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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#441

Post by kmacdough »

jwr wrote: post #416
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 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 sof…

But the point others make is, this type of libertarian free is wide open to the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy. A very successful, repeatable business strategy to own supposedly "open" domains. There's a reason people have debated freedom to and freedom from for centuries. This is the core conundrum/challenge of freedom.

GPL style licenses provide some guarantee you're investing in an ecosystem that is resistant to EEE. Freedom from takeover in exchange for freedom to make any arbitrary business venture. It's a choice, but to conflate libertarian freedom as the only form of freedom is narrow and ignores this centuries old unsettled debate.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#442

Post by jotaen »

4ad wrote: post #388
jotaen wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 copy…

Yeah, sorry if my terminology was unclear here: by “relicense” I colloquially meant to say “assign a different license to the project that is applicable for any work from that point onwards”.

> 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.

I don’t think it’s that simple. The Bear project appears to have accepted external contributions under the original license, so the project is subject to that license as long as those contributions remain.

It may not be a big practical issue in this case, due to the MIT license being quite permissive, but if the project was e.g. GPL-licensed, the maintainer wouldn’t trivially be able to change the license in “whatever direction they want”. (And by “trivial” I mean without e.g. rewriting or discarding the external contributions.)

Re: Bear is now source-available

#443

Post by echelon »

account42 wrote: post #377
echelon wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's only unsustainable when you are interested in keeping "user" and "developer" as distinct sets. > The hyperscalers aren't giving back 1/1,000,000th of what they've taken. Yet we go after "source available" or "fair source" like it's some grave evil. No we are going after it when people try to pass it off as open source when it really…

I can't comprehend this view at all.

I hate open source purism. It's not pragmatic and it's enabled us to be resold a world with ever disappearing rights.

This view is okay with hyperscalers. But it attacks the small developer.

The hyperscalers are removing our freedoms and privacy. Not small developers.

We need leverage against this.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#444

Post by ezekg »

jraph wrote: post #247
ezekg wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a thread from a couple hours ago on X: https://x.com/_m27e/status/1962563736142565882 . Read the images and follow the quoted posts. The example comes straight from the mouth of a COSS founder.

Sorry, but this yes-answered AI slop subtly makes no sense, it just reads comfortable to you. You should not delegate writing your opinion to the llm and even less use it to shape your opinion, this is my main takeaway from your screenshot. The AI answered your biased question in a way that pleases you, it's well known that they do this. This stuff is actually scary, and that clever people like you rely on this and d…

Fair enough, but the LLM said nothing incorrect (if it did, please point it out). Regardless, the screenshots don't even matter. You didn't seem to actually read the thread I pointed to, where a VC-backed startup founder admitted to using the AGPL to limit bigtech from using the software, a clear violation of freedom 0. They didn't choose the AGPL for altruistic reasons, rather, it's simply a part of the COSS startup playbook now -- because it works! -- they can use the term "open source" while protecting themselves from competition. Which is my entire point.

Why do they get to use "open source" while effectively violating the freedoms but somebody using the Elastic License, or the Sustainable Use License, or the SSPL, or the BSL, or the FSL, etc. isn't allowed to? They're all doing the same thing, only the latter licenses are saying the quiet part out loud.

Anyways, I agree we do seem to be talking past each other at this point. gl

Re: Bear is now source-available

#445

Post by 4ad »

jotaen wrote: post #442
4ad wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 copy…

Yeah, sorry if my terminology was unclear here: by “relicense” I colloquially meant to say “assign a different license to the project that is applicable for any work from that point onwards”. > 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. I don’t think it’s that simple. The Bear project appea…

It appears that Bear does not accept contributions[1] and the very few contributors it had in the past only contributed a trivial amount of code[2].

But you're right, relicensing requires the approval of all copyright holders, and in general there can be many. Of course many projects require the prospecting contributor sign a CLA where they relinquish their rights to the project in order to be able to contribute. Personally while I have signed some CLAs, such as the Go one where I retained my rights, I'd never sign one which required me to give away my copyright rights, precisely so they wouldn't be able to do a rugpull on me.

