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You didn't deserve to be downvoted to hell and back. People deserve to be paid for their work, and without copyright law only mega-cap companies would ever be a

You didn't deserve to be downvoted to hell and back. People deserve to be paid for their work, and without copyright law only mega-cap companies would ever be able to capture enough value from their work to survive. People act like you're saying Disney should be able to hold a copyright on Mickey Mouse for over 100 years. Calling it a "rug pull" when the creator of an open source project decides to stop giving away future work for free is a delusional level of self-entitlement. (1) The previous releases are still open source. If you don't like it, fork the last free release and maintain it yourself. (2) People deserve whatever the market is willing to pay for their work. See above. Frankly, if D. Richard Hipp decided to stop giving away future versions of SQLite for free, I would be the first person to congratulate him for finally having the courage to put his foot down and say "my fellow committers and I deserve at least a few million dollars for 20 years of work making something that billions of machines rely upon."

mightyham 1mo ago
Open-source is an inherently radical anti-capitalist philosophy. In your eyes everyone "deserves" what the market is willing to pay, but open-source developers would rather donate their time and energy to create or contribute to something that is freely accessible to anyone and everyone. Also, believe it or not, but some people are not motivated by money, and actually derive value from the process of creating software. The issue with rug-pulls like this is that they are deceptively masquerading with this philosophy as a calculated business strategy to adopt users. Then in this case they start using deceptive tactics like removing build files so they can continue appearing to be fully open source, even though they are violating the spirit of that term. Finally, they drop the facade when it is deemed valuable enough. Even if you are a strict capitalist, there is nothing virtuous or meritocratic about these kinds of business strategies, they rely on tricky, concealed intentions, and rightfully deserve criticism. I'll also add that there is nothing "courageous" about deciding to extract more value from your labor at the expense of public accessibility. True courage is found in acts of selfless sacrifice.
- bigstrat2003 1mo ago
  > Open-source is an inherently radical anti-capitalist philosophy. No it isn't. Open source isn't inherently political in any way. Maybe that's what it's about to you, but I open source things because I want to give to others out of a general sense of wishing to build up the whole community. I don't have anything against capitalism.
  - mightyham 1mo ago
    First off, in some sense everything is political. Next, I am not claiming that you can't be supporter of open source while also holding a wide array of associated political views. My point is that the concept of open source fundamentally rejects the ideal capitalist conception of the world as a bunch of purely rational self-interested agents seeking to optimize wealth and economic output. Willingly performing labor for its own sake, for the benefit of others, with no expectation of return value, is obviously not capitalist behavior.
    - president_zippy 1mo ago
      "First off, in some sense everything is political." That's what every partisan hack says before they shove their culture war politics down your throat. Some people out in the real world get laid and just can't be bothered to hear your opinion about the race-swapped Snow White remake, regardless of whether you loved it or hated it.
      - mightyham 1mo ago
        Politics is a lense of analysis that can be applied to almost anything related to the group behaviors of people. Refusing to engage with it because there are charlatans that apply these methods poorly just demonstrates an inability or lack of desire to understand. It's quite revealing btw that you decided to frame intellectual pursuits and sexual behavior as being in opposition and/or claim that the later is somehow more important.
pstuart 1mo ago
I effectively agree with you, but your last comment is interesting in the usage of the word "courage". My understanding of D. Richard Hipp's state of being is that he feels fairly financially compensated (via support contracts), and more so, emotionally compensated by knowing that his work adds value to other people's lives and having value in that. Money's a good thing to have, but having purpose in life is incredibly valuable too.
- president_zippy 1mo ago
  Fair enough on use of the word "courage" in this case. I will gladly walk back on things I am wrong about when I realize it. If DRH prefers the business model of giving away something for free and selling consulting support for it, then bully for him. It might result in less income, but I'm sure being a consultant is lot less stressful than running a corporation based on SQLite with >200 employees would be. However, I will not devalue the work of software engineering by giving away solutions to difficult problems for free and fostering a culture of self-entitlement toward software engineers. Treating prosperous and purposeful existences as conflicting aspirations is an unusually pernicious self-deception. Go get yours, I want you to get paid for your work. You deserve to get paid for the value you create. Besides that, it's naive to think that if you give up the portion of value you can capture, that it will go back to the people you're really trying to help. In reality, when you publish really good open source work that mega-cap tech companies can use at scale, they are the ones who capture the lion's share of the value you created rather than the end users they are data mining. "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." -Deuteronomy 25:4 If even Jews and Christians- for as much as the self-abasing communists on this site resent them- can concede that even a lowly beast of the field is entitled to a portion of the value it creates, then how much more deserving is dignified man of his recompense?
  - pstuart 1mo ago
    I'm not contesting the need to be compensated for work. My point is that there's stuff that I have worked on to scratch an itch and don't feel the need for monetary compensation. I believe there's an intrinsic need to be part of something bigger than ones self, and participating by volunteering time to have the satisfaction of knowing that you helped make something you care about better is not a bad thing, if on your own terms. The way DRH has talked about SQLite is that he is financially secure and by giving it away gets both the reward mentioned above as well as maintaining the value of the free software which he can still make money off of support contracts. He is choosing to do this because for him that effort is the most rewarding. FOSS has been a foundational facet of the work we get well-paid to participate in. This is a case in which we have the option to have our cake and share it too. None of this means you have to participate in this way, but I suggest that your viewpoint is yours and may not be shared by everybody else in the community.
roryirvine 1mo ago
An ironic choice of hypothetical given that SQLite's present ubiquity is a result of a very similar licensing rug-pull on the part of Berkeley DB, after Sleepycat's acquisition by Oracle. And, in turn, bdb gained prominence on the back of AT&T claiming copyright on ndbm during the Unix Wars. So there's a long history of this, and plenty of precedents which suggest that such a move would make very little money and would likely result in a better alternative quickly rising to take its place. I suspect that Hipp understands this, and is unlikely to do anything of the sort.

