[HN Gopher] Why Kreya isn't open source
___________________________________________________________________
Why Kreya isn't open source
Author : CommonGuy
Score : 76 points
Date : 2022-03-02 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kreya.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (kreya.app)
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| This should be titled, why Kreya doesn't actually understand or
| believe in open source.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Most relevant part: "With the upcoming 1.8 release of Kreya, we
| plan to include a paid version".
| vbcr wrote:
| Couldn't they have gone Intellij Idea route. Their community
| (free) version is Apache License 2.0, Ultimate (paid) version
| is closed source.
| q-big wrote:
| I respect that they have reasons not to release Kreya as open
| source. Fine.
|
| But claiming "We love open source" is a blatant lie: the article
| makes it really clear that they only love the aspects of open
| source that are to their advantage. They should better honestly
| write this.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Do you practice unconditional love? Among the people you love
| in your life...is there not a single aspect or behavior they
| exhibit that maybe annoys you a little bit or you wish was
| different?
| ertian wrote:
| "I love you, and I love it when you do favors for me...but I
| don't love you quite enough to return the favors."
|
| Everybody loves benefiting from free software. Who wouldn't?
| But if you aren't willing to contribute, then it probably
| isn't worth mentioning. All you're saying is "We love getting
| free stuff".
| remram wrote:
| They don't seem to be _unwilling to contribute_ , they just
| can't take the risk with their sole core product. They did
| release Mapperly as Apache-2.0, but to you that means
| nothing unless they open everything?
| kazinator wrote:
| Are you allowed to say you love open source or free software if
| you earn a salary for a company that makes proprietary tech?
| kstrauser wrote:
| Yes.
| aluminussoma wrote:
| Come on, that is being being pedantic about semantics. They do
| not need to be all-in with open source to like it/love
| it/appreciate it.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| No, it's not: the point is that they're basically saying "we
| love it as long as it's someone else who loses potential
| profits, not us". This is kind of a significant, and not a
| semantic minor detail.
|
| If one believes that open source something can lead to a loss
| of profits, then one must believe also that the open source
| software they have likely used has already made that
| sacrifice. It's easy to appreciate the sacrifice of others
| but then fail to make it oneself.
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| Or the authors of the OS projects didn't intend to earn
| money with it at all. Which can be perfectly the case!
| smoldesu wrote:
| "We love all-you-can-eat buffets, just not the part where you
| pay for it (so we climb through the window of our local
| Golden Corral to make our getaway)"
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| "I love all you can eat buffets but today I'm not really
| that hungry and it throws off the balance of cost to result
| so I think I'll just get a sandwich."
|
| This metaphor is alright for this actually.
| dewey wrote:
| Loving open source doesn't mean you have to open source every
| piece of code you write in your company. They open sourced some
| projects already.
|
| It could also just mean supporting projects financially, with
| developer time or filing issues.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Once you open source a project, it is out in the open.
|
| Gitlab disproves this.
|
| E.g., they have no solution on the horizon for dealing with spam
| for their open source Gitlab Community Edition. That means that
| for common use cases like having an instance open to the public
| for participation in GSoC, a gitlab-ce instance will get eaten
| alive by indonesian casino spam (or whatever the current spam
| offerings happen to be).
|
| But they _do_ have a solution for their proprietary Enterprise
| Edition which uses a proprietary blob. One of their employees
| suggested I just switch to that version because it 's apparently
| available free of charge.
|
| The other possibility is to use whatever they run on their
| gitlab.com service. In that case it's not my instance so the
| license doesn't really matter as much. Nevertheless, I'm almost
| certain they are running their proprietary spam filter there so
| it's not open source either.
|
| In conclusion, this is a perfect refutation of the author's
| point. Start open, run a service that's free of charge, and
| slowly cut off the flow of key features to the open source
| version (or simply do not care about that flow).
|
| Edit: clarifications
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Gitlab are under no obligation to open-source _specific_
| features - rather, if the software is licensed under an OSD-
| compliant license, anyone has the right to fork it and add
| their own spam filtering. That 's what openness is all about.
| [deleted]
| jancsika wrote:
| I'm telling the author that there's virtually no threat of
| anyone forking gitlab-ce, for any reason whatsoever. Even
| though "anyone has the right," as you say, and even though
| the lack of spam filtering there makes gitlab-ce essentially
| useless as a public-facing repo service.
