this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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This recent morality policing about contributions upstream is counterproductive to FOSS overall, and I honestly have to wonder if some group of FOSS averse corporations or a state actor is behind all the sudden drama.
I'd like to understand your point of view, why do you think that it's counterproductive?
The software is supposed to be free as in speech, not beer, ergo you can use it for whatever you want. If right out of the gate, GNU was like "you better contribute back if you use this!" nobody would use or contribute to it. All this does is produce drama and reduce use because of negative perceptions, it is bad for corporate adoption and adoption overall. If browbeating people like an ass worked we would live in a very different world. It does not.
Right? For me the free as in freedom always had the upside and downside of people have the freedom to use it how they want. Within the very lenient license which might be in use of course. This can include the freedom to do things with the software which the creators and contributors might not agree with or like.
But in the end a certain trust in humanity and the concept of freedom itself mean that we believe the net sum of making your software free will be positive for everyone. And to this day I haven't managed to become enough of a cynic to change my mind on this.
Its possible to dicuss licenses which helps prevent certain abuse cases. In fact those already exist. However people talk like this is the main issue of FOSS which I don't think it is at all.
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
Those words proved the folly of the "free as in freedom" open source many moons ago.
Did it? We're still here.
I don't think that there is such company trying to destroy FOSS. To me its more likely that people get annoyed that companies use Open Source without paying any money to the developers who maintain it. And there are lot of places trying to integrate a way to pay for Open Source software. And I'm all for it! But it needs to be confronted upfront, maybe part of the license if that is what they want. Not like a patent troll does with after usage.
I understand why its annoying, but why licensing it this way then? It was part of the contract letting them use without requiring any payment. Also developers are not responsible for any damage the code does, as they weren't paid at all. They are not responsible to do any work.
If this goes on, then many companies might start abandoning Open Source. Because if people start shaming them and asking to pay for something they never signed up, it could harm the FOSS world. There will be people who are not happy with the low payment and want more, because others get more too. Then fake devs jump in to steal Open Source (forking and rebranding) to just shame companies and require payment too.
It feels to me like a bunch of "rules for thee but not for me" type people co-opting a movement.
I don't have to pay cause I'm special. But you do.