5 ms·

FOSS is the victim in a way, but that means it must defend itself. OSI needs to get off their asses and acknowledge the problem and work with the community to d

by api 5y ago

FOSS is the victim in a way, but that means it must defend itself. OSI needs to get off their asses and acknowledge the problem and work with the community to develop licenses that limit SaaSification and other forms of appropriation in a way that is compatible with the principles of open source and lacks the optics (FUD) problems of the GPL approach. I’m not holding my breath since the OSI is funded almost entirely by huge companies that are quite happy with all the free labor they are exploiting. So far the OSI has plugged it’s ears and pretended everything is fine, and OSS zealots attack the character of any lowly developer who isn’t happy providing uncompensated labor to surveillance capitalist behemoths. I don’t see FOSS surviving another generation if this doesn’t happen, or at least not in a form that isn’t weaponized to herd everyone into proprietary cloud environments.

judge2020 5y ago
This would be solved if people were educated on dual-licensing - no new license needs to exist if you go GPL and have a paid commercial license.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Probably AGPL if SaaS is a concern.
  - trixie_ 5y ago
    People who want their OSS to be widely adopted wouldn't touch AGPL with a ten foot pole.
hardwaresofton 5y ago
There's another option -- those seeking to SaaSify F/OSS can support/partner the software they use. Sustainable hosting isn't something that larger corporations are into, but the right companies can do it, and as companies that have this mindset/condition built in (best if in writing, of course) grow, F/OSS becomes more sustainable by default. All it takes is a reasonable % of revenue contribution to the F/OSS powering your stack. I think the range should be 20% to 50%[0], but even if it was 10%, imagine if open source projects that power even small to mid size tech companies in the world received 10% (or even 3%) of the revenue being collected? The problem of getting the money down to F/OSS that powers inner machinery (libraries, frameworks, etc) is a bit tougher, but I think that could work out easily by doing a general % of revenue and deciding allocation. For example even if you do a 1% allocation to libraries in particular, as libraries are reused much more easily, at scale library authors will do quite well. Maybe a license that asks for a % of revenue is an easier static goal but I'm optimistic enough to think that the partnership approach could work. [0]: https://nimbusws.com/#sustainability https://nimbusws.com/#sustainability
- nixpulvis 5y ago
  It becomes far too tempting for them to break the abstraction barrier though. Just look at the AWS offerings divergence from the originals. Some companies are big enough to fund multiple competitors at the same time, which is about the best thing I can think to do here.
  - hardwaresofton 5y ago
    Yeah but I think the bad PR for breaking commitments should encourage upstreaming improvements, also the AGPL would definitely help.
WJW 5y ago
I still don't see why this means FOSS is a "victim in a way". If you don't want people to take what you put online for free, don't post it online with a notice saying "you can take this for free".
nixpulvis 5y ago
I feel highly unsettled at work anytime anyone trys to explain how to do something, which should be a simple local command, with a multitude of tangled services, each of which I need to request access to. My manager is obviously more than happy to help, but this friction is killing my motivation and atonomy. The fact this is how we're starting to develop software also helps me understnad why, as a user, all my shit's jenky as hell. OSS (to me) was supposed to allow us to bridge the gap between developers and users, making code easy enough to tweak that when a problem or unwanted behaviour comes up you can just fix it yourself. But it's getting harder and harder to see this dream anymore. There are a lot of nooks and crannies in OSS though, and I know there are still plenty of places where this dream is still very much alive. It's just become less and less mainstream, sadly.
jfengel 5y ago
I'm not sure what there is to solve. The problem of giving stuff away is obvious; it's the first thing people ask when they hear about Free Software. The free software philosophy is that people do it anyway, for reasons of their own. Of course they are taken advantage of. I don't think there is a solution, short of radically restructuring the entire world economy. The fundamental problem is people being people. I don't know what software will look like in a generation. I suspect it will be radically different, but that's just my guess. But I suspect open source will trundle along as the rickety, half-assed philosophy that has worked (more or less) so far.
jefftk 5y ago
> OSI needs to get off their asses and acknowledge the problem and work with the community to develop licenses that limit SaaSification and other forms of appropriation in a way that is compatible with the principles of open source and lacks the optics (FUD) problems of the GPL approach. I'm confused about what you want here. The GPL does not deal with SaaSification; for that you need the AGPL. But what problem do you have with the AGPL?
- lomereiter 5y ago
  AGPL doesn't prevent running unmodified software and offering it as a service by large vendors. See the controversy around SSPL and the recent ElasticSearch fork by AWS - I suggest reading Kyle Mitchell's take on this: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/20/Righteous-Expedient-Wrong.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/20/Righteous-Expedien... That said, I believe SSPL is an overkill, and what's needed for a less known SaaS product is a legally enforceable revenue-sharing mechanism - so it can benefit from being listed on popular platforms.
trixie_ 5y ago
Developers perfectly understand the available licenses. And for many they just want to put software out there and don't care how it is used so they put a BSD/MIT license on it.

