
Open Source Software Wall of Shame - Alir3z4
https://github.com/Alir3z4/oss-wall-of-shame
======
imjared
This seems odd. It feels unfair to shame companies because they may or may not
contribute to a handful of projects you've picked out. I'd also encourage the
author to do a bit more digging. The first entry calls out Instagram for
allegedly not contributing to Django but they have a fork of it here:
[https://github.com/Instagram/django](https://github.com/Instagram/django) and
without doing much digging, it's easy to say they've contributed at least
once.

Several of the companies listed make incredible contributions to OSS.

~~~
Alir3z4
Most of these companies and probably all of them contribute to Open Source for
sure, but they don't contribute back to the projects they use.

Instagram being a golden sponsor of Django ([https://github.com/Alir3z4/oss-
wall-of-shame/pull/3](https://github.com/Alir3z4/oss-wall-of-shame/pull/3))
but still it's not officially claimed that it started to sponsoring yet.

A 3 years old fork of Django doesn't seems to be a real contribution. Have a
look at instagram and its size and tell me a 3 years old fork of their web
framework of choice, something that made them $$$ is something to be called a
contribution.

Contribution is not only code, it can be $$$, hosting, hiring a developer to
work on the project or many many other ways.

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sapeien
Uber is a douchebag company, who knew? On a serious note, there is no
obligation for any user no matter how big to contribute anything upstream in
open source. If that were the case, we would be in big debt to the maintainers
of the Linux kernel, GNU, OpenSSL, and so much more.

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kutkloon7
Thats kind of the point of open source. It's free for anyone to use.

It's like shaming people for not paying for the free candy that you hand out.

~~~
enkiv2
In BSD-style licenses, if you make changes you can distribute them with a new
license. In GPL-style licenses, the source for any modifications must be
distributed along with any modified binaries. In AGPL-style licenses, the
source for any modifications must be available to users, even if no binaries
are ever distributed. So, in some cases, I'm sure not contributing upstream is
actually illegal.

I can understand why lots of companies would use open source software but not
contribute changes: if you already have your employees sign away their IP to
the company, then there are legal complications to figuring out how to
contribute, and if the company is publicly traded then internal modifications
to open source software in order to support features that have not yet been
announced may constitute an information leak if contributed upstream (and thus
give illegal trading advantage to maintainers, etc). It's a big can of worms.

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mugsie
What is the source for not contributing? (how do you know that an Uber
employee has not contributed back ?)

Also - contributing to open source is a lot more than code. (Good) Bug
reports, docs, and evangelism are all valid forms of contributions.

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_ix
I work for a company that uses open source. Sure, we might have the resources
to contribute, but... the "fixes" we implement tend to be hacks particular to
our overly complicated and Rube Goldberg-esque infosec infrastructure that I
guarantee would have us on a different wall of shame all together if the code
ever saw the light of day.

Besides, code leaving larger institutions outside of the tech industry has
other hurdles involving things like compliance and lengthy legal reviews...

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nkozyra
Careful what you wish for, you may shame them into contributing back.

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raverbashing
"Wall of shame"?

And maybe these companies did not have anything to contribute back?

Uber uses Celery, but I can't imagine their main worries being fixing bugs on
Celery (or even better, fixing them in a contributable form)

Several companies have internal fixes and workarounds for OSS, and _that is
fine_. Because not everything belongs upstream

~~~
thealistra
They also have other open source things here
[http://github.com/uber](http://github.com/uber), why shame them for not
contributing to the specific things, which they may as well use vanilla

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markwillis82
Would this not also depend on whether those companies make any changes to the
software that would be worth contributing back?

There are millions of websites using MySQL and Postgres that make money but
don't contribute back?

Add nginx/Apache to this list too? would cover most of the internet then.

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nicky0
When a software library is released with a license such as MIT or BSD it says:
use this for whatever you want as long as you preserve this notice. There is
NO requirement to "contribute back".

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jeffehobbs
Yeah, Uber sucks. I’ve deleted their creepy app and won’t use the service
until they go ahead and up they game.

BuuuUUUuuuut, this shaming is not an information-rich presentation. It would
be interesting to see a presentation on which big, heavily-invested companies
are not good OSS citizens, but this is not that presentation.

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bArray
To be fair to Uber, it would be in their interest to give back once they turn
a profit. Instagram doesn't seem to turn a profit (as far as I'm aware).

So this is just an attack on companies that can't give back. Amazing insight.

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pawadu
So this company has a team that stalks unfriendly journalists to find some
dirt on them, and thats okay but if they don't contribute to Celery they have
really crossed the line?

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JoachimS
Seems like somebody has been looking at what Über is using.

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thrillgore
If he wants to make a meaningful wall of shame he should start listing every
other company. Because this is more commonplace than just Uber.

~~~
Alir3z4
this list is not complete enough, tons of companies should be in there but I
need time and suggestion. Once a while I come up for new companies to put them
there, but I just forgot to do.

Uber came to my sight first.

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mixedbit
How does the author know if the listed companies never contribute?

~~~
Alir3z4
When a company throws a biscuit at the wall, believe me they announce so loud
that others can hear it very well.

When they contribute, they make it sure everyone knows about it.

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ConAntonakos
Didn't Instagram also co-create React.js?

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painted
looks like an attack against Uber

~~~
enkiv2
Uber doesn't particularly need to be attacked. Their business model is
basically to violate employment law; as a result, their days are numbered.

