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Expect to see this kind of drama happening regularly and frequently as the gazillion dollar commercial industry continues to subvert every ideal of the original

Expect to see this kind of drama happening regularly and frequently as the gazillion dollar commercial industry continues to subvert every ideal of the original open source ethos. Some of the best and now most commercially critical open source software started a long time ago, by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future. Turns out, we did not arrive in that future. We arrived in the one where both $xxxB companies and their countless cargo cultists explot every means possible to profit from open source software, making angry demands on volunteers and small teams, while giving back as little as possible. It's essentially a test to find every open source developer's breaking point. Recently, we found Matt's. Next month, it'll be someone else's.

beaconify 2y ago
I do see OSS as free labour for Bezos, Altman et. al. and act accoringly. Closed source (but open data formats) may be the new open source.
lolinder 2y ago
Agreed, but Matt is not the innocent and distressed open source maintainer who hit a breaking point, he's the extremely wealthy CEO of a company that brings in hundreds of millions a year in revenue. The CEO who recently tried to extort another large company for tens of millions of dollars per year to be directed to his personal for-profit company. The problem with Open Source as a movement isn't just the megacorps using it, it's also that paying for the project's ongoing development stopped being the goal for many monetization efforts—making the shareholders or the maintainers themselves (or in this case both) wealthy (or in this case even more wealthy) has become the new goal. That is why it's such a problem that these companies don't "give back". Having the software in the world doing its job is no longer the primary goal of starting an open source project, and the "takers" are encroaching on the founders' market cap.
FireBeyond 2y ago
What? WordPress was a fork of B2 and quickly intended to make money. Matt and Automattic bought into WPE. They were the ones who sold their shares to the Private Equity firm that now owns it! The only other board member of the Foundation is ... drum roll ... the Managing Partner of another Private Equity firm, that Matt himself appointed. All his hand wringing about PE is to distract from the simple fact that he has repeatedly been an asshole through this process, and it's not because he "reached his breaking point" as an open source developer. This is so apologistic it's not funny. He reached a breaking point as a CEO, because he made a horrible business decision to buy Tumblr, which has been nothing but a money pit, ever since. Since then, MATT's for profit business has had this boat anchor around it, so he's looking for extra cash. That's why he demanded their royalties be paid to Automattic, his for profit company, not the open source project. > by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future. Horseshit. People with RMS-like visions for the future don't see the commercial potential for an open source project, immediately spin up a Foundation with themselves as President, and immediately grant their own for-profit company a perpetual, exclusive and irrevocable commercial use license for said open source project. (They may however release self-congratulatory press releases talking about how they are champions of open source for assigning ownership of the project to their Foundation while neglecting to mention the licensing that they[1] signed off on, that very same day.) You have apparently fully bought into the narrative. > making angry demands on volunteers and small teams What "angry demands" has WPEngine made of the project? I'd love to hear of at least one. [1] I say 'they' but really, the licensing was signed for the Foundation by "Matt Mullenweg, President", and for Automattic by "Matt Mullenweg, President and CEO".
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Brian_K_White 2y ago
RMS was and still is right. If you care what someone else does with free software beyond making the source available, that is a you problem.
- philistine 2y ago
  Then why is GPL-3 encroaching on what I can do with open source software?
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    Why should anyone care if you find the single stipulation of gpl(any version) to share with the next guy that which was given to you for free, to be intolerable? Even gpl3 isn't "encroaching" on anything. It's terms are no different than any other terms, in that you can either accept or not. No different than if the terms are for money. If you don't agree to them, then luckily you don't have to use the software. You can write your own software that you don't have to share with anyone. Or you can pay for software that has other terms which are surely much more generous and empowering than gpl3. The only reason the software exists and is good enough to be valuable in the first place, is because it had those terms. If it had other terms, it wouldn't exist in the first place or be worth stealing for you complain that it doesn't let you steal it. If it had other terms, then most of the people who gave their time to work on it, would not have done so, because it would be a bad investment of their time. I guess the actual complaint here is "why can't you just give me software like MIT?" Why should anyone care about that complaint? It's like trying to use a freedom argument to criticize the limitation on your freedom to keep slaves.
gamblor956 2y ago
Matt is worth $400 million off the backs of open source developers. He is the big bad in this scenario. He's just mad someone else is also making money.
pointlessone 2y ago
We can only blame ourselves here. We knew that the companies would exploit it all along. Since before Free Software became a thing. Actually, this knowledge is the very ting that started Free Software. And we watched how Open Source came along to cozy up to businesses and bolster adoption. All this time we knew very well that no one’s going to pay for what’s available for free. And even after we’ve seen it happening time and time again we keep insisting that FLOSS is the best thing out there. We’ll have to move on to something else to see a meaningful change. I’d suggest excluding businesses from using software for free. You can keep your collective development, community building, and all the warm fuzzies. But you have to start requiring paid licensing for businesses if you want to stop the exploitation. You simply can not win on the moral basis in a system that has no strong moral aspect to it, such as free market capitalism.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Can someone remind me why large businesses using Free Software is a problem? If they respect the terms of the license and release their changes as Free Software, why do I, as the maintainer, care who uses it? Isn't the entire point of releasing Free Software to maximize user freedom? The only problem that I've been able to see isn't a problem with Free Software as a concept, it's a problem with VC-funded companies that think "Open Source" is a business model that will somehow get their investors an ROI, but that's a problem with the motivations of VC-funded companies, not with Free Software.
  - pointlessone 2y ago
    You’re not wrong but only partially right. Most FLOSS starts as a weekend project. Most end there, too. But some get big. Those big projects demand a lot of time and effort to deal with all the issues, PRs, mailing list/forum/IRC channel/whathave you moderation. So much effort that it in fact becomes another full-time job. Most people don’t know how to deal with that. They probably like what they’ve built, like all the attention, they try to be helpful. The obvious idea is to turn it somehow into a source of income so that they could continue doing what they like and what is obviously in demand. I’m not talking about Reacts, coporate internal projects that get open-sourced. I’m talking about your Linuxes, curls, and WordPresses, for that matter. WP didn’t start as a business. The business part of it came a little later. And now that Matt saw the business is lucrative he does what any business does. And what is incompatible with FLOSS. You’re right pointing out that the entire point of releasing Free Software is to maximize user freedom. But you also have to accept that user freedom is completely incompatible with any sort of sutainable development at scale. It can sort of work for small project that get a bug report every other week but it becomes untenable at a steady rate of half a dozen issues/PRs a day. Basically, unless every FLOSS user is a maintainer of their fork the whole thing falls apart. And let me tell you, ain’t no one got time for that. Most people do not maintain their forks. Some just don’t want to, some don’t have time, but most just don’t have the skill. They either don’t know 120 languages to support every piece of software they use, or don’t have the domain knowledge that spans kernles, file formats, graphics subsystems, web dev, and a billion other things. There’s simply no way to support all the software without maintainers who specialize in that particular language/domain. So we lock in people in those positions, exercise peer pressure/guilt to keep them working and then turn away and say “they just don’t know how to FLOSS”.

