[chii]

There should not be any difference between small or large entitise in how you deal with them as an opensource maintainer. Just because someone has more money (or less), should not automatically mean you treat them with more leniency or ethics.

You set up your standard, and stick to it whomever comes.

[latexr]

Companies are never just money. There is a monumental difference between:

1. A small company which is barely profitable but is building something which aligns with your values and you see as a positive to the world.

2. A massive mega corporation whose only purpose is profit, mistreats employees, and you view as highly unethical.

You shouldn’t treat those the same way. It’s perfectly ethical to offer your work for free to the first one (helping them succeed in creating a better world) and charging up the wazoo (or better yet, refusing to engage in any way with) the second one.

[b112]

There is no such difference.

A company is not a person, and can literally have its entire staff changed in short order. Or be bought.

Companies have no morals. Sometimes people in companies do, but again, that person can vanish instantly.

You should treat a company as a person which may receive a brain transplant at any time. Most especially, when writing contracts or having any expectation of what that company will do.

[potato3732842]

This is an exceptionally ignorant viewpoint.

A business that is privately owned, is run by its founders and which represents the lion's share of its officers income and net worth can be dealt with like any other small business.

Some guy who makes bespoke firmware for industrial microcontrollers or very niche audio encoding software isn't Microsoft. You won't be able to do business with him in a useful way if you treat him like Microsoft.

[scarface_74]

If the business is run by its founders and has taken VC funding, the founder’s “values” no longer matters.

[bee_rider]

There exist companies which have taken VC money, and others which haven’t. We’ve carved out one exception, but this doesn’t indicate that small personally-run companies can’t exist, right?

[Spooky23]

The key is contract. Casual chat with a corporate representative who isn’t selling you something about something you own requires some sort of contractual relationship and consideration.

[thfuran]

A sole proprietorship pretty much is a person.

[mindcrime]

Or a single member LLC.

[WD-42]

How do you refuse to engage if you use the MIT license?

[dec0dedab0de]

don't respond to their emails.

If you want to be extreme don't distribute it to them in the first place. Licenses do not come into effect until after distribution. So you could have a pay-to-download model that comes with a %100 discount if you're a lone developer or an organization with under X amount of revenue. You wouldn't be able to stop someone redistributing it after the fact, but you're not engaging.

[LtWorf]

Unfortunately now that everything is based on automated pipelines, something that doesn't integrate well is not so good.

Although at work we have a provider of proprietary software that has an APT repository where the URL includes a secret token, so they can track from where it's being accessed.

[vasco]

Interacting with faceless entities with the power to buy multiple countries the same way you'd interact with some interested independent young person wanting to learn.

Interesting moral proposition, I doubt you'd get many followers. I think it's perfectly reasonable to treat people differently from corporations, and random small and medium corporations differently than huge megacorps without losing any sleep.

Specially in business, charging more to those that can pay more is a very common approach.

[chii]

> charging more to those that can pay more is a very common approach.

and all consumers dislike price discrimination. Airlines is the classic example.

It's just that those companies do this because they can. And i hate it. I much prefer a static, single price for a product.

[homebrewer]

No, it's also because some consumers can't pay the "original" price. Steam in "developing" countries is a classic example — you as a game developer can ask a guy from my country $60 for a game (and some companies do try that), but he will simply go back to torrent trackers because $60 is a week's worth of living expenses.

gaben figured that out and successfully expanded into many markets that were considered basket cases for software licensing.

[jimbokun]

> Interesting moral proposition, I doubt you'd get many followers.

But the US Supreme Court would be one of them.

[PeeMcGee]

> You set up your standard, and stick to it whomever comes.

Well, the standard for software licensing is to sell cheaper licenses to smaller businesses and more expensive licenses to larger businesses.

[LtWorf]

So you're equally like to give your change to a poor beggar and to a guy begging from inside his rolls royce?

[chii]

If i ahead of time decided to give my next dollar to the next guy begging, why not?

[wizzwizz4]

That's a really silly precommitment. If you were sensible, your actual commitment should be "help the next person who requires help, provided that help can be provided in the form of one dollar".

[chii]

That's why the premise in the grandparent post is ridiculous.

But the license of a piece of software is not ridiculous - if you chose a very permissive license, you cannot then go and choose who should or shouldnt be profiting off your software. The license was a pre-commitment.

But lots of people make this pre-commitment, but then makes a moral/ethical judgement post-facto when someone rich seems to be able to extract more value out of the software than what "they deserve", and complain about it.

[wizzwizz4]

"Permissive" licenses, in fields where abusive corporations are known to operate, are a really silly precommitment. Copyleft exists for a reason. But, even if you (foolishly) made that precommitment, that doesn't then mean you have to do free labour for the abusive corporations, out of some misguided ideological consistency. (Such consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.)

[taormina]

I mean, the MIT license might be a “more permissive” license but it says very explicit things that Microsoft is explicitly ignoring. Your license choice doesn’t matter when they ignore the license anyway.

[flysand7]

If a guy comes begging for money out of rolls royce, I guess they either are pretty bad at begging or have a pretty bad sense of humor. I guess I wouldn't give money to them, it doesn't seem like it'll help them regardless.

[freeopinion]

What is the difference between a rolls royce and a celebrity benefit? You shun Shriners if they have a catered $1000 fund-raising dinner?

[formerly_proven]

> You set up your standard, and stick to it whomever comes.

Why? Most businesses don't entertain standard rates, either. It's case-by-case negotiations ("call us", "request quote"). Why should I, as a private person putting stuff out there for free, set up "my standard" and stick to it?

[keepamovin]

Because otherwise it's not a value, it's a whim.

But I guess they don't mean set the same price for everyone - but rather stick to your values in what you do.

[polotics]

Clearly you have yet to experience some of the less savoury behaviours from Megacorps sharks. You're looking at people trying to make a name for themselves internally and if this means being economical with attributions, this is the least they would do for their place in the California sun.

[keepamovin]

This is The Way