[HN Gopher] Bruce Perens: Building a 'billion dollar' startup wi...
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Bruce Perens: Building a 'billion dollar' startup with Crystal and
Lucky [video]
Author : zdw
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-07-26 17:03 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| Proven wrote:
| For me it's very simple - when I see GPL 3, I move on - even for
| personal uses.
|
| I can't imagine why I'd want anything to do with this license
| either. It's an unnecessary burden. Just stay away from it.
| haram_masala wrote:
| My strategy is to ignore the license and do whatever the hell I
| want. So far I've been 100% successful with it.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Why is GPL 3 objectionable for personal uses?
| bachmeier wrote:
| The completely serious answer is that some have turned this
| into a religion. GPL software is simply impure to them, so
| they won't touch it.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Which brings us to the question: would we be here if there
| had been no GPL at all?
| pjmlp wrote:
| No we wouldn't.
|
| The UNIX world and Windows would keep taking BSD code,
| assuming the court case would have ended the same way as
| it did, and that was it.
|
| The GPL haters tend to forget that GCC was pretty much
| ignored until Sun started the trend to split UNIX into
| user and developer editions, and without GNU there
| wouldn't be a userland for Linus to plug into Linux.
|
| Whatever, all UNIX clones that came after Linux
| (specially for IoT) are BSD/MIT based, so the long term
| roadmap is already quite obvious.
| cpach wrote:
| tl;dr anyone? (Pretty please)
| georgeam wrote:
| I've listened to only 2/3 of it, but: he promotes Crystal+Lucky
| (crystal is compiled) as good replacements for Ruby and Rails.
| The second part of his talk is about promoting a new variant of
| open license called PostOpen, which will require commercial
| users of Post Open software to pay 1% for using, 1.5% for using
| without sharing modifications. There is a 10% fee for worse
| offense. All percentages are percentages of revenue. This is
| partly aimed at large companies that host open source software
| with few modifications as a service and charge for it. Money
| goes to PostOpen and possibly conventional Open Source
| developers.
| johnebgd wrote:
| I see a low probability that anything licensed "post open"
| will see adoption if there is a royalty owed for it.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Imagine the business decision of selecting between a post-
| open licensed ware and BSD licensed similar functionality.
| In return for 1% of revenue and the hassle of an annual
| usage audit, you get what value in return, exactly? That is
| the key question.
|
| So as a purveyor of post-open software, you must have a
| business proposition that closes the deal. Not impossible,
| but different from the way most OSS projects operate today.
| Your skepticism is reasonable. To separate a customer from
| their money, you need to provide obvious value.
|
| It strikes me that once you take one post-open package into
| your stack, the incremental cost of the next N is zero. So
| maybe there is enough virality in that feature to drive
| adoption. One high-value post-open project could create a
| coat-tail effect.
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| I think any license that requires a percentage of revenue is
| DOA.
|
| First because involving all the chicanery of accounting to
| figure out my fee is asking for lots of resources just to
| calculate and audit fees.
|
| Second, unpredictable costs are bad. If my company's revenue
| doubles in a year, that doesn't mean that my department's
| budget doubles. Or that I even have enough earnings to cover
| licenses.
|
| Finally, this is hard enough with a single product. My org
| uses thousands of products. If they all charge 1%, where does
| that leave me.
|
| PS- morally this just seems dumb. If my grocery store charged
| me more or less depending on my income or the value I derive
| from a tomato, I won't shop there. Just publish a price and
| let people decide to buy or not.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| Maybe. That depends if OSS devs switch to this or not. This
| only hurts those making money off OSS which is fair. Think
| of it as contributing to improving the OSS.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| That's not correct. It's a flat 1% of revenue regardless of
| the number of Post-Open software packages used. (From the
| slide at 13:30 " _The same fee whether you use 1 Post Open
| program or 1000._ ") The organization that receives the
| payment is supposed to handle splitting up the revenue
| among software package authors, so it does require auditing
| of all usage.
| toast0 wrote:
| Yeah, I don't know what corporation would be happy with a
| license where the cost is nebulous like this.
|
| I would suspect lots of Hollywood Accounting is likely;
| putting all the PostOpen software in a subsidiary that has
| no revenue, or developing your own software under PostOpen
| but not distributing it outside, so that the majority of
| the usage is apportioned to affiliated companies.
|
| Plus, apportioning by usage is a negative incentive for
| optimization. If your DB reduces query runtime by 10% in
| the next version, it reduces its revenue, assuming other
| PostOpen software is in use and doesn't optimize.
| cycomanic wrote:
| You make a compelling argument except for ignoring the fact
| that many licences (in particular patent licences) work on
| percentages of sales or revenue. So it seems not to be a
| problem in those cases, why is it for software?
| bawolff wrote:
| Ah, so a linux system contains more than 100 packages, does
| that mean if it used this scheme companies would have to pay
| out >100% of revenue?
|
| Colour me unconvinced of the viability of this scheme.
