
Post-Open Source - luu
https://www.boringcactus.com/2020/08/13/post-open-source.html
======
amadeuspagel
Don't even know where to start here. First of all, another fight about Free
Software and Open Source. The licenses are the same. There's no point in
arguing about why people put code under those licenses, whether because of
freedom or practical reasons. For most people it's probably both.

Why is open source dead? Because mozilla layed of a bunch of people? If only
their code where open source, so that everyone else could keep working on the
projects they were working on. Because github makes money? And is closed
source? The writing about that is particularly revealing. "if they believed
open source was in principle better, they’d be open source themselves." See,
there are two alternatives: Either they really believe in open source, or they
see open source is something suckers do that they profit from. But in fact
github open sourced plenty of important code, like the ruby git library.
Thanks. Maybe it's not a dichotomy, not something that you "really believe in"
or not?

It's possible today, both on desktop and on a smartphone, to run a fully open
source OS. That's a huge victory by itself, and also makes those still using
closed systems freer by putting a limit on what the corportaions running them
can get away with.

The author dismisses any kind of open source that isn't on a sacred crusade
against closed source software as corporate friendly, lacking idealism. But I
think that even if there are several closed systems based on open source
competing (like a lot of closed source browsers based on an open source
rendering engine) that's much better then having just one closed source
browser.

So yes, open source really does make people more free, partly by making it
possible for dedicated people to run a fully open source system and browser,
partly by increasing competition.

~~~
AstralStorm
It is not possible to run an open source OS for a broader definition of OS on
almost any hardware out there.

You can run parts of an open source kernel and maybe open source user space.
But forget about fully open drivers (binary blobs rule), especially remember
resident platform blobs like Intel ME. The remaining exceptions are librem and
some hacked thinkpads or chromebooks equipped with coreboot.

And let's not ignore the fact that most cellphones are locked up or have
hardware without sane drivers, only ones provided in binary form. Not to
mention the kernel running on the DSP to handle modem. Or other things.

Even higher level, just Android, try running its applications without Google
proprietary services. While there is a reverse engineered version, it always
plays catch up...

~~~
fartcannon
Lineage OS works like a charm without google play services. I haven't used
those services in years.

------
zelphirkalt
> i’d say free software died a while ago, and open source went horribly right.

It's rather the opposite. It's a slow grind, but slowly more free software is
at the basis of things, due to its license nature and it growing more mature.
At the same time I think the failure of open source software (if you can call
it that ) was predictable and predicted long ago.

