Comment by movedx

Comment by movedx 2 months ago

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Do you think making important, widely used open-source software is a good idea when it's being done, for fun? What happens when it's no longer fun, but 150,000 people depend on it for their job?

Imagine Linus Tarvolds stopped working on Linux before there was a foundation to take over because he did it just for fun and no one else wanted to take up the mantle? It's hard to say what the outcome from that would have been... maybe Google would have claimed it entirely and slowly shifted the license to something else?

I appreciate that people can create things for fun, and those things can be open-source, but if someone creates something because it's the right thing to do and not just about fun... well where do we stand now? Should they make it open-source but demand money? Should it be closed-source if the fun-factor is less than 80%? 50%?

Unless a small, dedicated team of capable people agree that your open-source project is worth preserving, allowing it to survive you as the founder, I question the validity of open-sourcing anything for fun unless you design the licence, and more, to enable you to walk away and/or get bored.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

matrss 2 months ago

> What happens when it's no longer fun, but 150,000 people depend on it for their job?

Then someone else can take over, or not, depending on how important it really is to those 150000.

From the perspective of a business, using open source is strictly safer than closed source. With closed source, if the entity owning the code goes bankrupt, increases licensing fees substantially, just axes the project (incidentally what Google is also known for) or looses interest in some other way, you are out of luck. Go find something similar and hope there is a migration path. With open source, the equivalent is the maintainer walking away because they are bored, and you have the code right there to take over, or pay someone else to do so.

> I question the validity of open-sourcing anything for fun unless you design the licence, and more, to enable you to walk away and/or get bored.

Every open source license is already designed so that you can just walk away for whatever reason, e.g. when you are bored.

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  • fsndz 2 months ago

    exactly, there is always a risk, no matter the type of software you use. people just have to learn to manage that risk.

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satvikpendem 2 months ago

> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. - MIT license

When using open source, you take that risk. I've used a lot of libraries that have been abandoned over the years where I either had to switch to a fork, another library entirely, or just write the functionality myself. I know the risk inherent in OSS. For large projects like Linux, since it's so large, someone else would pick it up, but again, there's always a risk that someone doesn't.

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  • Qem 2 months ago

    Most proprietary software has similar scary warnings in their licenses/EULAs.

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    • Digit-Al 2 months ago

      The difference is this: No EULA can override an organisation's legal obligations. Most countries have fairly robust "fit for use" laws, so if you sell something and it is not fit for use you can be taken to court. If there is no sale then there is no "fit for use" protection.

      I do not mean this to imply I think commercial software is superior to free software, I am a great believer in FOSS, I just wnat to show a reason why a "scary" warning in commercial software is not equivalent to the same warning in FOSS.

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    • satvikpendem 2 months ago

      Sure but SLAs generally exist if you're buying proprietary software as B2B, not necessarily so for OSS, unless you buy support contracts as well, which some companies like RedHat provide.

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WalterBright 2 months ago

Not everything I do for the D Language Foundation is fun, but think of it like not every task taking care of one's car is fun, despite liking most of it.

> you design the licence, and more, to enable you to walk away and/or get bored.

It's all Boost licensed, so anyone can fork it, anyone can step up and continue with it, etc.

As D's scope has increased, a lot more of the tasks have been delegated out. I do a lot less management than I used to, and get to concentrate on the parts I'm good at.

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kelnos 2 months ago

> What happens when it's no longer fun, but 150,000 people depend on it for their job?

Then a few of those 150,000 people can start contributing and take over maintainership. If no one wants to step up, then I guess it isn't that important to them.

If you're depending on a one-person open source show for your company's livelihood, it's on you if you don't have a contingency plan for if/when that one person decides to abandon the project, or, hell, dies or gets too ill to continue working on it.

> I question the validity of open-sourcing anything for fun unless you design the licence, and more, to enable you to walk away and/or get bored.

No one owes you anything. Any way that anyone wants to open source something is perfectly valid. No one has to use their work for free, or under any particular terms. People who need the functionality from an open source project are free to find a different project (free or paid) or build their own, if they are uncomfortable with how a particular project is managed or licensed.

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oarsinsync 2 months ago

> I question the validity of open-sourcing anything for fun unless you design the licence, and more, to enable you to walk away and/or get bored.

I’m unaware of any open source license that prevents an author from walking away, ever? GPLv3 has no warranty or liability?

I guess you meant something with “and more”, but that sounds like a mismatch of expectations of what a user of open source might want, vs what is required of an author of open source?

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lionkor 2 months ago

Then the people who depend on it can fork it.

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ChoHag 2 months ago

> What happens when it's no longer fun, but 150,000 people depend on it for their job?

Then 150,000 people should open their wallet, or crack open a text editor, and pay.

> design the licence, and more, to enable you to walk away and/or get bored.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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