[HN Gopher] Misrepresenting open source for business benefit
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Misrepresenting open source for business benefit
Author : ssddanbrown
Score : 59 points
Date : 2022-06-27 17:17 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (danb.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (danb.me)
| jzebedee wrote:
| Particularly with the last anecdote, it seems that the evergreen
| problem with open-source licenses is not the choice of license or
| the particulars of the terms, but enforcing the terms at all.
|
| Bad actors have free reign to threaten and intimidate fair use
| development. While FOSS developers are having to defend
| themselves from these spurious claims, they have little recourse
| to pursue real infringement of their work.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _Bad actors have free reign to threaten and intimidate fair
| use development._
|
| IANAL; I want to avoid calling the last example "fair use
| development", as "fair use" -- which is a copyright concept --
| is not being relied upon here: there was a license (the MIT
| license) issued with the code, with which the "{Developer}"
| was, AFAICT from the OP, obeying. I do agree that the
| development/use by "{Developer}" appears "fair" (in the more
| colloquial/common sense of the word), given the information
| presented.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Champagne and Parmigiano-Reggiano both have their definitions
| codified in the law, and it's illegal to use those names on your
| wine or cheese if you don't meet them. Maybe we should do the
| same for Free Software and Open Source.
| krono wrote:
| FYI: Trademarks are a thing - international registration is
| really expensive, though, and then you've also got to be ready
| and have the resources required to defend it legally.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think the strategy would be to try to get it done within
| the EU. If people had to change their marketing materials to
| sell to Europe, they'd probably take out any spurious or
| misleading references to FOSS from the beginning. The EU has
| very much shown that it is concerned and willing to act over
| descriptions/names when it comes to trade.
| Nomentatus wrote:
| Not to mention "organic" which now has a legal definition (not
| an ideal one, but still.)
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Not to mention "organic" which now has a legal definition
| (not an ideal one, but still.)
|
| Personally, I always preferred the _scientific_ definition[0]
| over the marketing /legal one.
|
| [0] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/organic
| jrockway wrote:
| Words in English often have multiple meanings. Nobody is
| confused that you can use a string in a computer program,
| or use string to annoy your cat or tie up a package.
| "Organic" is the same way; when it's on food, it's not
| referring to the branch of chemistry. No computer scientist
| is confused about string being a physical thing. No organic
| chemist is confused by the "organic" label on their food.
|
| My takeaway is that we should start asking mechanical
| engineers to "reverse a string" in their interviews,
| though.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Words in English often have multiple meanings.
|
| How is that relevant here, given that I said I
| _preferred_ one definition over another?
|
| Did I say I was confused? Did I even imply that others
| might be confused?
|
| Did you somehow think I was unaware that some words have
| multiple meanings, or did you just ignore that which
| didn't fit how you chose to read my comment?
| jrockway wrote:
| Does it matter that you prefer one definition over
| another? If you want to talk to other people, you have to
| use their definition.
|
| Every time organic food is mentioned on HN, someone is
| quick to point out "haha does that mean food that
| contains carbon haha", and the word simply doesn't mean
| that in this context. It's tiring.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Does it matter that you prefer one definition over
| another?
|
| Well, (obviously, since I bothered to post about it) yes
| it does -- to me.
|
| Are you somehow claiming that I _must_ prefer something
| just because it 's in the vernacular?
|
| >Every time organic food is mentioned on HN, someone is
| quick to point out "haha does that mean food that
| contains carbon haha", and the word simply doesn't mean
| that in this context. It's tiring.
|
| Well, "organic" _does_ (you know, ISTR someone saying
| that words sometimes have multiple meanings. I wonder who
| that could have been?) mean "contains carbon."
|
| Perhaps you should have a nap now, as you seem to be a
| little cranky.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think people are desperately trying to figure out what
| your point is. Are you trying to demonstrate that you
| know what the word "organic" means? Or are you just
| talking about things you like? Do you like ice cream?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I think people are desperately trying to figure out what
| your point is.
