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Rug pulls, forks, and open-source feudalism

(lwn.net)
275 points pabs3 | 2 comments | 06 Sep 25 05:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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cycomanic ◴[06 Sep 25 19:40 UTC] No.45152264[source]▶
>Elasticsearch contributors were Elastic employees; that, unsurprisingly, did not change afterward. OpenSearch started with no strong contributor base, so had to build its community from scratch. As a result, the project has been dominated by Amazon contributors ever since

So in a way the "rug pull" achieved what it wanted, amazon is now contributing to development.

I think discussing these "rug pulls" without discussing the destructive habit of many large companies to only profit without giving back misses the mark. Any community where there is a large imbalance between the ones doing the work and the ones profiting will over the long run become unstable.

replies(3): >>45152513 #>>45153433 #>>45154145 #
1. preisschild ◴[06 Sep 25 20:18 UTC] No.45152513[source]▶
There are copyleft licenses like AGPL/GPL that basically require them to contribute back, without going to a proprietary license.
replies(1): >>45155034 #
2. pabs3 ◴[07 Sep 25 03:03 UTC] No.45155034[source]▶
AGPL/GPL require people to contribute forward to users, not back to maintainers. They also don't require any monetary compensation, which is what companies like Elastic are mainly after, not code contributions.