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Open source is not synonymous with free software. The world is evolving and so open source should also evolve with it. Confluent have made it abundantly clear t

by chuhnk 8y ago

Open source is not synonymous with free software. The world is evolving and so open source should also evolve with it. Confluent have made it abundantly clear that the Apache Kafka project is and always will be Apache 2 licensed. Therefore that's where you go for your completely free solution. The community license is additional features free for use but not for you to provide as a managed service. Enterprise is something you have to pay for. There's clear distinction and delineation between these. To an outside observer this might seem confusing and nuanced. In which case use the apache 2 licensed software which should unquestionably be open source and free. But otherwise those building businesses around open source technology have to find a way to protect against cloud providers. Licensing innovation is the only path forward right now until the cloud providers start to philosophically realign themselves back with what open source stood for and stop being bad actors.

Conan_Kudo 8y ago
> Open source is not synonymous with free software. This is literally the point of Open Source. It is "Free Software" repackaged for business people who hate ideals and morals as part of the story for the development of software.
- andrewshadura 8y ago
  Actually not even that. It is just defined from the other point of view. Open source is free software. Free software is open source. http://deblanc.net/blog/2018/12/13/the-osd-and-user-freedom/ http://deblanc.net/blog/2018/12/13/the-osd-and-user-freedom/
  - Conan_Kudo 8y ago
    Very true. But of course, we'll be downvoted by folks who want to "revise" history in their favor...
  - yarrel 8y ago
    I agree very strongly with the penultimate paragraph there. "Methods of development are tools being used to protect software freedom, which in turn is a tool to protect user freedom. User freedom, and what we get from that, is what’s valuable." But Open Source and Free Software are not synonyms, as the rest of the article shows. Open Source cannot account for itself or for why anything other than "having the source" is necessary. Free Software cannot accept just "having the source" on locked-down systems. As the article shows, "Open Source" confuses epiphenomena (source availability) and affordances (collaborative development) of Free Software with its primary goal. We see that confusion mislead people time and time again. It's doing so elsewhere in this discussion. So if Open Source was named not to help corporations avoid talking about freedom but to avoid confusing people it has failed in its intended as well as its adopted usage.
    - prance 8y ago
      I agree with your reasoning. Also, particularly > software freedom, which in turn is a tool to protect user freedom is AFAIK an assumption, or has this ever been proven? I mean, isn't it entirely possible that helping software startups protect their business model of whatever "near-enough" OS/free software they build will help user freedom more than taking a purist OSS stance and leaving it all up for grabs by Amazon, Alibaba etc.? Because of increased choice and competition?
      - djrosanova 8y ago
        I suppose anything is "possible"...
mindcrime 8y ago
Open source is not synonymous with free software. Nobody is saying that it is. The community license is additional features free for use but not for you to provide as a managed service. IOW, "not Open Source". And that's fine... a company has a right to create software using any licensing terms they want. But making something that's "almost OSS, but not quite" and trying to steal the sheen of respectability that comes from being OSS, while not actually being OSS, is disingenuous and misleading. Additionally, license proliferation in general is a Bad Thing because it muddles the issue around what's really Open Source and what isn't, especially for new-comers. The world is evolving and so open source should also evolve with it. Not all evolutionary steps are good things, in real life, or in metaphor-space. until the cloud providers start to philosophically realign themselves back with what open source stood for and stop being bad actors. There have always been people who used OSS without contributing back. There's nothing novel about this w/r/t cloud providers. And it's very questionable how you can consider somebody a "bad actor" for using a project under the terms that it was explicitly licensed under.
- nine_k 8y ago
  Why, the source is open. You can use it to look for bugs, to make your own optimized / customized / verified build, etc. The change applies to making the running code available in certain ways, not to access to the source. I wonder how "free as in freedom" such software is, though. OTOH AGPL is considered "free software" by GNU, so this likely is, too.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    "Open Source" has a very specific meaning[1], that goes beyond the mere availability of the source code. And these terms violate article 6 of the OSD, meaning that code licensed this way is not Open Source. And yes, yes, I know the old saw that "The OSI doesn't have a trademark on Open Source". That's irrelevant. In practical terms, the de-facto definition of "Open Source" is the OSD. [1]: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated
AlexB138 8y ago
The only time I have an issue with this sort of setup is when the commercial entity employs, or directly is itself, a primary maintainer of the open source project (not sure how that works for Confluent and Kafka). It creates an incentive structure that is counter to the community at large. e.g. a PR is issued to the open source project that makes a piece of the commercial product irrelevant. For the community that's good, for the maintainer it threatens their livelihood. Some of these projects wouldn't exist without commercial support, so it's not a clear cut issue, but I get why people are bothered by it.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  a primary maintainer of the open source project (not sure how that works for Confluent and Kafka). In theory Apache projects are supposed to exist in such a way that one vendor doesn't dominate all the decision making and development. In reality, it's not uncommon for a given vendor to have outsized influence on a given project. See: Ambari and Hortonworks, for example. I don't follow Kafka development super closely, but I believe Confluent do have significant influence, but I'm not sure if it's to an extent that could be considered dangerous or not.
  - PeterCorless 8y ago
    It is also far more dependent on personality of project leadership and contributors than pure % of code committed. Jay is well-regarded as a 'good guy' and has the interest of the technology at heart. Such personalities in leadership can change a project greatly though. A bad project leader may lose a great deal of public goodwill in an open source project. That is a key intangible that many do not take into account -- trustworthiness of leadership.

