7 ms·

> want to be FOSS but don’t want the tech giants to swallow your business? I get the aesthetic and sentiment, but in practice this doesn't convey the reality.

by tony 7y ago

> want to be FOSS but don’t want the tech giants to swallow your business? I get the aesthetic and sentiment, but in practice this doesn't convey the reality. Having a business link or incorporate your open source software project isn't necessarily bad. At the very least, it's a social proof. There could be sponsorships, patches sent back. There plenty examples of permissively licensed software out there that directly contradict this: FreeBSD for Nintendo Switch and PS4, FreeNAS Django, TypeScript, Jupyter. VSCode. Electron. Python. Ruby. CoreCLR. Windows Terminal. Anyone of these projects, someone could fork it, rename it, repackage it as value added. It doesn't happen since the transaction incentivizes merging contributions upstream - maintaining forked code has passive costs. Pushing it back passes the burden (and also the benefit) of the changes back to the project. > Go AGPL, they’ll avoid it like the plague. I feel when we're thinking about gatekeeping who and uses our software and why, we're not really doing open source anymore. In that case, writing commercial software license from scratch, or based off a permissively licensed project, and not releasing the source is an option.

djaque 7y ago
I license all of my software AGPL and the reason I do it isn't gatekeeping or some theoretical argument about what software is. It's because I have put a large amount of effort into this product and decided to release it for the benefit of the community. I would feel taken advantage of if a company came in and hoarded that software while making a profit off of it and never giving back. The free market is great and all, but it's also OK to just ask that people give you a fair deal when they use your code.
- beefhash 7y ago
  > and decided to release it for the benefit of the community I don't understand. You're saying “for the benefit of the community”, but then only speak about companies as negative examples. (1) Are companies inherently incapable of being members of the community to you? (2) Are people whose software is more liberally licensed (and may wish to incorporate parts of yours) not part of the community to you?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Presumably companies who are not willing to give back to the community are not part of the community for them, nor are people who enable people who do not give back to the community part of the community (in certain cases). (The community, of course, being "people who are willing to keep their work available to all other members of the community".)
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    OP clearly said > never giving back AGPL allows companies to use the product, while also guaranteeing that they contribute back. And community = entities who contribute back.
    - kazinator 7y ago
      The AGPL is about the operator of software not being legally allowed to hide nefarious code on their servers that harms users. The problem is that if you're a big enough monopolist prooviding some online service that people have to use, you can do that in the open. You just comply with the AGPL and reveal all the code that tracks users or discriminates or whatever Bad Stuff. At the end of the day, the code is still running, and vast numbers of users are still logging in. Basically, the AGPL has no real teeth; it gives the users no real control over the program they are using, only some visibility into it. Nefarious behavior can be hidden in configurations, not just code. And in other services. Like suppose a server program, at some point in its execution, makes a HTTPS request to another server. The URL, including parameters and an POST data, are driven by data from a configuration database. Oops! Who knows what the heck that is doing? But, hey, if you want to run such a thing on your own machine, here is the source code.
- sneak 7y ago
  The only thing that non-A GPL allows them to “hoard” that the AGPL does not are their own modifications. Your hard work is still available to the community. I don’t consider the AGPL to be free software. My freedoms to keep my own code to myself should not change based upon whether or not I am running a web server process on my machine or not. I think it’s just generic anti-corporate/anti-business sentiment dressed up as egalitarianism. ASPs are a feature, not a bug.
  - EGreg 7y ago
