Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
gavinhoward.com
gavinhoward.com
* Don't work on FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product. You're enriching someone else's ecosystem for no money. You take on the communication bandwidth and issue load of dealing with not only your issues but their issues too. Your software is useless if theirs fails. It's thankless.
* Don't work on FOSS you aren't using yourself anymore. This heuristic isn't fully fleshed yet, but I've found if I stop using software I wrote, it just becomes a support burden for me. Especially frustrating are entitled users or entitled users who make money entirely using my software who want niche issues fixed. Not PRs, they want me to debug it all or put in the thought to get the features working. (Probably doesn't apply if you're immersed socially with a friend group working on a FOSS project though)
If they want the patch or improvement, they should pay for it.
Log4J CVE might have been the perfect use case for asking for 50K-1M EURO for the maintainers to patch the bug, to any corporate clients this is a drop in the bucket.
The “calm and respectful” part is important. I can be right ornery, and learned, the hard way, that OS projects are more fragile than commercial ones, so enemies can do a lot of damage.
I have written software for a fairly … pithy … demographic, and have dealt with feedback that would make many FOSS authors hide under their standing desks, whimpering.
The hardest part for me is actually saying no, because it's never that black/white. I might work on it later because I want to help. I might stumble into a use case where I now need this feature and then do it. Someone might make a PR. But each "open ended issue" is still bandwidth, brain capacity, effort.
However, you are correct about that "using bandwidth" thing.
If we publish something, then I think it behooves us to make it clear what users/adopters of our work can expect from us.
I tend to use the MIT license ("You can do what you want, but don't come crying to me."). I also make every effort to make the project as understandable and well-documented as possible. I appreciate feedback, and apply it, if I deem it fitting.
I have only had one project "go viral," so to speak. It's a fairly big deal, nowadays. It was taken over by a new team, and they had very little trouble getting up to speed on it, because of the quality of the code and documentation. Thousands of folks around the world, use it every day. It's become a fairly vital infrastructure component, for a certain demographic.
The best thing I ever did, with that project, was get the hell away from it, as soon as I was confident the new team was good.
I agree with your second point though. The main reason I see for contributing to FOSS is to fix issues that affect me or creating issues that may lead to the maintainers improving the software in a way that would benefit me.
I think it makes sense for companies to open source tools they depend on. They help others by providing the free software and in return they get help identifying and fixing bugs.
I understand the logic behind this assertion, but i don't believe it holds true at all. Businesses will favor fixing bugs related to main features that drive revenue in. Whatever's not hurting their business is invisible to them.
So true. I'd expand on that with a more specific example: game modders. When i look at all the energy spent on game mods which bring significant (gratis) value to commercial games, i can't help but wonder what the FOSS gamedev ecosystem would look like if all those dedicated people put their energy on free-software ecosystem.
Minecraft for example made a fortune on promises of later open-sourcing the game and deriving value from all the volunteers building mods.
Also, each software has its guidelines to build mods. I feel like if a game had modding guidelines suggesting to open source, modders would be more than happy to do so; if not, open-sourcing a single-person project can be considered more work (eg. setup git).
Anyways, while there are some similarities shared between Open Source and video game modding scenes, they are substantially different. Instead of evidence to back up this claim, I implore you to imagine what it would be like if some wrote an article titled "Is It Even Worth Working on Videogame Mods Anymore?".
The premise sounds good but some of the best things in gaming were conceived as mods. Team fortress was a Quake mod. Now, I personally don't blike moba games but Dota also started as a mod. Not to mention Quake OSP/CPMA/Defrag, UTComp, HLDM, Black Mesa and countless others.
Mods = love
In an ideal world, I'd agree it would be better that that energy would go into free software. But in our current world, if there's a proprietary game someone is hooked on to the point they get excited about modding when they otherwise wouldn't and that modding leads to a career or even just skill development and perhaps connections with other modders, then overall it seems like it's still a productive use of time, if not entirely an equitable one from a monetary perspective.
There definitely social benefits that can outweigh the more concrete software == value and time trade-off benefits, but I find communities that are "worth" it _much_ harder to find these days.
I think there is still some middleground possible. It can still be enjoyable doing small support stuff for it and to keep it running and fixing small bugs, without any big rewrites or big features. I once cared about those things and I might still do. Just keeping it running might feel better than discarding it.
It all depends on personal preferences, the type of users and their communication, if you still use the language, etc.
More-or-less agreed.
> This heuristic isn't fully fleshed yet
I'd perhaps extend it as:
“Don't work on FOSS you or people you sufficiently care about aren't using anymore.”
Who qualifies as those you care about and why is an entirely personal thing and I'll not judge anyone's choice there. They could be friends, they could represent a cause you support, they could be randoms and you just get off on feeling helpful, they could be important and you like to be associated, you could be being paid to care, etc.
Also it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway as I'm in a wordy mood, if you are enjoying working on something even if you don't use the output I'd still consider that to be finding some use in what-ever it is.
Enjoyment is a good signal for whether youre using your time in a way your brain tolerates. I personally strike a balance between maximizing happiness and also maximizing value, so when enjoyment dips, it takes a bit for me to get off a project still.
Lol!
It also means you’re very restricted in license choices since you otherwise never know if your project might get picked up in the future and used in a proprietary service. This likely means you have to use something like AGPL.
Maybe you’re okay with being treated the way the log4j maintainers are being treated right now. The whole point is that you shouldn’t be! People producing valuable software in their free time and giving it away for free should be treated with respect and that’s not happening right now. We need to find a solution!
Someone using something I have written doesn’t cost me anything, but it also doesn’t create any obligations for me. I don’t need to make my contact info public, or have any interactions with users whatsoever.
log4j accepted donations which is really it’s own thing. Running a charity, which is what it means to get paid full time to maintain OSS, has a host of issues that have little to do with OSS and a lot to do with public relations.
If the biggest or only user is one company and its customers, it’s not really capital O Open.
There is no black/white category of what is direct support though. It's a spectrum. And these are my own personal heuristics, rooted in my experiences and found benefits/drawbacks of my own projects and working with people.
One of those things, other people actually use! I don't so much, but I enjoy keeping it going every so often because it gives me purpose.
Another of those things, literally nobody seems to know about, even though it's a very useful thing which there is no oss alternative for. I'm a little sad nobody uses it, but it's fine because I still use it.
When I stop using these completely, I'll shutter them. Somebody can fork them if they want.
