Previously LGPL, now re-licensed as closed-source/commercial. Previous code taken down.
Commercial users pay $99/year, free for personal use but each user has to make a free account after a trial period.
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If this project has other contributors, imagine how betrayed they must be.
Opening the project as FOSS until it becomes popular and then closing it to make money is such a scummy tactic
Fork the last commit with a LGPL commit?
GPL mentions explicitly that it is irrevocable, where as LGPL doesn’t mention anything about it. IANAL, but it looks like there is a case for irrevocable without violation of clauses by default https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4012/are-licenses-irrevocable-by-default#4013
For people considering contributing to FOSS in the future, maybe check for irrevocable clauses? I wish licenses selectors https://choosealicense.com highlighted this part more clearly.
Also depends on the contributions terms.
If they were a traditional FOSS, they can’t change the terms without all contributors agreeing or removing/modifying the contributed code so that they no longer have ownership of their authored sections.
Either way, it’s a dick move.
Never sign over copyright. If they didn’t, they can sue.
Booo
Bruh. This is why I hate all the open source license that are not GPL. Are not free software. I am not bother to pay for it. But I am bother to not see the code :(
Only to a certain extent.
The problem is that a lot of software is very complex and requires full-time development/maintenance. It’s simply not possible to work on stuff for free unless this is just a hobby and you can sustain yourself with a main job.
The main thing I have a problem with this instance is the following sequence of events
- The developer licensed it as LGPL.
- They did not accept ANY contributions to the code.
- The project became popular enough for people to post about in the fediverse (quite popular then, I guess)
- They got donations for their work, but apparently it was not enough.
- They removed the project from being accessible and moved to a paid only model.
This tells me:
- Their intention all along was to abuse FOSS community for popularity, traction, clout and free testing by people who are also doing this stuff in their free time.
- They got donations, but for whatever reason it was not enough for them. => Were they expecting to make retirement level income from their project which is in a crowded segment?
Yeah if you really care about FOSS you should use GPL and not MIT BDS and a multiple license. Because at the end of the day the code can became close source in just a second. That is the point of GPL and the Foss. I am willing to pay with money because I can. But I am not willing to pay with trust.
Can anyone recommend a good alternative?
PyQt.
Ah yes, the complete opposite of “simple” with 20x the boilerplate. Pysimplegui was alternative to pyqt for a good reason.
@ebits21 #PySimpleGUI #python #opensource
🎶 Another bites the dust. 🎶
Moves like this are a bit… strange? It was on github. There are 1.8k forks, with intact LGPL. What is happening here? Is their dev work worth 99$/year ? Not saying people don’t deserve to get paid for their work. I’m just not seeing the business case for this.
How else do you expect their time to be paid for?
Donations?
Hey, A lot of people spent their precious free time to look at your project, test it out, and talking about it to their colleagues. How are you going to pay us for wasting however many minutes or hours of time spent on your supposedly open source project before you did the bait-and-switch?
(By “you” I meant the developer.)
It’s quite entitled and dishonest to expect free beta-testing, marketing, and clout from the use of FOSS as a shortcut for your product.
If you are sincere then you should know what you are getting into when you create that license.txt with LGPL terms on it.
It’s quite entitled and dishonest to expect free beta-testing, marketing, and clout from the use of FOSS as a shortcut for your product.
Either show us where they voiced this expectation, or stop talking out of your ass.
The entire FOSS community works for very little compensation. You’re not special. Read the fucking room. A lot of people spend their free time building cool shit to share with the community. You’re a prick if you think that you’re in the right calling people in the FOSS community entitled.
The amount of people who feel like they’re entitled to the previous code and are calling the license change scummy make me sick.
This developer put their own free time into this project, they made sure to not accept anyone else’s code, and they understandably felt they deserve to be paid for their time. Whether this was a smart move is another matter entirely.
The one case where I can understand being upset is if you donated shortly before this happened. But otherwise, you should really reflect on how you’re giving back to the people who make the tools you feel oh so entitled to.
I wonder if you typed that with a straight face. If so then you are wildly out of touch with how FOSS and the democratization of FOSS development works.
