[doginasuit]

Surprisingly, there are use-cases for closed source other than the of greed of corporations. A server is one of those use-cases. I love to see open source servers and have worked on them myself but there are obvious reasons why that is not always feasible.

[rileymat2]

Greed is a loaded word, there are economic realities of paying developers to create the open source software. Could you elaborate on the non-economic use cases you are thinking of?

[doginasuit]

That was my point too. There are valid reasons to go with closed source, open source may not be a viable option for a variety of concerns, including economic realities. The person I was replying to raised the issue of corporations that take and do not give back (which definitely exist) and I was responding to it.

[rileymat2]

Yes, we don't have a great business model for this yet. We see the problems caused by things like Elastic Search either locking away important features or getting killed by well funded incumbents like Amazon.

My response was asking more, when you said "use cases" if there were non-economic ones you had in mind.

Years ago I got it in my head that we needed an open source copy left license that allowed for automatic licensing/royalty schemes in commercial use where the money would flow down to the project. This would give end users complete control over the software and modifications to the software, while distribution and money generated would be shared up the supply chain.

I still would like to see something like that but have no idea how to frame it.

[doginasuit]

My experience has made me consider closed source for three general reasons: backends where the security implications of open source would be a problem, software that has a high potential to be misused, and economic realities.

I've always tried to find another solution besides closed source because it takes away a big part of what makes me want to work on a project. But I recognize that it's not always going to be the best choice.

That sounds like a worthwhile reason for something like copyleft, since funding can be a problem. I have seen a lot of companies basically implement it by providing both kinds of licensing.

[pocksuppet]

The free-software answer to something like Amazon/ElasticSearch is a license that forces Amazon to pass on all their freedoms to their customers, which is something that Amazon doesn't want to do. That license isn't necessarily AGPL or SSPL as those have their problems.

[pocksuppet]

I don't see why I'd refuse to use something like nginx just because it's open-source. If it's good, it's good.

[doginasuit]

I love nginx and open source servers, that wasn't my point at all. I was referring to a backend that supports a business.