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I hate to be that guy, but idealism in software needs to die. Don't use a license that's more permissive than you're willing to tolerate. It's absurd to me fo

I hate to be that guy, but idealism in software needs to die. Don't use a license that's more permissive than you're willing to tolerate. It's absurd to me for a project to publish something with a 100% open source license and then complain when somebody tries to profit off of it. Doesn't really matter how egregious or large the perpetrator is. If you want exceptions, write it into the license. People want the goodwill that comes with open source, without accepting the consequences. That being said, I do empathize with the plight of the author. Perhaps they were naive to this possibility.

caslon 5y ago
In this case, I think the main problem is (emphasis mine): "If you can't see the image, Retool's new service is using images hosted from fakercloud.com" There's a difference between using someone's software and using someone's servers.
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  I'm interested in the legality of what they're doing. But it seems very similar in concept to automated web scraping, which has been deemed legal in the US.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    The U.S. legislature hasn’t touched computer laws in forever, so an armchair guess is hard, but chances are that causing an extreme financial burden by hotlinking someone else’s images is illegal - although maybe the fact that fakercloud could just block hotlinking based on the referrer header means it’s not as open-and-shut of a case.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  In my view, if your web server responds to an arbitrary HTTP GET with the asset and 200 error code, then your intention is that the asset is public and any browser can request it. If you don’t like a particular request, return 403 and get on with your life.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  I am sure that they can change that if marek requests it. But he doesn’t instead he wants a two year consulting contract where he continues to work on his own project.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
markdown 5y ago
> but idealism in software needs to die. Please nobody hear listen to this guy. I don't want to live in that world.
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  We already live in that world :) There are simply those who choose to accept it and those who don't!
  - masswerk 5y ago
    However, it's us who define this world. Fatalism is not an option. (Otherwise, we may enjoy the questionable comforts of tyranny.)
    - adam_arthur 5y ago
      Unfortunately you can't control the behavior of others. Otherwise there wouldn't be many problems in the world! Recognizing this fact and operating with that as an assumption is important.
      - masswerk 5y ago
        But, in the long run, doesn't this turn us into proverbial paperclip collecting AIs? The mode of sharing and using shared software is also a matter of social responsibility. E.g., if the author is obviously asking for sponsorship to maintain the project, as a major user/customer, you should consider a donation. Otherwise, you should be stripped of the benefit of the doubt, regarding the question, whether you are a civil person or not. Likewise, you shouldn't engage in actions, which are prone to doom (economically or otherwise) the project you're profiting from.
    - kbelder 5y ago
      It's not fatalism. I don't want to live in a world where a guy says I can do something with his software, and then gets upset and tries to rally people against me when I do. I've had girlfriends like that. If you don't want people to make money off your software, or use it a certain way, don't put it under a license that says it's fine to do so.
no_wizard 5y ago
To be clear they’re violating the terms of service of fakercloud.com is the implication I took from this Not so much an issue with them using faker.JS, though honestly companies should do more to pay for development of these kinds of libraries that they depend on, it isn’t the core issue here Which by the way is a great service if you are in the market and would fully managed fake data api
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  Does it violate the TOS though? I didn't see that mentioned in the article. But if so, then definitely a problem. They would then have a valid legal case against the company, I assume.
- bryan0 5y ago
  I think they should make that clearer in the blog post because it really wasn’t clear to me. So they’re paying for fakercloud and providing that data to their customers? It seems like this would then be a TOS issue as you mentioned.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  Did they ever accept the fakercloud TOS? If faker.js, an open source library, creates links to fakercloud.com - a for-profit offering, then someone who is merely using faker.js isn't falling afoul of the fakercloud.com TOS since they were never even presented with it in the first place. https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/blob/c9764abd20a198e318367952a94587eda1bac645/lib/internet.js#L15 https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/blob/c9764abd20a198e318367...
