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> For the flagship product of a company, especially a VC-funded company, not starting open source is the ethical thing to do. I can't even.. Seriously, I don'

> For the flagship product of a company, especially a VC-funded company, not starting open source is the ethical thing to do. I can't even.. Seriously, I don't understand where your argument is coming from. Because, if you look at it from the greater good perspective, commercial open-source is one of the only venues to build high quality software that can be freely self-hosted, modified and built-upon. Yet, you basically push for people building closed source software, due to what I understand is dogmatic believe of what open-source should mean. > If you make a license that actually discriminates on user or use case, then it's not open source. Based on a definition, bought and sponsored by the hyperscaler lobbies. Why the hell would discriminating against hyperscaller selling the product makes it non "open-source". 99.9999% users of open-source are not hyperscaler wanting to host and sell the product and will get value from the project.

jchw 1y ago
Firstly, no it wasn't. The history of the open source definition and OSI are interesting, including hijacking a term that was already in use, but the hyperscalers had nothing to do with it. I'll avoid restating Wikipedia, it's enough to say that's not right. Secondly, you can call it whatever you want but "open source" licenses that discriminate against user and use case are useless. Even if I just want to use something like a data structure implementation from your "open source" release in some unrelated project, I now have to inherit all of this baggage about your competitors. That just doesn't make any sense. The endgame of that is an ecosystem of open source that ultimately serves absolutely nobody except for maybe startup PR needs.
- resiros 1y ago
  > The endgame of that is an ecosystem of open source that ultimately serves absolutely nobody except for maybe startup PR needs. We self-host n8n, which by definition not open-source, and love it. It serves us. Not just n8n PR. That is the case for almost all self served products for non-commercial reasons
  - jchw 1y ago
    This is extremely confusing. I'm just talking about how it would harm the open source ecosystem if we allowed things that were not open source to be advertised as open source (and how it's bad when something is unopened after people start relying on it being open). I am not claiming that only open source software is good for society. Like, I don't really think it's a coincidence that GNU, DSFG and OSI all remain in relative agreement for decades over what makes something truly free or open source. They weren't all bought and sold by hyperscalers. There's reasons for the freedoms that are required to meet the definitions. On the other hand, I think you can release shared source and closed source software that is still plenty useful and beneficial. For example, I am a very big fan of how Unreal Engine is licensed. Yes, it isn't "open source" and it isn't marketed as such. You can't take Unreal Engine components and go use them elsewhere even if you're not competing with Epic Games. Still, they provide some extremely powerful and useful software free of charge to basically all independent game developers. I think that's fantastic. But that's all aside from what open source is. Unreal Engine isn't open source and it doesn't do anything for the open source ecosystem. Which is fine, because the entire world doesn't revolve around open source.
    - echelon 1y ago
      "fair source" is one of the new nomenclatures for software with source available that is anti-hyperscaler.
Spivak 1y ago
There is clearly a tension here where a bunch of people want to call their software open source without actually believing in what open source actually means. And this is absurd because it is betraying the fact that it's a marketing term. It seems like a bunch of startups realize that if they're trying to market to certain kinds of developers, if the software isn't open source, they won't touch it. You seem to believe that we shouldn't create closed source software but at the same time directly advocating for it—that's what it is that's what you're describing. If you want a more practical and less idealistic reason why it sucks when software companies prevent people like AWS from using their software, it's because the actual users of your software, the customers of AWS, wish to pay AWS to host it for them. They would like to hire the lovely folks who work at AWS to host and manage the software for them and the license prevents that. You are preventing your users from doing what they want with the software. And that's the rub, that's why it's important to not discriminate based off of use.
- echelon 1y ago
  Open source means Amazon pillages you and takes your margin. Period. That just isn't going to work anymore. The hyperscalers know this and they want you to keep building software this way. They'll write a managed version of your thing and collect all your money. Fair source would be "customers can use this in an unlimited way as long as they don't sell a managed version". That's what we need to do. Carve out the ability to make money for the originators doing the work. Open source has turned us all into serfs working on giant kingdoms we don't own. NOTE ALSO, the OSI has been so corporate captured that their definition of open source AI is not at all open. You shouldn't trust them at all.
  - Spivak 1y ago
    I find it odd that lots of people talk about the OSI being corporate captured but I don't defer to them as to what 'counts'. I couldn't care less what the OSI does or approves of. Any software that grants users the four freedoms is Open Source—it's the same criteria to be Free Software which is decidedly not at all corporate captured and hasn't ever changed. The very first freedom of Free Software the freedom to run it for any purpose. It's not some small detail.

