[morkalork]

The bit about google employees willing to step up and work on the project is kind of disgusting: The company is too cheap to fund the project with money, but don't worry, they've got an endless supply of eager developers looking to 'pad their résumé' and deny you all the reward and satisfaction of what you built. It almost reads like a threat "work for free or we'll fork it and take it away from you". Wow

[matheusmoreira]

The maintainer's leverage is severely diminished due to the fact MIT licensed versions of the software exist. Only new code will be copylefted so it will be easier to cut him out of the picture.

This is why developers should AGPLv3 their personal projects from day one. Then others can't fork it under another license.

Even if they choose AGPLv3, the creator still maintains full freedom since they own the copyrights. They can make a commercial version if they want to. They can even relicense it under favorable terms to companies for a licensing fee. Everyone else must abide by the copyleft rules.

If they don't like it, let them pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for their own developers to make their own in house proprietary version.

[overfeed]

> This is why developers should AGPLv3 their personal projects from day one.

That would be detrimental to "growth hacking" GitHub stars and gaining traction. One can't be paid without baiting users first.

[morkalork]

Is there a free-for-corporate use under XX revenue or limited time license one can pack with an AGPLv3 project? Something that doesn't block people, even businesses, from using the project during the growth stage but also doesn't give away all your rights or ability to get paid later?

[wild_egg]

The copyright holder is free to grant use under any license they like to whoever they like.

It's rare but I've seen a number of projects over the years that have a hard copyleft license along with a line in the readme like "Want to use this with a different license? Send me an email and we'll sort it out"

[matheusmoreira]

There's gotta be a way to do this ethically, naturally and organically. I want people to engage with my projects too but I don't really want to sell my soul for it.

I hate advertising so I don't even post about my projects anywhere unless some very specific conditions are met. People found and shared my projects anyway. They've made it to the front page of HN. I even gained a GitHub sponsor because of that. Not enough to turn my hobby into full time work but still awesome.

[rlpb]

> Even if they choose AGPLv3, the creator still maintains full freedom since they own the copyrights.

Only if they either refuse all contributions, require contributions to be made under an MIT license or similar (and then immediately relicense back to AGPLv3 before publishing), or require a CLA.

I'm all for personal projects to be licensed AGPLv3, but we must acknowledge that the moment you take others' AGPLv3 contributions, in practice you won't be able to do those other things.

[matheusmoreira]

Of course. The creator retains copyright. If there are multiple creators, things get complicated quickly. This is also why GNU projects ask that contributors assign copyright to the FSF. Gotta deal with this sort of bureaucracy before contributing is allowed.

[bayindirh]

Wow, indeed. To add insult to the injury, the whole message reads like this:

> Good news is several Google and Apple engineers have volunteered to help with libxml2 and libxslt security issues, despite your effort to sabotage libxml2 users...

I mean, c'mon. He's carrying the world on his shoulders and people are just pointing fingers?

Also, this shows how evil corporations are. I can understand Apple, it's their culture to avoid GPL code and and committing code to any public project needs permission from everyone plus the campus cat, but Google, the apparently bastion of open source software is doing the same thing without any shame...

They have morphed into the next Microsoft AFAICS.

Despicable.

[tristan957]

mcatanzaro frequently makes these over the top comments, and when called out, refuses to backtrack on them.

[hitekker]

What other over the top comments has Michael Catanzaro made?

[kasabali]

typical freedesktop.org developer

[matheusmoreira]

The accusation of sabotage was pretty disgusting but there's something that's arguably even worse deeper in the thread:

> maybe if you stop fixing things for free, perhaps somebody will suddenly be willing to pay you to do so

We should all remember that line every time we think about being generous or altruistic. He essentially called the maintainer a fool.

[overfeed]

I think mixing altruism with work is a mistake, which is the sentiment I read into the (sarcastic) comment. The maintainer has very little leverage for payment if they continue working on the project for free.

The maintainer has to pick a side and commit to it, and deal with the downsides. Alternatively, they may choose not to play.

[matheusmoreira]

I don't think he should be forced to pick sides. He made the thing, he knows the code base inside out. It would have been trivial for companies to hire him as a consultant or something since they're all depending on him. Why didn't they? It really makes no sense.

[aseipp]

Nick Wellnhofer did not create libxml2 or libxslt, David Veillard did. Nick has been the primary contributor since about 2015, though.

[matheusmoreira]

My mistake, I apologize.

Still, it looks like he maintained the library for a long time. He no doubt has more knowledge about the code base than outsiders. That ought to be valuable to corporations relying on the library and contributing security patches.

[overfeed]

> Why didn't they?

Why buy the cow if the milk is free? The license let's them use it without payment, and in a just world, they'd pay all the maintainers of libraries they use, but ours isn't a just world, and we need to formulate our strategies with that in mind.

[lovich]

> Why didn't they?

Because he continues to work for free? Companies are amoral actors. They aren’t going to donate out of charity and if someone wants to give them free work they won’t say no

[hulitu]

Google does _not_ fix things even for money, so he may have a point. /s