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What's up is that large companies started abusing the open source licenses to benefit themselves at the expense of open source communities. All it took was one

What's up is that large companies started abusing the open source licenses to benefit themselves at the expense of open source communities. All it took was one jerk ignoring the spirit of open source and exploiting open source projects to the maximum extent that was legal under the old licenses. It's not hard to guess who it was either. It's a good lesson. As soon as one person cheats or violates the spirit of a system, everyone else has to too or they'll fall behind. Unethical people ruin everything.

esperent 6y ago
> Unethical people ruin everything. In this case, let's be clear: it was unethical companies.
- bluefirebrand 6y ago
  Companies don't have ethics. It's unethical people running and working at those companies. And it's really far past time we stopped giving those people a pass because "it's the company, not me"
  - chithanh 6y ago
    > Companies don't have ethics. In a way, they do. There exists a "company culture", which is the collection of social norms that have formed inside the company. Most members of a group will behave in a way that does not stray too far from these norms. There is a very good TED Talk by Dan Ariely "Our Buggy Moral Code" which describes how such a culture is facilitating unethical behavior by individuals.
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  Companies are made of people.
remus 6y ago
While it would be nice if we could get away with people abiding by an unwritten 'spirit of the agreement' the reality is that if you don't want someone to do something with your code then it needs to be written down in a license. I think it is somewhat naive to expect it work any other way, as when you potentially have millions of devs using some code it is unrealistic to expect them all to grasp an unwritten set of rules from a culture they potentially know nothing about.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  You can have quite relaxed rules as long as everyone abides by the spirit of the agreement. As soon as one party violates that spirit you are forced to make everything much more explicit, which inflicts collateral damage on use cases nobody would have objected to previously.
  - growse 6y ago
    > You can have quite relaxed rules as long as everyone abides by the spirit of the agreement. As soon as one party violates that spirit you are forced to make everything much more explicit, which inflicts collateral damage on use cases nobody would have objected to previously. How are newcomers to know what the mystical "spirit of the agreement" is if it's not written down? How do you detect that there isn't, in fact, a precise consensus over the "spirit of the agreement" if it's not written down?
    - wongarsu 6y ago
      Newcomers can just look at what others are doing, and if what they want to do goes beyond standard practice should ask themselves "do I do undue harm to others?". That's how society generally runs on all scales, whether we are talking about the office fridge or about national law. Things generally start with very few explicit rules, and new rules get made when they are proven necessary.
      - growse 6y ago
        Eh? The national law is literally written down. "Guesswork" doesn't seem like a good way to do anything without stumbling into a lot of confusion and miscommunication.
        wongarsu 6y ago
        If law was as simple as reading what's written down, then what are all the lawyers and courts for. There is a lot of interpretation going on. But really I was referring to the process of how the laws are formed in the first place. A lot of the time they start out under-specified, and as abuses emerge we make more concrete laws using our new understanding. Of course the latter part usually leads to a lot of discussion and resistance because of the collateral damage any new law causes by being slightly broader than necessary. Which is a major reason many industries self-regulate in the attempt to make explicit laws unnecessary.
pessimizer 6y ago
> the spirit of open source This is not a thing that exists. What we have are licenses, not ghosts.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  The spirit of collaboration and working for a common good absolutely used to exist. Many of the internet's core protocols were built with the spirit of cooperation weren't they? Think about email and the value it adds to the world. Would we ever get the protocols needed to create email if we started right now today? Not a chance. IMO the previous generation(s) of tech people were way better than what we have today. They were interested in and enthusiastic about building awesome tech / products. Today the only thing anyone with influence is interested in building is a company that can IPO and make them a billionaire.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    > The spirit of collaboration and working for a common good absolutely used to exist. That currently still exists. It has nothing in particular to do with software, though. People collaborate, academics collaborate. Are you telling me that massive corporations were part of this back in the good old days, just helping people for the fun of it?
    - 838812052807016 6y ago
      I wonder what would happen if there was a law which forbade corporations from pursuing anything going against the common good? Or a law which only allowed companies to pursue the common good?
      - oflanac52 6y ago
        That would probably mean, for some, shutting down entire industries i.e. smoking, gambling..
- stonesweep 6y ago
SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
There are two broad spirits of open-source license: copyleft and corporate charity. Copyleft licenses like the GPL encourage those using the code to contribute back to the open-source community. Charity licenses like the BSD or Apache license are used by developers who want to work for exposure. They only encourage giving credit to the original developers, and implicitly allow closing the source. Letting people do that is the whole spirit of these licenses. People who don't want to be making charitable donations to megacorps shouldn't use charity licenses.
- kps 6y ago
  Not necessarily. The project I'm currently working on was initiated by a group of mostly-mega corps, staffed with dozens of full-time developers, and Apache licensed — all out of rational self-interest.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
    Just because megacorps sometimes release code under permissive licenses doesn't invalidate my point that permissive licenses are a way to make a charitable donation out of your work. Megacorps also make donations to charities. Charitable donations can be made out of rational self-interest!
mrob 6y ago
Following the terms of the license is not abuse. The whole point of permissive licenses is to allow anybody to exploit the software as they wish. If that's not what you want then don't use a permissive license. AGPL is a good alternative choice.
- charrondev 6y ago
  Isn’t that the whole purpose of this thread? There’s a trend of projects doing exactly what you just said. They don’t want that happening so they use a non-permissive license. Cue the holy war over the definition of open source.

