If you have been in the business for a decade or two, you’ve seen this play more than a few times. It’s legal, it’s profitable, so it keeps happening. Even when it destroys valuable products in the end.
Open source software with permissive licensing is the only true guarantee of not getting squeezed.
But you can’t always find suitable FOSS etc. so here we are. It’s a sad situation IMO
I may be misinterpreting here, so please do correct me.
Does the permissiveness of the license matter more than the utility of the tool? Whether or not an application/platform is using a permissive or copyleft license shouldn't really be a determining factor here for viability or vendor escape.
> But you can’t always find suitable FOSS etc.
This is the most prevalent problem, it's a lot easier to just spend money for a working tool than use an open source project that doesn't have everything you need, causes papercuts, and is being worked on in the developers' spare time.
However, a lot of FOSS options would be much better off if consumers did contribute to the project. Code is great, but financial support to the core developers goes much, much farther. Particularly if it enables them to prioritize the project over other things in life.
I meant to say that being open source doesn’t automatically mean you can use the software commercially, hence the need for a liberal (enough) license (to permit you this option).
No ideology intended so to say :)
> Does the permissiveness of the license matter more than the utility of the tool?
No of course not. A useless, but free tool is still useless. Likewise I’d argue that a useful open source tool you can’t use commercially is equally useless to many.
> However, a lot of FOSS options would be much better off if consumers did contribute to the project
I agree with you here
> being open source doesn’t automatically mean you can use the software commercially
I acknowledge there is a split in recognizing "open source" as between (a) a broad term of source code read-ability or (b) attributed to the specification defined by the Open Source Initiative. I see both arguments, but I believe using the OSI definition can eliminate some of these uncertainties.
* Despite the fact it's an end-user tool/application they will not be exposing, modifying, or extending in any way.