It's not okay to pretend your software is open source • Hacker News Board

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#81

Post by pgaddict » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 3:10 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #16

vorpalhex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are brownies, but they happen to contain a bit of horse shit. Not a lot, it's just like a tiny sprinkling on top, but they are definitely still brownies! You can't make a substantive change to a license and pretend it's a small deal. You can't hijack core tenants of a license, and then just put a little disclaimer at the bottom. "Buy one get one half off! *The one half off is actually just a plastic model and d…

I won't address your analogy since I think it's obviously quite different. Ultimately, people want to keep their code open, develop in the open, bring in contributors, make it easy to adopt and audit their code, etc. They also want to eat and have a home. The extreme hostility I've seen over the years to every OSS project that tries some new way of monetizing is just absurd and damaging to the concept. > "Hey, you ca…

The "extreme hostility" is not against alternative development/licensing models, but against doing X but saying it's Y.

It's obviously everyone's choice to pick whatever license / licensing model you want. The Commons Clause is getting all the flak merely because it pretends to be OSS-compliant, which it (pretty obviously) is not.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#82

Post by pfooti » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 3:12 PM UTC

thrower123 wrote: post #62

emersion wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the point. The point is: stop calling open-source stuff that isn't. You shouldn't lie to your users.

Open-source doesn't necessarily imply everything that the FOSS and GPL folks think it does outside of their semantic bubble. It's one of those bastardized terms that has become so mangled and situationally-dependent as to be almost meaningless. For a significant number of people "open-source" just means, "I found this on GitHub"

It hasn't, though. There's at least two different organizations that work to concretely operationalize what "open source" means. People may be confused about the term, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying to educate about it, and it definitely doesn't mean we should let other people go on polluting the ontological space with garbage that seems intentionally designed to confuse.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#83

Post by swat535 » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 3:15 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #5

I believe I'm in the minority when I say this. Ultimately, if I choose to, I will license my project however I want. If I want to restrict others from selling my product I will do so. Calling it Apache 2.0 + Common Clause makes sense, it's an extremely well known license and it's easier to start there and then say "but with some restrictions". That said, I do see the issue that people may use this software and not un…

I think it's actually very simple.

You basically want to freeload of the work of people, contributing to your project but want to reap the profits should any of them make money.

I'm sorry but you can't have your cake and eat it to. Either make it Free for personal use / students / non profits etc and paid for commercial use.

or just do us all a favor and keep your project closed source.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#84

Post by nqzero » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 3:15 PM UTC

IggleSniggle wrote: post #26

vorpalhex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are brownies, but they happen to contain a bit of horse shit. Not a lot, it's just like a tiny sprinkling on top, but they are definitely still brownies! You can't make a substantive change to a license and pretend it's a small deal. You can't hijack core tenants of a license, and then just put a little disclaimer at the bottom. "Buy one get one half off! *The one half off is actually just a plastic model and d…

To be fair, “brownies with a sprinkling of horseshit” is extremely descriptive yet concise. I understand what this is faster than reading the recipe for what this thing is.

the only thing wrong with this analogy is that it's more of a giant spoonful than a sprinkling

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#85

Post by Flimm » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

esotericn wrote: post #41

freehunter wrote: post #31

I agree that if you've labeled your software incorrectly as open source and you've been corrected, it should be re-labeled and the problem shouldn't be ignored. I will say, though, that personally I feel "free" software has a labelling problem. I'm not heavily engaged in the open-source movement, and a lot of the terms and wording and licensing confuses me to the point where I don't want to use it because I'm not sur…

If you want to provide the source to your software, you put the code on the Internet and you're done. You don't need to even choose a licence. That only comes in to play if you concern yourself with downstream users that care about licensing. It really only becomes complicated when you want to release it and _also_ monetise it or restrict its use. Licenses exist because of how this is ultimately at odds with how soft…

Copyright applies by default. You do need to choose a license:

> When you make a creative work (which includes code), the work is under exclusive copyright by default. Unless you include a license that specifies otherwise, nobody else can use, copy, distribute, or modify your work without being at risk of take-downs, shake-downs, or litigation. Once the work has other contributors (each a copyright holder), “nobody” starts including you.

See https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#86

Post by kazagistar » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #16

vorpalhex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are brownies, but they happen to contain a bit of horse shit. Not a lot, it's just like a tiny sprinkling on top, but they are definitely still brownies! You can't make a substantive change to a license and pretend it's a small deal. You can't hijack core tenants of a license, and then just put a little disclaimer at the bottom. "Buy one get one half off! *The one half off is actually just a plastic model and d…

I won't address your analogy since I think it's obviously quite different. Ultimately, people want to keep their code open, develop in the open, bring in contributors, make it easy to adopt and audit their code, etc. They also want to eat and have a home. The extreme hostility I've seen over the years to every OSS project that tries some new way of monetizing is just absurd and damaging to the concept. > "Hey, you ca…

> The extreme hostility I've seen over the years to every OSS project that tries some new way of monetizing is just absurd and damaging to the concept.

