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That's not clear at all. It's not hostile to tinkerers. It's hostile to entities that may want to take others open source work and provide a business around tha

That's not clear at all. It's not hostile to tinkerers. It's hostile to entities that may want to take others open source work and provide a business around that work. You can still run the software, for free, in your business. You can still change the software, for free, and run that in your business. You can still fork the software, from today, and do what you want with it. The vast majority of work done on the software is funded by sentry. This hurts literally no one who is legitimate.

grumpydba 7y ago
> You can still run the software, for free, in your business. You can still change the software, for free, and run that in your business. You can still fork the software, from today, and do what you want with it. You cannot reuse and publish. Matter of fact, even reading it and taking inspiration from it is risky. Words from an IP lawyer I know. It's a proprietary license. There is no shame in that. So don't try to act like you are still an open source company. One has to make a good living. That's not what I was criticizing. > It's hostile to entities that may want to take others open source work and provide a business around that work. Consider yourself happy Torvalds didn't think this way. Or Guido. What's your dev environment?
- kbenson 7y ago
  I think a lot of this revolves around what you think a "tinkerer" should be able to do. You clearly state "learn and reuse parts of your code", but depending on what you mean, people may or may not think "reuse parts of your code" falls under "tinkering". I imagine people might be split on that point, but I think "reuse and publish" is asking for much more. That's not tinkering, that's making a business, or at a minimum providing a service (even if uncharged and the service is software access).
- brlewis 7y ago
  Reading any software and taking inspiration from it is risky, because software patents inhibit the Progress of Science and useful Arts. Here's cockroachdb's version of the BSL: https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/blob/master/licenses/BSL.txt https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/blob/master/license... You may be right that this doesn't allow modification. I hope sentry words their Additional License Grant better. > Consider yourself happy Torvalds didn't think this way. Or Guido. Yes I'm generally happy when I get new stuff for free, but I don't expect that to always happen.
  - grumpydba 7y ago
    > Yes I'm generally happy when I get new stuff for free, but I don't expect that to always happen. Sure. But when a product is advertised as open source, I expect it to be true.
    - brlewis 7y ago
      Open source never includes the guarantee that there will be future open source releases. If their new license won't work for you, it's as if it just stopped being maintained. Use and/or fork the most recent open source version.
      - grumpydba 7y ago
        A paragraph of this announcement is literally titled "Commercializing Open-Source". This is a blatant lie.
- jsmeaton 7y ago
  > Consider yourself happy Torvalds didn't think this way. Or Guido. By all means, fork the software and start providing a business around it then. What you don't get to do, anymore, is provide a business around the output of others moving forward. A truly open source clone may spring up out of this. I strongly suspect it won't, because there are very few people contributing to this project who aren't employees. The ones that aren't employees are making changes to support the instance they use to support their real business. I personally fall into this bucket. I raise issues, participate in betas, and try to fix bugs where possible precisely because I use the software. I have no intention of packaging it up and selling it elsewhere.
  - cycloptic 7y ago
    The idea behind community-based development is that anyone can provide a business around the output of others, and it's not a problem because all improvements are shared by everyone. All the license change says to me is that the development team was very insular and ended up all at the same company, so they ultimately saw no benefit to participate in the wider community. Closing themselves off further is a natural progression from this. That's fine for them, and I'm not going to dig into the deeper reasons why it happened, but for this reason it's a big red flag to me when a FOSS project fails to attract contributors from more than one company.
