5 ms·

Yes, charity. That's exactly what these trillion dollar empires think of those open source maintainers. Microsoft pulled this same stunt multiple times on os ma

by siva7 2y ago

Yes, charity. That's exactly what these trillion dollar empires think of those open source maintainers. Microsoft pulled this same stunt multiple times on os maintainers.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pknerd 2y ago
What else can you expect from the company that was founded by Gates?(Ref, SCP,QDOS, IBM)
echelon 2y ago
Open source has been hijacked by trillion dollar hyperscalers. It's time we switch to "fair source" or "equitable source". Put MAU/DAU/ARR/market cap limits in your license. Open to everyone with a market cap under $1B or revenues under $100M. All others, please see our "business@" email. Place viral terms like the AGPL that requires that all other systems touched by your code to be open - especially the backend/server components that typically remain hidden. We're giving away power to these companies for free, and they use their scale and reach to turn our software into a larger moat that ensnares us and taxes us in everything else we do. Your contribution of open source in one area might bubble up as Microsoft or Google's ability to control what you see or how you distribute software to customers. It's intangible and hard to describe these insane advantages and network effects big players like this have to lay people, but I know we as software engineers understand this. Open source has been weaponized against us. They get free labor and use our work to tax us, pin us down, out compete us, and control us. We need to fight back.
- ashoeafoot 2y ago
  Those companies can produce legal abstraction hacking solutions faster then you can develop shielding ones. You needs something poisonous ,costing money or work with each usage preventing mass adoption without a complete rewrite .
  - NoTeslaThrow 2y ago
    Open source will inevitably succeed, but only in the long run. In the short term VC (or tech giant) cash will dominate any conversation. There's absolutely nothing you can legally do from preventing reimplementation (which is a good thing, because it means over the long term we will reimplement everything as free software).
- davidcatalano 2y ago
  Yes when projects like Alpine Linux are in the ropes due to lack of funding something needs to change.
  - dman 2y ago
    Wait what? I didnt realize this was the case and I say this as a huge alpine fan. Will look into whether there is an option to setup a recurring donation and will do so if its the case.
- immibis 2y ago
  There was already a term - "free software". "Open source" was literally created as a corporation-safe neutered form of "free software".
  - WD-42 2y ago
    It still boggles my mind that people don't understand this. The FUD and misinformation that's been spreading about the GPL and the FSF the last decade almost seems like an intentional campaign brought on by exactly those who benefit from you using a "permissive" license the most.
    - trelane 2y ago
      The key is that "permissive" is passive voice. It's more permissive for corporations in that they are allowed to use it to tie their customers even tighter to them. Compare this with "restrictive" (for corporations) AKA "copyleft" which ensures that users' freedom is maintained, by restricting how corporations can limit them. It's very akin to the paradox of tolerance.
      - pabs3 2y ago
        Some folks are now calling them pushover licenses instead of permissive licenses.
        WD-42 2y ago
        I love this
- bradgessler 2y ago
  I did this with https://terminalwire.com/ https://terminalwire.com/ I’m still tweaking the execution of the license, but in principle my thinking is, “if you’re using my software to make money, and you’re making a lot of money, you should probably be paying me to use my software”.
