Thoughts on Post-Open Source?

TLDR: Companies should be required to pay developers for any open source software they use.

He imagines a simple yearly compliance process that gets companies all the rights they need to use Post-Open software. And they’d fund developers who would be encouraged to write software that’s usable by the common person, as opposed to technical experts.

It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t really see any feasible means to get this to kick off.

What are your thoughts on it?

Zerush, (edited )
@Zerush@lemmy.ml avatar

These are my thoughts regarding FOSS for a long time. The sense of facilitating the development and freedom of the project has been distorted years ago, when large corporations put their hands on this project, controlling it. Just look at the amount of “OpenSource” soft and services controlled by Google, M$, Amazon, FB … Yes, they are free to distribute and modifiable by devs, but mostly full of APIs from these corporations, not controllable by the user, subtracting their sovereignty and only modifiable with effort by people capable of understanding the scripts and redirects they contain. For a normal user it is increasingly irrelevant whether the project is FOSS or proprietary, while these products and the internet in general are in the hands of these companies.

A simple question is enough, which one do you prefer to use? FOSS projects from large corporations, or Freeware from small independent startups, if you don’t have the knowledge to review the script anyway, almost impossible in millions of lines, with external references from large apps and services? It becomes decisions of mere trust, perhaps with the help of external services, such as WebKoll, Blacklight, Unfurl and similar, where in the end the license that the product has is irrelevant, with respect to security and privacy, often in question or not, in some like others. In the end only the intentions and ethics of the developer matter.

Yes, of course, the concept of OSS, FOSS and FLOSS requires a profound review and update, so that it does not become a destroyer of what it aims to protect and promote, a free internet.

yournamehere,

what an idiot. the eval process is funny stupid and costly. the consequences will be companies both avoiding to use foss and also be less secure for using closed source. and then there is ai. code written with ai is not copyright-able and i bet anyone will prefer ai dumb code over costly foss code. may that dev rott in hell for this egomaniac idea of a free world.

GarbageShoot,

“Post-Open Source”

Overly-teleological modernist framing has hopelessly fucked up tech discourse. Too much declaring things the future and hoping people will just believe you.

oscardejarjayes,

Most of these problems are literally just capitalism. This solution is just a band aid, and even then is unlikely to be implemented in a way that will help the problem.

BaumGeist, (edited )

people are always going to be floating ways to save capitalism in the face of communities privileging freedom over greed.

this completely misses the point of free software, and fails to solve the problems Mr. Perens identifies with Open Source. He claims it fails to serve the “common person” (end users) and then proposes a solution that serves… only devs.

Open Source has completely failed to serve the common person. For the most part, if they use us at all they do so through a proprietary software company’s systems, like Apple iOS or Google Android, both of which use Open Source for infrastructure but the apps are mostly proprietary… Indeed, Open Source is used today to surveil and even oppress them.

All these problems are already solved by free software. the rebranding of “open source” was a compromise on the principles of free software to make the movement palatable to profit-seekers. In the end, it predictably failed to improve anything. The solution isn’t to reinvent the wheel, it’s to stop making the wheel square because the square lobby insists they’ll only use it if it’s square. The solution is copyleft, and free software being used more than it’s defanged cousin.

The common person doesn’t know about Open Source, they don’t know about the freedoms we promote which are increasingly in their interest

That’s a feature, not a bug. On one hand, if people knew about free software they wouldn’t be as good consumers. On the other hand, internals should be opaque to users; just as devs don’t want to have to know how the logic gates in the CPU are routing their code to write code, end users shouldn’t have to worry about the politics of the communities that developed their code.

AstridWipenaugh,

This is exciting! He’s come up with an economic principle where entities engage in an equitable exchange of goods for money where the consumer of the good pays for the value they receive. This could really change everything! I wonder what they’ll call it?

Auzy,

Doesn’t make sense at all.

I keep seeing Redhat used an example, but they contribute a HUGE amount a source code and projects… Pipewire, systemd, rpm, DBUS and even the main XML addon for VSCode, etc.

I don’t think people realise how much poop linux would be swimming in if they went bankrupt…

Redhat are literally one of the big reasons why Linux is so seamless these days, and they’re solving a lot of the big problems. And from my understanding, they still contribute the code seperately anyway.

That being said, I agree money needs to go towards developers. However, a lot of them end up hired at major companies. And I don’t think this is the way to approach it

library_napper, (edited )
@library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

Fuck no. A small business that is struggling to survive should be able to use WordPress for their website and Linux for their laptops without paying

actual_patience,

The fee could be really small but scale depending on factors like business size. Or there could be no fee outright for businesses smaller than a certain size.

baseless_discourse,

That still sounds like a lot of confusion for small companies. especially given most FOSS is provided as-is without any legal consultant avaliable.

onlinepersona, (edited )

I agree. Either use a business source license like Elastic and others, or fight for the installation of a third party that audits proprietary code for license use and sues if the rules haven’t been followed. It’s why I like the creative commons. They are quite realistic. Most of their licenses say: if you use this commercially, you have to pay. If not, then it’s free.

