Ask Bruce Perens Your Questions About How He Hopes to Get Open Source Developers Paid (postopen.org)
- Reference: 0175589913
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/12/04/0426220/ask-bruce-perens-your-questions-about-how-he-hopes-to-get-open-source-developers-paid
- Source link: https://postopen.org/
To make it all happen, he envisions software developers owning (and controlling) a not-for-profit corporation developing a body of software called "the Post Open Collection" and collecting its licensing fees to distribute among developers. The hope? To "make it possible for an individual developer to stay at home and code all day, and make their living that way without having to build a company."
The not-for-profit entity — besides actually enforcing its licensing — could also:
Provide tech support, servicing all Post-Open software through one entity.
Improve security by providing developers with cryptographic-hardware-backed authentication guaranteeing secure software chain-of-custody.
Handle onerous legal requirements like compliance with the EU Cyber Resilience Act "on behalf of all developers in the Post Open Collection".
Compensate documentation writers.
Fund lobbying on behalf of developers, along with advocacy for their software's privacy-preserving features.
"We've started to build the team," Perens [3]said in a recent interview , announcing weeks ago that [4]attorneys are already discussing the structure of the future organization and its proposed license.
But what do you think? Perens has agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers...
He's also [5]Slashdot reader #3,872 . (And Perens is also an amateur radio operator, currently on the board of [6]M17 — a community of open source developers and radio enthusiasts — and in general support of Open Source and Amateur Radio projects through his non-profit HamOpen.org.) But more importantly, Perens "was the person to announce 'Open Source' to the world," [7]according to his official site . Now's your chance to ask him about his next new big idea...
Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment. We'll pick the very best questions — and forward them on to Bruce Perens himself to answer!
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/01/05/208249/open-source-initiative-co-founder-bruce-perens-resigns-citing-move-toward-license-that-isnt-freedom-respecting
[2] https://postopen.org/
[3] https://thenewstack.io/what-comes-after-open-source-bruce-perens-has-some-ideas/
[4] https://postopen.org/2024/11/14/legal-progress-new-code-of-conduct-version/
[5] https://slashdot.org/~Bruce+Perens/
[6] https://m17project.org/
[7] https://perens.com/about-bruce-perens/
Er, dude, it already exists (Score:3)
The hope? To "make it possible for an individual developer to stay at home and code all day, and make their living that way without having to build a company."
That's called "having a job." It's existed for centuries.
If you want control over how the company runs, you have to take the responsibility of running it. Not doing so guarantees you'll be bankrupt in short order.
Re: (Score:2)
> You don't need any responsibility, you just need to own shares.
There are employee owned companies that have seen considerable success.
There are a lot more where the employees owned it, but ignored their responsibility to understand how it work, and hired idiots to run it. They mostly don't last long.
If you own it, but don't put the effort into understanding how to run it, you deserve what you get, which will be living in your car.
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Agreed with AC. This isn't an employee/employer arrangement.
Re: (Score:2)
Literally everything he says it could do are things that companies do. He's describing an employee owned company, which is nothing new. Some succeed - the ones where the employees understand how the business works, and hire people to run it the way they want - that works in the market. Far more fail, because the employees refuse to accept the responsibilities of being company owners.
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It's a company for sure. And such companies do already exist, yes.
Cooperatives are shareholder owned. Those shareholders do not directly operate the company and certainly aren't considered as employees. They have voting rights for future company direction is all.
Sometime they are beholden to sell their produce to the cooperative but I suspect that's not the type of cooperative that Mr Perens has in mind.
Re: (Score:3)
> That's called "having a job." It's existed for centuries.
His goal is to get himself paid for doing nothing.
I remember him crying here about how I was interfering with his life's work because I was opposing the lies of the OSI about how Christine Petersen allegedly coined the term Open Source, he made it sound like he was going to be dying soon and I was single-handedly stopping him from saving FOSS before that happened.
Now he's got a different scam going, and wants more attention.
Re: (Score:2)
Bruce Perens is a one trick pony, and that trick got old a long time ago. Perhaps he should have coined another term, like enshittification. What little some people think they should get paid for.
Re: (Score:2)
> "That's called "having a job." It's existed for centuries."
Bingo. It could be a company with freelance coders being paid by their employer.
So he wants to take the "F" out of FOSS....
" and collecting its licensing fees to distribute among developers."
