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I seriously can't believe how short sighted people can be. That's bad business. I worked at a big bank too, you'd think they would understand about investment?

I seriously can't believe how short sighted people can be. That's bad business. I worked at a big bank too, you'd think they would understand about investment? No. They simply leeched off open source in the same way.

uyrdjdurfurhdh 6y ago
It's this actually short sighted though? I feel like the 'companies are exploiting open source' dialogue always ignores how wildly miniscule the risks often are for the company. Creality might have lost a US distributor but is the US their primary market and were they unable to find another distributor? Don't get me won't, I'm not happy about the state of affairs, but banks are usually pretty risk averse (or more accurately, their risk portfolio is catastrophe averse). If an org like a bank doesn't care it seems like a sign that open source either needs some better teeth or it needs to accept that its role in the ecosystem is changing. We might see some short term success calling out bad actors but if there's enough of them to put on a whole play then it seems more useful to focus on why they're all able to book a theatre so easily.
- artsyca 6y ago
  That's definitely one way of looking at it but when you're a bank with projects in the tens of millions hinging on EmberJS, you'd think you'd be more sensitive to the plight of EmberJS development? I mean the open source project suddenly being abandoned due to lack of a corporate sponsor would be pretty catastrophic, no? What struck me the most is that at its heart the bank has these sorts of provisions in its constitution, ie giving back to the community and being in harmony with the environment and being relationship oriented. It's like the lion not rewarding the mouse in that old fable, due to brand having been subverted by petty bureaucracy and middling management.
  - ColanR 6y ago
    > more sensitive to the plight of EmberJS development I doubt they'd have started using it in the first place if the software looked like it would be abandoned. If the best 'teeth' open source has is, "we might stop developing this at some point in the future if you don't give us $ for using our work", then as the parent said open source needs better teeth.
    - artsyca 6y ago
      Yea I know moralistic arguments lack teeth but on some level computer science is a field founded on the concept of good faith so I like to remain loyal to the spirit of Prometheus when I'm having my liver eaten out each morning by vultures aka my project manager. And as I mentioned in my parable the lion didn't need the mouse to bite it in order to do the right thing you know what I'm saying? In other words a 150 year+ institution should just know better and it's a shame to think they've been sucking the world dry for that long without a second thought as to how it might affect their own bottom line.
      - matz1 6y ago
        You can't rely on "they should just know better" otherwise you would face a lot of disappointment. If you want something you better have the teeth or something to force the change.
user5994461 6y ago
I worked at a bank too. There is a list of software and libraries approved for usage. GPL cannot make it to the list because the license is the first thing that's verified when requesting to add a new library. I always wondered what would happen if some developers used some GPL lib and shipped to customers and it was noticed and caused the company to be sued. Would all the developers be fired on the spot and the software undone?
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I would guess no unless someone stepped in from above. Unless it ended in the complete source code of all their systems, perhaps. In a lot of commercial code there is almost literally nothing worth protecting, just sunk-cost. If a finite element package got open sourced, that would be a minor disaster (although even then you're paying for the UX and support not the code) but things like firmware are barely worth the electrons on the drive. The point being the business impact would probably be fairly minor for most projects.
  - derefr 6y ago
    "A bank" contains multitudes, though. The big banks all have investment arms, which in turn have in-house algorithmic-trading subsidiaries. Now imagine that someone snuck some Affero GPLed code into the trading engine... (It is at this point that I realize that maybe one of the reason that HFT people like arcane formal-proof languages so much—besides just verifying that they won't lose money—is that the ecosystems of unusual languages are smaller, so it's less likely that any problem has a solution involving third-party code, and therefore there's less concern about IP contamination.)
  - user5994461 6y ago
    There are passwords, certificates, API keys, more GPL code, stolen code, commercial libraries (integrated but forgot or stopped to pay the license a while ago), vulnerabilities, ridiculous comments, trade secrets (trading algorithms, credit score calculation, fraud detection), etc... For any sizable software that has been alive for 10 years. There is no way it's safe to open source the repo.
- deleted 6y ago

