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Comment by jtwoodhouse | Hacker News Reader

"We want to reduce the threat from businesses such as hosting companies and other resellers who try to commercialize popular open source projects. We’ve seen our self-hosted code being used in a way it was never intended for by corporations that don’t care about us or open source."

I don't understand why people think they can stop others from commercializing their open source project. You can give something to the world. You can hold onto IP to stop others from cashing in. You can't have it both ways.

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The problem is people didn't understand that BSD/MIT license gives the same freedoms to all. The previous moat was to license permissively, but make it hard/impossible to install on traditional hardware without the (closed) architecture docs, and go closed source at any moment, since BSD allowed that.

Given enough eyeballs and persistent people, this moat started to be passed with relative ease, allowing big(ger) corporations to deploy intended-for-your-eyes-only, open codebases to production.

Naturally, people didn't like that, and started to move back to xGPL licenses to force modified copies to be open. This forces the parent company which started the project to keep the code open (or make people sign a CLA or don't accept PRs, etc.), but prevents their code from being cannibalized, and makes more sense on the long run because the added value is the service itself rather than the code. CE versions allows deployable open-core versions for the tech savvy.

[Actually Plausible says "A stronger moat for hosted Plausible", so the plan is exactly it].

So, Plausible at least, is returning to the root of Free Software, not OpenSourceWashed software. This is a good move in my book, and makes me happy that I was right about BSD/MIT in the long run.

> You can't have it both ways

You're right, but you're applying idealism to a concept that was popularised 35 years ago to the current landscape. If you want free-as-in-freedom software developed without restrictions with corporate backing, that ship has sailed.

What is your suggestion for how to run a business that offers an open source product that isn't going to have their lunch eaten by AWS/Azure/GCP once it becomes popular? If your answer is "well that's not open source", then I think you need to take a look at the reality of software in 2024.

I agree with your premise though I think we need a different word than "open source" if that's really the model moving forward.

Without going too deep into semantics, the original nature of open source is counter to business interests. If we're using that term for source code that's kinda open for some people some of the time, we risk virtue signalling.

That's a completely fair response I think, but I'd argue that language evolves, and meaning changes. Words and phrases we use now mean totally different things to what they meant 10-15 years ago, and that meaning is driven by common understanding.

Using the original intentions for Open Source is well and good, but do you think Richard Stallman foresaw IBM being the primary funding mechanism for GCC in 1989?

I think that underscores the tension that will always exist with open source. It's nearly impossible for altruism to remain self-sustaining. The rare glimpses when it exists should be cherished rather than conflated with the small business David vs. Goliath complex.

I think that world still exists. We're on HN, so there's always going to be a business/startup bias in what we talk about and share here. And doubly so if someone develops a product as open source with a commercial offering to support it from the get go.

Off the top of my head, Imgui[0] is an example of an open source project, widely used, developed by a small group with a main contributor. AssetCooker [1] is a project that I discovered recently which is clearly a passion project from a single developer who shared it with the world. CNCF [2] is an odd one, but in my mind it's a 21st century Apache foundation - they have a bunch of core projects which are complete open source projects, used widely in production and sustained through different models.

I think imgui (of the bunch) is probably closest to the GCC-of-the-early-90's idea.

[0] https://github.com/ocornut/imgui

[1] https://github.com/jlaumon/AssetCooker

[2] https://www.cncf.io/projects/

It's a growth hack. I don't believe anyone who releases their product under a FOSS license will remain FOSS unless the company goes under. It becomes a "too much money left on the table" situation.

It’s not even a hack these days, investors look for this as a traction metric

> You can't have it both ways.

Why shouldn't I? I created a product and I should be able to choose who do I give it to.

I want it to be as open as possible while restricting some types of usage I don't like, or that would be detrimental to the continuation of the project itself.

I don't see anything outlandish in my statement.

There's nothing stopping you from doing that, but it's not FOSS and you can't use a FOSS license to drive your growth.

I've seen some pretty wild license clauses in things claiming to be FOSS lately...like license termination if you don't support trans rights or if you're anti-furry.

It is FOSS, it's just not a free meal for FAANG & co.

How would you make the distinction, in a way that is legally enforcable?

I can understand why people would prefer FAANG & Co. weren't re-selling their FOSS, but I don't see how you can pick and choose who has access to and is allowed to run your code, and still be open source. Maybe you could have an application process, where you decide to give a license on a case-by-case basis, that can be rescinded later. But I'm not confident you'd get much traction.

The OP's point is that product owners want the benefits of being open source, but are frustrated with the downsides. You can't have one without the other, they are two sides of the same coin.

FAANG & Co won't touch AGPL, ditto for most enterprises. There are some exceptions in countries with weak IP enforcement on smaller players.

Interesting. Why don't more of these open source companies complaining about being cannibalised adopt AGPL instead?

Many of them are going AGPL, including the one we're discussing. Also recently Minio and the Synapse Matrix server from Element.

What's the benefit of SSPL over AGPL? (You can probably tell I'm not an expert in this!)

Wouldn't it be possible to have a license that gives different rights based on some binary indicators, e.g., annual revenue (or profit), an individual vs. a corporation, etc.? In theory, this could be gamed, but perhaps it wouldn't be worth it in most cases.

BSL usage grants sometimes do exactly this (free if you have less than X annual revenue) or similar (free if you're not competing with the company behind the project).

But it's technically not open source since there are usage restrictions, and considered "source available" which isn't descriptive enough IMO.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable that the people who develop some software and run a business doing so, wish to not have their livelihoods cannibalised out from under them by some larger entity.

I think the sunshine and rainbows idealism of some of the licences and OSS gatekeeping was fine 20 years ago, and works fine for certain kinds of software and mature, well-established projects (compilers, Postgres, MySQL etc) but these days, no longer fits the reality of the software landscape.

And on top of that how many open source products are they commercializing? Compilers, programming languages, operating systems, dev tools…

real. wants the good parts of open source and hating the bad parts of open source.

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