If you have other expectations maybe you'll find other endeavours more fulfilling. Which is sad but it is what it is.
So for many, it is not the same.
The choice people make doesn't change the expectations of others.
Personally, I’ve shipped several open source libraries that are still in use in lots of places despite me not having added a commit in over 10 years. They do the thing, don’t do anything else, don’t depend on other stuff, and thus don’t have a lot of surface to attack.
Imagine if the log4j guys had built their thing to spit out logfiles, then stopped before adding the bit where it can execute arbitrary code. I’m sure there was a version early on that did that. And I bet that version would still work perfectly well today. It was finished.
It just needed somebody to not unfinish it.
A late youth hobby of mine was being active in a coding community that wasn't open source, it was "lost source": based around a piece of freeware that was literally lost to a local storage hardware malfunction. But it had an API and a decade of stability (as in lack of API change, not lack of crashing unfortunately) and that caused an amazing amount of creativity, cooperation and so.
Perhaps this is an inherent weakness of open source: it's always easier to accept one more feature PR than committing to an API that remains sufficiently stable for that feature to happen in an isolated module.
I'm not saying that its always better to strive for the API instead of inclusion, it's a weakness as much as it is a strength, but chances are many situations where separation would have been better will be missed. It's a cultural bias.
It's nice to view software as something that can be done. I cringe when people look at activity on commits and think that if there isn't continuous activity, the project is dead. Maybe, but it might also be complete.
My most successful open source project in terms of adoption (it's packaged in nearly every distro) is one that is done. I wrote it about 10 years ago and other than one small bugfix it hasn't seen any activity since. It's useful, it's complete, nothing more to do.
Maybe that’s the problem we need to be addressing. More and more these days I find myself frustrated using modern software when old unmaintained software had already solved the problem.
We consider it a novelty when a writer like George RR Martin still uses WordStar on an old DOS machine [1]. Maybe it shouldn’t be a novelty. Maybe it should be the normal thing to do.
It’s utterly at odds with a consumer culture though. People don’t seem to want well-made things that last a lifetime. They want shiny disposable crap.
Also they tend to buy their tools.
Having bought several books from open source projects as means to try to help the authors, I am quite aware how little it brings home to keep a sustainable life.
The most important thing of FOSS has always been about ensuring an alternative to closed source. This provides people with leverage in negotiation with the corporations and states in a way they simply would not have without it. Beyond this, It provides a pathway for a much quicker evolution of the products, something actually driven by the most driven users, instead of corporates approved. Writing this on firefox on linux I'd say its working and has done, and will keep doing great good.
Without a functional Linux Desktops for users, there is no doubt to my mind the windows app store wouldn't be the only way to install apps on windows and there would be no way to sell an app that installed on windows without paying microsoft the standard 30% of total sales. The recent fight between steam and microsoft illustrates this perfectly. But they have tried every few years, claiming anti virus, child protection, anti piracy, convenience, anti spyware, anti ransomware, and well its always been the pro microsoft profit in reality ... But they lost each time, because each time too many of its users just threatened to move to linux. This is essentially the only reason you can install, run, and develop apps on windows without everystep including microsoft fees and licenses today.
Look at how stagnant and shitty matlab used to be, and its exorbitant priced to understand what happens when FOSS fails to provide. The niche matlab used is the, at the time, almost non-existent overlap between FOSS programmers good at both GUI UX, tutorial writing, and math. This changed with the FOSS python, numpy, scipy, matplotlib, and pytorch projects. Matlab has gotten extremely much better in the last few years, and its mostly because they finally got competition, they have also started to rapidly drop their effective prices for new users, but its too little too late, and it will never return to the stagnant cashcow it used to be. Matlab was is a troll sitting on a shitty toll bridge while both trying to destroy similar bridges and maintaining its own toll bridge as little as possible. In the last decade FOSS mortally wounded it in passing.
Inversely reduced FOSS influence predicts exploitation. as shown by how astonishingly bad the walled gardens of consoles and phones are. They have gotten away with being astonishingly shit, mostly because FOSS was intentionally and successfully made too hard to use on them.
But these are just visible examples. The great effect of FOSS has never been what it brings about, it is in what it prevents from occurring in the first place, and that, by definition, will never be easily visible.
- That you personally don't feel motivated to make OSS because of the way it's structured. Of course no one can fault you for that; that's the default position. Same for me and, say, juggling. But should the ecosystem really reorient itself around encouraging you--and specifically you--to participate?
- That there was some implicit social contract that has been recently violated by the commercial use of permissively licensed stuff. But there was no such social contract, the OSS dynamics haven't changed recently, and the whole point of the MIT and Apache licenses is to allow this.
- That the ecosystem doesn't have a structure that lends itself to the flourishing of OSS. This one is just clearly untrue; look around.
I hear all this vague grousing about the state of a system that seems to be working really well and for which participation is entirely voluntary. What problem do we want to solve again?
(There was also something in this article about ads in paid products, which I also find obnoxious, but that seems like a non sequitur? Did I miss something there?)
> These articles never clearly state what problem they want to solve.
Sorry. The problem is that I want my software to do more good than bad, and I'm not sure it will.
> (There was also something in this article about ads in paid products, which I also find obnoxious, but that seems like a non sequitur? Did I miss something there?)
I see ads as harm, harm through manipulation.
I know the article was not well-written; it was more a feeling dump of discouragement.
Like pollution, right? You working or not on FOSS isn't going to make a difference. Demand that ads be taxed/banned/regulated -- like pollution -- and hey, that's an activity you could do to fill time not spent working on FOSS, so that your not working on FOSS actually does make a difference!
- training purposes to better yourself
- as a showcase or to build up your reputation to get hired
- because you have a niche need in your personal life that no one else already solved
- It's a lot of fun
- It's addictive
Honestly I was a bit struck when a friend looked at my github and said it was a nice portfolio. The material view never hit me at all: my github is a product purely of what I've wasted/spent time on for fun, not to make a profile. :)
That’s what I do. Even my “farting around” projects have a lot of polish. I write everything I do as if it will ship.
I find it establishes great work habits and personal integrity, and my GH ids (I have a personal one, and a couple of org ones) make outstanding portfolios[0].
Not to worry, though. My experience, is that potential employers never look at at GH portfolios. Instead, they rely on leetcode tests to evaluate applicants.
I would never do that in a work context, because the environment there is so different, but it's often the right trade-off for things I'm doing for fun.
