paying-the-piper
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beeware
New vocabulary?
Hi everyone! I read through all the posts so far, and here are a couple of observations I've made:
Open source != open source != open source. There seems to be tension around "I'm making it work fine doing X" vs. other experiences struggling. I think this comes from a conflict in what "open source" actually means. We don't have vocabulary to differentiate, say, a company that open sources its consumer app vs. a library built by a solo developer. Certainly, some open source has a clear business model, but some projects don't. So the question is not really, "how do we fund open source", but "how do we fund open source that is...", well, whatever we call it?
Maybe we start by listing out the different types of FOSS scenarios we can think of? Would be great to see where certain things work (ex. selling services, tutorials) but others don't.
FOSS is as valuable to society as bridges are to cities. There's a cultural shift that needs to happen: the assumption that software is a commercial industry, and all useful things in software must have a business model. This may have been true in the early days, but today, given how technology permeates absolutely everything, I think of FOSS (at least the part with a funding problem) as the digital infrastructure of society. Funding non-commercial FOSS looks a lot to me like funding research, academia, arts, infrastructure, or any other public good in society. To build an institutional system that supports FOSS (not just a jumble of band-aid solutions), I think we can get a lot of inspiration from looking at how those sectors are supported. Curious to get others' thoughts on this.
I think your idea of seeing FOSS as part of the arts, or cultural value of a society is very interesting and I haven't heard that before. I think that the domains you mentioned, such as research and the arts, are largely funded by the state in many places in the world. So the suggestion is that perhaps FOSS could be funded by the state. I think I know of an example where this is currently happening in Australia, but I don't want to say because I'm not sure of the details. But this is a very interesting observation.
Secondly, I agree with your heading, that we need to improve our vocabulary. Specifically, I think the distinction between "free as in freedom" and "free as in beer" needs to be made clear. For example, I would like to know whether "free as in freedom" necessarily requires also "free as in beer"?
@nayafia "FOSS is as valuable to society as bridges are to cities." - that's profound - I love it!
I completely agree with both your points. Different funding models work for different projects - an open source code editor can't be deployed as a SaaS, for example. And the research/public good angle is a very good model for many open source projects. #2 covers some of those ideas; it would be interesting to see if we can leverage any of the existing funding in this space (or find new sources with government blessing) to make this happen.
@crjh One of my biggest problems with Stallman et all is their stubborn refusal to admit that "Free" is an awful name for the idea they're peddling. The vox populi definition of "free" isn't "freedom" - it's "no cost". If the discussion of your brand starts with a 30 minute lecture on what "free" means... you've just lost your audience.
Open source is better, but doesn't really address anything on the money side of the equation. #14 is one idea that might work; but a significant rebranding of "paid, sustainable, public good software" might well be in order.
@freakboy3742 agree 100%.
I think "re-branding" is a non-starter though. The current model works wonderfully for some interests, and so there will be huge resistance to any change. I much prefer a "new" or "alternative" model, that people who are interested in can opt into. I think the solution is already floating around in some version or combination of crowd-funding / subscription / org membership / patreon / gittip platform. We just have to figure it out.
Digital infrastructure is a fantastic phrase. It also makes it clear that if important parts of this infrastructure fail, then it would cause the digital industry problems. I think it's accepted now that this isn't a minor cottage industry, and its failure would cause problems.
Yes, research etc gets funded by the state, but I don't know that the state should actually fund FOSS. The big takeaway for me is there should be a centralized, neutral institution (like the state) that funds this stuff. Whether it's actually a division of the government, or just an NGO-like entity that we could create ourselves, I'm still not sure.
@freakboy3742 100% on problems associated with terms like "free software". I do like digital infrastructure, as it naturally excludes open source projects that are not infrastructure-related. Have also toyed with "public technology" or public sector.
"public software" and "public technology" are okay but they do have a different sort of focus in that private use of free/libre/open software is respected, people don't and shouldn't have to publish their modifications they use privately.
For various reasons, "Open Source" and "Free Software" will never go away, no alternative will ever dominate, and all attempts to create new terms just lead to https://xkcd.com/927/
The correct approach is to use "free/libre/open" or FLO to just reference this whole topic. It's not a great solution, but it's the only adequate one. https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/free-libre-open
@nayafia "…we could create ourselves…" is a problematic view as there are already tons of foundations and NGOs of various sorts working already and other initiatives already in the works. Please just be wary about starting new things just to start new things. In most cases, efforts are best solved by joining and cooperating with existing initiatives. No NGO would ever be like actually have a tax to fund FLO projects (which does make sense, but isn't something easy to achieve).
ha! great xkcd reference :) Yes, I think "open source" and "free software" are fine for certain use cases and the groups who use them. I guess I'm wondering how to make it more palatable to the outside world who might be interested in supporting these sorts of things, if only they understood them better. It may not be about new vocabulary so much as better storytelling.
I'm curious, which foundations/NGOs do you think are explicitly funding open source?
Interesting discussion.
As we all know, Free Software (principle of freedom, user is the developer. All Free Software is also Open Source software) and Open Source software (the methodology, expedient, not principled. Not all Open Source is also Free Software). I refer to the superset of these as FOSS. There is nothing inherently non-commercial about either FOSS.
With FOSS, value doesn't exist in the software itself, but rather what the software allows users to do, like provide services that make use of the software or support people using it, or provide customisation or training services. The only "commercial" issue with FOSS is that it's inherently self-regulating: if people feel they're being "exploited" (excessive profit, lack of value, etc.) they can take the source code and set up competing services.
