5 ms·

I can't really disagree with Redis here. Traditional licenses forced you to contribute back if you used community's code. SaaS changed everything: you can now

I can't really disagree with Redis here. Traditional licenses forced you to contribute back if you used community's code. SaaS changed everything: you can now "leech" software without giving back. We need a new model. We need to force contribution, because software corporations won't give back otherwise. I've worked for big corps and the bureaucracy will not allow it, even if developers wish to. If we don't force legal departments to comply we will lose the whole culture of freedom we've built in the past 40 years.

manigandham 8y ago
What freedom has been lost? You're free to build what you want and others are free to use it by the license you set. Forcing contribution would actually remove freedom.
SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
>We need to force contribution I’m interested in your proposed mechanism for that!
- hopler 8y ago
  After GPL solves this exact problem. The new problem is that no one wants that solution because massive cloud deployments ate business projects not open source hobby nrojects
- paulryanrogers 8y ago
  Perhaps they meant force contributing back improvements they're already making. I imagine AGPL may be what they had in mind. EDIT: fixed typo
jjeaff 8y ago
I think it would be reasonable to require that if you use the open source software for commercial reasons, you must also open source your modifications. The real problem is companies building their proprietary solutions on top of free labor. If they at least had to open source then that would hold back their competitive advantage they are trying to create by not contributing.
yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
So... AGPL? This is not an unsolved problem, unless I'm missing something. And if your answer is that companies won't touch AGPL with a 10-foot pole... why would you expect to get better results with something else?
dragonwriter 8y ago
> We need to force contribution, because software corporations won't give back otherwise This is untrue; plenty of permissively-licensed projects are supported by code contributions and dedicated paid support by software companies who use their code. You don't need copyleft, much less something new beyond copyleft, to get that. What Redis and others want gratis-but-proprietary licensing for is to prevent cloud services companies from competing with their SaaS offerings, not to force anyone to “give back”.

manigandham 8y ago

What freedom has been lost? You're free to build what you want and others are free to use it by the license you set. Forcing contribution would actually remove freedom.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

>We need to force contribution I’m interested in your proposed mechanism for that!

hopler 8y ago
After GPL solves this exact problem. The new problem is that no one wants that solution because massive cloud deployments ate business projects not open source hobby nrojects
paulryanrogers 8y ago
Perhaps they meant force contributing back improvements they're already making. I imagine AGPL may be what they had in mind. EDIT: fixed typo

jjeaff 8y ago

I think it would be reasonable to require that if you use the open source software for commercial reasons, you must also open source your modifications. The real problem is companies building their proprietary solutions on top of free labor. If they at least had to open source then that would hold back their competitive advantage they are trying to create by not contributing.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago

So... AGPL? This is not an unsolved problem, unless I'm missing something. And if your answer is that companies won't touch AGPL with a 10-foot pole... why would you expect to get better results with something else?

dragonwriter 8y ago

> We need to force contribution, because software corporations won't give back otherwise This is untrue; plenty of permissively-licensed projects are supported by code contributions and dedicated paid support by software companies who use their code. You don't need copyleft, much less something new beyond copyleft, to get that. What Redis and others want gratis-but-proprietary licensing for is to prevent cloud services companies from competing with their SaaS offerings, not to force anyone to “give back”.