[HN Gopher] The Asymmetry of Open Source
___________________________________________________________________
The Asymmetry of Open Source
Author : ingve
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-06-11 08:28 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (matt.life)
(TXT) w3m dump (matt.life)
| optimalsolver wrote:
| >These sections should make companies nervous, because it means
| they need to assume full responsibility when relying on software
| in their multi-million-dollar business that was probably
| developed by a tired young parent or college student who didn't
| get enough sleep.
|
| But those are exactly the same people who would be developing
| their software if they brought the work in-house.
|
| Off topic, but doesn't the success of open source software
| torpedo the claims by many companies that you need on-site
| collaboration for this kind of work? Even here on HN you see many
| comments going on about magical conversations in hallways, yada
| yada. But in reality, many of the software projects that millions
| use every day were built and are currently maintained by teams
| who have not only never met, but probably don't even know what
| the other team members look like.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Having worked with both open source and proprietary 3rd party
| software, in many ways, open source is actually maybe the
| safest pick. Or rather, proprietary stuff probably has the
| worst failure mode, where you end up being dependent on a
| legacy product with no support _and_ no code(and this is pretty
| much guaranteed to happen at some point!). And even if there is
| support, it could take weeks to get a support request elevated
| to a bug report, assigned to a dev, reviewed, tested, yadda
| yadda yadda. Especially if you 're a smaller customer.
|
| I won't comment on overall risk of third party open source vs
| proprietary. But it is obviously true that open source has an
| advantage in that there's no problem that could arise that
| can't in principle be solved in-house.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Re: the on-site collaboration, I think it is a different
| scenario? A company wants to some a particular problem, wants
| their solution to be the winning one, and wants to be able to
| stand behind the specific promises that they make regarding it.
|
| When picking an open source library from the internet, you can
| immediately apply a strong filter: select codes which already
| have an active community and ongoing development, they already
| do something like what they say on the tin. You only see
| projects that have won a couple times.
|
| Open source communities also draw in people who have the
| specific problem that their project solves. The need to have
| meetings to get everyone aligned on what the actual objective
| is is reduced, they showed up because they have the problem.
|
| The corporate project is, at best, trying to solve an internal
| company problem (so they can at least have meetings with the
| interested parties and maybe even dogfood a bit). Or, it might
| have some totally imaginary customers that sales and management
| think exist out there somewhere, so let's get together and
| brainstorm about what they might need.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| What an even-handed article that acts as essentially a how-to
| guide on running an OSS product.
|
| I have always held the notion that Open Source Is Not A Business
| Model; just because you build it does not mean that you are
| entitled to money, especially if you willingly give it out for
| free.
|
| Just like any startup, you must find product market fit and
| generate revenue. It's heartening to see the same philosophy in
| OSS as well. Treat it like any other commercial product, not as
| something special.
| temac wrote:
| While I agree in principle, reliance of big companies to
| critical projects while not helping them, and in tons of cases
| not even trying to help them, is not unheard of. And to be
| clear even in this case the maintainers are not entitled to
| anything, but: * trying to commercialise something, they would
| not be entitled to anything either * this would often be in the
| best interest of everybody to help those projects
| phpisthebest wrote:
| For me, I would have no problem paying for open source
| software, and have a few times. The problem is I have to have
| an invoice I can submit to corporate accounting to an actual
| business entity. I can not "donate" company funds to some
| random person on the internet.
|
| Many open source projects only have donations based funding,
| no way for be to download an actual software product that I
| am invoiced and pay for.
|
| Package the binaries and sell them to me, I will happily pay
| with company money...
| ghaff wrote:
| As someone who sold shareware a long time ago, and had to
| invoice companies now and then, there is some overhead to
| getting yourself setup to invoice, look like an actual
| business, and accept payments made out to a business. There
| are services these days so it's not _that_ expensive or
| hard. But it 's something I see a random software developer
| not wanting to deal with for the odd small payment. There
| are also approved vendor lists, etc.
