What comes after open source? Bruce Perens is working on it
theregister.com
theregister.com
If people want to create and promote their own utopian models that's their business. Personally I'd want nothing to do with that, and it definitely should not be called open source, just like any restrictive license.
On another note, a transaction is a meeting of the minds. When most people release open source software they want nothing in return and are owed nothing. That's how I feel about it. People who think they are owed something are like beggars who do miming or some such in the street and call it work. Nobody asked for it, some find it interesting and you might be able to guilt someone into paying but they didn't hire you and don't owe you anything. You can just not do it, it's only a job if you're explicitly hired.
No one cares to help you define or realize your semantic utopia either.
Language associations will always be mutable; that’s my utopia. You can pound sand trying to demand others speech be constrained by your sensibilities.
Exist in a religious-like state of biology where your mental model is essential, some kind of immutable linked list? No thanks.
Edit: note I made the same argument in different language. So much for the OPs premise holding water. People do care how others label things and the aggregate will make OP beholden to that. Good luck living your bespoke utopia OP.
Even when it's the ten trillion dollar combined market cap of FAANG (or whatever we call them now)?
Because that's not open source. That's free labor suicide.
And they’re not really the worst one could think of, as FAANG thenselves contribute a lot to open source software.
The salaries of the people who work on those projects are paid by the revenue streams generated by the companies.
What the FSF calls "free software" and what OSI calls "open source" are essentially mechanisms for implementing such approaches in a capitalist context, in which the abstraction of "intellectual property" is enshrined in law.
You'd need to provide and justify some alternative definition of what open source should be to make your final claim make any sense. As it stands, your claim "that's not open source" doesn't match the reality.
Its not like this is a loop hole. Not descriminating against anyone (including faang) is literally the point.
But nowadays it seems like everyone who creates a JavaScript package that concats two strings together, wants to be able to quit their day job and live on donations. It's just not realistic.
You seem to have misunderstood "good" to mean "everyone involved in the project will make equivalent to what they could have made working the same number of hours in Silicon Valley". When really all I meant was that the founder, and maybe sometimes a small group adjacent, can afford to spend all or at least part of their time maintaining and steering the project. If that's your argument, then you and I are in agreement.
Another commenter in this thread said it best - Open Source is a community. People participate in it because they enjoy doing so, not to get rich. If I can do something I enjoy, on my own schedule, entirely freed from corporate interests, and get rent money for it, I would certainly call that "good".
are you saying that licenses that guarantee users' permission to see the source code even if it's reused are "open source" licenses, and whereas licenses that allow code to be reused and distributed without allowing users to see that source are restrictive and not open source? I agree.
NB. This statement is not suggesting anyone is a beggar. It is suggesting people can behave _like_ beggars by doing "work" without being hired.
This is what so-called "tech" companies do. They create websites not because they have something to share but to observe traffic and web user behaviour, to collect data, and to act as an unrequested intermediary. They have no content that they themselves have produced. They get in front of and in between people trying to do stuff over the internet. "Let me help you with that." But nobody asked for it. Sometimes HN commenters try to guilt people into paying for "subscriptions" from an intermediary in order to view publicly shared content.
These companies never intended to pay anyone for content. Facebook/Meta and Google/Alphabet have been reluctant to pay for news. When new organisations asked for payment, HN commenters called this "blackmail." Then Elon Musk accused corporations of "blackmail" when they decided not to run ads on Twitter/X. Even the venerable volunteer-powered Wikipedia keeps asking for donations when its costs have been met and its employees are taking six figure "salaries". Today we learned that after lengthy negotiations OpenAI did not want to pay the NYT for their content. And so, the NYT has sued.
To me, open source isn't a transaction (even one with "nothing owed" as it were), as much as a community. What I get from participating in open source is to be a part of that community. You just don't get the same interactions working on a closed-source, proprietary code, no matter how deep and rigorous your process is. Ironically, I have stronger bonds with some of my collaborators at other companies/institutions than I do in my own, and that's all thanks to open source.
The fact that some of these open source communities happen to have built world-class software that is used by FAANGs and Fortune 500 companies is cool and a testament to the power of this process. But it's also sort of tangential. And I think we're missing something when we reduce open source down to the licenses and code transfer, as if that's all it is.
