[resiros]

I think that's perfectly fair. The community is quick to put whoever builds commercial OSS software on a cross the moment they change their license to ensure they still have a competitive advantage. Instead, we should encourage commercial OSS companies. COSS companiesare one of the only venues for creating high-quality OSS projects that you can self-host.

I personally think the definition of open-source is problematic (and clearly biased by the lobbies of hyperscalers). Why aren't n8n or MongoDB considered open-source? (https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md, https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/community-edition) Why does requesting that others not sell your product make the project not open-source?

[JoshTriplett]

> I think that's perfectly fair. The community is quick to put whoever builds commercial OSS software on a cross the moment they change their license to ensure they still have a competitive advantage. Instead, we should encourage commercial OSS companies.

Complete agreement there. I'd like to laud NetBird for using AGPL rather than one of the recent VC-fueled proprietary-with-source-available licenses.

> I personally think the definition of open-source is problematic (and clearly biased by the lobbies of hyperscalers).

Open Source has existed since before "hyperscaler" was a concept that existed, and before Software as a Service was a going concern. Its definition has not in any way been affected by the lobby of an industry that didn't exist when it was defined.

One rationale for not changing the definition of Open Source is an issue of Schelling points / focal points ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) ). Right now, we have a common definition of Open Source; if everyone could put their pet restriction in ("no military", "no SaaS", "no AI", "no nuclear power"), we'd end up with a hundred variants and no ability to collaborate and share code across projects.

[gr4vityWall]

> Why aren't n8n or MongoDB considered open-source?

In the case of MongoDB, it's because the SSPL requires that all the software used to offer the network service is also licensed under the SSPL. That prevents it from being used to write Free Software by mixing free programs and libraries that use a different license, even if they are free.

So, for example, if your network service supports managing MongoDB instances, and it includes Caddy or Nginx, then you're not complying with the license, as Caddy and Nginx aren't released under the SSPL and you cannot relicense them.

> Why does requesting that others not sell your product make the project not open-source?

Because requesting them to not do that makes your program proprietary, and thus non-free by definition.

[braginini]

The OSI definition doesn't allow that kind of restriction, mainly because it's all about keeping software as free and open as possible.

But the thing is, commercial open source companies play a huge role in making great open source tools, especially ones you can self-host. Without them, a lot of the software we rely on wouldn't even exist. People often push back when these companies change their licenses, but they forget the reality. Big cloud providers can make tons of money off open source projects without giving anything back. That's a tough spot for the folks.

I'm sure that in the nearest future we will have some COSS licenses :) Well, as an open source contributor I hope so

[kiba]

Making money isn't the problem. Restricting it is.

[api]

I'll put it rather bluntly: present-day open source is largely free labor for SaaS companies.

SaaS, meanwhile, is the least open and least free model of software distribution, significantly less open or free (as in freedom) than closed-source commercial software you run yourself. This model, SaaS, is powered from the ground up by open source, and most SaaS gives little or nothing back. Some SaaS is not much more than a management and UI layer built around pre-existing open source standards and code.

Something is very wrong if open source exists largely to enable the least free model of software distribution. Open source as currently conceptualized is stuck in the pre-SaaS eras of the 1980s and 1990s and refuses to adapt to what "free" and "open" mean in the new landscape.

It doesn't help that the OSI is fully captured by companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta with a vested interest in promoting the SaaS and cloud-first model. If local-first ever gained traction it would be a threat to not just their SaaS products but their incredibly lucrative cloud businesses.

[phkahler]

>> I'll put it rather bluntly: present-day open source is largely free labor for SaaS companies.

I've used Free Software and Open Source over 20 years and have never paid a SaaS company a dime.

OTOH the most valuable software that I regularly use is Free Software as opposed to Open Source Software. So maybe the OSS really is primarily free labor for SaaS?

[api]

I'm an OG open source user too. I installed Slackware Linux with kernel 0.99.15 from a stack of floppies as a teenager.

You're part of a very, very small minority. I'm talking about the majority of developers and what the majority of users experience.

What most users are experiencing today is an aggressively non-free non-open zero-privacy rent-seeking software environment that is enabled by open source under the hood. This seems contrary to the stated goals of free software.

[phkahler]

>> What most users are experiencing today is an aggressively non-free non-open zero-privacy rent-seeking software environment that is enabled by open source under the hood. This seems contrary to the stated goals of free software.

That's why GPL is the preferred license for user freedom. HN is by its nature full of people who want to develop stuff for profit. Maybe it's time to stop hanging around here.

[hodgesrm]

> SaaS, meanwhile, is the least open and least free model of software distribution.

Less free and less open than Oracle DBMS? That seems like a stretch.

[api]

Very much so. When you run Oracle DBMS you have your own data in your custody. You also have the software and the ability to spin it up in the future. It’s a binary blob but there’s VMs and longer term emulation for that. I can run MS-DOS software for 16-bit x86 just fine on my ARM64 Mac. This includes unmodified commercial closed source software from decades ago.

With SaaS you usually don’t have your data let alone the code. The app cannot be run by anyone but the ones running it. Old versions can’t be run. If the company goes away it’s gone forever along with the data.

A lot of SaaS is tied to a specific cloud with its specific managed services, so it can’t even be moved between cloud providers without significant effort.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> The community is quick to put whoever builds commercial OSS software on a cross the moment they change their license to ensure they still have a competitive advantage.

Yes, people object to pulling a bait and switch by taking something that was open source and then making it not open source.

> Instead, we should encourage commercial OSS companies. COSS companiesare one of the only venues for creating high-quality OSS projects that you can self-host.

We do encourage that. We also discourage commercial fake-OSS companies.

> I personally think the definition of open-source is problematic (and clearly biased by the lobbies of hyperscalers). Why aren't n8n or MongoDB considered open-source? (https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md, https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/community-edition) Why does requesting that others not sell your product make the project not open-source?

Part of the point of Open Source is that the software isn't completely tied to a single company. If software is under one of those more restrictive licenses and the company goes under, the software is dead. If software under an open source license is developed by a company that goes under, one or even many other companies can continue working on it. This also applies while the company is alive, too; as you note, commercial companies developing open source software is a good thing, and preventing parallel development or forks is bad for the ecosystem.