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I think focusing on big organizations (e.g. above certain revenue/profit should help). There must be some sweet spot, after all, the organizations that rely on

I think focusing on big organizations (e.g. above certain revenue/profit should help). There must be some sweet spot, after all, the organizations that rely on it should want it to be maintained as well.

chii 3y ago
tragedy of the commons. If someone else can pay to maintain it, but you get the benefits, then it's the obvious strategy to use. And also, there's zero evidence that proprietary software won't have these backdoors. In fact, you can't even check them for it!
- rubymamis 3y ago
  That's why I think such OSS packages should use licenses that force large companies to pay (moderate) fees for maintenance. I assume such sums of money won't even tickle them. Imagine 10 large companies, each pay $1000 a month for critical packages they use. For each developer, that's $10,000 they can either use to quit their current job or hire another person to share the burden. We need to normalize this.
  - chuckadams 3y ago
    You may as well just slap a "no commercial use" restriction on it. It takes months to go through procurement at the average big company, and still would if the package cost $1. Developers at these companies will find something else without the friction.
    - rubymamis 3y ago
      Maybe we need a platform to make this easier?
      - nicce 3y ago
        There is already GitHub Sponsors, for example. What we need to change from that?
        rubymamis 3y ago
        I’m not an expert on this. if it ticks all the legal and other issues big companies need to deal with in a frictionless manner, then that’s good. If not, maybe a different solution is needed.
  - bdd8f1df777b 3y ago
    You are conflating convenience with necessity. Currently large companies also use xz simply because it is configured to be the default in many distributions. If it charges them money, they will just move to zstd, brottoli, gzip or 7z. The first two are backed by large companies themselves who will not adopt these kind of licenses ever.

chii 3y ago

tragedy of the commons. If someone else can pay to maintain it, but you get the benefits, then it's the obvious strategy to use. And also, there's zero evidence that proprietary software won't have these backdoors. In fact, you can't even check them for it!

rubymamis 3y ago
That's why I think such OSS packages should use licenses that force large companies to pay (moderate) fees for maintenance. I assume such sums of money won't even tickle them. Imagine 10 large companies, each pay $1000 a month for critical packages they use. For each developer, that's $10,000 they can either use to quit their current job or hire another person to share the burden. We need to normalize this.
- chuckadams 3y ago
  You may as well just slap a "no commercial use" restriction on it. It takes months to go through procurement at the average big company, and still would if the package cost $1. Developers at these companies will find something else without the friction.
  - rubymamis 3y ago
    Maybe we need a platform to make this easier?
    - nicce 3y ago
      There is already GitHub Sponsors, for example. What we need to change from that?
      - rubymamis 3y ago
        I’m not an expert on this. if it ticks all the legal and other issues big companies need to deal with in a frictionless manner, then that’s good. If not, maybe a different solution is needed.
- bdd8f1df777b 3y ago
  You are conflating convenience with necessity. Currently large companies also use xz simply because it is configured to be the default in many distributions. If it charges them money, they will just move to zstd, brottoli, gzip or 7z. The first two are backed by large companies themselves who will not adopt these kind of licenses ever.