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> However, today’s cloud providers have repeatedly violated this ethos by taking advantage of successful open source projects and repackaging them into competit

> However, today’s cloud providers have repeatedly violated this ethos by taking advantage of successful open source projects and repackaging them into competitive, proprietary service offerings. Well, if that's the way you see it, then sure, go ahead and limit the software's use. But there are a lot of people, like myself on my OSS stuff, that do not feel like they're being taken advantage of when their software is used this way, otherwise I wouldn't put it out there. Granted I also disagree in many cases with copy left licenses. I don't want to engage in that debate here, but suffice to say some people want to control what you do once they transfer stuff to you and some don't. You see it a lot in non software these days too. We need a new term called "restrictionless software" or something similar so those of us with small companies don't need lawyers to share and share alike when each version of this type of clause comes out. In the meantime, building a company out of charitable software work is probably hard, so I'm sure others' revenues off your stuff feels wrong. And it's hard to maintain a sense of freedom but still add pay-for features, so I sympathize with companies going this route.

exikyut 8y ago
Looking at Redis [Labs], their livelihood is based solely on consulting and revenue generated from deploying Redis. Cloud providers are clearly netting multiple millions and not passing that upstream in the form of consulting, project donations, etc. This is one workaround. It works.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > This is one workaround. It works. A bit early to tell I'd say. Always hard to know who doesn't use something because of these things. But I think everyone can agree that this wouldn't have worked from the start; needed to build up a dependence on the software and interfaces before springing this. Feels a bit bait-and-switch every time someone's software gets commercially popular so they feel the need to change tack. Almost makes me wish it didn't become popular and widely distributed so the developers don't get this urge to do the switch. Then again, I'm always happy to see people get rich when they work hard on stuff.
- pritambaral 8y ago
  > This is one workaround. And a poor, misleading one. While solutions exist. > It works. That's to be seen. While actual solutions already work. A solution would be a proprietary license. Neutering the Apache 2 license while still calling it Apache 2 does a poor job of both properly licensing it or clearly advising potential users what their rights would be. In fact, calling it 'Apache 2 with modifications' is about as correct and honest as calling a dead man a 'human with injuries'.

exikyut 8y ago

Looking at Redis [Labs], their livelihood is based solely on consulting and revenue generated from deploying Redis. Cloud providers are clearly netting multiple millions and not passing that upstream in the form of consulting, project donations, etc. This is one workaround. It works.

kodablah 8y ago
> This is one workaround. It works. A bit early to tell I'd say. Always hard to know who doesn't use something because of these things. But I think everyone can agree that this wouldn't have worked from the start; needed to build up a dependence on the software and interfaces before springing this. Feels a bit bait-and-switch every time someone's software gets commercially popular so they feel the need to change tack. Almost makes me wish it didn't become popular and widely distributed so the developers don't get this urge to do the switch. Then again, I'm always happy to see people get rich when they work hard on stuff.
pritambaral 8y ago
> This is one workaround. And a poor, misleading one. While solutions exist. > It works. That's to be seen. While actual solutions already work. A solution would be a proprietary license. Neutering the Apache 2 license while still calling it Apache 2 does a poor job of both properly licensing it or clearly advising potential users what their rights would be. In fact, calling it 'Apache 2 with modifications' is about as correct and honest as calling a dead man a 'human with injuries'.