Dramatically reduced power usage in Firefox 70 on macOS with Core Animation - <AUTHOR> https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-reduced-power-usage-in-firefox-70-on-macos-with-core-animation/ <comment><USER2> This is quite dramatic, in that I can actually _feel_ my Macbook not heating up as much, nor can I hear the fans anymore.

We do quite a lot of work on a trading website that has heavy use of Canvas and CSS animations, and the latter really kills performance. Two runs on our production website from Intel Power Gadget, pre and post upgrade, show decreased temperature, a lot fewer power spikes, less DRAM wattage, lower GFX clocks, and about 40% less power overall:

Before: [https://i.imgur.com/WkdWaHx.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/WkdWaHx.jpg)

After: [https://i.imgur.com/3ojMyjT.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/3ojMyjT.jpg)

<comment><USER3> Bitmex looks very interesting, any fun stories to share?

<comment><USER4> Given the extensive market manipulation and liquidation of margin traders in cryptocurrency, probably nothing that can be shared publicly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been nagging on HN's comment sections every few months about this issue whenever a FF related submission made the frontpage... Now I can finally ditch chrome and start spreading the news so the guys in my office can do it too :D

Even better is the news that it's going to improve even further, and the plans to include a Metal backend to WebRender...

<comment><USER6> > _I 've been nagging on HN's comment sections every few months about this > issue whenever a FF related submission made the frontpage..._

Same here, until one of the people responsible for the patches replied to tell me that he fixed it. I've been running nightly builds of Firefox ever since.

Firefox with NoScript runs fast and cool. I love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing work by my colleagues! I hope we'll not regress this with WebRender ;)

Celebration aside, one particular note (that was known, but still) makes me sad:

> It's worth noting that the ability to assign an IOSurface to the CALayer > contents property is not properly documented. Nevertheless, all major > browsers on macOS now make use of this API.

So we end up in a situation where using the most efficient way to display contents now relies on undocumented/private APIs. At any point Apple can break them, or punish us for using them.

<comment><USER8> It's "documented" as in "tweeted out by an Apple engineer": [https://twitter.com/bciechanowski/status/874345241666437120?...](https://twitter.com/bciechanowski/status/874345241666437120?lang=en)

One thing that is _not_ documented is that the IOSurface must have been created with the 'BGRA' pixel format, or it will silently render as black instead.

<comment><USER9> I hope that 'bgra' was at least a typo of 'rgba'

<comment><USER10> BGRA is a "weird" convention in the graphics world that goes back to at least OS/2 bitmaps, when there was no wrong answer, and has stuck since then. Since early GPUs targeted Windows (where BGRA is the native format for GDI/D2D), it makes sense that it made it this far :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I want is an [https://arewesafariyet.com](https://arewesafariyet.com) that tracks Firefox's macOS energy usage against Safari's so that I can figure out when to switch. As far as I can tell, they still have a long way to go to match Safari in battery life and it would be nice if they had an explicit tracker set up as a way of prioritizing fixing that.

<comment> Spartan-S63 In addition to battery life, I'd also like things like native PiP mode (if possible) and native, fullscreen video playback. Better rendering gets closer to letting Firefox replace Safari for me, but the other features are important to me, too.

<comment><USER12> Native PiP is coming in Firefox 71 (already available for testing on Beta releases), though Windows-only at first. You can track macOS progress by following: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1532675](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1532675)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is very good news!

Firefox has been my daily driver for well over a year now and I've been extremely happy with it. The gripe I've had has been the heat/power consumption.

Props to the dev team!

</comment><comment> Spartan-S63 This is great to see! One gripe I still have with Firefox is how poorly it handles video playback (controls and energy consumption) compared to Safari. This makes me want to use Firefox more often, but Safari will still remain my daily driver because of native full screen video and PiP mode.

<comment><USER14> You can enable PiP mode on Firefox - in `about:config` look at the `picture- in-picture` options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just downloaded a clean install of Firefox 70 but even scrolling a simple site like Hacker News feels very laggy compared to Chrome.

Not sure whats going on. 2018 Retina MBP with dedicated GPU running Catalina.

<comment><USER16> I'm not a normal Firefox user — I usually use Chrome and Safari side-by-side. So I decided to give FF another try with this release, and I agree that the scrolling performance is noticeably worse in FF than Safari and Chrome on the same page. I know the link here is about power usage, not performance, but it makes things feel much less nice.

<comment><USER17> Firefox touchpad scrolling feels worse than other browsers by default because of the terrible default inertia and acceleration values. If you're not opposed to some tweaking, you can get them to feel much more like Safari. Further reading: [https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/63cd0m/how_to_get_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/63cd0m/how_to_get_firefox_to_scroll_like_safarichrome/)

<comment><USER18> WOW this explains so much about why my experience with Firefox has felt like garbage.

Why are the defaults set this way???

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you scrolling with a touchpad? Most of those settings don't impact touchpad scrolling. Is there a particular setting which makes the difference?

<comment><USER17> Did you try them? Several of the settings labeled "mousewheel" also affect touchpads. I don't have a touchpad on hand to check but I remember general.smoothScroll.mouseWheel.durationMaxMS making a difference as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just if someone wonders: "Tagesschau" is a german television news service, probably the most famous in Germany.

</comment><comment><USER20> Cool! I've been curious about Firefox's progress over the last few years, but this is what pushed me to download a modern version. Good work, Firefox team!

</comment><comment><USER21> So OpenGL wasn't allowing partial viewport "dirtying" on macOS. Does that mean Firefox on Linux has an opportunity for a similar gain?

<comment><USER8> In theory, yes, via the XPRESENT extension and similar mechanisms on Wayland. I don't know how well the drivers and window server optimize it though. (I plan to investigate this at some point.)

<comment><USER22> Most Wayland compositors track damage obsessively. If you turn on the paint debug overlay in Weston or something wlroots-based and start typing in e.g. gnome-terminal (with blinking cursor turned off), you'll see that _only a single character_ is painted at a time.

