Comment by ensignavenger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ensignavenger | Hacker News Reader

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I have a tremendous amount of and appreciation for Armin Ronacher and many of their fabulous Python libraries which I use regularly. However, this blog post is odd. It says that the open source sass model "has worked out very well for us", but then goes on to say "at one point someone has to make money somewhere.." in order to justify abandoning open source licensing of Sentry.

Maybe "worked out great" means that they got a ton of publicity and traction because they were open source, and now they are ready to abandon open source so they can monetize the traction they gained from being open source in the first place?

Sentry certainly doesn't have any obligation to continue being open source- the old code is still open source- but these events make me question any companies commitment when they claim to be open source. It seems that you can't take any company at their word, even when they publish multiple blog posts about how "committed" they are to open source- because in the end, many companies will do what Sentry did and will dump open source the minute they have gotten what they want from it.

[https://blog.sentry.io/2019/02/14/sentry-thrives-open-source..., https://blog.sentry.io/2016/10/24/building-an-open-source-se..., https://blog.sentry.io/2015/06/30/driven-by-open-source]

And if there was any doubt about Sentry's willingness to use and abuse open source- months after this announcement, they continue to advertise being open source on their site, lying to the community and their customers. https://sentry.io/_/open-source/

Sentry doesn't have any obligation to continue to releasing new code as Open Source, but they should stop lying about being open source.

I have been aware of Sentry for years, but I've never used it and haven't followed the company closely. Reading Armin's post, and the official Sentry announcement [0], this strikes me as pretty reasonable.

Sentry is about 11 years old. The industry has changed a lot in 11 years. There are people and companies around now that can build direct competitors more quickly than they could 11 years ago. The question raised in the Sentry post is completely valid: Was the license chosen 11 years ago the best one to base a company off of? A company relicensing its software after 11 years is a lot different than a company waving the open source flag for a year and then closing off access.

I appreciate the work people are doing to find a middle ground in the open source world. Purist approaches are important in many areas, but can't work for everyone and for every project. People who are suggesting that Sentry is no longer open source have a point, but there is also a world of difference to me between a company using a BSL, and a company whose entire codebase is a black box to the outside world.

One of the key questions I ask about companies built around open source, is "Are you being honest about your business structure?" I'm fine with middle-ground open source licenses as long as the terms are clear and transparent. I have no respect for hidden small-text clauses that put legal limits in place which contradicts what a company's PR copy says.

I say all of this from the perspective of a programmer who wants to be able to sustain my own work, as a user of open source who wants to have some libraries that are fully open, and as a customer who wants to pay people for reliable software-related services.

[0] https://blog.sentry.io/2019/11/06/relicensing-sentry

As I said, Sentry doesn't owe new open source code to anyone. Deciding to make new releases closed is acceptable.

However, they have repeatedly made statements that they are committed to open source- some only months before this announcement. The 11 year old decision argument doesn't hold true.

They have a right to change their mind. But they shouldn't be lying to their customers and the community now that their mind has changed- https://sentry.io/_/open-source/ They continue to advertise that they are open source on their marketing website. That is a lie, and it marks Sentry as an unethical, dishonest company.

The wider debate on licensing terms and business models can move forward- it has existed since the beginning of the software industry and likely will persist for the foreseeable future. I prefer open source licenses. I think they are the best proposal for software licensing and distribution so far. If Sentry wants to do something different and use the BSL license, that is fine- but they shouldn't lie and claim to be open source.

What label would you like them to use? What is the accepted name for a middle ground license now? Should they be advertising themselves as a "business source" company rather than an "open source" company?

I don't ask this antagonistically, it's an honest question. I don't think they've shifted so much that they're just a standard company trying to make money off of proprietary software at this point.

"You can host your own service, or you can pay us to host the service, but you can't host the service and charge others for our service" is a business model I'd like to see continue.

There's a term for "proprietary projects whose source is available on GitHub", namely "source available". "Open Source" != "source available", and attempts to describe one as the other are clearly attempts to deceive

As I recall "Source Available" is a lot worse than what Sentry is proposing. It usually required signing an NDA or jumping through some other hoop in order to get the source. This is much better than that so I don't think it would be properly descriptive.

Shared Source was a term used in the past for proprietary licenses that shared the source. You suggest Business Source, and I would be fine with them using that term- as far as I know it isn't already taken.

I think you are wording that a bit strongly. They are still sharing the source just saying you can't load it up on a server and start selling that service. (you can load it internally for your own use though)

Yes, Open Source has had a very specific meaning historically and maybe we need a new term but this still feels like they are following the spirit to me.

Part of the "spirit" of open source is the freedom to use the software- including to use it to sell a service. This protects the freedom to fork the software, and pay for support or charge others for the support I provide for my forked version.

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