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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#411

Post by NoGravitas »

ajdude wrote: post #282

Why do people go with MIT over a GPL? Would have just releasing it under GPL in the first place also have prevented this? Don't get me wrong, I have released libraries under MIT before because I have absolutely no problems with others using it even if they want to commercialize it, but I've also released things under GPL3.

Even AGPL would not have prevented this; it would just have required anyone else offering Bear as a service to contribute back changes. It would have discouraged larger companies with policies against AGPL from doing so, but not everyone.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#412

Post by account42 »

ezekg wrote: post #32
tptacek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of four licenses linked on the front page of the FSF.

And it's the most abused license in the history of open source [0] [1]. [0]: https://keygen.sh/blog/weaponized-open-source/ [1]: https://keygen.sh/blog/whither-open-source/

Gee I wonder why a proprietary software licensing company would want to disparage the AGPL.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#413

Post by SamInTheShell »

saghm wrote: post #409
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…

My issue with "source available" as a term has always been that it basically sounds like a synonym to "open source". It's not clear to me why the place to draw the line for what level of restriction constitutes " would be between what's known as " source available" and "true" open source when the question of "can I read the source code for this or not" seems way more intuitive to me than "can I run a cloud-based soft…

The history stems from the term “free” software not being very palatable for marketing. There are 4 tenants to free software. Bear is no longer free software.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#414

Post by account42 »

bruce511 wrote: post #170
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.

I think this is fair, by both Bear and yourself. He's free to attach any license he likes, you are free to use it or not. Obviously the goal of Open Source licenses does not include making money. You might, or might not, but it's not a priority. Equally your goal may be to only support Open Source projects. That's fine. For you removing support for this project makes sense. Once a project reaches the stage of needing…

Legally it's OK but I think ethically using open source to build up a brand that is then used to sell proprietary software is ethically questionable - just like the free until the competition has been eliminated bait and switch common in tech startups. Not saying this happened in this specific case though.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#415

Post by ezekg »

cousin_it wrote: post #408

I think the main contribution of Bear at first was centralizing and codifying a certain visual style: minimalistic, with a single narrow column. It's basically "the Medium layout, but indie". And the thing is, that style in itself is not copyrightable. To achieve it, you don't need to use bearblog. You just need a few tens of lines of CSS, which you can very easily write yourself. Today there's another thing going fo…

I missed the "discover" before. What a great idea. I've been reading through various blogs this morning, feeling like the internet is small again.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#416

Post by jwr »

swiftcoder wrote: post #144
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…

> 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 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

As a counterpoint, when I make something open source, I really mean "freedom", which includes the freedom to build a commercial service using the software. I use the MIT license not because of "corporate interests to undermine free software ideals", but because I really want the software to be free as in freedom.

GPL, GPLv3, AGPL and similar license actually restrict the freedom to do anything you want with the software. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it, just that "free software ideals" could mean different things to different people, and there might not be any "corporate interests".

Re: Bear is now source-available

#417

Post by ezekg »

account42 wrote: post #412
ezekg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's the most abused license in the history of open source [0] [1]. [0]: https://keygen.sh/blog/weaponized-open-source/ [1]: https://keygen.sh/blog/whither-open-source/

Gee I wonder why a proprietary software licensing company would want to disparage the AGPL.

I've probably contributed more to open source than you [0]. I also contribute the source code of my entire company under the open source Apache 2 license via DOSP [1].

I wouldn't be so quick to judge. I love open source. But I also think words and intent matters.

I don't really 'win' by attacking customers/users that use the AGPL.

[0]: https://keygen.sh/open-source/

[1]: https://keygen.sh/license/

Re: Bear is now source-available

#418

Post by jakelazaroff »

torstenvl wrote: post #323
jakelazaroff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specifically is your problem with the AGPL? I read both of your links and while there are a lot of incisive statements ("But the truth is, the AGPL isn't used to increase user freedom — it's used to restrict it, primarily through its legal ambiguities") you never spell out why you believe them.

It is objectively true. AGPL does not meet the definition of free software, because it restricts the use of the software when modified. The FSF pretends this isn't true by pretending that some uses are actually redistribution. However, this is too clever by half. Redistribution has a well-settled meaning, and allowing interaction over a network—unless it involves downloading the software itself—does not meet that def…

Let's grant your definition of "redistribution" for the sake of argument. How does the license restrict your use of any modified versions of the software? Like, what specifically are you forbidden from doing?

Re: Bear is now source-available

#419

Post by account42 »

delichon wrote: post #83
jorams wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know something's broken when Microsoft gets to claim to be the biggest backer of open source. They can say whatever they want. They're just lying. If you spend even a little bit of time looking into it you'll find it's just a marketing strategy.

I spent a little time looking into it, and it turns out that Microsoft owns an outfit named GitHub, which apparently offers free hosting for open source projects and is used by a lot of open source software makers. And Microsoft has around 4k employees with contributions to OS projects on GitHub. So maybe "biggest" is a lie in light of their anti-OS efforts, but it is at least arguable. Can you propose a bigger one?

You mean the outfit that has misappropriated the code of those hosted projects to train their commercial code generator which is a very clear violation of the spirit if not the letter of the licenses of many of those projects?

Re: Bear is now source-available

#420

Post by account42 »

pabs3 wrote: post #354
spongebobstoes wrote: post #51

open source is charity. I believe in it, I contribute to it, but I recognize it is unlikely to lead to a sustainable livelihood

There are lots of FOSS consultancies out there doing fairly well, some linked from the FOSSjobs wiki: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

Sure but the open source part is mostly incidental to their work. They solve business needs for corporations.
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