Comment by ignoramous 2 months ago
Your confusion isn't mine to solve but fortunately more ink has been spilled already, by folks more capable than I, for just that: https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2018/12/14/open-source-confront...
The entitlement therein is justified in the context of OSS.
> So that argument is idiotic.
Well, what's idiotic is expecting collab on a source-available project. There's a reason the community forks or uses OSS instead, as the article notes.
Those of us who have been around for a while — who came up in the era of proprietary software and saw the merciless transition to open source software — know that there’s no way to cross back over the Rubicon.
Open source software companies need to come to grips with that uncomfortable truth: their business model isn’t their community’s problem, and they should please stop trying to make it one. And while they’re at it, it would be great if they could please stop making outlandish threats about the demise of open source; they sound like shrieking proprietary software companies from the 1990s...> Well, what's idiotic is expecting collab on a source-available project.
Depends on what you understand by "collab". That can be a business partnership where actual money is exchanged. It is called capitalism, and I leave it up to you to judge how idiotic it is.
> Open source software companies need to come to grips with that uncomfortable truth
Again, I don't know many open-source software companies. I am currently using the Monaco Editor for a project, it is great open-source software, published by Microsoft. I wouldn't call Microsoft an open-source software company, though. Which is my point.
I don't think a small software company can gain much these days by making their software open-source. Just put it behind an SaaS, with a generous free tier (free as in beer) to attract users. Make (some part of) it source-available, so that people can experiment with your software and interface with it, for example for writing plugins (that would be the collab part). Think really hard about whether to actually open-source anything, and if it is worth it. When in doubt, consider AGPL.
The confusion seems to be all yours. This article is certainly something. First, they dispute that licenses are actually setting legal terms. If they were not, then there was no point to open-source licensing either. So that argument is idiotic. Secondly, sentences like
> Open source software companies need to come to grips with that uncomfortable truth: their business model isn’t their community’s problem, and they should please stop trying to make it one.
are full of unjustified entitlement. And also not relevant: The companies we are talking about are not open-source companies. They are just companies. Some of them, with source-available software and/or hardware. Some of them, with open-source software and/or hardware. Some of them, with both.