Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Why Some Open-Source Companies Are Considering a More Closed Approach (geekwire.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

There's no question that the concept of open-source software has revolutionized the enterprise software world, which spent billions of dollars fighting the mere idea for several years before accepting that a new future had arrived. But more than a few people are starting to wonder if the very nature of open-source software -- the idea that it can be used by pretty much anyone for pretty much anything -- is causing its developers big problems in the era of distributed cloud computing services. From a report: Two prominent open-source software companies have made the decision to alter the licenses under which some of their software is distributed, with the expressed intent of making it harder -- or impossible -- for cloud computing providers to offer a service based around that software.

Two companies do not a make a movement. But as the cloud world packs its bags for Las Vegas and Amazon Web Services' re:Invent 2018 conference next week, underscoring that company's ability to set the agenda for the upcoming year, the intersection between open-source projects and cloud computing services is on many people's minds. "The way that I would think of it, the role that open source plays in creating commercial opportunities has changed," said Abby Kearns, executive director of the open-source Cloud Foundry Foundation. "We're going to see a lot more of this conversation happening than less. I would put it in a very blunt way: for many years we were suckers, and let them take what we developed and make tons of money on this."

Redis Labs CEO Ofer Bengal doesn't mince words. His company, known for its open-source in-memory database (used by American Express, Home Depot, and Dreamworks among others), has been around for eight years, an eternity in the fast-changing world of modern enterprise software. [...] "Ninety-nine percent of the contributions to Redis were made by Redis Labs," Bengal said. There's a longstanding myth in the open-source world that projects are driven by a community of contributors, but in reality, paid developers contribute the bulk of the code in most modern open-source projects, as Puppet founder Luke Kanies explained in our story earlier this year.

75 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Doesn't matter. by andydread · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They shouldn't forget that regardless of the % of paid vs non-paid developers on a project the reason why they have the market penetration they currently do is because their products are FOSS in the first place.

    1. Re:Doesn't matter. by Shaitan · · Score: 2

      Revisions are needed to address this. You can use open source software and modify it for use on a commercial service platform without contributing back. Sure, they contribute back bug fixes to the core product but they often don't contribute back functional additions.

      Although in the case of Puppet there is certainly a community, most of the developers might be paid but the community develops the puppet modules around the core software that actually make it useful.

    2. Re:Doesn't matter. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And people here should realize that their market penetration is virtually 100% due to the free-as-in-beer nature of FOSS.

      Put more bluntly: The free-as-in-speech stuff people like to argue about endlessly on this site doesn't mean shit to most corporations. They see serviceable software they can legally use for free, and they leap at it. Oh, they have to make their mods freely available? Most companies are making no mods at all, or only small ones that are specific to their use of the SW, so they don't care if they have to make them public. (And face it, many companies don't follow the license and release their changes and enhancements, or if they do, it's a back level version that's useless.)

    3. Re:Doesn't matter. by Scarletdown · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They shouldn't forget that regardless of the % of paid vs non-paid developers on a project the reason why they have the market penetration they currently do is because their products are FOSS in the first place.

      Yep, and when they lock down their material, the logical response from the community is to select an older version as a base to start with and tell the original developer to fork off.

      --
      This space unintentionally left blank.
    4. Re:Doesn't matter. by Luthair · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So license it under the AGPL.

    5. Re:Doesn't matter. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Sure, they contribute back bug fixes to the core product but they often don't contribute back functional additions.

      But if they switch to someone else's product, you won't even get the bug fixes.

      My company uses many FLOSS products, and for most of them we wouldn't even have considered them if they were closed source. With FLOSS, you can try the product for free, you can look at the source when the documentation is weak, there are usually good online forums to ask questions, and the danger of an orphaned product is less.

      For most of these products, we contribute nothing back, but we don't cost them anything either. But we do pay for some support, submit a few patches and add to the online knowledge base.

      These companies closing their products may find that a small slice of a big thing was better than a big slice of nothing.

    6. Re:Doesn't matter. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh, they have to make their mods freely available? Most companies are making no mods at all, or only small ones that are specific to their use of the SW, so they don't care if they have to make them public.

      You don't even have to do that if you're using your modified software internally. Our company uses open source software, some of it with small modifications for our specific needs.

