21 ms·

It seems that whenever an open source project is run by a VC-backed company, it sooner or later ends up like this. Increasingly it seems that "open source" is

It seems that whenever an open source project is run by a VC-backed company, it sooner or later ends up like this. Increasingly it seems that "open source" is just the teaser to get people interested and then when investors want revenue growth, the rug gets pulled. IMO, it's not really open source if its run by a company that will eventually use its position to squeeze its users for cash.

candiddevmike 2y ago
Like other folks have said, anytime you see a CLA, you see the true intentions of the project. A project that will always be FOSS won't have a need for a CLA.
- _benedict 2y ago
  The ASF requires a CLA for all regular contributors or large contributions, so I don’t think this is a particularly good barometer.
  - remram 2y ago
    That's a good point. The ASF's FAQ [1] states that "All software developed by all projects of The Apache Software Foundation is freely available without charge" and that it "is specified in the Foundation's Articles of Incorporation [2]", however I see no such specification in the linked incorporation. Is there some actual legal guarantee there? [1]: https://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html#IsItFree https://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html#IsItFree [2]: https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/incorporator.html https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/incorporator.html
    - fweimer 2y ago
      I think it's mentioned in this document: https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/certificate.html https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/certificate.html
      - remram 2y ago
        Thanks! It seems a little short of the claim in their FAQ though, but it's something: > The purpose of the Corporation is to engage in any lawful act or activity [...] including the creation and maintenance of "open source" software distributed by the Corporation to the public at no charge
        ted_dunning 2y ago
        I don't think that falls short. The reason for the "any lawful act" language is to allow the ASF to do things like run a conference, accept donations, sell t-shirts and other activities. If the statement was only "develop open-source software" there are all kinds of important activities that support open source development that would be impossible. The fact is, however, that certificates can be changed by the people who can vote. IN the case of the ASF, the members are the ones who vote. Getting those ~800 members to radically trash the traditional goal of the foundation is not going to be possible as long as the current membership is active.
        remram 2y ago
        What I mean is that, if they made some software non-free alongside some free ones (to make money to finance the free ones, for example), that still seems valid as to the current certificate of incorporation. Their FAQ says "all software free no exception" and this document says something weaker.
        immibis 2y ago
        [flagged]
        remram 2y ago
        If you're trying to say something, say it, and point to proof. I don't know where to even find what you are trying about.
  - saurik 2y ago
    The difference with the ASF/FSF is that they are non-profits with a mission statement (and, if we don't trust that enough--due to OpenAI, as I don't entirely understand what happened there--with clearly-mission-aligned board leadership) that prevent them from pulling the rug out from under their license. (...and, right as I pushed this comment, I see that someone else looked into it, and maybe the ASF fails to have such a clause anywhere ;P but hopefully it is there and just a bit hidden.)
    - cortesoft 2y ago
      Sure, but that contradicts the statement made in the comment they are replying to: > anytime you see a CLA, you see the true intentions of the project. A project that will always be FOSS won't have a need for a CLA. If there are conditions to the statement, it isn't "anytime you see a CLA".
      - saurik 2y ago
        Sure, but now we would need to find another epicycle for why giving a for-profit corporation this dangerous power over its licensees is safe/benign. There is, at times, some logic to "the exception that proves the rule".
- fweimer 2y ago
  It depends on the CLA. In some countries, you cannot not have a CLA because there's always an implied contract. Many CLAs are just a hassle (basically, DCO that has to be reviewed by the legal department). But a lot are asymmetrical in a substantial way and the original developer gets to play by different rules than the rest. CLAs in the second category tend to be problematic. Even that is not a completely clear indicator because in some cases, the asymmetry is only intended to help with potential future relicensing in alignment with the project's goals, and not to enable commercialization (either today or at some point in the future). Some organizations have resisted direct commercialization of the code they have been entrusted with for decades, so that can happen even with an asymmetrical CLA.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  For those of us not in-the-know about licensing acronyms. CLA = Contributor License Agreement
- kodablah 2y ago
  This is not necessarily true. Sometimes it's needed to pivot to a better/different open source license without going through the pain of contacting every contributor ever. I have seen that pain in some projects that want to go from LGPL to MIT or something. For many contributors, they're ok giving full ownership of their contributions to a project owner on the owner's terms. Some contributors may not be ok with that of course, but it doesn't mean that every project owner has nefarious plans with said code ownership.
  - drdaeman 2y ago
    > better/different open source license And that's why "open source" is a really bad term that no one should use unironically, unless they want to confuse the hell out of people. There are protective (copyleft) licenses, and there are permissive licenses - and they're very different beasts. And it's, like, software licensing 101. > that want to go from LGPL to MIT or something I find this extremely weird. In a sane world, picking a copyleft license must mean that you care about user freedoms and want to make sure they're respected no matter what happens. Because that's the whole point of picking a copyleft license - not about letting people peek or tweak some code, not about social brownie points, and most certainly not about marketing campaigns - but about granting users their freedoms. Either people get confused about "open source" and pick... I don't know, whatever looks cool, without even understanding what they're doing; or they're giving up on their principles when they smell the money. I can understand wanting to go from, say, GPL to AGPL, or GPLv2 to GPLv3[+] - it would make sense, as it all goes in line of protecting freedoms. But LGPL to MIT is truly a weird one.
