I worry that a lot of our culture believes “OSS = good, closed = bad” when in reality we just want free stuff that mostly works. I’ve written some small libraries, and I’ve seen the proportion of people that contribute vs take. It’s not pretty. Few people talk about this. There is no magical community that will spring up and support something you create.
In the world of networked services, open source barely matters. When my access is over the network, rather than by downloading the source, copyright doesn’t apply.
Not to mention that data is becoming more and more important….
I’ve seen the proportion of people that contribute vs take. It’s not pretty.
Yup. And there’s tons of great reasons to not contribute to open source, but it’s not really sustainable overall.
When my access is over the network, rather than by downloading the source, copyright doesn’t apply.
Eh I don’t think it’s quite that simple; making stuff available over a network implicates copyright in a lot of cases, sometimes as distribution and sometimes as performance (both of which are exclusive rights of a copyright holder). E.g. in general you can’t buy a piece of proprietary software, set it up network-facing with an HTML5 UI, and sell access to it as an SaaS, unless you’ve purchased a license that specifically allows that. Example: if you buy Mathematica, you can’t use your copy to set up a Wolfram-Alpha-like service on top of it. Free-software licenses can also choose to give conditional or unconditional grants of any of these rights, e.g. the BSD license gives an unconditional grant of distribution and performance rights, the GPL attaches conditions to the distribution right, and the AGPL attaches conditions to both rights.
There is some seriously incredible artwork throughout the article. Like this and this. Wow.
Also some great prose:
This is how open source works
It isn’t a utopian dream to build great software. It’s a bat that for-profit companies use to bludgeon each other over the head with.
And great insights:
Say what you want about the GNU project on technical or popularity grounds. But it seems unmistakable to me that their ideological purity drove ObjC open-source. Say what you want about LLVM on technical or popularity grounds. But it seems unmistakable to me that their ideology allows Swift to stay closed.
They’re not completely crazy, these “free software” people. They are what they say on the tin. I really believe that’s more than you can say for “open source”, on the average.
[..]
Being nice, and being pro-open source, are completely independent concepts. An open source company can be evil, or it can be good, the same as a proprietary company.
[..]
If “open source” is a term wide enough to cover Oracle’s business then it has no value as a moral descriptor.
[..]
Instead I think we need to be charting a course for high-quality, free, and widely-available software, that is reasonably priced, such that the people who write it can continue to do so. “Sustainable software development”, if you like, where the people writing the software have a financial relationship with the people using it, instead of being authored by corporate benefactors with strange agendas.
Although that last part seems like a contradiction of terms (“free” software that’s “reasonably priced”). Would’ve liked some elaboration on that.
Snippet from a comment I posted to his blog (waiting for moderation). Thought I’d share here as well:
I do find your “Third Way” interesting. Some concerns/comments:
It could use a name. (“Sustainable software development” doesn’t seem right.)
I am concerned that this approach would lead to inappropriately priced software for a few reasons:
Software prices, especially in the Mac world (where I come from), are often variable depending on a lot of factors (i.e. is it a “family pack”, a bulk order for a business, a site-wide license, a “lifetime license” that gives free upgrades, etc.). There are different prices for different use cases in other words. This model doesn’t (currently) allow for that flexibility.
It could result in unreasonably expensive software. Think about having to pay for each commit that’s ever been contributed to a project that’s 3 years old. That will quickly add up to “unreasonable” for the average person. A possible solution to this is to cap it at some maximum and then reduce the payouts proportionally.
The ideas behind the two names are very different, but the FSF certainly endorses some non-copyleft free software such as Ogg codecs and many open source advocates endorse copyleft open source software such as git and Linux.
“Open source has won most of the war” … uhhh no. Firstly there is no war unless you are in the FSF camp. Open source is “poor” at producing and maintaining complex software needed by professionals. It is at best, well maintained public commons.
Heck even for programmers IntelliJ proves what dedicated software crafters can do behind closed doors.
I really liked this article.
I worry that a lot of our culture believes “OSS = good, closed = bad” when in reality we just want free stuff that mostly works. I’ve written some small libraries, and I’ve seen the proportion of people that contribute vs take. It’s not pretty. Few people talk about this. There is no magical community that will spring up and support something you create.
In the world of networked services, open source barely matters. When my access is over the network, rather than by downloading the source, copyright doesn’t apply.
Not to mention that data is becoming more and more important….
Yup. And there’s tons of great reasons to not contribute to open source, but it’s not really sustainable overall.
Eh I don’t think it’s quite that simple; making stuff available over a network implicates copyright in a lot of cases, sometimes as distribution and sometimes as performance (both of which are exclusive rights of a copyright holder). E.g. in general you can’t buy a piece of proprietary software, set it up network-facing with an HTML5 UI, and sell access to it as an SaaS, unless you’ve purchased a license that specifically allows that. Example: if you buy Mathematica, you can’t use your copy to set up a Wolfram-Alpha-like service on top of it. Free-software licenses can also choose to give conditional or unconditional grants of any of these rights, e.g. the BSD license gives an unconditional grant of distribution and performance rights, the GPL attaches conditions to the distribution right, and the AGPL attaches conditions to both rights.
There is some seriously incredible artwork throughout the article. Like this and this. Wow.
Also some great prose:
And great insights:
Although that last part seems like a contradiction of terms (“free” software that’s “reasonably priced”). Would’ve liked some elaboration on that.
Snippet from a comment I posted to his blog (waiting for moderation). Thought I’d share here as well:
Hm, free software doesn’t mean copyleft and open source doesn’t mean non-copyleft… Free software and open source refer to the same category of software (with microscopic exceptions barely worth mention).
The ideas behind the two names are very different, but the FSF certainly endorses some non-copyleft free software such as Ogg codecs and many open source advocates endorse copyleft open source software such as git and Linux.
I’d say that used to be true, until the GPL3 decided to make the jump to meatspace to avoid the dreaded “tivoisation”.
“Open source has won most of the war” … uhhh no. Firstly there is no war unless you are in the FSF camp. Open source is “poor” at producing and maintaining complex software needed by professionals. It is at best, well maintained public commons.
Heck even for programmers IntelliJ proves what dedicated software crafters can do behind closed doors.