20 ms·

Bear is now source-available

• jilles 1y ago
  I didn’t know this was a Django application. Love that. Totally understand the author’s point of view, too.
• cinericius 1y ago
  As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source, and they'll get very upset at you if you claim it is. I'd like to see some recognition from this crowd of the "free-ride competition" problem as this author puts it. What Herman is doing is a service to us all, and we should find a term (better than 'source-available', which is cold and doesn't capture community projects accurately) that people can promote themselves under without much weeping and gnashing of teeth. EDIT from a comment in a thread way down, that summarises my point: I argue that the natural winner-take-all dynamics of the marketplace are not beneficial to the the mission of free and open source software. In fact, having no safeguard against large organisations making money this way is actually hugely detrimental to the mission by enabling these companies to ensnare unsuspecting users in a web of both their own proprietary software as well as all that free and open source software has to offer.
  • omnicognate 1y ago
    > As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source Isn't this what the AGPL is for? That's an OSI approved "open source" license that places restrictions on people making the software accessible as a network service.
    • echoangle 1y ago
      AGPL doesn't really prevent Amazon from making it an AWS offering unless they want to modify the program and don't want to share the modifications.
      • jdxcode 1y ago
        Another reason is that copyleft licenses are kryptonite in large organizations.
      • omnicognate 1y ago
        Why would I want to stop them making it available as a network service except as a way of circumventing the copyleft by effectively distributing it without actually distributing it (which AIUI the AGPL fixes)? If you want to place restrictions on how people are allowed to use the software then A) I don't see the relevance of AWS as a special case, and B) go ahead but don't imply the "open source crowd" are being unreasonable by not considering it open source.
        • account42 1y ago
          You'd want to stop them if like in TFA you don't actually want to provide open source software but rather want to sell your software as a service with free marketing from being "open source".
      • Arrowmaster 1y ago
        It doesn't in an indirect way. A friend that worked for Amazon about 5 years ago told me they were even allowed to look at AGPL codebases on the clock because the lawyers were so afraid of it.
    • cinericius 1y ago
      Not a lawyer, but my understanding is there is a strong feeling that AGPL can be roughly ignored if a service provider provides some level of indirection (e.g. a proxy) between the user and the software. Then, the software is somehow not being accessed over a network and thus they are not required to release the source.
      • barnabee 1y ago
        I have a strong feeling that speaking to a lawyer might reveal that to be untrue
        • gpm 1y ago
          I have a strong feeling you would be told "we don't know, it's never been tested in court, there's a chance you would win and a chance you would lose on that argument".
          • swiftcoder 1y ago
            Yeah, but lawyers say that about just about everything
      • shakna 1y ago
        Not just a level of indirection. The "substantial features" of the code need to not be directly exposed. So if you had some AGPL OCR tool you were using, you could use it, but not in a way the user sees that text. Generate audio from it and expose the sound? Probably fine.
        • gpm 1y ago
          My understanding of the theory that they're advocating is that the AGPL requires that when you modify AGPL software you modify it to provide an offer of its source. And that you can comply with that completely, run the software, and then have a proxy in front that strips that offer without violating the letter of the license. And if that theory works I think "substantial features" of the code could be directly (but for the indirection of that proxy) exposed.
    • ahartmetz 1y ago
      I thought so, too, at first. But there's a crucial difference: With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying. With the Bear license, Bear's competition just cannot offer the software as a service. It feels mostly in the spirit of FOSS to me, but Stallman would disagree. He has made it clear that there should be no restrictions on use.
      • jakelazaroff 1y ago
        > With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying. Technically true, but in practice almost every tech company forbids GPL code. I bet if you re-read your employment contract closely you'll find that you agreed not to introduce any GPL code into the company's codebases. (Edited for clarity).
        • josephcsible 1y ago
          This can't possibly be true, since the Linux kernel's code is GPL and approximately every tech company uses Linux.
          • jakelazaroff 1y ago
            By "use GPL code" I mean integrate it into a company codebase (which would require the codebase to be licensed as GPL). Edited my original comment to clarify.
            • pabs3 1y ago
              Phones contain Linux, TVs contain Linux, cars contain Linux, clouds contain Linux. It is used everywhere.
              • heavyset_go 1y ago
                Companies that follow the law will release their changes to the Linux kernel when they distribute their products to users. Just using Linux is not enough to say anything built with it is a combined product in the eyes of the GPL, the license is pretty specific about what it considers a derivative work. For example, you can ship closed source apps and OS on top of Linux so long as you respect the license.
    • happymellon 1y ago
      I think the problem that these folks have is that AGPL still allows other people to host the software. They want to seem altruistic but want to also be the only provider. GPL would have been a better initial license, and AGPL would have been the next logical step to ensure that changes that hosted services make can come back to the original version. I'm not entirely sure what they were hoping to get by making an extremely permissive licensed piece of software, but competition doesn't appear to be it.
      • tptacek 1y ago
        They care that other people can sell the software, not that other people can use the software, which is why the license they use makes that distinction.
        • cxr 1y ago
          This is a confusing claim. Are you saying the chosen license (<https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/998e87263248d21c8c5b967de0047b0cdf4dc11c/LICENSE.md https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/998e87263248...>) makes the software free to use to offer (e.g. gratis) "hosted or managed service[s]" so long as one does not sell the services? This is trivially confirmed not to be true. It prohibits all use of the software to provide services, not just a prohibition on selling them.
      • mynameisvlad 1y ago
        > They want to seem altruistic but want to also be the only provider. This is an overly negative take. At the end of the day, they are still providing software and the source code free to use for practically every purpose except directly competing with them. That's still altruistic while also being sensible in the real world rather than an ideal.
        • foxglacier 1y ago
          Not for practically every purpose. It's a blog platform to be used by services that provide blog hosting, just like his own business does, so any use of it would be directly competing with him. From TFA, he never wanted people to actually use it, just to look at the source code.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • jakelazaroff 1y ago
    Most people have no problem with non-open source software. The gnashing of teeth comes in when projects like Terraform become successful specifically because they're open source, and then the maintainer changes to a closed source license that would have prevented the project from being successful in the first place. Doubly so when they relicense outside contributors' work with a closed source license because those contributors signed a CLA.
    • arp242 1y ago
      Quite a few people commenting here are having problems with it in the case of Bearblog though, including some pretty wild accusations. And lets be real here: https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/graphs/contributors https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/graphs/contributo... Looking at the details of that, the only two (small) substantial code changes from other people are "User can delete their own account" from 2020, and "Use cloudflare online dns api to perform domain check" from 2021.
      • jinzo 1y ago
        If we are real, it's also quite clear that contributions are not accepted at least from 2023. And the Readme talked about the project not meant to be self-hosted in the past. I have no horse in the race, just think that maybe this project is not a good measure of contributions.
      • jakelazaroff 1y ago
        > Quite a few people commenting here are having problems with it in the case of Bearblog though, including some pretty wild accusations. That's why I said "most people" (of which I think HN commenters are not a representative sample) rather than "nobody" :)
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • _puk 1y ago
      Sounds like we need a "forever open source" license. A commitment that any significant derivative retain the original (or some later version) of the original license. "Free to do whatever as long as it retains this license. A commitment that this license will not change, even by the original author". No special cases, just a blanket license for all derivatives. If it exists, what are the barriers to adoption? Why don't we all use it?
  • supriyo-biswas 1y ago
    The weird part is that these companies/individuals will use proprietary software with no qualms of the sort they express for these "source available" licenses.
    • DaSHacka 1y ago
      Because the proprietary software never claimed to be anything but.
      • ahartmetz 1y ago
        Well, Microsoft tried to muddy the waters with "Shared Source". Kind of like Office-Open- wait, Open-Office?-XML.
        • trelane 1y ago
          They also had (for governments) the ability to look at the (supposed) source code. They couldn't do anything with it (alter or even build iirc), but they could look at it. https://www.computerworld.com/article/1336859/microsoft-opens-source-code-to-governments.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/1336859/microsoft-open... Ha. How times have changed: > But governments won’t get the ability to alter source code. “This isn’t about developing or supporting customized versions of Windows,” Mundie said. The GSP and other source-code access programs are about “helping build comfort and trust with our key customers on how Windows is deployed, how security is running and how other software is running on top of Windows,” he said. > Russia’s Federal Agency for Governmental Communication and Information has signed a GSP agreement with Microsoft, and the company says it’s in discussions with about 20 other governments.
  • Spivak 1y ago
    Why the scare quotes, the first freedom of both Open Source and Free Software is the right to run the software for any purpose. It's not some little unimportant detail. It's arguably the most important property of Open Source.
    • cinericius 1y ago
      I argue that the natural winner-take-all dynamics of the marketplace are not beneficial to the the mission of free and open source software. In fact, having no safeguard against large organisations making money this way is actually hugely detrimental to the mission by enabling these companies to ensnare unsuspecting users in a web of both their own proprietary software as well as all that free and open source software has to offer.
