Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I'd prefer they just kept it closed source and charged money for it rather than making it "open source, but not really since you can't use it to build anything unless you give out all your code or can lawyer your way past this obnoxious, ambiguously worded license".

I don't care about being able to look at somebody else's source code. I just want something that I can use. Meteor looked really cool until I realized they had those two points exactly backwards.

View on HN

GPL with the dual licensed business model is fine with me, but they ought to be a bit clearer about that and state it up front. Also, is there a company the copyright is assigned to? It's not very clear at Meteor.com. Wandering around, I got this, which talks about "Meteor Development Group" ( http://www.meteor.com/contact ), but... there's no Inc or LLC or anything like that.

Also, when they talk about contributing, they don't write about having to sign a copyright assignment, which they must do if they want to continue to own the copyright to the whole thing, and thus be able to dual license it.

Furthermore, "get in touch and we'll write you a commercial license" doesn't sound like something very easy to evaluate, compared to, say, a pricing page. "Well, how much ya got, anyway?"

It is pretty early for them, though, it would appear, so maybe it's much ado about nothing, and as they work things out, they'll make things clearer and/or change the license.

It took years to convince the wider commercial technical community to so much as expose portions of their source code, regardless of license. It's invaluable for bug identification, security auditing, and general programmer education. I'm glad they're sharing it under any license, and I hope your attitude does not become more widespread.

Actually, what needs to die is the idea that anyone can own an idea (or pattern of words/code).

How is dual proprietary/GPL anything other than strictly less obnoxious than proprietary alone? You can, after all, stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that it's proprietary alone, and there will be no observable difference.

I think the obnoxious part is not being entirely upfront and clear about what you're looking to do. Sencha make no secret of the fact they're a business, with Meteor you need to infer it from a vaguely worded FAQ point and the licence type.

You can use Meteor. I quote from FAQ: If the GPL doesn't work for your project, get in touch (contact@meteor.com) and we will write you a commercial license to your specifications.

Just give me a price. I don't want to discuss pricing.

Don't be lazy. Throw out a price.

Is it normal business practice to use ultimatums instead of negotiation?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com