Here's a good post: [https://emersion.fr/blog/2019/intro-to-damage- tracking/](https://emersion.fr/blog/2019/intro-to-damage-tracking/)

To do this with EGL, you need to eglSwapBuffersWithDamage(KHR|EXT) instead of just eglSwapBuffers: [https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/weston/blob/23d01c67a...](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/weston/blob/23d01c67a320ab1920e4864f6d182bad93258112/clients/simple- egl.c#L127) (isn't it nice to have a GL API that's not terrible? :D)

I think I know how to do it, going to try soon. Bugzilled: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1590586](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1590586)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone has insights how power usage compares to safari? I'm team safari for the past years because it's just so much easier on the battery than anything else

<comment><USER24> Safari is unfortunately still consuming far, far less power on my Mid 2012 MBP and my 2017 MBP - though there is a significant improvement. Others have posted exact statistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does this help with streaming? In particular I have always had issues with twitch and firefox.

<comment><USER26> Stream video playback would probably invalidate most of the framebuffer anyway, so I'm not sure how much it would help. It's possible it will make a difference but probably not much. There are other things they could do along these lines that would definitely help, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good changes, although I find it amusing/discouraging that the "high complexity" graphics use case is a word processor.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can't wait to compare this to Safari, which I don't like but is dramatically gentler on my macbook's battery.

</comment><comment><USER29> > The crucial limitation here is that flushBuffer gives you no way to indicate > which parts of the OpenGL context have changed. This is a limitation which > does not exist on Windows

Sigh.

The state of OpenGL on OSX is terrible.

<comment><USER30> Deprecated, I thought. Just there for legacy support

<comment><USER29> Ah, you are right, since Mojave.

Yay for proprietary APIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > The crucial limitation here is that flushBuffer gives you no way to indicate > which parts of the OpenGL context have changed.

Partial window updates have been available in Windows since long ago (in non- accelerated GDI). Why don't others just copy Windows API instead of inventing their own poor API?

Maybe there is no partial updates because an application can write directly to GPU textures and GPU will redraw entire screen anyway?

Also I am not sure that browser needs OpenGL, because you cannot render text efficiently on GPU anyway and the main content of web pages is text.

> Whenever a layer is mutated in any way, the window manager will redraw an > area that includes the bounds of that layer, rather than the bounds of the > entire window.

Then the problem still isn't solved because a layer can be much larger than changed pixels.

<comment><USER32> Of course Apple has a partial window update API which is the primary drawing mechanism. flushBuffer maps to OpenGL, and Windows has its own version of this too (Wingdi::SwapBuffers).

I agree that browsers using OpenGL is...a design you could reach when measuring for graphics throughput at the expense of all else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wonderful, can't wait to test it out. This is one of the main reasons I still use Chrome. I can't watch videos on my laptop without hearing my fans go crazy when using FF

<comment><USER34> Using Linux, I can't watch youtube or use Google Hangouts for too long before the fans start going. Google refuses to add GPU support for Linux/Chrome. It's annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't know any details, but Chrome canary on MacOS has a "metal" flag.

"Vulkan" flag on Android too.

(Post mentioned they plan on implementing metal backend)

</comment><comment><USER36> Isn't it worrisome the dependence on OpenGL when it's been deprecated by Apple in favor of Metal?

Are there any plans to move of off this API?

<comment><USER37> [https://blog.astropad.com/the-catch-22-of-apple- apis/](https://blog.astropad.com/the-catch-22-of-apple-apis/) seems relevant

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Really exciting. This was the one thing keeping me from using Firefox on my personal laptop.

</comment><comment><USER39> How long till we get video acceleration?

</comment><comment><USER40> How does it compare to Chrome?

</comment><comment><USER41> Seems like a wash to me on a non-retina mac. It was fine before and seems fine now. Does anybody know if this should theoretically help non-retina mac users?

<comment><USER42> It won't hurt, but the article pointed out the main performance fail was coming from all the increased strain that retina displays were causing on memory and cache. Since retina displays have 4x as many pixels, Firefox was doing 4x as much work for its inefficient compositing engine doing large full- scene copies on every frame, and this was pushing the limits of what typical integrated graphics was able to smoothly pump through bandwidth-wise.</comment></comment>


John Locke on community - <AUTHOR> http://learntoduck.net/the-three-ps-of-community

<comment><USER2> I've been thinking a lot about why people share in communities, so this was a cool take on things. I'd tack on to the 3 P's that communities need members who are: 1\. Motivated. 2\. Empathetic. Maybe these are no s __* sherlocks. But I say motivated because people need incentives, whether it's the prospect of making money or building a reputation or getting recognition. There is something everyone is after, and many of even the best communities have some sort of reward system (HN & Quora off the top). And empathetic because members need to be able to relate to each other. If the sharer has high empathy then maybe less so. Here's a longer winded version of what I wrote: <http://marketinghead.tumblr.com/post/31338994971/why-share>

As I write this, maybe the closer community members are sympatico, the more likely you get community wo incentives needing to be so significant...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm. Interesting post. I might say that the closer community members are, the more the reward or incentive is getting to know the other members rather than fame or money. After all, that is the reward for interacting with offline communities based on close ties like family. Well, except for interactions with that rich uncle /sarcasm.</comment></comment>


What's Making Your Site Go Slow? Could Be The Like Button - <AUTHOR> http://www.allfacebook.com/whats-making-your-site-go-slow-could-be-the-like-button-2010-11 <comment><USER2> And this, ladies and gents, is why you should always insert third-party scripts, widgets, and frames either asynchronously or dynamically after-the- fact if you can help it. Between all the analytics and social third-party code people love to throw on every damn page these days, the average page load time is a mess.

For a prime example of how to utterly fail at making your page load time and CPU usage small from social bloat just visit any Mashable article.

</comment><comment><USER3> I frequently have a page sitting there, blank, with "waiting for analytics.google.com"* - and I assume if they weren't using it then the page would have displayed by then. Which baffles me - you'd think there'd be a way to have it finish loading the analystics after the page was available for reading.

*Or whatever the domain is.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone else noticed this on sites that they routinely visit, as the page load is slower and sometimes comes to a crawl with the Open Graph protocol installed?</comment>


The Learning-Disadvantage Gap of Socio-Academic Discrimination - the-mitr http://www.allartsallkids.org/learning_disadvantage_gap.html <comment><AUTHOR> I feel this is a complex issue - I was certainly one of the 'privileged' children in this regard, and much of my practice was in taking tests rather than on the test material, which I could certainly have done without. At the same time, I think the ability to perform complex cognitive tasks under high pressure is an extraordinarily useful aptitude - while I'd be all for less and less standardized testing, perhaps some resources should also be devoted to learning how an economically disadvantaged child can be helped to excel at cognitive challenges under pressure.</comment>


Giphy Closes $55M Series C at a $300M Post-Money Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/16/giphy-closes-55-million-series-c-at-a-300-million-post-money-valuation/ <comment><USER2> "The company acts a lot like Google, letting users upload and tag GIFs to make them searchable on the web and through Giphy's native mobile apps."

