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Comment by blibble | Hacker News Reader

the problem is the definition of Open Source is controlled by the Open Source Initiative, which has been captured by the hyperscalers

which is sort of funny because the term "Open Source" was itself coined to make it possible for people to seek funding to build companies based on the (crazy?) idea of producing software, then giving away its source code

20 years later, the structure of the industry has now changed, and now "Open Source" exists to feed Amazon, Microsoft and Google

if it's not possible to alter the definition to include licenses that include terms that allow sustainable value creation for businesses other than the hyperscalers, then the term is no longer fit for purpose, and we need a new one

"Fair Software"?

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It's really not though. The OSI quickly loses credibility when they try to push a definition that the community doesn't like (see the Open Source AI kerfuffle).

Both the OSI and the FSF are agreed that Source Available with bans on specific use cases is not FOSS. When you've got freaking Richard Stallman opposing you you really have to do better than just scream "corporate capture". Engage with his idea of Freedom, don't set up straw men.

the OSI and the FSF agree, for different reasons

> Both the OSI and the FSF are agreed that Source Available with bans on specific use cases is not FOSS.

well... yes, because they decide the definition of the terms

> When you've got freaking Richard Stallman opposing you you really have to do better than just scream "corporate capture". Engage with his idea of Freedom, don't set up straw men.

Stallman has a very particular view of Freedom (itself a multifaceted term)

and he rather famously completely rejects the term "Open Source"

the situation we're finding ourselves in is one where three increasingly malevolent entities control and capture 100% of the value generated by writing and selling software with source code

if you're an employee of these entities, great for you

for the rest of us, this is a bad situation to be in

and certainly not one that could produce another Red Hat

The AGPLv3 or later is both free and open source and should be the de facto license of choice in my opinion for mass adoption.

I agree that the OSI and FSF are trapped with their most hardcore followers, and can't effectively change, assuming they even wanted to.

As for Stallman... his idea of freedom is very narrowly-scoped. In particular, it makes no distinction between hobbyists and megacorps, and is completely blind with respect to economics.

By lumping hobbyists with companies, it makes the category error of extending human rights to corporations. This of course, is nothing new in America, and hasn't been since the infamous 1886 Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad court case, that established corporate "personhood".

Corporations are collections of humans. There are certain ways in which extending human rights to corporations a mistake, but allowing them to use free software isn't one of them: either the individuals in the company are able to use the software or they are not, and if they are not then the software is not free.

> allowing them to use free software isn't one of them

I never said corps shouldn't be allowed to use free software.

But I do think corps should not be allowed to be economic free riders of any software.

Take a look at Debian’s philosophy: https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

This predates the OSI definition. The philosophy is about what empowers the user. Business models (or their challenges) have nothing to do with it.

It just so happens that empowering the user also empowers competitors.

The OSD is basically a copy of the DFSG btw

You wouldn’t use the ten commandments as your only moral guide.

The landscape has changed. Google, Amazon, and microsoft are actively trying to destroy open source business models. Don’t let the leopards eat your face because you were too attached to your ideology.

> Don’t let the leopards eat your face because you were too attached to your ideology.

You're conflating ideologies. User-focused ideology doesn't care about business models. Leopards aren't eating their faces. They're perfectly fine where they are.

Business model focused ideology might care, but the AGPL exists and meets Debian's requirements. Those who care can choose to use it, or not, as they wish.

> It just so happens that empowering the user also empowers competitors.

IMHO copyleft licences are better for the user and permissive licences are better for competitors. Still people keep going with permissive licences.

Ehhh, Amazon offers a hosted Grafana service, which is AGPL. I'm not so sure that.

Which means that they have to share their changes to Grafana, doesn't it?

The LWN thread says that they don't, but have separate proprietary licensing and co-marketing agreements with Grafana Labs.

https://lwn.net/Articles/1019686/#CommAnchor1019710

Thanks that interesting!

And in this case it means that it's not AGPL, but proprietary. Which kind of proves my point: they are apparently paying Grafana Labs to avoid the constraints of AGPL. If Grafana was permissive, they would surely not pay.

That's not what I'm getting at.

Amazon hosting Grafana means it's not only "permissive licences are better for competitors".

Copyleft licenses don't present obstacle to competitors that people seem to believe.

> the problem is the definition of Open Source is controlled by the Open Source Initiative, which has been captured by the hyperscalers

Thank you for pointing that out.

This is something I have noticed in the last decade:

A lot of fake, captured organisations have popup around open source. I once went down the rabbit hole to try to make a list and quickly found dozen of them. It is always very hard to understand what they do and employ a bunch of people who usually never wrote a single line of code.

One example found on the Fedora website is the "Digital Public Goods Alliance" [0]

- [0] https://www.digitalpublicgoods.net/

> the problem is the definition of Open Source is controlled by the Open Source Initiative, which has been captured by the hyperscalers

I'm not sure this is true. The OSI's definition of open source doesn't seem to have changed since ~2001 [1] - before AWS was founded - and it'd been around in various forms since ~1997.

This was the era of Microsoft's 2001-era "Shared Source license" which was deliberately GPL-incompatible; Bruce Perens, author of the definition, wrote "Microsoft's Shared Source program recognizes that there are many benefits to the openness, community involvement, and innovation of the Open Source model. But the most important component of that model, the one that makes all of the others work, is freedom." [2] (Perens also judged the first version of the "Apple Public Source License" insufficiently free [3])

They've kinda always been about not just being able to view the source, but also modify it, and redistribute the modified version, merge it into other software projects, make commercial use of it, etc etc

It just so happens that this stance, adopted well before AWS existed, works extremely well for AWS.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20020126171934/http://opensource... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20010813210224/http://perens.com... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20010430042835/http://www.perens...

I'd argue it doesn't "just so happen" to benefit AWS, it was causal: Open Source created AWS. AWS is structured the way that it is in order to benefit from Open Source, and it grew to its current size by so benefiting.

In a lot of ways things like AWS are what the OSI set out to create when they set out to sell Free Software as an idea to corporations. This was the pitch.

> "Fair Software"?

That's the term most frequently used! I've seen a number of different efforts start to coalesce around this.

https://fair.io/

This was also a really nice license:

https://defold.com/license/

We need licenses like these to combat Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. "Open Source" is their grift now.

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