| radarsat1 wrote:
| _leftpad intensifies_
| jhauris wrote:
| No, and this is expressly discussed in TFV. It's a flat 1%
| regardless of how many "post open source" resources are
| used. This is intended to encourage adoption of more POS
| (unfortunate acronym) once you use any.
| bawolff wrote:
| Well if people want their ideas to be heard they need to
| write them down instead burying them in long videos
| amidst topics i dont care about. (Not blaming bruce,
| we're not the target audience here, but im still not
| watching a long form video).
|
| I still think its a weird business model. I can't imagine
| any propriatary software would work with that. Its very
| discouraging for small projects that do simple things, or
| for companies that want to try out software a little at
| first before committing to using it at a large scale.
| Azrael3000 wrote:
| I just skimmed the video so my TL;DR might not capture
| everything he said.
|
| Basically, he advocates a new license that he wants to develop
| that basically improves remuneration for open source
| developers. Use case: A "Post Open" software is used by a
| company, then this company has to pay a certain percentage (1
| to 10%) of their revenue to the "Post Open" software. If it is
| using multiple "Post Open" packages this percentage is divided
| among them (according to usage).
|
| Software in this scheme will be allowed to be modified,
| redistributed etc. and it will also contain a public API that
| defines the boundaries of the program (so it's not about
| linking anymore).
|
| I hope that captures the key points.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| There's a couple of other points of note:
|
| - Usage auditing for and reporting for Post-Open software is
| required alongside the payment. This is a huge reversal. Not
| having to do onerous license compliance monitoring was a big
| selling point touted by FOSS advocates for the past two
| decades, pointing to horror stories about audits demanded by
| the Business Software Alliance and huge payments for license
| violations.
|
| - It's called the "Post-Open" license for a reason: Bruce
| says FOSS has been defeated. He points out that corporations
| have both found ways to make money off of FOSS without
| contributing much and even hijacked the governance of FOSS
| for their own benefit. This is extremely startling to hear
| from someone so well known in open source.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Pretty good summary.
|
| Clarification: for-profit users pay a percentage of _end
| user_ revenue. non-profits and individuals pay nothing.
| Automated auditing envisioned.
|
| This is a proposal, not nearly ready for roll-out.
|
| The concepts are interesting, but only a rough framework
| exists at this time. The ideas are worth discussing. I wish
| there was a succinct blog post or something about them rather
| than this painful video.
| tytso wrote:
| What's unclear is how is the revenue percentage split across
| all of the various contributors of a particular "post open"
| package. Suppose there are 10 "Post Open" packages; do all of
| the packages deserve to get an equal share of the 1% rev
| share? Maybe some "post open" packages are more technically
| complex than others? Maybe some "post open" packages are more
| key to the value-add than others.
|
| Even if there is only a single "post open" package which gets
| the full 1% of the rev share, what about one developer which
| contributes a whitespace or spelling fix, versus another
| developer which contributes a key part of the package? What
| if one developer contributes a huge number of lines of code,
| but it's for a feature which isn't actually used at all by a
| particular billion dollar use case of said "post open"
| package?
|
| The devil is really in the details.....
| chromatin wrote:
| Well, the audio video quality is terrible, but the message -- in
| the second half, you have to power through a bunch of stuff about
| Crystal and Lucky -- is very interesting.
|
| He describes his vision for "post open source" license, which he
| is currently developing. His goals seem to be to to empower
| software developers to take back power from megacorps which have
| in his view subverted the nature of open source and turned it
| into a "resource extraction" scheme.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Being a 70's kid, the current state of open source feels very
| similar to the 70's freedom movements, where a large majority
| ended up working in offices Wall Street style during the 80's.
|
| Maybe there is a lesson there regarding human behaviour, and
| attitudes regarding the need of income in capitalist societies.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Another way of saying "post open source" is "not open source",
| or "proprietary". But, of course, those wouldn't get as much
| traction as trading on the good name of Open Source.
|
| We already _have_ some copyleft licenses that prevent the kinds
| of proprietary SaaS usage that have prompted recent complaints.
| People and projects don 't _use_ those licenses; they use
| permissive licenses, and then get surprised when companies use
| their software under those permissive licenses. I 've even seen
| people complain that if they use copyleft licenses, large
| companies won't touch their software. _That 's entirely the
| point! If you want companies to pay for an alternative license
| or an exception, you have to choose an Open Source license that
| they're not already willing to work with._
|
| Before we even consider giving up on the Schelling point that
| is Open Source, perhaps we should make better use of the full
| spectrum of Open Source licenses we already have.
| bachmeier wrote:
| As someone that has watched the evolution of open source,
| it's baffling to see these discussions. Developers adopted
| those licenses in many cases because they wanted their
| software to be used in the enterprise. Now that the
| "permissive" licenses aren't working out, they want to scrap
| open source altogether.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They were told about the devil's pact they were doing
| regarding adoption, but since they were the same group that
| believed in company propaganda like do no evil, they went
| ahead anyway.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| That's a really uncharitable interpretation. Permissive
| licences were not a problem in the internet economy of 20
| or even 10 years ago. The challenge now is that a very
| small number of internet companies - principally Amazon,
| Google and Facebook - have such market power that they can
| effectively co-opt permissively licensed products for their
| own ends. That wasn't the case 20 years ago and probably
| not 10 years ago either.
