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Err yeah of course it's the right move. The article says that the other alternative to pure open source is proprietary. Well obviously proprietary is bad for so

Err yeah of course it's the right move. The article says that the other alternative to pure open source is proprietary. Well obviously proprietary is bad for society, so if there is a way to construct a license that's at least partially open that's way better than completely proprietary. It's sad but I feel that AWS in 2019 has completely killed a business model.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> "It's sad but I feel that AWS in 2019 has completely killed a business model." AWS didn't "kill" anything since everything they did is allowed by the terms of FOSS licenses and was known to be possible for many years. It would be more accurate to say that there was never a valid business model in the first place. People originally wrote FOSS to "scratch an itch", not make money.
- foobiekr 7y ago
  Amazon can have killed the business model even if that model was fragile.
AlexB138 7y ago
I'm a big fan of open source, but why is it obvious that "proprietary is bad for society", exactly? I'd venture to guess that most of the people that frequent this site work for companies that sell proprietary software in some form or another. People being employed is pretty beneficial to society.
- tastythrowaway 7y ago
  My guess would be that the long tail of proprietary (due to existing market, mergers, de-facto standards, etc.) favors a greedy incumbent, which has basically never in history worked in the favor of the many. But published, open standards allow for greater adoption and participation, as well as a longer support lifespan.
- ahnick 7y ago
  The FSF provides a fairly long (strongly worded?) list of reasons on this page. https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary.en.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary.en.html IMHO proprietary software is better than no software, but open source software is better than proprietary software in terms of societal benefit. My favorite open source business model is the "Free Software Product" model. (Best articulated here -> https://sfosc.org/docs/book/business-models/#free-software-product https://sfosc.org/docs/book/business-models/#free-software-p...) The core ideas are: 1. Free software products have trademarked, proprietary distributions, with commercial terms attached. 2. Free software products (may) have 100% open source distributions, but they must use different trademarks and naming conventions, and receive no direct customer support or interaction from the upstream. They are strictly downstream repackaging of the proprietary upstream distribution. This is true regardless of which source code repository is being committed to - the user relationship is defined in terms of the commercial product, not the free software project. By either using this model on its own or combining it with OpenSaaS, I think it is entirely possible to run a profitable business, while providing public access to the code that benefits society.
jmull 7y ago
> ...that's at least partially open... Be careful. These companies aren't trying to do something good for open source software. They are trying to protect their own business models. IMO they have the right to develop and release software under whatever license they want. But as a user of that software, make sure you understand: if they decide your use of their software has potential revenue that they want, they are going to adjust the license to try to force you to pay up. That is, their software is only as open as is currently convenient for their business objectives. Really not "partially open" at all.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago

> "It's sad but I feel that AWS in 2019 has completely killed a business model." AWS didn't "kill" anything since everything they did is allowed by the terms of FOSS licenses and was known to be possible for many years. It would be more accurate to say that there was never a valid business model in the first place. People originally wrote FOSS to "scratch an itch", not make money.

foobiekr 7y ago
Amazon can have killed the business model even if that model was fragile.

AlexB138 7y ago

I'm a big fan of open source, but why is it obvious that "proprietary is bad for society", exactly? I'd venture to guess that most of the people that frequent this site work for companies that sell proprietary software in some form or another. People being employed is pretty beneficial to society.

tastythrowaway 7y ago
My guess would be that the long tail of proprietary (due to existing market, mergers, de-facto standards, etc.) favors a greedy incumbent, which has basically never in history worked in the favor of the many. But published, open standards allow for greater adoption and participation, as well as a longer support lifespan.
ahnick 7y ago
The FSF provides a fairly long (strongly worded?) list of reasons on this page. https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary.en.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary.en.html IMHO proprietary software is better than no software, but open source software is better than proprietary software in terms of societal benefit. My favorite open source business model is the "Free Software Product" model. (Best articulated here -> https://sfosc.org/docs/book/business-models/#free-software-product https://sfosc.org/docs/book/business-models/#free-software-p...) The core ideas are: 1. Free software products have trademarked, proprietary distributions, with commercial terms attached. 2. Free software products (may) have 100% open source distributions, but they must use different trademarks and naming conventions, and receive no direct customer support or interaction from the upstream. They are strictly downstream repackaging of the proprietary upstream distribution. This is true regardless of which source code repository is being committed to - the user relationship is defined in terms of the commercial product, not the free software project. By either using this model on its own or combining it with OpenSaaS, I think it is entirely possible to run a profitable business, while providing public access to the code that benefits society.

jmull 7y ago

> ...that's at least partially open... Be careful. These companies aren't trying to do something good for open source software. They are trying to protect their own business models. IMO they have the right to develop and release software under whatever license they want. But as a user of that software, make sure you understand: if they decide your use of their software has potential revenue that they want, they are going to adjust the license to try to force you to pay up. That is, their software is only as open as is currently convenient for their business objectives. Really not "partially open" at all.