3 ms·

Well, let's take a look at ElasticSearch, since that's the current hot topic. If Lucene followed the same logic being espoused here, then ElasticSearch as we k

Well, let's take a look at ElasticSearch, since that's the current hot topic. If Lucene followed the same logic being espoused here, then ElasticSearch as we know it wouldn't exist, because they wouldn't be able to use Lucene, which is an incredibly core component to ES. Elastic employs several people to work on Lucene full time at this point, so they're "giving back" in that regard, but they're still making money off of pre-existing open source. What is the litmus test for this being okay? No one seems to be upset at Elastic for making money off Lucene, but the idea of the big cloud vendors making money off of ES is upsetting to a lot of people. If Amazon or Microsoft employed a handful of people to work on ElasticSearch full time does it become okay then?

mythz 8y ago
There's no line after, there will only ever be the 3 multi-billion dollar cloud monopolies at the end of the food chain, the toll booth collecting rent for hosting others OSS efforts.
- cthalupa 8y ago
  So, I guess the question is: What about Open Source makes you believe this is the bad outcome? The cloud companies make their money providing the physical infrastructure, their expertise in working with the product, support, etc. when hosting it for you. You're not paying them to have access to ElasticSearch - you've already got ElasticSearch. Why should an end-user have to purchase ElasticSearch hosting from Elastic? Why shouldn't they have the option of getting their hosting from someone that they already get other hosted services from? If there had been a similar attitude behind the development of open source webservers, the web as we know it would almost certainly not exist today. If httpd had been licensed in such a way that you couldn't make money off of providing it as a hosted service, and no open source alternative had come into existence, I doubt we'd all be sitting on HN right now. It never got concentrated like it has today with the big three, but nothing in the license prevented it from occurring.
  - mythz 8y ago
    Cloud providers were only possible because they can host OSS without licensing restriction or costs, they've worked out that they could charge for computing by providing hosting and is where they've put their billion dollar Cap-Ex into building impenetrable moats. Hosting OSS isn't the only thing that creates value, but it's where most of the revenue is now being derived since no-one pays for OSS, only to host it. The generated wealth is then be used to finance other proprietary and OSS efforts that can outspend and out resource anyone else they choose to compete with, who need to rely on a different source and business model for their sustainable income. Cloud hosting is the primary business model that allows investing in developing OSS as they'll still get paid in the end, in this way OSS bringing the cost of software down to zero becomes a loss-leading marketing expense (and competitive advantage) that allows mass free bait distribution of their software which everyone else is at a disadvantage to compete against. Essentially OSS is strengthening cloud monopolies by bringing the cost of software development to zero with the majority of wealth created going to making major tech cloud providers more wealthy and powerful each passing year. > Why should an end-user have to purchase ElasticSearch hosting from Elastic? Because AWS didn't put any of the investment in creating it, they're reaping the benefits from Elastic's investments and can undercut them since they don't have to fund any of the development and have access to an bigger economy of scale no-one else has access to.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Developers wanting to get paid while refusing to buy their tools are also to blame. In the end, working for such corporations is the only way to actually be paid when one wants to have a daily job in software tooling.
amenod 8y ago
You have a valid point, and I don't have the answers to your concerns yet. I am sure best practices that protect Lucenes of the world will develop, given chance. For example ES could buy out rights for independent development, or they could simply pay part of their income to the original developers. Having constraints for selling and building on other people's work doesn't mean that one shouldn't be able to do it, just that previous link in the chain should be financially rewarded for it.
- cthalupa 8y ago
  > For example ES could buy out rights for independent development, or they could simply pay part of their income to the original developers. This sounds exactly like a lot of proprietary software licensing agreements :) >Having constraints for selling and building on other people's work doesn't mean that one shouldn't be able to do it, just that previous link in the chain should be financially rewarded for it. I don't think there's anything wrong with building and selling proprietary software, but that's really what's being described here. If financial reward is what you most care about, write proprietary software. If FOSS is what you care most about, then the AGPL is probably a good fit for you. It won't force anyone to pay you for using your work, but it would force them to give back to the community.
  - amenod 8y ago
    > If financial reward is what you most care about, write proprietary software. If FOSS is what you care most about, then the AGPL is probably a good fit for you. It won't force anyone to pay you for using your work, but it would force them to give back to the community. This is a false dichotomy. You don't need to "care most about financial reward" to recognize that FOSS is simply not sustainable. There is a whole level of freedoms one can grant (or not) to users of their software. FOSS is one extreme. Proprietary software is another. I don't think we need to tolerate black boxes, just because we want functioning software.