I prefer to think of commercial FOSS as inherently "non-exploitative business" - no lock-in, less opportunity for anti-competitive behaviour (e.g. patent infringement threats, use of proprietary file formats, etc.). On the other hand, most proprietary software business models are built around "exploitation" of users for profit.
I like the idea of knowledge being like a tax credit. If you have knowledge (e.g. you can run your own instance of a FOSS-based service rather than paying a service provider) you can save money. In some cases, where it's not your core business or interest, you could pay the provider in any case - but then it's a decision based entirely on the value proposition, not on the feeling that, to work commercially, you must use a particular piece of software.
For the record, I'm active in FOSS advocacy in NZ (see http://nzoss.org.nz) and I work for the Open Education Resource Foundation which is working to create an open (in the Creative Commons sense of "open") tertiary curriculum to allow anyone anywhere to learn to that level. Business models are emerging around assessment of people who have essentially trained themselves.
@nayafia I am co-founder of Snowdrift.coop, a cooperative non-profit initiative three years in the making so far, not yet operating, that aims to be a fundraising platform addressing these very issues. Here's our list of partners to reach out to: https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/partners — it's incomplete. I'm a member of the FLOSS Foundations list http://www.flossfoundations.org/ which is a whole community of Foundations and NGOs that support and fund FLO software — there's a whole bunch of these things in all sorts of areas.
Re: the terminology, the FSF hardcore types object to "Open Source" and otherwise "Open Source" is so widely used, it's hard to ignore. You should read the article I linked above. I urge people to use combined terms, and FLO is the best to have an adjective and not be strictly software-specific.
@lightweight The only licenses the Open Source Initiative has approved that are not FSF-approved Free Software licenses are Watcom and Artistic v1, both of which are barely used and are deprecated. "Open Source" as a term is used in cases that the OSI rejects but if you're talking about OSI definition, the set of "Open Source" and "Free Software" is almost perfect unity.
I should've been more precise @wolftune (this topic is all about precision): I refer to "copyleft" software as proper Free Software. Copyleft Free Software is multi-generational (i.e. has the Share-alike provision of the GPL). These do the most to protect the user (who, it is assumed by the license, is also the developer). Many other OSI licenses. e.g. the BSD family (including Apache, Mozilla, MIT, and others) are single-generation Free Software, in that they can be "exploited" by those creating derived works. These are called "business friendly" licenses, but I think that's a misnomer. They should be called "exploitable FLO or FOSS licenses". For the record, it is possible to have a business not built around an "exploitative" business model.
@lightweight please don't ever refer to "free software" as a synonym for copyleft. Nobody widely uses it that way except when spreading FUD and misunderstanding. The FSF is 100% clear that permissive licenses like MIT/BSD are absolutely "Free Software". Period. The technical, widely used term for these licenses is "permissive" but Richard Stallman sometimes calls them "pushover" licenses — they are absolutely free-as-in-freedom but they do nothing to ensure the long-term maintenance of that freedom. They meet all the items of the Free Software Definition. Copyleft is just a tactic, not any more or less free per the definition.
Fair call, @wolftune. That said, I strongly agree with RMS on this one: I favour copyleft over exploitable "permissive" open source licenses and consider them better for building the software commons. I do, however, accept that there are situation in the current commercial landscape where it is expedient to use a permissive license. As an expedient, they do less to reinforce the principle of perpetual user/developer freedom and enrichment of the commons. Therefore, to me, they are less good. But they are still better than any proprietary license.
@lightweight we agree, and you will appreciate the summary of this that I put together for Snowdrift.coop: https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/licenses
There is nothing inherently non-commercial about either FOSS.
With FOSS, value doesn't exist in the software itself, but rather what the software allows users to do
While this is an interesting discussion, @lightweight nailed the original point I was trying to make, which is that none of these terms adequately capture the sustainability problem we are discussing here. Our current vocabulary does a poor job of parsing out which types of FOSS are chronically underfunded, as well as convey its value to the outside world. Which has led to confusion even here, where some have argued FOSS funding is a solved problem, because one person's mental image of FOSS is not the same as another's.
I don't think we should force new vocabulary, but I think it will develop on its own, because the conversation around the funding of FOSS is not apples to apples. When we talk about the funding problems of FOSS, we are really referring to a subset of use cases, I think.
@nayafia It's actually much simpler than that. Almost all FLO works are underfunded except the ones that get funding via proprietary interests. The entire situation is that if you look at how funding happens, it almost always can be traced back to proprietary stuff. We are not talking about a subset of use cases. We are talking about how funding free/libre/open work via proprietary end products is a situation failing to actually promote free/libre/open values all the way.
Consider the general manifesto for Snowdrift.coop: https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/about
By the way, I really don't mean to be inappropriate and overly push my project, but I think people here really have not been looking at it. I opened another thread here: https://github.com/pybee/paying-the-piper/issues/34 — it should be discussed there rather than on every thread here, but fundamentally we already have a vision for how to solve this whole issue, we've been working on it for a long time, we are ourselves underfunded but keep working hard, and we could use everyone's help. I have my biases since I'm so involved in it, but I do want to ask everyone here to basically come join our existing initiative and help make us successful. I think we have the best solution out there that isn't compromising the core values. We just need to get it fully working.