Sure, but when there's a widely accepted definition and you aren't making efforts to clearly distinguish your usage of the term from the common usage, then you're just trying to take advantage of all of the linguist context and baggage associated with the common meaning while actually meaning something completely different.
In other words, you want the goodwill that comes from being open source without any of the responsibility and obligation.
sort of depends on the license.
GPL software is usually released to the benefit of the user, but the author passes on responsibility so that the rights are preserved when it is redistributed.
sure, but an entrepreneurial effort is one that is done without requirement of reward but expectation of being able to derive reward.
It seems a lot of what is called open source is done under an entrepreneurial model, the same as much writing, mimes on the street, or a million other things.
>and my competitors to be able to re-purpose it to try and drive me out of business..... When most people release open source software they want nothing in return and are owed nothing. That's how I feel about it.
That was not what Open Source was about on HN. Since that would exclude GPL, and APGL. And there were even hint of movement that BSD and MIT would not be considered as Open Source. And any license that does not form and benefits the communities does not fit into the definition of Open Source.
Somewhat fortunately, that seems to have die down a bit. And judging by upvote on your post I guess there are still the silent majority that agrees with you.
I personally don’t think an environment where nobody owes anybody anything is conductive to building great software. When every individual is encouraged to optimize for their own benefit (max selfishness) you don’t get the best outcomes for society.
The Free Software Definition mentions "user" 22 times and "freedom" 79 times, whereas the Open Source Definition has zero occurrences of these terms. It doesn't seem surprising that the user freedom message isn't getting through if you completely scrub it from the messaging.
While what we know now is that Free came first and indeed Open Source was a different "offering" with a different focus, a response to it...
... I must admit I have heard and actually started to love Open Source several years before even hearing of Free Software
I am a big fan of capitalism but it does have a tendency to drive out human discourse, as in this case, when companies think there is money to be made.
Meaning "always when there's business to make"? Because when there's no money to make it's not business (and not about capitalism) anymore.
"I noticed this because I had the good fortune in the 1970's to be part of a community of programmers who shared software. Now, this community could trace its ancestry essentially back to the beginning of computing."
[...]
"And then I heard that somebody at Carnegie Mellon University had a copy of that software [for the broken printer]. So I was visiting there later, so I went to his office and I said, "Hi, I'm from MIT. Could I have a copy of the printer source code?" And he said "No, I promised not to give you a copy." [Laughter] I was stunned. I was so -- I was angry, and I had no idea how I could do justice to it. All I could think of was to turn around on my heel and walk out of his room. Maybe I slammed the door. [Laughter] And I thought about it later on, because I realized that I was seeing not just an isolated jerk, but a social phenomenon that was important and affected a lot of people."
IMHO the biggest threat to Free Software is the proliferation of open source software. And so the biggest threat to all the open source users/lovers is their own lack of a meaningful philosophy on licensing.
The permissive Free Software licenses do the same, being the same licenses.
The source IS made available to software. The license clearly says you must make it availble in the same method you get the binaries, which is what is happening here.
What "circumvention" is going on ?
Right, so one receives software 'as a customer', does Red Hat have a requirement to provide you with source code going forward for infinity at no cost ? I don't know what reasonable is here but I do think that there are limits, it turns out that both ALMA and rocky somehow both work around this, I wonder how ?
Btw, I just checked that I can get access to the source of every package with my redhat.com account, however I do have a 'free developer subscription' so maybe that gives me/them access. Looks like there is still ways to access source.
But the spirit of the GPL was very much to be able do what old CentOS did: copy the latest version of RHEL that you were given access to and distribute it to others.
Paying RedHat once shouldn't give access to all of the code they will forever release from now on. But, if you want to keep paying, RedHat should keep taking your money and giving you the new code. They should not punish you for exercising your GPL rights by refusing to do business with you.
And Rocky are doing things that very clearly go against RedHat's wishes and will likely be stopped further down the line. They are "exploiting" the fact that RHEL for containers is released publically, not through a developer subscription, and that of course they are forced to give you the source code if they delivered a container to you. I'm fully expecting RedHat to close this "loophole" down.
