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throwaway5857

that hasn't been updated in NINE MONTHS

this was a scam

they got a bunch of people to write the software for them and then took it closed source

shame on them

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They also took a lot of donations in BTC which they never returned after pivoting their project to a private closed source solution. Shame on them for sure.

Starting off on the wrong foot.

With all the money they already have on the bank I suspect they don't agree with you.

I don't think it's a scam. According to kevin-buttercoin comment a month ago, they are working on Scala based version, and it will be opensourced.

Source: https://github.com/buttercoin/buttercoin/issues/65

I've actually talked with Kevin before, they do seem to care about open-source & security & scalability. I mean, from what we talked about, I got the sense they do. But for them, I think things are moving fast, and it's hard to please everyone, all the time, especially when you need to prioritize the business. It seems they care about open-source as a reassurance to security. And I think they do want to give back to the community.

I understand your point of view, but isn't that sort of the spirit of open source software? To take it and build something with it. I mean, they didn't close the repo, it's still up there, they just made the decision to not contribute back as they decided to build a business around it. Others can too.

Open source, yes. Free software, no.

Sadly this was open source, not free.

Free software typically doesn't force you to share changes either, as long as you don't distribute the binaries. Patching GPL code and using it in a web application without ever releasing the source is perfectly fine.

The Affero GPL was designed to force the release of source even in that case. That's the only license I know which has that property though.

Free software != GPL. One could argue that the Affero GPL represents a continuation of the ideals which gave birth to the GPL, now that more and more applications have moved to being network services (something less common in 80's).

Which is the reason for the AGPL license. Those people contributed their code under the MIT license. This is absolutely allowed.

It's legal, but that certainly doesn't mean it's ethical or that it inspires trust.

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