      From the GPL faq:
      The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.

    7. Re:Doesn't matter. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sure, they contribute back bug fixes to the core product but they often don't contribute back functional additions.

      Speaking as someone who uses OSS in my workplace, I contribute back both bug fixes and functional additions. The functional additions seldom make it in, usually because the core developers have no interest in it or don't see the utility. OSS projects suffer just as much from NIH as anyone else.

    8. Re:Doesn't matter. by ctilsie242 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Having a product F/OSS can be a deal maker or a deal breaker. For example, in a previous life, I worked for a company ran by old-school CS guys that considered code as an asset, and that if an application didn't have open source, or a way to get to the source, it would not be used, because they didn't want to deal with it. Worst case, if a product is abandoned, they could fork it and support it.

      It isn't like F/OSS doesn't make money. RedHat wasn't snapped up at insanely high prices by IBM for a losing business model.

    9. Re:Doesn't matter. by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      These companies closing their products may find that a small slice of a big thing was better than a big slice of nothing.

      Common sense would dictate that such companies aren't doing so hot in the first place, otherwise they wouldn't be changing their business model.

    10. Re:Doesn't matter. by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      I won't build a tool using libraries unless they're Apache 2 licensed, if not available, a 1-clause BSD-style.

      When you decide you don't like how I exercise my freedom and you try to restrict my choices so that I do what you want, you become the exact thing in the world that open source exists to fight.

      None of the software is standard because it is better. It is standard because it respects people's choices. If you decide to change your license so that you don't respect my choices, I won't be using it, and neither will a lot of other people. And, our choices will be the standard software of the future.

      And answer for business is not to release your source until after you get established in the market. The answer for everybody else, stop pretending you can see people's software before you can see the source. Let people who don't value the source pay the early adopter taxes to establish a solution in the market, and then if their business model is good and they want to be standard, they'll open it up. Apache 2 license allows everybody to do this at their own pace even when only making improvements.

    11. Re:Doesn't matter. by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

      Something like that happened with Open Office.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#ooo-build,_Go-oo_and_Oracle
      That was certainly not the only reason, as Open Office was also stagnating from a development POV. But I'm sure it contributed.

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
    12. Re:Doesn't matter. by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      For consulting work I make any tools I distribute Apache 2 licensed, so that each client can decide to release their parts later, or not.

      Most don't want to, because it fulfills private use cases, but they still value having standardized tools ship with it.

      IBM bought RedHat because, simply, services are worth more than products these days. Restrictive source only even helps with products, and even then it has disadvantages for most companies.

    13. Re:Doesn't matter. by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      But if they switch to someone else's product, you won't even get the bug fixes.

      And, you might have trouble recruiting programmers to work on your product - since these days, nobody makes a career out of a job. And the less 'standard' your platform is, the less mobile you are as a developer. Working on a widely-used Open Source project is a great calling card for a developer, and while you might think that would make them more likely to leave, it's just as likely that the opposite is true. If your devs think they're working in a backwater that will stagnate their careers, they're more likely to jump ship than if they're happily and securely working on a project that keeps them saleable...

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    14. Re:Doesn't matter. by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      All of this assumes that you never intended to make money from your product from either direct sales or licensing. That model for Open Source projects has been shown to be a non-starter. You open source if you have an adjacent product to sell - either one that makes your OS product more valuable, or a support service that makes companies feel safe using your stuff.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    15. Re:Doesn't matter. by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      > Oh, they have to make their mods freely available?

      You don't have to make mods available unless you are re-distributing the project.

      The fact that you can maintain the project yourself is considered to be a major advantage by some companies. Some companies use software that predates Linux and GNU entirely.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    16. Re:Doesn't matter. by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      You really do not need that, use and distribute it and the bigger you, even though you contribute nothing, the more people use it, the more they will contribute. Cloud is different, it is entirely monopolistic, carving off territories it totally controls, basically as a business focus, as an individual corporation, a one off, striving to put ALL OTHER digital businesses out of business. The goal of any cloud provider is to kill ALL opposition, small especially, medium especially and big especially, as a focus, to bankrupt all opposition and totally dominate the market with it's cloud.

