At JustDo we make our source code available for transparency and collaboration, we use a source-available license that ensures fair compensation for our work. This model allows us to maintain the benefits of open development while avoiding the pitfalls of unrestricted open-source licensing, ensuring we can sustainably develop and support our software.
I developed this license https://justdo.com/source-available-license , if someone wants to adopt it for their project, I'd love to provide its Latex form, just DM me. (With enough demand, I might Open Source the Source available license ;) )."
Could you use a PolyForm license instead? They have a set of standardized, source-available licenses that are much shorter and easier to understand.
"The PolyForm Project is a group of experienced licensing lawyers and technologists developing simple, standardized, plain-language software source code licenses. PolyForm aims to fill gaps in the menu of standardized software licenses, like non-commercial, trial, and small-business-only terms."
> allows us to maintain the benefits of open development while avoiding the pitfalls of unrestricted open-source licensing, ensuring we can sustainably develop and support
"allow us", "ensuring we can" ...
You misunderstand OSS, which is about "allow all", and "ensuring all of us can". Of course, the OSS model doesn't always work, nor do its proponents claim it is the one true way to run a project. Though, they do get irked when source-available licenses try to pass off as "almost OSS" but aren't quite.
How so? That's literally the point of source-available licenses: a company using the code can audit it and sometimes, depending on the license fix issues for their own use.
I wouldn't be interested in collaborating with a company on their source-available software (since I'd be doing free work for their profit), but if my company were using their product, and we needed a new feature or bug fix that they weren't going to prioritize, I'd much prefer to build that feature or fix that bug myself and give it back to the company than have to maintain my own fork.
And I don't really see a problem with that. Presumably my company would be using their software because building the whole thing ourselves would be too costly. But if I need to spend a week or two augmenting it? That's fine. Cheaper for my company, and I'm getting paid to do that work.
> a company using the code can audit it and sometimes, depending on the license fix issues for their own use
Presumption that enterprises don't have access to / or fix bugs in proprietary closed-source software of enterprises they depend on is unfounded. iow, source-available (as a way to increase collab and be transparent) is a gimmick.
Would rather have my team to build the features we need instead of maintaining screens, custom fields or transitions, and ask for a new feature that would take ages.
You underestimate the level of cooperation that can exist between two tech companies working on each other's proprietary code-bases (where warranted). I'd wager that those agreements won't look too different than with source-available firms.
So, to me, there's no added benefit to source-available; some of these firms want to build a FOSS-like community but also don't want to be FOSS.
I don't see any misunderstanding there. Maybe you misunderstand the basic meaning of words?
Transparency: If I can see the source code, that is certainly pretty much the definition of transparency.
Collaboration: It is easier to collaborate if I can see the source, don't you think? That doesn't define the legal terms under which this collaboration happens, of course, and you should make sure they suit you before you collaborate.
Or at your own benefit. As with any legal agreement you enter into. Also, you might be able to reach out to them, pay them, and obtain a different license. It is easier to see if this is worth the effort by seeing the source code first.
The confusion seems to be all yours. This article is certainly something. First, they dispute that licenses are actually setting legal terms. If they were not, then there was no point to open-source licensing either. So that argument is idiotic. Secondly, sentences like
> Open source software companies need to come to grips with that uncomfortable truth: their business model isn’t their community’s problem, and they should please stop trying to make it one.
are full of unjustified entitlement. And also not relevant: The companies we are talking about are not open-source companies. They are just companies. Some of them, with source-available software and/or hardware. Some of them, with open-source software and/or hardware. Some of them, with both.
The entitlement therein is justified in the context of OSS.
> So that argument is idiotic.
Well, what's idiotic is expecting collab on a source-available project. There's a reason the community forks or uses OSS instead, as the article notes.
Those of us who have been around for a while — who came up in the era of proprietary software and saw the merciless transition to open source software — know that there’s no way to cross back over the Rubicon.
Open source software companies need to come to grips with that uncomfortable truth: their business model isn’t their community’s problem, and they should please stop trying to make it one. And while they’re at it, it would be great if they could please stop making outlandish threats about the demise of open source; they sound like shrieking proprietary software companies from the 1990s...
> Well, what's idiotic is expecting collab on a source-available project.
Depends on what you understand by "collab". That can be a business partnership where actual money is exchanged. It is called capitalism, and I leave it up to you to judge how idiotic it is.
