The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

Re:The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source by relaunched on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @10:22AM (#17818850)

Let them do what they want; the open source community does not suffer fools.

It's a dirty practice to build something open source and after a certain point, try to close it off. But, it's not unheard of. Any project can change their license, I believe Google did this with Android. Older versions will get forked and others will do with those forks what they choose.

I'm hoping doing this would cause so much backlash that it'll force projects to revert back to OSS. But, it could just push people out of contributing to OSS -- then again, there might be some people more likely to contribute if they knew no one was going to make money off their work.

Let the market sort it out.

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Re:The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source by djsumdog on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @11:09AM (#17819203)

Google and Android is weirder. The base OS is still totally open source and based on a Linux kernel. But in order to distribute Android with Play/Gapps, you have to join the Open Handset Alliance. You're heavily restricted on what apps you can bundle and you CANNOT manufacture any Amazon Fire devices (or any Android devices that do not contain the Google base services).

The base is open, but what makes it useful is licensed, essentially making the free still crippled. I did a post about Android a while back:

https://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/

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Re:The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source by relaunched on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @12:13PM (#17819762)

Thanks for the clarification. The more I think about it, the less my comparison applies.

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