3 ms·

I'd rather have a maintained and secure fork of some library from a corporation than an unmaintained and deteriorating library from someone who can't afford to

I'd rather have a maintained and secure fork of some library from a corporation than an unmaintained and deteriorating library from someone who can't afford to upkeep it.

sam_lowry_ 5y ago
You'll have the worst of both worlds.
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  Can you explain?
  - pvarangot 5y ago
    Not OP but they probably mean you don't get the competitive advantage of owning your own purpose specific codebase, but your library also doesn't have an agile community that's working on it "for free".
  - teddyh 5y ago
    What you’ll have is an unmaintained insecure fork held in place by a company who doesn’t have to do any maintenance, since they, and their code, are declared “secure” by fiat.
    - animal_spirits 5y ago
      I don't see how that's any different than where we started from? Google can't just take over an open source library and declare no one can work on it any more.
      - teddyh 5y ago
        If it’s MIT or otherwise permissively licensed, they absolutely can take it over by forking, putting enough work into it that it’s not worth continuing the original version, and then not releasing it openly, or with complicated entanglements. If it’s GPL or similar, the process is slower. They will probably immediately start a grand redesign which will, incidentally, not use the GPL library. In the short run, they will start a replacement implementation of the GPL library, incidentally permissively licensed. Both will take time, but usually gets there. Both of these cases are seen all the time.
buscoquadnary 5y ago
Or they charge you to upgrade to the latest version and then lock you out of the software if you aren't up to date because it isn't secure. That could happen to.
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  If it is open source then we can just fork off of the last free version. Lets at least take advantage of the corporations who also want successfully maintained software.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Corporations don't have to maintain open source software under open source licenses if, for example, that software was released under MIT or BSD licenses. They could very well take an project with an MIT license and make it proprietary, and there won't be any free versions to fork from.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Corporations don't have to maintain open source software under open source licenses if, for example, that software was released under MIT or BSD licenses. If they own the copyright and control the only source code available, they can change the license regardless of whether it is permissive or copyleft currently. If they do only the second, they can shut down the repo regardless of the license, even if they don't change the license, and unless it's something like AGPL continue internal use. If they don't control the only archive of source code, then even if they can change the license going forward, other people can continue to distribute and fork off from the last Free version (again, irrespective of whether permissive or restrictive.) Unless they both own the copyright and have the legal power to retract the license offer for the earlier code (contrary to the usual express terms of license grants, which may be possible if it is a gratuitous license, but even if it is may not be fully effective in all cases because of promissory estoppel.)
- nolok 5y ago
  Does the license permit it ? If yes then they're not doing anything that the author didn't want them to do.
smasher164 5y ago
> can't afford to upkeep it Address the cause, not the symptom. Make it so these individuals are more capable of upkeeping their projects. Otherwise, over the long term, you'll end up with projects disincentivized to do the maintenance, leading to a weaker open-source community.

I'd rather have a maintained and secure fork of some library from a corporation than an unmaintained and deteriorating library from someone who can't afford to upkeep it.

sam_lowry_ 5y ago

You'll have the worst of both worlds.

animal_spirits 5y ago
Can you explain?
- pvarangot 5y ago
  Not OP but they probably mean you don't get the competitive advantage of owning your own purpose specific codebase, but your library also doesn't have an agile community that's working on it "for free".
- teddyh 5y ago
  What you’ll have is an unmaintained insecure fork held in place by a company who doesn’t have to do any maintenance, since they, and their code, are declared “secure” by fiat.
  - animal_spirits 5y ago
    I don't see how that's any different than where we started from? Google can't just take over an open source library and declare no one can work on it any more.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      If it’s MIT or otherwise permissively licensed, they absolutely can take it over by forking, putting enough work into it that it’s not worth continuing the original version, and then not releasing it openly, or with complicated entanglements. If it’s GPL or similar, the process is slower. They will probably immediately start a grand redesign which will, incidentally, not use the GPL library. In the short run, they will start a replacement implementation of the GPL library, incidentally permissively licensed. Both will take time, but usually gets there. Both of these cases are seen all the time.

buscoquadnary 5y ago

Or they charge you to upgrade to the latest version and then lock you out of the software if you aren't up to date because it isn't secure. That could happen to.

animal_spirits 5y ago
If it is open source then we can just fork off of the last free version. Lets at least take advantage of the corporations who also want successfully maintained software.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Corporations don't have to maintain open source software under open source licenses if, for example, that software was released under MIT or BSD licenses. They could very well take an project with an MIT license and make it proprietary, and there won't be any free versions to fork from.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Corporations don't have to maintain open source software under open source licenses if, for example, that software was released under MIT or BSD licenses. If they own the copyright and control the only source code available, they can change the license regardless of whether it is permissive or copyleft currently. If they do only the second, they can shut down the repo regardless of the license, even if they don't change the license, and unless it's something like AGPL continue internal use. If they don't control the only archive of source code, then even if they can change the license going forward, other people can continue to distribute and fork off from the last Free version (again, irrespective of whether permissive or restrictive.) Unless they both own the copyright and have the legal power to retract the license offer for the earlier code (contrary to the usual express terms of license grants, which may be possible if it is a gratuitous license, but even if it is may not be fully effective in all cases because of promissory estoppel.)
nolok 5y ago
Does the license permit it ? If yes then they're not doing anything that the author didn't want them to do.

smasher164 5y ago

> can't afford to upkeep it Address the cause, not the symptom. Make it so these individuals are more capable of upkeeping their projects. Otherwise, over the long term, you'll end up with projects disincentivized to do the maintenance, leading to a weaker open-source community.