  - bryan0 5y ago
    Yeah this explains it. Not a TOS prob then. You can’t complain when your software generates links to fakercloud.com by default.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jakelazaroff 5y ago
To me, that is the idealistic stance. If there’s a world in which an indie developer can muster up the legal guns to win an IP battle against a VC-funded behemoth, it ain’t this one. Writing restrictions into the license makes sense in theory. Actually enforcing that license against an uncooperative company will take far more time, money and effort than most people are willing to spend.
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  Large companies won't violate terms of a license knowingly. Certainly an individual dev could pull in a library with a non permissive license without the broader business being aware. Or, I do agree, there may be particularly corrupt companies that knowingly violate terms of a license... But that's going to be less common than not. Having worked for big tech, I can assure you they are very strict with licensing. In this case it's a fast and loose startup, so I agree that it may have happened regardless. But at a certain scale these kind of things will be caught. But you're not going to get AWS cloning your project if your license doesn't permit it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jabl 5y ago
    I can imagine that big Western or multinational companies won't knowingly violate a FOSS license. That being said, AFAIU violating the GPL of the Linux kernel is very common in the embedded world. A lot of that is made in places largely out of reach of Western IP laws, and by the time anybody gets around to do something, the fly by night company responsible has ceased existing, replaced by a new company currently working on a device five generations ahead, again committing GPL violations.
    - chii 5y ago
      > largely out of reach of Western IP laws which means either the market they serve don't care, or don't have enforcement within reach of the western courts. But then, them "stealing" GPL nor not won't really affect the owner of the GPL software, since the world would've been the same to them whether the fly-by-night company violated them, or did not exist in the first place.
risyachka 5y ago
For me the perfect license would be something that allows using the code freely in any project or company that makes no money or is smaller than X people. If you are using my code and you have a lot of cash from investments or revenue - it would only be fair if you pay for the license.
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  Something like this works! I've had similar thoughts. I'm not aware of widely used templates for this kind of license, but definitely needs to become more common.
- opensores11 5y ago
  See the Fair Source License, which has a limit up to X users. There is also a Polyform Small Business license I think, which is similar.
- pydry 5y ago
  Deciding "which" legal organization is actually using it is too much of a legal headache. We need something like this in spirit but which uses a legal mechanism thats more reliable.
ignoramous 5y ago
> Don't use a license that's more permissive than you're willing to tolerate. From tfa: Most Fortune 500s are using Faker in some capacity. The scope of the Faker project is not small... Who pays for Faker development? No one... Most of these donations are from fellow developers, and not enterprises or corporations. I don't think there's a single OSS license that'd force corps to pony up. Too restrictive terms and they'll simply go looking elsewhere. Google does OSS right. Open source to commoditize your competitor's advantages, not to strengthen your own.
- jabl 5y ago
  "Commoditize your complement" is one of the (few?) ways to monetize FOSS. But it also means that FOSS can't be the core offering of your company. I guess the lesson is don't be that guy whose business plan is 1. Write FOSS 2. ... 3. Profit!
- webmaven 5y ago
  > I don't think there's a single OSS license that'd force corps to pony up. Too restrictive terms and they'll simply go looking elsewhere. There is no such license, and there can't be. Just as a license that prohibits use by the military can't be open source, neither can a license that prohibits use by, or requires payment from, corporations. Dual licensing under GPL (or AGPL) and a commercial license is the closest you'll get, and it relies on the aversion many corporations have to the GPL, rather than adding restrictions per-se.
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    Mongo did just that (AGPL or custom license), but they moved to create SSPL; for some reason it didn't work out for them? Redis and Elastic tried something Frankenstein by mixing Apache and custom license code in the same repo, which spooked them and the community for good measure, with Elastic, later, notoriously doubling-down on "open" with SSPL. Of all the source-available licenses, I like BSL by MariaDB, better.
EGreg 5y ago
I literally wrote about how to monetize open source software: https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#Monetizing-Open-Source https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#Monetizing-Open-Source
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
neilwilson 5y ago
