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I give the following promise [1] for my file manager: If no commit is made to fman in more than 6 months, then it will be open sourced under a BSD license. Co
by mherrmann 8y ago
I give the following promise [1] for my file manager:
If no commit is made to fman in more than 6 months, then it will be open sourced under a BSD license.
Commits are displayed live on the home page, so people can actually hold me to that promise.
1: https://fman.io/blog/transparency/#open-source-promise https://fman.io/blog/transparency/#open-source-promise
- sleepychu 8y agoIt's a bit artificial though, as a metric, you could just do a trivial commit twice a year to keep your "promise". Great looking file manager will give it a bash next time I'm on my mac :-)
- mherrmann 8y agoSure, but at the end of the day, nobody will take me to court over it. And I could game it however it is phrased. The only reason why fman's development would seize is if it weren't making enough money. (Otherwise, I'd be incentivized to keep working on it, or hire someone to do so.) In that case, I'd have the choice between a) continuing to make very little money, and fman dying or b) open sourcing it to ensure its legacy. I know which one I'd choose. It's not just for Mac! Works just as well on Windows and Linux too.
- danieldk 8y agoI think this is a useful promise for customers. But what happens when you disappear from the web, after you bought a tropical island ;). How are people going to get the source code? Do you use some escrow mechanism?
- mherrmann 8y agoAs I mention on the page I linked to above, my family (=brother) knows how to release the source code in case I disappear.