> My personal thought is that we need a new kind of license: community open source. No corporations, just community.
You are going exactly against the OSS philosophy. OSS shouldn't restrict the use of software just because you don't like it. It was created to fight exactly this. This is also why source available BS (like BSL) is against OSS. OSS is literally about being about hacking and changing software to suit your needs. It was never about the money part. You should create your software as proprietary if you are SO bothered with OSS. And you can always donate and contribute back to the OSS software you use. I don't think butchering OSS philosophy is the way.
The problem here is license illiteracy. Even I who for a while used to think I understood a lot about OSS license just had a doubt now:
When you fork, do you retain the copyright part?
Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors
The OSS philosophy was conceived to help end users, not for-profit corporations. Then for-profit corporations co-opted the "Open Source"(tm) label to ensure they could benefit from all this free labor. You and many others are falling for it, and doing their work for them by scolding OSS developers for "going against the OSS philosophy".
So screw this corporate "OSS philosophy", and stop telling people what they "should" do. Those licenses exist and people can use them and this is what happens. We can and should also make different licenses which protect our interests as developers and we don't need corporate shills invoking some philosophical argument to discourage us.
> The OSS philosophy was conceived to help end users, not for-profit corporations
I beg to differ here. OSS and Free Software movement was conceived for the freedom to change the software to the user's needs. The entire meaning of free as is freedom means as long as I abide by the license properly, I can do whatever I want with it. Whether you like it or not, this means Microsoft can make money out of curl project if they want to. This is the same way we used to burn Ubuntu cd's and resell it back in the early 2000s. It's allowed and IIRC Ubuntu cd cover used to proudly advocate burning, sharing those cds.
This big tech and money in OSS is a new phenomenon. I am neither against them or with them. But just that it is not the reason why OSS or Free Software movement happened.
> the freedom to change the software to the user's needs.
How is this not exactly helping end-users? Corporations are producers, not users. And no one is complaining about MSFT or any other corporation using OSS as users, but only about co-opting it as a producer.
The corporations _are_ end-users. They're just using a project to make adoption of their platform easier. Just because a user passes on the benefit of their usage to more than a single human doesn't mean they're not a user.
OK. But that is allowed right? "Sharing" and "redistribute" are words you should have heard if you know what OSS. You are missing the whole point of Open Sourcing code. What you want is source available or proprietary software if you are bothered by this. And at that point, this has nothing to do with OSS.
This is literally why when a company stops open sourcing something, community or other company continues the fork. When a product fails as business and when open sourced, the software itself thrives.
Let me re-iterate, Open Source is purely about the software and the capability to share and make changes. IT IS NOT ABOUT MONEY, BUSINESS, CAPITALISM etc etc etc.
It is not even about collaboration. That is something that came out of Linux development which is one of the most famous Open Source project. All that is necessary is to make the software licensed under an OSS license. And I don't have to get PR from you, I don't need to accept outside collaboration etc etc.
> The OSS philosophy was conceived to help end users, not for-profit corporations
Citation needed here, if you're going to make such a bold claim.
The open source movement began as a counter to proprietary closed-source software, and nothing more. It has never been about "fairness" (however you define that) or about preventing anyone from profiting from OSS.
Now that said, fairness matters and I agree that some of what transpires today in the open source world doesn't feel fair.
But that's what new or difference licenses can accomplish, depending on the wants of the authors.
And that's different from the philosophy behind Open Source Software. We should be clear about that.
The GPL was "To prevent free code from being proprietarized" by for-profit corporations.
In addition the origin of Stallman's open source philosophy was a printer he couldn't use because of closed-source software. From the start it was about the rights of the users, not corporations.
> In the early years (1984 to 1988), the GNU Project did not have a single license to cover all its software. What led Stallman to the creation of this copyleft license was his experience with James Gosling, creator of NeWs and the Java programming language, and UniPress, over Emacs. While Stallman created the first Emacs in 1975, Gosling wrote the first C-based Emacs (Gosling Emacs) running on Unix in 1982. Gosling initally allowed free distribution of the Gosling Emacs source code, which Stallman used in early 1985 in the first version (15.34) of GNU Emacs. Gosling later sold rights to Gosling Emacs to UniPress, and Gosling Emacs became UniPress Emacs. UniPress threatened Stallman to stop distributing the Gosling source code, and Stallman was forced to comply. He later replace these parts with his own code. (Emacs version 16.56). (See the Emacs Timeline) To prevent free code from being proprietarized in this manner in the future, Stallman invented the GPL.
> The GPL was "To prevent free code from being proprietarized" by for-profit corporations.
You are adding the "by for-profit corporations" here. That's not in the link you provided. Let's distinguish between what was actually said or meant, and your own personal interpretation or editorializing here.
In the GPL context "proprietarized" could apply to anyone. I could write and release proprietary code with restrictive usage limits, and I'm not a corporation. And the GPL wants to prevent me from doing that as well.
