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OSI is an industry-advocate organisation. Their definition of "Open Source" is purposefully written to enable exploitation and SaaS-ificiation of open source so

OSI is an industry-advocate organisation. Their definition of "Open Source" is purposefully written to enable exploitation and SaaS-ificiation of open source software. Even if the Ethical Source guys and their Hippocratic License might not be watertight, it's still a much better effort than "you can use it for anything you want". Leeching and entitlement is highly prevalent (just watch what happens when someone accidentally publishes software with a wrong license and the abuse they get for correcting their mistake) and the whole original philosophy of open source is being disregarded.

mrob 3y ago
Obeying the terms of the license is not "leeching" or "entitlement". Permissive licenses are permissive by design. If you don't want people including your Open Source code in their proprietary software, use a license that prohibits this, such as the AGPL. The Open Source Definition allows for both permissive and copyleft licenses, and says nothing about which is philosophically preferable.
- oaiey 3y ago
  Our industry somehow lacks a good understanding of licenses. Like you outline, just use a different license. They might not attract people to contribute (because everyone has motives) but prevent all the aspects of behavior you do not want to see.
  - version_five 3y ago
    I think people have a reasonable understanding, they just want to have their cake and eat it too. Something with e.g. a noncommercial license (or gpl) is way less likely to gain wide adoption so people don't license it that way. Then when it does get used they call it leeching. I think (maybe controversially) it's the same when people talk about training AI on web content. People want all the upside of their choice of distribution (wider exposure) but complain about the perceived downside (somebody other than them profiting).
    - Brian_K_White 3y ago
      Right. When deciding on a license, people are choosing what they think defines success for their code instead of success for the world or the ecosystem or all the current and future users. They (think they) are optimizing for adoption or quantity of users, regardless of type, meaning do whatever it takes to appeal to business, right now, on business's terms. If a thing is good and useful, big business will use it on YOUR terms if they have to. But you have to have thought about this some and arrived at a solid principle and reasons for it, and be willing to not care if your thing is not adopted, by an Amazon, today. You have to be willing to think that it's better for all the users if it is either adopted on GPL terms, or not adopted ...by Amazon. That doesn't mean not adopted, it just means maybe someone who's not a dick might use it instead, and everyone gets TWO benefits out of that single decision. The project itself is more useful long term, and the existence of some other services or products besides Amazon. Either it makes the likes of Amazon better by force, or it allows others who are natively better more oxygen. 90% of the reason people can even enjoy the luxury of the powerful useful rich tools to build things today, for free as kids with no money and no permissions and no special access to their parents work tools etc, is only because other people in the past suffered the inconvenience of defying business and declaring strict ideals. But not just random meaningless idealism with arbitrary limitations, a correct idea, with only the surgically specific and correct limitations, as fully thought out as possible, that stands up to any accusation.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      > People want all the upside of their choice of distribution (wider exposure) but complain about the perceived downside (somebody other than them profiting). That's because copyright exists. You can't compare people not understanding licenses to people ignoring them.
  - pydry 3y ago
    It doesnt help when large abusive, monopolistic companies go on a license smear campaign - e.g. like Amazon vs. elastic and Google's burning hatred for everything AGPL.
kergonath 3y ago
The story discusses the OSI being irrelevant but says nothing against Open Source, quite the contrary. On the other hand, what it does not discuss is anything related to the FSF. > Even if the Ethical Source guys and their Hippocratic License might not be watertight, it's still a much better effort than "you can use it for anything you want". There is nothing wrong with “you can use it for anything you want”. There are many reasons to avoid copyleft licenses. So you need to be more persuasive and provide more insights if you want to be taken seriously. > Leeching and entitlement is highly prevalent (just watch what happens when someone accidentally publishes software with a wrong license and the abuse they get for correcting their mistake) You seem to have an issue with a specific case; which one is it? Otherwise, any licensing change is controversial if you listen to the “right” people. Your point is a bit puzzling though, as from my experience, the bullies are people advocating for the FSF and GPL. They tend to be even worse because of the moral implications of the Free Software movement, which sees anything non-GPL as a personal offense. Open Source proponents merely say that the developer should do whatever the hell they want with their code. > and the whole original philosophy of open source is being disregarded. The philosophy of Open Source is that the source should be open. All the whining about leaching and freeloaders does not come from Open Source advocates but from the people you seem to defend for some reason. What specific bits of the various Open Source philosophies is at odds with people re-using the code for closed applications?
- version_five 3y ago
  OSI and FSF definitions of open source / free software are essentially identical. Copyleft is a different thing of course that has a more philosophical angle, but it is not the only recognized free/libre software. Importantly there is no disagreement that open source / free software should have no restrictions on use, whether "ethical" or against "leeching".
- pessimizer 3y ago
  > from my experience, the bullies are people advocating for the FSF and GPL. They tend to be even worse because of the moral implications of the Free Software movement, which sees anything non-GPL as a personal offense. Not in these internal "spirit of open source" discussions. All the Free Software advocates I've seen only have one comment to make: if you wanted a restrictive license, you should have chosen one, not open source. The FSF provides many licenses that might protect authors from feeling "taken advantage of," and you can also write your own, non-FOSS license. Open source is meant to be used by anyone for any reason.
tedivm 3y ago
It's really weird to me how "exploitation" and "SaaSification" are brought up in defense of companies choosing licenses that exploit their communities so their own SaaS can have a monopoly for that project.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  And thinking they have a claim on the "spirit of open source." They're literally trying to shut down the competition so that their customers don't have better options, or failing that, demanding a regular tribute payment from their competitors if they continue to operate. I can't figure out the difference there between the "spirit of open source" and the "spirit of Microsoft."
- pydry 3y ago
  It's really weird to me to see people rail against companies releasing what is essentially open source and then reserving the right to charge for hosting it. It was even weirder to see hordes of people rally behind Amazon's moral crusade against it. It's all rather reminiscent of Google's anti AGPL tantrum (e.g. like when they banned it from their code hosting platform).
swyx 3y ago
> Their definition of "Open Source" is purposefully written to enable exploitation and SaaS-ificiation of open source software. lol? OSI is usually the first one complaining when SaaS companies relicense from MIT/Apache type licenses to other nonstandard open licenses.
- Pannoniae 3y ago
  but the former are the ones which allow amazon etc. to exploit and SaaSify software..... see ElasticSearch where Elastic was cast to be the bad guy because they wanted to stop Amazon using their product with zero contributions towards maintenance but making huge money from it.
pessimizer 3y ago
OSI started open source as an industry-advocate organization, and "the whole original philosophy of open source" is industry advocacy. The FOSS shorthand has confused people. Now they're rootless, thinking that there was a some moral underpinning to open source. Free software is the one with the ethical philosophy. Open source is about public collaboration to lower costs and raise software quality.

