9 ms·
Campsite switches to Creative Commons Non-Commercial license
- gnabgib 2y agoRelated: Campsite Is Winding Down (2 points, 23 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42480734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42480734 Welcoming Campsite's Founders to the Notion Team (2 points, 24 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42475934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42475934 Realizing the dream of good workplace software (33 points, 3 months ago, 28 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41805009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41805009 Show HN: Campsite – Posts, calls, docs, and chat in one app (6 points, 5 months ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182414
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thunderbong 2y ago> This codebase is available as-is and is not actively maintained by the Campsite team
- notatoad 2y agosee also https://www.campsite.com/blog/campsite-winding-down https://www.campsite.com/blog/campsite-winding-down sounds like there won't be a team to maintain it.
- mirzap 2y agoI don't understand why they wouldn't license it under an open-source software (OSS) license if they are closing the business anyway. This would be a great opportunity to foster a community around the project. Without an OSS license, it's unlikely that anyone will invest time and submit pull requests (PRs) to a non-OSS project.
- seu 2y agoMost probably as part of the agreement of being bought by Notion, to prevent competition.
- demarq 2y ago> We welcome forks of this repository for use in non-commercial projects. This should be reconsidered to something a little more permissive
- phoronixrly 2y agoI disagree
- denysvitali 2y agoWhy?
- phoronixrly 2y agoI provided on purpose exactly as much motivation as the comment I responded to.
- compootr 2y agodo we need a KilledByNotion list /hj? notion bought skiff and that burnt me
- panja 2y agoYeah I'm pretty over the building cool things solely to sell it off pipeline
- gherkinnn 2y agoI just read the Skiff announcement and they give you a very tight deadline for email forwarding. Good thing I'm too bitter and jaded to get in to any new saas offering, especially new and hip ones. This can't burn me. Anymore.
- edoceo 2y agoFool me eight or more times, shame on me.
- abetusk 2y agoCampsite is not open source. From the LICENSE file on the repo [0]: > Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International [0] https://github.com/campsite/campsite/blob/dae5db8611e8adc0571777c9272ab6165eea8f76/LICENSE https://github.com/campsite/campsite/blob/dae5db8611e8adc057...
- ternaryoperator 2y agoCreative Commons isn't a bar to being open source, but the Non-Commercial part certainly is. Definitely not OSS.
- mcmcmc 2y agoIf the source code is publicly available, that is open source. What you mean is that it is not FOSS.
- RobotToaster 2y agoIt doesn't meet the open source definition point 6, since it discriminates against fields of endeavour https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd (possibly point 5 as well, if a commercial entity counts as a "group of people")
- 47282847 2y agoA typical distinction is „source available“ or „public source“ vs „open source“ (no restrictions on use other than potentially keeping the openness intact and attribution).
- novemp 2y agoNooo I can't make money off of other people's work! This is an affront to FOSS!
- razemio 2y agoIt is a 100% not open-source. It won't be maintained besides pull-requests AND if another company or individual develops this further, it can not be used commercially by anybody else but the company who released this. It this fair? Open source goes both ways.
- spencerflem 2y agoThey have given us a gift with the code being availabile as it is. It would be fair for them to have released nothing. I do think its a shame that it can't legally be combined with GPL'd free software
- pessimizer 2y agoIt's a nice sentiment, but irrelevant. The code is not open source, they should not say that it is. Open source code can be used commercially.
- egeozcan 2y agoThat part is fair but they should have said something like "shared source", or "source available". "Open source" means something specific to a lot of people. You may have issues with how OSI operates (I do too!) but let's not muddy things further.
- razemio 2y agoYou misunderstood me. I am grateful they are sharing the source code for review. My problem is with the wording. Open source means something different by definition. If they leave this project in the dust and someone else continues to maintain it, because he depends on it, this would be illegal and they could sue if they want years later. With open source this can not happen to you. It is a huge difference.
- 2y ago
- seymores 2y agoToilet paper for laptop?
- alexvitkov 2y agoHow exactly do you use what looks like work-planning software non-commerically? As for the license, it's their code and they can release it under whatever license they want, but they obviously shouldn't call it open source. Usually companies do this sort of thing to take advantage FOSS's reputation, but in this case it just looks like ignorance to me.
- Juliate 2y agoThe Non-Commercial provision of the license is towards the app/code, not what the app is used for by end users. You would not be able to install it and sell users right to use it, but you would be able to install it in-house for your own employees.
