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https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/08/open_source_biz_sick_of/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/08/open_source_biz_sick_... Here's an article on it. Their

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/08/open_source_biz_sick_of/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/08/open_source_biz_sick_... Here's an article on it. Their logic actually makes sense. Not that I support gouging customers, but when you consider how there are massive billion dollar companies with expensive lawyers figuring out how to end-around OSS (via SaaS, etc) this is the logical conclusion. A lot of companies make a lot of money on OSS and give little to nothing in return. This isn't in the spirit of OSS but company men don't really care. So it seems like Akka finally got sick of it and is now coming to collect its (without question) overdue paycheck from these people. It's just unfortunate they went so aggressive with it. $2000/vCPU/year will do a lot of damage to smaller projects in the process of sinking the billion dollar open source leeches in the process.

azemetre 4y ago
If you’re making $25mil in revenue why is it out of the question to pay for licenses?
- Test0129 4y ago
  Why would you? License requisition is a real pain, they have to be factored into the budget, depreciated, etc. If you can instead simply pull in OSS and hide it behind a SaaS implementation (thereby complying with licenses) you can leverage it to make money. I don't think Stallman saw this coming. Some companies do better than others. For example, FAANG level companies typically have teams that do give back. In some cases several orders of magnitude more than they take from popular projects. It's the in-betweens, the other companies that don't do anything other than leech.
  - svnpenn 4y ago
    > pull in OSS and hide it behind a SaaS implementation (thereby complying with licenses) sorry, but you can do that shit anymore: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_License#Network_deployment_is_distribution https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_License#Network_dep...
    - bhuber 4y ago
      My interpretation of that clause is it applies to distributing code over a network. The most common example of this is serving javascript to a web browser. I'm pretty sure putting an API in front of a server that happens to run open source software doesn't count as "distribution", which is what we're talking about here with SAAS providers and Akka. If it does, then every site that is backed by servers running linux and not distributing their GPL license to clients is also in violation.
      - svnpenn 4y ago
        I would disagree with your assessment. OSL was specifically crafted, to close this exact loophole: > Most other open source licenses treat such network uses of software as internal to the company that runs the server, and they don't require disclosure of source code. That is seen by many nowadays as a loophole that permits large online companies to avoid their reciprocal source code obligations. http://rosenlaw.com/OSL3.0-explained.htm#_Toc187293088 http://rosenlaw.com/OSL3.0-explained.htm#_Toc187293088
        bhuber 4y ago
        Sorry, I didn't read your link carefully enough. I stand corrected, that does indeed seem to be the only reasonable interpretation. That said, this clause only exists in this particular OSL license, so it only applies to software distributed under it. Some quick googling indicates that OSL is 20 years old, and OSL v3 (the latest version), is 17. Despite that, it doesn't appear to have any significant usage. PyPi, for example, lists 10 software packages distributed under it [1], out of 387,658 total. So it certainly doesn't seem like a practical solution to the problem. I suspect the reason that nobody uses it is due to its toxicity - it taints anything that transitively uses it in any practical way. This leads to all sorts of nonsensical violations. For example, say you write a document in a word processor that uses a leftpad lib distributed under this license. Then you email that document to someone else. Congratulations, you're now in violation of the license - you distributed a "derivative work" of the leftpad lib to someone "other than you" over a "network". The terms of this license are so restrictive and cumbersome as to make it basically useless. Anything you publish under it can't effectively be used by the vast majority of the people who would want to use it, at which point you might as well not publish your work at all. I certainly wouldn't view this as a panacea for solving the SaaS-wrapping-OS-code problem. [1] https://pypi.org/search/?c=License+%3A%3A+OSI+Approved+%3A%3A+Open+Software+License+3.0+%28OSL-3.0%29 https://pypi.org/search/?c=License+%3A%3A+OSI+Approved+%3A%3...
- belfalas 4y ago
  > If you’re making $25mil in revenue why is it out of the question to pay for licenses? Turn it around: the kind of company that makes $25mil in revenue does so in part by figuring out what expenses it can negate or avoid. If they don't have to pay for licenses, they won't. Completely hypothetical anecdote certainly not based on personal experience working in the Bay: an Ops director who saved 50% on MSFT server license costs by only paying for the servers in the DC acting as current primary. "They are not taking production traffic so they are not in use, ergo no need to pay." As an engineer this logic may disgust you but it's the kind of thing that gets you promoted and 'in good' with "the business." PS. It's a similar principal to your filthy rich relatives who are surly misers and share nothing with everyone. (And they have no sense of humor, too!)
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    > the kind of company that makes $25mil in revenue does so in part by figuring out what expenses it can negate or avoid. Cutting expenses has no direct impact on revenue. For many companies, it is better to have small recurring expenses than to take on certain types of risk.
    - xani_ 4y ago
      The cost for the license would be more than the cost for the hardware to run it tho. We're talking literally doubling, maybe more, of the costs.
- xani_ 4y ago
  Coz you want to make $25 mil in revenue instead of $20 mil in revenue. The cost is so high actually forking and developing the fork is probably cheaper. Especially for a big company. Imagine app costing you 100k in hardware, 1 mil yearly in engineering cost but 5 mil in licensing cost just because you have big nice cluster with a bunch of modern high core count CPUs
- p_l 4y ago
  Because $25mil in revenue might still mean less profit than the cost of Akka licenses will add. Remember, Revenue is before applying costs - costs like extra million here or there from licensing and costs of servicing the license which I think many people forget about. Especially when the software doesn't have some automated methods of license management.

azemetre 4y ago

If you’re making $25mil in revenue why is it out of the question to pay for licenses?

