What comes after open source • Hacker News Board

Re: What comes after open source

#71

Post by bojanz » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

Fascinating article, and one that matches my recent thinking.

I am a part of a large GPL open source project, but am not sure that the GPL made a big difference there, since "distribution" is a loophole large enough to drive a truck through. If you extend & modify software just for your site / your client's site, you have no obligations.

Conceptually, a great followup article is Kyle E. Mitchell's "Unhappy Coincidences", published last year: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/08/28/Unhappy-Coincidenc...

Nowadays, I gravitate towards permissive licenses because I feel that people and companies contribute largely out of self interest, not because a license compels them to.

Re: What comes after open source

#72

Post by fartcannon » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

craigsmansion wrote: post #38

> "card-carrying" > "I used to see Stallman lecture." I see this more often. Is this somehow to indicate the level of engagement you felt? Because Free Software is about the 4 software freedoms, everything else is maybe your own romanticised version of what that should mean, and you somehow felt let down by those expectations. And that's regrettable, but ultimately very much your own experience, and mentioning it len…

Right? It strikes me that perhaps he doesn't know what he wants. This is not a F/OSS issue, this is a bureaucratic issue.

Re: What comes after open source

#73

Post by username223 » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

I agree with most of what you've said: popular modern "Open Source" projects are mostly just corporations uploading more-or-less obfuscated source code from time to time. If I found a bug in Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, my first move to fix it would be to get hired by Google, Apple, or Mozilla. In other words, I'll just sigh and move on.

But I'd disagree with you here:

> I believe that this focus on process is why the GNU project has fallen out of favor as well. The tools that the GNU project uses to develop its Free Software are arcane, ugly, and unique to them.

GNU and other old-school projects (Perl, Python) are the only large Free Software or Open Source efforts to which I would consider trying to contribute. They have spent years building reputations and creating communities. I don't care whether I submit a bug or patch through email or GitHub, but I do care whether or not my effort will have a real effect.

Re: What comes after open source

#74

Post by steveklabnik » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

heathjohns wrote: post #53

I think we need to zoom out more, even. The focus on freedom is too narrow - freedom at the cost of becoming disconnected is a raw deal. What we want is power. In the desktop era, having source code gave us power, so we associated the two and demanded the former - but this obviously hasn't translated to the cloud. You can't download a Facebook profile and then re-upload it somewhere else and still be connected to all…

I agree that, to really think about this problem, you need to keep zooming out. But I also know that programmers tend to reach for abstractions quite often, and you can go up and up and up that chain. I was trying to stay at this one specific level, and not zoom out too far :) Thanks for a great comment.

Re: What comes after open source

#75

Post by blotter_paper » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

bojanz wrote: post #71

Fascinating article, and one that matches my recent thinking. I am a part of a large GPL open source project, but am not sure that the GPL made a big difference there, since "distribution" is a loophole large enough to drive a truck through. If you extend & modify software just for your site / your client's site, you have no obligations. Conceptually, a great followup article is Kyle E. Mitchell's "Unhappy Coincidenc…

I prefer permissive licenses, but doesn't AGPL address the distribution "problems" of GPL? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_Lice...

Re: What comes after open source

#76

Post by steveklabnik » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

username223 wrote: post #73

I agree with most of what you've said: popular modern "Open Source" projects are mostly just corporations uploading more-or-less obfuscated source code from time to time. If I found a bug in Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, my first move to fix it would be to get hired by Google, Apple, or Mozilla. In other words, I'll just sigh and move on. But I'd disagree with you here: > I believe that this focus on process is why the…

I spoke a bit too strongly in that sentence, it should have said one of the reasons.

Funny enough, I tried to submit a patch to make a while back, and got one reply where the maintainer misunderstood me, I tried to provide clarification, and then radio silence for the past few years. Whereas I've gotten thousands upon thousands of patches through on Github. I agree with you that I care most about impact, but I've had much more impact via GitHub than via Savannah.

Re: What comes after open source

#77

Post by bojanz » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

blotter_paper wrote: post #75

bojanz wrote: post #71

Fascinating article, and one that matches my recent thinking. I am a part of a large GPL open source project, but am not sure that the GPL made a big difference there, since "distribution" is a loophole large enough to drive a truck through. If you extend & modify software just for your site / your client's site, you have no obligations. Conceptually, a great followup article is Kyle E. Mitchell's "Unhappy Coincidenc…

I prefer permissive licenses, but doesn't AGPL address the distribution "problems" of GPL? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_Lice...