- alexvitkov 2y agoIf that's what the license says, fair enough, but that's not how I parsed it. This is not a software-specific license so it's not as clear as say the GPL, where there's very explicit language for source code, object code, compilation, execution, distribution, ... Here's an excerpt from the license: - 1. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Public License, the Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed Material to: - A. reproduce and Share the Licensed Material, in whole or in part, for NonCommercial purposes only; and - B. produce, reproduce, and Share Adapted Material for NonCommercial purposes only. I don't understand what I'm reading in the slightest, I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole. I can "produce", "reproduce" and "share" the licensed material. I'm definitely not sharing it, so if "running the code" is allowed at all, it must fall under the "produce" or "reproduce" categories. The text is pretty clear that you can only "produce" and "reproduce" it for NonCommercial purposes as well, so what does that leave me with?
- spencerflem 2y agoYeah, I'm with you. CC is not well suited for something that can be run - unlike an image or music where its pretty clear what's happening when you use it.
- _def 2y agoI hadn't come across this yet, interesting idea, and something I had wished for in the past. Ultimately I realized google groups already is something you can easily use - the bigger (social) problem is that not everyone is comfortable with text communication.
- j5155 2y agoCampsite team, if you happen to be reading this: consider whether a more permissive license still meeting the FOSS definition, like GPL or AGPL, would better fit your needs. GPL means that anyone who modifies the source code, or integrates it into a larger work, has to release the modified version. So this would ensure that everyone’s contributions continue to help the wider community. As a side effect, it would also prevent anyone from using your work without releasing the source code for their project or product, benefitting open source as a whole. The choice is obviously ultimately yours. I personally didn’t realize the benefits of GPL until recently.
- dindresto 2y agoYou may also want to consider the EUPL, which is OSI approved and despite the name not limited to the EU. https://eupl.eu/ https://eupl.eu/ https://discourse.writefreesoftware.org/t/eupl-a-better-choice-for-european-citizens/43 https://discourse.writefreesoftware.org/t/eupl-a-better-choi...
- ensignavenger 2y agoI would prefer a more permissive license, such as MIT or Apache. Zulip is similar software, produced by a commercial company, and it is MIT licensed. The primary reason for this is that it isn't always clear with copyleft licenses where the boundary is between being a new separate work that uses the GPL software API, or when it is a derivative work of the GPL software. Also, as they are shutting down, there isn't really any reason for them to worry about some one else using the code in a permissive way. (That being said, a copyleft license is miles ahead of the CC NC license for software!)
- normie3000 2y ago> GPL means that anyone who modifies the source code, or integrates it into a larger work, has to release the modified version. Is this accurate? I thought GPL only required distributing the source alongside binaries. If you're running GPL code as a web service, I don't think there's a requirement to release the source to your users.
- 2y ago
- decide1000 2y agoThe license can be discussed here https://github.com/campsite/campsite/issues/15 https://github.com/campsite/campsite/issues/15
- briandear 2y agoThanks Campfire team for doing this. It’s great to be able to see the thinking around how something like this was built.
- Lio 2y ago> Thanks Campfire team for doing this. Now that's an interesting comment. This product is called Campsite not Campfire but I was confused by that myself. I'd not heard of Campsite before but it sounds like it might have been in the same problem space as 37 Signal's old Campfire product. Does anyone have any more background and if the two are related?
- briandear 2y agolol, I meant Campsite. I did love the original Campfire from 37 Signals though. Freudian slip on my part.
- vergessenmir 2y agoHah, more license confusion! It is a good learning resource for those wanting to see how such a codebase works. I do think they should have opened the repository as read-only and that may align more with the educational intent. "We will only consider pull requests and issues regarding self-hosting or critical fixes. " Having this makes the messaging a bit confusing. You will accept improvements and bug fixes which we can use commercially but you can't - Did I read that right?
- skrebbel 2y agoThey went from Show HN to bust in 5 months: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182414 I really wonder how that happened. Was there like no traction whatsoever? 5 months doesn't seem like an awfully long amount of time to give a product a chance.
- maccard 2y agoI read it as an acquihire-of-sorts - https://www.notion.com/blog/welcoming-campsites-founders-to-the-notion-team https://www.notion.com/blog/welcoming-campsites-founders-to-... Some people want to be founders, others want to solve a specific problem. There are definitely ideas I have that if I was offered a salary to solve them from a company I would take it rather than found to solve the problem.