      • Spivak 1y ago
        I mean in this specific case we're not talking about AWS or any other large company. We're talking about someone wanting to offer Bear.app hosting in the vein of managed Wordpress. This is good for Open Source. Having multiple commercial entities working off of and invested in the same codebase is exactly what Open Source envisions. It does take some mental discipline to actually believe in the movement and not view someone using your software to start a business as them "stealing your work." Such a thing doesn't make sense in OSS, you gave it away freely. It's a good thing, the competition is healthy. You don't have to believe, closed-source proprietary software is much easier to run a business off of as evidenced by most businesses operating that way. There's no shame in it. The FOSS folks are the free love "we don't believe in intellectual property mann" hippies of the software world.
      • monocularvision 1y ago
        The base-stealing that comes with the throwing out the term “winner-take-all” is astounding. People claim this all the time on HN without any shred of evidence that it is the case. The history of technology and markets show this just isn’t true on any significant timescale.
      • pabs3 1y ago
  • wahnfrieden 1y ago
    edit: I thought this HN thread was about the Bear app never mind
    • jakelazaroff 1y ago
      Bear has no VC investors: https://herman.bearblog.dev/manifesto/ https://herman.bearblog.dev/manifesto/
      • wahnfrieden 1y ago
        edit: I thought this HN thread was about the Bear app never mind
        • jakelazaroff 1y ago
          If you read the link you just posted you can see that this person invested in a different product called Bear: > Its portfolio includes Bear, the Apple Design Award winner notes app, …
        • eviks 1y ago
          No one is, just finish reading the sentence (or start - the op) > Bear, the Apple Design Award winner notes app
        • arp242 1y ago
          Different Bear. https://bear.app/ https://bear.app/ Which you could have known by spending five seconds on https://lambdalpha.com https://lambdalpha.com, or actually reading your own link which calls Bear an "Apple Design Award winner notes app", which doesn't really sound like the Bear blog. Stop spreading rampant misinformation.
          • leakycap 1y ago
            Rampant? Isn't that a pretty extreme response to a mistaken link?
  • gr4vityWall 1y ago
    > we should find a term (better than 'source-available' [...]) That term already exists: it's proprietary software. If you're going to restrict what users can do with their copies of the program, please do not try to label the program as Free Software / open-source.
    • mynameisvlad 1y ago
      [flagged]
    • ahartmetz 1y ago
      Maximalism and lack of nuance aren't going to fix the world. Though, neither is lack of thinking things through. I'm not sure how people, including myself, would feel about the situation if the company using a "Bear-like" license was, say, Oracle or Microsoft.
      • drdaeman 1y ago
        Using the well-established terms according to their intended definitions is surely not maximalism or lack of nuance. (I have no objections against the “source available” though - it’s a pretty unambiguous and useful term, that isolates one specific property.)
  • jraph 1y ago
    Free software ought to not be discriminatory and arbitrarily exclude users. Full stop. Anyone means anyone. Now, we can agree and talk about unfortunate consequences and possible mitigations. The AGPL is one possible mitigation: Big corps are usually afraid of it. But they do themselves: the AGPL doesn't forbid them to use the thing.
  • api 1y ago
    Wait, you’re saying open source shouldn’t exist just to be free labor for billion dollar companies and hustlers? Or to dump free product on the market to make it impossible to compete with said billion dollar companies?
  • benrutter 1y ago
    I guess I'm in that crowd, and well, I definitely recognise that! Open source is an important term, and I don't want to see it degraded. I think I'd find it annoying if this blog post was trying to claim Bear was still free software, or open source. That doesn't mean I think everything has to be open source. Bear is a blogging platform trying to make money and it seems fine to me for it not to be open source.
  • thayne 1y ago
    I don't know what the competing forks are, but it definitely doesn't seem like they are from a big megacorp like Amazon.
  • jaredklewis 1y ago
    People can license their software however they want, but it is worth reflecting on why almost all open source authors go with a permissive license like MIT: because it is basically a "buyer's market." When choosing a database, distributed queue, blogging platform, or whatever, companies usually have a choice of at least several high quality open source options. If one of those options places restrictions on the users, then those users are probably going to choose one of the other options. As a result, licensing your project GPL or the like usually means relegating it to obscurity. There are very notable exceptions, including Linux and WordPress, but they are outliers. It's hard to monetize an MIT project, but it is even harder to monetize a project without users. Whether this is "good" or "bad" is a separate debate (err, usually flame war), but I think many people gloss over that this is a coordination problem and that everyone is acting rationally. For better or worse, software does not seem to be scarce.
    • NoahZuniga 1y ago
      Well, many developers publish their code not because they want to specifically make a successful open source project, but because they made something that was useful to themselves, and like the idea behind open source. In that case it makes more sense to do a copyleft license because it will legally require all derivatives to also follow that open source idea.
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • jaredklewis 1y ago
        Yea I think stuff like this is great and will have some impact around the edges. Perhaps particularly in the realm of end-user software, like a window tiling manager. But once we start talking about the kind of software large corporations (like AWS) will have an interest in, projects have to be successful to be useful. Software requires maintenance so the maintainers need to be able to devote their time to maintaining and improving the project. So this will select for projects that are successful enough that the maintainers can focus on it fully (either because some company hires them to work on their own project, they can charge high consulting fees because of their association with the project, or whatever). I think "the code" (the thing covered by copyright) in most cases is not as valuable as "the project:" the leadership, the contributors, the users, the norms and practices, the commitment to ongoing maintenance, and so on. So just lots of individuals all putting pieces of their code out there with GPL probably doesn't make a lot of impact (though there is nothing wrong with it), because most users don't want "code" they want a "project" they can rely on.
  • bachmeier 1y ago
    > As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source, and they'll get very upset at you if you claim it is. If you aren't interested in open source, that's your option, but open source has had a clear meaning for decades. You can use/write your software and people that believe in open source can use/write open source. What's the problem?
    • nothrabannosir 1y ago
      Whether they contribute back their changes to their users.
      • adastra22 1y ago
        Then you want free software (a subcategory of open source).
        • dragonwriter 1y ago
          Free Software and Open Source have definitions that are both on their face and in practical application by the bodies responsible for each almost entirely identical. Neither is a subset of the other. If you are concerned about mandating users provide modifications by a similar license to the one they received material under, what you want is copyleft.
          • adastra22 1y ago
            “Free software” means copyleft. The free software foundation manages copyleft licenses. The term open source was explicitly coined to differentiate from the more restrictive free software / copyleft. All free software licenses are open source licenses. Not all open source licenses are free software licenses.
            • andrewshadura 1y ago
              This statement is incorrect.
  • singpolyma3 1y ago
    If it's source available like this then it's clearly not a "community project"
    • sarlalian 1y ago
      If you look at the commit graph, it’s definitely not a community project.
      • Melonai 1y ago
        I think it's more like "a project made for the community", not quite "project made by the community", though the former is definitely usually what's implied.
  • brookst 1y ago
    Perhaps a better term would be “limited use open source”
    • rzzzt 1y ago
      closen source?
      • WesolyKubeczek 1y ago
        Peeping source
        • Nevermark 1y ago
          Let's not bring Meta's imaginary source license to violate privacy and Mark Zuckerberg into this.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • yencabulator 1y ago
      That's not open source then.
    • cgijoe 1y ago
      The source is ajar.
  • type0 1y ago
    > we should find a term (better than 'source-available', which is cold and doesn't capture community projects accurately) it's not copyleft, it's a version of freeware license
  • 4ndrewl 1y ago
    The existence of a "winner-takes-all dynamic" suggests a market failure, not a marketplace.
  • zitterbewegung 1y ago
    Why use the MIT license when the AGPL is the better choice? I don’t understand why developers choose MIT and or Apache license and then figure out that they now have a competitor cloning their product .
    • vova_hn 1y ago
      A lot of people are scared of GPL and other copyleft licenses, mostly because of how most big corporations treat GPL. Also, MIT license in particular is much shorter and easier to understand for a non-lawyer, than most other software licenses.
      • theamk 1y ago
        I suspect that any corporation that prohibit GPL will prohibit BearLicence as well. Those usually have a list of approved licenses.
  • moralestapia 1y ago
    >What Herman is doing is a service to us all I don't owe that guy s*it, what are you talking about. He's actually doing a disservice to the OSS community, as there's now another story of OSS turning non-OSS out of greed, which damages (by a bit, but still) the whole aura that true OSS has built over the past 40 years.
  • swiftcoder 1y ago
    > the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd The original stance of the open source crowd was more along the lines of the GPL -> GPLv3 -> AGPL, which expressly prevents this kind of thing. The proliferation of "give everything away for free" MIT/BSD/Apache licenses seems to me to have been an intentional campaign by corporate interests to undermine free software ideals
    • jibal 1y ago
      The MIT and BSD licenses predated the GPL. People have a choice as to which ethic to follow ... it's not the result of a corporate conspiracy. (And I'm a social democrat, not a corporate simp.)