mythz 8y ago

There's no line after, there will only ever be the 3 multi-billion dollar cloud monopolies at the end of the food chain, the toll booth collecting rent for hosting others OSS efforts.

cthalupa 8y ago
So, I guess the question is: What about Open Source makes you believe this is the bad outcome? The cloud companies make their money providing the physical infrastructure, their expertise in working with the product, support, etc. when hosting it for you. You're not paying them to have access to ElasticSearch - you've already got ElasticSearch. Why should an end-user have to purchase ElasticSearch hosting from Elastic? Why shouldn't they have the option of getting their hosting from someone that they already get other hosted services from? If there had been a similar attitude behind the development of open source webservers, the web as we know it would almost certainly not exist today. If httpd had been licensed in such a way that you couldn't make money off of providing it as a hosted service, and no open source alternative had come into existence, I doubt we'd all be sitting on HN right now. It never got concentrated like it has today with the big three, but nothing in the license prevented it from occurring.
- mythz 8y ago
  Cloud providers were only possible because they can host OSS without licensing restriction or costs, they've worked out that they could charge for computing by providing hosting and is where they've put their billion dollar Cap-Ex into building impenetrable moats. Hosting OSS isn't the only thing that creates value, but it's where most of the revenue is now being derived since no-one pays for OSS, only to host it. The generated wealth is then be used to finance other proprietary and OSS efforts that can outspend and out resource anyone else they choose to compete with, who need to rely on a different source and business model for their sustainable income. Cloud hosting is the primary business model that allows investing in developing OSS as they'll still get paid in the end, in this way OSS bringing the cost of software down to zero becomes a loss-leading marketing expense (and competitive advantage) that allows mass free bait distribution of their software which everyone else is at a disadvantage to compete against. Essentially OSS is strengthening cloud monopolies by bringing the cost of software development to zero with the majority of wealth created going to making major tech cloud providers more wealthy and powerful each passing year. > Why should an end-user have to purchase ElasticSearch hosting from Elastic? Because AWS didn't put any of the investment in creating it, they're reaping the benefits from Elastic's investments and can undercut them since they don't have to fund any of the development and have access to an bigger economy of scale no-one else has access to.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Developers wanting to get paid while refusing to buy their tools are also to blame. In the end, working for such corporations is the only way to actually be paid when one wants to have a daily job in software tooling.

amenod 8y ago

You have a valid point, and I don't have the answers to your concerns yet. I am sure best practices that protect Lucenes of the world will develop, given chance. For example ES could buy out rights for independent development, or they could simply pay part of their income to the original developers. Having constraints for selling and building on other people's work doesn't mean that one shouldn't be able to do it, just that previous link in the chain should be financially rewarded for it.

cthalupa 8y ago
> For example ES could buy out rights for independent development, or they could simply pay part of their income to the original developers. This sounds exactly like a lot of proprietary software licensing agreements :) >Having constraints for selling and building on other people's work doesn't mean that one shouldn't be able to do it, just that previous link in the chain should be financially rewarded for it. I don't think there's anything wrong with building and selling proprietary software, but that's really what's being described here. If financial reward is what you most care about, write proprietary software. If FOSS is what you care most about, then the AGPL is probably a good fit for you. It won't force anyone to pay you for using your work, but it would force them to give back to the community.
- amenod 8y ago
  > If financial reward is what you most care about, write proprietary software. If FOSS is what you care most about, then the AGPL is probably a good fit for you. It won't force anyone to pay you for using your work, but it would force them to give back to the community. This is a false dichotomy. You don't need to "care most about financial reward" to recognize that FOSS is simply not sustainable. There is a whole level of freedoms one can grant (or not) to users of their software. FOSS is one extreme. Proprietary software is another. I don't think we need to tolerate black boxes, just because we want functioning software.