Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

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> unless ur claim is that many people in positions like him do what he does which is in turn caused by invariant factors?

I don't know about invariants, but there is absolutely a trend of for-profit companies setting up a business around open source and only later trying to close the doors to lock out the competitors that the Free Software system is explicitly designed to encourage.

> this global issue of companies building businesses off foss and not giving back.

I'll never understand this complaint about not giving back. I can understand if they're asking for free support and coercing you into saying yes, but that's rarely the concern, the concern is always "giving back".

If you release it under GPL, then companies are obliged to abide by the GPL and release their modifications, nothing more or less. If you release it under a less restrictive license then they have no obligations at all, and you presumably chose that license specifically because it made the software easier to use in enterprises.

If giving back matters so very much then you're not really interested in Free Software and you should put those requirements in the license. But you don't get to piggyback on the FOSS movement and then complain when people use your software freely to compete with your for profit.

As for the trend of the bait and switch. That’s a fair point. But u can always fork and move on. And even then would you say that’s more of an issue or occurs more frequently then corps not contributing back at all?

Like when you factor in all the negative externalities what is worse?

As for the license, yea I mean that’s kind of the direction I want people to talk about.

We have foss absolutists, but there’s these emerging systemic issues now for a few decades and I think that the literalism surrounding the foss principles needs to address it more fundamentally then saying go non free.

The dichotomy is not effective anymore when there is so much bad faith.

> so much bad faith

This is the part that I disagree with—to the extent there's bad faith, the bad faith is on the part of the for profits that pull the bait and switch, not the users.

Making your dev-focused project FOSS gives you enormous tailwinds that you can ride to dramatically increase your chance of success. That's the draw for these VC-funded FOSS projects. But those tailwinds come with expectations that you'll respect the license and not throw a tantrum when people actually take you at your word.

If you want to be the sole vendor for your project then you should make that clear from the beginning in the license, but people don't do that because then the tailwinds go away.

The key point is that there's no moral issue here (at least not on the users). You offered free stuff and people took you up on it. When you gave out the free stuff you got a lot of free publicity with that free stuff. You made a trade-off, and it's bad faith to try to convince your fans that the people on the other end of that deal are doing something wrong.

When a user uses some open source software, there is no negative happening. They are not accumulating some debt that should be repaid by "contributing back." If they make a million dollars on it, that makes no difference to the project. Agreeing to a license and then following that license is not "bad faith."

The only damage being done when someone makes money using open source software, is to the ambitions and ego of a developer who imagined that "open source" meant "give me your contributions so I can build an empire." Fortunately, open source is for the benefit of all of us. Nobody owes them fiefs.

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