I am not sure you can call it a failure of open source, if open source never
made sure, that some ideals are followed when using open source software.
Perhaps we can talk about ideals and ideas in people's heads and what they
thought open source was.

~~~
smartmic
I would go one step further and say that among the mentioned post-open source
alternatives, free licenses are the most mature, legally sound and promising
candidates to fight corporate exploitation of developers.

------
JoshTriplett
The article seems to gloss right past Free Software and copyleft licenses
based on the claim that some copyleft licenses like GPLv3 aren't widespread
because companies don't like and won't use them, then proceeds to opine on
what license terms best annoy companies (profanity, ambiguity, lack of
licensing, etc). And yet there's no consideration given to actually using
copyleft licenses like GPLv3 or GPLv2, just the repeated assertion of the
death of "Free Software".

If a copyleft license is sufficiently strong that some people don't want to
use it under those terms, some subset of those people may be willing to pay
for an alternate license. (The set of people who wouldn't pay for an
alternative to a copyleft license seem even less likely to consider any
completely non-standard incompatible-with-the-universe license.) If you want
to use a license that may potentially lose you a few over-cautious corporate
users, but which protects a community of users and the possibility of revenue,
a copyleft license like GPLv3 or GPLv2 may make sense.

Many of the people using permissive licenses don't work for companies, or
otherwise don't have anything that might block them from using a copyleft
license. Many people seem to worry about using a copyleft license because it
might mean some people can't or won't use the software. I've even seen
companies who would actually benefit from a copyleft license just not-think
about the possibility of using one because they have a vague impression that
Apache or MIT is what they _should_ use. It wasn't that they considered and
dismissed copyleft; they just didn't even think about the possibility and
weigh it as a potential option.

(Also, last time I saw a survey of licenses on popular software repositories,
GPLv3 was about as popular as GPLv2. LLVM vs GCC is a relevant and memorable
problem, but those two projects hardly represent the whole landscape of
software licensing. LLVM also gained popularity for reasons beyond just
licensing, such as recognizing the value of extensibility and providing
compiler framework libraries, much sooner than GCC did.)

I'm not going to say "use copyleft for everything!", and there _are_ good
reasons to use permissive licenses (such as propagating standards or releasing
tiny projects). But next time you're releasing a project, give it some actual
consideration. If you _want_ to release something under a permissive license,
and that's a deliberate decision, by all means do so; but don't just do so "by
default" without thinking about it, and without thinking whether the
permissive-by-default culture is actually in your best interests.

------
AstralStorm
I don't agree with characterization of Mozilla seeking profit over impact.

It's literally being destroyed by Chrome and Chromium derived browsers, with
Google now in almost the same position as Microsoft used to be, and Firefox
market share falling to single digits. They can barely fund operations because
of that.

It seems that FOSS ran by a small foundation cannot compete with open source
ran by one of the biggest corporations in the world. Which has nothing to do
with it being free software or not.

------
jacknews
To me, the intent of open-source, free, whatever, is simply that " _my_
computer should do _my_ bidding, not someone else's".

In the last couple of weeks I've installed an OS X machine, and a couple of
windows machines, both of which insisted I provide phone numbers, emails, or
credit cards in order to install just the basic OS.

Linux is already a clear win for privacy and the principle that my computer
is, my computer, not a client terminal to a corporate "ecosystem" (with
"users" obviously being the plants, or at best, herbivores).

------
ndesaulniers
> the linux kernel, along with a lot more stuff, declared it was sticking with
> the GPLv2 and not moving to the GPLv3. when your movement says “here is the
> new version of The Right Way To Do Things” and several of your largest
> adherents say “nah fuck you we’re going with the old version” that is not a
> good sign.

Some public comments Linus has made about the choice to stick with GPLv2 over
GPLv3: [https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU](https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU).

> and also most of the people using Linux right now are using it by accident,
> distributed as ChromeOS or Android

Also, those kernels are now built with LLVM.
[https://clangbuiltlinux.github.io/](https://clangbuiltlinux.github.io/) (not
all devices in existence, but all new ones for the past few releases of both
distros and many old chromebooks that received recent kernel upgrades).

~~~
de_watcher
Well, they've noticed how GPL is bad for their EEE strategy, so they've
grasped the first occasion to fight it: can't do much with the code that is
GPLv2, but can hinder the license update.

~~~
AstralStorm
Not exactly. GPLv3 has serious problems with proprietary hardware. As stated,
it would prevent current GPU drivers and many current network device drivers
from being possible to use, due to irreplaceable closed source binary blobs
and on device cryptographic authentication of said binary blobs.

Which is essentially the same as tivoization...

Immediately nvidia-driver and radeon drivers would be illegal.

~~~
electricant
Which is not actually a bad thing per se.

Those drivers do work better than their free/open-source counterpart but are
hard to install (especially if secure boot is enabled) and do not play nice
with the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem.

~~~
AstralStorm
No, it would be illegal to install those drivers. Not hard at all.

Radeon drivers specifically play nice with the ecosystem, but they feature
crypto firmware blobs.

Network drivers tends to be good neighbors too.

Nvidia drivers cause more of a problem, as do ugly smartphone GLES drivers.
(Not to mention very custom network chipsets there.)

------
mathnmusic
Most attempts to "fix open-source funding" \- such as GitHub sponsors or
OpenCollective are misguided. Bulk of the value of FOSS is being taken by
corporates, not individuals. So expecting individuals to support the
creation/maintenance of FOSS is futile. And corporates are RoI-driven. Charity
will only go so far.

------
jfax
Author made the fatal mistake of thinking "access to source code" is the
specific, concerted goal of Free software, not you know... software freedom.
In a world of forced software updates, elusive and feared "algorithms", etc,
it doesn't seem like a particularly "esoteric" goal to me.

------
warpech
The author added a human fart sound that plays when the visit comes from HN.

    
    
      // Hacker News is bad.
      if (document.referrer.startsWith("https://news.ycombinator.com")) {
          document.location = "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Human_fart.wav"
      }
    

If you don't want to have anything to do with the HN people, then who is your
ally in tech?