You use words like “entitled” as a derogatory term when you clearly don’t understand that yes, the community is entitled because that’s how these FOSS licenses work. And people have every right to be upset when the status quo changes for a project they have also helped develop and helped get popular.
So either you are trolling, or you are clueless. Either way you should be ignored and this is as much time I’m going to waste writing this comment.
What exactly did the FOSS community lose right there?
They can still use the versions that were licensed to them. The forks are right there.
However, you are not entitled to the dev distributing those versions for you.
Actually the LGPL legally binds the dev to distributing those versions. So you’re just a troll. I am done replying to you but it has been fun watching you try to justify shit in the name of compensation.
You’ve been unable to back up a single thing you said in this conversation with proof.
You had to walk back your accusations towards the dev, and you’re unable to actually point to the passage in the LGPL that supposedly binds the dev.
All you’re able to do at this point is call me a troll. You’re a parasite in the FOSS community who expects the work of others to be provided to them for free in perpetuity, and it pains you to realize it can be taken away from you.
You’re a dumbass who can’t read and doesn’t understand foss.
And that’s how we know you’re out of arguments.
Who’s we here? You’re getting downvoted to oblivion because of your hostility. I am merely replying in kind.
The previous code was released under lgpl so…. Yeah if you can find a copy of it you are entitled to it. That was the developer’s choice.
Taking all the old code down with a force push to GitHub suddenly is a bit futile since obviously there are ways to get the old source.
I’m not against developers getting paid, but there’s definitely a ‘rug-pulling’ aspect to this situation that leaves a bad taste.
The amount of people who feel like they’re entitled to the previous code and are calling the license change scummy make me sick.
But you’re not sick at the fact that they licensed it as LGPL just to get their product popular and then said “I got the eyeballs I wanted, time to milk this!”
This developer put their own free time into this project
When your code is open source the expectation is that you are sharing code with people for free so that the community can enjoy the work and hopefully you gain respect and popularity as your product matures and a lot of people utilize it. People might even fund you for your hard work if you become popular enough. Maybe a whole new product gets developed on top of your product and you become important. That’s how a lot of successful open source projects work.
If you are entitled to quick success, we are entitled to our ideology around FLOSS.
they made sure to not accept anyone else’s code.
So they just wanted people to test their product and market them for free? Who’s entitled here?
(Also that argument is not going to work in court when people sue them for violating LGPL terms)
and they understandably felt they deserve to be paid for their time
What about the compensation for people who beta-tested this product for free and recommended them to others?
But otherwise, you should really reflect on how you’re giving back to the people who make the tools you feel oh so entitled to.
The giving back part is increasing respect, popularity, and a community of contributors who will grow YOUR product for free. Don’t act like this small project is a gift from God.
Also, the author literally didn’t accept contributions. That just means they were looking for free marketing and eyeballs. As soon as it was convenient for them to pull the rug they did so without even thinking about the community. Who’s the scumbag, you tell me?
they licensed it as LGPL just to get their product popular and then said “I got the eyeballs I wanted, time to milk this!”
Show us where the dev said exactly that.
we are entitled to our ideology around FLOSS.
You are not entitled to anything. The dev simply released their work with a license that allows others to use it freely. Nothing more, nothing less.
So they just wanted people to test their product and market them for free?
Again, show us where they vocalized exactly that.
What about the compensation for people who beta-tested this product for free and recommended them to others?
What compensation were they expecting?
That just means they were looking for free marketing and eyeballs.
So far you’ve done nothing but put a whole bunch of malicious words into this developer’s mouth.
Apparently you want me to point out where I took the developer’s words but intentions are not words. You’re deliberately trying to argue that I am accusing the dev of things they did not do, but that’s not true. I am only arguing on their actions and assigning motive to their actions which I make clear in all my comments.
You’re the one who is calling people entitled for expecting LGPL code to be FOSS. I am merely replying to your comments.
Fuck off
You don’t have any good counterarguments, so you resort to insults.
I wanted to elaborate, but then decided that a simple fuck off is much more appropriate and gets to the gist of the content, you know?
That’s assuming you have something to elaborate with in the first place.
You’ll know best how far that attitude gets you.
Read my comment and enlighten all of us on how stealing free testing work from the community under the pretense of “open source” is not entitlement? How is this project going to compensate users for beta testing their software for free?
