Drivers passing through San Francisco have a new roadside distraction to consider: billboards calling out businesses that don’t cough up for the open source code that they use.
The signs are the work of the Open Source Pledge – a group that launched earlier this month. It asks businesses that make use of open source code to pledge $2,000 per developer to support projects that develop the code. So far, 25 companies have signed up – but project co-founder Chad Whitacre wants bigger firms to pay their dues, too.
This is why lots of software has started adopting SSPL license which doesn’t actually fix the problem and isn’t a FOSS license.
I still think a new license scheme should be considered though. Giants like AWS and Google have been profiteering off of FOSS for way too long now.
AGPL has been deemed generally successful in this regard because it has been upheld in court cases and forced companies to comply, which it seems to work pretty great for SaaS.
The problem is these giants will usually just choose a more permissive alternative anyway. Both MongoDB and Redis have forks that they can use, and GPL itself is permissive enough for private forking being legal.
The artwork they did for that billboard is sick
Wish it have a small “designed in Gimp”, “designed in inkscape” or “designed in kitra” Watermark in the bottom right corner
The whole contributions piece ignored a lot of bigger companies use their own developers to work on open source as well so monetary contributions aren’t always necessary.
Certainly. Quantify that shit; at $100/hr, push 20 hours worth of PRs per dev. But the ratio of companies that do that instead of bullying FOSS projects into doing free work to suit their particular needs is pretty poor.
Which licence is open source but demands payment from companies if they use it?
Our feudal patrons are so stingy!
Very nice.
You get to choose the license (or write your own) when you develop software. If you don’t want a permissive license don’t license your software that way, your motivation clearly doesn’t align with these licenses anyway.
Seems intentionally adversarial.
If you don’t want a permissive license don’t license your software that way, your motivation clearly doesn’t align with these licenses anyway.
Why does asking for money not align with the licenses?
I never said it does, are you intentionally ignoring the context in which my comment was made?
I have no love for the c-suite, but framing the OP as simply ‘asking for money’ is either ignorant or disingenuous.
Yes you have. Please explain to me the additional context. I seem to not grasp it.
What else are they doing then asking? Doing some marketing around it? If you get pressured by that you should not lead a company.
