The Significant Corporate Importance & Pressure Around Mesa Open-Source Linux 3D Drivers

[Old Grouch]

zilch

You decide that you will release it as GPL code, guess what you just did. You can't monetize it now, because there is no reason for anyone to buy a software license from you when I can just download the code and build the app myself.

In the context of open source "without restriction" is the same as "without cost".

The standard response is to point out that you can charge for services, which include (often minimal) copying costs, and on-going software maintenance - such as fixing bugs within particular time-scales or adding new features. Of course, someone with a copy of the code can make their own changes - which is fine, if they have the technical competence, or they regard it as a suitably valuable use of their time. Maintaining a private fork of GPL code is entirely possible, but requires (expensive) maintainers. If you contribute to public code, you get other people's contributions 'for free'.
A lot of people just freeload, and this is expected behaviour, even if unwelcome. Popular and useful projects tend to get funding, but I won't claim it is an easy process.
The question arises why should one pay for something you can get 'for free', and the answer lies in the value you put in long-term interests. It is a very different model to commercial, proprietary software. You can argue in similar ways over whether it is better to rent a property, or own it and maintain it yourself. There are benefits and disadvantages to both: and indeed questions over the entire model of property 'ownership'. In both situations, with software and property, if you enter the market with the wrong assumptions and expectations, you are likely to make expensive mistakes.

There are some things the FLOSS model does very well. But I wouldn't say it is perfect for all situations, and anyone who does is probably being simplistic, or naïve, or both.

[yoshi314]

I suppose this is the moment where Linux userland is gaining traction and breaking userspace at leisure starts to become a big problem. Up until now abi breakages were okay, because we could just rebuild everything that needed it.

I think the ABI-stable core of the linux userspace will have to expand from libc to libc+drivers and their userland - mesa, pulseaudio, maybe even the typical GUI libs (hopefully gtk/qt are abi-stable enough). All the rest can be bundled for now with the application, since that is more or less distro-agnostic.

Proprietary apps have fairly relaxed dependencies - usually built for LTS ubuntu or rhel of the time , but those become incompatible quickly as well.


already quite a few linux native games on steam are no longer working due to missing libs. abi breakages might become a thing in a year or two for those.

[anda_skoa]

I get the semantics

I have my doubts given that you repeatedly struggle to apply them distrinctly.

what you fail to understand is that in the context of software, due to it's very nature, free "without restriction" is for all intents and purposes the same as "without cost".

You are thinking of a sub set of software which as their packages distributed with a license that allows re-distribution, e.g. packages in the Debian repositories.
This does not even apply to the packages for the same software from the Redhat repositories.

You decide that you will release it as GPL code, guess what you just did. You can't monetize it now, because there is no reason for anyone to buy a software license from you when I can just download the code and build the app myself.

Almost nobody builds apps themselves, not even software developers and even less so on platforms where this is complicated such as Windows, or mobile platforms.

Also consider the security implications of downloading the code from some third party's server vs getting the binary from the actual vendor.

The closest you would get is getting the code from the vendor but then it would still cost all the time and effort to setup dependencies and build.
Same for every update.

Unless your own time is super cheap you will always be better of getting the pre-built vendor package.

In the context of open source "without restriction" is the same as "without cost".

Common misunderstanding and, given as I said before, it is understandable that you fell for it.

A lot of software is available that way because someone else has already incurred the cost and is distributing things for free.

With mobile ecosystems this has become a very widely used model for software distribution. For free, open and closed source software.

[sophisticles]

You are thinking of a sub set of software which as their packages distributed with a license that allows re-distribution, e.g. packages in the Debian repositories.
This does not even apply to the packages for the same software from the Redhat repositories.

Almost nobody builds apps themselves, not even software developers and even less so on platforms where this is complicated such as Windows, or mobile platforms.

Also consider the security implications of downloading the code from some third party's server vs getting the binary from the actual vendor.

The closest you would get is getting the code from the vendor but then it would still cost all the time and effort to setup dependencies and build.
Same for every update.

Unless your own time is super cheap you will always be better of getting the pre-built vendor package.

Common misunderstanding and, given as I said before, it is understandable that you fell for it.

A lot of software is available that way because someone else has already incurred the cost and is distributing things for free.

With mobile ecosystems this has become a very widely used model for software distribution. For free, open and closed source software.

Are you for real?

Do you even use Linux?

Ever hear of distros that source based and its users build everything from source?

Gentoo, Arch, ring a bell?

How about all the Red Hat clones that exist?

