3 ms·

Allow me to try a analogy. You and sfRattan rightfully pointing to a disease (large cloud providers using true free software to make money without contributing

by jtrn 1y ago

Allow me to try a analogy. You and sfRattan rightfully pointing to a disease (large cloud providers using true free software to make money without contributing back). But "fair source" cure is a new, unproven drug with serious side effects, all while ignoring the established, effective vaccine (strong copyleft GPL/AGPL and dual-licensing), that has been available for decades. The rise of "fair source" is both as sign of "market panic" and just "marketing". It does not seem to be necessary or good evolution for software freedom. That was HIGHLY abstract... So much so that I am not sure it maps onto reality, but I at least think this is a valid concern.

morcus 1y ago
> But "fair source" cure is a new, unproven drug with serious side effects, all while ignoring the established, effective vaccine (strong copyleft GPL/AGPL and dual-licensing) Can you explain this a bit more? I don't understand how this is true. AFAIK AGPL only prevents someone from modifying your AGPL codebase without sharing that in turn, but if they're content to offer exactly the service you're offering without modification it's not an issue. See for example Grafana, which is distributed under the AGPL but still has to handle competition from AWS and Azure that have managed Grafana offerings.
j1elo 1y ago
(A)GPL + Dual licensing is totally insufficient to fullfill the needs, or at the very least the wants, of people using things like "Fair source" licenses (regardless of the naming): to share their code as a sign of goodwill, without that becoming a risk for their survival. Amazon offers lots of AGPL software, and they fully respect the license in all cases. Ultimately the GPL is about protecting users' rights at the expense of developers' rights. So as long as AWS can offer a better/cheaper managed version of a software service, while still giving the users all details on how to run the same service if they chose to, then the AGPL is completely achieving its aims, even if the original company goes out of business. -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095581
- sfRattan 1y ago
  > Ultimately the GPL is about protecting users' rights at the expense of developers' rights. No. The GPL is about giving developers and users the same rights. Some developers want more rights than users, and engage in special pleading to call that "fairness". > So as long as AWS can offer a better/cheaper managed version of a software service, while still giving the users all details on how to run the same service if they chose to, then the AGPL is completely achieving its aims, even if the original company goes out of business. The truth many developers don't want to face is that, if you write a program or tool that can be easily deployed by the behemoths of tech on infrastructure and at scale you cannot match, then you do not have a licensing problem... You have an architecture problem. A company big enough to take your code and deploy it at overmatched scale and efficiency is also big enough to study your publicly accessible code, however it is licensed, and write new code that achieves the same outcome, maybe even implements nearly the same API, and then deploy that at scale. Actually competing with them involves pursuing fundamentally different architectures and value propositions which they cannot imitate, not writing some new license and trying to pitch it to customers/clients as "fair". The above reverse engineering and reimplementation already happen in the other direction (e.g. Docker vs. Podman). There's no reason to think a motivated behemoth couldn't do exactly the same to your "fair" source software. On the other hand, Google is constitutionally unable to ever make or deploy at scale something like, for example, Ente Photos, because Google desparately wants all the photos people upload to be legible to Google forever and for whatever new purposes Google's executives might dream up in the future.

by jtrn 1y ago

morcus 1y ago

> But "fair source" cure is a new, unproven drug with serious side effects, all while ignoring the established, effective vaccine (strong copyleft GPL/AGPL and dual-licensing) Can you explain this a bit more? I don't understand how this is true. AFAIK AGPL only prevents someone from modifying your AGPL codebase without sharing that in turn, but if they're content to offer exactly the service you're offering without modification it's not an issue. See for example Grafana, which is distributed under the AGPL but still has to handle competition from AWS and Azure that have managed Grafana offerings.

j1elo 1y ago

(A)GPL + Dual licensing is totally insufficient to fullfill the needs, or at the very least the wants, of people using things like "Fair source" licenses (regardless of the naming): to share their code as a sign of goodwill, without that becoming a risk for their survival. Amazon offers lots of AGPL software, and they fully respect the license in all cases. Ultimately the GPL is about protecting users' rights at the expense of developers' rights. So as long as AWS can offer a better/cheaper managed version of a software service, while still giving the users all details on how to run the same service if they chose to, then the AGPL is completely achieving its aims, even if the original company goes out of business. -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095581

sfRattan 1y ago
> Ultimately the GPL is about protecting users' rights at the expense of developers' rights. No. The GPL is about giving developers and users the same rights. Some developers want more rights than users, and engage in special pleading to call that "fairness". > So as long as AWS can offer a better/cheaper managed version of a software service, while still giving the users all details on how to run the same service if they chose to, then the AGPL is completely achieving its aims, even if the original company goes out of business. The truth many developers don't want to face is that, if you write a program or tool that can be easily deployed by the behemoths of tech on infrastructure and at scale you cannot match, then you do not have a licensing problem... You have an architecture problem. A company big enough to take your code and deploy it at overmatched scale and efficiency is also big enough to study your publicly accessible code, however it is licensed, and write new code that achieves the same outcome, maybe even implements nearly the same API, and then deploy that at scale. Actually competing with them involves pursuing fundamentally different architectures and value propositions which they cannot imitate, not writing some new license and trying to pitch it to customers/clients as "fair". The above reverse engineering and reimplementation already happen in the other direction (e.g. Docker vs. Podman). There's no reason to think a motivated behemoth couldn't do exactly the same to your "fair" source software. On the other hand, Google is constitutionally unable to ever make or deploy at scale something like, for example, Ente Photos, because Google desparately wants all the photos people upload to be legible to Google forever and for whatever new purposes Google's executives might dream up in the future.