5 ms·

What does it mean to acquire an open source project?

tylerhannan 1y ago
(disclaimer: I work at ClickHouse) At its simplest the team who was building that rad thing called LibreChat, now works at ClickHouse and build that rad thing called LibreChat. Even simpler, the LibreChat team works at ClickHouse and are now my colleagues. More complex, acquisitions can take a variety of "forms"...most importantly in these scenarios (and now I speak without knowledge of the deal structure) is making sure the team is paid, that copyright/trademark stuff is worked out, that OSS plans are discussed, and that everyone is excited to work together.
swyx 1y ago
intellectual property has value and an owner. that ownership can change hands. for money. open source means you have a license to freely use and commercialize it. not that it has no owners.
- gessha 1y ago
  I find it more intuitive to talk about it in terms of project governance and control. An OSS project has contributing members and they exert control over the project by working on the codebase and approving/rejecting contributions. If they act as an entity, you can buy their control over the project. The entity that owns the project can now change the license, “sponsor” the contributors by giving them salary, “fire” the contributors, etc.
righthand 1y ago
That there will soon be a new fork of it.
- tylerhannan 1y ago
  Why is that? From the post “ LibreChat remains 100% open-source under its existing MIT license Community-first development continues with the same transparency and openness Expanded roadmap to bring an even more enterprise-ready analytics experience. This proven playbook is the same one that we applied when joining forces with PeerDB to provide our ClickPipes CDC capabilities, and HyperDX, which became the UX of our observability product, ClickStack.” Also, I work at ClickHouse, my email is super easy to figure out. Would love to alleviate concerns where I can.
  - righthand 1y ago
    I was being facetious. Good luck with the new endeavor.

(disclaimer: I work at ClickHouse) At its simplest the team who was building that rad thing called LibreChat, now works at ClickHouse and build that rad thing called LibreChat. Even simpler, the LibreChat team works at ClickHouse and are now my colleagues. More complex, acquisitions can take a variety of "forms"...most importantly in these scenarios (and now I speak without knowledge of the deal structure) is making sure the team is paid, that copyright/trademark stuff is worked out, that OSS plans are discussed, and that everyone is excited to work together.

swyx 1y ago

intellectual property has value and an owner. that ownership can change hands. for money. open source means you have a license to freely use and commercialize it. not that it has no owners.

gessha 1y ago
I find it more intuitive to talk about it in terms of project governance and control. An OSS project has contributing members and they exert control over the project by working on the codebase and approving/rejecting contributions. If they act as an entity, you can buy their control over the project. The entity that owns the project can now change the license, “sponsor” the contributors by giving them salary, “fire” the contributors, etc.

righthand 1y ago

That there will soon be a new fork of it.

tylerhannan 1y ago
Why is that? From the post “ LibreChat remains 100% open-source under its existing MIT license Community-first development continues with the same transparency and openness Expanded roadmap to bring an even more enterprise-ready analytics experience. This proven playbook is the same one that we applied when joining forces with PeerDB to provide our ClickPipes CDC capabilities, and HyperDX, which became the UX of our observability product, ClickStack.” Also, I work at ClickHouse, my email is super easy to figure out. Would love to alleviate concerns where I can.
- righthand 1y ago
  I was being facetious. Good luck with the new endeavor.