It is buried in the footnotes of the post, but the ultimate reason behind going closed source is that Google built their enterprise GDrive syncing client for mac off a fork of osxfuse. The original author of osxfuse feels entitled to some compensation for that and is doing his damnedest to make it happen.
as I interpret most permissive license's, they say something like "must retain the above copyright notice, and this list of conditions.", which makes it not possible to change the license. But you can always go "closed source", and there's nothing stopping you from charging money (which is why Business likes these permissive license's)
The footnote says Google are using their own fork. Now we don't know when they forked and how much they diverged, but it's quite possible that were going to maintain their own fork, anyway.
It's also noteworthy isn't the "original author of osxfuse". In fact, Google is. So while I can empathise with the general complaint about commercial use, one doesn't get to make that complaint against the one company that originally started the project and released it under a permissive license.
Disagreeing with someone is no excuse for saying their freedom to exercise the rights of an open source license should be restricted, nor for declaring they have no right to speak their mind openly. Open source grants them this freedom, unpalatable as it may be to you.
There is no legal reason preventing their complaint from being made. It may not be well-received by those who demand unlimited reuse without compensation. Regardless, that does not restrict one’s right to make that complaint and take that action.
This isn't a question of rights. Most people understand in English that "can't complain" means "you can complain if you like but won't be taken seriously or regarded as a valid complaint".
Non-disparagement agreements are a common thing in business. They restrict your right to "complain". I regret the conflict between my understanding of English and that of others, but I stand by my statement.
That's why I prefer the GPL and variants for personal projects that I don't intend to profit off monetarily. It's a conscious choice that I do want compensation, and I don't want to work for free"--but said compensation should be in code and not necessarily in money.
It's why contributing to a BSD-licensed project as a hobby can feel a bit icky, and doing the same on a GPL-licensed project doesn't.
If I don't want my code to be used in a commercial setting I use AGPL. It's super-banned in every company for which I know the open source policies. It's also the most sensible open source license in today's SAAS world.
In addition to the sensible question of whether Google even would need to link against any GPL code raised by other commenters, there's also the question of whether the GPL would even make any sense for a kext, considering the kext needs to include Apple's header files (largely APSL-licensed) and link against macOS's kernel. (binary-only proprietary fork of the open source xnu source dump)
(I've licensed my own FOSS kext code as LGPL - either way, the copyleft aspect wouldn't affect any userland code using the kext as it'd be running in a different process. And AGPL doesn't change anything in this context either as far as I'm aware as its additional provisions are only relevant for code running on systems not under the user's control, and again if you're not linking against it, your code isn't a derived work.)
Maybe. What we know factually at this point in time: osxfuse was BSD licensed, Google used it and haven't contributed back. osxfuse is popular project.
If it was GPL licensed, do you think Google would bother to use it? Or would they write their own instead? Would we even know about osxfuse then?
MIT/BSD is amazing on bootstrap phase, when getting code used and building user base is top priority. Monetization always comes later. Using GPL from the start might just turn your first users away and you might never manage to get critical mass of users to be able to monetize product at all.
In this particular case we don't know if there were any other previous attempts at financing it, like have maintainer contacted Google to provide consulting services? Or provide enterprise support to other parties? etc.
MIT/BSD is in a kill free software phase, where commercialization of SAAS and other services are king.
MIT/BSD is turning open source software, in to open source dev tools and libraries, no longer is should the end user software be free and open, no just the tools, frameworks, languages, and libraries used to create the end user software
I wasn't aware that osxfuse is distributed by Google. If that is the case then I am sorry for spreading false information and indeed, the GPL would apply.
It's still not clear whether the GPL would apply in the way commenters here think it would.
GPL clauses would only affect Google code upon linking. It's often possible to use fuse style software without linking - they could use it via the command-line and mount whatever they need at startup or even dynamically.
Does osxfuse have a command line tool? Most fuse style software does. If it doesn't, Google could have written a command-line client and open sourced just that.
> GPL clauses would only affect Google code upon linking. It's often possible to use fuse style software without linking - they could use it via the command-line and mount whatever they need at startup or even dynamically.
This doesn't matter. If you distribute the isolated program you need to provide the sources anyway. Having to license other Google code as GPL is not the issue. It's making it required to provide back the changes you've made to fuse itself.
There may be some GPL proponents that really want it to "virally" infect other code. But what atq2119 was describing is just wanting to make sure you at least get back the changes to your own code. That's also why I think the trend towards BSD/MIT in open-source is dangerous. GPL/LGPL/AGPL should be perfectly fine for corporations when used appropriately. They are almost always just ways to make sure the best version of your project doesn't end up closed-source. I can't recall cases of those licenses being used to force other code to be open-sourced but maybe they exist.
GPL also only affects people other than the copyright owner. Google can relicense the code to themselves for their own internal use, if they hold the copyright on all the code they are using.
As far as I understand this would be a "mere aggregation" since the application and the kernel module communicate at arms length through the kernel syscall interface https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#MereAggregation .
So they'd have to make the source of the kernel extension available (as the GPL requires) but it would not be viral to the application using the kernel extension.
As the FAQ entry says this is a legal question "which ultimately judges will decide" and as far as I know that hasn't happend yet. Which is probably one reason many don't want to do it and err on the safe side and choose another project with non-viral license.
You conveniently left out the "and variants" in your quote.