"Shockingly enough, Giphy is not yet monetizing. That said, the $300 million valuation makes sense when you think of all the various and likely quite lucrative paths that Giphy could take toward revenue generation."

So many _gems_ in this!

<comment><USER3> You missed this equally sparkling gem (emphasis mine):

"The most obvious revenue stream could come from 'ad words', where a Giphy search could turn up sponsored content based on what the user was looking for. _If it worked for Google, there's no reason why it wouldn't work for Giphy_ , and founder and CEO Alex Chung hinted on the phone that this would likely be the main source of revenue for Giphy when it decides to flip the switch."

<comment><USER4> "Daryl: Look, this is a marketing campaign. You got nine days. Let's say you do get the money. What are you going to do with it?"

"Ryan: The first lesson of Silicon Valley, actually, is that you only think about the user, the experience. You actually don't think about the money. Ever."

~ The Office, Season 7 Episode 9

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whoa, $55M series c for a company with zero plans to monetize something that's very difficult to monetize? I must be missing something here. They must have incredible growth or something but even then what's the end goal? Ad words won't succeed on images (Google tried this twice; once with text and once with images[1]) so why do they think they will? Didn't imgur have a similar issue when people would just link to the image thus working around their ad placement anyway? imgur had to resort to pro subscriptions and creating their own social network of sorts where they could place sponsored content to make money[2] but where would either of those fit into Giphy?

I feel like I'm either missing something incredibly obvious that's going to make Giphy rich or...these investors are just throwing money away. I'm not sure which but it at least feels like it must be the former.

[1] [http://www.cnet.com/news/google-adding-display-ads-to- image-...](http://www.cnet.com/news/google-adding-display-ads-to-image- search/)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-how-imgur-plans-to- ma...](http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-how-imgur-plans-to-make- money-2014-3)

<comment><USER6> Speaking of Imgur and ads, a couple years ago I noted that Imgur was covertly redirecting direct links to images on social media sites to the ad-filled versions: [http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/moved- temporarily/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/moved-temporarily/)

Apparently per recent comments on that article, they've extended that behavior to _all_ websites, although I have not verified that yet.

Granted, there's no way Giphy could pull that off with their current integrations. But maybe I'm not sufficiently creative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The most obvious revenue stream could come from 'ad words', where a Giphy search could turn up sponsored content based on what the user was looking for."

This is clearly an over-zealous editorialization by TC.

Google's AdWords program is the revenue generation monster it is because of the extremely high-intent of Google Searches.

Google's top categories (by cost per click) of search are weighted around insurance, mortgage, loans, attorneys, credit cards, etc.(1)

That's not going to happen at Giphy.

Way more plausible would be some sort of .gif pre-roll akin to Youtube ads, content sponsorship ("What's she wearing?" etc.

(1) [http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive- keywords](http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords)

</comment><comment><USER8> So this was a ~20% raise, which is typical.

For Lightspeed et al. to return the vaunted 10x ($550M) that means Giphy would have to have a liquidity event at a valuation of 2.7BN.

Either that or they need to get revenue to some ungodly figure.

What am I missing here? Why are these funds betting this is a unicorn when according to everyone "VC funding is frozen."

<comment><USER9> VC funding isn't frozen. VC funding has cut multiples on high-growth companies to a fraction of their previous numbers. Giphy hasn't monetized, so the normal conversation about revenue multiples that's killing everybody else doesn't apply yet.

The likely thesis is that there WILL be monetization around gifs and gif sharing, and Giphy WILL be the company that dominates that. It's probably not hard to size that market as pulling in $1bil / year, so if Giphy points out they're the furthest along and the competition won't catch up, it's not an unreasonable bet.

Another way to think about it is to find things you don't believe in. For Giphy, that might look like:

\- You don't think "gifs and people sharing gifs" is a trend that will last.

\- You don't think it's possible to monetize gifs and sharing gifs, or at least the first company will screw it up so bad it tanks their business.

\- You don't think Giphy is the clear market leader, or you think what they've done is easily replicated (incl. brand).

<comment><USER10> > "Giphy hasn't monetized, so the normal conversation about revenue multiples > that's killing everybody else doesn't apply yet."

I keep hearing this kind of thing: that it becomes _harder to raise_ once you start to have revenue.

Really?

<comment><USER9> A LOT of sales conversations (VC or otherwise) are about eliminating reasons to say no. Revenue is a hugely thorny subject, and getting revenue growth to look uncontentious is hard. You need high growth, low churn, lots of expansion, a plausible path to find new customers, and specifically for giphy, a story about why you couldn't monetize the entire market immediately (why do you need time to ramp up? hiring sales reps, implement the same feature on different platforms, what?). Lots of details, lots of speed bumps that would tank an otherwise compelling story.

On the other hand, it's not easy to sell without revenue, but if you find somebody who's a believer in the space, you've eliminated a TON of questions. So it's not easier per se, because a lot of investors will turn you down for not having revenue, but among those who say yes, there's no further questions, because there's nothing to dig into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A Series C where the post-money valuation is only 6x? The stock must be diluted as hell.

The Series B was $21M raised at $80M valuation ([https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/giphy](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/giphy)). I would not want to hold equity at this startup.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't believe they typed this with a straight face:

 _" So imagine if you wanted to send out "/giphy hungry" to your teammates and a McDonald's GIF appeared, or if you sent out "/giphy monday morning" and a Starbucks GIF appeared."_

In general, I have observed that technology people specifically tend to be a bit ad-phobic. And in their team channel they try to engage the their comrades and Giphy turns them into the channel that just dropped an advertisement into their chat stream? What if Victoria's Secret buys the keyword valentine? Who is at fault if someone says "/giphy Happy Valentines Day!" and Giphy turns that into a NSFW ad for lingerie which goes out to everyone?

