I don’t know what happens with manifest v3, because the Mozilla variant is not compatible to Chromium. Maybe I have to use 2 independent branches. But I try to avoid that. Manifest v3 is a big mess of bullsh*t.
As web developer working in a company as consultant, I think often that I use a lot of free software like framework / library and tools to build proprietary applications without paying the free sofatware I use.
I feel sad about that, that our clients and my company do not want to pay ( with some exceptions ).
That’s a social problem.
Maybe some laws our just another culture about take care of our commons can change that.
We can still hope. :/
I do think users have benefited from Open Source, but I also think that there has been an a decline in Open Source software in general
I don’t think contracts are a good analogy here (in the sense that every corporate consumer of the software would have to sign one)
Having said this I do understand where he is coming from. And I agree that:
a lot of big companies consume this software and don’t give back
corporate interests are well entrenched in some Open Source projects, and some bad decisions have been made
he does raise an interesting point about the commons clause (but them I’m no laywer)
I would like to remind everyone that the GPL pretty much exists because of (1.). If anything we should have more GPL code. In that regard I don’t think it failed us. But we rarely see enforced (in court). Frankly most of our code is not that special so please GPL it.
Finally I think users do know about Open Source software indirectly. In the same way they find out their “public” infrastructure has been running without permit or inspection the day things start breaking and the original builder/supplier is long gone and left no trace of how it works.
Since these days everything is software (or black box hardware with firmware) this is increasingly important in public policy. And I do wish we would see public contracts asking for hardware/firmware what some already for software.
I wont get into the Redhat/IBM+CentOS/Fedora or AI points because there is a lot more going on there. Not that he is not right. But I’m kind of fed up with it :D
I don’t particularly agree with his impression that the average user doesn’t benefit from open source, or that they should know anything about open source.
The only popular operating system that isn’t based on an open source kernel is Windows. Nearly every mobile phone in the entire world is running an open source kernel. And I’d bet that nearly every computer system in the world has at least some open source software running on it.
And who cares whether the average user knows about open source software? The average Blender user doesn’t use it because it’s open source, they use it because it’s the best 3D modeling software. The benefits of open source software are usually what makes it enticing to people who have no idea what open source is.
I’m not sure what this guy is smoking, but I don’t want any. He talks about licenses being different from contracts, but there isn’t any significant difference. He talks about developers getting paid instead of releasing their work for free, but there’s nothing stopping anyone from doing this right now. Plenty of products offer business licenses separate from their copyleft licenses. Anyone who releases their software under GPL or whatever chooses to do that, because that’s what they want to do. If they wanted to make it only source-available, or to sell source access, they would have.
It’s an interesting idea, but the differences between copyright and contract law present quite a hurdle.
Either you release something publicly, licensing it under certain conditions (you can use it this way, but not that), or you cut a contract with a 3rd party for them to use it a certain way – something that only makes sense in a context where the wider public doesn’t already have those rights, otherwise a contract would be unnecessary.
You see it in some Free software projects: they’re licensed under something aggressive like the AGPL, but for a few you can buy a proprietary license. This of course limits community participation though, as to contribute, you must agree to these terms. I think React does something like this, forcing you to sign a contract to submit a patch.
He points out a number of problems that I’d like to see solved, so I’d love to hear his ideas, so long as they’re similar in spirit to the goals of the FSF.
I’m not sure. The benefit of open source is that you can just take it and use it. And even incorporate it into your own projects. And it’s super easy, all you have to do is make the source available if it’s copyleft.
Now people want to add money to the mix, define valid use-cases, have me file paperwork to become a non-profit etc… Especially adding money to the mix could turn out bad in my eyes. Currently people are incentivised by other things. Software development and usage is a level playing field and you get gifted awesome programs. I’m really not sure if more capitalism helps. (But yes, I also think it’s annoying that companies like IBM, Amazon and Google make big money and often don’t contribute. And maybe handling money is unavoidable, for example since nowadays many projects need to pay for infrastructure, or do automated builds / tests / CI and that also costs money unless Github helps you out.)
I already dislike the growing amount of Source-Available software, and software that contains the commons clause. Can I now share this with my friends? Can they invite some more people to the instance? Do I need a lawyer and do proper accounting if they contribute paying for the server? What if the software relies on other software (libraries/databases) that aren’t free anymore?
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