|
| Author claimed that open sourcing would equal less money for
| author. My argument is that is not a given nor even likely--
| it depends on specifics wrt complexity of the software,
| difficulty of maintaining it, relationship of dev to users,
| etc.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I wonder - would it be a good idea to release the source code a
| few versions old? Competitors likely already have implemented
| similar things so no major corporate issues. Not open source,
| just source-available, so no issue with Amazon running off with
| the code. And power users/fans can add their own additional
| software which likely will still work with newer versions.
|
| Of course, I'm likely missing several things - I'd be grateful if
| someone could point these out. (I've been thinking of this
| strategy not just in this specific case but in general.)
| soapdog wrote:
| Well, for one thing you might be missing is that software
| doesn't change drastically between versions these days.
| Specially if you factor rapid release cycles in. So whatever is
| present in your new version is just a small set of features
| compared to all that is available on your older versions.
| People might simply be tempted by the FOSS version, not because
| it is FOSS but because it is free. A ton of people use FOSS
| software not because of all the ethos of free software but
| because it is gratis. If an old version is already useful
| enough and available as a fork, it will be hard to tempt some
| one to pay for your full version.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Yeah I get your point.
|
| I was not referring to one numerical version behind but
| rather one "version with significant features" behind, sorry
| should have been more clear.
|
| The cost point is very valid. Of course if I were to put out
| any code (I'm not a full-time developer) it would be as a
| hobby so monetization would be a bonus. I wonder if
| Kreya/others etc could offer _some_ customer service that 's
| so much of a benefit that corps want it (maybe like what Red
| Hat does). Though that'll also add complexity... a chicken
| and egg problem I suppose.
| eternityforest wrote:
| It seems like more and more companies are doing this. Kind of
| concerning. Is true FOSS going to fade away one day?
|
| Chromium no longer has sync, so we currently have _no_ usable
| browsers that support Google 's stuff.
|
| The last 15 years of open source progress seems to have been
| driven by big companies rather than the community.
|
| Community driven FOSS doesn't even seem like a reasonable idea at
| all given how much work it is, and how completely thankless it
| is, so most of what we get there is just "scratch your own itch"
| type stuff, often fairly useless outside a really specific use
| case, rather than the real pro-grade packages.
|
| Arch seems to be eating some of Debian's dev base, and Arch is
| built from the ground up for highly customized "just enough"
| setups.
|
| It seems like the community mostly just cares about privacy and
| tinkering these days.
|
| What's going to happen to the "Windows-like" side of FOSS?
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| > Chromium no longer has sync, so we currently have no usable
| browsers that support Google's stuff.
|
| Yes, Google has been not only anti-competitive, also very anti-
| FOSS. Google has been slowly making Chromium project more
| closed source. The original article of this thread is an
| evidence of Google's harmful effects on FOSS eco-system. Now
| other companies are also retreating on their open source effort
| because of Google.
| ertian wrote:
| I think it's a bit of a pendulum. The enthusiasm and excitement
| for open source was largely driven by the locked-down
| environment of the time. Access to source and high-quality free
| software with source was an exhilarating novelty.
|
| But now we're kind of saturated, and used to it. Practically
| everything is free, it's not exciting anymore. New open source
| projects feel like just a drop in the bucket. Creators don't
| get the same sense of accomplishment from releasing new code.
|
| It may be necessary for a whole new generation to experience
| how shitty it is to be stuck with for-pay locked-down software
| that gradually rots beneath you, juggling library licences,
| phoning IT help lines for trivial problems, and having to ship
| every few years to some new (expensive) hotness.
| ahelwer wrote:
| I don't know, there are a few companies I've seen around lately
| that have an open source "core" with proprietary business add-
| ons. Teleport and Tailscale for example. The Tailscale CEO
| wrote a post about it recently that got traction on here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29736369
| otikik wrote:
| For an app like this, open sourcing non-business-critical parts
| of the app a perfectly valid way to go about it, like they are
| doing with the templating library. You still get visibility,
| testing and the occasional bugfix from the community.
|
| Another possible way to go about it is open-core: Open source
| version, with more advanced features on a closed-source solution.
| Contributors to the open source version have to waive off some of
| their rights in order for this to work, though. There are tools
| that automate most of that these days.