mightyham 1mo ago

Open-source is an inherently radical anti-capitalist philosophy. In your eyes everyone "deserves" what the market is willing to pay, but open-source developers would rather donate their time and energy to create or contribute to something that is freely accessible to anyone and everyone. Also, believe it or not, but some people are not motivated by money, and actually derive value from the process of creating software. The issue with rug-pulls like this is that they are deceptively masquerading with this philosophy as a calculated business strategy to adopt users. Then in this case they start using deceptive tactics like removing build files so they can continue appearing to be fully open source, even though they are violating the spirit of that term. Finally, they drop the facade when it is deemed valuable enough. Even if you are a strict capitalist, there is nothing virtuous or meritocratic about these kinds of business strategies, they rely on tricky, concealed intentions, and rightfully deserve criticism. I'll also add that there is nothing "courageous" about deciding to extract more value from your labor at the expense of public accessibility. True courage is found in acts of selfless sacrifice.

bigstrat2003 1mo ago
> Open-source is an inherently radical anti-capitalist philosophy. No it isn't. Open source isn't inherently political in any way. Maybe that's what it's about to you, but I open source things because I want to give to others out of a general sense of wishing to build up the whole community. I don't have anything against capitalism.
- mightyham 1mo ago
  First off, in some sense everything is political. Next, I am not claiming that you can't be supporter of open source while also holding a wide array of associated political views. My point is that the concept of open source fundamentally rejects the ideal capitalist conception of the world as a bunch of purely rational self-interested agents seeking to optimize wealth and economic output. Willingly performing labor for its own sake, for the benefit of others, with no expectation of return value, is obviously not capitalist behavior.
  - president_zippy 1mo ago
    "First off, in some sense everything is political." That's what every partisan hack says before they shove their culture war politics down your throat. Some people out in the real world get laid and just can't be bothered to hear your opinion about the race-swapped Snow White remake, regardless of whether you loved it or hated it.
    - mightyham 1mo ago
      Politics is a lense of analysis that can be applied to almost anything related to the group behaviors of people. Refusing to engage with it because there are charlatans that apply these methods poorly just demonstrates an inability or lack of desire to understand. It's quite revealing btw that you decided to frame intellectual pursuits and sexual behavior as being in opposition and/or claim that the later is somehow more important.

pstuart 1mo ago

I effectively agree with you, but your last comment is interesting in the usage of the word "courage". My understanding of D. Richard Hipp's state of being is that he feels fairly financially compensated (via support contracts), and more so, emotionally compensated by knowing that his work adds value to other people's lives and having value in that. Money's a good thing to have, but having purpose in life is incredibly valuable too.

president_zippy 1mo ago
Fair enough on use of the word "courage" in this case. I will gladly walk back on things I am wrong about when I realize it. If DRH prefers the business model of giving away something for free and selling consulting support for it, then bully for him. It might result in less income, but I'm sure being a consultant is lot less stressful than running a corporation based on SQLite with >200 employees would be. However, I will not devalue the work of software engineering by giving away solutions to difficult problems for free and fostering a culture of self-entitlement toward software engineers. Treating prosperous and purposeful existences as conflicting aspirations is an unusually pernicious self-deception. Go get yours, I want you to get paid for your work. You deserve to get paid for the value you create. Besides that, it's naive to think that if you give up the portion of value you can capture, that it will go back to the people you're really trying to help. In reality, when you publish really good open source work that mega-cap tech companies can use at scale, they are the ones who capture the lion's share of the value you created rather than the end users they are data mining. "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." -Deuteronomy 25:4 If even Jews and Christians- for as much as the self-abasing communists on this site resent them- can concede that even a lowly beast of the field is entitled to a portion of the value it creates, then how much more deserving is dignified man of his recompense?
- pstuart 1mo ago
  I'm not contesting the need to be compensated for work. My point is that there's stuff that I have worked on to scratch an itch and don't feel the need for monetary compensation. I believe there's an intrinsic need to be part of something bigger than ones self, and participating by volunteering time to have the satisfaction of knowing that you helped make something you care about better is not a bad thing, if on your own terms. The way DRH has talked about SQLite is that he is financially secure and by giving it away gets both the reward mentioned above as well as maintaining the value of the free software which he can still make money off of support contracts. He is choosing to do this because for him that effort is the most rewarding. FOSS has been a foundational facet of the work we get well-paid to participate in. This is a case in which we have the option to have our cake and share it too. None of this means you have to participate in this way, but I suggest that your viewpoint is yours and may not be shared by everybody else in the community.

roryirvine 1mo ago

An ironic choice of hypothetical given that SQLite's present ubiquity is a result of a very similar licensing rug-pull on the part of Berkeley DB, after Sleepycat's acquisition by Oracle. And, in turn, bdb gained prominence on the back of AT&T claiming copyright on ndbm during the Unix Wars. So there's a long history of this, and plenty of precedents which suggest that such a move would make very little money and would likely result in a better alternative quickly rising to take its place. I suspect that Hipp understands this, and is unlikely to do anything of the sort.