&quot;Meta&quot; development

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 17:03:15 +0000

Here's an interesting article about the economics and sustainability of OSS development. Most of us love Hubzilla and would like to see the project grow and expand. Much of that will require a significant and ongoing investment in sustainable development. I've many time said, if you want a particular feature, you can pay some me to create it for you. That works for some things. But how do we create a community that will engage in consistent active development? Part of that is answering the question of finding, retaining and paying active developers. If we all wait for the weekend code warriors to do it, we'll never get it done.

This article gives some much needed food for thought.

The (broken) economics of OSS – Matt Klein – Medium

Last week, Redis Labs announced a change in how they will license some extensions to the core Redis project (see here and here for more…

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Waitman Gobble

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 17:33:57 +0000 last edited: Tue, 04 Sep 2018 17:34:50 +0000

FreeBSD is an example of an OSS project built mostly by companies. If you take a look at the thousands of licenses included in FreeBSD, a majority of the code is licensed by companies. I haven't studied the Linux source tree too closely but it's probably the same situation. Company X wants a feature and they add it, release the code back to the 'community'

Also, there is the FreeBSD foundation that collects money and pays for some development.

The example of Redis labs, "By January 2013 the company had more than 1,000 paying customers" .. what's your vision for that in regards to Hubzilla?

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 17:56:02 +0000

I'm not interested at all in Hubzilla following the Redis model. But the overall article is a much larger conversation not centered around Redis particularly.

The author lays out a solution he calls, "loose open core," I liken it to what has grown up around Wordpress - which I find to be a fairly reasonable model. I think a similar ecosystem could build around Hubzilla with one main difference - the MIT license actually makes it easier to implement a "loose open core" model. Because module and addon devs are able to create using the core code without needing to release their final product for free distribution, you won't have sites like GPLDL.COM! popping up undercutting the developer creating the addon.

So, I guess... what does this community as it is think of the author's "loose open core" concept?

Download the most popular GPL-licensed Premium WordPress Themes & Plugins and WooCommerce Extensions for FREE from GPLDL.COM!

Waitman Gobble

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 18:32:59 +0000 last edited: Wed, 05 Sep 2018 00:09:33 +0000

I'm not sure this is the issue with GPL vs a free use license. Maybe there are examples of commercial closed source libraries/software that are protected in the way you describe? But a free license is more usable to a company like Apple, Netflix or Sony. all of which use FreeBSD code without having to share source with users... in that sense it is considered a more 'free' license than GPL. example is the Playstation.

the other side of the coin, is - hardly anybody follows the license terms anyway. Just about every IoT device runs Linux and probably has GPLv3 or even AGPL licensed code, and these guys sell closed source systems. It's totally crazy. It's like law suit apocalypse waiting to happen lol.

Also that graphic i posted, i made it, there are actually that many licenses in one 'copy' of FreeBSD. Almost all of them say the same thing: "free to distribute as long as this copyright message is included with source or binary". Did Sony include a book of licenses with their product? Do they even link to it anywhere?

I built a 'license file' that would satisfy the licenses in FreeBSD, it's a pretty massive file.

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 19:59:53 +0000

In the WordPress community there was a discussion long ago that all addons and themes are derived code, I doubt there has been a legal ruling on it, but that is how that community has been operating - meaning all php for themes and addo s must comply with GPL terms and be distributable under those terms. This allows things like GPLDL to exist. With the MIT license on Hubzilla, that isn't an issue, so an enterprising add-on dev could "close source" their addons without the problem of a downline recipient (legally) releasing it publicly, making an ecosystem around Hubzilla actually easier to bring g I to being than WP.

My question here is, how would the community overall react - is that something we should encourage/discourage and what are other ideas for developing a revenue stream that will support future development of those things that will benefit everybody?

poVoq

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 16:18:17 +0000

I personally feel Wordpress is probably the worst of the worst when it comes to the open-core model and without the GPL it would be even worse.

Typical open-core models where they are upfront of a more or less limited "community edition" with no support and a "pro" version that is typically just a few enterprise additions and support added is basically not so bad. They sell support and features to enterprise customers who actually want and need that, while having a open-source version that can be used and improved on by the community (and enterprise internal until the bosses can be convinced to make it an official purchase).

The Wordpress model on the other hand is a bunch of at first glance open-source extensions that are also heavily promoted as such, while in reality they are nearly always strategically cut to really hit any free users where it hurts most to get them to update to the paid version. This is basically closed source with false advertisement added on top. Add to that the huge amount of abandoned plugins and generally quick money grab attepts in the repository and you really got the worst of the worst. But at least with the GPL there is a chance that some of the reasonably good but abandoned paid extensions can be resurrected as real open-source versions. With MIT you lose even that. And the GPLDL argument is basically the same as with piracy, i.e. I doubt much sales are lost that way as most of the users would have never paid in the first place.

poVoq

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 16:32:22 +0000

On the general topic... I believe software vendors in the classical sense are a bad idea and only through some very "creative" (in a bad way) means they can stay profitable in an open-source dominated environment.
The Redis example is also really about something else... it is the big cloud providers that have been using Redis extensively, but who refuse to pay this specific Redis support vendor (how happens to have hired the original developer and has put Redis in its name) for their services. But these cloud vendors have their own programmers as staff working on improving Redis where they need it, so the support model really just doesn't make sense for them. And in the case of AGPL license software that also isn't a problem, as they have to share their code improvements back to the common open-source version.

So for me the future of software development is shared common code (like Linux) being developed mainly by employees of large enterprises that use it for some backend processes, but not as their main sales vehicle. In addition to that, you have support vendors (also with programmers on staff that work on features of the common pool software), and these offer the use of the open-source software to small and medium sized enterprises (or large ones with absolutely not software development capacity... this includes governments) that need to have an official vendor for their procurement process.
Last but not least you have community supported software that is either developed by a team of people in their free time, or a few people are paid for through crowd funding (see Godot Engine for example) or social-responsibility funding (basically Mozilla).

Waitman Gobble

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 00:24:42 +0000 last edited: Thu, 06 Sep 2018 00:25:30 +0000

I don't have feelings about Redis either way, but the developer who started the project seems to have brought the name with him when he partnered up with the other company. It seems he's more than just a hired employee? they joined together and landed millions of vc dollars.

Redis Labs - Wikipedia

Redis Labs (originally Garantia Data) is a private computer software company based in Mountain View, California. It provides a database management system marketed as "NoSQL" as open source software or as a service using cloud computing.[1] The company has additional offices in London and Tel Aviv. Redis Labs was founded in 2011 by Ofer Bengal, prev...

Anyway, MongoDB is 'similar' I guess. I visited their offices in Palo Alto a few years back. It looks to me like their core business is backup, and security, and their clients are large financial corps. Their open source software isn't really their core business, but 'enables' the core business. That's my opinion/observation.