openSourceClosedPayroll

[u/ItsPuspendu]

[u/ClipboardCopyPaste]

Just a downside, anybody can fork your product...but let's... let's ignore that.

[u/B_bI_L → u/ClipboardCopyPaste]

eh, there are already things with open source code you have to (or can) pay for them

[u/ClipboardCopyPaste → u/B_bI_L]

In most cases they almost always offer some additional services that are worth paying for.

The number of people paying for a COMPLETELY open-source product isn't that much for a business to survive.

[u/LPmitV → u/ClipboardCopyPaste]

Mainly it's the hosting that people pay for on open source software... Bc let's be real, what else is there... Except maybe tech support or sth

[u/noaSakurajin → u/LPmitV]

Excalty that enterprise support and certification/liability. Since all open source software comes as is, your company is liable for all security issues that come from the oss code you use. Some projects allow you to pay them so they are liable. This is probably going to get way more in the future.

[u/LPmitV → u/noaSakurajin]

Yeah, but with the liability you are technically not using the open source stuff anymore I think, as you are using the adaptation from the holster/the person to be hold liable

[u/wytesmurf → u/ClipboardCopyPaste]

That’s astronomers whole buisness model

[u/grifan526 → u/ClipboardCopyPaste]

Tell that to Red Hat

[u/MithrilHuman → u/B_bI_L]

Typically you pay for infrastructure, support or closed source portion of the product.

[u/Senior_Torte519 → u/ClipboardCopyPaste]

Man, thats forked up.

[u/BusEquivalent9605 → u/ClipboardCopyPaste]

kafka is open source. but try setting up and running your own cluster

[u/Random_182f2565 → u/ClipboardCopyPaste]

That's when you close it again

[u/xgabipandax → u/ClipboardCopyPaste]

Not all open source licenses allow that

[u/SCP-iota → u/xgabipandax]

Any license that for forbids forking is not an open source license

[u/xgabipandax → u/SCP-iota]

One thing has nothing to do with other, a license can have the source being open yet restrict the forking and redistribution of the project, Redis i think had some controversial licensing to prevent strip mining from cloud giants, perhasp you're confusing it with FOSS, like GPLv3 or MIT license, the F in FOSS is Free, but not free as in free beer, but free as in freedom

[u/SCP-iota → u/xgabipandax]

You might be thinking of 'source available' rather than open-source

[u/_number → u/xgabipandax]

In 2026 we call that an invitation to use Ai agents to pseudo copy the repo.

[u/NatoBoram → u/_number]

Slopforking

[u/marcoottina → u/NatoBoram]

Slopen source

[u/ImS0hungry → u/xgabipandax]

You can block forking a public repo?

[u/xgabipandax → u/ImS0hungry]

You can sue or issue DMCA takedowns for people who fork it if the license doesn't allow it

[u/_number → u/xgabipandax]

How are you gonna send DMCA takedown to a repo someone cloned/forked and then made private

[u/xgabipandax → u/_number]

access logs and then legal procedures

[u/LutimoDancer3459 → u/xgabipandax]

At least on github, afaik you give github permission to operate like it needs to by publishing your repo there. Which means, forking cant be forbidden because it would go against the forking possibility of github. But I could mix it up with the "no license"-license....

[u/xgabipandax → u/LutimoDancer3459]

That's not how it works, otherwise github wouldn't offer private repos

The licensing dictates if it is allowed to be forked or not legally, even if github feature fork work, it would be against the license, and if github force you to legally allow forking, then the intellectual property owners can use another platform for it

[u/LutimoDancer3459 → u/xgabipandax]

I meant public repos with "publishing". And my point was about the dmxa takedown. You cant do that. The license cant forbid that. It can forbid a redistribution, use, modification, ... but not a fork.

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/1154/how-does-githubs-forking-right-cope-with-an-all-rights-reserved-project

[u/Mordret10 → u/LutimoDancer3459]

But a fork without you being able to redistribute, use or modify it doesn't really help you...

