Open Source

31560 readers

804 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

315

SF ads call out tech firms for not paying for open source (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] mlg 35 points 1 month ago

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.