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Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

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Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#91

Post by mring33621 »

ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #39
prmoustache wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where it is not ethical. At any point you can decide to pursue or stop maintaining the code and anyone can decide to fork and take over. It is just naive to think you will always find fun in working on it or pretend you might make a living out of it unless you have a strong business plan.

> I don't see where it is not ethical. And that's the problem. Many people like the idea of 'helping' other people for free, even if these users never 'give something back' (because they can't program, don't have the time to translate something, ...). But helping other people (companies) make money for free that already have not only enough but way more than you, and you even do the less rewarding work like fixing bu…

At my company, a huge bank, where we use a ton of open source code, we were explicitly told that working on (contributing to) open source was a terminal offense.

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#92

Post by wutangflange »

MattGaiser wrote: post #90

> In Germany a company needs to be profitable. If you run your business at a deficit for too long, you get your business closed, and then you usually even have to pay back a lot of taxes. What is this about? The government forcibly closes companies that lose money?

This applies in America as well, at least for the IRS. One can only run a money-losing business for a few years before they stop considering you a business and instead a hobbyist.

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#93

Post by vasili111 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #90

> In Germany a company needs to be profitable. If you run your business at a deficit for too long, you get your business closed, and then you usually even have to pay back a lot of taxes. What is this about? The government forcibly closes companies that lose money?

I think (but I maybe wrong) it is a "protection" against selling product under it's price.

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#94

Post by LaGrange »

oblio wrote: post #55
phoronixrly wrote: post #21

Developments like this one and the faker.js and colors.js fiasco from last week have made me rethink my position about licensing. Now it seems to me that releasing code you wrote for free under a permissive open-source license is somewhere between ill-advised and unethical. On one hand it will not benefit you in any way, on the other, it will be incorporated in a company's proprietary project thus lowering the expens…

It's not unethical, it's more like being a "fellow traveler" or in clearer terms, a useful idiot. People with money (corporations) were always the ones to benefit most from permissive open source, they're best placed for it. Permissive open source only really makes sense as charity[1], or for libraries you as a developer want to be able to use at future companies[2] or as a component for a corporation's grand strateg…

> It's not unethical, it's more like being a "fellow traveler" or in clearer terms, a useful idiot.

I mean, the line between a useful idiot and a scab is so thin it barely exists.

> Permissive open source only really makes sense as charity[1], or for libraries you as a developer want to be able to use at future companies[2] or as a component for a corporation's grand strategy.

Edit: nah, I think "as charity" it's bad (takes away from others, corporations don't need your charity), case 2 is at best misguided (just charge them, don't do this for free, please), and only 3 makes sense, as in "language bindings for our product are permissive."

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#95

Post by MattGaiser »

wutangflange wrote: post #92
MattGaiser wrote: post #90

> In Germany a company needs to be profitable. If you run your business at a deficit for too long, you get your business closed, and then you usually even have to pay back a lot of taxes. What is this about? The government forcibly closes companies that lose money?

This applies in America as well, at least for the IRS. One can only run a money-losing business for a few years before they stop considering you a business and instead a hobbyist.

Is this only applicable to small businesses? As Uber certainly isn't considered a hobby.

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#96

Post by matwood »

MattGaiser wrote: post #90

> In Germany a company needs to be profitable. If you run your business at a deficit for too long, you get your business closed, and then you usually even have to pay back a lot of taxes. What is this about? The government forcibly closes companies that lose money?

The IRS has something similar, hobby vs business, though doesn't seem to be as aggressive.

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/earning-side-income-is-it-a-hob...

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#97

Post by gtufano »

MattGaiser wrote: post #90

> In Germany a company needs to be profitable. If you run your business at a deficit for too long, you get your business closed, and then you usually even have to pay back a lot of taxes. What is this about? The government forcibly closes companies that lose money?

It's mostly the same also in Italy. A company is considered "under systematic losses" (translating directly from Italian) after 5 years of losses. It's not closed, but it's considered, basically, a vector for something that's "not business", so it gets a minimum of taxes to pay, loses some fiscal advantages, and pays more additional taxes. Startups (as in "formally registered to the startup register") are not subject to this rule, but they have other limitations (and benefits)

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#98

Post by DangerousPie »

MattGaiser wrote: post #90

> In Germany a company needs to be profitable. If you run your business at a deficit for too long, you get your business closed, and then you usually even have to pay back a lot of taxes. What is this about? The government forcibly closes companies that lose money?

It's to prevent people from registering their hobby projects as a businesses to deduct expenses from their taxes.

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#99

Post by tobywf »

Devasta wrote: post #76
phoronixrly wrote: post #21

Developments like this one and the faker.js and colors.js fiasco from last week have made me rethink my position about licensing. Now it seems to me that releasing code you wrote for free under a permissive open-source license is somewhere between ill-advised and unethical. On one hand it will not benefit you in any way, on the other, it will be incorporated in a company's proprietary project thus lowering the expens…

No one except the most credulous buffoons really believed the "MIT is more free" nonsense about the GPL, it is, was, and always will be a push to move away from "Free as in Freedom" to "Free as in Free Tech Support". Large Corps won't use your code if its AGPL? Thats a feature, code away without worrying about breaking anything!

Having a license where "network use is distribution" seems to be a must these days.

I also recently found the European Union Public License (EUPL, e.g. [0]), which seems similar to the AGPL. Might be interesting to Europeans. The translations being available in multiple languages is really nice. It being a less often used license could also be a feature.

[0] https://choosealicense.com/licenses/eupl-1.2/

Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding

#100

Post by guitarbill »

hda2 wrote: post #86
pabs3 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a lot of effort and money to enforce copyleft open source licenses, a lot of companies just violate them regardless. Some companies even violate permissive licenses, for eg my router violates the microhttpd BSD license. The latest GPL lawsuit I saw was only possible due to a large grant from amateur radio hobbyists. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/press/qand…

Damages. Offer two licenses. One GPL and the other commercial. Make the commercial license as costly as possible, even Oracle grade by charging per core. Include language stating that the licensing agreement falls back to the commercial license if the GPL is violated and the violation is not remedied according to the provisions set in the GPL. Any licensing fees collected get poured back into the open source project.…

Is there an easy way of providing commercial licences? Has anybody had experiences with this?

I've seen Super Source (https://supso.org/), which I think used to be called Supported Source (https://supportedsource.org). It seems to make providing commercial licenses easy. But their website is pretty bare. Do people usually just roll their own with Square or Stripe? I've found it hard to get search results on this at all.

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