      • swiftcoder 1y ago
        I'm not so clear the choice was made consciously. There's a big swing away from the GPL and towards MIT/BSD around the time that Apple starts adopting a bunch of open-source projects for inclusion in MacOS X, and it accelerates when various big companies announced that they would be forbidding GPLv3 adoption. Fast forward to the cloud provider era, and basically no new software is being placed under the GPL (at least in part because Amazon/Google/Facebook/etc are predicating contributions on being GPL-free)
        • drob518 1y ago
          The problem with GPL was "tainting." It was never clear in what cases you could use GPL without it dragging all your code into being freely available. LGPL was supposed to help with that; AGPL made it even worse. The lawyers were terribly confused and recommended you just not use anything with "GPL" in the license. The reason why MIT/BSD licenses flourished is that they were easy to understand. As long as you didn't sue the original author or try to claim the code was written by you, you were free to do almost anything with it, including mixing it in with other for-profit code. Whether that's an abomination or a blessing depends on your corporate vs. free software politics.
          • 1y ago
  • orthoxerox 1y ago
    > As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source. This statement is 100% correct. Open means open for everyone. There's a "but they are providing FOSS as a service on a proprietary platform", which seems like the next step on the LGPL-GPL-AGPL stairway of licenses, but SSPL failed to convince anyone it was a necessary freedom: - MongoDB Inc obviously had no plans to release their own SaaS platform under SSPL - AWS source code being released wouldn't have benefited anyone other than maybe other major cloud providers
  • pxc 1y ago
    > As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't... Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the software for any purpose. You can't deny users this freedom "for their own good", or to spite big corporations, and still be free software. Subtler issues of power and dependency won't be resolved through licensing alone, and certainly not by compromising on basic software freedom for users.
  • kelnos 1y ago
    > if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source That's because then it isn't. Sorry, but you can't just take terms with an accepted meaning and decide they mean something else, without any conversation or consensus from there people using that term. The OSI has a specific definition of what "open source" means[0]. Restricting what users of the software can do in this way is in direct opposition to parts of that definition, so no, if you do that, then it is no longer open source. I'm not saying you aren't entitled to set up your licensing that way. I think it's disgusting when the likes of Amazon decide to take someone's hard work and use their massive oligopolist position to trivially outcompete anything the original author might try to do to make some money. But that doesn't mean it's open source. I think people need to stop being so afraid to call their software something else. They seem to be really attached to the idea of being an "open source developer", and don't want to drop that moniker even after changing their licensing away from open source. People also need to stop licensing their software under true OSS licenses, building a community of regular, significant contributors around it, and then changing their licensing (which they can do because they've [IMO shadily] required contributors to reassign copyright). That's a huge bait-and-switch, and people are right to be upset when that happens. In the case of Bearblog, it seems like the author is really the only significant contributor, so I think what he's doing is totally fine, for the record. Frankly I think he did this the right way: his announcement email is entirely reasonable and sympathetic, and he doesn't try to breathlessly claim that his software is still open source. [0] https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd [1] [1] While I don't love how the OSI folks basically just decided they own the term "open source" and that they get to define it, I think they've been pretty good stewards over time, and having clear-cut definitions of things is a good thing.
  • BrenBarn 1y ago
    Agreed. There was similar discussion around "the free and open web" on this thread some days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45066258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45066258 I think some people lose sight of the difference between the theoretical possibility of competing forks/implementations/services and the practical possibility. If a big enough organization gets ahold of something and begins to drive it, the fact that it's nominally open source may not be enough to ensure that people have a practical ability to get out from under that organization. In other words you need not just openness of "information" but actual open space to maneuver in the real world of food and money and markets and so on. In many cases for-profit companies have taken up (or created) open source tools and made use of them in ways that still benefited the community at large. But it's not clear to me that FOSS licenses as we know them actually guarantee that. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to want to build safeguards against open source software being weaponized or co-opted for unfree purposes. One thing that's not clear from the Bearblog dev's post is whether he would be open to small-scale "competitors" who share an ethos similar to his own. In theory such competitors could be granted special license exceptions. If I were in his position I could see myself wanting to exclude big companies (and companies that hope to become big) while allowing small operators. The challenge is to create an enforceable license that encodes that, rather than requiring the author to manually approve or deny each request.
  • heavyset_go 1y ago
    > As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source, and they'll get very upset at you if you claim it is. There are factions in open source advocacy, ranging from laissez faire views of freedom to views of freedom as something that needs some limitations to conserve it and prevent abuses/tragedy of the commons/etc.
  • tombert 1y ago
    I'm not 100% convinced that these licenses actually work. How hard would it be for a BigCo to have an intern to modify the code enough so that it's not an easily detectable violation? I mean this stuff isn't just theoretical, there have been video games where we only find out they violated the GPL after a major code breach. [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20129285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20129285
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • Illniyar 1y ago
    That is exactly the stance. If there are strings attached that means some people can't use it, it's not really open. (GPL has strings attached if you use it, which is bad in a different way) I don't think anyone has a problem with the non open source licenses themselves. If you start with a closed source license or whatever, that's fine. It is switching from an open source licenses to something that is not. A lot of the projects that later switched out of open source would have never gotten any traction if they started with the license they ended up with.
  • digdugdirk 1y ago
    I've long thought there needs to be some sort of "cooperative source" license. With DAOs and whatnot, there's even the possibility of an automated global common fund for contributing and supporting. There's definitely a big opportunity to rethink things in this arena.
  • didibus 1y ago
    What's wrong with "source-available" ? Open-source normally means there's no use restrictions, but there could be some requirements in order to do so (like attribution). Free software normally means there's no use restrictions, but modifications can mandate maintaining the modifications also free to use, retaining the same freedoms. And if you fray from those, you can call it source-available and the specifics of what usage restrictions exist are per-license.
  • 38 1y ago
    [dead]
  • lmm 1y ago
    > What Herman is doing is a service to us all, and we should find a term (better than 'source-available', which is cold and doesn't capture community projects accurately) that people can promote themselves under without much weeping and gnashing of teeth. People are cold to source-available projects because of their experience of source-available projects. If you want to benefit from the warm reputation that open source has, you need to offer the things that open source offers. If you want to do some novel thing, that's fine, but your novel thing will have to earn its reputation.
  • sneak 1y ago
    There’s no such thing as a “free ride” on software that is given away freely. It’s a gift. Once you gift it, it is no longer yours, it belongs to the people to whom you have given it to, to do whatever they wish with.
  • senko 1y ago
    > the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source Exactly! As RMS famously put it[0]: > It is essential, for the sake of true freedom, that every user - including the humble billionaire overlord who owns a rocket factory - has the unfettered right to run the software we, the noble proletariat of unpaid maintainers, lovingly craft in our basements at 3 a.m. Our highest ethical duty is to empower Jeff Bezos to instantiate yet another Kubernetes cluster that bills government agencies by the millisecond, for freedom means all users, especially those with yachts shaped like smaller yachts. Therefore, to deny Amazon the liberty to exploit our software without a cent of reciprocation would be to shackle the very essence of the Four Freedoms, for Freedom Zero is, and always has been, the sacred right of the richest man alive to squeeze the last drops of value from our volunteer patches while whispering “thank you for your contribution” into the abyss of a PR bot. On a more serious note: > I argue that the natural winner-take-all dynamics of the marketplace are not beneficial to the the mission of free and open source software. Now, if said software was intended to run on users machines to actually empower the user, we wouldn't be in this pickle, wouldn't we? I don't see Amazon freeloading off of GNOME, KDE, LibreOffice, Blender or GIMP. No, I would argue the root cause of the problems here is that bros want to own their users (saas to the moon) and think open source is the way to do it. I say, fork those people! As the author of Bear put in this very article: > I wanted the code to be available for people to learn from, and to make it easily auditable so users could validate claims I have made about the privacy and security of the platform. > > Unfortunately over the years there have been cases of people forking the project in the attempt to set up a competing service. Nowhere here is the intent for users to host the blogs themselves. No, he wants uses to use his service, not his software. Fair enough, but that shouldn't have been open source in the first place. The author is just rectifying a mistake he made previously. If the author had actually wanted end users to use his software, he wouldn't care who runs it. Look at Hugo, they're doing alright. > enabling these companies to ensnare unsuspecting users Well, to me, as a user, Bear is the company that ensnares me unexpectedly, because it tells me it's running open source but the minute I want to run it myself, oh no, I'm freeloading. Whenever I see a project that requires a Kubernetes cluster to do something people would have in the past done in 15 files of C, I know they don't care about me as an empowered user in the "free software" sense. They see me as "a user" in a drug-addict sense. F that. [0] he never said that, obviously
  • jeswin 1y ago
    Unfortunately, AWS has invented and legitimized this entirely new class of leeching off of open source work, where they capture the entire economic value of a project by owning the hosting infrastructure; contributing nothing back and forking when the original authors protest. OSS stewards should correct this - in my view disallow cloud vendors beyond a certain size to freeload.
