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> comfy taking OSS work, doing a ton of proprietary development on it, and leaving the companies who did all the groundwork flailing in the wind Well, that's o

> comfy taking OSS work, doing a ton of proprietary development on it, and leaving the companies who did all the groundwork flailing in the wind Well, that's one way to put it I guess. I personally am OK with anyone taking my work and doing a ton of proprietary development on it. I wouldn't put it out there that way if I wasn't (and don't w/ my proprietary stuff). We need to stop demonizing restrictionless development. Same with commercial/copy-left development of course, but I'm seeing too much copy-left righteousness these days. To each their own. Also, we need to stop being so prideful in our work that we consider some uses of it an affront. Sometimes when you make things available to the world at large sans restrictions you have misusers. That's ok. But hating the proverbial man tends to only negatively affect downstream users at large. MongoDB can do what it wants, and should commercialize where it wants, but all this corporate hatred coupled with openness righteousness should stop being used as justification. > _Also_ I bet some random licensing folks are crapping their pants at IBM right now. I'm ashamed at how funny that is. So are their customers and all users who lost some freedoms today because of perceived self-righteousness. Ashamed is a fair word for grinning after pivots like these, but I definitely don't see a problem with the pivot itself. Again, to each their own.

aseipp 8y ago
> Same with commercial/copy-left development of course, but I'm seeing too much copy-left righteousness these days. I'm not sure what planet you live on, but the GPL and other various copy-left licenses have been on the slow decline for years in part due to things like SaaS negating the use of everything but the Affero GPL and the social 'implications' of using the GPL ("poisonous", "viral"), while the use of extremely liberally-licensed, "corporate-friendly" permissive licenses has skyrocketed. You don't have to look far (I've seen it more than once) to find people submitting issues on places like GitHub to completely relicense a project, just because it was GPL. Even here, every time a piece of code with a GPL license is attached and posted, you can be certain of someone pointing this out. There are technical factors involved (like what's the deal with JavaScript licensing), but ultimately less projects choose the GPL -- or any other "demanding" copy-left license -- than ever before, so I have no idea what you're talking about, other than a perceived persecution complex where you think people are trying to "stop you" from using their code? Of course, the funny thing is you say we need to stop "demonizing" restrictionless development, and of all copyleft licenses, the Affero GPL actually has risen in usage. But that's not because there's a big mean group of copy-leftists making people do it through blackmail. It's because it's risen in usage in corporate-sponsored, open-core projects, precisely to disincentivize systems like large, already-rich SaaS companies sucking the money out of their core customers by requiring them to share the source code for their changes (which they are often unable to do, making it effective). Corporations that sell open source software exactly understand how this game works -- they don't want other companies directly eating away the bulk of their revenue streams by just slapping a stupid UX and some user management patches on top, and so they license their software in an appropriate manner to try to cover all bases (source available, but without already-geared-up companies eating away their direct lifelines). You'll also notice most of the companies doing this strategy aren't already highly-powerful, highly-monied SaaS companies. They're often much smaller and starting off, trying to get their software in the hands of users, while retaining revenue leads. Highly powerful companies like Google can afford to just release everything under non-copyleft licenses like Apache or MIT. They can subsidize the development of the software through established business. But I imagine most people on this website wouldn't see these companies as being "copy-left righteous", only "protecting their investment". Unsurprisingly, this kind of understanding doesn't seem to extend to individual developers who license their code under a copyleft licenses (who are "righteous", and have no reason to care about anything other than the most people possible using their software). Maybe the "copy-left" righteousness you're seeing isn't a massive proliferation of copy-left licensing, but actually a result of people getting wise to the way this conversation plays out. After all, if I'm going to be accused of being righteous, I might as well use the GPL, since apparently anything less than a free-for-all isn't acceptable to a lot of people.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > I'm not sure what planet you live on, but the GPL and other various copy-left licenses have been on the slow decline for years The planet that recognizes that proclaimed righteousness (what I wrote about) has nothing to do with adoption (what you wrote about). If anything it makes the righteousness stick out because it goes against what people are choosing. I rarely see GPL devs demonized for how they choose to give their code away, or blog posts and evangelists espousing anti-GPL, or the straggling person "eventually coming out and calling it poisonous", or justifications on non-GPL changes as claiming corporate harm. I have no statement on license prevalence and it is unrelated to my comment. My statement is about justification used and being overly prideful of their work. Change and be done. One way is not necessarily better than another, and companies are not all bad, and that's not only who you are hurting with these changes, etc. But when I hear complaints about the company using up all their hard work like it's some zero-sum coffer being depleted, I don't pity them. I know the intent is guilt and I don't think it's a good look.
mintplant 8y ago
I don't see much in your argument apart from: I'm okay with this; you shouldn't be self-righteous; don't hate on corporations. Lots of telling me what I should do and how I ought to feel about my work, nothing really backing it up. In which case, I feel justified in simply responding: no, my values are different from yours.
- kodablah 8y ago
  It was more about what you shouldn't do, i.e. guilting others and how they use the software you made available. The values can be different, but that blame is not on someone else.
mrkurt 8y ago
> We need to stop demonizing restrictionless development. I'm not! I love permissive OSS licenses, I think they're great until they get abused. What I'm demonizing is overly powerful megacorps owning an unreasonable amount of the available "tech" revenue. This license from MongoDB is an unfortunate side effect of that. I don't think anyone there wanted a weirdly restrictive license, but I do think they want to build a healthy business on top of their work. And that's something I want them to be able to do as well. There's a big, big difference between companies in an oligopoly position and normal companies. Permissive OSS grew up in a world that wasn't a weird oligopoly for good reasons, but a lot has changed in the last 10 years and it's downright dangerous to license things permissively and try to build a business at the same time. Example: we built an Edge Runtime, it's under a permissive license, if we're successful I expect we'll run into the same problem DB companies have and then have to navigate around that: https://github.com/superfly/fly https://github.com/superfly/fly
- kodablah 8y ago
  > I think they're great until they get abused. I think they're great even when they get "abused" (for that definition of "abuse" which I don't agree with). > What I'm demonizing is overly powerful megacorps owning an unreasonable amount of the available "tech" revenue. Whether or not that is a problem is a different discussion, but suffice to say the license change will not solve or change that. It is naive to think so. > it's downright dangerous to license things permissively and try to build a business at the same time Well, if you attempt to build a business on the permissively licensed thing, of course. I'm not sure I concede that building a business on permissively licensed thing, thereby changing its license, is required. Building a business around it? Developing it with funds acquired on other business? Remaining small and not growing it beyond its original development? All of these are sustainable development models too. Before being so quick to blame these "megacorps" like they did something wrong, consider whether the changes to correct this "wrong" even accomplish the goal and whether that goal has any value of being accomplished. The intent of the license change has less value than its practical effect, and the idealistic way we'd like open source to sustain itself and be profitable is not always the pragmatic one. Calling them "megacorps", saying they are the problem, saying you have no choice but to change your license, etc all of this is what I mean about the ill-perceived righteousness of license restrictions.

