Comment by rvnx
4 years ago
The consequences is that these companies get very rich and they eventually take-over the open-source project.
See Redis for example, two Israeli dudes took the open-source Redis, made tons of money.
Everyone is happy: the two founders became rich, the VCs became rich.
What about the authors and contributors of Redis ? Well thank you for the gift. As a present you can have the privilege to work for us to keep maintaining your bugs. Don't complain too much.
Then you can rewrite the history to make it sound like you created Redis and it's a win, while it's actually just a very smart dude in Italy who wrote most of the software using his own sweat and support from his employer (Pivotal).
> What about the authors and contributors of Redis ? Well thank you for the gift.
He was eventually hired by Redis-the-company, allowed them to use the trademark (originally they were Redis Labs which was a compromise with him), went to their conferences, trained their Redis developers (who contributed to Redis-the-open-source), etc.. I assume he was happy with the deal as he spoke positively about them and chose to spend a lot of time with them, and eventually retired after I presume getting a nice amount of money from the decade-long adventure.
Indeed, this is the ideal outcome for all involved. Everyone makes some money, everyone spent the time doing what they enjoyed doing, nobody got shafted, and contributors were able to integrate their contributions while being able to pull the whole app back down for their own (free) use.
These days liberal OSS licenses are really just free labor for this kind of thing. If you use a very liberal OSS license just make sure you are 100% OK with your work being appropriated this way, including having your name stripped from it and some hustler taking credit.
In the long term I think this kind of behavior is going to kill open source for things beyond libraries and building blocks.
Everything open on the Internet is destroyed by exploitation of one form or another: appropriation, spam, scams, etc. I've become fond of saying "the Internet is a dark forest."
If he didn’t want someone commercializing his software, he should used a different license. His own employer is is a commercial wrapper on an open source Project.
Did the two Israeli dudes violate the Redis license?
Is it possible to do something legal, yet morally wrong?
“By selecting this license I give anyone permission to do X, Y, and Z with my software - provided they do A as well.”
“I’m going to chose to do Z and A with your software.”
“Moral hazard! Moral hazard!”
Picking a license indicates what you are willing to have others do with your work. If you don’t want people to be able to monetize it, pick a different license.
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Clearly there was demand for a commercial offering. What should they have done differently?
Are you referring to Microsoft's business model?
It's possible. But there is nothing immoral here.
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It is, but did they?