| saulpw wrote:
| I wonder why there aren't any open source software
| publishers. Like game publishers, they would take the
| open source software, package it up, submit invoices,
| take money, distribute binaries, provide rudimentary
| support for installation and system issues, and ideally
| pay 30-70% to the dev. Seems like a pretty reasonable
| business model, if there actually are businesses who are
| willing to pay for properly packaged software.
| Zxian wrote:
| https://codecodeship.com/
|
| They do exist.
| josephg wrote:
| Yep. Lots of companies - probably most companies - do nothing
| to support the opensource projects they depend on. Honestly I
| think most business people would be horrified if they
| understood how much their business depends on the volunteer
| labor of strangers. How many Fortune 500 companies depend on
| the work of a random hippy in NZ who lives in a houseboat?
| And the article is right - the funniest part is that you need
| him more than he needs you.
|
| Plenty of non-opensource developers also have no idea how to
| act on GitHub. Some people are great. But I've also gotten
| more than my share of entitled "drop everything and fix this
| now" issues opened over the years. "It's causing an outage!".
| It's like I'm a wayward junior engineer who needs to be
| brought in line. Do you appreciate my work or not, idiots?
| You can't have it both ways. It's kind of surreal.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> The first thing to consider is that the developers count as
| users. That means you can use your own project commercially!_
|
| I'm my own best customer. I write software that _I_ want to use,
| and use it.
|
| Writing my modules as full-fat, generic, supported, MIT-licensed
| libraries, means that their Quality is top-notch. I don't like to
| worry about my dependencies, and I like to be able to reuse them,
| if possible.
|
| It also helps people to take me seriously, although that seems to
| be a rather optimistic approach. In my experience, almost no one
| ever looks at my work, and they usually just attack me, because
| I'm old, and come across as an "OK Boomer," whatever that means
| to you.
|
| _> because it means they need to assume full responsibility when
| relying on software in their multi-million-dollar business that
| was probably developed by a tired young parent or college student
| who didn 't get enough sleep._
|
| As the comedian says, "So, what's your point?"
|
| They make a ton of money, from someone else's work. They don't
| give a damn about the other person, except as someone to bitch
| to, when they feel cranky. As long as the license doesn't say
| they need to pay, or open their own work, then why should they
| care?
|
| I was just looking at adding a feature to my app for converting
| long/lat to timezones. This seems straightforward, until you look
| at a timezone map[0].
|
| It's entirely possible to create my own mapping program, by
| splicing together some geo points, and a table, but I was
| wondering what was out there.
|
| There's a number of choices, but they tend to want eye-watering
| prices. The open source stuff is basically an open toolbox.
|
| I'll probably be rolling my own, into a Swift package. I may
| open-source it, just to be a dick, but I don't really want to be
| supporting a popular package.
|
| [0]
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_Time_Zones_Map...
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| It's an unavoidable truth (I hope that by this point it is) that
| an open source collaborative development model (them who are able
| to contribute are allowed to do so; no questions asked) produces
| better software than an in-house or private, restricted,
| development models.
|
| and while there are some tradeoffs, the advantages (I hope) are
| overwhelmingly in favor of open collaboration.
|
| this is so important that the entirety of science (real
| (old-?)world science) hinges on this open access and 'public'
| collaboration; there's less of this kind of science now than
| before.... (see also: ongoing scientific publishing revolt)
|
| but I digress, none of this to say that there's no problems, but
| the problems are more social (cultural and economic) than they're
| technical.
|
| the points are: collaborative models of software development are
| technically superior; they make better software.
|
| the 'problem' of how to "make this into a business" cannot be
| solved, we must re-evaluate wtf a 'business' even means. we need
| to question why do 'things' need to be 'businesses'.
| francoismassot wrote:
| Really nice guide to understand how to drive your OSS project, I
| run an OSS project and many things written in the article feels
| right. The positive point is that I see many users/customers that
| fully understands that if they want the project to last, they
| will need to contribute financially, it clearly makes your life
| easier.
|
| One point I want to emphasize is to think long-term. If you want
| to build something great that is solid, it will be hard and it
| will take years. You are also building trust with your user base
| and this takes a lot of time too. So you need to ensure that you
| won't be burned out by your project, both for you and for your
| users.
