Re:Cracks are showing in Enterprise Open Source's foundations
by 0xbadcafebee on Friday January 29, 2021 @11:48AM
(#25959322)
I have said this before, and I'll keep saying it: A corporation controlling an open source project is antithetical to the purpose of Open Source, which is a project designed for the collaboration of a community of users. Licensing issues are just a tiny part of the problem. Open Source is a license type and philosophy, but that license type exists solely so that users can get fixes for their bugs/problems incorporated into upstream.
Corporate Open Source doesn't give a shit about a user's problems. The corporation only exists to further its own interests, and it uses Open Source as a tool to do so. Its sole motivation is profit, and so it is unwilling to accept the changes that users want to make if they're not directly benefiting the corporation.
Community-driven Open Source is about the users. Sometimes the project leads are a little too dictatorial and micromanage the project, preventing user fixes for stupid reasons. But most of the time, if you have a useful thing to contribute or change, they will accept it, even if it doesn't benefit them personally.
I think the current trend with Corporate Open Source was natural given the selfish nature of corporations. It's only going to get worse from here. In 10 years, most Corporate "Open Source" projects will go one of two ways. In one, they're donated to Corporate-aligned "Foundations" and all the development is done by the corporation, but "management" is done by some generic board [of people in corporations]. In the other, it's just a thin API layer over a proprietary system, like kernel drivers.
I think the only real Open Source left will be the old school variety. The projects led by a random chick in her garage who just needs a tool that solves her problems. Nobody's going to pay her for it, and she's fine with that, because she just needs this damn code. And that will be how Open Source survives: the hobbyist who donates their work to the world, just because it's a good thing to do.
The only salvation I can see in all of this is a new form of Open Source that enables corporations to safely donate their work. Note that I said donate. They can't have any expectations of holding onto IP or copyright. But perhaps they can find some way to use it as a tax write-off? So the project is run by a chick in her garage, but she takes patches from corporations, or maybe even a small yearly "donation" just to keep managing the project. In this way you could actually have a thriving community, even if that community is made up of corporations.
Corporate Open Source doesn't give a shit about a user's problems. The corporation only exists to further its own interests, and it uses Open Source as a tool to do so. Its sole motivation is profit, and so it is unwilling to accept the changes that users want to make if they're not directly benefiting the corporation.
Community-driven Open Source is about the users. Sometimes the project leads are a little too dictatorial and micromanage the project, preventing user fixes for stupid reasons. But most of the time, if you have a useful thing to contribute or change, they will accept it, even if it doesn't benefit them personally.
I think the current trend with Corporate Open Source was natural given the selfish nature of corporations. It's only going to get worse from here. In 10 years, most Corporate "Open Source" projects will go one of two ways. In one, they're donated to Corporate-aligned "Foundations" and all the development is done by the corporation, but "management" is done by some generic board [of people in corporations]. In the other, it's just a thin API layer over a proprietary system, like kernel drivers.
I think the only real Open Source left will be the old school variety. The projects led by a random chick in her garage who just needs a tool that solves her problems. Nobody's going to pay her for it, and she's fine with that, because she just needs this damn code. And that will be how Open Source survives: the hobbyist who donates their work to the world, just because it's a good thing to do.
The only salvation I can see in all of this is a new form of Open Source that enables corporations to safely donate their work. Note that I said donate. They can't have any expectations of holding onto IP or copyright. But perhaps they can find some way to use it as a tax write-off? So the project is run by a chick in her garage, but she takes patches from corporations, or maybe even a small yearly "donation" just to keep managing the project. In this way you could actually have a thriving community, even if that community is made up of corporations.