[HN Gopher] Liquibase continues to advertise itself as "open sou...
___________________________________________________________________
Liquibase continues to advertise itself as "open source" despite
license switch
Author : LaSombra
Score : 324 points
Date : 2025-10-16 08:02 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Pretty much everyone I know switched to Firebase.
|
| Paying a license and playing by the rules of a myriad licenses is
| a chore even for those who can afford it.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Liquibase and Firebase has absolutely nothing in common.
| Liquibase is a database migration tool...
| Arkan wrote:
| I supposed you misread - both tools are completely different.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Mistyped. Of course I meant Flyway. Funny how the LLM in the
| brain hallucinated )
| chromehearts wrote:
| Maybe Pocketbase as an alternative?
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| I would imagine Flyway would be the most robust alternative
| freetonik wrote:
| The only thing those have in common is the word `base` in their
| names.
| Macha wrote:
| Huh, did not realise Liquibase changed their license. Seems a bit
| weird when basically every web framework has an alternative in
| house, and there's Alembic and Flyway as framework-generic
| alternatives.
| 12345ieee wrote:
| Not to mention their pro features keep breaking syntax of the
| community version, obviously with 0 transparency.
|
| Now, of course they should get paid for the work they do, but
| these sort of "we were FOSS and surprise we're not anymore" are
| becoming commonplace and are always done hoping no one notices.
| saddist0 wrote:
| Honestly, FSL doesn't break any flow for day to day developers.
| What's the harm? I am curious to know. On the contrary I like
| competitive vs non-competitive distinction.
| sarchertech wrote:
| It's because big tech companies have spent millions to foster
| goodwill towards the OSI Open Source definition. And there's
| a general feeling that software that fits that definition is
| pure and any that doesn't is unclean.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| Most of us don't want to let a court decide if we compete
| with a very general distinction you describe, and can't
| afford lawyers to evaluate a 2 year old license without much
| case law.
|
| Most of us prefer not to bring on a dependency in our project
| that is primarily designed to extract commercial value from
| users and is less friendly to contributors than similar open
| source projects.
| k2bt wrote:
| I don't like any of these licenses, but if I was playing devil's
| advocate here, "open source" as a term on its own surely just
| implies the source code is publicly available? Which it is.
| k2bt wrote:
| Sorry, I stand corrected quoting from the OSD: "Open source
| doesn't just mean access to the source code".
| fukka42 wrote:
| The OSD is just some people's opinion. They hold no legal or
| official weight.
|
| It's like me starting the cheese initiative and trying to
| control what others call cheese, a job that's typically
| reserved for governments.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The OSI are the people who made it up, and the only reason
| why anybody cares about it. If you call yourself Open
| Source and you don't comply with the OSI definition, you're
| a parasite trying to commit fraud with the good will
| generated by other people.
|
| I also don't care if somebody in 1975 said "I like to be
| open, and I'll let anyone look at the source." Old McDonald
| had a farm before McDonald's was a restaurant, but that
| doesn't mean that if you open a restaurant called
| McDonald's that is decorated like a McDonald's, you're not
| a scammer. I know your plastic fruit is carbon-based, but
| if you label it as "organic" you're a thief.
|
| If you're not trying to scam people, be creative and make
| up your own catchphrase for letting people look at your
| source code - or don't even, because the whole idea of
| having a branding for allowing people access (and rights
| to) the source is imitation of the FSF and OSI.
| fukka42 wrote:
| They're in no way, shape, or form official and they
| didn't come up with the term open source.
|
| Like I said above, they're as official as the cheese
| initiative I just made up.
|
| No government has endorsed them, and open source is not a
| protected name in any country I am aware of.
|
| They're just some arrogant American organisation that
| expects the entire world to bend to their whim, as usual.
| sarchertech wrote:
| OSI was financed by Tim O'Reilly originally and now by
| big tech companies as a way to co-opt th free software
| movement and make it more business friendly.
|
| They have successfully convinced a generation of
| developers that "Open Source" is pure and holy, but a
| licensee that includes a term that says something like no
| company making more than $100 million per year can use
| this software for free is unclean and maybe even evil.
|
| They don't want alternative licenses to exist because it
| hurts their bottom line.
| arpinum wrote:
| I'm ok with saying that Open Source is now widely
| understood to mean what the OSI says, that's just a
| function of how language evolves. But we don't need to
| re-write history to get there.
|
| Open Source isn't a brand, it isn't a trademark, it was
| hijacked by OSI to enforce their specific interpretation
| of a phrase that was already in use. OSI wasn't founded
| until 1998, over a decade after the term open source
| software became popular and was used throughout the unix
| and linux communities and in businesses such as Caldera.
| Before OSI came up with the OSD many creators of open
| source software had non-compete clauses in the licence.
| Izkata wrote:
| Likewise I feel like it only became "the common
| understanding" due to pushing within the past decade.
| Before that "the common understanding" was what people
| are only now calling "source available" - which I don't
| think I'd heard of before just a couple years ago.
| mrob wrote:
| "Open Source software" was never a popular term before
| the OSI promoted it. "Open Source software" is a
| reworking of the original term "Free software" to be more
| palatable to businesses. The Open Source Definition is
| very similar to the older Free Software Definition and
| virtually all software qualifies as either both or
| neither.
| kube-system wrote:
| No, "Open source" had been used as a term for many
| decades before the February 3rd, 1998 meeting where
| Christine Peterson suggested that it be borrowed to
| describe software. This is much of the reason why any
| attempts to trademark the phrase have been denied.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| Not just some people. It's more like if the Cheese
| Association of France came up with a definition, and that
| definition then gets accepted by cheese lovers and major
| dairy industry companies worldwide. The OSD holds
| significant weight in the industry.
| fukka42 wrote:
| No government has endorsed the OSI or has protected the
| name open source. Unlike, for example, the word Gouda.
| preisschild wrote:
| https://opensource.org/osd
| npteljes wrote:
| I believe that it's not a protected term or a trademark or
| anything, but rather it's the case of misleading marketing.
| Open source is widely understood to be a specific thing, which
| Liquibase explicitly isn't.
|
| Although, on the other hand, "Two years after release, the
| license for each applicable version of Liquibase Community code
| reverts to Apache 2.0". So, it's like... eventually open
| source. Which is still misleading, as it doesn't apply to the
| current versions.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > Open source is widely understood to be a specific thing
|
| I think everyone thinks the way they understand open source
| is the way everyone understands open source. And yet every
| time an open source project, by any definition, changes their
| license, people debate what open source really means.
|
| Unlike a term born with a specific definition, like "FOSS",
| open source doesn't really have a definition. The OSI has a
| definition that seems to be most popular, but that's not the
| only understanding of the term that is doing the rounds.
|
| For plenty of people, open source means "source-available
| software". For others, it's software licensed under a subset
| of specific licenses (which licenses is also a subject for
| debate). And for some it means "software developed in a
| specific way that involves the community", like many Linux
| adjacent projects are, disqualifying corporate projects
| licensed under those specific licenses because they can do a
| Liquibase any time they want and there's very little chance a
| community large enough to maintain and develop the existing
| code will stand up when they do.
|
| Liquibase now falls under one of the three definitions I've
| heard people agree about rather than two.
| npteljes wrote:
| I guess you're right, in the way that we can either
| describe and prescribe language, and yes, open source is
| not defined in exact terms. I still do think that attaching
| the label to a product, and disregarding the decades long
| collaborative nature of the development is utter nonsense.
| In my opinion, the onus is on these people to get closer to
| what open source really is, not because I don't want to
| update the term, but because I want the movement to
| succeed, and not to be watered down.
|
| Funnily enough, the Liquibase project agrees with this
| sentiment too (or wants to avoid the fallout from open
| source gatekeepers):
| https://github.com/liquibase/liquibase/pull/7380
| kube-system wrote:
| "Open source" was a widely used term in several industries
| before it was _ever_ used for software. The original meaning
| was simply "publicly available". It was OSI that attempted
| to co-opt the term to mean something more specific.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I might disagree with meaning of "free software" in common
| parlance. But "open source" is pretty much agreed on. Source
| available is as valid and much more descriptive when well
| source is or can be provided to users.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Everyone I know switched to Flyway.
| real_joschi wrote:
| One thing that Liquibase does better than Flyway is supporting
| multiple different database systems with the same migrations by
| abstracting the changes instead of relying on raw SQL
| statements such as Flyway.
|
| Liquibase and Flyway are the only major frameworks on the JVM
| which could be embedded into a JVM application to get rid of a
| sidecar or a startup process which has to run before the actual
| application could start.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| > abstracting the changes instead of relying on raw SQL
| statements such as Flyway.
|
| That's exactly why Liquibase turned source-available. These
| abstractions are leaky, error-prone and are better maintained
| via the money from support contracts.
|
| "Make problem, they earn money fixing them" is a reasonable
| modus operandi.
| nesarkvechnep wrote:
| I really like Sqitch these days.
| miniwark wrote:
| Thanks for the discovery, i did not know of this one. From the
| docs, it look like promising to me.
| SCdF wrote:
| For those who were not familiar with the licence they have
| switched to: https://www.tldrlegal.com/license/functional-source-
| license-...
| benterris wrote:
| For more context, the FSL was created by Sentry, who explain
| why it's been created and what problems it was trying to solve
| here: https://blog.sentry.io/introducing-the-functional-source-
| lic...
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Is 2 years too little? The deep pocketed companies I know dont
| mind 5 year old software and I'll be okay with 2012 Redis or
| 2020 Postgres.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| The only closed source license _I_ find acceptable is the BuSL
| "Business Source License" because it eventually becomes
| opensource. It guarantees you a 4 year moat on the code before
| it becomes open source, and it remains source available until
| then. This ought to be good enough for valid uses and prevents
| needless license proliferation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License
| evanelias wrote:
| FSL uses this "eventual open source" mechanism too.
|
| At this point, FSL appears to be more widespread than BSL.
| Adoption of BSL has waned; even its creators (MariaDB, for
| their MaxScale proxy product) recently stopped using it.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > FSL uses this "eventual open source" mechanism too.
|
| I stand corrected. I hate license proliferation, but the
| naming and marketing is better. I hope the other former
| open-source companies consolidate on something.
|
| > undergoes delayed Open Source publication (DOSP). [1]
|
| and that "DOSP" (Delayed Open Source Publication) is an OSI
| concept! [2]
|
| But I cannot (yet) find what the timeframe for the DOSP
| is... because we don't want to wait 90 years for Mickey to
| be public domain.
|
| [1] https://fair.io/about/
|
| [2] https://opensource.org/delayed-open-source-publication
| evanelias wrote:
| That linked documented was sponsored by Sentry, who led
| the development of FSL. I don't believe it's accurate to
| call DOSP an "OSI concept" -- meaning, it's not something
| the OSI invented or coined. OSI also does not consider
| such licenses to be approved under their open source
| definition.
|
| As for the timeframe, FSL uses a 2 year period.
|
| edit to add: just to be clear, I'm a fan of FSL and Fair
| Source licensing, and do not consider lack of OSI
| endorsement to be a problem.
| amaccuish wrote:
| What's up with the comments here?
|
| Either just reading the "base" part and plugging some unrelated
| service, or claiming source available is the same as open source
| rcakebread wrote:
| For those arguing it is still open source, Liquibase says it is
| not.
|
| "Is FSL an open source license?
|
| No."
|
| https://www.liquibase.com/blog/liquibase-community-for-the-f...
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| This was less than a month ago, so the README may not simply
| have been updated yet then, rather than the frustratingly large
| number of projects that are source available but want to brand
| themselves as something they are not.
| donohoe wrote:
| Fair point, but it takes less than 10 minutes imho to update
| a README. Perhaps less than 1. And they took the time
| elsewhere to update other docs. So it's fair criticism when a
| month later it's still saying things that are no longer true.
| ktosobcy wrote:
| anyone thought about forking? :)
| real_joschi wrote:
| https://hachyderm.io/@joschi/115378071393408064
| https://bsky.app/profile/joschi.xyz/post/3m3a76o6nkc2c
| Meneth wrote:
| So Liquibase made an open-source project, used Apache instead of
| strong copyleft (e.g GNU AGPL), and then expected others to not
| do the thing Liquibase chose to allow them: make closed-source
| derivatives.
|
| Liquibase has only itself to blame.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| Organizations can still achieve their goals with the AGPL
| instead of a source available license. Redis switched, and
| their own organization was pleased, as well as their community.
| I don't think any Liquibase user would be unhappy with
| Liquibase being dual licensed with AGPL.
| dig1 wrote:
| AFAIK, AGPL is no-go for EPL/Apache-licensed projects, unless
| the whole project is under (A)GPL, or use some "exceptions"
| wording. Wrt Redis community, it's the shadow of the former
| itself, everyone who plans to invest in Redis long-term,
| moved to Valkey.
| lifty wrote:
| Regarding Redis, you mean that AGPL was not a good choice
| for them?
| mhitza wrote:
| It would have been a good choice. They made the wrong
| choice, lost some community support and then they
| licensed Redis under AGPL.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| It looks like they auto switch to Apache after some time. I am
| not sure if that makes it better or worse
| jraph wrote:
| Should probably be called "open source with a two year delay", or
| "open source in two years".
|
| Or "open source when obsolete" because that's what it is,
| fundamentally. Of course, it sells less and makes it way more
| obvious what these delayed open source licenses are at their
| core: "we'd like to make people believe we respect their freedom,
| but are not actually convinced with giving them that".