    Why is anti-corporate sentiment not an example of egalitarianism? Seems to me that this is the paradox of intolerance... being intolerant of intolerance is a reasonable stance for otherwise tolerant people.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    > The only thing that non-A GPL allows them to “hoard” that the AGPL does not are their own modifications. The point of the GPL family of licenses is not to solely make the author's "hard work available to the community". It's to ensure that any modifications which are later provided to other users must be licensed such that those users can make their own modifications. Private modifications are still permitted under the AGPL. In fact, the FSF explicitly states that licenses which disallow private modifications are not free software. > Your hard work is still available to the community. That'd also be true if you used CC-0 or made it public domain. That's not the point of using one of the GPL licences. > My freedoms to keep my own code to myself should not change based upon whether or not I am running a web server process on my machine or not. The AGPL doesn't say "if you run apached on your server you must release your code to everyone who asks for it". It says that people who use your software over a network must be given the source code. And in the context of SaaS and "online-only software" it's pretty clear why such a provision is necessary -- in the nightmare scenario, all software would be only accessible over the internet and you'd have no rights to the source code even if the code was GPL. You might not agree with this measure or the plausibility of such a nightmare scenario (and that's fine), but there is a clear ethical argument for it (and it is consistent with the history of the free software movement).
- ygra 7y ago
  On the other hand, if a company did that, would it actually impact you or your project? It's not that it'd be vanishing just because of that.
  - pfalcon 7y ago
    The question is not that, the question is how many people would be motivated to work on community-facing open-source projects then? Would you be motivated? "Show me your code". Otherwise, we're all carriers of petty human nature. And few people enjoy thoughts that for time you've torn off from your family, to help some random strangers (and user support is biggest time/effort sync for open-source project, and what makes them popular), risking family problems (re: Reiser and his FS), the eventual benefactor will be some company, making money on the popularity of your project.
  - djaque 7y ago
    The way I see it, it doesn't matter if it impacts the project or not. It's about getting a fair deal for the effort you give to the community, not protecting the project. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of the Googles of the world making a profit off of my work for free. If they want to use the code, then they can pay their due and purchase a licensed version or give back to the community.
    - kazinator 7y ago
      You deeply misunderstand what the AGPL is about; what are its motivations. It has nothing to do with preventing profit.
      - djaque 7y ago
        No I don't. It's possible to belive in free software principles and also care about the AGPL for reasons not spelled out in its preamble.
- jsjddbbwj 7y ago
  If a company took your code and made a service people like and enjoy with that code, how is that not benefiting the community? The bsd licence gave us the iPhone. Doesn't that benefit mankind?
  - imtringued 7y ago
    The project is the service that people like and enjoy.
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    Should you not compare the mean benefit to some community for the two cases of releasing the code either as BSD or as AGPL? Of course you will have to include counterfactual scenarios, rather than what you did: summing up the total benefits of only observed scenarios. Obviously, averaging over counterfactuals is difficult, if not impossible in practice, so people go with intuition. It remains up for debate which way is the better basis for a ethical decision theory.
  - djaque 7y ago
    If I only wanted to provide a service people used then I'd just start a company and charge for my product. This is about getting a fair deal in the case where I distribute my work for free. I'm not OK with a company turning around and profiting off of it without paying their fair shair, whether that be a licensing fee or by giving back to the community.
  - pfalcon 7y ago
    > The bsd licence gave us the iPhone. I wouldn't put it like that. It wants to "bill" people for a grand each, and gave billions to some company. But most importantly, what about the guy who wrote that BSD code - he didn't die unable to buy medicines for cancer? No? Then it's all good.
  - ryukafalz 7y ago
