| ▲ | imiric 14 hours ago |
| How can people still not understand that OSS can be abused? It doesn't matter that the previous code is still available. Nobody can technically delete it from the internet, so that's hardly something they did "right". The original maintainers are gone, and users will have to rely on someone else to pick up the work, or maintain it themselves. All of this creates friction, and fragments the community. And are you not familiar with the concept of OSS rugpulls? It's when a company uses OSS as a marketing tool, and when they deem it's not profitable enough, they start cutting corners, prioritizing their commercial product, or, as in this case, shut down the OSS project altogether. None of this is being a "textbook good participant". > Meanwhile, 99% of companies never open source anything: why aren't you complaining about how "unethical" they are? Frankly, there are many companies with proprietary products that behave more ethically and have more respect for their users than this. The fact that a project is released as OSS doesn't make it inherently better. Seeing OSS as a "free gift" is a terrible way of looking at it. |
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| ▲ | Someone an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > The original maintainers are gone, and users will have to rely on someone else to pick up the work, That’s a risk that no license, open source or not, can protect against. Priorities may change, causing maintainers to stop maintaining, or maintainers (companies or people) may cease to exist. OSS licenses also do not promise that development will continue forever, will continue in a direction you like or anything like that. The only thing open source licenses say is “here’s a specific set of source code that you can use under these limitations”. The expectation that there will be maintenance is a matter of trust that you may or may not have in the developers. > or maintain it themselves. With open source, at least you have that option. > And are you not familiar with the concept of OSS rugpulls? It's when a company uses OSS as a marketing tool, and when they deem it's not profitable enough, they start cutting corners, prioritizing their commercial product, or, as in this case, shut down the OSS project altogether. Companies have to live. It’s not nice if something like that happen to you for a tool you depend on, but you can’t deny companies to stop doing development altogether. In this case, you have something better, as, in addition to picking up maintenance on the existing open source version, you have the choice to pay for a version maintained by the original developers. |
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| ▲ | armchairhacker 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > It doesn't matter that the previous code is still available…The original maintainers are gone, and users will have to rely on someone else to pick up the work, or maintain it themselves. It does matter: popular products have been forked or the open-source component was reused. E.g. Terraform and OpenTofu, Redis and Redict, Docker and Colima (partly MinIO and RustFS; the latter is a full rewrite, but since the former was FOSS and it’s a “drop-in binary replacement”, I’m sure they looked at the code for reference…) If your environment doesn’t have API changes and vulnerabilities, forking requires practically zero effort. If it does, the alternative to maintaining yourself or convincing someone to maintain it for you (e.g. with donations), is having the original maintainers keep working for free. Although this specific product may be mostly closed source (they’ve had commercial addons before the announcement). If so, the problem here is thinking it was open in the first place. |
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| ▲ | lukevp 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I thought Valkey was the blessed fork of Redis. Is Redict better in some way? | | | |
| ▲ | drzaiusx11 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | To be clear, colima isn't a fork of docker. It's just the lima VM with the docker OCI runtime + cli which is FOSS and always has been. Docker Desktop is the pile of garbage you can kinda sorta replace it with, but PodMan and PodMan Desktop is closer to a clone of Docker than Colima. Colima _is_ Docker |
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| ▲ | inetknght 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance You might want to get your arguments in order. In one sentence you're calling OSS rugpulls a problem, and then in another you're claiming that proprietary products behave more ethically. So which is it? Is it less-ethical to have provided software as open source, and then later become a proprietary product? Why? I see having source code, even for an old/unmaintained product be strictly superior to having never provided the source code no matter how much "respect" the company has for their users today. |
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| ▲ | imiric 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You might want to think about my argument a bit more. > Is it less-ethical to have provided software as open source, and then later become a proprietary product? Why? Because usually these companies use OSS as a marketing gimmick, not because they believe in it, or want to contribute to a public good. So, yes, this dishonesty is user hostile, and some companies with proprietary products do have more respect for their users. The freedoms provided by free software are a value add on top of essential values that any developer/company should have for the users of their software. OSS projects are not inherently better simply because the code is free to use, share, and modify. To be fair, I don't think a developer/company should be expected to maintain an OSS project indefinitely. Priorities change, life happens. But being a good OSS steward means making this transition gradually, trying to find a new maintainer, etc., to avoid impacting your existing user base. Archiving the project and demanding payment is the epitome of hostile behavior. | | |