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| open source for enterprise is often more about trust and
| transparency than "freedom". Source avaliable has most
| advantages of FOSS without the legal and monetization issues.
|
| There is this blind trust in open source model taken to a
| unhealthy or misguided extreme in a lot of online discussion.
|
| A two year delay is pretty reasonable and liberal. It allow
| costumers that dont want to accept the new licence able to
| continue as-is by simply following an older version.
| jraph wrote:
| > There is this blind trust in open source model
|
| In my case, it's not about any open source model, it's about
| software freedom.
|
| What's unhealthy is non-free software, and there's nothing
| extreme in having this opinion.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's free for humans and 99.999% of businesses.
|
| If you base your opinions on pure black and white tests
| without considering the actual tradeoffs of the license
| then that's blindness.
| jraph wrote:
| If you base your opinions on compromises and always
| making tradeoffs on your core values, you've lost your
| direction.
|
| What do we do now?
|
| > It's free for humans and 99.999% of businesses
|
| Nope. "Free" has specific meaning in this context, this
| qualifier doesn't apply here. It's the whole point. If
| you believe it applies, you've fundamentally
| misunderstood the free software definition and what's at
| stake for the free software movement.
|
| More specifically, the qualifier is not relative to a
| specific entity and what freedom it actually needs / uses
| at some given point in time.
|
| I'm certainly for fundamental freedoms like the freedom
| of the press, even if I'm not myself a journalist.
|
| To go further with the comparison, there's nothing in
| being against compromising on the freedom of the press
| that's blindness or being black and white (or maybe it's
| being black and white, but I can't see how it would be
| wrong).
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Everything is a compromise. GPL versus MIT is a
| compromise either way. Both are more free than the other.
| So don't tell me there's such a thing as fully free and
| that nothing else matters.
|
| > I'm certainly for fundamental freedoms like the freedom
| of the press, even if I'm not myself a journalist.
|
| Freedom of the press has more restrictions. In particular
| violating an NDA in your press activities is somewhat
| similar in how it affects few people and is time-limited.
| jraph wrote:
| I don't follow.
|
| GPL and MIT fully fulfill the exigences of the free
| software definition, there's no compromise here.
|
| Choosing between GPL and MIT may involve compromises, but
| we are talking about something else, you are moving the
| goalposts here.
|
| (note: I kept updating my previous comment, probably
| while you were writing this, sorry for this)
|
| (edit: ah, you noticed)
|
| > Freedom of the press has more restrictions. In
| particular violating an NDA in your press activities is
| somewhat similar in how it affects few people and is
| time-limited.
|
| Violating an NDA is a matter of law and contracts that
| can equally apply to software, it's not at the level of
| the fundamental right or at the level of the license.
|
| If you are speaking about protecting one's source, then
| it's orthogonal (and probably also an important mechanism
| for) freedom of the press.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| MIT gives less freedom to the user. GPL gives less
| freedom to the dev. I'm not moving goalposts, those are
| both very important and you can't maximize both.
|
| > it's not at the level of the fundamental right or at
| the level of the license.
|
| I would say the ability to run a competing business
| within two years is less fundamental than the ability to
| talk about what you saw at your former job.
|
| Also what are you saying about "not at the level"? It
| _overrides_ the fundamental right, but people accept
| that.
| jraph wrote:
| > MIT gives less freedom to the user.
|
| No. Someone can use some MIT licensed software for any
| purpose and can strictly do anything with it that the GPL
| would allow.
|
| Just as free.
|
| However, I do agree that permissive licenses like the MIT
| allows someone to build proprietary software with the
| code, and the users won't enjoy software freedom with
| that result. That would be the reason why I wouldn't
| license my software under permissive license except for
| specific cases.
|
| One could argue the MIT actually gives more freedom to
| the user: they can, with a MIT source code, build and
| distribute a proprietary derivative. Of course, this
| doesn't mean this additional freedom is desirable.
|
| > Also what are you saying about "not at the level"? It
| overrides the fundamental right, but people accept that.
|
| Yeah, just like laws limit your freedom to run free
| software for any purpose. You, for instance, can't
| legally take /bin/ls with you to go kill someone even if
| its license itself doesn't explicitly forbid it. I'm
| pretty fine with this.
|
| I have some feeling we do agree that freedom is never
| absolute and kinda argue past each others.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > the users won't enjoy software freedom with that result
|
| That's the part I was talking about.
|
| So I don't know why you started your post with "No."
|
| > I'm pretty fine with this.
|
| Cool. And I'm fine with some other restrictions. So we're
| agreeing that being fine with a restriction doesn't
| necessarily mean anyone has "lost the direction" of free
| software? And instead we can talk about the _specific_
| dangers of a restriction without reflexive rejection?
| jraph wrote:
| >> the users won't enjoy software freedom with that
| result
|
| > That's the part I was talking about.
|
| > So I don't know why you started your post with "No."
|
| You are mixing two different users. FreeBSD user A enjoys
| software freedom. macOS user B doesn't. A and B are
| different people. And notably, the release of macOS
| didn't make FreeBSD disappear, so A still fully enjoys
| their freedom even though B doesn't with the downstream
| software (but could with the upstream software as well).
|
| If you are mixing user A and user B, your mental model of
| this stuff is not clear and reasoning with it is going to
| be difficult and frustrating. And it makes you reach
| incorrect conclusions such as "permissive licenses are
| less free for the users than copyleft licenses".
|
| > So we're agreeing that being fine with a restriction
| doesn't necessarily mean anyone has "lost the direction"
| of free software?
|
| Laws are supposed to protect individual and collective
| freedom and interests. They do this by putting limits on
| what you could do that would prevent others from enjoying
| their own freedom.
|
| (of course, I know we are far from this ideal; also laws
| aren't perfect and issues should be fought against - it's
| actually, in practice, a constant fight because different
| (groups of) people have different interests and
| priorities - but that's another concern and mixing
| concerns makes things hard to reason about)
|
| License restrictions that compromise on software freedom
| are simply not comparable to whatever it takes to make a
| society work. They are not making a tradeoff for your own
| good as a user. They are benefiting the software provider
| at the cost of the user's freedom.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I'm not mixing up users A and B. Let me try phrasing it
| better. MIT does not give software freedom to all users
| of the code. A huge number of users get excluded in
| practice, far more users than this clause in the
| liquibase license.
|
| > Laws are supposed to protect individual and collective
| freedom and interests. They do this by putting limits on
| what you could do that would prevent others from enjoying
| their own freedom.
|
| I'm not sure where you're going with this when my example
| was NDAs. NDAs aren't there to protect freedoms, they
| only remove freedom. Laws enforce them, but in the same
| way that laws enforce license restrictions.
| jraph wrote:
| > MIT does not give software freedom to all users of the
| code
|
| Okay, I would agree more with this phrasing. That's the
| issue I have with permissive licenses.
|
| > NDAs aren't there to protect freedoms, they only remove
| freedom.
|
| To be fair, I'm also not a fan of most NDAs indeed.
|
| > Laws enforce them, but in the same way that laws
| enforce license restrictions.
|
| Yep, I agree with this.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Okay, I would agree more with this phrasing. That's the
| issue I have with permissive licenses.
|
| So do you also see what I meant about both permissive and
| copyleft licenses giving up some freedoms? You can't have
| it all.
|
| A restraint on running a particular type of business
| isn't _great_ for software freedom, but if it 's narrow
| and temporary I don't think it ruins the entire license.
| The gap in freedom is avoidable but also it's much
| smaller than the gaps you can't avoid.
|
| For ongoing freedom, If I was choosing between plain MIT
| and a GPL clone that bans competiting companies but
| reverts to pure GPL after a couple years, I would pick
| the latter.
| jraph wrote:
| > So do you also see what I meant about both permissive
| and copyleft licenses giving up some freedoms? You can't
| have it all.
|
| Not a fan of the framing but I get your point (of view).
|
| > For ongoing freedom, If I was choosing between plain
| MIT and a GPL clone that bans competiting companies but
| reverts to pure GPL after a couple years, I would pick
| the latter.
|
| Reasonable. I would find the 2 years delay unbearable and
| pick MIT, but I wouldn't enjoy doing so. It's fortunate I
| don't have to pick :-)
| rpdillon wrote:
| I've written this above and it's a point I don't see very
| many people make in this discussion, but you're locking
| yourself into an ecosystem that has a monopoly on hosting
| as a service. That damages you as a customer because you
| no longer have choice about what service you go to for
| hosting. You're left with either hosting it yourself or
| going with the only vendor who's allowed to. That's not a
| great experience.
|
| It's not a hard thought experiment. Just imagine this
| license applied to whatever database you're used to
| spinning up in the cloud on whatever provider you want.
| If that one provider doesn't have the plan you're looking
| for, you're forced to take on the work of hosting it
| yourself because no one is allowed to do that for you and
| let you pay them because the license forbids it.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That seems fine to me? If I want them to host it then I
| don't care a lot about the license, and my escape hatch
| of self-hosting is quite good. I don't think self hosting
| is a big burden.
|
| And competitors can still host a mildly older version
| freely, so that prevents long term lock-in even if I
| ignore self hosting.
|
| So the main company still has to compete to keep
| business, which is good for everyone, but they keep some
| control over the hosting business, which means they're
| less likely to get crushed and stop updating. I think it
| sounds good overall.
| evanelias wrote:
| OK, but how do these concerns apply specifically to self-
| hosted dev tools such as Liquibase? Why do you object to
| FSL for this specific type of software, which has a
| different usage pattern than a database server?
| gr4vityWall wrote:
| Because it's proprietary software. The GNU and the FSF
| website have written plenty about it:
|
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-
| impor...
|
| That license restricts what you can do with the software
| due to a business interest of the author. Therefore, it's
| non-free or proprietary.
| evanelias wrote:
| I was specifically replying to the GP, who commented
| about concerns of "locking yourself into an ecosystem
| that has a monopoly on hosting as a service". I wanted to
| know why _that specific concern_ is an issue for GP, in
| the context of software like Liquibase which isn 't even
| hosted in the first place. Your reply does not address
| that in any way.
|
| > That license restricts what you can do with the
| software due to a business interest of the author.
|
| Yes, it restricts you from offering a competing hosted
| service. Do you offer a competing hosted service to
| Liquibase using Liquibase's source code? Is this
| something you ever would conceivably do? If not, how does
| this restriction affect your life in any way?
|
| > Therefore, it's non-free or proprietary.
|
| I never claimed it was Free Software.
| gr4vityWall wrote:
| > I wanted to know why that specific concern is an issue
| for GP
|
| That's exactly what my comment is addressing! People
| advocating for Free Software don't usually advocate that
| _only_ the software they use should be free; they
| advocate for the freedom of all users.
|
| > I never claimed it was Free Software.
|
| You did not, indeed. Sorry if my wording gave the
| impression I was trying to put claims in your post. That
| phrase is an answer to this question from you:
|
| > Why do you object to FSL for this specific type of
| software
|
| We object to it because it makes the software proprietary
| rather than free.
| evanelias wrote:
| OK, so you care about freedom. And yet you tell other
| people how they should license their software projects,
| even when you aren't involved in those projects in any
| way, and their license choices don't impact you in any
| way. And you tell people what software they should and
| shouldn't use purely on subjective philosophical grounds.
|
| Personally I call that something other than promoting
| freedom. Quite the opposite.
| gr4vityWall wrote:
| > you tell people what software they should and shouldn't
| use
|
| Please, there's no point in arguing like that. There's no
| need to mischaracterize or reword what another user is
| saying.
|
| I don't think we'll get much further in this discussion
| if you consider yourself a fan of the FSL, a proprietary
| license. Your time will be better spent replying to other
| people.
| evanelias wrote:
| > > you tell people what software they should and
| shouldn't use
|
| > There's no need to mischaracterize or reword what
| another user is saying.
|
| You directly linked to a post by RMS which says things
| like "When you use proprietary programs or SaaSS, first
| of all you do wrong to yourself, because it gives some
| entity unjust power over you. For your own sake, you
| should escape." Among many other examples in that post,
| and countless other FSF posts, telling people _not to use
| non-Free Software_. This is not a mischaracterization.
|
| Granted, these are RMS's statements, not yours. But I
| assumed that since you linked to that post and are
| espousing similar concepts, you are endorsing its
| contents and hold the same views. If that is not the
| case, my apologies. But perhaps you could clarify whether
| or not you think RMS is correct to tell people not to use
| non-Free software?
|
| > if you consider yourself a fan of the FSL
|
| I live in a free society and can be a fan of whatever
| license I want -- meaning, I can express free will in how
| I select what software I use, and how I license software
| that I create. _That is freedom_. I am not trying to
| dictate what software or licenses _you_ use, because _I
| respect your freedom to do the same_.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| But thats not a discussion about free or not free
| software. That's a discussion about interoperability,
| standards and vendor lock-in.
|
| Free software encurrage interoperability to a degree, but
| interoperability and free software are very separate
| things.
|
| And hosting providers are not evil or bad for making
| highly coupled systems. Its a valuable service companies
| gladly pay for, and a compromise developers need to
| calculate in their plans.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Very little is obsolete that fast. I don't think it shows a
| lack of respect for my freedom. The goal is to place some
| (rather minor) restrictions on businesses, and businesses are
| not people.
| jraph wrote:
| > Very little is obsolete that fast
|
| Isn't two years of security patch lag a big deal?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's a dev tool that isn't taking untrusted input, right?
| Then no, I don't think security patches are a big deal.
|
| Also I feel like "obsolete" is the wrong word for that.
| imtringued wrote:
| Other than puritanism, what exactly stops you from using
| the FSL version? It's not like you're a hyperscaler hosting
| their product as a SaaS.
| jraph wrote:
| What you call puritanism is a fight for user software
| freedom to be recognized as a fundamental right.
|
| Your phrasing is malicious. It waves off a 40 year fight
| from many reasonable people as extreme and ridiculous, or
| as religious-like.
|
| Did you expect me to answer "no, nothing else than
| puritanism" to your question?
|
| Well, I won't.
| x0x0 wrote:
| So you can use it just fine but because aws would have to
| pay to resell it you won't.
| jraph wrote:
| Again, that's a terrible presentation of the situation.
| It makes me look like I defend AWS.
|
| That's like saying that although I could, I won't vote
| for candidate C who is against the freedom of the press
| when candidate C would prevent awful newspaper N from
| publishing its horrible bullshit.
