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Have you ever built a non-open source product using any open source libraries? Do you feel like you take advantage of the authors of those libraries? I've neve
by capableweb 5y ago
Have you ever built a non-open source product using any open source libraries? Do you feel like you take advantage of the authors of those libraries?
I've never felt like I've taken advantage of others, and I also don't feel like that when others use my libraries to build products and earn money based on those products. If you're giving away software for free, you can't expect to make any money from it, because it's just that, free.
- OkayPhysicist 5y agoI think you can, however, expect payment in kind, i.e developer time. If someone is marketing an improved version of my code, I think they do have an obligation to provide their source as well. Hence the (A)GPL.
- capableweb 5y agoI guess if "Pay in developer time" is part of the license, you could expect that. Personally, I always use MIT and hence I expect nothing, even for people who use my software to earn themselves money :)
- OkayPhysicist 5y agoYeah, and that's why I can't imagine using those licenses. It's an open invitation for free riders into a system built on mutual aid. It costs you nothing to open source code, so it's the very least you can do as a user of open source code.
- capableweb 5y agoI definitely understand your point of view. It's hard for me to justify restricting my open source work like that though, as I associate "freedom" with "do literally whatever you want, I don't care". I've myself have built businesses on open source code, and wouldn't want to stop others from doing the same either, even if they don't contribute back code.