esperent 6y ago

> Unethical people ruin everything. In this case, let's be clear: it was unethical companies.

bluefirebrand 6y ago
Companies don't have ethics. It's unethical people running and working at those companies. And it's really far past time we stopped giving those people a pass because "it's the company, not me"
- chithanh 6y ago
  > Companies don't have ethics. In a way, they do. There exists a "company culture", which is the collection of social norms that have formed inside the company. Most members of a group will behave in a way that does not stray too far from these norms. There is a very good TED Talk by Dan Ariely "Our Buggy Moral Code" which describes how such a culture is facilitating unethical behavior by individuals.
jacques_chester 6y ago
Companies are made of people.

remus 6y ago

While it would be nice if we could get away with people abiding by an unwritten 'spirit of the agreement' the reality is that if you don't want someone to do something with your code then it needs to be written down in a license. I think it is somewhat naive to expect it work any other way, as when you potentially have millions of devs using some code it is unrealistic to expect them all to grasp an unwritten set of rules from a culture they potentially know nothing about.

wongarsu 6y ago
You can have quite relaxed rules as long as everyone abides by the spirit of the agreement. As soon as one party violates that spirit you are forced to make everything much more explicit, which inflicts collateral damage on use cases nobody would have objected to previously.
- growse 6y ago
  > You can have quite relaxed rules as long as everyone abides by the spirit of the agreement. As soon as one party violates that spirit you are forced to make everything much more explicit, which inflicts collateral damage on use cases nobody would have objected to previously. How are newcomers to know what the mystical "spirit of the agreement" is if it's not written down? How do you detect that there isn't, in fact, a precise consensus over the "spirit of the agreement" if it's not written down?
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    Newcomers can just look at what others are doing, and if what they want to do goes beyond standard practice should ask themselves "do I do undue harm to others?". That's how society generally runs on all scales, whether we are talking about the office fridge or about national law. Things generally start with very few explicit rules, and new rules get made when they are proven necessary.
    - growse 6y ago
      Eh? The national law is literally written down. "Guesswork" doesn't seem like a good way to do anything without stumbling into a lot of confusion and miscommunication.
      - wongarsu 6y ago
        If law was as simple as reading what's written down, then what are all the lawyers and courts for. There is a lot of interpretation going on. But really I was referring to the process of how the laws are formed in the first place. A lot of the time they start out under-specified, and as abuses emerge we make more concrete laws using our new understanding. Of course the latter part usually leads to a lot of discussion and resistance because of the collateral damage any new law causes by being slightly broader than necessary. Which is a major reason many industries self-regulate in the attempt to make explicit laws unnecessary.

pessimizer 6y ago

> the spirit of open source This is not a thing that exists. What we have are licenses, not ghosts.

donmcronald 6y ago
The spirit of collaboration and working for a common good absolutely used to exist. Many of the internet's core protocols were built with the spirit of cooperation weren't they? Think about email and the value it adds to the world. Would we ever get the protocols needed to create email if we started right now today? Not a chance. IMO the previous generation(s) of tech people were way better than what we have today. They were interested in and enthusiastic about building awesome tech / products. Today the only thing anyone with influence is interested in building is a company that can IPO and make them a billionaire.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  > The spirit of collaboration and working for a common good absolutely used to exist. That currently still exists. It has nothing in particular to do with software, though. People collaborate, academics collaborate. Are you telling me that massive corporations were part of this back in the good old days, just helping people for the fun of it?
  - 838812052807016 6y ago
    I wonder what would happen if there was a law which forbade corporations from pursuing anything going against the common good? Or a law which only allowed companies to pursue the common good?
    - oflanac52 6y ago
      That would probably mean, for some, shutting down entire industries i.e. smoking, gambling..
stonesweep 6y ago

SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago

There are two broad spirits of open-source license: copyleft and corporate charity. Copyleft licenses like the GPL encourage those using the code to contribute back to the open-source community. Charity licenses like the BSD or Apache license are used by developers who want to work for exposure. They only encourage giving credit to the original developers, and implicitly allow closing the source. Letting people do that is the whole spirit of these licenses. People who don't want to be making charitable donations to megacorps shouldn't use charity licenses.

kps 6y ago
Not necessarily. The project I'm currently working on was initiated by a group of mostly-mega corps, staffed with dozens of full-time developers, and Apache licensed — all out of rational self-interest.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
  Just because megacorps sometimes release code under permissive licenses doesn't invalidate my point that permissive licenses are a way to make a charitable donation out of your work. Megacorps also make donations to charities. Charitable donations can be made out of rational self-interest!

mrob 6y ago

Following the terms of the license is not abuse. The whole point of permissive licenses is to allow anybody to exploit the software as they wish. If that's not what you want then don't use a permissive license. AGPL is a good alternative choice.

charrondev 6y ago
Isn’t that the whole purpose of this thread? There’s a trend of projects doing exactly what you just said. They don’t want that happening so they use a non-permissive license. Cue the holy war over the definition of open source.