(And I still make all the code open source because, well, it might be useful to someone even in the state it's in)
I do a lot of self-discipline "tricks," in order to enforce a certain habitual workflow, and this is one of them.
Many folks get far more done than I do, using very different techniques. I just enjoy the process and the Craft, as much as I do the end result.
One significant advantage, for me, is that I never have to worry about cleaning the house before the boss comes over for tea.
I'd liken it to an artist's sketchbook. If every piece is required to have the appearance of a master work, lest you be judged by it, then the sketches must remain private or else be destroyed (which they often were). But the masterpieces don't jump to the canvas without sketches. Forgo one, forgo the other. And an artist's sketches often have an elegance that's lost in the translation to a finished piece. I see similar parallels in the rough line art for animation, and certainly in an architect's studies. Not all of it is destined to be finished, either, but such work is often prized regardless.
So why (aside from fearing for our careers) should we be afraid to share?
Some code is inherently low-stakes. Some code will only ever be useful, even to the public, for a few months. Sometimes I just want to express an idea, where the proof of concept matters far more than making something shippable, which might imply strapping it down to a particular platform or ecosystem where no one outside those walls is likely to see it.
Even on the job, there's a time and place for the quick & dirty script, where anything more would be an over-engineered waste of time.
Back to the artist analogy, the best advice for maintaining a good portfolio is edit, edit, edit. Constantly be looking to remove work, leaving only your best, as you'll be judged by the worst. Does that model really work for GitHub? If everyone started withdrawing work they were no longer satisfied with, we'd all be worse off, if not actively harmed. So that's where I believe my artist analogy ought to end.
I used to have a big Strathmore sketchbook, that I took with me, everywhere, and, whenever I had the time, I would practice in it. I have old photos of me, with it. I was fairly scruffy-looking [still are -Ed.], and the sketchbook was sort of my "brand." My classmates used to call me "Puff," because I liked drawing dragons.
It got to the point, where even my rough sketches would be as good as finished works.
The same goes with my code. For example, when I start writing code, I habitually add a headerdoc comment, almost immediately. I write about that here: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/leaving-a-legacy/
I work surprisingly quickly. I can generally spin up a full-fat native swift app, App Store-ready, in a couple of days. I do that frequently for my test harnesses (but I prefer taking more time, for the apps I actually plan to release).
I never really warmed to Boris Valleho's work (he used to hang in a gallery that I had work in, and I met him), but I have to admit, that guy can draw.
Look up his sketches. He used to make a lot of money, selling them, so there's a lot of them out there. The gallery that I mentioned, had a big rack of his castoffs, selling for hundreds of dollars. They sold like hotcakes. He was that gallery's star (I, on the other hand, was chopped liver).
Here's a few of his marketed drawings, but his sketches are almost as good: https://www.borisjulie.com/product-category/prints/boris-pri...
Hah, I feel like I understand more where you're coming from with that. I was the opposite, seeking to get my finished works to feel more like my rough sketches.
> I never really warmed to Boris Valleho's work (he used to hang in a gallery that I had work in, and I met him), but I have to admit, that guy can draw.
That he can draw is undeniable indeed. There are a few artists whose sketch work reaches that level of refinement almost immediately. Others get there after years of study and practice. Still others don't see that at as a goal at all for that stage of their process, and others still would see it as an antithesis to what they're after. Looking at Valleho's finished work, I can at least understand how his sketches are in service to that sort of end state.
Compare, perhaps, to some Rennaisance-era sketches. Typically far rougher compared to the finished works, but hardly less impressive. I'd suggest there's a great difference in what they were interested in: matters of anatomy, gesture, and composition. Of course, they were also inventing and rediscovering knowledge that modern artists have far easier access to. There's an interesting dichotomy in that some destroyed their sketch work, while others had far less interest in actually finishing anything.
I've forgotten an appalling degree of art history, so I can't readily name names, but as far as finished works go, I had a fondness for painters using relatively minimalist brush strokes, with each application of paint exactly the right color in exactly the right place.
I prefer art to be a lot “rougher” than Valleho’s work, but had a difficult time, doing it, myself; which was one factor in my eventual retreat from art.
But as a continuous activity, over years, what exactly is in it for maintainers to get up in the morning and trade their remaining lease on life for value to be consumed by rich leeches?
They need to for their own needs.
It provides them with some other benefit.
Myth of the rational maintainer, if you will.
In real life, people get (mentally) stuck into suboptimal situations where leaving would make them happier all the friggin' time.
Bad jobs they should have quit. Bad partners they should have broken up with.
Why not bad open-source projects they should have stopped maintaining?
What's so wrong with this line of thinking?
What was enjoyable, becomes grunt work, like making the full set of unit tests for features users want, but you don't actually use yourself.
Whatever this handwavy 'other benefit' was, stops being beneficial.
But they're still paying the opportunity cost, sitting down as the older, greyer, burnt out maintainer while others get the benefit from their work.
The fact that you consider users to be “leeches” means you’re missing the point of open source.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leech_(computing)
Contributors are not leeching the work.
Users who don't contribute are though, especially when they suck down developer time with issues.
You're not in a position to judge my understanding of FOSS because the word 'leech' makes you uncomfortable.
After several years of hard work a prior open source project that grew to immense popularity got me employment a few times. It wasn’t the actual project, code, or capabilities that meant anything. The only thing appealing about that project was it’s popularity.
Nobody ever looked at the code, except people interested in submitting pull requests. If you think a prospective employer will take the time to analyze the code you are either applying for an exceptional specialized position or completely mistaken.
Work on open source because you like to solve tough problems, want to grow as a developer, or because you just want to build some interesting product. Don’t kid yourself into thinking the code will immediately solve some business interest.
Instead they'll just look at whether you contributed to big projects.
Someone who managed to make significant contributions to Linux or LLVM for example might be better than the average joe.
which leads to people who want to use this mechanism to claim credit in projects they don't actually have contributions in, and because the employer doesn't actually look at the code, they cannot tell.
I recall a while ago where someone would contribute a skeleton README or some random typo fixes to many different project, and using that to make their claim to fame.
So i reject the idea that employers should use open source contributions as a metric without closely examining what those contributions are.
Specifically, may be better at navigating the politics of organisations. Which is a key skill at many employers - likely equal to or more important than technical skill as one ascends through the ranks.
If you think nobody ever looks at your public code, you're wrong. It's just like wearing a bathing suit at the beach or pool: people look.
