[HN Gopher] Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due...
___________________________________________________________________
Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing
funding
Author : schlotzisk
Score : 271 points
Date : 2022-01-12 09:43 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| rob_c wrote:
| open source is a great code license scheme, but a horrible
| business model.
|
| Shame it's not worked out for him, but when it's voluntary most
| businesses hear "free tool"
| pjc50 wrote:
| An important Open Source lesson: it isn't really a business model
| in and of itself. It's worth it if you're scratching your own
| itch: running it on hardware that you have anyway, to do things
| that you want done. Doing it purely for others is not
| sustainable.
| kanwisher wrote:
| Glad he gave up. This is the kind of project industries should be
| funding. It seems like a bunch of factories got his labor for
| free. I love open source but its better if its something that
| scratches you own itch, or someone funds it.
| lstodd wrote:
| Industry funded TR-069. It is a lovecraftian nightmare, not
| even open-source efforts could salvage anything useful.
|
| Another industry funded FIX. It is just a bit less of the same.
| pabs3 wrote:
| It seems like something that should be backed by an industry
| consortium; member companies pay money to the foundation and that
| employs the author and other folks to work on the code etc.
| progbits wrote:
| I'm probably missing something but why would the industry back
| this? This makes it easier to combine and switch between
| manufacturers while they probably prefer vendor lock-in. Once a
| factory starts using your PLC it will continue buying
| replacements and upgrades forever.
|
| I only had brief exposure to this domain years ago, working on
| a single Siemens PLC control project. The whole software stack
| was utter garbage (GUI only tooling, binary blobs that don't
| work well with version control, weird custom subset of VB for
| the computer UI scripting, ...) that made me wish for some
| interface like PLC4X so I could just bypass all of it.
| cesarb wrote:
| > I'm probably missing something but why would the industry
| back this?
|
| One possible reason: to "commoditize your complement"
| (https://www.gwern.net/Complement). These industries make
| hardware, making the software side better makes that hardware
| more useful.
| onion2k wrote:
| _I 'm probably missing something but why would the industry
| back this?_
|
| The device manufacturer side of the industry probably
| wouldn't back it. The people who do the integration work
| would though. They're the ones who actually benefit from it.
| skadamat wrote:
| I remember listening to a podcast with the Braintree
| founder and he had mentioned how they worked with the other
| payment providers out there to create some shared, common
| standards. This type of competition / co-opetition _does_
| happen from time to time (also see Lyft and Uber also co-
| lobbying governments together).
|
| No idea how this would work for this industry though
| brianm wrote:
| The title is misleading -- one developer (a major one, mind you)
| is stepping back from offering free community support. This is
| not "Apache PLC4X" announcing an end of community support, it is
| one of the core developers announcing _he_ will be doing so.
| capableweb wrote:
| To be fair, it seems there is just about ~5 developers who have
| contributed more than 100
| commits(https://github.com/apache/plc4x/graphs/contributors),
| with only three of them working on it for longer than one year.
| So it seems Christofer is just about the "core development
| team".
|
| Looking around at the website and the GitHub repository, I
| can't find a single place to get community support either, it
| seems to only be commercial support now, so it seems Apache
| PLC4X is indeed no longer offering community support.
| smarx007 wrote:
| I have observed two common reactions in companies not willing to
| sponsor open-source:
|
| 1. "Do you mean we will pay money to develop software for our
| competitors? Murder!"
|
| 2. The OSS donations are not seen as business expense but as
| charity. "We don't do charity."
|
| What we found effective so far is an OSS project, a consulting
| company and a consulting arrangement where any modifications to
| the core project will be upstreamed. This way, the company pays
| money to solve their problem (and not competitors') and it's not
| seen as charity (it's consulting), while an OSS project goes on.
| Moreover, the OSS project is itself used as a selling point for
| the consulting services, as a proof that we will not lock the
| customer in with some proprietary framework.
| pfranz wrote:
| As a peon, I push for open source because I'm tired of doing
| the same thing at multiple jobs that have nothing to do with
| our competitive advantage. That goes for a lot of industry
| collaboration. So much money is quietly wasted on labor that
| could be saved by standards and open source projects existing.
| yohannparis wrote:
| So true! I don't understand why the government does not
| provide grants to open source projects that help the most
| people. Things are changing (i.e. Sweden & France using
| Matrix), but I see some projects like public infrastructure
| (roads, sewage, power lines.) If they are good and strong
| enough, a business can piggyback on it and be more efficient.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Call me cynical, but I believe more government adoption of
| open source will occur only when those projects can match
| the political kickbacks being paid by the proprietary
| vendors. Corruption is globally endemic, and there is too
| much money sloshing around to keep politicians honest and
| working in the interests of The People they purportedly
| serve.
| pyb wrote:
| Who is "we"? Projects such as VLC tried the consulting
| approach, but didn't get the outcomes that they'd hoped for.
| [deleted]
| pabs3 wrote:
| I like Debian's approach; there are volunteers and contributors
| paid to work on the project by external organisations. There
| are community based gratis support services as well as a long
| list of consultants around the world offering services, those
| range from individuals to well known open companies.
| the-dude wrote:
| Maybe I missed something, but I had to search for the repo :
| https://github.com/apache/plc4x
| jpfr wrote:
| There's quite a bit of OPC UA bashing across this project. So let
| me chime in to keep the "balance in the universe".
