throwaway150

Yes, it is not popular, for the reasons I already mentioned.

What puzzles me is why so many HN comments, including yours, frame this purely in consumer terms: "If this open source tool doesn't meet my needs, I'll switch to a proprietary one."

And that is perfectly fine. Use whatever works for you. No issue there.

What seems misplaced is the expectation that Matrix must be popular. Why should it be? It is not your project, and you are not contributing to it. Where does this expectation of its popularity come from?

Matrix already serves its developers and contributors. If it does not serve you, you can either help improve it or choose a proprietary alternative. Both are reasonable paths.

What feels off is the dismissive tone suggesting that if Matrix is not widely adopted, something must be wrong and proprietary options are therefore superior. In reality, this is just how open source works: projects exist to serve those who build and support them, not necessarily the mass market.

There is nothing wrong with an open source project not meeting everyone's needs, leading some people to choose proprietary alternatives. Remarks like "This is the fastest way to get people to say: I hate proprietary solutions but at least they work" or "OK great. I guess you answered why Matrix is not more popular" are not really the decisive critique you think they are.

Open source and proprietary software each have legitimate roles. For some use cases and users, open source tools are a better fit. For others, proprietary solutions make more sense. Popularity alone is not a meaningful measure of value and choosing what works best for you is entirely reasonable either way.

You need to learn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

There is no need to get into an online argument with the developers. The open source software is still offered to you as a gift. You can modify it however you need and keep it for yourself.

The developers developed the open source software for themselves. Doesn't work for you? Too bad. But they are not going to develop it for you. Definitely not, when you are not paying them.

If it doesn't work for you, you shouldn't think, "Oh, I need to get into an online argument with the developers." Here's what you do.

1. Develop the fix/feature you need for yourself. If you cannot do it yourself, hire someone who can.

2. Send a pull request to the developers. But don't expect them to merge it. Remember they developed their stuff for themselves. You developed your stuff for yourself. If they merge, great. If they don't merge, you've still got your stuff for yourself.

3. If they don't merge your stuff, you could maintain a fork. Yes, it's a pain to keep your fork updated but you need to do your own work. Nobody else will do your work for you.

If all this is too difficult for you, why even consider open source? Just use proprietary software.

I truly don't understand the self-entitled HN comments that think for some strange reason that someone else should give you a software for free and then do all the work for you.

Then you should use proprietary solutions. Open source solutions are written by developers for themselves. They are not writing it for you. They have no reason to write them for you. You are not paying them. It is a labor of love they are doing for themselves.

Yet as a bonus they are offering it to you for free as a gift with the hope that if it doesn't work for you, you can improve it or hire someone you can.

If you only care about consuming open source but not contributing, by all means you should buy proprietary solutions.

Honestly I cannot imagine who expects the original vi and trusts vi to be there. Every Unix/Linux user I have met expects Vim and trusts Vim to be there. If there are users expecting original vi, they must be a very small minority.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46930961

I am genuinely unable to decide if this is satire or sincere. Please someone tell me that this is a parody.

> Then why are you asking for legal advice on HN?

I didn't ask for legal advice. I was challenging my parent comment with a rhetorical question. With that rhetorical question, I meant that there is no way for the parent commenter to ensure that liabilities will be bounded, so I was implying that they were incorrect in saying that one can get very ver far. Please read the messages more carefully before jumping to incorrect conclusions.

> Liability is capped by court (e.g. small claims court) or by specific claim type depending on the legislation of the jurisdiction (e.g. speeding tickets typically have set fines varying by state).

What you are saying is partly true and overly simplified. Are you a lawyer? Do you have legal expertise? If not, I don't understand why you feel compelled to advise on things you understand so little yourself? Are you going to compare my contract with my vendor with speeding ticket? Are you kidding me?

Comparing contractual liability to speeding fines makes me think you have not a clue of what you're talking about. Speeding penalties are statutory and predefined. Commercial liability usually is not. In Europe, most serious business disputes never go near small claims courts. They go to ordinary civil courts or arbitration, where damages depend on the contract, applicable law, and the specific facts. There is often no automatic cap unless the contract explicitly sets one, and even then its enforceability depends on jurisdiction and circumstances.

Small claims limits only restrict which court hears the case, not the total liability. A claimant can often file in a higher court or pursue related claims elsewhere. And in cross-border European business, jurisdiction, governing law, and enforcement become additional risks. Getting this wrong can expose you to far more liability than you expected.

Liability is not limited by your personal understanding of the law. That is why businesses do not rely on guesswork. Contracts are reviewed, liability caps are negotiated, insurance is obtained and lawyers are paid to spot risks that non-lawyers routinely miss.

