Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheRealPomax | Hacker News Reader

It's why things like Captura no longer exist. You make something fantastic with an open source license, someone else renames it and sells it in app stores, and the people running the app stores go "the license allowed for this, we see nothing wrong".

It's well past time for getting rid of licenses that say "you can do what you like with this software", and replace them with licenses that allows you to sell as long as the original project gets a cut, without taking on any of the liability.

The idea that you just mark your work as MIT/GPL/CC0 may have made open source more popular, but it also ruins lives when that thing you worked on for years and never made you anything makes a random drive-by asshole more than your annual salary.

View on HN

There is absolutely nothing wrong with making and selling proprietary software. If you want to make money, you should probably just do that.

I'm very happy to have created a mildly popular permissively-licensed library. It's a contribution to a community with zero intention of profit. That is, for the most part, what open source is all about.

If you read me as saying making and selling proprietary software was wrong, you read a very different text from what I wrote. Making and selling software is perfectly fine, and building that software on top of libraries specifically released for that purpose is equally fine.

Open source licenses that in perpetuity lock you out of any form of gains from your own work, even when that work is the very backbone of someone else's non-open-source, for-pay product, are morally objectionable licenses.

I believe the parent is responding primarily to this point:

> The idea that you just mark your work as MIT/GPL/CC0 may have made open source more popular, but it also ruins lives when that thing you worked on for years and never made you anything makes a random drive-by asshole more than your annual salary.

There's no reason this should ruin your life - your quality of living didn't suddenly decrease. If you are unhappy with this outcome, you probably didn't really intend to create open source software, and should stick to writing proprietary software.

> Open source licenses that in perpetuity lock you out of any form of gains from your own work, even when that work is the very backbone of someone else's non-open-source, for-pay product, are morally objectionable licenses.

It is simply false that open source licenses lock you out of any form of gains from your own work. They allow others the opportunity to benefit from it, as you yourself can too.

It is possible that someone wanted to share their work with others without any payment expectations (but not realize the value of their work) and chooses to license it permissively.The product becomes successful, but the only ones earning money through the product are big companies. ( One may argue that project became successful because of its license or because it was used by the said company, but they are difficult arguments to prove and accept).

I won't fault them for expecting to get paid if they later realize the value of their work and know that it is generating significant commercial money. It is natural to feel like being taken advantage of by the commercial entity when they don't get compensated (even if that was their initial choice).

When someone says "you should have chosen to make it proprietary or use a more restrictive license from beginning", it might come across as a polite way of saying "Too bad, no backsies! You were foolish enough to chose a permissive license. So, accept the consequences".

If a developer wants to get paid for their work with something other than "feel good OSS points", I don't see many options out there. They need to solicit donations(which doesn't have good track record) or re-license.

I think as more products go through this cycle of permissive license, monetization by third-party and re-licensing, we'll be seeing a significant number of projects erring on the side of caution and use restrictive licenses from the start.

I think this discounts the rest of the work required in converting a technological solution into a product. That is, marketing, sales, support, strategy, operations, and oftentimes, UI/UX work.

But in general, yes, I feel that the bigger issue here is a fundamental mismatch between the author's desires and their chosen license. It's not so different from signing a contract with terms you later regret.

Maybe we need better licenses.

>> are morally objectionable licenses.

Easy on the drama there. Nobody makes someone use a particular piece of software. Don't build your product with pieces that don't fit your plans.

> MIT/GPL/CC0

There's (many) different licenses - for a reason.

If someone makes a small game, wants users to enjoy all the freedoms its developer had, but does not want random 3rd party to include it in a product without telling their users about that, use a GPL style license.

If someone is working on a network protocol, an image format, or audio/video codec, and have that go everywhere to become a defacto standard is more important than other considerations, go for a BSD/MIT style license.

Some vendors don't mind their users looking under the hood. But still want to retain control. Enter 'shared source' (=not open source) or dual licensing (eg. free for non-commercial use, commercial users: pay up).

Documentation is different. So is hardware.

If you're a developer (or vendor): think about this, and pick appropriate license. Just don't complain when you did open source something, and a 3rd party runs with it.

[Citation Needed] (and a couple of questions)

1. How has this ruined someone's life? That mechanism isn't easy for me to see.

2. If the license allowed for it, why should any one see something wrong there?

3. Aren't you putting short shrift on the effort it takes to productize something?

> Why I (A/L)GPL

https://web.archive.org/web/20120620103603/http://zedshaw.co...

> I want people to appreciate the work I’ve done and the value of what I’ve made.

> Not pass on by waving “sucker” as they drive their fancy cars.

This is the correct approach - double license, if you're non-commercial then you'll get GPL/AGPL/etc. and if you're a company and want to use it to make money this way or another then pay up.

A fair approach that provides a way of supporting the people making it and further development.

You do realize, I hope, that if you give even one person A GPL/AGPL version of your software, they can then redistribute it to anyone for any purpose. There's no such thing as "GPL for non-commercial use".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com