8 ms·

Open Source Software Wall of Shame

27 points by Alir3z4 10y ago

nkozyra 10y ago
Careful what you wish for, you may shame them into contributing back.
markwillis82 10y ago
Would this not also depend on whether those companies make any changes to the software that would be worth contributing back? There are millions of websites using MySQL and Postgres that make money but don't contribute back? Add nginx/Apache to this list too? would cover most of the internet then.
JoachimS 10y ago
Seems like somebody has been looking at what Über is using.
mixedbit 10y ago
How does the author know if the listed companies never contribute?
- Alir3z4 10y ago
  When a company throws a biscuit at the wall, believe me they announce so loud that others can hear it very well. When they contribute, they make it sure everyone knows about it.
pawadu 10y ago
So this company has a team that stalks unfriendly journalists to find some dirt on them, and thats okay but if they don't contribute to Celery they have really crossed the line?
mugsie 10y ago
What is the source for not contributing? (how do you know that an Uber employee has not contributed back ?) Also - contributing to open source is a lot more than code. (Good) Bug reports, docs, and evangelism are all valid forms of contributions.
kutkloon7 10y ago
Thats kind of the point of open source. It's free for anyone to use. It's like shaming people for not paying for the free candy that you hand out.
- enkiv2 10y ago
  In BSD-style licenses, if you make changes you can distribute them with a new license. In GPL-style licenses, the source for any modifications must be distributed along with any modified binaries. In AGPL-style licenses, the source for any modifications must be available to users, even if no binaries are ever distributed. So, in some cases, I'm sure not contributing upstream is actually illegal. I can understand why lots of companies would use open source software but not contribute changes: if you already have your employees sign away their IP to the company, then there are legal complications to figuring out how to contribute, and if the company is publicly traded then internal modifications to open source software in order to support features that have not yet been announced may constitute an information leak if contributed upstream (and thus give illegal trading advantage to maintainers, etc). It's a big can of worms.
bArray 10y ago
To be fair to Uber, it would be in their interest to give back once they turn a profit. Instagram doesn't seem to turn a profit (as far as I'm aware). So this is just an attack on companies that can't give back. Amazing insight.
imjared 10y ago
This seems odd. It feels unfair to shame companies because they may or may not contribute to a handful of projects you've picked out. I'd also encourage the author to do a bit more digging. The first entry calls out Instagram for allegedly not contributing to Django but they have a fork of it here: https://github.com/Instagram/django https://github.com/Instagram/django and without doing much digging, it's easy to say they've contributed at least once. Several of the companies listed make incredible contributions to OSS.
- Alir3z4 10y ago
  Most of these companies and probably all of them contribute to Open Source for sure, but they don't contribute back to the projects they use. Instagram being a golden sponsor of Django (https://github.com/Alir3z4/oss-wall-of-shame/pull/3 https://github.com/Alir3z4/oss-wall-of-shame/pull/3) but still it's not officially claimed that it started to sponsoring yet. A 3 years old fork of Django doesn't seems to be a real contribution. Have a look at instagram and its size and tell me a 3 years old fork of their web framework of choice, something that made them $$$ is something to be called a contribution. Contribution is not only code, it can be $$$, hosting, hiring a developer to work on the project or many many other ways.
nicky0 10y ago
When a software library is released with a license such as MIT or BSD it says: use this for whatever you want as long as you preserve this notice. There is NO requirement to "contribute back".
painted 10y ago
looks like an attack against Uber
- iampoul 10y ago
  My thoughts exactly :D
- enkiv2 10y ago
  Uber doesn't particularly need to be attacked. Their business model is basically to violate employment law; as a result, their days are numbered.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
raverbashing 10y ago
"Wall of shame"? And maybe these companies did not have anything to contribute back? Uber uses Celery, but I can't imagine their main worries being fixing bugs on Celery (or even better, fixing them in a contributable form) Several companies have internal fixes and workarounds for OSS, and that is fine. Because not everything belongs upstream
- thealistra 10y ago
  They also have other open source things here http://github.com/uber http://github.com/uber, why shame them for not contributing to the specific things, which they may as well use vanilla
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sapeien 10y ago
Uber is a douchebag company, who knew? On a serious note, there is no obligation for any user no matter how big to contribute anything upstream in open source. If that were the case, we would be in big debt to the maintainers of the Linux kernel, GNU, OpenSSL, and so much more.
thrillgore 10y ago
If he wants to make a meaningful wall of shame he should start listing every other company. Because this is more commonplace than just Uber.
- Alir3z4 10y ago
  this list is not complete enough, tons of companies should be in there but I need time and suggestion. Once a while I come up for new companies to put them there, but I just forgot to do. Uber came to my sight first.
_ix 10y ago
I work for a company that uses open source. Sure, we might have the resources to contribute, but... the "fixes" we implement tend to be hacks particular to our overly complicated and Rube Goldberg-esque infosec infrastructure that I guarantee would have us on a different wall of shame all together if the code ever saw the light of day. Besides, code leaving larger institutions outside of the tech industry has other hurdles involving things like compliance and lengthy legal reviews...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ConAntonakos 10y ago
Didn't Instagram also co-create React.js?
jeffehobbs 10y ago
Yeah, Uber sucks. I’ve deleted their creepy app and won’t use the service until they go ahead and up they game. BuuuUUUuuuut, this shaming is not an information-rich presentation. It would be interesting to see a presentation on which big, heavily-invested companies are not good OSS citizens, but this is not that presentation.

