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I'm not anti-Free Software. I'm all for it. I make my living off of it, and I contribute regularly to open source projects. I'm anti-Overly-Restrictive-and-Inno

by jarin 16y ago

I'm not anti-Free Software. I'm all for it. I make my living off of it, and I contribute regularly to open source projects. I'm anti-Overly-Restrictive-and-Innovation-Stifling-Licenses. You'll note that I recommended that the BSD license would be way more appropriate for this project.

zdw 16y ago
Snarky translation: I'm all for embrace and extend of other peoples, just like late 90's Microsoft. Look at how well that worked for everyone. BSD licenses are great and all, but often lead to a situation where the original developers get used with little to no compensation in return in terms of code improvement or financial benefit. A great example of how annoying this can be to the original developers - look at the bottom paragraph of http://openssh.org/ http://openssh.org/ My take on the whole thing - they should have published a spec, with hard and fast guidelines for interaction and preferably a protocol verification test suite, rather than code. Then release an implementation with a license that is GPL or proprietary or whatever - just make it so that 3rd parties can write interoperable code if they want. To put this succinctly, we need the "HTTP" of social media, not the "Apache" of social media.
- jarin 16y ago
  That's a good point, and I totally agree that would be a good solution. It needs more than just one working implementation out there, or it will just turn into Google Wave part 2. The good thing is the Diaspora protocol is much simpler than the Wave protocol, so hopefully it won't take very long before good alternative implementations start showing up.
- raganwald 16y ago
  To put this succinctly, we need the "HTTP" of social media, not the "Apache" of social media. That is very deep and it applies to a LOT of different "markets," not just social networking. A truly open standard API for interoperability is a very different thing from a truly open standard implementation.
forensic 16y ago
BSD license is such a failure from the perspective of the copyright holder. It's a bunch of OSS guys working for free to enrich parasites who don't give back to the original developers. Society benefits, sure. Those who use the code benefit, yes. But the guys who initially develop the software get little back. Charity work should be for poor people.
- jarin 16y ago
  See the problem in this case is that Diaspora was open sourced in such an immature state that it's almost certain that a large chunk, if not the majority of the development will be done by people other than the initial developers. Large portions of the codebase are already being rewritten by outside contributors, because of all of the security holes. Now add to that the Contributor Agreement, which assigns joint ownership to Diaspora, Inc. (who is free to license their work to other companies under any agreement of their choosing), compared to the contributors (who are bound by the AGPL). So who's doing the charity work, and who are the parasites getting enriched here?
  - forensic 16y ago
    That's a fine point. Personally I favour the GPL and am not really sure what to think about this Diaspora license scheme. My post was really targeted at BSD style licenses and how they are awful. The entire principle of pro bono work is as a civil service - improving society by engaging with the disadvantaged in your community. Software professionals are still new to the professionalism thing. We haven't learned the lessons that lawyers and doctors learned a long time ago. Do pro bono work - it's an important part of life - but choose your beneficiaries wisely. BSD licensed software is just handing free cash over to the advertising industry. Re-brand it, market it, make easy cash, and destroy the popularity of any GPL competitors which then stifles innovation for that particular type of product.

by jarin 16y ago

zdw 16y ago

Snarky translation: I'm all for embrace and extend of other peoples, just like late 90's Microsoft. Look at how well that worked for everyone. BSD licenses are great and all, but often lead to a situation where the original developers get used with little to no compensation in return in terms of code improvement or financial benefit. A great example of how annoying this can be to the original developers - look at the bottom paragraph of http://openssh.org/ http://openssh.org/ My take on the whole thing - they should have published a spec, with hard and fast guidelines for interaction and preferably a protocol verification test suite, rather than code. Then release an implementation with a license that is GPL or proprietary or whatever - just make it so that 3rd parties can write interoperable code if they want. To put this succinctly, we need the "HTTP" of social media, not the "Apache" of social media.

jarin 16y ago
That's a good point, and I totally agree that would be a good solution. It needs more than just one working implementation out there, or it will just turn into Google Wave part 2. The good thing is the Diaspora protocol is much simpler than the Wave protocol, so hopefully it won't take very long before good alternative implementations start showing up.
raganwald 16y ago
To put this succinctly, we need the "HTTP" of social media, not the "Apache" of social media. That is very deep and it applies to a LOT of different "markets," not just social networking. A truly open standard API for interoperability is a very different thing from a truly open standard implementation.

forensic 16y ago

BSD license is such a failure from the perspective of the copyright holder. It's a bunch of OSS guys working for free to enrich parasites who don't give back to the original developers. Society benefits, sure. Those who use the code benefit, yes. But the guys who initially develop the software get little back. Charity work should be for poor people.

jarin 16y ago
See the problem in this case is that Diaspora was open sourced in such an immature state that it's almost certain that a large chunk, if not the majority of the development will be done by people other than the initial developers. Large portions of the codebase are already being rewritten by outside contributors, because of all of the security holes. Now add to that the Contributor Agreement, which assigns joint ownership to Diaspora, Inc. (who is free to license their work to other companies under any agreement of their choosing), compared to the contributors (who are bound by the AGPL). So who's doing the charity work, and who are the parasites getting enriched here?
- forensic 16y ago
  That's a fine point. Personally I favour the GPL and am not really sure what to think about this Diaspora license scheme. My post was really targeted at BSD style licenses and how they are awful. The entire principle of pro bono work is as a civil service - improving society by engaging with the disadvantaged in your community. Software professionals are still new to the professionalism thing. We haven't learned the lessons that lawyers and doctors learned a long time ago. Do pro bono work - it's an important part of life - but choose your beneficiaries wisely. BSD licensed software is just handing free cash over to the advertising industry. Re-brand it, market it, make easy cash, and destroy the popularity of any GPL competitors which then stifles innovation for that particular type of product.