4 ms·

Should probably be called "open source with a two year delay", or "open source in two years". Or "open source when obsolete" because that's what it is, fundame

by jraph 1y ago

Should probably be called "open source with a two year delay", or "open source in two years". Or "open source when obsolete" because that's what it is, fundamentally. Of course, it sells less and makes it way more obvious what these delayed open source licenses are at their core: "we'd like to make people believe we respect their freedom, but are not actually convinced with giving them that".

aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
open source for enterprise is often more about trust and transparency than "freedom". Source avaliable has most advantages of FOSS without the legal and monetization issues. There is this blind trust in open source model taken to a unhealthy or misguided extreme in a lot of online discussion. A two year delay is pretty reasonable and liberal. It allow costumers that dont want to accept the new licence able to continue as-is by simply following an older version.
- jraph 1y ago
  > There is this blind trust in open source model In my case, it's not about any open source model, it's about software freedom. What's unhealthy is non-free software, and there's nothing extreme in having this opinion.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    It's free for humans and 99.999% of businesses. If you base your opinions on pure black and white tests without considering the actual tradeoffs of the license then that's blindness.
    - jraph 1y ago
      If you base your opinions on compromises and always making tradeoffs on your core values, you've lost your direction. What do we do now? > It's free for humans and 99.999% of businesses Nope. "Free" has specific meaning in this context, this qualifier doesn't apply here. It's the whole point. If you believe it applies, you've fundamentally misunderstood the free software definition and what's at stake for the free software movement. More specifically, the qualifier is not relative to a specific entity and what freedom it actually needs / uses at some given point in time. I'm certainly for fundamental freedoms like the freedom of the press, even if I'm not myself a journalist. To go further with the comparison, there's nothing in being against compromising on the freedom of the press that's blindness or being black and white (or maybe it's being black and white, but I can't see how it would be wrong).
      - Dylan16807 1y ago
        Everything is a compromise. GPL versus MIT is a compromise either way. Both are more free than the other. So don't tell me there's such a thing as fully free and that nothing else matters. > I'm certainly for fundamental freedoms like the freedom of the press, even if I'm not myself a journalist. Freedom of the press has more restrictions. In particular violating an NDA in your press activities is somewhat similar in how it affects few people and is time-limited.
        jraph 1y ago
        I don't follow. GPL and MIT fully fulfill the exigences of the free software definition, there's no compromise here. Choosing between GPL and MIT may involve compromises, but we are talking about something else, you are moving the goalposts here. (note: I kept updating my previous comment, probably while you were writing this, sorry for this) (edit: ah, you noticed) > Freedom of the press has more restrictions. In particular violating an NDA in your press activities is somewhat similar in how it affects few people and is time-limited. Violating an NDA is a matter of law and contracts that can equally apply to software, it's not at the level of the fundamental right or at the level of the license. If you are speaking about protecting one's source, then it's orthogonal (and probably also an important mechanism for) freedom of the press.
        Dylan16807 1y ago
        MIT gives less freedom to the user. GPL gives less freedom to the dev. I'm not moving goalposts, those are both very important and you can't maximize both. > it's not at the level of the fundamental right or at the level of the license. I would say the ability to run a competing business within two years is less fundamental than the ability to talk about what you saw at your former job. Also what are you saying about "not at the level"? It overrides the fundamental right, but people accept that.
        jraph 1y ago
