

Ask HN, again: Do Companies Exploit Open Source And Programmers Are Plagiarists? - csbartus

Someone had a good technical post on HN later this week which went into a flame war. Unfortunately some important issues were missed on the thread which might be interesting for hackers:<p>1. Do (VC backed) companies exploit open source?<p>"For a VC backed firm it is entirely about ever increasing revenues to give the illusion of growth so that shareholders will invest and drive the price of a stock as high as possible. It is not in their best interest to not do an IPO. They want money now, as much of it as possible, and they aren’t interested in good technology investments or people.<p>What they want is tons of free technology they can hide from investors. They want that technology all run by people who didn’t write any of the software so that these employees can’t claim ownership later.<p>This nearsighted management, combined with limited funding at the start, means that these companies exploit open source. They will use it, make their money, and then run off when they’re done. Which, actually, is totally alright, because that’s just how things are, and honestly if you’re a company looking to make money that way, then that’s what you should do."<p>2. Do programmers are plagiarists?<p>"Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what you’re using? How many of you tell investors that your entire operation is based on something one guy wrote in a few months? How many of you out there go to management and say, “Hey, you know there’s this guy Zed who wrote the software I’m using, why don’t we hire him as a consultant?”"
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fauigerzigerk
I don't know, isn't that just a lot of phraseology obscuring the simple fact
that consenting adults have made a deliberate decision to make software
available under permissive licenses, hoping to benefit in some indirect way?

How much you have to tell anybody about using a particular piece of software
and whether you can use it for commercial purposes, that's all in the
licenses. I don't understand the fuss and I don't understand what not
exploiting OSS would look like or what not employing Zed Shaw has to do with
plagiarism. I just don't get it.

I do understand Zed's anger because he has put in a lot of quality work for
very little in return. That's because he gave his work away with no obligation
for anyone to even mention him. And he has given his work away to people who
don't seem to care much about quality of implementation. I think he should
consider writing closed source software, shocking as it may be. I don't think
there are any moral or ethical conclusions for OSS whatsoever and all the talk
about plagiarism and venture capital is nonsensical in my opinion.

OSS is a good tool for learning, for passing on knowledge, for getting into a
market and for big corporation's to ruin the competitions income stream. At
the end of the day you need to sell your open source software or yourself to
BigCorp. That's the only way to monetize it and everybody should be aware of
this simple fact by now.

~~~
csbartus
> How much you have to tell anybody about using a particular piece of software
> and whether you can use it for commercial purposes, that's all in the
> licenses. I don't understand the fuss and I don't understand what not
> exploiting OSS would look like or what not employing Zed Shaw has to do with
> plagiarism. I just don't get it.

Many of us are illiterated in use of these licenses. Even a contributor like
Zed. I could imagine a generally available rule of thumb on licensing for open
source: something like dual licensing. My code is free for all peer hackers
but not for big corporations.

Is that something available? Ie. a variation/combination of CC or GPL or BSD
or MIT?

~~~
adharmad
How do you distinguish between hackers and corporations. A small startup, can
in a couple of years of time become a large company, which can be bought by a
bigger corporation.

Where do you draw the line?