I believe Alma Linux has taken a different approach and is no longer promising bug-for-bug compatibility with the latest RHEL. They are planning to start maintaining the RHEL code themselves, and take new patches from RedHat's CentOS Stream to try to match RHEL as closely as possible, if I recall correctly.
Maybe, but the GPL explicitly permits this by only requiring source to be distributed to those who receive the software.
If, instead, the GPL stated that source must be available to everybody when software is distributed to anyone, we maybe wouldn't have this RHEL situation? What would we lose if that were the case?
I think the main reason the requirement to publish the sources is limited to the person who receives the binary is simply practical. For one, there is basically no way to sue as a third party to a contract - even if the contract required you to publish all of your code openly, someone who didn't receive the binary can't really have standing to sue if you just don't publish it. Also, at the time the GPL was created, sending source code carried some measurable cost, so making it public would have been at least mildly expensive.
I'm sure you know this, but to be clear for readers: almost all free software licenses are also open source licenses and vice versa.
The canonical examples are things like the BSD licenses.
See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatible...
> This is the original BSD license, modified by removal of the advertising clause. It is a lax, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL.
I think it would be clearer to say that the greatest threat to free software is the proliferation of non-copyleft free software which can be closed down if a company so wishes.
That's BS. First of all, companies have closed down GPL projects, because founding companies require copyright assignments on contributions.
Even the FSF does it, with the purpose of being able to change software to newer versions of the GPL, or to be able to sue for copyright infringement. And in the US at least, it's better if one entity is the copyright owner. But the issue remains thay the FSF could turn most of its GNU software proprietary.
The other reason for why it's BS is that it doesn't actually match reality. See LLVM vs GCC.
The biggest danger is companies releasing software with source-available, under proprietary licenses, using the Free Software / Open Source label for marketing purposes, diluting the meaning, which is otherwise well defined.
Like for example MongoDB and Elasticsearch, which grew due to being FOSS, then switched. And the license doesn't matter if the company has the right to switch, given they own the copyright.
I also predict this message will get "But Amazon" replies. Well, that's what FOSS is. Yes, it does grant Amazon the right to make money off your work. If you don't like it, then don't build FOSS, only to pull a bait and switch. FOSS is a terrible business model, because once a project is FOSS, it becomes part of the commons, and that's by design.
This is a good point. CLAs are bad because they are designed to allow a license change. The only organisation I would be likely to contribute under a CLA is the FSF, but that's mainly because RMS is still there and I know he won't pull the rug.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html#free...
I remember rms saying that GPL software places no restrictions on how the software can be USED. It just means that the benefit goes to the users of the software.
SaaS is the least free model for software. You have no privacy, no control, and in most cases can’t even export your data.
Thus open source actually minimizes freedom in practice, at least for everyone other than developers.
It’s extremely common for well intentioned policies and movements to have perverse effects that aren’t anticipated because the effect emerges from the whole system rather than from any single part in isolation.
The effect of a thing is pretty much unrelated to its intent, hence the saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The root problem is that humans are awful at understanding how a policy will manifest when embedded in a complex system.
I think this is also why every attempt at central planning a whole society ultimately fails.
FOSS may have accelerated things slightly, yet the mediocre quality and incompleteness held back its impact for a long time. Server side those deficiencies were less visible and could be addressed more gradually. Ultimately I think SAAS was inevitable as everything shifted online. Now even single-player, closed source games require an Internet connection.
No, because "FOSS stuff as RMS intended" explicitly excludes the SSPL.
To comply you must provide 'the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service'
A plain reading of this means that for a standard web app you would need to release not just the application code, but also code for the web server you are using, the os you are using, its drivers, device firmware, the os/firmware for your routers, your deployment stack, and probably more I'm missing. You better not trigger a deployment from a Windows computer using Chrome!
Even if I'm using open-source stuff for all of that it would need to have licenses compatible with SSPL such that I can relicense and release them all under the SSPL. I believe GPL is incompatible so that counts out most software I would use to host a webapp.
To me it seems like a fundamentally unreasonable license because for all practical purposes it is entirely impossible to comply with section 13.