    • account42 1y ago
      I'd rather those "OSS vendors" would look for a better business model than software as a service. Having the option for competing service providers (including yourself) is a big advantage of open source.
  • account42 1y ago
    > As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source, and they'll get very upset at you if you claim it is. You don't get to just redefine terms if you find them inconvenient and people are right to push back against such attempts. If you want something else, put in the work to get mind share for your model instead of trying to catch a free ride by taking over an established one.
  • saghm 1y ago
    My issue with "source available" as a term has always been that it basically sounds like a synonym to "open source". It's not clear to me why the place to draw the line for what level of restriction constitutes " would be between what's known as " source available" and "true" open source when the question of "can I read the source code for this or not" seems way more intuitive to me than "can I run a cloud-based software service for this without violating the terms of the license". From what I can tell, the argument against including stuff that's called source available in the category of open source basically boils down to the OSI definition, but it doesn't seem reasonable to me for an organization to claim exclusive rights to a very generic-sounding term with an intuitive definition that clashes with how they want to define it. If there's a concern over the pollution of their brand, they should be trying to trademark it, and if there's not, the constant backlash against anyone using the term in a way that conflicts with their definition is pretty antisocial. I recognize that this battle is probably already lost, but I'm not sure I'll ever understand why as a community we seem to have been happy to police usage of an unintuitive definition through public pressure just to try to make a point that doesn't seem to have nearly as much consensus behind it as the expectation of uniformity would imply.
    • SamInTheShell 1y ago
      The history stems from the term “free” software not being very palatable for marketing. There are 4 tenants to free software. Bear is no longer free software.
      • saghm 1y ago
        All of those statements are reasonable, but they don't really change the point I'm making from what I can tell. Having trouble marketing "free software" doesn't justify anything about how an entirely separate term should be used.
        • SamInTheShell 1y ago
          I actually put this in the wrong thread. Disregard, I have no clue where the thread I meant to put that was.
  • aatd86 1y ago
    Transparent Source?
• threemux 1y ago
  I suppose this is the move if you're looking to foreclose all possible competing usages. Kudos for using correct terminology as it is no longer Open Source. However, I still believe AGPL is a better alternative in most cases and functionally prevents large enterprises from touching your code due to typical internal policies.
  • ezekg 1y ago
    Shame on the people who recommend the AGPL to effectively be an OSI-approved source-available license. This is a grievance against the spirit of open source.
    • tptacek 1y ago
      It's one of four licenses linked on the front page of the FSF.
      • ezekg 1y ago
        And it's the most abused license in the history of open source [0] [1]. [0]: https://keygen.sh/blog/weaponized-open-source/ https://keygen.sh/blog/weaponized-open-source/ [1]: https://keygen.sh/blog/whither-open-source/ https://keygen.sh/blog/whither-open-source/
        • tptacek 1y ago
          You might take that up with the FSF, which clearly disagrees with you about its "affront".
          • arccy 1y ago
            [flagged]
            • drdaeman 1y ago
              No offense meant, but what's wrong with y'all today, people? Why so many folks in the comments use words in a way that doesn't match their dictionary-intended meanings and even insist that doing otherwise is something... weird, in a bad way? Am I taking crazy pills? Save for The Church of Emacs and St. IGNUcius (obvious jokes), FSF is a political and social activism organization - not a religious one. They have foundational principles and manifestos, sure, but those aren't religious dogmas, but rather the views/desires how the society should work. Labeling FSF as religious implies that it's a cult and thus there's no talking reason to them. But they're no more religious than any other civil rights movement - the beliefs about software freedoms are no different than beliefs in any other social rights.
• jraph 1y ago
  It's always sad when someone removes their project from the free software world. I'd like to comment further on the permissive license point: > When I started building Bear I made the code available under an MIT license. I didn't give it much thought at the time I suspect many people choosing permissive licenses do it in the same spirit. They don't give much thoughts about the license, they just want to share the code with others (which is very nice!), and there was a push some years ago to make permissive licenses the default in many ecosystems (this is not innocent, by the way). For me, the first lesson from this blog post is: think hard about what you want to really allow. Given what the author says later: > It hurts to see something you've worked so hard on for so long get copied and distributed with only a few hours of modification The permissive license was obviously a bad choice. Not blaming, of course, hindsight is 20/20. Pick permissive licenses if you are okay to work for free for other entities, and if you are cool with the potential asymmetry of them not sharing their improvements. I'll preach for my church: when you release something, please consider a strong copyleft license. If it's SaaS, consider AGPL. It still allows people to provide services with your work, but if they need to improve your code, they are required to redistribute the improvements to their users. I don't see many reasons, in most cases, to allow people to get your code and not do the same as you: provide the code to their users; that's unfair to both their users and yourself (a notable exception is if you want to push/promote a format or a standard - then you want to push adoption at "all" costs). Most of the times, this means you can get these improvements back. By sharing free software under AGPL, it is still possible that you'll work for free for someone else. But at least, you'll be competing on more equal footing. They'll actually need to work to be better than you. In both cases, your advantage over them is your expertise in your own stuff. A side effect of the AGPL is that big corps are afraid of it, so you will likely not get competition from them (even though AGPL allows them to do so).
• indigodaddy 1y ago
  From their GitHub: Obviously you could self host it (and I guess plenty have figured out how to and even created competitors with the code if they are making this change?), but they discourage hobbyists from trying with this unhelpful statement. So what was the point of even being open source? Their whole statement kind of comes off as disingenuous to me because of this. "Bear Blog has been built as a platform and not as an individual blog generator. It is more like Substack than Hugo. Due to this it isn't possible to individually self-host a Bear Blog."
  • ozgrakkurt 1y ago
    It reads perfectly clear. It is designed to be a platform and mit license makes it too easy for other people to create competing services and they don’t want that. Maybe it was a mistake on their part to make it initially open source or it is bad that there are people looking to steal other people’s work
    • preisschild 1y ago
      If you don't want your work to be "stolen", and instead want to force the people to contribute back, use the AGPL
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    • 1gn15 1y ago
      It's not possible to steal code, since the original author still has it.
      • ozgrakkurt 1y ago
        It depends what it is used for. It is not so simple if they are profiting off it and you start profiting as well by stealing their customers. Maybe it is ok even then, but it sounds like it would be super annoying if the “thief” is just copy pasting the code without adding any value
• ezekg 1y ago
  Has the maintainer looked at fair source? [0] I believe it's superior to source-available (and open core), because it eventually becomes fully open source under DOSP [1], which is great for free and paid users, especially for a blog platform like Bear. There's an FCL [2] fair source license, which aligns pretty well with their current Bear Blog License (namely the non-compete and license key bits from the ELv2). All in all, the term "source-available" is pretty meaningless, because there are too many variables. Fair source tries to tighten that up. It also aligns quite well with Bear's manifesto [3]. Even if Bear PTY LTD ceases to exist, Bear won't. This can be codified under DOSP. Disclaimer: I'm involved with fair source and helped write the FCL. [0]: https://fair.io https://fair.io [1]: https://opensource.org/dosp https://opensource.org/dosp [2]: https://fcl.dev https://fcl.dev [3]: https://herman.bearblog.dev/manifesto/ https://herman.bearblog.dev/manifesto/
  • ArnavAgrawal03 1y ago
    We use a BSL for our product (https://morphik.ai https://morphik.ai) and usually stay away from calling it anything. We'd just say "repo is public at: https://github.com/morphik-org/morphik-core https://github.com/morphik-org/morphik-core". I like the term fair source, though. Is it correct to assume that software than eventually becomes open under something like Apache or MIT is fair source? Or is there more subtlety to it?
    • the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
      > Is it correct to assume that software than eventually becomes open under something like Apache or MIT is fair source? Or is there more subtlety to it? The concrete definition we came up with and published: > Fair Source is an alternative to closed source, allowing you to safely share access to your core products. Fair Source Software (FSS): > - is publicly available to read; > - allows use, modification, and redistribution with minimal restrictions to protect the producer’s business model; and > - undergoes delayed Open Source publication (DOSP).
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
• rbren 1y ago
  I’d like to see a “no jerks” license. It’d be MIT by default, but call out specific bad actors as being disallowed from using the software. That way your average corporate user wouldn’t need to consult a lawyer before adopting
  • rs186 1y ago
    It will be as useless in terms of enforcement as "shall be used for good, not evil." https://www.json.org/license.html https://www.json.org/license.html
    • gpm 1y ago
      I think they're suggesting a license that says "except Apple, Amazon, Google, Huawei, ..." not a license that literally says "no jerks". The problem of attempting to enumerate the jerks does seem pretty... insurmountable... to me though.
