4 ms·

This is a point I've been pondering about recently, especially since the attacks against Free Software and RMS. I've been convinced of the inherent good that o

by rakoo 5y ago

This is a point I've been pondering about recently, especially since the attacks against Free Software and RMS. I've been convinced of the inherent good that openly available software is, both for users and developers, and for society at large. I want to continue contributing to the common goods. But I am also fully aware that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, and all other platforms exploiting users' privacy and controlling so much of our digital lives could rise to power that easily because they had a trove of open source software to build on, software for which there is no counterparts needed. That is what the MIT, Apache, BSD licenses and friends allow you to do. That is why my opinion now is that if you want your work to be open, you should not make it open source "only" but fully Libre. Use a copyleft license. If other developers don't want to pay you in money, at least their production should become a common so that the entirety of society can benefit. Don't give FB more power to turn elections in the direction they want; make it so that someone else can _only_ build a platform where users, and as such people, remain those in power. Open Source Software benefits those in power, and unfortunately it is not us who hold this position.

senko 5y ago
Copyleft wouldn't help here. You don't need to do anything if you just use the code as-is.
- webmaven 5y ago
  While not a complete solution, the AGPL helps close this loophole.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    No it doesn't. AGPL only requires the changes to be shared.
    - rakoo 5y ago
      It also requires the original to be shared with the same license. That's what ensures that the software and its evolutions remain a digital commons
jevoten 5y ago
A good analysis of what open source enables - Facebook et al. were able to build their companies more easily using it. But you forget to compare it to the alternative, where there is no significant open source or libre software available. You can't run Linux, you have to trust Windows not to backdoor you. There is no Signal or Matrix or other encrypted messaging - or if there is, you have no way of verifying it. If you want to write a .txt file, you must pay for a close-source text editor. Or a very expensive compiler, if you're a programmer. Is the compiler backdooring your code? Maybe. You must find paid alternatives for all the free software you rely on, for work, or for your hobbies. And who builds that paid software? Not a garage shop - they could never afford all the compilers and libraries and tools necessary. Only billion-dollar+ companies, engaging in incestuous cross-licensing, letting each-other use their tools, and crushing any upstarts. If open source (or even copyleft) benefits those in power, closed source benefits them infinitely more.
- rakoo 5y ago
  Indeed Open Source also benefits Libre Software today. But do we really know what the ecosystem would be like today in a world where only Copyleft existed ? Linux itself is GPL, so are some of the distributions. Hurd hasn't seen adoption, probably because the alternative is good enough. Signal is still there, client and server. But maybe it wasn't needed because ejabberd, one of the biggest XMPP servers, was already there and powering all messenger platforms. You're assuming that if developers didn't license under non-copyleft, they'd license under proprietary instead; there's no real reason to believe this. And as many examples have shown, many of the tools we use aren't actually made by billion-dollar companies but by single developers on their free time. The examples in the article show it, Werner Koch (the guy behind OpenPGP) has been asking for funding for years (decades ?). ssh, curl, ... Anyway, that world is so different that we'll probably never know how it'll work, so here is the area where the optimism of people are visible and I myself believe Copyleft could have been a success.
  - jevoten 5y ago
    Ah, sorry. I misunderstood you as talking about the problems of open source in general, but you were referring only to non-copyleft open source. In that case I think we agree.
aeldidi 5y ago
Companies will use whatever is at their disposal to grow faster and more efficiently, this is the free market working as intended (and isn't a bad thing by itself: see free software companies like SourceHut benefiting as well). I think the core of the problem lies in distribution. We've gotten so used to other people distributing our code for us (through the use of package managers and such) that we've made it hard to actually have a dialogue with our users. Many consumers of packages just know their dependencies by the npm package name, rather than actually seeing what the person has to say about the software, how they plan to maintain it and for how long, etc. Even things like licenses are really just ignored at large, with there being a general mentality of "it's on Github therefore it's probably MIT". There was something I remember reading a bit ago about a Go project whose license was simply "you do not have permission to use for any reason ever" which was depended on by projects from big organizations such as AWS[0]. This is mostly just a rambling and I don't have any concrete way to solve this, but I think it should be taken into account when assessing whether the problem really lies in the individual license choices of developers, or whether this is some kind of effort by big market actors to keep open source solutions at a subpar level of quality in comparison to commercial offerings (for example: some of Microsoft's VsCode extensions only work on the proprietary version, not any open source forks[1]). [0]: https://fossa.com/blog/bouk-monkey-importance-knowing-your-dependencies/ https://fossa.com/blog/bouk-monkey-importance-knowing-your-d... [1]: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/240 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/240