beaconify 2y ago

I do see OSS as free labour for Bezos, Altman et. al. and act accoringly. Closed source (but open data formats) may be the new open source.

lolinder 2y ago

Agreed, but Matt is not the innocent and distressed open source maintainer who hit a breaking point, he's the extremely wealthy CEO of a company that brings in hundreds of millions a year in revenue. The CEO who recently tried to extort another large company for tens of millions of dollars per year to be directed to his personal for-profit company. The problem with Open Source as a movement isn't just the megacorps using it, it's also that paying for the project's ongoing development stopped being the goal for many monetization efforts—making the shareholders or the maintainers themselves (or in this case both) wealthy (or in this case even more wealthy) has become the new goal. That is why it's such a problem that these companies don't "give back". Having the software in the world doing its job is no longer the primary goal of starting an open source project, and the "takers" are encroaching on the founders' market cap.

FireBeyond 2y ago

What? WordPress was a fork of B2 and quickly intended to make money. Matt and Automattic bought into WPE. They were the ones who sold their shares to the Private Equity firm that now owns it! The only other board member of the Foundation is ... drum roll ... the Managing Partner of another Private Equity firm, that Matt himself appointed. All his hand wringing about PE is to distract from the simple fact that he has repeatedly been an asshole through this process, and it's not because he "reached his breaking point" as an open source developer. This is so apologistic it's not funny. He reached a breaking point as a CEO, because he made a horrible business decision to buy Tumblr, which has been nothing but a money pit, ever since. Since then, MATT's for profit business has had this boat anchor around it, so he's looking for extra cash. That's why he demanded their royalties be paid to Automattic, his for profit company, not the open source project. > by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future. Horseshit. People with RMS-like visions for the future don't see the commercial potential for an open source project, immediately spin up a Foundation with themselves as President, and immediately grant their own for-profit company a perpetual, exclusive and irrevocable commercial use license for said open source project. (They may however release self-congratulatory press releases talking about how they are champions of open source for assigning ownership of the project to their Foundation while neglecting to mention the licensing that they[1] signed off on, that very same day.) You have apparently fully bought into the narrative. > making angry demands on volunteers and small teams What "angry demands" has WPEngine made of the project? I'd love to hear of at least one. [1] I say 'they' but really, the licensing was signed for the Foundation by "Matt Mullenweg, President", and for Automattic by "Matt Mullenweg, President and CEO".