I'll accept that perhaps I'm missing the point, and there is some value here that isn't visible to me, but for right now it really seems like a stretch to value this company as $300 million.

<comment><USER12> I'm using /giphy on Slack, and it's not even working well. 75% of the gifs I get presented for my keywords are not what I expected, at all. So basically I'm often disappointed and delete the message again to not annoy my colleagues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am speechless. If this is worth 300M$, I guess this script is worth at least 1/10 of that: [https://github.com/github/hubot- scripts/blob/master/src/scri...](https://github.com/github/hubot- scripts/blob/master/src/scripts/gif-me.coffee)

300M$ valuation with no income at all and the source of revenue being ad based, it sounds like something straigth from the Silicon Valley tv show

</comment><comment><USER14> What do they do that requires so much money? (honest question)

<comment><USER15> Apparently it's really expensive to make Slack virtually unusable.

<comment><USER10> You win the Internet!

Seriously. There's an LA Tech Slack that I really _wished_ was something other than an endless cascade of gif spam. I left it because I got sick of the red notification buttons making me head over to look for something about... I dunno... tech... and instead there's a dancing nut sack.

/giphy facepalm

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a conspiracy theory.

The world actually ended in the year 2000. Jesus returned, struck down the antichrist, and all that, and the series was over. But the problem is that the series' producers signed a contract for ten seasons and they blew the big finale in season _eight_.

What do you do then? Why, you screw around. You write cheesy concept plots and play with breaking the fourth wall and do tie-ins with other franchises and all kinds of stuff. God's got his whole team of writers scouring the annals of post-shark-jumping shows looking for crazy plot lines to hold the viewership long enough to run out the clock.

Let's see... I got it! Let's make Donald Trump president of the USA!

Stuff like that, or dancing cat spam on Slack being worth more than what it would cost to put humans back on the Moon.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's one way to monetize.

Ads inside GIFs.

It's genius, really. Most GIFs are looping and are often watched several times. What if the service to which you upload a GIF injected an extra frame, lasting, say 40ms, that displays a subliminal advertisement. It would go by so fast that most people wouldn't notice. But then later they would get unexplainable cravings of the product that was advertised.

People are already tuning out the obvious ads, so subliminal ads are much more effective. Better yet, adblocking software won't be able to block such subliminal ads without blocking the entire GIF.

<comment><USER6> Content _tampering_ is a surefire way to get users to leave to another service. Of which there are many.

<comment><USER17> There's also no way to control the negative content too.

Imagine someone creates a pro-ISIS beheading gif and Coca-Cola paid to slap an icon in the corner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You are all missing the point, giphy empower matches on Tinder who never talk to each other to now converse without using words.

It has to be worth something.

<comment><USER6> I am legitimately unsure if this is sarcasm or not. Well done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It was a "Jump to Conclusions" mat. You see, it would be this mat that you would put on the floor... and would have different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO. I'm going to pitch this company and see if I can raise a $5M seed round, I mean, at this point, why not!

</comment><comment><USER20> Um, I would bet good money that monetization will not be successful. This is a real moonshot.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why has Google never tried to monetise Google Images results in the same way?

My instinct is that they have considered it but that image search lacks the same intent that makes AdWords clicks so valuable to Google.

<comment><USER5> Google tried to. Twice. They tried with text ads and image ads. Neither works as far as I could tell. [http://www.cnet.com/news/google-adding-display-ads- to-image-...](http://www.cnet.com/news/google-adding-display-ads-to-image- search/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a fun product, but won't they run into copyright issues if it gets big? Seems like all the content is owned by others, and I'm not sure it counts as fair use.

<comment><USER6> Hence why part of the raise is likely reserved for potential legal fees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Giphy really needs to improve their search engine IMHO!

</comment><comment><USER24> Instead of embedding ads into GIFs, I think that Giphy can leverage its image tagging data to help brand owners track social media brand mentions. For example, Giphy could theoretically help Disney track usage and context of Mickey Mouse gifs, providing Disney insight into current public perception of their characters, allowing Disney to react if necessary.

</comment><comment><USER25> I feel too bad right now for I had the exact same product ready and developed with a hell of a traction 4 years ago (for I have not seen the value in it back then), yet I dropped it for another idea that failed a 2 years later.

<comment><USER26> You didn't know the right kind of morons to ask for funding from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How is this even possible? Giphy is a running joke in Slack chat about how terrible it is.

And all these articles about unicorns and "watch out startups", and VCs decide to invest in GIPHY? I'm so confused.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wow. Now at the C level without monetizing gifs?

Something tells me this won't last...

</comment><comment><USER29> Huh.

I guess I just hope the founders took some money out in this round.

</comment><comment><USER30> omg this is post-modern farce. who gets involved in this?!

<comment><USER31> \--- [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/giphy/funding- rounds](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/giphy/funding-rounds)

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Betaworks \---</comment></comment>


Home taping didn't kill music - <AUTHOR> http://www.badscience.net/2009/06/home-taping-didnt-kill-music/

<comment><USER2> Anyone who thinks that filesharing hasn't totally killed record industry profits is either crazy rationalizing or stupid beyond belief.

I can tell you that I would have bought many, many albums if things like bittorrent didn't exist. Since I can just get mp3's from bittorrent or my friends, unscrupulous people like me can basically get unlimited free music, although I do often buy music on iTunes to get a high bitrate non-defective copy of an album I especially like (Tea for the Tillerman, Neon Bible, Trial of Van Occupanther). I hate going to concerts, so I only do it when people convince me to go along, and certainly no more than I would if music wasn't free. The bands I like are probably about the same as the ones I liked pre- filesharing, minus ones I've grown out of (Tool, Radiohead, Weezer -- I've bought albums from all these bands pre-filesharing days) plus ones I randomly found on iTunes, plus ones I heard my wife listening to or on Last.FM. I haven't found any new music via filesharing really.

The argument about filesharing is that it is impossible to stop, so attempting to do so is pointless. The amount of government intervention necessary to effectively end sharing of music (and thus violating copyright law) is so draconian that given the balance of (good done by enforcing law) - (harm done by enforcing law) is extremely in the negative.

When the government tries to enforce laws that people will not follow, it does great harm to people's respect for the Law. Marijuana laws, too-low speed limits and other laws that are ignored put people in the habit of ignoring the law if they can get away with it. While Jeffersonians like me generally see this as a healthy attitude (as no one gets hurt), it should still be our goal to establish laws that aren't bullshit, if only for practical reasons (like using the police to work on crime that we actually care about instead of people going 65 instead of 55 on a flat, straight highway).

