"I support it only if it's open source" should be a more common viewpoint

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Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/08/12/onlyopensource.html

What are your thoughts? Any counter-counter points to the author’s response to most concerns regarding open source?

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themeatbridge@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
“I only eat food that’s free.”

I fully support open source software, but it’s not feasible under the current economic system to expect everyone to exclusively contribute to open source projects.

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- semperverus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You are allowed to charge money for open source.
  
  Its the recipe that makes the food you’re eating that would need to be publicly available and free to redistribute.
  
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  - hperrin@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yep, you sure are. You also can’t stop someone from forking it and giving it away for free. See: Red Hat Enterprise Linux and AlmaLinux.
    
    Money in open source is one of the biggest hurdles to it becoming the norm. IMHO, governments should fund more open source projects and fund them at higher levels. We have art grants because art improves society, and we should have an equal or higher amount of open source grants because open source improves society too.
    
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  - balder1991@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You’re allowed, but as long as anyone else can do it for free, you can’t build a business model on selling it. At most you can sell something else (support, cloud compute, some solution that makes using it easier etc.).
    
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  - CriticalMiss@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Technically, according to the GPLv3 you don’t need to make the source code publically available. If you sell software with binaries then their source code must be included with it. If you’re Red Hat you can also add an additional ToS to the website that states if you buy the software you can’t freely distribute the source code you download from the website or you will be sued to oblivion.
    
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  - themeatbridge@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s not a perfect metaphor.
    
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- phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I don’t mind paying for software.
  
  I want free as in freedom, not free as in beer. Though a free beer might not be the worst thing in the world
  
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  - themeatbridge@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Sure, and I recognize that it’s not a great metaphor. But I’m thinking about it from the developer side. Open Source software is not motivated by profits, and profit motivates a lot of developers. Some of the best software projects were actualized by a few committed individuals who were passionate about the purpose. But then you have Microsoft which tries to tie bonuses to lines of code, and ends up with bloated garbage because peoples is peoples.
    
    Open source is good, in the same way free lunches for school children are good. The benefits are innumerable. But it’s not feasible to expect every developer to commit to open source projects when their efforts might not be rewarded.
    
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- blah3166@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Bitwarden and Cryptpad. Both open source and self hostable, yet I pay for both. paying for open source is possible.
  
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  - Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    He never said paying for open source projects is impossible, obviously we have the ability pay. It’s the expecting EVERYONE to drop money on every FOSS project that’s infeasible. That shit ads up.
    
    It’s the same issue that PeerTube has, people making free content with no ads, but they aren’t guaranteed payment. I’m not about to pay $5 per month on Patreon for every creator that I like, cause that’s just not sustainable.
    
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  - sibachian@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    i stopped paying for cryptpad when they stopped building their own software and started peddling the utter garbage that is onlyoffice.
    
    i asked them a few years ago if they are planning to build something new and they just said why build when there are things like onlyoffice already available.
    
    sigh.
    
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  - br3d@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    But how many other people do? Almost certainly not enough, I’ll bet
    
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- Jason2357@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Aren’t “consume” and “support” different concepts? The article is trash, so I’m not referring to that, but I could take this stance in broader terms.
  
  My voluntary time and money is limited, so if you keep your work proprietary, I’m not going to provide it to you any more than I absolutely need to in a basic, transactional sense.
  
  If my boss says work on this project -I’ll do it because I’m paid to do that, for the amount of time I’m paid to do it, but no more. If my bank says use this closed source application, okay fine, but I’ll never recommend it to anyone or submit a bug report when it breaks. If my government or library is considering entering into some closed source ecosystem, I’ll go out of my way to recommend against it, but I’ll probably end up having to use it. If I feel like paying for Netflix, I’ll share passwords and use regional VPNs, cancel whenever I feel like it, or whatever and never feel guilty.
  
  If your product is open source, pretty much the opposite of all of the above. That’s what I would consider as “support.”
  
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hperrin@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m an open source developer who’s put thousands of hours of work into my open source projects.

Amount of money I’ve made from writing and maintaining open source projects: $0

Amount of money I’ve made from writing and maintaining closed source projects: idk exactly, but probably close to $1,000,000 (over ten years of working in big tech)

I get wanting to use open source software. I want to use open source software. I want to write open source software. I do write open source software. But please understand that I only do that because I enjoy it. I also need to pay the bills, and there’s not much money in writing open source software.

