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My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

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931 points sohzm | 6 comments | 04 Jul 25 02:04 UTC | HN request time: 1.101s | source | bottom
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tombert ◴[04 Jul 25 03:25 UTC] No.44460923[source]▶
Things like this are why I have become disillusioned with Open Source, and why latest projects have been closed source. The GPL is a good enough idea but it is basically impossible for anyone to realistically enforce. If a corporation is selling an optimized binary, then it can be almost impossible to prove that there was any violation of the GPL without viewing the source.
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rfl890 ◴[04 Jul 25 03:32 UTC] No.44460940[source]▶
Well, if you're writing open source because you want to write open source, then none of this matters. If you are worried about corporations stealing your work, that should drive you away from OSS. OSS should stay "hobbyist" for the individual developer.
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AnotherGoodName ◴[04 Jul 25 03:50 UTC] No.44460997[source]▶
There’s a million reasons to want to write open source. A lack of attribution in particular is a killer for motivation.
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sohzm ◴[04 Jul 25 04:17 UTC] No.44461093[source]▶
i love open source because it feels like a kind of donation i can't make financially, so in a way, i'm trying to make up for that

but yeah someone claiming it all falsely isnt good for the motivation

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1. tombert ◴[04 Jul 25 04:32 UTC] No.44461141[source]▶
Wouldn’t this still be accomplished with a freeware model? That way hobbyists could still get your stuff for free but a corporation would have a slightly more difficult time directly stealing it.
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2. sohzm ◴[04 Jul 25 06:06 UTC] No.44461578[source]▶
when i started using computer i jumped to linux ecosystem in a month, and have been using it primarily until very recently

i personally dont feel good using things that are not opensource, yeah i use closed source softwares but i try to limit them

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3. tombert ◴[04 Jul 25 14:24 UTC] No.44464837[source]▶
I don’t have a problem with using open source software, I run NixOS with Sway and tmux and Vim and Typst and a million other FOSS things.

I just don’t feel like directly contributing to helping a corporation make money without being paid. I have a finite amount of time on this planet, I don’t need to provide unpaid labor to make Mark Zuckerberg richer.

4. Pannoniae ◴[04 Jul 25 19:21 UTC] No.44467146[source]▶
yeah, 100%. although there's strong propaganda to specifically make it open source (capital O and capital S)... the conspiracy-minded part of my brain thinks that it's probably because they can then use it.

But yeah, I've pretty much come to the same conclusion myself too - ship source, but ship it under ARR.

I think there's another innovation which hasn't really been explored yet - an "anti-copyright" cartel-style licencing, where you only have permission to use the product to make something dependant on the original product itself, and whatever you make can freely be used by the original creators and all the other participants in the cartel

The effect would basically be creating a "closed" ecosystem encouraging innovation inside it but protecting it from people stealing shit from the outside...

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5. tombert ◴[05 Jul 25 00:03 UTC] No.44469028[source]▶
I'm just not convinced that these licenses are realistically enforceable. A lot of binaries aren't going to show obvious signs in the output. I would have to reverse engineer every binary that might be using my code and look for a sign that they are violating the license so that I might be able to get a discovery request and sue them.

As of right now, I just feel like the best thing to do is not put my code out there, and just binaries. If a company likes what they see then they can pay me for the code.

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6. Pannoniae ◴[09 Jul 25 06:50 UTC] No.44507007{3}[source]▶
fair point... probably easier to detect with bytecode languages.

But even if you put binaries out, they can steal them, it's just harder... I guess, making it harder is the point as a form of deterrence. Dunno, these things are hard questions :)