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SCALE: The life and times of the AGPL

Posted Mar 14, 2013 16:54 UTC (Thu) by corvus (guest, #82)
In reply to: SCALE: The life and times of the AGPL by njwhite
Parent article: SCALE: The life and times of the AGPL

That seems to be a reasonable interpretation of Kuhn's remark. However, I do still take issue with that remark: OpenStack should definitely not be lumped in with GitHub and BitBucket which are not at all FLOSS.

OpenStack is Apache licensed, and as such, you can extend it with proprietary modules if you choose (just as with the Apache HTTP server). However, the OpenStack community is very insistent that OpenStack should not become an open-core system. It is a complete set of FLOSS software components that are quite capable of running at scale straight from the upstream repos. Some of the largest contributors have an "upstream-first" attitude, with continuous deployments based on upstream increasingly popular.

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I didn't say OpenStack and GitHub were precisely the same.

Posted Mar 15, 2013 3:36 UTC (Fri) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link]

To be clear, it's true that I had OpenStack on the same slide as GitHub and BitBucket, and Nathan may have drawn more on what the slide says than what I said out loud during the talk. When I give that part of the talk, I point out clearly that OpenStack, is, itself, Apache-licensed Free Software, but has a growing number of proprietary or simply "undisclosed" forks. That situation is indeed different from GitHub and BitBucket in the details, but the general idea is the same: a Free Software core, but lots of proprietary add-ons for secret sauce.

I didn't say OpenStack and GitHub were precisely the same.

Posted Mar 15, 2013 16:31 UTC (Fri) by n8willis (editor, #43041) [Link]

It was clear that in both cases, the concept at hand was that there are companies out there building a web-service product that relies on a free software base (e.g., OpenStack or git) but in which the ultimate product itself is not available as free software to the end users; in that case, OpenStack is an example of the component, while Github and Bitbucket were examples of the final product.

Nate

I didn't say OpenStack and GitHub were precisely the same.

Posted Mar 16, 2013 16:12 UTC (Sat) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link]

I think corvus has a point though: OpenStack has a non-profit that is producing a fully Free Software version, and that's what OpenStack itself is. Compare that to GitHub: Git itself *is* like OpenStack in that it's fully Free Software and is part of a non-profit (i.e, Conservancy), too, but GitHub produces the type of software I'm talking about.

I think the problem here is purely the naming: OpenStack proprietary/trade-secret forks/depoloyments aren't called OpenStack, whereas there's no ambiguity when you say "GitHub" what you mean (i.e., you don't mean Git).

I admit I need to be clearer about that point when I give the talk in the future.

SCALE: The life and times of the AGPL

Posted Mar 15, 2013 9:48 UTC (Fri) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]

> the OpenStack community is very insistent that OpenStack should not become an open-core system. It is a complete set of FLOSS software components that are quite capable of running at scale straight from the upstream repos. Some of the largest contributors have an "upstream-first" attitude, with continuous deployments based on upstream increasingly popular.

While I don't have direct experience of OpenStack, this is what I've heard too, and is great news. Ultimately the license can only go so far in encouraging good behaviour; it's great when most users understand why software freedom and contributing upstream is important.

So perhaps OpenStack wasn't the best example to choose, though it sounds like bkuhn has heard otherwise (I am in no position to judge).

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