    - jsmeaton 7y ago
      > The idea behind community-based development is that anyone can provide a business around the output of others I disagree with this statement. Being able to build a business around the output of others is a side effect, and not the primary reason for open source. I would argue, and many companies are arguing, that the side effect causes more harm than good, and there should be some kind of optional middle ground. > the development team was very insular and ended up all at the same company Look, I have no statistics around contributors that are employees vs contributors from other companies. Zeeg may have an idea. But as he said up-thread, they tend to hire those that contribute. Operating Sentry at scale is no small feat, and I'm not surprised that most companies prefer to spend the money on the SAAS solution rather than on employees to operate it. > so they ultimately saw no benefit to participate in the wider community This is the bit I most disagree with. They are still participating in the wider community in the vast majority of cases. There is a single restriction - you may not take the output and duplicate their business.
zeeg 7y ago
fwiw we basically employ everyone (either full time or as a contractor) that contributes to Sentry, and if we don't, shoot me an email and maybe we can fix that!
sneak 7y ago
It is entirely legitimate to take f/oss software and offer a hosted service of it, directly competing with those who paid money to produce the software, and potentially harming their services business. If “we literally wrote it” isn’t enough to retain your services customers, maybe you shouldn’t have them.
- jsmeaton 7y ago
  Sure, it's totally legitimate under an f/oss license. Which is why many companies that are spending millions of their own money developing these systems are moving to different models where it's no longer legitimate. If the puritans aren't willing to accept that, that's their right, and they can take their money elsewhere. There's a tragedy of the commons element to it all. Company A invests millions of dollars developing a product out in the open for the benefit of themselves AND their users. Users are free to self host for literally $0. Then company B comes along and repackages the solution, usually behind closed doors, and reaps the $millions of benefit with only the marginal costs of operating the product. The whole argument is very strange to me. Users - end users - have all the freedom in the world. It's only really multi billion dollar companies that are exploiting the work of others for their own personal gain that are being shut out - but the puritans seem ready to defend them anyway. In a world where Amazon (for example) control everything, users have far less freedom.
  - sneak 7y ago
    > Then company B comes along and repackages the solution, usually behind closed doors, and reaps the $millions of benefit with only the marginal costs of operating the product. Well, they can only reap what company A fails to reap; either by having lower prices, or a better service offering, or being better or more useful in some way, right? I mean, if company A is literally the same name as the software, they have a natural marketing advantage, so company B would have to be better on some axis to eat even part of their lunch.
    - jsmeaton 7y ago
      > Well, they can only reap what company A fails to reap; either by having lower prices That's basically my entire point. Of course company B gets to have lower prices, since they're not spending money on building the product.
icebraining 7y ago
It should be noted that this change also means one can't use parts of the code in their FOSS projects, especially if the rest of the codebase in copyleft. I'm not sure anyone was using parts of the Sentry codebase that way, though. (I guess people can use the code after it converts to BSD, but that's a dangerous gambit, because if a bug - particularly a security bug - is found, you have to wait three years for the patch) By the way, I have no ill will towards Sentry, though I can't deny it's a loss.

