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open source for enterprise is often more about trust and transparency than "freedom". Source avaliable has most advantages of FOSS without the legal and monetiz

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.

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.