this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024

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draw.io no longer open source since August 27, 2024 (github.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

TL;DR: Competitors in integrating with Atlassian are not allowed to incorporate code after the change because they used it in free add-ons, which caused the official integration (a paid add-on that is the sole source of funding) to be labeled a scam by a review in late August.

Plus, the thing was never really open source anyway:

draw.io is also closed to contributions, as it's not open source. We follow a development process compliant with our SOC 2 Type II process. We do not have a mechanism where we can accept contributions from non-staff members.

[–] peregus 16 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Open source means that the source code is...open, that everyone can view and use it, it doesn't mean that everyone can contribute to it. Or am I wrong?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

People usually use the open source definition from the Open Source Initiative. That definition does have extra requirements:

https://opensource.org/osd

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Damn great username btw 👌

[–] peregus 3 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks for the clarification!

[–] wurstgulasch3000 7 points 3 weeks ago

What you a referring to is often called "source available"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

@peregus yes, wrong. Being "open" doesn't mean just "readable". Imagine an open bird cage, not just an open book. It needs to be open to fly free.

[–] peregus -3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The definition of the worlds open source seems to me that the source is readable by everyone. If you mean something different like @[email protected] said, then that's something else.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

@peregus why do you think so? My view is backed by the two official definitions from OSI and FSF, plus the wording of specific licenses. Your definition is backed by... linguistics? While ignoring the second (open cage) meaning of "open"? Quite strange narrow definition, don't you think? And at odds with everyone who has been doing open-source for decades.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

That is usually referred to as "source available" and doesnt fall into the category of open source.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Then nvidia produced Open Source code then I guess?

(There were Repos, but everything was Copyrighted. Noone was technically allowed to use it afaik, but it was still there about some AI stuff back then)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

@ReakDuck I'm sure nvidia would like that, this "open source" label is good for marketing. They just want to avoid being actually open. Have the cake and eat it, like many businesses do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Noone was technically allowed to use it

There is your answer. draw.io can be used by everyone and for almost every purpose, so the situations aren't even remotely the same.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Chatgpt please refactor this code entirely but keep the function input and output the same.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Just wondering, if a project switch to close source from open source, all the donation to the stage when it’s open source will be sent back to the donor or counted as shares?

[–] peregus 29 points 3 weeks ago

They count as...gone! Gone to develop what's been open source until it becomes closed source. As I think it should be, because what you helped to develop with your donation is still there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I don't see a CLA so this is somewhat surprising that all ~30 contributors would be okay moving away from open source.

Unless this was a unilateral decision

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Apache is a permissive license, plus:

draw.io is also closed to contributions, as it's not open source. We follow a development process compliant with our SOC 2 Type II process. We do not have a mechanism where we can accept contributions from non-staff members.

This was added wayyyy before. OP is making this much more of a deal than it actually is.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

@Aatube I don't see how OP is making it a big deal. That post is merely stating facts, as confirmed by the company representative in the GitHub discussion. Yes, the project was never "open-source-like governed", but it was technically open-source software. With the additional restriction in the license it's not anymore. All pretty theorical, but nevertheless true.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

"No longer open source" is factually true. However, it gives the impression that they did something much more drastic. It would be much better to just get to the point with something like "draw.io forbids competitors for Atlassian integration from using their code".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Up until a year ago, the README explicitly said they didn’t claim to be an open source project: https://github.com/jgraph/drawio/commit/8906f90ac0cc50a0c6da77c28cf9b2b2339277b1#diff-b335630551682c19a781afebcf4d07bf978fb1f8ac04c6bf87428ed5106870f5L10

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Appreciate it, i wasn't familiar with the project and didn't see that!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Whatever, I’m using it regardless of what shitty commercial alternatives tried to be shoved down my throat. If Draw.io goes shit I’ll just switch to ditaa

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Thanks for the note on Ditaa. I didn't know it existed but I love the idea of rendering bitmaps from ASCII, especially on the web. It's like Mermaid but the original syntax is a diagram in and of itself!

Like the author writes:

There is a number of formats that are text-based (html, docbook, LaTeX, programming language comments), but when rendered by other software (browsers, interpreters, the javadoc tool etc), they can contain images as part of their content. If ditaa was intergrated with those tools (and I'm planning to do the javadoc bit myself soon), then you would have readable/editable diagrams within the text format itself, something that would make things much easier. ditaa syntax can currently be embedded to HTML.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's still open source. It's just that development has ceased.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's not open source and development has not stopped.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Whatever is still going on after the proprietary fork doesn't count. It is irrelevant, just some other payware that will enshittify as it is resold. The last canon version is the unburden foss version. For practical purpose the development ended there and it's fine. It's great it made it that far before dying. At least tgat version won't backslide in functionality or won't leverage it's adoption to extract rent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Oh, it will backslide. This won't run on lastest Chrome in 10 years time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Is that web software not html5 compliant ?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

https://alternativeto.net/software/diagramly/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Is there an actual open source alternative to visio?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

When excalidraw was mentioned in another comment I think it would also be worth to mention tldraw even though I don't kniw whether it can be counted as an replacement since I never used draw.io.

https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw

[–] Adalast 1 points 3 weeks ago

Damn it... I literally just found draw.io like 2 weeks ago.

[+] [email protected] -1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] vikingtons 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

And despite that, if was still newsworthy enough to be posted like 6 times in total 😅

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I posted it to 8 communities because there are 8 communities I am aware of where this on-topic. Some people might be subscribed to only a subset of them. This is the natural consequence of the fediverse enabling us to have more than one community for discussing the same topic.

[–] vikingtons 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I suppose some instances cut others off as well (I see only 6 total) so you have a fair point

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

To my mind, the ideal would be that if you, as the person who wants to share some 'open-source' news, chose one community that you think is 'best' (based on what instance it's on, if the mods are real people and are active, participation levels, whatever you think really). And we, as subscribers, would do the same. This way, the 'good' communities would thrive, and the 'bad' ones would wither away. What happens at the minute, is that there's 8 communities for open source, and there'll always will be, because they aren't in competition with one another.

(this is mostly just a general point about cross-posting behaviour, it's not meant as a dig at you personally).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

problem is I have no idea which of these communities is "best", I do not pay enough attention to things going on behind the scenes to have any knowledge of that.

[–] Kelly -1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

problem is I have no idea which of these communities is "best"

Its a bit basic but so far I've just gone with the largest population. Usually I'm just after the most activity and that generally scales with population. It keeps things relatively simple.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Thx looks like I am only in this one.