That's the reason I think that GPL/dual licensing is the best. If it is a
casual hacker, he shouldn't mind reciprocating. If it is a company, it
shouldn't mind paying.

~~~
csbartus
Okay, understood: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-licensing>. And thanks!

Just one question: Is dual licensing a common pattern or many other licenses
are used frequently (BSD, CC)? Just wondering if there is such a protective
and still free, clear licensing why people are not using it as a de facto
standard?

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Because people have different goals. "People" like IBM do not have the same
interests as people like Zed Shaw. IBM made Eclipse available under a non
viral license in order to combat VisualStudio (and maybe Sun).

They want as many corporations as possible to build on Eclipse to take the
wind out of VS's sails. They are not interested in making money from Eclipse.
They are interested in limiting the influence of Microsoft on their enterprise
customers. So the license is a strategic tool.

Linux is kind of an accident in that regard. Linus chose a license long before
the big corporations found that they had to support Linux after they had
successfully crushed each others' Unix business in a decade long war of
attrition.

So Linux is GPL, but fortunately they found a way to interpret GPL in a way
that didn't preclude closed source software on top of it. It's all in their
definition of "linking".

Where this ingenious trick doesn't work, in the device drivers space, the
whole thing breaks down, which every Linux on Laptop user has been able to
experience for many many years. A single non-cooperative device manufacturer
can prevent sleep and resume, power management and many other functions to not
work properly for many users. So Linux has become almost exclusively a server
platform, contrary to Linus Torvalds personal desires, but in agreement with
the BigCorp strategy.

------
cjg
Of course companies exploit (as in make use of) open source software - it's
free (as in beer and speech).

As a developer, using open source without proclaiming that to the rest of your
company is hardly plagarism.

Unless a licence forces a company / developer to broadcast their usage then
that won't happen in the majority of cases.

------
Edinburger
> "Hey, you know there’s this guy Zed who wrote the software I’m using, why
> don’t we hire him as a consultant?"

This seems wrong. For example, let's say we use Apache webserver and Rails.
They aren't our core business. I really don't want to need core contributors
from Apache webserver and Rails to help us use them. Now, if our core business
was building a new server or framework on top of Apache or Rails respectively,
that would be a different matter.

------
lhorie
Are programmers are plagiarists?

Generalization. Some will happily copy and paste stuff whenever they can,
which technically is plagiarism for the particular snippet. Using something
that was given out for free, or reading that code and reusing the same ideas /
patterns / code style / algorithm / whatever for something bigger and
different isn't necessarily plagiarism.

As the saying goes, "copy one person, it's plagiarism, copy many people, it's
reasearch".

I'd say that the part of the blame on the ordeal of not getting paid for your
free work is that most open source projects don't make any effort to say that
they want money (assuming they do).

The only example of someone doing that off the top of my head (I'm sure there
are others) is Jack Slocum's Ext. He had a commercial license from day one and
his site clearly explains who it applies to.

Complaining on a blog that people may or may not read / care about / agree
with isn't exactly legally binding (or whatever the correct term is) and it
doesn't inspire enough professionalism (for me anyways) to feel comfortable
doing business with.

------
ErrantX
> Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what
> you’re using?

I do! He loves it because it is free (with the caveat he adds "be careful").

We've offered money to OS maintainers of projects we've made use of in the
past (either to consulty or, more usually, to develop some features for us) -
mostly they refuse (usually politely).

------
stonemetal
>>Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what
you’re using?

Does my boss care? No. Do I tell my boss that I used the standard library
instead of writing my own string class? No. In software you make use of other
software all the time having done so is not some super special event that
requires an epic poem be written about the original author. Second the
original author gets to say how you use his stuff, if he want attribution all
he has to do is require it. The rules are clearly defined when you put stuff
out there for others to use and ask them to do certain things but not others
why be surprised when they don't do others?

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jamesbritt
Re item 2: I talk all the time about my use of OSS in my products and when I
do contract work. I don't list the names of the hundreds of people who have
contributed, though, unless I'm talking to other geeks, because most other
people don't give a crap about who wrote what. Also, nothing I have is "based
on" anything written by one guy in a few months. I don't think I know a single
person or company for whom that is true.

------
j_baker
Of course everyone exploits open source software. That's what's so awesome
about it: you can exploit it all you want. The alternative is to buy Windows
and get exploited yourself. (Full disclosure: I'm not a windows-phobe. I just
believe in credit where credit is due)

------
jacquesm
Companies will take an advantage wherever they can, using open source is no
exception. I venture that almost none of the really large web properties that
we have today would have gotten off the ground without open source.

------
skwiddor
I've been hired twice because I wrote open source code.

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devijvers
Are you aware that plagiarism is a crime? Hence, without being convicted
nobody is a plagiarist.

It's like saying: are programmers burglars? Well, have they been convicted for
burglary? No? Duh ...

~~~
jacquesm
Having been convicted for burglary and having committed burglary are two
distinct things.

It is possible to be -wrongfully- convicted of burglary without ever having
done a burglary, it is possible to be rightfully convicted when you've done it
and you can 'get away with it' if you have done it but you have not been
convicted.