|
| On the negative side of things, I see several OSS projects that
| try to oversell (consciously or not//too much marketing) their
| project to speed up the growth, this makes all the more important
| the assessment of an OSS project before putting it in production.
| pierotofy wrote:
| > On the consumer side, open source is inherently for enthusiasts
|
| Consumers care about whether software works for their needs, they
| don't care whether it's proprietary or open source. And often
| there's also the factor of price.
|
| The problem with FOSS is that too few developers have the
| willingness to ask for money directly, like selling binaries
| instead of sponsorships/donations which have terrible conversion
| rates. https://piero.dev/2023/02/foss-funding-chapter-2-binaries/
|
| Other monetization methods proposed in the article just don't
| scale, aside from the running a SaaS business which is 100% a
| great way to fund work.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| .. because asking for money generally fails.. Huge "shareware"
| projects garnered a total of five figures kind of money, ever.
| Plenty of projects fail to get a thousand dollars, ever. The
| market is filled with success stories, to you dont see the
| misery of the failed ones.. _especially_ when the stakes get
| large, such as phone monthly revenues, or ad streams on major
| consumer brands. The management that grabs the reigns there are
| hired specifically to push others out and maximize gains.
| vharuck wrote:
| People who buy things expect quality, service, and
| interoperability. In my experience, FOSS projects often have
| the quality, but they lack service (they may ignore suggestions
| or unusual bugs). Interoperability is usually left as an
| exercise for the user.
|
| If a user buys a binary, the seller should expect demands for
| work or a refund. But people don't expect refunds for
| donations. And it takes a lot of money to attach strings to a
| donation.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| all valid, until the ubiquity of modern net use. Many people
| dont make individual purchases, instead they subscribe to
| bundled services which in turn gate-keep at a company store.
| The amounts of money moving in walled-gardens now are vastly
| larger than any individual products ever saw.
| vetinari wrote:
| > The problem with FOSS is that too few developers have the
| willingness to ask for money directly, like selling binaries
| instead of sponsorships/donations
|
| While I agree with you, this leads to confusion: the naive
| users from your first sentence then say, that they thought it
| is open source, why the author asks for money?
|
| This can be seen for example with android apps, that have GPL-
| licensed sources on Github, free binaries in F-droid and paid
| binaries in Google Apps Store. So basically the author is
| charging only a convenience fee, but this confusion still
| arises.
| ghaff wrote:
| As I understand the proposal is that the source code is indeed
| open source and available freely but you have to pay to
| download the binary?
|
| It can be done. Some companies do things along these lines.
| But, especially at the consumer level, that introduces a lot of
| adoption friction. I imagine most users will close the page and
| move on once they saw they needed to build a binary themselves
| to try something out for free.
| onurcel wrote:
| I don't get it. An open-source project don't need users? Sure
| someone could publish a work for the sole goal of publishing it,
| but most of the time you make something public for a reason
| (financial or not). In fact, like the other comment in this
| thread, I find the author's point contradictory to ask for
| sponsoring their project. Again someone could sponsor something
| that has no utility, but it seems to be far fetched to say the
| open-source don't need users.
|
| However, while I disagree with the statement, I agree with the
| sentiment. Most open-source projects' authors don't care about
| their users, at least not as much as in the beginning, probably
| because of the said incentive mismatch.
| bawolff wrote:
| > but most of the time you make something public for a reason
| (financial or not)
|
| Sure, but getting outsiders to use the project may or may not
| be that reason. There are plenty of projects that publish for
| reasons other than to be popular.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| > Use "copyleft" (GPL/AGPL) only if you want to sell proprietary
| licenses to companies; otherwise they will not use your software,
| period.
|
| Isn't this, in the light of some European legislation-to-be that
| could make an unaware maintainer liable because some other
| company used their code, a win-win? Either pay or don't use.
| temac wrote:
| Maybe there are osbcures cases where you would not _use_ GPL
| licensed software for obscure reasons, but in general that
| seems very weird. Distributing it is another story.