|
| I'd prefer newspaper N not to publish bullshit, or even
| to not exist at all, but I wouldn't want this to cost the
| freedom of the press.
|
| AWS doing terrible things shouldn't cost us user software
| freedom.
|
| Yes, indeed, there's stuff that I will do or won't do out
| of principles, of course! Even if it would be convenient
| to do otherwise! Is this an alien concept?
|
| How is this difficult to understand that someone doesn't
| want compromises on rights that ought to be fundamental?
| rpdillon wrote:
| It puts you in bed with a community where you're too
| locked in. If there's only one provider that's allowed to
| sell an online SaaS-based version of the software, then
| if they do a poor job of hosting it, or don't host it in
| a configuration that suits my needs, I literally have no
| choice.
|
| I've written about this in other comments, but this
| happened to me in 2015 hosting Elasticsearch and the
| official Elasticsearch hosting offering just didn't
| support CPU configurations that were proper for
| geohashing heavy workloads. I had to switch to AWS to get
| that. They even talked to the head of sales, and they
| said, yeah, we're working on it, but right now your best
| bet is to switch. Under a license like this, that
| wouldn't be possible.
| pastel8739 wrote:
| You can host it yourself, right?
| gr4vityWall wrote:
| But they can't pick a vendor who may host it better than
| the original authors. And the only reason for that is
| because the authors maybe would make less money that way.
| rester324 wrote:
| That statement is not so true as you think it is though.
| Legal entities as companies for example are juridical persons
| in most countries. This principle is called company
| personhood.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That was already incorporated into what I said. I phrased
| it the way I did on purpose.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Companies are legal entities with similar properties to
| people according to some parts of the law, but they're not
| people. Companies cannot be arrested, companies do not need
| to eat food, and companies do not retire. They have a small
| set of human rights and obligations without any human
| properties. Companies share an abstraction with people when
| it comes to some part of the legal system.
|
| Company personhood and its implications and restrictions
| differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and in countries
| like the USA the exact definition is still a matter up for
| debate.
| sneak wrote:
| Businesses are indeed people; they cannot think or act or
| plan or do. They are groups of people acting in concert.
| Without people, there are no businesses. Without people,
| there are no business initiatives, no products, no sales, no
| profits, no shareholders.
|
| Businesses are precisely and exactly people.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| When I said businesses are not people, I was pluralizing
| the claim that _a_ business is not _a_ person.
|
| Yes _a_ business is _made out of_ people, but that 's a
| very different thing from what I was talking about.
|
| (And please don't mention sole proprietorships, what I
| meant should be plenty clear now.)
| rester324 wrote:
| Except the fact that as I explained to you in another
| comment this is not true. Businesses are a person. Not
| the ordinary natural person, but a juridical person
| unsungNovelty wrote:
| #source-washing
| pnt12 wrote:
| Late open source, with a double entendre on late.
| jsiepkes wrote:
| Apparently this also poses a problem for OSS projects such as
| Keycloak since they can't use non-OSS licenses according to the
| CNCF [1].
|
| I wonder if a project which uses Liquibase can be included in
| Debian, Fedora, etc.? Since these projects also have requirements
| on OSS licenses for the software they distribute.
|
| [1] https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak/issues/43391
| mhitza wrote:
| > I wonder if a project which uses Liquibase can be included in
| Debian, Fedora, etc.?
|
| Cannot be included in the main repositories, but nothing stops
| them from being part of other repositories (custom, or if
| something like rpm fusion non-free exists for Debian based
| distros as well).
| sarchertech wrote:
| Big tech companies (the money behind the Open Source Initiative)
| have done a few things.
|
| 1. They co-opted the free software movement and made it more
| business friendly.
|
| 2. They convinced people that Open Source is pure and software
| that isn't Open Source is unclean.
|
| 3. They convinced a bunch of developers that their definition of
| Open Source that was specifically crafted to protect business
| interests is canon.
|
| 4. They convinced a well meaning subset of those developers to
| police the other devs and pressure them to release their software
| under big tech approved licenses.
| thedevilslawyer wrote:
| Or you know, like, the 4 freedoms matter?
| sarchertech wrote:
| This was the original 1986 definition of "free software".
|
| 'The word "free" in our name does not refer to price; it
| refers to freedom. First, the freedom to copy a program and
| redistribute it to your neighbors, so that they can use it as
| well as you. Second, the freedom to change a program, so that
| you can control it instead of it controlling you; for this,
| the source code must be made available to you.'
|
| Giant trillion dollar conglomerates repackaging and selling a
| product backed by free labor without contributing back wasn't
| something they were contemplating back then.
| cube00 wrote:
| The conglomerates can also host it on their extensive cloud
| infra at a price small competitors will never be able to
| match because they own the cloud infrastructure too.
|
| Somehow the service+infra is the same cost or cheaper then
| buying the infra alone and trying to deploy the open source
| version to it.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I don't know, they were focused on freedom for users not
| for vendors/programmers.
|
| I think it's very intentional that a restriction on what
| you can do with software -- including reselling it -- is a
| violation of the "four freedoms" -- freedoms for what
| someone can do with software, including redistribute it or
| use it for any purpose they want (including reselling it).
|
| These licenses meant to prohibit users from using the
| software in ways that harm the business interests of the
| programmers -- I am confident the original creators of free
| software four freedoms would agree they are not free
| software. It is very intentional that they were saying the
| freedom of users to do what they want with software should
| not be limited for the convenience of the business
| interests of those who wrote the software.
| sarchertech wrote:
| The 4 freedoms came later. The above definition predates
| them. There's nothing in that definition that makes me
| think anyone was thinking of anything beyond community
| created software, distributed by the community.
|
| This license isn't about users. If you are repackaging
| and reselling software you are no longer the end user,
| you are a vendor. Your customers are the end user.
|
| This license in particular isn't my favorite, but I'm
| totally fine in theory with licenses that attempt to
| patch loopholes exploited by bad actors.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > If you are repackaging and reselling software you are
| no longer the end user, you are a vendor. Your customers
| are the end user.
|
| In the Free Software community, this line was always
| blurry, almost non-existent even.
|
| Even if the receiver of the Free Software package is not
| a programmer by any definition, at worst case, they can
| ask for a friend to patch something up, and if another
| friend wanted his patched version, the modified source
| code has to move with the software package.
|
| Open Source software can block even this simple pathway
| by not giving back the modified source from friend to the
| user, creating a dependency. It'd be heartless to do this
| between two friends, but companies will happily do that.
|
| My most vivid example of this is SDKs for hardware. Half
| of the API is open, but the patched version of the (open
| source) libraries cost $2K+, several NDAs and allegiance
| to company for the rest of your life or you can be sent
| to a concentration camp operated by an alliance of
| companies doing the same thing.
|
| ...and this is just for a small biometric scanner you
| happen to find in a piece of 10 year old discarded tech.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| > Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project
| is that you should not charge money for distributing
| copies of software, or that you should charge as little
| as possible--just enough to cover the cost. This is a
| misunderstanding.
|
| > Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free
| software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a
| license does not permit users to make copies and sell
| them, it is a nonfree license.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| That was written in a world where "selling software"
| meant charging people money for Software that ran in
| their computers, like the famous example of Stallman
| mailing tapes with Emacs tarballs.
|
| The whole thing was thought up when residential internet
| couldn't be used for much more than email, BBS and
| Usenet, and it wasn't viable to use it for downloading a
| text editor.
|
| It's not a timeless set of principles to live by forever
| after, proprietary software --that's not charged for-
| dominates everyone's lives more than ever in the public
| and private sphere, precisely from companies that
| benefited from the open source ecosystem of software
| engineering tools.
| ndiddy wrote:
| The 1985 GNU Manifesto explicitly brings up the
| possibility of third-party companies whose sole business
| is charging for setting up, running, and managing free
| software:
|
| > Meanwhile, the users who know nothing about computers
| need handholding: doing things for them which they could
| easily do themselves but don't know how.
|
| > Such services could be provided by companies that sell
| just handholding and repair service. If it is true that
| users would rather spend money and get a product with
| service, they will also be willing to buy the service
| having got the product free. The service companies will
| compete in quality and price; users will not be tied to
| any particular one. Meanwhile, those of us who don't need
| the service should be able to use the program without
| paying for the service.
| sarchertech wrote:
| That's not quite true. They didn't imagine that 3rd
| parties would be "running" the software. In the scenarios
| above the end user is running the software on their
| computers. They always have access to the source code and
| there's no vendor lock-in.
|
| "The service companies will compete in quality and price;
| users will not be tied to any particular one."
| bayindirh wrote:
| I try to remember this and remind to others while chatting:
| - Open Source software is about developer freedom.
| - Free Software is about user freedom.
|
| I'm for the latter, strongly.
| blibble wrote:
| > Giant trillion dollar conglomerates repackaging and
| selling a product backed by free labor without contributing
| back wasn't something they were contemplating back then.
|
| this is absolutely right, and the OSI has been successfully
| captured by these companies
|
| would RedHat be able survive to IPO these days? I very much
| doubt it (see: Oracle Linux)
|
| a new term is needed, "Open Source" is no longer fit for
| purpose in a world where the hyperscalers exist
|
| "Fair Source"?
| Qwuke wrote:
| "First, the freedom to copy a program and redistribute it
| to your neighbors, so that they can use it as well as you"
| I can't do this with FSL unless it's a permitted purpose.
| So, even under this definition it is not free or open
| source.
|
| The GNU Project and Richard Stallman, who made this
| statement, would agree that it's not free under even this
| earliest definition. They in-fact made it even clearer when
| they defined freedom of "use" as the distinct 0th freedom
| eventually to make it even clearer that being able to use
| the software freely is fundamental to their idea of
| freedom. Again, freedom isn't about price, it's about
| usage, availability, redistribution and lack of
| restrictions on this. I cannot freely redistribute FSL
| licensed code under the original definition of free
| software.
|
| "Giant trillion dollar conglomerates repackaging and
| selling a product backed by free labor without contributing
| back wasn't something they were contemplating back then."
|
| Yes, the GNU project were acutely aware of this and
| designed the GPL licenses around such scenarios - they just
| didn't design it for SaaS businesses, where if you
| redistribute the built program externally after modifying
| it but only distributed its responses over a network, you
| technically weren't obligated to open source that
| modification. AGPL resolved this issue, and has more case
| law behind it than this 2 year old license, and has
| certainly less daunting implications than a not legally
| well defined 'competing purpose'.
|
| Wrt to the legal concerns with AGPL, they're not actually
| that it wouldn't provide any protection, but rather that it
| might offer the originally distributing entity too much
| power: legal power to declare all software used in the
| stack to produce a network request MUST be made source
| available. I have not seen any lawyer concerned with
| whether or not Amazon would be able to bypass its
| protections, and the license was made by lawyers to clearly
| provide protection. Did you create this legal theory
| yourself? Because I've not seen any writing from a lawyer
| on the internet that suggests that Amazon could firewall
| themselves off in a friendly jurisdiction under any reading
| of the license, and I read a lot of AGPL lawyerblogging.
|
| Sentry, the company who created FSL, even states that this
| license restricts user freedom explicitly - for the sake of
| the business interests of the original developer.
|
| So summing up.. Richard Stallman, the FSF, the GNU Project,
| the OSI, the creators of the FSL, the company now currently
| using FSL, all agree that this source available license
| does not meet the definition of "free software". So, whose
| definition are we using out of thin air?
| sarchertech wrote:
| >I can't do this with FSL unless it's a permitted
| purpose.
|
| You're free to distribute it to your neighbors for free
| for any purpose. You're free to distribute it for a fee
| for almost any purpose save one. You just can't
| commercialize it as a competing product.
|
| "Source available" again calling this source available is
| disingenuous. You're deliberating using the least free
| term that is technically accurate.
|
| This isn't my favorite license, but it provides a lot
| more freedoms than merely looking at the source code.
|
| With respect to AGPL providing "too much control". That
| is a valid and likely reason for courts to find it
| unenforceable.
| Qwuke wrote:
| >You're free to distribute it for a fee for almost any
| purpose save one.
|
| So it does not meet the original free software's required
| freedoms, and is therefore not free software?
|
| >"Source available" again calling this source available
| is disingenuous. You're deliberating using the least free
| term that is technically accurate.
|
| No, the source is available to read and the software is
| not free based on the historical definitions you're
| providing, unfortunately. Happy to understand from a
| different lens, but Stallman specifically meant freedom
| in the way even FSL writers agreed with.
|
| Also, please refrain to using commonly used terms in the
| common way as 'disingenuous', it doesn't lead to
| interesting discussion and is how these threads end up
| needing to be patrolled by dang:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| >With respect to AGPL providing "too much control". That
| is a valid and likely reason for courts to find it
| unenforceable.
|
| So, this is a personal non-legal theory that does not
| have a basis in jurisprudence, then? GPLv3 is proven as
| enforceable, and is what AGPL is based on. No court in
| any legal system would throw away a license based on
| giving "too much control". That's just not how copyright
| or licensing contracts work. You may want to disclaim
| conjectures like this with IANAL..
| sarchertech wrote:
| My entire point is that "Source available" is a term
| frequently used in a derogatory way to make software that
| doesn't follow the principles and hey espouse sound
| dirty.
|
| My entire point is how big tech has captured the
| zeitgeist, so the common use of that term is irrelevant.
|
| >No court in any legal system would throw away a license
| based on giving "too much control".
|
| You are 100% incorrect. Contracts are frequently found
| unenforceable for this exact reason.
|
| >So it does not meet the original free software's
| required freedoms, and is therefore not free software?
|
| The original definition says nothing about a fee or what
| restrictions may be in place.
| Qwuke wrote:
| >My entire point is that "Source available" is a term
| frequently used in a derogatory way to make software that
| doesn't follow the principles and hey espouse sound
| dirty.