GitHub and LinkedIn profiles only serve to reinforce the job experience printed on the resume.
WordPress and ElasticSearch come to mind, both made a lot of money.
You also get people adding to your product for free.
I started work on my canvas library (licence: MIT) 8 years ago mainly so I'd have something to showcase to potential employers. It worked: the reason I finally managed to land a job as a web developer was because someone took time to check out the library and decided the work I'd put in was worth them taking a risk on an older new entrant.
Since that time I've continued to develop the library to help me deepen my knowledge of all things canvas. Especially since I started to look at ways to make canvas elements more responsive, and more accessible. But the main reason is just the joy I get from using it to create pretty demos and animations - the library scratches a creative itch.
I got used to the idea that I'll never be rich a long time ago. Good friends are more important than money.
no, it's thanks to free software and the GPL. Thanks to open source you get Playstation and macOS which both use BSD to create the most proprietary system possible.
I just wrote a little script to give me some model geometry numbers. I'm sure others could use this, I wrote mine because all that exists online is half-ass Jskirpt pages that are covered in ads and offer a slightly different form of this calculation than I want.
Once upon a time I would've published this somewhere and let anyone else who wanted those numbers for a project of their own at least have a chance at finding and using my code for it.
Today, I don't have a place for that kind of thing (someone took offense to my presence last year and got me booted from several platforms). Even if I did, I wouldn't want to undertake the burden of having published something others might find useful, even in an utterly trivial context like "where do I put supports on a model railroad spiral ramp?"
Im too old, too ill, and too weird to get hired anywhere, so any code I write now is just for me. Its liberating. I no longer care about things like CamelCase vs under_score_debates and can set m y text lines at 300 char wide if i want to.
This bothers me. Can I get some more detail and drama?
> Today, I don't have a place for that kind of thing
If you want to share your work with close friends, you could use say, self-hosted Gitea or GitLab.
I'm really not certain myself wtf happened. Maybe I just fell victim to my own paranoia. Maybe quoting MLK and supporting an Amish school really are that controversial. Maybe it was the "naked lizards" video game mod.
Since i mentioned it that way, I'll also mention that I've been tempted to resurrect a site for some reason or none simply because up until last year, I had had some online presence continuously since 1994. I keep deciding not to, because I don't want to deal with the inevitable drama of offending someone by existing.
The only host I'd be happy with anymore would be someone leasing me bandwidth and an IP on a common carrier contract; and I'll stack up Pis or scavenged laptops and host horse porn if i feel like it.
I offend, therefore I am!
> and host horse porn i[f] i feel like it.
Sounds like a Tor hidden service might work better for you, for the sole reason that it's harder to shut down.
I was honestly surprised that someone got offended enough to figure out my email and send me insults just because I was lazy and kept the git branches for my network library named "master" and "slave". Plus the main server supports various blacklist command line parameters for IPs, login handles, and ports.
Now the entire project is off Github and on a private Gitea.
Depends on the context.
In the areas FOSS was able to get a footing, it usually remained. Web browsers have been trending towards the open core model for example, same goes for compilers, most of which are FLOSS. On the server, the GNU/Linux platform is the most commonly used one. Same goes for embedded applications including Android.
Does this translate to end user freedoms? Sadly, in many instances it doesn't. But I think it's still worth fighting for freedom, even if the only reachable audience is other freedom loving enthusiasts instead of the broad majority of people.
FOSS is the same. The idea that people are taking FOSS code and building billion dollar companies with it are somehow doing nothing of value except deploying your code is complete nonsense. FAANG companies that use FOSS software as the backbone of their tech stack are not simply deploying some code. They're working hard and adding value on top of it.
You make a pencil.
Someone takes your pencil, and puts it in a really nice box with some other pencils.
People use those pencils to draw a $10 million picture.
The box maker uses contracts to ensure they get a 10% cut of that picture sale.
Actual pencil makers gets no cut.
I can see why this would annoy pencil makers, no matter how nice the box is, or how much effort they put into sales. At a societal level it seems incentives are slightly out of wack too.
Personally, I'd rather see all the money go to the artist than add more levels of ownership, control and cuts, especially if the inputs are non-rivalrous.
The classic economics example is lighthouses, we all benefit from the non-shipwrecked ships bringing goods to market but feel like the merchants should probably contribute to their construction via taxes rather than rely on randomly charitable lighthouse builders (see: Public Goods)
Not quite, because what you're paying for in AWS for instance is not just the nice box (and AWS glue like IAM), but abstracting away all the annoying hardware stuff you'd have to deal with yourself if you went box-free.
Particularly, it's a lot easier to scale hard up and down (and thus better align your infrastructure spending with the actual demand) in the cloud than it is with on-prem hardware. So cloud providers are billing for that convenience and flexibility because maintaining all that hardware and providing the glue between the services becomes their problem.
I'm not really AWS's biggest fan (I go full self-hosted on my personal projects and when I must use AWS for work I'm careful to avoid vendor lock-in), but neither do I think it's fair to characterize them as just putting pencils in a box.
In reality, many a company would put a frame around the picture and market itself as an innovative artist. There's value in the frame, sure...however...
Take Facebook as an example. The first version of Facebook was essentially built on 4 FOSS projects - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Facebook couldn't exist without them (or alternatives). But of themselves nothing about those projects represents the value that lies in creating Facebook.
Suggesting that the value in a product is within the programming language, database, server software, or OS that it's built on makes no sense. Certainly no more than suggesting a valuation picture owes something to the person who made the pencil it was drawn with. It absolutely doesn't.
FOSS applications are tools that we use to build things. They're essential, and critical, and immensely useful, and companies ought to fund the maintenance of them much more, but they are not where the value in the applications that people use them to build comes from.
A picture's ability to convey the art, absolutely does owe a lot to the technology (ink, canvas, culture) that was used in its creation.
I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe … if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolise, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because — well, because I am seemingly so simple.
Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this Earth knows how to make me.
"
REF: https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl.html?chapter_n...
One of the best things about open source for me is that it reduces this a little. By having public and free code, you can begin to reuse others' work instead of re-creating it. It's a radical multiplier on progress. Imagine having to write log4j when all you really want to work on is creating a search engine. An individual can build a project at a level of complexity/finess that would otherwise require LIFETIMES. Every day, I get to regularly complete projects which I shouldn't be able to complete in my lifetime because of open source. And I get to contribute back to that fabric/infinite conversation. Proprietary code, although it might garner usage and benefit its users, will never be part of that fabric.
