazon from making it an AWS offering unless they want to modify the program and don't want to share the modifications.

Why would I want to stop them making it available as a network service except as a way of circumventing the copyleft by effectively distributing it without actually distributing it (which AIUI the AGPL fixes)? If you want to place restrictions on how people are allowed to use the software then A) I don't see the relevance of AWS as a special case, and B) go ahead but don't imply the "open source crowd" are being unre…

You'd want to stop them if like in TFA you don't actually want to provide open source software but rather want to sell your software as a service with free marketing from being "open source".

Re: Bear is now source-available

#392

Post by eadmund »

> Unfortunately over the years there have been cases of people forking the project in the attempt to set up a competing service. And it hurts. It hurts to see something you've worked so hard on for so long get copied and distributed with only a few hours of modification. It hurts to have poured so much love into a piece of software to see it turned against you and threaten your livelihood. It hurts to believe in open-source and then be bitten by it.

The free solution to this is Affero GPL. The AGPL ensures that anyone who hosts a program must grant its users the same rights to use, examine, modify and share it that he received. The original author can just download that source and incorporate its changes.

That means that a fork doesn’t hide changes from the original author who ‘poured so much love’ into it.

We as a community have got to stop using the MIT or BSD licenses on our code. Use the AGPL for server code, the GPL for tools and the LGPL for libraries.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#393

Post by delfinom »

eadmund wrote: post #392

> Unfortunately over the years there have been cases of people forking the project in the attempt to set up a competing service. And it hurts. It hurts to see something you've worked so hard on for so long get copied and distributed with only a few hours of modification. It hurts to have poured so much love into a piece of software to see it turned against you and threaten your livelihood. It hurts to believe in open…

Eh? Big players still run AGPL licensed services. The concern is not about the access to source code.

The concern is livelihood. When a big player swoops in, they can completely decimate your business because of shear scale advantages, they can undercut you into bankruptcy. And while sharing the source under even GPL is noble, it's just also kneecapping your ability to make and grow a new business if it's a tool/service that has market traction. The OG author having access to that modified source code does absolutely nothing to help them.

The big players are literally seagulls waiting to steal your current and future customers.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#394

Post by account42 »

jeswin wrote: post #362
cinericius wrote: post #3

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. I'd like to see some recognition from this crowd of the "free-ride competition" problem as this author puts it. What Herman is doing is a service to us all, and we should find a term (better than 'source-availa…

Unfortunately, AWS has invented and legitimized this entirely new class of leeching off of open source work, where they capture the entire economic value of a project by owning the hosting infrastructure; contributing nothing back and forking when the original authors protest. OSS stewards should correct this - in my view disallow cloud vendors beyond a certain size to freeload.

I'd rather those "OSS vendors" would look for a better business model than software as a service.

Having the option for competing service providers (including yourself) is a big advantage of open source.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#395

Post by eadmund »

jaredklewis wrote: post #93
cinericius wrote: post #3

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. I'd like to see some recognition from this crowd of the "free-ride competition" problem as this author puts it. What Herman is doing is a service to us all, and we should find a term (better than 'source-availa…

People can license their software however they want, but it is worth reflecting on why almost all open source authors go with a permissive license like MIT: because it is basically a "buyer's market." When choosing a database, distributed queue, blogging platform, or whatever, companies usually have a choice of at least several high quality open source options. If one of those options places restrictions on the users…

> People can license their software however they want, but it is worth reflecting on why almost all open source authors go with a permissive license like MIT: because it is basically a "buyer's market." When choosing a database, distributed queue, blogging platform, or whatever, companies usually have a choice of at least several high quality open source options.

> If one of those options places restrictions on the users, then those users are probably going to choose one of the other options.

First, if someone isn’t paying, he’s not buying. ‘Paying’ should be understood broadly, e.g. code as well as money counts. A company paying dollars really doesn’t care that much about the license — plenty of companies pay for proprietarily-licensed products (even ridiculously limited ones, with dongles and high seat prices). OTOH, a company ‘paying’ with code contributions should prefer the GPL, because it knows that its contributions will never be taken away from it.

Second, the GPL does not restrict users; it restricts developers from restricting users.

The GPL family is the right way for individuals and companies to form a software commons in which all can benefit.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#396

Post by fsflover »

fsflover wrote: post #129
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 Any examples when AGPL was used successfully by competitors? Typically every company prohibits using this licence.

Why am I silently downvoted?

Re: Bear is now source-available

#397

Post by hellcow »

fastball wrote: post #330
hellcow wrote: post #40

I'm sad to see this. I supported Bear because it was open source. As that's no longer the case, I just canceled my membership. I would love to see this reversed and moved to AGPL instead.

What is the difference (to you) between open source and source available?

One is altruistic, akin to charity. It deliberately maximizes users’ rights to do anything they want with the software (freedom 0). I’m only in the lucky position I’m in now because of open source, and I want to push for more of that in the world with my wallet and my time.

I’m not going out of my way to support a commercial license. There are a million commercial blog platforms to choose from.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#398

Post by eadmund »

account42 wrote: post #386
jaredklewis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which copyleft software does AWS use? Linux, certainly. And MariaDB/MySQL (but also the BSD-like PostgreSQL). I was under the impression that it typically avoids GPL software when there is a BSD- or MIT-licensed alternative.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#399

Post by NullCascade »

eadmund wrote: post #392

> Unfortunately over the years there have been cases of people forking the project in the attempt to set up a competing service. And it hurts. It hurts to see something you've worked so hard on for so long get copied and distributed with only a few hours of modification. It hurts to have poured so much love into a piece of software to see it turned against you and threaten your livelihood. It hurts to believe in open…

>Use the AGPL for server code, the GPL for tools and the LGPL for libraries.

If we are doing it for ideological reasons why not go all in and use AGPLv3 for everything, including libraries? It also has the added benefit that big corporations will not use your code.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#400

Post by eadmund »

cinericius wrote: post #44
Spivak wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the scare quotes, the first freedom of both Open Source and Free Software is the right to run the software for any purpose . It's not some little unimportant detail. It's arguably the most important property of Open Source.

I argue that the natural winner-take-all dynamics of the marketplace are not beneficial to the the mission of free and open source software. In fact, having no safeguard against large organisations making money this way is actually hugely detrimental to the mission by enabling these companies to ensnare unsuspecting users in a web of both their own proprietary software as well as all that free and open source softwar…

> enabling these companies to ensnare unsuspecting users in a web of both their own proprietary software as well as all that free and open source software has to offer.

That’s why the AGPL exists.

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