OSS-Blacklist
codeberg.org
A list of companies that are hostile towards the open source community

Just saw the discussion around the Haier Home Assistant takedown and thought it would be good to materialize the metaphorical blacklist.

  • thesmokingman@programming.dev
    27·
    10 months ago

    It’s probably a good idea to have a stronger definition and mission. Here are a few scenarios you should consider.

    • FSF defines anything that’s not copyleft as hostile. That’s most companies. I personally don’t think I can tell my users what to do with my software other than remove my liability so I vehemently disagree with Stallman.
    • Mongo wrote the SSPL and MariaDB wrote the BSL. Both licenses are seen as regressions. I personally respect the MariaDB case and have been harassed by too many Mongo salespeople to say the same about them.
    • Platforms like AWS are the reason companies like CockroachDB and Elastic implemented restrictive licenses.
    • IBM has been gutting open source through its acquisition of Red Hat. This is a common story; Oracle has been screwing *nix longer.
    • Protecting trademarks causes a lot of consternation from users. The Rust Foundation is the most recent example of this I remember blowing up the FOSS community.

    I like your idea a lot. I think it needs some definition to be very successful!

    • qaz@lemmy.worldOP
      11·
      10 months ago

      FSF defines anything that’s not copyleft as hostile. That’s most companies. I personally don’t think I can tell my users what to do with my software other than remove my liability so I vehemently disagree with Stallman.

      I’m not planning on counting that as hostile behavior. Organizations can choose a license for their software (and I can choose not to buy/use it). This collection is mostly focused on companies that hurt existing Open Source software. Such as sending a cease and desist to an unofficial plugin/extension or closing down software that was originally open source.

      • taladar@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        10 months ago

        Maybe your could also add organisations (companies, government agencies, NGOs,…) that create standards in such a way that the standard is hard or impossible to implement in open source implementations?

          • taladar@sh.itjust.works
            4·
            10 months ago

            I was more thinking about things like governments that decide that every implementation of something must be certified to be used, e.g. with wireless technologies. Not so much implementation as specification or legal compliance barriers to open source basically.

            You raise a good point though, financial barriers such as per user pricing that are hard to implement for software distributed for free would be quite similar.

    • psud@lemmy.world
      2·
      10 months ago

      IBM is so good and so bad. Their machines are so open. Their software is not.

      • thesmokingman@programming.dev
        2·
        10 months ago

        I personally use Apache 2.0 because it’s been upheld in court. I’m not sure if MPL has been directly challenged in court. Either way, I agree with the sentiment. The legal perspective is why I moved away from MIT/ISC.

        • jackpot@lemmy.ml
          3·
          10 months ago

          you should considwr MPL, if someone found a security vulneravility theyd be legally obligated to tell yoy for example. also, it still allows commerical closed source software. try it!!