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

"Atom won't be closed source, but it won't be open source either."

discuss.atom.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 12 posts

Re: "Atom won't be closed source, but it won't be open source either."

#3

Post by catinsocks »

That is disappointing I understand that work deserves money but I wanted a viable competitor to the big 2.

Emacs has gotten better because of XEmacs, vim may get better because of newvim, but that won't be possible here unless you want to contribute your time for a closed source project and hope that whoever sees your pull request chooses to merge it.

Here's hoping they change their mind and perhaps develop a few useful paid extensions or something like that instead.

Re: "Atom won't be closed source, but it won't be open source either."

#4

Post by malka »

nextstep wrote: post #2

That sounds like closed source. I don't see how there could be a gray area here. Either I can compile Atom from source, or it's not open source.

You could be able to compile it from sources, but fotking could be forbidden for example

Re: "Atom won't be closed source, but it won't be open source either."

#6

Post by click170 »

nextstep wrote: post #2

That sounds like closed source. I don't see how there could be a gray area here. Either I can compile Atom from source, or it's not open source.

I completely agree with you.

But at the same time, there's the Android/AOSP situation.

Re: "Atom won't be closed source, but it won't be open source either."

#7

Post by 0X1A »

catinsocks wrote: post #3

That is disappointing I understand that work deserves money but I wanted a viable competitor to the big 2. Emacs has gotten better because of XEmacs, vim may get better because of newvim, but that won't be possible here unless you want to contribute your time for a closed source project and hope that whoever sees your pull request chooses to merge it. Here's hoping they change their mind and perhaps develop a few use…

Considering GitHub is essentially entirely closed source, I doubt there will be a change of heart.

Re: "Atom won't be closed source, but it won't be open source either."

#8

Post by grrowl »

malka wrote: post #4
nextstep wrote: post #2

That sounds like closed source. I don't see how there could be a gray area here. Either I can compile Atom from source, or it's not open source.

You could be able to compile it from sources, but fotking could be forbidden for example

By GitHub (and Git's) own structure, everything is forkable. It would be very unlike them to prevent forking on one of thier own "special" repos, but in the worst case you could still:

  git clone git@github.com:atom.io/core.git
  git remote add fork git@github.com:grrowl/atom-core.git
  git push -u fork master

Re: "Atom won't be closed source, but it won't be open source either."

#9

Post by vezzy-fnord »

Essentially it's proprietary, but with a viewable source.

Similar to Microsoft's "shared source" licensing models.

Still proprietary at the end of the day. Let's not dilute this with misleading euphemisms like "closed source" and "open source". Freedom is no priority here, it seems.

Re: "Atom won't be closed source, but it won't be open source either."

#10

Post by keithwarren »

Some companies choose not to open source their stuff because it opens up more opportunities for revenue.

This insistence that everything be open source or it is somehow inferior is tantamount to the people raging over 0.99 apps. How dare they not give away their work for free!

If you want a FOSS editor there are lots of options but don't cry foul when someone announces a new one which you think is cool but then throw a hissy fit when they choose to not open it up like you think they should.

Post reply on HN