    Its users may like and enjoy it, but only ever as users. The community has lost the right to shape the project as they wish. The software becomes a tool of influence over its users. I don’t think that benefits them. > The bsd licence gave us the iPhone. Doesn't that benefit mankind? The BSD license gave Apple a start to build the iPhone; Apple gave us devices that we aren’t given full access to even though we ostensibly own them. No, I’m not sure that’s a net benefit for humanity.
thayne 7y ago
So dual license with AGPL and a paid commercial license. So users have the option of either paying with money or by open sourcing everything that they build on top of the product.
- bigiain 7y ago
  As mentioned in the last line of the linked article: "In some cases, we may have alternative licenses available for AGPL licensed code." (I still bet _mostly_ open source stuff licensed under AGPL just gets outright ignored by FAANG scale company engineering teams, rather than being embraced and convincing their boss to to go into bat to pay for a commercial license...)
loeg 7y ago
FreeBSD / PS4 is a bad example. Sony gave nothing back. And very few people know or care that the PS4 runs essentially Sony's hacked up FreeBSD 9. Better examples for FreeBSD are Netflix, Netgate, Netapp, iX (until recently), and Dell. All make significant contributions to FreeBSD despite not being compelled to do so by the license.
jonathankoren 7y ago
I’m sure MongoDB really appreciates all the “social proof” that Amazon gave them.
imtringued 7y ago
I am working on some projects that are purely meant to be self hosted and they are 100% user facing. The only way a company could wedge itself between the project and user is by hosting it on the user's behalf. I am perfectly fine with that. However, what I completely disagree with is the idea that a company larger than a one man team suddenly takes the code, hosts it, adds proprietary features and then kills the original project because nobody even knows it exists. They are free to start their own projects from scratch if they want to keep their project proprietary. I don't expect to win against a behemoth. I just don't want the behemoth to spit in my face. The AGPL is the right choice almost all the time when you have user facing projects.
ryukafalz 7y ago
> I feel when we're thinking about gatekeeping who and uses our software and why, we're not really doing open source anymore. I agree, roughly, but I don’t think it’s really gatekeeping if it’s their choice not to use the software. The AGPL explicitly gives them (and everyone else) the right to use it! They just have to contribute back if they do, which is apparently too unpalatable for them. By comparison, I’m not in favor of some of the newer licenses that attempt to carve out usage restrictions. I’ll fight the Commons Clause wherever I see it. But just requiring that they contribute back? I think that’s fair.
- kazinator 7y ago
  "Free" now means "Free not to use if you don't like the license"? I exercise my choice not to use Adobe Photoshop; instead I use GIMP. Is therefore Adobe Photoshop free software?
  - ryukafalz 7y ago
    >Is therefore Adobe Photoshop free software? Certainly not! Adobe Photoshop severely restricts you as the user; for example, you're not permitted to send a copy to a friend, or to fix a bug that's bothering you, or to contribute that fix so others can benefit from it. GIMP on the other hand is free software because anyone (including Google!) can use it for any purpose, distribute their changes, etc. As a clarifying point, "free" here (as defined in the Free Software Definition) refers to freedom for the user, not for the developer, hosting provider, etc. A license can impose restrictions on the developer to provide more freedom to the user. For example, if you're hosting a Mastodon instance (AGPL), there's a sense in which you're the user, but to a much greater extent the people using your instance are the users. The AGPL ensures that they have all the freedoms you were given by the developer of the software.
    - kazinator 7y ago
      A "free for non-commercial use" license of a shareware program also ensures that whoever I give it to next has all the freedoms I was given by the developer of the software. I'm free to make non-commercial use of it, so is the next person. A freely redistributed software whose license requires that it must be used while executing a headstand also ensures that when I pass it on, the next person has all the same freedoms. I'm free to use it, as long as I'm standing on my head; so is the next person. It's basically a tautology of all licenses that allow copying, which do not distinguish among users, or among first hand versus second hand recipients.

