1d ago

"I support it only if it's open source" should be a more common viewpoint

vitalik.eth.limo /general/2025/08/12/onlyopensource.html

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51038205

What are your thoughts? Any counter-counter points to the author's response to most concerns regarding open source?

Technology @lemmy.world

pdqcp @lemmy.dbzer0.com

1d ago

"I support it only if it's open source" should be a more common viewpoint

vitalik.eth.limo /general/2025/08/12/onlyopensource.html

26 comments

...or non-profit... But I agree...
- If it's non profit AND not open source, it seems a bit shady, doesn't it?
  
  Maybe, but not necessarily. You see, there could be plenty of reasons to protect ones code...
Somewhat tangential hot take: I REALLY think the scope of free as in beer use of open source projects should be limited to personal and small scale business use only (when the business makes below a certain yearly revenue). It's infuriating how the biggest tech companies openly use open source software as the base of their products while giving NOTHING in return to those open source projects, and in fact only bash them when they show the least bit of resistance to whatever evil profit driven change they demand the project make. If you're making billions in revenue using open source software which has saved you R&D money, why shouldn't the open source project itself be entitled to even half a percent of that which will more than cover all their development costs? I'm so sick of companies seeing open source as free outsourced labour they can exploit. There are also existing licenses that only allow free as in beer use of the software if it's for personal use or in a worker co-op, which I think is also an interesting approach worth considering.
Alternatively, I think we should seriously explore even more copyleft licenses than AGPL. I think it was either Elastic Search or MongoDB that tried to implement a license requiring every software that depends on the open source version of their software be open source as well? Everyone, including the OSF bashed that decision when it came out, and as far as I know there were indeed a lot of problems with how that license was written, but people also denounced the very concept of going beyond AGPL which I don't get.
- The open source movement was corporations trying to have their cake and eat it too with the things the free software movement had done. That means organisations calling attention to open source without mentioning free software will always push against copyleft as their goal is to get free labour and testing for things megacorporations use while reserving the right to take future development private.
Can we do the same with taxes? I won't fund any projects that aren't license appropriately
- @quicksnail @pdqcp
  Public Money? Public Code! https://publiccode.eu/en/
Open source isn't good enough, I want my software to use a strong copyleft license with no ability to relicense via a CLA (CLAs that don't grant the ability to relicense software are rare, but acceptable). AGPL for servers, GPL for local software, LGPL for libraries when possible, and Apache, MIT, or BSD ONLY when LGPL doesn't make sense.
- FLOSS
- I see no reason not to use AGPL for all software too
  
  It's not clear that the AGPL is enforceable in lots of countries, so the GPL is safer if you don't need the extra restrictions.
Unpopular opinion around here, but I feel that there is a place for IP in the world. Yes, it is a flawed system that is abused by corpos, but it is also a system that can and does protect the work of the little guy. Copyleft has a place, FOSS has a place, and copyright, needs reformed.
DMCA should never have been signed into law the way it was. It limited "free use" way too much and is now being weaponized by police to shirk accountability. Corporations abuse it by buying up technology which would compete with them and burying it. Etc.
My fix:
Repeal DMCA. Full stop.
Place a requirement on patant/IP purchases that they have to be a material component of a product brought to market within 5 years of purchase else the ownership of the patant/IP reverts to its original creator with no recompense to the purchaser.
No transfer of ownership of purchased IP can be made without informing the original creator and giving a reasonable period for them to object. If they object, they must have the right to file the complaint in court to reassert ownership, which may involve reasonable recompense as decided by the court. Also, all clauses in current contracts related to transfer of ownership become void and unenforceable.
Any purchases made of patants or technical IP must be commensurate with the market cap of the highest level owner in the subsidiary chain. Nestlè does not get to buy the design for a new water filtration under some barely visible water brand to pretend like they cannot afford to pay what it is worth.
Not specific, but still relevant, to patant/IP situations: Forced arbitration becomes illegal and unenforceable. Everyone has the right to demand their case go before, and be adjudicated by, an impartial and uninvolved judge.
I have had other reforms, but they are not coming to mind currently. I know it is all a very unpopular opinion around here, but I am personally an independent developer and I want my tools and the code I designed to be used for the purposes I have designed them for, and I don't want someone lifting algorithms I invented and not giving credit or licensing it from me. I am one man who has a family that he struggles to feed, and I recognize that the copyright and patant protections are, ostensibly, there to protect my work as well.
- Copyright in general should be strictly limited to an extremely short time, like maybe 1-5 years. After that others should be allowed to use and expand on it unless you release a new work that expands on it yourself. Trademarks eliminate the confusion about who published it and if you aren't actively using the content, it should be given to society to benefit everyone. This would promote progress and competition. Extended copyright, especially, is only useful for people and companies who don't want to be productive and just get paid for one thing their ancestors/predecessors did ages ago. The original design for copyright said exactly this would happen.
  
  Indeed. I agree with everything you said here.
  Most of my quandary stems from patants at this point I guess. Copyright reform advocates are plentiful, but patant reform is much more rarely mentioned and IMHO is a bigger issue for progress and development of society. The anticompetitive practice of purchasing patants so you can bury them gets deep under my skin. There are so many things that have been invented, problems that have been solved, potential progress that has had the first steps made, that was squelched because some person/company with more money than civic duty realized that it would negatively affect their revenue stream. And instead of developing the idea and incorporating it to make their own products better, they just hide if in a vault somewhere.
  That all said, I cannot describe how happy I was when I heard of some rogue patant whore activists out there coming up with ideas for enshittification and patanting them so corpos cannot use those specific methods to enshittify our world more. I wish I had been able to patant the SaaS architecture when I graduated HS in 2003. Maybe the world would be a much better place.
- "IP is good, actually" shouldn't be a hot take. Those are the laws that licensing is built on.
  
  The fact it is a hot take here is literally the topic of this post.
- Get the fuck out
No. Not just open source. But Free (as in freedom). GPL & AGPL
Yes, and this should mean financially supporting it. Just using it does not equate to supporting, and usually telling windows friends that you use arch btw and so should they does not equate either.

26 comments