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> I also know that the Maker-Taker problem is an issue in open source, just as I know that a friend you buy lunch for every day, and who earns as much money as

> I also know that the Maker-Taker problem is an issue in open source, just as I know that a friend you buy lunch for every day, and who earns as much money as you do, is supposed to return the favor now and then Informal agreements like this work between people who know each other, not for agreements between strangers. The terms in an open source license are intended to be universally applicable, to make the obligations clear for anyone who reads them. This includes total strangers and companies that didn’t exist when you published the code. Those strangers shouldn’t be expected to abide by anything not explicitly written down in the license. If the license doesn’t document the obligations you expect of anyone, you used the wrong license. We should be suspicious of people who try to claim that there are additional unwritten obligations for reusing source code. Open source licenses have very generous terms, maybe too generous. They allow takers. That’s how it works, you can take it.

marcinzm 2y ago
It's I think sort of clear from everything that Automattic's leadership doesn't seem to understand that running a business means you're running a business. You're not making a side project, working on a hobby or running a non-profit. You're running a for-profit business which means others will treat you as such and you can't make excuses for it.
mlyle 2y ago
Nah. Or at least, not entirely. (I'm not really writing about Automattic here). Contracts -- and law in general -- describe in detail what kinds of actions will allow another to bring legal force into play against you or vice-versa. But there's all kinds of actions that I can legally take that don't conform to norms that will invite condemnation and reprisal through means other than the legal sphere. Not every obligation should be given legal force; not every action that's strictly legal will turn out to be socially okay or consequence free.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fragmede 2y ago
  If you want things, you get them written into the contract. that's how business works. Eg the license for Facebook's llama model says if you have a ton of users you gotta pay up. if this were something small, like maybe give us a shout-out once in a while then hey, but we're talking substantial actual resources that shouldn't be left to implied assumptions. because if you don't actually talk about it, what I assume and what you assume is reasonable is going to be on different planets.
  - mlyle 2y ago
    A license can allow something, but there can still be companies that are good citizens of the open source community of things licensed that way and other companies that are not so good. In turn, that can affect how likely others are to view those companies favorably and/or cooperate with them. e.g. I favor Prusa 3d printers over other vendors because Prusa provides substantial resources to development of the tooling that we all use. Other vendors are (usually) compliant with the contract, but may not be seen as good citizens by everyone in the community, and this can have consequences even if it doesn't have legal force.
- jchw 2y ago
  In my opinion this is completely backwards. You should reserve all of the rights you intend to exercise. This is indeed what most companies have always done; you don't go randomly giving people copyright licenses to e.g. your characters and then get mad when they use them. Instead you just tacitly allow some unlicensed usage of your IP. That really is a social contract that exists in different places across the world. I understand that some people didn't always understand the consequences of their choices, or maybe wrongly thought we all agreed on these unwritten social contracts, but we don't agree at all and I hope the lesson is learned well.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    None of my prior work contracts stipulated not to microwave fish in the break room, or how often I ought to shower; yet "Don't stink up the office" is rule most folk innately know, recognize and respect as part of being a decent colleague. Some rules have to stay unwritten (or be in vague clauses), otherwise every contract will be tens of thousands of pages long.
    - jchw 2y ago
      Look, you can argue about the existence of social norms till the cows come home, it won't change the fact that there is a non-trivial subset of open source developers and users that believe the lack of discrimination of any kind is exactly the point of Open Source. The definition is not stipulating these rights indiscriminately by accident, and it did not have to be written that way. I will acknowledge that some people in the community clearly believe that enforcing unwritten social rules with regards to Open Source is the best practice, but I don't accept that this is the common or obvious viewpoint. I think that viewpoint is overrepresented in spaces like Hacker News with a lot of startup-adjacent folks but even here I wouldn't expect the majority of people to agree with this. P.S.: This all having been said, while I think that there aren't commonly-shared unwritten rules w.r.t. who may do what with open source software pertaining to its copyright license(s), I don't think there's absolutely no "unwritten rules" in open source. For example, I think the CLA rug-pull pattern is a pretty dirty trick, but that has little to do with open source licenses and more to do with outright deceiving people. And even then, it does beg the question of why you would agree to sign something that explicitly grants that right when there is absolutely no reason to do so.
- gorgoiler 2y ago
  In the context of free software the entire ethos is complete, unabated freedom to do anything except restrict freedoms. Even that wasn’t free enough for some. Permissive licensing allows you redistribute software without even disclosing your patches. These are radically different to regular contracts.
  - mlyle 2y ago
