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Notices

1. Hallå Kitteh (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Jun-2018 23:20:47 UTC Hallå Kitteh
   Noticing how https://about.gitlab.com/2018/06/03/microsoft-acquires-github/ and its comments manage to present "open core" as if it were something that had positive connotations.
   • Hallå Kitteh (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Thursday, 07-Jun-2018 00:24:27 UTC Hallå Kitteh

     • notklaatu
     • scolobb
     @scolobb @klaatu "Open core" was coined a decade ago as a neutral term[0], but immediately came into use as a negative word by free software advocates, because of the unavoidable conflicts of interest and the way places like MySQL was using the model. Some discussion of the term:
     
     http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/10/16/open-core-shareware.html
     
     http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/03/05/open-core-slur.html
     
     bkuhn is certainly not the only person who has been using the term, and not the person who coined it, I just happened to know that he has a few posts discussing it.
     
     [0] Coined by Andrew Lampitt in 2008, according to enwp.org/Open_core referencing Phipps, Simon (July 2012). Open Source Strategies for the Enterprise. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-1-4493-4117-6.
   • Hallå Kitteh (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Thursday, 07-Jun-2018 08:34:50 UTC Hallå Kitteh

     • Björn Schießle 🌍 🇪🇺
     @bjoern At least they present themselves honestly. What gives me concern is that they seem to consider it entirely unproblematic.
   • Hallå Kitteh (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Thursday, 07-Jun-2018 13:24:01 UTC Hallå Kitteh

     • Björn Schießle 🌍 🇪🇺
     • scolobb
     @scolobb @bjoern Good summary.
     
     I agree with bkuhn's view that the core (ah-hem) of the concept is really proprietary relicensing and/or proprietary add-ons. But that's just one view. There is no consensus on the meaning.
   • Hallå Kitteh (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Thursday, 07-Jun-2018 13:44:15 UTC Hallå Kitteh

     in reply to

     • Björn Schießle 🌍 🇪🇺
     • scolobb
     @bjoern @scolobb Gitlab is not leveraging centralized copyleft as a way of making themselves a dominant party, but they are a dominant party, and quite consciously so.
     
     IIRC they have hired any external developer that started making significant contributions, which is a softer way of making sure they control the direction of the project.
     
     They also provide the read-only source code of the proprietary bits, which further fuzzies the line, but it *is* proprietary.
   • Hallå Kitteh (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Thursday, 07-Jun-2018 13:56:41 UTC Hallå Kitteh

     • Christine Lemmer-Webber
     • Björn Schießle 🌍 🇪🇺
     • scolobb
     @cwebber @bjoern @scolobb Very much this.