| [deleted]
| svnpenn wrote:
| > First off, we are huge fans of open source projects. For
| example, Kreya uses the open source scripting language Scriban.
|
| I really don't know how you overcome to cognitive dissonance to
| continue after this. Call me naive, but it's pretty scummy to
| take someone else's open source work, add some extra code, and
| slap a pricetag on it.
|
| Also doing that violates most copyleft licences.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Looks like scriban is BSD 2-Clause. It's perfectly fine to use
| it in commercial products.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| > Also doing that violates most copyleft licences.
|
| How would adding some extra code and slapping a price tag on it
| violate any copyleft license? Name a single one that forbids
| it.
| detaro wrote:
| you are missing "... and not share the source code ..." in
| your question, which is clearly the context here.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| If that's the context, then what point is the statement
| trying to make?
|
| The addition of the code and the slapping of the price tag
| has no bearing whatsoever on copyleft compliance, and that
| you have to redistribute the source of the combined work
| along with the binary under a compatible license is just
| calling water wet.
| hedora wrote:
| You can do that, but you can't prevent the first person
| you sell it to from redistributing your additional code
| for free.
|
| This is basically Red Hat's business model, so making it
| work is possible, but they're effectively selling
| services, not software licences.
| cpach wrote:
| _"Also doing that violates most copyleft licences."_
|
| Scriban isn't copyleft though.
|
| https://github.com/scriban/scriban/blob/master/license.txt
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Scriban is BSD so they knew what they were doing. It was always
| a possibilty, they made a choice.
|
| https://github.com/scriban/scriban/blob/master/license.txt
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| If the scriban people didn't want that to happen, they
| could have used a license (e.g., GPL) that prohibits it.
|
| Some of us use BSD or MIT licenses precisely for that
| reason. I'm happy if someone uses my MIT-licensed code in a
| commercial product. That's why I chose that license.
|
| It's not "morally reprehensible" in any way.
| jaywalk wrote:
| It's not "technically" legal, it's fully legal in every
| sense. And using someone's code for a purpose they
| explicitly allowed is about as far from morally
| reprehensible as it gets.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If you don't want people to base closed source software on
| your work, then you shouldn't be granting them a license
| that explicitly permits them to do exactly that. AGPL is an
| option if that is what you want.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The rules of the game are known at the start.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| Here's a possibly novel take - the modern interview process for
| software developers is causing more and more projects to move to
| these non-FOSS licensing terms.
|
| "Wait, what? What could convoluted interview processes possibly
| have to do with licensing?"
|
| Well, developers need to make money _somehow_. In the past,
| releasing your software as FOSS allowed you to display your
| skills for software development and feature planning out in the
| open. Often, you 'd be hired on the basis of those demonstrable
| skills at a paying job even if you didn't make money on the
| product itself. Multiple engineers I know went through very
| abbreviated hiring processes, being pretty quickly waved through
| if they had worked on FOSS in any significant capacity.
|
| Today, that's not the case at all, and any interview process for
| a high-paying job seems to have 5-6 rounds of arduous interviews,
| no exceptions. I have conducted around fifty or so interview
| processes for dev positions at a non-FAANG company, and "look at
| the candidate's FOSS experience" isn't on a single one of them. I
| don't think I could get any major FOSS contributor exempted from
| a single interview process at my company on the basis of their
| experience. The case of the Homebrew creator and Google is
| reasonably well-known [1].
|
| Well, the natural response is going to be for them to work on
| their own product, and not open up the source code unless they
| get paid for it. Which is what software devs are doing these
| days, in increasing numbers.
|
| ----------------------------------------
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768
| abeyer wrote:
| Sounds plausible, but I dunno how prevalent that really is,
| though. Do that many people write OSS code just to get hired?
|
| I've never once made a contribution or started a project
| primarily because I thought it would get me a job or other
| professional recognition. I contribute to projects I think are
| worthwhile, to those that I benefit from and want to give back
| to, and to things that "scratch an itch" either personally or
| professionally.
| bogwog wrote:
| I think it's extremely common. Just look at all of the
| LinkedIn profiles with links to Github. Schools tell their
| students to do this because it will help them get hired, even
| though that's probably wrong in the vast majority of cases.
|
| If you're looking for a job, don't have a network/personal
| connections, don't have an amazing resume, etc then what can
| you do? Either spend months grinding leetcode so you can get
| an entry level job working on ads, or contribute/build
| something (open source or not) to get your name out there and
| pad your resume.