|
| In case causality is an unfamiliar concept, my point was
| to reply to another comment[0] (which made a value
| judgement vis-a-vis the "legal" definition of the word)
| with my thoughts.
|
| Desperately? Really? That assertion is right up there
| with "Bad grammar is the leading cause of death in the
| Western Hemisphere." In case my point isn't clear here,
| I'll clarify by saying that both are ridiculous
| assertions.
|
| >Are you trying to demonstrate that you know what the
| word "organic" means?
|
| Nope. Just expressing myself.
|
| I'm really not clear why some folks are so put off by
| dictionary definitions, especially something so
| uncontroversial. Perhaps some folks (like myself) have
| way too much time on their hands.
|
| >Or are you just talking about things you like? Do you
| like ice cream?
|
| Actually, I said _prefer_ , not "like." While there is
| some confluence in meaning there, those are _not_
| synonyms.
|
| And yes. I am fond of ice cream. Thanks for asking!
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31898793
| dgb23 wrote:
| There are "business benefit" use-cases that don't fall into
| either of those categories. Note that the article doesn't claim
| that this is an exhaustive list, nor that there aren't positive
| cases. I just want to mention and discuss some of them.
|
| I keep them general, because those are my interpretations. But
| you'll probably recognize similar things in many other projects.
|
| One compelling example, comes from a maintainer and author of
| several popular repositories that are quite powerful and would be
| hairy and time consuming to re-implement. Typical high-impact,
| foundational library code. Some of his arguments for making them
| open source seems to be primarily two fold, one is not as
| directly business related:
|
| He just wants to provide things for others to use and sees
| benefit in that, so it's both altruistic and fun, but also due to
| getting more use, his libraries are more exposed and hardened.
|
| The other one is simply not wanting to repeat the same work over
| and over when switching projects or employees. This is a really
| important one IMO. Foundational libraries are ridiculously
| expensive to re-implement in every project for every employee.
| It's just inefficient. But by open sourcing them everyone who
| uses them gets to benefit from everyone else. Everyone gets to be
| more efficient and potentially have higher quality code that is
| maintained over a much longer time.
| ssddanbrown wrote:
| To confirm, my article focuses on benefits to business based
| upon their (In my opinion/understanding)
| misrepresentations/misunderstandings of their licenses, not
| business benefits of Open Source in general. I am a big fan of
| Open Source and realise that there are indeed many benefits.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Like to publish under the Apache 2.0 license when I can, because
| no one can predict the public or commercial use-cases 5 years
| from now. Also, I tend to look at software as being transitory in
| nature, and only the underlying algorithm reincarnates if proven
| useful (the GNU is likely immortal).
|
| The shareware model of the 1980's stopped being a viable business
| plan a long time ago. Also, most recent Desktop Application
| utilities have been replaced by mobile app users (IRC became
| twitter, BBS became facebook, usenet forsale became ebay, email
| became webmail or telegram... and so on... and so on..)
|
| The only time we tend to close software is for business reasons
| where IP release would cause market fragmentation and or sales
| degradation. i.e. a lesson the 187+ fart app publishers would
| never understand.
| jchw wrote:
| I dunno if the author is here, but regardless, I have one
| additional project to name and shame: Qt. Honestly, Qt's
| misrepresentation of open source is so bad that it truly ought to
| be against the law.
|
| Here, see for yourself some of the tactics they use:
|
| https://www.qt.io/download-open-source
|
| > This dual-licensing model is based on the principal of quid pro
| quo - roughly meaning "something for something."
|
| > Simply put, this is how it works: In return for the value you
| receive from using Qt to create your application, you are
| expected to give back by contributing to Qt or buying Qt.
|
| No you're not. You're expected to follow the license agreement,
| which requires neither of those things. You can't even argue an
| interpretation where GPL requires you to contribute back to Qt,
| and most of Qt is LGPL, which requires even less. The closest it
| gets is that if you patch Qt, you have to publish the changes.
| That's a pretty stark contrast there...