~~~
DoctorNick
people who aren't self-absorbed enough to think that their preferred newssite
is the center of all activity in their industry?

------
warpech
Maybe you'll downvote, but I'll be that guy: It's very hard to read a text
that is written in all lowercase. I don't understand why the author would
choose to do that.

The topic of this article is very close to me but the style of writing makes
it too hard to read.

------
hardwaresofton
F/OSS isn't dead. Capitalism _does_ consume almost everything it touches, and
you should have seen it coming.

The easy fix is to start using the F in F/OSS more (AGPL, etc), and force
anyone who wants to use and extend your software for commercial use to pay up.
Take that money, and invest it back in F/OSS software if you want -- use it to
buy treats for your dog if you want. If you want wider reach and use for your
software (which in a sense is even more "free" for some meaning of the word),
then use the GPLv2/MIT license or other such permissive licenses.

The hard fix is trying to win over hearts and minds when it comes to OSS-
washing and the marketing pushes/strategies companies employ these days to get
people to write/maintain their software for them. The problem here is that
some people are absolutely fine with the current situation -- many get
absurdly cheap (essentially free) meaningfully complex software even if it's
basically shareware from corporations, and are fine with that. Many also are
fine creating software that is permissively licensed because people write
software for all sorts of reasons, fame and recognition being one.

It does make me glad to see this narrative coming up on HN though -- the
corporatization of OSS has been happening for a long time now and needs more
attention drawn to it. Every company has a right to try to make money with
software, but some are more well-intentioned than others (and they usually
suffer from a harder route to market viability).

------
tyingq
I don't feel like extrapolating Mozilla's problems into a general problem with
open source makes sense.

Mozilla is in an odd position, with most of their revenue coming from their
largest competitor. I think that's pretty unique.

------
frabbit
[https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-
ip/](https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/)

~~~
bergstromm466
Thanks for sharing this link!

------
ece
I think the author made some good points worth thinking about, but I would
somewhat disagree with the conclusion. Some of the bigger FOSS projects left
out of the write-up would be Chromium which is BSD+others, and Java is GPL, so
it shouldn't be surprising that corporations figured out which license would
help them the most and went with that. Likewise, I think people should pick
the right license for the job (Something along the lines of BSD/Apache for a
system lib, and GPL for user-facing software), and experimentation in this
area can only be good. License zero, ethical source, Tidelift, and some
license/project proliferation with POSS all seem like they're going in
different directions if anywhere, which might also make sense as there is more
branching out of FOSS in general.

FWIW, I think the 4 freedoms reinforce what end users want, or maybe used to
want: compatibility and interoperability. The big companies somehow managed to
convince users against having those two things in the name of a few
conveniences as the author himself pointed out. Gatekeepers can only be
stopped if users reject them, and the GPL isn't so bad a tool for doing
exactly that.

~~~
ece
To add something else, POSS focusing on developers (Tidelift, L0) instead of
just user freedoms, seems completely the right thing to be doing.

------
shock
> only programmers care if they have access to the source code, and most
> people aren’t programmers. and i am a programmer, and i don’t give a shit.

What a horribly short sighted view...

What happens when the company stops developing the software for your device?

~~~
inglor_cz
Depends on the device...

Symbian^3 was moved to a free and open licence (Eclipse Public License) for
some time. The ecosystem died anyway.