> If that is your concern, you shouldn't be doing business anywhere, US or otherwise.

Yes, that is my concern. I do business in Europe. By paying actual laywers. And I'll continue to do so. Thank you very much.

Correct. That's not true in Europe either. IIRC it's not true in Asia either. I don't understand why so many people who don't have even the most basic understanding or experience of licensing feel they must post their opinion as if they were facts. People are certainly entitled to their opinion. But so many comments here are speaking absolute nonsense about licensing as if they were facts. I genuinely don't understand why people feel compelled to do so.

> So, my question is: are the people that are upset with the "ambiguity" people who neither

> (a) want to buy a license nor

> (b) be bound by the AGPLv3?

No and no. People first want to know what the correct licenses are even before deciding which licensing path (including buying a commercial license) to take. You don't just commit to buying a commercial license without first understanding your options and comparing those options. People want to know what those options are.

People are upset that a company cannot get the simple matter of open source licensing right. It's the easiest kind of licensing. But they cannot get it right. These upset people would now never want to do business with this company.

People who would have otherwise been happy to purchase a commercial license would also stay away from the company because messing up open source licensing is a red flag. Who knows what kind of mess would be present in their commercial contracts. Yes, you can hire a lawyer to sort it out but I'd much rather do business with a company where I'm confident that the company is acting in good faith even before lawyers get involved.

> If so, I have no sympathy.

Your sympathy means nothing to me when I am picking vendors for my business. When I'm picking my vendors, I'm going to rely on professional legal expertise available to me, not the sympathies of random strangers on the internet.

> Largely, if you read defensively and try to read what is not said, then you get very very far.

How far is "very, very far"? Is it far enough that, if there were a lawsuit, my liability would truly be capped at €10,000? Because that's how much liability I can afford. If that "very very far" guarantees such a limit, then yes, I agree it is very very far. But my experience tells me that without formal legal training, I cannot be confident that I have interpreted legal language correctly enough to rely on that conclusion.

Open source licenses are often relatively readable, but corporate contracts and other legal texts, including those from companies that market themselves as open source in questionable ways, can contain subtleties and loopholes. As a layperson, it is difficult to know how much exposure I might have if I misunderstand a detail and act in contradiction of the license terms.

Perhaps we are simply on opposite sides of the D-K effect here. Or maybe you simply are good with legalese and I'm being unnecessarily skeptical.

If experience with lawyers matters, I have spent many years working with lawyers across Europe. If that taught me anything, it is to avoid assuming that I can reliably interpret legal language without proper training.

Yes, I can usually grasp perhaps 80 percent of what a contract is saying at a high level. But in every contract we reviewed, lawyers consistently found issues or implications I would not have noticed. They then either refined the contract or advised taking a calculated risk. So I think it is reasonable for me to remain cautious about my own ability to interpret legal language with confidence.

> It is - it might not be successful (the court may rule against you)

Exactly what I said.

Speaking only for myself here. But I don't have the arrogance to assume that I can interpret legalese the way I interpret English. When shit goes to court, saying here's what I thought "may" means is not going to be a legal defense strategy. There's a reason I hire lawyers for this kind of shit because they are really good at their job and I won't pretend I know their job better than they do.

Wow. I didn't know that. Looks like this is a very US thing. I looked up now and TIL that US adopted the Berne convention as late as 1989. I'm surprised. So this movie released in 1966 didn't have default "all rights reserved" due to Berne convention. But most European countries, like 80%, had adopted the Berne convention by 1925. So when software was developed in Europe they automatically got "all rights reserved".

> If you didn't mention the license, it was in public domain.

I don't think this has ever been the case. If a license is not mentioned, it is always "All rights reserved" by the authors of the project, by the Berne convention (1886).

Yes, if the licensing terms are unclear, to err on the side of caution, it is best to assume "All rights reserved" by the authors of the software so you don't accidentally violate the authors' rights. And then hire a lawyer to sort this matter for you.

Licensing should never be left to "reading comprehension". If there is any doubt about the terms, a clarification should be requested. A clarification was requested here. The requested clarification was declined. If this matter was really so simple that simple "reading comprehension" would solve it, the project maintainers could have said so. But they didn't. And that they didn't holds more weightage than what some random stranger has to say about "reading comprehension".

I have used many open source tools and I have convinced my company to buy the commercial license of the said tools to get the enterprise version and support. Win-win for both parties. I use and improve my skills on the open source version of the tools I love. Our company uses great tools. The project maintainers get paid.

