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> managing an open source codebase of this size would add real strain to our small team Can you please elaborate what do you mean when you say this? This is so

> managing an open source codebase of this size would add real strain to our small team Can you please elaborate what do you mean when you say this? This is something I do not understand. How licensing terms affect your codebase management beyond setting things up so the code is available to users? Publishing something under a FLOSS license doesn’t mean anything except that you grant end-users certain rights (the four essential freedoms). The rest (like accepting patches or supporting external developers) is customary but by no means obligatory. You don’t have a capacity for it - don’t do it, easy. There are thousands of developers who do that - they just dump whatever they have under a nice license and that’s it. Unless you’re saying your legal department doesn’t have capacity to handle licensing concerns, especially if you’re using or potentially using non-FLOSS third party components. That I can totally understand, it could be pretty gnarly. Please don’t be mistaken: Free Software is a purely legal matter of what you allow users to do with your work - not some operating principles or way of organizing processes. Note: All this said, I can understand that you may not want to grant some freedoms to the end users, particularly the freedom to redistribute copies, because this could affect your plans of selling the licenses. But that’d be a whole different story than codebase management concerns.

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> you’re saying your legal department doesn’t have capacity to handle licensing concerns My read is their legal department isn’t fleshed out enough to defend the work when e.g. a tech giant steals it.
- deleted 9mo ago
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- drdaeman 9mo ago
  What’s the threat scenario and “defense” here? As I wrote, If the concern is that they cannot figure out a way to distribute it as paid software as others may redistribute it for free, that’d be a valid point of concern (and there are plenty of options). But that’s not what they’re saying.
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > What’s the threat scenario and “defense” here Someone steals their work. Violates the license. To defend their rights Kagi has to sue or lay down. Not giving away the keys to the kingdom until that ability to defend is established just underlines that they're doing valuable work.
    - drdaeman 9mo ago
      Pardon my skepticism but I don’t believe that’s a realistic threat model. Yea, purely hypothetically that could happen. But realistically, why would someone do that - what’s the point? Especially so it’s severe enough to warrant a serious legal battle that takes more than a few sternly worded DMCA-like emails to hosting providers? Mind you, if we’re talking about hypotheticals, someone can ship a differently branded or malware-ridden (or idk what else, my imagination runs dry pretty fast here) version of their binary distribution without any source code access just fine, violating licensing all the same. Patching unprotected binaries is pretty easy, frequently much less demanding than building from source. And with all due respect to the good work they’re doing, I highly doubt Orion team needs to buy a Denuvo license, haha. (And, as I said, it’s not even remotely what they wrote.)
      - notrealyme123 9mo ago
        For example: If it is open source, it will end for in LLMs and will be used in other browser variants (bigger and smaller). Any USP of the code itself will be gone.
        drdaeman 9mo ago
        What’s this “it” are you talking about, exactly? If LLMs hoover up removal of auto-shipped telemetry (currently the main selling point) then I’d say that’d be a reason to publish and submit this to every indexer imaginable ASAP ;-) Shame it’s a bit of absence of code so it’s nor really possible to submit anywhere. And other features are worthy because they’re implemented ideas, not because of their actual implementations. Like programmable buttons or overflow menus - I’m pretty sure there’s no secret sauce there, and it’s extremely unlikely one can just grab some parts of that and move it to a different product - adapting the code from Orion’s codebase would likely take more effort than just implementing the feature anew. Most code is just some complicated plumbing, not some valuable algorithmic novelty. And this plumbing is all about context it lives in. The value is usually not in the code, but in the product itself. Some exceptions apply, of course.
carlosjobim 9mo ago
It's the strain of dealing with FLOSS freaks, who are by far the most annoying and persistent people to have ever walked the earth.

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago

> you’re saying your legal department doesn’t have capacity to handle licensing concerns My read is their legal department isn’t fleshed out enough to defend the work when e.g. a tech giant steals it.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
drdaeman 9mo ago
What’s the threat scenario and “defense” here? As I wrote, If the concern is that they cannot figure out a way to distribute it as paid software as others may redistribute it for free, that’d be a valid point of concern (and there are plenty of options). But that’s not what they’re saying.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > What’s the threat scenario and “defense” here Someone steals their work. Violates the license. To defend their rights Kagi has to sue or lay down. Not giving away the keys to the kingdom until that ability to defend is established just underlines that they're doing valuable work.
  - drdaeman 9mo ago
    Pardon my skepticism but I don’t believe that’s a realistic threat model. Yea, purely hypothetically that could happen. But realistically, why would someone do that - what’s the point? Especially so it’s severe enough to warrant a serious legal battle that takes more than a few sternly worded DMCA-like emails to hosting providers? Mind you, if we’re talking about hypotheticals, someone can ship a differently branded or malware-ridden (or idk what else, my imagination runs dry pretty fast here) version of their binary distribution without any source code access just fine, violating licensing all the same. Patching unprotected binaries is pretty easy, frequently much less demanding than building from source. And with all due respect to the good work they’re doing, I highly doubt Orion team needs to buy a Denuvo license, haha. (And, as I said, it’s not even remotely what they wrote.)
    - notrealyme123 9mo ago
      For example: If it is open source, it will end for in LLMs and will be used in other browser variants (bigger and smaller). Any USP of the code itself will be gone.
      - drdaeman 9mo ago
        What’s this “it” are you talking about, exactly? If LLMs hoover up removal of auto-shipped telemetry (currently the main selling point) then I’d say that’d be a reason to publish and submit this to every indexer imaginable ASAP ;-) Shame it’s a bit of absence of code so it’s nor really possible to submit anywhere. And other features are worthy because they’re implemented ideas, not because of their actual implementations. Like programmable buttons or overflow menus - I’m pretty sure there’s no secret sauce there, and it’s extremely unlikely one can just grab some parts of that and move it to a different product - adapting the code from Orion’s codebase would likely take more effort than just implementing the feature anew. Most code is just some complicated plumbing, not some valuable algorithmic novelty. And this plumbing is all about context it lives in. The value is usually not in the code, but in the product itself. Some exceptions apply, of course.

carlosjobim 9mo ago

It's the strain of dealing with FLOSS freaks, who are by far the most annoying and persistent people to have ever walked the earth.