10 ms·

If you don't want "free"loaders using your software why is it "free" in the first place?

by webmobdev 3y ago

mavelikara 3y ago
Free as in freedom, not beer.
- yellowapple 3y ago
  Except that the BUSL is the literal opposite: free as in beer, not freedom.
  - phatfish 3y ago
    It does guarantee transition to a free as in freedom open source license after a set period. Seems to be (at most?) 4 years.
    - yellowapple 3y ago
      It's a pretty weak guarantee. If it's possible to switch to the BUSL, then it's just as possible to switch to something even further from FOSS later.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kdmccormick 3y ago
Because they want it to be developed collaboratively, in the public eye, and for the good of all contributors. In other words, free as in freedom, but not free as in beer.
- iavael 3y ago
  Originally it's "free as in speech" not "free as in freedom" But BSL is definitely not free as in speech. So if it's neither free as beer, so what part of it is "free"?
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  Thanks for sparing me the time of replying to the snarky questions.
- webmobdev 3y ago
  Then it is a question of choosing the right license - AGPL.
  - LambdaComplex 3y ago
    Yeah, it always confuses me when people release something under e.g. the BSD or MIT license and then complain about "freeloaders." It's totally understandable to not want companies to profit off of proprietary, closed-source forks of your software. I get it! But there are licenses that you can use to stop that from ever happening (namely [A]GPL). Why not use one of those?
    - hashtag-til 3y ago
      I tried adding one perspective above :), maybe that provides some insight
    - ikiris 3y ago
      because most of their desired customers ban AGPL usage.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      It's because a lot of them were culturally anti-copyleft, but had never read the licenses or the reasons behind them. Copyleft is politically scary to some people, so they refuse to acknowledge it other than to call people zealots. Explicit licenses protect you. Open source spirits don't. Everyone should be honest: the only reason a lot of people prefer open source is because they want to preserve a rug-pull option. Then they get surprised with it's Amazon pulling the rug on them.
      - _msw_ 3y ago
        Disclosure: I work for Amazon, but I've been a copyleft advocate for a quarter century. Indeed, copyleft can be politically scary. Especially when for-profit companies co-opt copyleft to drive licensing revenue by selling alternative license arrangements [1]. If all those who adopt copyleft licenses pledged to commitment to community-oriented GPL enforcement principles [2] I think that it would be a lot less scary. Unfortunately we've seen "copyleft trolls" that try to wield copyleft as a weapon, either for profit or to make other demands that are not helpful to the community. Copyleft licenses are, indeed, protective licenses from my perspective. Or, they should be. An aside, when it comes to "Amazon pulling the rug" -- what exact incident are you referring to? [1] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality... [2] https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.htm...
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  If you want people/companies to contribute back, why volunteer your code under a license that doesn't require that?
  - kdmccormick 3y ago
    "Why did I leave Halloween candy on my porch if I wasn't okay with one jerk kid taking all of it for himself?" Because projects believ(ed) that the good will of their users would be enough to sustain their projects and businesses. Now that certain projects see that good will isn't working, they're switching to the legal system.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      Open source licenses are the legal system. They're licenses. Changing your license isn't "switching to the legal system."
      - kdmccormick 3y ago
        I must not be making myself clear. Projects are free to choose permissive licenses like BSD. Companies are then free to use the code however they like and not contribute back in any way. Projects are then free to be annoyed by this because they hoped that companies would contribute time and/or resouces out their own good will. Finally, projects are free to move to "business source" licenses because good will didn't work, so they need to utilize the legal system to ensure that large companies help sustain the project. What part of this do you disagree with?
        madeofpalk 3y ago
