Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?
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@timconsidine said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
Being fully open source is a red-herring IMHO.
I love Cloudron, I promote it and recommend it because as you say it is the most accomplished platform in that field, plus I love the community and have massive respect for the two main developers, for their skills and the great software they make but also because of their friendly attitude, their care for customer support and the way they engage with users. Plus while Cloudron is not Free Software the code source is out there for any to inspect so that's great in terms of users knowing what the software actually does and that's good enough for me.
However, the point of Free Software is not only about how things are now but also about future proofing. Things might change in the devs' lives, they might need to move on, they might need a lump of cash cause something terrible happen and sell the company, or whatever else. And if the new devs have a different ethics what do we do? Look for another software and all the time and energy spent on Cloudron is kinda wasted and then not as many people benefit from this amazing platform? And to be honest the current situation makes it hard to recommend it and promote in some context because not everyone is just interested in the best software or value for money but also care about software license but ethical and practical reasons.
I don't have a perfect solution as I understand and respect Girish and Nebulon's current position in that they don't want someone to just fork everything and release it for free.
Maybe something could be added in the license that says the code must be made publicly available, and that if the license changes to a more restrictive one (one that removes the public release of the code), then the current license reverts to a Free Software license e.g. AGLP 3.0 or its successor. This would basically guarantee Freedom 0 and 1 and would implement some kind of (twisted) copyleft. And that would be enough to make me happy
But I don't know if that is possible at all?? I'm a legal geek but not on software license...yet
Anyone know? -
@jdaviescoates said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
a pretty comprehensive list of Cloudron alternatives/ competitors
I still think such a list would be very helpful/ useful market research (and source of inspiration for App Wishlist posts)
I just came across https://elest.io/ via a post @Sam_uk made in a thread about Keycloak.
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@jdaviescoates said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
I still think such a list would be very helpful/ useful market research (and source of inspiration for App Wishlist posts)
I've just started such a list of Cloudron alternatives/ competitors here.
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i2think cloudron needs to be open source again. even if companies do recell it, it would be great for it to be open source to the public.
my admins are critisizing cloudron for not bein open source, and want us to stop using it untill it becomes open source or something like that. -
Yawn
What makes users think they have any say or influence on what the owner does.
Woke socialism
Have all your admins open sourced their activities? -
@adison said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
or something like that.
it is at least source available, which is a bit something like that
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Again, I prefer a sustainable paid software with available sources over an unsustainable open source project any day of the week. Look at Hashicorp, who suddenly switched licenses to become sustainable or the gazillion of abandoned open source projects...
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@necrevistonnezr said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
Again, I prefer a sustainable paid software with available sources over an unsustainable open source project any day of the week. Look at Hashicorp, who suddenly switched licenses to become sustainable or the gazillion of abandoned open source projects...
I don't seem them as mutually exclusive. Indeed, if Cloudron went fully open source again I don't think anyone would stop paying, but quite a few who don't subscribe now because it isn't open source may do so.
I'd keep paying for supports and timely updates, which is what we're all paying for, wouldn't you?
I should think Cloudron could relatively easily restrict timely updates to paying customers only, perhaps making them publicly freely available 6 months later or something (quite a few sustainable open source projects do stuff like this).
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Open source software is abandoned all the time, but so is a lot of commercial software. Abandoned open source software can be picked up and maintained by the community, especially if the community has been involved in writing code along the way. This happens frequently. It never happens with proprietary software.
Regarding commercial viability, this isn't a guaranteed win for proprietary licensing either. Yes, restrictive licenses give creators leverage. They don't automatically give creators a user base. Good open source software spreads (that's the point!). While that doesn't necessarily give creators revenue automatically, if their user base is 1000x larger, it does give them a lot of options. Reaching people is the most expensive part of marketing; open source makes that much easier and cheaper.
There are costs to open source, obviously. Maintaining a community of contributors is a different kind of work than writing code, and it can be challenging. Some people won't pay when they don't have to. These are factors @girish and @nebulon have to take into account. But software-focused incubators like Y-Combinator continue to churn truly open source companies. I'm pretty sure it's not because they want to be nice but because the benefits outweigh the costs. They believe it will make them money.
It does seem a bit ironic for anyone using Cloudron to cast doubt on the viability of open source software, considering we only use Cloudron to run open source software. Nothing is guaranteed to work, but open source works all the time.
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@timconsidine Sorry, but that's not it. Putting the "woke socialism" label everywhere is really not what we should do.
I've seen more entitled pro "freedom" people whine about a company not doing what they want, saying they'll call for a boycott or what have you, "vote with your wallet"-style, than anyone else.I, too, don't like the attitude of "cloudron NEEDS to go open source bc my admins are whining about it". I'd love for cloudron to be open-source, but I understand why it's currently not, and I'm okay with it. So much so that I have been a paying customer since early 2017 on version zero dot something, and have no plans to cancel my membership anytime soon.
I'd much rather have serious, respectful, adult discussion about open source software and business models (which most people in this thread are doing) than slapping labels on others willy-nilly.