| abeyer wrote:
| From what I've seen the vast majority of that just produces
| lots of copies of tutorial projects repeated over and over
| again, as that's far easier than actually coming up with a
| new project that's of use to other people, or getting
| involved, learning the process, and becoming a contributor
| on an existing one.
|
| I've seen that advice everywhere, but _never_ actually seen
| someone become an ongoing OSS contributor as a result. I'm
| sure it happens, but I question how often and how much of
| an impact it actually is.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > Do that many people write OSS code just to get hired?
|
| No, I meant that in the past, it was a significant incentive
| to release code that you were already working on for a
| company or product as FOSS, i.e. "Even if this company or job
| doesn't work out, the open-sourced code is a good way to
| demonstrate my technical capability". I am talking real,
| commercially capable tools.
|
| I would say that not too many people _wrote_ OSS code to get
| hired, but a high number of people might have open-sourced
| existing code on the basis that it might help them get hired
| some day. If you haven 't tried to build a company or product
| based on your code, then this wouldn't apply to you (unlike
| the Kreya devs).
| yellowapple wrote:
| The "we want to make money" argument is pretty weak when desktop
| software like Ardour demonstrates that it's still possible and
| feasible.
|
| The "we don't want to be stuck with a too-permissive license"
| argument is also pretty weak when there are a _lot_ of licenses
| besides MIT (and when they, being the copyright holders, can
| relicense at any time; sure, the cat 's out of the bag for
| already-released code, but for future versions that ain't
| necessarily the case).
| traverseda wrote:
| Personally I'm a fan of MariaDB's "Business Source License".
| Enough of the benefits of open source that I can trust your
| product, but enough of the benefits of closed source that you can
| use whatever monetization strategy you want.
|
| It seems like a pretty good compromise to me.
| didip wrote:
| Can you explain to me briefly what does business source license
| mean?
| traverseda wrote:
| Shared source that becomes truly open source after 5 years.
| This means that if the company managing the source code does
| really poorly someone else can fork it commercially, but only
| the version from 5 years ago. This protects users in the
| cases the managing company goes out of business, or goes
| evil, but still lets them put in arbitrary commercial
| restrictions.
| paxys wrote:
| > And even if we created or found an applicable license, who
| would enforce it? We are a small team of four software engineers
| from Switzerland and we have neither the knowledge nor the means
| to report license violators.
|
| Everyone who goes "just release it under XYZ license" misses this
| one key part. There are next to zero examples of small companies
| successfully enforcing their software copyright. It is expensive
| and takes a team of lawyers to do so.
| kemitchell wrote:
| > There are next to zero examples of small companies
| successfully enforcing their software copyright.
|
| Not so. Consider: If it did happen, would you hear about it?
| Consider also: Why do huge, multinational companies invest so
| much in open license compliance programs and program offices?
|
| I have personally helped small companies and even solo
| developers enforce license terms for their software. And I have
| seen plenty of instances of developers doing so without paid
| lawyer help. I have also helped small companies and solo
| developers sell commercial licenses for projects under
| copyleft, noncommercial, and other licenses meaningfully
| limiting permissions. Those customers have the source code. If
| they could simply flaunt the rules, there'd be little cause to
| pay for exceptions.
|
| Why aren't these stories all over my blog? Because I can't run
| around blurting client confidential information. California
| Business and Professions Code 6068: "It is the duty of an
| attorney to do all of the following: ... (e)(1) To maintain
| inviolate the confidence, and at every peril to himself or
| herself to preserve the secrets, of his or her client."
|
| There are exceptions. Sometimes at least the first part of the
| process happens in public, as when a company gets called out by
| a dev on Twitter. Those tweets are out there. And they can work
| when the developer's primary leverage is public relations. That
| tends to be true against violators that sell or hire among
| developers.
|
| There are also takedown requests under the Digital Millennium
| Copyright Act. Sometimes, getting a company's repository, web
| app, or other online presence taken down for copyright
| infringement is all the leverage a developer needs to make a
| violator stop, or even kick off a settlement conversation. And
| DMCA notices are definitely something devs can submit
| themselves. I have represented clients on the receiving ends of
| many such requests, some of which also involved social media
| name-and-shame campaigns.
