5 ms·

Nothing wrong with this imo. I actually hope more open source projects start with a business source license if their ultimate goal is to become a SaaS platform.

by adoxyz 3y ago

Nothing wrong with this imo. I actually hope more open source projects start with a business source license if their ultimate goal is to become a SaaS platform. I think we've seen time and time again large enterprises abusing the spirit of open source for their own monetary gain, contributing nothing back, and just acting in bad faith.

toenail 3y ago
Abusing the spirit of open source, what? If somebody doesn't want any competitors they should have read the licenses and understood them, and not simply used open source as a buzzword for marketing purposes.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  A lot of people start open source businesses under the good faith assumption that competitors will be fair and that the people who do the actual work capture the value, and that people genuinely contribute back. License technicalities don't matter. If people use permissive licenses as an excuse to justify an ecosystem that is parasitic any such system will die out, it cannot sustain itself.
  - toenail 3y ago
    If your business can't succeed using an open source license you made poor business choices. Own it, don't blame the license or the open source community.
    - Barrin92 3y ago
      If I have to pay developers, operate a business, allocate time and money to create value and take the risk that comes with it, and you come and take my work unchanged, strip all atribution and mereley resell it, then I can't succeed by definition. The most talented businessman on earth cannot. If that's what you think open source is, it'll vanish. No commercial system can exist like that and it should not because it effectively means distributing resources from people who do everything to people who do nothing.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        > and you come and take my work unchanged, strip all atribution and mereley resell it, then If they strip all attribution, then you can just take them to court for violating the license; other than public domain and WTFPL, even the most permissive licenses (BSD/MIT/Apache) still require attribution.
      - toenail 3y ago
        > If that's what you think open source is, it'll vanish. Free software has been fine without any businessmen or companies involved, we don't need your or any company's approval. It seems like the only thing that will vanish from the open source sphere are companies with flawed business plans.
      - pessimizer 3y ago
        Open source is what's written in the license, no more, no less. It doesn't have spirits or souls.
        teddyh 3y ago
        This is like saying that programs are what is written in the code; there are no such things as “bugs”, since the programs are what they are. Back in the real world, with people in it, the GPL and (by extension) Open Source were created for underlying reasons.
      - growse 3y ago
        If you're not able to come up with a business plan that involves open sourcing your software, that's fine! Building a business off the open source model and community good-will before realising it doesn't work is either incompetence or dishonesty. > If that's what you think open source is, it'll vanish. No commercial system can exist like that and it should not because it effectively means distributing resources from people who do everything to people who do nothing. This is a weirdly hyper-capitalist take. You're saying that the successful businesses built off open source "should not" exist?
    - zaphirplane 3y ago
      You make it sound the licence is infallible The licence could be the problem in how the competitors are operating and leaching
      - growse 3y ago
        No-one forces you to use the license in the first place.
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  > If somebody doesn't want any competitors they should have read the licenses and understood them, and not simply used open source as a buzzword for marketing purposes. One should always read software licenses before installing a dependency, regardless of how a particular project is marketed. This would still be necessary even if companies weren’t using the term “open source” to refer to this type of license. People make it sound like companies are out to confuse you by calling it “open source”. If you’re the kind of developer that blindly uses a piece of software because someone claimed it was open source without doing due diligence on how it can be legally used, then you deserve whatever consequences may arise.