mrob 3y ago

Obeying the terms of the license is not "leeching" or "entitlement". Permissive licenses are permissive by design. If you don't want people including your Open Source code in their proprietary software, use a license that prohibits this, such as the AGPL. The Open Source Definition allows for both permissive and copyleft licenses, and says nothing about which is philosophically preferable.

oaiey 3y ago
Our industry somehow lacks a good understanding of licenses. Like you outline, just use a different license. They might not attract people to contribute (because everyone has motives) but prevent all the aspects of behavior you do not want to see.
- version_five 3y ago
  I think people have a reasonable understanding, they just want to have their cake and eat it too. Something with e.g. a noncommercial license (or gpl) is way less likely to gain wide adoption so people don't license it that way. Then when it does get used they call it leeching. I think (maybe controversially) it's the same when people talk about training AI on web content. People want all the upside of their choice of distribution (wider exposure) but complain about the perceived downside (somebody other than them profiting).
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    Right. When deciding on a license, people are choosing what they think defines success for their code instead of success for the world or the ecosystem or all the current and future users. They (think they) are optimizing for adoption or quantity of users, regardless of type, meaning do whatever it takes to appeal to business, right now, on business's terms. If a thing is good and useful, big business will use it on YOUR terms if they have to. But you have to have thought about this some and arrived at a solid principle and reasons for it, and be willing to not care if your thing is not adopted, by an Amazon, today. You have to be willing to think that it's better for all the users if it is either adopted on GPL terms, or not adopted ...by Amazon. That doesn't mean not adopted, it just means maybe someone who's not a dick might use it instead, and everyone gets TWO benefits out of that single decision. The project itself is more useful long term, and the existence of some other services or products besides Amazon. Either it makes the likes of Amazon better by force, or it allows others who are natively better more oxygen. 90% of the reason people can even enjoy the luxury of the powerful useful rich tools to build things today, for free as kids with no money and no permissions and no special access to their parents work tools etc, is only because other people in the past suffered the inconvenience of defying business and declaring strict ideals. But not just random meaningless idealism with arbitrary limitations, a correct idea, with only the surgically specific and correct limitations, as fully thought out as possible, that stands up to any accusation.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    > People want all the upside of their choice of distribution (wider exposure) but complain about the perceived downside (somebody other than them profiting). That's because copyright exists. You can't compare people not understanding licenses to people ignoring them.
- pydry 3y ago
  It doesnt help when large abusive, monopolistic companies go on a license smear campaign - e.g. like Amazon vs. elastic and Google's burning hatred for everything AGPL.