The reasons for using GPL and AGPL is that it advertises 'other licences are available - for a cost - but this is the only one you get for free'. The cost of using GPL licences is that any changes you make to it everybody gets to have and anything you create with it has to be licensed under that licence. It was designed to create a viral effect so that free software remained free and that people could make money from those who didn't like free. The MIT licence says "I have tenure in some organisation that is getting its money from something else and which can pay me to spend time on this".
- rabidrat 5y ago
  > people could make money from those who didn't like free. Does GPL ever work this way? In practice, GPL discourages corporate (=widespread) adoption, driving down the quality of open-source software, and creating the market for paid closed-source software (which is often worse than open-source software, but packaged better). I'd love to see cases where a GPL-dev successfully negotiates a reasonable "cost-plus" arrangement with a company for a non-free license. Your analysis of the MIT license is spot-on, btw.
  - chii 5y ago
    > which is often worse than open-source software, but packaged better isn't that a contradiction? How can it be worse, but packaged better, if the packaging is what people are paying for? > GPL discourages corporate (=widespread) adoption and i believe this is because most GPL software doesn't provide enough value over the cost. But for MIT style licenses, there is zero cost, and thus, adoption must be high by the laws of supply/demand! In other words, the excess value provided by the software under an MIT license is extracted and kept by the corporations using it. GPL licenses forces some sort of non-monetary compensation in the form of contributions, and thus, the corp cannot extract and retain the full value of the software (and hence, they correctly decide to make a cost/benefit analysis, and choose the most profitable decision).
    - ex_amazon_sde 5y ago
      > GPL licenses forces some sort of non-monetary compensation in the form of contributions, and thus, the corp cannot extract and retain the full value of the software No, this is false. - You can use a GPL library without making changes and contributing anything upstream - You can use a GPL library internally and make changes without contributing anything upstream - You can use a GPL library, make changes and distribute it to 3rd parties and, only in that case, you simply have to share the changes with the 3rd parties. [Not with upstream]
scottrogowski 5y ago
As someone who has fallen into the idealism trap, I couldn't agree more. Here's another opinion I've been mulling - the emphasis on FOSS is actively damaging to our community and we need to take steps to end it. We're highly trained professionals who often sacraficed a lot to get to where we are. Having this culture of giving away our professional work for free - often to people and organizations who can readily afford to pay for it - borders on masochism. Instead of constantly singing the praises of open source, we should be encouraging a deep level of self-esteem in younger engineers by encouraging them to "know their worth". There are of course clear and obvious benefits to FOSS - like no licensing friction and better security - but we have to find a sustainable way to reward the developers. Little donations here and there aren't going to do it either.
- chii 5y ago
  > Instead of constantly singing the praises of open source i would differ in my opinion, because it's not the 'singing praises' that's the root cause, but that the creator of said FOSS library expecting money in some form for having provided value up front (either contributions or donations etc). That's an expectation that will never live up to reality. > we have to find a sustainable way to reward the developers this exists already - charging for the software you develop. Or, develop a business model around the software - aka, the software is free, but is just the bait for consulting business.
  - scottrogowski 5y ago
    My argument was not about one person being disappointed by expecting value and getting none - it was a broader point about the cultural encouragement - prevalent in engineering circles - of working for free. To be specific - I think a good argument could be made for free development in the service of the underprivileged or other altruistic causes. However, a large portion or most development ends up benefitting large public corporations who make large profits. But because, as a culture, we encourage this work, we have basically set ourselves up to be exploited. I recognize that this is an unpopular opinion and is difficult to make well, in a thread, without being downvoted. But I think there is always value at questioning our underlying cultural assumptions.
vlawr 5y ago
You have to use a permissive license, otherwise your software will be ignored by all distributions. Which means it won't be available even for non-profit users. There should be a non-profit-software Linux distribution that is only for non-leeches. But as it is, the OSS landscape favors corporations. I'm beginning to wonder how much that software-needs-to-be-free propaganda has been spread in the 90s and early 00s by the beneficiaries (corporations and foundations).