|
| OPC UA is a protocol to interact with an object-oriented
| information model. Basically _CORBA done right_ to use object-
| oriented principles and reuse software components in industrial
| automation.
|
| Since OPC UA is a protocol, its performance depends mostly on the
| implementation. Some PLCs may be crappy. But that doesn't
| translate into bad performance overall. My experience goes to the
| exact contrary.
|
| Full disclosure, I lead-develop and maintain an open source OPC
| UA implementation that sees quite a bit of use by the big guys in
| the automation domain. We use C for performance. And we do have
| funding from the industry.
|
| https://github.com/open62541/open62541
|
| But yes, it is hard to break into this world. Especially since
| solutions have to be maintained for 20+ years. A solo developer
| usually cannot ensure that this will still be usable some years
| down the line.
| p_l wrote:
| First, a bit of off-topic, but do you know we keep #open62541
| open for you on Libera.Chat? :D
|
| I think the biggest issue I encountered with OPC-UA is the
| rather random nature of implementations from vendors.
|
| For example, I had S7-1500 PLC deployed on a project, and we
| used OPC-UA to talk to it as well as to expose internals of the
| program that was talking to it.
|
| We also had WinCC HMI, and while it could do basic read-write
| access to OPC-UA, we couldn't attempt to go for Method Calls,
| which would have considerably simplified a bunch of things for
| us.
|
| Meanwhile, FreeOPC-UA (python) turned out to be a bit buggy ;)
|
| It's a quite nice system, and I really like the object-oriented
| nature of it and support for modeling instead of random soup of
| PLC tags that appears to be the norm. Standard industry models
| for various components help extra there.
|
| Currently I'm looking into implementing a wrapper around
| open62541 for Common Lisp and Ada, and possibly a CORBA & DDS
| translator for it. Originally I missed PLC4X completely, and we
| needed to talk to S7-1500 as soon as possible and kinda got
| stuck with Python, now I wish I could do it in Lisp or Ada and
| get it done probably much faster :)
| jmnicolas wrote:
| It's not surprising that people and especially companies are not
| going out of their way to pay for a free product.
|
| Instead of being hurt by how ungrateful the world is, maybe it
| would be better to find a way to make the rich pay and let the
| poor (like me) still get the software for free.
|
| It's not like it's unheard of in the open source world.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > 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?
| matwood wrote:
| 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...
| gtufano wrote:
| 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)
| DangerousPie wrote:
| It's to prevent people from registering their hobby projects as
| a businesses to deduct expenses from their taxes.
| wutangflange wrote:
| 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.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Is this only applicable to small businesses? As Uber
| certainly isn't considered a hobby.
| vasili111 wrote:
| I think (but I maybe wrong) it is a "protection" against
| selling product under it's price.
| chrisdutz wrote:
| Hi all,
|
| geee ... a friend pointed me here and I have to admit that I'm
| quite overwhelmed by the wave my post generated. But very happy
| it seeded some good discussions.
|
| However I should point out that only I said that I would stop
| providing free community support. I am only one of the
| contributors. Even if I am probalby one of the most active ones,
| there are still others probably going to step up and tackle the
| one or the other issue someone might come up with.
|
| If the project was just me, Apache would probably have already
| moved the project into the atic, which is far from happening :-)
|
| Now I'll continue reading all of this ... but I had to set this
| straight first.
|
| Chris
| jamesrr39 wrote:
| Just curious (not in the industry), and I guess you maybe have
| already looked into this, but in addition to paid support have
| you considered paid work for implementing a specific new
| feature that a company wanted? A previous company I worked for
| did this for custom requests and made some money out of it.
| bmn__ wrote:
| No one wants to pay for that either.
|
| https://c-ware.de/en/cf-listing-page/
| aspenmayer wrote:
| What is up with those fundraising goals? Due to weird
| scaling, the number of 0s in the goal overflow onto each
| other, but it looks like you're asking for hundreds of
| thousands or millions of euros to port things. Maybe that's
| a reasonable sum for the work entailed, but I can't recall
| ever seeing numbers that high for any kind of crowdfunded
| projects or open source support. Is asking for that kind of
| money realistic?
| SirSourdough wrote:
| I think most of them are in the the EUR5,000-20,000 range
| and there's an issue with rendering the numbers that is
| duplicating the decimal value after the comma. Seems in
| line with other projects / compensation sources on the
| face of things.
| ranma42 wrote:
| German-style number delimitors: '.' for thousands and ','
| for the fractional part So the highest targets are 20000
| EUR, which seems very reasonable. I think it's a bit
| silly to include the Eurocents though...
| LadyCailin wrote:
| The highest was EUR20k. Your browser was just doing
| something weird. Anyways, a totally reasonable sum for a
| couple of months of full time dev work.
| ilaksh wrote:
| This is not really as much about open source as it is a larger
| issue: people are sheep. That includes developers and especially
| managers and executives. Few people are capable or willing to
| make decisions based on technical merit. They generally follow
| trends mindlessly or make decisions about tools based on
| political expediency or following whatever their local hers
| leader is doing.
|
| This has caused me quite a lot of frustration over the years
| because I like to make tools and solve problems. But often
| building a tool or coming up with a framework for solving a
| problem, even if it's technically really challenging, is only a
| fraction of the battle. It's getting any of the sheep to pay
| attention, notice, or decide your solution can benefit them in
| their sheep power struggles that is actually the biggest
| challenge.
