Meshed Insights
meshedinsights.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2013
Meshed Insights is a consultancy blog by Simon Phipps on open source licensing, copyleft, patents, and the history of Sun and Oracle.
What HN saysHN links it in discussions of open source licensing, Microsoft's Linux patent deals, and Oracle's handling of Sun; commenters cite it for context.
29HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
31stories submitted
951story points
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Most-shared posts
- 1Oracle Finally Killed Sun4 people · 87 points · first shared 2017 · 9 comments on HN
- 2The rights-ratchet model – spotting the next Elastic before it happens4 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 3Microsoft and Linux and Patents and Tweets3 people · 179 points · first shared 2016 · 65 comments on HN
- 4Legally Ignoring the License3 people · 6 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 5Is the GPL Really Declining?2 people · 79 points · first shared 2017 · 237 comments on HN
- 6What Did Sun’s OSPO Do?2 people · 61 points · first shared 2021 · 22 comments on HN
- 7Rehost and Carry On, Redux – Meshed Insights Ltd2 people · 4 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 8DRM Is Toxic to Culture1 people · 394 points · first shared 2017 · 250 comments on HN
- 9A Change in License for Berkeley DB1 people · 79 points · first shared 2013 · 77 comments on HN
- 10The Missing Stakeholders1 people · 34 points · first shared 2021 · 15 comments on HN
- 11The Cost of Open Sourcing Your Project (2016)1 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 12No to “No Hacking” Clauses1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 13Wix and WordPress Explainer1 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · 3 comments on HN
- 14Oracle has been gaslighting programmers about APIs for a decade1 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 15Public Domain Is Not Open Source1 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
_msw_ · 2023-08-11
And this is why I think people who love Software Freedom should think twice about signing a CLA for their copyleft licensed contributions. [1]
inbound=outbound license terms is a good norm for FOSS. Why should a software vendor play by different rules than everyone else when it comes to things like copyleft compliance?
[1] https://meshedinsights.com/2021/06/14/legally-ignoring-the-license/
maffulli · 2024-03-21
I don't accept that this is OSI's fault thought: It takes two to tango. The OSI has been thinking about a more appropriate format to address the issues of copyleft in the cloud world. I recognize that the problem exists, I wrote about it here: https://opensource.net/lost-decade-crucial-lessons-for-ai/
Frankly speaking, I would love to see also a detailed criticism of the AGPLv3. I would love to have a better understanding of why the SSPL was deemed necessary and what needs the AGPLv3 fails to satisfy... So far, the only explanations I've heard are superficial at best.
You have to also realize that most of these companies are not interested in copyleft or in the values of Open Source to empower users. They're following a very well known path, one that Phipps calls the rights ratchet model. Call it the SugarCRM model, if you prefer: it's a very very predictable pattern, from Open Source to proprietary in about 10 years https://meshedinsights.com/2021/02/02/rights-ratchet/
These are complex matters though and I'm convinced that they cannot be eviscerated properly on a social media, or only on an online forum. We need better ways.
cutler · 2018-06-04
https://meshedinsights.com/2016/11/22/microsoft-linux-patents-tweets/
That was only 18 months ago at which time MS had harvested a cool $85 million form its Linux patent racket. God knows what the Linux Foundation were smoking when they accepted Microsoft's membership. Suse Linux is another victim of Microsoft's extortion. Worst is the patents remain unspecified, as far as I'm aware.
wahern · 2017-09-03
Longer piece putting things in context: https://meshedinsights.com/2017/09/03/oracle-finally-killed-sun/
walter_bishop · 2016-11-29
"Microsoft & Linux & Patents & Tweets"
https://meshedinsights.com/2016/11/22/microsoft-linux-patents-tweets/
pmelendez · 2014-05-15
"PS. I heard 2015 will be the year of Linux"
I heard that too in 2012[0], 2013 [1] and 2014 [2]
[0] http://www.linuxtoday.com/it_management/2012010900341OSOO
[1] http://www.finnbay.com/linus-torvalds-leadership-defines-2013-as-the-y…
[2] http://meshedinsights.com/2014/03/14/2014-year-of-the-linux-desktop/
antoncohen · 2017-12-19
Note that RocksDB is also dual licensed under Apache 2.0 and GPLv2 [1]. I believe they added GPLv2 to make it compatible with MySQL for MyRocks, because the original Facebook+Patents license might not have been GPL compatible. Then when the Apache Foundation decided that Facebook+Patents wasn't compatible they switched it out for Apache 2.0 [2].
But that doesn't clarify much. Specifically your question about dependency licensing. RocksDB only depends on gflags (BSD licensed) and various compression library choices (allowing a choice of licenses). osquery seems to depend on a lot more libraries [3], so the likelihood of running into a licensing conflict seems a lot higher.
[1] https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/blob/master/db/db_impl.cc
[2] https://meshedinsights.com/2017/07/16/apache-bans-facebooks-license-co…
[3] https://github.com/facebook/osquery/blob/master/tools/provision.sh