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Don't you think there's a moral issue expecting free contributions to something which only you are allowed to monetize? And how can you satisfy users to the gre

by shawnz 5y ago

Don't you think there's a moral issue expecting free contributions to something which only you are allowed to monetize? And how can you satisfy users to the greatest extent while also preventing them from using the provider that is best able to meet their needs? EDIT: regarding your inline response, > Nowhere in OSS licenses does it include the expectations of free contributions The expectation is not encoded in the license, it is the reason for choosing the license. Why would anyone want to afford you the benefits of FOSS so that you can personally monetize it and nobody else?

skrtskrt 5y ago
There are plenty of reasons for choosing an OSS license - people can easily audit the code, people can self host for their own purposes, etc. There is plenty of code that is only open-sourced after it has been fully created by a single organization/entity - no free contributions needed! If we're talking about expectations not encoded in the license it's very clear that developers would just like to be able to release software with all those OSS benefits, but also to have a way to be compensated when AWS takes it, charges people to have it run it on an AWS server, and makes a ton of money. I'm not denying AWS is adding value, but it sure is odd that they're the only ones making a dime there.
- shawnz 5y ago
  I don't think those are really reasons for choosing an OSS license, they are reasons for choosing a source-available license (of which OSS licenses are just one kind). > I'm not denying AWS is adding value, but it sure is odd that they're the only ones making a dime there. I don't understand what's odd about it. If ES were never open source and was a proprietary product from the beginning, there would be nothing stopping Amazon from paying for it and providing it as a service under contract from Elastic, if they thought it added enough value to make that worthwhile. Then they would both be profiting in a monetary sense from the relationship. But it's not a proprietary product (or at least, it wasn't previously)
- pabs3 5y ago
  There is a talk by an OSS person (I forget the details), where they make the argument that AWS selling hosting for a particular piece of software increase the market for that software, which means that while AWS takes some share of the pie, the size of the pie is bigger so the original author's share goes down but the size of their slice goes up. So I'm not sure in every case AWS selling hosted software is actually a bad thing for the original authors.
sokoloff 5y ago
I want to afford anyone the benefit of an F/OSS license so they don’t have to waste their life energy recreating a wheel that I’ve already created. If it helps you and saves you time, have at it! In other cases, I contribute back patches so that companies can ship better software to their users (sometimes so I benefit; other times just so someone else doesn’t have to fix the same bug I just fixed). This license case isn’t about “you can personally monetize it and nobody else” but rather “you and anyone else who wants to can try to monetize it”.
- shawnz 5y ago
  Right, I mean to say why would potential contributors want to afford those benefits to the original author so that only the original author can monetize it?

by shawnz 5y ago

skrtskrt 5y ago

There are plenty of reasons for choosing an OSS license - people can easily audit the code, people can self host for their own purposes, etc. There is plenty of code that is only open-sourced after it has been fully created by a single organization/entity - no free contributions needed! If we're talking about expectations not encoded in the license it's very clear that developers would just like to be able to release software with all those OSS benefits, but also to have a way to be compensated when AWS takes it, charges people to have it run it on an AWS server, and makes a ton of money. I'm not denying AWS is adding value, but it sure is odd that they're the only ones making a dime there.

shawnz 5y ago
I don't think those are really reasons for choosing an OSS license, they are reasons for choosing a source-available license (of which OSS licenses are just one kind). > I'm not denying AWS is adding value, but it sure is odd that they're the only ones making a dime there. I don't understand what's odd about it. If ES were never open source and was a proprietary product from the beginning, there would be nothing stopping Amazon from paying for it and providing it as a service under contract from Elastic, if they thought it added enough value to make that worthwhile. Then they would both be profiting in a monetary sense from the relationship. But it's not a proprietary product (or at least, it wasn't previously)
pabs3 5y ago
There is a talk by an OSS person (I forget the details), where they make the argument that AWS selling hosting for a particular piece of software increase the market for that software, which means that while AWS takes some share of the pie, the size of the pie is bigger so the original author's share goes down but the size of their slice goes up. So I'm not sure in every case AWS selling hosted software is actually a bad thing for the original authors.

sokoloff 5y ago

I want to afford anyone the benefit of an F/OSS license so they don’t have to waste their life energy recreating a wheel that I’ve already created. If it helps you and saves you time, have at it! In other cases, I contribute back patches so that companies can ship better software to their users (sometimes so I benefit; other times just so someone else doesn’t have to fix the same bug I just fixed). This license case isn’t about “you can personally monetize it and nobody else” but rather “you and anyone else who wants to can try to monetize it”.

shawnz 5y ago
Right, I mean to say why would potential contributors want to afford those benefits to the original author so that only the original author can monetize it?