        > MIT gives less freedom to the user. No. Someone can use some MIT licensed software for any purpose and can strictly do anything with it that the GPL would allow. Just as free. However, I do agree that permissive licenses like the MIT allows someone to build proprietary software with the code, and the users won't enjoy software freedom with that result. That would be the reason why I wouldn't license my software under permissive license except for specific cases. One could argue the MIT actually gives more freedom to the user: they can, with a MIT source code, build and distribute a proprietary derivative. Of course, this doesn't mean this additional freedom is desirable. > Also what are you saying about "not at the level"? It overrides the fundamental right, but people accept that. Yeah, just like laws limit your freedom to run free software for any purpose. You, for instance, can't legally take /bin/ls with you to go kill someone even if its license itself doesn't explicitly forbid it. I'm pretty fine with this. I have some feeling we do agree that freedom is never absolute and kinda argue past each others.
    - rpdillon 1y ago
      I've written this above and it's a point I don't see very many people make in this discussion, but you're locking yourself into an ecosystem that has a monopoly on hosting as a service. That damages you as a customer because you no longer have choice about what service you go to for hosting. You're left with either hosting it yourself or going with the only vendor who's allowed to. That's not a great experience. It's not a hard thought experiment. Just imagine this license applied to whatever database you're used to spinning up in the cloud on whatever provider you want. If that one provider doesn't have the plan you're looking for, you're forced to take on the work of hosting it yourself because no one is allowed to do that for you and let you pay them because the license forbids it.
      - Dylan16807 1y ago
        That seems fine to me? If I want them to host it then I don't care a lot about the license, and my escape hatch of self-hosting is quite good. I don't think self hosting is a big burden. And competitors can still host a mildly older version freely, so that prevents long term lock-in even if I ignore self hosting. So the main company still has to compete to keep business, which is good for everyone, but they keep some control over the hosting business, which means they're less likely to get crushed and stop updating. I think it sounds good overall.
      - evanelias 1y ago
        OK, but how do these concerns apply specifically to self-hosted dev tools such as Liquibase? Why do you object to FSL for this specific type of software, which has a different usage pattern than a database server?
        gr4vityWall 1y ago
        Because it's proprietary software. The GNU and the FSF website have written plenty about it: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor... That license restricts what you can do with the software due to a business interest of the author. Therefore, it's non-free or proprietary.
Dylan16807 1y ago
Very little is obsolete that fast. I don't think it shows a lack of respect for my freedom. The goal is to place some (rather minor) restrictions on businesses, and businesses are not people.
- jraph 1y ago
  > Very little is obsolete that fast Isn't two years of security patch lag a big deal?
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    It's a dev tool that isn't taking untrusted input, right? Then no, I don't think security patches are a big deal. Also I feel like "obsolete" is the wrong word for that.
  - imtringued 1y ago
    Other than puritanism, what exactly stops you from using the FSL version? It's not like you're a hyperscaler hosting their product as a SaaS.
    - jraph 1y ago
      What you call puritanism is a fight for user software freedom to be recognized as a fundamental right. Your phrasing is malicious. It waves off a 40 year fight from many reasonable people as extreme and ridiculous, or as religious-like. Did you expect me to answer "no, nothing else than puritanism" to your question? Well, I won't.
      - x0x0 1y ago
        So you can use it just fine but because aws would have to pay to resell it you won't.
        jraph 1y ago
        Again, that's a terrible presentation of the situation. It makes me look like I defend AWS. That's like saying that although I could, I won't vote for candidate C who is against the freedom of the press when candidate C would prevent awful newspaper N from publishing its horrible bullshit. I'd prefer newspaper N not to publish bullshit, or even to not exist at all, but I wouldn't want this to cost the freedom of the press. AWS doing terrible things shouldn't cost us user software freedom. Yes, indeed, there's stuff that I will do or won't do out of principles, of course! Even if it would be convenient to do otherwise! Is this an alien concept? How is this difficult to understand that someone doesn't want compromises on rights that ought to be fundamental?
unsungNovelty 1y ago
#source-washing
pnt12 1y ago
Late open source, with a double entendre on late.
reedciccio 1y ago
Delayed Open Source, and it's an old practice https://opensource.org/delayed-open-source-publication https://opensource.org/delayed-open-source-publication