This is why open source is worth it to me. Regardless of what proprietary companies do, I'm getting value from and providing value to open source.
To answer the question though, like climate change, or whatever big issue, there's personal things you can do, there's groups you can join but we're in a democracy and pushing for things to be put into laws and then enforced is better than relying on copyright which was never really designed or operated with the best intests of society as a driver, despite that being the official spin.
I'm fine and stable, just discouraged and feeling like software, which is the only talent I have, is not good for me to work on because it may do more harm than good.
I have a good wife who is supportive and makes sure I am okay.
Thank you for the concern!
> To answer the question though, like climate change, or whatever big issue, there's personal things you can do, there's groups you can join but we're in a democracy and pushing for things to be put into laws and then enforced is better than relying on copyright which was never really designed or operated with the best intests of society as a driver, despite that being the official spin.
I think you're right, here. Laws may be what is necessary.
You practice your favourite instrument and post it on the tube. Worth it.
You get to know people with similar style and taste so you jam together. Worth it.
You guys stream the sessions on Twitch and got fans. Release EPs on bandcamp. But it starts to take too much personal time away from you. Worth it?
But the fans want it! You'll have to decide. Sometimes you work for months on an album. People cheer on the live stream, but not a lot of income from selling the art. Worth it?
Pick your RUNLEVEL. :)
This is a good analogy.
I guess it's still different from what I meant because while making music does not really do harm, software can in the wrong hands.
(Okay, music can still do wrong in the wrong hands, but the scale of harm from software is far bigger.)
- it's fun for you
- if you use it personally
Don't work on it if:
- it's just for CV purposes
- you have this idea that you should be working on FOSS because FOSS is great and you should somehow contribute
- you want to create FOSS for the sake of creating FOSS. The world doesn't need more code, it needs less. There's plenty of garbage code floating around
Regarding OP's comments on GitHub Copilot - I agree with the sentiment but I wouldn't worry too much. If the "stolen" code snippet is easy to write then it's really no big deal it it gets copied. If it was difficult to write then the person "stealing" it probably won't be able to understand it, which will lead to trouble down the line. It's not (yet) the same as ignoring the license of an entire repository.
> Regarding OP's comments on GitHub Copilot - I agree with the sentiment but I wouldn't worry too much. If the "stolen" code snippet is easy to write then it's really no big deal it it gets copied. If it was difficult to write then the person "stealing" it probably won't be able to understand it, which will lead to trouble down the line. It's not (yet) the same as ignoring the license of an entire repository.
Boy, I hope you are right.
Nitpicking from the main point, but logging companies are still destroying our planet/forests. They haven't learnt a single lesson. The most valuable woods come from very unsustainable exploitations far away (from my perspective, eg. Philippines/Canada), and as for the so-called "sustainable" local exploitations here in France they earn the label by destroying entire ecosystems and replanting between 3-6 species over the entire area after they've chopped everything down.
It's still ecocide on a wide scale.
But the humble software library developer is on another planet. For them its sponsorship or nothing. Otherwise their work wont carry the virtues of "free" and "open".
Microsoft has claimed that consuming code for Copilot is fair use, and therefore does not require permission from the copyright owner, so how would a license—an offer of permission under limited terms—impact that at all?
> But even if I solidify the licenses, what stops GitHub from ignoring them by claiming that their Terms of Service allows them to use my code?
Well, the fact that arguing the ToS would be a retreat from their position that they don't need permission in the first place, whether or not the code is hosted on GitHub.
It's awful the way log4j is being treated. I just don't think anything has changed.
Sadly, that's the way all FLOSS gets treated. I saw this exact same sentence when heartbleed came out with just the project name changed.
I don't think that anti-commercialisation clauses in the license will fix anything, though.
However, both Docker and Gitlab have professional teams behind them. It might not be the case that a particular important FOSS gizmo's creator is interested in writing up/enforcing better licensing terms or providing the maintenance a commercial client would expect.
Open source still has lots of life left in it, but copyleft licenses are now increasing in importance, and the days of letting it slide when a company violates your license are now gone.
To decide on what license you want, ask yourself, do you want this to improve software as a whole, or do you want this to improve FOSS? Does the image of proprietary software benefiting from your work soothe or anger you? Nowadays, it's becoming increasingly important to choose the latter. If you don't care what happens, you can license it as MIT or something. There are still valid cases for that.
Except that filing a lawsuit costs money, and if by nature your product is free, where are you getting the money for said lawsuit, and what damages are you suing over? You might be able to get a cease and desist order for copyright, but then what?
For most software projects, there should be a way to buy a commercial support license.
For many, such a license should be required for use in any org which is over X employees. Even if not enforced, this way a conscientious dev can justify for paying for the license.
In addition, for some of the deeper "plumbing" projects, that cannot be really charged for independently, they can included in the licensing of some of the projects that use them, as a clause for certain types of orgs, etc.
Something like - using X also requires a license for log4j of $50/yr - where that could even be a pittance, but included in many projects that benefit.
This will make the software much more reliable, while actually giving a basis for open source devs to have the funds to support themselves, feel self worth, and pay for a lawyer to protect their IP for things like TikTok's move.
As an open source coder, I theoretically love the above, but don't know what license, how to set it up, or how to handle the contracting and payment. In addition, I don't know how to justify my commitment - what exactly am I promising and how.
Nonetheless, if someone like Gitlab were to deal with figuring out the technical steps of the licensing and payments, you bet that I would be happy to move my code off GitHub for it (well, my code is already off GitHub, but whatever), and I bet many others would follow suit.
github.com/openfare/openfare
At least promise, if but a dull glimmer of hope...
The up-and-coming generation of developers have grown up exposed to millionaire content creators. They might start wondering about their cut.
The above is not open source, it's a pretty common free (gratis) for limited use, paid for other use commercial/proprietary license of the type tons of non-open-source software uses. (E.g., Visual Studio.)
In the case where a support contract is available, but not required, it is no less free than any other free software, but there is at least a chance that it might be bankrolled, as well as the projection that this is a professional project.
Even where the support is required, it is my understanding of RHS that that won't impede on the title free, since the usage is not what you are paying for. But there we are quibbling semantics ;)
I would guess that you mean one of the following, but I do not see any violation:
> 8. "not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution."
> 9. "restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. "
> 6. "restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research"
In addition, that is the "The Open Source Definition", but the phrase "open source" cannot be copyrighted (there is legal precedent, IIRC with Lindows) .
