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OSS-Blacklist: A blacklist for keeping track of OSS hostile companies/organizations (codeberg.org)
submitted 10 months ago by qaz@lemmy.world to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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Just saw the discussion around the Haier Home Assistant takedown and thought it would be good to materialize the metaphorical blacklist.

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[-] thesmokingman@programming.dev 31 points 10 months ago

It’s probably a good idea to have a stronger definition and mission. Here are a few scenarios you should consider.

  • FSF defines anything that’s not copyleft as hostile. That’s most companies. I personally don’t think I can tell my users what to do with my software other than remove my liability so I vehemently disagree with Stallman.
  • Mongo wrote the SSPL and MariaDB wrote the BSL. Both licenses are seen as regressions. I personally respect the MariaDB case and have been harassed by too many Mongo salespeople to say the same about them.
  • Platforms like AWS are the reason companies like CockroachDB and Elastic implemented restrictive licenses.
  • IBM has been gutting open source through its acquisition of Red Hat. This is a common story; Oracle has been screwing *nix longer.
  • Protecting trademarks causes a lot of consternation from users. The Rust Foundation is the most recent example of this I remember blowing up the FOSS community.

I like your idea a lot. I think it needs some definition to be very successful!

[-] qaz@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

FSF defines anything that’s not copyleft as hostile. That’s most companies. I personally don’t think I can tell my users what to do with my software other than remove my liability so I vehemently disagree with Stallman.

I'm not planning on counting that as hostile behavior. Organizations can choose a license for their software (and I can choose not to buy/use it). This collection is mostly focused on companies that hurt existing Open Source software. Such as sending a cease and desist to an unofficial plugin/extension or closing down software that was originally open source.

[-] taladar@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago

Maybe your could also add organisations (companies, government agencies, NGOs,...) that create standards in such a way that the standard is hard or impossible to implement in open source implementations?

[-] ResoluteCatnap@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago

I.e reddit raising API costs high enough that it effectively killed it.

[-] taladar@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago

I was more thinking about things like governments that decide that every implementation of something must be certified to be used, e.g. with wireless technologies. Not so much implementation as specification or legal compliance barriers to open source basically.

You raise a good point though, financial barriers such as per user pricing that are hard to implement for software distributed for free would be quite similar.

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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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