If you value an open source project, especially if it’s just a small development team that doesn’t sell anything, please donate to them.

Right now, I run an email service, port87.com, and it is technically closed source. But it’s built on my open source projects, Svelte Material UI, Nymph.js, and Nephele. Probably about 70% of the code that makes up Port87 is open source, and if you use Port87, you’re helping me continue to develop those open source projects. So even if you don’t donate to open source projects, there are other ways to contribute. Support companies who support open source projects.
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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yup, I’m the same way. If I could work in FOSS, I’d be happy to take a pay cut, but FOSS doesn’t pay anywhere near good enough. So it’ll remain a hobby.
  
  As such, I’m pretty reasonable about what needs to be open source, and what’s fine being proprietary. For example:
  
  OS - must be FOSS
  
  games - proprietary is fine, but no privileged access (e.g. kernel level anti-cheat)
  
  web browser - must be FOSS
  
  web services - proprietary is fine, provided they don’t collect a creepy amount of info about me
  
  Basically, the more risk there is of a security issue, the more I expect it to be FOSS. And I’m willing to help out too. I’ve submitted patches to Lemmy and other FOSS projects I use, and I’ll donate something similar to what I’d pay for a proprietary app for certain projects.
  
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- frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This sort of thing can’t really be done in capitalism at all. Open Source (as it was advanced by Eric S. Raymond and the Mozilla Project back in the late 90s) was always stuck in a capitalist way of thinking.
  
  In a society where everyone has their basic needs met and people are expected to contribute what they can, writing FOSS can be your contribution.
  
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- JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  In some “ecosystems” everything being free is kinda how you are compensated, instead of money. You spend time making your app for free, but so does everyone else so you don’t have to pay for those things either. The two main examples I’ve personally been involved with are game modding and 3d printing models, I use the free stuff other people make all the time, releasing the things I make for free is how I pay it back.
  
  But yeah, if you use something you really like, throw them a buck or two for the work.
  …although I’ve donated about as much as I’ve received as donations myself. Eh. No matter.
  
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- lustrum@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The early mobile phone apps conditioned people to expect things free.
  
  I donate to any project, open or closed source if it’s worth it.
  
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Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I love the thought, but it the thinking behind it is very utopian. It doesn't match the real world. In my experience, if a company can't make all of the profit from a thing they invest in, they simply won't invest. I wish that wasn't the case, but it's what I've seen. The C-Suite and management would rather make 100% profit from living in the dark ages compared to "just" 99% of the profit from pushing the world forward.

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- Dojan@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  but it the thinking behind it is very utopian
  
  I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Things don’t have to be realistic to be aspirational. It’s a bigger problem when people give up because improvement isn’t realistic or deemed necessary by comparison to some other factor.
  
  Saw it a lot here. People would be all “sure our healthcare isn’t great but at least we’re not like the U.S.” as the rightwingers bit by bit enshittified the entire system.
  
  A utopia is what we should aim for. What’s the point of anything less?
  
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  - Zorque@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There’s a difference between being realistic and being pessimistic. The latter expects any attempt to fail, while the former seeks an attainable path to a goal.
    
    One can not attain that utopian vision without setting realistic goals. Setting your eyes on the end game without ever focusing on the path to get there is dooming yourself to failure.
    
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fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It"s a difficult viewpoint given where money flows. A better method shoupd be more government funded software, with a FOSS requirement since it’s tax dollars.

That being said, I’m very fortunate to be working for a company that releases software under MIT and/or SSPLv1, and we use almost exclusively Open Source for our infrastructure and back office (decisions I made, but had the strong, proactive backing of our CEO/Founders).

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diptchip@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Paying for closed source software is kind of like voting for your oppressors. Using close sourced software is literally like giving away access to your computer in hope that your computer may be used in a way you’d prefer… The software economy is the only reason I don’t create software.

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DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Counterpoint: “I support drone strikes in random developing countries as long as the drones are open source” doesn’t really sound that good lol

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- rbos@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  How about, if we must have military drones, they should be open source.
  
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  - DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yea this phrasing sounds a lot better
    
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Cris_Color@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
How the world “should” respond to the thing we care about is an actively counter-productive thing to get hung up on.

Its much important how they do respond to it, and how we can reach those who don’t connect with it

(And that doesn’t just lecturing people and trying to brow beat them into caring about it, which seems like the default approach for a lot of foss folks 🥲 thats the opposite or reaching people, that’s alienating them)

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LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I agree.

