5 ms·

The real amnesia about “open source” history is that, at the time of the formation of the OSI, developers and companies were afraid of Free Software, Copyleft,

The real amnesia about “open source” history is that, at the time of the formation of the OSI, developers and companies were afraid of Free Software, Copyleft, and GNU. Making free/libre/community code palatable — even merely for re-use — was an uphill battle. Nowadays, use of open source is so pervasive that you get a strange look in developer circles when you use the word “proprietary”. And we are worrying now about paying for committer/maintainer time given how important OSS modules are, especially standard and popular programming libraries and database technologies. That is quite the inversion. Let’s take an example: search. Elastic has gone public while employing an army of Elasticsearch and Lucene committers, and while selling SaaS and cloud services around Elasticsearch and related projects, thus paying for those committers, creating a massive ecosystem/community, and revenue for themselves (plus return for their investors). A win like that would have been unimaginable in the pre-OSI era. Companies wouldn’t adopt Elasticsearch, wouldn’t put real data in it, and certainly wouldn’t pay some company to run it for them. Instead, that era saw companies like Verity, FAST, Autonomy, and similar proprietary search engines. Can you even name a proprietary on-premise deployable search engine today? Even if you can, it’s probably powered by Lucene, Solr, Elasticsearch under the hood. That’s how much the entire universe has shifted.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago
Well shoot, putting it like that I wouldn't mind it if all the search engines were proprietary and well-documented so I wouldn't have to justify the cost against the less easily quantified cost of using Elasticsearch
- Jedi72 8y ago
  If you want to box up the cost for accounting purposes why not just hire elastic search consultants? From the buyers point of view its not any different from a proprietary company
int_19h 8y ago
Many companies are still afraid of copyleft. When you see what actually gets used in corporate environments and shipped in commercial products, it's almost exclusively MIT/BSDL/AL, some LGPL, and very little GPL.
- adrianN 8y ago
  And forget about using GPLv3 or AGPL software.
  - lucideer 8y ago
    "copyleft" is a loose term used to refer to all GPL-ish things collectively
- abcdef123xyz123 8y ago
  Yes. I'm not sure I would say afraid but certainly cautious. I would avoid recommending GPL software to anyone I work with or for. The license is too complicated, the rules too strict (and seem to change with every license version), the FSF is too hardline. Simple, permissive licenses are easier and safer.
- tyingq 8y ago
  Well, GPL "tools" like Linux, Git, Emacs, etc, will be used. If there's an established pattern that using a GPL licensed thing doesn't trigger GPL terms on their code, companies are fine with it.
- simonh 8y ago
  "Used in corporate environments" and "Shipped" are two completely different thing. You will find GPL software all over the place in the enterprise because there is no risk. You won't often see GPL software in shipped commercial products, because when you ship stuff you might need to include proprietary components you don't want to have to open up. It still does happen from time to time though.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    I have personally worked on a GPL component that's a crucial part of a shipped Microsoft product, so I'm well aware that it happens. But compared to non-copyleft licenses, it's a drop in the bucket, even with the industry-wide embrace of Linux. And if Linux couldn't blaze that path for other stuff, I'm not sure what can.
closeparen 8y ago
Copyleft became acceptable because we got out of the business of selling derivative works, and started selling network access instead. AGPL is as toxic as ever.
- meditate 8y ago
  The common uses of AGPL I've seen are in direct response to the big players trying to swallow things up into their cloud platforms while not giving back to the community. So you can blame those entities for the toxicity.
wazoox 8y ago
Indeed. Young devs probably can't even fathom that back in the late 80s and 90s, not only everyone used proprietary languages and tools such as DBase, TurboC++, Delphi and Visual Basic, we used proprietary libraries for things such as displaying images or opening network connections, and paid good money for them. And boy, were they awfully buggy. And you didn't have access to the source to understand why it didn't work, and good luck getting any meaningful support. Proprietary software really is hell. How that taught us to love the GPL.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Apparently there isn't much love left for the GPL.
  - Haga 8y ago
    The GPL nevee had much lo e for those who where stuck in jobs to support their family's with reliable income. The day everyone could earn a living doing os work, most software companies would cease to be. Yet they hide behind a preacher who never stepped into the misery mill himself. You are on the soap box against borders while we mortals must play papers please.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Easy, want to use the work of others for free? Receive the same as you are willing to give others. Feel like earning money? Then pay back some of the dues, so that upstream can stay in business. That preacher is the reason many anti-GPL folks can enjoy Linux, GCC and a comfortable POSIX like userland. I wonder why they aren't all making FreeBSD a huge commercial success if GPL is so evil then.
- Crinus 8y ago
  Delphi comes with the full RTL and VCL source code. You don't get the source for the compiler, but this is useless for anyone than a 0.0000001% of the people who use GCC or Clang. Also all the tools you mentioned were incredibly productive and with way better documented than any equivalent open source solution today - assuming there is an equivalent open source solution (especially for something like dbase where the best you can find is somewhere between the awful joke that is LibreOffice Base and the plain awfulness of Harbour). Honestly you used the worst examples you could come up with if you wanted to paint a "proprietary software bad, open source software good" image. Those were excellent tools (yes, including Visual Basic, which like any user friendly tool with a very low barrier to entry was abused to hell and beyond, thus - again like any user friendly low barrier tool - got a bad name for itself).
NikolaNovak 8y ago
I fully agree with the premise and details of your post; to the last point of "can you name a proprietary...", HN tends to forget about / disregard the wonderful world of "enterprise" / "big corporate" software. Most large companies I dealt with are very "modern"/open-source on the client-visible apps; but very proprietary / legacy on the back-office stuff, from ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning - HR/Financials/CRM/EPM and such) onwards. I mean, corporate world back-office still largely runs on DB2 and Oracle databases, the likes of Windows & AIX (HP-UX/Solaris back in the day as well), even z/OS, and it goes up & down the stack like that. (as a somewhat related stunning bottoms-up anecdote, a young-ish AIX sysadmin at my recent engagement absolutely positively refused to install AIX tools [1] on the servers, as he didn't want to pollute them with that "unsupported open source stuff") [1] https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/aix-toolbox/index.html https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/aix-toolbox/i...
stakhanov 8y ago
Elastic is the exception, not the rule.
mcguire 8y ago
"Even if you can, it’s probably powered by Lucene, Solr, Elasticsearch under the hood." There's the rub.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