People who claim business source licenses are “not opensource” sound like such capitalist shills to me. It’s as if they’re shouting from the rooftops “it’s OK to fuck over opensource developers because principles matter more than reality”.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

deFrisselle,
@deFrisselle@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

So, basically the opposite of BSD3 license

actual_patience,

Yeah pretty much

bizdelnick,

TLDR: Companies should be required to pay developers for any open source software they use

You need to read the article yourself before writing TLDR. Spoiler: it is not about payments, it is about source code availability.

actual_patience,

If you had also read the article BTW you would have realized that spoilers: it’s not about source code availability.

You saw the first few paragraphs about the Red Hat drama and didn’t read further.

Reading the whole thing you’d realize it’s a list of reasons why open source software hasn’t become popular with the wider public, and his proposed solution to this.

I just included the idea he is proposing, others can read the article to see his reasoning.

baatliwala,

Don’t kid yourselves, regardless of all your ideals open source only works because it’s free from a monetary perspective.

Companies work on patches to Linux or other software because it primarily benefits themselves, and they only use Linux because it’s free. Companies create hardware on Linux because it’s free. They can manufacturer cheap devices and people will buy them because they were low cost primarily because of the use of FOSS software.

Nearly all of FOSS is funded by corporations whether you like it or not, for the reasons you want to hear or not. The only thing that drives people is money.

kayazere,

The FOSS contributions from companies mentioned is only at the kernel level. And a lot that use the kernel, but with proprietary blobs for their hardware. I suspect that is because kernel/embedded development is hard and costly.

Most of the dominate OSes people use, with the exception of Windows, is based on an FOSS kernel, with then the layers above and applications being proprietary.

These software systems are being used to lock people in to the specific platforms and perform user hostile behavior. So while having the kernel be FOSS, it doesn’t result in user freedoms imagined by FOSS, it just companies reducing their costs.

actual_patience,

they only use Linux because it’s free. Companies create hardware on Linux because it’s free

Companies use open source software because it’s the cheapest option. It’s all about margins.

Nearly all of FOSS is funded by corporations whether you like it or not

Yes, and FOSS can get a lot more funding if they charged companies even a little bit.

So as long as it’s cheaper to pay a fee to continue to use an open-source software than it is to hire a group of developers to produce and maintain the same thing, the idea is viable.

halm,
@halm@leminal.space avatar

The only thing that drives people is money.

Hundreds of thousand of unpaid open source contributors would have a word about that. In fact, millions of voluntary workers in other fields, too.

You’re right that companies contribute to open source as well, and that their motivations are probably self serving. Your conclusion doesn’t hold water, though.

C126,

Right? This guy has never heard of passion

halm,
@halm@leminal.space avatar

Also: generosity, altruism, compassion, kindness, curiosity, exploration, principle, idealism, etc, etc.

IMHO, money is something that exists in the world and that I need to live. It’s a necessary evil, not a universal human driving force. And believe me, I’m neither rich or even financially afloat.

grue,

Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of his own actions (inviting corporations to exploit Free Software by trying to re-brand it).

filister,

All the people predicting doom and gloom for open source, but the reality is that without open source we wouldn’t be in the position where we currently are in terms of technology.

To be honest, I also think the patent system should be revamped as it is extremely flawed at the moment and prone to abuse by patent trolls, and it is stifling innovation.

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

I think that the RHEL example is out-of-place, since IBM (“Red Hat”) is clearly exploiting a loophole of the GNU Public License. Similar loopholes have been later addressed by e.g. the AGPL and the GPLv3*, so I expect this one to be addressed too.

So perhaps, if the GPL is “not enough”, the solution might be more GPL.

*note that the license used by the kernel is GPLv2. Cue to Android (for all intents and purposes non-free software) using the kernel, but not the rest.

library_napper,
@library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

What loophole? I think they’re just blatantly violating it

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

They’re still providing the code for people who buy the compiled software. And they are not restricting their ability to redistribute that code. So it’s still compliant with the GPL in the letter. However, if you redistribute it, they’ll refuse to service you further versions of the software.

It’s clearly a loophole because they can argue “ackshyually, we didn’t restrict you, we just don’t want further businesses with you, see ya sucker”.

Atemu,
@Atemu@lemmy.ml avatar

Is there a court case about this already? Because that’s clearly not the intention of the GPL.

lvxferre, (edited )
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

I don’t think that there is one yet, otherwise it would get famous. Not sure though.

randomaside,
@randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Enshittification continues

TootSweet,

≥So perhaps, if the GPL is “not enough”, the solution might be more GPL.

Love this.

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