|
| It's not dirty, it just doesn't follow the principles the
| rest of us espouse. We're interested in software that
| follows these principles via a license like this.
|
| That you're ascribing malice to the entire FOSS community
| seems a bit strange, when they're the ones who created
| the free software definition in the first place. The
| source is available but is not free software even in the
| original definition.
|
| >Contracts are frequently found unenforceable for this
| exact reason.
|
| So, personal theory, wrt AGPL. Given you've recently been
| made aware of the stack of case law for AGPL and that it
| is largely _just_ GPLv3, I wonder why you think this is a
| possibility given it is your uninformed non-expert
| opinion.
|
| >The original definition says nothing about a fee or what
| restrictions may be in place.
|
| Completely out of context, because even the original
| definition defines it as "free speech" as in that there
| are no restrictions on the ways you can freely using it
| anyway you want, including distributing it.
|
| You're right that a business might offer a fee for free
| software under this definition, but that's unrelated to
| it being free to distribute under any clauses.
|
| Given that Stallman is alive and we don't have to do
| dubious Stallman legal textualism to justify source
| available licenses, when even source available license
| writers and users are fine with that distinction, seems a
| bit strange.
| sarchertech wrote:
| >It's not dirty, it just doesn't follow the principles
| the rest of us espouse. We're interested in software that
| follows these principles via a license like this.
|
| I've been involved in this for decades at this point.
| Free Software and Open Source folks generally "source
| available" as a pejorative.
|
| By using a term that implies the lowest level of freedoms
| possible for software that doesn't restrict access to the
| source code, you are implying that no freedoms exist
| beyond reading the source.
|
| >Given you've recently been made aware of the stack of
| case law for AGPL and that it is largely _just_ GPLv3, I
| wonder why you think this is a possibility given it is
| your uninformed non-expert opinion.
|
| AGPL significantly changes GPLv3. If you want to
| understand how that could cause it to be unenforceable
| read up on severability and its limitations in various
| jurisdictions. Courts have wide latitude in most
| jurisdictions to decide how much of a contract or license
| (in civil law jurisdictions they are always the same
| thing) to uphold if certain parts are invalidated.
|
| >Completely out of context, because even the original
| definition defines it as "free speech" as in that there
| are no restrictions on the ways you can freely using it
| anyway you want, including distributing it.
|
| Free speech has restrictions in every jurisdiction in the
| world. Saying in something is "free as in free speech"
| has no implication that it is absolutely free from all
| duties, obligations , or restrictions.
|
| If that is a requirement for free software, the GPL isn't
| a free software license because it does place obligations
| on distribution.
|
| >Given that Stallman is alive and we don't have to do
| dubious Stallman legal textualism to justify source
| available licenses, when even source available license
| writers and users are fine with that distinction, seems a
| bit strange.
|
| I don't care what a single individual says about what he
| believes now. I'm more interested in what he said in 1985
| and what the people who made up the community believed.
|
| Mostly though I only care about any of the past cruft
| because Open Source and to a lesser extent Free Software
| has takes the air out of the room in any discussion about
| software freedoms.
|
| I'm interested in realistic compromises to make more free
| software more viable in a world where Amazon, Google, and
| Facebook exist. I'm not interested in ideals about a very
| specific meaning of absolutely free software.
| Qwuke wrote:
| >I'm interested in realistic compromises to make more
| free software more viable in a world where Amazon,
| Google, and Facebook exist. I'm not interested in ideals
| about a very specific meaning of absolutely free
| software.
|
| Okay, I'm confused why you bring free software or the
| free software definition into this at all then if you're
| just picking and choosing what parts of the original
| statement/bulletin you care about and what parts you
| choose to disregard, on top of disregarding the original
| movement and organization founded at its inception.
|
| If you're hoping to rebrand source available software,
| why not call it something other than _free software_ if
| you want to do a rebranding? You could propose similarly
| internally consistent principles and attempt to cultivate
| a community. Call it 'fair source' or 'managed
| availability' or something. Refer to the 'freedoms' as
| rights, instead. You'd convince a much larger group and
| wouldn't have to pretend that principles for
| commercialization wasn't considered in 1985.
|
| Since, again, from the start there the goal of free
| software was that no single company was supposed to be
| the single commercializer of a piece of software. That
| principles carries to the GPL.
|
| If you're hoping to convince us that source available
| software is actually free software, you're giving me a
| great platform to talk to others about the history of
| actually free software and making yourself appear
| wrongheaded as if you didn't read the original bulletin
| or understand the larger software development community,
| or worse that you're attempting to co-opt our very
| specific yet widely accepted professional definition of
| free software.
| sarchertech wrote:
| >Okay, I'm confused why you bring free software or the
| free software definition into this at all then if you're
| just picking and choosing what parts of the original
| statement/bulletin you care about and what parts you
| choose to disregard, on top of disregarding the original
| movement and organization founded at its inception.
|
| 1. It's important for people to understand how OSI co-
| opted the goodwill and some of the ideas from the Free
| Software movement.
|
| 2. I think they have some good ideas even if I don't
| agree with all of them.
|
| >If you're hoping to rebrand source available software,
| why not call it something other than _free software_ if
| you want to do a rebranding? You could propose similarly
| internally consistent principles and attempt to cultivate
| a community. Call it 'fair source' or 'managed
| availability' or something. Refer to the 'freedoms' as
| rights, instead. You'd convince a much larger group and
| wouldn't have to pretend that principles for
| commercialization wasn't considered in 1985.
|
| I'm just a guy with 3 kids under 5 and not enough time to
| run any kind of rebranding project. I'm just angry that
| whenever someone launches a project that is more free
| than proprietary software but that isn't OSI approved,
| 90% of the comments are about why it isn't free or isn't
| open source.
|
| I could publish a new project on hacker news and call it
| "fair source" and then explain how fair source isn't free
| software, but it's like free software with an extra
| restriction.
|
| The 5 freedoms:
|
| -1: You can't distribute this software if your name ends
| in "ezos".
|
| 0-4 same as the rest.
|
| I guarantee you 90% of the comments would be attacks on
| the license (even if -1 was something reasonable). And it
| would start off with negative goodwill. Most people
| haven't actually read the 4 freedoms or the OSD, most
| people just follow the zeitgeist and it says Open Source
| == good, everything else == bad.
|
| I do not think that a group financed primarily by big
| tech should have this kind control on the goodwill doled
| out by the community. But they do. I think that the more
| people that understand that the better.
| Qwuke wrote:
| >1. It's important for people to understand how OSI co-
| opted the goodwill and some of the ideas from the Free
| Software movement.
|
| Okay I don't understand why this is happening in the same
| breath you're suggesting that OSI is responsible for
| making everyone in the free software movement believe
| freedom of use (even in commercial cases) is required
| otherwise things are source available. GNU foundation,
| OSI, and even source available license writers basically
| agree on this part. Can you be specific here?
|
| Because otherwise you're just reinforcing the perception
| I explained above, since largely the disagreement between
| OSI and the original free software people is that OSI
| supports too _permissive_ and too many non-copyleft
| licenses, not that the permissive or copyleft licenses
| need to enshrine certain license holders or
| disenfranchise others, or block commercialization or
| competitors. That's deeply antithetical to the idea of
| free or open software, regardless of the camp.
|
| >2. I think they have some good ideas even if I don't
| agree with all of them.
|
| AGPL, despite achieving all of your goals to prevent
| hyperscalers from free riding, is not one of them?
|
| >I'm just a guy with 3 kids under 5 and not enough time
| to run any kind of rebranding project. I'm just angry
| that whenever someone launches a project that is more
| free than proprietary software but that isn't OSI
| approved, 90% of the comments are about why it isn't free
| or isn't open source.
|
| Because the community has largely agreed on the
| principles codified by OSI. The principles you propose
| seem to betray the larger movement's intentions
| significantly, which is much bigger in scope than OSI.
|
| >-1: You can't distribute this software if your name ends
| in "ezos".
|
| >0-4 same as the rest.
|
| That's a lot different than source available licenses
| actually, which usually declares enshrines the original
| license holder, even though it's not technically free
| under the other principles. I think if you thought up of
| a new consistent principle that didn't enshrine a single
| distributor or disenfranchise entire classes of other
| distributors, people would be open to the idea of a
| variant of free software.
|
| But I think the bigger issue is that you think AGPL is
| failing somehow in not being restrictive enough compared
| to source available licenses. Maybe you could articulate
| that more clearly, and _that_ would gather more mind
| share. Merely stating that OSI is bad doesn't really
| change people's opinion of source available. Mostly
| reinforcing free software/copyleft maxi's ideas and
| insinuating GPL needs to be more common.
| gr4vityWall wrote:
| > My entire point is that "Source available" is a term
| frequently used in a derogatory way to make software that
| doesn't follow the principles
|
| I agree it doesn't need to be called "source available";
| it's just proprietary software.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Giant trillion dollar conglomerates repackaging and
| selling a product backed by free labor without contributing
| back wasn't something they were contemplating back then._
|
| That's not a bug, that's a feature. Freedom 0 applies to
| everyone.
|
| Giving a gift does not confer an obligation, and
| "contributing back" is meaningless in this context. Someone
| using a gift you gave them to run a business does not harm
| you in any way whatsoever.
| sarchertech wrote:
| If it was merely about "giving a gift" with no
| obligations or restrictions there should be no open
| source licenses. Everything would just be released into
| the public domain.
|
| Free software has never been about giving gifts with no
| obligations.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| This is implying that free software is a 'gift'.
|
| It's not, it is an exchange.
|
| You gain the ability to use the library or program in
| exchange for releasing your changes and modifications.
|
| Well, unless it's MIT licensed, in which case you're kind
| of a sucker and it all but _is_ a gift to Big Tech.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| So you have qualms about OSI co-opting free software movement
|
| Then defend a source available license designed by a company
| that describes the license as intended for prioritizing
| business needs over user freedom and used, and is often brought
| out when businesses decide to switch a more available license
| to one that restricts commercial activity, co-opting public
| contributions that would otherwise never happened
|
| INSTEAD of promoting copyleft licenses such as AGPL, seems a
| bit odd. We care about freedom, in every use case.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I don't think calling it "source available" is being honest.
| It looks like you're free to modify and distribute it all you
| want so long as you aren't pulling an Amazon.
|
| AGPL isn't battle tested enough for me to be confident it
| will protect against big tech doing big tech things like
| spinning off a separate company in Ireland to firewall AGPL
| software.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| > AGPL isn't battle tested enough for me to be confident it
| will protect against big tech doing big tech things like
| spinning off a separate company in Ireland to firewall AGPL
| software.
|
| What does it matter if they do? The point of the AGPL is
| that if you make a version available to users over the
| network, either you release the source to your version or
| you can't use it. That subsidiary could still be made to
| release the source or stop using it. Wouldn't that be
| "mission accomplished?"
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Not exactly. If you're not modifying your version you
| don't need to make the source available to server users.
| So if you contract out the modifications, and they only
| give the source to you, and you give the source to
| nobody...
|
| I don't know if that scheme would work but I think "not
| battle tested enough" is valid.
|
| Also there's some weirdness in how the availability
| requirement applies at the time of editing that gives me
| questions, but I'm far from an expert there.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Thanks. I hadn't followed that concern.
|
| I think a plain read of the license would make it clear
| that the "distribution" obligation occurs when you make
| it available on the network to your users (regardless of
| whether you modified it yourself or paid a contractor to
| do so), but I'm not a lawyer, so sometimes what looks
| like plain text to me can have a specific meaning that
| doesn't make sense to me.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well the wording is "Notwithstanding any other provision
| of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified
| version must prominently offer[...]"
|
| Starting with no trickery, there's a lot of circumstances
| where you could buy software from a vendor and
| confidently declare you didn't modify it. And that should
| be true even if you ask for certain features just for
| you. So there's probably a way to make the separation
| work.
| cyphar wrote:
| I think that the contractor would be required to change
| the software to include a notice, and if you removed it
| you would be modifying the software again. I suspect a
| judge would not look kindly on such shenanigans in any
| case.
|
| My view is that if Amazon or Apple lawyers thought they
| could bypass the AGPL that easily, they would've done it
| already (just look at the stuff NVIDIA does to pretend
| that it's not flagrantly violating the GPL).