    Sure; and I don't see how this adjusts my point. I support the freedom that the license also supports. But there's plenty of things people can do with freedom that bring consequences; they just don't bring legal consequences.
akoboldfrying 2y ago
Obviously I agree that current licenses do permit this. However: What are the long-term implications if everyone behaves this way? They are that less open source software will be created and made available to everyone with permissive licensing. More software will be produced either commercially, or with more restrictive licensing. Less software will be produced overall, because of the overhead costs of enforcing these restrictions. The culture will shift from a norm of "Here, use this thing I made if you want!" towards "You'd better not be using this thing I made without paying me." This formalisation of norms into explicit contracts backed by legal enforcement would not necessarily be a bad thing overall, and it may be a necessary thing in a "society" where there are too many people for everyone to know everyone else personally and establish trust that way. But it will be different. There will be winners and losers.
- twelve40 2y ago
  Everyone does behave this way. For any popular open-source project (e.g., Linux), the absolute vast majority does not contribute, just uses or makes money off of it. How can you shame someone into starting to contribute? There are people who like to contribute, there are other people who like to make a quick buck using someone else's work, and nothing else, and always will be. Unclear how to magically change the latter if the legal means fail.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- skywhopper 2y ago
  This is silly. Open source doesn't require getting paid. In fact, that people have figured out how to make open source turn them into billionaires is a problem. And a good sign that the market is broken. Get those people out of open source. Linux, Kubernetes, Apache, Python, and more are doing just fine. Companies should find ways to build things together rather than trying to abuse open source to pay off VCs who are the real takers in the software industry.
skywhopper 2y ago
I would argue that the taking is the point of open source. By providing software free to use and copy and modify to the world, you’re making it a better place. You won’t be financially rewarded for that. That isn’t the point. Mongo, Redis, Elastic, HashiCorp, Automattic, and many others have forgotten that.
- urban_alien 2y ago
  The continuation of this work demands defending it (and therefore the good it spread) from parasitic actors.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  Mongo, Redis, Elastic, HashiCorp did not forgot that. They knew it, and thats why they changed their license. If Automattic wants to force companies to pay for Wordpress, it should use a license that encourages/requires that.
Barrin92 2y ago
>We should be suspicious of people who try to claim that there are additional unwritten obligations for reusing source code. There are additional and unwritten obligations in everything, that's just what a culture is. And open source culture has always relied on a general goodwill extended to strangers, it is what keeps it alive. If we only abide by the letter of the law and take as much as we can and give as little as possible open source is just dead, I mean you already see this with large open source contributors moving towards more restrictive licenses. Saying that the conclusion of this is that licenses were too generous and that we ought to be suspicious of people because they take the underling ethos seriously is... strange to say the least.
- jnwatson 2y ago
  The social obligations that people have are not the same obligations that businesses have with each other, and that is true culturally and legally. There are no consumer protection laws for businesses. There is no cooling off period for certain contracts. Businesses are supposed to have the legal wherewithal to protect their own interests. You can't project our social norms to businesses.
  - pjerem 2y ago
    I don’t know why you are downvoted. I find it pretty terrifying that people are thinking about companies as if they were conscious beings while they are only a complex mix of the people working for it who may or may not have random amounts of power. Companies aren’t people, they are social constructions which can, or not, have positive or negative impact on the society but ultimately live for making money. And I don’t mean this as an insult, it’s just that if you want to work with other people with other goals than making money, a company is just the wrong structure. I think it’s crucial to stop that belief that companies have souls. Companies souls are what is wrote in their status, nothing more, nothing less.
    - ddingus 2y ago
      Same. Corporations are just constructs that shield their owners from liabilities. Generally speaking, these constructs are created to solve problems an individual may have trouble with. The constructs have no agency. They must act through people and are directed by people, but are not people. Perhaps we should treat corporations like people and jail them, like we do people. What would that look like? Freeze all assets for a period of time? Or, since they are essentially shields for those directing them, maybe remove the shield part for X period of time...
nextaccountic 2y ago
> We should be suspicious of people who try to claim that there are additional unwritten obligations for reusing source code. Open source licenses have very generous terms, maybe too generous. They allow takers. That’s how it works, you can take it. This only makes sense in the point of view that every obligation should be enforced by courts. However public opinion can sway people to fulfill non-legal obligations or else have their reputation tarnished. WP Engine reputation is pretty damaged due to their behavior of being a "taker" rather than a "maker".
twotwotwo 2y ago
I don't like what Automattic's doing, but I don't think that means we have to throw out the whole idea of obligations that aren't legal obligations.
patcon 2y ago
I don't buy it. This "only what's in the legal" is so silly, and ppl who keep writing it are self-identifying as not understanding whole branches and histories of community- and culture-building