by tony 7y ago

djaque 7y ago

I license all of my software AGPL and the reason I do it isn't gatekeeping or some theoretical argument about what software is. It's because I have put a large amount of effort into this product and decided to release it for the benefit of the community. I would feel taken advantage of if a company came in and hoarded that software while making a profit off of it and never giving back. The free market is great and all, but it's also OK to just ask that people give you a fair deal when they use your code.

beefhash 7y ago
> and decided to release it for the benefit of the community I don't understand. You're saying “for the benefit of the community”, but then only speak about companies as negative examples. (1) Are companies inherently incapable of being members of the community to you? (2) Are people whose software is more liberally licensed (and may wish to incorporate parts of yours) not part of the community to you?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Presumably companies who are not willing to give back to the community are not part of the community for them, nor are people who enable people who do not give back to the community part of the community (in certain cases). (The community, of course, being "people who are willing to keep their work available to all other members of the community".)
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  OP clearly said > never giving back AGPL allows companies to use the product, while also guaranteeing that they contribute back. And community = entities who contribute back.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    The AGPL is about the operator of software not being legally allowed to hide nefarious code on their servers that harms users. The problem is that if you're a big enough monopolist prooviding some online service that people have to use, you can do that in the open. You just comply with the AGPL and reveal all the code that tracks users or discriminates or whatever Bad Stuff. At the end of the day, the code is still running, and vast numbers of users are still logging in. Basically, the AGPL has no real teeth; it gives the users no real control over the program they are using, only some visibility into it. Nefarious behavior can be hidden in configurations, not just code. And in other services. Like suppose a server program, at some point in its execution, makes a HTTPS request to another server. The URL, including parameters and an POST data, are driven by data from a configuration database. Oops! Who knows what the heck that is doing? But, hey, if you want to run such a thing on your own machine, here is the source code.
sneak 7y ago
The only thing that non-A GPL allows them to “hoard” that the AGPL does not are their own modifications. Your hard work is still available to the community. I don’t consider the AGPL to be free software. My freedoms to keep my own code to myself should not change based upon whether or not I am running a web server process on my machine or not. I think it’s just generic anti-corporate/anti-business sentiment dressed up as egalitarianism. ASPs are a feature, not a bug.
- EGreg 7y ago
  Why is anti-corporate sentiment not an example of egalitarianism? Seems to me that this is the paradox of intolerance... being intolerant of intolerance is a reasonable stance for otherwise tolerant people.
- cyphar 7y ago
  > The only thing that non-A GPL allows them to “hoard” that the AGPL does not are their own modifications. The point of the GPL family of licenses is not to solely make the author's "hard work available to the community". It's to ensure that any modifications which are later provided to other users must be licensed such that those users can make their own modifications. Private modifications are still permitted under the AGPL. In fact, the FSF explicitly states that licenses which disallow private modifications are not free software. > Your hard work is still available to the community. That'd also be true if you used CC-0 or made it public domain. That's not the point of using one of the GPL licences. > My freedoms to keep my own code to myself should not change based upon whether or not I am running a web server process on my machine or not. The AGPL doesn't say "if you run apached on your server you must release your code to everyone who asks for it". It says that people who use your software over a network must be given the source code. And in the context of SaaS and "online-only software" it's pretty clear why such a provision is necessary -- in the nightmare scenario, all software would be only accessible over the internet and you'd have no rights to the source code even if the code was GPL. You might not agree with this measure or the plausibility of such a nightmare scenario (and that's fine), but there is a clear ethical argument for it (and it is consistent with the history of the free software movement).
ygra 7y ago
On the other hand, if a company did that, would it actually impact you or your project? It's not that it'd be vanishing just because of that.
- pfalcon 7y ago
  The question is not that, the question is how many people would be motivated to work on community-facing open-source projects then? Would you be motivated? "Show me your code". Otherwise, we're all carriers of petty human nature. And few people enjoy thoughts that for time you've torn off from your family, to help some random strangers (and user support is biggest time/effort sync for open-source project, and what makes them popular), risking family problems (re: Reiser and his FS), the eventual benefactor will be some company, making money on the popularity of your project.
- djaque 7y ago
  The way I see it, it doesn't matter if it impacts the project or not. It's about getting a fair deal for the effort you give to the community, not protecting the project. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of the Googles of the world making a profit off of my work for free. If they want to use the code, then they can pay their due and purchase a licensed version or give back to the community.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    You deeply misunderstand what the AGPL is about; what are its motivations. It has nothing to do with preventing profit.
    - djaque 7y ago
      No I don't. It's possible to belive in free software principles and also care about the AGPL for reasons not spelled out in its preamble.
jsjddbbwj 7y ago
If a company took your code and made a service people like and enjoy with that code, how is that not benefiting the community? The bsd licence gave us the iPhone. Doesn't that benefit mankind?
- imtringued 7y ago
  The project is the service that people like and enjoy.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  Should you not compare the mean benefit to some community for the two cases of releasing the code either as BSD or as AGPL? Of course you will have to include counterfactual scenarios, rather than what you did: summing up the total benefits of only observed scenarios. Obviously, averaging over counterfactuals is difficult, if not impossible in practice, so people go with intuition. It remains up for debate which way is the better basis for a ethical decision theory.
- djaque 7y ago
  If I only wanted to provide a service people used then I'd just start a company and charge for my product. This is about getting a fair deal in the case where I distribute my work for free. I'm not OK with a company turning around and profiting off of it without paying their fair shair, whether that be a licensing fee or by giving back to the community.
- pfalcon 7y ago
  > The bsd licence gave us the iPhone. I wouldn't put it like that. It wants to "bill" people for a grand each, and gave billions to some company. But most importantly, what about the guy who wrote that BSD code - he didn't die unable to buy medicines for cancer? No? Then it's all good.
- ryukafalz 7y ago
  Its users may like and enjoy it, but only ever as users. The community has lost the right to shape the project as they wish. The software becomes a tool of influence over its users. I don’t think that benefits them. > The bsd licence gave us the iPhone. Doesn't that benefit mankind? The BSD license gave Apple a start to build the iPhone; Apple gave us devices that we aren’t given full access to even though we ostensibly own them. No, I’m not sure that’s a net benefit for humanity.