So it would no longer be free and open source software. Just commercial open source software. Somehow collecting license fees from.... from who? How? Would anyone want to use that software enough to pay for it? It all maybe sounds better than closed so
The high level business model (Score:2)
sounds like the already successful "cooperative" in other industries.
Fairness (Score:4, Informative)
Dear Mr Perens,
I recognize the problem you describe as real. Thank you for attempting to address it.
You mention a number of contribution avenues to the greater ecosystem of free software—from documentation to lobbying to actual programming. How will your proposed system ensure that such varied contributions are compensated fairly?
As-is, free software is largely a do-ocracy, with only moderate potential for deception. Adding bureaucracy to the equation threatens to upset this natural order.
Thank you and best of luck.
Re: (Score:3)
There's really two questions there.
- What is the algorithm for payouts?
- How is trust to be ensured?
I haven't read the docs myself but I'd guess both answers are still being formulated, and both are up for discussion.
Re: (Score:2)
"...but in order to pay them there must be a source of revenue."
No, you don't understand. Revenue is a problem for someone else, "we" get paid. It doesn't have to work, it only has to make fanatics believe it.
"How will you stop the management component of this foundation eating all of that money"
LOLOL, you really don't understand. Bruce Perens IS the management component, eating all of that money is the end game.
How do you stop Steve Bannon from skimming off all the money for the wall? Same answer. It's
So, basically shareware 2.0? (Score:3)
Basically this is another attempt at shareware, where you have a version licensed at no charge, but then start asking for dough after a while, or if the entity is big enough, perhaps with some virtual signaling thrown in for anti-military use? (Like North Korea, China, or Russia is going to heed those clauses.)
Instead, perhaps the best is to have both a free license like GPL 3 and a commercial license. If one doesn't care, pick a license, GPL 2, 3-clause BSD, or commercial. This way, if a company wants to use a product and do stuff with it, they can pay for the privilege of not releasing their derivative stuff.
As for foundations, this is something I think needs to be addressed. Were it not for F/OSS products, FAANG companies would not exist. Pretty much everything we take for granted now would not exist. At best, we might be connecting to AOL, CompuServe, or MSN, with what would be the Internet still mainly using Solaris and commercial variants of UNIX. Perhaps governments should consider a tax which would go to F/OSS projects and the amount would depend on how much the project is used, and whom. This way, some project like OpenSSL or GnuPG would get the money it deserves for being a core part of how things function out there.
F/OSS does work, and Red Hat and Ubuntu show that it does. It is just many companies don't like the idea of "free" unless it something they want to (ab)use.
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Shareware didn't work because no one wanted to pay before using, and so many people who were authors either failed to create a sustainable ecosystem - ie they would charge once and never again, therefore assuring their software was unsupported over time, or they'd keep on trying to charge you for every little update and piss off the users, who would remain stuck on a past release and never update. If you just gave it away, you wouldn't see a cent.
So, to get around the first thing, i'd create a fully functi
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> Shareware didn't work because no one wanted to pay before using
Disagree. Shareware came in many forms including honorware, and that failed too. Shareware didn't work because no one wanted to pay, full stop.
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"F/OSS does work, and Red Hat and Ubuntu show that it does."
If it works, why propose a tax so that projects get the money they "deserve"? I'm sure you liked the tax on blank media, too, so that record companies got the money they "deserve". What we really need is the government forcing our ideals on everyone else. Freedumb.
"It is just many companies don't like the idea of "free" unless it something they want to (ab)use."
Look who's talking.
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> Instead, perhaps the best is to have both a free license like GPL 3 and a commercial license.
That's arguably one of the best ways to profit from a bunch of valuable code that you own. But there is a rub, which is that if your project requires that contributors assign copyright to you so that you can dual license their code so that you can profit from it without them, a high percentage of them will decline and contribute to some other project.
who owns the means of production? (Score:2)
And people are offended when "open source" is likened to communism?
The difference between capitalism and communism, at risk of being reductionist, is who owns the means of production. What is being proposed is literally a change in who owns, and benefits from, the means of production of software. Now, if you believe in communist principles, ok, but don't be offended when someone literally promotes communism in software development and is called out for it.
Many of us read Animal Farm as middle schoolers an
Business as a service (Score:2)
The copyright stays put with the developers. The corporate structure that Mr Perens is promoting is all about monetising the output, doing the business side of the business, rather than changing of ownership.
Business as a service if you like.
Why (Score:2)
Why did Bruce stop posting on Slashdot? I haven't seen you lately.
