Comment by KingMob
3 hours ago
> I always wonder why people bother with providing source under a source available license.
I treat it as "business plus", not "FOSS minus". And of course, some source-available licenses convert to FOSS over time.
> Any work they do on the code is effectively free work they do for you that entitles them to nothing.
Funny, that's the same complaint FOSS companies have about AWS free-riding off their hard work and then competing. They switch to source-available licenses because a FOSS license allows flush FAANGs to exploit them.
> They switch to source-available licenses because a FOSS license allows flush FAANGs to exploit them.
And then they die because they cut themselves off from the OSS community.
Most shared source companies don't actually fare that well. There's a history of these companies spawning new OSS competitors based on forks. Or just not gaining any traction at all.
The "boohoo amazon killed my business" thing isn't as widely spread as you think. They only offer a few hundred services. Several of those are based on open source things. If I were an investor, I'd be reluctant to invest in shared source companies. Unlikely to have long term stamina, extremely likely to be outpaced by some OSS thingy, likely to see users jump ship as soon as they can. I think a few investors probably learned that lesson the hard way.
Shared source from day 1 just means you probably end up running a niche business and are by definition not very investable. Usually these things if they get funded at all are doomed for some acquihire scenario where they end up in the hands of professional revenue milkers like IBM or Oracle. Nothing good happens to users of those projects when that happens. Developers leave in disgust and start new projects. It becomes abandon-ware.
A second argument here is that if Amazon thinks you are worth hosting in managed form, that means they see a multi billion $ market. This doesn't happen until after you are successful typically. And there are plenty of people who don't use Amazon who might still like to use the same stuff. It's a great validation that you have a valuable project and that there is a huge market for it. You just don't get to be the monopolist in that market.
There are millions of open source projects out there that are just fine. Most of those don't require VC funding, or IPOs, or other cash grab mechanisms to sustain themselves for a long time. Most of the really successful projects actually see active contributions from those FAANGs as well. E.g. MS is one of the most active contributors to the Linux kernel. Google as well. OSS actively used by FAANGs represents the most solid open source code out there. Guaranteed to be well supported for ages. Loads of active contributors; many of them paid for by those companies.
You can switch to a copyleft-FOSS license that requires users like AWS to effectively contribute back too. And this way you stay "open source".