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Seems a bit like Plausible only pays lip service to some of these ideas. Merely 5 months ago the co-founder touted here on HN about how they are "big fans of op

Seems a bit like Plausible only pays lip service to some of these ideas. Merely 5 months ago the co-founder touted here on HN about how they are "big fans of open source so wanted as permissive [a] licence as possible" [0], then promptly went and changed the license to a strongly copyleft (AGPL) a few weeks later! They might well be the next Elastic/CockroachDB/MongoDB/etc. Or better yet, they might do the classic bait-and-switch later on: get developer buy in with a good story about openness, then once they'd gotten enough of a customer (aka dev) share, do the switch. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700565

markosaric 6y ago
What's wrong with AGPL that doesn't fit with our ideas? We were on the MIT first and got into a situation where a large corporation wanted to take our code and resell it to tens of thousands of their customers and they made it clear they didn't want to contribute anything back to our project whatsoever. We are a two person team putting our own time and savings into this and it could have instantly killed the project and the chance of becoming sustainable. We changed the license and that was a simple way to stop them without changing our principles/ideas. Could have gone proprietary too at that stage but we didn't. Everything is clearly explained here https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-licenses https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-licenses
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
  > What's wrong with AGPL that doesn't fit with our ideas? Absolutely nothing. That person doesn't know what they're talking about. I am sorry to hear that you learned about the peril of a permissive license in the way you did, but I'm happy that you switched to strong copyleft. Arguments demanding permissive licensing instead of strong copyleft amount to saying "but then how will I stand on your neck?" You shouldn't have to put up with that.
- Daho0n 6y ago
  So pretty much the Elastic route as pointed out by GP.
FearlessNebula 6y ago
Why is [a] in brackets?
- z77dj3kl 6y ago
  To indicate I edited it (to make it grammatically correct in my sentence).
- IncRnd 6y ago
  That looks like a grammatical correction.
elliekelly 6y ago
I don’t really know the background here but it really bugs me when I see people arguing nefarious intent simply because someone changed their mind later. Is there a logical fallacy that addresses “allegations of flip flopping”? Sometimes people learn something new that changes things. Sometimes situations change and so the strategy needs to change. Sometimes people realize, for whatever reason, they were wrong and so they take steps to correct it. Do some people sometimes flip flop for the purpose of misleading people or pandering? Of course. But I really don’t think that’s typically the motive. We should be supportive of people changing their minds, not suspicious.
nightpool 6y ago
I'm not sure I understand the root of your complaint. You're saying that because the developers changed the license from a permissive license to a strong copyleft license, they're not supporting open source? I think that using a license like the AGPL is much better for the open source community in the long run, because it makes it more likely that the code will stay free and accessible no matter what company wants to adapt it

markosaric 6y ago

What's wrong with AGPL that doesn't fit with our ideas? We were on the MIT first and got into a situation where a large corporation wanted to take our code and resell it to tens of thousands of their customers and they made it clear they didn't want to contribute anything back to our project whatsoever. We are a two person team putting our own time and savings into this and it could have instantly killed the project and the chance of becoming sustainable. We changed the license and that was a simple way to stop them without changing our principles/ideas. Could have gone proprietary too at that stage but we didn't. Everything is clearly explained here https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-licenses https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-licenses

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
> What's wrong with AGPL that doesn't fit with our ideas? Absolutely nothing. That person doesn't know what they're talking about. I am sorry to hear that you learned about the peril of a permissive license in the way you did, but I'm happy that you switched to strong copyleft. Arguments demanding permissive licensing instead of strong copyleft amount to saying "but then how will I stand on your neck?" You shouldn't have to put up with that.
Daho0n 6y ago
So pretty much the Elastic route as pointed out by GP.

FearlessNebula 6y ago

Why is [a] in brackets?

z77dj3kl 6y ago
To indicate I edited it (to make it grammatically correct in my sentence).
IncRnd 6y ago
That looks like a grammatical correction.

elliekelly 6y ago

I don’t really know the background here but it really bugs me when I see people arguing nefarious intent simply because someone changed their mind later. Is there a logical fallacy that addresses “allegations of flip flopping”? Sometimes people learn something new that changes things. Sometimes situations change and so the strategy needs to change. Sometimes people realize, for whatever reason, they were wrong and so they take steps to correct it. Do some people sometimes flip flop for the purpose of misleading people or pandering? Of course. But I really don’t think that’s typically the motive. We should be supportive of people changing their minds, not suspicious.

nightpool 6y ago

I'm not sure I understand the root of your complaint. You're saying that because the developers changed the license from a permissive license to a strong copyleft license, they're not supporting open source? I think that using a license like the AGPL is much better for the open source community in the long run, because it makes it more likely that the code will stay free and accessible no matter what company wants to adapt it