AI impact (Score:2)
Do you worry this whole initiative could be made redundant by AI? AI is already writing decent code and getting better each year.
How would entity revenue be verified and enforced? (Score:2)
The How Post Open Works [1]article [postopen.org] says, "Deep-pockets entities (over USD$5 Million revenue in a year), companies that include the software in a paid-for product, and companies that wish to keep modifications private must pay."
How would this revenue threshold be verified and enforced, especially for privately-held companies that do not publicly disclose their annual revenues?
[1] https://postopen.org/how-post-open-works/
Re: (Score:2)
Assume they are all over the limit and have to pay, if they aren't they can feel free to send over their financials and if examination shows they are indeed under that limit then the discount will be applied.
"..... and companies that wish to keep modifications private must pay."
Hasn't this part always been the case when it comes to F/OSS? Needing to go to source of source and getting them to re-issue with a new/different license?
Licensing fees? (Score:2)
This is my question: If the software is open-source (Free Software if you prefer) how will you force anyone to pay licensing fees? And if you do force people/organizations to pay licensing fees, then how can the software possibly be considered open-source (Free Software)? Aren't you just envisioning a pool that sells proprietary software, and if so, are you abandoning the idea of open-source / Free Software?
Re: (Score:2)
My follow-on question is this: How do you envision your collective competing with developers who choose truly open / Free licenses?
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> if you do force people/organizations to pay licensing fees, then how can the software possibly be considered open-source (Free Software)? Aren't you just envisioning a pool that sells proprietary software, and if so, are you abandoning the idea of open-source / Free Software?
No. Open Source means the source can be viewed. It has actually meant that since the 1980s. It is entirely commercially compatible. Attribution-only licenses which let others close down your code are Open Source.
Free Software, on the other hand, arguably cannot be sold that way. RedHat is making a pretty serious try at it, but I think it could eventually come back to bite them (if we continue to have a DOJ, that is) as the terms of their license conflicts with the terms of the source to the GPL software the
Re: (Score:2)
I'm using the official [1]open source definition [opensource.org] from the OSI, which is a lot stronger than "yeah, you can view the source."
It specifically says:
> Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open source software must comply with the following criteria:
> 1. Free Redistribution
> 2. Source Code
... etc
[1] https://opensource.org/osd
Re: (Score:2)
> I'm using the official open source definition from the OSI
The OSI didn't invent the term "Open Source", which dates from the 80s.
Christine Petersen's claim to have done so is a bald-faced lie, and Bruce is party to that lie. And now, so are you.
Why not basic income? (Score:1)
What if everyone got a Strong Basic Income (non-tax-funded, generous, indexed to price rises, truly universal) and coded without their mind on their money and their money on their mind?
Re: (Score:2)
Non tax funded? That would be a miracle! Where exactly do you propose the money would come from, if not from taxes?
Simple Question (Score:2)
I don't know how you get around the historical problem of money corrupting individuals and organizations.
Do you?
How can I participate? (Score:2)
I've been nested in Open Source within .NET as a platform for a bit, and in other communities in the past. I've seen and helped others navigate this stuff. Honestly, I'd love to join you. Is there a meaningful way I can participate in shaping this venture?
Here's an example of one thing I'd love to solve. I would love to give devs a licensing framework if not a platform for being both open source and compensated. I want to see a spectrum of options that are both lawyer-approved and safely understandable/expl
Doesn't this miss the point of open source? (Score:2)
Open source software was founded on the idea that "all software should be free." People who write open source code should expect no payment. As soon as they start expecting payment, it's no longer open source, but commercial. Calling it a nonprofit, is like calling OpenAI a nonprofit. That is how the company was organized legally (at least, originally), but the transfer of money has a way of bending otherwise pure intentions.
I think I'm knee-jerk opposed (Score:2)
Why not "Post-Free"? Is that what they called in the Confederate States?
The "selling" point would be that the software is high-quality? And it would compete with Free software? I can't dump it into my project? And it's not ... Free?
Re: (Score:2)
It's not made completely clear from the summary what it would be. It's not a fully developed concept ant that will need to be hammered out. The reality is that outside of the self-righteous and the few lucky people who get paid to do FOSS, developers aren't likely to contribute to projects where they don't get paid, but they're more than willing to use software they don't have to pay for. Moving projects to this may help keep developers interested in projects and may encourage development of the boring part
Re: (Score:2)
> Why not "Post-Free"?
No need for a new description.
There's already a term for what Bruce is proposing.
It's called "commercial software".