by jraph 1y ago

aDyslecticCrow 1y ago

open source for enterprise is often more about trust and transparency than "freedom". Source avaliable has most advantages of FOSS without the legal and monetization issues. There is this blind trust in open source model taken to a unhealthy or misguided extreme in a lot of online discussion. A two year delay is pretty reasonable and liberal. It allow costumers that dont want to accept the new licence able to continue as-is by simply following an older version.

jraph 1y ago
> There is this blind trust in open source model In my case, it's not about any open source model, it's about software freedom. What's unhealthy is non-free software, and there's nothing extreme in having this opinion.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  It's free for humans and 99.999% of businesses. If you base your opinions on pure black and white tests without considering the actual tradeoffs of the license then that's blindness.
  - jraph 1y ago
    If you base your opinions on compromises and always making tradeoffs on your core values, you've lost your direction. What do we do now? > It's free for humans and 99.999% of businesses Nope. "Free" has specific meaning in this context, this qualifier doesn't apply here. It's the whole point. If you believe it applies, you've fundamentally misunderstood the free software definition and what's at stake for the free software movement. More specifically, the qualifier is not relative to a specific entity and what freedom it actually needs / uses at some given point in time. I'm certainly for fundamental freedoms like the freedom of the press, even if I'm not myself a journalist. To go further with the comparison, there's nothing in being against compromising on the freedom of the press that's blindness or being black and white (or maybe it's being black and white, but I can't see how it would be wrong).
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      Everything is a compromise. GPL versus MIT is a compromise either way. Both are more free than the other. So don't tell me there's such a thing as fully free and that nothing else matters. > I'm certainly for fundamental freedoms like the freedom of the press, even if I'm not myself a journalist. Freedom of the press has more restrictions. In particular violating an NDA in your press activities is somewhat similar in how it affects few people and is time-limited.
      - jraph 1y ago
        I don't follow. GPL and MIT fully fulfill the exigences of the free software definition, there's no compromise here. Choosing between GPL and MIT may involve compromises, but we are talking about something else, you are moving the goalposts here. (note: I kept updating my previous comment, probably while you were writing this, sorry for this) (edit: ah, you noticed) > Freedom of the press has more restrictions. In particular violating an NDA in your press activities is somewhat similar in how it affects few people and is time-limited. Violating an NDA is a matter of law and contracts that can equally apply to software, it's not at the level of the fundamental right or at the level of the license. If you are speaking about protecting one's source, then it's orthogonal (and probably also an important mechanism for) freedom of the press.
        Dylan16807 1y ago
        MIT gives less freedom to the user. GPL gives less freedom to the dev. I'm not moving goalposts, those are both very important and you can't maximize both. > it's not at the level of the fundamental right or at the level of the license. I would say the ability to run a competing business within two years is less fundamental than the ability to talk about what you saw at your former job. Also what are you saying about "not at the level"? It overrides the fundamental right, but people accept that.
        jraph 1y ago
        > MIT gives less freedom to the user. No. Someone can use some MIT licensed software for any purpose and can strictly do anything with it that the GPL would allow. Just as free. However, I do agree that permissive licenses like the MIT allows someone to build proprietary software with the code, and the users won't enjoy software freedom with that result. That would be the reason why I wouldn't license my software under permissive license except for specific cases. One could argue the MIT actually gives more freedom to the user: they can, with a MIT source code, build and distribute a proprietary derivative. Of course, this doesn't mean this additional freedom is desirable. > Also what are you saying about "not at the level"? It overrides the fundamental right, but people accept that. Yeah, just like laws limit your freedom to run free software for any purpose. You, for instance, can't legally take /bin/ls with you to go kill someone even if its license itself doesn't explicitly forbid it. I'm pretty fine with this. I have some feeling we do agree that freedom is never absolute and kinda argue past each others.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    I've written this above and it's a point I don't see very many people make in this discussion, but you're locking yourself into an ecosystem that has a monopoly on hosting as a service. That damages you as a customer because you no longer have choice about what service you go to for hosting. You're left with either hosting it yourself or going with the only vendor who's allowed to. That's not a great experience. It's not a hard thought experiment. Just imagine this license applied to whatever database you're used to spinning up in the cloud on whatever provider you want. If that one provider doesn't have the plan you're looking for, you're forced to take on the work of hosting it yourself because no one is allowed to do that for you and let you pay them because the license forbids it.
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      That seems fine to me? If I want them to host it then I don't care a lot about the license, and my escape hatch of self-hosting is quite good. I don't think self hosting is a big burden. And competitors can still host a mildly older version freely, so that prevents long term lock-in even if I ignore self hosting. So the main company still has to compete to keep business, which is good for everyone, but they keep some control over the hosting business, which means they're less likely to get crushed and stop updating. I think it sounds good overall.
    - evanelias 1y ago
      OK, but how do these concerns apply specifically to self-hosted dev tools such as Liquibase? Why do you object to FSL for this specific type of software, which has a different usage pattern than a database server?
      - gr4vityWall 1y ago
        Because it's proprietary software. The GNU and the FSF website have written plenty about it: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor... That license restricts what you can do with the software due to a business interest of the author. Therefore, it's non-free or proprietary.

Dylan16807 1y ago

Very little is obsolete that fast. I don't think it shows a lack of respect for my freedom. The goal is to place some (rather minor) restrictions on businesses, and businesses are not people.

jraph 1y ago
> Very little is obsolete that fast Isn't two years of security patch lag a big deal?
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  It's a dev tool that isn't taking untrusted input, right? Then no, I don't think security patches are a big deal. Also I feel like "obsolete" is the wrong word for that.
- imtringued 1y ago
  Other than puritanism, what exactly stops you from using the FSL version? It's not like you're a hyperscaler hosting their product as a SaaS.
  - jraph 1y ago
    What you call puritanism is a fight for user software freedom to be recognized as a fundamental right. Your phrasing is malicious. It waves off a 40 year fight from many reasonable people as extreme and ridiculous, or as religious-like. Did you expect me to answer "no, nothing else than puritanism" to your question? Well, I won't.
    - x0x0 1y ago
      So you can use it just fine but because aws would have to pay to resell it you won't.
      - jraph 1y ago
        Again, that's a terrible presentation of the situation. It makes me look like I defend AWS. That's like saying that although I could, I won't vote for candidate C who is against the freedom of the press when candidate C would prevent awful newspaper N from publishing its horrible bullshit. I'd prefer newspaper N not to publish bullshit, or even to not exist at all, but I wouldn't want this to cost the freedom of the press. AWS doing terrible things shouldn't cost us user software freedom. Yes, indeed, there's stuff that I will do or won't do out of principles, of course! Even if it would be convenient to do otherwise! Is this an alien concept? How is this difficult to understand that someone doesn't want compromises on rights that ought to be fundamental?

unsungNovelty 1y ago

#source-washing

pnt12 1y ago

Late open source, with a double entendre on late.

reedciccio 1y ago

Delayed Open Source, and it's an old practice https://opensource.org/delayed-open-source-publication https://opensource.org/delayed-open-source-publication