      Yeah the cloud is shit and those who operate it are controlling shit and should never be trusted. The original cloud was the internet, totally distributed computing with no central control. The filthy cunts of the like of M$, Google or Amazon could not tolerate this and want a system of total monopolistic control, their cloud and all others out of business. FOSS should cut off their air and put them out of business ie strangle them at birth before they can do real harm to the technological future of humanity.

      FOSS is all about distributed computing power, from hardware to software and the corporate monopolistic cloud is an anathema to the function of FOSS and should be opposed. Those anal retentive companies representing the cloud of total control and oppression should should be allowed to participate in FOSS but no FOSS work should go to cloud services, as far a distributing computer power is concerned, the corporate cloud is as evil as fuck.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    17. Re:Doesn't matter. by astrofurter · · Score: 1

      For most of these products, we contribute nothing back

      That's why the FOSS model is failing. All those Free Software developers whose work makes your business possible are starving or reduced to wageslavery, while corporate freeloaders suck up all the value.

      Have you noticed how the rate of new real (not corporate freemium crippleware) FOSS projects has been dropping lately? Have you noticed how the rate of abandoned projects (probably lurking in your dependency tree!) has absolutely skyrocketed?

    18. Re:Doesn't matter. by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      In the cloud the software stays where it is, so there's no distribution. In a way, the users come to you. That's a literal interpretation, not necessarily a correct one.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. IBM/Red Hat? systemd? by walterbyrd · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I have been waiting for the next shoe to drop in the systemd scam.

    Of course, IBM cannot close all Linux code. But can they keep enough closed to control enterprise Linux?

    Sort of like the Microsoft controls "open source" OOXML?

    1. Re:IBM/Red Hat? systemd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      IBM can't close any Linux code, that's not how licensing works.

    2. Re:IBM/Red Hat? systemd? by walterbyrd · · Score: 1

      IBM cannot close any code from the Linux kernel.

      I am not sure about the rest of it.

      You cannot freely download true RHEL. OOXML is not really open.

    3. Re:IBM/Red Hat? systemd? by Aighearach · · Score: 3, Insightful

      IBM is one of the major contributors to open source, fear of IBM is just stupid.

      All of the software that people speculate they wanted out of the deal are areas where they're already pushing out open source (mostly Apache 2 licensed, so usable by everybody, GPL/BSD/proprietary) and they're basing their profits on professional services to big users.

      That's great for open source, great for smaller companies dedicated to open tools, great for business. The only people it sucks for are their competitors trying to sell lock-in that has less brand gravitas. LOL The world has sure changed!

      I'm loving this new systemd world. SysV can burn in a fiery hell for all I care. No, I'm not going to explain the difference between a semaphore and a mutex; I'm hoping to forget that SysV ever existed! Use grpc, d-bus, or pass messages. No, you don't get to edit startup scripts on the fly, you have to check them into source control anyways, so even if they were plain-text, you can't do that. Talk to the BOFH and quit trying to fuck up the configuration by mashing the keyboard.

  3. TLDR version by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    TLDR: they broke their own business models.

    Cause: They made their product open source but were charging money for a hosted service. Other people start selling their own hosted service and they got unhappy that they didn't have a monopoly so they switched part of their code to "Commons Clause" which disallows others from offer it as part of a paid service.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:TLDR version by fortythirteen · · Score: 1

      "Hosted Service" is too broad a term, in this instance. Courts have decided (wrongly IMO) that you can not only sell your own hosting of someone else's FOSS, you can slap your own logo on it and resell it as your own closed source solution, without even having to tell the customer what's actually under the hood.

      They didn't break their own business model, the courts allow for people to take advantage of FOSS licensing in a way that hurts FOSS.

    2. Re:TLDR version by lgw · · Score: 1

      Courts have decided (wrongly IMO) that you can not only sell your own hosting of someone else's FOSS, you can slap your own logo on it and resell it as your own closed source solution, without even having to tell the customer what's actually under the hood.

      The BSD license used to have clause requiring the end product to advertise the open-source components. It didn't catch on. With the advertising clause removed, the BSD license became popular.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    3. Re:TLDR version by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Courts have decided (wrongly IMO) that you can not only sell your own hosting of someone else's FOSS, you can slap your own logo on it and resell it as your own closed source solution

      What court decided this? Please provide a citation or a link to the decision.

