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by zapita
2220 days ago
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Crossplane is open-source. You're moving the goal posts on what is "real open-source" in a way that is not reasonable. Do you also consider Gitlab or Red Hat products to be "not real open-source"? Because they are also controlled by a single commercial entity, yet nobody seems to question their open-source credentials. > I know that it's important that Upbound makes some money so that it can keep maintaining Crossplane (see poor Docker) but ... This is exactly why it's hard for companies like Docker to make money. Giving away a free product is not enough. Open-sourcing all of it is not enough. No, you have to create a bullshit "neutral" governance that ensures small companies like Upbound and Docker are kept in check by Google, Microsoft, IBM, and other giant corporations that can afford to pack committees, hire more contributors, and spend more marketing dollars to associate themselves with the brand. Those foundations are not about making the projects more open at all. They have become a form of "protection money". Give your project away to a big foundation, indirectly controlled by large corporate sponsors who happen to be your competitors - or see your project sabotaged by people like you calling it "not really open", "evil" and "controlled by the VCs". |
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> Do you also consider Gitlab or Red Hat products to be "not real open-source"?
Would you trust Gitlab so much that you'd build your own business on top of its open code and compete with Gitlab? I'd use Gitlab in my company but I wouldn't build on top of its code and hope that the future releases won't break my product.
> This is exactly why it's hard for companies like Docker to make money.
I agree with you on how hard it is for these companies to make money but then don't make money this way, what can I say? I'm just saying that what we call open-source needs to be neutral and that doesn't necessarily mean Google, Microsoft etc. will crush the company. Not a single open source project is crushed by those if they didn't allow it. It's all about competition and they're making a choice. Some say if you can't compete then collaborate (hand off some parts), some just keep working without them; maybe fail and no one hears about them even if it was a great idea or it was too good for those companies to be destroyed.