- cyxxon 2y agoSeems like an aqcui-hire from Notion is the answer here: https://www.notion.com/blog/welcoming-campsites-founders-to-the-notion-team https://www.notion.com/blog/welcoming-campsites-founders-to-...
- syrjir 2y agoThey've been going for years
- killingtime74 2y ago5/12 years?
- milliams 2y agoWhat's Campsite? Nothing here describes it.
- felipemesquita 2y agoA creatively named basecamp.com competitor
- myself248 2y agoBasecamp looks like some sort of project management workflow thing? Okay. So neither one is related to the outdoors at all.
- fevangelou 2y agoWith so many "critical" dependencies, it probably cost more to operate. No wonder it got "acquired" by Notion.
- pikseladam 2y agoToo many services to pay for just to try it.
- foxhop 2y agoI don't like lawyers so I use public domain. Also code is like math which is public domain.
- rswail 2y agoWhich doesn't exist in some jurisdictions. Or at least the right to put something into the public domain. Same with moral rights of the creator. Code is explicitly not like math. There's been half a century of case law about it.
- gus_massa 2y agoMIT or BSD are pretty close and they don't have the problems of public domain that is not recognized in some countries.
- felipemesquita 2y agoI understand the concern with calling something licensed with CC BY-NC “open source”, but I’m very interested in reading the complete source of a modern comercial app. It’s rare that we get to see the complete picture of something that has many paying customers like this, and I’m thankful for the Campsite team for sharing it.
- rswail 2y agoSo the license makes it more like a tombstone of the source. It can't be used except for non-commerical use, whatever that means.
- paxys 2y agoPeople complaining about the license are missing this - https://www.notion.com/blog/welcoming-campsites-founders-to-the-notion-team https://www.notion.com/blog/welcoming-campsites-founders-to-... Notion bought the company. They have no reason to want the product to actually be open source, because they'd just be helping a potential competitor.
- jsiepkes 2y agoSo Campsite got acqui-hired by Notion, tells their customers in a blog [1] something along the lines: "Thanks for all the fish, you've got 2 months to migrate to something else.". They could have open sourced it in a way which would have allowed customers to atleast maintain their own install. But instead they release it under a license which says "non-commercial". So even if you were to export your own data you can't even self-host it. It seems to me rug pulls such as these are bad for the entire industry. Why would you invest in these kind of products if there is real chance you'll get rug-pulled? [1] https://www.campsite.com/blog/campsite-winding-down https://www.campsite.com/blog/campsite-winding-down
- ensignavenger 2y agoWhich is why strongly favoring products that are already real open source is the best business decision.
- cwbuilds 2y agoIs there an 'open source Slack' type thing anywhere? This is the closest I've found- https://mattermost.com/ https://mattermost.com/
- srid 2y agoIf you are willing to explore a hybrid model of chat, there is Zulip: https://github.com/zulip/zulip https://github.com/zulip/zulip
- ensignavenger 2y agoZulip is another one, mentioned in a sibling comment. Matrix/Element is used by some companies. Nextcloud Chat exists, but I don't know much about it.
- Ruthalas 2y agoI think the Nextcloud offering is called "Nextcloud Talk", for anyone wanting to check that out.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- perfmode 2y agoIt’s cool to see a recent Rails codebase in the wild. This’ll be helpful as a guide for me this year while I’m ramping up.
- throawayonthe 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoEvery README should explain what the software actually is. "an open source version of the Campsite app" tells me absolute nothing — what IS the Campsite app? I would have submitted a PR with a fix, but the README also states they wouldn't accept such a PR anyway.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- robinhood 2y agoI'm glad the founders have found a way out. This is key when launching a product that never really took off. However, I never understood why this product existed in the first place. I'll probably get downvoted to oblivion, but to me, it represents exactly the type of software people from Silicon Valley would release: products disconnected from the needs of real companies, not the fancy unicorns. This is represented by this sentence on the marketing website: "The new standard for...". For future companies: before claiming to be the new standard, please be the new standard in the first place. That being said, for educational purposes, making the code publicly available is a nice gesture and I see a lot of values. I wish more companies would do that so the industry as a whole learn from the talents of others - because yes, these people are incredibly talented.