    4. Re:TLDR version by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      While true, since it is phrased in the past tense, most of the people who adopted only the 1-clause BSD license have moved to the Apache 2 license, since that can be reused by everybody without having to count clauses.

      OTOH, I reject 2 or 3-clause BSD-licensed software all the time. People using those licenses don't change as often, or care about license complaints.

    5. Re:TLDR version by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Don't bother asking for citations in these situations.

      They might even provide you a link, but it will say something entirely different than the claim. There is no there, there.

      Just evaluate the truth of what is said. It doesn't matter who says an idea as to the truth of the idea, so citations are not relevant outside of A) a claimed source or B) academia.

    6. Re:TLDR version by george14215 · · Score: 1

      Are Azure, AWS, et. al. compelled to make their infrastructure source (derived from OSS) available to customers who use Azure, AWS, etc? If so, this seems like an unfortunate loophole in the GPL.

    7. Re:TLDR version by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      Are Azure, AWS, et. al. compelled to make their infrastructure source (derived from OSS) available to customers who use Azure, AWS, etc?

      No because they are not distributing binary versions of it.

      If so, this seems like an unfortunate loophole in the GPL.

      The Affero GPL was "designed to close a perceived application service provider (ASP) loophole in the ordinary GPL." The AGPL is not often used but when it is, it's usually for server specific software.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  4. Open-Source Regrets by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You could summarize this as "open-source companies are realizing that they don't actually want to open-source their work."

    --

    How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
    1. Re:Open-Source Regrets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Open Source Startup: Half of our work is already done, we just have to put the pieces together!

      Open Source Corporation: We can get paid for some services, but most of our effort goes uncompensated. We've had to stop accepting code suggestions from outside developers because they ruin compatibility and about a third of them have jokes in the comment fields that we do not want associated with our company. Many of the projects we initially utilized in making our products no longer behave as they did when we started, so we have to maintain our own local fork, which means evaluating every bug fix on the main trunk to see if it is relevant for our code.

    2. Re:Open-Source Regrets by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      You could summarize this as "open-source companies are realizing that they don't actually want to open-source their work."

      PRE-CISELY!

      Hypocrites all.

  5. This title is FUD! by fbobraga · · Score: 1

    I don't even read TFA...

  6. Virtualization + mature open source software by bettodavis · · Score: 5, Informative

    Broke the open source business model.

    All these open source software developers relied on support and deployment revenue, rather than on selling their software licence as traditional companies did.

    It worked because software, regardless of its source code availability, is complex and requires expertise to deploy and keep working. Free software wasn't free to deploy and keep working.

    But by eventually having mature open source software that 'just works', you can install fresh new instances of it, free from any problems and following a copy-exactly recipe, replicated umpteen times in a virtualized environment. The expertise only needs to be at the time of creating the recipes, and that can be done by a few automation experts inside your company from time to time, not a full company earning money from it.

    Amazon, Azure et al have their relatively small automation groups, doing deployment and customization recipes that are then repeated ad infinitum across their infrastructure, making good revenue for them. While the developers of the software saw not a single penny from it.

    1. Re:Virtualization + mature open source software by Junta · · Score: 1

      I don't think it killed the model, but something like redis would never have been a viable commercial endeavor, open source or not.

      Back in the 90s, you could make a business out of 'just a datastore' (e.g. Oracle). In the last decade or so, that's just not enough, the field is too well explored, there are plenty of options, and if you hate them all implementing a new one from scratch isn't that difficult if it comes to it.

      redis labs might be doing solid enough work, but it just isn't enough. I see a lot of this in the industry 'my software I give away for free is really popular, but why can't I monetize it??' Too often they believe if they just closed source and sold it it would be just as popular but making them rich, but that's just not in the cards for most of these projects. I see plenty of commercial software flop, but generally it is more obscure because the monetization as step 1 just brings death more swiftly and no one even hears of it.

      There of course is the whole 'hosting without allowing on-premise' open source loophole to allow private modifications without sharing (closed by things like AGPL), but that's not the direction of the cited companies.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    2. Re:Virtualization + mature open source software by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Redis didn't offer anything new even when it was new, though. So no. The thing that people used instead of Brandybrand(TM) would have a different name, that's all.