      • jraph 1y ago
        Yeah, and even if you like the idea, this is not dependable. How do you know, as a user, that you'll not end up in the jerk list tomorrow?
        • gpm 1y ago
          Presumably the license would, like practically all open source licenses, be irrevocable. You aren't guaranteed new versions will be issued under the same license (short of a contract saying otherwise, just like every other piece of open source software) but the existing license that did not list you as a jerk can't be revoked...
          • jraph 1y ago
            True, but that's still a risk that adds to the risk of the authors switching the license. BTW, if the jerk list is tied to the license, if the project had external contributors, they all need to agree to add or remove someone from the list, like any license change…
• ozgrakkurt 1y ago
  Curious what author would think of separating the service and the core parts and leaving core as open source. This way someone could create a competing service but they would have to write the entire service layer themselves and a single user would be able to self host the core part. Also curious what they think about the thiefs not caring about the license and copy pasting it anyway. I don’t think the kind of person that copies your code and tries to sell it would really care about the license
• redwood 1y ago
  It's great to see the open source crowd particularly in Europe is finally turning corner here. You know something's broken when Microsoft gets to claim to be the biggest backer of open source. Meanwhile they'll break your back and steal all your trust and credibility if they can
  • jorams 1y ago
    > You know something's broken when Microsoft gets to claim to be the biggest backer of open source. They can say whatever they want. They're just lying. If you spend even a little bit of time looking into it you'll find it's just a marketing strategy.
    • delichon 1y ago
      I spent a little time looking into it, and it turns out that Microsoft owns an outfit named GitHub, which apparently offers free hosting for open source projects and is used by a lot of open source software makers. And Microsoft has around 4k employees with contributions to OS projects on GitHub. So maybe "biggest" is a lie in light of their anti-OS efforts, but it is at least arguable. Can you propose a bigger one?
      • yencabulator 1y ago
        Microsoft is the biggest supporter of Microsoft gaining market share.
        • jen20 1y ago
          Red Hat is the biggest supported of Red Hat gaining market share. They are also a big supporter of open source... I'm not claiming Microsoft is a good actor (and they certainly produce a whole lot of derpy trash along the way), but the argument itself is not particular sound.
      • account42 1y ago
        You mean the outfit that has misappropriated the code of those hosted projects to train their commercial code generator which is a very clear violation of the spirit if not the letter of the licenses of many of those projects?
• simjnd 1y ago
  I really believe this is the best model or licensing. I care about seeing the code and being able to modify it to suit my own preferences, but I also care about the project being healthy and the maintainer being able to earn from their efforts without worrying about cheap competition. Even better when a project starts with this model so it doesn't feel like a rug pull or doesn't get messy with forks overshadowing the original product. But I don't feel like Bear had the kind of scale to face this type of reaction. I use mataroa.blog periodically which is in the same nice and I wish the Bear maintainers fulfillment with their project.
• poulpy123 1y ago
  I understand the reasoning and I also understand the interest of still providing the sources. I'm however curious why the MIT license was chosen instead of the AGPL if competition was a concern
  • tptacek 1y ago
    Presumably it wasn't a concern when they started and became one later; after all, they changed the license.
  • didibus 1y ago
    AGPL doesn't prevent others from reselling your software no? I thought it only mandated that they also release their own source modifications. He seems to claim 3rd parties are offering bearblog commercially without modifications (or with useless modifications, like just a changed name).
• hellcow 1y ago
  I'm sad to see this. I supported Bear because it was open source. As that's no longer the case, I just canceled my membership. I would love to see this reversed and moved to AGPL instead.
  • bruce511 1y ago
    I think this is fair, by both Bear and yourself. He's free to attach any license he likes, you are free to use it or not. Obviously the goal of Open Source licenses does not include making money. You might, or might not, but it's not a priority. Equally your goal may be to only support Open Source projects. That's fine. For you removing support for this project makes sense. Once a project reaches the stage of needing to create an income stream, Open Source licenses are no longer appropriate. Yes, some developers are naive in thinking Open Source licenses protect their income stream. Yes some users are naive in thinking that projects will remain Open Source forever. Source-available, or Shipped-with-source of whatever you want to call it is a proprietary license which is just fine. It's not Open Source, nor does it need to be.
    • account42 1y ago
      Legally it's OK but I think ethically using open source to build up a brand that is then used to sell proprietary software is ethically questionable - just like the free until the competition has been eliminated bait and switch common in tech startups. Not saying this happened in this specific case though.
  • fastball 1y ago
    What is the difference (to you) between open source and source available?
    • hellcow 1y ago
      One is altruistic, akin to charity. It deliberately maximizes users’ rights to do anything they want with the software (freedom 0). I’m only in the lucky position I’m in now because of open source, and I want to push for more of that in the world with my wallet and my time. I’m not going out of my way to support a commercial license. There are a million commercial blog platforms to choose from.
• accelbred 1y ago
  This isn't bear, the compilation database building cli tool, for those similarly confused.
  • timeforcomputer 1y ago
    Almost the same emoticon logo too. ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Bear vs. ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ Build EAR The compilation database tool (https://github.com/rizsotto/Bear https://github.com/rizsotto/Bear), is extremely helpful. It got CCLS/clangd working for me over multiple in-house build systems at a vfx studio. It also is super helpful for debugging. I have used it a lot alongside a script which converts a compile_commands.json to a sequence of commands, so I can edit them individually without fiddling with the build system, and then once fixed (such as adding a flag to one TU) try to find the way to do that in the build system.
• athrowaway3z 1y ago
  I certainly get the hurt feelings, but i'm not clear on the license at all. >Limitations: You may not provide the Software as a hosted or managed service that offers users access to substantial features or functionality. Where on the spectrum sits an average cookie-cutter VPS provider that comes with an OS package manager that installs the program? Does the VPS provider have to screen the package manager? Does that change if they build a wiki with "1-click-install" that just sends an ssh command to install? Is this just a requirement to have some theater where an "unaffiliated" third party has to provide the set-up scripts? Or just a rule you can't mention the option during the sales pipeline?
  • captainmuon 1y ago
    I think users applies to end-users here. So you must not run the software as a service (either paid or for free) for other users. You are free to use it yourself. Crucially, I think what is banned to offer accounts. Offering turnkey-hosting is probably banned in spirit, but the person offering the turnkey-hosting is not in violation, rather the person booking the turnkey hosting and offering the accounts on the instance to third parties is in violation. I think the wording is originally against somebody like Amazon hosting e.g. database instances for other people to use, and then giving you an account in that database. It's still OK to rent a VM from them and use the package manager to install it. In any way, it is really confusing, in a way a license should not be. And I don't really understand why someone builds a blog platform, which is not monetized, open sources it, but doesn't want other people to host it. If I open source my stuff, I want people to use it. If I want to share the code but don't want people to use it I'd just put it somewhere it with no license at all (all rights reserved).
    • krisoft 1y ago
      > You are free to use it yourself. Idk. That's not how I'm reading it. Someone reading my blog is a user of the blog software. So running the blog and letting people read it would fall under that limitation and therefore would be prohibited. I understand that's probably not what they tried to write, but wouldn't want to defend that understanding in a courtroom. > It's still OK to rent a VM from them and use the package manager to install it. Do you open up port 80 to the world? Because then you are hosting the service that offers users access to substantial features or functionality. > In any way, it is really confusing, in a way a license should not be. On that we agree.
• spongebobstoes 1y ago
  open source is charity. I believe in it, I contribute to it, but I recognize it is unlikely to lead to a sustainable livelihood
  • foxglacier 1y ago
    Yes. Somebody else using your software is usually the ambition of open source developers but this guy is hurt by it. He's programming for money, not doing charity. It sounds like being open source was just for show to make his business look like a charity.
  • lemming 1y ago
    I don't know about you, but if I'm going to donate to/work for charity, I'd like to ensure it's for someone who actually needs it rather than the Amazons of the world. I don't feel a pressing need to donate any money or time to them.
    • bigstrat2003 1y ago
      That makes no sense at all. Software is not a scarce resource, unlike your money. If you donate money to a charity who gives it to Amazon, you would have good reason to be upset. But if you write a piece of software and Amazon uses it, other (needier) users benefit just as much! Or to put it in another context, if you went and volunteered for a highway cleanup, would you get mad if Bezos drove on the highway you cleaned? Because that is what your position here is analogous to, and that seems like a poor line of reasoning to me.
      • lemming 1y ago
        > if you went and volunteered for a highway cleanup, would you get mad if Bezos drove on the highway you cleaned? No, but I would get mad if Bezos made a ton of money charging people to drive on a clean highway after I had cleaned it for free.