Since there is no way to stop filesharing, and reducing it at all will involve huge monitoring of the internet, fuck it, change copyright law to reflect reality, and let big music publishers join horse-shoe makers and coal delivery men in the history books.

<comment><USER3> That's interesting. I, on the other hand, was so disgusted by the RIAA's tactics and lobbying that I stopped buying CDs altogether _without_ resorting to (currently) illegal downloading of music.

I can make my own music. I decided many years ago I didn't need theirs that much if they couldn't play nicely in the sandbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If bittorrent and Kazaa, Napster didn't exist, I wouldn't have even heard of or even tried hundreds of artists, that then resulted in me buying their albums and attending their concerts.

I estimate (very conservatively) because of Napster, Kazaa, Bittorrent, etc., I've spent thousands of dollars I otherwise wouldn't have on music, both on CD purchases and at concerts.

</comment><comment><USER5> The record industry is dead. Anyone still trying to justify downloading in that it has not affected the industry is just plain old stupid. Millions of people who would have purchased did not because the music was available for free. The selling of records industry is completely dead.

Music is not going anywhere, and the large payments that musicians have will not be going anywhere either - they can easily make this money in concerts.

This is actually good - proceeds from a concert are spread out across a lot more people than proceeds from a CD.

<comment><USER6> And some people purchased who would not have done if the music hadn't been available for free. I don't know if those sales made up for the people you mentioned. But I'm sure you don't know either.

I agree that the record selling industry is dying, and probably can't be saved as we know it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Taping is lossy. Digital copying is not (unless you want it to be).

Taping doesn't scale easily (tape trees notwithstanding).

Both these served to limit taping's impact.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well Apple did see a business model and made money.

Every time I read these articles I guess -people that at movie/music industry - are they too old for technologies or what?

I don't need a CD, just content.

</comment><comment><USER9> The problem with biased analysis (like this article) is that it never gives you a clear picture. I think we all know the music industry inflates their numbers drastically to make the problem of music downloads appear worse than it is. But the Norwegian study that says those who download music are 10 times more likely to spend money on music is also pretty easy to debunk (the sample size alone is enough reason to discredit it)

In the end I think the music industry is losing money not because of pirates but because their market has evolved. Now people can buy the one good song on an album and leave the rest behind (which cuts 90% of the record company's revenue). That alone explains their losses. But they're clearly in denial about it and looking for a bad guy. Music piracy fits the bill.

So imho most of the anti-piracy rhetoric is just label execs hoping there's a solution to their revenue problem (e.g. "if we just stop the pirates our revenue will go back up")

<comment><USER10> Actually music exec have a solution to the problem it just takes a long time to implement.

The solution is known as 360-contract. Currently labels profit only from the selling of albums and some of the merchandise, but not from tours, sponsorship deals or ads. An artist on a 360-contract pays the label a cut of everything...

The assumption of the labels is that illegal downloads actually boost the total value of the artist, but diminishes their share (artists make more money on touring but less on the records). The labels have started to push their artists to 360 contracts a while back, but until all the old contracts are up for renegotiation they have no choice but fight the illegal downloading.

<comment><USER11> Why would the artists agree to that?

<comment><USER12> I imagine the relationship between the artist, and its contractor to be similar of small groups of hackers, and their investors. At any given time a record label has several "good enough" artists in their incomming tunnel to be able to make them sign just about anything.

<comment><USER13> So, basically, the record labels have and always will need to rely on human stupidity to turn a buck.

<comment><USER14> Yes, but now they only need to con a few people (the artists) instead of lots of people (all the fans).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nothing has "killed" music. There is still plenty of music being made and listened to. Record labels- organizations that existed to finance the manufacture of media and marketing of music are dead, because the marginal cost of manufacturing bits is low, and marketing doesn't require payola to hundreds of radio stations anymore, etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> A great solution to goods with extremely low marginal cost is reasonably priced unlimited subscription services. It's cheap, convenient, legal, and benefits everyone.

Unfortunately Apple has used their near-monopoly in the music player market to prevent subscription services, so Napster, Rhapsody, et al are cut off from the majority of the market.

</comment><comment><USER17> If a consumer decides not to spend money on copyrighted material it seems to me they are likely choosing to spend that money elsewhere so it's unlikely piracy causes any real harm to most economies. It may hurt a specific segment but that's just the evolution of supply & demand at work.

I think the best argument against piracy being a major crisis in entertainment is the quality of the products we've seen in the last few years since piracy has really hit the mainstream. Lots of great movies, lots of good TV (so I hear) and when it comes to music I would argue that for most people who previously had a very limited spectrum of musical choices we're now in a renaissance. I don't see any of my favorite bands going out of business, quitting, or putting out subpar products. If anything we're seeing less mainstream acts flourish since, for the first time, they can actually compete with the mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER18> To be fair: it wasn't as easy, quick, or high fidelity to tape music as it currently is with ripping or pirating.

Not that I think either of those will "kill music"... it just kind of bothers me when people make the comparison as if it's an exact analog (ha!).</comment>


Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/30/lack-of-leadership-in-open-source-results-in-source-available-licenses/ <comment><USER2> _> "It hijacks open-source APIs and places them on top of its own proprietary solutions, thereby siphoning off customers from the open-source project to its own proprietary solution, as it did with the MongoDB APIs."_

Basically, there is no such thing as an "Open Source API". APIs are not software, and we've already seen the damage that treating APIs as software (for copyright purposes) can do.

The proper abstraction for APIs (and protocols, and file-formats, etc.) is the _standard_ , which ideally admits the possibility of multiple interoperable implementations, both proprietary and open source (patents being the joker in the deck, unfortunately).

<comment><USER3> It's certainly an interesting point of view. Take something that's commercial, for example, like Microsoft's docx format. If Open Office/Libre Office implements support for docx, is it hijacking proprietary formats, and siphoning customers off of proprietary projects? (edit: as it has been pointed out, .docx is a bad example, because it was standardized, but the point stands, I believe.)

I hate that this stuff hits HN front page. It worries me that we're developing a culture where I as an individual must adhere to some moral framework when writing code, lest I violate some social open source norms. To me, this is deeply poisonous to the spirit of open source.