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You can't change the code to remove the notice, but you
| could let the link expire. Or the frontend server, while
| adding your own branding, might remove the notice the
| backend added.
|
| > I suspect a judge would not look kindly on such
| shenanigans in any case.
|
| I completely agree there, but they still need to find the
| license clause sufficiently correct and in scope if they
| want to throw the book at you.
| imtringued wrote:
| Why do you need it to be battle tested when you already
| know that that is allowed?
|
| You're also forgetting that even if it was illegal, setting
| up a shell company in a foreign country means the shell
| company will be able to get away with a lot of outright
| illegal stuff.
|
| Chinese tech companies can just take your code with no
| recourse.
| jraph wrote:
| The open source initiative was initially about hiding the
| political and philosophical aspects behind the free software
| movement (that's the second part of your (1)). (hence the "Why
| Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software" essay [1]). With
| some benefit of the doubt, one could imagine that it was a
| well-meaning move to make companies do free software so we
| could all enjoy the freedom it gives, without them feeling they
| are doing dirty politics. This hasn't worked out: programs
| targeting end users are still proprietary for the most part.
|
| I'm not sure what's bad about 2. What's quite bad however IMHO
| is the push to use _permissive_ licenses and the anti (A)GPL
| FUD that these big tech companies spread. Of course it is very
| convenient to them that every library under the sun is under
| MIT or BSD, so they can built proprietary software more
| efficiently.
|
| Note: the OSI recognizes the AGPL as an open source license so
| at least the set of "big tech approved licenses" is not the
| same set as the OSI approved licenses.
|
| [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-
| point....
| sarchertech wrote:
| Many "big" companies would rather not bother with GPL, but
| the biggest tech companies don't care when it comes to
| repackaging and reselling it as a service.
|
| AGPL hasn't been thoroughly tested in the courts, so it's
| unclear how much protection it offers. It's not beyond
| someone like Amazon to setup a new company just firewall off
| AGPL software.
| jraph wrote:
| > but the biggest tech companies don't care when it comes
| to repackaging and reselling it as a service.
|
| If I'm not mistaken, Apple would rather avoid touching
| anything GPLv3 with a ten foot pole. They are among the
| biggest tech companies in my mind.
|
| Anybody seems fine with GPLv2 though. But GPL is less
| convenient than permissive licenses.
|
| Of course, you can still indeed build services with GPL
| software without redistributing the modifications, which is
| the point of the AGPL.
|
| > It's not beyond someone like Amazon to setup a new
| company just firewall off AGPL software.
|
| I suppose so. However, this would work as intended: the
| Amazon firewall company would need to redistribute the
| improvements.
|
| Also, do you have examples of this happening? (not arguing,
| actually genuinely curious)
| Qwuke wrote:
| Wrt to the legal concerns with AGPL, they're not actually
| that it wouldn't provide any protection, but rather that
| it might offer the originally distributing entity too
| much power: legal power to declare all software used in
| the stack to produce a network request MUST be made
| source available. Basically, a ""contagious"" or copyleft
| license as GPLv3 intended, but even more viral than
| intended in the AGPL variant since it extends well beyond
| the source software. I have not seen any lawyer concerned
| with how Amazon would be able to bypass its protections,
| *because they're otherwise the same as GPLv3 and have
| already been tested.*
|
| I think this poster created the legal theory themselves
| because they were aware of other legal concerns with the
| AGPL affecting the above scenario. I've read a lot of
| legalblogging about AGPL, and none bring up this as even
| a remote possibility, because unless you think GPLv3 case
| law is somehow irrelevant then you don't think AGPL will
| be simply bypassed.
|
| One last thing: I'm surprised the poster was concerned
| about AGPL being untested, despite it using GPLv3, and
| not that FSL has only existed for 2 years and has 0 case
| law surrounding.
| jraph wrote:
| > legal power to declare all software used in the stack
| to produce a network request MUST be made source
| available
|
| If I understand correctly what you say, this is one of
| the main concerns with the SSPL because of the following
| [1]:
|
| > The SSPL is based on the GNU Affero General Public
| License (AGPL), with a modified Section 13 that requires
| that those making SSPL-licensed software available to
| third-parties (modified or not) as part of a "service"
| must release the source code for the entirety of the
| service, including without limitation all "management
| software, user interfaces, application program
| interfaces, automation software, monitoring software,
| backup software, storage software and hosting software,
| all such that a user could run an instance of the service
| using the Service Source Code you make available", under
| the SSPL.
|
| I'm not familiar with this concern for the AGPL itself.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License
| Qwuke wrote:
| Yes, that's the MongoDB variant which codifies it
| directly, and SF Conservancy and other legal entities
| promotion FOSS licenses states that the network stack
| contagion concern does not actually apply for the AGPL.
| But because AGPL doesn't dig into the definition of
| "access", simply defining it as "users interacting with
| it remotely through a computer network", nor define clear
| boundaries for how the "contagious" part of GPLv3
| interacts with the rest of the network stack of this
| clause, it has meant that some lawyers think that a court
| may overly broadly interpret the definition.
|
| So far this contagion concern hasn't actually played out,
| and big corporations/hyperscalers are often using AGPL
| software somewhere in their stack if they're using common
| Linux distros - and nothing thus far has been compelled
| to be open sourced that isn't AGPL software.
|
| This might be insightful about the concerns as well as
| why lawyers still think it's straightforward:
| https://www.opencoreventures.com/blog/agpl-license-is-a-
| non-...
|
| https://discuss.logseq.com/t/on-the-agpl-license-and-the-
| ide...
|
| https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL
|
| (not a lawyer): https://drewdevault.com/2020/07/27/Anti-
| AGPL-propaganda.html
| jraph wrote:
| > But because AGPL doesn't dig into the definition of
| "access", simply defining it as "users interacting with
| it remotely through a computer network", nor define clear
| boundaries for how the "contagious" part of GPLv3
| interacts with the rest of the network stack of this
| clause, it has meant that some lawyers think that a court
| may overly broadly interpret the definition.
|
| Oh yeah, I have encountered this argument before, indeed.
| Thanks for the pointers btw. I do agree with Drew (your
| last link) here. I think it's part of the FUD from Google
| & Co I mentioned in my first comment in this thread. To
| me, it's even an evidence that the AGPL actually works as
| intended: it's not convenient for the Big Tech companies
| who can't reuse the AGPL without having to release their
| code that's targeted to end users, which they don't want
| to do.
|
| > big corporations/hyperscalers are often using AGPL
| software somewhere in their stack if they're using common
| Linux distros
|
| Do you have specific software in mind? What's AGPL in a
| common Linux distro? I'm asking because this surprises
| me. AGPL isn't usually used for something that's not a
| internet service, I wouldn't expect to find it in Linux
| distros' basic blocks.
| Qwuke wrote:
| Is Amazon Linux a common Linux distro? If so, it's often
| distributed with AGPL licensed code, I can think of a few
| pieces of software it has that are AGPL. They haven't
| been able to do internal forks of Ghostscript, if they
| were ever to do so, because of AGPL.
|
| Debian is also the other more common one distros with
| AGPL software included with it.
|
| Other things like forks of BerkleyDB by hyperscalers have
| all ended up as FOSS because of AGPL. Presumably this is
| a better example of where non-AGPL code would have not
| actually seen the light of day.
| jraph wrote:
| These distros package AGPL software, but are these AGPL
| packages part of the base install (I don't think so), and
| does Amazon use this software on production?
| Qwuke wrote:
| >are these AGPL packages part of the base install
|
| For several Amazon Linux AMIs, yes and yes! For Debian,
| the software are in the main archive, actually.
| jraph wrote:
| > For several Amazon Linux AMIs, yes and yes!
|
| Okay, I believe you, I'm not familiar with this. I'd
| still be interested in knowing which specific AGPL
| software Amazon would use themselves (note, I'm sure they
| distribute AGPL software through their distro, that
| doesn't mean they use it themselves).
|
| > For Debian, the software are in the main archive,
| actually.
|
| I mentioned the base install. Whatever you get by running
| deboostrap without parameters, or with a base debian
| docker container. Of course there's AGPL software in
| main. main is huge.
| Qwuke wrote:
| So for Amazon, I used to work there and not sure I can
| talk about specifics, but there was AGPL software used
| outside of the AMIs but they were approved on a case by
| case basis. Ghostscript is public and used in the AMIs
| that are shipped standard, and ofc is used sometimes by
| Amazon. And if any modifications went out, it was of
| course gladly republished, but I don't think any forks of
| AGPL software were being maintained to the best of my
| knowledge.
|
| >I mentioned the base install. Whatever you get by
| running deboostrap without parameters, or with a base
| debian docker container. Of course there's AGPL software
| in main. main is huge.
|
| No, afaik, unfortunately. That might drastically change
| how you distribute its base. I was a little unclear but I
| had meant "No but at least the most common distro ships
| it in their archive" with my first comment.
| jraph wrote:
| Right! Interesting, thanks.
|
| Hadn't thought about Ghostscript!
| imtringued wrote:
| AGPL isn't viral or contagious, it's copyleft. You need
| permission from the author to copy. If you violate the
| license terms you're copying something you're not allowed
| to copy. That's a copyright violation like illegally
| downloading music and the rights holder is allowed to
| tell you to stop doing it.
| Qwuke wrote:
| >AGPL isn't viral or contagious, it's copyleft
|
| Oh I agree! And I think it's straightforward to comply
| with.
|
| I was just explaining the common legal concerns that pop
| up with the license, and that too much 'contagion' has
| historically been a gripe about its lack of case law.
| sarchertech wrote:
| FSL is a much simpler court case. "You weren't allowed to
| compete with us. You did. Here are the actual damages
| incurred. Pay us."
|
| An AGPL enforcement would require the court to interpret
| its virality which is an open question before even
| deciding whether a violation occurred.
|
| The potentially overreaching nature of AGPL is one reason
| it maybe unenforceable. On the other hand if courts lean
| towards the less viral interpretation Google could get
| around these issues by modding an AGPL project to run on
| their proprietary hardware that no one has access to and
| then simply releasing the modified source code.
| jraph wrote:
| > Google could get around these issues by modding an AGPL
| project to run on their proprietary hardware that no one
| has access to and then simply releasing the modified
| source code.
|
| Well I guess they could today, I don't see the AGPL
| preventing them to. As long as the modified source is
| available under the AGPL I suppose they'd be good to go.
|
| A license that forces someone to release software for
| specific hardware would be non-free I suppose.
|
| I don't see this being practical though. Running
| proprietary hardware just for this reason would likely be
| costly, and not really efficient: someone could restore
| support for general hardware from upstream / only keep
| the interesting changes.
| Qwuke wrote:
| >An AGPL enforcement would require the court to interpret
| its virality which is an open question before even
| deciding whether a violation occurred.
|
| In US courts, the case law shows that the "virality" is
| not really an open question because of GPLv3 case law,
| and has never been interpreted that way. I'm not sure why
| you're commenting about this scenario when you're unaware
| that this has been actually tried in courts.
|
| In fact, we saw that in infamous Neo4j AGPL case,
| actually. AGPL worked as intended and protected the AGPL
| software in a similar way to LGPL. The court went on to
| protect non-GPL compliant additions that Neo4j made as
| being considered contagious, even, going even further to
| protect the original licensee than intended with the
| original unmodified license.
|
| So, just recapping, you've gone from stating that Amazon
| could firewall off AGPL because it has no case law, and
| after learning it does has its case law includes GPLv3
| that it simply may not be 'viral' enough because that
| hasn't been tested in court, to now learning it has been
| tested in court and successfully enforced.
| sarchertech wrote:
| AGPL has little case law. The extent of virality added by
| the additional clauses is not clear.
|
| My point is that it doesn't matter. If it is "viral" to
| the extent some people are concerned about, Amazon can
| find ways to firewall it.
|
| If it isn't, then they it doesn't really hamper their
| business model at all.
| Qwuke wrote:
| >The extent of virality added by the additional clauses
| is not clear.
|
| The Neo4J case was one piece of a longstanding part of
| GPLv3 caselaw where the virality is clear.
|
| >My point is that it doesn't matter. If it is "viral" to
| the extent some people are concerned about, Amazon can
| find ways to firewall it.
|
| Just a recap of your responses so far:
|
| So AGPL has no case law and might even be unenforceable,
| so therefore it you should use non-free source available
| licenses. Oh, it does have case law and hyperscalers have
| been forced to open source their forks like of BDB?
|
| Well, the virality hasn't been tested and FSL would be an
| easier case. Oh, it has been tested, multiple times and
| licensees have had to work out an agreement like in the
| Neo4j case - such that judges would actually be able to
| rely on prior art unlike FSL?
|
| Okay, well, even if that's all true - Amazon could just
| firewall it anyways. How? Well they would simply use vast
| resources to create proprietary hardware, create a fork
| for proprietary hardware despite that making it
| impossible to receive patches from the main fork, and
| then sell that as a service.
|
| Based on the above, I think you've done what you can to
| convince me.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > contagious license
|
| Can I catch GPL inadvertently and against my will? No, it
| is not "contagious".
| Qwuke wrote:
| Sorry, I'll put that in air quotes, I don't believe free
| software is disease causing :) just speaking about the
| common concern is whether or not AGPL copyleft applies to
| everything involved in responding to a network request
| (it does not).
| gdwatson wrote:
| "They convinced a bunch of developers that their definition of
| Open Source that was specifically crafted to protect business
| interests is canon."
|
| They adopted the existing Debian Free Software Guidelines as
| the Open Source Definition. The DFSG are good, actually, and
| represent an important community consensus outside the FSF.
| sarchertech wrote:
| They looked around and found the guidelines that most closely
| matched their goals. Specifically DFSG already included a
| clause about not restricting commercial use.
|
| Also if you read the original DFSG the clause about field of
| endeavor has been interpreted by OSI differently from the
| intent.
|
| It was about saying your license can't prevent an end user of
| your software from using it for a specific purpose. It really
| says nothing about restrictions on how you can sell the
| software.
|
| The problem is OSI is now the sole interpreter of the
| definition.
| microtherion wrote:
| > "Free software" does not mean "noncommercial." On the
| contrary, a free program must be available for commercial
| use, commercial development, and commercial distribution.
| This policy is of fundamental importance--without this,
| free software could not achieve its aims.
|
| -- https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
| sarchertech wrote:
| Sure. That restriction came later.
| fragmede wrote:
| Why is _that_ the problem? Trademarks are one of the three
| branches of intellectual property. The two words "open"
| and "source" look like generic terms, but "Open Source" has
| come to mean a relatively specific thing. So have Disney
| and Google and Coca-cola.
| jraph wrote:
| The DFSG and the OSD are the same text, but the OSI and the
| Debian project interpret it differently, and this difference
| is important.
|
| Debian (and most other distributions, btw), for the most part
| (or entirely, I suppose), agrees with the FSF / the GNU
| project when deciding which license is free or non free. The
| OSI has a more permissive interpretation.
|
| RMS speaks about that in a recent interview in French [1],
| English translation below:
|
| > La FSF a finance Debian a son commencement. Mais
| rapidement, le projet, qui comptait plus de contributeurs, a
| voulu formuler une definition de la liberte differente, avec
| l'intention d'etre equivalente.
|
| > A l'epoque, j'ai commis une erreur : j'aurais du verifier
| plus attentivement s'il pouvait y avoir des divergences
| d'interpretation entre le projet GNU et Debian. La definition
| me paraissait equivalente, meme si elle etait formulee
| autrement. J'ai dit : "C'est bon." Mais en realite, il y
| avait des problemes potentiels.