I personally wouldn't mind this kind of internal use for the kinds of projects I'm involved in. For the kinds of software that is more likely to play a substantial role in customer-facing services, some people would feel differently. That happens to not be my cup of tea, but in any case there's the AGPL, as another commentor points out. And for yet other situations, there's LGPL.
Though as gdrive does have locally installed components, if those used code covered by standard GPL they at least would be covered even if the server-side components were considered separate enough that they would not.
I'm not sure if the dev feels entitled for _compensation_ per se, but G and other companies don't contribute back to the project in any form. Not $ and not in code. Now that is not a very good thing... though technically that's exactly what you get with permissive O/S licenses. It looks like the dev realized that and changed the license.
It also doesn't look like he trusts this companies much, because otherwise he could've just slapped the Commons Clause on his existing license and be done with it. So he closed the source instead.
Fleischer isn't harmed by Google using it, in the same sense that Google isn't harmed by him releasing osxfuse 3.10 under a proprietary license instead of BSD.
For the community it's certainly a pity, but I guess if you consider open source projects to be "default dead", not contributing to keeping it alive isn't the same thing as harming a project community.
To many developers, the main reason they contribute to open source software is for the benefit of leveraging each others work. If one is the sole author due to lack of contributions, from that perspective there is no value to the developer in providing it as open source. The problem is compounded if they look around and see companies profiting off of their work and neither contributing fixes/improvements back nor funding the developer(s) who do.
So how is it harmed? By exactly the situation playing out with FUSE: the person who has been maintaining it has been seeing no benefit financial or otherwise and decides to take his ball (the source code) home as he has every right to do. I suspect if he doesn't see some corporate sponsorship soon he may very well decide to stop releasing future updates entirely.
> To many developers, the main reason they contribute to open source software is for the benefit of leveraging each others work.
Then these developers need to understand copyright and licensing, and choose a license that enforces that motive. If you release under BSD, you're not encouraging companies with a profit motive to contribute back.
So, on one hand, it's not a stone soup situation in the sense that it's not like there's any less soup if Google comes and takes all the soup they can eat. On the other hand, open source software only survives when _someone_ contributes needed maintenance, bug fixes, security patches and features. If you don't find a way to incentivize people to contribute, the project can fail. Incentivizing people who are already using your code and have large sacks of cash seems like the easiest place to start.
> It also doesn't look like he trusts this companies much, because otherwise he could've just slapped the Commons Clause on his existing license and be done with it. So he closed the source instead.
If he doesn't have a copyright assignment, he probably can't easily change the license.
However, if the license is BSD, he can just not release source code. And, if he wasn't getting any contributions anyway then he gets no loss.
No, you don’t need copyright assignment to relicense permissively-licensed code, you (or anyone else really) literally only need to say “fuck it” and start building on the old BSD code with a new license.
It is when you’re relicensing to a less restrictive license, say GPL to BSD, that you need CLA shenanigans beforehand.
I know exactly what you mean, but this is incorrect.
CC is not "closed source". CC makes a license incompatible with the OSI definition of "open source", which is one of the interpretations of the term.
There's a persistent confusion over the difference between OSI's definition and the casual understanding of it. To the laymen, if you can _see_ the source, then it's an _open_ source. And if you can _use_ and _change_ it, then it's a _free_ source.
So when you start claiming that if it's not "OSI's open source", it's "closed source" - it doesn't help matters in the slightest, nor does it help advancing OSI's view of the open source.
Are you going to tell me next that "free speech" means not paying for the radio? And that everything else is just one interpretation of the term? Or that freeware and free software are interchangeable terms?
CC is not open source and does not get to pretend it is. Come up with your own marketing name.
> CC is not open source and does not get to pretend it is.
CC is not a closed source license either, which is what GP claimed. That's the point.
> Come up with your own marketing name.
... and the second point is that OSI zealotry doesn't make anyone any good. "Open" is an ambiguous word. It's the same issue as with "Free software", which is almost universally followed by the "free as in speech, not as in beer" explainer. 25 years in use, still ambiguous.
"Open source" is a misnomer, it doesn't mean exactly what it says. Ideally, it should've been called "libre source" or some other made-up name, but that boat has sailed. And so flipping people off because their understanding of the term is different from the OSI definition only serves to antagonize them and needlessly paint the whole open source movement bad.
Saying this as someone with all side projects released under OSI licenses, some as far back as in mid 90s.
The GP is me. CC is not open source^TM and hence closed source^TM.
> "Open source" is a misnomer,
Sure, but who cares? The fact is that if you tell me "this software is open source" I know that this is a domain specific term and what it means, just like "this is a normal vector". In particular "normal" here means something else than in standard English.
The only thing you are then doing is complaining about how you wanted to use "normal" for your new cool definition.... That ship has sailed.
Aka pretend it is. If you have to say that you are not actually <adjective> but only "<adjective>", then this is not an alternative definition but alternative facts (i.e. you are lying to deceive people).
Given that the main selling point of permissive licenses is that they make it easy for businesses to incorporate code into a project that can be closed-source for the sake of competitive advantage, this would seem to be an incident that might have been prevented with a license more in line with the author's motivations.
He doesn’t call google out by name but what grandparent says explains this:
> Starting with this release, redistributions bundled with commercial software ...
The question is, is google going to call his bluff and pay up or reassign some internal resources? I’m assuming they’d want their gdrive fork to work on Catalina.