<comment><USER4> > _It worries me that we 're developing a culture where I as an individual > must adhere to some moral framework when writing code, lest I violate some > social open source norms. To me, this is deeply poisonous to the spirit of > open source._

Every culture or community has norms, and many of those norms generalize to universal moral principles, like: participate fairly in a community, not exploit it.

"Spirit of Open Source" isn't something defined entirely in the phrase of "open source". It's an idea that gets defeated by actions of some larger players today, hence the outrage (and an opportunity to remind people yet again, that RMS was right about this).

<comment><USER5> My take on "Spirit of Open Source" is basically: (1) I need this software, (2) I wrote this software and it has satisfied my needs, (3) I'm a nice guy so anyone else who wants to use this can use it free of any requirements whatsoever. Hence I use the MIT license.

I don't care if Amazon or Facebook gets rich off of it. I don't care if Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton get elected based on it. I don't care if the Russians use it. It's a tool, and like a hammer can be used for good or ill, and I disclaim all responsibility for what stupid people do with it. I don't care if somebody forks it and 99% of people start using the fork instead of my original. All I care is that I got what I wanted out of it, I hope perhaps that some other people use it so that they can help contribute and maintain it, and perhaps I'm hoping for a tiny bit of respect and recognition. My expectations are grounded and realistic: very few people will likely use it; I don't have a hope in hell of either making money off of it or of changing the world because of it. And I'm completely satisfied with that. In fact I'm more than satisfied, I feel wonderful because millions of other people are doing the same things with their software and just about anything I could possibly want is out there somewhere. Hence a sense of community and of good will.

Others folks (such as the author of the article) have different "spirits" most of which I find distasteful, including those who have a stick up their arse about big orporations and want to add restrictions about commercial use or about derivative works, those who think their software is God's gift to the world and they thus deserve something for it, those who want to control what others are allowed to do, those who want to change the basic ways that the world works, and those who come from a place of greed and regret. I don't share in any of that outrage, not even a little bit, and so this article (to me at least) is complete rubbish.

<comment><USER6> What's really interesting for me is that you really seem to have a disgust for people trying to add restrictions to "open source" software with the goal of keeping it open but seem to be totally fine with for profit enterprises adding restrictions to software and services, often trying to extract as much value as possible out of you. Doesn't that seem to be somewhat of an arbitrary double standard?

Why can't or shouldn't the "Spirit of Open Source" be able to include exactly the things that you complain about? I would love to hear your grounding for your position :)

<comment><USER5> Adding restrictions to "keep it open" is oxymoronic. Folks can do whatever they want with their software licensing, but please don't deceive people by pretending it's FOSS if it's not.

<comment><USER2> Oxymoronic? Perhaps in a strictly literal sense but first of all there are two slightly disjoint goals: Maximizing _user_ freedom, and maximizing _developer_ freedom.

We can maximize user freedom by having developers put code into a commons, reject the freedom-to-restrict-users, and deny other developers the ability to enclose that commons in those sort of restrictions (ala copyleft).

This has an even more broadly applicable analogy, Popper's "tolerating intolerance" and related paradoxes.[0]

Another way of looking at this is through the frame of positive and negative freedoms[1][2] (often described as "freedom to" vs. "freedom from"). It is often not possible to maximize both. For example, when the goal is maximizing human freedoms for the most people, it is not unreasonable to disallow making any people un-free, which includes denying people the freedom to sell _themselves_ into indentured servitude.

[0] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/#ConTolPar](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/#ConTolPar)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_liberty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_liberty)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem isn't really here. The problem is that everyone wants a permissive abusable license when AGPL would be just fine. If everyone here complaining just used AGPL then we wouldn't have this Amazon situation.

People want to have their cake and eat it too. They started with an MIT license because it gets more uptake then whine when the license terms are being followed.

But then it wouldn't be widely used. The solution to that is for everyone to use AGPL then the open-source playing field is level again.

<comment><USER8> AGPL is vulnerable to certain workarounds in the same way that GPL was. The CC class of non-commercial licenses might be more applicable, but that may harm adoption.

EDIT: honestly not sure why this is so heavily downvoted (-7 as of the edit), the whole point of SSPL and other licenses is to address the "workarounds" that Amazon and others have discovered in AGPL

<comment><USER9> Would you mind elaborating on that? I am interested in a super-copyleft license for my next project and thought that AGPL was the "best" option out there. In what ways can it be bypassed?

<comment><USER10> Check mongoDB's SSPL FAQ ([https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side- public-license...](https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public- license/faq#when-to-use)).

As far as I'm concerned, SSPL is superior to AGPL in that it catches all the bits that make your software _actually work_ , forcing you to include them as part of the offering. I honestly don't understand the apparent objection to referring to a license with such a clause as open source - all it does is close a (major imo) loophole.

<comment><USER11> From my reading of SSPL v1, it would seem extremely difficult to use in concert with other free software; it requires you to distribute _all software_ [0] you're using to run your service under the SSPL. The trouble is, you can't do that if you're using any other software in your environment that's licensed under another copyleft license such as the GPL. Does this apply all the way down to the Linux kernel? Who knows!

SSPL v2 appears to be an attempt to correct this[1], by explicitly excluding system components and allowing other FSF/OSI approved licenses if you're unable to release something under the SSPL yourself. But note that not even MongoDB, the project that the SSPL came from, is using v2 at the moment.

The GPL and AGPL have been around longer and have much more of a community behind them, and both versions of the SSPL are incompatible with them. At least for the time being, I'm inclined to stick with the AGPL for network services, because I like having access to all the GPL/AGPL code out there. Maybe someday I'll take a look at SSPL v2; I wouldn't touch SSPL v1 with a 10-foot pole.

[0] "all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software" [1] [http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- review_lists.o...](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- review_lists.opensource.org/2018-November/003836.html)

<comment><USER10> It seems there are indeed serious issues with SSPLv1 that I was unaware of. That being said, the loophole in the AGPL that they are attempting to address is also a serious issue. The rewording in v2

> "storage software and hosting software" changed to "host orchestration > software"

seems to be fairly reasonable though, unless I've misunderstood things once again?

> But note that not even MongoDB, the project that the SSPL came from, is > using v2 at the moment.