| [deleted]
| qwertox wrote:
| Just quoting this snippet from the landing page:
|
| "No license costs, no restrictive licenses. Being open source,
| PLC4X is free of charge. Start experimenting without worrying
| about license costs or shady license agreements. The Apache 2.0
| is one of the worlds most trusted and adopted open source
| licenses out there."
|
| Big companies need to grow up and start contributing with serious
| amounts. I wonder how this could get regulated with a law, for
| example that any company with more than x in revenue must pay y
| percent to an open software foundation. Maybe one needs to be
| created, one which monitors the space and ranks the projects on
| some metric like pull requests or issues closed. Then the rank is
| a ratio of the amount they get.
| ghoward wrote:
| Somewhat agreed.
|
| I started a poll [1] asking if devs could get their employers
| to pay. Almost nobody answered. I'm not sure it would be
| possible to get companies to pay without regulation, as you
| say.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29893520
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Taxes. You invented taxes.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Government grants for open source software would probably be
| a good thing though, now that this is mentioned. Just like
| the arts get public funding due to public good, open source
| software would make sense as well. Even better than most of
| these things, because by definition, open source is free for
| the public, whereas grants for arts and even things like
| research are often locked behind a paywall of sorts.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| The EU already does this. I'm sympathetic, but once you
| have witnessed how their research grants program works, or
| what the results are when bureaucrats fund "art", you might
| not be as excited. These things have a way of becoming
| something different than what was originally envisioned.
| qwertox wrote:
| At least in Germany taxes aren't bound to a specific purpose,
| they're not allowed to be. They get thrown into a big pot and
| then distributed as needed. Then you'd have these OSS
| developers (whoever represents them) fighting against other
| recipients.
|
| It would be better to have the FAANGs of the world being
| forced to pay into a bucket which gets distributed
| specifically to OSS projects.
| collaborative wrote:
| Some solutions:
|
| 1. "Regulate". Create an official body that charges a flat fee
| for any use of any OSS and then pays a % to developers based on
| some obscure metric. This would likely lead to corruption
| within the newly created body
|
| 2. "Ads". Display ads on every platform that distributes
| software. Then, pay part of the revenue to each software based
| on # of downloads/etc (this is similar to how Youtube pays
| content creators). This would require cooperation from
| distributors (Github, NPM, etc). In my opinion, it would be
| good for both devs and platforms, as devs would prefer
| platforms that pay fairly over platforms that make them give
| stuff up for free. But it will never happen because it would
| hurt capital and the platforms are controlled by capital
|
| 3. "Become unionized". Collectively remove content from
| traditional platforms and move it to a cooperative platform
| that charges $ and fairly distributes it
|
| I think #3 is the most realistic one. There is a "museum of the
| working class" (forget the name now) in Manchester where they
| have the banners of the first industrial revolution secret
| guilds and societies. The new tradesmen were being abused by
| capital so they organised under secret oaths such as "never
| help a tradesman that doesn't belong to the society" or "never
| undercut a fellow's price". Capital will always try to make
| workers work for less, the only way to stop this is to get
| organised
| Elegant-Ad2200 wrote:
| I think this developer fails to address a major concern -
| companies looking for industrial control software want support.
| From the page, it looks like your support options are two guys,
| one in Germany and one in Poland. That would be an immediate non-
| starter for our company.
|
| The alternative would be to hire one or two developers on our own
| for support, and then the cost savings would be out the door.
| Maybe this library is more performant, but it's a (relatively)
| small piece of the industrial control scheme. A massive shift
| like this is just not something companies will take a risk on.
| _zooted wrote:
| I'm assuming [1] didn't work very well then:
|
| [1]: https://plc4x.apache.org/users/commercial-support.html
| DannyBee wrote:
| I have mixed feeling - almost all vendor-specific stuff in this
| space is a mess. Definitely "yesterday's technology, tomorrow",
| done in a way that is often very hard to use. This is a space
| that mainly wants stuff that has worked and will work for 20-30
| years. Monitoring/etc is often still an optional feature.
| forty wrote:
| I think building the stuff YOU (or your company) need for free,
| and offering paid support to build stuff other need is exactly
| how open source should work. If no one has interest in paying the
| paid support, I guess there is no business opportunity, and it's
| better to focus on something else.
| natch wrote:
| If I am ever rich enough to engage in philanthropy for open
| source projects, I'll let an admittedly petty pet peeve drive
| some of my decisions about which projects to shower cash onto: If
| you define your acronyms and tell me up front what tf your
| project does without making me google it, I'll support you.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| "Like with typical Machine-Learning and AI projects, the job of
| the data-engineer is the least fun part and everyone wants to be
| a data-scientist, that works with a magically curated data-lake.
| This is the same with industrial data-integration. Most focus
| goes onto the projects that allow you to do great things with
| industrial data, however almost nobody is willing to work on the
| part of actually getting the data."
|
| To me, this seems like the inconvenient truth of this latest ML
| wave. There's lots of activity around using various ML libraies
| and tools, but they all assume you have input in the right
| format, that someone is collecting the data you need in the first
| place, etc.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Just like how everybody wants to be a game designer, so they
| can dictate to the engineers and artists how to implement all
| their glorious intricate designs they dreamed up while lounging
| in their leather armchair, without getting their own hands
| dirty doing any dull repetitive shit work in Unity3D or
| Photoshop, then complain bitterly when their minions didn't
| implement their vision properly to their exacting standards.
