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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#471

Post by imiric »

delfinom wrote: post #393
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/serv…

> The concern is not about the access to source code.

That is a big part of the concern, yes. That anyone can copy your work, setup a competitor, and never give anything back. Copyleft licenses, and the AGPL in particular, ensure that those changes are made public, which benefits everyone, including the original project.

> When a big player swoops in, they can completely decimate your business because of shear scale advantages, they can undercut you into bankruptcy.

That's not a guarantee. In fact, many businesses built around copyleft licensed products can thrive, in ways that their competitors cannot. The original authors understand the code base, the product, and their users much better. They have first-mover advantage on any new features, and have full control over the project's direction. They can use these advantages to build a business that is difficult to compete with, even for much larger and more powerful competitors.

In the open source world, the value of a company hinges on the quality of its product and the community around it, not on market hype, speculative valuations, and venture capital. It is more difficult to build unicorns and make investors rich with this approach, but focusing on the user avoids many of the wrong incentives that make most companies user hostile. Many companies fail because the leadership doesn't understand this, nor the philosophy behind open source, and they simply want to use it as a marketing tactic.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#472

Post by F3nd0 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #263
F3nd0 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shareware isn't even open source, generally, and it certainly isn't gratis--you have to pay for it, or at least should, and there are often restrictions or time limits if you don't. Again, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedom, not free beer. Yes. The comment you are replying to already said this: ‘Free/libre software is distinguished from "gratis" software’. Your earlier comment wasn’t wrong for saying t…

Copyleft licenses don't even need to be free! All copyleft means is that derivative works must use the same license. For example, the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license [1] wouldn't fulfill freedom 0, since you can't use the material for commercial purposes. (Granted, Creative Commons licenses are typically not used for software, but the point stands.) [1] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Is that really the case? I’m not outright disputing this, but with the term ‘copyleft’ originating from the free software movement and all, I normally take it to identify free software which protects the freedoms it grants (typically by extending the terms of its licence to derivative works).

I see that a similar mechanism is used by some non-free licences, as you have just shown, but are those really considered ‘copyleft’? Isn’t the term more properly used when said mechanism is used specifically to grant and protect the four freedoms? Both the FSF¹ and Wikipedia² seem to view the freedom aspect as an important part of copyleft, at the very least.

1. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft

Re: Bear is now source-available

#474

Post by apgwoz »

anikom15 wrote: post #467
apgwoz wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…until businesses decided that the GPLv2 was legally risky and businesses started to avoid it.

This is FUD. Some businesses may have a policy of not using GPL software, but all the major enterprises, including Microsoft and Apple, use GPL software.

My comment wasn’t written with enough precision.

Using GPL software: yes. Totally fine. The rise of Linux and all that jazz.

Incorporating any part of GPL software _into_ other products? Pretty much doesn’t happen. Every company I’ve ever worked for has said “do not bring LGPL or GPL software into the codebase.” When it comes to commercial software, be it cloud based, or downloadable, you’re not going to find much that tries to incorporate GPL stuff. You just won’t.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#475

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

Jensson wrote: post #463
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL is meant to be viral... it infects other projects so as to open up software ecosystems. The open source movement came out of a time when nearly everything was proprietary and locked up. Tivo-ization really woke up a lot of people to the dangers of proprietary lock in and abuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

> The GPL is meant to be viral But that also makes people not wanna bother with it. People in the middle who doesn't care either way will be very apprehensive of putting in a license virus in their project.

You should always know what patents and licenses are part of your project/product.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#476

Post by miggol »

_puk wrote: post #219
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really not a lawyer, but I'm skeptical that such a thing is even possible; is it legally possible to say that you as the copyright owner will never relicense something? (What I'm given to understand does work is using a copyleft license and taking code from multiple parties without a CLA, because then relicensing requires all the copyright owners to agree, which for a large enough project is impractical.)

How about a standard entity "OSI perhaps?!", that commits a file to an early stage of the repository (could this be automated), who then cannot / will not give approval for a relicense?

Love the idea but the thing is, if it's just one file then it's probably easy enough to work that contribution out of the repository.

