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Copy pasting what I think to be the most important part of the article: RoboVM is a complicated piece of technology that we have worked hard for years to

Copy pasting what I think to be the most important part of the article: RoboVM is a complicated piece of technology that we have worked hard for years to create. Over the past few months, we have seen competitors actively exploiting our good faith by using our open source code to compete with us directly in commercial products. On the flip side, we have received almost no meaningful contributions to our open source code. You can imagine how disappointing this has been to us; we had hoped our initial business model of OSS with proprietary extensions (like our debugger and interface builder integration) would work. But in light of the low contributions and behavior of competitors, we decided to stop automatically releasing changes to the core of RoboVM as open source. -Zechner I'm not sure what to think about the competitors-stealing-our-code angle, but the OSS-is-being-used-as-freeware argument is certainly one point in favor of closing/controlling their code (as a business).

admax88q 11y ago
They should have used a viral license like GPLv3, and sold commercial license exceptions.
- rmc 11y ago
  Or a licence like Affero GPL, which requires you to release the source code (and changes maybe?) if you make it available online.
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    AGPL requires that you release the version that you are actually running on the server.
- zxv 11y ago
  Yes, the GPLv3 is a powerful tool, but it doesn't completely eliminate the need to control when and how source code becomes open. In practice, GPLv3 may only offer hope that one could some day prevent violations after the time and expense of litigation. VMWare and Tivo are examples. Consider Google Android, which releases sources with binaries when the release occurs, not before. Balancing the how and when is just as important as the license. Gnu Ghostscript was an example for many years. They used a dual license and released source to the public six months after binaries.
  - admax88q 11y ago
    > In practice, GPLv3 may only offer hope that one could some day prevent violations after the time and expense of litigation That's overly pessimistic. People abusing your GPLv3 licensed code would be almost the same as people pirating your proprietary software. It would still be copyright infringement and with prices already set for commerical license exceptions it would be relatively easy to sue for damages plus legal fees. It's funny in this case that the Free Software approach may actually be a more viable business model for RoboVM than the OSS approach. Many people consider Open Source to be better for business and Free Software to be a bunch of hippies. But had RoboVM used a viral license and sold commercial exceptions (a model that the FSF considers acceptable) they could be defending user's freedoms while also building a viable business.
    - bad_user 11y ago
      A successful open-source project is also about building a community of third-party contributors. Or at least the possibility of one such community happening. Dual licensing basically kills off that discussion, because in order for dual licensing to work, then contributors need to sign a contributors agreement that licenses their work for whatever purpose the parent company sees fit. And this is where I've always disagreed with FSF's stance. Many people claim that GPL is inadequate because of the "ASP loophole". But a much bigger loophole is dual licensing. This is because dual licensing happens (and is useful) only when the product is unusable as open-source. For example Gitorious is AGPL licensed and does not need dual licensing because you know, it's meant for people to have an on-premise solution for Git hosting and it's a take it or leave it thing. A Javascript library on the other hand is totally useless as AGPL. Dual licensing