|
| Real jobs like that simply don't exist. Not that there aren't
| thousands of bootcamps and trade schools that will take your
| money to train you for imaginary low-effort high-prestige
| fantasy jobs that you'll never actually find.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Knowing how to design a system is important even if you never
| get the chance to use that directly. Indirectly, it is useful
| when you need to call out a manager or colleague on their own
| bad designs.
| wiremine wrote:
| > On the one side there's no point in convincing the IT folks
| that what you've got to offer is awesome, if the OT folks don't
| know about it. The OT folks are the ones doing the decisions.
| Everything in the OT world is pay-to-play. You'll never get an
| article posted in an OT magazine, if you don't pay for it. In the
| OT world there are also almost no conferences, like in the IT
| world. Everything is about industrial fairs with extremely
| expensive booths. The budgets the big players have at their
| disposal are simply unbelievable. As an open-source project you
| have no chance of being noticed at all.
|
| This is a key lesson. Open Source has not won in this part of the
| technology world, and it's a HUGE walled garden.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| _Believe it, or not. We still failed at getting customers to go
| beyond our incredibly successful POCs. I'll write a separate
| article on this. What we were told off the record was, in every
| case things didn't proceed due to politics and not our
| performance._
|
| Sorry to hear it didn't work out, Chris - looking forward to your
| article. PLC4X was definitely one of the more interesting
| projects at codecentric.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| 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 expenses necessary to develop it. In
| the end, you've contributed to closed source and on top of that
| you got nothing in return... And that is the best case, as we saw
| with log4j, you can be held responsible in the court of public
| opinion in case the project you developed and maintain for free
| (with no warranty or liability as per license) causes an issue...
| jcelerier wrote:
| as usual when it's about free software licenses,
| https://www.reddit.com/r/stallmanwasright
|
| > In the end, you've contributed to closed source
|
| yes, that's exactly what using the GPL is supposed to prevent
| charcircuit wrote:
| What's wrong with lowering the time it takes to develop closed
| source software? Closed source software solves people's
| problems. By making it easier to make, more of people's
| problems can be solved. There can be less time spent where
| multiple people remake the same exact thing over and over
| again.
| glogla wrote:
| Maybe. Or maybe you are just helping the rich get richer and
| the poor get poorer. Whether proprietary software is a force
| for good or just another mechanism of exploitation is a
| matter of opinion, and the GP might not share yours.
| charcircuit wrote:
| As a child starting from $0 I built up almost all of the
| money I have now doing contract work by making closed
| source software using open source software. Being able to
| quickly make things without even having to spend any money
| is great for someone with no money. It didn't make me
| poorer as someone with $0, it made me much richer. I know
| my software was a positive to the lives of many people even
| if it is closed source.
| eropple wrote:
| Are you giving back to the people who enabled you to do
| so?
| charcircuit wrote:
| Honestly, no. They released their software for free, so
| that's what I will pay.
| rbanffy wrote:
| If you are making money using open source software, it's
| always nice to support the creators of the software you
| use.
| prmoustache wrote:
| 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.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| > 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 bugs is
| not what moste people thought of when making OSS.
| sitkack wrote:
| To explain it a different way, I think, is that releasing
| code under a permissive license where the end user is a
| large corp, doesn't make the world a better place, it just
| reduces the labor needed to achieve an end.
|
| OSS saves on headcount.
| mring33621 wrote:
| 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.
| Tostino wrote:
| Name and shame them.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to expect this user to do that.
| (However, if somebody else knows of a bank like that...)
| Tostino wrote:
| I mean throwaway accounts just pop up all over. I would
| never expect GP to answer and put themselves at risk ;).
| lumost wrote:
| In the case of industrial control, database tech, and other
| high cost fields it would be dubious to pitch an open source
| product and then abandon it.
|
| Getting a high adoption OSS project takes more than putting a
| repo on GitHub. In some cases like this one, it's possible
| that the underlying cost of these activities is much closer
| to the licensed proprietary software than the OSS variant
| (aka free)
| KSteffensen wrote:
| The guy has been working on this almost 25 years. That's
| not pitching and abandoning.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > In the case of industrial control, database tech, and
| other high cost fields it would be dubious to pitch an open
| source product and then abandon it.
|
| Why? Open source projects are released with "NO WARRANTY",
| which includes the possibility of dropping maintenance at
| any time. If you want continued support you either fork the
| project and DIY, or pay someone to support you.
| mason55 wrote:
| And that is not something the companies using the
| software are interested in.
|
| This isn't like a software company taking over some
| abandonware tool that they rely on. Building and
| maintaining software is not in the wheelhouse of these
| companies. They'd rather spend more or have fewer
| features in exchange for lowering risk.
| [deleted]
| phoronixrly wrote:
| The unethical part is that you've contributed (for free!) to
| the development of closed-source proprietary software.
| FpUser wrote:
| Stupid it may be but it is not unethical. We live in
| supposedly free world and one has full right to decide how
| their work is to be used. Don't like it, just use GPL or
| whatever license you might want to concoct to prevent /
| limit corporate use.
| akerl_ wrote:
| What is unethical about contributing (for free!) to the
| development of closed-source software?
|
| And if you've decided that making open-source software
| inherently contributes to the development of closed-source
| software, what's your recommendation?
