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I agree that any aggressive towards the maintainer is unwarranted, even if I personally disagree with his move. In particular this comment quoted in TFA amused

by simias 7y ago

I agree that any aggressive towards the maintainer is unwarranted, even if I personally disagree with his move. In particular this comment quoted in TFA amused me: >Then drop it and let someone else maintain it. I want to reply to this person: then fork the last open source version and maintain that. That's the whole point really. Besides he apparently made the change two years ago and people only start noticing now, it's pretty clear that there's not a vibrant community of contributors ready to take the project over. It's not entirely fair in this case because of the certificate needed to sign the kernel module but if it's really that difficult to get a certificate from Apple as an open source project that seems more like a problem with Apple than with osxfuse's maintainer. Besides what can he reasonably do? Just give the certificate to whoever asks for it? That's going to get it revoked by Apple in approximately 4 femtoseconds. Companies benefiting from the work of opensource projects and not giving anything back is genuinely a big problem IMO. It's not illegal of course, but it is unethical in my opinion. Look at the state of OpenSSL, one of the most (if not the most) popular crypto library out there, who has to beg for scraps in order to fund the project. And when there's a critical vulnerability like heartbleed, who gets mocked online? The poor guy or gal who authored the commit, not the countless multi-billion dollar corporations who deployed their code for free without paying for a thorough audit or contributing anything back.