    - riffraff 2y ago
      (L)GPL to MIT is a choice many projects made when they decided they cared more about their code being used than about it staying free. Copyleft licenses were the default choice at some point in time, but then in the '10s most big projects seemed to pick a permissive license, and many switched.
      - drdaeman 2y ago
- orthecreedence 2y ago
  I think that's a bit reductive. It's possible to have a CLA because you want to sell a non-GPL version of your app to some corporation that's worried about the legalities of the license. This is an additional revenue stream that open-source projects make use of, and it's not fair to say "any project with a CLA is selling out." There's this balance between being a project forever run out of someone's garage and actually growing into a larger and more used system. I'd say the line is dilineated by many factors: who is the project's primary user? Enterprise? Devs? How much money is changing hands? What's the business model? Is there investment involved? How restrictive is the primary license? How restrictive is the CLA? I think any open-source project that has aspirations to actually make money for the creators is shooting themselves in the foot without a CLA. And it's fine to judge them for this, but we live in a system where people have to extract value out of this shit even if it's against their ethos. If people truly and ultimately believe in open-source, then the most logical conclusion is that capitalism does not allow for open source and that must be changed. Fighting things at the license level can only delay the inevitable. But people want to have their cake and eat it too: "I want the system to stay the same AND I want open-source creators to keep pumping out stuff for free forever."
- lacker 2y ago
  This is not true. Many companies want a CLA because their lawyers are worried about unclear patent law. They don't want someone to contribute some code, and then later claim the contributed code violates their patents. Good examples are React from Facebook, and TypeScript from Microsoft. Both require a CLA. But these projects are never going to go closed-source. They are complements to the companies' core business strategies.
- stubish 2y ago
  Imagine a world where GPLv2 was found to be unenforceable in a major jurisdiction such as the US. It has been a serious worry in the past. A CLA lets a project survive that situation. But I don't know if it is possible to have a CLA that also cannot be used to fork a project into a commercial license. So the trick would seem to be a CLA that assigns copyright to some sort of non-profit that is legally bound to be unable to take that path.
- rpaik 2y ago
  Even if a project/company doesn't have a CLA, I don't think that is any sort of guarantee that their license won't change in the future.
yawboakye 2y ago
start open/source available has become a trend among yc-backed startups lately. one wonders how long before a “well, actually, we need a business-y license.”
- brianwawok 2y ago
  Lately? This was cool like 12 years ago. Then you turn commercial once you get enough users. It’s the open source chameleon model.
acedTrex 2y ago
Open source and profit go together like oil and water
- valyala 2y ago
  Open source works great for for-profit companies. Take a look at RedHat.
JohnDeHope 2y ago
Maybe we will have to replace "open source" with "spec driven". As you point out, open source can be just as bad as closed source, given future changes in direction by the project team. But "spec driven" means that anybody can come along and compete, and you can switch to them, regardless of how the original developers feel about it.
- graemep 2y ago
  Is it not more about who does the development? If cone entity does the development, they can change direction or licensing and it is hard for anyone to fork. If you have more of a bazaar form of development with many contributors neither is as easy (even less so if you do not have a CLA). Even if you have a small core team of developers, a really bad direction is likely to lead to a split.
  - evantbyrne 2y ago
    I think you are right to think of it in terms of who is doing development. The plus of a non open-source license is well-funded development. The downside is fewer outside contributions. In this specific instance, I think Cockroach was BSL? So, it can be forked into a community project where new contributions are open-source. Another corporation just wouldn't be able to profiteer off the fork directly until the changeover date.
haolez 2y ago
Old(?) school open source with GPL licenses doesn't seem to suffer from this, on a first glance. Maybe Stallman was right. Would love to hear from someone more knowledgeable on this. I'm not trying to troll.
- ghshephard 2y ago
  GPL is actually a great license for this scenario. The software advances to a particular level of development, inertia, market penetration - then the company that owns the software dual licenses with GPLv3 - which no company can risk to have on their premise, distribute, or use/touch, etc... - ergo you then have to pay for a commercial license to avoid the GPLv3 taint.
  - graemep 2y ago
    Why can companies not use GPL3 software? I cannot see how its so different from GPL 2 for companies that are users. I can see it has some disadvantages for companies incorporating GPL software in their products, but none for companies merely using GPL 3 software.
    - ghshephard 2y ago
      I can't say for certain why they can't use GPLv3 - just that no company I've ever worked for (n=4 since GPLv3 came out) - will allow it on premise. It's probably why Apple stopped updating all their GNU binaries, and you have to sideload stuff with brew to use anything released in the last 10 years. If I had to guess - The patent rights clause weirds out a lot of lawyers. Obviously anyone who works with hardware doesn't like the anti-tivoization clause. Another possibility is the AGPL (which IS lethal for obvious reasons) is often conflated with GPLv3. All I know is GPLv2 is fine, GPLv3 is usually not, and AGPL is never possible in corporations that I've worked for.