caslon 5y ago

In this case, I think the main problem is (emphasis mine): "If you can't see the image, Retool's new service is using images hosted from fakercloud.com" There's a difference between using someone's software and using someone's servers.

adam_arthur 5y ago
I'm interested in the legality of what they're doing. But it seems very similar in concept to automated web scraping, which has been deemed legal in the US.
- judge2020 5y ago
  The U.S. legislature hasn’t touched computer laws in forever, so an armchair guess is hard, but chances are that causing an extreme financial burden by hotlinking someone else’s images is illegal - although maybe the fact that fakercloud could just block hotlinking based on the referrer header means it’s not as open-and-shut of a case.
ryandrake 5y ago
In my view, if your web server responds to an arbitrary HTTP GET with the asset and 200 error code, then your intention is that the asset is public and any browser can request it. If you don’t like a particular request, return 403 and get on with your life.
throwaway4good 5y ago
I am sure that they can change that if marek requests it. But he doesn’t instead he wants a two year consulting contract where he continues to work on his own project.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

markdown 5y ago

> but idealism in software needs to die. Please nobody hear listen to this guy. I don't want to live in that world.

adam_arthur 5y ago
We already live in that world :) There are simply those who choose to accept it and those who don't!
- masswerk 5y ago
  However, it's us who define this world. Fatalism is not an option. (Otherwise, we may enjoy the questionable comforts of tyranny.)
  - adam_arthur 5y ago
    Unfortunately you can't control the behavior of others. Otherwise there wouldn't be many problems in the world! Recognizing this fact and operating with that as an assumption is important.
    - masswerk 5y ago
      But, in the long run, doesn't this turn us into proverbial paperclip collecting AIs? The mode of sharing and using shared software is also a matter of social responsibility. E.g., if the author is obviously asking for sponsorship to maintain the project, as a major user/customer, you should consider a donation. Otherwise, you should be stripped of the benefit of the doubt, regarding the question, whether you are a civil person or not. Likewise, you shouldn't engage in actions, which are prone to doom (economically or otherwise) the project you're profiting from.
  - kbelder 5y ago
    It's not fatalism. I don't want to live in a world where a guy says I can do something with his software, and then gets upset and tries to rally people against me when I do. I've had girlfriends like that. If you don't want people to make money off your software, or use it a certain way, don't put it under a license that says it's fine to do so.

no_wizard 5y ago

To be clear they’re violating the terms of service of fakercloud.com is the implication I took from this Not so much an issue with them using faker.JS, though honestly companies should do more to pay for development of these kinds of libraries that they depend on, it isn’t the core issue here Which by the way is a great service if you are in the market and would fully managed fake data api

adam_arthur 5y ago
Does it violate the TOS though? I didn't see that mentioned in the article. But if so, then definitely a problem. They would then have a valid legal case against the company, I assume.
bryan0 5y ago
I think they should make that clearer in the blog post because it really wasn’t clear to me. So they’re paying for fakercloud and providing that data to their customers? It seems like this would then be a TOS issue as you mentioned.
oh_sigh 5y ago
Did they ever accept the fakercloud TOS? If faker.js, an open source library, creates links to fakercloud.com - a for-profit offering, then someone who is merely using faker.js isn't falling afoul of the fakercloud.com TOS since they were never even presented with it in the first place. https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/blob/c9764abd20a198e318367952a94587eda1bac645/lib/internet.js#L15 https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/blob/c9764abd20a198e318367...
- bryan0 5y ago
  Yeah this explains it. Not a TOS prob then. You can’t complain when your software generates links to fakercloud.com by default.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jakelazaroff 5y ago