|
| When settlements do get reached between private parties on
| license violations, they're almost always confidential, or
| neither side has any incentive to be loud. The activist
| organizations doing enforcement, like SFC, tend to see the
| press releases announcing settlements as big parts of the
| payoff for enforcement. But they are the exception, not the
| rule. Search around the Web for "settlement agreement form".
| I'd bet nearly every one you find has a built in
| "confidentiality" or "nondisclosure" part built in.
| notyourday wrote:
| It costs too much money to enforce, takes too much time and
| payout is very small even if you win ( you won't -- you will
| probably settle for a fraction after wasting years of your
| time and hundreds of thousands of dollars )
|
| Source: a friendly customer is an attorney specializing in
| just that.
| kemitchell wrote:
| I do this open-related law thing for a living. I know
| fellow specialists, and there aren't that many of us. I'm
| not aware of any colleague in private practice specializing
| in open software license enforcement as such. Even staff
| attorneys at open source foundations that enforce split
| their time across advisory, compliance, and other matters.
| And those foundations don't do so many enforcement claims
| anyway, in absolute terms.
|
| If you know an exception, that's great, please connect me.
| kyle@kemitchell.com. If they're actually specialized in
| high-stakes copyright litigation among firms with legal
| budgets in the millions, there's no need. I know those
| folks. I wouldn't refer small or solo firms at their rates.
| I'd suggest they may not be adequately adjusting for scale.
| Nobody sees the whole industry.
|
| As for the view from my own two eyes, I have absolutely
| billed solo-developer clients for work on settlements and
| license deals following license violations who were happy
| to pay and came away with a nice profit. I have also seen
| developers drive lucrative deals pointing out violations of
| license terms without any attorney assistance at all.
| abeyer wrote:
| Is this less true for commercial licenses, though?
|
| If someone's going to violate your licensing terms, they don't
| really care which license they violate, and it's not like it's
| hard to find pirated software.
| lolinder wrote:
| If a company has to go onto a pirate website to get a copy,
| that's going to throw up red flags in all but truly corrupt
| organizations.
|
| If, on the other hand, a piece of software can be downloaded
| directly off the company's website, it's pretty easy to gloss
| over the fine print that says " _if_ you comply with terms X,
| Y, and Z ".
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| It's very hard to find pirated source code though.
| yellowapple wrote:
| It's almost trivial to create it yourself for anything
| written in C# or another .NET language. ILSpy and similar
| tools have existed for quite some time.
| abeyer wrote:
| True in many cases, but I suspect the ones violating the
| license are more interested in getting free benefit of the
| software than they are in the philosophy of making source
| available.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I don't see why there's a need for this explanation. If your end
| goal is to sell the software you make you shouldn't open source
| it.
|
| The main use case for open source is software you USE, you
| release it into the wild so others also add to it and it becomes
| better for everyone to USE. See programming languages or
| frameworks. You're not selling the OSS, you're getting others to
| improve the OSS that you then use to create a closed source
| product.
|
| Open sourcing software you intend to sell means it's either a
| trojan horse or someone else just sells it (in one case
| dishonest, in another case you get exploited).
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| I'd like to see source trusts like the code is given to an
| authority that will make it Apache/MIT/BSD if conditions are met.
| Let the creators draw the line in the sand. Company goes
| bankrupt. No new release for 3 years. Or maybe always release the
| code from 5 years commit by commit. Just to prevent abandonware
| and lost sources. Should be sufficient to preserve commercial
| viability.
| hedora wrote:
| The Business Source License more or less achieves this.
| q-big wrote:
| > The Business Source License more or less achieves this.
|
| The Business Source License is not an open source license.
|
| Sources:
|
| > https://mariadb.com/bsl11/
|
| > https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html
|
| "The Business Source License (this document, or the
| "License") is not an Open Source license. However, the
| Licensed Work will eventually be made available under an Open
| Source License, as stated in this License."
| coder543 wrote:
| You seem to be missing the whole point of this thread. They
| wanted something like a "source trust". The BSL provides
| something like that, as long as you aren't worried about
| people breaking the license without concern for legal
| consequence.
|
| The code eventually becomes open source after certain
| criteria are met. No one in this thread claimed that BSL-
| licensed code is immediately open source.
| pid-1 wrote:
| GitLab does something like that if I'm not mistaken.