~~~
shock
Yes, but as a programmer if you had the source code and the inclination you
could still make modifications to suit your needs.

~~~
inglor_cz
I was a programmer at that time and I was even reasonably well-versed in the
rather arcane dialect of C++ that was used in Symbian programming.

Making a non-trivial change to an OS and deploying it successfully to a device
on my own would be a challenge, though. Once Nokia stopped paying the internal
developers and Symbian programming forum was closed, there were no gurus
capable of answering questions.

And in case of a very complicated OS whose internal workings were very
different from other OSes out there, having no vibrant community of experts =
death, unfortunately.

------
bad_user
> _" around the same time, free software organizations were starting to
> successfully sue companies who were using free software but not complying
> with the license. so big companies, like Apple, saw new restrictions coming
> in at the same time as more aggressive enforcement, and said “well shit, we
> want to base our software on these handy convenient tools like GCC but we
> can’t use GPLv3 software while keeping our hardware and software as locked
> together as we’d like.” so they started pouring money into a new C compiler,
> LLVM, that was instead open source."_

This is only half the story.

The other half is that GCC is a monolithic app, built in a style that makes it
hard to contribute to. GCC was (maybe it still is), ironically, defective by
design in order to force companies to extend GCC, instead of building plugins
that could be distributed as proprietary.

Either way, LLVM's license is still Free Software, still Open Source. And
LLVM's permissive license is actually proof that you don't necessarily need a
copyleft license to get companies to contribute. And we've got a whole
ecosystem of such projects built with permissive licenses, hello BSD/OS.

Free Software and Open Source never meant just copyleft. That's a
misconception.

\---

> " _what really killed free software? ... in a word, capitalism._ "

It's funny that the author says that, because it is capitalism that enabled
Free Software to exist in the first place.

 _Copyleft_ wouldn't be possible without the existing copyright law.

Also the biggest contributors to FOSS projects have been companies. Not
individuals in their spare time, not the state, but companies motivated by
profit. Just like how technological innovations are often driven by companies
motivated by profit. And yes, we could have a discussion about perverse
incentives, and how we could avoid that.

But I was born in communism, I know how not living in capitalism is actually
like, and unless people can suggest actual solutions, instead of a rant
inspired by Marx & friends, we've got nothing to talk about. I wish articles
with such bad takes would start with the conclusion, so I wouldn't waste my
time.

~~~
DoctorNick
>Either way, LLVM's license is still Free Software, still Open Source. And
LLVM's permissive license is actually proof that you don't necessarily need a
copyleft license to get companies to contribute. And we've got a whole
ecosystem of such projects built with permissive licenses, hello BSD/OS.

It's also enables proprietary extensions, easily enabling companies to make
compilers for their proprietary languages, see CUDA. That seems pretty
contrary to the mission of free software.

Also, just curious, how many patches have FreeBSD and co. actually received
back from Sony and Apple in the past few years? They still seem to be
struggling to add features to the point of begging for 802.11ac support.

------
TaylorAlexander
The hacker news crowd isn’t too friendly to leftist content but I wanted to
say I appreciate this article. It all makes sense to me and it gives me
something to think about. I agree that licenses can not be used to force good
behavior and we need to focus on changing norms. I choose licenses like CC0
for my work and focus on how to survive regardless of what big companies may
do with the code. It’s tough to navigate but I think successfully doing open
source is worth the experimentation.

------
alexellisuk
Some very thoughtful points. Also echoed in "Working in Public" by Nadia
Eghbal

------
hoseja
Ethics are only evolutionarily sound if cooperation among agents increases
fitness. Since corporations seemingly do not need to cooperate, ethics indeed
are harmful to their chances of proliferation.

------
snvzz
It's silly how the article idolizes Free Software and the 4 freedoms.

If only if they looked at OSI's open source definition, they would have
realized the same 4 freedoms are held in it.

------
AshamedCaptain
Ironically Mozilla is rather more of the "corporate friendly open source" than
anything else, making this look like pure clickbait.

------
taatparya
Perhaps limiting use by companies or individuals with income less than one
million dollars directly or indirectly would help.

