Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by leovailati 1919 days ago
Just wondering here, is there any way to protect oneself from that type of situation while at the same time keeping the source code open? Obviously, the name and logo are trademarked, but a third party could rebrand the program while using the same underlying source code.
3 comments
la_fayette 1919 days ago
The advanced features seem to be a good protection. Also the cost ist quite low, if you competing in the same market could you offer the service cheaper? I guess not. Moreover it is critical software for small businesses, I think many would pay for long term support on the original software...
link
berkes 1919 days ago
Whether you can offer open source software cheaper, depends a.o. on scale.

Which is what AWS used to outprice elastic and redis.

link
bityard 1919 days ago
Yes, it's called the GPL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License

Under the GPL, a competitor can certainly take the code, rebrand it, and sell it as their own but they are required to provide the full source code of whatever "borrowed" GPL code they distribute to the end user. This ensures that the source (and whatever changes/additions are made) cannot be taken and locked up by someone else, which is possible with more permissive licenses like the BSD and MIT licenses.

link
unnouinceput 1919 days ago
Open source == no protection. You rely on the morals of your customers. At any time somebody bigger than you can take your free source, modify it, make it better because they have already a base and sell it as closed proprietary software and you can't do anything about it.
link
dwohnitmok 1919 days ago
> sell it as closed proprietary software

This is not true for all open source licenses. Copyleft licenses such as the GPL and its variants prevent this.

Someone can distribute your software instead of you and thereby lock you out of any profits there, especially if they undercut your price (in the limit case they can distribute your paid software for free), but certain open source licenses prevent retroactive locking as proprietary software.

link
galaxyLogic 1918 days ago
> rely on the morals of your customers ...

If they are just abiding by the license, would that be considered "immoral"?

link