

Why is Atom Closed Source? - MrGando
http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/44

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flyinglizard
GH is shooting its own foot here. The fact this is the first issue discussed
before Atom has even been made public makes me think we'll see a lot of
backlash. Eventually GH will cave in and release it under proper license, so
why upset everyone in the first place? Some of GH's appeal relies in its image
as a dev-friendly, "cool" company.

Now, as for Atom, they don't need to worry about forking when its opensourced,
as GH's branding and integration with the present GH functionality will likely
to deter most from using forks.

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lawl
> _it 's not going to be open source but you will be able to look at the code
> and send pull requests. So it's very similar to open source in that you can
> fix bugs and add features if your changes get accepted by Github, but has
> the limitation that you can't redistribute your changes by creating your own
> editor based on Atom if Github should not accept your changes._

So it is open source... Just not free software. Get the terms straight, guys.

~~~
pktgen
Love the double dipping. "GitHub can profit off your code, but you can't do
anything with it and have no rights to it!"

~~~
octo_t
well, its not "your" code is it? GitHub have written it. If you don't want
them to profit off your work, don't submit patches to Atom?

~~~
pktgen
The whole point is they're trying to have it both ways. They want to benefit
from other people's work freely (that's why they're accepting pull requests),
but do not want to let others benefit from their work in the same way.

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stephen
There is a legitimate problem in the software/developer tools ecosystem that
everyone wants everything to be free, which means no one can make money
building it.

I'm actually looking forward to Github's solution to this, given they are
generally pretty smart folk. Perhaps they'll find a model that others can
follow.

~~~
michaelll
On the flip side, they do seem to be making money off of services built upon
the free software licensed Git.

~~~
stephen
True. SaaS FTW.

Git wasn't really their codebase though, although, true, they do employ core
people now (IIRC/AFAIK).

Pessimistically, given that Atom is not initially/wonderfully open source, if
Git _had_ been Github's codebase from day 1, it is likely they would have had
the same "crap, we must charge for this somehow" thoughts they are having now,
and Git as we know it would not have happened.

------
kyrra
This was already posted 13 hours ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7310017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7310017)

------
sequence7
It seems that the answer to this question is quite simply that github want to
make money selling the product which seems reasonable. Why is there so much
outrage, if you only use open source (in the free software definition)
software then simply don't use atom?

~~~
astrowilliam
Totally agree. If you want an open source editor, just don't use atom. It's
not that difficult of a decision to make. I hate it when developers feel
"entitled" to open source software. No, not everything is open source. There
are some pieces of software that you will have to buy.

I use open source software every single day of my life, but I also pay for
software. I pay for Sublime Text, it's worth it. If Atom is better than
Sublime, sure I'll buy it.

In my opinion paying for something is about supporting the devs so they can
continue making great products and feed their families.

It's fine for a company to make a profit, that's why they are a company after
all. In a utopian society everything would be free, but we don't live there.

------
AdrianRossouw
someone mentioned in that thread that the .app file contains a package.json
which states it is under an apache license.

I think the default that npm init gives is BSD, so this seems like a nominally
conscious decision on their part.

I don't really think it would make sense for github (a services company) to
start selling commercial desktop software, but whatever.

