On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 13:48:12 UTC, psychotic Rabbit wrote:
> On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 10:21:35 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> I can't be bothered to strain through your tortured analogies that make no sense and explain to you all the ways you're wrong.  I'm respecting you enough to point out that none of your points make any sense, most would just ignore crazy analogies like this and move on, content to let you stew in this nonsense.
>
> Well, that sure is an interesting way of responding to criticism.
>
> By giving up, you've made your argument ever weaker that it was before.
>
> But all power to you..and you're hybrid 'ransom the open source community' model ...just don't work on my projects, unless your contribution is free.

When you start by calling the dominant mixed licensing model, or at least my twist on it, "offensive," frankly a bizzare claim, you don't inspire confidence that you're actually looking for a discussion.  However, I liked a comment you made in another thread about why people should use D, which showed some insight, so I will respond a bit.

In most any open source community today, there are people who volunteer contributions and those who get paid to write open-source or sometimes even closed-source patches, particularly for mixed projects like Android or llvm.  In other words, it's already a mix of people volunteering work for free and those getting paid, and we don't see the breakdown you posit.  The fact is that some people are fine with volunteering and most aren't, as the vast majority of lines of source code written is closed-source, so mixing the two works just fine.

As for your lawn mower analogy, the difference is you don't own this lawn mower, the open-source code.  It is a shared resource, that anybody can do what they want with, especially for the non-GPL code that I mentioned in my article.  So building proprietary modules on an OSS codebase is more like building your own bricks-and-mortar store on your private land alongside a public road, something people have been doing for millenia.  OSS code works much better for this than any road, because you can copy it a million times at basically no cost, whereas only a couple dozen stores can be built alongside a road.

And what we find is that when you allow such mixing with permissively-licensed projects (that the GPL makes much more difficult), as we see with those using mixed models in the popular permissively-licensed projects I mentioned above, you can fund a _lot_ more development even on the OSS core, which is why Android is now the dominant operating system on the planet.

This experiment has been run over the last decade: mixed models have won.  That is why I think D should follow suit, leading such mixed use for programming languages too.

On Saturday, 3 February 2018 at 10:49:06 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> And what we find is that when you allow such mixing with permissively-licensed projects (that the GPL makes much more difficult), .....

I've never been a fan of the GPL.. until I read this thread.

It may well be, that more and more people will look towards the GPL as a means to protect their projects from the influence (and potential dangers) of this 'hybrid' model.

In any case, I do believe in people having the freedom to make their own choices - so I am ok with any model really, providing I have a model that suits (and protects) my needs, goals, and values.

On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 12:08:21 +0000, psychoticRabbit wrote:

> On Saturday, 3 February 2018 at 10:49:06 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> And what we find is that when you allow such mixing with permissively-licensed projects (that the GPL makes much more difficult), .....
> 
> I've never been a fan of the GPL.. until I read this thread.
> 
> It may well be, that more and more people will look towards the GPL as a means to protect their projects from the influence (and potential dangers) of this 'hybrid' model.

Except it doesn't. The GPL can be used to keep a competitor from stepping up and using your work to create an alternative product, allowing you to have a mixed open/closed model without worrying about competition.

Many companies that have commercial and open source editions use the GPL for the open source code; if you submit a patch you also have to assign copyright (or maybe unrestricted right of use) to that company. Any would- be competitor would always lag behind the copyright-holding corp because they have to release all features they develop if they distribute the application, and the copyright holder is free to take any such work into their own product.

On Saturday, 3 February 2018 at 13:14:04 UTC, rjframe wrote:
>
> Except it doesn't. The GPL can be used to keep a competitor from stepping up and using your work to create an alternative product, allowing you to have a mixed open/closed model without worrying about competition.
>
> Many companies that have commercial and open source editions use the GPL for the open source code; if you submit a patch you also have to assign copyright (or maybe unrestricted right of use) to that company. Any would- be competitor would always lag behind the copyright-holding corp because they have to release all features they develop if they distribute the application, and the copyright holder is free to take any such work into their own product.

I don't understand the legalities of various forms of licencing.

I do understand (to some extent) human motivation.

"Why would any particular person choose to contribute -- voluntarily -- to a public good that he or she can partake of unchecked as a free-rider?"

And yet people do (contribute -- voluntarily). Why is that?

I think that these so called hybrid models undermine the aligned interests of such people, and instead move people's incentive to contibute, back towards monetary compensation.

There may well be some positive effect arising from these hybrid models, but I am concerned about the negative effects of these hybrid models, on such communities - particulary those they don't have funds.

Is this the model corporations (or those with money) will use to undermine those communities?

On Sunday, 4 February 2018 at 02:15:32 UTC, psychoticRabbit wrote:
> On Saturday, 3 February 2018 at 13:14:04 UTC, rjframe wrote:
>>
>> Except it doesn't. The GPL can be used to keep a competitor from stepping up and using your work to create an alternative product, allowing you to have a mixed open/closed model without worrying about competition.
>>
>> Many companies that have commercial and open source editions use the GPL for the open source code; if you submit a patch you also have to assign copyright (or maybe unrestricted right of use) to that company. Any would- be competitor would always lag behind the copyright-holding corp because they have to release all features they develop if they distribute the application, and the copyright holder is free to take any such work into their own product.
>
> I don't understand the legalities of various forms of licencing.
>
> I do understand (to some extent) human motivation.
>
> "Why would any particular person choose to contribute -- voluntarily -- to a public good that he or she can partake of unchecked as a free-rider?"
>
> And yet people do (contribute -- voluntarily). Why is that?

Many OSS volunteers like to tinker, look at all the people that hack their Xbox or iPhone, ie even closed systems.  Others take an OSS tool that is almost good enough for their needs and add a little more to it till it is: that's what I did when I ported D to Android.  There are a few for whom OSS is a religious quest, they work on OSS because they believe it's a moral imperative, ie those such as Stallman.

