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Open Source (Almost) Everything

tom.preston-werner.com

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Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#51

Post by sjs »

StatHacking wrote: post #44
sjs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can do whatever they want with the software What if they want to build something on top of it that is not open source? They cannot and that is a restriction. It is the definition of a restriction. > When someone closes the source, it's restricting others freedom, not his. How so? No one is restricted if somebody makes a private fork of a codebase. That's like saying that if I don't go to the bar down the stree…

You can't go to your college with an Uzi and start shooting classmates. Although you "can", it is not allowed. Is the constitution restricting your freedom? NO, that's not your freedom, that's power on taking others' life. Another example - a less extreme and more realistic one - is a judge (or a jury). Are they "freerer" than you because they can put you on jail? Is your freedom "less" than theirs? No, you have the…

(That was mostly incomprehensible, but I'll respond anyway...)

You're making the faulty assumption of thinking that someone who wants some source code that is only available under the GPL will just use it and decide to license their work under the GPL as well.

Every time I need some code for a proprietary product I'm working on I pass up GPL and AGPL code. If there's no MIT or BSD licensed code that does what I need then I will write it myself. This happens frequently. Sometimes I share the source (MIT or BSD licensed), sometimes not. If I use MIT or BSD licensed code I contribute back. Not everyone does but enough people do, and those who do contribute are happy knowing that their code may be even more useful to more people because it is not encumbered by the GPL.

So somebody who is making a proprietary thing is not restricting anyone by using an MIT or BSD licensed component. They are making a proprietary thing and the only alternative isn't to make a GPL thing. Another alternative is to make something else, or make nothing at all. No matter what they do in no way is anyone restricted from taking the MIT/BSD component and doing whatever they please with it. They are not restricted by the proprietary thing.

The GPL has its place, it's just not universally good the way RMS would have us all think.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#52

Post by tingletech »

cpeterso wrote: post #47
tingletech wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, this is exactly why the contracts and grants people where I work like it...

What is the consequence of using an open-source license without patent release? Does that mean that if your employer open-sourced some software that contained patented IP, then people must obtain a license from your employer? And what happens in the reverse situation, where a third-party contributor commits code that contains patent-protected IP?

Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. No warranties expressed or implied. "as is" -- use at your own risk.

My employer has over 3800 active US patents and 3600 active foreign patents. I just hack code in the library, and I like to share it. As far as I know, none of the code I write is based on any patented IP -- but who is to say some professor on one of our campuses isn't doing research that somehow relates to what I'm working on in some way that could potentially infringe?

The projects I work on that are Copyright my employer don't usually have third party commits; under BSD they retain copyright to their contribution and I guess we accept it "AS IS/NO WARRANTIES". but even under apache license 2.0 or educational community license 2.0 someone can't license rights they don't have. There is always a risk that a "forth" party might make a claim that the third party contribution is infringing the forth party's patent.

(views are my own and do not represent my employer)

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#53

Post by mweibel »

chubot wrote: post #26

One of the strongest arguments is modularity. It's definitely true that you prevent your code from rotting and acquiring random dependencies if you think about how you can export it as a useful open source library.

Couldn't agree more.

As I and my teammate started working on Candy (http://amiadogroup.github.com/candy) we knew that we want to open-source the project. Therefore we built everything so modular and flexible that even we used the vanilla Candy and wrote just some custom plugins for our own use-case.

I think it definitively leads to better code.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#54

Post by bhickey »

sogrady wrote: post #43

This is another datapoint that generational attitudes towards the value of software have shifted. In the early days of software, it was an afterthought: what made it possible for IBM and others to sell the more valuable hardware asset. Microsoft (founded 1975) perceived the economic opportunity attached to volume distribution of user facing machines, and helped usher in an age where the value shifted from the hardwar…

I can provide a data point here.

In college I did some App Engine development. At a previous job, we used open source Google Java libraries like Guice and Guava. I recently started at Google and walked in the door largely proficient in using their stack. In my opinion, they did everyone a favour.

They've done good by other companies by providing them with solid libraries. They did right by me -- knowledge of their libraries presumably made me a stronger candidate. Finally, they did right by themselves by reducing the time it took me to get up to speed.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#55

Post by dhx »

audioHack wrote: post #38
quadhome wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same way that no one would buy RHEL?

Complexity of self-support versus value of paid support. Something like RHEL, the support is worth it to many businesses. Something like Github... I could see it being less of a priority once it is up and running.

The costs of setting up a geographically redundant GitHub clone and continuously updating software and configuration are far in excess of the mere $200/month GitHub charges for their Platinum plan: unlimited users, unlimited public repositories and 125 private repositories. Even the Bronze plan for $25/month with 10 private repositories is exceptional value to businesses that only develop a few pieces of software.

At GitHub's price points, a manager would be crazy to take on the risk, expense and effort of setting up their own clone. The obvious "but..." excuses don't even apply because:

1. GitHub offers enterprise "run GitHub from your own server room" services for companies that have greater needs for confidentiality/customisability.

2. Private organisations can take their source code and other data with them. This means that users are free to move elsewhere (regardless of whether GitHub is entirely open sourced) if GitHub suddenly decides to charge $1,000/month/user.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#56

Post by jordanlev »

sogrady wrote: post #43

This is another datapoint that generational attitudes towards the value of software have shifted. In the early days of software, it was an afterthought: what made it possible for IBM and others to sell the more valuable hardware asset. Microsoft (founded 1975) perceived the economic opportunity attached to volume distribution of user facing machines, and helped usher in an age where the value shifted from the hardwar…

Very insightful. Reminds me of a talk I saw Tim O'Reilly give at OSCON back in the day, basically about this same concept. He described it as "moving up the stack", with each successive phase commoditizing the thing beneath it (hardware at the bottom, then software, then services). Here's a link to his writeup of the concept (although it's kind of dry -- I remember the presentation itself having more pictures and being more engaging): http://tim.oreilly.com/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html

I wonder what's going to sit above "services" in the next phase? Maybe the services will be commoditized because there will be so many of them that do similar things and they all talk to each other via RESTful interfaces... so then the thing that's valuable is whatever sits above that. Identity systems? Yahoo Pipes? I dunno... predicting the future is hard, let's go shopping!

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#57

Post by tome »

alexhawket wrote: post #33
pnathan wrote: post #5

I've generally come to the conclusion that open sourcing tangential software is a good cultural/social practice. Adopted broadly, it represents a gigantic time-savings for our industry, allowing us to collectively push forward to other more interesting problems than writing company-specific ci server/build system/source control system, etc. +1, GitHub.

One simple rule of business: commoditize your complements. Apple sells hardware and "gives away" all their media. Content creators and developers are charged only enough (30% margin) to basically break even managing the system. This adds tremendous value to their hardware since they now have "an ecosystem" and not just some electronic widgets. Aside: Apple have set prices for music but assumed app developers would al…

One simple rule of business: commoditize your complements.

I'm surpised no one else has mentioned that. It's a very powerful idea, and essentially what this blog post is getting at. I don't know if Joel Spolsky coined that phrase, but that's where I first heard it:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#58

Post by secoif »

I like to imagine how awesome github's potential UX could be be if they decoupled, open-sourced and allowed contributions to their front-end.

Something along the lines of stable and opt-in unstable UI branches with frequent releases.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#59

Post by hboon »

secoif wrote: post #58

I like to imagine how awesome github's potential UX could be be if they decoupled, open-sourced and allowed contributions to their front-end . Something along the lines of stable and opt-in unstable UI branches with frequent releases.

They'd probably end up like how it is for most Linux distributions. An acquired taste.
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