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This open source purism only benefits the leeches. This is the same defense I see repeated for Amazon and Google, and they're two of the biggest destroyers. H

This open source purism only benefits the leeches. This is the same defense I see repeated for Amazon and Google, and they're two of the biggest destroyers. Honestly OSI and their definition of "open" has been a scourge. Google and Amazon encourage this thinking because it benefits them. You can have non-commercial "fair source" for customers that prevents vultures from stealing your hard work. That's ethical, yet it gets dunked on by OSI purists. You can demand that profiteers be required to open source their entire stack. But these licenses are discouraged and underutilized. But when this keeps keeps happening again and again and continues to be met with victims blaming -- I'm disgusted by the open source community's failure to be pragmatic and sustainable. You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy. And so what did they take and take and never give themselves? Open source has a problem.

bigyabai 1y ago
> You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy. For source-availible software, you do. Someone "stealing" your code is table-stakes, if that turns your stomach then open source licenses aren't for you. You can sell your software and enjoy all the same protections of copyright that FOSS benefits from, instead. Microsoft built an empire doing that. It's no use crying over spilled milk if the software is freely licensed. There just isn't. If a paid competitor can do a better job, it will inevitably replace the free alternative - that's competition. When you try to use fatalist framing devices like "open source has a problem" you ignore all the developers happily coexisting with FOSS. The ones who don't complain, many of whom spend their whole lives never asking for anything but the right to contribute. If that's a problem and you dislike your neighbors, you're the one who needs to find a new neighborhood.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
kstrauser 1y ago
Open source, and Free Software especially, isn’t about pragmatism, or at least not only pragmatism. It’s about user freedom. And I only hear people complaining about shared source and other proprietary software licenses when the people using them claim they’re open source so that they can piggyback on that goodwill without actually participating. It’s perfectly fine if someone wants to release stuff under a closed license. They just don’t get to do that and then brag about their open source contributions.
- swiftcoder 1y ago
  > It’s about user freedom. I think it's worth asking "who is the user?" in this type of scenario. Because to my mind, AWS or WP Engine aren't really "users" per se - they are resellers that provide services to end-users, and the end-users are the only ones whose rights we should be particularly concerned about Of course, most of these licenses were written before reselling open-source software was a hugely valuable endeavour, so they make no distinction between resellers and end-users...
  - growse 1y ago
    They're using the software to achieve a useful aim (build a business that offers a service). Difficult to get a purer example of a "user" than this.
- ohdeargodno 1y ago
  [dead]
jazzyjackson 1y ago
If you're mad about what someone can legally do under your license, get a better license
- KingMob 1y ago
  Thing is, whenever they use, or switch to, a "better" license, people get mad about that too.
  - thunderfork 1y ago
    [dead]
  - nubinetwork 1y ago
    Not the developer's problem. Don't like the license? Don't use the software. (Note, I'm not defending anything that MM has done, but you're allowed to change your license, even if users dont like it.)
    - drob518 1y ago
      Well, yes and no. You can change it, but only going forward. A change doesn’t mean that WPengine would have to stop using it. They would have what they have, but they wouldn’t be able to use anything new, developed under new license terms. And I think a lot of the community would walk away from Wordpress and side with WPengine. There would be a high profile fork.
      - ljm 1y ago
        Let the chips fall as they may, no? If there was a way to make changes entirely free of consequence, everybody would be doing it.
        drob518 1y ago
        Yep, agreed. IMO, Matt just has sour grapes that someone was able to build a superior business.
nine_k 1y ago
There are things that are compact but build an interoperability ecosystem around them. Various compression algorithms, cryptography algorithms, communication protocols benefit from having a permissively-licensed implementation. Producing a closed-source fork won't make much sense, and where it does, won't damage the ecosystem. If I invented a new image compression format, I would like to see it supported everywhere, including all possible closed-source software. There are things that are complex enough, and build an ecosystem on top of them. Producing a closed fork may split the ecosystem, and strangle the open branch if it. These things should use a copyleft license, or maybe dual strict copyleft + commercial license. Linux, Python, Postgres, Grafana, Nexcloud are good examples. WordPress did it almost right, it uses GPL v2. But to force contributions from hosters, they should have used AGPL, which did not even exist at the time.
raincole 1y ago
This is not "open source purism," dude, what are you even talking about? This is just choosing a proper open source license.
Elinvynia 1y ago
OSI was literally started by the leeching megacorps (look at their list of sponsors this is not some grand conspiracy) to shame people away from creating more fair licenses. They are already angry enough that they had to consider AGPL as open source because it meets all their criteria.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  If OSI wanted to adjust their definition to exclude copyleft licenses, they could easily do so, it would not even be particularly hard to argue as a position. But open-source does include free software, even if not the other way around.
tsimionescu 1y ago
Your whole outlook is against the philosophy of Free Software. The whole point of free software is user freedom. If users can get better/cheaper services from WPEngine than they can from WordPress, and this is putting WordPress out of business: good. Companies should compete on services, not by enforcing a software monopoly. This is better for users than the alternative. Since they're using open source software, they can always switch back if WordPress starts offering better services, or switch to some new company that can do it even better than either in the future.
- alganet 1y ago
  Free software has nothing to do with making services cheaper.
  - bdcravens 1y ago
    Nor is it about any obligation to contribute back.
    - alganet 1y ago
      I never said it was.
  - tsimionescu 1y ago
    It absolutely does. Even Stallman talks explicitly about this - it's one of the reasons why the freedom to do anything, including commercially, with the code is so important.
    - alganet 1y ago
      No, it doesn't. Freedom to commercialize does not mean the movement is designed to make things cheaper.
      - tsimionescu 1y ago
        It's not designed to do that, no. But it is one of the goals, or at least one of the bonuses they expect to come of this. A big part of the freedom Stallman wants for everyone is the freedom to pay anyone who has the skills to work on your software, rather than the original creator having a monopoly on that and being able to charge monopoly prices to you.
MangoCoffee 1y ago
>This open source purism only benefits the leeches. I don't understand what open source purism even is. You pick a license for your software, and now you're mad because people are making money off of it. Then why even go with an open source license? Do what Bill Gates did tell people to pay up for using Microsoft software, because Microsoft software isn't open source. What are you crying about?
- evanelias 1y ago
  > I don't understand what open source purism even is. I believe GP is referring to the behavior of users, not the developer. That is, an increasingly large segment of the industry refuses to touch software using non-OSI-approved licenses. Open source purists view non-OSI "source available" licenses with the same disdain as fully proprietary closed-source software. In turn, this situation makes it extremely hard for independent-minded developers to form businesses for any software that doesn't lend itself well to SaaS. Massive companies can afford to release things as FOSS, but smaller/bootstrapped businesses effectively cannot. Compare this to a few decades ago: the industry used to be less dogmatic regarding licenses, and there were a lot more smaller independent software vendors.
  - tsimionescu 1y ago
    A good part of why this is is that, with a source-available license, you are almost as much at the mercy of the company developing the software as with proprietary software. Sure, it's nice that you can read the code, maybe workaround certain bugs, or audit it for security. But, crucially, if the company decides to change their terms ask for much more money, or just refuse to do business with you, or goes out of business, you're in just as bad a situation as if you were buying Oracle software. You will have to replace them with new software, you won't have a choice to continue development or find a new vendor to support it for you.
    - evanelias 1y ago
      How so, specifically? Can you provide examples of why this is the case with common non-OSI licenses such as SSPL, BSL, Functional Source License, or Fair Core License?
gus_massa 1y ago
If you don't like that, just use AGPL that force SAAS to publish the modifications.
- justin66 1y ago
  Seriously. I don't even understand what the argument is about.
kmeisthax 1y ago
WP Engine sponsors the development of several WordPress plugins. Are we calling plugin developers leeches now?