      - graemep 2y ago
        I can see it makes sense for Apple (anti-tivoization is something they do not want). > I can't say for certain why they can't use GPLv3 - just that no company I've ever worked for (n=4 since GPLv3 came out) - will allow it on premise So they do not allow the use of things like Bash or GNU coreutils? That seems quite restrictive and difficult.
karmakaze 2y ago
Opensource is opensource: CockroachDB Core up until Nov 24, 2024 is, and not afterward. Anyone who wants to fork it can do so. Mind you this will be a hard fork as there's no way to keep in sync with their enterprise product. What you say is true in that you shouldn't view a VC backed opensource offering as 'permanently' opensource by the same group.
- geenat 2y ago
  Kind of... Certain extensions such as basic backups are closed source and have never been in the OSS version. Many things would have to be re-added from scratch in a fork.
  - karmakaze 2y ago
    I'm having trouble parsing/making sense of this. Was basic backup in Core? If you were running anything more than Core you weren't running an OSS version and had already crossed that line before this announcement. If you were running an OSS version there's nothing to add, just fork, no?
    - gerwim 2y ago
      Core only has the "full backup". Incremental and other types are available to enterprise. I run the Core edition (with full backups) for my personal projects.
    - geenat 2y ago
      CockroachDB Core uses 3 licenses: CCL, BSL, Apache CCL, BSL = "source available" Apache = open source Parts of CockroachDB under CCL that do NOT transition to Apache OSS: https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/tree/master/pkg/ccl https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/tree/master/pkg/ccl > the sub-tree under pkg/ccl is under a different license (CCL) that does not transition to APL2 after a set duration. https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/discussions/127140#discussioncomment-10073671 https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/discussions/127140#...
  - a-robinson 2y ago
nsm 2y ago
Yep! I actually far prefer closed source software, made by non-VC funded companies, where there business is to create good software that actually adds value for the license I'm paying for. Something like Sublime Text or JetBrains. Sure <VC funded editor company> can have people spend years of their life working on something, but release it as open source because VCs are paying for it, and that leads to more mindshare, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Similar reasons to not use VSCode (commoditizing the complement by using billions of dollars from other products). The "must be open source (I think they actually mean free as in $$) at all costs" crowd baffles me because the money to support the humans creating the software in the real world doesn't just magically appear.
- ElijahLynn 2y ago
  I'm imagining that those closed source softwares wouldn't be possible without open source libraries and tools...
  - pasc1878 2y ago
    I would imagine there is a lot on Windows possibly macOS. Many c/C++ libraries are not open source - even more .Net ones
  - sauercrowd 2y ago
    Open source as a byproduct of a company absolutely works - it's been proven by tons of tech companies. But if you open source your revenue-generating parts, and only charge for support/managed version/enterprisey features you'll end up with quite weird incentives, particularly with infrastructure tools, in which the big cloud providers will happily compete with you, using the version you open sourced and providing and ecosystem to their customers that one simply cannot compete with
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    In the sense that most modern programming languages and compilers are open-source, sure, nothing outside the embedded world can truly be built without relying on open source. There are still native shops that rely on very little open source, though at this point probably only in niches like gamedev or defence.
jaaron 2y ago
> IMO, it's not really open source if its run by a company that will eventually use its position to squeeze its users for cash. I know it's not as popular or sexy as it used to be, but the whole point of a foundation like Apache was to avoid these situations, even more than the way the Linux Foundation is setup. Apache _explicitly_ manages projects to avoid these downsides. - Single corporation ownership. Projects cannot get out of the Incubator unless they demonstrate a diverse and healthy community. That doesn't mean popular, it doesn't necessarily mean best-in-class, but it means that there shouldn't be just one entity backing a project. - Membership in Apache is _personal_ not a seat for a given company. If you're a committer on an Apache project and you move jobs, you're _still_ a committer on that project - The Foundation owns the trademarks. There have been fights about this in the past, but the whole idea is that the _community_ owns the name, so some corporation can't claim to be the sole or official owner by naming their company or product after the open source product. The core premise of the Apache Software Foundation is community over code, that healthy, diverse communities have a better chance of standing the test of time than open source projects backed by a single individual or company. That's the thesis at least. The is starkly different from several other foundations, notably the Linux Foundation or Eclipse Foundation which are modeled more around industry consortiums. Both models have their place, but I believe Apache better models the core values many of us feel strongly about when it comes to free and open source software.
- timcobb 2y ago
  What is more popular than the Apache Foundation? I thought Apache was top... Is there a cooler/better Apache? If so, please let me know. And when was Apache more popular? I thought it was the uncool place where stuff was written in Java, that became popular because people's conception of Java (and the language/ecosystem itself) changed.
  - mcpherrinm 2y ago
    I think CNCF is home to most of the big projects I’ve been contributing to or using lately.
    - 2y ago
eikenberry 2y ago
This is one reason to avoid any company run software that requires a CLA to contribute. No CLA makes it a lot harder to do this, at least if they have very much in the way of community contributions. Distributed ownership would keep them honest.
gsich 2y ago
EEE all over again.

