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Ask HN, again: Do Companies Exploit Open Source And Programmers Are Plagiarists?
Someone had a good technical post on HN later this week which went into a flame war. Unfortunately some important issues were missed on the thread which might be interesting for hackers:
1. Do (VC backed) companies exploit open source?
"For a VC backed firm it is entirely about ever increasing revenues to give the illusion of growth so that shareholders will invest and drive the price of a stock as high as possible. It is not in their best interest to not do an IPO. They want money now, as much of it as possible, and they aren’t interested in good technology investments or people.
What they want is tons of free technology they can hide from investors. They want that technology all run by people who didn’t write any of the software so that these employees can’t claim ownership later.
This nearsighted management, combined with limited funding at the start, means that these companies exploit open source. They will use it, make their money, and then run off when they’re done. Which, actually, is totally alright, because that’s just how things are, and honestly if you’re a company looking to make money that way, then that’s what you should do."
2. Do programmers are plagiarists?
"Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what you’re using? How many of you tell investors that your entire operation is based on something one guy wrote in a few months? How many of you out there go to management and say, “Hey, you know there’s this guy Zed who wrote the software I’m using, why don’t we hire him as a consultant?”"
- cjg 17y agoOf course companies exploit (as in make use of) open source software - it's free (as in beer and speech). As a developer, using open source without proclaiming that to the rest of your company is hardly plagarism. Unless a licence forces a company / developer to broadcast their usage then that won't happen in the majority of cases.
- ErrantX 17y ago> Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what you’re using? I do! He loves it because it is free (with the caveat he adds "be careful"). We've offered money to OS maintainers of projects we've made use of in the past (either to consulty or, more usually, to develop some features for us) - mostly they refuse (usually politely).
- devijvers 17y agoAre you aware that plagiarism is a crime? Hence, without being convicted nobody is a plagiarist. It's like saying: are programmers burglars? Well, have they been convicted for burglary? No? Duh ...
- jacquesm 17y agoHaving been convicted for burglary and having committed burglary are two distinct things. It is possible to be -wrongfully- convicted of burglary without ever having done a burglary, it is possible to be rightfully convicted when you've done it and you can 'get away with it' if you have done it but you have not been convicted.
- neuromanta 17y agoDon't talk like a lawyer. That's exactly what these companies/businessmen do too. They just look at open source as a free way to make money, they don't see the community behind it. That's the way it is. We, who develop open source software in our free time, shouldn't think about this... we don't do it for money. If someone makes money using my free software, it's fine by me. My good conscience worth more than money.
- jacquesm 17y agoCompanies will take an advantage wherever they can, using open source is no exception. I venture that almost none of the really large web properties that we have today would have gotten off the ground without open source.
- skwiddor 17y agoI've been hired twice because I wrote open source code.
- Edinburger 17y ago> "Hey, you know there’s this guy Zed who wrote the software I’m using, why don’t we hire him as a consultant?" This seems wrong. For example, let's say we use Apache webserver and Rails. They aren't our core business. I really don't want to need core contributors from Apache webserver and Rails to help us use them. Now, if our core business was building a new server or framework on top of Apache or Rails respectively, that would be a different matter.
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoI don't know, isn't that just a lot of phraseology obscuring the simple fact that consenting adults have made a deliberate decision to make software available under permissive licenses, hoping to benefit in some indirect way? How much you have to tell anybody about using a particular piece of software and whether you can use it for commercial purposes, that's all in the licenses. I don't understand the fuss and I don't understand what not exploiting OSS would look like or what not employing Zed Shaw has to do with plagiarism. I just don't get it. I do understand Zed's anger because he has put in a lot of quality work for very little in return. That's because he gave his work away with no obligation for anyone to even mention him. And he has given his work away to people who don't seem to care much about quality of implementation. I think he should consider writing closed source software, shocking as it may be. I don't think there are any moral or ethical conclusions for OSS whatsoever and all the talk about plagiarism and venture capital is nonsensical in my opinion. OSS is a good tool for learning, for passing on knowledge, for getting into a market and for big corporation's to ruin the competitions income stream. At the end of the day you need to sell your open source software or yourself to BigCorp. That's the only way to monetize it and everybody should be aware of this simple fact by now.
- csbartus 17y ago> How much you have to tell anybody about using a particular piece of software and whether you can use it for commercial purposes, that's all in the licenses. I don't understand the fuss and I don't understand what not exploiting OSS would look like or what not employing Zed Shaw has to do with plagiarism. I just don't get it. Many of us are illiterated in use of these licenses. Even a contributor like Zed. I could imagine a generally available rule of thumb on licensing for open source: something like dual licensing. My code is free for all peer hackers but not for big corporations. Is that something available? Ie. a variation/combination of CC or GPL or BSD or MIT?
- adharmad 17y agoHow do you distinguish between hackers and corporations. A small startup, can in a couple of years of time become a large company, which can be bought by a bigger corporation. Where do you draw the line? That's the reason I think that GPL/dual licensing is the best. If it is a casual hacker, he shouldn't mind reciprocating. If it is a company, it shouldn't mind paying.
- j_baker 17y agoOf course everyone exploits open source software. That's what's so awesome about it: you can exploit it all you want. The alternative is to buy Windows and get exploited yourself. (Full disclosure: I'm not a windows-phobe. I just believe in credit where credit is due)
- lhorie 17y agoAre programmers are plagiarists? Generalization. Some will happily copy and paste stuff whenever they can, which technically is plagiarism for the particular snippet. Using something that was given out for free, or reading that code and reusing the same ideas / patterns / code style / algorithm / whatever for something bigger and different isn't necessarily plagiarism. As the saying goes, "copy one person, it's plagiarism, copy many people, it's reasearch". I'd say that the part of the blame on the ordeal of not getting paid for your free work is that most open source projects don't make any effort to say that they want money (assuming they do). The only example of someone doing that off the top of my head (I'm sure there are others) is Jack Slocum's Ext. He had a commercial license from day one and his site clearly explains who it applies to. Complaining on a blog that people may or may not read / care about / agree with isn't exactly legally binding (or whatever the correct term is) and it doesn't inspire enough professionalism (for me anyways) to feel comfortable doing business with.
- stonemetal 17y ago>>Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what you’re using? Does my boss care? No. Do I tell my boss that I used the standard library instead of writing my own string class? No. In software you make use of other software all the time having done so is not some super special event that requires an epic poem be written about the original author. Second the original author gets to say how you use his stuff, if he want attribution all he has to do is require it. The rules are clearly defined when you put stuff out there for others to use and ask them to do certain things but not others why be surprised when they don't do others?
- jamesbritt 17y agoRe item 2: I talk all the time about my use of OSS in my products and when I do contract work. I don't list the names of the hundreds of people who have contributed, though, unless I'm talking to other geeks, because most other people don't give a crap about who wrote what. Also, nothing I have is "based on" anything written by one guy in a few months. I don't think I know a single person or company for whom that is true.