To me, that is the idealistic stance. If there’s a world in which an indie developer can muster up the legal guns to win an IP battle against a VC-funded behemoth, it ain’t this one. Writing restrictions into the license makes sense in theory. Actually enforcing that license against an uncooperative company will take far more time, money and effort than most people are willing to spend.

adam_arthur 5y ago
Large companies won't violate terms of a license knowingly. Certainly an individual dev could pull in a library with a non permissive license without the broader business being aware. Or, I do agree, there may be particularly corrupt companies that knowingly violate terms of a license... But that's going to be less common than not. Having worked for big tech, I can assure you they are very strict with licensing. In this case it's a fast and loose startup, so I agree that it may have happened regardless. But at a certain scale these kind of things will be caught. But you're not going to get AWS cloning your project if your license doesn't permit it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jabl 5y ago
  I can imagine that big Western or multinational companies won't knowingly violate a FOSS license. That being said, AFAIU violating the GPL of the Linux kernel is very common in the embedded world. A lot of that is made in places largely out of reach of Western IP laws, and by the time anybody gets around to do something, the fly by night company responsible has ceased existing, replaced by a new company currently working on a device five generations ahead, again committing GPL violations.
  - chii 5y ago
    > largely out of reach of Western IP laws which means either the market they serve don't care, or don't have enforcement within reach of the western courts. But then, them "stealing" GPL nor not won't really affect the owner of the GPL software, since the world would've been the same to them whether the fly-by-night company violated them, or did not exist in the first place.

risyachka 5y ago

For me the perfect license would be something that allows using the code freely in any project or company that makes no money or is smaller than X people. If you are using my code and you have a lot of cash from investments or revenue - it would only be fair if you pay for the license.

adam_arthur 5y ago
Something like this works! I've had similar thoughts. I'm not aware of widely used templates for this kind of license, but definitely needs to become more common.
opensores11 5y ago
See the Fair Source License, which has a limit up to X users. There is also a Polyform Small Business license I think, which is similar.
pydry 5y ago
Deciding "which" legal organization is actually using it is too much of a legal headache. We need something like this in spirit but which uses a legal mechanism thats more reliable.

ignoramous 5y ago

> Don't use a license that's more permissive than you're willing to tolerate. From tfa: Most Fortune 500s are using Faker in some capacity. The scope of the Faker project is not small... Who pays for Faker development? No one... Most of these donations are from fellow developers, and not enterprises or corporations. I don't think there's a single OSS license that'd force corps to pony up. Too restrictive terms and they'll simply go looking elsewhere. Google does OSS right. Open source to commoditize your competitor's advantages, not to strengthen your own.

jabl 5y ago
"Commoditize your complement" is one of the (few?) ways to monetize FOSS. But it also means that FOSS can't be the core offering of your company. I guess the lesson is don't be that guy whose business plan is 1. Write FOSS 2. ... 3. Profit!
webmaven 5y ago
> I don't think there's a single OSS license that'd force corps to pony up. Too restrictive terms and they'll simply go looking elsewhere. There is no such license, and there can't be. Just as a license that prohibits use by the military can't be open source, neither can a license that prohibits use by, or requires payment from, corporations. Dual licensing under GPL (or AGPL) and a commercial license is the closest you'll get, and it relies on the aversion many corporations have to the GPL, rather than adding restrictions per-se.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  Mongo did just that (AGPL or custom license), but they moved to create SSPL; for some reason it didn't work out for them? Redis and Elastic tried something Frankenstein by mixing Apache and custom license code in the same repo, which spooked them and the community for good measure, with Elastic, later, notoriously doubling-down on "open" with SSPL. Of all the source-available licenses, I like BSL by MariaDB, better.

