Post #2289590

2026-05-07 13:31 UTC

it seems carefully crafted to give one's business the nerd-pleasing veneer of "open source," and maybe even getting some free labor from contributors, while not actually committing yourself to the flourishing of the commons in any way

Replies (3)

@dmoonfire@polymaths.social 2026-05-07 13:48

@aparrish@friend.camp There was a cool-looking Git-versioned database tables program out there (can't remember the name, but it used an embedded Postgres Go engine). They had open sourced the CLI but then kept all the hub and infrastructure closed. Even though it looked neat, I just couldn't let myself get into the project because it felt like... I don't know, OSS-washing a commercial project. Kind of like how Lidarr has some mysterious closed-source infrastructure framework you can't take out without making code changes.

Open ##2289591
@nelson@tech.lgbt 2026-05-07 13:58

@aparrish@friend.camp I hate seeing the GPL weaponized in this way.

Open ##2289592
@suetanvil@freeradical.zone 2026-05-07 14:02

@aparrish@friend.camp I have mixed feelings about stuff like this. As a user, it offers lots of the benefits of open-source (zero-cost, auditable, fixable, forkable) and that's always better than binary-only payware. But I'm never going to put any effort into contributing to this project. It's a commercial product and I won't work on it unless they pay me. IMO, FOSS-as-business-strategy is better non-FOSS, but it's not *real* FOSS and there's no real community.

Open ##2289593