  - jen20 3y ago
    > People make it sound like companies are out to confuse you by calling it “open source” That is exactly what people who call non-OSI-approved licenses “Open Source” are doing. However, I agree, one should also read the license and those of the entire dependency tree.
- davorak 3y ago
  Not having competition is not the problem I have seen listed when abuse is talked about. It is not contributing back in ways that are promotional to how much the company is benefiting. Or not going out of their way to acknowledge that they started with someone else's open source project, not even something like an academic citation.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Open source licenses don't require you to do those things. That was the intention in coming up with them. They were the Bazaar people. They sold open source as something that makes software quality better. It was the counterpoint to Free Software, who said they made programs morally better, and that it was largely irrelevant whether copyleft made software quality better.
    - davorak 3y ago
      > Open source licenses don't require you to do those things. That was the intention in coming up with them. I mentioned the cases I have seen the word abuse used as a counter point to 'If somebody doesn't want any competitors' which is not something I have seen brought up when taking about abusing the spirit of open source. I was not taking about what the licenses legally bind you to do.
  - tedivm 3y ago
    There are open source licenses, such as the AGPL, which explicitly require that those changes being contributed back. There are licenses which require attribution. The fact the companies switching to the BS License is a sign that those aren't the real issues.
    - davorak 3y ago
      AGPL is very explicit/narrow about how and when you give back not everyone will want exactly that. My last example of where I have seen the word abuse used is only about lack of attribution similar to an academic citation.
kodablah 3y ago
> abusing the spirit of open source for their own monetary gain For many, the spirit of open source is to allow it to be used in any way, commercially or otherwise. I don't consider it acting in bad faith at all to use what's out there and made available, and I am happy to give things away as in beer. Otherwise it's not open source (which is also fine, not all software has to be open source). To abuse the spirit of open source, make arbitrary rules about its use.
- davorak 3y ago
  > To abuse the spirit of open source The main way I think about this and how I often see people act are that actions which undermine the long term success and sustainability open source community is abusive. So you take a behavior and say if a non-trivial number of people emulated/copied this behavior will the open source community survive long term, if the answer is no, then the behavior is abusive. Of course people disagree with what will lead to long term sustainability of open source projects and communities, though it does seems like a reasonable heuristic to the first degree of approximation.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Then I'd say that the abusive behavior is to imply there are terms in the license that aren't actually there, and to use that implication to attract developers and customers to your project. If your open source has a soul, write it into the license. Note that after you do that, it will not be an open source license.
    - davorak 3y ago
      I do not follow either of your statements. I do not know what you would use as an example for your first sentence. I do not know what you are trying to communicate with the last two sentences.
- Rapzid 3y ago
  Open Source is poorly defined. All the most popular "open source" licenses are restrictive. The restrictions are what differentiates them. Hell, look at GPL.. It's a spectrum IMHO from closed-source to "do whatever you want" source.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> I actually hope more open source projects start with a business source license Well, by definition they wouldn't be open source projects then. But yes, better to make that clear from the start.

