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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

This is not about 'the open source community' this is just about Redis. The open source community is doing just fine (and Redis is doing just fine), no need for overbroad or inaccurate claims.

Besides that the obvious point is that every open source producer is entirely free to release their product under whatever license they see fit and if you don't like it then simply don't use the product.

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Are they doing fine?

I’d like to make all of the software I write freely BSD licensed.

If I do that, it seems with very high probability that it might turn out to be a time sink and a money sink with no benefit other than +reputation. Which is worthwhile, but perhaps not as worthwhile as those fat stacks.

I don’t know. We’re heading for a future where the only people that can afford to write OSS projects that actually influence the world are those who work for FAANG or in academia.

Redis Labs is doing fine but probably despite the license of Redis + the Cloud setup we have currently, just because Redis OSS is massively popular. I think that a less popular project that could survive with AGPL may be completely non viable with BSD. However note that AGPL is a weak protection. It takes just the Amazon legal department to say "ok, let's do it" because it is perfectly legal to just sell as a service AGPL licensed stuff. Let many popular OSS projects switch to AGPL and you'll see Amazon switching mentality about AGPL, IMHO.

AWS is probably unstoppable via licensing, they can do a clean room implementation from the wire protocol - if they really want to. (Though with the Oracle v Google API copyrightability lawsuit ongoing, this might change, but that seems like a small win for a big loss.)

Could go one step further (out of the Oracle playbook) and include a copyrighted poem in the wire protocol itself so that any clean room build automatically violates that copyright too.

Use a haiku For this lovely handshake In the autumn

Ha! I do love a good haiku.

Maybe something like this would be more fitting:

    Way down to the wire
    It gets bleaker than ever
    Try and copy this

They should write the oracle-db then and get oracles business.

Soon! But first they need to stop using it. [ https://www.lightreading.com/enterprise-cloud/infrastructure... ]

GPLv3/AGPLv3 would still force Amazon and the like to share all the updates they make to the software itself, which is good for the software - forcing companies to be part of the software ecosystem - but not necessarily helping the (main or otherwise) developer.

The elephant in the room here is that the usual OSS-as-an-offering model works from the fact that intimate knowledge of the software and visibility creates a strong market position for selling services (SaaS or consulting) that others cannot match. Whereas if "others" includes Amazon, GCP etc., their economies of scale and market visibility tilt the playing field in the other direction, making it harder for the OSS-as-offering model.

AGPL would do nothing to stop cloud providers having hosted versions.

What it would do is mean that a lot less people would be able to use the software as it's a license that is not allowed at most companies. You can argue that this is for the wrong reasons, or it's due to fearmongering, but that doesn't change the fact.

I think you have it backwards: a less popular project could be viable with BSD and wouldn't survive as AGPL.

Yeah, because the 'sell support/hosting' model has been such a failure /s You don't have to be in academia to afford to write F/OSS nor is it financially draining to do so.

Is very easy to say that, if you already "rich".

That is not universal across all the developer community. Here, in Colombia, open source is something you do on the sidelines.

Pretend you can live of it? That is non-sense.

It's not that hard to make a living, if you write custom software instead of selling products. The niche I'm aware is development of modules for Odoo (a kind of SAP alternative); I've worked for such a small bootstrapped company for years, and 90% of what we wrote was A/LGPL licensed. Most clients don't care if you release useful generic parts of the code as OSS modules, nor if you use such modules from other developers.

I know companies following this model all over the world: Spain, Brazil, India, Argentina, Venezuela, etc.

If I do that, it seems with very high probability that it might turn out to be a time sink and a money sink with no benefit other than +reputation.

Why do you think that?

> I’d like to make all of the software I write freely BSD licensed.

Why? If you want to make money off of it, there is nothing wrong with selling proprietary software. I'll gladly open source lots of stuff but I'm not just going to work for other people for nothing -- that's just madness. And that isn't really what free software / open source is supposed to be. It's not a platform for martyrdom.

> We’re heading for a future where the only people that can afford to write OSS projects that actually influence the world are those who work for FAANG or in academia.

I think the strength of an OSS project (or really a single individual at that stage) can be to innovate - make something that in a corporate setting, FAANG or not, can't be pursued because it hasn't a chance to become projected since business value isn't tangible, and anyway needs meandering around to find solutions in its problem space. Once something demoable is created, it might attract corporate backing. But corporate development is actually very bad at developing the kernel of something not seen yet. Maybe there should be a market place for initial designs/concepts to grab beyond VC funding?

For most of my time as a software developer and engineer I released code under GPLv2 and BSD licenses. It paid the bills because I knew how to sell what I was doing. I charged enough to cover the time sink. Now I am a world-class expert in some common BSD-licensed software.

There still isn't a simple, sustainable and uncomplicated model for developers to earn a full-time living selling their open source product.

The Patreon approach is not sustainable in the long-term, neither is the company sponsorship route.

Charging for support as the principal source of your income is probably one of the least appealing options for most developers.

Open-core is one option - GitLab wouldn't be a financial success without it. Dual-license is another option.

What does the FSF (Free Software Foundation) have to say on the matter? Charge for distribution [1]. Yet, no-one can realistically charge for distribution today - not least when so many projects are hosted for free on GitHub.

If you want to make source code available and still be paid for your product - consider something like the Fair Source License. It's neither closed source or open source. It will appear blasphemous to some open source advocates, but it feels like a reasonable compromise between closed source and permissive open source licences: https://fair.io/

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

Of course Redis is doing just fine. But that depends on continued development (investment) and continued community involvement. To me it looked like the villagers have been gathering with pitchforks and torches for the last 24 hours and I think much of it is unfair to Redis.

There's Redis (OSS), Antirez (OSS developer), and RedisLabs (commercial company and employer of Antirez).

RedisLabs made some extra software available (nice) under a noncommercial-only license (well duh but ok), pretending some material relation between the noncommercial-use-only license and the Apache License (not nice).

The pitchforks and torches are (to 98%) about that last bit. Everyone is happy that Redis still exists and that Antirez and RedisLabs have a sustainable business around Redis. No one - and potentially especially not the Apache foundation - enjoys the bait-and-switch of using the Apache name for a proprietary shared source license.

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