|
| If it's unethical to work on closed-source and open-source,
| do we all just go home and stop writing code?
| phoronixrly wrote:
| We're getting into technicalities here, but in my opinion
| the ethical thing to do is to share your code freely for
| everyone else to use, however at the same time use a
| license that _requires_ them to do the same with any code
| they derive from yours. This is absolutely nothing new,
| ref. the GPL.
| akerl_ wrote:
| It's clear that your preference is that people do that.
| What's not clear is why the MIT license and closed source
| software are unethical.
|
| Not everything we dislike is a violation of ethics.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > What's not clear is why the MIT license and closed
| source software are unethical.
|
| Is it ethical to allow unethical behavior?
| akerl_ wrote:
| I feel like we're in a loop. Are you saying that making
| software under MIT or closed source licenses allows
| unethical behavior in a way that makes creation of that
| software unethical? If so, can you back that up instead
| of asking rhetorical questions?
|
| I write software personally, which I license under the
| MIT license. I write software professionally, which is
| closed source. I don't believe either of those things is
| inherently unethical. There are obviously examples of any
| kind of software that _are_ unethical, and there are ways
| that closed source licenses enable unethical behavior,
| but I'm not following the expansion of that to the
| license choice itself.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| MIT licenses enable closed source software that would
| otherwise have to be open source, is the point.
| akerl_ wrote:
| "Would otherwise" assumes a default state where the
| original software was GPL, presumably. But the fact that
| the MIT license allows for use in closed source software
| isn't in dispute.
|
| Do you (and the other commenters in this thread) believe
| that closed source software is unethical? And if so, why?
|
| And do you believe that MIT-licensed software is also
| unethical, because it allows for closed source usage? If
| so, why?
| rbanffy wrote:
| I question whether allowing unethical behavior is, in
| itself, unethical, when you have the option of not
| allowing it at all. I didn't mention software licenses
| anywhere in the question.
|
| To use a situation common these days, knowing people
| wearing masks are less likely to pass COVID to others
| wearing masks, is it ethical to have a restaurant that
| allows clients not to wear masks? Is it ethical to
| operate a whore house that doesn't mandate regular AIDS
| tests?
| chrisdutz wrote:
| When I started to work on PLC4X I was hoping people would
| be using it to build commercial applications and either
| making money with it, saving money or building better
| products. That's why I stronly believe in the Apache
| License and am not a GPL advocate.
|
| However I would never have expected that allmost nothing
| is returned by anyone.
|
| I mean, I'm an IT consultant and I was doing consulting
| with other projects that I work on and I'm fine with
| that. I love doing that, I love giving training,
| mentoring people and companies to become open-source
| contributors. I saw that the effort-to-improvement-ratio
| open-source could bring to the automation industry was
| just incredible 5 years ago. That's why I put so much
| work into the project and I continue doing so ... just
| differently ;-)
| keewee7 wrote:
| >code you wrote for free
|
| >for free
|
| How much open source code is actually written by hobbyists
| working for free? Most of the Linux code is written by paid
| engineers employed by big tech companies.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| > How much open source code is actually written by hobbyists
| working for free?
|
| Initially, almost all of it.
|
| > Most of the Linux code is written by paid engineers
| employed by big tech companies.
|
| Nowadays. It didn't start this way.
| drran wrote:
| Yes, it's because of GPL restrictions: if you use my code,
| then I can use your (to some extent), so proprietary
| developers are forced to cooperate, which everyone job
| easier.
|
| Linux is used by whole planet, but it's not a burden for
| Linus Torvalds.
|
| Same for KHTML -> WebKit/WebCore -> Blink (LGPL), which is
| used even by such GPL haters as Apple and M$.
| trasz wrote:
| Same for Postgres and multitude of other liberally-licensed
| software.
| Devasta wrote:
| 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!
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't have any problem releasing stuff under permissive
| licenses like MIT.
|
| What you shouldn't do is have unrealistic expectations about
| the software you release. If you give stuff away for free,
| expect that you're giving it away for free. If people ask for
| free support, and you don't want to give it, be prepared to
| tell them so. Also, don't expect that there is any unwritten
| expectation for anything in return.
|
| Your license is your agreement with your users. If it doesn't
| outline what you want, you picked the wrong one.
|
| I'd use GPL if I wanted to expend the effort trying to force
| people to contribute to my projects. But that isn't always
| the case.
| aseipp wrote:
| It's so funny that if you say that actually the GPL is good
| because random corporations can't freely utilize it with zero
| consequence and make money off your labor, you'll get a bunch
| of bedbugs come out of nowhere saying uhhhhhhhhmmmm, actually
| you're the one hurting "free" software, somehow, for being so
| difficult, so cruel, because how dare you prevent others from
| writing even more computer programs, can't you understand N+1
| programs in the world is better than N? And that you are the
| one who stopped it, you selfish selfish person? And that
| someone else could have even made money off that? You've
| practically robbed them pre-emptively with intent. And you
| wouldn't want to scare away the 9-figure corporation by being
| mean... _would you_?
|
| Sorry but I don't consider letting Lucy set up the football
| and giving it a solid go to be kind and equitable. It's
| called "being a mark."
| tobywf wrote:
| 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/
| anticensor wrote:
| EUPL is severable, unlike GPL family. GPL is explicitly
| non-severable.
| namibj wrote:
| Unfortunately it's compatibility clause means it's only as
| strong as GPL...