candiddevmike 2y ago

Like other folks have said, anytime you see a CLA, you see the true intentions of the project. A project that will always be FOSS won't have a need for a CLA.

_benedict 2y ago
The ASF requires a CLA for all regular contributors or large contributions, so I don’t think this is a particularly good barometer.
- remram 2y ago
  That's a good point. The ASF's FAQ [1] states that "All software developed by all projects of The Apache Software Foundation is freely available without charge" and that it "is specified in the Foundation's Articles of Incorporation [2]", however I see no such specification in the linked incorporation. Is there some actual legal guarantee there? [1]: https://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html#IsItFree https://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html#IsItFree [2]: https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/incorporator.html https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/incorporator.html
  - fweimer 2y ago
    I think it's mentioned in this document: https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/certificate.html https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/certificate.html
    - remram 2y ago
      Thanks! It seems a little short of the claim in their FAQ though, but it's something: > The purpose of the Corporation is to engage in any lawful act or activity [...] including the creation and maintenance of "open source" software distributed by the Corporation to the public at no charge
      - ted_dunning 2y ago
        I don't think that falls short. The reason for the "any lawful act" language is to allow the ASF to do things like run a conference, accept donations, sell t-shirts and other activities. If the statement was only "develop open-source software" there are all kinds of important activities that support open source development that would be impossible. The fact is, however, that certificates can be changed by the people who can vote. IN the case of the ASF, the members are the ones who vote. Getting those ~800 members to radically trash the traditional goal of the foundation is not going to be possible as long as the current membership is active.
        remram 2y ago
        What I mean is that, if they made some software non-free alongside some free ones (to make money to finance the free ones, for example), that still seems valid as to the current certificate of incorporation. Their FAQ says "all software free no exception" and this document says something weaker.
        immibis 2y ago
        [flagged]
        remram 2y ago
        If you're trying to say something, say it, and point to proof. I don't know where to even find what you are trying about.
- saurik 2y ago
  The difference with the ASF/FSF is that they are non-profits with a mission statement (and, if we don't trust that enough--due to OpenAI, as I don't entirely understand what happened there--with clearly-mission-aligned board leadership) that prevent them from pulling the rug out from under their license. (...and, right as I pushed this comment, I see that someone else looked into it, and maybe the ASF fails to have such a clause anywhere ;P but hopefully it is there and just a bit hidden.)
  - cortesoft 2y ago
    Sure, but that contradicts the statement made in the comment they are replying to: > anytime you see a CLA, you see the true intentions of the project. A project that will always be FOSS won't have a need for a CLA. If there are conditions to the statement, it isn't "anytime you see a CLA".
    - saurik 2y ago
      Sure, but now we would need to find another epicycle for why giving a for-profit corporation this dangerous power over its licensees is safe/benign. There is, at times, some logic to "the exception that proves the rule".
fweimer 2y ago
It depends on the CLA. In some countries, you cannot not have a CLA because there's always an implied contract. Many CLAs are just a hassle (basically, DCO that has to be reviewed by the legal department). But a lot are asymmetrical in a substantial way and the original developer gets to play by different rules than the rest. CLAs in the second category tend to be problematic. Even that is not a completely clear indicator because in some cases, the asymmetry is only intended to help with potential future relicensing in alignment with the project's goals, and not to enable commercialization (either today or at some point in the future). Some organizations have resisted direct commercialization of the code they have been entrusted with for decades, so that can happen even with an asymmetrical CLA.
ziddoap 2y ago