marcinzm 2y ago

It's I think sort of clear from everything that Automattic's leadership doesn't seem to understand that running a business means you're running a business. You're not making a side project, working on a hobby or running a non-profit. You're running a for-profit business which means others will treat you as such and you can't make excuses for it.

mlyle 2y ago

Nah. Or at least, not entirely. (I'm not really writing about Automattic here). Contracts -- and law in general -- describe in detail what kinds of actions will allow another to bring legal force into play against you or vice-versa. But there's all kinds of actions that I can legally take that don't conform to norms that will invite condemnation and reprisal through means other than the legal sphere. Not every obligation should be given legal force; not every action that's strictly legal will turn out to be socially okay or consequence free.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fragmede 2y ago
If you want things, you get them written into the contract. that's how business works. Eg the license for Facebook's llama model says if you have a ton of users you gotta pay up. if this were something small, like maybe give us a shout-out once in a while then hey, but we're talking substantial actual resources that shouldn't be left to implied assumptions. because if you don't actually talk about it, what I assume and what you assume is reasonable is going to be on different planets.
- mlyle 2y ago
  A license can allow something, but there can still be companies that are good citizens of the open source community of things licensed that way and other companies that are not so good. In turn, that can affect how likely others are to view those companies favorably and/or cooperate with them. e.g. I favor Prusa 3d printers over other vendors because Prusa provides substantial resources to development of the tooling that we all use. Other vendors are (usually) compliant with the contract, but may not be seen as good citizens by everyone in the community, and this can have consequences even if it doesn't have legal force.
jchw 2y ago
In my opinion this is completely backwards. You should reserve all of the rights you intend to exercise. This is indeed what most companies have always done; you don't go randomly giving people copyright licenses to e.g. your characters and then get mad when they use them. Instead you just tacitly allow some unlicensed usage of your IP. That really is a social contract that exists in different places across the world. I understand that some people didn't always understand the consequences of their choices, or maybe wrongly thought we all agreed on these unwritten social contracts, but we don't agree at all and I hope the lesson is learned well.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  None of my prior work contracts stipulated not to microwave fish in the break room, or how often I ought to shower; yet "Don't stink up the office" is rule most folk innately know, recognize and respect as part of being a decent colleague. Some rules have to stay unwritten (or be in vague clauses), otherwise every contract will be tens of thousands of pages long.
  - jchw 2y ago
    Look, you can argue about the existence of social norms till the cows come home, it won't change the fact that there is a non-trivial subset of open source developers and users that believe the lack of discrimination of any kind is exactly the point of Open Source. The definition is not stipulating these rights indiscriminately by accident, and it did not have to be written that way. I will acknowledge that some people in the community clearly believe that enforcing unwritten social rules with regards to Open Source is the best practice, but I don't accept that this is the common or obvious viewpoint. I think that viewpoint is overrepresented in spaces like Hacker News with a lot of startup-adjacent folks but even here I wouldn't expect the majority of people to agree with this. P.S.: This all having been said, while I think that there aren't commonly-shared unwritten rules w.r.t. who may do what with open source software pertaining to its copyright license(s), I don't think there's absolutely no "unwritten rules" in open source. For example, I think the CLA rug-pull pattern is a pretty dirty trick, but that has little to do with open source licenses and more to do with outright deceiving people. And even then, it does beg the question of why you would agree to sign something that explicitly grants that right when there is absolutely no reason to do so.
gorgoiler 2y ago
In the context of free software the entire ethos is complete, unabated freedom to do anything except restrict freedoms. Even that wasn’t free enough for some. Permissive licensing allows you redistribute software without even disclosing your patches. These are radically different to regular contracts.
- mlyle 2y ago
  Sure; and I don't see how this adjusts my point. I support the freedom that the license also supports. But there's plenty of things people can do with freedom that bring consequences; they just don't bring legal consequences.

