Comment by wvenable
7 hours ago
> DHH's choice of license reacts to a real pressure in open source: many companies make real money from open source software while leaving the hard work of building and maintaining it to others.
If you don't want start a business and make real money from your software then denying that to others is antithetical to the concept of open source and free software.
That being said; I have no issue with a developer choosing any license they want -- it's their software and therefore it's their right. But calling it "open source" when it specifically forbids certain use-cases is just wrong. DHH wants his cake (pretend it's real OSS) and eat it too (deny usages).
> If you don't want start a business and make real money from your software then denying that to others is antithetical to the concept of open source and free software.
What if you do and have done so, yet you're competing with e.g. AWS, GCP, Azure, who can do it for cheaper than you due to scale, and also have a much easier time to sell an extra line item to their existing customers vs you having to go through commercial negotiations and purchase agreements? Cf. Elastic, Redis, etc.
If you have a problem with that then don't make it open source.
And if you don't make it open source, don't call it open source.
My own personal position is that my commercial software is commercial for me and my open source software is free for everyone to use for any purpose including making money that I will never see. If I cared, I wouldn't make that software open source.
It should be pointed out that commercial and free software / open source are not opposed though.