4 ms·

I would tend to agree. Saying "our software is free for anyone to do anything they want with, except Amazon to profit from" may not be free in letter, but I cer

I would tend to agree. Saying "our software is free for anyone to do anything they want with, except Amazon to profit from" may not be free in letter, but I certainly see it free in spirit. I fear we're letting perfect be the enemy of the good here, and letting the FOSS ecosystem wither and lose incalculable value by letting trillion-dollar corporations exploit the hard work of people for free. If the choice is between "cheap Timescale on AWS run by Amazon" and "slightly less cheap Timescale on AWS run by Timescale", I'll take the latter. I think banning FAANG from competing with the single source of revenue these FOSS companies have is a small price to pay to ensure a thriving FOSS ecosystem, and I think insisting on absolute freedom is killing the ecosystem.

cycloptic 6y ago
The trillion dollar companies don't get it "for free", they still have to pay employees, contractors and consultants to actually run the software. And as you know, the salaries tend to be a lot higher at bigger companies. Pick your poison.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  If you give me a couch for free but I have to bring a truck to take it away on, does that make it not-free?
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    If you had to pay to rent a truck and also pay to hire workers to move it in and out of the truck and then up 10 floors to your apartment, then yes, it wasn't free, there is a real cost to you. A cost that you saved me because I didn't have to pay someone to take it to the landfill. So I would actually be saving money despite that it looks like I gave it to you "for free". And if I was really crafty I'd have suggested for you to use a particular moving company and then I'd have charged them a referral fee. (Of course this is a somewhat cynical view, and this isn't even getting into the other costs associated with second hand furniture -- anything with upholstery carries a risk of containing mold or vermin and you may need to pay more to get it cleaned/sanitized)
    - analognoise 6y ago
      Open Source - Choosy Beggars.
      - cycloptic 6y ago
        Yes, that's definitely the cynical way to look at it :)
rectang 6y ago
> Saying "our software is free for anyone to do anything they want with, except Amazon to profit from" may not be free in letter, but I certainly see it free in spirit. Some people feel just as strongly about imposing field-of-use restrictions to exclude military entities as you do about excluding "trillion dollar companies". Others feel strongly about excluding all commerical usage. But "Open Source" means no field-of-use restrictions — so although any of you are free to craft your own licenses excluding X, Y, or Z, you don't get to call those licenses "Open Source". > I fear we're letting perfect be the enemy of the good here, and letting the FOSS ecosystem wither and lose incalculable value by letting trillion-dollar corporations exploit the hard work of people for free. No economic value is lost. Timescale is free to publish their own software offings with their own licensing; those offerings merely exist outside the Open Source ecosystem. Open Source is plenty successful. It does not need to destroy itself in order to encompass all things. Besides, "letting trillion-dollar corporations exploit the hard work of people for free" is what Open Source has always done. Everybody gets to use it for free — trillion dollar corporations, governments, religious organizations, activists, convicts... everybody!
- jeffffff 6y ago
  by that argument copyleft licenses aren't open source either? from a practical perspective this license is strictly more permissive than AGPL in that it only excludes cloud companies rather than all non-OSS companies.
  - copascetic 6y ago
    How so? Corporations can use and sell software and run services for money that use copyleft software if they want to if they abide by the terms of the license, and some do, whereas the TSL specifically disallows this. How does AGPL exclude "all non-OSS companies"? These companies are choosing not to use AGPL software; that doesn't make AGPL not an open source license. The AGPL doesn't even require source code publication when run over the network unless you modified the code, so if Timescale were licensed with AGPL, Amazon could directly offer Timescale as a service and not even need to provide a source code download link. AGPL obviously does not exclude other companies from merely using the software in other ways, so I really don't see how the TSL is "strictly more permissive".

cycloptic 6y ago

The trillion dollar companies don't get it "for free", they still have to pay employees, contractors and consultants to actually run the software. And as you know, the salaries tend to be a lot higher at bigger companies. Pick your poison.

StavrosK 6y ago
If you give me a couch for free but I have to bring a truck to take it away on, does that make it not-free?
- cycloptic 6y ago
  If you had to pay to rent a truck and also pay to hire workers to move it in and out of the truck and then up 10 floors to your apartment, then yes, it wasn't free, there is a real cost to you. A cost that you saved me because I didn't have to pay someone to take it to the landfill. So I would actually be saving money despite that it looks like I gave it to you "for free". And if I was really crafty I'd have suggested for you to use a particular moving company and then I'd have charged them a referral fee. (Of course this is a somewhat cynical view, and this isn't even getting into the other costs associated with second hand furniture -- anything with upholstery carries a risk of containing mold or vermin and you may need to pay more to get it cleaned/sanitized)
  - analognoise 6y ago
    Open Source - Choosy Beggars.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      Yes, that's definitely the cynical way to look at it :)

rectang 6y ago

> Saying "our software is free for anyone to do anything they want with, except Amazon to profit from" may not be free in letter, but I certainly see it free in spirit. Some people feel just as strongly about imposing field-of-use restrictions to exclude military entities as you do about excluding "trillion dollar companies". Others feel strongly about excluding all commerical usage. But "Open Source" means no field-of-use restrictions — so although any of you are free to craft your own licenses excluding X, Y, or Z, you don't get to call those licenses "Open Source". > I fear we're letting perfect be the enemy of the good here, and letting the FOSS ecosystem wither and lose incalculable value by letting trillion-dollar corporations exploit the hard work of people for free. No economic value is lost. Timescale is free to publish their own software offings with their own licensing; those offerings merely exist outside the Open Source ecosystem. Open Source is plenty successful. It does not need to destroy itself in order to encompass all things. Besides, "letting trillion-dollar corporations exploit the hard work of people for free" is what Open Source has always done. Everybody gets to use it for free — trillion dollar corporations, governments, religious organizations, activists, convicts... everybody!

jeffffff 6y ago
by that argument copyleft licenses aren't open source either? from a practical perspective this license is strictly more permissive than AGPL in that it only excludes cloud companies rather than all non-OSS companies.
- copascetic 6y ago
  How so? Corporations can use and sell software and run services for money that use copyleft software if they want to if they abide by the terms of the license, and some do, whereas the TSL specifically disallows this. How does AGPL exclude "all non-OSS companies"? These companies are choosing not to use AGPL software; that doesn't make AGPL not an open source license. The AGPL doesn't even require source code publication when run over the network unless you modified the code, so if Timescale were licensed with AGPL, Amazon could directly offer Timescale as a service and not even need to provide a source code download link. AGPL obviously does not exclude other companies from merely using the software in other ways, so I really don't see how the TSL is "strictly more permissive".