5 ms·

> Ariadne Conill, a long-time open-source contributor, observed that corporations using open source had responded with ""regulatory capture of the commons"" ins

by kibwen 1y ago

> Ariadne Conill, a long-time open-source contributor, observed that corporations using open source had responded with ""regulatory capture of the commons"" instead of contributing to the software they depend on. I'm only half-joking when I say that one of the premier selling points of GPL over MIT in this day and age is that it explicitly deters these freeloading multibillion-dollar companies from depending on your software and making demands of your time.

xxpor 1y ago
Why bother open sourcing if you're not interested in getting people to use it?
- itsanaccount 1y ago
  you seem to have mistaken corporations for people.
  - kortilla 1y ago
    You seem to think corporations aren’t made of people
    - dsr_ 1y ago
      Sheds are made of wood, but they aren't trees.
    - eikenberry 1y ago
      Groups of people are not the same as the people that make them up. They think differently and have different motivations.
    - codedokode 1y ago
      Corporations are made of rich stock owners.
- bigfatkitten 1y ago
  So that if they find it useful, they will contribute their own improvements to benefit the project. I don’t think many projects see acquiring unpaying corporate customers as a goal.
- meindnoch 1y ago
  Trillion dollar corporations are not "people".
  - eikenberry 1y ago
    No corporations are people, they are legal constructs. How much money they are worth makes no difference.
- gizmo686 1y ago
  A decent part of my job is open source. Our reason for doing it is simple: we would rather have people who are not us do the work instead of us. On some of our projects this has been a great success. We have some strong outside contributors doing work on our project without us needing to pay them. In some cases, those contributors are from companies that are in direct competition with us. On other projects we've open sourced, we've had people (including competitors) use, without anyone contributing back. Guess which projects stay open source.
  - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
    We have a solution to this. It's called the (L)GPL. If people would stop acting like asking for basic (zero cost) decency in exchange for their gift is tantamount to armed robbery, we could avoid this whole mess.
    - ilc 1y ago
      The GPL doesn't do anything when the project is just used internally by another company. They never trigger the distribution clauses, and they own the copyrights of all the work being done. So if you NEVER distribute binaries outside your company's walls. The GPL is a giant nothing, for most practical cases. That's why we're starting to see the AGPL more now. But even then, for INTERNAL applications. It's still a nothing. The GPL doesn't cure people being greedy. It just changes how they are allowed to be greedy.
- lelandbatey 1y ago
  You can want to be helpful without wanting to have power or responsibility. I'm interested in people (not companies, or at least I don't care about companies) being able to read, reference, learn from, or improve the open source software that I write. It's there if folks want it. I basically never promote it, and as such, it has little uptake. It's still useful though, and I use it, and some friends use it. Hooray. But that's all.
- OkayPhysicist 1y ago
  The GPL does not prohibit anyone from using a piece of software. It exclusively limits the actions of bad faith users. If all people engaged with FOSS in good faith, we wouldn't need licenses, because all most FOSS licenses require of the acceptors is to do a couple of small, free activities that any decent person would do anyway. Thank/give credit to the authors who so graciously allowed you to use their work, and if you make any fixes or improvements, share alike. Security issues like this are a prime example of why all FOSS software should be at least LGPLed. If a security bug is found in FOSS library, who's the more motivated to fix it? The dude who hacked the thing together and gave it away, or the actual users? Requesting that those users share their fixes is farrr from unreasonable, given that they have clearly found great utility in the software.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    GPL doesn't force people to share their fixes and improvements. And there is nothing bad faith about not sharing all your hardwork for free.
    - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
      It does if you then share the resulting software. And I think if you make an improvement just for your own enjoyment, you'd be a better person if you shared it back than if you didn't.
      - ahtihn 1y ago
        A lot of software out there runs on servers and is never shared with users in a manner that matters for GPL.