        • account42 1y ago
• mzajc 1y ago
  > This license is almost identical to the MIT license but with the stipulation that the software cannot be provided as a hosted or managed service Note that while the original change was an additional clause to the MIT license, it was quickly changed to something completely different.[0] Since it no longer permits sublicensing and restricts "remov[ing] or obscur[ing] any licensing, copyright, or other notices in the Software," I believe it's closer to GPL now? [0]: https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/commit/89c3f346ef000c8a031e50d763853d261f7c631c https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/commit/89c3f346ef...
• phkahler 1y ago
  Naive. Guy picks a license that allow anyone to do anything they want with his code. Later realizes that was not appropriate when he's trying make money. Changes to an obscure license that on the surface seems to fix the problem. Your options are: MIT / BSD, GPL, LGPL, AGPL. All others are unnecessary and create needless incompatibility.
  • palata 1y ago
    Don't forget MPLv2 and EUPL.
  • mottosso 1y ago
    I'd have to agree with this stance. You choose MIT when you are happy to share your source with no strings attached. Some do pick MIT with this intent, but that was not the case here. But rather a case of either miscommunication or wanting to have the pie ("look how altruistic I am") and eating it too ("look how business-minded I am").
    • sarlalian 1y ago
      I mean, there’s a chance it’s exactly what he said, “I didn't give it much thought at the time, but knew that I wanted the code to be available for people to learn from, and to make it easily auditable so users could validate claims I have made about the privacy and security of the platform.” … it doesn’t have to be some to be some sort of nefarious OSS altruism, it really could be, “maybe people would want to see how this works”… that ends up leading to … oh crap a bunch of people who have never contributed, and will never contribute, are hosting versions of what I created and taking money that I really would like to have to feed my family.
      • account42 1y ago
        Possibly, but that would be pretty damning. A license isn't something you should YOLO. If he is that laissez-faire about licensing the source code then what other important aspects of the project has he not given sufficient thought.
• Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  Nitpick but I accidentally upvoted the article (in the bearblog.dev website itself, the small upvote in the website) and turns out once you upvote, you can't downvote? Well, I love minimalist site providers Its license is AGPL which still technically falls under Open source as to what "OSI?" says. Source available just have a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe my critique of them isn't based on good intentions but I feel like I am getting really restricted as a user by source available licenses. I understand the pain of developers trying to make money. I just think that AGPL is a better use case and even elastic search went back to agpl and a lot of these source available things are going to agpl I am sure that big tech might be able to bypass agpl itself somehow and that's why there were things like sspl but I still think that agpl is one of the most rock solid copy left licenses.
• singpolyma3 1y ago
  If competition hurts then yeah, you probably didn't want to be open source to begin with
• xvrqt 1y ago
  It's funny this all to do about Yet-Another-Simple/Static-Blog generator or whatever
• joshcsimmons 1y ago
  Silly. Globally over half of smartphone users have Android phones. Bear was actually the only thing that kept me in the Apple ecosystem for so long, was really bummed when I switched to Android to have to move to another notes program. IMO - you are charging money for your app which makes you a business. When you don't listen to the market you forfeit any right to complain when you get your lunch money stolen. Sounds hard but most lessons in business are expensive!
  • jolux 1y ago
    That’s a different product — bear.app. This is about bearblog.dev.
    • psionides 1y ago
      Honestly I was really confused about this too…
• bodge5000 1y ago
  As much as people tend to hate it, I quite like copyleft licenses on the whole and wouldnt mind it at all for Bearblog, but this particular variation seems a bit odd. I mean I havent heard any problems from Elastic with it so I guess it sorts itself out, it just seems more complicated just AGPL
• ahdanggit 1y ago
  > We're entering a new age of AI powered coding, where creating a competing product only involves typing "Create a fork of this repo and change its name to something cool and deploy it on an EC2 instance". I've been curious about how LLMs would impact open source, I have some theories and this is not the only one.
  • simmons 1y ago
    I would love to hear your other theories! I don't think it would exactly be "create a fork of this repo", but if a developer invests significant time and effort solving hard problems where the solutions are implemented in the released source, once an LLM model is trained on it, then someone else could quickly and easily have the LLM generate a new program that implements the novel solutions. Whether this is a problem or not may depend on the motivations of the developer, but this potential for IP laundering may very well begin influencing the licenses and methods of distribution that people choose. (Of course, I suppose at some point AI will be able to analyze and learn from binary executables or obfuscated source...)
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• lispisok 1y ago
  "I released source code under the MIT license and people are now using it to their financial benefit. Who could have possibly seen this coming?" Why does this keep happening? Why are so may developers blind to this obvious outcome?
  • darkwater 1y ago
    Because between 15 and 20 years ago the BSD zealots won that culture war. I would really love to see a simulation where GNU licenses won that culture war and which landscape we would have today.
    • orthoxerox 1y ago
      GPL wouldn't have changed anything. Or even AGPL, if you had been running an unmodified Bear instance.
    • sunshowers 1y ago
      There are good reasons the so-called "BSD zealots" won the so-called "culture war", such as the definition of a derived work being largely uncharted territory. Did you know that there's a compelling legal argument that the GPL attaches to programs talking to each other via JSON data structures? I think MPL 2.0 is the ideal kind of copyleft, because of its scope being very clear.
      • kstrauser 1y ago
        There is no such compelling legal argument. That’s an extraordinary idea with zero precedent or support.
        • sunshowers 1y ago
          https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugins https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugins > When is a program and its plug-ins considered a single combined program? > It depends on how the main program invokes its plug-ins. If the main program uses fork and exec to invoke plug-ins, and they establish intimate communication by sharing complex data structures, or shipping complex data structures back and forth, that can make them one single combined program. A main program that uses simple fork and exec to invoke plug-ins and does not establish intimate communication between them results in the plug-ins being a separate program. JSON data sent over the wire, particularly data with nested arrays and maps, and especially a bidirectional communication protocol, can reasonably count as "intimate communication" with "complex data structures" shipped "back and forth". This is nonbinding guidance, but it is from the FSF, and it is legally untested afaik (not a lawyer). There's sufficient legal risk here that I'd be wary of using rich communication protocols with GPL programs, particularly if there isn't an explicit exception for that protocol.
• moralestapia 1y ago
  >It hurts to believe in open-source and then be bitten by it. No, you don't believe in open source, hypocrite. Open source means anyone can use it, even for commercial purposes, and you knew this from day zero. Honestly, no sympathy for these people, as this happens over and over again, they actually exploit the very few good intended OSS people. They portray their project as open source initially, to gather sympathy and free work from others, then when they see the $$$ they flip the switch to non-OSS and rub their hands.
  • archagon 1y ago
    Or... maybe they actually need money to keep maintaining the project? Not everyone is out there living a life of leisure. If open source purists can't accept that, they'll find their cause gradually shrinking into nothing.
    • moralestapia 1y ago
      [flagged]
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    • FinnKuhn 1y ago
      He was making money with the project when it was open source already.
  • rozab 1y ago
    In this case it's kind of unbelievable how quickly the flip happened. Their 'manifesto'[0] was published only at the start of the year, where they vowed to be an incorruptible bastion of stability in a selfish society focused on short-term thinking. They want Bear to be around in 50 years. Then in the last couple weeks or so[1] it seems they saw a bit of a spike, and immediately pulled up the ladder. They even criticised this sort of behaviour in their manifesto: >We've seen our fair share of open-source projects become sour (see the recent Wordpress drama) or abandoned entirely. We've seen OpenAI become ClosedAI. There's a common thread here. Trust isn't just a legal structure, but a social contract. I am actually totally in favor of source available licenses, but in this case it seems counter to all the boasts the developer has made about their platform.[2] [0]: https://herman.bearblog.dev/manifesto/ https://herman.bearblog.dev/manifesto/ [1]: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=bear%20blog&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=... [2]: https://herman.bearblog.dev/building-software-to-last-forever/ https://herman.bearblog.dev/building-software-to-last-foreve...
• the_duke 1y ago
  We are also entering the age of "hey AI, take this repo, reimplement the same functionality". Now, no LLM is currently anywhere near doing that for ElasticSearch. But for a project with 4845 lines of Python code? (as per tokei) Definitely doable, with a bit of handholding and manual fixing. Would that be a derivative work? Maybe, but that would be a hard legal battle.
  • gkbrk 1y ago
    > Now, no LLM is currently anywhere near doing that for ElasticSearch. You could probably feed all of ElasticSearch into an LLM and ask it to "reimplement it" successfully. But why would you even bother? There's already an existing open-source alternative called OpenSearch [1]. [1]: https://github.com/opensearch-project/opensearch https://github.com/opensearch-project/opensearch
    • sarlalian 1y ago
      His point was that we are quickly entering the land of “Source Available” not really being a shield if someone’s willing to spend some time in claude code.