> Open source software companies need to come to grips with that uncomfortable truth
Again, I don't know many open-source software companies. I am currently using the Monaco Editor for a project, it is great open-source software, published by Microsoft. I wouldn't call Microsoft an open-source software company, though. Which is my point.
I don't think a small software company can gain much these days by making their software open-source. Just put it behind an SaaS, with a generous free tier (free as in beer) to attract users. Make (some part of) it source-available, so that people can experiment with your software and interface with it, for example for writing plugins (that would be the collab part). Think really hard about whether to actually open-source anything, and if it is worth it. When in doubt, consider AGPL.
I personally wouldn't use something available under a non-OSS source-available type license, but if they're able to build a business around it and are doing well, that's great.
This is a disease. It is not open source. No one who values open source will use it. For any task, for software that would run on my system, I would rather use open source even if it's five times worse.
Correct, but I am asking people to not use it because the whole software chain would erode and fall apart if too many people started using such non open-source licenses. Moreover, open source safeguards adoption of the software.
monkey paw curls Your AGPL code now only runs on amazon lambda functions.
Stallman et. al. have not worked in big corp since the 80s so they don't understand how misaligned incentives are now. The AGPL is a solution to the issues we were having in the 00s. The issues of the 20s are solved by source available licenses. Or my preferred solution, any open source license which can only be used by a natural person, corporations need not apply.
Two Claude accounts of mine got blocked (one of them was a paid account for which I got a refund following the block), without explanation, very normal use.
I loved using Claude, I think it did better job than other LLM. Attempts to appeal failed with no response.
I've seen this kind of comment a few times, I was considering building some tools on top of Claude but this strongly puts me off. I don't want to invest the engineering time only to randomly have the account blocked with no warning and no explanation.
Like you shouldn't lock yourself to a specific cloud provider, you shouldn't lock yourself to a LLM as a service provider.
You could build your tools with a generic access to the best LLMs of the market. Today Claude is great, but perhaps Gemini, Mistral, ChatGPT, Command-R, or some wizard-dolphin-mixtral-carrots-merge-v3 can be descent replacements.
Totally, spending time developing the muscles to build more advanced RAG workflows is first and foremost a data modeling and data engineering challenge -- developing the hierarchical data modeling expertise, taking advantage of the structure and flexibility of the document model, chunking, and real time memory requirements combined with the power of vector embeddings and advanced query and filter capabilities is a skill that will last, irrespective of the popular model, service provider, cloud platform or framework du jour.
In the spirit of sharing, I wanted to mention a project I'm working on, called JustDo.com . We've been developing this enterprise-grade project management and planning tool and have seen validated product-market fit with some Fortune 500 companies.
We believe strongly in the power of open source and we're preparing to go 'Open Core' by this summer (See Community Edition in the pricing page to see what will be Open Sourced). Our intention is to give back to the community and enable more people to benefit from our tool.
If anyone is interested in exploring more about JustDo or participating in our open-source journey, I'd be more than happy to chat or answer any questions you might have :)
I am about to open source a web-app in the field in about two months.
Been in the making for 7 years, is in use by famous big-corps for few years already.
Bi-directional Jira integration built-in.
I am not mentioning the name of the tool simply because the landing page is really not where I want it to be at the moment
If you are looking for a solution in the field can DM me and I'll give you access to the code before we complete all the open source preparation.
Our speciality is that the tool solves both the communication problem (Trello, Asana) and the planning problem (MS Projects). Typical client will have 50-400 active users.
> afaik it dates back at least to Ancient Athens and was one of the tenets of their democracy: rich people were excluded from the political process entirely.
My only source for this is Etienne Chouard[1], a French teacher; it dates back to a 2011 video of a lecture[2] (in French). Notwithstanding political opinions, I expected his apparently factual take on history to be reliable; but I am now questioning whether he can be trusted fully in terms of intellectual honesty. Again, notwithstanding opinions, is he being genuine is his arguments, eg. not skewing history? I'll let you be the judge of that. I am not a specialist in Ancient history, though I have a bit of a formal pol.sci. background.
It wasn't about "rich" so much as perceived to be dangerously influent, my mistake. Note that it was entirely subjective, to be decided by a vote.
The procedure implemented was called "ostracism" and allowed the exclusion of anyone from political affairs for 10 years, simply based on a vote by citizens, without a need for justification whatsoever. Common reasons apparently were "he speaks too well", "craves power too much", "I don't trust him".
Thank you, HN for a quick and efficient fact-check.