According to the DoD, Open Source Software means "software for which the human-readable source code is available for use, study, re-use, modification, enhancement, and re-distribution by the users of such software" [0]
In practice, there are many "Open Source" licenses that allow paid licensing [2]. The most well known competitor, FOSS, only slightly differentiates itself with the phrase "Open Software" and openly allows fees.
[0]: https://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software-FAQ/#q-what-... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-so...
> For most software projects, there should be a way to buy a commercial support license.
> For many, such a license should be required for use in any org which is over X employees.
I interpret this to mean that: You impose in the license of the software that if you are an organization over X employees, you are not entitled to use and distribute the software under that license instead you must hold the commercial license or you must in addition to the normal license hold the commercial support license.
In the first case(where the normal license grant does not apply to sufficiently sized orgs) I believe you impose a restriction of use on the software in a specific field of endeavor in contradiction with section 6. in the OSD.
In my view it is clear that if you require an additional commercial support license for some users but not everybody you violate section 7. as the rights to the program is restricted for some parties (orgs with over X employees only has those rights if they also acquire a commercial support license):
“7. Distribution of License
The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.“
Now it might very well be that you had another mechanism in mind for imposing your requirement of “Orgs over X employees must hold a commercial support license”. In that case it might very well be a different mechanism in the definition that conflicts with your mechanism, but I cannot see how you can achieve your aim of imposing a requirement on usage of the software for some users without contradicting the spirit of the open source definition which says that you must grant the same rights to all users of your software.
I cannot find in your link [2] what you mean by the phrase: “In practice, there are many "Open Source" licenses that allow paid licensing [2]”. Usually when people speak of paid support licensing for open source (or free software) that is an OPTIONAL support license or a separate commercial license(see the QT license options) that you acquire the software under, and it does not conflict with either free software or open source software. My opposition is only your stipulation that the commercial license be required for some users of the software, and it is this requirement part that I claim conflicts with the Open Source Definition. Note that it is perfectly valid to charge people to obtain your open source software from you, but you are not allowed to impose restrictions on their ability to redistribute that software (including source) to others for free, hence this is probably not the solution you are looking for?
> 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
> The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
It's okay to charge for open source software, but for software to be open source, the license cannot discriminate against users who do not pay the developer. This means:
- If someone pays for open source software, the license cannot require the user to make any additional payments. This prevents the developer from imposing a recurring fee to use the same version of the software via the license, but the developer is still free to charge for future software releases.
- If someone pays for open source software and then shares it with other people, the license cannot require the people who use copies of the software to pay the developer.
Software releases under your proposed license would be source-available, but not open source. As a sibling comment mentions, the DoD FAQ you linked describes the Open Source Definition as 1 of 2 "industry review processes" that a software license should pass to be considered open source.
Kinsella uses this example to illustrate how some people have no idea how contracts work.
Funny trivia. I spent considerable time working on corporate SW that acted as a gatekeeper for GPL-like licenses. It seems that one of the worst things a corporation can do to itself is use free SW with such a license. Nope. And why should they? There are so many options with so-called "friendly" licenses. Friendly to the corporation that is.
I see it as another aspect of huge corps evading any kind of taxes and IT-crowd actually being OK with it. I mean an unknown dev would be more than proud to do free work for K8S (and many do) just for the sake of putting it in her CV and _maybe_ cash out on it with a better paying role later on. But the fact remains. She, essentially, worked for free for Google, Amazon, Red Hat, etc. All the same as she is OK(ish) with them tax evading because if you get to work for them you'll be extra rewarded (unless you disagree that much of the huge salaries in IT are down to tax evasion).
In any case if you approach FOSS romantically I think you're in for a big let down. It's some form of business transaction. Nebulous and tricky but business nontheless.
That it one view. However I for one did quite some work on opensource work, where all I got out we're interesting problems to solve. There I didn't care who is using it in the end. I created a solution and maybe got feedback from people smarter than me on the solution. This is more since than business. (And yes, with other projects I was able to get attention on me for getting jobs and some I do for work. But no, it's not all about business and money. My job pays enough and some things are fun.
What if that wasn't the case or you were unable to find a job altogether? Would you still think the exact same way?
OSS developers do not have to be unpaid doormats. If I would be log4j dev, I would probably just wipe out all JNDI related functionality from project. Companies who need JNDI for backward comparability, would have to pay for support.
This. Backwards compatibility is, as a general rule, not fun. And if you're not coding for money and you're not coding for fun, what's left, exactly?
Btw, I saw this tweet about OBS now many times and I keep wondering why Jesus would steal from OBS :b
If I were higher up the tree in my company I'd dump money on these guys. Or at the very least set up a "donate back to open source" initiative, perhaps based on economic calculation and amounts of software used. Now that I think about, maybe I'll start such an initiative, see how far I can get it.
Most of the dark patterns he mentions are more (cough) features (cough) of monomania-type capitalism than of FOSS. Or just human nature. Sitting on your fat ass and blaming the poor guy who did all the work was really old before the pyramids were built. Same for the tragedy of the commons.
If you do OSS because you want others to use your software but you're afraid to charge for it then just stop. Of course you'll be disappointed. The whole point of OSS is you put it out there, others use it, fork it, add to it, commit back, and because of pooled efforts now the software is better.
No one owes anyone anything beyond the terms of the license. DHH recently wrote a great article about OSS which seemed to be inspired by recent discussions: https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-won-t-let-you-pay-me-for-my-open...
The best way to get paid for OSS is to use it for a real product. Ie. Make something beyond just code.
also "The best way to get paid" is to not make it OSS but to charge for it!
Because if the only reason some one would use the software is because it was free...
The main problem seems to be that other people using this work sometimes don't understand the license and expect the author to provide support.
Working with different code bases is also great practice and one always learn something new.
A lot of contributors are from countries where cost of life is much cheaper, and they are happy to contribute as they don't compare themselves. But in the end, being kept busy maintaining an open source project for the benefit of rich people elsewhere is a bad use of their time resources.
- I keep learning something in the process
- It keeps me busy, if there is downtime at work, like when we are waiting for a management decission or waiting for some other component to complete. (that is of great value to me, right now; as it keeps me from being depressed)
- It gives a deep feeling of satisfaction, to see the working result
- I am my own boss in the process
So yes, it is worth it, but it does not directly translate into money. I guess it might be helpful, if I am forced to turn to work as a contractor; in this case it would be a kind of showcase.