        jenadine 1y ago
        That's why there is AGPL to fix that "bug" Anyway, the GPL is there to protect final users and not the maintainer of the project. And if a software is running on someone else server, you are not the user of that software. (Although you use the service and give the data, but that's another problem)
- freeone3000 1y ago
  What’s the point in people using it if all that profit ends up in someone else’s pockets?
- ben0x539 1y ago
  When I, as a little child (or at least that is how it feels now), got excited about contributing to open source, it was not the thought that one day my code might help run some giant web platform's infrastructure or ship as part of some AAA videogame codebase that motivated me. The motivation was the idea that my code might be useful to people even with no corporation or business having to be involved!
- timewizard 1y ago
  People can use it. Corporations won't. I'm entirely unbothered by this outcome. This isn't a popularity contest and I'm sick of gamification of literally everything.
- riedel 1y ago
  There is tons of reasons. E.g. public money public code. We are in research and we are open sourcing because we know that we cannot maintain anything, giving people the chance to pick up stuff without having buy stuff that is constantly losing value and becomes abandon ware very soon these days (at this point we often don't even have the resources to open source). So what you most get from us is 'public money crappy unmaintained code'
spott 1y ago
This makes an assumption that a bunch of companies are maintaining their own forks of MIT software with bug fixes and features and not giving it back. I find that hard to believe.
- canyp 1y ago
  Not really. A company that does not bother contributing to a liberally-licensed project will 100% avoid GPL software like the plague. In either case, they won't contribute. In the latter case, they don't get to free-ride like a parasite.
  - ninjin 1y ago
    It is reasonable to assume that this is true. But an equally effective way other than making your license unpalatable to them, is just to say no and state clearly: "Patches or GTFO". Also, have a homepage to link with your (hefty?) consulting rates? I have mentioned this in the past, but there was this weird shift in culture just after 2000 where increasingly open source projects were made to please their users, whether they were corporate or not, and "your project is your CV" became how their maintainers would view their projects. It does not have to be this way and we should (like it seems to be the case with libxml2) maybe try to fix this culture?
    - tzs 1y ago
      > It is reasonable to assume that this is true. But an equally effective way other than making your license unpalatable to them, is just to say no and state clearly: "Patches or GTFO". Also, have a homepage to link with your (hefty?) consulting rates? That's fine for feature requests, but the issue in the present case is bug reports.
      - ninjin 1y ago
        I fail to see how that is different. Ultimately, you have released a piece of software into the wild with a clause stating: "The software is provided 'as is' and the author disclaims all warranties with regard to this software including all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness". Thus, it is purely cultural that somehow others and yourself expect you to cancel your family time on a Saturday night solely because an issue has been found in a piece of software you have given away for free. This "value add" is wearing people out and if we want this expectation to remain, maybe it is time for those profiting or those with a monopoly on violence to explore ways to support those that kindly provide free labour like this?
c2h5oh 1y ago
With SAAS swallowing big chunk of software business GPL is much less effective. There isn't much difference between MIT and GPL unless you are selling a product that runs locally or on premisses and with the latter some companies try to work around GPL by renting servers with software on it - either as physical boxes or something provided on cloud provider marketplace. Look at what you actually have installed on your computer - odds are that unless your job requires something like CAD, photo/video editing or other highly specialized software you have nothing made by large enterprise with exception of OS and Slack/Teams/Zoom.
- toyg 1y ago
  > With SAAS swallowing big chunk of software business GPL is much less effective. Which is why we have the AGPL.
  - indolering 1y ago
    But no LAGPL :(
    - toyg 1y ago
      Is that the one with fake breasts?
tzs 1y ago
From a maintainers point of view there is no difference between someone from a large company reporting a bug and some random hobby programmer reporting a bug.

