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To me, this is the core bait and switch problem. It’s not just that expectations and commitments are suddenly unilaterally changed. Is that the core subject of

To me, this is the core bait and switch problem. It’s not just that expectations and commitments are suddenly unilaterally changed. Is that the core subject of the license (an open-source codebase) has quite often been built collaboratively with the agreement and contribution of entities outside of the organization unilaterally claiming domain over the underlying work. If this is somehow permissible under the original license, it points to needing licenses that offer more consistency and protection. If I contribute to your project, I want to make sure that you can’t close the door on the codebase whenever you feel that you’ve harvested enough value from me, value that you’re now going to go monetize with others.

verdverm 3y ago
Would you want outsiders dictating how your projects evolve? What if someone came along and monetized your project and didn't give any money back? Every project, company, contributor, and community get to decide this for themselves. There are no easy or correct answers
- fishnchips 3y ago
  When you've had thousands of hours of free external contributions to the ecosystem, where is the actual ownership? Is it still "your project"? And if so, to what extent? What are your obligations to the community members and/or external contributors? On the monetization question - do you need to give others the opportunity to give money back? If so, who should assess the size and "adequacy" of these contributions? If you don't provide the opportunity for others to sponsor the project, does it change your rights and obligations? These are not easy questions, and now our entire industry is trying to work out the answers. OP's is one voice in this discussion, and an important one given GitLab's prominence and the fact that they took a different path, which seems to be working well for them. It's also a way more complex problem for software like Terraform that explicitly depends on the work of others for its core functionality than for something that works perfectly fine standalone, like Hashi's Vault, or indeed GitLab itself.

verdverm 3y ago

Would you want outsiders dictating how your projects evolve? What if someone came along and monetized your project and didn't give any money back? Every project, company, contributor, and community get to decide this for themselves. There are no easy or correct answers

fishnchips 3y ago
When you've had thousands of hours of free external contributions to the ecosystem, where is the actual ownership? Is it still "your project"? And if so, to what extent? What are your obligations to the community members and/or external contributors? On the monetization question - do you need to give others the opportunity to give money back? If so, who should assess the size and "adequacy" of these contributions? If you don't provide the opportunity for others to sponsor the project, does it change your rights and obligations? These are not easy questions, and now our entire industry is trying to work out the answers. OP's is one voice in this discussion, and an important one given GitLab's prominence and the fact that they took a different path, which seems to be working well for them. It's also a way more complex problem for software like Terraform that explicitly depends on the work of others for its core functionality than for something that works perfectly fine standalone, like Hashi's Vault, or indeed GitLab itself.