[2]: https://youtu.be/HDg2sIZZi8I?t=2408 (40:08 to ~42:00) Note that the whole is quite interesting from a political science standpoint, again notwithstanding any political opinion (note that the speaker however does not refrain from speaking his).
Did a rather poor online search, and the closest I came to something on the subject I found[1] is this:
> Of this group, perhaps as few as 100 citizens - the wealthiest, most influential, and the best speakers - dominated the political arena both in front of the assembly and behind the scenes in private conspiratorial political meetings (xynomosiai) and groups (hetaireiai). These groups had to meet secretly because although there was freedom of speech, persistent criticism of individuals and institutions could lead to accusations of conspiring tyranny and so lead to ostracism
When your previous post said that "rich people were excluded from the political process entirely. You could either become rich or participate in politics, not both — in a direct democracy, no less" I took your claim to be that the rich weren't even allowed to vote in the direct democracy, not that they would be ostracised for being percieved to conspire with other rich people to influence that democracy using their extra power/wealth.
Edit: I just read your other fact-checking-yourself comment (currently under this one) and wanted to note that I wasn't trying to beat a dead horse. I appreciate your willingness to accept that your recollection/phrasing was incorrect.
I appreciate your understanding. And your phrasing, you nailed it.
Candidly, while nigh impossible to see things from the eyes of Ancient Greeks, I think the main take away (which may explain my incorrect recollection, as a shortcut/oversimplification) is that their view of democracy accepted 'sentiment' as valid motive, as valid 'reason' for principle and action. Part of such sentiment was suspicion, the sense of "feels right / wrong". It wasn't naive or blind, nor die-hard objective or quantified; the practice of democracy had to feel 'right', ad hoc. (I've read, in other contexts, accounts of suspicion against greed and wealth from this time very comparable to what we hear today; on a number of topics for that matter, like immigration or cultural identity, the words and perceptions of every day people are strikingly similar.)
It seems that human judgment was deemed 'sacred' or 'quintessential' enough for Ancient Greeks that they let it flow freely, though in some specific moments and places, carefully constrained within the whole political framework —remember that the point was less excellence thereof than survival of all.
Also interesting is the 'de-escalating' approach, ostracism has a negative outcome: not to 'empower' the good guys but rather to 'disable' the bad ones. Here lies a very important principle of their democracy: never give too much power to anyone, especially the ones you 'like' (it always backfires against democracy, as it did eventually in the Roman experiment a couple centuries later). Seek the minimum amount of global power required to fulfill the mission, less is more, lower is better. Concentration of power is a threat to the distribution ideal sought by democracy.
Whatever we think of it, the democratic 'experiment' back then lasted some 200 years, under these principles, and I think it's well worth studying if our current regimes are to become more 'direct' in the hyper-connected environment we now find ourselves in.
As far as I understand it, he refers to Goldman's maximum assumed losses from all the litigations they are involved in, not just 1mdb.
So, no, gs are offering nothing at the moment.
From Goldman's q3 report:
'As of the date hereof, the firm has estimated the upper end of the range of reasonably possible aggregate loss for such matters and for any other matters described below where management has been able to estimate a range of reasonably possible aggregate loss to be approximately $1.8 billion in excess of the aggregate reserves for such matters.'
Risk vs. Reward. Fraudsters and thieves can easily return the amount stolen. The fact that they rarely get caught works for them. Now make them pay 10x, jail or ban them from doing business and they're likely to think 10x before doing it again.
Even the Romans worried. About "who would be there to clean after the janitors"
Time for a financial death penalty: state imposed maximum impoverishment as penalty for such corruptions.
It's GS types only real fear...
10x was legit in Babylon, circa 1754 BC, with the oldest written law concerning this:
Ex. Law #265: "If a herdsman, to whose care cattle or sheep have been entrusted, be guilty of fraud and make false returns of the natural increase, or sell them for money, then shall he be convicted and pay the owner ten times the loss.
Innocent until proven guilty was also in the Code of Hammurabi, not sure about the 'eye for an eye' bit or the treatment of slaves though. Nonetheless the precedent of 10x is there.
Thanks for the tip, I will go for the YouTube talk before investing in the book.
baybal2 - sibling comment - was correct and unfairly modded down. A well known leader referenced the Law of Hammurabi the other day.
Coincidentally I was listening to this press conference whilst procrastinating on HN, to come across this story. New to the Law of Hammurabi, I had to check out the Wikipedia page, to read the 'ten times' bit, enabling me to conveniently cut 'n' paste the above comment.
