Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

drewdevault.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 147 posts

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

#91

Post by Bartweiss »

yebyen wrote: post #79
michaelt wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An honest FOSS license + dual licensed for commercial would say "it's fine if you make money, and we don't need a cut... unless you've integrated our software AND you don't want your final product to be similarly open-source." I think the "problem" the commons clause is aimed at is where AWS starts selling managed deployments of your product, and they make $$$$ from your work without giving you a cut. And maybe your…

So, the model that AGPL was designed to combat, right? Under the AGPL, Amazon would be free to do that, as long as they released the code for their managed deployment systems. (This doesn't get you any money, but it saves you from the sense that your FOSS-work has been exploited by a commercial entity that doesn't give anything back, so long as it's actually enforceable.)

I think this is a lot of people's complaint with the Commons Clause.

It's defended by citing a real problem, but the AGPL also addresses that problem. Meanwhile, its impact on non-Amazon players like "some random user who wants to write and share a handy tool" is much less pleasant, because it effectively turns that user into a free profit source for the license holder.

I can imagine a healthy role for some intermediate license that goes beyond AGPL to say "actually Amazon, you have to pay us for this". But it would need to not distort what FOSS means for everybody the way this does.

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

#92

Post by icebraining »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #73
BeetleB wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest. Given how every Reddit/HN thread I come across has an argument on whether it is appropriate to use open source in this context, I strongly disagree with the phrase "most people". In my experience, most people call it open source, and i…

There is a loud minority of people who disagree, mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The term "open source" is a trademark of the Open Source Initiative and has a clear, unambiguous meaning.

Unfortunately, no, the OSI could never get a trademark on "open source".

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

#93

Post by kazagistar »

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.

Calling it "natural addative" would be more similar to how the Commons Clause is named.

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

#94

Post by gus_massa »

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.

Using another analogy, it's like "vegan lasagna with meat". We all understand what it mean, but once you put some juicy meat there you can't call it vegan anymore.

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

#95

Post by Bartweiss »

yebyen wrote: post #77
skykooler wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fusion 360 has a license like that - free for personal use, but you have to pay if you use it to make anything you sell.

Fusion 360 is not in any way open code though, right? I'm thinking of any _open_ product that says you have to pay once your derivative product goes commercial, even if it's also open. That would be decidedly non-free in the sense of restrictive and as an example, this is something that is not compatible with standard GPL, and not included in the basic general BSD/MIT licenses. My definition of a free license would i…

This is an interesting idea, but I wonder how fees would be assessed?

At one remove "source available, but pay for commercial use" seems very workable. The tricky part is handling it 3+ commercial layers out, where you're either building up a pyramid of fees or making direct payments several notches back along the chain. The first threatens to strangle commercial use past a few removes, the second might work better but opens all the "find the license holder" issues music has already.

I don't mean to dismiss the idea, rather I'm interested to think through what a low-impact way of implementing this might be.

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

#96

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

icebraining wrote: post #92
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a loud minority of people who disagree, mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The term "open source" is a trademark of the Open Source Initiative and has a clear, unambiguous meaning.

Unfortunately, no, the OSI could never get a trademark on "open source".

Ah, pity.

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

#97

Post by kazagistar »

api wrote: post #27
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…

The Commons Clause might be clunky, but its an attempt to address the changes that have happened in the world since the late 1990s. For those who don't know, the FOSS revolution came about in the late 1990s and as a popular movement was largely fueled by concern over the extent to which Microsoft was dominating the PC and (then) PC-based server industries. MS was moving to embrace-extend-extinguish the web at the tim…

The problem solved by FOSS licenses is nonfree software that users cannot fully control and redistribute. The adjusted solution for the cloud era is not Commons Clause, which removes freedoms from users, it's AGPL. But no one wants to hear that because they just see FOSS as a way to make a quick buck on the backs of others.

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

#98

Post by icebraining »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #65
api wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Commons Clause might be clunky, but its an attempt to address the changes that have happened in the world since the late 1990s. For those who don't know, the FOSS revolution came about in the late 1990s and as a popular movement was largely fueled by concern over the extent to which Microsoft was dominating the PC and (then) PC-based server industries. MS was moving to embrace-extend-extinguish the web at the tim…

This version of events is so incredibly wrong. Free software started in the eighties over concerns about how proprietary software was being used. Embrace-extend-exstinquish was Microsoft's attack on a growing free software market, it had nothing to do with the web. The "free" in "free software" never referred to the price, and is not business strategy. It's used like in "free speech," and it refers to the free modifi…

I don't think you're really in disagreement. api didn't actually say FOSS started in the 90s, but that the "FOSS revolution" (which I read as the widespread use of FOSS licenses) did. And that statement still works if you read Free as "in speech".

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

#99

Post by duckerude »

koonsolo wrote: post #76

We need a different name for this, so either - Source-available software ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software ) - Shared source ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Initiative ) So that it's clear that source code is available in some form, but it's not open source.

Shared source ranges from actual free software to software that you aren't allowed to modify or redistribute, and it's only used by Microsoft.

I don't think it's a good idea to expand the meaning to cover software that isn't Microsoft's.

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

#100

Post by BeetleB »

bunderbunder wrote: post #75
BeetleB wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest. Given how every Reddit/HN thread I come across has an argument on whether it is appropriate to use open source in this context, I strongly disagree with the phrase "most people". In my experience, most people call it open source, and i…

How far we've come. I remember back in 2001, when Reddit and HN didn't exist yet, and the whole Internet was caught up in a seemingly unanimous furor about how, not only were most of Microsoft's just-released Shared Source licenses not open source, but even the ones like MS-PL that met the OSI definition still weren't open source simply because they had Shared Source cooties on them by virtue of being announced at th…

What you're describing is to be expected. In 2001, the percentage of people on the Internet that were tech geeks and aware of OSI and GNU was much higher than today, and so they could more easily control the narrative. Today they are in the minority.

I've seen this in many activist communities. They (likely unintentionally) pick regular language to mean something very specific, and then spend endless amounts of time arguing that everyone else is using their terminology incorrectly. It's a huge waste of time. The rational thing to do is give your concepts unambiguous names - not ones where the majority that speak the English language could take to mean something else.

>I fear that the bad old days were so far back now that people no longer remember why this stuff is important.

Lumping those who disagree with your terminology with people who disagree with your philosophy isn't going to help the cause either. It alienates allies. In my experience, people by and large agree that it is important and are favorable with it. They merely disagree with the terminology.

And that's the other thing that happens with ideological movements. As they grow, many fall into a local optimum where the focus is on purity. Who amongst us is pure enough to be in our circle? We'll keep devising ways to root them out (insistence on poor terminology being one way).

Post reply on HN