Test0129 4y ago
Why would you? License requisition is a real pain, they have to be factored into the budget, depreciated, etc. If you can instead simply pull in OSS and hide it behind a SaaS implementation (thereby complying with licenses) you can leverage it to make money. I don't think Stallman saw this coming. Some companies do better than others. For example, FAANG level companies typically have teams that do give back. In some cases several orders of magnitude more than they take from popular projects. It's the in-betweens, the other companies that don't do anything other than leech.
- svnpenn 4y ago
  > pull in OSS and hide it behind a SaaS implementation (thereby complying with licenses) sorry, but you can do that shit anymore: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_License#Network_deployment_is_distribution https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_License#Network_dep...
  - bhuber 4y ago
    My interpretation of that clause is it applies to distributing code over a network. The most common example of this is serving javascript to a web browser. I'm pretty sure putting an API in front of a server that happens to run open source software doesn't count as "distribution", which is what we're talking about here with SAAS providers and Akka. If it does, then every site that is backed by servers running linux and not distributing their GPL license to clients is also in violation.
    - svnpenn 4y ago
      I would disagree with your assessment. OSL was specifically crafted, to close this exact loophole: > Most other open source licenses treat such network uses of software as internal to the company that runs the server, and they don't require disclosure of source code. That is seen by many nowadays as a loophole that permits large online companies to avoid their reciprocal source code obligations. http://rosenlaw.com/OSL3.0-explained.htm#_Toc187293088 http://rosenlaw.com/OSL3.0-explained.htm#_Toc187293088
      - bhuber 4y ago
        Sorry, I didn't read your link carefully enough. I stand corrected, that does indeed seem to be the only reasonable interpretation. That said, this clause only exists in this particular OSL license, so it only applies to software distributed under it. Some quick googling indicates that OSL is 20 years old, and OSL v3 (the latest version), is 17. Despite that, it doesn't appear to have any significant usage. PyPi, for example, lists 10 software packages distributed under it [1], out of 387,658 total. So it certainly doesn't seem like a practical solution to the problem. I suspect the reason that nobody uses it is due to its toxicity - it taints anything that transitively uses it in any practical way. This leads to all sorts of nonsensical violations. For example, say you write a document in a word processor that uses a leftpad lib distributed under this license. Then you email that document to someone else. Congratulations, you're now in violation of the license - you distributed a "derivative work" of the leftpad lib to someone "other than you" over a "network". The terms of this license are so restrictive and cumbersome as to make it basically useless. Anything you publish under it can't effectively be used by the vast majority of the people who would want to use it, at which point you might as well not publish your work at all. I certainly wouldn't view this as a panacea for solving the SaaS-wrapping-OS-code problem. [1] https://pypi.org/search/?c=License+%3A%3A+OSI+Approved+%3A%3A+Open+Software+License+3.0+%28OSL-3.0%29 https://pypi.org/search/?c=License+%3A%3A+OSI+Approved+%3A%3...
belfalas 4y ago
> If you’re making $25mil in revenue why is it out of the question to pay for licenses? Turn it around: the kind of company that makes $25mil in revenue does so in part by figuring out what expenses it can negate or avoid. If they don't have to pay for licenses, they won't. Completely hypothetical anecdote certainly not based on personal experience working in the Bay: an Ops director who saved 50% on MSFT server license costs by only paying for the servers in the DC acting as current primary. "They are not taking production traffic so they are not in use, ergo no need to pay." As an engineer this logic may disgust you but it's the kind of thing that gets you promoted and 'in good' with "the business." PS. It's a similar principal to your filthy rich relatives who are surly misers and share nothing with everyone. (And they have no sense of humor, too!)
- shkkmo 4y ago
  > the kind of company that makes $25mil in revenue does so in part by figuring out what expenses it can negate or avoid. Cutting expenses has no direct impact on revenue. For many companies, it is better to have small recurring expenses than to take on certain types of risk.
  - xani_ 4y ago
    The cost for the license would be more than the cost for the hardware to run it tho. We're talking literally doubling, maybe more, of the costs.
xani_ 4y ago
Coz you want to make $25 mil in revenue instead of $20 mil in revenue. The cost is so high actually forking and developing the fork is probably cheaper. Especially for a big company. Imagine app costing you 100k in hardware, 1 mil yearly in engineering cost but 5 mil in licensing cost just because you have big nice cluster with a bunch of modern high core count CPUs
p_l 4y ago
Because $25mil in revenue might still mean less profit than the cost of Akka licenses will add. Remember, Revenue is before applying costs - costs like extra million here or there from licensing and costs of servicing the license which I think many people forget about. Especially when the software doesn't have some automated methods of license management.