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Paying people to work on open source is good

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Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#71

Post by lolinder »

benatkin wrote: post #64
lolinder wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "original community" are you referring to here? Are we talking about the free software movement that Richard Stallman founded, or the Open Source Initiative that forked off of the movement in an effort to be more friendly to businesses? It's a bit ironic that people now wax lyrical about the "true meaning" of Open Source when the OSI described their origin like this (emphasis added): > The conferees decided it w…

> What "original community" are you referring to here? It's a big community with a wide range of perspectives, but not so big that it can't be understood. To me the original community was mostly over a decade or two. This is similar to other communities such as a burgeoning genre of music. Whatever it was, it was established long before the words "Business Source License" were uttered. The first date range that comes…

Again, though—you're fighting for the moral integrity of a term that was explicitly coined to try to buck the moralizing that was associated with the Free Software movement and make the new concept of Open Source more appealing to corporations.

The BSL isn't the first sign of the bastardization of the ideal behind Linux. The bastardization started as soon as the OSI decided that they needed to appeal to corporations, and in condemning the BSL the OSI is just following the same business-friendly playbook they've held to all along.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that the OSI provided a watered-down version of free software that got us to where we are today. I just disapprove of the moralizing that surrounds them when they were explicitly founded on pragmatism.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#72

Post by cratermoon »

cipherboy wrote: post #60
cratermoon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By picking his own definition of what open source means, is the author really arguing for paying people to work on open source? Or is his argument more one of being in favor allowing a bunch of things that happen to pay people to work on them be counted as "open source"? For example, if RHEL still counts as open source, then Red Hat's programmers are paid open source developers, but if RHEL is now proprietary, then t…

Even with the changes to RHEL licensing, Red Hat developers are still encouraged to upstream changes before landing them in Fedora (and in turn, before landing them in CentOS stream and ultimately RHEL). Nearly every developer at Red Hat working on RHEL will do work in the public, on OSI-licensed packages upstream, before landing changes in RHEL. The change to RHEL licenses is not around source availability of the pa…

This is mostly irrelevant to my question. I wasn't speculating about RHEL specifically, but about source available under non-OSI, non-FSF licenses generally.

If what counts as "open source" can be anything the author says counts, there are potentially lots of projects not previously considered open source, and the developers paid to work on them as "paid open source" developers.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#73

Post by tzs »

benatkin wrote: post #45

I'll respond to the little part where it puts using a "non-OSI approved license" under the umbrella of open source. It's not OSI approved because it isn't open source, as the community defined it long ago, and as it still makes sense for it to be defined. If you want me to agree with you, don't do that. Otherwise, I don't feel compelled to consider a bunch of disparate things as a Win . Here's one that could be more…

> I'll respond to the little part where it puts using a "non-OSI approved license" under the umbrella of open source. It's not OSI approved because it isn't open source, as the community defined it long ago, and as it still makes sense for it to be defined

So what would you call a license that meets OSI's open source definition [1] but has not been OSI-approved?

OSI no longer approves new licenses unless they think the new license fills a gap that is not filled by existing OSI-approved licenses, which means there are millions of possible new licenses that meet every criteria of their open source definition but will become OSI-approved.

[1] https://opensource.org/osd/

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#75

Post by netbioserror »

woodruffw wrote: post #28
netbioserror wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't really have anything to say here, other than to reiterate: it is simply not charitable to assume the author is "stupid," "deluded," or similar. It adds zero information to the conversation, and actively detracts from your underlying point.

His little soapbox rant sucked every last bit of energy out of his underlying point.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#77

Post by sanderjd »

benatkin wrote: post #45

I'll respond to the little part where it puts using a "non-OSI approved license" under the umbrella of open source. It's not OSI approved because it isn't open source, as the community defined it long ago, and as it still makes sense for it to be defined. If you want me to agree with you, don't do that. Otherwise, I don't feel compelled to consider a bunch of disparate things as a Win . Here's one that could be more…

I think this is a pretty good microcosm of the whole debate in this one sentence where you say:

> It's not OSI approved because it isn't open source, ...

> ... as the community defined it long ago, ...

Yep, definitely! Nobody disagrees that the OSI defined this long ago.

> ... and as it still makes sense for it to be defined.

Maybe! But that's where the debate is. Is that the most sensible definition? Perhaps, even probably, yes. But it's also a totally valid question to interrogate. And that's what people are doing.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#78

Post by em-bee »

tzs wrote: post #73
benatkin wrote: post #45

I'll respond to the little part where it puts using a "non-OSI approved license" under the umbrella of open source. It's not OSI approved because it isn't open source, as the community defined it long ago, and as it still makes sense for it to be defined. If you want me to agree with you, don't do that. Otherwise, I don't feel compelled to consider a bunch of disparate things as a Win . Here's one that could be more…

> I'll respond to the little part where it puts using a "non-OSI approved license" under the umbrella of open source. It's not OSI approved because it isn't open source, as the community defined it long ago, and as it still makes sense for it to be defined So what would you call a license that meets OSI's open source definition [1] but has not been OSI-approved? OSI no longer approves new licenses unless they think t…

So what would you call a license that meets OSI's open source definition [1] but has not been OSI-approved?

arrogant, as in: do you really believe that your project is so different that one of the existing approved licenses will not do? (addressed to the hypothetical project with such a license)

i mean, i am with bruce perens who believes that we need to rethink licenses completely to address many problems that have come up recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38783500 and i guess this article does hints at some of the problems that need to be addressed. but coming up with a license that is in the spirit of FOSS and yet solves some of these problems is a non-trivial task that i do not believe an average developer or company is capable of by themselves, therefore it is very unlikely that your non-approved license is really worth it.

by all means please participate in the process of developing a new license, but do not actually use such a non-approved license until there is a broader consensus that this new license actually is worth it. otherwise it's just making things complicated for no good reason.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#79

Post by benatkin »

sanderjd wrote: post #77
benatkin wrote: post #45

I'll respond to the little part where it puts using a "non-OSI approved license" under the umbrella of open source. It's not OSI approved because it isn't open source, as the community defined it long ago, and as it still makes sense for it to be defined. If you want me to agree with you, don't do that. Otherwise, I don't feel compelled to consider a bunch of disparate things as a Win . Here's one that could be more…

I think this is a pretty good microcosm of the whole debate in this one sentence where you say: > It's not OSI approved because it isn't open source, ... > ... as the community defined it long ago, ... Yep, definitely! Nobody disagrees that the OSI defined this long ago. > ... and as it still makes sense for it to be defined. Maybe! But that's where the debate is. Is that the most sensible definition? Perhaps, even p…

The debate would be for a new meaning of the term open source, which has already been established. People can create a new meaning but it doesn't change the original meaning of it, which I like to call the true meaning.

The license is far from being the only thing about open source. What makes open source what it is are its triumphs, such as the popularity of Linux and how many developers prefer open source tools and platforms. However, using a license like the Business Source License indicates a lack of belief in the vision of open source, and a need to exert control.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#80

Post by lucb1e »

hardcopy wrote: post #51

A few weeks ago a wrote in to my Senator on the complete lack of government funding for independent engineers/small projects building FOSS (USA). NLNet in the EU is awesome. We really should have something like the NLNet in the USA.

OSTIF is vaguely similar and iirc from the USA
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