4 ms·

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

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.

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.