Armin ronacher, also had some thoughts on this recently, via a license that converts to OSS. https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2023/12/25/life-and-death-of-open-s...
- Microsoft
- AWS
- Databricks
Most all of these companies have at one point or another coopted a project, sucked its life blood dry for their own means, and abandoned it. It's a weird, toxic relationship that we accept as normal because some projects can't do without corporate engineer time and money.
FOSS is kind of a different ballgame though. When I think of FOSS I think of my AppStore on PopOS; the apps there are sophisticated and useable, but if I'm being honest they're rarely "the best" at what they do. There's never been a FOSS CAD software that rivals proprietary alternatives, the email clients are lackluster at best, even IRC tends to take a back seat. That isn't to say the apps are bad, they're just not going to be "the best" usually.
Ideally we'd have a single license that encourages corporate use, adoption, and contribution but doesn't encourage them to coopt a project by injecting their engineers and interests into the management of said projects. Ideally there'd be a way for corporate interests to make money reselling software while also paying back, in proportion, to the project. That all seems like a very complicated balancing act.
To be fair, "lackluster at best" describes every email client ever made, proprietary or otherwise (though proprietary ones are better at hiding this under a shiny veneer).
Meanwhile, Kubernetes is probably a bad example, because nobody but large companies need Kubernetes, in the same way that we do not lament that people cannot build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in their garage.
There are several examples of OSS being best in class, it's just not the best in every class (yet, at least).
Edit: simplified.
This is very much the opposite of the spirit of free software. It's a feudal system.
Other than that it's cool, sure.
Free software licenses all have one thing in common: they speak only to redistribution, not to use. To use a free program, you only have to agree to the disclaimer (that if something goes wrong, it is at your own risk).
AGPL prohibits you from running a modified version of the program, if its functionality is publicly accessible, unless you release the modifications. That makes it an EULA.
No free software license requires you to release your modifications if the program is not redistributed.
The problem of siloed saas applications infringing on user freedoms cannot be attacked using copyright, without resorting to non-free licensing, which is an unacceptable.
Note that not everyone agrees that the GPL is a free license, in the first place. Software is maximally free if you can do anything with it you want, including incorporating it into proprietary software.
Many FOSS developers skip copyleft licenses and use MIT, BSD and such, myself included.
I can swallow the idea that GPLed software is free, but AGPL is out of the question.
This most certainly wouldn't have happened if "open source realism" didn't stood against free software "utopian" idealists. I still remember the "Linux Kernel is now in most devices in the world" when Android came out. This didn't went well, didn't it?
Lastly, isn't redhat an enthusiastic supporter of open source ? The domain https://opensource.com/ is literally copyrighted and supported by redhat...
I don't understand your point here. Could you please make it again, more directly?
Which android are you referring to? The table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distrib... may help you.
I don't think that, say, Lineage or Calyx share the same privacy concerns as Google's android variant, or the myriad vendors' proprietary forks.
Of course, if most of Android were GPL instead of Apache, the lockin wouldn't be possible.
If you're referring to locked bootloaders and not being able to use the GPL kernel due to that, that was a defect in GPLv2 that was fixed in GPLv3 (that and software patents). TiVo was the one that induced that change, and the term was "tivoization."
From wikipedia: Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises
true, but to anyone who paid attention at the time, bruce perens already pointed out this problem only one year after announcing the open source initiative: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/02/msg01641.html
so not only is this problem not new, but also at least bruce perens has been aware of it all this time.
but what is happening today probably would have happened without the promotion of open source as well. so i agree, that it is time to act. GPLv4 anyone?
The AGPL?
How do you figure? They very explicitly permit commercial use and even selling of Free Software.
Red Hat's behavior is not any kind of loophole in FOSS licensing that's worth worrying about. It's just a shenanigan they are pulling because they think it will help them stay paid.
The loopholes worth fussing about are SaaS (peple having absolutely no control over the software because they are using someone else's installation remotely) and tivoization (locked down hardware preventing users from exercising their rights in regard to the FOSS operating system it runs)
They don't want to pay their engineers to work on Red Hat only to have some free forks follow the work, so they came up with the idea of eliminating and likely blacklisting customers who look like are there just to pick up changes for a fork.