grumpydba 7y ago

> You can still run the software, for free, in your business. You can still change the software, for free, and run that in your business. You can still fork the software, from today, and do what you want with it. You cannot reuse and publish. Matter of fact, even reading it and taking inspiration from it is risky. Words from an IP lawyer I know. It's a proprietary license. There is no shame in that. So don't try to act like you are still an open source company. One has to make a good living. That's not what I was criticizing. > It's hostile to entities that may want to take others open source work and provide a business around that work. Consider yourself happy Torvalds didn't think this way. Or Guido. What's your dev environment?

kbenson 7y ago
I think a lot of this revolves around what you think a "tinkerer" should be able to do. You clearly state "learn and reuse parts of your code", but depending on what you mean, people may or may not think "reuse parts of your code" falls under "tinkering". I imagine people might be split on that point, but I think "reuse and publish" is asking for much more. That's not tinkering, that's making a business, or at a minimum providing a service (even if uncharged and the service is software access).
brlewis 7y ago
Reading any software and taking inspiration from it is risky, because software patents inhibit the Progress of Science and useful Arts. Here's cockroachdb's version of the BSL: https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/blob/master/licenses/BSL.txt https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/blob/master/license... You may be right that this doesn't allow modification. I hope sentry words their Additional License Grant better. > Consider yourself happy Torvalds didn't think this way. Or Guido. Yes I'm generally happy when I get new stuff for free, but I don't expect that to always happen.
- grumpydba 7y ago
  > Yes I'm generally happy when I get new stuff for free, but I don't expect that to always happen. Sure. But when a product is advertised as open source, I expect it to be true.
  - brlewis 7y ago
    Open source never includes the guarantee that there will be future open source releases. If their new license won't work for you, it's as if it just stopped being maintained. Use and/or fork the most recent open source version.
    - grumpydba 7y ago
      A paragraph of this announcement is literally titled "Commercializing Open-Source". This is a blatant lie.
jsmeaton 7y ago
> Consider yourself happy Torvalds didn't think this way. Or Guido. By all means, fork the software and start providing a business around it then. What you don't get to do, anymore, is provide a business around the output of others moving forward. A truly open source clone may spring up out of this. I strongly suspect it won't, because there are very few people contributing to this project who aren't employees. The ones that aren't employees are making changes to support the instance they use to support their real business. I personally fall into this bucket. I raise issues, participate in betas, and try to fix bugs where possible precisely because I use the software. I have no intention of packaging it up and selling it elsewhere.
- cycloptic 7y ago
  The idea behind community-based development is that anyone can provide a business around the output of others, and it's not a problem because all improvements are shared by everyone. All the license change says to me is that the development team was very insular and ended up all at the same company, so they ultimately saw no benefit to participate in the wider community. Closing themselves off further is a natural progression from this. That's fine for them, and I'm not going to dig into the deeper reasons why it happened, but for this reason it's a big red flag to me when a FOSS project fails to attract contributors from more than one company.
  - jsmeaton 7y ago
    > The idea behind community-based development is that anyone can provide a business around the output of others I disagree with this statement. Being able to build a business around the output of others is a side effect, and not the primary reason for open source. I would argue, and many companies are arguing, that the side effect causes more harm than good, and there should be some kind of optional middle ground. > the development team was very insular and ended up all at the same company Look, I have no statistics around contributors that are employees vs contributors from other companies. Zeeg may have an idea. But as he said up-thread, they tend to hire those that contribute. Operating Sentry at scale is no small feat, and I'm not surprised that most companies prefer to spend the money on the SAAS solution rather than on employees to operate it. > so they ultimately saw no benefit to participate in the wider community This is the bit I most disagree with. They are still participating in the wider community in the vast majority of cases. There is a single restriction - you may not take the output and duplicate their business.

zeeg 7y ago

fwiw we basically employ everyone (either full time or as a contractor) that contributes to Sentry, and if we don't, shoot me an email and maybe we can fix that!

sneak 7y ago

It is entirely legitimate to take f/oss software and offer a hosted service of it, directly competing with those who paid money to produce the software, and potentially harming their services business. If “we literally wrote it” isn’t enough to retain your services customers, maybe you shouldn’t have them.

jsmeaton 7y ago
Sure, it's totally legitimate under an f/oss license. Which is why many companies that are spending millions of their own money developing these systems are moving to different models where it's no longer legitimate. If the puritans aren't willing to accept that, that's their right, and they can take their money elsewhere. There's a tragedy of the commons element to it all. Company A invests millions of dollars developing a product out in the open for the benefit of themselves AND their users. Users are free to self host for literally $0. Then company B comes along and repackages the solution, usually behind closed doors, and reaps the $millions of benefit with only the marginal costs of operating the product. The whole argument is very strange to me. Users - end users - have all the freedom in the world. It's only really multi billion dollar companies that are exploiting the work of others for their own personal gain that are being shut out - but the puritans seem ready to defend them anyway. In a world where Amazon (for example) control everything, users have far less freedom.
- sneak 7y ago
  > Then company B comes along and repackages the solution, usually behind closed doors, and reaps the $millions of benefit with only the marginal costs of operating the product. Well, they can only reap what company A fails to reap; either by having lower prices, or a better service offering, or being better or more useful in some way, right? I mean, if company A is literally the same name as the software, they have a natural marketing advantage, so company B would have to be better on some axis to eat even part of their lunch.
  - jsmeaton 7y ago
    > Well, they can only reap what company A fails to reap; either by having lower prices That's basically my entire point. Of course company B gets to have lower prices, since they're not spending money on building the product.

icebraining 7y ago

It should be noted that this change also means one can't use parts of the code in their FOSS projects, especially if the rest of the codebase in copyleft. I'm not sure anyone was using parts of the Sentry codebase that way, though. (I guess people can use the code after it converts to BSD, but that's a dangerous gambit, because if a bug - particularly a security bug - is found, you have to wait three years for the patch) By the way, I have no ill will towards Sentry, though I can't deny it's a loss.