  7. Of course most contributions are by the company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Open source tends to rely on a large group of occasional contributors and a a few somewhat-more frequent committers that review the contributions and perhaps contribute stuff themselves also. Few of those contribute as a full-time job. If you're unhealthily obsessed with the project and issue a commit for every comma and semicolon (like certain "top wikipedia editors" do), it's easy to have as many commits to your name as the next ten combined.

    Now you have a company and a bunch of full-time contributors to your core product. Of course ninety-nine percent is going to be contributed by the people you pay to do exactly that full-time.

    If that metric alone is your reason to go closed-source, you have great potential to excel in pointy-haired management. And it actually makes me glad I'm not using your product; if I were it would be reason enough to start looking for something else. Something with sane management.

    1. Re:Of course most contributions are by the company by Junta · · Score: 2

      For all but the most famous open source projects (and even many of those), the project is 99% 2-6 people working at a particular company.

      I have no reason to doubt those company's assessment that they are the real driver behind the project. However if they were fee based then no one would have even looked at them in the first place.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    2. Re:Of course most contributions are by the company by Junta · · Score: 1

      Actually, I do, since many "corporate" projects are by-products of doing something else.

      I think these specific two are pretty much as presented, projects that are the core of the business of the two groups and they are also the meaningfully core contributors. In terms of generically companies gaming commits for the sake of marketing material, that certainly happens in particularly buzzword compliant projects. I have seen for example IBM, RedHat, and Canonical all put github contributor statistics into marketing slides for certain high profile projects.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  8. OSS death watch by ElitistWhiner · · Score: 2

    From the outset what looked like a huge misguided free buffet at the expense of sweat equity (ideological slavery), I have witnessed the value of free, as in free beer, resource incentive to mine its treasury.

    This moment, nexus, will pivot and change. And the value it takes forward can be golden, mixed regulated or outside the box equity. It really amounts to whether the BIG's recognize, value and instantiate vestments for the beer they've drank.

  9. The future looks like ElasticSearch by MikeRT · · Score: 2

    A lot of features that are free in Solr, but nowhere near as easy to use, are premium in ElasticSearch. Amazon cannot just take X-Pack and say "so long, suckers" to Elastic, and replicating X-Pack would be non-trivial in terms of costs. You can get Amazon-managed ElasticSearch, but it's going to be pretty basic compared to paying for either licenses or cloud functionality from Elastic. It's basically good only for people who don't even want to run basic security inside of ElasticSearch.

    And you know what? I'm totally fine with that. There's no such thing as a free lunch. The open core has provided clients of mine plenty of value, and it's subsidized by keeping all of those features held back for paying customers.

    I expect the Cloudera-HortonWorks merger will do the same for the Hadoop ecosystem. Ambari will be dropped in favor of Cloudera Manager, which is not free. So all of the companies that won't pay for licenses will have to either roll their own management system or pay up. That might actually mean that the combined company will be able to turn a profit and keep paying for a lot of open source contributions.

    1. Re:The future looks like ElasticSearch by t0rkm3 · · Score: 1

      Or... you could look at Graylog that enables the X-pack functionality as an open source tool.

      The caveat is that you need to allow the GL servers to talk to ES and restrict everyone else... but you get a helluva a deal in the process, plus some cool ETL features and a UI, without dicking around

  10. Changing profitability. by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Traditional Open Source software could be profitable from the following methods:
    1. Distributions. We take the Open Source software, configure it and put it on a nice piece of physical media, and sell it. This worked well until around the turn of the Century. Where broadband has allowed most people to download the content much faster then it is to wait for the media to be shipped to you, and at no cost.

    2. Consulting/Support. Early Open Source software was often difficult to use (and some of it still is) Having experts at you beck and call for a modest fee to help you setup and use such products was quite valuable. However this requires the software to be sufficiently complex to use, if the software was too easy to use or configured with good defaults, then the average Joe will know enough to get it working.

    3. Coding add ins. There is a fix you need, the community is not jumping on it, so you can pay for a developer to put in that code so you have it available. This is assuming you cannot find a replacement product or such missing feature is so necessary to not wait for.