|
| > Plus tard, quand l'open source a emerge, ils ont repris la
| definition de Debian, je ne sais plus s'il ont change
| quelques mots mais ils ont surtout change l'interpretation.
| Des lors, elle n'etait plus equivalente a celle du logiciel
| libre. Il existe aujourd'hui des programmes consideres comme
| "open source" mais pas comme logiciels libres, et
| inversement.
|
| > J'ai d'ailleurs explique ces differences dans mon essai
| Open Source Misses the Point.
|
| English translation (not a native English speaker, I hope the
| translation is ok, especially considering that RMS is close
| to his words and it's probably easy to misrepresent him
| without noticing):
|
| > The FSF funded Debian at its beginnings. But rapidly, the
| project, gaining more contributors, wanted a different
| phrasing for the definition of freedom, which the intent of
| being equivalent.
|
| > Back then, I made a mistake: I should have checked more
| carefully if there could be different ways to interpret it
| between the GNU and the Debian projects. The definition
| seemed equivalent to me, even if it was phrased differently.
| I said: "OK". But in reality, there were potential issues.
|
| > Later, when Open Source surfaced, they took Debian's
| definition, I don't know if they changed a few words but they
| above all changed the interpretation. Since then, it was not
| equivalent to the free software definition anymore. There
| exist open source software that's not free software, and
| conversely.
|
| > By the way, I explain all this in my Open Source Misses the
| Point essay.
|
| [1] https://linuxfr.org/news/40-ans-pour-l-informatique-
| libre-en...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Truly one of the biggest wealth transfers in history. From well
| meaning developers straight into the pockets of corporations.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120620103603/http://zedshaw.co...
|
| > Why I (A/L)GPL
|
| > Open source to open source, corporation to corporation.
|
| > If you do open source, you're my hero and I support you.
|
| > If you're a corporation, let's talk business.
|
| > I want people to appreciate the work I've done and the value
| of what I've made.
|
| > Not pass on by waving "sucker" as they drive their fancy
| cars.
|
| https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/
|
| > To the Beggar Baron, open source's value is its free
| donation.
|
| > You would never stand on the street and offer to buy the
| wallets off people who are about to donate a few dollars to
| you. That'd be stupid.
|
| > They're _giving_ you their money for free. Take it and run.
|
| Always slap AGPLv3 onto everything you make. Always choose the
| most copyleft license imaginable. Permissive licenses yield
| _zero_ leverage. It 's either AGPLv3 or all rights reserved.
| Nothing else makes sense.
| hylaride wrote:
| If AGPLv3 was slapped onto everything back then, the
| likelihood of linux/open source being where it is today would
| be an order of magnitude less. A good chunk of the original
| windows TCP/IP stack was ripped from BSD licensed code. Had
| that not have been "easy" for Microsoft to take, the internet
| may not have developed the way it did and we'd all maybe be
| on proprietary networks like AOL/MSN/etc.
|
| The solution isn't always swinging super-far in the other
| direction.
|
| That being said, commercially supported OS software has
| essentially become shareware - just enough to get you hooked,
| and then the price jump is enormous.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That sounds lovely, actually.
|
| Before Microsoft added TCP/IP to Windows, there were third
| party ports of the BSD TCP/IP stack to Windows. The winner
| ended up being Trumpet Winsock, until Microsoft wisely used
| the same winsock API for their own implementation and
| embraced and extinguished.
|
| Those ports would still have occurred even if the BSD
| TCP/IP stack was GPL'd.
| hylaride wrote:
| IIRC, Microsoft wrapped a good chunk of the BSD code with
| it's native implementation of the Winsock API (I may be
| misremembering and the BSD code may have only been in the
| NT or win32 code - it's been decades and I'm pretty sure
| the whole stack has been rewritten since).
|
| But if there wasn't a bunch of people pushing various
| implementations based on a permissive licence, it may not
| have been clear that the demand was there. Winsock (the
| API) heavily leveraged BSD sockets in its implementation,
| too. V1 was for all intents and purposes designed to deal
| with unifying their BSD implementations that had
| problematic issues because Windows didn't have a lot of
| the system calls that UNIX/POSIX did (though POSIX was
| available later on in NT) and allowing inter
| compatibility. It's not clear that Peter Tattam would
| have written Trumpet if the API wasn't already published,
| which was driven by the BSD code.
|
| Also, Trumpet was not free or open source. It was
| notoriously pirated and illegally distributed.
|
| Some history is here: https://windows-
| pride.fandom.com/wiki/WinSock#Background
| mitjam wrote:
| Special booster: New product liability in EU for software. If
| your software is in any way related to commercial activity
| (eg. consulting or having been created as part of paid work),
| yproduct liability kicks in.
|
| Best but not 100% secure way to protect yourself is to donate
| the software to a well meaning non profit. If you control the
| non-profit, the barrier might not hold, if you don't control
| it, it's not your software anymore.
|
| Update: Thinking of it: AGPL might at least offer some
| protection as many integrators shy away from using software
| with this license.
| sneak wrote:
| The AGPL is a nonfree license that violates freedom 0. It's a
| EULA posing as a copyright license. It's nonsensical.
|
| https://sneak.berlin/20250720/the-agpl-is-nonfree/
| kstrauser wrote:
| I use to feel the same way, but I've relented. The end-end-
| users -- the people actually interacting with the software
| -- retain the right to keep accessing its source so they
| can modify it. That fills an important gap, where vendors
| can modify other-licensed software, let me use it, but
| prevent me from accessing the changes they made to it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Developers and corporations don't really matter. Trading
| their freedoms for ours is completely fine. We, the users,
| are the ones who matter. It's all about us. No, the
| developer cannot tivoize the software, because that harms
| us. No, the developer can't isolate it in a server, because
| that harms us. They should probably be glad Stallman is in
| charge... My definition of "harms us" is far more expansive
| and extreme than his.
|
| And if the corporations don't like it, why don't they
| just... _buy_ the developers out like the good capitalists
| they are? They want the software so badly? Contact the guys
| who wrote it and and get down to business. Make them
| millionaires and I 'm sure they'll have no issues giving
| them special permission to violate the AGPLv3. They are the
| copyright holders, they can do whatever they want. I even
| emailed Stallman to confirm that he thinks it's an ethical
| practice, and he does. The emails are literally recorded in
| the commit messages, just get in contact and talk business.
|
| If they won't do that, then let them pay hundreds of
| thousands of dollars a year for their own full time
| developers to write their own version. I'm sure their
| lawyers will also advise them not to even read our free
| software source code since it can taint the final product.
| Works for me. If they won't contribute back on our terms,
| if they won't pay us, then they should get literally
| nothing. That's leverage.
|
| The article you linked is hilarious. People really need to
| stop feeling sorry for _trillion dollar corporations_. Won
| 't you think of the poor billionaires with nothing to their
| names? Give me a break. I care a lot about individual
| hackers who code for a higher purpose. You'd have to pay me
| big bucks to spare even one second of thought towards some
| billionaire technofeudalist organization.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| Liquibase is also not free software. Most of these non-open-
| source licenses aren't free software. I'm not aware of any
| exceptions, but I'd be happy to see some examples if there are
| any.
|
| The rest of your comment mainly seems to be a mixed bag of
| rhetoric. It obscures the reality that Liquibase is, to modify
| your words, "co-opting the" open source movement to make it
| "more business friendly."
| sarchertech wrote:
| I don't love their license. But I think that a license that
| says you aren't free to redistribute this software or it's
| derivatives for a fee (including by letting users use it over
| a network) if you're a corporation making over $1 billion a
| year in revenue is perfectly compatible with the original
| intent of free software.
|
| The freedoms were about freedom for the user not a non user
| developer.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| > Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is
| that you should not charge money for distributing copies of
| software, or that you should charge as little as possible--
| just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.
|
| > Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free
| software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a
| license does not permit users to make copies and sell them,
| it is a nonfree license.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Those comments came later. Also making copies and selling
| them along with the source code is much different than
| the SaaS model that RMS didn't predict.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| If you think that the explicit reminder that free
| software allows selling is inconsistent with the original
| definition, then I think the onus is on you to prove that
| inconsistency. So far I read your comments as giving a
| sort of argument from silence that commercial
| transactions weren't explicitly mentioned in the earliest
| versions together with a gut feeling that your view is
| the same as theirs.
|
| The original 1986 definition, which I see you referring
| to elsewhere, came from a news letter that's available
| here: https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt
|
| The news letter itself cost $1. And it also includes an
| order form charging $150 for Emacs ($443.40 in 2025
| dollars). The tape and the manual come to $487.74 in 2025
| dollars.
|
| The issue with SaaS is loss of the freedoms, not that
| vendors charge money. Free Software was never about
| forcing organizations to break even or operate at a loss.
| If you believe that's inherent to the original definition
| then I think you'd have to present a clearer argument for
| that position. Free Software Foundation
| Order Form February 6, 1986
|
| All software and publications are distributed with a
| permission to copy and redistribute.
|
| Quantity Price Item
|
| ________ $150 GNU Emacs source code, on a 1600bpi
| industry standard mag tape in tar format. The tape also
| contains MIT Scheme (a dialect of Lisp), hack (a rogue-
| like game) and bison (a compatible replacement for yacc).
|
| ________ $15 GNU Emacs manual. This includes a reference
| card.
|
| Thus, a tape and one manual come to $165.
|
| ________ $60 Box of six GNU Emacs manuals, shipped book
| rate.
|
| ________ $1 GNU Emacs reference card. Or:
|
| ________ $6 One dozen GNU Emacs reference cards.
|
| Shipping outside North America is normally by surface
| mail. For air mail delivery, please add $15 per tape or
| manual, $1 for an individual reference card, or 50 cents
| per card in quantity twelve or more.
|
| Prices are subject to change without notice.
| Massachusetts residents please add 5% sales tax to all
| prices.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I'm in no way saying that free software didn't allow
| selling. I'm saying that it didn't forbid licenses that
| added restrictions on vendors.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying. But I think that's the same thing
| in the context of the FSF's thinking. I believe you are
| arguing that missing freedom 0 implied a sort of
| compatibility with the non-commercial restriction (this
| is the argument from silence I referred to earlier). But
| from what I see, the incompatibility of non-commercial
| restrictions is forced by the logic. Freedom 0 was almost
| surely an attempt to clarify confusions and make explicit
| an implicit assumption.
|
| There are really two issues here: one is what counts as
| copyleft (i.e. the ideal FSF license) and what counts as
| compatible with copyleft. The so-called permissive
| licenses like MIT and BSD are compatible with copyleft
| licenses in a way that licenses that restrict commercial
| access aren't. That's because these licenses don't add
| new restrictions but the non-commercial one does.
|
| The abstract idea of copyleft is that it's a chain of
| rights grants A > B > C > D... where entities on the
| right have exactly the same rights as the entities on the
| left. In other words, copyleft preserves downstream
| freedoms, or ">" is a freedom preserving operator for
| copyleft software.
|
| A permissive licensed piece of software X can be
| incorporated into copyleft software, say, B because X
| does not restrict any freedom required to be free
| software. However once incorporated, the chain becomes
| absorbed, you can't un-free the free software. So X >' B
| where >' is a sort of injection operation, but then
| everything downstream of B uses the ">" operator. X can
| also spin off proprietary copies of itself. Those are not
| compatible with free software, but they exist on a
| different branch of the rights grant tree and so aren't
| relevant to free software.
|
| On the other hand a license with a non-commercial clause
| includes a restriction already. It's not a hypothetical
| restriction that someone else can add to a fork (as in
| permissive licenses). You can't take a license with a
| non-commercial clause M and map it into free software
| because, as you granted, free software includes the right
| to sell and the license doesn't grant the right to remove
| the non-commercial restriction. If it did grant the right
| to remove that restriction, then a fork that removed the
| restriction would possibly be compatible with free
| software.
|
| What your argument amounts to in this framing is that
| even though A has the right to sell copies of the
| software, ">" doesn't have to preserve that right. This
| would require a stronger argument IMO, since (1) the
| freedom to charge is explicitly mentioned early even if
| it's not explicitly enumerated as one of the four
| freedoms yet, and (2) we have no examples where the FSF
| allows an entity on the left of ">" to terminate rights
| on the right of ">". That would break ">" as an operator.
| behringer wrote:
| You are mistaken.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I don't think that I am.
| rpdillon wrote:
| The FSF never drew a distinction between users and
| developers. They considered all users to be developers
| and all developers to be users.
| pc86 wrote:
| Might I suggest that if it's so clear cut as your comment
| suggests, perhaps provide even a single argument to that
| point?
|
| This comment might as well just be "nah."
| behringer wrote:
| I don't see why, the original comment also gave no
| concrete reasoning beyond mere opinion.
| pc86 wrote:
| Because it devolves into exactly what happened:
| "You're wrong." "No I'm not." "Yeah you are."
| "Nuh uh" "Yuh huh"
| pessimizer wrote:
| When people say something with no reference and no
| argument, the most they're owed is "no, you're wrong." If
| you give them anything else, it's a gift.
| Flimm wrote:
| If you're talking about free-as-in-freedom software,
| promoted by Richard Stallman and the FSF, then they have
| always been clear that Free software must not forbid
| commercial usage or require payment. Vendors are perfectly
| free to sell copies of Free software if they wish, but the
| license cannot forbid making copies and derivatives, even
| for commercial usage. See:
|
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#selling
| sarchertech wrote:
| The original use before the 4 freedoms were codified said
| nothing about the rights of non user vendors.
| Qwuke wrote:
| >the rights of non user vendors
|
| Because everyone was always a user in the definition of
| free software! Because it's free as in free speech.. In
| the first bulletin where the definition was made,
| Stallman envisioned no restrictions on distribution and a
| user being a business was entirely unrelated to how
| compensation were to occur:
| https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt
| sarchertech wrote:
| >Because everyone was always a user
|
| In the very early days they were always the same, but
| differences between use and distribution emerged quickly.