Red Hat should be applauded for trying to find a business model which is compatible with copyleft, yet prevents freeloading.
Stallman never wanted to create a license that was anti-business, that's why this kind of thing is possible. A license which says you cannot drop or blacklist customers for any reason wouldn't be a free license.
There is an abundance of distros out there; anyone who doesn't like Red Hat for any reason can easily use something else.
It will be interesting to see whether Red Hat's ploy works out in the long run. Will it help grow their business, or will it turn out to be detrimental due to a backlash effect. Obviously, some people don't like it; it's a question of are there enough of them to matter.
There is also the question of whether a free fork of Red Hat that people can develop and test with without becoming paying Red Hat customers really is bad for Red Hat (as they are obviously convinced) or whether it is actually good.
Trade law in Europe works like exactly that: you do not get to choose your clients; you either have to serve anyone that is willing to pay, or no one at all. The US should definitely adopt this principle.
It does, in some ways? Your business can't discriminate based on protected characteristics, like race.
I don't even like this. Shoplifters should all go to prison, but once they've paid their debt to society and been rehabilitated, they should be allowed to do everything that law-abiding citizens can do, including going back as a legitimate customer to stores that they previously stole from.
Many customers aren't wanted, even if they happen to have money to spend.
I do really disagree on this. If somebody tells you "you are allowed to do X", not punishing you when you do X is clearly stated.
I was a student with no income and I couldn't afford the pro version of the "free" compiler.
that was no fun at all.
The video was discussed on HN at the time at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27961940.
Lol, ok, maybe they are not working for you and some non- negligible amount of people, but this should not be generalized neither as "our" licences nor as "not working anymore". There are plenty of software I use for which GPLv3 works like a charm. E.g I loved how Apple ditched bash as the default shell because of GPL.[1]
[1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250729585?sortBy=best
What I like (or at least what I read here) is the acknowledgement of Stallman and the GPL as generally a success, in terms of analyzing the lay of the land, setting up a particular legal framework and letting it do its thing -- noting that "its thing" was never complete and total open source domination (which is probably an impossible and silly goal) and instead just trying hard to ensure a baseline-slash-practicable idea.
I don’t think paying developers is going to help this particular problem. For starters, we can stop referring to non developers as “common people”. Many are experts, including technical experts, in other areas.
Second, to make software with great usability, we need to pay some of those other experts to help. Designers, user researchers, and also the users of software of a given domain. None of that has anything to do with software licenses.
However, been having similar thoughts lately with GitHub. I see people who appear to be supporting an entire subtopic of the Linux, Android, or iOS ecosystem, and there's ... $50 / month?
It was really weird personally, cause I think somewhere I thought those people got paid. And then instead its "wait, you're rewriting all of Google's examples for them? So they actually work?"
And unfortunately, I find myself guilty of this, because they're such unusable junk. For anybody who's ever had to implement In-App Billing on the Play Store from scratch with an example that doesn't work, we can totally be friends.
This seems horrible due to its complexity and poor filter for who contributes.
I’d rather just buy software licenses from Microsoft et al and let the corporate governance guide projects from whatever this new madness is.
It’s funny because commercial software exists. Projects are free to sell and customers free to buy. We don’t need some new subscription type. Just sell software and stop trying to get cool kid points.
Of course redhat/ibm sucks for how they’ve misused open source, but that’s a separate issue.
I know several corporations that actively violate the GPL license of "poor" people's projects that have no money or desire to litigate, so they get away with it.
Companies pirating GPL software should be aware that no matter how small the developer they are opening themselves to a slamdunk court case.
It's not a slam-dunk case if you can't afford or aren't interested to litigate in the first place, which is many of such projects.
It seems the majority of technology's social influence appears to be heavily clustered toward the early phase of either abject redefinition of existing domains (eg. mass manufacturing) or the introduction of completely novel domains (eg. internet). Once popularity is achieved you tend to see a social norm forming around the new technology and old hierarchies and interests reasserted. We've seen this, for example, with industries such as advertising, media conglomerates and banking surviving the internet.