(my own stuff is here: https://github.com/mosermichael )
Why does the floor keep constantly dropping? Who are these developers, always willing to do more for less?
In my experience:
* Some of it: people who open source their hobby projects. The personal upside of investing resources into open source is fun & practice.
* A lot of it: academia. Universities have an infinite supply of indentured labour in students and postgrads. The personal upside is grades and graduation. The institutional upside is publishing and grant money.
* Lately: large enterprises. These have the resources to throw high quality engineering behind their open source projects (unlike the universities, where quality has always been a struggle, due to tremendous "developer" churn and different incentives). The personal upside is salary; the business upside is $$$ via "commoditize your complements". Added bonus: open source serves as an HR tactic too.
Put together, the demand for the "race to the bottom" is there and so is the supply. And so it happens. The machinery behind "If you don't do it (with a permissive license), someone else will".
The "bottom" judgement in "race to the bottom" was quoted from the OP.
For what it's worth, I personally contribute or have contributed to open source in all three forms that I identified. And exactly for the incentives listed.
Support requires manpower, is tedious, difficult, requires a whole different set of skills; few will do it for free.
For example, I agree that the company behind MuseScore has exhibited some bad behavior that is worth discussing, but their attempt to introduce opt-in telemetry to Audacity is difficult to classify as adding "spyware."
Also, the article meanders through a lot of different points that have very little in common other than being cynical. For some reason, it starts talking about stuff that isn't related to open source. It also talks about a lot of different issues regarding open source. I don't understand what the overarching message is, except for something along the lines of "all software development sucks."
The conclusion also strikes me as a little bit dramatic too:
> I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. If I make Rig Open Source, it could very well do more harm than good, regardless of whether I get paid! And if I don’t, it won’t get used anyway.
1. I don't understand why it's likely to do more harm than good, or by what measure. How does this tie into previous examples? How do you expect it to be "exploited"?
2. It doesn't seem to approach the completely valid question of why developers don't like using closed-source tools.
3. It seems to imply that the mere act of releasing software should entail some kind of payday or recognition, but that doesn't make any sense. I agree open source is undervalued, but so are a lot of things. Ask people who draw if they feel like their skill is valued appropriately; it's not. The reason why businesses are able to make money off of software is because they don't just write software, they also sell it. Even if you're trying to live off of donations, you still have to "sell" it. Look at how well-branded successful projects like Blender and Krita are! And a lot of projects use the "progress report" blogging format similar to the one successfully used by dolphin-emu to engage with the community. It's a lot of non-programming work.
I don't mean to devalue anyone. I can just about guarantee that if you do the selfless job of putting quality open source into the world, it will never, ever be paid at market rate. But that's the price you pay for being able to do whatever you want. An artist, 99.99% of the time, cannot make money creating whatever they like; most would probably only ever find serious success in graphic design. I think open source is a wonderful asset and has produced some amazing artifacts for us to enjoy that have done enormous good for the world. Can you even quantify the amount of good done by having a robust production-ready operating system used by everyone from budding geeks in gradeschool to production servers at Fortune 500 companies?
I hope you find whatever you are looking for, and I don't like being dismissive. But I urge people to see the non-cynical side of this.
> Also, the article meanders through a lot of different points that have very little in common other than being cynical. For some reason, it starts talking about stuff that isn't related to open source. It also talks about a lot of different issues regarding open source. I don't understand what the overarching message is, except for something along the lines of "all software development sucks."
I agree that it meanders, but I don't think I'm cynical, just discouraged.
The real point of the post was to ask the question in the title, explain why I am feeling that way, and ask people to contact me (the last line), which they have!
> I don't understand why it's likely to do more harm than good, or by what measure. How does this tie into previous examples? How do you expect it to be "exploited"?
Rig is a build system, which means that if companies steal it and modify it, they could conceivably make it insert a backdoor into every piece of software it builds. (See Ken Thompson's "Trusting Trust".) That is an enormous potential harm, at least in my opinion.
> It doesn't seem to approach the completely valid question of why developers don't like using closed-source tools.
You're right, and I honestly think there's no problem not liking closed-source tools. I just happen to think it's hypocritical to want Open Source, but push closed-source on end users that don't know better.
> It seems to imply that the mere act of releasing software should entail some kind of payday or recognition, but that doesn't make any sense.
This is not what I meant, sorry. It's more that I want my software to do more good than bad, and I'm not sure it would.
> But I urge people to see the non-cynical side of this.
Me too.
However, there is another axis to consider: In English, "free" also means gratis. This means that no one with recognized authority is enforcing a shift of resources in exchange for using the code as written. Yes, you can ask for resources, and there are many ways to do so, but without enforcement, you get the most common behavior of "thank you, I will" and all the attendant problems, be that of pushing the license to limits, finding loopholes, to lack of funding, dead projects, to (possibly) self-interested actors placing features in open source that they can later exploit because no one really audits the code (See also log4j. I am not saying that a government placed something exploitable in the code. I am not saying that a private actor did so. I am saying it is interesting that a piece of widely used infrastructure has had an exploitable feature for so long).
Criticism aside, how does one provide freedom to learn and explore while curtailing the free rider problem?
A first-generation solution: Sell copies of your source code for the resources you need to maintain it. One example would be to make the source available once money has changed hands. You cannot stop the buyer from turning around and giving the source away for free: Once you have made a sale, you have made a sale. That particular copy of your source has created all the profit it will create.
A second-generation solution: Sell future updates. This is an idea I have been playing with, in terms of a business plan. Your source is free (both gratis and freedom) and you sell tokens. The tokens are capable of being purchased separately. Tokens can be exchanged for votes to determine which new features are developed and which bugs are fixed. They key is in selling the tokens.
Make FOSS free for individuals. Developers can download, read, integrate, etc. the code or package for free at home on their personal PCs.
The moment FOSS software enters the corporate or academic space, it becomes a licensed product requiring fees and statements of work to be paid for licensing, use, and changes.
https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/Resources#internsh... https://www.debian.org/intro/help
Surf through projects to find ones that seem to be interested in contributions. Red flags are many ignored unresolved pull requests or too much hostility in project.
Some projects have issues labeled with "beginner friendly" or some such. Have a look there and try to fix something. If it turns 9ut to be boring, move onto another project.
But also a lot of companies take it quite seriously now so it can be good for your resume particularly if you are not in the industry yet and want more experience or some references of your prior work. So it can be worthwhile even if you aren't completely passionate about it to the extend you would be content to always do it as an unpaid hobby.