|
| Features start in the most expensive tier, then tricke down and
| end up in OSS.
| notyourday wrote:
| Gitlab was a VC backed firm.
| amelius wrote:
| And how would you handle the security aspects of not having the
| source code?
|
| For instance, not all companies are happy with third parties
| that have access to their data, either directly or indirectly.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Code disclosure if company goes bankrupt triggers a counter-
| incentive: Your customers has a stake in you going bankrupt.
| jka wrote:
| ...if your customers believe that maintaining your code can
| be done more cost-effectively than the rates you're currently
| charging them.
|
| (and note that cost-effectiveness != cost -- they're
| correlated, but not the same)
| dTal wrote:
| Why would your customers want you to stop maintaining the
| software they use and have _already paid for_?
| hermitdev wrote:
| If you're of sufficient size that you are a risk to a
| company's bottom line, I've got news for you: they probably
| already have a stake in you going bankrupt. Companies buy
| insurance against their business partners going bankrupt all
| the time. One such means is called a credit default swap
| (CDS).
| mattigames wrote:
| In that line of logic your competition has a new incentive
| for you to NOT go bankrupt (perhaps buy your company before
| that happens?)
| chakkepolja wrote:
| Isn't that the deal with QT?
| mooreds wrote:
| Are you looking for something like the business source license?
|
| https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-mariadb/
| boarnoah wrote:
| I wonder if a nice source available license comes about, similar
| to how we have common ones for FOSS like MIT which are well
| understood and easy to apply.
|
| A source available license allowing for personal modifications,
| sharing with other licensees, contributing fixes that might not
| be a priority to the dev is present with projects like Unreal
| Engine and a few other examples I can think of. However they are
| all bespoke licensing.
| Sytten wrote:
| We are having a similar discussion for the startup I am working
| on (Caido.io). We are bootstrap and would like to make a living
| out of our work. We just don't have the luxury of VC money where
| we can open source and worry about making money later.
|
| Our compromise is that we are open sourcing anything that is not
| the core of the application for now. If we have enterprise /
| cloud features down the line, we will open source the core.
|
| I would really like to live in a world when open source doesn't
| necessarily mean gratis or direct copy by a competitor, but I
| have yet to see that work for desktop applications.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| I love open source, but commercial software is completely fine
| in my opinion. I think the idea that there needs to be a way
| how open source can be monetized is very damaging to the idea
| itself. You can do that through support and expertise of
| course, but can also sell the software itself.
|
| You can also open source it later if you are established but
| you can also choose not to. The advantage of open source is
| that you may be able to leverage the ingenuity of people
| outside your company, get them invested in your software. I
| believe most are in open source to share code with each other,
| not necessarily to build a business.
|
| Most people that make money with open source don't really offer
| the software, they offer the whole package of a solution that
| can solve a problem for business customers. But not every form
| of software can fit into such a scenario.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Being able to make a living is more important than open
| sourcing. Keep in mind that these other open source companies
| likely took that decision because they thought they would earn
| more money than keeping it closed source. It's a user funnel.
| krapp wrote:
| >I would really like to live in a world when open source
| doesn't necessarily mean gratis or direct copy by a competitor,
| but I have yet to see that work for desktop applications.
|
| What would open source possibly mean, if not at least the
| latter? If you're a free software person then competitors being
| able to directly copy your code for nothing is part of the
| moral imperative you chose to stand for. Absent that
| imperative, open source still allows for proprietary sub-
| licensing.
|
| You don't _have_ to open source your code if you don 't want
| to, nor do you _have_ to give it away for free if you do.
| Sytten wrote:
| For me open source is to give the assurance to users that we
| are not doing shady things and that no matter what the
| business does they will continue to be able to use their
| software.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| What assurance does it give? I could "open source" the cmd
| files of my go app but keep the core libraries proprietary
| and the only folks who would call me out on it are the ones
| who understand what I did, everyone else will just see some
| folders in git and releases filled with binaries that
| aren't FOSS and think nothing of it. There are numerous
| examples of open source software doing shady things like
| telemetry and calling home too.
|
| It also doesn't necessarily guarantee future use of the
| software unless someone is going to step up and maintain
| it. Keeping software current/compatible is quite onerous,
| especially for GUI apps.
| krapp wrote:
| ... and how do you give users that assurance? By giving
| them free access to the source code so they can validate
| it, rewrite it and redistribute it if they want.