EGreg 5y ago

I literally wrote about how to monetize open source software: https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#Monetizing-Open-Source https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#Monetizing-Open-Source

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

neilwilson 5y ago

The reasons for using GPL and AGPL is that it advertises 'other licences are available - for a cost - but this is the only one you get for free'. The cost of using GPL licences is that any changes you make to it everybody gets to have and anything you create with it has to be licensed under that licence. It was designed to create a viral effect so that free software remained free and that people could make money from those who didn't like free. The MIT licence says "I have tenure in some organisation that is getting its money from something else and which can pay me to spend time on this".

rabidrat 5y ago
> people could make money from those who didn't like free. Does GPL ever work this way? In practice, GPL discourages corporate (=widespread) adoption, driving down the quality of open-source software, and creating the market for paid closed-source software (which is often worse than open-source software, but packaged better). I'd love to see cases where a GPL-dev successfully negotiates a reasonable "cost-plus" arrangement with a company for a non-free license. Your analysis of the MIT license is spot-on, btw.
- chii 5y ago
  > which is often worse than open-source software, but packaged better isn't that a contradiction? How can it be worse, but packaged better, if the packaging is what people are paying for? > GPL discourages corporate (=widespread) adoption and i believe this is because most GPL software doesn't provide enough value over the cost. But for MIT style licenses, there is zero cost, and thus, adoption must be high by the laws of supply/demand! In other words, the excess value provided by the software under an MIT license is extracted and kept by the corporations using it. GPL licenses forces some sort of non-monetary compensation in the form of contributions, and thus, the corp cannot extract and retain the full value of the software (and hence, they correctly decide to make a cost/benefit analysis, and choose the most profitable decision).
  - ex_amazon_sde 5y ago
    > GPL licenses forces some sort of non-monetary compensation in the form of contributions, and thus, the corp cannot extract and retain the full value of the software No, this is false. - You can use a GPL library without making changes and contributing anything upstream - You can use a GPL library internally and make changes without contributing anything upstream - You can use a GPL library, make changes and distribute it to 3rd parties and, only in that case, you simply have to share the changes with the 3rd parties. [Not with upstream]

scottrogowski 5y ago

As someone who has fallen into the idealism trap, I couldn't agree more. Here's another opinion I've been mulling - the emphasis on FOSS is actively damaging to our community and we need to take steps to end it. We're highly trained professionals who often sacraficed a lot to get to where we are. Having this culture of giving away our professional work for free - often to people and organizations who can readily afford to pay for it - borders on masochism. Instead of constantly singing the praises of open source, we should be encouraging a deep level of self-esteem in younger engineers by encouraging them to "know their worth". There are of course clear and obvious benefits to FOSS - like no licensing friction and better security - but we have to find a sustainable way to reward the developers. Little donations here and there aren't going to do it either.

chii 5y ago
> Instead of constantly singing the praises of open source i would differ in my opinion, because it's not the 'singing praises' that's the root cause, but that the creator of said FOSS library expecting money in some form for having provided value up front (either contributions or donations etc). That's an expectation that will never live up to reality. > we have to find a sustainable way to reward the developers this exists already - charging for the software you develop. Or, develop a business model around the software - aka, the software is free, but is just the bait for consulting business.
- scottrogowski 5y ago
  My argument was not about one person being disappointed by expecting value and getting none - it was a broader point about the cultural encouragement - prevalent in engineering circles - of working for free. To be specific - I think a good argument could be made for free development in the service of the underprivileged or other altruistic causes. However, a large portion or most development ends up benefitting large public corporations who make large profits. But because, as a culture, we encourage this work, we have basically set ourselves up to be exploited. I recognize that this is an unpopular opinion and is difficult to make well, in a thread, without being downvoted. But I think there is always value at questioning our underlying cultural assumptions.

vlawr 5y ago

You have to use a permissive license, otherwise your software will be ignored by all distributions. Which means it won't be available even for non-profit users. There should be a non-profit-software Linux distribution that is only for non-leeches. But as it is, the OSS landscape favors corporations. I'm beginning to wonder how much that software-needs-to-be-free propaganda has been spread in the 90s and early 00s by the beneficiaries (corporations and foundations).