I believe that copyright law is the biggest weapon one has against open source rugpulls and one should not give it away.

[1] https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/master/CONTR...

[2] https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/graphs/contributo...

Re: Bear is now source-available

#446

Post by gpm »

shakna wrote: post #280
cinericius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a lawyer, but my understanding is there is a strong feeling that AGPL can be roughly ignored if a service provider provides some level of indirection (e.g. a proxy) between the user and the software. Then, the software is somehow not being accessed over a network and thus they are not required to release the source.

Not just a level of indirection. The "substantial features" of the code need to not be directly exposed. So if you had some AGPL OCR tool you were using, you could use it, but not in a way the user sees that text. Generate audio from it and expose the sound? Probably fine.

My understanding of the theory that they're advocating is that the AGPL requires that when you modify AGPL software you modify it to provide an offer of its source.

And that you can comply with that completely, run the software, and then have a proxy in front that strips that offer without violating the letter of the license.

And if that theory works I think "substantial features" of the code could be directly (but for the indirection of that proxy) exposed.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#447

Post by pflenker »

sarlalian wrote: post #171
mottosso wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have to agree with this stance. You choose MIT when you are happy to share your source with no strings attached. Some do pick MIT with this intent, but that was not the case here. But rather a case of either miscommunication or wanting to have the pie ("look how altruistic I am") and eating it too ("look how business-minded I am").

I mean, there’s a chance it’s exactly what he said, “I didn't give it much thought at the time, but knew that I wanted the code to be available for people to learn from, and to make it easily auditable so users could validate claims I have made about the privacy and security of the platform.” … it doesn’t have to be some to be some sort of nefarious OSS altruism, it really could be, “maybe people would want to see ho…

To be unfairly cynical here, the sentence you quoted sounds to me like "I chose to not have a front door. I didn't give it much thought at the time, but knew that I wanted my home to be available for people to learn from my interior design choices and decorations. Then I discovered that people walked in, started to eat out of my fridge, leave dirt everywhere and carry off some of my chairs, and it hurts".

The fault here lies not with the persons who use the maintainer's code exactly in line with the license, no matter what other _intentions_ he might have had.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#448

Post by NiloCK »

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…

Apologies if I was unclear, but I'm not worried about being understood. It's rare for me to write on the topic.

My frustration is that I always have to guess at writers intention, and that the broader dialogue is confused by this lack of clarity.

This thread exemplifies it - people accused the BearBlog author of being a hypocrite because he says things like "It hurts to believe in open-source and then be bitten by it."

A more charitable read than the hypocrisy accusation is that the BearBlog author never believed in Open Source as intended by the OSI or MIT license, but rather believes in open source as colloquially used, for purposes of software legibility.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#449

Post by fkyoureadthedoc »

F3nd0 wrote: post #267
Skunkleton wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its weirdly incorrect to zero index stuff like this. The zero index refers to the start of the first thing, which is not what numbered lists are supposed to indicate.

If I recall correctly, there were originally three freedoms, but then a fourth one was thought of and put at the front to give it prominence, numbering it as zero as not to disturb the original numbering.

Unless you think they'd add a "Freedom -1" in the event that they add a 5th even more important freedom, then this is clearly just selected because 0 indexed lists are cute to programmers

Re: Bear is now source-available

#450

Post by FinnKuhn »

archagon wrote: post #148
moralestapia wrote: post #134

>It hurts to believe in open-source and then be bitten by it. No, you don't believe in open source, hypocrite. Open source means anyone can use it, even for commercial purposes, and you knew this from day zero. Honestly, no sympathy for these people, as this happens over and over again, they actually exploit the very few good intended OSS people. They portray their project as open source initially, to gather sympathy…

Or... maybe they actually need money to keep maintaining the project? Not everyone is out there living a life of leisure. If open source purists can't accept that, they'll find their cause gradually shrinking into nothing.

He was making money with the project when it was open source already.
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