octotree

If I get something from this post and the "Are we still open source?" slides linked in the sibling comment [0], is that Open Source is a dangerous route for software that wants or expects to eventually be commercialized. I've read countless threads on HN and that seems to always be the final lesson. There are lower risk but less "idealistic" licenses such as Apache, and higher risk but also ideal licenses such as GPL. Especially relevant to GPL, it ends up being counterproductive, as the license is a hardcore protection of the users' rights, at the expense of the project owner's rights. See the debate caused by Octotree [1], [2]. It's a pity because the way I see it, GPL is the ideal way to go. But if you need to pay the bills with software you write, it is also one of the worst open source choices out there. (A)GPL is then relegated to e

And from the latest comment on this issue (https://github.com/christianbundy/octotree/issues/1#issuecom...): It seems that the project switched from MIT to AGPL around 2016, so all the contributor commits before that doesn't matter. Excluding those, there's only 10 commits from people outside the team, which frankly isn't a big deal. Anyways, it's frustrating that the author is kinda acting a bit scummy for something that might not have been even a problem. If he was a bit patient and had just got permission from those people beforehand... (I don't really think any of those 10 people would object to it since the commits aren't that big, unless one of them is a free software movement purist perhaps) And people generally agree on Mozilla's "95% author coverage" line so I think this controversy might have been a bit overblown.

They seem to have cooled off now. They apologized for being dismissive, thanked people, and discussion has become much more civil. https://github.com/christianbundy/octotree/issues/1#issuecom...

@sircmpwn Sort of implies [0] he'd need a contributor in order to fund a lawsuit (really puts his money where his mouth is on open source & privacy issues, at least, truly admirable) - but is that actually the case? Doesn't AGPL grant the user (casual observer even?) the right to view the source, not just the contributor to have it be available? (Perhaps he just means that he's supportive but doesn't care enough to pursue it alone - absolutely fair enough if that's the case, not trying to suggest he should do something, just checking my understanding.) [0] - https://github.com/christianbundy/octotree/issues/1#issuecom...

They have now reverted to AGPL. I'm glad they didn't decide to die on that hill. https://github.com/christianbundy/octotree/issues/1#issuecom...

> It seems like the problem here stems from the project owner taking the source code as-is and essentially re-licensing it as proprietary, which is a big no-no. > For context, when NodeBB faced this possibility, we simply contacted every single contributor and asked nicely if they'd assign over their ownership of their contribution to us (note the use of the word "assign", not "license", a license is revocable, an assignment is not). This is certainly the correct way to do hit. However, in this specific case, it appears that as of the current code, not many external contributions remain. The author of the original issue in the meantime forked the repo and continued to document the issue there [1] as it was being constantly closed, but as is evident from his own `git blame` analysis, most of the contributions are from staff, and the extern

> But what I don't get is: how do you even know this with such confidence? Because instead of saying "yes it's based on the AGPL code, I have consent" they're saying "no it's not based on the AGPL code, it's a complete rewrite", which is an easily provable lie. The minified JavaScript has tons of 1:1 copies of the AGPL code, clear as day (example: https://github.com/christianbundy/octotree/issues/1#issuecom...), and the maintainer is deleting any comment that mentions the clear evidence.

Yep, lots of them are still the most recent author according to git-blame too: https://github.com/christianbundy/octotree/issues/1#issuecom...

The problem is that many of the contributions are deeply intertwined with the current codebase, which is a derivative of those contributions. Example: https://github.com/christianbundy/octotree/issues/1#issuecom... If the maintainer wants to remove the AGPL without copyright infringement, I think they'd need to delete most/all of pjax.js and have someone else write a clean-room implementation that isn't built on contributions from someone else.

This link is less informative now that the maintainer nuked the thread. :/ I've started a new GH discussion here: https://github.com/christianbundy/octotree/issues/1

From Christian Bundy: "Since @buunguyen has decided to suppress this conversation via censorship, I thought I'd move the discussion here." https://github.com/christianbundy/octotree/issues/1