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> 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 demon

by 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.
- mrkurt 8y ago
  I'm not sure what you think I'm arguing, but I also don't think the license change will solve problems for MongoDB. That they had to change their licensing so drastically is a symptom of a much larger problem. > 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. They _are_ megacorps. It's ok to be fine with megacorps, but it's a little silly to pretend they're not. They are a problem (you can disagree with this). We'd be better off with 20 smaller companies than one large Google. More innovation, less barriers to competing, etc, etc. It's not really righteousness, righteousness is more a moral stance than an "oh shit this is a bad state we're in".

by mrkurt 8y ago

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.

mrkurt 8y ago
I'm not sure what you think I'm arguing, but I also don't think the license change will solve problems for MongoDB. That they had to change their licensing so drastically is a symptom of a much larger problem. > 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. They _are_ megacorps. It's ok to be fine with megacorps, but it's a little silly to pretend they're not. They are a problem (you can disagree with this). We'd be better off with 20 smaller companies than one large Google. More innovation, less barriers to competing, etc, etc. It's not really righteousness, righteousness is more a moral stance than an "oh shit this is a bad state we're in".