m-p-3 7y ago
> I agree that any aggressive towards the maintainer is unwarranted, even if I personally disagree with his move. I also agree, being aggressive towards a volunteer maintainer achieves nothing and brings the possibility that he'll simply stops working altogether on it for free, like what happened with wiringPi some time ago.
tssva 7y ago
There are two possible scenarios: The developer always thought that contributing back code or financial support should be a requirement of use but failed to reflect this in the license chosen and now is correcting this. The developer over time has changed their believe of what the requirements for use should or need to be. This change of thought may have been informed by the behavior of those using the code but is still a change of thought on the developers side. In both scenarios the developer changing their license is not acting unethically nor were those previously using the code while meeting the terms it was previously available under. What may be unethical is the developer trying to put blame for the license change on those that were using the code while meeting the requirements of the previous license because under the first scenario the developer is at fault and under the 2nd neither is at fault.
- simias 7y ago
  In my system of value (which is of course subjective and you may not share) I do consider that these open source projects suffer a sort of tragedy of the commons where some companies benefit immensely from them (think how expensive it would be to build and maintain something like osxfuse from scratch) but don't contribute anything back to it. It's like big corporations managing to pay little to no taxes in the countries they do most of they business, is it illegal? Probably not in most cases. Still unethical in my personal opinion. But instead of just complaining about it I could try to be more productive and offer an alternative. Maybe there could be a nonprofit dedicated to centralizing these donations and redistributing them, for instance by polling the donors to figure out what they use and then split the cake based on the results. I'm sure in many situations it's not so much that the company doesn't want to give anything bad, it's just that they can't be bothered or don't know how. I don't know how realistic that would be though.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > think how expensive it would be to build and maintain something like osxfuse from scratch Google did both for a while.
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      Yeah, but they're Google. Their business model is lighting piles of cash on fire, then advertising to the crowd that shows up to watch the pile of burning money.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Part of this goes back to the entire GPL/AGPL vs everything else debate. Everyone has been getting away from GPLv3 and it's derivatives for the past decade. In that world, would it matter so much if some commercial interests took a product, since they'd always have to at least show their work? The idea was that we'd eventually have FOSS replacements for everything from Photoshop to Word to video editors. 2019 and GIMP is is nowhere near the level of Photoshop, Libreoffice is pretty decent through, and DarkTable isn't too shabby. Still, this FOSS utopia of all our software never happened. Linux as a kernel for Android has led us to an even more closed system than before. Sure if Linux was GPLv3, maybe we wouldn't see it as the basis of Android at all, but if we had gone down that route, I wonder how things would be different. I've written at length about this before: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software/ https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-philosophy-of-open-source...
marcus_holmes 7y ago
I'm a startup tech founder, benefiting massively from FOSS code. I realise there is a debt here, and the plan is definitely to repay that debt once we're cash-positive. Being able to have that plan, and not having to pay for software licences up front, is awesome. But I totally understand TFA's point of view. Maintaining a FOSS library is hard work, and those benefiting from it should contribute. If he's not seeing that happen organically, then he's quite within his rights to make it happen. And to be fair, he's not even saying "I'll charge you". He's just saying "contact me". I'd speculate that if I needed to use his code, I could cut a deal where we would pay him when we get cash-positive.
- earonesty 7y ago
  "Small companies don't have the resources"... that's some backward thinking right there. By failing to contribute, small companies cost themselves money very quickly. How can a small business afford to live in a world of un-maintainable forks, patches and tech debt? Only large companies can afford to maintain private forks of FOSS. Small companies have to give back, or they will simply disappear.
  - toadkicker 7y ago
    I can't count how many times I've submitted a patch only to hear my supervisors complain that I made a contribution to the thing that makes the business profitable.
    - nicky0 7y ago
      I know you are deploying irony but due to competing interpretations I can't figure out its intent. Do you mean the supervisors do complain or they don't?
      - Conan_Kudo 7y ago
        I'm pretty sure he's not being ironic. I've heard the same thing from other folks before.
marktangotango 7y ago
> then fork the last open source version and maintain that. But the current maintainer has the Apple provided signing cert, that's the whip hand in this whole deal. I personally don't blame this fellow and in fact apluad him. To many companies exploit OSS maintainers. I think it's great to see someone turn it around for once.
- nicky0 7y ago
  Then they have to get a new signing cert for the forked project.
  - microtherion 7y ago
    Yes, I didn't understand why TFA considered the signing cert issue significant. AFAIK, Apple would not refuse issuing multiple certs for forks of the same code base.
- tw04 7y ago
  >But the current maintainer has the Apple provided signing cert, that's the whip hand in this whole deal. So apply for a new signing cert? The only thing I'm hearing is "he closed and I don't want him to close it but forking it takes a lot of effort and I don't want to put in that effort". If nobody is willing to put even the basic effort of applying for a new signing cert, color me skeptical that they'll actually maintain the entire project including the apparently voluminous changes needed to work with Catalina. I hate nothing more than people who complain something isn't open source but want it to be maintained by someone else's time and effort. People's time isn't free, and they have no obligation to give you their current or previous time for nothing. (Not talking about you personally, referring to the guy in the original post)
  - dontreact 7y ago
    Huge tangent but this is the same thing that bothers me about pro piracy arguments. Some people feel they have a right to get a copy of someone’s music without paying for it and get upset when there are protections to prevent this.

by simias 7y ago

m-p-3 7y ago

> I agree that any aggressive towards the maintainer is unwarranted, even if I personally disagree with his move. I also agree, being aggressive towards a volunteer maintainer achieves nothing and brings the possibility that he'll simply stops working altogether on it for free, like what happened with wiringPi some time ago.

tssva 7y ago

There are two possible scenarios: The developer always thought that contributing back code or financial support should be a requirement of use but failed to reflect this in the license chosen and now is correcting this. The developer over time has changed their believe of what the requirements for use should or need to be. This change of thought may have been informed by the behavior of those using the code but is still a change of thought on the developers side. In both scenarios the developer changing their license is not acting unethically nor were those previously using the code while meeting the terms it was previously available under. What may be unethical is the developer trying to put blame for the license change on those that were using the code while meeting the requirements of the previous license because under the first scenario the developer is at fault and under the 2nd neither is at fault.