Given this broad pattern, perhaps a more appropriate pathway to explore if seeking globally significant structural evolution in the social contract might be retaking direct ownership of hardware and services. Some potentially aligned contemporary parallel macro-opportunities include the growing devolution of tertiary education (ie. potential for public uptake of a parallel pedagogical pathways leading to increased youth involvement), greatly reduced custom hardware fabrication costs, affordable non-cellular wireless hardware (wifi mesh/LoRa), existing open courseware, increasing global recognition of the urgency and severity of trans-national environmental challenges, and the dangling UBI social question.
But while the engaged learner clearly benefits from openness and information (at least until they encounter commerce), and a business might be said to enjoy access to a pool of better educated employees and reduced operating costs, ultimately corporate position in most markets depends upon the maintenance of an edge which is historically based on either trade secrets or government-mandated monopoly (patent law) neither of which are particularly applicable to software or business methods and thus the open source movement.
This would appear to be the unresolved dichotomous core of the issue.
1. The "hard" position - if you don't want "permissive" don't release it as open source is very "hard" and it does fly against what is a clear and growing view that whatever open source "truly" means, it's not supposed to mean exploitation of others work for free by large corporate entities. (who weirdly also are involved in finding a lot of development)
2. The "soft" position (this builds a community, which is the major benefit) also ends up allowing for exploitation.
3. the term "exploitation" is biased in the debate and shows where I sit. But using others work without payment and with no clear intention of keeping to the intention of the license they provided seems a good choice. FOSS found a loophole in the law and made a whole new means of making the law support community and individual rights - that the payment you make to me is to forward restrict your rights. If you can get out of that obligation have I had any payment?
4. There are two options going forward if we want to put that obligation back / create the utopia we are vaguely dreaming of
- Force a chnage in the interpretation of the current license - something like GPLv2 really means GPLv3.
- chnage the license (going forward) - ie GPLv4000
But both are fraught with problems.
In the end we are looking for a non-governmental solution to a problem that governments are clearly designed for - reallocating wealth according to human and social notions of fairness and / or most appropriate use of resources when the market fails to do it.
We pay scientists who will mostly release open source work, the question then becomes why not coders and then which coders.
That does not seem a good solution - so perhaps it's government action to re-open the market in FOSS?
This is certainly true of OpenAI and Google. But Adobe Firefly is trained on only on their own Adobe Stock images, licensed content, and public domain content.
It does seem however seem a significant change of the terms, as Adobe was essentially paying contributors based on their downloads (i.e. how often their work was used), but the whole AI model is they use the work to not having to pay the contributors anymore.
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to [NAME]
Happy birthday to you!
(Written by me.)
Why Software Should Be Free made a case against copyright as well. It's quite disappointing to see open source miss the point of free software once again.
I don't mind if another artist paints with my brush...
I wouldn't like a factory set up producing works with my brush en masse.
I'd half-agree, but I don't think "breaking copyright" matters to the question of "is LXM 'AI' plagiarism?".
Like you say you can plagiarize without braking copyright(for cases where the copyright allows usage without attribution such as with public domain), and it's also possible to break copyright without plagiarism(e.x. redistributing with attribution when you don't have the license).
But I think this is irrelevant to the point being made. LXM's need to take in a large amount of data, and then the outputs are attributed to the "model" rather than the originators of the material.
Since most of the content being digested by LXMs is not public domain that's where copyright gets twisted up with it, since for the majority of LLM training data 'plagiarism' and 'breaking copyright' come from the same act of redistributing/using without attribution(and since the "LXM" is considered to have created the data by most people the 'plagiarism' comes in).
As a creator I feel like that's not very useful, to be a single name in billions. Of course I'd still like attribution if the work was significantly based on mine.
When you program a machine to do the same thing but 1000x more efficient, it's still plagiarism.
If I encode a movie with H264 there is no way to get it to output "exactly what was in the training data" and I can argue that "like humans extract important information from large dumps of data, the algorithm does the same".
I don't have any reservations about calling an H264 encoded video redistributed with the wrong attribution "plagiarism", so I don't see what's different about Large X Models that they deserve a special pass.
I thought he laughed himself to death reading Eric S Raymond's blog!
https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/10
https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/7
They both echoed that we need to be prepared for such environment and they have some good points.
