[totetsu]

>Most commentators view the licensing away from open source as a negative event. I’d like to argue that it is a milestone to celebrate. By licensing away the company signals that the product has achieved a mature state and that the help of an open source strategy is not needed any longer: The company has proved to the world that the software can be built and that the economy at large cares and thinks this software is a good idea. This is an important achievement!

Is "open source strategy" purely an economic tool? I though there was as much societal and political motivations involved as economic. Primarily isn't the idea of a healthy software commons a political move to avoid technological capture and rentseeking practices that hurt the economy overall. This authors framing the discussion are purely economical seems to miss why people might be upset. Where do the communities that grow up around and support open source projects fit in to this analysis.. Just people willing to give away their time and be instrumentalised to make make the product Mature enough to give a return to VCs?

I am honestly curious what the landscape is like on this issue. Should no-one ever contribute to an opensource project that is controlled by a VC backed company if they're not comfortable with the thought of a license change? Are companies treating open source just like a strategy to build a "community" for instrumental reasons only to pull out the rug later going to end up poisoning the well and undermining any sense of good will and community spirit of developing tools to share together. Conversely all well being and prosperity comes from a paycheck, who is going to apply their skills and time to build software out of goodwill alone. Is the problem that large cloud infrastructure providers are now in a position to lock customers in and engage in rent seeking, and by integrating opensource projects into their service catalogue the take off the table one of the monetization strategies of companies that developed them, that is providing premium support.

[kfarr]

Totally agree, "open source strategy is not needed any longer" doesn't make any sense for many projects where open source of that particular software or information is the primary purpose. It's not solely an economic engine.

[dirkriehle]

> Is "open source strategy" purely an economic tool? I though there was as much societal and political motivations involved as economic.

There are many different types of open source projects. Those created for purely commercial exploitation usually don't care about the societal benefits much (but they are still there, fortunately.

[fao_]

> Is "open source strategy" purely an economic tool?

Yes, because the only thing a good company cares about is economics -- namely, money.

This is, very literally, what the Cathederal and the Bazaar was about. Exploiting people's labour. ESR (i.e. the founder of the Open Source movement) very literally made an argument in the latter half of the book that goes "You get better performance out of people when you don't pay them/pay them less").

[ninkendo]

In what universe is ESR the founder of the open source movement? He wrote that book, and… fetchmail. Do you have him confused with RMS?

[lmz]

RMS is for Free Software, not Open Source.

[fao_]

lmao you're mixing up Free Software and Open Source Software, which are not the same thing.