is also what made Qt and consequently KDE to be less popular than Gtk+ and Gnome in distributions such as Red Hat's or Ubuntu, or why popular project such as Firefox or LibreOffice are better integrated with Gtk+/Gnome, even though Qt has always been technically superior. Heck, Qt's licensing is why Gtk+/Gnome happened in the first place. You see, the biggest advantage of open-source, its raison d'être if you will, is the possibility to fork. But if a fork cannot survive because of licensing reasons, maybe because it cannot be applied to the same projects as the original, then that's not really open-source. Personally I prefer the open core. For example I currently work with Scala and the JVM and I use IntelliJ IDEA as my IDE. It has a community edition with everything I need. Yet I pay for the Ultimate edition anyway. If the community edition gets discontinued, I'll switch in a heartbeat.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  The main purpose of their tool was running Java code on iOS. Using GPLv3, you couldn't do that.
HillRat 11y ago
I'm about to do a Java to iOS shootout, so this is fairly apposite for me. RoboVM's big advantage for us at the moment is that it's a commercially-supported product in a space where you are completely at the mercy of your tools; if your use case falls outside Google's, then j2objc is a potential cul-de-sac; XMLVM looks interesting but may still be more of an academic project than professional tool, and so on. Ultimately, it makes more sense for Xamarin to give RoboVM more resources and take the codebase internal: the end result is likely to be a better tool and higher revenue.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bad_user 11y ago
There have been several projects closing the source of their software due to the competitors-stealing-their-code angle. All of those projects I know of are dead, because in most cases what makes them interesting is the open-source nature.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  This is kind of the elephant in the room isn't it? I know there are a lot of mediocre FOSS software I tolerate solely because its FOSS. I know of several commercial or free closed alternatives that are better in a lot of ways, but the FOSS angle makes it interesting to me and others (others who freely contribute support in forums, code, etc).
bcg1 11y ago
> I'm not sure what to think about the competitors-stealing-our-code angle, but the OSS-is-being-used-as-freeware argument is certainly one point in favor of closing/controlling their code (as a business). Implicit in this argument is the assumption that Xamarin ever wanted RoboVM to "win" at all. I'm not saying that they don't... just that they subsumed a smaller competitor with an arguably superior product. Its logical to conclude that there exists a possibility that they simply paid to buy out RoboVM because they thought it would be cheaper than trying to compete head to head (especially, since as your c+p points out, competitors were/are using RoboVM code), and if RoboVM returns some of that money then it is just gravy on the biscuit. If that's the case then too bad for Xamarin... it is more of a sign of their ineptitude and of their eventual demise... if their leadership choose to use cash to knock out competitors instead of innovation, it will be interesting to see how long they can keep that up.
- jbigelow76 11y ago
  I don't think shutting down RoboVM to avoid competition is Xamarin's goal, after all if RoboVM were to shut down there is no reason to assume that the Java developers that use it would migrate wholesale over to the Xamarin C# development environment. My theory is that Xamarin is starting to care less and less what language is used to build mobile apps (for a while they claimed to care more about C# than Microsoft did); and instead own the products that become a natural pipeline into their service offerings like Test Cloud. Buying RoboVM lets Xamarin build in hooks that will mean staying in Xamarin platform is a natural progression.