| ▲ | jrflowers 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | It seems like you’re trying to build a system of ethics around being annoyed by OSS maintainers not working for free in perpetuity. Having access to Apache licensed code that you can build off of is better than never having access to any code at all. Anything else about values or respect has to be inferred or imagined and has no bearing on the software itself. Edit: Like who cares if they “wanted” to contribute to the public good? Did they actually contribute to the public good? It seems like they did and the code that did so is right there. If “life happens” then why are they obligated to do a smooth transition? I love free stuff as much as the next person, hell, free stuff is my favorite kind of stuff. Is it annoying when there’s less free stuff? Yes. Does my personal irritation constitute a violation of a lofty set of ideals that just coincidentally dictates that nobody annoy me? No. I would love to live in a world where it just so happens that it’s ethically wrong to bother me though. That would be sweet. | | |
| ▲ | ianbutler 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's what they always do it always comes down to a sense of perpetual entitlement over the work of others, work they themselves would never do. I've had the same discussion for years now on HN. It is not unethical to decide to stop supporting something especially if you played by all the rules the entire time. No one is owed perpetual labor and they completely disregard localstack has been oss for something like 10 years at this point just celebrate it had a good run, fork and maintain yourself if you need it that badly. It is incredibly weird to think something that was maintained oss for 10 years is a rugpull that's just called life, circumstances change. | | |
| ▲ | overfeed 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I've had the same discussion for years now on HN. It is not unethical to decide to stop supporting something especially if you played by all the rules the entire time. What's unethical is taking yhe fruits of other people's work private: ranging from code contributions, through bug reports and evangelism. Companies are never honest about how they intend to use CLAs and pretend its for the furtherance of open source ethos. Thankfully, there's an innate right to fork entire projects after rug pulls, whixh makes them calculated gambles amd nor a quick heist. | | |
| ▲ | inetknght 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > What's unethical is taking yhe fruits of other people's work private: ranging from code contributions, through bug reports and evangelism. First, if it's open source, then the contributions are still there for everyone to use. Second, if the license allows it, then the license allows it. Now, if the contributions were made with a contribution license to prevent it, you've got a solid argument. Otherwise you're applying your own morals in a situation where they're irrelevant. | | |
| ▲ | progmetaldev 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I agree, along with the child comment. I think the issue is that if there wasn't some kind of ability to "rug pull," that we would see far fewer open source contributions in the first place. I hate that a company can take a fully open-source project, and then turn it into a commercial offering, dropping support for the project's open source model. I am fine with a project's maintainers stopping support for a project because they have other things to deal with, or just are burnt out. I understand that both of these things are allowed under the specific license you choose, and still believe you should have the freedom to do what was done here (although not agreeing with the idea of what was done, I still think it should be allowed). If you want to guarantee your code is allowed to live on as fully open, you pick that license. If you don't, but want to contribute as a means to selling your talent, I still think the world would have far less software if this was discouraged. The source is still legal from before the license was changed, and I feel that even if the project doesn't get forked, it is still there for others to learn from. With that said I'm wondering if there has ever been a legal case where source was previously fully open source, then became closed source, and someone was taken to court over using portions of the code that was previously open. It seems like it would be cut and dry about the case being thrown out, but what if the code was referenced, and then rewritten? What if there was code in the open source version that obviously needed to be rewritten, but the authors closed the source, and then someone did the obvious rewrite? This is more of a thought experiment than anything, but I wonder if there's any precedent for this, or if you'd just have to put up the money for attorneys to prove that it was an obvious change? | |
| ▲ | overfeed 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Second, if the license allows it, then the license allows it. I'm not arguing the legality. One can be a jerk while complying with the letter of the license. I stopped signing CLAs, and I feel bad for those suckered into signing CLAs - based on a deliberate lie that they are joining a "community" - when the rug pull is inevitably attempted. I hate that "open source as a growth hack" have metastisized onto rug pull long cons. > Otherwise you're applying your own morals in a situation where they're irrelevant. Sharing my opinion on an HN thread about an open source rug-pull is extremely relevant. |
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| ▲ | pocksuppet 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The ethical problem is the bait-and-switch. A project that begins open and remains open is no problem; a project that begins closed and remains closed is no problem (ethically); a project that begins closed and becomes open is no ethical problem either. But a project that begins open, advertises their openness to the world, uses their openness to attract lots of community interest and then suddenly becomes closed is pulling a bait-and-switch, or rugpull. | | |