aseipp 8y ago

> Same with commercial/copy-left development of course, but I'm seeing too much copy-left righteousness these days. I'm not sure what planet you live on, but the GPL and other various copy-left licenses have been on the slow decline for years in part due to things like SaaS negating the use of everything but the Affero GPL and the social 'implications' of using the GPL ("poisonous", "viral"), while the use of extremely liberally-licensed, "corporate-friendly" permissive licenses has skyrocketed. You don't have to look far (I've seen it more than once) to find people submitting issues on places like GitHub to completely relicense a project, just because it was GPL. Even here, every time a piece of code with a GPL license is attached and posted, you can be certain of someone pointing this out. There are technical factors involved (like what's the deal with JavaScript licensing), but ultimately less projects choose the GPL -- or any other "demanding" copy-left license -- than ever before, so I have no idea what you're talking about, other than a perceived persecution complex where you think people are trying to "stop you" from using their code? Of course, the funny thing is you say we need to stop "demonizing" restrictionless development, and of all copyleft licenses, the Affero GPL actually has risen in usage. But that's not because there's a big mean group of copy-leftists making people do it through blackmail. It's because it's risen in usage in corporate-sponsored, open-core projects, precisely to disincentivize systems like large, already-rich SaaS companies sucking the money out of their core customers by requiring them to share the source code for their changes (which they are often unable to do, making it effective). Corporations that sell open source software exactly understand how this game works -- they don't want other companies directly eating away the bulk of their revenue streams by just slapping a stupid UX and some user management patches on top, and so they license their software in an appropriate manner to try to cover all bases (source available, but without already-geared-up companies eating away their direct lifelines). You'll also notice most of the companies doing this strategy aren't already highly-powerful, highly-monied SaaS companies. They're often much smaller and starting off, trying to get their software in the hands of users, while retaining revenue leads. Highly powerful companies like Google can afford to just release everything under non-copyleft licenses like Apache or MIT. They can subsidize the development of the software through established business. But I imagine most people on this website wouldn't see these companies as being "copy-left righteous", only "protecting their investment". Unsurprisingly, this kind of understanding doesn't seem to extend to individual developers who license their code under a copyleft licenses (who are "righteous", and have no reason to care about anything other than the most people possible using their software). Maybe the "copy-left" righteousness you're seeing isn't a massive proliferation of copy-left licensing, but actually a result of people getting wise to the way this conversation plays out. After all, if I'm going to be accused of being righteous, I might as well use the GPL, since apparently anything less than a free-for-all isn't acceptable to a lot of people.

