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Comment on Ground control to Major Trial: When a $130M aerospace company chooses to endlessly abuse opensource free trials instead of typing git pull, you start to question gravity, or at least common sense.

yarr@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

As a small aside “Open Source Free Trials?” If it’s open source, can’t they just disable the trial part? I think (as usual) some essential nuance got destroyed converting this article to a ~~clickbait~~ ~~engaging~~ exciting headline.

To anyone that isn’t aware of this: big companies don’t give a fuck about anything except stock price going up. They will crush dreams every quarter to do this. They don’t care.

If you don’t like how a company is using your software and you’re hoping they will have a conscience/heart… don’t! Fix your license to make this use case illegal/impossible if it really matters to you.

Or, consider if Open Source is even the right license here (although I think the headline is a bit confused here)…

If you want this “fixed”, tweak your license and/or send a cease and desist to that company and/or seek damages. Changing nothing and waiting for them to do the right thing, you’re going to be waiting infinitely, because they will never do the right thing. They will do the thing that gets them the most revenue with the least spending. That’s all you can count on.

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barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

As a small aside “Open Source Free Trials?” If it’s open source, can’t they just disable the trial part?

Yes. There’s a number of projects which distribute binaries which aren’t as liberally licensed as the source they’re built from. E.g. Ardour is another one. There’s a demo version, subscriptions start as low as $1/month, $45 buys you the current major version and the next major version with all its updates, perpetual license. There’s also the implicit understanding that if you don’t pay up and want support, your bug reports better be developer-grade.

Basically it’s a way to get artists who are used to either freeware or commercial offerings to donate. Also as far as DAWs go it’s a fucking steal.

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mosiacmango@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Vates spun up xcp-ng off the xen hypervisor and a great “vsphere” like management plane called xen orchestra. Its a fantastic hypervisor with vsan/built in backups/etc.

They have gone from “a guy” to a 100 person company in the last few years while sticking by the FOSS ethic entirely. You can entirely build the project from source, or even grab a few github scripts that build it for you. They have always been open and clear about letting you build it however you like.

They know how to cut this abusive behaviour off. They are fully capable. They don’t want to use those tools, legal or technical, because it goes against the spirit of FOSS, even if it’s to stop someone else who is abusing the spirit of FOSS.

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- INeedMana@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  They don’t want to use those tools, legal or technical, because it goes against the spirit of FOSS, even if it’s to stop someone else who is abusing the spirit of FOSS.
  
  I’m not convinced. It all started from a license saying “if you want to distribute your version, you have to license it the same”. One either plays by the rules or the modification doesn’t see the light of day. And at the time of publication, it was rather radical stance
  Freedom sometimes has to be enforced
  
  This is not a story about a company denying free trial to another company because the latter is big. It’s about the latter leeching resources from supporters who’s money go towards the fleet that serves their 4k VM “trial”
  
  It is against the spirit of FOSS
  
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  - mosiacmango@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Vates is pretty chill, as is clear in the article. I think you can argue the above clearly, but lets say that Vates likes the “vibe” of FOSS, and is willing to take it a bit on the chin to keep that energy internally. A bit of “turn the other cheek.”
    
    Well, even Jesus started kicking ass at one point with the money lenders. It looks like they are getting there now.
    
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- yarr@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  They have always been open and clear about letting you build it and use it however you like.
  
  I don’t disagree with the want to license software like this. The downside then is a subset of “letting you build and use it any way you like” includes registering N trial accounts every 30 days. If this isn’t actually spelled out as illegal under the license, some jerkbag will do it. I wish we didn’t live in this world, but we do.
  
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phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You’re absolutely right

Having said that, it’s tiring to see a billion dollar companies behaving like this. It’s always the big ones, it’s always the ones with shareholders that have to cut corners, cheat, lie, and steal.

Company sizes must be limited by law. No person shall own more than one company, no company shall employ more than 1000 people, any company with a net worth over 50 million has taxes go to 100% for any of the worth after those 50m.

Do this and instead of one large cheating billion dollar corporation, you’ll have twenty smaller ones that compete and cooperate where needed. None will get too powerful, all will behave better

While at it, let’s get rid of the investment coi as well

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- yarr@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Company sizes must be limited by law. No person shall own more than one company, no company shall employ more than 1000 people, any company with a net worth over 50 million has taxes go to 100% for any of the worth after those 50m.
  
  Good luck with that one. Try to convince congress critters about this point of view while they take a second or two to look up from the pork barrel. I 100% agree this would be great, I just fail to see any possible way to get there.
  
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