What comes after open source? Bruce Perens is working on it
www.theregister.com
'Our licenses aren't working anymore,' says free software pioneer

TLDR: Companies should be required to pay developers for any open source software they use.

He imagines a simple yearly compliance process that gets companies all the rights they need to use Post-Open software. And they’d fund developers who would be encouraged to write software that’s usable by the common person, as opposed to technical experts.

It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t really see any feasible means to get this to kick off.

What are your thoughts on it?

  • Lmaydev@programming.dev
    21·
    6 months ago

    That’s all well and good. But it still doesn’t change the whole not getting paid issue. Unless they violated the license lol

    • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      6 months ago

      Violating the (spirit of) the license (without violating the letter, because of loopholes in the license) is exactly what Perens is talking about.

      He’s not “complaining he isn’t getting paid.” I think it’s pretty rare that the people working on open source software are actually hurting for money or anything. He’s complaining that the actual practice of how the software is being used, RHEL and Android on phones and etc, isn’t doing well at reflecting the vision of the computing world the GPL was supposed to create. Then, as one possible solution, he’s proposing to kill two birds with one stone with a new license where the companies that are skirting the license right now can have to fund the development of particular types of open source software that need to get done anyway but is lacking right now (because of lack of profit motive).

      You might or might not agree with his thesis; as much as I think it’s interesting and insightful I have some reservations about it. I just thought you were misunderstanding his whole argument as being in terms of money, that’s all.