| pickingdinner wrote:
| What happened to dual licenses?
|
| Free for private and non-commercial use. $$ per seat for
| commercial use.
|
| This can still be completely open source.
| teddyh wrote:
| According to the prevailing definitions, prohibiting commercial
| use is not Open Source.
| pickingdinner wrote:
| Of what? the GPL?
|
| Software can be MIT + commercial. That's still perfectly open
| source.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Of the Open Source Definition; no discrimination against
| fields of endeavor (such as selling software).
|
| https://opensource.org/osd
| pickingdinner wrote:
| You're not prohibiting anyone from using it. Nothing is
| stopping a business from using it, especially if the
| price is fair.
|
| So does OSI have complete authority over the definition
| of OS?
|
| Does their definition restrict dual licenses?
|
| Have they thought maybe creating more lucrative OS
| models/standards would help their cause?
| teddyh wrote:
| > _So does OSI have complete authority over the
| definition of OS?_
|
| Yes.
|
| > _Does their definition restrict dual licenses?_
|
| No.
| pickingdinner wrote:
| > Yes
|
| Except GNU and OSI are in conflict?
|
| > No
|
| Then you can have an OS license with a business license
| or even an FU license (arbitrarily horrible license).
| teddyh wrote:
| > _Except GNU and OSI are in conflict?_
|
| No, they aren't. GNU completely accepts the OSI
| definition of Open Source.
|
| > _Then you can have an OS license with a business
| license or even an FU license (arbitrarily horrible
| license)._
|
| "Dual licensing" is an OR operation, not an AND.
| pickingdinner wrote:
| > According to the prevailing definitions, prohibiting
| commercial use is not Open Source.
|
| Can you combine that with what you said earlier? I read
| it as a counter argument to dual licensing. Now you seem
| to be perfectly OK with it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Final comment. I couldn't quite parse the AND/OR comment.
| But dual licensing is providing a choice of options--pick
| A or B. It's not attaching a rider to an existing open
| source license that takes away some of the freedoms of
| the existing license based on usage.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Except GNU and OSI are in conflict?
|
| Not at all. The various GPL licenses are OSI-approved.
| Though the GPL _may_ restrict your ability to offer an
| open core version of the project.
|
| I think what you're missing is that if a project is
| licensed under an open source license, you can dual
| license it--including _only_ offering some components
| under the proprietary license, i.e. open core--but the
| existence of that dual license doesn 't take away any of
| the rights associated with the open source license on the
| open source portion of the codebase.
|
| But dual license doesn't mean that the use of an open
| source codebase can can be carved up into allowable uses
| under the open source license and allowable uses under a
| proprietary license.
| pickingdinner wrote:
| Conflict may have been too strong a word. In argument
| maybe? From what I understood, GNU was/is kind of a big
| deal, and OSI didn't have a monopoly on OS, or otherwise
| they would have on GNU also.
|
| > if a project is licensed under an open source license,
| you can dual license it
|
| Confirming this is all I am after.
|
| I wasn't talking about carving anything up, though that
| sounds fun.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Conflict may have been too strong a word. In argument
| maybe?
|
| The FSF (including GNU) and OSI have their own histories,
| missions, and philosophies (to some degree although
| there's no real conflict about what open source/free
| software are). Yes, there are politics around both
| organizations but that's mostly inside baseball from the
| perspective of the average software consumer. There are
| any number of other non-profits in the open source space
| that also do their own various things.
|
| And, yes, you can dual license. But understand that if
| one of the licenses is, say, MIT, a commercial entity can
| still use the software without paying no matter what the
| other license says. i.e. you can't use the second license
| to take away rights from the first license.
| pickingdinner wrote:
| Then dual licensing is not possible?
|
| It's a simple IF statement.
|
| IF commercial then $cash, else $mit.
|
| A dual license doesn't mean they can choose if they
| already are what they are, ie for profit.