by chuhnk 8y ago

Conan_Kudo 8y ago

> Open source is not synonymous with free software. This is literally the point of Open Source. It is "Free Software" repackaged for business people who hate ideals and morals as part of the story for the development of software.

andrewshadura 8y ago
Actually not even that. It is just defined from the other point of view. Open source is free software. Free software is open source. http://deblanc.net/blog/2018/12/13/the-osd-and-user-freedom/ http://deblanc.net/blog/2018/12/13/the-osd-and-user-freedom/
- Conan_Kudo 8y ago
  Very true. But of course, we'll be downvoted by folks who want to "revise" history in their favor...
- yarrel 8y ago
  I agree very strongly with the penultimate paragraph there. "Methods of development are tools being used to protect software freedom, which in turn is a tool to protect user freedom. User freedom, and what we get from that, is what’s valuable." But Open Source and Free Software are not synonyms, as the rest of the article shows. Open Source cannot account for itself or for why anything other than "having the source" is necessary. Free Software cannot accept just "having the source" on locked-down systems. As the article shows, "Open Source" confuses epiphenomena (source availability) and affordances (collaborative development) of Free Software with its primary goal. We see that confusion mislead people time and time again. It's doing so elsewhere in this discussion. So if Open Source was named not to help corporations avoid talking about freedom but to avoid confusing people it has failed in its intended as well as its adopted usage.
  - prance 8y ago
    I agree with your reasoning. Also, particularly > software freedom, which in turn is a tool to protect user freedom is AFAIK an assumption, or has this ever been proven? I mean, isn't it entirely possible that helping software startups protect their business model of whatever "near-enough" OS/free software they build will help user freedom more than taking a purist OSS stance and leaving it all up for grabs by Amazon, Alibaba etc.? Because of increased choice and competition?
    - djrosanova 8y ago
      I suppose anything is "possible"...

mindcrime 8y ago

Open source is not synonymous with free software. Nobody is saying that it is. The community license is additional features free for use but not for you to provide as a managed service. IOW, "not Open Source". And that's fine... a company has a right to create software using any licensing terms they want. But making something that's "almost OSS, but not quite" and trying to steal the sheen of respectability that comes from being OSS, while not actually being OSS, is disingenuous and misleading. Additionally, license proliferation in general is a Bad Thing because it muddles the issue around what's really Open Source and what isn't, especially for new-comers. The world is evolving and so open source should also evolve with it. Not all evolutionary steps are good things, in real life, or in metaphor-space. until the cloud providers start to philosophically realign themselves back with what open source stood for and stop being bad actors. There have always been people who used OSS without contributing back. There's nothing novel about this w/r/t cloud providers. And it's very questionable how you can consider somebody a "bad actor" for using a project under the terms that it was explicitly licensed under.

nine_k 8y ago
Why, the source is open. You can use it to look for bugs, to make your own optimized / customized / verified build, etc. The change applies to making the running code available in certain ways, not to access to the source. I wonder how "free as in freedom" such software is, though. OTOH AGPL is considered "free software" by GNU, so this likely is, too.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  "Open Source" has a very specific meaning[1], that goes beyond the mere availability of the source code. And these terms violate article 6 of the OSD, meaning that code licensed this way is not Open Source. And yes, yes, I know the old saw that "The OSI doesn't have a trademark on Open Source". That's irrelevant. In practical terms, the de-facto definition of "Open Source" is the OSD. [1]: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

AlexB138 8y ago

The only time I have an issue with this sort of setup is when the commercial entity employs, or directly is itself, a primary maintainer of the open source project (not sure how that works for Confluent and Kafka). It creates an incentive structure that is counter to the community at large. e.g. a PR is issued to the open source project that makes a piece of the commercial product irrelevant. For the community that's good, for the maintainer it threatens their livelihood. Some of these projects wouldn't exist without commercial support, so it's not a clear cut issue, but I get why people are bothered by it.

mindcrime 8y ago
a primary maintainer of the open source project (not sure how that works for Confluent and Kafka). In theory Apache projects are supposed to exist in such a way that one vendor doesn't dominate all the decision making and development. In reality, it's not uncommon for a given vendor to have outsized influence on a given project. See: Ambari and Hortonworks, for example. I don't follow Kafka development super closely, but I believe Confluent do have significant influence, but I'm not sure if it's to an extent that could be considered dangerous or not.
- PeterCorless 8y ago
  It is also far more dependent on personality of project leadership and contributors than pure % of code committed. Jay is well-regarded as a 'good guy' and has the interest of the technology at heart. Such personalities in leadership can change a project greatly though. A bad project leader may lose a great deal of public goodwill in an open source project. That is a key intangible that many do not take into account -- trustworthiness of leadership.