by adoxyz 3y ago

toenail 3y ago

Abusing the spirit of open source, what? If somebody doesn't want any competitors they should have read the licenses and understood them, and not simply used open source as a buzzword for marketing purposes.

Barrin92 3y ago
A lot of people start open source businesses under the good faith assumption that competitors will be fair and that the people who do the actual work capture the value, and that people genuinely contribute back. License technicalities don't matter. If people use permissive licenses as an excuse to justify an ecosystem that is parasitic any such system will die out, it cannot sustain itself.
- toenail 3y ago
  If your business can't succeed using an open source license you made poor business choices. Own it, don't blame the license or the open source community.
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    If I have to pay developers, operate a business, allocate time and money to create value and take the risk that comes with it, and you come and take my work unchanged, strip all atribution and mereley resell it, then I can't succeed by definition. The most talented businessman on earth cannot. If that's what you think open source is, it'll vanish. No commercial system can exist like that and it should not because it effectively means distributing resources from people who do everything to people who do nothing.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      > and you come and take my work unchanged, strip all atribution and mereley resell it, then If they strip all attribution, then you can just take them to court for violating the license; other than public domain and WTFPL, even the most permissive licenses (BSD/MIT/Apache) still require attribution.
    - toenail 3y ago
      > If that's what you think open source is, it'll vanish. Free software has been fine without any businessmen or companies involved, we don't need your or any company's approval. It seems like the only thing that will vanish from the open source sphere are companies with flawed business plans.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      Open source is what's written in the license, no more, no less. It doesn't have spirits or souls.
      - teddyh 3y ago
        This is like saying that programs are what is written in the code; there are no such things as “bugs”, since the programs are what they are. Back in the real world, with people in it, the GPL and (by extension) Open Source were created for underlying reasons.
    - growse 3y ago
      If you're not able to come up with a business plan that involves open sourcing your software, that's fine! Building a business off the open source model and community good-will before realising it doesn't work is either incompetence or dishonesty. > If that's what you think open source is, it'll vanish. No commercial system can exist like that and it should not because it effectively means distributing resources from people who do everything to people who do nothing. This is a weirdly hyper-capitalist take. You're saying that the successful businesses built off open source "should not" exist?
  - zaphirplane 3y ago
    You make it sound the licence is infallible The licence could be the problem in how the competitors are operating and leaching
    - growse 3y ago
      No-one forces you to use the license in the first place.
LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
> If somebody doesn't want any competitors they should have read the licenses and understood them, and not simply used open source as a buzzword for marketing purposes. One should always read software licenses before installing a dependency, regardless of how a particular project is marketed. This would still be necessary even if companies weren’t using the term “open source” to refer to this type of license. People make it sound like companies are out to confuse you by calling it “open source”. If you’re the kind of developer that blindly uses a piece of software because someone claimed it was open source without doing due diligence on how it can be legally used, then you deserve whatever consequences may arise.
- jen20 3y ago
  > People make it sound like companies are out to confuse you by calling it “open source” That is exactly what people who call non-OSI-approved licenses “Open Source” are doing. However, I agree, one should also read the license and those of the entire dependency tree.
davorak 3y ago
Not having competition is not the problem I have seen listed when abuse is talked about. It is not contributing back in ways that are promotional to how much the company is benefiting. Or not going out of their way to acknowledge that they started with someone else's open source project, not even something like an academic citation.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Open source licenses don't require you to do those things. That was the intention in coming up with them. They were the Bazaar people. They sold open source as something that makes software quality better. It was the counterpoint to Free Software, who said they made programs morally better, and that it was largely irrelevant whether copyleft made software quality better.
  - davorak 3y ago
    > Open source licenses don't require you to do those things. That was the intention in coming up with them. I mentioned the cases I have seen the word abuse used as a counter point to 'If somebody doesn't want any competitors' which is not something I have seen brought up when taking about abusing the spirit of open source. I was not taking about what the licenses legally bind you to do.
- tedivm 3y ago
  There are open source licenses, such as the AGPL, which explicitly require that those changes being contributed back. There are licenses which require attribution. The fact the companies switching to the BS License is a sign that those aren't the real issues.
  - davorak 3y ago
    AGPL is very explicit/narrow about how and when you give back not everyone will want exactly that. My last example of where I have seen the word abuse used is only about lack of attribution similar to an academic citation.

kodablah 3y ago

> abusing the spirit of open source for their own monetary gain For many, the spirit of open source is to allow it to be used in any way, commercially or otherwise. I don't consider it acting in bad faith at all to use what's out there and made available, and I am happy to give things away as in beer. Otherwise it's not open source (which is also fine, not all software has to be open source). To abuse the spirit of open source, make arbitrary rules about its use.

davorak 3y ago
> To abuse the spirit of open source The main way I think about this and how I often see people act are that actions which undermine the long term success and sustainability open source community is abusive. So you take a behavior and say if a non-trivial number of people emulated/copied this behavior will the open source community survive long term, if the answer is no, then the behavior is abusive. Of course people disagree with what will lead to long term sustainability of open source projects and communities, though it does seems like a reasonable heuristic to the first degree of approximation.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Then I'd say that the abusive behavior is to imply there are terms in the license that aren't actually there, and to use that implication to attract developers and customers to your project. If your open source has a soul, write it into the license. Note that after you do that, it will not be an open source license.
  - davorak 3y ago
    I do not follow either of your statements. I do not know what you would use as an example for your first sentence. I do not know what you are trying to communicate with the last two sentences.
Rapzid 3y ago
Open Source is poorly defined. All the most popular "open source" licenses are restrictive. The restrictions are what differentiates them. Hell, look at GPL.. It's a spectrum IMHO from closed-source to "do whatever you want" source.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> I actually hope more open source projects start with a business source license Well, by definition they wouldn't be open source projects then. But yes, better to make that clear from the start.