      • SpaceNugget 1y ago
        If you viewed the source and reproduced a software project you don't have a license to redistribute, that's cut and dry copyright violation. If the code looks similar enough you are toast. That's why there's the concept of a "clean room" reimplementation. The same is true if you feed the source into the context of an LLM and asked it to reproduce it. You have done nothing but introduce the possibility of transcription bugs.
  • noinsight 1y ago
    > We are also entering the age of "hey AI, take this repo, reimplement the same functionality". Wouldn't you do this just against the/an API documentation? Interesting thought.
• sciencesama 1y ago
  i need a bear alternative that can support images and video embeddings
  • qudat 1y ago
    https://prose.sh https://prose.sh — serve your blog using ssh. It was inspired by bearblog and others in this ecosystem of minimal blog platforms. https://pico.sh https://pico.sh includes a suite of other services (some paid) but the business model doesn’t depend on prose in particular.
• Fordec 1y ago
  Its interesting that they went with the Elastic License. Maybe this is a leaf in the wind that we're going to see more adoption of the license outside of Elastic. I get it's not a "standard" license, but standard licenses become standard through adoption. Someone has to be early to the party.
  • kstrauser 1y ago
    I like the Elastic License. It helps me know which programs to avoid.
• upboundspiral 1y ago
  I don't have experience in the subject but recently listened to a podcast episode discussing the tension between open source and building a sustainable business by Oxide and Friends. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-source-and-capitalism-with-ashley-williams/id1625932222?i=1000632582518 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-source-and-capita... https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-source-anti-patterns-with-kelsey-hightower/id1625932222?i=1000626219893 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-source-anti-patte...
• rurban 1y ago
  He talks about his blogging software bearblog. Bear is still here https://github.com/rizsotto/Bear https://github.com/rizsotto/Bear and open source
• mithrilskeleton 1y ago
  Companies in situations like these keep making this blunder when the solution is so right in front of them: use the AGPLv3.
  • riffraff 1y ago
    AGPL is not enough to prevent someone providing competing hosting options. They'd need to provide code if they make changes, but competitors are still free to offer the exact same service and not spend anything in development, which reduces the viability of the original project if hosting was the supposed source of income. So the original project wants to restrict user freedoms, i.e. they _do not_ want the project to be open source; it's a legit choice, even if I personally prefer free software.
• alberth 1y ago
  >You may not provide the Software as a hosted or managed service that offers users access to substantial features or functionality. IANAL, but does the above limitation prevent users from hosting bear for their own (or your company’s own) needs? If so, doesn’t that defeat the whole reason why it’s MIT licensed. https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/master/LICEN...
  • maronato 1y ago
    People and companies can host it for personal/internal use. People and companies cannot host it and offer it as a service to other people or companies. https://www.elastic.co/licensing/elastic-license/faq https://www.elastic.co/licensing/elastic-license/faq
    • alberth 1y ago
      The license doesn’t mention anything about “personal” or “internal” use. Again, IANAL, but I can see why a company might be cautious about using Bear as a self-hosted blog engine, since companies technically have “users.” For comparison, the Elastic License v2 - which this license is apparently modeled on - explicitly restricts use by "third parties": > "You may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service" ---- The Bear license doesn’t include similar language, which could create uncertainty. It might help to explicitly clarify that self-hosting for one’s own use is allowed, or to add “third party” wording to the limitations. I only raise this because (a) licensing is tricky, and (b) if this feedback helps the author clarify their intended license terms, that’s a win for everyone. https://www.elastic.co/licensing/elastic-license https://www.elastic.co/licensing/elastic-license
    • Medea 1y ago
      But he chose not to use the exact wording from the Elastic Search license, which clearly says "third parties." Instead, he wrote his own license, and now it is not clear if I am allowed to self-host. In my opinion that is a bad decision.
• johntash 1y ago
  I vaguely remember seeing bearblog before. While I can't comment much on the actual article, I do want to applaud how simple it looks. It makes me want to migrate away from ghost to bear or hugo or something without javascript/etc.
  • passthejoe 1y ago
    Most static site generators offer a Bear Blog theme, including Hugo and Zola. So you can get a self-hosted site that looks and acts like a Bear Blog, but run it yourself with a free software SSG.
    • johntash 1y ago
      Even better, thanks for the tip! I'll have another go at migrating to Hugo or maybe spend some time checking out other ones that are new to me.
• nickpsecurity 1y ago
  The author released it under a do-anything-you-want license. Then was hurt other people used the code for commercial and competitive reasons. The first paragraph showed the root cause was not thinking through licensing in the first place. Now, they've seriously considered it, decided their goals, and re-released it with a mix of generosity and self-interest. We should probably remind people that licensing is an agreement between them and the other party deciding what can and can't be done. Make sure you've considered things like profit, competitors, source redistribution, etc ahead of time. Then, pick the license that suits your goals best. For many, that's source-available licenses instead of open source.
• noduerme 1y ago
  [flagged]
• beanjuiceII 1y ago
  [flagged]
• 8organicbits 1y ago
  Bear has built a great community, I often find myself looking at blogs on the platform. The trending list is a pretty good news feed of tech-blogger related content: https://bearblog.dev/discover/ https://bearblog.dev/discover/
• jhack 1y ago
  This screams of uneducated regret with a sprinkling of greed. How do you make your code open source but then not understand what open source is? Or even read the license?
  • _heimdall 1y ago
    It could also scream life changes. There are plenty of scenarios in which initially the pros of open source outweighed the cons and that has flipped today. I can say that if I had spent years working on a blog platform with some decent side hustle income I may want to protect it better if I thought my main income might change, by choice or otherwise.
• scotty79 1y ago
  I feel like this logo ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ is also sort of just pulled from the open culture and free-ridden as he pleases.
• ajdude 1y ago
  Why do people go with MIT over a GPL? Would have just releasing it under GPL in the first place also have prevented this? Don't get me wrong, I have released libraries under MIT before because I have absolutely no problems with others using it even if they want to commercialize it, but I've also released things under GPL3.
  • NoGravitas 1y ago
    Even AGPL would not have prevented this; it would just have required anyone else offering Bear as a service to contribute back changes. It would have discouraged larger companies with policies against AGPL from doing so, but not everyone.
• kovac 1y ago
  Thanks for the bear blog. Considering how LLM companies don't respect licenses, and if your livelihood depends on it, I'd go a step further and only make the source available upon request, under strict agreements about how it's used. There's a lot of "open-source" nowadays that has nothing to do with the spirit of hacking.
• brundolf 1y ago
  I got this confused with the Bear note-taking app for a minute (https://bear.app/ https://bear.app/), since it's in a closely adjacent domain and even has similar value statements. Unfortunate naming collision
• NiloCK 1y ago
  The updated license in the BearBlog repo (https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/master/LICEN...) doesn't seem to match the Elastic License very well (https://www.elastic.co/licensing/elastic-license https://www.elastic.co/licensing/elastic-license). Have I missed a different source for the license text?
• kamranjon 1y ago
  Does anyone know why this says "No javascript, no stylesheets, no trackers. Just your words." But when you look at the github repo here: https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog It says the repo is 40% CSS and 31% Javascript? Am I misinterpreting what this means in this context?
  • jakelazaroff 1y ago
    If you click on the language name, GitHub should take you to a list of all files in that language in the repo. It looks like the JavaScript is basically all admin type stuff.
• Aeolun 1y ago
  While I can be sympathetic to the problem. This seems to a be a text only blog. Is the technical part here truly the big barrier to setting up a competing service?
• NiloCK 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • 0xfffafaCrash 1y ago
    Have you considered that some people listen to text rather than read it? Do you think screen readers, non-native English speakers, or anyone else listening to these are able to reasonably differentiate between “Open Source” and “open source”? Most readers won’t notice the difference or disregard it as meaningless and if you have to explain to everyone your position on a matter of communication it’s likely that you are the one who needs improvement with respect to your communication, not the rest of the world.
    • popalchemist 1y ago
      Impractical as he is, he is still technically correct, and I suspect, courts would back this stance were it ever to be tried in court.
    • philipwhiuk 1y ago
      > screen readers Good screen readers will definitely pronounce capital letters differently by way of emphasis.
    • wiether 1y ago
      > non-native English speakers As one of them, I can tell that I agree with @NiloCK. Maybe because I'm French so I had to learn even stronger rules, but to me if someone doesn't capitalize proper nouns in English, I'll first think that I misunderstood what they were writing because of my deficiencies, before coming to the conclusion that they didn't capitalize. Whereas, in French, I'm confident enough to mentally capitalize without even thinking about it.