Despite going to school I had not ever heard of Law of Hammurabi before. I have not read it in depth but just that small bit of knowledge regarding the history of written laws has changed how I see and understand the world.
It seems to me that the prosecutor and finance minister are probably just as corrupt. They just see a pot of money and want to steal it, masquerading it as reparations.
I don’t think GS did anything wrong and I hope they tell the Malaysians to fuck off.
> It seems to me that the prosecutor and finance minister are probably just as corrupt. They just see a pot of money and want to steal it, masquerading it as reparations.
Could you provide some data to substantiate these accusations? The prosecutor is the first non-Muslim Attorney General in Malaysia's history, picked right after a historic election for Malaysia where the opposition party won for the first time. I don't see any evidence of corruption from what I scanned.
The finance minister is Lim Guan Eng. A politician who was previously imprisoned for defending a rape victim. Allegations of corruption against him were proven to be false and planned by, ironically, a corruption-funded organization under the former regime (the one that was partnered with GS). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Guan_Eng
> I don’t think GS did anything wrong and I hope they tell the Malaysians to fuck off.
I do think that the two partners Leissner and Ng are probably complicit to some degree. They probably do deserve to get prosecuted by the justice department.
But GS are just the underwriters of the bond, they aren't guaranteeing the bonds. They didn't steal the money either. The Malaysian government is claiming that because the fee was large (around 10%) that it's clear evidence that the organization as a whole was complicit and guilty. I don't think that's a very strong argument.
But the Malaysians don't seem as interested in justice (certainly the two partners should be jailed) as they are in finding someway to get their money back. So instead of looking at the people in their own country who stole the money, an investigation that might implicate other powerful people besides Jho Low, they turn their eyes to easiest target they have, GS, a foreign company.
It might even be reasonable to ask for the underwriting fee back (though I'm on the fence about that), but 7.5 Billion USD? Do you think that number of motivated by justice? Do you think it's motivated by "teaching them a lesson?" Or do you think that the number is so high because Malaysia wants the money and they see an easy way to get it?
7.5 Billion is almost 10% of the entire company's shareholder equity, truly a staggering sum for GS to pay. Total revenue for GS in 2017 was around 30 Billion, net profits were just 4 billion. How is almost 2 years of net profits in the least bit fair as a punishment?
And if it is fair, why stop at that? Why not 15 billion? Or 30 billion? Why not just take all their equity and turn it into a state corporation. Surely Goldman Sachs, the blood sucking squid, deserves a comeuppance for all the proletariat ire they have received over the years.
Maybe that last paragraph is a little much, but the point still stands. I think people irrationally hate banks and hate wall st, and their view of justice for the banks is colored by that discrimination.
Perhaps it would help if we clarified some terms first. "An underwriter is the party that evaluates and assumes another party's risk for a fee, such as a commission, premium, spread or interest.". Note, the part about taking on the risk. GS underwrote the huge 1MDB bond, but allegedly in cahoots with corrupt individuals, while allegedly intentionally ignoring red flags (raised by their own internal compliance department) and then knowingly passing all the risk and subsequent losses to the Malaysian tax payers.
> 7.5 Billion is almost 10% of the entire company's shareholder equity, truly a staggering sum for GS to pay.
Apparently the 1MDB losses have cost Malaysian taxpayers around USD $12 billion. Given that GS was the underwriter and allegedly the key enabler of the scandal, punishing GS by making them pay at least the majority of those taxpayer losses seems unjustified or unfair to you? What amount do you believe is fair?
For example, if a "fence" helps a thief sell off some "gear" and the thief is caught. How much should the "fence" be liable for? How much should the victims get back?
In a bond issue i think the underwriter normally promises to buy securities if they are not sold and evaluates the risk for potential buyers. I'm not sure what claim the Malaysian tax payer has. Maybe Malaysia should default on all these bonds and then hope the people that bought them from GS sue GS if they want to punish GS.
Even if guilty, what GS has to do with any debt beyond what it raised for 1mdb (us$6b)?
You write: "Given that GS was the underwriter and allegedly the key enabler of the scandal, punishing GS by making them pay at least the majority of those taxpayer losses seems unjustified or unfair to you? What amount do you believe is fair?"
But from reading the first paragraph under the History section here:
it is clear that by the time Goldman started raising money for 1mdb (2012 if i am not mistaken), a lot of money been raised already, i.e. GS wasn't the key enabler.
So why blame Goldman for all the debt accumulated under 1mdb?
you don't gtake back just the money that they stole. always you get more to convince others to not try it again. they should try and get as much as possible.