    The move to cloud services of Open Source software is really finding a new way to keep it profitable. By making the application and configurations a service vs an application. So you are paying for the infrastructure more then the software.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re: Changing profitability. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      re:#3

      ah yes, loot boxes

    2. Re:Changing profitability. by Junta · · Score: 1

      2. Also 'cover your ass' support. RedHat certainly provides support, but of the clients I know personally that pay for RedHat, most of them never need the support, but the expense is justified 'just in case' something should happen.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    3. Re:Changing profitability. by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      I paid about $5 for my first copy of slackware, but the disk was free; it was glued to the cover of some mainstream computer magazine. I only paid an opportunity convenience fee to somebody unconnected to the software.

      2 and 3 are where it is at, but 3 is already part of the consulting mentioned in 2.

      And the additional thing is hosting. Because otherwise, the slashdot effect would return, but these days it would be (slashdot^twitter) and we'd be really screwed.

      Consulting, support, hosting. Each of those is individually more valuable than software-as-a-product.

  11. Being a dick by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    is the word(s) you're looking for.

  12. Mean attitude = bad karma by Air-conditioned+cowh · · Score: 2

    If they are closing off the source code then they are sending a message to the Universe that they are living in scarcity and the Universe will look upon them, smile, and say "So bit it!". Don't even ask what what Richard Stallman would say!

  13. How new is this? by jbmartin6 · · Score: 2

    There's a longstanding myth in the open-source world that projects are driven by a community of contributors, but in reality, paid developers contribute the bulk of the code in most modern open-source projects

    The same sort of argument was made many years ago when Nessus went closed source. The fact is, open source is not necessarily the right tool for every problem. This isn't some new phenomenon as far as I can tell.

    --
    This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
  14. This is HYSTERICAL! by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    From TFS:

    "We're going to see a lot more of this conversation happening than less. I would put it in a very blunt way: for many years we were suckers, and let them take what we developed and make tons of money on this."

    Um... And you didn't see that coming?

    What happened to "Software just wants to be FREEEEEE"?!?

    Fucking RMS-licking, beard-stroking, unwashed Hypocrites.

  15. maybe if copyright worked as it was intended by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2

    Maybe if copyright worked as it was intended things could be different.

    If software copyright lasted for 7 years - OK, maybe we could make it shorter because software - you could make your money and then the world at large would still get full access to your software at some point.

    Granted, no idea how that would work with frequent software updates ... this is a /. comment, not anything that someone actually thought through carefully ;)

  16. AWS is eating our lunch? by molarmass192 · · Score: 2

    The gist of all this is that these companies were intending to monetize the services and / or hosting. Instead, AWS is monetizing the services and hosting. So, in effect, AWS is eating these companies lunches. I see how this is bad news for the companies developing these products, but it's the natural order of things. The open source Pandora's box has been opened, there's no stuffing the lid back on it now. First hardware got commoditized, then software got commoditized, and now services are getting commoditized. They need to find a way to move up the value chain (eg. consulting / education / customizations), or their air supply will eventually run out.

    --

    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
    1. Re:AWS is eating our lunch? by raynet · · Score: 1

      How is hosting different from companies running the service at their own servers?

      --
      - Raynet --> .
  17. Only relevant if the pie is something by DidgetMaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What these companies are realizing is that it doesn't matter at all if you have a big slice or a small slice if the pie itself is worth ZERO. Anything multiplied by zero is zero. For years, these companies were willing to donate lots of code to the 'community' so that the pie would get nice and large. Then they would add all kinds of value to an 'enterprise' version and convince a small piece of the pie (e.g. 10%) to buy their very expensive solution. They gave away the milk as long as they could scrape the cream off the top and sell it.

    Now they are discovering that with cloud services, other companies can come in and scrape away all that cream and leave them with nothing. Those other companies have contributed little or nothing to the actual development of the code so they have no costs to recoup. The open source companies are realizing that the open source model contributes to this whole freeloading situation and want to put a stop to it. I like free software as much as the next guy, but somebody has to pay the bills.

    1. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by raynet · · Score: 2

      I think they are just not happy that someone else might be making more from their product. As long as they can keep paying a reasonable number of developers to work on the project, things should be just fine, they company doesn't have to keep growing or maximise profits.

      --
      - Raynet --> .
    2. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by farble1670 · · Score: 2

      The open source companies are realizing that the open source model contributes to this whole freeloading situation and want to put a stop to it. I like free software as much as the next guy, but somebody has to pay the bills.