bigyabai 1y ago

> You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy. For source-availible software, you do. Someone "stealing" your code is table-stakes, if that turns your stomach then open source licenses aren't for you. You can sell your software and enjoy all the same protections of copyright that FOSS benefits from, instead. Microsoft built an empire doing that. It's no use crying over spilled milk if the software is freely licensed. There just isn't. If a paid competitor can do a better job, it will inevitably replace the free alternative - that's competition. When you try to use fatalist framing devices like "open source has a problem" you ignore all the developers happily coexisting with FOSS. The ones who don't complain, many of whom spend their whole lives never asking for anything but the right to contribute. If that's a problem and you dislike your neighbors, you're the one who needs to find a new neighborhood.

cindyllm 1y ago
[dead]

kstrauser 1y ago

Open source, and Free Software especially, isn’t about pragmatism, or at least not only pragmatism. It’s about user freedom. And I only hear people complaining about shared source and other proprietary software licenses when the people using them claim they’re open source so that they can piggyback on that goodwill without actually participating. It’s perfectly fine if someone wants to release stuff under a closed license. They just don’t get to do that and then brag about their open source contributions.

swiftcoder 1y ago
> It’s about user freedom. I think it's worth asking "who is the user?" in this type of scenario. Because to my mind, AWS or WP Engine aren't really "users" per se - they are resellers that provide services to end-users, and the end-users are the only ones whose rights we should be particularly concerned about Of course, most of these licenses were written before reselling open-source software was a hugely valuable endeavour, so they make no distinction between resellers and end-users...
- growse 1y ago
  They're using the software to achieve a useful aim (build a business that offers a service). Difficult to get a purer example of a "user" than this.
ohdeargodno 1y ago
[dead]

jazzyjackson 1y ago

If you're mad about what someone can legally do under your license, get a better license