|
| For example, there are zero restrictions, duties, or
| obligations on using the software. But once you
| distribute changes (or in the AGPL case allow other
| people to use your changes), duties and obligations
| attach.
| Qwuke wrote:
| >In the very early days they were always the same, but
| differences between use and distribution emerged quickly.
|
| I think those concerns existed at the time of the writing
| of the first bulletin, if you read how they were
| expecting to be compensated. See the part titled "So, how
| could programmers make a living?".
|
| >For example, there are zero restrictions, duties, or
| obligations on using the software. But once you
| distribute changes (or in the AGPL case allow other
| people to use your changes), duties and obligations
| attach.
|
| Yep, the duty and obligation to redistribute, as
| mentioned in the bulletin above - but without a single
| company being the sole arbiter or commercializer of the
| source, as defined in the Free Software Definition you
| mention elsewhere. Freely, as in free speech.. A quote
| from the original bulletin:
|
| ```
|
| This means much more than just saving everyone the price
| of a license. It means that much wasteful duplication of
| system programming effort will be avoided. This effort
| can go instead into advancing the state of the art.
|
| Complete system sources will be available to everyone. As
| a result, a user who needs changes in the system will
| always be free to make them himself, or hire any
| available programmer or company to make them for him.
| Users will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or
| company which owns the sources and is in sole position to
| make changes.
|
| ```
|
| In the SaaS era, freedom is impinged not because
| hyperscalers make money off of free software. That was
| always the intended goal, because it isn't freedom like
| free beer or simply 'non-commercial uses'. Freedom is
| impinged because modifications of the software aren't
| redistributed if distribution is only done over generated
| artifacts on a network. AGPL is specifically for
| networked software like this.
|
| Unless you're implying that the GNU foundation, Richard
| Stallman, or the free software movement generally ever
| viewed even narrowly commercially restrictive licenses as
| free software. Which you can tell from the source
| documents and all others in this comment thread, that is
| obviously not the case.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| The principles predate modern SaaS by decades. You can
| see it in the wording of the FAQ you linked. It keeps
| using the word "distribute" - meaning giving people a
| copy of the software to put on their own computer - as if
| that were the only way of commercializing software. Which
| it pretty much was in the 1980s.
|
| There has been some revision over time, but there's an
| argument to be made that small revisions are inadequate
| to keep up with the sea change in how computing works
| that's happened since the turn of the century. The
| elephant in the room here is that SaaS, and especially
| cloud computing, has pretty well undermined the practical
| foundation for how the Free Software model was supposed
| to work for people who are trying to make a living
| selling Free Software.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Doesn't the AGPL from nearly 20 years ago address SaaS?
| Given that basically every big tech company bans AGPL
| licensed software, it seems like it provides adequate
| protection.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Yeah AGPL's intent seems to be to prevent people from
| commercializing the use of the software as an online
| service without providing source code.
| benterix wrote:
| The world changes, everything changes. Already 20 years
| ago Stallman saw that his original idea was abused
| (tivoization etc.), hence GPLv3. In the web era we have a
| completely different set of issues to deal with, and one
| of them is the killing of incentive by the big three
| public cloud providers.
|
| Back in RMS days, he advocated, for example, a RedHat-
| style business model where you sell Free Software with
| services. But when AWS takes your project and releases it
| as their service, good luck competing with them. This is
| a very real problem.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| I didn't think the idea of creating free software was to
| monetize it. If you create a software as "free", then
| anyone including hyper scalers can use it.
|
| Put out a restricted license if you don't want
| hyperscalers to offer it as a service. Although they have
| enough software engineering talent to use the old version
| to create and maintain a fork (e.g. valkey, opensearch,
| etc.).
| piperswe wrote:
| The developer and the user are one and the same. Freedom
| for one is freedom for the other. Users should have the
| freedom to pay someone else to act as developer for them,
| as well.
|
| These tenets are core to Free Software. Without freedom for
| users _and_ developers, there is no true freedom.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Most of these non-open-source licenses aren't free software
|
| Free as in beer? They are. BSL and SSPL and FSL and friends
| are free, with some restrictions which are usually extremely
| reasonable and boil down to forbidding reselling.
| mcny wrote:
| In context of GNU and FSF, when we say free software, we
| always mean free software with the basic freedoms
| Freedom 0: The freedom to use the program for any purpose.
| Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and
| change it to make it do what you wish. Freedom 2:
| The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help
| your neighbor. Freedom 3: The freedom to improve
| the program, and release your improvements (and modified
| versions in general) to the public, so that the whole
| community benefits.
|
| If you do price segmentation and prohibit billion
| (trillion?) dollar companies such as Amazon.com from using
| it, it is no longer free software
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Which freedom does that violate?
| ahtihn wrote:
| Freedom 0.
|
| Amazon is prohibited from using it for their commercial
| offering.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Based on the current definitions. If we go back in time
| to the early 80s, there were no rights for non-user
| vendors being discussed.
| close04 wrote:
| You omitted an important clarification stated before
| those freedoms:
|
| > The word "free" in our name does not refer to price; it
| refers to freedom
|
| It's free as in libre, not free as in gratis. They don't
| prohibit the exchange of money.
| mcny wrote:
| That is a moot point. It could be a million dollars but
| the person who received it can them pass it on for zero
| dollars.
| close04 wrote:
| If you're going to throw the commandments of software
| freedom at someone to make your point you _do not_ get to
| exclude exactly the part that explicitly contradicts what
| you say with a dismissive "except that, that doesn't
| count" because it doesn't fit your ideas.
|
| A license that gives freedom but not gratuity fits the
| rules you quoted. The general topic is far from an open
| and shut case so I'm happy to debate arguments with you,
| but not the lazy, disingenuous way.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > forbidding reselling.
|
| You absolutely cannot forbid reselling and call yourself
| Free Software. So what are you talking about?
| close04 wrote:
| I am talking about the 4 rules posted by GP above [0]
| from FSF's definition of free software, after selectively
| removing the part that wasn't aligned with their point,
| then calling that part "moot". I was not talking about
| the content of the article. The comment thread starting
| at the link below will provide all the context.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45604819
| mcny wrote:
| I don't see freedom two as having a qualification of
| "helping your neighbor".
|
| My interpretation is you can share anything you have with
| anyone else, even Amazon dot com and it (Amazon dot com)
| will have all the rights you have.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Sure, but that zero-dollar copy comes with no guarantees
| from the person passing it around. You could, as a
| billion dollar company, provide the software freely but
| offer additional warranties and support for a licensing
| cost. This was and is a really common business model for
| companies that package Free Software for pay.
| theamk wrote:
| I would not call all of them "extremely reasonable" -
| "forbidding reselling" also significantly discourages
| forking. If the original company is bought by
| Oracle/Broadcom, and raises the prices to unreasonable
| amount, all their users are likely screwed.
|
| As a user, it's pretty important for me that someone can
| continue to provide software under reasonable conditions
| even if original authors can't.
|
| (FSL and other licenses which convert to open source are
| much better in that regard, but there is no excuse for BSL
| / SSPL)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| You seem to imply it is a negative, I don't think it is.
|
| 1. They certainly came from the free software movement, but
| they don't call it "free software", they call it "open source".
| It is a detail but the name acknowledge the distinction, "open
| source" is a more practical term while "free software" is more
| idealistic. And I think it is a good thing we have both a
| business friendly OSI for getting stuff done and a more
| militant FSF to keep businesses in check.
|
| 2. I never needed this convincing so I may be biased, but open
| source is I believe superior to proprietary. Think of the
| source code as documentation, the best kind because it tells
| the truth. Think of the ability to change and rebuild the
| software as unlimited extra settings you get for free.
|
| 3. Their definition of open source is as much canon as the
| definition of free software by the FSF is canon.
|
| 4. Most developers aren't lawyers, we can't really trust them
| to pick licenses, or worse, write licences that will do what
| they think will do. So having an approved list of well tested
| license is a good thing.
|
| That big tech and big money is behind it is not a bad thing.
| Developers want to get paid after all. Big tech have the best
| lawyers too, so by picking a licence they acknowledge, you know
| what you are up to.
|
| And note that some of the OSI approved licenses, like AGPL are
| particularly hated by big tech.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I'm going to vote you up, because at least your points make
| sense.
|
| The key problem with your argument unfortunately is this
| part.
|
| >> they don't call it "free software", they call it "open
| source"
|
| The problem with this is that "Open Source" is already a
| phrase with meaning. Trying to co-opt that term for marketing
| reasons is disingenuous.
|
| I happen to think that a source-available license is better
| than a closed source license. I ship my own code that way.
| However what I create is _not_ Open Source, and I don 't
| market it as such.
|
| Liquibase is using a known term to market their product, when
| their license is _not compatible_ with that term.
|
| Their license is absolutely fine. Trying to pass ot off as
| OSS is not.
| redwood wrote:
| Spot on. Thank you for saying this. It boggles my mind with a
| bunch of former Red Hat types now work for companies like
| Microsoft and perpetuate a zealot mindset that might have made
| sense in the 90s but now it's completely divorced from what the
| next generation of software companies need.
|
| All you have to do is look at the name of the company on the
| building ...it still says Microsoft folks
| Zobat wrote:
| You might not have noticed but Microsoft has moving heavily
| into the open source world. Mind you, they're still a for
| profit company and you and I might not like everything they
| do to make their profit but they're a long way away from
| hating on open source.
|
| "Since 2017, Microsoft is one of the biggest open source
| contributors in the world, measured by the number of
| employees actively contributing to open source projects on
| GitHub, the largest host of source code in the world." [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_and_open_source
| rsrqa1 wrote:
| Microsoft has subverted projects like CPython by hiring
| mediocre core developers who have built out their power
| over the years. Microsoft has coerced other projects to
| move to GitHub so they could steal and launder the
| copyright in their LLMs. Multiple Microsoft GitHub CEOs
| have mocked open source and resistance to the code
| laundering.
|
| Microsoft "open" source projects like VSCode exist to lock
| in developers, surveil developers and steal their IP.
| Developers should become dependent on GitHub, Copilot and
| stolen code until the open source ecosystem can finally be
| destroyed.
|
| The entire thing is a big EEE that is beginning to pay off
| because of LLMs (we can still resist by moving off GitHub
| and rejecting LLM code theft).
| oytis wrote:
| The original open source was a programmer to programmer
| relationship, not company to company. Open source as a business
| model was inveted later, and it turns out compatibility with
| original open source licenses only goes that far.
| goodpoint wrote:
| 5. They astroturfed permissive licenses
| znpy wrote:
| You're 100% right.
|
| Side note: Stallman was right all along, before everybody else,
| in 1985.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I still remember everyone talking about how Android was so much
| better because it was "open source". And for a while, that was
| true. Now it's just a free gateway into having your freedom has
| a user taken from you, because no one ever bothered to make
| Android an actual FLOSS community like Linux and many
| programming languages are.
|
| You need to have an actual ethos behind these things. You need
| to have an actual foundation organization behind these things
| like the PSF, FSF, or Linux foundation that drives the
| development, not corporate overlords who have a profit motive.
|
| The people involved need to understand that they're not going
| to create untold amounts of value that can be measured
| monetarily. At best you might get hired as a fellow for a while
| and get to draw some money from donations. Linus only got rich
| because some very generous people offered him shares after they
| built a company on his project.
| preisschild wrote:
| I think (free / libre) Android is still alive today (although
| it is endangered now with Google not yet having released
| Android 16 QPR1. I would still hope with enough contributors
| we could fork it). Forks like LineageOS/GrapheneOS exist,
| which further improve allow you to use Android completely
| without proprietary Google Spyware. There is also a quite big
| ecosystem of free open source apps (on FDroid and other
| repos)
| lenerdenator wrote:
| The problem isn't that there's no free/libre Android, it's
| that it's not the core ethos.
|
| 15-20 years ago, someone at Google thought, "Jeeze, these
| little smartphones are great, but they could be better, and
| imagine all of the data we could get off of users if they
| did everything in their lives with one?", so they bought
| into Android, which was a completely independent startup
| until 2005. That is the platform's raison d'etre. They
| wanted to compete with PalmOS, Windows Mobile, and later
| iPhoneOS, for the data that people were entering into
| smartphones, so they introduced a software product that was
| open source so that OEMs would buy in. And it worked.
|
| Android would not have had a use to Google as a GNU/Linux-
| style project where there is no gatekeeper. If I can easily
| tear out Google's proprietary software, and replace it with
| something else without losing access to things like the
| Play Store, then Google just lost out on the value
| proposition on their purchase of Android in 2005 when it
| came to my use of it. They did it to make money off of my
| use, not to graciously support a FLOSS project.
|
| And now we're seeing that playing out as all of the FLOSS
| projects you mention are under direct threat from Google's
| handling of the project.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| "While corporations were once opposed to this model of software
| licensing, fearing the reduction of the Exchange-Value of their
| own products as a side effect of its widespread adoption, they
| ultimately realized that this software licensing model
| represented another socialized model of production which could
| be privately appropriated."
| sneak wrote:
| This is an anti-free-software narrative that is not supported
| by available evidence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
|
| Freedom 0 is important. It's not some big tech conspiracy.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Freedom 0 was added after the definition I'm talking about.
|
| I think freedom for the _end user_ to use the software for
| any purpose is much more in keeping with the original spirit.
| brookst wrote:
| It's kind of facile to imagine a conspiracy actively working to
| "convince" people to do the wrong thing. I've never seen any
| evidence of such a thing.
|
| In reality, I think it's an emergent property of software
| development, where very few people can make a living using the
| platonic ideal of a free license. People start projects that
| are free, then see that they can't pay the rent, while users
| (including companies) keep asking for more support and more
| feature work (for free, naturally).
|
| So the projects evolve, and get closer to business, both to
| attract contributions from developers who _are_ paid (by big
| business) and to position project owners to actually make some
| money.