27 points by Alir3z4 10y ago

Careful what you wish for, you may shame them into contributing back.

Would this not also depend on whether those companies make any changes to the software that would be worth contributing back? There are millions of websites using MySQL and Postgres that make money but don't contribute back? Add nginx/Apache to this list too? would cover most of the internet then.

JoachimS 10y ago

Seems like somebody has been looking at what Über is using.

mixedbit 10y ago

How does the author know if the listed companies never contribute?

Alir3z4 10y ago
When a company throws a biscuit at the wall, believe me they announce so loud that others can hear it very well. When they contribute, they make it sure everyone knows about it.

pawadu 10y ago

So this company has a team that stalks unfriendly journalists to find some dirt on them, and thats okay but if they don't contribute to Celery they have really crossed the line?

mugsie 10y ago

What is the source for not contributing? (how do you know that an Uber employee has not contributed back ?) Also - contributing to open source is a lot more than code. (Good) Bug reports, docs, and evangelism are all valid forms of contributions.

kutkloon7 10y ago

Thats kind of the point of open source. It's free for anyone to use. It's like shaming people for not paying for the free candy that you hand out.

enkiv2 10y ago
In BSD-style licenses, if you make changes you can distribute them with a new license. In GPL-style licenses, the source for any modifications must be distributed along with any modified binaries. In AGPL-style licenses, the source for any modifications must be available to users, even if no binaries are ever distributed. So, in some cases, I'm sure not contributing upstream is actually illegal. I can understand why lots of companies would use open source software but not contribute changes: if you already have your employees sign away their IP to the company, then there are legal complications to figuring out how to contribute, and if the company is publicly traded then internal modifications to open source software in order to support features that have not yet been announced may constitute an information leak if contributed upstream (and thus give illegal trading advantage to maintainers, etc). It's a big can of worms.

bArray 10y ago

To be fair to Uber, it would be in their interest to give back once they turn a profit. Instagram doesn't seem to turn a profit (as far as I'm aware). So this is just an attack on companies that can't give back. Amazing insight.

imjared 10y ago

This seems odd. It feels unfair to shame companies because they may or may not contribute to a handful of projects you've picked out. I'd also encourage the author to do a bit more digging. The first entry calls out Instagram for allegedly not contributing to Django but they have a fork of it here: https://github.com/Instagram/django https://github.com/Instagram/django and without doing much digging, it's easy to say they've contributed at least once. Several of the companies listed make incredible contributions to OSS.

Alir3z4 10y ago
Most of these companies and probably all of them contribute to Open Source for sure, but they don't contribute back to the projects they use. Instagram being a golden sponsor of Django (https://github.com/Alir3z4/oss-wall-of-shame/pull/3 https://github.com/Alir3z4/oss-wall-of-shame/pull/3) but still it's not officially claimed that it started to sponsoring yet. A 3 years old fork of Django doesn't seems to be a real contribution. Have a look at instagram and its size and tell me a 3 years old fork of their web framework of choice, something that made them $$$ is something to be called a contribution. Contribution is not only code, it can be $$$, hosting, hiring a developer to work on the project or many many other ways.

nicky0 10y ago

When a software library is released with a license such as MIT or BSD it says: use this for whatever you want as long as you preserve this notice. There is NO requirement to "contribute back".

painted 10y ago

looks like an attack against Uber

iampoul 10y ago
My thoughts exactly :D
enkiv2 10y ago
Uber doesn't particularly need to be attacked. Their business model is basically to violate employment law; as a result, their days are numbered.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

raverbashing 10y ago

"Wall of shame"? And maybe these companies did not have anything to contribute back? Uber uses Celery, but I can't imagine their main worries being fixing bugs on Celery (or even better, fixing them in a contributable form) Several companies have internal fixes and workarounds for OSS, and that is fine. Because not everything belongs upstream

thealistra 10y ago
They also have other open source things here http://github.com/uber http://github.com/uber, why shame them for not contributing to the specific things, which they may as well use vanilla

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sapeien 10y ago

Uber is a douchebag company, who knew? On a serious note, there is no obligation for any user no matter how big to contribute anything upstream in open source. If that were the case, we would be in big debt to the maintainers of the Linux kernel, GNU, OpenSSL, and so much more.

thrillgore 10y ago

If he wants to make a meaningful wall of shame he should start listing every other company. Because this is more commonplace than just Uber.

Alir3z4 10y ago
this list is not complete enough, tons of companies should be in there but I need time and suggestion. Once a while I come up for new companies to put them there, but I just forgot to do. Uber came to my sight first.

_ix 10y ago

I work for a company that uses open source. Sure, we might have the resources to contribute, but... the "fixes" we implement tend to be hacks particular to our overly complicated and Rube Goldberg-esque infosec infrastructure that I guarantee would have us on a different wall of shame all together if the code ever saw the light of day. Besides, code leaving larger institutions outside of the tech industry has other hurdles involving things like compliance and lengthy legal reviews...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ConAntonakos 10y ago

Didn't Instagram also co-create React.js?

jeffehobbs 10y ago

Yeah, Uber sucks. I’ve deleted their creepy app and won’t use the service until they go ahead and up they game. BuuuUUUuuuut, this shaming is not an information-rich presentation. It would be interesting to see a presentation on which big, heavily-invested companies are not good OSS citizens, but this is not that presentation.