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by sofixa 405 days ago
> Also, they require a CLA with copyright assignment so they can reuse your contributions in nonfree software. It’s always shady when companies do this.

They sell a version of the software, of course they'd have a CLA. It's not shady, it's a prerequisite to be able to sell - because even if you assume no contributor will decide to retract their contribution later on, many of your customers will ask for guarantees that you fully own, control and can sell the code you're selling them
1 comments
sneak 405 days ago
Yes, that’s why it’s shady. It expects the community to contribute to this free software project, only to use those contributions in nonfree software. It’s trying to leverage community efforts for private gain.

If you believe in the ideology of software freedoms, you don’t release nonfree software. It’s open source cosplay.

Linux is GPL and that hasn’t stopped anyone from adopting it.

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sofixa 404 days ago
> If you believe in the ideology of software freedoms, you don’t release nonfree software. It’s open source cosplay

Or, you believe in open source software, want yours to be available, forkable and even why not get community contributions, but you also want a full time job that allows you to eat? How much of the world's software wouldn't exist if we gatekept open source to a volunteer effort only?

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sneak 404 days ago
Obviously, if you don’t dual license, you can’t make any money.

Linux and Python and Wordpress and Redis stand in stark contrast to your basic presumption here.

It’s not gatekeeping to say that if you care about software freedoms, you don’t promote or release nonfree software. It’s just logic.

The choice is not “release only free software xor be commercially successful”.

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sofixa 402 days ago
Linux and Python the projects don't make any money. Various orgs that contribute to them and build off them do, but that's irrelevant.

WordPress mostly make money hosting, and are indeed a good example. Redis somewhat, but it wasn't going that well, hence their recent license changes.

> The choice is not “release only free software xor be commercially successful”.

There are vanishingly few companies that manage to pull off a successful (profitable) business off open source software they're developing, and most of them predate the rise of the hyperscalers that can just sell everyone your open source as a service. Can you think of any others?

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