akoboldfrying 2y ago

Obviously I agree that current licenses do permit this. However: What are the long-term implications if everyone behaves this way? They are that less open source software will be created and made available to everyone with permissive licensing. More software will be produced either commercially, or with more restrictive licensing. Less software will be produced overall, because of the overhead costs of enforcing these restrictions. The culture will shift from a norm of "Here, use this thing I made if you want!" towards "You'd better not be using this thing I made without paying me." This formalisation of norms into explicit contracts backed by legal enforcement would not necessarily be a bad thing overall, and it may be a necessary thing in a "society" where there are too many people for everyone to know everyone else personally and establish trust that way. But it will be different. There will be winners and losers.

twelve40 2y ago
Everyone does behave this way. For any popular open-source project (e.g., Linux), the absolute vast majority does not contribute, just uses or makes money off of it. How can you shame someone into starting to contribute? There are people who like to contribute, there are other people who like to make a quick buck using someone else's work, and nothing else, and always will be. Unclear how to magically change the latter if the legal means fail.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
skywhopper 2y ago
This is silly. Open source doesn't require getting paid. In fact, that people have figured out how to make open source turn them into billionaires is a problem. And a good sign that the market is broken. Get those people out of open source. Linux, Kubernetes, Apache, Python, and more are doing just fine. Companies should find ways to build things together rather than trying to abuse open source to pay off VCs who are the real takers in the software industry.

skywhopper 2y ago

I would argue that the taking is the point of open source. By providing software free to use and copy and modify to the world, you’re making it a better place. You won’t be financially rewarded for that. That isn’t the point. Mongo, Redis, Elastic, HashiCorp, Automattic, and many others have forgotten that.

urban_alien 2y ago
The continuation of this work demands defending it (and therefore the good it spread) from parasitic actors.
madeofpalk 2y ago
Mongo, Redis, Elastic, HashiCorp did not forgot that. They knew it, and thats why they changed their license. If Automattic wants to force companies to pay for Wordpress, it should use a license that encourages/requires that.

Barrin92 2y ago

>We should be suspicious of people who try to claim that there are additional unwritten obligations for reusing source code. There are additional and unwritten obligations in everything, that's just what a culture is. And open source culture has always relied on a general goodwill extended to strangers, it is what keeps it alive. If we only abide by the letter of the law and take as much as we can and give as little as possible open source is just dead, I mean you already see this with large open source contributors moving towards more restrictive licenses. Saying that the conclusion of this is that licenses were too generous and that we ought to be suspicious of people because they take the underling ethos seriously is... strange to say the least.

jnwatson 2y ago
The social obligations that people have are not the same obligations that businesses have with each other, and that is true culturally and legally. There are no consumer protection laws for businesses. There is no cooling off period for certain contracts. Businesses are supposed to have the legal wherewithal to protect their own interests. You can't project our social norms to businesses.
- pjerem 2y ago
  I don’t know why you are downvoted. I find it pretty terrifying that people are thinking about companies as if they were conscious beings while they are only a complex mix of the people working for it who may or may not have random amounts of power. Companies aren’t people, they are social constructions which can, or not, have positive or negative impact on the society but ultimately live for making money. And I don’t mean this as an insult, it’s just that if you want to work with other people with other goals than making money, a company is just the wrong structure. I think it’s crucial to stop that belief that companies have souls. Companies souls are what is wrote in their status, nothing more, nothing less.
  - ddingus 2y ago
    Same. Corporations are just constructs that shield their owners from liabilities. Generally speaking, these constructs are created to solve problems an individual may have trouble with. The constructs have no agency. They must act through people and are directed by people, but are not people. Perhaps we should treat corporations like people and jail them, like we do people. What would that look like? Freeze all assets for a period of time? Or, since they are essentially shields for those directing them, maybe remove the shield part for X period of time...

nextaccountic 2y ago

> We should be suspicious of people who try to claim that there are additional unwritten obligations for reusing source code. Open source licenses have very generous terms, maybe too generous. They allow takers. That’s how it works, you can take it. This only makes sense in the point of view that every obligation should be enforced by courts. However public opinion can sway people to fulfill non-legal obligations or else have their reputation tarnished. WP Engine reputation is pretty damaged due to their behavior of being a "taker" rather than a "maker".

twotwotwo 2y ago

I don't like what Automattic's doing, but I don't think that means we have to throw out the whole idea of obligations that aren't legal obligations.

patcon 2y ago

I don't buy it. This "only what's in the legal" is so silly, and ppl who keep writing it are self-identifying as not understanding whole branches and histories of community- and culture-building