| ghaff wrote:
| No, dual licensing simply means something different from
| what you think it does. Doing your IF statement violates
| the terms of the MIT license (assuming the same public
| codebase.).
|
| A dual license is not IF/THEN/ELSE, it's pick $mit _or_
| $commercial--your call. If I pick $mit, no obligation to
| pay. You can _not use_ $mit at all. But if you use it
| whether as part of a dual license model or otherwise, you
| don 't get to rewrite it. Of course, you don't need to be
| open source at all which is what I usually tell clients
| who want their software to be "open source" for marketing
| purposes but get around some of the business model
| challenges.
|
| Here's the fairly canonical MySQL example of a dual
| license: "Oracle uses a dual licensing model for MySQL to
| meet the needs of its consumers. Oracle offers MySQL
| under a proprietary (OEM style) license for licensees who
| want to create and commercially distribute proprietary
| derivative works incorporating MySQL without revealing
| the underlying source code and do not wish to be subject
| to other restrictions and obligations of the GPL.
| Additionally, Oracle licenses MySQL under the GPL for
| licensees who simply want to use the software or who want
| to incorporate MySQL into a product to be later
| distributed likewise under the GPL."
|
| (Note that Oracle owns the MySQL copyrights. They perhaps
| couldn't otherwise do this unless subject to some
| restrictions. You can also just use MySQL without
| contacting Oracle.)
|
| But what you're proposing, the software doesn't _have_ an
| MIT license. It has MIT license verbiage coupled to other
| license language that forbids free commercial use. It 's
| not a dual license. It's a new, different, and non-open
| source license. (Which is fine but your software isn't
| then open source.)
|
| So from the IF/THEN/ELSE perspective your variety of dual
| licensing is not possible in the sense of a rider on an
| approved open source software license.
|
| (Of course, that assuming you can even define much less
| enforce "commercial." Creative Commons basically gave
| up.)
| ghaff wrote:
| To be a little more precise, the OSI does not own the
| "open source" term. But _most_ of the industry accepts
| that, if a license isn 't OSI-approved, it isn't an open
| source license. (And certainly isn't if it clearly
| violates the open source definition in some manner.)
| teddyh wrote:
| > _To be a little more precise, the OSI does not own the
| "open source" term. But most of the industry accepts
| that, if a license isn't OSI-approved, it isn't an open
| source license._
|
| I agree, but this is only putting it mildly. To make an
| analogy, does the United States get to decide what the
| borders of the United States are? No; there is (AFAIK) no
| international law which has delegated that right to the
| US Government. But _most_ of the international community
| accepts that, if the US says that someplace is a part of
| the US, it is. In the same way, OSI and its Open Source
| Definition decides what is and is not Open Source.
| rgoulter wrote:
| > You're not prohibiting anyone from using it. Nothing is
| stopping a business from using it, especially if the
| price is fair.
|
| But "Free for private use, pay for commercial use" _is_ a
| restriction.
|
| If you pay for it, you can use it.
|
| If you don't pay for it, you're restricted from using it.
| -- If there were no restrictions for not paying, then
| you'd just not pay.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| How do you enforce that, especially as a small company/solo
| developer? How do you stop people from creating a FOSS
| alternative by reimplementing your freely available source
| code?
| pickingdinner wrote:
| It really isn't about enforcing it. How do you enforce that
| is the question that even GPL struggles with.
|
| It's a simple value proposition and a simple premise. If
| you're commercial, we're commercial. If you're not making
| money, you can still have it.
|
| Compare that to just someone buying something. Individuals
| and especially businesses will buy what they need to buy.
| Imagine someone insisting "you don't have to buy me, but I am
| hungry". That's not even a business model. I find it's the
| value proposition is what is broken with most OSS. It's
| virtue signalling plus relying on donations. NPR does that,
| except they spend hours on the air begging for money. OSS
| might work if they were given the airtime too, but usually
| all the time they have is a few sentences the "shopper" reads
| before they hit the (free) download button (or enter the git
| command or whatever).
| candiddevmike wrote:
| If you don't enforce your license, what's the point of
| having it? Lawyers aren't cheap, and international law is
| incredibly complex.
