Fair Source licensing is the worst thing to happen to open source-definitely ma (2016)
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Zero codebases choose between FOSS or Fair Source. The choice is always between Fair Source and completely closed.
The author's concept of "true open source" software will never seriously be provided to end-users in any form besides a closed source binary. That's my interpretation of this statement several sentences in, where they essentially reject FOSS:
>While free software licensing (e.g., GNU General Public License) attempts to force freedom on downstream developers, true open source basically says, "Take this software, use it and improve it (or not), and license the resulting product as you wish."
It seems like the author's definition of successful software is closed source software. See their point of criticism of Fair Source:
>Fair Source says, in essence, "You have all the rights of open source until your derivative work is actually popular. At that point you must pay." In other words, if your software stinks and no one wants to use it, hurray! It's open for usage, redistribution, and modification.
The CentOS and source code access problem in post-acquisition Red Hat makes it a terrible example to cite for the author's conclusion:
>There is no money in (selling) open source, as I've argued many times. There is, however, a mountain of cash waiting for those that monetize open source indirectly through support/software services like Red Hat, and even more for those that don't sell software-related services at all.
The supporting arguments and overall take is low quality.
I think they mean MIT-style licenses, rather than GNU-style. That's how I read it, at least. You wouldn't be able to improve closed-source software.
"True open source"
"force freedom on downstream developers"
GPL and BSD style licenses are both "true open source". If you are the upstream you literally aren't contained by any license and if you are downstream you are only constrained to offer exactly what you received and are free to write it yourself if that is too big of an ask.
> For some bizarro reason, open source companies keep trying to monetize software even as the rest of the world has moved on
The bizarro reason is that people literally need to eat. They can't "move on" unless they want to move on into the woods to live like a hobo. We either have to give up entirely on independent devs or find some way to pay them.
> It's the wrong way to treat developers
You aren't being mistreated if you don't like the license something is offered under.
Writer is...gross.
>> Apache-style open-source licensing has clearly won out over the GPL
this is telling.. neither license "won out" .. the world of software, use of software, and economics of software, are all expanding dramatically in real time. Define "win" in that context ? too many assumptions, too much tirade..
> We either have to give up entirely on independent devs or find some way to pay them.
yes
I really like the Functional Source License (FSL) (the main license under the Fair Source brand), and we've adopted it at my company. It's not open source, and shouldn't be compared with that. But you do get a lot of the same advantages as you'd get from an open-source product, such as being able to inspect the source code to get an understanding of how the system works.
Isn't this the point? If you release software that runs your service as open-source, you want to prevent Amazon coming along and making their own cloud service based on your code.