| SloopJon wrote:
| > it will be incorporated in a company's proprietary project
| thus lowering the expenses necessary to develop it
|
| Without necessarily taking a position on the ethics, I would
| point to macOS and its derivatives as a clear example of this.
| Apple invested significant resources into a successor to System
| 7 called Copland, abandoning it in 1996. While the purchase of
| NeXT in 1997 hugely influenced the design of OS X, look at all
| of the free and open source projects that accelerated its
| development: Mach, Clang/LLVM (and GCC before it), KHTML, KJS,
| CUPS, much of the BSD and GNU userland, and the list goes on.
|
| macOS, and by extension iOS, would not be where it is today
| without its open source core. Put a little spit and polish on
| it (no small thing, of course), add a kernel extension named
| Don't Steal Mac OS X.kext, and voila: new O/S.
| favorited wrote:
| The flip side (of this specific example) is that several of
| those projects were either started or nearly exclusively
| funded by Apple.
|
| - Mach's primary architect, Avie Tevanian, was hired by NeXT
| to productize it, and he continued that work at Apple with
| XNU and the OS X strategy to replace the classic MacOS
|
| - Apple hired Chris Lattner after he finished his PhD (where
| LLVM was started) and then created Clang and open-sourced it,
| as well as other LLVM tools like libcxx
|
| - Apple hired Michael Sweet (creator and maintainer of CUPS)
| and paid him to maintain it for several years
|
| As you say, Apple's software wouldn't be where it is today
| without open source. But major open source projects either
| wouldn't exist at all (e.g., Clang) or would have needed
| someone else to pay for their maintenance (e.g., CUPS)
| without Apple.
| pabs3 wrote:
| 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/qanda.html
| hda2 wrote:
| 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.
|
| If another company is stupid enough to ignore these terms,
| I'm sure you can find someone willing to sue on your behalf
| for a fraction of the damages owed to you.
| guitarbill wrote:
| 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.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| From my experience, RLM is one option that is widely used
| for this. FlexLM is another one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reprise_License_Manager
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexNet_Publisher
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If somebody is going to be paying you more than $1000,
| they'll contact you about it. You don't need to automate
| the license payments; you just need to check your email.
| vipa123 wrote:
| Do you have a real-world example of what a license like
| this looks like?
| lolinder wrote:
| Even so, I'd assume that a company that knowingly infringes
| on the GPL is much less likely to demand free support, lest
| they draw attention to their violation. So at the very least
| it should free maintainers from having to deal with bug
| reports/feature requests/entitled demands from corporate
| entities that refuse to give back.
| ghoward wrote:
| Not GP, but I hadn't thought of this! That would be a great
| side effect of using the GPL now that I think about it.
| oblio wrote:
| 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
| strategy.
|
| [1] "Here, have this, I built it and I want to share it so that
| it doesn't go to waste sitting on my storage."
|
| [2] Only the case if you accept outside contributions with no
| copyright assignment, since otherwise you have the power to
| relicense your own code.
| LaGrange wrote:
| > 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."
| daudmalik06 wrote:
| Guys this is just beggining, I am working in cyber security since
| 2013, After the discovery of log4shell, almost whole internet is
| at risk of supply-chain attacks, Hackers are continuously
| targeting open-source packages because it's really easy way to
| hack big organization. We literally track 100's of attack on
| daily basis. Services like vulert.com can play a vital role, let
| me know what do you think.
|
| Best
| charcircuit wrote:
| I thought this blog post ironic since it said stuff like "free
| trial of open source" and "Industry 4.0."
|
| I also think it's crazy that the government forces businesses to
| be profitable.
| ath0 wrote:
| In a sense, the US government does the same thing. In the US
| tax code, you can can deduct business expenses to reduce taxes
| -- ie, subtract expenses for a corporation you control from
| your personal income. This has been known be abused, as folks
| deduct their personal car, house, travel... as a result, if you
| have a business that goes long enough without a profit, the IRS
| will look really hard at it to make sure it's not really
| leisure.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/irc183activitiesnotengagedin...
| dmitriid wrote:
| > if you have a business that goes long enough without a
| profit, the IRS will look really hard at it to make sure it's
| not really leisure.
|
| Uber lost 20 billion dollars in the last decade. Where's IRS?
| CaptainJustin wrote:
| This is dangerously close to being off-topic but it would be good
| to hear from people interested in PLC4X:
|
| I would really like to see home appliance manufacturers extend
| their products with a simple 2.n IO pin interface at the back.
| Absolutely minimal. For example: a kettle could have an input pin
| to turn it on/off and an output pin that just writes whether it
| is on or not. A simple 4-pin interface on the back in this case.
| An ice-machine that has three size options and an on/off switch.
| The classic case of the bean-to-cup coffee machine.
|
| Does anyone know if there is a standard (for manufactures) for
| this sort of thing? If this was a standard that added a dollar or
| 3 to appliances one could plug-in some IOT board that allows for
| Home-assistant or similar integration.
|
| Of course I've completely ignored the question of whether or not
| a market exists.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The industry equivalents are probably something like MODBUS or
| CAN. But a kettle which has enough electronics in it to support
| an isolated waterproof low-voltage control connection instead
| of the cheap _mechanical_ system would be significantly more
| expensive.
|
| Also, nobody wants a wiring loom for their kitchen. If you have
| to do it, do it over zigbee or something.
