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Disclaimer: I’ve been paid to write and do experiments/devrel for OCV and portfolio companies in the past People seem to be complaining about the business mode

Disclaimer: I’ve been paid to write and do experiments/devrel for OCV and portfolio companies in the past People seem to be complaining about the business model here, but that can be tweaked or changed literally at will (and by negotiation for maintainers). As for intent, at this point I don’t think it makes sense to consider Sid’s intent nefarious —- look at how Gitlab is run. Speaking of the disclaimer, we tried to lay out the reasoning and background on how people make money in open source: https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2022-03-someone-has-to-pay-for-the-domino/ https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2022-03-someone-has-to-pay... On the spectrum of how people make money with open source, open core with investment has been proven to work and produce large sustainable companies that can compete with VC backed closed source (I say this as someone who has benefitted from Gitlab’s free tier massively). There’s a trade off here. What number should the investor get, and what number should the maintainers get? How we get to an equitable number (pun intended) is discourse and negotiation. Open source is unsustainable right now —- Github Sponsors will not save the maintainers with software used by Fortune 500s expecting business level support. That shouldn’t be the situation, but it is. At the very least, the open core model encourages maintainers of F/OSS software to do enough business to help themselves, while spending some of Sid’s money. We need F/OSS maintainers that know how to business, just like the beautiful conception of F/OSS by nerds that knew how to lawyer.

ianbutler 4y ago
I agree with the mission and even more so: > Open source is unsustainable right now —- Github Sponsors will not save the maintainers with software used by Fortune 500s expecting business level support. That shouldn’t be the situation, but it is. I was actually thinking along exactly these lines this morning. That's why I was disappointed in particular because of who's name was on it, because to me it reads poorly. That's why my reaction was so visceral. I'm glad to hear that in actuality it has really been benefiting those OSS maintainers, but I stand by at least my suggestion that some of the explainer/marketing copy on that site needs to change. It in my honest opinion does not read to the same level of positivity that you or lbotos below put it to.
- hardwaresofton 4y ago
  > I was actually thinking along exactly these lines this morning. Oh here’s another thought, what if Github (Microsoft) started doing this as well. That actually seems less and less of a stretch the more I think about it. Certain former C level execs of Github are rolling around free these days… > That's why I was disappointed in particular because of who's name was on it, because to me it reads poorly. That's why my reaction was so visceral. I'm glad to hear that in actuality it has really been benefiting those OSS maintainers, but I stand by at least my suggestion that some of the explainer/marketing copy on that site needs to change. It in my honest opinion does not read to the same level of positivity that you or lbotos below put it to. Thanks for pointing this out this gap. Even the chance to prevent causing this kind of reaction is massive. I positive it’s a writing/conveyance problem , but I can only think this because of my direct dealings with OCV. Just a bit of tweaking on this page and a better layout of the vision is probably whats needed. I mean I’m not even the person who should be commenting — the voices that need to be heard are maintainers that made the choice to trust OCV. They’re on disparate timezones but hopefully more chime in.
whoville 4y ago
> at this point I don’t think it makes sense to consider Sid’s intent nefarious Why not? He's spouting a bunch of ridiculous bullshit about licensing without any consensus among people who are experts in licensing and ethical questions and business questions, eg: the FSF, the OSI licensing list, the FSFE Legal Network, and all so he can make money. Looks nefarious enough to me, at least if you believe in free software. Edit: HN won't let me post. Heather Meeker wrote the SSPL for MongoDB, then she helped write this which is all about protecting against the SSPL. If you cite a person as the licensing expert for credibility when the thing is completely contradictory to what that person has written in the past should result in loss of credibility, not gaining it. She's a lawyer for her client, wrapping up their chosen business model in novel legal bullshit to help sell it.
- hardwaresofton 4y ago
  > Why not? He's spouting a bunch of ridiculous bullshit about licensing without bothering to ask or cite the opinion of people who are experts in licensing and ethical questions and business questions, eg: the FSF, the OSI licensing list, the FSFE Legal Network, and all so he can make money. Looks pretty nefarious to me. This is quite the spicy comment -- I'm not a licensing expert (note that there was a licensing specialist involved) so I can't speak to OCV's interpretation of licenses, but which idea is the ridiculous bullshit? The PBC charter? The idea that preventing changing license being good? Do you think OCV is making deals that exploit maintainers? This isn't a particularly new business model, so I figure it's not there -- people like/dislike open core, but I don't think people go as far as to call it nefarious. Is the primary concern that the other organizations weren't contacted? > and all so he can make money. Looks pretty nefarious to me. Is the idea here that he'll make money somehow from people choosing to start public benefit corporations? Or from a lot of maintainers choosing to take his investment? This does not seem like a "nefarious" (generally defined as "extremely wicked") thing -- what should it look like to be not nefarious?
- kfarr 4y ago
  FTA quoting an expert in licensing: "It’s important not to orphan a community codebase,” said open source software licensing specialist Heather Meeker, General Partner at OSS Capital. “It can be hard to define what that means, but it’s disruptive to withdraw code from a public repository and then change the license. The challenge is to ensure a commitment to the community as ownership interests change over time. You need protective provisions, so companies don’t abandon their open source roots.”
zozbot234 4y ago
> Open source is unsustainable right now —- Github Sponsors will not save the maintainers with software used by Fortune 500s expecting business level support. If Fortune 500 companies are expecting "business level support" from FLOSS maintainers and developers, they should be paying for that. This is how things have always worked. GitHub Sponsors is neither here nor there; its purpose, as with any crowdfunding, is to help everyone else fund development of FLOSS.