For those of us not in-the-know about licensing acronyms. CLA = Contributor License Agreement
kodablah 2y ago
This is not necessarily true. Sometimes it's needed to pivot to a better/different open source license without going through the pain of contacting every contributor ever. I have seen that pain in some projects that want to go from LGPL to MIT or something. For many contributors, they're ok giving full ownership of their contributions to a project owner on the owner's terms. Some contributors may not be ok with that of course, but it doesn't mean that every project owner has nefarious plans with said code ownership.
- drdaeman 2y ago
  > better/different open source license And that's why "open source" is a really bad term that no one should use unironically, unless they want to confuse the hell out of people. There are protective (copyleft) licenses, and there are permissive licenses - and they're very different beasts. And it's, like, software licensing 101. > that want to go from LGPL to MIT or something I find this extremely weird. In a sane world, picking a copyleft license must mean that you care about user freedoms and want to make sure they're respected no matter what happens. Because that's the whole point of picking a copyleft license - not about letting people peek or tweak some code, not about social brownie points, and most certainly not about marketing campaigns - but about granting users their freedoms. Either people get confused about "open source" and pick... I don't know, whatever looks cool, without even understanding what they're doing; or they're giving up on their principles when they smell the money. I can understand wanting to go from, say, GPL to AGPL, or GPLv2 to GPLv3[+] - it would make sense, as it all goes in line of protecting freedoms. But LGPL to MIT is truly a weird one.
  - riffraff 2y ago
    (L)GPL to MIT is a choice many projects made when they decided they cared more about their code being used than about it staying free. Copyleft licenses were the default choice at some point in time, but then in the '10s most big projects seemed to pick a permissive license, and many switched.
    - drdaeman 2y ago
orthecreedence 2y ago
I think that's a bit reductive. It's possible to have a CLA because you want to sell a non-GPL version of your app to some corporation that's worried about the legalities of the license. This is an additional revenue stream that open-source projects make use of, and it's not fair to say "any project with a CLA is selling out." There's this balance between being a project forever run out of someone's garage and actually growing into a larger and more used system. I'd say the line is dilineated by many factors: who is the project's primary user? Enterprise? Devs? How much money is changing hands? What's the business model? Is there investment involved? How restrictive is the primary license? How restrictive is the CLA? I think any open-source project that has aspirations to actually make money for the creators is shooting themselves in the foot without a CLA. And it's fine to judge them for this, but we live in a system where people have to extract value out of this shit even if it's against their ethos. If people truly and ultimately believe in open-source, then the most logical conclusion is that capitalism does not allow for open source and that must be changed. Fighting things at the license level can only delay the inevitable. But people want to have their cake and eat it too: "I want the system to stay the same AND I want open-source creators to keep pumping out stuff for free forever."
lacker 2y ago
This is not true. Many companies want a CLA because their lawyers are worried about unclear patent law. They don't want someone to contribute some code, and then later claim the contributed code violates their patents. Good examples are React from Facebook, and TypeScript from Microsoft. Both require a CLA. But these projects are never going to go closed-source. They are complements to the companies' core business strategies.
stubish 2y ago
Imagine a world where GPLv2 was found to be unenforceable in a major jurisdiction such as the US. It has been a serious worry in the past. A CLA lets a project survive that situation. But I don't know if it is possible to have a CLA that also cannot be used to fork a project into a commercial license. So the trick would seem to be a CLA that assigns copyright to some sort of non-profit that is legally bound to be unable to take that path.
rpaik 2y ago
Even if a project/company doesn't have a CLA, I don't think that is any sort of guarantee that their license won't change in the future.

