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No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

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Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#411

Post by sokoloff »

nmfisher wrote: post #332
arethuza wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing clauses in a license is one thing, I suspect enforcing them through ultra complex international corporate structures is quite another. Edit: Sadly, I think these kinds of battles are rather one sided.

Of course, licence clauses won't physically stop someone who is fine with wilful infringement. But they're not intended to. They're intended to restrict the behaviour of people who, by and large, respect the law. It's practically unthinkable that a company like Apple/Amazon/etc is going to create an expensive, complicated international legal structure to conceal wilful infringement of some open source licence. It's p…

It’s achievable. You could even just name the companies with a periodic process to update the list.

There are all kinds of ways you can write a license that won’t be used popularly but would achieve this specific goal. Do you want to close “your” software off to companies who might seek to be acquired later?

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#412

Post by indigochill »

echelon wrote: post #21

Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? Apple is telling us we can't run our own software on their goddamned devices, yet they built their empire on open source. Look at Facebook, Google, Amazon. They've extracted all the blood they can and given us back scraps. AWS is repackaged software you pay more for. Yes, it's…

> Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down?

Let's imagine a VPN company is a thin front on top of Tor and they charge $50/year for their "service". They're not stealing Tor. It doesn't mean Tor should stop existing. Sure, it's a scummy thing for the company to do, but Tor is still a valuable resource that remains free for anyone to use.

The point of open source is the creation of value. That some companies capture some of that value (usually less egregiously than this example - AWS is actually providing a dynamic host scaling service that happens to host open source software, Apple is providing a software vetting service and top-notch hardware that happens to be built on Unix) is irrelevant in the bigger picture.

> Remember when the Internet was actually pleasant? When it was nice to build stuff for others to use?

This is still true if open source developers are more focused on delivering overall value than they are on their jealousy that a company is integrating their software and charging for it. This could definitely be frustrating if the developer was hoping to make a business out of their software, but if that's the real problem then the license should reflect that.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#413

Post by prepend »

StavrosK wrote: post #349
prepend wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You certainly can, but why? It’s a problem easily solved by not giving away free lunches or adding terms. It seems odd to me to have the solution completely within my power to fix, but not fix it, and complain about the situation. In my view, the license is specifically made to allow reselling. That’s why I pick MIT, Apache, and BSD. If I don’t want people to resell then I pick GPL or some other license.

Because I want to give my software away to individuals and small companies, but if someone gets big enough that they can afford to pay, I want them to pay me then. I don't want to discourage them from using my thing when they're small.

That makes sense. What I mean is that you can do that. Set up a license so rich people can’t use it.

What I meant is that releasing software under a license that doesn’t reflect what I want and the complaining will just lead to frustration.

This seems like a simple problem to solve, just release under whatever license I want. This faker.js project is released under MIT. The author can continue development under some non-OSS license and I think that will make him happier because rich people would stop using it. But I don’t think it will make him the income he wants.

I think the problem is that non-OSS licenses will result in people just not using the project, not that rich people will start shelling out.

As a small business, I would avoid these licenses as well because having multiple licenses kick in at different levels will be confusing and expensive. I’d rather use OSS or just buy commercial products.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#414

Post by spdionis »

prepend wrote: post #345
StavrosK wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can’t offer people a free lunch and then claim they are steeling if they don’t voluntarily tip you the full cost of a lunch. No, but I can be miffed if I offer people a free lunch and they turn around and sell the free lunch I paid to make and keep all the money.

You certainly can, but why? It’s a problem easily solved by not giving away free lunches or adding terms. It seems odd to me to have the solution completely within my power to fix, but not fix it, and complain about the situation. In my view, the license is specifically made to allow reselling. That’s why I pick MIT, Apache, and BSD. If I don’t want people to resell then I pick GPL or some other license.

That's exactly what the maintainer of faker.js is doing. He decided to stop giving away free lunches.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#415

Post by spdionis »

icebraining wrote: post #344
tubularhells wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't watched a lot of things the past 10 years. A couple movies with friends, but I can count those on one hand. I don't really miss it. Some friends find t weird and try to push recommendations still, and I thank them and tell them I'll put it on the list. Then I promptly forget what they talked about, but they seem to have been satisfied with this. No harm done, right? On the other hand, they seem to be all ab…

Oral sharing has been the human way of transmitting stories for tens of thousands of years. Your newfangled "written books" are just a novelty :)

I think "single-tasking" is key though :)

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#416

Post by ghaff »

3pt14159 wrote: post #63
ganafagol wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but this is not the right reaction. It won't improve anything. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? You are free to adjust the license to prevent this. But then tomorrow everybody comes and rants about that the GPL is too restrictive. That's the price we pay for this. It's the license that keeps…

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

Then write one. You can write a license with any terms you want. It won't be open source (per FSF, Debian, and OSI definitions) but it can impose absolutely any terms that are important to you. Don't be surprised if not many use it, but you'll have achieved what seems to be your primary objective.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#417

Post by nmeofthestate »

tastroder wrote: post #388
IshKebab wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any ammonium nitrate though? I mean, chances are he was just some pyro and not actually interested in bombing/killing people. But it's dumb to do that in a flat.

> But it's dumb to do that in a flat. One of the other articles refers to some sort of fireproof container outside of the house.

>Cops said FDNY fire marshals are combing through Squire’s charred, first-floor apartment to determine the cause of the blaze, an FDNY spokesperson said.

The fact that his apartment is 'charred' suggests he was doing stuff in it.

Could be he took the materials with him as he was trying to escape out the back window, or that's just where he was storing them so they wouldn't be found if a search was conducted.

I think it's useful that this was reported on, because it could make people more wary of shelling out money to a guy who was recklessly endangering others even if there were no nefarious motives.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#418

Post by StavrosK »

prepend wrote: post #413
StavrosK wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I want to give my software away to individuals and small companies, but if someone gets big enough that they can afford to pay, I want them to pay me then. I don't want to discourage them from using my thing when they're small.

That makes sense. What I mean is that you can do that. Set up a license so rich people can’t use it. What I meant is that releasing software under a license that doesn’t reflect what I want and the complaining will just lead to frustration. This seems like a simple problem to solve, just release under whatever license I want. This faker.js project is released under MIT. The author can continue development under some…

Oh, agreed. I'm more lamenting the fact that there's no good license for this (that I'm aware of, anyway).

> As a small business, I would avoid these licenses as well because having multiple licenses kick in at different levels will be confusing and expensive. I’d rather use OSS or just buy commercial products.

You could just license it from the start and not have to worry about the license kicking in, though.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#419

Post by part1of2 »

echelon wrote: post #21

Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? Apple is telling us we can't run our own software on their goddamned devices, yet they built their empire on open source. Look at Facebook, Google, Amazon. They've extracted all the blood they can and given us back scraps. AWS is repackaged software you pay more for. Yes, it's…

What billion dollar industry is built on top of faker.js?

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#420

Post by Guthur »

ghaff wrote: post #416
3pt14159 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

Then write one. You can write a license with any terms you want. It won't be open source (per FSF, Debian, and OSI definitions) but it can impose absolutely any terms that are important to you. Don't be surprised if not many use it, but you'll have achieved what seems to be your primary objective.

This.

Using a free use license and then complaining that companies and people freely use is just completely moronic.

And it's not stealing so stop with the hyperbolic nonsense.

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