The right to see and modify the source code to the software you run is not restricted, or aimed at, individuals or corporations. I think the GPL's goals here are universal, meaning any entity should have those rights.
Which I think is a good thing. We agree on the ideals of free software here, I just think you're layering "for-profit corporations" on top of it in a manner that was never actually part of the philosophy, because it doesn't make those distinctions.
It can certainly be part of your philosophy, but be clear about that.
The GPL and Free Software, yes. Open Source not so much. The term "open source" was originally coined to make Free Software more easily understandable to newbies. Pretty much right away, though, it was used to water down Free Software licenses to make them more palatable to businesses by selling the end users' freedom.
The point is what do creators want to get out of their open source project. If it is the opportunity to sell, they can make it source available. If they don't want money, having open source license is better as it could mean more contributions.
In practice it doesn't mean more contributions though. If MSFT used his project for profit and contributed back, he wouldn't be complaining. Instead they forked his project, without even sufficient attribution, and now he has to do even more work to differentiate his original project from their derivative.
So the point is that we need another license that does gives open source rights to individuals, yet does not permit corporations to take everything and give nothing.
> So the point is that we need another license that does gives open source rights to individuals, yet does not permit corporations to take everything and give nothing.
That seems to be the point being debated now. When a megacorp forks an OSS project and cuts out the author, how does that encourage developers? How does that encourage OSS?
And for that matter, perhaps less ideological but practical, how does that encourage small startups who want to be as open as possible while wanting to be able to scratch out a living working on something they care about?
You suggest staying closed source, rather than tweaking an open-source license to limit corporate forks, for the purpose of protecting OSS philosophy. It strikes me as odd.
> That seems to be the point being debated now. When a megacorp forks an OSS project and cuts out the author, how does that encourage developers? How does that encourage OSS?
When a megacorp forks an OSS project, the maintainer should know that it is allowed. If you are MIT licensed, that megacorp can resell your software, create a business around it and make billions in revenue. That is allowed. If they are bothered by it, they either should use a different license or take the software proprietary. To me, the problem here is that Microsoft hasn't properly followed OSS license here. My qtile window manager config file has copyright notice of all the authors. That is how you follow MIT license. Another problem I see here is not knowing how to do license compliance. Also, why should it matter if the one who forks it is an individual or a mega corp. As far as OSS is concerned, it's irrelevant.
> And for that matter, perhaps less ideological but practical, how does that encourage small startups who want to be as open as possible while wanting to be able to scratch out a living working on something they care about?
I have been an OSS guy for a long time. And think OSS in business is a very tricky and hard problem. If you don't have the reason to be OSS, it's better to be honest about it. There are other ways to support OSS. Just support like 10% or even 5% of the dependencies you use as a business and that will make wonders. And be honest about things. Obviously, there are success stories. But if you have seen the recent trend, people are in the mindset that someone forking your OSS is ripping off of them. Not stopping to think that it was allowed all along.
> You suggest staying closed source, rather than tweaking an open-source license to limit corporate forks, for the purpose of protecting OSS philosophy. It strikes me as odd.
Because the moment you "tweak" the OSS license the way you are talking, it stops being OSS. Also, your proprietary software still needs to abide by the OSS licenses it uses. If I use a OSS software, it should abide by the OSS license somewhere in the output.
I think it's better to be honest about OSS than being like... we love OSS (Just like Microsoft <3 Open SOurce) and saying.. you know what? Don't use this software in this industry because that where my business happens. Oh and since you don't agree with my politics, you can't use it. I am not gonna list them, but there are licenses which does these and they are exclusionary. Free as in Freedom is what brings in people to OSS. The moment you start excluding people, it's a slippery slope. It's already happening in politics and else where. Let's just keep software away from it all please.
> > My personal thought is that we need a new kind of license: community open source. No corporations, just community.
> You are going exactly against the OSS philosophy.
GPL is almost that: community, because if you want to use it in a commercial product you have to make sources available, not to the community but to those who ask for it.
I'm of the opinion that open source is a business tool, and one should use a license that helps one achieve business goals. Those goals can be very personal and about career advancement, or they can be those of a trillion dollar corporation. TFA might benefit from using GPL if they are upset at what MSFT did, or they might work with MSFT to have their work integrated into the original to end the fork, or...
You are going exactly against the OSS philosophy. OSS shouldn't restrict the use of software just because you don't like it. It was created to fight exactly this. This is also why source available BS (like BSL) is against OSS. OSS is literally about being about hacking and changing software to suit your needs. It was never about the money part. You should create your software as proprietary if you are SO bothered with OSS. And you can always donate and contribute back to the OSS software you use. I don't think butchering OSS philosophy is the way.
The problem here is license illiteracy. Even I who for a while used to think I understood a lot about OSS license just had a doubt now:
When you fork, do you retain the copyright part? Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors
That is what we need to fix.