yawboakye 2y ago

start open/source available has become a trend among yc-backed startups lately. one wonders how long before a “well, actually, we need a business-y license.”

brianwawok 2y ago
Lately? This was cool like 12 years ago. Then you turn commercial once you get enough users. It’s the open source chameleon model.

acedTrex 2y ago

Open source and profit go together like oil and water

valyala 2y ago
Open source works great for for-profit companies. Take a look at RedHat.

JohnDeHope 2y ago

Maybe we will have to replace "open source" with "spec driven". As you point out, open source can be just as bad as closed source, given future changes in direction by the project team. But "spec driven" means that anybody can come along and compete, and you can switch to them, regardless of how the original developers feel about it.

graemep 2y ago
Is it not more about who does the development? If cone entity does the development, they can change direction or licensing and it is hard for anyone to fork. If you have more of a bazaar form of development with many contributors neither is as easy (even less so if you do not have a CLA). Even if you have a small core team of developers, a really bad direction is likely to lead to a split.
- evantbyrne 2y ago
  I think you are right to think of it in terms of who is doing development. The plus of a non open-source license is well-funded development. The downside is fewer outside contributions. In this specific instance, I think Cockroach was BSL? So, it can be forked into a community project where new contributions are open-source. Another corporation just wouldn't be able to profiteer off the fork directly until the changeover date.

haolez 2y ago

Old(?) school open source with GPL licenses doesn't seem to suffer from this, on a first glance. Maybe Stallman was right. Would love to hear from someone more knowledgeable on this. I'm not trying to troll.

ghshephard 2y ago
GPL is actually a great license for this scenario. The software advances to a particular level of development, inertia, market penetration - then the company that owns the software dual licenses with GPLv3 - which no company can risk to have on their premise, distribute, or use/touch, etc... - ergo you then have to pay for a commercial license to avoid the GPLv3 taint.
- graemep 2y ago
  Why can companies not use GPL3 software? I cannot see how its so different from GPL 2 for companies that are users. I can see it has some disadvantages for companies incorporating GPL software in their products, but none for companies merely using GPL 3 software.
  - ghshephard 2y ago
    I can't say for certain why they can't use GPLv3 - just that no company I've ever worked for (n=4 since GPLv3 came out) - will allow it on premise. It's probably why Apple stopped updating all their GNU binaries, and you have to sideload stuff with brew to use anything released in the last 10 years. If I had to guess - The patent rights clause weirds out a lot of lawyers. Obviously anyone who works with hardware doesn't like the anti-tivoization clause. Another possibility is the AGPL (which IS lethal for obvious reasons) is often conflated with GPLv3. All I know is GPLv2 is fine, GPLv3 is usually not, and AGPL is never possible in corporations that I've worked for.
    - graemep 2y ago
      I can see it makes sense for Apple (anti-tivoization is something they do not want). > I can't say for certain why they can't use GPLv3 - just that no company I've ever worked for (n=4 since GPLv3 came out) - will allow it on premise So they do not allow the use of things like Bash or GNU coreutils? That seems quite restrictive and difficult.

karmakaze 2y ago

Opensource is opensource: CockroachDB Core up until Nov 24, 2024 is, and not afterward. Anyone who wants to fork it can do so. Mind you this will be a hard fork as there's no way to keep in sync with their enterprise product. What you say is true in that you shouldn't view a VC backed opensource offering as 'permanently' opensource by the same group.

