[HN Gopher] Here's why we are going open source
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Here's why we are going open source
Author : wietsevr
Score : 65 points
Date : 2021-03-31 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.citizenlab.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.citizenlab.co)
| mandiantBob wrote:
| Not to be confused with citizenlab.ca, a research lab of
| University of Toronto that deals with high profile civil right
| violations using OSINT and tech analysis.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| This confused me as well - I thought I had misremembered the
| name of the original CitizenLab but I couldn't figure out what
| was different.
|
| Especially since the domain (including TLD) is only a single
| letter off
| d1plo1d wrote:
| I really hope they change the name. Citizenlab.ca is quite well
| established and doing important work.
| runjake wrote:
| That's gotta be deeply frustrating for the original Citizen Lab
| who was founded 15 years before this company.
|
| It makes me wonder how much of their income has come from the
| good work and reputation of the original Citizen Lab.
| cinntaile wrote:
| They are focused on completely different things though, this
| seems to be neighbourhood projects in Belgium and the
| Netherlands. Not focused on privacy and citizen data at all.
| But yeah they should have picked a different name.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Closed source to an open-core model, fwiw.
| wrnr wrote:
| How does the choice for AGPL influence third-party consumers of
| governments deployments the citizenlab platform? I understand
| this license closes the network loophole in GPL by forcing all
| calling code to be released under the AGPL, so I be interested to
| know if I can call apis and download data of my government
| website without sharing it or talking to citizenlab. Maybe I am a
| little paranoid but this feels like a big brain play, or some
| just sloppy oversight.
|
| [EDIT] Clarification.
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| The loophole is someone hosting a modified instance without
| publishing their source code changes. I don't think it affects
| data or APIs at all.
| wrnr wrote:
| Oh so I can basically do a SaaS and as long as I don't change
| the codebase without charing the changes its ok
| kjeetgill wrote:
| I don't think it's as simple as the parent says, but I
| don't know better either. Talk to a lawayer.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > forcing all calling code to be released under the AGPL
|
| No. If you modify an AGPL network service you have to share the
| changes. If you call the API from a client you have no
| obligations.
| ddevault wrote:
| They're asking contributors to sign a CLA which assigns copyright
| for your changes to them. Quick reminder: do not sign this kind
| of agreement. It's deliberately designed for them to pull the rug
| out from under you and make this proprietary again after a period
| of enjoying the benefits of community contributions. Shame on
| them for asking in the first place.
| tzs wrote:
| The author of the above comment has a blog post on CLAs, which
| was submitted to HN a couple years ago and drew quite a bit of
| discussion. That discussion is here [1], in case anyone wants
| more detail on his position or wants to argue against it
| without just rehashing things already dealt with.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18148365
| dblock wrote:
| This is important, +1.
|
| If you want an example of what successful OSS looks like for
| over 10 years now, https://github.com/artsy, MIT license.
| lostmsu wrote:
| What do you mean "pull rug out of you"? If they decide to
| discontinue GPL edition, you are free to pick it up from where
| they left.
| ddevault wrote:
| It signals that they're not making a long-term committment to
| open source. When they pull the rug out from under you, the
| community will have to scramble to put together a viable
| fork. It is a highly disruptive event that we've seen happen
| many times. Some communities never recover.
| lostmsu wrote:
| It is not that hard to fork. Just look at the sheer number
| of Chromium forks.
|
| Even Firefox had one or two until recently.
| brentguf wrote:
| For those interested, here is the GitHub repo:
| https://github.com/CitizenLabDotCo/citizenlab!
| nik_s wrote:
| I worked in the same co-working space as Wietse, Aline and Koen,
| the three co-founders of Citizenlab, when they were launching
| their service. They're a super competent team with a fantastic
| vision and execution - I'm excited to see this new step in their
| story.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| I'm genuinely wondering how is it legal for a company to take the
| same name as an unaffiliated nonprofit?
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's not unless it's a trademark violation (e.g. if the name
| collision might cause confusion).
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