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> The value is in the long term sustainability of a project, that can outlive a company acquisition or bankruptcy (such as Oracle and the Jenkins project). Toda

by kodah 6y ago

> The value is in the long term sustainability of a project, that can outlive a company acquisition or bankruptcy (such as Oracle and the Jenkins project). Today, the successful open source model is more an epitome of user adoption, healthy community cooperation, and long-term sustainability, along the free as in free speech source code. I'm not sure if you actually meant to do this, but you're really only talking about open source as it relates to business. Linux didn't start out of a business need and most open source projects weren't started or even long term maintained by businesses. It was only when we discovered that businesses were using and making/saving money off open source that we figured out that splitting your day job and your hobby while someone makes a killing off your software is antithetical to ones life. While I agree with much of your article, I'd add another point: businesses need to stop trying to run open source and using it for PR and recruiting. This practice has put a huge tax on the open source community because it makes people think that their rules, largely from corporate America, apply here. Open Source was, and always will be, a global effort that doesn't need American exceptionalism rearing it's ugly head. Rather, businesses need to take a step back, understand the culture and priorities of open source and then try to fit in. After all, the cultures, priorities, and attitudes of open source are what made it useful to corporations in the first place.

amelius 6y ago
> Rather, businesses need to take a step back, understand the culture and priorities of open source and then try to fit in. Companies don't care. They don't even care about the law these days (see Uber, AirBnB, Facebook & privacy, etc. etc.) If OSS wants companies to behave in certain ways, it should be encoded in the license that comes with the software, at a minimum. My suggestion would be to have a license that makes the software free to use for anyone and companies with a maximum net profit of (say) $1M. Above this, companies need to negotiate a different (paid) license. This would enable OSS authors to have an income from their work, while not changing anything else about OSS as the price of software is basically pennies for big companies.
- enriquto 6y ago
  > My suggestion would be to have a license that makes the software free to use for anyone and companies with a maximum net profit of (say) $1M. But wouldn't that make it non-free software? (according to the FSF definition).
  - panta 6y ago
    Yes, but mega-corps are exploiting free software and killing it in a way. Personally I believe it would be in everyone’s interest to fight back. Maybe we could have “human-scale free software” alongside the traditional model.
    - 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
      "mega-corps" have been using free software in the same way for 20 years. If they were killing it, wouldn't it be dead by now?
  - amelius 6y ago
    No, because paying for the software is now a luxury-problem. You make money from the software, so you're effectively paying a negative amount already. Anyway, this is not about definitions. In the end, it might be in the interest of companies too if every company paid for their FOSS. Right now, it is not in the interest of companies to pay because that would be an advantage to their competitors. So in a way, it's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      > Anyway, this is not about definitions. But it is. If people cannot run your software freely, for any purpose, then it is not free software (and that includes users who are big companies). There's really no way around that. If you are worried that companies may use your software without giving back to the community, the best is to use a copyleft license like GPL or AGPL. You can also dual-license your software as AGPL/proprietary, and sell proprietary licenses at different prices according to the client. This is a fairly common setup, and many companies appreciate it (the only issue is that all external contributors to your project must surrender their copyright to you).
jabl 6y ago
> Rather, businesses need to take a step back, understand the culture and priorities of open source and then try to fit in. Well, open source was created in order to make (some of) the ideas of the hippy free software movement more acceptable to businesses, so, I think you got that part backwards. At the cost of losing the free software ideals, open source has gone mainstream, and nowadays a large fraction of the work that goes into big established open source projects is done by paid developers working for corporations. Thus, to a very large extent, open source IS businesses. They are making it in their image, to fit their needs. I guess the lone hacker/activist has been sidelined, and others with more resources have taken over the show.
- bibryam 6y ago
  One does not replace the others though. There are still independent hackers doing a great deal of open source (Let's put them in the free software category). That is especially true for the node community. There are many projects build by full time employees dominated by 1-2 companies (a good example here are the ASF projects). There are gigantic projects that are possible to be developed in high pace only through collaboration even between competitors (Kubernetes in CNCF) There won't be only one way of doing OSS. But I believe there will be again a rise of independent software hackers and this time they will be better equipped with tools for automation, distribution, funding, marketing, etc.

by kodah 6y ago

amelius 6y ago

> Rather, businesses need to take a step back, understand the culture and priorities of open source and then try to fit in. Companies don't care. They don't even care about the law these days (see Uber, AirBnB, Facebook & privacy, etc. etc.) If OSS wants companies to behave in certain ways, it should be encoded in the license that comes with the software, at a minimum. My suggestion would be to have a license that makes the software free to use for anyone and companies with a maximum net profit of (say) $1M. Above this, companies need to negotiate a different (paid) license. This would enable OSS authors to have an income from their work, while not changing anything else about OSS as the price of software is basically pennies for big companies.

enriquto 6y ago
> My suggestion would be to have a license that makes the software free to use for anyone and companies with a maximum net profit of (say) $1M. But wouldn't that make it non-free software? (according to the FSF definition).
- panta 6y ago
  Yes, but mega-corps are exploiting free software and killing it in a way. Personally I believe it would be in everyone’s interest to fight back. Maybe we could have “human-scale free software” alongside the traditional model.
  - 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
    "mega-corps" have been using free software in the same way for 20 years. If they were killing it, wouldn't it be dead by now?
- amelius 6y ago
  No, because paying for the software is now a luxury-problem. You make money from the software, so you're effectively paying a negative amount already. Anyway, this is not about definitions. In the end, it might be in the interest of companies too if every company paid for their FOSS. Right now, it is not in the interest of companies to pay because that would be an advantage to their competitors. So in a way, it's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    > Anyway, this is not about definitions. But it is. If people cannot run your software freely, for any purpose, then it is not free software (and that includes users who are big companies). There's really no way around that. If you are worried that companies may use your software without giving back to the community, the best is to use a copyleft license like GPL or AGPL. You can also dual-license your software as AGPL/proprietary, and sell proprietary licenses at different prices according to the client. This is a fairly common setup, and many companies appreciate it (the only issue is that all external contributors to your project must surrender their copyright to you).

jabl 6y ago

> Rather, businesses need to take a step back, understand the culture and priorities of open source and then try to fit in. Well, open source was created in order to make (some of) the ideas of the hippy free software movement more acceptable to businesses, so, I think you got that part backwards. At the cost of losing the free software ideals, open source has gone mainstream, and nowadays a large fraction of the work that goes into big established open source projects is done by paid developers working for corporations. Thus, to a very large extent, open source IS businesses. They are making it in their image, to fit their needs. I guess the lone hacker/activist has been sidelined, and others with more resources have taken over the show.

bibryam 6y ago
One does not replace the others though. There are still independent hackers doing a great deal of open source (Let's put them in the free software category). That is especially true for the node community. There are many projects build by full time employees dominated by 1-2 companies (a good example here are the ASF projects). There are gigantic projects that are possible to be developed in high pace only through collaboration even between competitors (Kubernetes in CNCF) There won't be only one way of doing OSS. But I believe there will be again a rise of independent software hackers and this time they will be better equipped with tools for automation, distribution, funding, marketing, etc.