|
| I'm not sure if it's good or bad, or if we even need to make
| such a judgment, but I think the phenomenon is easily explained
| without resorting to some kind of shadow campaign on behalf of
| business.
| preisschild wrote:
| > while users (including companies) keep asking for more
| support and more feature work (for free, naturally).
|
| Then don't actually do that or offer to implement/support
| them in exchange for money?
|
| There are always assholes (expecting free work), but you can
| just ignore them.
| sarchertech wrote:
| There are 2 different "PR" campaigns that happened.
|
| The first is Open Source vs Free Software. There's nothing
| shadowy about it. It's right there in the open. You can see
| who finances OSI. You can read what have to say about making
| Open Source business friendly and branding a new term vs
| "Free Software".
|
| And you can see how shortly after they started promoting the
| term it took off in popularity. They didn't invent the term,
| but they definitely popularized it.
|
| The 2nd PR campaign is OSI convincing devs that only software
| that only software that uses an official blessed license is
| pure.
| gadders wrote:
| Exactly right. These updated licenses are mostly to stop
| massively profitable hyperscalers using their work for free.
| For the average joe, or regular company it makes no difference.
| preisschild wrote:
| There are actually open source copyleft licenses (such as
| GPL, AGPL) that force "massive profitable hyperscalers" to
| contribute their improvements back.
| gadders wrote:
| But not any money.
| preisschild wrote:
| This seems like a straw man argument
|
| "Everyone who disagrees with this is a large freeloading
| corporation"
| mips_avatar wrote:
| Yeah but MIT is a million times better than elastic 2.0 or
| other trash commercial "source available" licenses, I wish
| everything was GPL and all photos were creative commons but
| they're not and I'm not going to begrudge any business
| releasing a tool under MIT.
| sarchertech wrote:
| That's not my point. I mostly agree with that. But I'd go a
| step further and say in the real world Open Source software
| doesn't offer enough protections against big tech companies
| doing big tech company things with your software.
|
| The license here isn't an exemplar of what I'm interested in.
| But the discussions on this thread are. Anything that isn't
| OSI blessed is bullied.
|
| We are already OK with saying you can use this software
| however you want, but when you distribute it you have certain
| obligations/restrictions. I think it's fine to go a step
| further and say if you distribute this software and you make
| $1 billion a year in revenue, you can't charge for it.
|
| I think that's fine the same way I think it's fine to say a
| company has free speech despite not allowing people to
| threaten murder.
| mips_avatar wrote:
| I mean I wanted to release a project under a modified
| license like "if your corporation laid off engineers in
| 2022-2025 you may never use this project commercially"
| language, but I think MIT might still be best. Software is
| trickier than licenses for things like images where
| licenses like creative commons BY-SA are really good
| because it guarantees the photo stays in the public domain
| but you can also include the photo on your website
| (considered a collection and you can still retain rights to
| your blog post). The problem with software licenses is that
| software is so much more composable. Like sure you can host
| a restrictively licensed project and call into it from your
| company's commercial app, but if you want to modify a
| module into your app that's tricky legally. Maybe I'm
| missing something here but I think the real risk is fake
| open licenses like elastic v2 (some YC company launched
| with it today) rather than the push for licenses like MIT.
| pessimizer wrote:
| What is the point of this comment? Free Software is the best of
| course. Open Source can be relicensed into Free Software, or
| relicensed into anything, as long as you keep the attribution
| or whatever little consideration they ask. So although Open
| Source is a corporate tool, at least the current snapshot is
| still equal to the best.
|
| This is _below Open Source._ And it 's claiming to be Open
| Source. You've made the case of why Open Source is a lowered
| standard, but you seem to be doing it to defend an _even lower
| standard._
|
| This is like defending an Open Source product calling itself
| "Free Software." It doesn't make any sense. People can release
| under any license they want, they wrote the software. The
| problem is _lying_ about it.
| einrealist wrote:
| I have just created a task to find an alternative in case 4.x
| cannot be used anymore.
|
| I have nothing against someone trying to monetise useful
| software. However, switching from an open-source software (OSS)
| licence is essentially a bait-and-switch tactic. This immediately
| destroys trust. It also destroys the part of the user base that
| is difficult to monetise but still has the potential to be
| monetised. I was hoping that the Elastic and TerraForm debacles
| had taught people a lesson.
|
| Flyway is also questionable at this point. If Liquibase is
| switching, what's to stop Flyway?
|
| Unless a fork is happening, I'm considering creating my own
| migration library tailored to our actual needs and usage. It
| should not be so hard. Liquibase was more of a convenience.
| ahoka wrote:
| It takes some thinking, but you can just use plain SQL to do
| the migrations.
| watwut wrote:
| That amounts to creating own db migration tool.
| ahoka wrote:
| Writing idempotent DDL is not that hard and then you don't
| have the problem the migration tools solve (tracking
| state).
| watwut wrote:
| Which of course will give you around 10% of what
| liquibase and flyway do.
| real_joschi wrote:
| It takes some thinking, but you can just use rsync to build
| your own version of Dropbox.
| asdfaoeu wrote:
| The beauty of open source is you can always fork the previous
| version. I don't see how it's anymore of a bait and switch than
| a vendor raising the price of a product.
| einrealist wrote:
| The ability to fork something doesn't mean its viable or
| reasonable for everyone. That's a risk to users in case of
| both extremes: bait-and-switch tactics (mostly due to
| commercial motivations) or abandoned projects (see ASF
| Attic).
| nomel wrote:
| > doesn't mean its viable or reasonable for everyone
|
| Related, it's often not viable to give away something for
| free.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > I don't see how it's anymore of a bait and switch than a
| vendor raising the price of a product.
|
| That's often called bait and switch if a subscription price
| is hiked significantly.
| nomel wrote:
| No relation. This is free, open source, where you can fully
| use, modify, and continue it as far into the future as you
| want. A paid model, you _lose access_ if you don 't adhere.
| With this, you're losing nothing except _future development
| time_ , which you were previously getting for free. These
| are _completely_ different things.
|
| My naive interoperation of this comment section says there
| were quite a few people making money on this work, without
| helping them pay their bills.
| rester324 wrote:
| I would add EventstoreDB (now KurrentDB) and NATS to the list
| of questionable service providers. The former has already
| relicensed it's service, and the latter had also intended to do
| so, they just chickened out after seeing the reactions and
| resistence from their user base. It's really become a business
| strategy at this point to pull the rug below the users.
| telios wrote:
| I thought NATS was a project under the CNCF, with the
| trademarks being transferred to the Linux Foundation, which
| is why they couldn't relicense NATS, and why they can't
| relicense it in the future.
| miniwark wrote:
| Apart from Flyway (Apache), Atlas (Apache) and Sqitch (MIT)
| still use "Open Source" licenses.
| einrealist wrote:
| Don't confuse the license with project ownership. Flyway is
| owned by Red Gate Software and the community edition of
| Flyway is licensed under Apache 2.0. Apache Atlas is owned by
| the Apache Software Foundation AND licensed under Apache 2.0.
| real_joschi wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they mean https://atlasgo.io/ and not
| https://atlas.apache.org/.
| einrealist wrote:
| Ah, my fault. But that does not change the point I try to
| make: project ownership is equally important, if you
| cannot just fork and maintain some open source software
| yourself. It's something to include in risk calculations.
| Arcuru wrote:
| What is their new license blocking you from doing?
| einrealist wrote:
| The commercial use permissions look murky to me. But I'm not
| in the legal department.
|
| What's more important is trust. What's to stop them from
| changing the licence again after evaluating the impact of the
| first change? Liquibase has collected "anonymous" metrics by
| default since version 4.30 (do they consider an IP address
| and timestamp as PII?). As soon as I saw that, I anticipated
| this scenario. It was not really a surprise. They have a way
| to analyse the impact. Now, I am reassessing the risks.
| mebcitto wrote:
| It's Postgres specific but there is
| https://github.com/xataio/pgroll which takes the automation a
| step further.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Was Elastic's relicensing a debacle from their perspective?
| Their share price did drop a bit after the announcement, but
| the company seems to still be quite healthy. For example,
| everyone I know who's working on search and RAG products right
| now is doing it with Elasticsearch. The version published by
| Elastic NV, not the Open Source fork or any other open source
| alternative.
|
| And perhaps more to the point, their revenue now is about twice
| what it was in 2020. That's hardly the situation I would expect
| to see if the move had destroyed people's trust in the company.
| If anything it seems like it might have had the opposite
| effect, at least among the demographic that matters most to
| Elastic as a company: paying customers.
| einrealist wrote:
| For users, it was more of a debacle, with Amazon being one of
| the biggest companies to rely on stable permissive licensing.
| Users who could not afford commercial licenses or were unable
| to accept the new license for legal reasons found themselves
| in limbo. I am sure that Elastic lost (potential) business to
| OpenSearch (and AWS). By how much is hard to measure. Sure,
| they were able to retain enough business. It probably attests
| to good service and product.
| pnt12 wrote:
| And AWS has agreements with services with similar services,
| eg MongoDB. Maybe elasticsearch asked for too much money,
| or AWS didn't want to pay out of principle.
| nashashmi wrote:
| If the previous code is on GitHub, then the previous code is open
| source. All future development will be under fsl. And released
| two years later.
| pards wrote:
| This is a shame. We use Liquibase on my project and I have a few
| bugfixes / functional gaps that I was planning to contribute back
| but I doubt my large enterprise client would sanction
| contributions to a commercial codebase.
| dylanowen wrote:
| Why not, if liquibase isn't directly completing with your
| company and your bug fixes help their business, why would they
| care?
| Arcuru wrote:
| I agree that this isn't technically "open source", but the FSL
| blocks competing use. Is anyone here actually blocked from using
| Liquibase because of their switch to the FSL?
| exabrial wrote:
| I think from the get go the should have planned their enterprise
| vs open source a bit better and it would have worked out
| mawadev wrote:
| I use liquibase at work because there was a large marketing
| campaign saying this was the standard for db schema versioning in
| the java world. Now that I look at flyway, it seems to be a tiny
| bit better... I had mixed results with liquibase, if you don't
| use the xml changeSets you are in for a ride and its not that
| easy to do a simple diff on two databases. It kinda works but
| feels iffy...
|
| During my frustrations I read blogposts saying you can implement
| schema version changes easily by yourself and I kind of see it...
| You have to do the thinking by yourself anyway when you declare
| changeSets?
| einrealist wrote:
| Be careful, or you could end up in the same situation with
| Flyway. I'm not sure how many contributors are employed or paid
| by Redgate Software. But what's to stop them from doing the
| same to Flyway once their competitor has made this change to
| Liquibase?
| preommr wrote:
| > if you don't use the xml changeSets
|
| I find it crazier that people use xml changesets.
|
| My setup is to use sql files versioned by date. Each file has
| changsets (regions demarcated by comments) for single
| transaction actions (like creating a database), along with it's
| rollback actions written as comments in it's respective
| changeset.
|
| I don't trust rollbacks, I mostly use them for dev purposes for
| scripts that are wip. If i have to "undo" changes to a db,
| better to write specific scripts that revert the actions (i.e.
| manually move columns around to a tmp table).
|
| I essentially just use liquibase as a language-agnostic db-
| migration tool that can connect ot a db and run a series of sql
| files. I could write scripts for that, but it's nice to have a
| third-party solution.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I haven't used it for 15 years, but this is exactly what I
| used to do. I felt like using SQL helped me understand what
| was actually happening to the database and having a tool that
| automatically did the right thing for applying those snippets
| between versions was great.
|
| For example, think of one install going from 1.0.0 > 1.0.2
| while another is going from 1.0.0 > 1.1.0. Sure, you could
| write something to do that yourself, but I'd rather use an
| existing library that already covers tons of edge cases.
|
| The number of Docker containers I've used that need to be
| rolled through a special incantation of several versions to
| get things upgraded cleanly make me shake my head sometimes.
| Every time I have to do that I still think of Liquibase and
| wish that I could just grab the most recent version and have
| the database schema magically updated like I could do with
| Java apps 2 decades ago.
| jshvshdjav wrote:
| cfgbvcsbmn
| dylanowen wrote:
| The comments here are pretty surprising. a lot of commenters are
| very worried about something that seems like a very reasonable
| change. The license change is to prevent someone like AWS
| offering managed-liquibase. It might not be technically open
| source anymore but why does that matter? You can still
| read/fork/contribute to the source and leverage liquibase
| internally. The fact that liquibase the company exists and
| provides this library is great. They shouldn't have to live in
| fear of their hard work being co-opted into managed liquibase to
| pass some open source purity test.
| ciferkey wrote:
| I've been collecting a history of this sort of thing, and list of
| companies here: https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/on-self-hosting-
| opentofu-an... . I'll have to add this one.
|
| Let me know if there's more I can include!
| bityard wrote:
| There's also https://isitreallyfoss.com
| kordlessagain wrote:
| The timeline problem:
|
| Copyright/patent law says:
|
| You wrote it at time T
|
| Therefore from T to T+70years, you control it
|
| Anyone who writes the same thing at T+1 is "copying"
|
| But if we both arrive at the same solution independently,
| causality matters more than chronology. If your code didn't cause
| mine, why should your timestamp give you power over me?
|
| This breaks the whole edifice:
|
| If independent discovery isn't "theft," then copyright only makes
| sense for literal verbatim copying. And even then - if I retype
| your code character-by-character because it's the best solution,
| am I stealing or just recognizing truth?
| kube-system wrote:
| Copyright law and patent law are two entirely different things
| and handle conflicts entirely differently. Lumping them both
| together is legally nonsensical.
| dizlexic wrote:
| The only "free" software license is MIT.
|
| We can talk about Stallman's "vision", but frankly he's a commie
| who wants to dictate usage rights for others.
|
| Free as in speech not as in beer. I read as total freedom. Not
| freedom to do what I think you should.
| mx_03 wrote:
| Is opensource synonym of free?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-16 23:01 UTC)