I'm the author of a number of open source projects, and some of the messages I've received are just insane.
The latest thing is... get a load of this... it's now no longer good enough to give your code and your service away for free. Nope. It has to be free and permissively licensed, so that anyone who wants to take it closed and put their name and a price tag on it can do so without compensating you in any way whatsoever. Anything less and you're not serving "the community."
I have to ask what kind of community this is. OSS was envisioned as the basis of an information gift economy, not a bunch of "takers." Nowadays the takers are increasingly corporations, not even individuals.
That's why my larger non-trivial OSS projects are and will likely remain GPL or similar. I do sometimes release trivial stuff under public domain or nearly-so licenses, but things that take years of work? Sorry, but you have to give something back. At the very least you have to acknowledge its authorship if you use it.
Luckily these attitudes are far from the majority, but I still think it's worthwhile to call out obnoxious trash for what it is. I've come to the same opinion with regard to piracy, especially industrial-scale piracy. The thing that really bothers me is when people actually get holier-than-thou about it. I have more respect for you if you just say "look, I'm a cheap greedy jerk and I want free stuff." At least you're admitting it. But please do not try to act like your wanting free stuff is some kind of grandiose liberal social statement that's helping make the world a better place, because it's not. At worst you are helping to devalue labor and destroy peoples' livelihoods. At the very best you are accomplishing nothing.
The last thing I want the author of something as beautiful as Space Engine to see is to visit the HN thread about their project and see a bunch of whiny takers berating them about how they're not allowed to take take take on terms that please them sufficiently.
I'm the author of a number of open source projects, and some of the messages I've received are just insane.
The latest thing is... get a load of this... it's now no longer good enough to give your code and your service away for free. Nope. It has to be free and permissively licensed, so that anyone who wants to take it closed and put their name and a price tag on it can do so without compensating you in any way whatsoever. Anything less and you're not serving "the community."
I have to ask what kind of community this is. OSS was envisioned as the basis of an information gift economy, not a bunch of "takers." Nowadays the takers are increasingly corporations, not even individuals.
That's why my larger non-trivial OSS projects are and will likely remain GPL or similar. I do sometimes release trivial stuff under public domain or nearly-so licenses, but things that take years of work? Sorry, but you have to give something back. At the very least you have to acknowledge its authorship if you use it.
Luckily these attitudes are far from the majority, but I still think it's worthwhile to call out obnoxious trash for what it is. I've come to the same opinion with regard to piracy, especially industrial-scale piracy. The thing that really bothers me is when people actually get holier-than-thou about it. I have more respect for you if you just say "look, I'm a cheap greedy jerk and I want free stuff." At least you're admitting it. But please do not try to act like your wanting free stuff is some kind of grandiose liberal social statement that's helping make the world a better place, because it's not. At worst you are helping to devalue labor and destroy peoples' livelihoods. At the very best you are accomplishing nothing.
The last thing I want the author of something as beautiful as Space Engine to see is to visit the HN thread about their project and see a bunch of whiny takers berating them about how they're not allowed to take take take on terms that please them sufficiently.