ianbutler 4y ago

I agree with the mission and even more so: > Open source is unsustainable right now —- Github Sponsors will not save the maintainers with software used by Fortune 500s expecting business level support. That shouldn’t be the situation, but it is. I was actually thinking along exactly these lines this morning. That's why I was disappointed in particular because of who's name was on it, because to me it reads poorly. That's why my reaction was so visceral. I'm glad to hear that in actuality it has really been benefiting those OSS maintainers, but I stand by at least my suggestion that some of the explainer/marketing copy on that site needs to change. It in my honest opinion does not read to the same level of positivity that you or lbotos below put it to.

hardwaresofton 4y ago
> I was actually thinking along exactly these lines this morning. Oh here’s another thought, what if Github (Microsoft) started doing this as well. That actually seems less and less of a stretch the more I think about it. Certain former C level execs of Github are rolling around free these days… > That's why I was disappointed in particular because of who's name was on it, because to me it reads poorly. That's why my reaction was so visceral. I'm glad to hear that in actuality it has really been benefiting those OSS maintainers, but I stand by at least my suggestion that some of the explainer/marketing copy on that site needs to change. It in my honest opinion does not read to the same level of positivity that you or lbotos below put it to. Thanks for pointing this out this gap. Even the chance to prevent causing this kind of reaction is massive. I positive it’s a writing/conveyance problem , but I can only think this because of my direct dealings with OCV. Just a bit of tweaking on this page and a better layout of the vision is probably whats needed. I mean I’m not even the person who should be commenting — the voices that need to be heard are maintainers that made the choice to trust OCV. They’re on disparate timezones but hopefully more chime in.

whoville 4y ago

> at this point I don’t think it makes sense to consider Sid’s intent nefarious Why not? He's spouting a bunch of ridiculous bullshit about licensing without any consensus among people who are experts in licensing and ethical questions and business questions, eg: the FSF, the OSI licensing list, the FSFE Legal Network, and all so he can make money. Looks nefarious enough to me, at least if you believe in free software. Edit: HN won't let me post. Heather Meeker wrote the SSPL for MongoDB, then she helped write this which is all about protecting against the SSPL. If you cite a person as the licensing expert for credibility when the thing is completely contradictory to what that person has written in the past should result in loss of credibility, not gaining it. She's a lawyer for her client, wrapping up their chosen business model in novel legal bullshit to help sell it.

hardwaresofton 4y ago
> Why not? He's spouting a bunch of ridiculous bullshit about licensing without bothering to ask or cite the opinion of people who are experts in licensing and ethical questions and business questions, eg: the FSF, the OSI licensing list, the FSFE Legal Network, and all so he can make money. Looks pretty nefarious to me. This is quite the spicy comment -- I'm not a licensing expert (note that there was a licensing specialist involved) so I can't speak to OCV's interpretation of licenses, but which idea is the ridiculous bullshit? The PBC charter? The idea that preventing changing license being good? Do you think OCV is making deals that exploit maintainers? This isn't a particularly new business model, so I figure it's not there -- people like/dislike open core, but I don't think people go as far as to call it nefarious. Is the primary concern that the other organizations weren't contacted? > and all so he can make money. Looks pretty nefarious to me. Is the idea here that he'll make money somehow from people choosing to start public benefit corporations? Or from a lot of maintainers choosing to take his investment? This does not seem like a "nefarious" (generally defined as "extremely wicked") thing -- what should it look like to be not nefarious?
kfarr 4y ago
FTA quoting an expert in licensing: "It’s important not to orphan a community codebase,” said open source software licensing specialist Heather Meeker, General Partner at OSS Capital. “It can be hard to define what that means, but it’s disruptive to withdraw code from a public repository and then change the license. The challenge is to ensure a commitment to the community as ownership interests change over time. You need protective provisions, so companies don’t abandon their open source roots.”

zozbot234 4y ago

> Open source is unsustainable right now —- Github Sponsors will not save the maintainers with software used by Fortune 500s expecting business level support. If Fortune 500 companies are expecting "business level support" from FLOSS maintainers and developers, they should be paying for that. This is how things have always worked. GitHub Sponsors is neither here nor there; its purpose, as with any crowdfunding, is to help everyone else fund development of FLOSS.