@GI_Jack @drewdevault I never understood the Apache license. From a business perspective, yes, you get free labor. But why would an individual provide that free labor being fully cognizant that their contribution can be stolen?
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nicholas_saunders (nicholas_saunders@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Apr-2024 00:58:01 JST nicholas_saunders -
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mcv (mcv@nerdica.net)'s status on Monday, 08-Apr-2024 00:58:01 JST mcv @nicholas_saunders @GI_Jack @drewdevault
Many Apache projects are being developed by people working for the businesses that use it. And it's useful for the businesses that people share that work, because it means better supported software for them.
Sharing is valuable for companies too. My first employer refused to share a framework that an employee wrote, and that meant they lost support for it, when they could have gotten free support. My second employer hired tons of Apache contributors and did very well as a result.
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clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Monday, 08-Apr-2024 00:58:09 JST clacke @mcv @drewdevault @GI_Jack @nicholas_saunders Smart companies know that coopetition works.
They don't want to compete on things that are not their core business. Their competitive advantage is not that their web site works and runs efficiently on the low technical level, so they will not lose business because their competition has working websites too.
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mcv (mcv@nerdica.net)'s status on Monday, 08-Apr-2024 00:58:12 JST mcv @nicholas_saunders @GI_Jack @drewdevault
Not everything is about competition. There's also room for cooperation. That company worked closely with some other companies in the Apache ecosystem to make their tools better than those from other ecosystems.
The company also gave away its in-house developed open source CMS and made money not from licenses but from support contracts and hiring out experts.
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nicholas_saunders (nicholas_saunders@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Apr-2024 00:58:14 JST nicholas_saunders @mcv @drewdevault @GI_Jack right...but why would anyone else contribute, just to help a competitor?
The gpl may be hated, but it protects those contributions.
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