• Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      It’s particularly popular for startups to use to bootstrap their tech company and build cred shortly before they reach the “we have to actually turn a profit” phase, at which point the bean counters try to squeeze every bit for a nickel. Once they have marketshare, they say, “we are helping the competition by releasing this!” and abandon the things they actively maintain.

      There is also a direct benefit for open sourcing: you can get other people to debug and improve your software for free. They go the enclosure direction once they want to squeeze their customers for more money, e.g. closing the source code and charging $x per use of the software to their service clients.

      Once they’re a monopoly, companies can swing back to the open source direction because they have no competitors to worry about and can just get free dev work and good will out of it.

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    So, don’t mistake this as me telling you you’re totally wrong, because you definitely do have a point and it gets under my skin too (that’s why I believe licenses like AGPL and, dare I say, SSPL should be used), but many of these companies actively contribute back to the open source software they’re using.

    • vivadanang@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      and are hardly the only companies using FOSS; everyone from non profits to miliary systems use it. this meme doesn’t really work when you take the whole picture into account.

  • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Closed licenses are arguably better for certain left projects, particularly self-contained ones. You can use bourgeois legal nonsense to stop corpos from using your work.

    I’ve seen anti-war people write open source code that ended up getting used to help fly war drones.

    • Faresh@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Closed licenses are arguably better for certain left projects

      What about licenses that restrict the software from being used in a certain way? I think I’ve heard of at least one open-source license that disallows the software from being used in the military industry.

      • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I like the idea a lot but my understanding is that they’re unenforceable. I’d go with one of those if I thought they worked, though.