| ▲ | jrflowers 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > a project that begins open, advertises their openness to the world, uses their openness to attract lots of community interest and then suddenly becomes closed Do you have any examples of that happening? When I click on the link at the top of this thread it takes me to a GitHub repo with a bunch of Apache licensed code that is open to anyone that wants to use or modify or build off of however they want. Heck, with permissive licensing like that you or I could fork it and put any part/all of that code into a proprietary product and make money off of it if we wanted to, and that would be entirely in keeping with the spirit and practice of FOSS. This project seems perfectly open from what I can see, looks like the original devs stopped working on it though | |
| ▲ | imiric 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Precisely. It's remarkable that people think releasing a project as OSS is a license to disrespect users. This isn't even related to OSS. Software authors should have basic decency and respect for the users of their software. This relationship starts with that. Publishing a project as OSS doesn't relinquish you from this responsibility. It doesn't give you the right to be an asshole. And yet we fall for this trap time and time again, and there are always those who somehow defend this behavior. I think it's an inherent conflict with the entrepreneurship mindset and those who visit this forum. Their primary goal is to profit from software. OSS is seen as a "gift" and an act of philanthropy, rather than a social movement to collaborate on building public goods. That's silly communism, after all. I'm demanding that people work for free for my benefit! Unbelievable. | | |
| ▲ | rebolek 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Wow. "Software authors should have basic decency and respect for the users of their software." Why? Not at all. "Publishing a project as OSS doesn't relinquish you from this responsibility. It doesn't give you the right to be an asshole." You are free to be asshole and it's nobody's business. Actually it's exactly opposite. Such feeling of superiority and privilege, that just because you use some software, you have any right to command its author is the very definition of being an asshole. "I'm demanding that people work for free for my benefit! Unbelievable." Yes, that's unbelievable. | | |
| ▲ | imiric 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > "Software authors should have basic decency and respect for the users of their software." Why? Not at all. Because that's the core reason why we build software in the first place. We solve problems for people. Software doesn't exist in a void. There's an inherent relationship created between software authors and its users. This exists for any good software, at least. If you think software accomplishes its purpose by just being published, regardless of its license, you've failed at the most fundamental principle of software development. > you have any right to command its author is the very definition of being an asshole. Hah. I'm not "commanding" anyone anything. I'm simply calling out asshole behavior. The fact is that software from authors who behave like this rarely amounts to anything. It either dies in obscurity, or is picked up by someone who does care about their users. > "I'm demanding that people work for free for my benefit! Unbelievable." Yes, that's unbelievable. Clearly sarcasm goes over your head, since I'm mimicking what you and others think I'm saying. But feel free to continue to think I'm coming from a place of moral superiority and privilege. |
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| ▲ | skeledrew 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's a matter of honesty and trust. A company that has never provided source code is more honest and trustworthy than one that provides source code, extracts community labor (by accepting issues and/or PRs) and then makes off with said labor (even if they left a frozen version available) at a future point. | | |
| ▲ | progmetaldev 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Does the amount of labor that was provided by a community make a difference? What if it was minimal? Where do you draw the line (any piece of code accepted, or a "large portion" of code)? I didn't downvote you, but I suspect combining PRs with issues is what most people have an issue with. Issues obviously help to improve software, but only through the fixing or writing of new code. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I also think that if it were a requirement to never close source your project after it's already been open sourced, we'd have far fewer projects available that are open source. Often a project is created on a company's dime, and open source, to draw attention to the developer skills and ability to solve a problem. If the code was legally disallowed to be close sourced in the future, we might see far less code available universally. A working repository of code is potentially a reference for another developer to learn something new. I don't have any examples, but I know for a fact that I've read code that had been open source, and later close sourced, and learned something from the open source version (even if it was out of date for the latest libraries/platform). |
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| ▲ | tedk-42 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Open Source Software doesn't mean maintenance free. The code is all there mate. Their time and efforts and ongoing contributions to the project are not. OSS is not about fairness and free work from people. It's just putting the code out there in public. |
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| ▲ | jalalx 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| So basically businesses should go bankrupt because making money is "unethical" |