- NoTeslaThrow 2y ago
  I don't understand why we don't just lean into the "osi = corporate, copyleft = good faith" model that's worked perfectly well for the last thirty years.
- onefreecomputer 2y ago
  [dead]
- conartist6 2y ago
  That's incompatible with why I do OSS. For me OSS is the ratchet for humanity, the way we fight enshittification and force companies to innovate and compete with each other to make better things. As soon as you abandon that mission and split it into fiefdoms, you're now just the thing that true OSS has to disrupt in order for humanity as a whole to get better software. A shame though it is, helping everybody the same amount is not likely to get your much gratitude from anyone. But that's the job.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  >Open to everyone with a market cap under $1B or revenues under $100M. That would also mirror what they do with tools like Visual Studio, which is free until you hit a certain number of developers or revenue.
- armchairhacker 2y ago
  Then the company just re-implements your project; they have the resources to. Most software isn't hard to reverse-engineer, and most people aren't exceptional; if a group is big enough to create a GPL-licensed product that competes with Microsoft's, they're big enough to create an MIT-licensed product that competes with Microsoft's. I like GP’s comment “don’t discuss anything in private and/or offer priority support without being paid”. Also: - Ensure you get attribution, and support others who deserve attribution - Develop open-source alternatives to paid programs - Donate to others who write open-source I disagree that open-source contributed much to companies becoming so rich. I believe it was more that people gave them (money and) private data, e.g. made posts and interactions that only exist on their locked-down platform. I doubt a lack of open-source and accessible development tools would’ve prevented Google and Facebook; if anything, they would've been founded by richer or more networked people. And it certainly won't prevent them now.
- trelane 2y ago
  We don't need yet another license, especially not a use license. Just use a GPL, the version (LGPL, GPL, or AGPL) depending on what you are concerned with. > Open source has been weaponized against us. This was always going to be the case. We Free Software advocates have been saying this for decades. And you're not even to the most important part: this isn't about you, me, or megacorps. It's about users.
  - alganet 2y ago
    Getting someone who worked on the thing or someone close to the author to be hired by your company and bumped to a high prestige position probably has more effect on law than a license (just an intuition). "Hey, that guy worked with the author, and he was hired and now is a super top dog there... he must be the true genius behind it" I mean that for ideas, not materialized code. You guys are so focused on small text files and miss the big picture sometimes. Licenses are a small angle for those things.
    - trelane 2y ago
      Look up the WRT54g sometime https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/enforcement-strategy.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/enforcement-st...
      - alganet 2y ago
        Is it USA courts only? If it is, it's the same as nothing for people like me. Also, GPL is about source code, not ideas. Source code is not that relevant.
        trelane 2y ago
        The WRT54g led to a variety of user-serviceable firmware worldwide, including dd-wrt and openwrt. It gave, and continues to give, new life to otherwise wifi devices that shipped with a abandoned propeietary software. It was a revolution in wifi router firmware, and still is. It was created because Linksys shipped GPL code to customers but didn't provide the source.

