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Finding a viable third way is going to require identifying a set of broadly agreed-on values that differ from those espoused by FSF or OSI. Maybe my thinking i

Finding a viable third way is going to require identifying a set of broadly agreed-on values that differ from those espoused by FSF or OSI. Maybe my thinking is limited by what's already out there, but I have a hard time seeing a third free-as-in- beyond speech (FSF) and beer (OSI). Perhaps thinking in terms of free-as-in- is too constrained and we need to propose an entirely new social contract around participatory software development?

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Maybe my thinking is limited by what's already out there, but I have a hard time seeing a third free-as-in- beyond speech (FSF) and beer (OSI). We, OSI and FSF are both free-as-in-speech; they both use definitions centered around th freedom of the licensee.
steveklabnik 8y ago
I don’t want to spoil too much, but yes, I think “participatory” may play a part. I have more questions than answers, though.
- sevensor 8y ago
  Let me spoil it a little then :) I use the word "participatory" because it seems like a lot of complaints about the current state of free and open source software hinge on a lack of reciprocity. You have the individual maintainer of a small project, who feels burned because there are people out there making money on her back. You have companies like Red Hat making life harder for CentOS because Oracle are a big pile of freeloading jerks (old news, I know). You have other companies like Google strategically open sourcing some of their technologies for commercial advantage. We have complaints about maintainers who orphan their projects, and we argue about whether it's OK to complain about not getting something for nothing any more. It seems like all of this strife comes from disagreements about what expectations we should have for all of the stakeholders -- owners, users, contributors, and maintainers. Not all of this can be spelled out in a license, as we've seen in the rise of CLAs and COCs. And so I use "participatory" in the sense that participating in third-way open source would impose some obligations in addition to the entitlements enumerated by the license.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Maybe my thinking is limited by what's already out there, but I have a hard time seeing a third free-as-in- beyond speech (FSF) and beer (OSI). We, OSI and FSF are both free-as-in-speech; they both use definitions centered around th freedom of the licensee.

steveklabnik 8y ago

I don’t want to spoil too much, but yes, I think “participatory” may play a part. I have more questions than answers, though.

sevensor 8y ago
Let me spoil it a little then :) I use the word "participatory" because it seems like a lot of complaints about the current state of free and open source software hinge on a lack of reciprocity. You have the individual maintainer of a small project, who feels burned because there are people out there making money on her back. You have companies like Red Hat making life harder for CentOS because Oracle are a big pile of freeloading jerks (old news, I know). You have other companies like Google strategically open sourcing some of their technologies for commercial advantage. We have complaints about maintainers who orphan their projects, and we argue about whether it's OK to complain about not getting something for nothing any more. It seems like all of this strife comes from disagreements about what expectations we should have for all of the stakeholders -- owners, users, contributors, and maintainers. Not all of this can be spelled out in a license, as we've seen in the rise of CLAs and COCs. And so I use "participatory" in the sense that participating in third-way open source would impose some obligations in addition to the entitlements enumerated by the license.