Yes. And by closing the loophole while staying viral, it makes it unlikely that anyone would ever use AGPL code.

For example, if you use an AGPL CMS to power your website, you now need to open source the entire thing.

So, I'm not saying that it is necessary to have a stronger copyleft license, I am saying that the existing copyleft license was successful because people were able to often ignore it.

A lot of energy has been spent discussing the reach of GPL's virality, and its loopholes. When it comes to copyleft, the Mozilla Public License 2.0 has a much saner approach by avoiding virality all together. Share changes to the code you received, keep the rest.

Re: What comes after open source

#78

Post by wrs » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #66

wrs wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically one of the controversies/confusions regarding the FSF’s ideology is that it ignores the distinction between developers and users. In the ur-hacker world RMS wanted to preserve, the users are developers. That’s why the right to make a derivative work is paramount (a freedom no non-developer can take advantage of), and why libre software is strongly skewed toward developer tools rather than viable “end-use…

> Traditionally the FSF advocate will say something here about end users hiring developers to modify software for them, but in reality that’s economically ridiculous. Why is it ridiculous?

As a way to judge end user software budgets, commercial software that costs more than a few hundred dollars is considered “expensive”. That would pay for less than a day of work by a software developer to make modifications to software. The only economical way to support end users is to amortize that cost over many end users, by hiring developers into a central development organization.

Sure, for the far right of the bell curve, the “end users” who are owners of medium-sized businesses, it becomes viable. But I’m talking about the end users who buy Microsoft Office Home Edition.

Re: What comes after open source

#79

Post by steveklabnik » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #64

steveklabnik wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I didn't get into it, but I do think that the user/developer distinction plays a part here. That is, one way to think about the Free Software/Open Source divide is that copyleft ensures freedoms for users at the expense of restricting developers, and permissive licenses ensure freedoms for developers at the expense of restricting users. As developers gained some power, we directed it towards helping ourselves…

> That is, one way to think about the Free Software/Open Source divide is that copyleft ensures freedoms for users at the expense of restricting developers, and permissive licenses ensure freedoms for developers at the expense of restricting users. I think there are two errors there: one is conflating the Free Software / Open Source divide (which is less about licenses and more about consequentialist vs. deontologica…

Yes, while I think it's interesting, I don't think it's fully accurate. Thanks for the good points. I agree with you especially on consequentialism vs dentology; I've been wondering if I shouldn't write another version of this blog post that's a bit more heavy on the philosophy and jargon...

Re: What comes after open source

#80

Post by jrochkind1 » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #33

jrochkind1 wrote: post #28

Certification isn't going to work for the very reasons Klabnik revealed in this same post. > Even if you are the kind of person who thinks boycotts work, there just aren’t enough free software diehards to form a large enough boycott. And even then, you’d want to do the boycott together, simultaneously, to send the message. A licensing regime is the only way I know to _prevent_ someone else from taking your software a…

> (I also think he conveniently avoided one of the reasons we're seeing license/open source splintering -- because of attempts to find ways to _make a profit_ off open source. See the Amazon/ElasticSearch dispute. This is a real thing going on in the landscape he's talking about, with maybe more impact than the ideological concerns he talks about, but is inconvenient for what he wants to talk about. I still have no s…

Right on. I think it's probably as much of what's going on with open source as ideology (including beliefs about 'fairness') though. (Or maybe I'm just a Marxist who thinks material conditions usually are primary to ideology :) ).

There were ways people made a living while producing libre/open source for the last 30ish years, that also produced quality, useful, sustainable software.

I think those ways have broken down, and no longer do that. I could get into the details of what I think those ways were and why they have broken down (I tried to in an HN comment on one of the posts on ElasticSearch, the comment replies did not express consensus with me :) But it includes that the software we want now is 'more expensive' to produce, as well as increased 'rationality' from employers of developers). But regardless of the details, I think things like the ElasticSearch thing (there are many more examples; the whole variety of "open core" software) suggest it's probably happening.

I think that's probably more fundamental to the splits around open source than ideological predilections or beliefs about "fairness", in that any solutions or succesful evolutions of "how open source-ish is done" will have to take account of them, not just ideological predilections. Will have to provide an ecology/economy where people can make a living while producing quality useful sustainable "open source-ish" one way or another. I see no clear solutions regardless.