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I also work on open source full time. I personally am happy to give my work away unconditionally to both freeloaders and contributors and fortunately my employe

I also work on open source full time. I personally am happy to give my work away unconditionally to both freeloaders and contributors and fortunately my employer feels the same way (I am often a freeloader myself on unrelated projects). Ideally your moneymaker can compete on its own without being dependent upon gatekeeping how the open source part is used. But with project ownership means you can change the rules for your competitors, but it's also a sign that you fear your offering is not competitive enough without the rule change.

hashtag-til 3y ago
I find it brave we had this generation of companies creating open-source business models. It’s a shame it didn’t work out for them due to bad actors. The trend I see is for the next generation of good open-source great ideas to be much more protective around their intellectual property. Such a loss, again, due to bad actors.
- kodablah 3y ago
  I don't think the loss is due to bad actors. These actors aren't bad, they're rational. I think the loss is due to giving away things unconditionally without thinking about what that means. Many companies aren't reneging on open source. The ones that are reneging can't compete on what they are selling, so they have to compete on what they're not selling.
  - hashtag-til 3y ago
    Bad actors want to take advantage no matter what. It is the same case as Red Hat recent moves not to provide easy-to-rebrand linux distribution sources. Before they went the extra mile to foster collaboration, but were forced to be less friendly because of freeloaders. Similar point here. Hashicorp have very good products that are open source as a way to foster collaboration. Freeloaders rebrand it and re-sell with no added value, so Hashicorp are forced to close it (or more like put a timer) to protect their investment. As I said, I'm a big fan of open-source, and have been working on it for a long time, but am growing more and more frustrated with the current state of things, so much so, that it makes a lot of sense to me that companies that start with great collaboration spirit are forced to tighten their sources due to bad actors in the system.
- deadbunny 3y ago
  I consider building a moat on open source contributions (that have to assign their copyright) then closing off to be something a "bad actor" would do.
  - hashtag-til 3y ago
    Not at all. It's a defense mechanism that many are forced to do in order to protect from freeloaders.
pessimizer 3y ago
> it's also a sign that you fear your offering is not competitive enough without the rule change. Agreed. It can't mean anything other than that you can't compete on a fair playing field, so you have to add restrictions to lock customers into your service. That you wrote the service is irrelevant since you licensed it as a gift to the world. It's exactly what Free Software was designed to thwart, and exactly what open source was designed to preserve.
- evanelias 3y ago
  But how can you ever have a "fair playing field" when some competitors are a thousand times larger than you?

hashtag-til 3y ago

I find it brave we had this generation of companies creating open-source business models. It’s a shame it didn’t work out for them due to bad actors. The trend I see is for the next generation of good open-source great ideas to be much more protective around their intellectual property. Such a loss, again, due to bad actors.

kodablah 3y ago
I don't think the loss is due to bad actors. These actors aren't bad, they're rational. I think the loss is due to giving away things unconditionally without thinking about what that means. Many companies aren't reneging on open source. The ones that are reneging can't compete on what they are selling, so they have to compete on what they're not selling.
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  Bad actors want to take advantage no matter what. It is the same case as Red Hat recent moves not to provide easy-to-rebrand linux distribution sources. Before they went the extra mile to foster collaboration, but were forced to be less friendly because of freeloaders. Similar point here. Hashicorp have very good products that are open source as a way to foster collaboration. Freeloaders rebrand it and re-sell with no added value, so Hashicorp are forced to close it (or more like put a timer) to protect their investment. As I said, I'm a big fan of open-source, and have been working on it for a long time, but am growing more and more frustrated with the current state of things, so much so, that it makes a lot of sense to me that companies that start with great collaboration spirit are forced to tighten their sources due to bad actors in the system.
deadbunny 3y ago
I consider building a moat on open source contributions (that have to assign their copyright) then closing off to be something a "bad actor" would do.
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  Not at all. It's a defense mechanism that many are forced to do in order to protect from freeloaders.

pessimizer 3y ago

> it's also a sign that you fear your offering is not competitive enough without the rule change. Agreed. It can't mean anything other than that you can't compete on a fair playing field, so you have to add restrictions to lock customers into your service. That you wrote the service is irrelevant since you licensed it as a gift to the world. It's exactly what Free Software was designed to thwart, and exactly what open source was designed to preserve.

evanelias 3y ago
But how can you ever have a "fair playing field" when some competitors are a thousand times larger than you?