        Describing changing to a source-available licenses as "now utilizing the legal system" is strange. Projects choosing a permissive license like BSD is utilizing the legal system. BSD is a contract, a copyright license. It imposes restrictions/limitations/obligations, which can/would be enforced by a court.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  > In other words, free as in freedom, but not free as in beer. That's the Free Software slogan, not open source. The only relationship between the two is that open source can easily be relicensed into Free Software (or proprietary, or whatever.) There's nothing in open source about friendliness or collaborative development. I'm not forced to take your advice or contributions just because I'm open source, so how could that have anything to do with it?
  - hashtag-til 3y ago
    > I'm not forced to take your advice or contributions just because I'm open source Opinions like that are the reason why more and more companies are walking away from the great attempt of building stuff collaboratively.
  - kdmccormick 3y ago
    > That's the Free Software slogan, not open source. The only relationship between the two is that open source can easily be relicensed into Free Software (or proprietary, or whatever.) > There's nothing in open source about friendliness or collaborative development. Your view of the meanings of "free" and "open source" software is very literal and narrow. I'm not trying to debate the technical definitions of those terms, because frankly, I don't care and I don't think they matter in this discussion. The crux of what I am saying is this: A company may choose to share their source code for others to benefit from, under the hope that large players will contribute back in some way rather than use the situation to the disadvantage of the upstream company. In other words, they might hope to: * Let hobbyists learn from and use their code for free. * Let competing companies use their code, as long as they contribute something back (money, bugfixes, festures, community support, QA). * Make their employees happy. and they may not hope to: * Empower other large companies to freeload--ie, profit without contributing back at all. Yes, I understand that permissive open source licenses allow freeloading in a legal sense. That does not mean the upstream companies have to be happy about it, much in the same way that you're allowed to use your office's shared kitchen to microwave fish, but your colleagues do not have to be happy about it. What about this is so hard to understand?
  - _msw_ 3y ago
evanelias 3y ago
By any chance are you familiar with Little Free Library (https://littlefreelibrary.org/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/), those public boxes for people to take or leave books? How would you feel if someone took ALL the books, repeatedly, and then sold them? Would you just shrug and say "well that's totally fine, why is it free in the first place?" This behavior is antisocial, and completely destroys the offering/concept for everyone. I have a bootstrapped software company with an open-core product. Meanwhile, a VC-backed startup that has raised over $100m of funding decided to use one of my core open source libraries (which they haven't contributed to in any way) for a critical component of their commercial product, which also overlaps with my product's functionality in some ways. In response, I eventually made the difficult decision to archive that library's repo and moved its functionality into my main product in a way that prevented external use. So then this startup created a hostile fork of my library, and started to implement functionality that is only present in my own commercial product. After that, I had to waste several months of unpaid time just to make their fork of my own library no longer easily compatible with recent versions of my own product. Some time later, finally the startup decided to abandon use of my library altogether and wrote their own similar library (which was undoubtedly much easier for them, being able to see all the edge cases my library already handled). My lesson from all this: I will never create another new large open source product ever again. Too many sociopaths out there for the system to work at all. If I ever decide to make something source-available, I will consider BSL. And before someone says "why not AGPL?", it is because many companies don't touch AGPL software with a ten-foot pole. My sense is that adopting AGPL for a brand new product typically causes the product to be dead on arrival. That said, I would honestly love to be wrong here. If there are a lot of AGPL open core / commercial FOSS companies that have been successful, please share examples, I say this genuinely and without snark.
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  Thanks for the post. I’m sorry you went through this with bad actors in open-source. I agree fully with your *GPL point of view and have seen that in practice many time. It is in the written guidance for open-source in the company I work for, along the lines “for GPL-like licenses, that’s a ‘no’ by default, unless you follow this very complicated process to get approvals from many people”.

