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It's interesting to see the change in tone from Bryan's previous blog, which was one of 'you can challenge opensource, but it will win out': "open source will s

It's interesting to see the change in tone from Bryan's previous blog, which was one of 'you can challenge opensource, but it will win out': "open source will survive its midlife questioning just as people in midlife get through theirs" to the more recent entry, which is that open-source is facing an existential crisis: "we need your legal voices before these creatures destroy the village!" I don't see how Confluent can respond directly to Bryan's 3 questions, though. They have the bigger social network, so i expect them to ignore him and just talk to their cool-aiders. It is a risk to ignore Bryan, though, as he's massively influential.

hiro_protag 8y ago
I truly don't understand the panicked tone. There are always going to be lots of projects licensed under all the existing licenses. If you don't like the new license, don't use it. Or start your own competing project. Greybeard says, people using $LICENSE are filthy heathens. You should use $OTHER_LICENSE instead. Film at 11.
- robert_foss 8y ago
  These a company backed projects that portray themselves as open source while actually being nothing of the sort due to licensing. It's a ruse. If MongoDB or CockroachDB for example want to describe their project as open source they should also act accordingly.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    > portray themselves as open source They don't! "The Confluent Community License is not approved by the OSI and likely would not be as it excludes the use case of creating a SaaS offering of the code. Because of this, we will not refer to the Confluent Community License or any code released under it as open source."
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - acqq 8y ago
      The quote is from: https://www.confluent.io/confluent-community-license-faq https://www.confluent.io/confluent-community-license-faq
    - anilgulecha 8y ago
      Isn't this a "wink, wink"? They could have instead said : Confluent Community license is not a FOSS licence, but tries to provide many of the rights afforded in FOSS licenses. That would have cleared up the status in a jiffy, and people would have made their decision to use or not use. But the intention seems to be to have their cake, and eat it too.
      - eesmith 8y ago
        .. no? I mean, is the Microsoft Visual Studio Community license a "wink, wink" license? Or the Sun Community Source License? Or the Atlassian Community License? FWIW, "Community" in the license name seems to indicate "not free software" and "not open source software". There's only one OSI or FSF approved license with that word in the name. They write 'Strictly speaking it is “source-available.”' That description has its own Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software points out that it doesn't always meet "the criteria to be called open-source".
        anilgulecha 8y ago
        No one I know of treats MSVS or Atlassian or whatever is under SCSL as open source. Confluent was treated and used as open source and that changed.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        eesmith 8y ago
- jamesblonde 8y ago
  Why would you create a throwaway account just to discuss in this thread? Is it hard to get a PR company late on sunday night to reply on HN?
IAmEveryone 8y ago
I don’t get what the change of tone is supposed to signify. Your comment hints at it revealing some greater truth, but without elaboration I guess I’m too ignorant of the social dynamics at play here to get it. Your last paragraph seems self-contradictory, unless you possess some unique insights into Bryan’s supposed influence. I also think disparaging everyone disagreeing with you as “cool-aiders” is somewhat cheap, and orthographically ahistoric. But someone from confluence already replied in the comments here, so I guess the point is moot?

hiro_protag 8y ago

I truly don't understand the panicked tone. There are always going to be lots of projects licensed under all the existing licenses. If you don't like the new license, don't use it. Or start your own competing project. Greybeard says, people using $LICENSE are filthy heathens. You should use $OTHER_LICENSE instead. Film at 11.

robert_foss 8y ago
These a company backed projects that portray themselves as open source while actually being nothing of the sort due to licensing. It's a ruse. If MongoDB or CockroachDB for example want to describe their project as open source they should also act accordingly.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > portray themselves as open source They don't! "The Confluent Community License is not approved by the OSI and likely would not be as it excludes the use case of creating a SaaS offering of the code. Because of this, we will not refer to the Confluent Community License or any code released under it as open source."
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - acqq 8y ago
    The quote is from: https://www.confluent.io/confluent-community-license-faq https://www.confluent.io/confluent-community-license-faq
  - anilgulecha 8y ago
    Isn't this a "wink, wink"? They could have instead said : Confluent Community license is not a FOSS licence, but tries to provide many of the rights afforded in FOSS licenses. That would have cleared up the status in a jiffy, and people would have made their decision to use or not use. But the intention seems to be to have their cake, and eat it too.
    - eesmith 8y ago
      .. no? I mean, is the Microsoft Visual Studio Community license a "wink, wink" license? Or the Sun Community Source License? Or the Atlassian Community License? FWIW, "Community" in the license name seems to indicate "not free software" and "not open source software". There's only one OSI or FSF approved license with that word in the name. They write 'Strictly speaking it is “source-available.”' That description has its own Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software points out that it doesn't always meet "the criteria to be called open-source".
      - anilgulecha 8y ago
        No one I know of treats MSVS or Atlassian or whatever is under SCSL as open source. Confluent was treated and used as open source and that changed.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        eesmith 8y ago
jamesblonde 8y ago
Why would you create a throwaway account just to discuss in this thread? Is it hard to get a PR company late on sunday night to reply on HN?

IAmEveryone 8y ago

I don’t get what the change of tone is supposed to signify. Your comment hints at it revealing some greater truth, but without elaboration I guess I’m too ignorant of the social dynamics at play here to get it. Your last paragraph seems self-contradictory, unless you possess some unique insights into Bryan’s supposed influence. I also think disparaging everyone disagreeing with you as “cool-aiders” is somewhat cheap, and orthographically ahistoric. But someone from confluence already replied in the comments here, so I guess the point is moot?