admax88q 11y ago

They should have used a viral license like GPLv3, and sold commercial license exceptions.

rmc 11y ago
Or a licence like Affero GPL, which requires you to release the source code (and changes maybe?) if you make it available online.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  AGPL requires that you release the version that you are actually running on the server.
zxv 11y ago
Yes, the GPLv3 is a powerful tool, but it doesn't completely eliminate the need to control when and how source code becomes open. In practice, GPLv3 may only offer hope that one could some day prevent violations after the time and expense of litigation. VMWare and Tivo are examples. Consider Google Android, which releases sources with binaries when the release occurs, not before. Balancing the how and when is just as important as the license. Gnu Ghostscript was an example for many years. They used a dual license and released source to the public six months after binaries.
- admax88q 11y ago
  > In practice, GPLv3 may only offer hope that one could some day prevent violations after the time and expense of litigation That's overly pessimistic. People abusing your GPLv3 licensed code would be almost the same as people pirating your proprietary software. It would still be copyright infringement and with prices already set for commerical license exceptions it would be relatively easy to sue for damages plus legal fees. It's funny in this case that the Free Software approach may actually be a more viable business model for RoboVM than the OSS approach. Many people consider Open Source to be better for business and Free Software to be a bunch of hippies. But had RoboVM used a viral license and sold commercial exceptions (a model that the FSF considers acceptable) they could be defending user's freedoms while also building a viable business.
  - bad_user 11y ago
    A successful open-source project is also about building a community of third-party contributors. Or at least the possibility of one such community happening. Dual licensing basically kills off that discussion, because in order for dual licensing to work, then contributors need to sign a contributors agreement that licenses their work for whatever purpose the parent company sees fit. And this is where I've always disagreed with FSF's stance. Many people claim that GPL is inadequate because of the "ASP loophole". But a much bigger loophole is dual licensing. This is because dual licensing happens (and is useful) only when the product is unusable as open-source. For example Gitorious is AGPL licensed and does not need dual licensing because you know, it's meant for people to have an on-premise solution for Git hosting and it's a take it or leave it thing. A Javascript library on the other hand is totally useless as AGPL. Dual licensing is also what made Qt and consequently KDE to be less popular than Gtk+ and Gnome in distributions such as Red Hat's or Ubuntu, or why popular project such as Firefox or LibreOffice are better integrated with Gtk+/Gnome, even though Qt has always been technically superior. Heck, Qt's licensing is why Gtk+/Gnome happened in the first place. You see, the biggest advantage of open-source, its raison d'être if you will, is the possibility to fork. But if a fork cannot survive because of licensing reasons, maybe because it cannot be applied to the same projects as the original, then that's not really open-source. Personally I prefer the open core. For example I currently work with Scala and the JVM and I use IntelliJ IDEA as my IDE. It has a community edition with everything I need. Yet I pay for the Ultimate edition anyway. If the community edition gets discontinued, I'll switch in a heartbeat.
s73v3r 11y ago
The main purpose of their tool was running Java code on iOS. Using GPLv3, you couldn't do that.

HillRat 11y ago

I'm about to do a Java to iOS shootout, so this is fairly apposite for me. RoboVM's big advantage for us at the moment is that it's a commercially-supported product in a space where you are completely at the mercy of your tools; if your use case falls outside Google's, then j2objc is a potential cul-de-sac; XMLVM looks interesting but may still be more of an academic project than professional tool, and so on. Ultimately, it makes more sense for Xamarin to give RoboVM more resources and take the codebase internal: the end result is likely to be a better tool and higher revenue.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

bad_user 11y ago

There have been several projects closing the source of their software due to the competitors-stealing-their-code angle. All of those projects I know of are dead, because in most cases what makes them interesting is the open-source nature.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
This is kind of the elephant in the room isn't it? I know there are a lot of mediocre FOSS software I tolerate solely because its FOSS. I know of several commercial or free closed alternatives that are better in a lot of ways, but the FOSS angle makes it interesting to me and others (others who freely contribute support in forums, code, etc).

bcg1 11y ago

> I'm not sure what to think about the competitors-stealing-our-code angle, but the OSS-is-being-used-as-freeware argument is certainly one point in favor of closing/controlling their code (as a business). Implicit in this argument is the assumption that Xamarin ever wanted RoboVM to "win" at all. I'm not saying that they don't... just that they subsumed a smaller competitor with an arguably superior product. Its logical to conclude that there exists a possibility that they simply paid to buy out RoboVM because they thought it would be cheaper than trying to compete head to head (especially, since as your c+p points out, competitors were/are using RoboVM code), and if RoboVM returns some of that money then it is just gravy on the biscuit. If that's the case then too bad for Xamarin... it is more of a sign of their ineptitude and of their eventual demise... if their leadership choose to use cash to knock out competitors instead of innovation, it will be interesting to see how long they can keep that up.

jbigelow76 11y ago
I don't think shutting down RoboVM to avoid competition is Xamarin's goal, after all if RoboVM were to shut down there is no reason to assume that the Java developers that use it would migrate wholesale over to the Xamarin C# development environment. My theory is that Xamarin is starting to care less and less what language is used to build mobile apps (for a while they claimed to care more about C# than Microsoft did); and instead own the products that become a natural pipeline into their service offerings like Test Cloud. Buying RoboVM lets Xamarin build in hooks that will mean staying in Xamarin platform is a natural progression.