Did capitalism hack the open-source model? | Hacker News Reader

Did capitalism hack the open-source model?

medium.com

27 pointsjp_4212 comments

I would be a lot more sympathetic to articles like this if they didn't all end with, "and therefore we should all just move back to proprietary licenses."

> With the open-source model, the breach is the absence of a business model — not the fact that it is free, but rather, the absence of rules.

On the contrary, literally the whole point of the free software movement was to have an absence of rules. The "not needing to pay money" part was a side effect; an optional side effect that developers were encouraged to subvert.

People can argue that the lack of rules is a problem, but it's important to recognize that when they say things like this, they aren't saying, "Open Source has some flaws we need to fix." They're saying, "Open Source fundamentally doesn't work, and we should abandon it."

Put aside the complaints about Google and DRM, and the main gist of this article is arguing that the "patch" for Open Source is to get rid of forking.

I wouldn’t even say there are no rules. Apple doesn’t like GPL v3 so they don’t update some of the utilities in MacOS — it’s their choice and they bow to the rule.

Apple uses Cups for printing, for example, and they will surely abandon it

Why would they do that? CUPS is owned by Apple, and not GPL-licensed.

>> Put aside the complaints about Google and DRM, and the main gist of this article is arguing that the "patch" for Open Source is to get rid of forking.

Well, that kind of is the "open" part of "open source". If you are free to redistribute code, it implies that you are free to fork. I wonder why the author doesn't push for more restrictive licensing models (like GPL) instead?

The ironic part is that the one of the reasons this article was written in the first place was because the author tried to build a product off of Chromium and couldn't -- because modern Chrome relies on proprietary DRM modules that can't be forked.

And the takeaway they took away from that was, "authors should have more control over what other people do with their code."?

Hi, more restrictive licences like GPL tend to slow projects development and the code remain fully open-source, hence, any corporate can fork. Developers would need substancial resources to protect and enforce against the likes of the GAFA. We do not prone a full closed-source model, of course not, but rather the possibility to have a mix of public and open innovation within the same project.

I look at another part of society, where the hacking and getting hacked has a long tradition- lawyers and the law. And money subverts them all. In the long run. So lets look at yet another part of society- our own bodys. How does the body detect intruders, or even prevent theire entrance?

1) Provide no interface for hacking. Our stomaches and colons are our main energy interface - they regenerate at a increddible rate. Slimy, colon cells, they live fast, they die fast, holding on to them is near impossible.

2) Have a pre-warn system for getting hacked. If your sensory apparatus deteriorates, go in full reverse on all operations.

3) A general good feature to have - the ability to undo damage, by doing a full reset to a previously working state. Good in software development, good for a society, its a nice last line of defense, that the comon citizen can veto-vote direct democratic.

4) Divide and Conquer: Prevent accumulations of power, by allowing monopolies to be legally usurped. Can proof your employer is in a cartel/monopoly? Congratualations, you are allowed to march out with x% of the company into a seperate company.

5)Dont be a static target. A passive defense is weakness, as it gives the attacker infinite attempts. If attacked, and the attack is proofable, dissolve the attacker, integrate his strengths into the defenses.

Most open source models (bsd, gpl2, mit, etc.) were meant to harness capitolism, and they seem to have done rather well with a few glaring exceptions like android. Arguing to abandon it because its not the communist utopia promised by literally nobody is asinine.

When we talked a decade ago about "when open source wins", we were really excited for it. Now that it's happened, some people are freaking out. This is what winning looks like, though. This was the plan all along.

I'm sorry, but this article just seems to muddle the issues, based on some misguided idea that open source was a method for plucky independent developers to profit from the code paid by big corporations (in this case, Chromium) while being immune from their power.

The whole premise that "capitalism hacked open-source" is itself ahistorical: if anything, open-source was a creation of capitalism, by people who disliked that Free Software had ethical implications, and wanted a term that would strip those and make it "corporation friendly".

Does Google and other big corps profit off open source developers? No shit; that was the point.

I see open source and capitalism as very similar ideas. It really is summed up in the absence of rules. And I like the analogy from the article

> empty spaces do not remain vacant for a very long time

But this seems to be impling that we need rules otherwise they'll be taken up by greedy companies. I think this is underestimating the role of the individual, who ultimately is the one who decides who gets business.

Maybe instead of being "Google addicts" but expecting the everything to be balanced, maybe we should be more conscious and intentional about who gets our business.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com