by kibwen 1y ago

xxpor 1y ago

Why bother open sourcing if you're not interested in getting people to use it?

itsanaccount 1y ago
you seem to have mistaken corporations for people.
- kortilla 1y ago
  You seem to think corporations aren’t made of people
  - dsr_ 1y ago
    Sheds are made of wood, but they aren't trees.
  - eikenberry 1y ago
    Groups of people are not the same as the people that make them up. They think differently and have different motivations.
  - codedokode 1y ago
    Corporations are made of rich stock owners.
bigfatkitten 1y ago
So that if they find it useful, they will contribute their own improvements to benefit the project. I don’t think many projects see acquiring unpaying corporate customers as a goal.
meindnoch 1y ago
Trillion dollar corporations are not "people".
- eikenberry 1y ago
  No corporations are people, they are legal constructs. How much money they are worth makes no difference.
gizmo686 1y ago
A decent part of my job is open source. Our reason for doing it is simple: we would rather have people who are not us do the work instead of us. On some of our projects this has been a great success. We have some strong outside contributors doing work on our project without us needing to pay them. In some cases, those contributors are from companies that are in direct competition with us. On other projects we've open sourced, we've had people (including competitors) use, without anyone contributing back. Guess which projects stay open source.
- OkayPhysicist 1y ago
  We have a solution to this. It's called the (L)GPL. If people would stop acting like asking for basic (zero cost) decency in exchange for their gift is tantamount to armed robbery, we could avoid this whole mess.
  - ilc 1y ago
    The GPL doesn't do anything when the project is just used internally by another company. They never trigger the distribution clauses, and they own the copyrights of all the work being done. So if you NEVER distribute binaries outside your company's walls. The GPL is a giant nothing, for most practical cases. That's why we're starting to see the AGPL more now. But even then, for INTERNAL applications. It's still a nothing. The GPL doesn't cure people being greedy. It just changes how they are allowed to be greedy.
lelandbatey 1y ago
You can want to be helpful without wanting to have power or responsibility. I'm interested in people (not companies, or at least I don't care about companies) being able to read, reference, learn from, or improve the open source software that I write. It's there if folks want it. I basically never promote it, and as such, it has little uptake. It's still useful though, and I use it, and some friends use it. Hooray. But that's all.
OkayPhysicist 1y ago
The GPL does not prohibit anyone from using a piece of software. It exclusively limits the actions of bad faith users. If all people engaged with FOSS in good faith, we wouldn't need licenses, because all most FOSS licenses require of the acceptors is to do a couple of small, free activities that any decent person would do anyway. Thank/give credit to the authors who so graciously allowed you to use their work, and if you make any fixes or improvements, share alike. Security issues like this are a prime example of why all FOSS software should be at least LGPLed. If a security bug is found in FOSS library, who's the more motivated to fix it? The dude who hacked the thing together and gave it away, or the actual users? Requesting that those users share their fixes is farrr from unreasonable, given that they have clearly found great utility in the software.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  GPL doesn't force people to share their fixes and improvements. And there is nothing bad faith about not sharing all your hardwork for free.
  - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
    It does if you then share the resulting software. And I think if you make an improvement just for your own enjoyment, you'd be a better person if you shared it back than if you didn't.
    - ahtihn 1y ago
      A lot of software out there runs on servers and is never shared with users in a manner that matters for GPL.
      - jenadine 1y ago
        That's why there is AGPL to fix that "bug" Anyway, the GPL is there to protect final users and not the maintainer of the project. And if a software is running on someone else server, you are not the user of that software. (Although you use the service and give the data, but that's another problem)
freeone3000 1y ago
What’s the point in people using it if all that profit ends up in someone else’s pockets?
ben0x539 1y ago
When I, as a little child (or at least that is how it feels now), got excited about contributing to open source, it was not the thought that one day my code might help run some giant web platform's infrastructure or ship as part of some AAA videogame codebase that motivated me. The motivation was the idea that my code might be useful to people even with no corporation or business having to be involved!
timewizard 1y ago
People can use it. Corporations won't. I'm entirely unbothered by this outcome. This isn't a popularity contest and I'm sick of gamification of literally everything.
riedel 1y ago
There is tons of reasons. E.g. public money public code. We are in research and we are open sourcing because we know that we cannot maintain anything, giving people the chance to pick up stuff without having buy stuff that is constantly losing value and becomes abandon ware very soon these days (at this point we often don't even have the resources to open source). So what you most get from us is 'public money crappy unmaintained code'

spott 1y ago

This makes an assumption that a bunch of companies are maintaining their own forks of MIT software with bug fixes and features and not giving it back. I find that hard to believe.

canyp 1y ago
Not really. A company that does not bother contributing to a liberally-licensed project will 100% avoid GPL software like the plague. In either case, they won't contribute. In the latter case, they don't get to free-ride like a parasite.
- ninjin 1y ago
  It is reasonable to assume that this is true. But an equally effective way other than making your license unpalatable to them, is just to say no and state clearly: "Patches or GTFO". Also, have a homepage to link with your (hefty?) consulting rates? I have mentioned this in the past, but there was this weird shift in culture just after 2000 where increasingly open source projects were made to please their users, whether they were corporate or not, and "your project is your CV" became how their maintainers would view their projects. It does not have to be this way and we should (like it seems to be the case with libxml2) maybe try to fix this culture?
  - tzs 1y ago
    > It is reasonable to assume that this is true. But an equally effective way other than making your license unpalatable to them, is just to say no and state clearly: "Patches or GTFO". Also, have a homepage to link with your (hefty?) consulting rates? That's fine for feature requests, but the issue in the present case is bug reports.
    - ninjin 1y ago
      I fail to see how that is different. Ultimately, you have released a piece of software into the wild with a clause stating: "The software is provided 'as is' and the author disclaims all warranties with regard to this software including all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness". Thus, it is purely cultural that somehow others and yourself expect you to cancel your family time on a Saturday night solely because an issue has been found in a piece of software you have given away for free. This "value add" is wearing people out and if we want this expectation to remain, maybe it is time for those profiting or those with a monopoly on violence to explore ways to support those that kindly provide free labour like this?

c2h5oh 1y ago

With SAAS swallowing big chunk of software business GPL is much less effective. There isn't much difference between MIT and GPL unless you are selling a product that runs locally or on premisses and with the latter some companies try to work around GPL by renting servers with software on it - either as physical boxes or something provided on cloud provider marketplace. Look at what you actually have installed on your computer - odds are that unless your job requires something like CAD, photo/video editing or other highly specialized software you have nothing made by large enterprise with exception of OS and Slack/Teams/Zoom.

toyg 1y ago
> With SAAS swallowing big chunk of software business GPL is much less effective. Which is why we have the AGPL.
- indolering 1y ago
  But no LAGPL :(
  - toyg 1y ago
    Is that the one with fake breasts?

tzs 1y ago

From a maintainers point of view there is no difference between someone from a large company reporting a bug and some random hobby programmer reporting a bug.