by api 5y ago

judge2020 5y ago

This would be solved if people were educated on dual-licensing - no new license needs to exist if you go GPL and have a paid commercial license.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Probably AGPL if SaaS is a concern.
- trixie_ 5y ago
  People who want their OSS to be widely adopted wouldn't touch AGPL with a ten foot pole.

hardwaresofton 5y ago

There's another option -- those seeking to SaaSify F/OSS can support/partner the software they use. Sustainable hosting isn't something that larger corporations are into, but the right companies can do it, and as companies that have this mindset/condition built in (best if in writing, of course) grow, F/OSS becomes more sustainable by default. All it takes is a reasonable % of revenue contribution to the F/OSS powering your stack. I think the range should be 20% to 50%[0], but even if it was 10%, imagine if open source projects that power even small to mid size tech companies in the world received 10% (or even 3%) of the revenue being collected? The problem of getting the money down to F/OSS that powers inner machinery (libraries, frameworks, etc) is a bit tougher, but I think that could work out easily by doing a general % of revenue and deciding allocation. For example even if you do a 1% allocation to libraries in particular, as libraries are reused much more easily, at scale library authors will do quite well. Maybe a license that asks for a % of revenue is an easier static goal but I'm optimistic enough to think that the partnership approach could work. [0]: https://nimbusws.com/#sustainability https://nimbusws.com/#sustainability

nixpulvis 5y ago
It becomes far too tempting for them to break the abstraction barrier though. Just look at the AWS offerings divergence from the originals. Some companies are big enough to fund multiple competitors at the same time, which is about the best thing I can think to do here.
- hardwaresofton 5y ago
  Yeah but I think the bad PR for breaking commitments should encourage upstreaming improvements, also the AGPL would definitely help.

WJW 5y ago

I still don't see why this means FOSS is a "victim in a way". If you don't want people to take what you put online for free, don't post it online with a notice saying "you can take this for free".

nixpulvis 5y ago

I feel highly unsettled at work anytime anyone trys to explain how to do something, which should be a simple local command, with a multitude of tangled services, each of which I need to request access to. My manager is obviously more than happy to help, but this friction is killing my motivation and atonomy. The fact this is how we're starting to develop software also helps me understnad why, as a user, all my shit's jenky as hell. OSS (to me) was supposed to allow us to bridge the gap between developers and users, making code easy enough to tweak that when a problem or unwanted behaviour comes up you can just fix it yourself. But it's getting harder and harder to see this dream anymore. There are a lot of nooks and crannies in OSS though, and I know there are still plenty of places where this dream is still very much alive. It's just become less and less mainstream, sadly.

jfengel 5y ago

I'm not sure what there is to solve. The problem of giving stuff away is obvious; it's the first thing people ask when they hear about Free Software. The free software philosophy is that people do it anyway, for reasons of their own. Of course they are taken advantage of. I don't think there is a solution, short of radically restructuring the entire world economy. The fundamental problem is people being people. I don't know what software will look like in a generation. I suspect it will be radically different, but that's just my guess. But I suspect open source will trundle along as the rickety, half-assed philosophy that has worked (more or less) so far.

jefftk 5y ago

> OSI needs to get off their asses and acknowledge the problem and work with the community to develop licenses that limit SaaSification and other forms of appropriation in a way that is compatible with the principles of open source and lacks the optics (FUD) problems of the GPL approach. I'm confused about what you want here. The GPL does not deal with SaaSification; for that you need the AGPL. But what problem do you have with the AGPL?

lomereiter 5y ago
AGPL doesn't prevent running unmodified software and offering it as a service by large vendors. See the controversy around SSPL and the recent ElasticSearch fork by AWS - I suggest reading Kyle Mitchell's take on this: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/20/Righteous-Expedient-Wrong.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/20/Righteous-Expedien... That said, I believe SSPL is an overkill, and what's needed for a less known SaaS product is a legally enforceable revenue-sharing mechanism - so it can benefit from being listed on popular platforms.

trixie_ 5y ago

Developers perfectly understand the available licenses. And for many they just want to put software out there and don't care how it is used so they put a BSD/MIT license on it.