jchw 1y ago

Firstly, no it wasn't. The history of the open source definition and OSI are interesting, including hijacking a term that was already in use, but the hyperscalers had nothing to do with it. I'll avoid restating Wikipedia, it's enough to say that's not right. Secondly, you can call it whatever you want but "open source" licenses that discriminate against user and use case are useless. Even if I just want to use something like a data structure implementation from your "open source" release in some unrelated project, I now have to inherit all of this baggage about your competitors. That just doesn't make any sense. The endgame of that is an ecosystem of open source that ultimately serves absolutely nobody except for maybe startup PR needs.

resiros 1y ago
> The endgame of that is an ecosystem of open source that ultimately serves absolutely nobody except for maybe startup PR needs. We self-host n8n, which by definition not open-source, and love it. It serves us. Not just n8n PR. That is the case for almost all self served products for non-commercial reasons
- jchw 1y ago
  This is extremely confusing. I'm just talking about how it would harm the open source ecosystem if we allowed things that were not open source to be advertised as open source (and how it's bad when something is unopened after people start relying on it being open). I am not claiming that only open source software is good for society. Like, I don't really think it's a coincidence that GNU, DSFG and OSI all remain in relative agreement for decades over what makes something truly free or open source. They weren't all bought and sold by hyperscalers. There's reasons for the freedoms that are required to meet the definitions. On the other hand, I think you can release shared source and closed source software that is still plenty useful and beneficial. For example, I am a very big fan of how Unreal Engine is licensed. Yes, it isn't "open source" and it isn't marketed as such. You can't take Unreal Engine components and go use them elsewhere even if you're not competing with Epic Games. Still, they provide some extremely powerful and useful software free of charge to basically all independent game developers. I think that's fantastic. But that's all aside from what open source is. Unreal Engine isn't open source and it doesn't do anything for the open source ecosystem. Which is fine, because the entire world doesn't revolve around open source.
  - echelon 1y ago
    "fair source" is one of the new nomenclatures for software with source available that is anti-hyperscaler.

Spivak 1y ago

There is clearly a tension here where a bunch of people want to call their software open source without actually believing in what open source actually means. And this is absurd because it is betraying the fact that it's a marketing term. It seems like a bunch of startups realize that if they're trying to market to certain kinds of developers, if the software isn't open source, they won't touch it. You seem to believe that we shouldn't create closed source software but at the same time directly advocating for it—that's what it is that's what you're describing. If you want a more practical and less idealistic reason why it sucks when software companies prevent people like AWS from using their software, it's because the actual users of your software, the customers of AWS, wish to pay AWS to host it for them. They would like to hire the lovely folks who work at AWS to host and manage the software for them and the license prevents that. You are preventing your users from doing what they want with the software. And that's the rub, that's why it's important to not discriminate based off of use.

echelon 1y ago
Open source means Amazon pillages you and takes your margin. Period. That just isn't going to work anymore. The hyperscalers know this and they want you to keep building software this way. They'll write a managed version of your thing and collect all your money. Fair source would be "customers can use this in an unlimited way as long as they don't sell a managed version". That's what we need to do. Carve out the ability to make money for the originators doing the work. Open source has turned us all into serfs working on giant kingdoms we don't own. NOTE ALSO, the OSI has been so corporate captured that their definition of open source AI is not at all open. You shouldn't trust them at all.
- Spivak 1y ago
  I find it odd that lots of people talk about the OSI being corporate captured but I don't defer to them as to what 'counts'. I couldn't care less what the OSI does or approves of. Any software that grants users the four freedoms is Open Source—it's the same criteria to be Free Software which is decidedly not at all corporate captured and hasn't ever changed. The very first freedom of Free Software the freedom to run it for any purpose. It's not some small detail.