If you don't want "free"loaders using your software why is it "free" in the first place?

mavelikara 3y ago

Free as in freedom, not beer.

yellowapple 3y ago
Except that the BUSL is the literal opposite: free as in beer, not freedom.
- phatfish 3y ago
  It does guarantee transition to a free as in freedom open source license after a set period. Seems to be (at most?) 4 years.
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    It's a pretty weak guarantee. If it's possible to switch to the BUSL, then it's just as possible to switch to something even further from FOSS later.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

kdmccormick 3y ago

Because they want it to be developed collaboratively, in the public eye, and for the good of all contributors. In other words, free as in freedom, but not free as in beer.

iavael 3y ago
Originally it's "free as in speech" not "free as in freedom" But BSL is definitely not free as in speech. So if it's neither free as beer, so what part of it is "free"?
hashtag-til 3y ago
Thanks for sparing me the time of replying to the snarky questions.
webmobdev 3y ago
Then it is a question of choosing the right license - AGPL.
- LambdaComplex 3y ago
  Yeah, it always confuses me when people release something under e.g. the BSD or MIT license and then complain about "freeloaders." It's totally understandable to not want companies to profit off of proprietary, closed-source forks of your software. I get it! But there are licenses that you can use to stop that from ever happening (namely [A]GPL). Why not use one of those?
  - hashtag-til 3y ago
    I tried adding one perspective above :), maybe that provides some insight
  - ikiris 3y ago
    because most of their desired customers ban AGPL usage.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    It's because a lot of them were culturally anti-copyleft, but had never read the licenses or the reasons behind them. Copyleft is politically scary to some people, so they refuse to acknowledge it other than to call people zealots. Explicit licenses protect you. Open source spirits don't. Everyone should be honest: the only reason a lot of people prefer open source is because they want to preserve a rug-pull option. Then they get surprised with it's Amazon pulling the rug on them.
    - _msw_ 3y ago
      Disclosure: I work for Amazon, but I've been a copyleft advocate for a quarter century. Indeed, copyleft can be politically scary. Especially when for-profit companies co-opt copyleft to drive licensing revenue by selling alternative license arrangements [1]. If all those who adopt copyleft licenses pledged to commitment to community-oriented GPL enforcement principles [2] I think that it would be a lot less scary. Unfortunately we've seen "copyleft trolls" that try to wield copyleft as a weapon, either for profit or to make other demands that are not helpful to the community. Copyleft licenses are, indeed, protective licenses from my perspective. Or, they should be. An aside, when it comes to "Amazon pulling the rug" -- what exact incident are you referring to? [1] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality... [2] https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.htm...
madeofpalk 3y ago
If you want people/companies to contribute back, why volunteer your code under a license that doesn't require that?
- kdmccormick 3y ago
  "Why did I leave Halloween candy on my porch if I wasn't okay with one jerk kid taking all of it for himself?" Because projects believ(ed) that the good will of their users would be enough to sustain their projects and businesses. Now that certain projects see that good will isn't working, they're switching to the legal system.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Open source licenses are the legal system. They're licenses. Changing your license isn't "switching to the legal system."
    - kdmccormick 3y ago
      I must not be making myself clear. Projects are free to choose permissive licenses like BSD. Companies are then free to use the code however they like and not contribute back in any way. Projects are then free to be annoyed by this because they hoped that companies would contribute time and/or resouces out their own good will. Finally, projects are free to move to "business source" licenses because good will didn't work, so they need to utilize the legal system to ensure that large companies help sustain the project. What part of this do you disagree with?
      - madeofpalk 3y ago
        Describing changing to a source-available licenses as "now utilizing the legal system" is strange. Projects choosing a permissive license like BSD is utilizing the legal system. BSD is a contract, a copyright license. It imposes restrictions/limitations/obligations, which can/would be enforced by a court.
pessimizer 3y ago
> In other words, free as in freedom, but not free as in beer. That's the Free Software slogan, not open source. The only relationship between the two is that open source can easily be relicensed into Free Software (or proprietary, or whatever.) There's nothing in open source about friendliness or collaborative development. I'm not forced to take your advice or contributions just because I'm open source, so how could that have anything to do with it?
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  > I'm not forced to take your advice or contributions just because I'm open source Opinions like that are the reason why more and more companies are walking away from the great attempt of building stuff collaboratively.
- kdmccormick 3y ago
  > That's the Free Software slogan, not open source. The only relationship between the two is that open source can easily be relicensed into Free Software (or proprietary, or whatever.) > There's nothing in open source about friendliness or collaborative development. Your view of the meanings of "free" and "open source" software is very literal and narrow. I'm not trying to debate the technical definitions of those terms, because frankly, I don't care and I don't think they matter in this discussion. The crux of what I am saying is this: A company may choose to share their source code for others to benefit from, under the hope that large players will contribute back in some way rather than use the situation to the disadvantage of the upstream company. In other words, they might hope to: * Let hobbyists learn from and use their code for free. * Let competing companies use their code, as long as they contribute something back (money, bugfixes, festures, community support, QA). * Make their employees happy. and they may not hope to: * Empower other large companies to freeload--ie, profit without contributing back at all. Yes, I understand that permissive open source licenses allow freeloading in a legal sense. That does not mean the upstream companies have to be happy about it, much in the same way that you're allowed to use your office's shared kitchen to microwave fish, but your colleagues do not have to be happy about it. What about this is so hard to understand?
- _msw_ 3y ago

evanelias 3y ago

By any chance are you familiar with Little Free Library (https://littlefreelibrary.org/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/), those public boxes for people to take or leave books? How would you feel if someone took ALL the books, repeatedly, and then sold them? Would you just shrug and say "well that's totally fine, why is it free in the first place?" This behavior is antisocial, and completely destroys the offering/concept for everyone. I have a bootstrapped software company with an open-core product. Meanwhile, a VC-backed startup that has raised over $100m of funding decided to use one of my core open source libraries (which they haven't contributed to in any way) for a critical component of their commercial product, which also overlaps with my product's functionality in some ways. In response, I eventually made the difficult decision to archive that library's repo and moved its functionality into my main product in a way that prevented external use. So then this startup created a hostile fork of my library, and started to implement functionality that is only present in my own commercial product. After that, I had to waste several months of unpaid time just to make their fork of my own library no longer easily compatible with recent versions of my own product. Some time later, finally the startup decided to abandon use of my library altogether and wrote their own similar library (which was undoubtedly much easier for them, being able to see all the edge cases my library already handled). My lesson from all this: I will never create another new large open source product ever again. Too many sociopaths out there for the system to work at all. If I ever decide to make something source-available, I will consider BSL. And before someone says "why not AGPL?", it is because many companies don't touch AGPL software with a ten-foot pole. My sense is that adopting AGPL for a brand new product typically causes the product to be dead on arrival. That said, I would honestly love to be wrong here. If there are a lot of AGPL open core / commercial FOSS companies that have been successful, please share examples, I say this genuinely and without snark.

hashtag-til 3y ago
Thanks for the post. I’m sorry you went through this with bad actors in open-source. I agree fully with your *GPL point of view and have seen that in practice many time. It is in the written guidance for open-source in the company I work for, along the lines “for GPL-like licenses, that’s a ‘no’ by default, unless you follow this very complicated process to get approvals from many people”.