I build many of the apps i use from source, ffmpeg, Handbrake, Avidemux, the list goes on.

That's literally the point of open source, that you can download the source code and build the app yourself.

No wonder you don't understand that giving away the source for free is the same as giving the product away for free, ypu seem to think everyone is using pre-built binaries.

[anda_skoa]

Do you even use Linux?

Started in 1996, as my main system since 1998 and in my job since 2001.

Has been ages since I've built any software other then the one I am working on for my customers.

Ever hear of distros that source based and its users build everything from source?

Gentoo, Arch, ring a bell?

They still mostly install packages, just that their packaging system pulls source packages and builds them.

Even Arch/Gentoo users rarely get sources from random locations and build those.
Otherwise you'd see a much larger percentage of LFS users.

It is even rarer on other Distributions and magnitudes rarer on macOS, Windows or any of the mobile platforms.

I build many of the apps i use from source, ffmpeg, Handbrake, Avidemux, the list goes on.

Good for you.

Most user prefer the ease of use of app stores/repositories, or downloading some pre-packaged binary for their respective OS.

None of my relatives, friends or acquaintances who are not software developers ever built software.
Those who are software developers have rarely build software for their respective mobile device unless it was for a job.

That's literally the point of open source, that you can download the source code and build the app yourself.

It is indeed a great option, but rarely done by people who are not in IT and especially rarely on platforms that don't have easy access to build dependencies or even need a separate system to cross compile.

Do you really think those hundreds of millions of Windows users or billions of iOS/Android users have ever built software?
Let alone regularly?

No wonder you don't understand that giving away the source for free is the same as giving the product away for free, ypu seem to think everyone is using pre-built binaries.

Not everyone but the vast majority of people.

[sophisticles]

Do you really think those hundreds of millions of Windows users or billions of iOS/Android users have ever built software?
Let alone regularly?

We are not talking Windows users, we are talking about the fact that when we are referring to open source it is impossible to separate free as in beer from free as in speech,

They are one and the same, all you have to do for most open source software is download the tarball, extract, open a command prompt and type make.

You don't have to know how to code, the different between a compiled and an interpreted language, nothing.

And yes, i think most Linux users compile software locally all the time, even if they don;t realize they are doing it like a Manjaro user enabling AUR and installing from that repository.

[Nozo]

If the Linux fanatics that demand everything must be GPL weren't such obstructionists, Linux would have a much bigger presence on the desktop than it has now.

Laughs on the BSDs 0.01% market share*

[anda_skoa]

We are not talking Windows users, we are talking about the fact that when we are referring to open source it is impossible to separate free as in beer from free as in speech,

Windows users are just a very good example of why your assumption is not true that users would simply build from source, let alone sources they got from some random non-vendor website.

For a lot of user it does not matter whether they would have the rights to do that as they simply can't or won't do it themselves.
Especially users on platforms for which this is difficult to do even from a developer point of view.

They will always prefer to install through a store, repository or binary installers.

They are one and the same, all you have to do for most open source software is download the tarball, extract, open a command prompt and type make.

And the point is that most users don't do that.
They might not even know what a tarball is, how to open a command prompt or how to install build utilities such as make, compilers, etc.

Installation from a store is a one-click task, two clicks if the store requires confirmation of the purchase.

Even as a developer I prefer this for all software that I use.
Tracking down build dependencies is already tedious enough during work, no need to have that overhead for software I am just a user of.

And while it is tedious on Linux it becomes increasingly difficult on less developer friend systems, let alone for mobile or embedded platforms.

And yes, i think most Linux users compile software locally all the time

That might have been true in the early 2000s but certainly not today.
Let alone users on other platforms.

If you do that regularly then this is fine, it is great to have that option.

For most other people it is either not worth their time or they lack the skills or confidence to do it.
They'd rather compensate somebody else to do it for them.

If that somebody is me they would need to be a very good friend to not pay my hourly rate and a close relative like a parent or sibling to get it for free.
Everyone else will pay the vendor, whether they use an open source license or not.

[mrg666]

If millions of Android and Steam deck users are any indication, great majority of them never compile any application ever. I have compiled the whole Android system hundreds of times for my phones and shared with people though, which is a very rare case. And it is so much fun, and shows how great is Linux.

Regarding desktop that some idiots think is the biggest goal of Linux, It is a race that nobody runs anymore. I am sure MS would love to retry dominating the mobile space (they lost to Linux) instead of useless desktop space. Linux owns the whole internet now.

Stop feeding this idiot!