kergonath 3y ago

The story discusses the OSI being irrelevant but says nothing against Open Source, quite the contrary. On the other hand, what it does not discuss is anything related to the FSF. > Even if the Ethical Source guys and their Hippocratic License might not be watertight, it's still a much better effort than "you can use it for anything you want". There is nothing wrong with “you can use it for anything you want”. There are many reasons to avoid copyleft licenses. So you need to be more persuasive and provide more insights if you want to be taken seriously. > Leeching and entitlement is highly prevalent (just watch what happens when someone accidentally publishes software with a wrong license and the abuse they get for correcting their mistake) You seem to have an issue with a specific case; which one is it? Otherwise, any licensing change is controversial if you listen to the “right” people. Your point is a bit puzzling though, as from my experience, the bullies are people advocating for the FSF and GPL. They tend to be even worse because of the moral implications of the Free Software movement, which sees anything non-GPL as a personal offense. Open Source proponents merely say that the developer should do whatever the hell they want with their code. > and the whole original philosophy of open source is being disregarded. The philosophy of Open Source is that the source should be open. All the whining about leaching and freeloaders does not come from Open Source advocates but from the people you seem to defend for some reason. What specific bits of the various Open Source philosophies is at odds with people re-using the code for closed applications?

version_five 3y ago
OSI and FSF definitions of open source / free software are essentially identical. Copyleft is a different thing of course that has a more philosophical angle, but it is not the only recognized free/libre software. Importantly there is no disagreement that open source / free software should have no restrictions on use, whether "ethical" or against "leeching".
pessimizer 3y ago
> from my experience, the bullies are people advocating for the FSF and GPL. They tend to be even worse because of the moral implications of the Free Software movement, which sees anything non-GPL as a personal offense. Not in these internal "spirit of open source" discussions. All the Free Software advocates I've seen only have one comment to make: if you wanted a restrictive license, you should have chosen one, not open source. The FSF provides many licenses that might protect authors from feeling "taken advantage of," and you can also write your own, non-FOSS license. Open source is meant to be used by anyone for any reason.

tedivm 3y ago

It's really weird to me how "exploitation" and "SaaSification" are brought up in defense of companies choosing licenses that exploit their communities so their own SaaS can have a monopoly for that project.

pessimizer 3y ago
And thinking they have a claim on the "spirit of open source." They're literally trying to shut down the competition so that their customers don't have better options, or failing that, demanding a regular tribute payment from their competitors if they continue to operate. I can't figure out the difference there between the "spirit of open source" and the "spirit of Microsoft."
pydry 3y ago
It's really weird to me to see people rail against companies releasing what is essentially open source and then reserving the right to charge for hosting it. It was even weirder to see hordes of people rally behind Amazon's moral crusade against it. It's all rather reminiscent of Google's anti AGPL tantrum (e.g. like when they banned it from their code hosting platform).

swyx 3y ago

> Their definition of "Open Source" is purposefully written to enable exploitation and SaaS-ificiation of open source software. lol? OSI is usually the first one complaining when SaaS companies relicense from MIT/Apache type licenses to other nonstandard open licenses.

Pannoniae 3y ago
but the former are the ones which allow amazon etc. to exploit and SaaSify software..... see ElasticSearch where Elastic was cast to be the bad guy because they wanted to stop Amazon using their product with zero contributions towards maintenance but making huge money from it.

pessimizer 3y ago

OSI started open source as an industry-advocate organization, and "the whole original philosophy of open source" is industry advocacy. The FOSS shorthand has confused people. Now they're rootless, thinking that there was a some moral underpinning to open source. Free software is the one with the ethical philosophy. Open source is about public collaboration to lower costs and raise software quality.