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My read of what José has said here is that the terms attached to that form rule out most open source projects using it because one of the clauses on being eligi

My read of what José has said here is that the terms attached to that form rule out most open source projects using it because one of the clauses on being eligible is that "your organization must not seek to make a profit through services or by charging for higher tiers". This rules out basically any project where one or more contributors have made any money from consulting, which is ~all major open source projects.

nickjj 4y ago
> This rules out basically any project where one or more contributors have made any money from consulting, which is ~all major open source projects. You're right, he's built a multi-employee consulting agency around Elixir which he has linked in his Twitter bio. He even explicitly calls out at using Docker to install Livebook on its official installation page. So he's built a profitable business on top of Elixir and is now upset for having to pay $300 to continue using the tools that help him run his business? I don't get it. This is the cost of running a business. He could choose to self host the Docker bits but I'm guessing the costs would be higher than paying Docker's monthly fee. Alternatively he can spend the next XX years developing his own competitor to Docker and then pay out of pocket to host everyone's stuff for free indefinitely.
- josevalim 4y ago
  I have replied at the root but I think you are misunderstanding my complaints. I completely agree that Docker doesn't own me anything. By the same token, I can express my frustration by them vaguely announcing that many Livebook and Elixir deployment pipelines may be broken _within a month_. Also, it took several years of _free work_ for Elixir to become profitable (and even then, we invest most of the profits right back into the community). And I consider well within my rights to recognize that their open source grant wouldn't have helped me back then and I doubt it will help others now. Overall, it is not about the cost. It is just that I would rather take my business elsewhere (paid or free). Here is a quick exercise: imagine I announce the next Elixir versions will require at least $300/year to use. I bet everyone would be fine with it. The cost of running a business and all that, right?
  - nickjj 4y ago
    > Here is a quick exercise: imagine I announce the next Elixir versions will require at least $300/year to use. I bet everyone would be fine with it. The cost of running a business and all that, right? That's not a fair analogy. Docker is still free to use to build your own things today. You can run containers on your servers and pay $0. You can host images on your own registry and Docker makes $0 off that, you can still provide free value to the community by allowing the community to pull from your registry at no cost. An accurate analogy would be more like Elixir officially hosting all open source Elixir apps for free for ~10 years and now 10 years later you want to start charging a relatively small amount of money to continue hosting things for the community. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me and that's what Docker is doing here.
    - josevalim 4y ago
      The analogy worked fine under the last sentence of your previous comment - now removed - which said something like "assume nothing is given, assume nothing is owned". Anyway, we can work with your example. Your example is missing the context that Docker images are not always used as an app, but also as a building block. So let's change the exercise slightly: assume Dashbit owns Hex.pm and posting any package to Hex.pm now requires $300/year or packages will be removed within a month. As an OSS maintainer, if you do not pay, you will break the deployment of all users of your package. So... would everyone still be fine with it? The cost of running a business and all that? EDIT: Hex.pm supports custom registries which anyone can self-host. Including built-in tools to help you with that. You can apply this exercise to any open source community with a centralized-by-default package manager with custom registries (which, afaik, are most of them).
stonemetal12 4y ago
To me that says Red Hat doesn't qualify. Since the Organization attempts to make a profit. Apache does since they are a non profit. However it says nothing about individuals of the organization making money off consulting. So contributing to Apache and running an Apache consulting company is OK, Apache still qualifies but your consulting company doesn't.
RobotToaster 4y ago
At the very least the rules around this need to be clarified, I can understand them not wanting to host pseudo open source "open core" or interfaces to proprietary SaaS for free. If that includes any service though (like their own hosting, or as you say, consulting), it seems somewhat ridiculous.

nickjj 4y ago

> This rules out basically any project where one or more contributors have made any money from consulting, which is ~all major open source projects. You're right, he's built a multi-employee consulting agency around Elixir which he has linked in his Twitter bio. He even explicitly calls out at using Docker to install Livebook on its official installation page. So he's built a profitable business on top of Elixir and is now upset for having to pay $300 to continue using the tools that help him run his business? I don't get it. This is the cost of running a business. He could choose to self host the Docker bits but I'm guessing the costs would be higher than paying Docker's monthly fee. Alternatively he can spend the next XX years developing his own competitor to Docker and then pay out of pocket to host everyone's stuff for free indefinitely.

josevalim 4y ago
I have replied at the root but I think you are misunderstanding my complaints. I completely agree that Docker doesn't own me anything. By the same token, I can express my frustration by them vaguely announcing that many Livebook and Elixir deployment pipelines may be broken _within a month_. Also, it took several years of _free work_ for Elixir to become profitable (and even then, we invest most of the profits right back into the community). And I consider well within my rights to recognize that their open source grant wouldn't have helped me back then and I doubt it will help others now. Overall, it is not about the cost. It is just that I would rather take my business elsewhere (paid or free). Here is a quick exercise: imagine I announce the next Elixir versions will require at least $300/year to use. I bet everyone would be fine with it. The cost of running a business and all that, right?
- nickjj 4y ago
  > Here is a quick exercise: imagine I announce the next Elixir versions will require at least $300/year to use. I bet everyone would be fine with it. The cost of running a business and all that, right? That's not a fair analogy. Docker is still free to use to build your own things today. You can run containers on your servers and pay $0. You can host images on your own registry and Docker makes $0 off that, you can still provide free value to the community by allowing the community to pull from your registry at no cost. An accurate analogy would be more like Elixir officially hosting all open source Elixir apps for free for ~10 years and now 10 years later you want to start charging a relatively small amount of money to continue hosting things for the community. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me and that's what Docker is doing here.
  - josevalim 4y ago
    The analogy worked fine under the last sentence of your previous comment - now removed - which said something like "assume nothing is given, assume nothing is owned". Anyway, we can work with your example. Your example is missing the context that Docker images are not always used as an app, but also as a building block. So let's change the exercise slightly: assume Dashbit owns Hex.pm and posting any package to Hex.pm now requires $300/year or packages will be removed within a month. As an OSS maintainer, if you do not pay, you will break the deployment of all users of your package. So... would everyone still be fine with it? The cost of running a business and all that? EDIT: Hex.pm supports custom registries which anyone can self-host. Including built-in tools to help you with that. You can apply this exercise to any open source community with a centralized-by-default package manager with custom registries (which, afaik, are most of them).

stonemetal12 4y ago

To me that says Red Hat doesn't qualify. Since the Organization attempts to make a profit. Apache does since they are a non profit. However it says nothing about individuals of the organization making money off consulting. So contributing to Apache and running an Apache consulting company is OK, Apache still qualifies but your consulting company doesn't.

RobotToaster 4y ago

At the very least the rules around this need to be clarified, I can understand them not wanting to host pseudo open source "open core" or interfaces to proprietary SaaS for free. If that includes any service though (like their own hosting, or as you say, consulting), it seems somewhat ridiculous.