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Comment by xyzzy_plugh | Hacker News Reader

> Big corporations aren’t benevolent - the advocacy I see around OSS projects from FAANG (MAANG) companies is problematic. They don’t support OSS. They use and leverage it.

How is this problematic? For most of my career, I also haven't supported OSS -- I too use and leverage it.

Open source is relatively simple: it does what it says on the tin. If you make something freely available under a non restrictive license, you no longer own that thing. Sure, you may retain some copyright, but you've given it away. Why are people always surprised when those free things are leveraged? Is everyone truly this naive?

GPL, AGPL, BSL... they all solve different problems. There's no right answer. If you're building something and want to make money, then it behoves you to choose a license that strengthens your position to make money, rather than introduce a vulnerability.

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Open source, historically speaking, is an implied social contract:

I as the developer do something nice for the world. I therefore hope that you, as the user, will pay it forward.

When this ethos is subverted by people who don't pay it forward, who just see "Free!" and unthinkingly take and take without ever thinking to give anything back, it rubs people the wrong way.

I don't think so, historically speaking.

"Open Source", historically speaking, was the right (and obligation) to have the ability to modify the source code of software you use. There was nothing about 'paying it forward', but rather giving users the freedom to control the software they run.

The parent comment to your's has been my understanding (using FLOSS since last year's of last millennium), why do you find it not to be true that there was an implied social/moral contract with free-libre software?

Because there was never an implied social/moral contract. If you want something, put it in the license. Don't shame people for adhering to the letter of the license.

Because that's revisionist history?

Do you have any written evidence that this was a commonly accepted "social contract"? Because I've been using FLOSS since last year's of last millennium as well and I've never heard of such attitudes until recent years. (Even today, I rarely see OSS project leaders actually saying they expected all users to give back something -- it's mostly other users who somehow assume everyone else needs to do so. And if I may say, making presumptions on the intentions of OSS developers is a bit... presumptuous to say the least, even if well intentioned.)

One of the few "giving back" contracts I'm aware of is the GPL. Which explicitly states in the license that you need to open source your modifications if you distribute the binary. Vim nags you a bit to donate to Uganda children, but that's explicit as well.

You demand evidence, implicitly, but give none ... calling something revisionist (suggesting purposeful misleading, ie lying) without any backup is, um, a bit unfriendly. Maybe it was just that people in projects I came across followed that pattern of share-and-share-alike?

>Even today, I rarely see OSS project leaders actually saying they expected all users to give back something //

I've never seen it _demanded_ of anyone. Also, I think it largely went away in the early 2000s, as more, varied licenses came online bringing OSS a much broader base.

Pay-it-forward seemed to be a growing movement across society (well before Oprah latched on to it) but particularly on the 'net/burgeoning web. I used Slackware as my primary and got a lot of code from Sourceforge as well as using Debian and RedHat packages later.

Perhaps it was our approach [my, and other people with this impression]. That the first [and only] FOSS license I heard of was GPL, that the movement rallied (to my recollection) around that banner and so the idea of giving back was embedded -- I'm not a programmer. My self-apportioned part early on was to share Linux, help people with compilations and installs; act as a helper and advocate I suppose. It wasn't an explicit obligation, maybe it comes from transactional thinking having grown up in a Western Capitalist society under right wing governments?

[I'll have a dig around for some sources if I get chance.]

> I as the developer do something nice for the world. I therefore hope that you, as the user, will pay it forward.

Why do you believe this to be the case? While I applaud the notion, it is sadly divorced from reality. The notion of "nice for the world" or hoping users "pay it forward" is not, historically speaking, part of the social contract.

The social contract has been roughly either "you, the end user, are granted free access to the source code of these programs, in perpetuity, to use, modify or distribute as you see fit, while either preserving or discarding these properties (depending on the license)", or "this body of work is unencumbered by copyright or liability, enjoy".

> people who don't pay it forward, who just see "Free!" and unthinkingly take and take without ever thinking to give anything back, it rubs people the wrong way.

No? It doesn't. If I write some code and slap the BSD or MIT license on it, it's gone. I've gifted it to the universe. That's the point.

I grow tired of this rhetoric that open source is somehow coupled to community contributions and donation based funding. It's not! Sure, that may happen for some projects, and it's wonderful that it does, but it is decidedly not a characteristic of Open Source.

SQLite is Open Source, yet your contributions are not welcome. Linux is Open Source, haven't you bought Linus a coffee?

> GPL, AGPL, BSL... they all solve different problems. There's no right answer.

While there are legitimate arguments in favor of different open source licenses, the BSL is a proprietary license and is always the wrong answer. I'd agree with this if it used a real open source license like Apache or MIT as its third example instead.

Well BSL is pretty much a MIT license https://opensource.org/licenses/BSL-1.0

And well the other BSL (Business Source License) may be appropriate for proprietary software that you want to be released under a open license at a later time.

Although I am also not really aligned with the idea on a ideologically plane.

I meant the Business Source License, and I'd be willing to bet that the person I was replying to did too.

FOSS goes beyond throwing some code on a forge and slapping a license on it!

A lot of companies do astroturfing by creating a false impression of community, cooperation, openness and decentralized development.

Later on they add CLAs, switch to open-core or use other tricks to strictly control development and use.

> FOSS goes beyond throwing some code on a forge and slapping a license on it!

It literally does not. Please refer me to any definition of Free and Open Source Software that refers to anything beyond the text contained in the license. Please stop spreading such woefully sore interpretations. This is exactly how you burn out authors and maintainers.

> A lot of companies do astroturfing by creating a false impression of community, cooperation, openness and decentralized development.

I've said it elsewhere, but these elements do not inherently have anything to do with Open Source. It's beyond foolish to presume them.

> Later on they add CLAs, switch to open-core or use other tricks to strictly control development and use.

If this bothers you (which it shouldn't) then perhaps consider an alternative licenses which restrict the ability to monetize without releasing source, such as AGPL.

Licenses are being wielded as per their lettering. This is a good thing, generally. We all benefit from Open Source regardless of CLAs or open-core.

CLAs are primarily there for legal protection. An alternative is a DSO, but legal teams tend to be a bit hesitant to allow them. Everyone dislikes CLAs, including companies that use them, because they make it more difficult to accept changes.

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