From the page you linked,

> If this version is approved by OSI, we plan to apply it to the next release > of our MongoDB software, which is currently available under version 1.0.

so it seems they really do just want to address the current loophole in the AGPL.

<comment><USER11> >> "storage software and hosting software" changed to "host orchestration software"

>seems to be fairly reasonable though, unless I've misunderstood things once again?

It's better, though note that the terms in the list referenced there aren't strictly defined.

>> If this version is approved by OSI, we plan to apply it to the next release of our MongoDB software, which is currently available under version 1.0.

>so it seems they really do just want to address the current loophole in the AGPL.

Sure, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that. But the fact that they haven't switched over by now signals to me that they're not yet confident in the newer version of the license; if they're not, I can't say I am either.

And it's worth noting that SSPL v2 was withdrawn from the OSI review process back in March: [https://opensource.org/LicenseReview032019](https://opensource.org/LicenseReview032019)

<comment><USER10> This is all really disappointing - they ought to mention it up front in their FAQ. I hope they (or someone else) submits a v3 with tighter definitions that can close the SaaS proprietary source code loophole without introducing a compromising level of overreach or ambiguity.

> the fact that they haven't switched over by now signals to me that they're > not yet confident in the newer version of the license; if they're not, I > can't say I am either.

Agreed; I wouldn't want to make use of it either until the dust is well settled.

<comment><USER12> I recommend taking a look at the API Copyleft License [https://github.com/kemitchell/api-copyleft- license/blob/mast...](https://github.com/kemitchell/api-copyleft- license/blob/master/license.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For people who haven't followed this: The headline is as misleading as it can be.

The whole agenda of the guy writing this is to move open source projects to being no longer open source, because he doesn't like what that entails (as it also means "amazon enjoys the same freedoms as everyone else"). But they like to confuse it as much as they can.

This would be much less of an issue if these people were upfront: "We don't like Open Source, so we try something else". But they don't want to do that because they know Open Source has a good reputation, so they try confusion and deception.

<comment><USER14> I don't see this. Are you saying the author has a bone to pick with Amazon in particular or that he has a stake in seeing OSS-based cloud services become non-OSS because he has money at stake in selling those services? None of the proposed licenses significantly curtail the possibility of having internal deployments of software or linking against the software in commercial software.

<comment><USER10> > None of the proposed licenses significantly curtail the possibility of > having internal deployments of software or linking against the software in > commercial software.

Actually...

The Fair Source License (Sourcegraph, [https://fair.io/](https://fair.io/)) explicitly does restrict those things.

The RSAL (Redis, [https://redislabs.com/blog/redis-labs-modules-license- change...](https://redislabs.com/blog/redis-labs-modules-license-changes/)) kind of does, but only under some circumstances.

> The only restriction is that the application cannot be a database, a caching > engine, a stream processing engine, a search engine, an indexing engine or > an ML/DL/AI serving engine.

The Confluent Community License ([https://www.confluent.io/blog/license- changes-confluent-plat...](https://www.confluent.io/blog/license-changes- confluent-platform)) only says you can't run it directly as a SaaS offering, which is better but I'm a bit uncertain where the line would be drawn in terms of product functionality.

The Commons Clause ([https://commonsclause.com/](https://commonsclause.com/)) explicitly prevents you from selling the software, including hosting, consulting, support, etc. As with the Confluent license it isn't entirely clear where the line is drawn in terms of product functionality.

The SSPL (mongoDB, [https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public- license...](https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public- license/faq#when-to-use)) is in fact an open source license as far as I'm concerned, but OSI hasn't (won't?) recognize it.

<comment><USER15> Some interesting tests would be Firebase, Airtable, and Google Sheets. Assuming each of those products was built on top of databases available under each license, which would be legal?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you make your project open source, your goal should be maximizing people using it, _not_ maximizing how much you profit from it. I know they may seem identical, but they aren't: Apple makes a lot of money by making software that has huge roadblocks to using it. And as many people are now realizing, open source has the ability to _not make lots of money_ by making it incredibly easy for anyone to use.

We all benefit greatly from Linux, and I think most people have not contributed back to it in any meaningful way, monetary or otherwise. A lot of these projects only exist _because_ they were built on top of other Open Source solutions with no expectation to give them any sort of "cut". Had Linus decided he actually wanted to start a hardware business and then got angry that IBM was better at putting Linux on metal than he was, it would be similar to this situation and I think most of us would be unhappy about a bunch of turmoil resulting from that. But when it's someone else's ideas that are being used for free, they always seem obvious and fundamental, when its your own, it's unique and unfair.

As others have said here, it is _OK_ to say "wait a minute, I want something different", and then _do something different_. What is not OK is wanting to water down the definition of the term open source so that whatever thing you want to do still gets to use it. The OSI's position here is perfectly reasonable -- that doesn't mean you can't invent some new kind of license or relationship. People forget that OSI had to work to get into industry in the first place, it wasn't automatically accepted. It is somewhat funny and ironic that others now want to benefit from this work while doing something completely different.

<comment><USER17> > If you make your project open source, your goal should be maximizing people > using it, not maximizing how much you profit from it.

Dangerous ground telling people what their goals should be. There is no reason a person shouldn't try to maximise their profits from open source strategies. The Linux example is not a strong one - lots of the kernel devs are for-profit and Linus Torvalds made a fortune [0] - likely linked to his involvement in Linux. With benefit of hindsight it is hard to see how he could have better optimised for profit.

The key insight for commercial OSS is that maximising profit does not necessarily mean maximising your paying userbase size. 10 users paying $10,000 a month easily trumps 1000 users paying $10. And going OSS as a commercial strategy (eg, Red Hat's classic model) gives competitive advantages if you can lever it - no risk of being undercut by a cheaper software package, ability be very selective in who you offer support to and an obvious strategy for wheedling in to new markets.

In the initial rush where computers were being changed out every 5 years (pre 2003 era), having software to sell was where the advantage was. Now the industries are starting to mature and that is no longer as obvious it once was. The money seems to be in support and ongoing relationship fees, which are very amenable to OSS.

So basically, if someone's goal is to maximise profits they should consider making their software open source. Especially if they are breaking in to an incumbent's market.