> I think that these so called hybrid models undermine the aligned interests of such people, and instead move people's incentive to contibute, back towards monetary compensation.

I don't think it affects them much, as none of the motivations above would be hurt by paid contributors.  If anything, it _increases_ their drive, as they have a lot more OSS code to work on with mixed codebases.

> There may well be some positive effect arising from these hybrid models, but I am concerned about the negative effects of these hybrid models, on such communities - particulary those they don't have funds.

There may be some negative effects in a few cases, as you say, for example, those who felt obligated to work on an OSS project that they valued but wasn't getting much contribution may back off once it's getting a lot of corporate-funded OSS patches, since they may not feel as needed.  However, that's a great problem to have, as it's only because there's a lot of work already being done, ie the positive effects way outweigh the negatives.

> Is this the model corporations (or those with money) will use to undermine those communities?

I think you're missing the point entirely: _this is the model that the community uses to undermine the corporations_.  I alluded to this in my first post and went into it more in another post later in this thread, but didn't go too far down that road, as it's a second-order effect.

Open-source mixing like this allowed plucky startups like Next in the '90s and google in the '00s to build operating systems, macOS/iOS and Android, that competed with and demolished the former corporate giants.  New startups use OSS all the time now to do the same to Apple and Google.  We're heading towards a future where the corporation itself is obsoleted, this mixed model helps get us there.

On Sunday, 4 February 2018 at 08:26:54 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>
> I don't think it affects them much, as none of the motivations above would be hurt by paid contributors.  If anything, it _increases_ their drive, as they have a lot more OSS code to work on with mixed codebases.
>

Well, it's not clear cut, that is for sure, but, I remain concerned that this increasing move towards monetary contributions for participating in open source communities, will result in fewer contributors (i.e the more time a person has to dedicate, the more skilled they are, the more likely they'll be the one being paid - leaving all those other contributers at the mercy of the contributions from those paid contributors. Then the 'community' aspect of open source is lost.

Sure, you can distrubute the same poison that corporations drink, and give it to the masses..  but guess what will happen... in the long run that is.

I would prefer to see a future where money was NOT the primary motivating force...  - because that is how open source communities came about, in the first place.

On 2 February 2018 at 11:21, Joakim via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 09:26:51 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
>>
>> On 31 January 2018 at 09:43, Joakim via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm sure you can find much better D devs to contribute such work by posting bounties on the D or ldc bountysource pages:
>>>
>>> https://www.bountysource.com/teams/d https://www.bountysource.com/teams/ldc-developers
>>>
>>
>> I was surprised to see a gdc bounty page.  I was even more surprised that the one notable bounty is an issue that's either blocked by Walter, or waiting on someone to implement array op templates in druntume/object.d. :-)
>
>
> Heh, the lead gdc dev doesn't know that gdc bounties exist, not sure I could have made my case for their being hidden any better. :)
>
> On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 09:30:08 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
>>
>> I'm reminded of airlines who have a "Priority" or "Privileged" queuing system at the gate.  If you didn't want to wait in line to board, then you should have paid up.
>>
>> Not sure if any parallels ring with you here. :-)
>
>
> Any system that requires payment can be superficially compared to any other, but the real salient point here is the discrepancy: to even get on the flight, you have to pay for a ticket, whereas he paid nothing for the open-source sections of a mixed codebase.  So, he's more like a guy who shows up at the gate without a ticket _and_ barges into the Priority queue, which is a sure way to get thrown out of the airport altogether. :D
>

The up-front cost to get yourself on the plane is irrelevant, you could even think of it as a baseline cost that everyone pays to get themselves there (OSS software has a cost, even though package is free, someone's got to spend time on your money building/setting it up).

Maybe it's just the British culture that I have firmly ingrained inside. Ranting about queuing just comes more naturally, as its what we do best. To undermine the queuing system is to undermine the national way of life. :-)

Granted, there's not many great things that can be said about a first-come, first-serve system - and in OSS projects, the meritocratic communities do give sense to that we operate in such a fashion when it comes to ownership of the code base, or fixing long-standing issues. i.e: I arrived first as a contributor, therefore my opinion against outranks your opinion for (this is a irrationally negative example, however).


> And I have no problem with priority queues, baggage fees, etc., as the reason they charge for those is to _lower_ the ticket price for the cheapest consumer, a concept called price discrimination (and before I get the usual nonsense about how that's illegal, or it should be, it isn't and it shouldn't):
>
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
>
> So I pay less for my cheap flights, while others who want to lug a ton of suitcases or get through the line faster pay more, which is only fair.
>

Fair enough. Me, I am frankly more disturbed by a money-talks culture that gives preferential treatment to the highest bidder over the hoi polloi. :-)

On Sunday, 4 February 2018 at 08:26:54 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> I think you're missing the point entirely: _this is the model that the community uses to undermine the corporations_.

I really do think it's the other way around - indeed, it is probably too late - as corporations have *already* managed to highjack 'open source' for their own means.

Google is probably the best at doing it - having essentially highjacked the linux kernel, as well as deploying a variety of their own so-called 'open source' projects, in order to push its corporate agenda onto an unsuspecting world.

http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4050/3271

Facebook does it pretty well too.

Microsoft is still 'working it out', cause they're model of doing business came about in very different times ... but they'll figure it out soon enough.

And people complain about GPL being viral ... just have a look at corporate agenda - which is only ever about dominance and control (despite its deceptive rhetoric).

That's why I like D - because corporations haven't yet worked out how to highjack it for their own agenda - 'yet' being a keyword.

But some ideas presented in this thread will get them started on it, no doubt ;-)