> define the corporate relationship with developers to ensure companies paid a fair amount for the benefits they receive. It would remain free for individuals and non-profit, and would entail just one license
If anyone is interested in helping out with business side of the project, please reach out jed@poss.market
I don't know anything on "post-open", but some of the article sounds like he wants something like what ASCAP is to the music industry.
About redhat... the moment redhat went "enterprise" with RHEL is the point when they stopped being publicly friendly with their "enterprise" patches (remember when patches in the srpm became obfuscated... pepperidge farms remembers) and servers.
I feel like the motivations are at odds with the suggestion. If the problem you want to solve is that consumer software is not open source, charging companies to use it isn't going to change anything.
==
Open Source as a movement has failed IMO for the economic reasons always mentioned, but what we have actually produced is a software commons where individuals and companies cooperate on the production of infrastructure and release it to everyone for free.
On the face of it this is obviously great, but I do wonder if this reduces the amount of software actually being produced since competing with free is very hard. We all know developers are an incredibly difficult market to sell to, and I wonder if open source contributes to this.
OSS companies seem to be abandoning their OSS roots because it turns out competitors copying your work is a real concern once you hit maturity.
To me, this is actually the biggest question to solve for OSS: how can we use Capitalism's ability to accrue resources to useful products to produce the optimal amount of software.
==
OSS has also dramatically improved trust in random code since we're getting source and not binary blobs. Getting software utilities from the 90s was/remains sketchy since you actually have very little confidence in what you are getting. It's not perfect, but software that gets built from CI or from a distro in the open is far more trustworthy.
I think the current model of relying on licenses to enforce open source software is subject to interpretation by humans and hard to enforce.
SQLite has found that to be quite effective.
That is what one may fairly call an "Alternate Fact". The term "Open Source" is well-documented to have been coined in early 1998 (not quite 26 years ago).
Somehow we have to find a way to be market as well. Not pure market. But somehow a mix. This mix takes time as the whole idea of open/free source is new approach vs patent/copyright (general even open/free is a kind of copyright or copy left)/secret or abandon/share/public.
Need a mix model.
They never worked.
He has some things right, but others are not.
Actually, his post was one of the two that catalyzed mine.
Free software and open software reducing your costs in making products that make money. Be they services (a la Google/Facebook), hardware, operating systems (a la Apple and Darwin), or books (a la OReilly), or consulting (a la IBM).
Open source itself doesn't make money.
So if you can open source and reduce your maintenance costs of something that is required for your product but not really a differentiator it is a win.
If you try to make money from open source itself, either you will fail, or else you will end up either de-facto abandoning open source, or else doing shady legal things to get around it (see the example of Red Hat/IBM in the article).
Basically, you are consulting for the company to solve an issue, and the open source is an enabler.
And $240k/year is what they pay an individual contributor. You are basically being paid for your time and expertise and not really for your product.
Source code is freely available. We sell ready-to-run binaries, almost entirely to individual end users (desktop application).
I am curious as to what you're selling, and why wouldn't anybody just download a free copies from somewhere else?
I've tried to build a community where supporting the continuous full time development of the software is seen as a social good, and thus worth participating in even if the software itself is available at no charge. Most of our income comes from "subscriptions" which have nothing to do with the licensing-style arrangements seen today, but are merely a recurring payment agreement that gives us a consistent income, allowing us to avoid endless "got to make a new release" mania.
[1] https://discourse.ardour.org/t/another-month-missing-the-fin...
> There’s more people (perhaps another dozen) pitching in with translation, release engineering (preparing Ardour for users), Mantis triaging (“Mantis” is the bug database used to keep track of known problems, “triaging” the process of prioritizing/verifying bugs) and other necessary tasks.
http://ardour.org/support_expectations.html
I have a hard time believing that $240k/year is enough to pay an honest market rate to all these people for their time.
There is also additional revenue flow via Harrison Consoles' Mixbus, which is a separate commercial product based on Ardour. The amount that flows "directly" to Ardour is small, but the overall amount does add another person at Harrison working on the software in a mostly-full-time capacity.
Also, which market should we be aiming for when defining "market rate" ?
That's a very good question :)