Drivers passing through San Francisco have a new roadside distraction to consider: billboards calling out businesses that don’t cough up for the open source code that they use.
The signs are the work of the Open Source Pledge – a group that launched earlier this month. It asks businesses that make use of open source code to pledge $2,000 per developer to support projects that develop the code. So far, 25 companies have signed up – but project co-founder Chad Whitacre wants bigger firms to pay their dues, too.
This is why lots of software has started adopting SSPL license which doesn’t actually fix the problem and isn’t a FOSS license.
I still think a new license scheme should be considered though. Giants like AWS and Google have been profiteering off of FOSS for way too long now.
AGPL has been deemed generally successful in this regard because it has been upheld in court cases and forced companies to comply, which it seems to work pretty great for SaaS.
The problem is these giants will usually just choose a more permissive alternative anyway. Both MongoDB and Redis have forks that they can use, and GPL itself is permissive enough for private forking being legal.
No one has to pay anyone because its Open Source. Demanding it, calling out after usage is the wrong move. If someone does not want others to use the code without paying, then they need to use a license that does not allow that without a contract.
I’m all for Open Source and not against paying. But this move here seems to be wrong to me. Maybe create an eco system to pay for the software to use it, if that is what bothers you (as the one who writes and maintains the code).
Yeah, it all depends on what agreement was made when they started using the software.
The artwork they did for that billboard is sick
Wish it have a small “designed in Gimp”, “designed in inkscape” or “designed in kitra” Watermark in the bottom right corner
Does anyone know the actual designer behind them? I would be curious to know.
The whole contributions piece ignored a lot of bigger companies use their own developers to work on open source as well so monetary contributions aren’t always necessary.
Certainly. Quantify that shit; at $100/hr, push 20 hours worth of PRs per dev. But the ratio of companies that do that instead of bullying FOSS projects into doing free work to suit their particular needs is pretty poor.
"I had one conversation with a representative from a larger firm and he’s like: ‘Chad, you’re asking me to spend ten million on maintainers.’”
Whitacre affirmed that request, and pointed out the firm “spends ten million on something anyway.”
Apparently Chad Whitacre is either a moody 15 year old or a fucking moron.
Very nice.
Our feudal patrons are so stingy!