kodablah 8y ago
> I'm not sure what planet you live on, but the GPL and other various copy-left licenses have been on the slow decline for years The planet that recognizes that proclaimed righteousness (what I wrote about) has nothing to do with adoption (what you wrote about). If anything it makes the righteousness stick out because it goes against what people are choosing. I rarely see GPL devs demonized for how they choose to give their code away, or blog posts and evangelists espousing anti-GPL, or the straggling person "eventually coming out and calling it poisonous", or justifications on non-GPL changes as claiming corporate harm. I have no statement on license prevalence and it is unrelated to my comment. My statement is about justification used and being overly prideful of their work. Change and be done. One way is not necessarily better than another, and companies are not all bad, and that's not only who you are hurting with these changes, etc. But when I hear complaints about the company using up all their hard work like it's some zero-sum coffer being depleted, I don't pity them. I know the intent is guilt and I don't think it's a good look.

mintplant 8y ago

I don't see much in your argument apart from: I'm okay with this; you shouldn't be self-righteous; don't hate on corporations. Lots of telling me what I should do and how I ought to feel about my work, nothing really backing it up. In which case, I feel justified in simply responding: no, my values are different from yours.

kodablah 8y ago
It was more about what you shouldn't do, i.e. guilting others and how they use the software you made available. The values can be different, but that blame is not on someone else.

mrkurt 8y ago

> We need to stop demonizing restrictionless development. I'm not! I love permissive OSS licenses, I think they're great until they get abused. What I'm demonizing is overly powerful megacorps owning an unreasonable amount of the available "tech" revenue. This license from MongoDB is an unfortunate side effect of that. I don't think anyone there wanted a weirdly restrictive license, but I do think they want to build a healthy business on top of their work. And that's something I want them to be able to do as well. There's a big, big difference between companies in an oligopoly position and normal companies. Permissive OSS grew up in a world that wasn't a weird oligopoly for good reasons, but a lot has changed in the last 10 years and it's downright dangerous to license things permissively and try to build a business at the same time. Example: we built an Edge Runtime, it's under a permissive license, if we're successful I expect we'll run into the same problem DB companies have and then have to navigate around that: https://github.com/superfly/fly https://github.com/superfly/fly

kodablah 8y ago
> I think they're great until they get abused. I think they're great even when they get "abused" (for that definition of "abuse" which I don't agree with). > What I'm demonizing is overly powerful megacorps owning an unreasonable amount of the available "tech" revenue. Whether or not that is a problem is a different discussion, but suffice to say the license change will not solve or change that. It is naive to think so. > it's downright dangerous to license things permissively and try to build a business at the same time Well, if you attempt to build a business on the permissively licensed thing, of course. I'm not sure I concede that building a business on permissively licensed thing, thereby changing its license, is required. Building a business around it? Developing it with funds acquired on other business? Remaining small and not growing it beyond its original development? All of these are sustainable development models too. Before being so quick to blame these "megacorps" like they did something wrong, consider whether the changes to correct this "wrong" even accomplish the goal and whether that goal has any value of being accomplished. The intent of the license change has less value than its practical effect, and the idealistic way we'd like open source to sustain itself and be profitable is not always the pragmatic one. Calling them "megacorps", saying they are the problem, saying you have no choice but to change your license, etc all of this is what I mean about the ill-perceived righteousness of license restrictions.