| p_l wrote:
| A lot is being done on Zigbee/Z-wave plus MQTT
| wiseleo wrote:
| I am interested in that, but my approach is more of a modchip
| on top of the existing board. It's not that difficult to
| intercept SPI and I2C in-circuit and thus enable IoT capability
| for legacy appliances.
| DannyBee wrote:
| The _standard_ you probably want is IO-Link, or close to it. It
| was meant to bring a bit of smarts to the standard 3-wire
| sensors and basic actuation pins, with 100% backwards
| compatibility.
|
| So you have a standard analog temperature sensor that outputs
| 4-20ma on its pins. With IO-Link, it still does that, but if
| you hook it up to an io-link master, you can just read the
| temperature directly in C/F on the same pins. Or adjust the
| calibration. Or ...
|
| It's not a perfect match, mind you, but i think it's pretty
| close.
| Maxious wrote:
| There is a sort of this thing for demand response - ie. the
| electricity company urgently needs to reduce load and are
| willing to pay you for it. Of course, the appliance
| manufacturers have to provide a way for electricity companies
| that use different communication protocols to have this
| control.
|
| Enter AS/NZS 4755 which uses a RJ-45 connector - if you pull
| the DRM1 pin to ground, the device turns off.
| epaulson wrote:
| This is a level or two up the stack and I think it's more "meet
| in the cloud", but the Home Connectivity Alliance was just
| kicked off at CES to make appliances more interoperable:
|
| https://staceyoniot.com/will-a-new-standard-for-smart-applia...
| ZiiS wrote:
| Adding physical connectors to mains voltage devices operated
| near water has significant costs. Wireless has managed to cater
| for this segment though still severely lacking standardization.
| plcguy wrote:
| Too bad. There's not too many PLC projects out there.
|
| There's Inxton, TcOpen and few guys doing it in Beckhoff TwinCAT3
| space.
| chaostheory wrote:
| ... and this what reasonable people expect when maintainers walk
| away from a project, instead of purposely breaking other people's
| stuff.
| collaborative wrote:
| The sad consequence of OSS is that the cost of software is fast
| approaching $0. Only SaaS barely manages to turn in a profit
| these days and I think that's simply because server-side is the
| only software still seen as costly. And even then, a common
| response from customers will be "why do I need to register".
| People are happy to marry a giant and sign up with
| Apple/Google/etc. Everyone else is expected to give their work
| for free and even support it. The world would be a better place
| if devs collectively stopped this
| cesarb wrote:
| > The sad consequence of OSS is that the value of software is
| fast approaching $0.
|
| You are confusing cost and value. The _cost_ of software might
| approach 0, but the _value_ of software depends only on how
| useful it is to its users. One could even argue that a
| consequence of OSS is _increasing_ the value of software in
| general, due to an ever growing collection of easily-obtainable
| useful software.
| collaborative wrote:
| Yes, you are correct. I meant cost, of course (edited)
| jsiepkes wrote:
| I truely feel for the guy.
|
| Reading the blog it seems like the age old story of having a
| superior product (drastically cut cost, better performance,
| etc.). However getting managers at customers to stick their neck
| out for it is hard. Because they know (and to a degree I can't
| say I blame them) changing such a critical piece of core
| infrastructure is going to be stressful. And what's in it for
| them if the company saves some money it is currently happy to
| spend? If it fails they sure do know what's in it for them... So
| big chance they'll just stick with the properietary solution they
| already have.
|
| EDIT: I should add I think there is also another dimension to
| this. Things that currently work and "only" cost money are a
| problem solved for a company. If they have to change it they have
| to spend their "intelectual budget" on it. Meaning resources like
| technical people which are probably already scarce and working on
| other project need to be assigned to it.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Proprietary solution never cost "only" money. You generally
| have to negotiate licensing, then you have to renegotiate
| licensing when you need to make a change (or when you current
| terms expire). You have to invest effort into understanding
| your license (Open Source licenses are usually at least
| somewhat standardized and usually a lot short than proprietary
| licenses). Finally, the big kicker is vendor lock-in. If the
| vendor doesn't want to or can't support you business anymore,
| you have no choice but to replace their software. If the vendor
| want to change their terms, you can't find some one else to
| support you. If a vendor changes the product, you can't fork it
| to continue using it the way you need to.
|
| I have never seen a proprietary software product that "only"
| cost money.
| mlyle wrote:
| I think this misses the point, though-- no matter how true it
| is.
|
| The costs associated with procuring the existing, proprietary
| solution are understood and accepted. If it goes wrong, it's
| a risk that the organization has collectively selected
| together.
|
| Advocating for doing something cheaper doesn't gain any
| individual person that much necessarily, and incurs outsized
| risk. It also incurs a lot of explicit, poorly-understood
| costs outside of those already accepted and recurring costs.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Selling any sort of change to any company is usually very
| hard. It has nothing to do with proprietary versus open
| source. Open Source is a major selling point, and the Open
| Source community can/needs to do better explaining the
| value proposition of Open Source. That is why companies
| that wish to sell change employ salespeople.
| mlyle wrote:
| Right. I don't think anyone else in this thread really
| said that it had something to do with proprietary vs.
| open source or even very much to do with free-as-in-beer
| vs. costly.
| ngc248 wrote:
| >>>> Things that currently work and "only" cost money are a
| problem solved for a company. If they have to change it they
| have to spend their "intelectual budget" on it. Meaning
| resources like technical people which are probably already
| scarce and working on other project need to be assigned to it.