|
| How do you expect to make money if no one pays you for the
| commercial license because you don't enforce it?
| pickingdinner wrote:
| You could say that about any license. Every license has
| stipulations, including those not for profit. Otherwise
| it would be public domain.
|
| One could arguing enforcing open source is harder to
| afford specifically because you aren't making money off
| of it.
| [deleted]
| asylteltine wrote:
| People will come in and yell that non commercial license isn't
| open source... but sorry it is! All my projects that are more
| than hobbies have non commercial licenses. It's open source! If
| you want to profit it off of it, you can pay me part of that
| profit.
| vedranm wrote:
| That's called source available.
| [deleted]
| asylteltine wrote:
| [dead]
| robalni wrote:
| I have been thinking about how to fund free software development
| for years and the best solution I have been able to come up with
| so far is...
|
| First, as stated in this article, the problem is the asymmetry.
| Normally you need to pay to use a service and the service
| provider needs money in order to continue. But in software
| development, the developer needs money to continue but the user
| doesn't need to pay to use it.
|
| This problem of asymmetry has already been solved all around the
| world. The citizens in a country can use a lot of services
| because they pay tax. This works because the government patches
| the asymmetry by filling in the gap of the missing money flow,
| using money that they collect from everyone who wants to be a
| part of this system.
|
| There is just one difference with software development: software
| is global, so we can't use any existing tax system.
|
| What we need is a global system that collects money from everyone
| who wants to participate in the system. The money could be
| collected by the software developers, similarly to how some of
| them already accept donations. When they get a payment, they
| register it in a global database that keeps track of who has
| paid. This database can then be used by anyone who wants to
| enforce this system by requiring that people have paid a software
| developer in order to be able to do certain things. The question
| then is how many people would be willing to make this
| requirement.
| andyferris wrote:
| I think the same argument applies to research, which is
| currently nationally funded.
|
| The issue is that policy makers haven't seen the value in the
| same way (yet).
| robalni wrote:
| If we make it a national system:
|
| - For any requirements to be a part of the system, you can't
| pay a developer in one country and be accepted as part of the
| system in another country.
|
| - Developers in one country will not get money from users in
| another country.
|
| - Why wait for policy makers? The sooner we get something
| working the better.
| vedranm wrote:
| Assuming this is feasible, how would you make sure the
| collected money ends up funding the right projects?
| robalni wrote:
| That's a good question.
|
| There would have to be a list of approved developers you can
| pay because otherwise people could just pay themselves and
| register that payment in the system.
|
| I can think of two ways to update this list:
|
| - Some trusted maintainers of the system can add developers
| who want to be added, making sure they are real developers
| who have already done real work.
|
| - People could use their money to vote for developers to be
| added.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| that is a fine idea but, perhaps it has not sunk in mentally,
| what a large percentage of "business" operates by intercepting
| and controlling funds and access to a system. In the positive
| way this provides legal guarantees within the business
| community, and brand development to fund marketing and such; in
| the negative it is just how it sounds, added costs, less
| efficient, gate-guarders and hoarders and slow-walkers all
| around. In that situation the progress dramatically slows down,
| and control is a battle.
|
| You are suggesting to "create from thin air" a new entity that
| will almost certainly do all the bad parts, and may or may not
| do the positive parts, and has control to gate-keep for
| whatever reasons.
| pabs3 wrote:
| There are governments doing this already, for example Germany's
| Sovereign Tech Fund or NLnet's EU-funded grant programs.
|
| https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources#grants
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Enforcement is the bigger problem, I think.
| robalni wrote:
| I don't know exactly what you are trying to say here, but as
| I said, the question is whether enough service providers want
| to make paying a developer a requirement for the things they
| control, so that enough people think paying is worth it.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Volunteer open source has given us the majority of all open
| source projects
|
| This is a statement that is (I assume) technically true. It's
| also quite misleading. And it carries through to the discussion
| of serendipitous and reliance developer models.
|
| Sure, if you count projects on Github, I assume the vast majority
| aren't clearly worked on by someone paid as a developer to do so.