| q-big wrote:
| > I would really like to live in a world when open source
| doesn't necessarily mean gratis or direct copy by a competitor
|
| Open source does not mean "gratis". See for example this
| historic order form of software offered by the Free Software
| Foundation:
|
| >
| https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/bull/17/gnu_bulletin_940...
|
| Open source just implies that by economic principles, the
| market price for the respective software will soon converge to
| the marginal cost.
|
| Just to give another example how open source software might
| have a price: start a Kickstarter campaign which will release a
| software product as open source as soon as, say, 100,000 USD or
| EUR is reached.
| adwn wrote:
| > _Open source does not mean "gratis". See for example this
| historic order form of software offered by the Free Software
| Foundation:_
|
| If the best example in support of your thesis is a "historic
| order form" (not even a revenue statement!) from 30 years
| ago, way before the ubiquitous availability of high-speed
| Internet, then you might want to rethink your position.
| q-big wrote:
| > If the best example in support of your thesis is a
| "historic order form"
|
| That is why I gave a second example.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Your second example with Kickstarter stretch goals
| doesn't change much imho, it's a one-time payment which
| won't really work long-term for a company, and after the
| release it's the same situation again. In the end that's
| still not payment for the software itself or the license
| to use it, but for development with the typical risk of
| investment.
| q-big wrote:
| > it's a one-time payment
|
| The claim was about open source being gratis:
|
| > I would really like to live in a world when open source
| doesn't necessarily mean gratis
|
| and not about being able to enforce recurring payments.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| Selling units of something is different from one-time
| patronage. There's no way you'll employ more than
| yourself by doing 100k fund raisers for your work, and
| Software often requires teams.
|
| If this were economically viable, it'd be happening
| often.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| > Open source does not mean "gratis". See for example this
| historic order form of software offered by the Free Software
| Foundation:
|
| That's the example that's been shown for the last 30 years,
| Richard Stallman making a buck selling copies of Emacs and
| GCC during a period in the 80s and early 90s, when
| infrastructure constraints made it cheaper, or feasible in
| the first place, for the user to order software to be shipped
| on physical media rather than downloading it from the net.
|
| Either there are no more examples of businesses that have
| lived off selling copies of Free desktop software, or the FSF
| really doesn't care enough to look for one in the last 20
| years.
| blagie wrote:
| Dunno. Recently, I had good luck with AGPL dual-license models.
| Most competitors wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot-pole. At
| the same time, we could build a contributor community. It cut
| off some sales, but build far, far more.
|
| I've seen other organizations do well with cloud hosting or
| support models. There are plenty of open source unicorn
| companies doing those sorts of things. Highest-margin "price
| doesn't matter" contracts will generally go to the author of a
| tool.
|
| It really depends on the business plan. I've been pretty
| successful with both open and closed source models, and in
| retrospect, I think they wouldn't have worked swapped around.
|
| The logic you're giving doesn't really make sense: "We just
| don't have the luxury of VC money where we can open source and
| worry about making money later." or "Our compromise is that we
| are open sourcing anything that is not the core of the
| application for now. If we have enterprise / cloud features
| down the line, we will open source the core."
|
| Open source has significant business upsides. For example:
|
| - If I'm buying from a small startup, open source reduces the
| risk of what happens when the startup goes under, or if a
| business goes Oracle and decides to take advantage of me once
| they have lock-in.
|
| - It builds ecosystems, networks, traction, visibility, and
| distribution. For small companies, those are hard problems.
|
| - It allows external contributions. Conversely, on the customer
| side, if a vendor won't fix a bug, I can.
|
| - On the customer side, it gives me transparency into roadmaps
| and development.
|
| Right now, I'm now at a big company, and I generally tend to
| buy open source. The build-versus-buy decision is purely
| economic, and economics usually goes towards "buy." Open-source
| gives most of the advantages of "build."
|
| The relative cost/value of those is an analysis that depends on
| your specific business model. Making the decision otherwise --
| pretending open-source is some kind of charity -- is bad
| business.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| AGPL has a ton of problems even as an open source license.
| Just use a source available or creative commons license, AGPL
| isn't helping your case.
| bogwog wrote:
| What kind of problems does AGPL have? Seems like a great
| choice for someone with commercial plans since it gives you
| a strong competitive advantage against anyone who thinks of
| just reselling your software/service.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| https://deavid.wordpress.com/2020/08/02/affero-gpl-is-
| toxic-...