Sure, I can get behind that but it has nothing to do with this article which is about non-OSS software trying to trick developers who might want to contribute to OSS into contributing to them instead using naming tricks and deceptive terminology.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#87

Post by icebraining » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

hoaw wrote: post #66

Flimm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only one commonly accepted definition of open source. Just making the source code available is not enough, you also have to grant the right to be able to use the software for commercial purposes, etc. See: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

The whole point of the license is presumably that they disagree with that definition. As far as I know a license can be OSI approved without containing patent grants, effectively making the code unusable for commercial purposes. There is also, again as far as I know, nothing stopping companies from using contracts to restrict the use of code in at least some OSI approved licenses. That said, I do think they should st…

A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. You're free to use another definition for the same term, but if you don't make it extremely clear to you're departing from the most commonly used, don't be surprised if people treat you as any other sleazy salesperson.

The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so. Unlike software copyright, software patents are not even valid in many countries.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#88

Post by pritambaral » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

99052882514569 wrote: post #14

vorpalhex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are brownies, but they happen to contain a bit of horse shit. Not a lot, it's just like a tiny sprinkling on top, but they are definitely still brownies! You can't make a substantive change to a license and pretend it's a small deal. You can't hijack core tenants of a license, and then just put a little disclaimer at the bottom. "Buy one get one half off! *The one half off is actually just a plastic model and d…

>These are brownies, but they happen to contain a bit of horse shit. Not a lot, it's just like a tiny sprinkling on top, but they are definitely still brownies! Don't buy them, don't eat them. >"Hey, you can use this for free if you don't make any money, but we want 10% if you're using this in a paid product" -> See? Done, easy, nobody upset. Don't pretend "Hey, this is open source, except it isn't, and please give m…

> Creative Commons ...

"Commons Clause" is not a Creative Commons license. The two are unrelated.

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#89

Post by Bartweiss » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #16

vorpalhex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are brownies, but they happen to contain a bit of horse shit. Not a lot, it's just like a tiny sprinkling on top, but they are definitely still brownies! You can't make a substantive change to a license and pretend it's a small deal. You can't hijack core tenants of a license, and then just put a little disclaimer at the bottom. "Buy one get one half off! *The one half off is actually just a plastic model and d…

I won't address your analogy since I think it's obviously quite different. Ultimately, people want to keep their code open, develop in the open, bring in contributors, make it easy to adopt and audit their code, etc. They also want to eat and have a home. The extreme hostility I've seen over the years to every OSS project that tries some new way of monetizing is just absurd and damaging to the concept. > "Hey, you ca…

> we want 10% if you're using this in a paid product"

> Confusing since what you've just described sounds very much like what is being railed against?

It's very much not.

"Free for private users, paid for corporations" and "free for free uses, paid to include in new products" are both existing licenses, which may be source available but are generally not open source.

The Commons Clause is different; it permits OSS-style contributions to the codebase while reserving the sale rights to one party. "...the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software"

There seem to be two serious miscommunications here.

First, "source available and we monetize by controlling rights" is not universally hated. Most people less extreme than Stallman are fine with that, they just don't want it achieved by warping FOSS licenses and projects.

Second, the Commons Clause is a particularly bad road to monetized source-available projects. Applying it to an existing project has the effect of converting a FOSS community into an unpaid dev team for one license holder. That's very different from "we'd like a cut if you monetize this".

Re: It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

#90

Post by esotericn » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 3:23 PM UTC

Flimm wrote: post #85

esotericn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to provide the source to your software, you put the code on the Internet and you're done. You don't need to even choose a licence. That only comes in to play if you concern yourself with downstream users that care about licensing. It really only becomes complicated when you want to release it and _also_ monetise it or restrict its use. Licenses exist because of how this is ultimately at odds with how soft…

Copyright applies by default. You do need to choose a license: > When you make a creative work (which includes code), the work is under exclusive copyright by default. Unless you include a license that specifies otherwise, nobody else can use, copy, distribute, or modify your work without being at risk of take-downs, shake-downs, or litigation. Once the work has other contributors (each a copyright holder), “nobody”…

I addressed this in my comment.

> That only comes in to play if you concern yourself with downstream users that care about licensing.

``` println!("gosh, no LICENSE!"); ```

I just published some source code without choosing a license.

(Yes, yes, I do licence my actual projects. But letting legalistic bullshit put people off releasing their source, even by a microscopic amount, is something that I disapprove of strongly.)