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by scrollaway 1100 days ago
> It doesn't matter one whit whether people can "pay the bills". It's totally irrelevant to the discussion. If you can't make money making open source software, then go get a job.

What a terrible fucking take.

First of all yes it matters. OSS developers not being able to pay their bills despite maintaining software used by trillion dollar corps has been in the news several times. It’s an ongoing issue and talked about a lot.

Second, “go get a job” is essentially “stop doing open source”. As in “I would rather have you write closed source software than source available/open core”.

This isn’t your decision to take. This isn’t your life to live. And this isn’t your culture to dictate.

Also, you live in a bubble if you think the majority of people give a crap about the OSI definition. I say this as someone who does give a crap (though not that big of one).
1 comments
kiba 1100 days ago
We should absolutely be finding business models that work for open source but not compromising the ethic of it, like open core.

It probably just won't make a ridiculous amount of money for open source developers. It's the tradeoff you have to make when deciding to write open source or proprietary software.

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godelski 1100 days ago
> We should absolutely be finding business models that work for open source but not compromising the ethic of it

I don't think anyone is arguing this. We're only arguing that "Source Available" is an extremely reasonable interpretation of the words "Open Source."

And I'll be honest, I don't see much of a difference between a Common Clause License and MIT. For the average person, they are functionally equivalent. I don't see this as a big deviation from the original ethics and goals but rather than it is an update because bad actors abused the openness.

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scrollaway 1100 days ago
Sure but I honestly disagree that open core compromises the ethics of open sourse.

It's just pragmatic. People are into open source for different reasons. I've been in it for almost two decades and it was always for the the benefits for learning, hackability, transparency, future-proofing, etc etc. All aspects which are perfectly preserved by open core.

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