But I don't think I'll ever buy an enterprise version of the software which can't get the simple matter of open source licensing right. It isn't that hard. Thousands of developers are doing it.

If the tool was totally enterprise version only, I'd probably have less qualms about it. But to advertise a tool as open source license but then violate the open source licensing method both in spirit and the letter of the law is just too unprofessional for me that I'd steer clear of them in future and discourage anyone I know from spending their money on them.

That term doesn't exist in the legal language where I live. And I don't know your term well enough to know what it maps to in our law.

Whether stupidest nitpick or not, thank you for posting this. I learned Pavlovian conditioning better from your comment. This is the kind of comment I come to HN for. Appreciate it.

Since there are people from all countries here, the answer to your question depends a lot on who you ask. I don't think even the specific word you used is relevant in all parts of the world.

> I think a lot of these debates miss the core point, which is stage and context. Yes, a single modern server can handle far more than most people think, and yes, microservices are massively overused. But early teams usually optimize for speed, safety, and predictability rather than perfect efficiency. Cloud + autoscaling is expensive, but it reduces operational risk when traffic is unpredictable and the team is small. Bare metal is great once you understand your workload and failure modes, but it requires real ops discipline that many startups don’t have early on. Same with microservices: a modular monolith with good boundaries gets you very far with far less complexity, and most products never reach the scale where microservices are truly necessary. In practice, the winning approach tends to be: start simple, scale vertically, keep the architecture boring, and only add complexity when real bottlenecks force your hand - not because Twitter or Netflix did it.

Does this look like LLM slop to anybody?

A new account created just 2 days ago with not much comment history. And this happens to be their first substantive comment! I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

On the internet nobody knows if someone made up a story. They might have as well made up the whole story. This post may be a work of fiction. Maybe it never happened. But it is entertaining.

> Or am I crazy?

You are not. The entire post is LLM slop. I am as baffled as you are how something like this could be on the front page of HN.

The senseless bolding of random words in the text, numbers that are way off and don't make any sense are the clues that the post is LLM generated and the blogger didn't even bother to proofread it.

I come to HN to read thoughtful posts written by humans. Why are we upvoting LLM slop to the front page?

It is frustrating that the awesome article about Nonograms currently has less than 70 upvotes. But this pure LLM slop has 100+ upvotes and counting! What would it take to stop this LLM slop infestation?

> but the punitive impact might change things

Call me cynical but I have little to no hope that even class actions would solve anything. These companies have become so big that they can take one class action after another for years to come without making a dent in their financials and without bringing any change to their operating procedures.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted. This may be snark, but this is 100% needed in the world we live in today. It is a fact of today's world that individuals have no leverage over these companies. I can understand why big companies, who have leverage, buy their services. But I don't understand why individuals, who have no leverage, buy their services and build their profession and livelihood around them. Any day, they can cut you off from their services. You are being irresponsible to yourself if you put all your eggs in these big tech baskets.

We seriously do need this kind of research and compelling articles that argue why relying on these big tech cloud services is harmful for individuals.

100% agree with you. The big techs are definitely 100% at fault. But you know, fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice...

I mean, we get these stories every month. Yes, 100% it is not ethical to randomly kneecap people. But let's be honest. Nobody is working on making these big tech companies accountable for the potentially devastating, algorithm-driven decisions they take. How many more times do they have to fool us before we all realize that it's time to move away from them?

All I ask from you, myself and all the tech folks here is to learn from these lessons and pass them on to everyone around you. With how things are today, it is reckless to depend on these big tech cloud services for your livelihood and profession. If you're working for a company where the company has leverage, all good. But as an individual, you should stay away from these big tech companies, because they can screw up your life any day, without warning and without recourse.

It's gone. No human will ever respond to you. That's how these companies operate. From here, you realistically have two options.

1. Forget the account and move on. You could create a new one, but nobody can tell how long it would take before that gets suspended as well.

2. If the suspension has a tangible negative impact on your profession, hire a lawyer and get proper legal advice.

Most important of all, let this be a lesson for you and your colleagues. It is a terrible idea to let any critical part of your life depend on unregulated industries that can wipe out someone's livelihood at the whim of machine learning systems. Learn this lesson and pass it on to everyone you know.

As an individual, you are nobody to Google and you have no leverage. It is reckless to build your livelihood or profession around their platforms. If you were a company, your team could speak to an account manager and negotiate. As an individual, your only real leverage is legal action.

Stories like this appear every month. I don't know how many more it will take before it becomes best practice not to depend on these utterly abominable rackets for anything critical.