| bogwog wrote:
| That post actually supports my point. He made some bad
| arguments against AGPL, but this key part highlights the
| point I was making:
|
| > ... as well of depriving them from having no
| competitive advantage for making any suitable profit from
| it.
|
| That's exactly what I want if I'm planning to make money
| from my open source project. I can release it as open
| source so that users can study it, contribute, audit it,
| self host it, etc. while at the same time avoid worrying
| about an Elastic Search situation.
|
| Obviously, whoever wrote that is coming at it from a
| different perspective than I.
| Sytten wrote:
| Good points, like I said we are still discussing it
| internally and I like some of the points you made.
|
| For now our target customers are individuals that happen to
| be very good with computers so we can't expect juicy support
| contracts. That is why we think that if we can pivot to that
| model (enterprise support) open source would make sense.
|
| We try to as transparent as possible in the meantime with
| public roadmap, open sourcing non critical parts, etc. At the
| moment we don't want external code contributions to the core
| so I think our model make sense.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Dunno. Recently, I had good luck with AGPL dual-license
| models. Most competitors wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot-
| pole. At the same time, we could build a contributor
| community. It cut off some sales, but build far, far more.
|
| Not sure about building a community around that. AFAICT most
| people don't want to make contributions under a CLA knowing
| that you can build the commercial version incorporating their
| work. Some will, but I look at things like QCad -> LibreCAD
| and it just didn't work - the "open" version of the
| commercial branch is ahead of the community one now.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| I like the idea of a promise that all code will be open sourced
| at a 2 to 3 year delay. I have seen this model in use, and it
| disincentivizes competitor forks (especially if that open source
| is GPL) while still allowing paid versions.
| skadamat wrote:
| There's open source backend software and there's full-stack / GUI
| oriented software and in my limited experience, I don't think the
| latter always makes sense.
|
| Smarter people than me have articulated their points about that:
|
| - https://blog.wolfram.com/2019/04/02/why-wolfram-tech-isnt-op...
| - https://macwright.com/2021/12/07/sharing-in-the-presence-of-...
|
| "Placemark, the application, won't be open source. I didn't even
| consider the possibility: open sourcing the application layer of
| a product just doesn't work. You get all the downsides of
| community support, white-labeling, process friction, confusion
| around why people have to pay, confusion around whether to use
| the open source version or the paid version, and none of the
| benefits."
|
| I think the dream is to open source the standards, protocols,
| backend engines, etc. But man, whenever you have to think heavily
| about a user interface, things get really hard. How do you
| decentralize design of something?
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| > First off, we are huge fans of open source projects.
|
| This one sentence makes the whole post come off as disingenuous
| to me. Who isn't a fan of free work?
| remram wrote:
| The rest of the article explains why they won't release _this
| product_ opensource even though they love it. It is not
| disingenuous.
|
| They released Mapperly under Apache-2.0, but I don't know if
| you read that far.
|
| If I tell you that "I love NodeJS but this specific project
| needs to run on embedded so I used C", it doesn't diminish my
| love of NodeJS or make it disingenuous. Love doesn't mean
| you'll always pick the thing _no matter what_ , just a strong
| preference _over the other possible options_.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| > The rest of the article explains why they won't release
| opensource even though they love it. It is not disingenuous.
|
| No it doesn't. This is like someone saying, I love poor
| people and helping them but I love capitalism more because
| then I can charge those poor people in order for them to get
| help. Might as well just say what they really love which is
| money.
| remram wrote:
| Who is poor? How does needing money make you love
| capitalism?
|
| How do you personally pay rent if you feel that not giving
| every single thing for free is wrong?
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| > Might as well just say what they really love which is
| money.
|
| Thanks for understanding my point. They are just saying
| they "love open source" to ingratiate themselves to the
| reader but it's a meaningless statement because who
| wouldn't love free work? The entire article that follows
| comes off like a long-winded rationalization. They would be
| better off saying "we don't open source our product because
| we don't want to" I would respect that more and it would
| save me time.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Desktop apps are a special case
|
| As someone who remembers when most apps were desktop apps this
| seems a strange point. I suppose it's a better look than what the
| actual header for this section should be which is "we want to
| sell this for money"
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