this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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I never said anything about you or your arguments. I was talking about the analogies the person used to antagonize everyone. And I love how you glossed over all of that to get a little bit hurt at me.
But while your here, your fighting the wrong battles.
Because we are much stronger doing things in the open than we will trying to pick and choose who gets to do what. Even small utilities can contribute to people learning and adapting.
So what if google also benefits? They benefit off of using TCP, SSL, and thousands of standard technology. Should those be charged as well? It's such a boogy man at the cost of other people learning and benefiting from what you've done the same way you benfit from others. It's not about gatekeeping, it's about being community.
I'm gonna draw another place I think too much effort is being given to making sure the "correct" people benefit and that's selective welfare programs. It's costs shit tons of money to administer programs like food stamps. When if we gave everyone UBI, it wouldn't matter. Because everyone gets it.
EDIT: In a copy left license, I still own the copyright to my work. So there's that as well.
But all that on a shelf. I don't give a fuck what you do with your software. I just don't want to be called a racists for whatever reason because I believe in community owned software.
Sorry, the reason I glossed over that is because I didn't want to get involved in that conversation. I was just trying to get the conversation back on topic. I don't endorse the personal attacks.
Why are we ok with workers not getting paid for their labor? Would you still work at your job if they didn't pay you? These companies aren't small shops, they're huge giants that in some cases are destroying countries. They'll be ok if they have to share a tiny fraction of their obscene wealth with regular people.
That's a great question. I'm not really sure actually. Btw, I don't think Open Source™ should go away. I do think there could be a middle ground though. There should be more nuance than just 0% give away or 100% give away.
I think you may be confusing Source Available with Closed Source. Source Available licenses don't stop regular people from creating a community, contributing, learning, adapting, improving software. They do stop companies from making money off of your work though.
I'm not confusing the two. If I copy the "source available" and accidently remember it in a "commercial" product, I'm technically hooped. It's considered derivative work and therefore I'm in violation of the license. Regardless if I'm a simple app dev or Google.
Also, like I said a few times now. I done own the code I contribute. Technically meaning if you contribute code, and use that snippet in a commercial context, again, your in violation of the license.
This is why copy left is the defacto standard. The author of the code retains copywrite ownership of it.
Your still resolving solved problems.
Ooooh, wait. I think I understood one of your points better now...
So, I think you're saying, what if you contribute some code to a source available project, maybe some boilerplate that's the same everywhere, and then you use that same contribution in a commercial product? Then you'd be in violation of the source available license? Is that what you're saying?
This seems like a good reason NOT to contribute to a source available project, which is totally fine. Whereas this is possible with GPL if you 100% own the code and didn't sign a CLA.
However, not all projects are "I want everyone to pitch in and I want everyone to own the project." There are lots of projects where 1 dude or 1 company want to retain ownership of their app and don't need or want outside contributors. Normally, they'd probably just be closed source—maybe they might consider being source available.
(Just as long as they don't pretend to be Open Source™, in which case fuck them.)
What's the point of source available if I'm never allowed to derive value from it?
FUTO specifically allows you to derive value from a project like this:
Yes, it's a different set of value than Open Source™ gives you. Again, they're not claiming to provide the same value as Open Source™. (They're also not trying to replace Open Source™.) Yes, it's not the value that you want. Yes, that's by design.
Do you also think, what's the point of Google Search, Windows, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, etc if you can't derive any "value" from it, where "value" means Open Source™ value? Those apps are still insanely valuable to users, even if they don't get Open Source™ value from them.