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I can totally understand why an entity (individual or business) would want the most options for themselves. It's completely natural, if a little selfish. But t

by Radim 9y ago

I can totally understand why an entity (individual or business) would want the most options for themselves. It's completely natural, if a little selfish. But the discussion here is about FOSS sustainability from the dev perspective, not yours as a user. Dual licensing was one option, proposed by the OP. Or do you think it's OK that critical libraries like NumPy, Django, etc end up with scraps (if lucky), and then we read odes to that on HackerNews? Long-term planning needs a certain reliable continuum (no pun intended) of people and resources. You know, experts able to meaningfully contribute at this level (core NumPy, core Scikit-learn, core Django, whatever) have very real trade-offs to make, regarding the cost of their labour, free time, family time etc, once out of academia. The "I HAZ BUG PLS FIX NOW, GIMME GIMME FREE" users are only one piece of the open source puzzle. I'm sure your friend that runs a business understands this very well (or he'll be out of business quickly).

TeMPOraL 9y ago
I agree what I presented is quite a selfish POV. What I was aiming at is an explanation why those very liberal licenses are attractive to developers at the initial stage of an open source project. Initially, the userbase is much more valuable than monetary contributions - I doubt that e.g. NumPy developers at the beginning of their work were confident that their project will end up being widely used by the financial sector. The presented reasoning may indeed be a big part of the problem here. I'm just describing it, not encouraging it. I am definitely not happy to see so much open source being used as critical components of worldwide infrastructure and businesses, and yet receiving little support both in terms of money and professional effort. FWIW, I do donate the little spare money I have to open source projects.
- Radim 9y ago
  Absolutely. Sustainability only becomes an issue when there's something to sustain :-) Beginnings are a creative effort, undertaken by passionate pioneers (rarely in it for the money), with outcomes that are notoriously hard to predict in advance. The hallmark of academia. That's why I said the later transition hurts -- it's a conceptual and cultural shift, not merely financial.

by Radim 9y ago

TeMPOraL 9y ago

I agree what I presented is quite a selfish POV. What I was aiming at is an explanation why those very liberal licenses are attractive to developers at the initial stage of an open source project. Initially, the userbase is much more valuable than monetary contributions - I doubt that e.g. NumPy developers at the beginning of their work were confident that their project will end up being widely used by the financial sector. The presented reasoning may indeed be a big part of the problem here. I'm just describing it, not encouraging it. I am definitely not happy to see so much open source being used as critical components of worldwide infrastructure and businesses, and yet receiving little support both in terms of money and professional effort. FWIW, I do donate the little spare money I have to open source projects.

Radim 9y ago
Absolutely. Sustainability only becomes an issue when there's something to sustain :-) Beginnings are a creative effort, undertaken by passionate pioneers (rarely in it for the money), with outcomes that are notoriously hard to predict in advance. The hallmark of academia. That's why I said the later transition hurts -- it's a conceptual and cultural shift, not merely financial.