by siva7 2y ago

Yes, charity. That's exactly what these trillion dollar empires think of those open source maintainers. Microsoft pulled this same stunt multiple times on os maintainers.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pknerd 2y ago

What else can you expect from the company that was founded by Gates?(Ref, SCP,QDOS, IBM)

echelon 2y ago

Open source has been hijacked by trillion dollar hyperscalers. It's time we switch to "fair source" or "equitable source". Put MAU/DAU/ARR/market cap limits in your license. Open to everyone with a market cap under $1B or revenues under $100M. All others, please see our "business@" email. Place viral terms like the AGPL that requires that all other systems touched by your code to be open - especially the backend/server components that typically remain hidden. We're giving away power to these companies for free, and they use their scale and reach to turn our software into a larger moat that ensnares us and taxes us in everything else we do. Your contribution of open source in one area might bubble up as Microsoft or Google's ability to control what you see or how you distribute software to customers. It's intangible and hard to describe these insane advantages and network effects big players like this have to lay people, but I know we as software engineers understand this. Open source has been weaponized against us. They get free labor and use our work to tax us, pin us down, out compete us, and control us. We need to fight back.

ashoeafoot 2y ago
Those companies can produce legal abstraction hacking solutions faster then you can develop shielding ones. You needs something poisonous ,costing money or work with each usage preventing mass adoption without a complete rewrite .
- NoTeslaThrow 2y ago
  Open source will inevitably succeed, but only in the long run. In the short term VC (or tech giant) cash will dominate any conversation. There's absolutely nothing you can legally do from preventing reimplementation (which is a good thing, because it means over the long term we will reimplement everything as free software).
davidcatalano 2y ago
Yes when projects like Alpine Linux are in the ropes due to lack of funding something needs to change.
- dman 2y ago
  Wait what? I didnt realize this was the case and I say this as a huge alpine fan. Will look into whether there is an option to setup a recurring donation and will do so if its the case.
immibis 2y ago
There was already a term - "free software". "Open source" was literally created as a corporation-safe neutered form of "free software".
- WD-42 2y ago
  It still boggles my mind that people don't understand this. The FUD and misinformation that's been spreading about the GPL and the FSF the last decade almost seems like an intentional campaign brought on by exactly those who benefit from you using a "permissive" license the most.
  - trelane 2y ago
    The key is that "permissive" is passive voice. It's more permissive for corporations in that they are allowed to use it to tie their customers even tighter to them. Compare this with "restrictive" (for corporations) AKA "copyleft" which ensures that users' freedom is maintained, by restricting how corporations can limit them. It's very akin to the paradox of tolerance.
    - pabs3 2y ago
      Some folks are now calling them pushover licenses instead of permissive licenses.
      - WD-42 2y ago
        I love this
bradgessler 2y ago
I did this with https://terminalwire.com/ https://terminalwire.com/ I’m still tweaking the execution of the license, but in principle my thinking is, “if you’re using my software to make money, and you’re making a lot of money, you should probably be paying me to use my software”.
NoTeslaThrow 2y ago
I don't understand why we don't just lean into the "osi = corporate, copyleft = good faith" model that's worked perfectly well for the last thirty years.
onefreecomputer 2y ago
[dead]
conartist6 2y ago
That's incompatible with why I do OSS. For me OSS is the ratchet for humanity, the way we fight enshittification and force companies to innovate and compete with each other to make better things. As soon as you abandon that mission and split it into fiefdoms, you're now just the thing that true OSS has to disrupt in order for humanity as a whole to get better software. A shame though it is, helping everybody the same amount is not likely to get your much gratitude from anyone. But that's the job.
Mountain_Skies 2y ago
>Open to everyone with a market cap under $1B or revenues under $100M. That would also mirror what they do with tools like Visual Studio, which is free until you hit a certain number of developers or revenue.
armchairhacker 2y ago
Then the company just re-implements your project; they have the resources to. Most software isn't hard to reverse-engineer, and most people aren't exceptional; if a group is big enough to create a GPL-licensed product that competes with Microsoft's, they're big enough to create an MIT-licensed product that competes with Microsoft's. I like GP’s comment “don’t discuss anything in private and/or offer priority support without being paid”. Also: - Ensure you get attribution, and support others who deserve attribution - Develop open-source alternatives to paid programs - Donate to others who write open-source I disagree that open-source contributed much to companies becoming so rich. I believe it was more that people gave them (money and) private data, e.g. made posts and interactions that only exist on their locked-down platform. I doubt a lack of open-source and accessible development tools would’ve prevented Google and Facebook; if anything, they would've been founded by richer or more networked people. And it certainly won't prevent them now.
trelane 2y ago
We don't need yet another license, especially not a use license. Just use a GPL, the version (LGPL, GPL, or AGPL) depending on what you are concerned with. > Open source has been weaponized against us. This was always going to be the case. We Free Software advocates have been saying this for decades. And you're not even to the most important part: this isn't about you, me, or megacorps. It's about users.
- alganet 2y ago
  Getting someone who worked on the thing or someone close to the author to be hired by your company and bumped to a high prestige position probably has more effect on law than a license (just an intuition). "Hey, that guy worked with the author, and he was hired and now is a super top dog there... he must be the true genius behind it" I mean that for ideas, not materialized code. You guys are so focused on small text files and miss the big picture sometimes. Licenses are a small angle for those things.
  - trelane 2y ago
    Look up the WRT54g sometime https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/enforcement-strategy.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/enforcement-st...
    - alganet 2y ago
      Is it USA courts only? If it is, it's the same as nothing for people like me. Also, GPL is about source code, not ideas. Source code is not that relevant.
      - trelane 2y ago
        The WRT54g led to a variety of user-serviceable firmware worldwide, including dd-wrt and openwrt. It gave, and continues to give, new life to otherwise wifi devices that shipped with a abandoned propeietary software. It was a revolution in wifi router firmware, and still is. It was created because Linksys shipped GPL code to customers but didn't provide the source.