      So in other words, these companies want to put restrictions on the use of the source. That's fine, but it's not F/OSS.

      6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

      The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

      Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.

      https://opensource.org/osd-ann...

    3. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      they company doesn't have to keep growing or maximise profits.

      That's absolutely not true for a public company.

    4. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      What if there is not only one pie?

      What if products and services are not even the same pie?

      What if the services still have value?

      The problem with your argument is that it is inherently number-based, ("somebody has to pay the bills") but you didn't do any math in the real situation, and didn't come up with a metaphor that even has the same number of important things.

    5. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by DidgetMaster · · Score: 1

      I fully realize that is not according to FOSS requirements, but that does not stop companies from wanting now to put restrictions on it. They will simply have a hard time doing that after the genie was let out of the bottle. Once you release your source code as open source, you have given up your rights to all kinds of things. Now these same companies are having 'donor's remorse' when they find out they did it with one business model in mind, but now the rules have changed and they want to turn back the clock.

      I face this dilemma myself. I have been working on a new data management system (kind of a database/file system hybrid that is way better than WinFS was supposed to be) and have been advised by many to release it as open source. That would undoubtedly increase its exposure and might promote wide adoption, but once you do that there is no going back. If I actually want to be paid for all that hard work I have done, then I may never be able to do that, so I am very hesitant. Until I see a clear path to actual money, I am not going to chase after some mirage.

    6. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by piojo · · Score: 2

      they company doesn't have to keep growing or maximise profits.

      That's absolutely not true for a public company.

      Not so. Companies have missions. The mission generates profit, but profit is not the mission. This allows them to plan long term instead of doing what makes the most money this quarter. P&G explains this right in their mission statement:

      We will provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world’s consumers, now and for generations to come. As a result, consumers will reward us with leadership sales, profit and value creation, allowing our people, our shareholders and the communities in which we live and work to prosper.

      This quote, and further explanation from here:
      https://www.quora.com/Why-is-a...

      On the other hand, some companies appear to be full of shit in their mission statements. Here's what Nestle has to say:

      Our mission of "Good Food, Good Life" is to provide consumers with the best tasting, most nutritious choices in a wide range of food and beverage categories and eating occasions, from morning to night.

      In my region, Nestle switched their powdered milk product from being straight dehydrated milk to a roughly 50/50 split of milk and carbohydrate. The packaging appeared identical, except the ingredient list and nutrition facts. Adulterating a dairy product with a simple carbohydrate gives the lie to their claim about "most nutritious" choices. Here, we find a mission that is not followed.

      --
      A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
    7. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      https://hbr.org/2016/09/the-ma...

      "Nothing in American corporate law says that business managers have an open-ended, always-on obligation to maximize the financial interests of shareholders."

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    8. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      What if the pie is a lie?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    9. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      We will provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world’s consumers, now and for generations to come. As a result, consumers will reward us with leadership sales, profit and value creation, allowing our people, our shareholders and the communities in which we live and work to prosper.

      I fail to see how "providing products and services of superior quality" would do anything but maximize profits.

      Our mission of "Good Food, Good Life" is to provide consumers with the best tasting, most nutritious choices in a wide range of food and beverage categories and eating occasions, from morning to night.

      ... and same.

      Our mission of "Good Food, Good Life" is to provide consumers with the best tasting, most nutritious choices in a wide range of food and beverage categories and eating occasions, from morning to night.

      Yet somehow, you know they made that switch. And the move seems to have left you with a warm fuzzy about Nestle. Seems like pretty slick marketing to me.

    10. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by Your.Master · · Score: 2

      I'm not sure if you wildly misunderstood the parent post or wildly misunderstand what a "warm fuzzy" is, it seems like the former, but no he's not happy which makes it not great marketing. Especially since relatively few people will ever see that mission statement in the first place.

      As to your first question, if providing products and services of superior quality is what maximizes profits, that's not a problem. When people complain about corporate fiduciary responsibility leading to the maximization of profits, they are talking about cases like Nestle there, or like Martin Skhreli (the smug dipshit who raised the prices of epipens and then went to jail for a semi-unrelated fraud), where unethical and consumer-hostile or community-hostile practices are used to maximize profits. In some famous historical cases, even murder.