| ellyagg wrote:
| He knows we already have some licenses like that. He mentions
| that the megacorps that have come to dominate open source use
| their influence to give the worst licenses the highest
| profile. This could be arguable, but I think it makes some
| sense and he did address it.
|
| Starting a new movement with a new license could be a way to
| escape the current dynamics.
| mfer wrote:
| I think there is a struggle between open source, having a
| viable business, and having a VC backed business. Folks aren't
| working that out well. VC backed businesses are different from
| viable businesses in that a viable business needs to be able to
| make money to pay expenses and operate while VC backed
| businesses need to make returns on investments for the VCs.
|
| For open-source projects that are the top level (e.g.,
| PostreSQL) and being paid to work on it... it's often useful to
| have an enterprise market and support model.
|
| Side note, open source works better business model wise when
| things are more distributed. More centralized with megacorp
| clouds is harder for open source based businesses.
|
| For libraries that can be used by many projects, open source is
| a great way to go. I've done semver, vcs, and other libs this
| way. They aren't the business thing being sold but enablers of
| other things being build.
|
| Interfaces are great and we need more standard interfaces. They
| make is possible to have open source and proprietary solutions
| that work with the same stuff. Businesses can compete and work
| with more freedom to do so with open interfaces.
|
| Businesses trying to have an open source software SaaS that
| they run in public clouds are always going to be at a
| disadvantage. The public cloud provider can always do it
| cheaper and undercut the business. Businesses that try to go
| that route will end up having business issues.
|
| Physical products are another space all together. It's the
| thing (hardware + software) that make it work. Open source
| software is great there, too. I see it in the car I drive.
|
| Where we license things as open source should be coupled to our
| thought out business models. It's not an open source or post
| open source world. It's about the right tool for the job in
| front of us. We need more thought and talk on that.
| jancsika wrote:
| > His goals seem to be to to empower software developers to
| take back power from megacorps which have in his view subverted
| the nature of open source and turned it into a "resource
| extraction" scheme.
|
| And he's going to achieve that with a software license?
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is possible, but I doubt it will gain any major adoption.
| jollybean wrote:
| "subverted the nature of open source and turned it into a
| "resource extraction" scheme. "
|
| I'm not sure if that's a fair statement because the notion of
| 'resource extraction scheme' is entirely subjective.
|
| If people are using the software in accordance with the license
| that you afford it, then that's it, there's nothing more you
| can ask.
|
| If it turns out that 80% of the value is going to be captured
| by 'Big Corps', well, then that's what it is and it's entirely
| up to the Open Source developer to contemplate why they would
| want to do this or not. To each their own.
|
| I suggest however, that there should be a better 3rd option
| that frankly doesn't exist, which is to allow devs to get paid
| commensurate with the popularity of their software, which would
| technically be commercial, but wherein the terms would actually
| be fairly open by any reasonable measure.
|
| I suggest this dichotomy between 'Stallman/GPL vs. Evil Corps'
| is completely false and that it's mostly grey in between. It's
| just that there's a little bit of a cliff between the more open
| license and harder commercial terms which make things quite
| difficult for everyone aka imagine your corporate lawyer asked
| to review every one of the weird commercial terms of the 300 or
| so Node.js packages you're using ...
| neolog wrote:
| > If people are using the software in accordance with the
| license that you afford it, then that's it, there's nothing
| more you can ask.
|
| Actually, I like people to do more than the bare minimum
| that's legally required of them. Unfortunately corporations
| usually don't do that.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Which is why we are basically back to the 80's with
| commercial software and demo versions.
|
| With the difference that demo versions are no longer time
| limited, and even with the demo version there is code
| available instead of being an option on the commercial
| product.
|
| Companies just call it open source instead, regardless of
| what is stated at OSI website as definition.
| detaro wrote:
| Title doesnt match video title, intentional?
| cpach wrote:
| The submitted title (now changed) was probably a summary of
| what 'zdw thought was the most interesting take-home from the
| video.
| xrayarx wrote:
| Already posted 2 days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27961414
| tzs wrote:
| It seems to be at about 7:51 that he starts talking about the
| problems he sees with current open source. Here's a link to that
| point in the video [1].
|
| Around 12:47 is where he finishes that and concludes we cannot
| fix open source, and talks about "Post Open". Here's a link to
| that point in the video [2].
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/XRl-it1-ruI?t=471
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/XRl-it1-ruI?t=767
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Your regular reminder that there is already a permissive licence
| that effectively prevents use by megacorps: WTFPL. Google won't
| touch software licensed with it and Intel have also refused it in
| the past. And yes, you can add a "no warranty" disclaimer in your
| readme too.
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