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I'm not sure if the dev feels entitled for _compensation_ per se, but G and other companies don't contribute back to the project in any form. Not $ and not in c
by eps 7y ago
I'm not sure if the dev feels entitled for _compensation_ per se, but G and other companies don't contribute back to the project in any form. Not $ and not in code. Now that is not a very good thing... though technically that's exactly what you get with permissive O/S licenses. It looks like the dev realized that and changed the license.
It also doesn't look like he trusts this companies much, because otherwise he could've just slapped the Commons Clause on his existing license and be done with it. So he closed the source instead.
https://commonsclause.com/ https://commonsclause.com/
- saagarjha 7y ago> G and other companies don't contribute back to the project in any form Amit Singh literally created the project while at Google.
- eps 7y agoFantastic, but is this meant to somehow give Google a solid excuse for not contributing back to a 3rd party fork they ended up using?
- richardwhiuk 7y agoIt's not clear to me that they are using the third party fork
- tus88 7y ago> Now that is not a very good thing I am still waiting for someone to explain why open-source software is harmed by people using it, if they don't contribute back.
- cwyers 7y agoSo, on one hand, it's not a stone soup situation in the sense that it's not like there's any less soup if Google comes and takes all the soup they can eat. On the other hand, open source software only survives when _someone_ contributes needed maintenance, bug fixes, security patches and features. If you don't find a way to incentivize people to contribute, the project can fail. Incentivizing people who are already using your code and have large sacks of cash seems like the easiest place to start.
- blihp 7y agoTo many developers, the main reason they contribute to open source software is for the benefit of leveraging each others work. If one is the sole author due to lack of contributions, from that perspective there is no value to the developer in providing it as open source. The problem is compounded if they look around and see companies profiting off of their work and neither contributing fixes/improvements back nor funding the developer(s) who do. So how is it harmed? By exactly the situation playing out with FUSE: the person who has been maintaining it has been seeing no benefit financial or otherwise and decides to take his ball (the source code) home as he has every right to do. I suspect if he doesn't see some corporate sponsorship soon he may very well decide to stop releasing future updates entirely.
- jagged-chisel 7y ago> To many developers, the main reason they contribute to open source software is for the benefit of leveraging each others work. Then these developers need to understand copyright and licensing, and choose a license that enforces that motive. If you release under BSD, you're not encouraging companies with a profit motive to contribute back.
- laughinghan 7y agoFleischer isn't harmed by Google using it, in the same sense that Google isn't harmed by him releasing osxfuse 3.10 under a proprietary license instead of BSD. For the community it's certainly a pity, but I guess if you consider open source projects to be "default dead", not contributing to keeping it alive isn't the same thing as harming a project community.
- bsder 7y ago> It also doesn't look like he trusts this companies much, because otherwise he could've just slapped the Commons Clause on his existing license and be done with it. So he closed the source instead. If he doesn't have a copyright assignment, he probably can't easily change the license. However, if the license is BSD, he can just not release source code. And, if he wasn't getting any contributions anyway then he gets no loss.
- oefrha 7y agoNo, you don’t need copyright assignment to relicense permissively-licensed code, you (or anyone else really) literally only need to say “fuck it” and start building on the old BSD code with a new license. It is when you’re relicensing to a less restrictive license, say GPL to BSD, that you need CLA shenanigans beforehand.
- diffeomorphism 7y agoWhat do you mean by "instead"? Commons Clause is closed source.
- huhtenberg 7y agoI know exactly what you mean, but this is incorrect. CC is not "closed source". CC makes a license incompatible with the OSI definition of "open source", which is one of the interpretations of the term. There's a persistent confusion over the difference between OSI's definition and the casual understanding of it. To the laymen, if you can _see_ the source, then it's an _open_ source. And if you can _use_ and _change_ it, then it's a _free_ source. So when you start claiming that if it's not "OSI's open source", it's "closed source" - it doesn't help matters in the slightest, nor does it help advancing OSI's view of the open source.
- diffeomorphism 7y agoNo, that is completely wrong. If you can _see_ the source, then it is _shared_ source (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Initiative). If you can _use_ and _change_ it, then it's a _open_ source. Are you going to tell me next that "free speech" means not paying for the radio? And that everything else is just one interpretation of the term? Or that freeware and free software are interchangeable terms? CC is not open source and does not get to pretend it is. Come up with your own marketing name.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago>G and other companies don't contribute back to the project in any form. Not $ and not in code osxfuse is a fork of Google's MacFuse...