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@marcusquinn mainly, the admins are looking for sourcecode, witch they cant find. i've even searched for it this morning, but couldn't find it.
if i may ask, where is the source code?
most of the time, they hate it when they use proprietary products that don't contain any source code.
though, if they do make us stop using it, i will at least use it for my personal infrostructure. -
@adison said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
mainly, the admins are looking for sourcecode, witch they cant find. i've even searched for it this morning, but couldn't find it.
If you visit the homepage of Cloudron https://www.cloudron.io and scroll to the bottom, you find
About=>Open Source.
And at the bottom => ...and all Cloudron app packages are open source at our GitLab instance.
In there you got all apps and also the Cloudron internals like the box code.So if you or your admins could elaborate on what you/they are looking for, we are happy to assist.
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@adison that is totally understandable from a sysadmin perspective. We also think one should be able to introspect the code running on ones server. This may not be made overly clear from our side, as we sometimes lack focus on the non-technical stuff. But to be clear, Cloudron is source-available and as @BrutalBirdie already mentioned, the platform code is at https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/box there is nothing to hide from our side, anyways one can just ssh into the server and open the source files, it's all plain-text javascript.
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@ryangorley said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
software-focused incubators like Y-Combinator continue to churn truly open source companies. I'm pretty sure it's not because they want to be nice but because the benefits outweigh the costs. They believe it will make them money.
The operative word being them. I don't see Y-Combinator as a attractive path, quite the opposite — when independent creator-owned products retain freedom to put the user first, without investor overheads, or increasing support costs for the many, at the expense of the few.
The only investment Cloudron needs is community, and that has steadily grown in all the year's since I've joined.
The apps packaging by the community are almost all offered as open-source.
There doesn't seem to be a problem to solve here, more a preference for some to bend others to their will.
Hours contributed to code contributions will have many times the influence over opinions.
Until there's community code contributions showing that the burdens of development and maintenance are in the main offered beyond the things asked of the founders, I don't see substance being committed beyond opinion — and everyone is still free to have those opinions.
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
@adison We agree on having source code available, and I'm not a fan of compiled code, either. This one of the many reasons that drew me to Cloudron. Sure, there's alternatives, but I value my time enough to prefer the many time-saving conveniences of Cloudron, and the confidence that things can carry on running, whatever happens in future.
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
@marcusquinn eitherway, at least its source-available. better than completely proprietary with no look.
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@marcusquinn said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
The operative word being them. I don't see Y-Combinator as a attractive path, quite the opposite — when independent creator-owned products retain freedom to put the user first, without investor overheads, or increasing support costs for the many, at the expense of the few.
I may not have communicated clearly. I'm not suggesting Cloudron should join an accelerator or seek venture backing (their product is good enough I think they could though). I'm calling attention to the erroneous assumption I've seen frequently repeated in this thread that switching to an open source license is commercially non-viable. Venture capitalists want to earn lots of make money, period. If it was not possible to monetize open source software, they would not invest in such companies. But they do, perhaps for the reasons I have mentioned or better reasons.
The only investment Cloudron needs is community, and that has steadily grown in all the year's since I've joined.
The apps packaging by the community are almost all offered as open-source.
There doesn't seem to be a problem to solve here, more a preference for some to bend others to their will.
The problems related to proprietary licensing have been expressed repeatedly here. The primary issue is not how we paying, committed customers feel. The issue is about how the 99.9999% of potential users who are not using Cloudron feel and more importantly whether they'll even have the chance to form an opinion at all. When was the last time you told someone about Cloudron and they were already using it? When was the last time they had even heard about Cloudron? If your experience is anything like mine, you'll come away feeling that Cloudron is being utilized far less than it could be for how incredibly powerful, affordable, and easy-to-use it is. That problem is of concern to both the Cloudron team and those of use who depend upon their software. One solution may be open source licensing.
Hours contributed to code contributions will have many times the influence over opinions.
Until there's community code contributions showing that the burdens of development and maintenance are in the main offered beyond the things asked of the founders, I don't see substance being committed beyond opinion — and everyone is still free to have those opinions.
Find me a single person who would not contribute to Cloudron should it once again be freely licensed. I can point to many I know personally who will not contribute with it licensed as is. How can you blame them? At any moment we could get an announcement that Cloudron has been purchased and will no longer be source available? There's no protection against that. I like the Cloudron developers, I think their hearts are in the right place, but who says their feelings won't change and they won't lock things up or sell the code to someone else who will? A developer who doesn't take this into account hasn't been around very long.
Still, logic should be the only basis for any action by the Cloudron developers, not opinions weighted by volume of code commits. I have no reason to believe you have anything but sincere motives, but brushing aside arguments you don't value as mere opinions and belittling the people who express them as just wanting to bend wills does no service to our shared interests here. I think we can agree Cloudron is an incredible tool and we'd love the people who made it to be successful and we want all our friends to use it. Can we keep that in focus?