simias 7y ago
In my system of value (which is of course subjective and you may not share) I do consider that these open source projects suffer a sort of tragedy of the commons where some companies benefit immensely from them (think how expensive it would be to build and maintain something like osxfuse from scratch) but don't contribute anything back to it. It's like big corporations managing to pay little to no taxes in the countries they do most of they business, is it illegal? Probably not in most cases. Still unethical in my personal opinion. But instead of just complaining about it I could try to be more productive and offer an alternative. Maybe there could be a nonprofit dedicated to centralizing these donations and redistributing them, for instance by polling the donors to figure out what they use and then split the cake based on the results. I'm sure in many situations it's not so much that the company doesn't want to give anything bad, it's just that they can't be bothered or don't know how. I don't know how realistic that would be though.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > think how expensive it would be to build and maintain something like osxfuse from scratch Google did both for a while.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    Yeah, but they're Google. Their business model is lighting piles of cash on fire, then advertising to the crowd that shows up to watch the pile of burning money.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Part of this goes back to the entire GPL/AGPL vs everything else debate. Everyone has been getting away from GPLv3 and it's derivatives for the past decade. In that world, would it matter so much if some commercial interests took a product, since they'd always have to at least show their work? The idea was that we'd eventually have FOSS replacements for everything from Photoshop to Word to video editors. 2019 and GIMP is is nowhere near the level of Photoshop, Libreoffice is pretty decent through, and DarkTable isn't too shabby. Still, this FOSS utopia of all our software never happened. Linux as a kernel for Android has led us to an even more closed system than before. Sure if Linux was GPLv3, maybe we wouldn't see it as the basis of Android at all, but if we had gone down that route, I wonder how things would be different. I've written at length about this before: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software/ https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-philosophy-of-open-source...

marcus_holmes 7y ago

I'm a startup tech founder, benefiting massively from FOSS code. I realise there is a debt here, and the plan is definitely to repay that debt once we're cash-positive. Being able to have that plan, and not having to pay for software licences up front, is awesome. But I totally understand TFA's point of view. Maintaining a FOSS library is hard work, and those benefiting from it should contribute. If he's not seeing that happen organically, then he's quite within his rights to make it happen. And to be fair, he's not even saying "I'll charge you". He's just saying "contact me". I'd speculate that if I needed to use his code, I could cut a deal where we would pay him when we get cash-positive.

earonesty 7y ago
"Small companies don't have the resources"... that's some backward thinking right there. By failing to contribute, small companies cost themselves money very quickly. How can a small business afford to live in a world of un-maintainable forks, patches and tech debt? Only large companies can afford to maintain private forks of FOSS. Small companies have to give back, or they will simply disappear.
- toadkicker 7y ago
  I can't count how many times I've submitted a patch only to hear my supervisors complain that I made a contribution to the thing that makes the business profitable.
  - nicky0 7y ago
    I know you are deploying irony but due to competing interpretations I can't figure out its intent. Do you mean the supervisors do complain or they don't?
    - Conan_Kudo 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure he's not being ironic. I've heard the same thing from other folks before.

marktangotango 7y ago

> then fork the last open source version and maintain that. But the current maintainer has the Apple provided signing cert, that's the whip hand in this whole deal. I personally don't blame this fellow and in fact apluad him. To many companies exploit OSS maintainers. I think it's great to see someone turn it around for once.

nicky0 7y ago
Then they have to get a new signing cert for the forked project.
- microtherion 7y ago
  Yes, I didn't understand why TFA considered the signing cert issue significant. AFAIK, Apple would not refuse issuing multiple certs for forks of the same code base.
tw04 7y ago
>But the current maintainer has the Apple provided signing cert, that's the whip hand in this whole deal. So apply for a new signing cert? The only thing I'm hearing is "he closed and I don't want him to close it but forking it takes a lot of effort and I don't want to put in that effort". If nobody is willing to put even the basic effort of applying for a new signing cert, color me skeptical that they'll actually maintain the entire project including the apparently voluminous changes needed to work with Catalina. I hate nothing more than people who complain something isn't open source but want it to be maintained by someone else's time and effort. People's time isn't free, and they have no obligation to give you their current or previous time for nothing. (Not talking about you personally, referring to the guy in the original post)
- dontreact 7y ago
  Huge tangent but this is the same thing that bothers me about pro piracy arguments. Some people feel they have a right to get a copy of someone’s music without paying for it and get upset when there are protections to prevent this.