[danenania]

I don't believe we've been served well by defining the term "Open Source" to also necessarily mean "Free". This definition and the accompanying zealotry mainly serves big tech and the cloud providers. Everyone else would be better off if we as an industry also make room for software that is Open (in the sense that the code is freely available), but not Free (you must pay or obtain permission to run it yourself, re-distribute it, or run it for others).

Open is almost universally good. Open means self-hosting, auditability, ability to patch/submit patches for problems yourself, and not being up shit creek if the provider folds.

But Free? Free might not always be bad, but it has a lot of problems. Free = a race to the bottom. Free = ads. Free = selling user data. Free = no one cares enough to maintain it. Free = no one cares enough to promote it. Free = no one can afford to hire a UX designer. Free = ripped off by AWS. Free = bait and switch when the VC gets impatient.

For all these reasons, you should demand access to the code, yes, but you should also be willing to pay the people who write the crucial software you rely on. It's far more sustainable and healthier for our industry.

[soumyadeb]

Stallman keeps saying Free of OSS is "Freedom of Speech" not "Free Beer". However, the "Free Beer" part is also important - there won't be any startup if every software (open-code or not) required big license fees.

Sure, the open-code part is very valuable for all the reasons you mention. However, people writing code altruistically has also been extremely valuable for getting us where we are today.

[danenania]

"Sure, the open-code part is very valuable for all the reasons you mention. However, people writing code altruistically has also been extremely valuable for getting us where we are today."

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. My problem is with the many folks who automatically discount anything that is not "Free Beer". This attitude seems to be quite pervasive, unfortunately.

[soumyadeb]

Fair enough. Having a "OSS-compliant" license which supports "payment to run the sofrware" would help open-source startups like us but I guess "requiring payment" will hurt the "Freedom of Speech" part of OSS.

An analogy would be - you have "Freedom of Speech" in a democracy but it requires a 100$ payment. Maybe?

[danenania]

I'd say the expectation that all software should be free is more similar to expecting all books to be free, and self-righteously declaring that you will only read free books, because any author who tries to make money by writing books is clearly a sell-out who can't be trusted.

Closed source is like saying you aren't allowed to skim the book at the store before buying or share your favorite passages with a friend. That does infringe free speech. An author selling a book does not.

But just as with written media, there's plenty of room for both paid and free options that are both Open in the sense that the code is available. In a healthy ecosystem we'd have a lot of both, and no widespread bias against paid options. If anything businesses should have the opposite bias.

[belorn]

Depending on what you compare it to you get different answers.

We don't have patents or copyright for math. It is not that we want mathematicians to not get paid, or that we don't value math, or that there is no room for both paid and free math. It is that math is such a fundamental building stone that allowing rent seeking in that space would cause significant harm to society, including the advancement of science.

Some software is like a book. You buy it and consume it. You don't buy a book and build a better book. You do have the problem with schools in that children would be harmed if they had to pay for it, so we have libraries and school that buy the books for them so they become "free" for the children. Some nations, like Sweden, also have laws that demands that book publishers send books to libraries and the money the copyright owner is set by the state.

If we treat software as math then it should be free. If we treat software as books it should be semi-free for those that needs it and can't afford it.

[amenod]

> Stallman keeps saying Free of OSS is "Freedom of Speech" not "Free Beer". However, the "Free Beer" part is also important - there won't be any startup if every software (open-code or not) required big license fees.

Just wanted to point out the problem with this reasoning - "big license fees" are not necessary when the software is not Open Source (TM). One counter-example is Commons Clause which is not Open Source (TM), but still allows users normal use freedoms (self hosting, inspecting code, repairing and improving it, sharing modifications), but doesn't allow re-selling the product to 3rd parties. The irony is that it got a lot of bad press. I think Richard Stallman / FSF called it "particularly nasty"? Unfortunately, with all the good that FOSS has done, the zealotry that comes with it makes finding an optimal solution very difficult.

I'm not suggesting that Commons Clause (or BSL, or Fair License, or any other hybrid licenses for that matter) should be used everywhere, but they do solve a real problem in a user-friendly way (as a user, I would actually prefer a hybrid license to open core).

Congratulations to Sentry for choosing the BSL, I hope it serves them well!

[thinkmassive]

I recently saw a quote that said "Enterprise software is free as in puppy" which sums it up pretty accurately.

[PretzelFisch]

I have trouble with startups leaching off "free as in beer" code. The least they could do is pay an open source license with the same level of equity they pay to their employees.

Startups pop up to make money they shouldn't shy away from disruption just because there head start on product launch might cost some money.

[diffeomorphism]

If you want this to change, then you should not use "free" when you mean "gratis" or "freeware". Free software explicitly only cares about freedom and encourages you to charge as much as you want/can: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

[ensignavenger]

There is plenty of room for what you describe. You just shouldn't call it Open Source, because Open Source has a well-established definition already. You could call it Shared Source, or Source Available, or some one suggested Business Source. Whatever you want to call it (that isn't already taken), but don't lie in your marketing efforts by calling it open source.

[kerkeslager]

> I don't believe we've been served well by defining the term "Open Source" to also necessarily mean "Free".

I don't think we've done that. On the contrary, Stallman and many other free software advocates specifically distinguish between open source software and free software.

To add to the confusion, I think you're talking about free as in beer (gratis) rather than free as in freedom (libre). The latter is what most free software advocates are talking about.

I would argue that all of the problems you mention are caused by open source software that is not free (libre) even if it is free (gratis).

[danenania]

While this may be technically true, in practice these two types of "freedom" are almost always conflated. Anyone who posts something that is "libre" but not "gratis" will be met with lots of "why isn't it FOSS?" and "here's a FOSS alternative" comments. This is the (imo) self-defeating attitude I'm referring to.

[kerkeslager]

Well, if something is libre it's hard for it not to also be gratis, because someone can just take your code and run it elsewhere. So there's understandable skepticism when something is libre but not gratis, because the suspicion is that the creator will retract the libre-ness of their code.

I see the trend you're talking about, but I also see an inverse trend: people think that if software isn't funded it won't happen. Particularly on Hacker News: there's a segment of Hacker News who either can't comprehend or refuse to acknowledge that there might exist motivations besides money. I'm not accusing you of this, at least not to that extreme, but I'm saying that some people have that attitude, and it's certainly informing what you're saying to some extent.

My perspective as someone who has written some open source software, is that I did it for fun, to solve my own problems, or out of some idealistic drive to push humanity forward. Money was a foregone conclusion, but I wrote the software anyway. I might feel differently if I had written anything significant enough that it had a wide user base of profitable companies, but it's my impression that people don't write software and make it free because they want money.

I'm not saying we shouldn't support our free software contributors. We should, it's a nice thing to do. All I'm saying is that fear about the incentive structure of open source software isn't really warranted. Free (libre) and free (gratis) software will continue to be built regardless of whether they are ever funded, by people who are well-aware that they may never receive any money for it.