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From my POV: Open Source should be about transparency, 3rd party code reviews and occasionally contribution from your own fanbase/community or well niche player

From my POV: Open Source should be about transparency, 3rd party code reviews and occasionally contribution from your own fanbase/community or well niche players. It was never about allowing (unpaid) developers help you built your project, unfortunately most people think the later is why you go OSS.

jrpt 10y ago
It was definitely about having unpaid developers contribute code upstream too. That's a large part of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. That's open source in theory. Open source in practice, however, means 99% of users never contribute back anything. These developers just end up being exploited (particularly by well funded companies) by working for free, building something valuable, fixing people's bugs, but not being paid for their time. That's what I want to change with Supported Source, an alternative model to open source. Open source developers: don't give your code away for free any longer! If companies are willing to use your code, they should pay you (it can still be given for free to small companies or individuals) Check it out at https://supportedsource.org/ https://supportedsource.org/
nickpsecurity 10y ago
The original, commercial model of source sharing by Burroughs B5000 was specifically so they could fix or extend the operating system. The UNIX sharing was for people to port, extend, and fix it. Academics have been remixing stuff in publications for a long time, too. You can bet getting contributions is usually a reason for open-source with a percentage of them coming from unpaid developers. It's always there.
pjmlp 10y ago
Many comercial products always had the source available. For example, usually with the professional version of compilers the source code was also there, just not on the student/hobby versions. Just recently I got hold of an old Turbo Pascal 5.5. brochure where Borland explicitly referred the availability of the source code on it.
- TimJYoung 10y ago
  Yes, and later on the entire Delphi ecosystem frowned on not making the source code to third party components available in at least some form, so most did. Borland originally set the stage for this by including the source code to the entire RTL/VCL in Delphi, which continues to this day.
- SadWebDeveloper 10y ago
  That model is not Open Source but Source Licensing because you are paying a royalty (or the complete suite) to access the source code so it's not open to everyone.

jrpt 10y ago

It was definitely about having unpaid developers contribute code upstream too. That's a large part of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. That's open source in theory. Open source in practice, however, means 99% of users never contribute back anything. These developers just end up being exploited (particularly by well funded companies) by working for free, building something valuable, fixing people's bugs, but not being paid for their time. That's what I want to change with Supported Source, an alternative model to open source. Open source developers: don't give your code away for free any longer! If companies are willing to use your code, they should pay you (it can still be given for free to small companies or individuals) Check it out at https://supportedsource.org/ https://supportedsource.org/

nickpsecurity 10y ago

The original, commercial model of source sharing by Burroughs B5000 was specifically so they could fix or extend the operating system. The UNIX sharing was for people to port, extend, and fix it. Academics have been remixing stuff in publications for a long time, too. You can bet getting contributions is usually a reason for open-source with a percentage of them coming from unpaid developers. It's always there.

pjmlp 10y ago

Many comercial products always had the source available. For example, usually with the professional version of compilers the source code was also there, just not on the student/hobby versions. Just recently I got hold of an old Turbo Pascal 5.5. brochure where Borland explicitly referred the availability of the source code on it.

TimJYoung 10y ago
Yes, and later on the entire Delphi ecosystem frowned on not making the source code to third party components available in at least some form, so most did. Borland originally set the stage for this by including the source code to the entire RTL/VCL in Delphi, which continues to this day.
SadWebDeveloper 10y ago
That model is not Open Source but Source Licensing because you are paying a royalty (or the complete suite) to access the source code so it's not open to everyone.