|
| This entire page is full of fearmongering crap designed to scare
| people out of trying to use the open source version. It, of
| course, has some other very curious issues, like that giant
| blurry link which is actually an image with text, but what is
| perhaps most interesting to me personally is their _other_ page
| about open source:
|
| https://www.qt.io/licensing/open-source-lgpl-obligations
|
| > The primary open-source license is the GNU Lesser General
| Public License v. 3 ("LGPL"). With the LGPL license option, you
| can use the essential libraries and some add-on libraries of Qt.
| This allows for keeping your application source code closed as
| long as all the requirements of LGPLv3 are met. More details are
| available below.
|
| They go on to describe the restrictions. Some of them are fair,
| as they point out legitimate places where businesses may not like
| the terms, such as GPL 3's anti-TiVoization rules or their DRM
| agreement. However, some of the obligations are basically pre-
| fulfilled when you use the official SDK, which is what the
| previous download page was for. For example, if you use the
| official SDK, you will get dynamically-linked Qt. This is good
| enough to satisfy the relinking rules of LGPL. However, they
| never actually say this anywhere, since it would probably scare
| less people into a commercial license. Even with that grievance,
| this page is _significantly_ more reasonable than the page that
| _most_ people see, right before attempting to download the SDK
| (which, BTW, requires that you log in, even for the open source
| version. So build it yourself. It 's easy.)
|
| Due to their recent shenanigans with the KDE Free Qt agreement,
| I'm inclined to not believe a charitable interpretation of what's
| going on here. I want Qt to be successful and sustainable of
| course, but not like this.
| tebruno99 wrote:
| You don't have to use the sdk install and probably don't want
| to if You're developing Qt OSS software. Target the
| distribution or build it Yourself.
| https://wiki.qt.io/Get_the_Source
| jchw wrote:
| I agree. Quoteth myself:
|
| > So build it yourself. It's easy.
|
| I've been doing that, too. Hell, I've got SDK builds so small
| that they work great on Github Actions. And obviously, on
| Linux, you can just grab dev files and Qt Creator right out
| of your repos, making it even simpler.
| zugi wrote:
| Agreed, I love Qt and use it a lot. But they triple license it
| (GPL, LGPL, Commercial) and then _strongly imply_ that you need
| a Commercial license to develop any commercial software with
| it.
|
| That's just not the case. You are perfectly free to choose the
| GPL or LGPL license for commercial development, as long as you
| understand and fully comply with the selected license.
|
| I don't blame them for trying to limit their binary installers
| to paid customers or registered users, but building from source
| is always an option, and gives you more control over
| dependencies and library versions anyway.
| ssddanbrown wrote:
| Yeah, I must admit, I know I've looked at using QT in the past
| but walked away to use something else due to the wording and
| mass of information.
| zugi wrote:
| Ignore the FUD (even though much of it is from Qt
| themselves.) If you can comply with the GPL or LGPL, then you
| can use Qt.
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| As a general rule, any project that mixes proprietary software in
| an "open source" repo (like the cal.com example) is a potential
| landmine. You have to be extra careful if you try to re-implement
| a proprietary feature since cloning the repo necessarily pulls in
| the proprietary bits. It's better to treat the projects as if
| they are proprietary,
| ssddanbrown wrote:
| Absolutely. With that cal.com example it took me quite a while
| to check that (by my own interpretation) a fork/clone won't
| instantly be against their license terms since the legal-
| writing can be hard to fully interpret. In addition, this is
| not mentioned in the `License` section of the readme, you're
| required to dig down a layer.
| rathboma wrote:
| As an open source project maintainer [1] with a set of
| proprietary add-ons, I totally understand the project
| maintainer desire to have a single repository with a single
| version, single build system, and a single place for issues.
|
| I've considered doing the same thing, but it's all the legal
| complexity that stops me, doesn't seem worth it.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/beekeeper-studio/beekeeper-studio
| ssddanbrown wrote:
| For sure, In my opinion I think this is totally fine as long
| as it's clearly specified in the likely first point of
| contact (Generally the readme on GitHub) & license file and
| as long as the other licenses aren't breached upon
| clone/download of the source alone, potentially acting as a
| license trap.
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