Well shoot, putting it like that I wouldn't mind it if all the search engines were proprietary and well-documented so I wouldn't have to justify the cost against the less easily quantified cost of using Elasticsearch

Jedi72 8y ago
If you want to box up the cost for accounting purposes why not just hire elastic search consultants? From the buyers point of view its not any different from a proprietary company

int_19h 8y ago

Many companies are still afraid of copyleft. When you see what actually gets used in corporate environments and shipped in commercial products, it's almost exclusively MIT/BSDL/AL, some LGPL, and very little GPL.

adrianN 8y ago
And forget about using GPLv3 or AGPL software.
- lucideer 8y ago
  "copyleft" is a loose term used to refer to all GPL-ish things collectively
abcdef123xyz123 8y ago
Yes. I'm not sure I would say afraid but certainly cautious. I would avoid recommending GPL software to anyone I work with or for. The license is too complicated, the rules too strict (and seem to change with every license version), the FSF is too hardline. Simple, permissive licenses are easier and safer.
tyingq 8y ago
Well, GPL "tools" like Linux, Git, Emacs, etc, will be used. If there's an established pattern that using a GPL licensed thing doesn't trigger GPL terms on their code, companies are fine with it.
simonh 8y ago
"Used in corporate environments" and "Shipped" are two completely different thing. You will find GPL software all over the place in the enterprise because there is no risk. You won't often see GPL software in shipped commercial products, because when you ship stuff you might need to include proprietary components you don't want to have to open up. It still does happen from time to time though.
- int_19h 8y ago
  I have personally worked on a GPL component that's a crucial part of a shipped Microsoft product, so I'm well aware that it happens. But compared to non-copyleft licenses, it's a drop in the bucket, even with the industry-wide embrace of Linux. And if Linux couldn't blaze that path for other stuff, I'm not sure what can.

closeparen 8y ago

Copyleft became acceptable because we got out of the business of selling derivative works, and started selling network access instead. AGPL is as toxic as ever.

meditate 8y ago
The common uses of AGPL I've seen are in direct response to the big players trying to swallow things up into their cloud platforms while not giving back to the community. So you can blame those entities for the toxicity.

wazoox 8y ago

Indeed. Young devs probably can't even fathom that back in the late 80s and 90s, not only everyone used proprietary languages and tools such as DBase, TurboC++, Delphi and Visual Basic, we used proprietary libraries for things such as displaying images or opening network connections, and paid good money for them. And boy, were they awfully buggy. And you didn't have access to the source to understand why it didn't work, and good luck getting any meaningful support. Proprietary software really is hell. How that taught us to love the GPL.

pjmlp 8y ago
Apparently there isn't much love left for the GPL.
- Haga 8y ago
  The GPL nevee had much lo e for those who where stuck in jobs to support their family's with reliable income. The day everyone could earn a living doing os work, most software companies would cease to be. Yet they hide behind a preacher who never stepped into the misery mill himself. You are on the soap box against borders while we mortals must play papers please.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Easy, want to use the work of others for free? Receive the same as you are willing to give others. Feel like earning money? Then pay back some of the dues, so that upstream can stay in business. That preacher is the reason many anti-GPL folks can enjoy Linux, GCC and a comfortable POSIX like userland. I wonder why they aren't all making FreeBSD a huge commercial success if GPL is so evil then.
Crinus 8y ago
Delphi comes with the full RTL and VCL source code. You don't get the source for the compiler, but this is useless for anyone than a 0.0000001% of the people who use GCC or Clang. Also all the tools you mentioned were incredibly productive and with way better documented than any equivalent open source solution today - assuming there is an equivalent open source solution (especially for something like dbase where the best you can find is somewhere between the awful joke that is LibreOffice Base and the plain awfulness of Harbour). Honestly you used the worst examples you could come up with if you wanted to paint a "proprietary software bad, open source software good" image. Those were excellent tools (yes, including Visual Basic, which like any user friendly tool with a very low barrier to entry was abused to hell and beyond, thus - again like any user friendly low barrier tool - got a bad name for itself).

NikolaNovak 8y ago

I fully agree with the premise and details of your post; to the last point of "can you name a proprietary...", HN tends to forget about / disregard the wonderful world of "enterprise" / "big corporate" software. Most large companies I dealt with are very "modern"/open-source on the client-visible apps; but very proprietary / legacy on the back-office stuff, from ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning - HR/Financials/CRM/EPM and such) onwards. I mean, corporate world back-office still largely runs on DB2 and Oracle databases, the likes of Windows & AIX (HP-UX/Solaris back in the day as well), even z/OS, and it goes up & down the stack like that. (as a somewhat related stunning bottoms-up anecdote, a young-ish AIX sysadmin at my recent engagement absolutely positively refused to install AIX tools [1] on the servers, as he didn't want to pollute them with that "unsupported open source stuff") [1] https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/aix-toolbox/index.html https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/aix-toolbox/i...

stakhanov 8y ago

Elastic is the exception, not the rule.

mcguire 8y ago

"Even if you can, it’s probably powered by Lucene, Solr, Elasticsearch under the hood." There's the rub.