It is quite fun to try and think of ways that this could work though. Perhaps a bot that code-paraphrases (paracodes?) every accepted PR. Or maybe there's some crypto magic you could do to make the only option a clean room rewrite.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#477

Post by krisoft »

captainmuon wrote: post #123
athrowaway3z wrote: post #47

I certainly get the hurt feelings, but i'm not clear on the license at all. >Limitations: You may not provide the Software as a hosted or managed service that offers users access to substantial features or functionality. Where on the spectrum sits an average cookie-cutter VPS provider that comes with an OS package manager that installs the program? Does the VPS provider have to screen the package manager? Does that c…

I think users applies to end-users here. So you must not run the software as a service (either paid or for free) for other users. You are free to use it yourself. Crucially, I think what is banned to offer accounts. Offering turnkey-hosting is probably banned in spirit, but the person offering the turnkey-hosting is not in violation, rather the person booking the turnkey hosting and offering the accounts on the insta…

> You are free to use it yourself.

Idk. That's not how I'm reading it. Someone reading my blog is a user of the blog software. So running the blog and letting people read it would fall under that limitation and therefore would be prohibited.

I understand that's probably not what they tried to write, but wouldn't want to defend that understanding in a courtroom.

> It's still OK to rent a VM from them and use the package manager to install it.

Do you open up port 80 to the world? Because then you are hosting the service that offers users access to substantial features or functionality.

> In any way, it is really confusing, in a way a license should not be.

On that we agree.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#478

Post by frumplestlatz »

orthoxerox wrote: post #403
frumplestlatz wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a BSD developer from the 90s, that does not reflect my experience. We wanted our code to be as widely used as possible. It’s really not any more complicated than that. There was always tension between the folks that shipped GPL software and folks that shipped BSD/MIT software, but the dividing line was not whether or not we were “commercial programmers and startup bros”. It has always come down to questions of wha…

> There was always tension between the folks that shipped GPL software and folks that shipped BSD/MIT software, but the dividing line was not whether or not we were “commercial programmers and startup bros”. > It has always come down to questions of what we believe freedom to mean, how we wanted to contribute utility to the world, and whether we saw the use of our software in commercial projects as a loss to ourselve…

This is a very old argument, rooted in differences in how one believes OSS cooperation is best fostered; through social norms and practices, and/or through legal fiat.

BSD/MIT authors see most proprietary use as a feature — it can drive adoption and contributions that wouldn’t exist otherwise, while generally not directly competing with the original project in the open source commons.

It is considered an opportunity to leverage social mechanisms to garner support and contribution that would otherwise not be available.

GPL relicensing is different, in that it creates a direct rival open source commons with inescapable one-way asymmetry.

The license permits it, but since BSD/MIT authors tend to prefer social norms over legal fiat to sustain cooperation, they don’t see hypocrisy in objecting (even if GPL advocates do).

(I’ve tried to be as measured as possible, but obviously, I fall on one side of the debate, and I’m sure that my point of view leaks through.)

Re: Bear is now source-available

#479

Post by sgc »

anktor wrote: post #373
sgc wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often think the solution is to move away from crafting a perfect ideology to encapsulate in your license, and just throw out some numbers. If you make more than N* the median income of this or that place, you can't use this software for free (whether that means licensing fees, code contribution, etc can vary). Let the smaller fish grow. If they get big enough, they can give back.

How would that ever be enforced? Do you not run into WinRAR/Sublime problem of "ey you've been using this, pay us, please"?

At 50k USD / year revenue it would be impossible, probably a lot easier at 1m / year. Higher profile use cases are known, and companies tend to comply with licenses rather than pirate software. Just like now, you lose a lot of control as soon as your source is available.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#480

Post by sunshowers »

lmm wrote: post #305
sunshowers wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, as mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45096736 , simply running GPL programs is probably fine. Input/output that doesn't establish "intimate communication" probably doesn't create a combined work, but "shipping complex data structures back and forth" does, according to the FSF. There isn't a similar degree of legal risk with MPL 2.0, nor with non-copyleft licenses (which is the subject of this s…

> There isn't a similar degree of legal risk with MPL 2.0, nor with non-copyleft licenses (which is the subject of this subthread, not proprietary licenses) There is a similar degree of legal risk with the overwhelming majority of licenses in use. Yes, using exclusively permissively-licensed software would let you avoid this particular risk - but given that essentially no-one (BSD advocates are, if anything, less scr…

Is your position that the FSF is wrong? If so, why trust the licenses that the same FSF wrote?

In general, businesses acquire commercial licenses for proprietary software, which is a kind of derisking.

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