Comment by bbkane

1 year ago

> Profit isn't far removed from theft

I definitely think there are unethical ways to profit - capitalism needs to be regulated for the good of the consumer/ecosystem/society.

However, I don't believe that a blanket comparison of any type of profit to theft can be useful or correct.

> so maybe this shouldn't feel so unfair

Do you think this company is unethical for writing closed source software and trying to sell it?

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bbkane

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tison  1 year ago

This article is actually a translated one. In the original article[1], I talked about commercial open-source and how one can collaborate with the open-source community when running a software business.

This section is moved to the second-to-last section in the posted blog, including:

[QUOTE]

When you read The Cathedral & the Bazaar, for its Chapter 4, The Magic Cauldron, it writes:

> … the only rational reasons you might want them to be closed is if you want to sell the package to other people, or deny its use to competitors. [“Reasons for Closing Source”]

> Open source makes it rather difficult to capture direct sale value from software. [“Why Sale Value is Problematic”]

While the article focuses on when open-source is a good choice, these sentences imply that it’s reasonable to keep your commercial software private and proprietary.

We follow it and run a business to sustain the engineering effort. We keep ScopeDB private and proprietary, while we actively get involved and contribute back to the open-source dependencies, open source common libraries when it’s suitable, and maintain the open-source twin to share the engineering experience.

[QUOTE END]

I wrote other blogs to analyze open-source factors within commercial software[2][3][4][5], and I have practiced them in several companies as well as earned merits in open-source projects.

When you think about it, there are many developers working for their employers, and using open-source software in their $DAYJOB is a good motivation to contribute more (especially for distributed systems; individuals can seldomly need one). I know there is open-source developers who develop software that has nothing to do with their $DAYJOB. I'm maintaining projects that has nothing to do with my $DAYJOB also (check Apache Curator, the Java binding of Apache OpenDAL, and more).

[1] https://www.tisonkun.org/2025/01/15/open-source-twin/

(Need a translator) [2] https://www.tisonkun.org/2022/10/04/bait-and-switch-fauxpen-...

[3] https://www.tisonkun.org/2023/08/12/bsl/

[4] https://www.tisonkun.org/2022/12/17/enterprise-choose-a-soft...

[5] https://www.tisonkun.org/2023/02/15/business-source-license/