It's not good to assume you will make money directly on your own project or some niche project, but there are lots of established projects which are in demand in the industry and you would be able to make money working on them. I work on the Linux kernel which I started as a hobby and I've been able to take my skills between several different companies and continue working on the same software (although different areas) which has been good for me.
Not to say you can't get transferable skills or relevant experience working on proprietary software and some may prefer the challenge or variety of working on different code bases at different jobs. So proprietary software is pretty on-par in those respects. There are a lot of areas where proprietary software is ahead too so if you want to work cutting edge software in a particular area, open source might not be the best option for you.
As far as getting started, start with working out what you are interested in and want to work on.
that's the wrong question to ask - the first question to ask is whether you have some aspect of a project that you enjoy working on (or have a project of your own that you enjoy working on).
If your goal is to put your name in a well known project for marketing purposes, then i'd say you have the wrong goal for doing OSS.
This is the big fallacity here, although I'm not sure why "free" is in (scare) quotes. FOSS isn't necessarily volunteer free-time development; afaik for example vast majority of Linux development is done by salaried engineers as their day-job. That is the way things should be done imho.
You're right that I should have addressed that point.
I used "free" in quotes because it's not free in the sense of "no cost".
* modifiable and fork-able code
* free for non-commercial use
* and payment plans defined in code for commercial use.
I'm working on it at github.com/openfare
Often it's in the shape of services but I've seen a fair share of proprietary code.
It is standard for production code to rely on third party libraries. Not just standard, but the opposite is considered bad thing - you are not supposed to implement everything from scratch. If you do, you will end up with more bugs and issues. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in development last 30 years that would say "it is bad to use open source libraries".
But no, it was not all that kuch prevalent. Instead, people wrote their own almost everything.
It would also be irrational. The rare security issue like this is kot a good enough reason for such massive undertaking. You manage risks, you are not supposed to act purely out of fear.
> Good software engineers do that.
The amount of effort required would necessitate management sign up for this. And they won't, because it is not rational thing to do for majority of software.
I eat my own dog food. Most of the work I do is SPM modules, which I use in larger, aggregate, development work. They are often “spun out” of my larger projects, as I proceed. I may see that the section I’m writing, has use outside of the main, so I stop work on the larger project for a few days, while I extract and develop the submodule as a standalone project; complete with documentation and testing. Feel free to check out my work. My GH handle is the same as my HN handle. I stay busy.
Also, I write software to help people. Here’s a relevant comment that I made, yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29660819
> I can't even get a job
IMHO, making a single contribution to an important FOSS project (e.g. Linux kernel, a major programming language or a widely used library), although not easy, will definitely land a job very easily for anyone.
I have code in FreeBSD. Does that count?
I think that being an upstream FreeBSD contributor will make it easy getting a job in some areas/companies. It speaks much louder than (formal) qualifications IMO.
Then all businesses must pay to use FOSS.
Is there any benefit in making FOSS free for all users including corporate users?
I thought the use was fine.
A lot these philosophical debates around FOSS remind me of similar discussions regarding socialism and anarcho-communism. There is a great deal of useful thought and objectively good ideas to be taken from these socioeconomic theories. I subscribe to a considerable number of them, and put forth a considerable effort to put into practice the values and beliefs they espouse. But pragmatically speaking, free-market capitalism and constitutional democratic republics are going to be the dominant economic and political systems for the foreseeable future. Certainly my lifetime. So every time I encounter a fundamentalist or someone who flatly refuses to engage with any entity or ideal that runs counter to their anarcho-communist orthodoxy, I cringe with the anticipation of hopelessly idealistic platitudes and the associated injured ego that the greater world won't "listen" and fall in line.
Yes, FOSS was/is/will be exploited by dishonest actors. It will go unappreciated by the large majority of those who benefit from it. It will never be as commercially viable as other more exploitative business models. It will likely remain an esoteric niche, even if it continues to be the buzzword darling of the tech industry. Twas ever thus. Just remember, you can't write code if you're wringing your hands. We contribute because for us personally the benefits outweigh the risks/burdens. We do it because we believe in the free and open exchange of ideas. We do it because we find satisfaction in the act of creating novel things and sharing them with others. We do it because we want to give back to a community that has already provided us with considerable value. If you're doing it because you're looking for glory and wealth, I invite you to look elsewhere. Viva la revolución!
They are putting it wrong. You do not work on open source for compensation, but because you want to.
People who got into opensource with sole aim at scoring high profile job with some dotcom make no good for the state of opensource community.
Big, high profile open source projects die from maintainer/contributor dilution who confuse supporting an oss project with full time job.
There is a critical mass limit of such people introduced into OSS projects, past which irreversible "toxicity chain reaction" starts. Then "Foundations," "Steering Committees," "CoC councils" start to grow like barnacles on the body of the project, and it soon dies because normal people can't, and wont do this stuff.
If you don't want companies to use your code for free, don't publish it for free. If they violate the licence, presumably it is a case for the courts.
People have different reasons for working on open source. Some want to make money from it, others don't.
As an example, I don't know the full ElasticSearch story, but if Amazon's fork was legally allowed by the license, it worked as intended. People insist on open source precisely because they don't want to be dependent on one vendor's decisions.
Isn't ElasticSearch worth billions? Would they have become as popular if they hadn't been open source?
Good look to the OBS team in pursuing legal actions against ByteDance/CCP.
this is assuming you have the resources to :
a) know the theft happened
b) follow up in court.
I have to disagree. Use a Linux based operating system, self-host your internet services at home, use google free android, or do a subset of that.
Its all open source and works locally.
For average end-users, “use a linux based operating system” alone comprises a mountain of barriers, but most are rarely even approached because they’re preempted by lack of reliable hardware support and lack of support for staple applications like Word, Excel, and Photoshop.
It's all a spectrum, with free learning material everywhere. Yes, some of thr licenses and agreements are less free, but in truth, never before have so much been available. You can break that golden cage. What you put attention on matters.
The motivation is not money, but to provide a benefit to society or to the people in the immediate vicinity, i.e. to be helpful and to be appreciated.
I thought the solution was to treat FOSS as CC0 (public domain) [1], not create yet another license nobody's going to care or use.
CC0 is probably a better license for most FOSS & probably close to what happens in reality (sans a few exceptions) as TikTok and Copilot examples show.
[1] https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc...