
A few thoughts about Open Source Software - justincormack
http://antirez.com/news/48
======
cjbprime
> First of all, open source for me is not a way to contribute to the free
> software movement, but to contribute to humanity. This means a lot of
> things, for instance I don't care about what people do with my code, nor if
> they'll release back their modifications. I simply want people to use my
> code in one way or the other.

As other people (buster) have mentioned, they feel that releasing GPL code is
contributing to humanity too. Here's the difference as I see it:

You want to maximize the number of people who use your code, because that
makes you feel good about yourself and your contribution.

Someone who releases GPL wants to try to maximize the good outcomes that
result from their releasing that piece of code.

For example: the FreeBSD hackers get to know that their code was incorporated
into OS X and used by many millions of people. That's pretty cool for them.
But the contribution to humanity of their code is limited by that -- the OS X
kernel's closed source, so no-one can benefit from learning how that works,
and in the meantime the FreeBSD project itself is dwindling. Meanwhile, e.g.
Android is based on Linux, and is available to everyone to study. Linux is
growing hugely, and is an amazing example of humanity working together to
achieve a public good. I can't really say the same about FreeBSD.

So, I think the question is -- is your aim somewhat selfish, in wanting to
maximize the consequences that can be directly traced to you, or is it driven
by wanting to maximize the consequences to the rest of your society of your
actions?

If the latter, I think there's an entirely reasonable argument that says that
the GPL is a better way to do it. There's no question that, as you argue, the
GPL has less immediate freedom for each individual user than the BSD licenses.
But why should we measure freedom for each individual, if what we care about
is the final level of freedom for everyone in society?

To put it another way, I think the BSD license can result in "tragedy of the
commons" scenarios where maximizing _individual_ freedom has worse total
consequences than would have resulted by applying regulation to maximize
_societal_ freedom instead.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
our company recently expunged all LGPL code from our product. The cost of that
license outstripped the usefulness. We wrote or got around the need for any of
it; it wasn't too hard. Generally we were after a fraction of the IP, and
there were alternatives.

LGPL is fine for non-commercial folks. For business I need a license to do as
I please with the code, with no futzing around.

<edit: LGPL>

~~~
taylodl
LGPL lets you do as you please with the code. If you need to modify the code,
which in my experience isn't all that often, you simply provide the patch back
to the committers. They're not required to take it, but that doesn't affect
you. You simply had to provide it.

And since you took from the community, doesn't it make sense to contribute
back when you have something to contribute?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
LGPL requires us to ship the libraries in particular ways. Our product runs on
mac, windows, android, pad and phone. It was impossible to conform.

An now, we don't take from the community, so no we don't feel the need to give
back in that way.

And in my experience, much of open source does have to be modified. Usually to
extract the IP needed without the cruft sticking to it - all the assumptions
made by the authors about how it was going to be used.

~~~
taylodl
IANAL, but I believe you're incorrect about shipping the libraries in
particular ways. My understanding of the LGPL is you don't have to ship the
libraries with your application, you just need to provide the relevant
copyright notices - usually in your Help/About.

I worked with the legal department at my company to get a list of approved
open source licenses for components included in our applications. The GPL was
immediately ruled out. Because of the GPL they spent several weeks
scrutinizing the LGPL. They approved it.

Obviously your mileage has varied with your lawyers. And if we want to keep
our jobs we can't cross the lawyers, even if we believe them to be wrong. It'd
be nice if our community had a common understanding of the LGPL. There seems
to be a lot of confusion.

~~~
makomk
Nope. The LGPL basically requires you to make sure that the end user can
replace the LGPLed code with a modified but ABI-compatible version (for
instance, because there's some bug in the code). Think back to the libpng
security vulnerability a few years ago, for example - because that was under a
more permissive license than the LGPL, users of proprietary software that
included the insecure version couldn't update to a fixed version by themselves
and were reliant on the companies that supplied them the software.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That may be correct, but its an engineering description of a legal document.
We're great at deconstructing things - lawyers are great about enforcing the
letter. SO I'm not sure anything that boils down to "The LGPL basically
requires..." can be trusted - certainly that argument has no weight with our
lawyers.

Consider for a moment anything shipped on an iPad or iPhone. How does the user
replace pieces of your application, exactly? Its not possible, by design
(thank you Apple).

~~~
DannyBee
Speaking as an open source lawyer, the question of whether it's legal to use
LGPL 2.0/2.1 software in an app store app is a very open one, exactly for the
reason given above. You will find people taking opinions on both sides.

It certainly happens that people use LGPL 2.1 code in IOS apps, but that
doesn't mean it's okay.

The answer is more clear for other licenses, including LGPL v3.

I wouldn't trust what you see app stores doing as "okay". Among other things,
I do due diligence on mergers/acquisitions, and without a doubt, app store
apps are one of the places I see the most license problems.

------
buster
Interesting point of view and i can understand that he embraces the "total
freedom" BSD license gives (aka "do whatever you want, i don't care"), but in
contrast i can also understand the GPL and i would argue that GPL is more
about "contributing to humanity" then BSD just because it forces someone to
contribute back and thus enforce more "contributions" to humanity then a
formerly BSD licensed closed down fork of something that once was freely
available.

As a developer i enjoy BSD because i know i don't have to take care of license
issues and just go ahead in contrast to "mhh, GPL, LGPL, version 2 or 3, MPL,
Apache, what can and what can't i do?!".

All in all, from my point of view, GPL has a very good motive and approach
when it comes to "contribute to humanity", even more so then BSD.

edit: Also about his thought "if something is useful people will contribute
back in some way, because maintaining forks is not great.":

This just doesn't apply to software companies that have a closed down software
approach. The in-house forks are just frequently rebased but never contributed
back. In my life i have seen several in-house repositories including a lot of
BSD licensed libraries that never were contributed back. It's sad but it's
just the outcome of closed-down "Whatever we pay for in development work puts
us ahead of competition, we don't want to help competition, we leave it closed
source".

~~~
notimetorelax
GPL is very restrictive when in it comes to integrating GPL libraries into
closed-source applications. Here is short description on Wikipedia:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Link...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Linking_and_derived_works)

I think it is ludicrous to require to open source an application that may be
using library as is without any modifications.

~~~
rbanffy
> I think it is ludicrous to require to open source an application that may be
> using library as is without any modifications.

If it's my library you do as I say or you don't use it. If you don't like the
license, you are free to write your own library.

The GPL is about giving freedom to the users.

~~~
happimess
> The GPL is about giving freedom to the users.

> If it's my library you do as I say or you don't use it.

That sounds more like giving control to the developers than giving freedom to
the users.

~~~
rbanffy
> giving control to the developers

The only freedom GPL denies the developer is the freedom to take freedoms away
from their users.

------
ssp
I suspect there is some incoherent thinking about the BSD license. If you are
a BSD advocate, consider this:

Someone takes a BSD project and bases a proprietary program on it. Is that
person doing something wrong? Well, no, you say, because that's the whole
point of the BSD license. It's also fine to keep rolling in new versions of
the BSD project.

Now suppose someone takes a BSD project and relicenses it under the GPL,
announces it on the internet, gets it into all the Linux distributions, and
starts soliciting contributions of new GPL-only features while also rolling in
new versions of the BSD project as they become available. Is that person doing
something wrong?

I suspect that a calm, "No, that's also great. That's why we made it available
under BSD." would not necessarily be the response.

~~~
pooriaazimi
This is how I think about BSD vs. GPL issue (of course, it's a contrived
example and numbers are not accurate):

You have created X (say, redis). 5000 individuals and companies need it right
away and want to use it momentarily.

If it's in public domain, all of them will use it, then make separate forks,
and maintain them (individually, or in groups).

If it's a commercial product (say, $20.000), you might get 10-20 customers.
They won't contribute back code, but will give you loads of money so you can
hire more people. It's great business, but a couple of teenagers can't hack
away with it because it's just too expensive.

If it's GPL, 500 companies (10%) will use it. Because if they use it, they
have to re-licence their code as GPL also, which is unacceptable in many
cases. They all contribute back their modifications though, which is great.

If it's BSD, everybody (5000 people) can and will use it (as it doesn't
require you to contribute back your modifications, and you can have a private
fork). So, we have 5000 companies using X. How many of them are contributing
back? If it's more than 10%, then it's a win. If it's less, it's a loss
(compared to GPL).

In other words, if you GPL you code, your pool of potential contributes has
shrunken substantially.

\---

So, the question is this: which is bigger? the percentage of companies that
can use a GPL-licenced software, or the percentage of companies that are using
BSD-licenced software _and are contributing back their changes_. I think in a
lot of cases, the second one is bigger.

~~~
erichocean
_If it's in public domain, all of them will use it, then make separate forks,
and maintain them (individually, or in groups)._

SQLite is almost exactly analogous to what you described (database, public
domain).

AFAIK, there is no widely-used SQLite fork.

IOW, the situation you describe with every company "maintaining their own
fork" literally _did not happen_ to the software that's the closest case study
in real life to what you describe.

------
gillianseed
There simply can't be a perfect licence, since the licence reflects the
conditions the author/owner value, and well, people value different things,
something licence profileration is a good indication of.

Beyond that, I think we can (imo) see that different types of licences are
more popular in certain types of open source projects. GPL is very popular for
'full application'-style projects, more permissive licences like BSD/LGPL etc
are in my experience more likely to be used in libraries, frameworks,
component code in general.

Antirez wants to promote his personal choice, the BSD-licence, and that's
perfectly fine, other programmers are vocal in their support for other
licences aswell.

One thing struck me though (apart from the complaints concerning 'another'
available licence which felt unecessary), which is that after his words of how
he 'just wants to better the world with his code' his concern of 'what open
source does not recieve enough of' boils down to money, not code
contributions. And as such he suggests that companies should send part of
their earnings the programmer's way, not an unreasonable request by any
measure (although sadly perhaps unrealistic).

It's no surprise then however, that he does not favour GPL, in which the
source code is paramount.

There's no right or wrong here of course, just different preferences, Antirez
has little interest in source code contributions but feels that monetary
contributions are lacking, the GPL on the other hand is all about 'the source
code' and that it (and enhancements made to it) remains open.

Choice is good!

~~~
antirez
I agree 100% with you, but one reason why lately I look at GPL with suspicious
is that it's long and complex enough that I'm not sure every contributor to
GPL fully realizes the implications. It's not just "if you modify you need to
release the modified version" as I believed. The SDR Touch affair clearly
shows it. Also the problem when linking to closed source code.

This idea that it's ok to make money using the GPL in one way (just using the
software as it is, as a service, like when you run a copy of MySQL) and not
into another way (by using a GPL library in your closed source app, just
releasing back what you changed in the GPL code) is very odd IMHO, probably
not in the spirit of code sharing.

~~~
keenerd
Well yeah, the GPL states that it needs to be trivially easy for end-users to
replace the GPL chunk with their own code. Because in the past (Tivo) GPL code
was used against people. Two separate packages is the simplest way to do it.
And I feel the 'no bundling' thing is a little over the top. As long as
rtl_tcp was a separate file that you could easily replace, it seems it fit the
letter of the license.

I know I'm[1] not going to convince you, but the GPL exists for a reason as
does the BSD. BSD puts the rights of the programmer first and foremost. This
is useful at times, but it also lets bad apples ruin a code base. GPL puts
protecting the _code_ first. (And to a lesser extent, the end-user.) In the
end, it means that GPL code is basically immortal because no one person/group
can control the code base.

[1] keenerd from rtl-sdr

------
onemorepassword
Stopped reading at the "GPL folk are anti-commercial" straw man attack. This
is not "a few thoughts", this is just another attempt at starting a flame war.

If you want a constructive discussion, you should consider listening to other
people's arguments.

------
d0mine
What people take for granted:

It is still legal to develop/install your own software on most devices.

You don't have to pay to some corporation for the privilege to be allowed to
distribute your program to other users or even to start developing your
program in most cases.

You may build whatever program you like without thinking whether it confirms
to some corporation's rulebook/opaque acceptance process.

You can create a popular application without using API that is controlled by a
corporation that will pull plug on you if your application becomes too
popular/not aligned with its interests.

\-- What license better enables the above?

Enjoy the freedom to choose whatever license you like. Don't bash GPL in the
process.

------
hakaaaaak
I've given a lot of my time to open source projects for the same reasons
without getting monetary compensation, however:

1\. I don't think that companies will ever give back to a project if there is
no "ask". To do this GitHub, etc. could provide an easier way to take gifts.

2\. The odds of companies giving gifts would seem to be very low even if there
was a big "give" button, because:

a. The person that would typically see the value in giving would have to
provide a very good reason for the need for that gift to the administration of
the company, whose interest is making money, not giving gifts to external
entities. And it needs to look good on the books, too, so in my experience
they would rather for the development time or just pay for a support license.

b. It isn't a gift if you are getting something for it. If it can be proven
that you were funding something that was a product/service, you may need to
pay VAT, etc. on it. The rules and laws surrounding this vary depending on
country and province.

c. Could your gift be considered funding to a project you didn't intend to
fund without documentation saying explicitly what the gift was to fund (and at
that point, if you have that document, then it is no longer a gift- it is
payment for a product or service). You don't want to give a gift for X project
and then find out that it looks like you gave a gift to someone that also
wrote a virus.

d. Instead of a gift, if you are taking payment for services to write
software, then ownership comes into account. Is it work for hire or not? Who
owns the copyright? You may need to have a contract and declare that you are
an individual contractor and that the work is not work for hire. But again the
rules may differ depending on location of the developer and of the business
that wants to "give" to that developer.

~~~
ScottBurson
I think crowdfunding could offer a solution to these problems.

I think there are some special requirements to make this work. First, the
companies that want the work done need to commit to pay before it's done, so
the developer knows how much they can expect to receive. Second, on the other
hand, there needs to be an evaluation step, so the contributors don't have to
pay if the work does not live up to their collective expectations. I don't
think the Kickstarter-style model, where the developer receives all the money
in advance unconditionally, can attract a lot of contributions from
businesses.

And as you say, companies would need to know exactly what they're buying with
this money. Fundamentally, they're buying _influence_ : influence over what
project the developer works on, influence over the details of the work, and
influence over the evaluation process.

All this is a shameless plug for my crowdfunding site:
<https://bountyoss.com/>

------
potomak
I agree with most of your thoughts.

You say: "unfortunately it is not possible to pay bills with pull requests",
that's one of the reasons I'm working on <http://issuehunter.co>, a project to
get paid for OSS development. It's a crowdfunding platform based on GitHub
issues, it should improve and accelerate open source software development
process.

I'll shortly release a beta version and I'd really like to get some of that
big percentage of developers that "do a lot of work in their free time for
passion" as beta testers. Well, there's an alpha version at
<http://issuehunter.herokuapp.com> where you can sign up but it's not fully
functional at the moment.

You can follow <http://twitter.com/issuehunter> to get notified about project
updates.

------
reidrac
I loved the text until he got to the GPL. Honestly, I really don't care what
licence you're using in your project as long as the result is open source
software. It is your work, so use any licence you want, I won't say if _in my
opinion_ it is the right choice or not, and please don't judge me if I choose
a different one.

We're all in the same ship, don't we?

EDIT: I can't understand why this comment is being downvoted. I appreciate the
feedback of the downvotes, but in this case I find it confusing. If you don't
agree, it would be nice if you post a reply.

------
MatthewPhillips
I'm no license expert but isn't MIT the least restrictive license?

~~~
antirez
BSD two-clause and MIT should be substantially equivalent AFAIK.

~~~
ksec
Yes. I have always wanted to ask. So what is the difference between BSD and
MIT?

~~~
qznc
BSD 2-clause = MIT (aka X11)

The BSD 3-clause and 4-clause variants are a little bit more restrictive,
though none of them have this "viral" character of copyleft licences like the
GPL.

I would advise MIT, because it does not have this "how many clause"
confusions.

------
fdr
I don't understand where people are getting this meme that the GPL or FSF has
anything to do with (not) charging for software. It's about protecting the
people you distribute your software to, by affording them more equivalent
rights you have as the author of the code or its derivative works.

Here it is from the horse's mouth:

> <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html>

> Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development.
> Don't waste it!

There exist legitimate practical problems to grouse over, like certain
business models (shrink wrap) made significantly tougher to pursue, or license
compatibility (did you know that the main reason GPL has its incompatibilities
has little to do with copyleft, but rather section 6, which mandates one is
free to use the software for _any purpose with no added restrictions_...that's
why GPL2 is incompatible with GPL3 and Apache2, as both have restrictions with
regard to patents...and JSON, which states that the software must be used for
"good, and not evil", or OpenSSL, which has the infamous BSD advertising
clause), but this idea that the FSF or Free Software movement has anything to
do with making software available for zero cost is a misconception that just
needs to curl up and die. It's about the non-servile interaction between
author and consumer. The author has the right to distribute and modify. So
does the consumer.

I honestly don't understand where people are getting this idea that software
for zero cost is part of the FSF/GPL ideal from other than the fact that,
regrettably, the preferred word of the FSF includes "Free".

------
wyuenho
The GPL is the best free software license to hamper indirect users' freedom to
not license source code under such terms. GPL is also extremely ambiguous for
many types of software, especially when it comes to dynamically typed
languages. We just don't know what "linking" means under those environments.

Having that said, I too have been wondering about the same thing antirez
talked about. I wondering how many OSS developers actually receive back
monetary compensation for their _time_ put into writing their software. I'm
not even talking about compensation in direct relation to the _value_ their
software, which for all I know, if that were the case, Linus and Stallman
should have been as rich as Steve Jobs.

There's definitely a mismatch between what people are _paid for_ and what
people _most valuable for_ in our current industry. I wonder if there was
another GPL version that's better suited for JS/Python/Ruby or whatever will
actually start forcing the companies to hire more OSS developers.

------
lifeisstillgood
I have released under BSD and GPL2 but I understand one thing - unless and
until there is a significant and tested base of case law, in every
jurisdiction I care about, these licenses are just contracts between happy
parties. Angry parties define case law.

Having said that I strongly suspect that the GPL preamble will be the most
common piece of text in code in 2100

~~~
cjbprime
> unless and until there is a significant and tested base of case law, in
> every jurisdiction I care about, these licenses are just contracts between
> happy parties. Angry parties define case law.

There is a significant and tested base of GPL case law. Large corporations
regularly find themselves with no option other than coming into compliance.

The beauty of the GPL as a license, I think, is that there's no way to contest
its validity -- if you're distributing GPL-derived code yet you don't think
the GPL works, then you're distributing someone else's code without any valid
copyright license, and you have lost.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I did think that there was minimal precedent-setting cases. There is the
"world first" of iptables in Munich, Germany, from 2004, but afaik most stuff
is settled quickly - the GPL _looks_ water tight and the PR shitstorm is not
worth the effort. Only companies like D-Link and Cisco have even come close -
so there is precendence in US and Germany for embedded GPL violations.

Not in the UK to my limited knowledge though.

It might be untestable however - everyone wants it to be as it is, almost no-
one benefits enough from breaking it, at least not blatently. Which I think is
the thrust of your second paragraph.?

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Lega...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Legal_status)

* [http://www.twobirds.com/English/News/Articles/Pages/2007/Rev...](http://www.twobirds.com/English/News/Articles/Pages/2007/Review_German_GNU_General_Public_License.aspx)

------
erichocean
This article reminded me of something I've always wondered about software
licenses:

Suppose I write a book of "software licenses" with a short introduction,
copyright page, etc. The rest of the book's content are the actual software
licenses (GPL, BSD, MIT, Apache, the CC variants, etc.), one license per
chapter.

At the end of the book, I include a final chapter with the source code for a
small software program, without any license or copyright declaration. I then
distribute the book on the Internet, for free.

What license is the source code at the end of the book under, if any, for the
people the book is distributed to?

In particular, would any of the GPL licenses necessarily apply, due to their
"virality"? And if not, why not?

Would _all_ licenses apply equally?

~~~
josephlord
I would expect that there would be no license granted to a the source code in
a separate chapter and therefore copyright law would apply.

The GPL "virality" only applies to code that has been published under the GPL
so if you had written the code it wouldn't apply.

Now another form of infectiousness would apply to the code, that of copyright
itself. Anyone who copied the code would be infringing copyright as would
anyone who copied them (although they might have a claim against anyone that
told them they could copy it). Almost all proprietary licenses are at least as
infectious as the GPL.

------
khitchdee
The problem with open source is it's poorly documented making it difficult for
a new person to join the effort. Someone should make an open source project to
document all other open source projects.

~~~
cjbprime
<http://openhatch.org/>

~~~
khitchdee
I think this is in the right direction. What would be cool is if this could be
tied in with the open source repository managers like SourceForge so that soon
as I start a SourceForge project, I get tied in with OpenHatch.

------
mmahemoff
_In my opinion instead what the open source does not get back in a fair amount
is money_

I'm not really sure what the problem is. I don't know the numbers, but I
expect there are thousands of full-time open-source developers. (I was one of
them.) Meaning that anyone who has made a substantial contribution to an
important project could probably find a decently-paying job to work full time
on the project.

There have also been a number of very successful startups based on open-source
efforts from the founders.

------
lifeisstillgood
Something hit me as I read this - that the profusion of frameworks in
languages - where there is no simple and easy way to combine output of one
code in one framework into inputs of another (it's why Django plugins do not
chain to tornado or pyramid plugins - a problem Rails does not have)

It really needs to be something along the http === unix pipe solution that way
we can mostly ensure open source code written by one can be reused by another.

------
qznc
I should have waited [0] for this discussion to submit my licence chooser [1].

