7 ms·

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

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...
      - pxc 3y ago
        I've been into free software since I was a kid, so all of this is very familiar to me. You've done a great job of breaking it down! Thanks for this and similar comments on this post. I hope they clear things up for some people. I feel that GPL (and AGPL, even more so) often does not get a fair shot, and that's a shame.
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  GPLs are a bit complicated for companies because (personal opinion alert) I THINK it is ok if you’re a company, member of a particular community, to be able to embed that on some product and not be mandated to open-source the whole thing. IMHO not everything needs to be open-source, but in many case it just makes so much sense that is a dumb idea to reinvent the wheel. Many projects are succesfull this way. One I can think of is LLVM.
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

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...
    - pxc 3y ago
      I've been into free software since I was a kid, so all of this is very familiar to me. You've done a great job of breaking it down! Thanks for this and similar comments on this post. I hope they clear things up for some people. I feel that GPL (and AGPL, even more so) often does not get a fair shot, and that's a shame.
hashtag-til 3y ago
GPLs are a bit complicated for companies because (personal opinion alert) I THINK it is ok if you’re a company, member of a particular community, to be able to embed that on some product and not be mandated to open-source the whole thing. IMHO not everything needs to be open-source, but in many case it just makes so much sense that is a dumb idea to reinvent the wheel. Many projects are succesfull this way. One I can think of is LLVM.

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