uyrdjdurfurhdh 6y ago

It's this actually short sighted though? I feel like the 'companies are exploiting open source' dialogue always ignores how wildly miniscule the risks often are for the company. Creality might have lost a US distributor but is the US their primary market and were they unable to find another distributor? Don't get me won't, I'm not happy about the state of affairs, but banks are usually pretty risk averse (or more accurately, their risk portfolio is catastrophe averse). If an org like a bank doesn't care it seems like a sign that open source either needs some better teeth or it needs to accept that its role in the ecosystem is changing. We might see some short term success calling out bad actors but if there's enough of them to put on a whole play then it seems more useful to focus on why they're all able to book a theatre so easily.

artsyca 6y ago
That's definitely one way of looking at it but when you're a bank with projects in the tens of millions hinging on EmberJS, you'd think you'd be more sensitive to the plight of EmberJS development? I mean the open source project suddenly being abandoned due to lack of a corporate sponsor would be pretty catastrophic, no? What struck me the most is that at its heart the bank has these sorts of provisions in its constitution, ie giving back to the community and being in harmony with the environment and being relationship oriented. It's like the lion not rewarding the mouse in that old fable, due to brand having been subverted by petty bureaucracy and middling management.
- ColanR 6y ago
  > more sensitive to the plight of EmberJS development I doubt they'd have started using it in the first place if the software looked like it would be abandoned. If the best 'teeth' open source has is, "we might stop developing this at some point in the future if you don't give us $ for using our work", then as the parent said open source needs better teeth.
  - artsyca 6y ago
    Yea I know moralistic arguments lack teeth but on some level computer science is a field founded on the concept of good faith so I like to remain loyal to the spirit of Prometheus when I'm having my liver eaten out each morning by vultures aka my project manager. And as I mentioned in my parable the lion didn't need the mouse to bite it in order to do the right thing you know what I'm saying? In other words a 150 year+ institution should just know better and it's a shame to think they've been sucking the world dry for that long without a second thought as to how it might affect their own bottom line.
    - matz1 6y ago
      You can't rely on "they should just know better" otherwise you would face a lot of disappointment. If you want something you better have the teeth or something to force the change.

user5994461 6y ago

I worked at a bank too. There is a list of software and libraries approved for usage. GPL cannot make it to the list because the license is the first thing that's verified when requesting to add a new library. I always wondered what would happen if some developers used some GPL lib and shipped to customers and it was noticed and caused the company to be sued. Would all the developers be fired on the spot and the software undone?

mhh__ 6y ago
I would guess no unless someone stepped in from above. Unless it ended in the complete source code of all their systems, perhaps. In a lot of commercial code there is almost literally nothing worth protecting, just sunk-cost. If a finite element package got open sourced, that would be a minor disaster (although even then you're paying for the UX and support not the code) but things like firmware are barely worth the electrons on the drive. The point being the business impact would probably be fairly minor for most projects.
- derefr 6y ago
  "A bank" contains multitudes, though. The big banks all have investment arms, which in turn have in-house algorithmic-trading subsidiaries. Now imagine that someone snuck some Affero GPLed code into the trading engine... (It is at this point that I realize that maybe one of the reason that HFT people like arcane formal-proof languages so much—besides just verifying that they won't lose money—is that the ecosystems of unusual languages are smaller, so it's less likely that any problem has a solution involving third-party code, and therefore there's less concern about IP contamination.)
- user5994461 6y ago
  There are passwords, certificates, API keys, more GPL code, stolen code, commercial libraries (integrated but forgot or stopped to pay the license a while ago), vulnerabilities, ridiculous comments, trade secrets (trading algorithms, credit score calculation, fraud detection), etc... For any sizable software that has been alive for 10 years. There is no way it's safe to open source the repo.
deleted 6y ago