3 ms·
The bait and switch is the community and social elements, not the code. Inviting the local community to come and improve your space that you opened up for ever
by growse 3y ago
The bait and switch is the community and social elements, not the code.
Inviting the local community to come and improve your space that you opened up for everyone to exist in, and then suddenly locking the doors is both entirely legally justified and a crappy thing to do.
- lolinder 3y agoThis analogy falls flat because it makes it sound like the community is locked out of the improvements they made to your space. But there's no scarcity here: once HashiCorp locked the doors all of the improvements that the community made were still there, and the community could and did organize a new space for continued improvements.
- growse 3y agoIt’s not perfect, I agree, because code is trivially copied (unlike material things). But like I said, this is not about the code. The wider point about subverting expectations still stands. Yes, we re-organised into tofu/valkey/whatever but that’s come at a _cost_. It’s perfectly reasonable to say that this is open source working properly, the license lets them do this etc. I think it’s also perfectly reasonable to feel a little bit embittered towards a copyright owner pulling the shutters up and forcing everyone to move.
- skeledrew 3y agoThe term "bait and switch" infers intent as well though. The community was invited to come and improve the space, but then there's this group that unexpectedly starts to monopolize that space in a way that destroys its viability. So controls need to be put in place, or eventually the space has to be totally abandoned or shut down.
- kube-system 3y agoI think this point of view is greedy. FOSS is about sharing code, not enslaving other developers or organizations indefinitely into the future.