4 ms·

Anything not hard-copyleft (GPL, AGPL) or source-available (BSL etc.) is going to be embraced, extended, and SaaSified / paywalled. Eventually the open version

by api 6y ago

Anything not hard-copyleft (GPL, AGPL) or source-available (BSL etc.) is going to be embraced, extended, and SaaSified / paywalled. Eventually the open version might get abandoned since its authors will get tired of providing free labor to billion dollar cloud companies. I don't think you'll see a lot of major projects under super-liberal licenses in the future. You will see such licenses for libraries and other components.

indigochill 6y ago
> I don't think you'll see a lot of major projects under super-liberal licenses in the future. You will see such licenses for libraries and other components. And that seems fine, at least if you subscribe to the Unix philosophy of composability. Honestly, I love Django, but for some projects I'd love even more to use just Django's ORM without all the other stuff (which I also like, but is irrelevant for some projects).
dcow 6y ago
If you use a GPL library then your main work becomes GPL.
- tarsinge 6y ago
  We are talking about products here.
- rover0 6y ago
  If you use a GPL library and don't make the main work GPL you're committing copyright infingement. Your work will never magically become GPL.
- da_chicken 6y ago
  That's true -- well, you're obligated to release the work under GPL -- but quite a lot of libraries are LGPL licensed which allows a proprietary application to link to it.
valyala 6y ago
IMHO, companies change their product licenses from BSD-like licenses to custom source-available licenses because of the fear they couldn't compete on the market. The license change doesn't protect the company from losing the market. Moreover, it increases the speed of company abandonment because of bad public message. Full disclosure: I'm CTO at VictoriaMetrics [1], we are happy with Apache 2 license and have no plans to change it. [1] https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/ https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
> Anything not hard-copyleft (GPL, AGPL) or source-available (BSL etc.) is going to be embraced, extended, and SaaSified / paywalled. Eventually the open version might get abandoned since its authors will get tired of providing free labor to billion dollar cloud companies. FreeBSD is 27 years old. Postgres is 24 years old. SQLite, which is placed in the public domain, is 20 years old. You will forgive me not holding my breath.
- fader 6y ago
  I think that OSX co-opting BSD is a perfect example here, honestly.

by api 6y ago

indigochill 6y ago

> I don't think you'll see a lot of major projects under super-liberal licenses in the future. You will see such licenses for libraries and other components. And that seems fine, at least if you subscribe to the Unix philosophy of composability. Honestly, I love Django, but for some projects I'd love even more to use just Django's ORM without all the other stuff (which I also like, but is irrelevant for some projects).

dcow 6y ago

If you use a GPL library then your main work becomes GPL.

tarsinge 6y ago
We are talking about products here.
rover0 6y ago
If you use a GPL library and don't make the main work GPL you're committing copyright infingement. Your work will never magically become GPL.
da_chicken 6y ago
That's true -- well, you're obligated to release the work under GPL -- but quite a lot of libraries are LGPL licensed which allows a proprietary application to link to it.

valyala 6y ago

IMHO, companies change their product licenses from BSD-like licenses to custom source-available licenses because of the fear they couldn't compete on the market. The license change doesn't protect the company from losing the market. Moreover, it increases the speed of company abandonment because of bad public message. Full disclosure: I'm CTO at VictoriaMetrics [1], we are happy with Apache 2 license and have no plans to change it. [1] https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/ https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

> Anything not hard-copyleft (GPL, AGPL) or source-available (BSL etc.) is going to be embraced, extended, and SaaSified / paywalled. Eventually the open version might get abandoned since its authors will get tired of providing free labor to billion dollar cloud companies. FreeBSD is 27 years old. Postgres is 24 years old. SQLite, which is placed in the public domain, is 20 years old. You will forgive me not holding my breath.

fader 6y ago
I think that OSX co-opting BSD is a perfect example here, honestly.