All the other big players like Google/Facebook will open source those middle pieces to help people who will make apps that will most likely have to interact with their platforms. They'll never release the source to actual end products.
Are there any examples where the middle-tier stuff is successful on its own as a business model? I guess you could say Redhat or Canonical, but even then they're developing a lot of commercial stuff around the core open source operating systems/distros .. things like Landscape. Also they got in early, years ago, and might be able to build a better foundation than more recent companies.
RedHat makes, for example, patches for kernel vulnerabilities, but they actually give that away for free. What they sell is a promise that when there's a new vulnerability, you can get a patch from them quickly.
They also spread this service across MANY different open source packages. Like you said, a company that just offered services around a smaller package would have to run a lot more lean and would probably be a risky venture.
What's preventing someone from freeloading? It sounds like regardless of whether you're paying, you can still get the patches.
It's much harder for freeloaders to accept feature requests from customers, for example, because that would result in a fork.
What's the joke where someone fixes some machine and charges $1000? Their cost breakdown was:
turning a knob: $1
knowing which knob to turn: $999
If you catch any bugs specific to your systems or need special feature Red Hat is always there to help because a lot of open source software developers are as well Red Hat employees.
If you use CentOS or whatever other RHEL-based distribution there is no support at all other the one community might provide.
That may be the case, but WorkMail is definitely not eating MSFT's lunch. Microsoft continues to be incredibly successful in enterprise
AGPL is also busted. It has its own loopholes, some self-imposed for nebulous reasons attributed to software freedom, some self-imposed due to FSF's peculiar stances on copyright law more generally.
Those limitations are starting to become practical, as big companies with legal talent actually start reading and analyzing the terms, as applied to important projects like MongoDB. Mongo alluded to those weaknesses in its submission of SSPL to OSI. I've written about them in slightly more detail:
https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/04/Copyleft-Bust-Up.h...
It's certainly a solution. It's just a really really bad one that makes lock in obscene and would probably strengthen amazon.
AGPL has one major drawback though, it prevents free non-commercial use.
If I use ghostscript for a research data collection system, I have to open source the whole thing?
I wish there was a version of AGPL which exempted non-commercial use, as I doubt anybody means to force charities to pay up...
No, it doesn’t. It just requires that you release the source code of the modifications.
https://tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-affero-general-public-lice...
An open source licence can’t prevent any use, otherwise it would no longer be an open source licence.
AGPL is GPL + over the internet, not LGPL + over the internet.
If you do not like the obligation it places on you in exchange for using the work of other people then don't use it.
A library adopting the AGPL license has the effect of making it impossible for closed-source non-commercial projects to use it, even without modification.
> If you do not like the obligation it places on you in exchange for using the work of other people then don't use it.
Commercial projects can afford to pay, open source projects don't need to.
Charities, research institutions, etc can't afford to pay, and usually can't open source their projects.
If we move to an industry where AGPL is standard without any exemption for closed-source non-commercial use, we prevent the usage that nobody would object to.
That's what this entire thread is...
GPL says no usage without sharing.
LGPL says no modification without sharing.
AGPL says no usage without sharing.
We're seeing people move from LGPL to AGPL, which has generally unintended consequences.
It's not modifications, it's your entire application. AGPL doesn't have the linking exception.
Using an APGL library means I have to open source my account management code, or my data anonymisation system, etc.
Of course I'm perfectly happy to open source modifications, but that's not AGPL, that's LGPL (or ALGPL I guess?)
The open source issue is fixed, it is called AGPL.
However, the issue that Redis along many other suffering from is called brutal competition, it is not even just tech or open source tech, Amazon is eating everyone's lunch. I don't have any idea how this problem can be solved.
But, I know that restricting building API compatible software is not a solution, not a good one at least.
Letting anyone build API compatible software is a natural order of things that enables innovation and helps consumers avoid lock-in, specially with stagnated software, this is a big deal and something that we shouldn't give up, so on that topic, fark Oracle.