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by elnygren 1036 days ago
Why are people so hostile towards BSL? Paying/asking money for great products is fine and if the product's source code is in git, the better.

Not everything has to be _free_. The major benefit of OSS for many is that you can read the source code. The major benefit of paid SaaS is that things just work and you pay for that. BSL can be the perfect combination of these.
2 comments
acatton 1036 days ago
I can't speak for other people. I'm not hostile to the BSL, if a company wants to license their products under BSL, I don't care, I will just not use it.

The main issue I have with the BSL is opensource-washing were companies basically release an open source product which become popular because it is open source, and then do a bait-and-switch and relicense it under the BSL restrictive license, but still claim "it is open source" which is a lie.

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growse 1036 days ago
They're not hostile to the BSL. Other projects that started out under the BSL (e.g. Cockroach) don't draw the ire.

The anger is at a company that trades on the benefits of open source, and then shuts that down when it becomes inconvenient. People think they're free-loading on the contributions of others.

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