------
ace8154
What about Creative Commons Zero (CC0)?

Its intention is to be an internationally-recognized license equivalent to
public domain

------
dusted
Every time X has more users than Y, Y is declared dead, no matter if Y has as
many or more users as always..

------
Thev00d00
The lack of capitals at the start of sentences....

~~~
Ciantic
Yes. I think I haven't noticed such a long form writing style before. I bet
it's intentional.

What makes it really difficult for me is my eyes can't seem to anchor anywhere
when I read. It's like reading a big phrase, or like speaking without taking a
breath.

~~~
Semaphor
In addition you have to look closely to see if there’s a . or , to know if
it’s a new sentence or not. Horrible UX.

------
electricant
Very good points. Made me rethink about the whole GPL licensing model. It may
be worth considering the WTFPL license and or the JSON license in the near
future.

~~~
JoshTriplett
One of the few popular pieces of software affected by the JSON license
_finally_ managed to eliminate it: [http://mikepennisi.com/blog/2020/jshint-
watching-the-ship-si...](http://mikepennisi.com/blog/2020/jshint-watching-the-
ship-sink/)

I sincerely hope no new project ever uses that license.

~~~
cmroanirgo
Thanks for the link. I'd not quite understood the nuanced rejection of JSON.
That "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" equates to how...

> _Legally-conscious objectors aren’t betraying their own dastardly
> motivations; they’re refusing to enter into an ambiguous contract. Put
> differently: they’re not saying, “I’m an evildoer,” they’re saying, “I don’t
> understand what you want.”_

~~~
JoshTriplett
Right. Among other potential issues, such a license is effectively revocable
based on someone declaring some particular action or entity "evil" (which is
heavily subjective). A license that included the term "this license may be
revoked by the author at any time" would also not be FOSS.

~~~
bitwize
Open source licenses are revocable anyway under U.S. law because they are bare
licenses, not contracts.

~~~
nrr
I'm not sure how to search for this to verify your claim, but I'm intrigued.
Do you happen to have a citation to a ruling that you can share?

~~~
bitwize
This has not been tested in court so far as I know.

(Please do not cite _Artifex v. Hancom_. Special conditions prevailed in that
case that do not apply, in general, to all software under a nonexclusive open
source license.)

Generally speaking, under common law, in order for an agreement to have the
force of a contract, there must be an offer, acceptance, and consideration.
Since most people acquire open source through a download, there is no
consideration (monetary value) being remitted to the author of the software,
and hence the license does not have the force of a contract binding on the
author. The license is thus a bare license, and the author has the right to
revoke it at any time. Unfortunately that's how contract law works in common-
law jurisdictions, and we are in for some nasty surprises once this actually
does get tested in court.

Civil-law jurisdictions, for example Germany, do not necessarily require
consideration in order for a contract to be binding. Open source licenses such
as the GPL can be binding contracts in Germany.

------
bitwize
Open source is hosed because a bare license is revocable at any time by the
licensor. If your business depends on an NPM library written by some schlub on
the internet, and that schlub decides they don't like you, then they can
revoke your license and sue for copyright infringement, not to mention
preventing you from operating legally as long as you depend on their software.

It gets even worse if the "schlub" is an entity like Google -- and you appear
on their radar and they decide you're a competitor.

~~~
frenchy
> Open source is hosed because a bare license is revocable at any time by the
> licensor.

I haven't the slightest clue what you're taking about. You can change your
license on future versions, but you can't retroactively change the conditions
of an offer that's already been accepted.

If you're talking about the ability to delete published packages from NPM,
that's entirely unrelated to licensing.

~~~
CameronNemo
This is what is being referred to. I have never seen an actual case of it
occurring, only threats.

[https://lulz.com/linux-devs-threaten-killswitch-coc-
controve...](https://lulz.com/linux-devs-threaten-killswitch-coc-
controversy-1252/)

~~~
bitwize
MikeeUSA may be an odious little prick, but he is 100% correct in his legal
analysis, and cites actual legal experts to support his case.