| But if you filter by widely-used and commercially-interesting
| it's a different story.
|
| >Reliant open source is the majority of financed projects by far,
| and has yielded projects like Homebrew, curl, OpenSSL, Vue.js,
| rclone, Caddy, and countless others.
|
| OpenSSL, for one, is a terrible example. As came out with
| Heartbleed, the OpenSSL developers were collecting something like
| $5K/year in donations.
| jwilk wrote:
| (2021)
|
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30706650 (44 comments)
| snickerer wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know Serendipitous is a word.
| brandall10 wrote:
| Never heard the term "serendipitous encounter"?
| snickerer wrote:
| Never heard it, but must admit that I am not a native English
| speaker. Thanks for pointing out the term. I learnt something
| new today.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| serendipity, serendipitous, serendipitude, serendipitation,
| serendipitoid...
| peschu wrote:
| I don't know if your underlying assumption holds at all.
|
| In the end the GPL resolves these issues and enforces stuff.
| Obviously most companies don't want that for different reasons.
|
| Without GPL, as a company you take the code and if neccessary at
| some point, you employ somebody to further develop it in house
| (when maintainer gives up or something).
|
| Why pay and share and give that advantage to your competitors?
|
| The key to open source is when governments develop policies for
| using open source instead of paying licenses for proprietary
| software and maybe pressure from customers to companies which use
| open source software.
|
| But average people don't know and don't care at all about open
| source ... :(
| bawolff wrote:
| > Without GPL, as a company you take the code and if neccessary
| at some point, you employ somebody to further develop it in
| house (when maintainer gives up or something).
|
| You can do that with GPL too.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Without GPL, as a company you take the code and if neccessary
| at some point, you employ somebody to further develop it in
| house (when maintainer gives up or something).
|
| > Why pay and share and give that advantage to your
| competitors?
|
| What companies have actually found is that collaborating on OSS
| infrastructure projects is extremely beneficial, essentially
| outsourcing some of the work to focus more on their unique
| selling points. This has happened more or less the same for GPL
| and more permissively-licensed projects.
|
| Linux is the top example of a GPL project that has nurtured
| this type of commercial collaboration. Clang&LLVM is the top
| example of a non-GPL project which has achieved the same.
| Kubernetes is probably the second contender, and also non-GPL.
|
| Ultimately I believe the GPL was an important step forward in
| getting companies to realize this type of business model can
| work. But it is much more of a hindrance today, since it brings
| about an awful lot of bureaucracy and ceremony when you need to
| combine it with proprietary code. So, I expect most
| collaborative OSS projects will continue to stay away from the
| GPL moving forward.
| ghaff wrote:
| A common take on this for a while has been that the GPL
| discourages certain types of freeloading while permissive
| licenses make (commercial, in particular) collaboration
| easier.
|
| Linux, as you say, does provide an example of mass
| collaboration happening with a GPL license but it's unique in
| so many ways that I'm not sure it provides a very useful
| study point.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > while permissive licenses make (commercial, in
| particular) collaboration easier.
|
| This is simply not true.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _What companies have actually found is that collaborating
| on OSS infrastructure projects is extremely beneficial,
| essentially outsourcing some of the work to focus more on
| their unique selling points._
|
| I think there are examples of this in FreeBSD: after a
| company effectively forked the project, FreeBSD kept rolling
| forward--with bug fixes, updated drivers, _etc_. The
| company(s) had to maintain larger and larger internal _diff_
| s to get all of these improvements.
|
| At some point they tended to just start giving back whatever
| wasn't their secret sauce and keep their own code as self-
| contained as possible. I think a popular workflow nowadays is
| to just track -CURRENT [1], and maybe branch when they cut a
| release of their own product.
|
| [1] https://klarasystems.com/articles/evaluating-freebsd-
| current...
| mcdonje wrote:
| If GPL was a stepping stone, I'm curious where the possible
| future(s) of OSS licensing are. I only know the basics when
| it comes to licenses.