Even more broadly, politically - copyleft in general is very unpopular with people, even amongst leftists and self-identified communists who you’d think would be all about that since y’know, good of the commons and the fact that communist states literally didn’t give a fuck about copyright and the literature seeing it transparently as another government method of enforcing corporate power, especially apparent today when it comes to pharmaceuticals snd the fact that capitalism needs this intellectual property monopoly as an added incentive for R&D is an issue with capitalism’s broken incentive structures, not cost of it.

Few people seem to understand the power of intellectual property, and various critics of corporate technology either omit mentioning or openly defend intellectual property, despite corporations having monopolies being the reason enshittification is such a phenomenon in the first place.

It seems like a lot of arguments about the role of technology in society instead boil down to more-stuffism vs. less-stuffism, usually based on emotionally charged preference for modern aesthetics or how much they believe the noble savage/appeal to nature fallacies.

When it comes to AI for instance, anyone reasonable can see that if it’s open sourced for everyone to use then it’s just a simple common good like a public library, use it (responsibly) and there’s no issue.

Closed source private models in use by corporations suck up the environment (which belongs to everyone) and use the capital they steal from wage workers who actually produce the things they sell to give themselves leverage over said consumers/workers and other corporations, and this is not fair to the 99%.

Picture a world where AI is good enough to where it actually provides value to use it in a good chunk of jobs, and the best AI is corporate and closed source, and they just enshittified it and jacked up the prices, but if you want to get a job, you better know how to use it well. It would mean that corpo has an enormous power over your life now and you got little choice but to pony up, and they can raise prices whenever they want and snowball that capital into more and more.

I think the reason in this instance is that a lot of artists are bourgeoisie themselves and they understand that. They may be progressive as a personality strait/gimmick/style and talk about “empathy” but they understand the material reality of things.

They had the opportunities and the room for failure necessary to go into such a high risk field, and their ultimate form of commercial success is essentially using that privilege to create intellectual property they could make money from, hence the “concerns” over “style theft” and moralist fearmongering over vaguely defined concepts like “soulless”, which is usually as arbitrary as “white” for racists (not implying equivalence here).

I find generally that a lot of the anti-AI viewpoints are simple self-serving veils of bourgeoisie who’s capital is threatened, no different from the culture war fearmongering about vaping, a dying grasp of the tobacco companies of old threatened by shenzen gadget slop factories.

The material reality is that digital goods are effectively infinite, copying an image isn’t a crime nevermind copying a style or some such, it is transparently absurd to imply otherwise.

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- OtherOtherOther@lemdro.id ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I generally agree with the first part of your post but I feel you have a weird hang up on artists. Most artist didn’t go to school for art, most artists are simply self taught.
  
  The bare minimum cost of being an artist is a pencil and paper. And although there way of combating it with appeals to copyright is regressive. It comes from a place of desperation because at the end of the day they are laborers. And I’ve come to find that many tech people tend to diminish artists as laborers.
  
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rbos@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Consider, though, the value you received in non-monetary terms. How much would you have had to pay?

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HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Fuck Vitalik Buterin.

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- ClownsInSpace2@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Damn, why?
  
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  - ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    He’s the founder of a major cryptocurrency project, Ethereum
    
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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Its my way of thinking. From the ip perspective I can see peoples argument about profits and companies but for individuals you are likely to get your stuff stolen and used by companies. I mean look at ai training. So better to deny any company trying to claim your work is thiers. Added to that is the company technology that goes to the graveyard. Open source allows ones work to be immortal. Then from the user perspective we all know how controlling and privacy invasive proprietary software is.

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tabular@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Open source can refer to MIT licensed code/projects where it can be taken, modified and redistributed as proprietary software without giving back. You can’t contribute without wondering if you’re doing work for a mega corp.

I would be temped to argue that doesn’t go far enough. If copyleft wasn’t circumvented by AI I’d argue for that.

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- Badabinski@kbin.earth ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I think a new GPL needs to be created to account for this. Like, "any generative system using this as an input which can ever replicate this code base (even in part), must be bound to this license." People could then run overfitting analysis to see if they ever get their copyleft code out of the model. If they do, then they have grounds to sue. I'm fine with an LLM being trained on my code, but I want the four freedoms to be preserved if it is.
  
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