by rakoo 5y ago

senko 5y ago

Copyleft wouldn't help here. You don't need to do anything if you just use the code as-is.

webmaven 5y ago
While not a complete solution, the AGPL helps close this loophole.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  No it doesn't. AGPL only requires the changes to be shared.
  - rakoo 5y ago
    It also requires the original to be shared with the same license. That's what ensures that the software and its evolutions remain a digital commons

jevoten 5y ago

A good analysis of what open source enables - Facebook et al. were able to build their companies more easily using it. But you forget to compare it to the alternative, where there is no significant open source or libre software available. You can't run Linux, you have to trust Windows not to backdoor you. There is no Signal or Matrix or other encrypted messaging - or if there is, you have no way of verifying it. If you want to write a .txt file, you must pay for a close-source text editor. Or a very expensive compiler, if you're a programmer. Is the compiler backdooring your code? Maybe. You must find paid alternatives for all the free software you rely on, for work, or for your hobbies. And who builds that paid software? Not a garage shop - they could never afford all the compilers and libraries and tools necessary. Only billion-dollar+ companies, engaging in incestuous cross-licensing, letting each-other use their tools, and crushing any upstarts. If open source (or even copyleft) benefits those in power, closed source benefits them infinitely more.

rakoo 5y ago
Indeed Open Source also benefits Libre Software today. But do we really know what the ecosystem would be like today in a world where only Copyleft existed ? Linux itself is GPL, so are some of the distributions. Hurd hasn't seen adoption, probably because the alternative is good enough. Signal is still there, client and server. But maybe it wasn't needed because ejabberd, one of the biggest XMPP servers, was already there and powering all messenger platforms. You're assuming that if developers didn't license under non-copyleft, they'd license under proprietary instead; there's no real reason to believe this. And as many examples have shown, many of the tools we use aren't actually made by billion-dollar companies but by single developers on their free time. The examples in the article show it, Werner Koch (the guy behind OpenPGP) has been asking for funding for years (decades ?). ssh, curl, ... Anyway, that world is so different that we'll probably never know how it'll work, so here is the area where the optimism of people are visible and I myself believe Copyleft could have been a success.
- jevoten 5y ago
  Ah, sorry. I misunderstood you as talking about the problems of open source in general, but you were referring only to non-copyleft open source. In that case I think we agree.

aeldidi 5y ago

Companies will use whatever is at their disposal to grow faster and more efficiently, this is the free market working as intended (and isn't a bad thing by itself: see free software companies like SourceHut benefiting as well). I think the core of the problem lies in distribution. We've gotten so used to other people distributing our code for us (through the use of package managers and such) that we've made it hard to actually have a dialogue with our users. Many consumers of packages just know their dependencies by the npm package name, rather than actually seeing what the person has to say about the software, how they plan to maintain it and for how long, etc. Even things like licenses are really just ignored at large, with there being a general mentality of "it's on Github therefore it's probably MIT". There was something I remember reading a bit ago about a Go project whose license was simply "you do not have permission to use for any reason ever" which was depended on by projects from big organizations such as AWS[0]. This is mostly just a rambling and I don't have any concrete way to solve this, but I think it should be taken into account when assessing whether the problem really lies in the individual license choices of developers, or whether this is some kind of effort by big market actors to keep open source solutions at a subpar level of quality in comparison to commercial offerings (for example: some of Microsoft's VsCode extensions only work on the proprietary version, not any open source forks[1]). [0]: https://fossa.com/blog/bouk-monkey-importance-knowing-your-dependencies/ https://fossa.com/blog/bouk-monkey-importance-knowing-your-d... [1]: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/240 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/240