      Nobody is pissed off when somebody makes a truly superior product at superior value that improves your life, other than their competitors maybe. That's the best-case scenario for capitalism. But anyway, P&G is making the same point: they will profit through superior value and choice.

      A public company has a fiduciary duty to protect the interests of its investors. In many cases, that interest is profit maximization, but it doesn't have to be. If you have openly advertised a mission statement that includes "people over profits" and have taken a bunch of steps to make a sustainable but not ever-growing business which does not maximize profits but performs some other service as its highest goal, then it is reasonable to consider the investors' interest is in your mission, and they have to protect the mission over profits. Moreover, that duty isn't truly an absolute statement -- it's only violated by the upper management of a company if they put their personal interests over the interests of the company. It is not violated if they tank the company without clearly intending to get anything something out of it.

      However it's difficult to argue in any case except a charitable cause that protecting shareholder interests does not at least include sustainability, even in the face of an economic downturn.

    11. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by piojo · · Score: 1

      Your.Master answered the bulk of your post, so I'll simply respond to this:

      I fail to see how "providing products and services of superior quality" would do anything but maximize profits.

      It's a fine point, but a lot of companies provide decent/acceptable products at high volume. P&G could do that, but they've at least made the claim that the middling quality market is not where they want to sell. Which is more profitable? Probably the route P&G chose, and they surely thought about that while designing the mission statement. But it is their plan, and if an officer decided it would also be profitable to make cheap junk, they would get internal pushback about it not being in line with their mission.

      --
      A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
    12. Re:Only relevant if the pie is something by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      P&G could do that, but they've at least made the claim that the middling quality market is not where they want to sell.

      Sure, and that's clear from brands like Tampax, Scope (aka mint flavored alcohol), and Pepto Bismol (aka liquid chalk).

  18. Me too... by mi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A tiny piece of software I released into the world once is almost BSD-licensed. Almost, because a separate clause prevents its usage by anyone possessing any item of clothing with a Che Guevara likeness on it.

    To my surprise, someone once reached out to me — years ago — asking, if I can remove the requirement, because it makes it more difficult for them to include my software in their distro...

    True story...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  19. Re:That is the problem with non GPL licenes. by raynet · · Score: 2

    This is one reason I don't like to contribute to FOSS projects that required transferring copyrights, I prefer my code to stay GPL thank you very much.

    --
    - Raynet --> .
  20. Re:That is the problem with non GPL licenes. by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    In the US this requires an individual contract, you can't shrink-wrap or bundle a copyright assignment.

    It seems that most projects allow contribution by mere pull request.

    How many projects can actually produce a valid signed contract for each contributor? A few. Much less than the number of projects who claim that they own your copyright. ;)

  21. Re: _Does_ Matter for GPL v3 by MCRocker · · Score: 1

    This is (part of) why GPL v3 was created. If it's online, you have to post the license and source. A lot of companies would prefer to pay a modest license fee to avoid the indignity of having pages like that on their site.

    Many businesses consider GPL to be business unfriendly and use APL instead. I guess this just shows that GPL v3 would have protected their interests better and they wouldn't have to opt for dubious combo licenses. Point FSF.

    --
    Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
  22. Re: _Does_ Matter for GPL v3 by MCRocker · · Score: 1

    Good point. I was remembering the first draft before they decided to keep the Affero license separate.

    --
    Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
  23. Super hard to earn a living form OpenSource by ReneR · · Score: 1

    I do Linux / OpenSource since I finished school in 1998-ish. Developed ROCK Linux, later forked it into the #t2sde build systems from source Linux, developed GSMP (sound editor), ExactImage, and contribute fixes all over the place, form the Linux kernel, GCC, even Chrome you name it. Guess how many people / companies paid me for something. Even getting into Embedded Systems with our #t2sde Linux was super hard and next to impossible – for a small company like I funded. So we ended up doing some closed source end-user Apps, including https://exactscan.com/ and https://ocrkit.com/ . To get back to do more open source again (because Apple's ecosystem and hardware get's too much on my nerves) I now started a YouTube channel, to hopefully fun cool & daily open source hacking: https://www.youtube.com/user/r...

  24. SO? by BitztreamNotARealNam · · Score: 2

    How's life in the hypocrite lane?