Also, I assume he meant BSD 2-clause, not the 3-clause variant.

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5118241> [1]
<http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/licences/>

------
ScottBurson
_a lot of smart coders could provide an economical boost if they could be more
free to write what they love and what a lot of people are probably already
using to make money_

I'm trying to solve this problem with crowdfunding: <https://bountyoss.com/>

------
thruflo
I think the concept of redistribution is more interesting than which license.
By what method could redistribution be achieved? Transparently accounted
voluntary micropayments shared out though the reputation graph of a repo.

Call it, ahem, redis-tribution.

------
mindcrime
I mostly agree with antirez on this. When I was first starting on the Fogbeam
Labs[1] projects, I thought a lot about what license to use. The "stock" model
for "commercial open source" seems to be to use the GPL, with the business
model rooted in the idea of "people pay if they want to use the code without
conforming to the GPL". But somehow that never seemed quite right to me. We're
doing enterprise software, and - by and large - I doubt most of the firms who
would ever use our products would ever want to redistribute them, and would
never wind up having an GPL issues to begin with.

And, like antirez, I just want our stuff to be used, even if the business side
of things never takes off at all. I finally decided to go with the Apache
License v2. The risk, obviously, is that it is now possible for a competitor
to fork our stuff and compete with us, even if their product is closed source.
On the "pro" side, however, is the "business friendly" perception of the ALv2
and the absence of the stigma which is (fairly or unfairly) associated with
the GPL.

As far as the risk of competitors goes... I figure we should, to paraphrase
Steve Blank, "be so lucky as to be successful enough that somebody would
_want_ to fork and compete using our stuff". And if somebody does a closed
source fork, we'll be happy to compete with them anyway, since we believe that
being closed / proprietary is a competitive disadvantage in 2013. Simply, we
believe that the world is moving more and more towards a place where software
is _expected_ to be open source, and where being open source will be part of
the "cost of doing business". Obviously this hasn't yet bubbled up to the
point where the SAS's, or SAP's of the world are being forced to go open
source, but I think that day is coming. Or, at least, the day is coming when
there will be significant OSS competition for SAS, SAP, etc. I'd mention
Oracle, but Oracle is already a big part of the OSS world, after acquiring
Sun. Think about that for a minute... for better or worse, freaking _Oracle_
is one of the biggest players in the "commercial OSS" space.

 _Many developers do a lot of work in their free time for passion, only a
small percentage happens to be payed for their contribution to open source._

Of all the reason I wanted to start a company, and an "open source company" in
particular, this is a huge one... I _want_ very much to one day be able to
hire programmers, lots of programmers, and pay them to work on open source
projects. It's kind of the old saw about "if you can't find the job you want,
create it". I never found the company I'd ideally love to work for, so I want
to create that company, a company that's hacker friendly, largely engineering
driven, and a place where people will be excited to hack on the stuff they're
hacking on.

"But", you might protest, "who wants to work on enterprise software"? Well,
that doesn't necessarily mean what you think it does. "Enterprise software"
doesn't have to be boring. It's not all CRUD screens for updating customer
records. We're talking about social software, machine learning, text
analytics, search, knowledge management, semantic web, and related stuff here.
If you would, for example, find hacking on Lucene or Mahout or Activiti or S4
or Kafka or Hadoop or something of that nature, then we're on the same page.
Heck, or Redis as far as that goes. Redis certainly could be "enterprise
software" in some contexts.

Edit: vis-a-vis some of the other discussions on the post, I just want to be
clear about one thing: At Fogbeam our stance is that if/when we fork an
existing OSS project, our modifications will always remain open and freely
available to all, even if the license doesn't require it. Everything we are
working with _right now_ is code we've written ourselves, and it's all ALv2
anyway, and it's all on Github for the taking. That is the way we expect to
always do things, even if we did, for example a "Fogbeam Distribution of
Hadoop" or something like that. We also develop with an open bug tracker,
publicly available mailing lists, etc. When we talk about being "an open
source company" we're not just talking about the license(s). We're not
interested in a Google/Android model where we build stuff in the dark and then
throw it over the wall in piece-meal fashion and then ignore the community.

[1]: <http://www.fogbeam.com>

------
theverylastuser
I bet that copyright and patent laws make life unfair for a programmer. If he
is protected by a large patent portfolio, he can attempt to make a profit,
otherwise he must beware.

------
ucee054
Counterpoint:

<http://zedshaw.com/essays/why_i_gpl.html>