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Brian_K_White 2y ago

RMS was and still is right. If you care what someone else does with free software beyond making the source available, that is a you problem.

philistine 2y ago
Then why is GPL-3 encroaching on what I can do with open source software?
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  Why should anyone care if you find the single stipulation of gpl(any version) to share with the next guy that which was given to you for free, to be intolerable? Even gpl3 isn't "encroaching" on anything. It's terms are no different than any other terms, in that you can either accept or not. No different than if the terms are for money. If you don't agree to them, then luckily you don't have to use the software. You can write your own software that you don't have to share with anyone. Or you can pay for software that has other terms which are surely much more generous and empowering than gpl3. The only reason the software exists and is good enough to be valuable in the first place, is because it had those terms. If it had other terms, it wouldn't exist in the first place or be worth stealing for you complain that it doesn't let you steal it. If it had other terms, then most of the people who gave their time to work on it, would not have done so, because it would be a bad investment of their time. I guess the actual complaint here is "why can't you just give me software like MIT?" Why should anyone care about that complaint? It's like trying to use a freedom argument to criticize the limitation on your freedom to keep slaves.

gamblor956 2y ago

Matt is worth $400 million off the backs of open source developers. He is the big bad in this scenario. He's just mad someone else is also making money.

pointlessone 2y ago

We can only blame ourselves here. We knew that the companies would exploit it all along. Since before Free Software became a thing. Actually, this knowledge is the very ting that started Free Software. And we watched how Open Source came along to cozy up to businesses and bolster adoption. All this time we knew very well that no one’s going to pay for what’s available for free. And even after we’ve seen it happening time and time again we keep insisting that FLOSS is the best thing out there. We’ll have to move on to something else to see a meaningful change. I’d suggest excluding businesses from using software for free. You can keep your collective development, community building, and all the warm fuzzies. But you have to start requiring paid licensing for businesses if you want to stop the exploitation. You simply can not win on the moral basis in a system that has no strong moral aspect to it, such as free market capitalism.

lolinder 2y ago
Can someone remind me why large businesses using Free Software is a problem? If they respect the terms of the license and release their changes as Free Software, why do I, as the maintainer, care who uses it? Isn't the entire point of releasing Free Software to maximize user freedom? The only problem that I've been able to see isn't a problem with Free Software as a concept, it's a problem with VC-funded companies that think "Open Source" is a business model that will somehow get their investors an ROI, but that's a problem with the motivations of VC-funded companies, not with Free Software.
- pointlessone 2y ago
  You’re not wrong but only partially right. Most FLOSS starts as a weekend project. Most end there, too. But some get big. Those big projects demand a lot of time and effort to deal with all the issues, PRs, mailing list/forum/IRC channel/whathave you moderation. So much effort that it in fact becomes another full-time job. Most people don’t know how to deal with that. They probably like what they’ve built, like all the attention, they try to be helpful. The obvious idea is to turn it somehow into a source of income so that they could continue doing what they like and what is obviously in demand. I’m not talking about Reacts, coporate internal projects that get open-sourced. I’m talking about your Linuxes, curls, and WordPresses, for that matter. WP didn’t start as a business. The business part of it came a little later. And now that Matt saw the business is lucrative he does what any business does. And what is incompatible with FLOSS. You’re right pointing out that the entire point of releasing Free Software is to maximize user freedom. But you also have to accept that user freedom is completely incompatible with any sort of sutainable development at scale. It can sort of work for small project that get a bug report every other week but it becomes untenable at a steady rate of half a dozen issues/PRs a day. Basically, unless every FLOSS user is a maintainer of their fork the whole thing falls apart. And let me tell you, ain’t no one got time for that. Most people do not maintain their forks. Some just don’t want to, some don’t have time, but most just don’t have the skill. They either don’t know 120 languages to support every piece of software they use, or don’t have the domain knowledge that spans kernles, file formats, graphics subsystems, web dev, and a billion other things. There’s simply no way to support all the software without maintainers who specialize in that particular language/domain. So we lock in people in those positions, exercise peer pressure/guilt to keep them working and then turn away and say “they just don’t know how to FLOSS”.