geenat 2y ago
Kind of... Certain extensions such as basic backups are closed source and have never been in the OSS version. Many things would have to be re-added from scratch in a fork.
- karmakaze 2y ago
  I'm having trouble parsing/making sense of this. Was basic backup in Core? If you were running anything more than Core you weren't running an OSS version and had already crossed that line before this announcement. If you were running an OSS version there's nothing to add, just fork, no?
  - gerwim 2y ago
    Core only has the "full backup". Incremental and other types are available to enterprise. I run the Core edition (with full backups) for my personal projects.
  - geenat 2y ago
    CockroachDB Core uses 3 licenses: CCL, BSL, Apache CCL, BSL = "source available" Apache = open source Parts of CockroachDB under CCL that do NOT transition to Apache OSS: https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/tree/master/pkg/ccl https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/tree/master/pkg/ccl > the sub-tree under pkg/ccl is under a different license (CCL) that does not transition to APL2 after a set duration. https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/discussions/127140#discussioncomment-10073671 https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/discussions/127140#...
- a-robinson 2y ago

nsm 2y ago

Yep! I actually far prefer closed source software, made by non-VC funded companies, where there business is to create good software that actually adds value for the license I'm paying for. Something like Sublime Text or JetBrains. Sure <VC funded editor company> can have people spend years of their life working on something, but release it as open source because VCs are paying for it, and that leads to more mindshare, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Similar reasons to not use VSCode (commoditizing the complement by using billions of dollars from other products). The "must be open source (I think they actually mean free as in $$) at all costs" crowd baffles me because the money to support the humans creating the software in the real world doesn't just magically appear.

ElijahLynn 2y ago
I'm imagining that those closed source softwares wouldn't be possible without open source libraries and tools...
- pasc1878 2y ago
  I would imagine there is a lot on Windows possibly macOS. Many c/C++ libraries are not open source - even more .Net ones
- sauercrowd 2y ago
  Open source as a byproduct of a company absolutely works - it's been proven by tons of tech companies. But if you open source your revenue-generating parts, and only charge for support/managed version/enterprisey features you'll end up with quite weird incentives, particularly with infrastructure tools, in which the big cloud providers will happily compete with you, using the version you open sourced and providing and ecosystem to their customers that one simply cannot compete with
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  In the sense that most modern programming languages and compilers are open-source, sure, nothing outside the embedded world can truly be built without relying on open source. There are still native shops that rely on very little open source, though at this point probably only in niches like gamedev or defence.

jaaron 2y ago

> IMO, it's not really open source if its run by a company that will eventually use its position to squeeze its users for cash. I know it's not as popular or sexy as it used to be, but the whole point of a foundation like Apache was to avoid these situations, even more than the way the Linux Foundation is setup. Apache _explicitly_ manages projects to avoid these downsides. - Single corporation ownership. Projects cannot get out of the Incubator unless they demonstrate a diverse and healthy community. That doesn't mean popular, it doesn't necessarily mean best-in-class, but it means that there shouldn't be just one entity backing a project. - Membership in Apache is _personal_ not a seat for a given company. If you're a committer on an Apache project and you move jobs, you're _still_ a committer on that project - The Foundation owns the trademarks. There have been fights about this in the past, but the whole idea is that the _community_ owns the name, so some corporation can't claim to be the sole or official owner by naming their company or product after the open source product. The core premise of the Apache Software Foundation is community over code, that healthy, diverse communities have a better chance of standing the test of time than open source projects backed by a single individual or company. That's the thesis at least. The is starkly different from several other foundations, notably the Linux Foundation or Eclipse Foundation which are modeled more around industry consortiums. Both models have their place, but I believe Apache better models the core values many of us feel strongly about when it comes to free and open source software.

timcobb 2y ago
What is more popular than the Apache Foundation? I thought Apache was top... Is there a cooler/better Apache? If so, please let me know. And when was Apache more popular? I thought it was the uncool place where stuff was written in Java, that became popular because people's conception of Java (and the language/ecosystem itself) changed.
- mcpherrinm 2y ago
  I think CNCF is home to most of the big projects I’ve been contributing to or using lately.
  - 2y ago

eikenberry 2y ago

This is one reason to avoid any company run software that requires a CLA to contribute. No CLA makes it a lot harder to do this, at least if they have very much in the way of community contributions. Distributed ownership would keep them honest.

gsich 2y ago

EEE all over again.