    • NiloCK 1y ago
      Apologies if I was unclear, but I'm not worried about being understood. It's rare for me to write on the topic. My frustration is that I always have to guess at writers intention, and that the broader dialogue is confused by this lack of clarity. This thread exemplifies it - people accused the BearBlog author of being a hypocrite because he says things like "It hurts to believe in open-source and then be bitten by it." A more charitable read than the hypocrisy accusation is that the BearBlog author never believed in Open Source as intended by the OSI or MIT license, but rather believes in open source as colloquially used, for purposes of software legibility.
• datadrivenangel 1y ago
  Should have re-licensed to the spite license: https://github.com/voynix/spite-license https://github.com/voynix/spite-license
• subarctic 1y ago
  It isn't obvious from the title or the blog post itself, but it looks like this is some blogging software called Bear, not Bear the markdown notes app for macos and ios, which as far as I know isn't open source anyway
• lrvick 1y ago
  We open source every line of code we legally can at Distrust, and it has paid off in getting us work, even on forks, many many times. Source code is cheaper than ever, so if you fail to open source first then an open source clone will be created, and your hard work will be irrelevant. Best to have the first open source mover advantage. This move just told users you are selfish, and breaking the pay it forward chain of goodwill extended by all the developers of the open source libraries your code relies on. You also just told everyone to park their content on a platform that now has a bus factor of 1, with no option to export and reimport to a compatible fork hosted elsewhere. If your ability to make a living hinges on open source code like yours not existing, then you are already on too fragile ground to be sustainable, and this looks desperate and will just make more people leave.
• sirodoht 1y ago
  Maybe unfairly but quite disappointed at this development. This sentence crystalises open source: > "Unfortunately over the years there have been cases of people forking the project in the attempt to set up a competing service." You make something for everyone. And they may use it as they please. This is what open means. Did the author make something open source with the hope that nobody would actually use the gift that they made? Mataroa [1] also started with MIT license (directly inspired by bear blog) and it subsequently changed as well but to Affero GPL instead. [1] https://github.com/mataroablog/mataroa https://github.com/mataroablog/mataroa
• orliesaurus 1y ago
  Hot take but in the era of vibe coding, where you can literally one-shot a clone of bearblog, this comes as a surprise that people are trying to set up paid alternatives to this service trying to hurt his baseline..
• gforce_de 1y ago
  Why is there no support for compression? $ URL=https://herman.bearblog.dev/ $ curl -v -H 'Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip, br, zstd' $URL 2>&1 | grep --text ^'< Content-Encoding:\|< Content-Length:\|> Accept-Encoding:' > Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip, br, zstd ...
• tempfile 1y ago
  > Unfortunately over the years there have been cases of people forking the project in the attempt to set up a competing service. And it hurts. I am literally incapable of sympathising with this situation. Seriously, what did you expect to happen?
• RicoElectrico 1y ago
  I am confused, Bear appears to make no money as the hosting is free. So this is about hurt ego, not any financial loss.
  • FinnKuhn 1y ago
    He is very much making money with it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38937143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38937143 I suspect it is now probably more than in 2024.
    • RicoElectrico 1y ago
      Apparently this holds true today as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38937425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38937425
• eadmund 1y ago
  > Unfortunately over the years there have been cases of people forking the project in the attempt to set up a competing service. And it hurts. It hurts to see something you've worked so hard on for so long get copied and distributed with only a few hours of modification. It hurts to have poured so much love into a piece of software to see it turned against you and threaten your livelihood. It hurts to believe in open-source and then be bitten by it. The free solution to this is Affero GPL. The AGPL ensures that anyone who hosts a program must grant its users the same rights to use, examine, modify and share it that he received. The original author can just download that source and incorporate its changes. That means that a fork doesn’t hide changes from the original author who ‘poured so much love’ into it. We as a community have got to stop using the MIT or BSD licenses on our code. Use the AGPL for server code, the GPL for tools and the LGPL for libraries.
  • delfinom 1y ago
    Eh? Big players still run AGPL licensed services. The concern is not about the access to source code. The concern is livelihood. When a big player swoops in, they can completely decimate your business because of shear scale advantages, they can undercut you into bankruptcy. And while sharing the source under even GPL is noble, it's just also kneecapping your ability to make and grow a new business if it's a tool/service that has market traction. The OG author having access to that modified source code does absolutely nothing to help them. The big players are literally seagulls waiting to steal your current and future customers.
    • imiric 1y ago
      > The concern is not about the access to source code. That is a big part of the concern, yes. That anyone can copy your work, setup a competitor, and never give anything back. Copyleft licenses, and the AGPL in particular, ensure that those changes are made public, which benefits everyone, including the original project. > When a big player swoops in, they can completely decimate your business because of shear scale advantages, they can undercut you into bankruptcy. That's not a guarantee. In fact, many businesses built around copyleft licensed products can thrive, in ways that their competitors cannot. The original authors understand the code base, the product, and their users much better. They have first-mover advantage on any new features, and have full control over the project's direction. They can use these advantages to build a business that is difficult to compete with, even for much larger and more powerful competitors. In the open source world, the value of a company hinges on the quality of its product and the community around it, not on market hype, speculative valuations, and venture capital. It is more difficult to build unicorns and make investors rich with this approach, but focusing on the user avoids many of the wrong incentives that make most companies user hostile. Many companies fail because the leadership doesn't understand this, nor the philosophy behind open source, and they simply want to use it as a marketing tactic.
• graphememes 1y ago
  That's kind of the point of MIT.
• cousin_it 1y ago
  I think the main contribution of Bear at first was centralizing and codifying a certain visual style: minimalistic, with a single narrow column. It's basically "the Medium layout, but indie". And the thing is, that style in itself is not copyrightable. To achieve it, you don't need to use bearblog. You just need a few tens of lines of CSS, which you can very easily write yourself. Today there's another thing going for Bear: the discovery page. It's gradually becoming a driver of visibility, attracting more authors to Bear to get readers who are there. But I'm wary of these "flywheel" kind of things, even if they have an indie look. To me it still feels better to have my own website, and participate only in those discovery systems that support it, like Reddit or HN.
  • ezekg 1y ago
    I missed the "discover" before. What a great idea. I've been reading through various blogs this morning, feeling like the internet is small again.
  • hellcow 1y ago
    You can also participate in openring to provide that type of small-web discoverability to other authors you like: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring.
  • rpgbr 1y ago
    As in https://github.com/knhash/jekyllBear https://github.com/knhash/jekyllBear
• ubermonkey 1y ago
  It's odd that this blogging system is using a name also in use by a writing tool: https://bear.app/ https://bear.app/
• xrd 1y ago
  What is to prevent someone from cloning this code, and jumping into claude code and saying: "implement an identical system in Elixir?" LLMs are great at translation from X programming language to Y programming language. The Google/Oracle Android/Java lawsuit boiled down to whether Google engineers copied source code, or whether they re-implemented things in a clean room without using prior code, right? Isn't using an LLM to rebuild something a great loophole for this elastic search license? I see this being a losing battle because the license is only as strong as your ability to enforce it. Bear is probably in a good position because of their network position, but this seems like a losing battle long term.
  • franktankbank 1y ago
    What's preventing someone just ignoring the license?
• anonfordays 1y ago
  There's a reason why some call MIT/BSD licenses "cuck licenses." If you don't want others to profit off your hard work... don't pick a license that lets other profit off your work...
• Pet_Ant 1y ago
  I strongly believe that the BuSL [1] "Business Source License" is preferrably. It leaves the code as source-available for now, but eventually the code becomes open-source. It gives you a moat from which you can run a business. Or less of a moat, and more of a time-distorting slow motion field that your competitors are 4 years behind. This is the license Hashicorp used. It means that abandoned projects never need to die. It means that the source code is publically available now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License
• Jenny249 1y ago
  [flagged]
• me-vs-cat 1y ago
  > It hurts to have poured so much love into a piece of software to see it turned against you and threaten your livelihood. I'm confused: how is this their livelihood? I don't see any way to pay them directly nor where they monetize the blogs. Their pain is real, my question is in good faith, and I explicitly am not disparaging the love they have poured into this project.
• abhaynayar 1y ago
  I was always curious how license changes of these sort work exactly? Like, until that exact commit when the new license is added in, old license is in effect? So someone can commercialize from before that commit (cause MIT)? Also is there any way to fight that, if say you decide to change license, (but the code with old license is already out there), can someone retroactively sue you for using the old code with the more permissive license?
• bayindirh 1y ago
  We, as in developers, need to understand that permissive licenses are about "developer" freedom, and copyleft licenses are about "user" freedom. If someone doesn't want their code to be grabbed and ran away with it, they shall use (A)GPL. Then, nobody can add a "secret sauce" and sit on top of your work and act like they have written all of it and make it proprietary. Moreover, do not do copyright reassignments and with every new contributor, the license becomes more entrenched in your codebase. We should stop demonizing copyleft licenses and romanticize permissive licenses. Every inconsiderately permissive licensed code butters corporations and is destined to be closed and their developers got exploited. We should increase license literacy in Free Software.