|
| This is on the mark. This is why "upgrading" anything is hard.
| Stuff already implemented and being used has an inertia, which
| is very hard to overcome.
| mfer wrote:
| Companies choosing a piece of software is more than the quality
| of the software. A superior piece of software isn't enough.
|
| For example, many companies want (and sometimes require) the
| ability to have a support contract with developers for things
| this critical. The people making these decisions may not even
| be technical and close to the system within the management
| structure.
|
| Companies also may have rules and requirements that govern who
| they can pay and how. For example, just donating money to a
| developer some developers in their company like or use the
| software of isn't going to fly. In some countries it may not
| even be legal. Sometimes you need to run things as a business
| and jump through some hoops to make it all work financially and
| without burn out.
|
| Some of this is just how the business world works. With so many
| businesses in so many different legal jurisdictions there's
| almost no way to change the system.
|
| Skilled trades people who strike out on their own have to learn
| enough business to operate. It's not just about doing their
| skill. There's a fair amount of mentoring that happens to help
| people learn that stuff. Maybe we need more of that in
| software.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| smarx007 wrote:
| https://github.com/apache/plc4x/tree/develop/plc4c
| jhgb wrote:
| The main page _does_ say "C (not ready for usage)", though.
| Redoubts wrote:
| Sorry, I don't understand the implication here.
| jarym wrote:
| There's a reason why the majority of costs in running a tech
| business are often in the non-technical parts.
|
| Don't open source unless you can afford to. Invest in non-
| technical bits of your organisation. Avoid making choices and
| then hating the consequences.
| fefe23 wrote:
| If you don't want people to rip you off without giving back, then
| use GPL and not Apache license.
|
| People in favor of the Apache license are people who like to "pay
| you in exposure".
|
| Turns out you can't eat exposure.
|
| Well you wrote that code, you want people to use it, right? Then
| attach no strings!
|
| Turns out I also need to pay rent and and buy food.
| otrahuevada wrote:
| A good compromise for this kinds of things is usually dual
| licensing: - If you're big enough to make real
| money and you need my attention then pay me this much please
| - If you're some rando with a toy project, then we have a github
| issue tracker
|
| A project this size and age should always have a lawyer at hand
| just in case, and they should be able to walk the maintainers
| through the process of dual-licensing everything.
| jgilias wrote:
| What you suggest is not really dual licensing though. It's a
| source-available license with a free tier.
|
| Dual licensing means that there are two licenses that the user
| can choose from _at their discretion_. This is why GPL may work
| together with a commercial license but not MIT, as businesses
| have reasons to avoid GPL.
| riveducha wrote:
| It sounds like otrahuevada is describing the same thing,
| doesnt it? Choose a commercial license if you want support,
| or the open source license if you don't. That is how I
| understood it.
| jgilias wrote:
| What otrahuevada is describing is a situation in which the
| software developer determines under what terms a particular
| user may use the software, not a situation where the user
| makes this choice. Only the latter situation is (can be)
| dual licensing. The difference may seem subtle, but it's
| actually huge.
|
| There was a discussion about this with someone else just
| yesterday. I'll find the link.
|
| Edit:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29871302#29873586
| adament wrote:
| I understood the parent post to suggest dual licensing where
| the commercial license also gives you paid support. I.e. if
| you expect support pay up by buying a commercial license.
| Though I see no reason to conflate the two things. I would
| suggest in this case not even having a public issue tracker,
| and make your open source offering a take it or leave it
| proposition.
| [deleted]
| onion2k wrote:
| In case you're wondering what PLC4X is, it's a way of gluing
| different industrial IoC things together.
| https://plc4x.apache.org/
| phkahler wrote:
| This strikes me weird. This software seems to be under the
| "Apache" umbrella. But this guys last plea for support is on his
| own blog. Beyond the "how do we fund open source" thing in the
| piece, I'm left with too many "what's going on" questions around
| this. Does Apache support it? Why or why not?
|
| Getting back to the blog, he says the comms piece is his unique
| selling point. OK, so people don't want to support the open part
| but yet it's missing a rather important piece. Is that correct?
| The whole thing just left me a bit confused.
| kevindong wrote:
| > Note that the ASF does not pay for software development on
| any Apache projects; we rely on volunteers for all of our
| project coding work. The ASF focuses on providing the
| technical, legal, and community infrastructure for like-minded
| communities; we trust that healthy project communities will
| build their own software products.
|
| https://www.apache.org/foundation/governance/
| chrisdutz wrote:
| If you read my article carefully: I started the first steps on
| this 10 years ago ... then I was trying to build something
| proprietary, but gave up on it as it was an insane amount of
| work for one person financing himself.
|
| After that I started really getting involved with Apache and
| all sorts of projects.
|
| 5 years after my first attempt I started a new attempt, this
| time open-source and that worked from a project perspective.
|
| I wrote it in my own blog, because I am stopping free
| commmunity support for myself. It's not the project stoping
| this. Apache is a non-profit charity and it's dangerous for it
| to be accused of having monetary interests in what it does.
|
| In order to separate what I had to say from the project I
| published it on my blog and not even on the mailinglist (I sent
| a link though explaining why I'll be less active).
|
| Hope that explains things. The title of this thread however was
| a bit mis-leading.
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