thayne 7y ago

So dual license with AGPL and a paid commercial license. So users have the option of either paying with money or by open sourcing everything that they build on top of the product.

bigiain 7y ago
As mentioned in the last line of the linked article: "In some cases, we may have alternative licenses available for AGPL licensed code." (I still bet _mostly_ open source stuff licensed under AGPL just gets outright ignored by FAANG scale company engineering teams, rather than being embraced and convincing their boss to to go into bat to pay for a commercial license...)

loeg 7y ago

FreeBSD / PS4 is a bad example. Sony gave nothing back. And very few people know or care that the PS4 runs essentially Sony's hacked up FreeBSD 9. Better examples for FreeBSD are Netflix, Netgate, Netapp, iX (until recently), and Dell. All make significant contributions to FreeBSD despite not being compelled to do so by the license.

jonathankoren 7y ago

I’m sure MongoDB really appreciates all the “social proof” that Amazon gave them.

imtringued 7y ago

I am working on some projects that are purely meant to be self hosted and they are 100% user facing. The only way a company could wedge itself between the project and user is by hosting it on the user's behalf. I am perfectly fine with that. However, what I completely disagree with is the idea that a company larger than a one man team suddenly takes the code, hosts it, adds proprietary features and then kills the original project because nobody even knows it exists. They are free to start their own projects from scratch if they want to keep their project proprietary. I don't expect to win against a behemoth. I just don't want the behemoth to spit in my face. The AGPL is the right choice almost all the time when you have user facing projects.

ryukafalz 7y ago

> I feel when we're thinking about gatekeeping who and uses our software and why, we're not really doing open source anymore. I agree, roughly, but I don’t think it’s really gatekeeping if it’s their choice not to use the software. The AGPL explicitly gives them (and everyone else) the right to use it! They just have to contribute back if they do, which is apparently too unpalatable for them. By comparison, I’m not in favor of some of the newer licenses that attempt to carve out usage restrictions. I’ll fight the Commons Clause wherever I see it. But just requiring that they contribute back? I think that’s fair.

kazinator 7y ago
"Free" now means "Free not to use if you don't like the license"? I exercise my choice not to use Adobe Photoshop; instead I use GIMP. Is therefore Adobe Photoshop free software?
- ryukafalz 7y ago
  >Is therefore Adobe Photoshop free software? Certainly not! Adobe Photoshop severely restricts you as the user; for example, you're not permitted to send a copy to a friend, or to fix a bug that's bothering you, or to contribute that fix so others can benefit from it. GIMP on the other hand is free software because anyone (including Google!) can use it for any purpose, distribute their changes, etc. As a clarifying point, "free" here (as defined in the Free Software Definition) refers to freedom for the user, not for the developer, hosting provider, etc. A license can impose restrictions on the developer to provide more freedom to the user. For example, if you're hosting a Mastodon instance (AGPL), there's a sense in which you're the user, but to a much greater extent the people using your instance are the users. The AGPL ensures that they have all the freedoms you were given by the developer of the software.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    A "free for non-commercial use" license of a shareware program also ensures that whoever I give it to next has all the freedoms I was given by the developer of the software. I'm free to make non-commercial use of it, so is the next person. A freely redistributed software whose license requires that it must be used while executing a headstand also ensures that when I pass it on, the next person has all the same freedoms. I'm free to use it, as long as I'm standing on my head; so is the next person. It's basically a tautology of all licenses that allow copying, which do not distinguish among users, or among first hand versus second hand recipients.