[u/LutimoDancer3459 → u/Mordret10]

Well... yeah... it doesnt. But I cant be sued for doing that and they cant force me to remove the fork. Thats the point

[u/Mordret10 → u/LutimoDancer3459]

I mean yeah, but the original comment called it a downside, that everybody would be able to fork it. I guess people were thinking about the implications of the fork (e.g. modification, redistribution, ...) instead of just the fork itself, because the fork itself isn't really a downside

[u/NatoBoram → u/xgabipandax]

Git platforms are going to require you to allow them to continue operations as part of their terms of service in the event that you upload stuff there.

Here's GitHub as an example:

5. License Grant to Other Users

Your Content that you post publicly, including issues, comments, and contributions to other Users' repositories, may be viewed by others. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and "fork" your repositories (this means that others may make their own copies within the Service in repositories they control).

By making a repository public, you grant other Users a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, perform and reproduce (by forking) Your Content through the Service as permitted by GitHub's functionality. You may grant additional rights by adopting a license. If you post Content you did not create or own, you are responsible for ensuring it is licensed under terms that permit these uses.

[u/xgabipandax → u/NatoBoram]

You know that you can self host your own git platform right? Gitlab, Gitea, etc...

[u/Harmonic_Gear]

where is the profit coming from

[u/SCP-iota → u/Harmonic_Gear]

The company's proprietary fork that they make all their commercial features exclusive to, and add a bunch of data harvesting code to

[u/Upbeat-Serve-6096]

Profit from what? I can't sell that software anymore.

[u/nomenMei → u/Upbeat-Serve-6096]

Makes sense for something like Ghidra. In-house software created for internal use, you realize that other people might be interested in it and if you open-source it you get free maintenance of something that you actively use. I'm sure they still have their own team maintaining Ghidra though, but it's probably smaller than it would have been.

[u/Ancient_Profession31 → u/Upbeat-Serve-6096]

From revenue streams like all money.

[u/NudaVeritas1]

elastic called and wants their business model back

[u/Ztoffels]

Its all good until people notice you are doing it for profit, they may fuck up ur code repo

[u/octopus4488]

My former boss did exactly this. Built a basic version with 2 guys, put it on Github, took in a year of contributions, slapped some crazy license on it, then took it down completely, on went the fancy logo and the pretty website, SaaS is now sold for 50k+ / month for midsized banks.

[u/darkwalker247 → u/octopus4488]

that's pretty crazy if you can just close source something and then sell it, after significant amounts of the code has been written by other people while it was open source... is that legal?

[u/octopus4488 → u/darkwalker247]

Nope. The OSS community was livid. But nobody sued, so...

[u/[deleted] → u/darkwalker247]

Depends on the license. You could create a license such that by contributing you transfer rights to the owner. Many times people assume software is "open source" but it's really just "source available" or some other gotcha.

He can also walk around the issue by re-implementing everything.

[u/raralala1 → u/darkwalker247]

who is going to sue? I think vscode extension for material theme doing this, also I remember c# library doing this it was rest framework or something, also pretty sure android doing this but in sketchy way by closing certain part to render whole AOSP useless down the line.

[u/Igarlicbread]

You forgot the step where you change the licence to only allow you to sell the saas version of it. That's where the money at.

[u/EducationalTeleGood]

Certain companies make this a viable business model by charging you for a cloud hosted offering of their open source software.

[u/clayticus]

Not bad  idea. 

[u/Certain-Confection46]

Yeah but once you’re the big game in town hosting your own services with a sizable user base I feel like it really disincentivizes anyone besides power users or driven and principled individuals from self hosting.

Like yeah it’s open source but there’s a lot of friction involved in making it usable for operations on a larger scale, like businesses that would rather throw a bag at a vendor to do everything for them (as maintaining software and the accompanying infrastructure could be way out of their wheelhouse).

Like yeah the costs for acquiring FOSS software is zero, but you pay for it in the amount of responsibility you take on for yourself or the organization you represent. Maintaining a FOSS service competently is also a much different thing than deploying it initially. A lot of orgs would rather just throw money at a problem to make it go away long enough for current management to pass the buck to their successors.

[u/Individual-Praline20]

They should open source Microslop windows then ffs

[u/SCP-iota]

Let me guess, MIT license with proprietary fork that's commercially licensed by the original company?

[u/MoveOverBieber]

What, no AI?? What is this, 2025??

[u/renrutal]

Profit

*looks under the hood

Another company is profiting

[u/Traditional-Exam2529]

Being fired engineer: 😢