KingMob 1y ago
Thing is, whenever they use, or switch to, a "better" license, people get mad about that too.
- thunderfork 1y ago
  [dead]
- nubinetwork 1y ago
  Not the developer's problem. Don't like the license? Don't use the software. (Note, I'm not defending anything that MM has done, but you're allowed to change your license, even if users dont like it.)
  - drob518 1y ago
    Well, yes and no. You can change it, but only going forward. A change doesn’t mean that WPengine would have to stop using it. They would have what they have, but they wouldn’t be able to use anything new, developed under new license terms. And I think a lot of the community would walk away from Wordpress and side with WPengine. There would be a high profile fork.
    - ljm 1y ago
      Let the chips fall as they may, no? If there was a way to make changes entirely free of consequence, everybody would be doing it.
      - drob518 1y ago
        Yep, agreed. IMO, Matt just has sour grapes that someone was able to build a superior business.

nine_k 1y ago

There are things that are compact but build an interoperability ecosystem around them. Various compression algorithms, cryptography algorithms, communication protocols benefit from having a permissively-licensed implementation. Producing a closed-source fork won't make much sense, and where it does, won't damage the ecosystem. If I invented a new image compression format, I would like to see it supported everywhere, including all possible closed-source software. There are things that are complex enough, and build an ecosystem on top of them. Producing a closed fork may split the ecosystem, and strangle the open branch if it. These things should use a copyleft license, or maybe dual strict copyleft + commercial license. Linux, Python, Postgres, Grafana, Nexcloud are good examples. WordPress did it almost right, it uses GPL v2. But to force contributions from hosters, they should have used AGPL, which did not even exist at the time.

raincole 1y ago

This is not "open source purism," dude, what are you even talking about? This is just choosing a proper open source license.

Elinvynia 1y ago

OSI was literally started by the leeching megacorps (look at their list of sponsors this is not some grand conspiracy) to shame people away from creating more fair licenses. They are already angry enough that they had to consider AGPL as open source because it meets all their criteria.

rcxdude 1y ago
If OSI wanted to adjust their definition to exclude copyleft licenses, they could easily do so, it would not even be particularly hard to argue as a position. But open-source does include free software, even if not the other way around.

tsimionescu 1y ago

Your whole outlook is against the philosophy of Free Software. The whole point of free software is user freedom. If users can get better/cheaper services from WPEngine than they can from WordPress, and this is putting WordPress out of business: good. Companies should compete on services, not by enforcing a software monopoly. This is better for users than the alternative. Since they're using open source software, they can always switch back if WordPress starts offering better services, or switch to some new company that can do it even better than either in the future.

alganet 1y ago
Free software has nothing to do with making services cheaper.
- bdcravens 1y ago
  Nor is it about any obligation to contribute back.
  - alganet 1y ago
    I never said it was.
- tsimionescu 1y ago
  It absolutely does. Even Stallman talks explicitly about this - it's one of the reasons why the freedom to do anything, including commercially, with the code is so important.
  - alganet 1y ago
    No, it doesn't. Freedom to commercialize does not mean the movement is designed to make things cheaper.
    - tsimionescu 1y ago
      It's not designed to do that, no. But it is one of the goals, or at least one of the bonuses they expect to come of this. A big part of the freedom Stallman wants for everyone is the freedom to pay anyone who has the skills to work on your software, rather than the original creator having a monopoly on that and being able to charge monopoly prices to you.

MangoCoffee 1y ago

>This open source purism only benefits the leeches. I don't understand what open source purism even is. You pick a license for your software, and now you're mad because people are making money off of it. Then why even go with an open source license? Do what Bill Gates did tell people to pay up for using Microsoft software, because Microsoft software isn't open source. What are you crying about?

evanelias 1y ago
> I don't understand what open source purism even is. I believe GP is referring to the behavior of users, not the developer. That is, an increasingly large segment of the industry refuses to touch software using non-OSI-approved licenses. Open source purists view non-OSI "source available" licenses with the same disdain as fully proprietary closed-source software. In turn, this situation makes it extremely hard for independent-minded developers to form businesses for any software that doesn't lend itself well to SaaS. Massive companies can afford to release things as FOSS, but smaller/bootstrapped businesses effectively cannot. Compare this to a few decades ago: the industry used to be less dogmatic regarding licenses, and there were a lot more smaller independent software vendors.
- tsimionescu 1y ago
  A good part of why this is is that, with a source-available license, you are almost as much at the mercy of the company developing the software as with proprietary software. Sure, it's nice that you can read the code, maybe workaround certain bugs, or audit it for security. But, crucially, if the company decides to change their terms ask for much more money, or just refuse to do business with you, or goes out of business, you're in just as bad a situation as if you were buying Oracle software. You will have to replace them with new software, you won't have a choice to continue development or find a new vendor to support it for you.
  - evanelias 1y ago
    How so, specifically? Can you provide examples of why this is the case with common non-OSI licenses such as SSPL, BSL, Functional Source License, or Fair Core License?

gus_massa 1y ago

If you don't like that, just use AGPL that force SAAS to publish the modifications.

justin66 1y ago
Seriously. I don't even understand what the argument is about.

kmeisthax 1y ago

WP Engine sponsors the development of several WordPress plugins. Are we calling plugin developers leeches now?