|
| Forcing derivatives to be open source seems on the surface
| like a good way to provide a project with some protection
| against market forces while also helping to keep knowledge
| and development accessible to humanity.
|
| Genuinely curious about pitfalls and other options.
| ghaff wrote:
| As I mentioned in another comment, permissive licenses
| (MIT, Apache, BSD) are generally seen as making
| collaboration, especially among commercial entities easier.
| There are fewer gotchas to merging products and otherwise
| pulling in code from different places. As a matter of
| policy, companies are generally more comfortable making use
| of permissively licensed code in their own software, even
| if it's intended for internal use.
|
| So you're right that the GPL provides some safeguards about
| code being reworked into a proprietary product and kept
| closed. But a lot of the industry has come to see that the
| flexibility associated with more permissive licenses can
| outweigh that. (And there's been a general shift towards
| more permissive licensing. Most everything in the cloud-
| native open source space is permissively licensed. I
| believe the CNCF even requires this for projects under its
| umbrella.)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Sony contributions to FreeBSD shows how well it works, or
| the various compiler vendors thar now have clang forks,
| yet clang is now 3rd place in ISO C++ support.
| pabs3 wrote:
| The GPL doesn't enforce stuff, only large amounts of lawyers
| fees can do that. Plenty of companies violate the GPL with zero
| consequences. Same goes for permissive licenses TBH.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| maybe not about OSS, but they know and care about freedom, and
| I think we are gonna have to really understand how open source
| and free software are connected as a matter of principle;
| beyond their origin stories.
|
| > Why pay and share and give that advantage to your
| competitors?
|
| this is the essence of the issue;
|
| we gotta understand why society is often seen through such
| adversarial lenses?
|
| this question ("why adversarial thinking?") though asked
| rhetorically, has a good answer which is important to
| understand, as well as a bad answer which is also important to
| understand.
|
| I've chosen to consider this question without fully answering;
| but by thinking about the notion of 'identity', what makes me
| be in this or in that group such that 'who are our
| competitors?' is not so simple to answer.
| EGreg wrote:
| _I develop the Caddy web server, and I rely on open source
| sponsorships for my living. To be part of a more secure and
| reliable Internet, have your employer sponsor me (mholt) on
| GitHub!_
|
| Doesn't that mean he needs users? And especially corporate users?
| The more he has the more $ he makes
| c00lio wrote:
| Not quite. He needs _paying_ users. Those don't necessarily
| grow in the same fashion and under the same circumstances as
| non-paying users.
| EGreg wrote:
| That's true, but maybe there is a probability you can
| multiply to get the revenue? Just like freemium users
| detourdog wrote:
| I think it means whatever you want. I read it as if you are
| able to make money using Caddy wouldn't it be fair to share it
| with the developer. I think there is a sub-text that implies if
| you sponsored Caddy and needed some extension or support that
| is available also. Before Open Source was codified the was an
| attitude where the software is free but the documentation costs
| money.
| qwery wrote:
| It sounds like you think there's some conflict there, but I
| don't think they're making any claim that developers don't need
| income/support/food (they pretty much state the opposite) or
| that open source projects don't need developers to (continue to
| ) be developed. The project isn't the developer, the users
| aren't the donations.
| Dudester230602 wrote:
| Perhaps it's time to start talking about open source maintainers
| paying compensation to users?
|
| I never wanted your Nodejs and SPAs. You hyped it up and then it
| was forced on me by the industry.
| garganzol wrote:
| Matt is a developer of Caddy webserver - which is infinitely
| useful in so many settings ranging from hobby websites to
| corporate networks.
|
| My rule of thumb - if I really like a project and use it on
| everyday basis, I always pay back either by buying a license or
| by subscribing to monthly donations. This simple rule keeps
| authors afloat.
|
| BTW, I make monthly donations to Caddy webserver because parts of
| our business are reliant on it.
|
| "One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds
| what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings
| blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be
| watered."
| mholt wrote:
| Thanks for your sponsorship. It really does matter, and I hope
| you get more than your money's worth!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-06-11 23:02 UTC)