[0] [https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity- business/...](https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity- business/tech-millionaire/linus-torvalds-net-worth/)

<comment><USER16> The question is not whether the author made a fortune, but whether they were upset that tremendous more value was captured by others. I'm sure Amazon has made way more money on AWS last year by leveraging Linux than Linus has in his entire life. Now the analogy is exactly 1-to-1 compatible: Amazon offers Linux as a service, Amazon offers MongoDB as a service. If you want another analogy: more value was captured by Github (and Microsoft) from Git than Linus. Again, from offering the software as a service.

It is fine to try to leverage the properties of open source to make profits, just don't be surprised when it doesn't, on its own, do so. That is what is meant by my first statement: "open source will absolutely help you gain traction, it will not necessarily help you capture value". As such, if you use open source, the goal best served is gaining users. Don't be surprised when it doesn't make you a ton of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand this sentiment. The whole point of choosing a permissive license is that you want others to have the right to profit off of your work and give you nothing in return.

If you don't want others to have that right, then choose a different license.

But don't grant the right and then complain when people exercise it.

<comment><USER14> I don't think it's that hard to understand. To some degree, Amazon's behavior is exploiting an idealism that has given us software such as Linux that we're all benefitting from today, and it's easy to see why a starry-eyed engineer would want to carry on that legacy and create a project such as Redis with a permissive license.

What you say ("The whole point of choosing a permissive license is that you want others to have the right to profit off of your work and give you nothing in return.") is obvious in hindsight, and should go without saying if you start a project with the express intent of commercializing it. However, in many cases, it's not the obvious decision for reasons related to the project's genesis (e.g. Spark or Mesos being student projects), and in others, it's not the route taken because of an idealistic impulse that I think would be really unfortunate to see squashed.

<comment><USER19> Amazon is, in effect, bringing attention to this issue and I am glad that they are.

> What you say ("The whole point of choosing a permissive license is that you > want others to have the right to profit off of your work and give you > nothing in return.") is obvious in hindsight, and should go without saying > if you start a project with the express intent of commercializing it.

Even if you do thoughtfully choose a license with the express intent of commercializing the work, some competing project elsewhere - student projects, in your example - will eat your market. It is about time players entering our industry be warned of the effects of such "pissing-in-the-pool" activities.

<comment><USER20> Are you saying that choosing a permissive license is like "pissing-in-the- pool"? As if do so contaminates the market for everyone?

<comment><USER21> Yes. The whole AWS problem stems from having too much software under "permissive" licenses and now enough under reciprocal licenses.

Reciprocal licenses work like herd immunity: you need a large enough ecosystem to effectively keep freeloaders at bay while rewarding those who cooperate often.

<comment><USER22> How would less permissive software existing have helped e.g. MongoDB with their "AWS problem"?

<comment><USER23> MongoDB did not have an "AWS problem". AWS did not release anything related to MongoDB until after they stopped making open-source releases.

MongoDB had a "We gave others freedoms we didn't like" problem, so they rescinded those freedoms. Freedoms that they'd given in the first place to profit off of the reputation of Open Source Software. If they'd never given those freedoms out, they'd never have had any problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting how human nature always wants to blame everything on one source. AWS might be bad, no argument against it. But the truth is there is more and more speaking about the end of open source as we know it.

E.g. smartphones (the most used end-user computer nowadays) being walled gardens. So walled, that not even a giant like Huawei can easily continue to use Google's OS.

E.g. Trade war makes every side being less open towards all other sides.

E.g. at least one huge Open Source proponent being sold to a company that is known for not handling open source too well.

E.g. big corps like Google having found a way to misuse stuff that is seemingly open source as marketing tools to spread there proprietary actual products.

E.g. with at least many big corps believing that the cloud has beaten on-prem, and who knows what is behind these APIs. Maybe they don't even use Linux and TCP/IP anymore.

E.g. with the rise of AI and machine learning software itself maybe(!) not being the most important tech development factor anymore.

E.g. with Valve not having won the gaming platform war against Microsoft.

E.g. with Microsoft claiming to integrate more and more with open source (but then how much control are they starting to wield, having a shitload of coders, money and users to field for their personal cause).

</comment><comment><USER25> What a lot of people overlook is when Amazon takes something (DocumentDB with MongoDB compatibility) on internally is they are re-inventing the way the database works in such a way it's dubious if the community would benefit. I do think it would have been better to see this go the Postgres route where they could have continued to contribute to the core product but I believe MongoDB saw competition against their MongoDB Cloud product and decided to change the licensing. This neccessitated the need for a hard fork since they were not interested in working together. An AWS Q&A stated they are working on a completely independent code base that is API compatible with MongoDB 3.6, so there is nothing to contribute back to the MongoDB open-source code base.

DocumentDB much like Amazon Aurora has pivoted much of the database internals to depend on the AWS ecosystem. The whole concept of replica-sets on MongoDB are very rigid and inflexible compared to the elegance made possible by EBS and Amazon engineers.

MongoDB replication is measured in seconds meanwhile DocumentDB replication is "usually less than 100 milliseconds". This makes read replicas in DocumentDB more relevant for all kinds of real-time tasks vs MongoDB.

</comment><comment><USER26> So Amazon is not a good citizen open-source wise. Some companies doing this has been the state of affairs as long as open source exists, and the world has not ended. Eventually the cost of maintaining forks will force them to engage with the community. Customers will want newer features available upstream. Amazon will contribute things back that make their own life easier. Other companies will struggle with open source business models. Engineers will favor companies that open source interesting projects. Everybody will be fine.

<comment><USER27> The cynicism that pours into threads like these is kind of depressing, though. People are increasingly more tolerant to predatory business practices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's a very wide claim. Amazon may not be the most valued type of open source user, but they are on par with most open source infrastructure historically.

It's as if they are trying to say that only the creators of an open source project can build a SaaS for it. Tell that to mySQL, Postgres, redis, everything apache (Hadoop, Cassandra(which is based on amazon's DynamoDB whitepaper), Kafka, Zookeeper), every programming language ever (Except maybe C#). It has always been the case that open source infrastructure was built by one group and another completely unrelated group, who are much better at cloud anything, built the SaaS offering for it.

If this is Mongo again, it's probably a PR stunt by them to get their failing business model's latest failing hail marry to not completely destroy developer trust (which it will, of course, fail to do).

There is really just one thing to complain about Amazon's use of open source, they aren't supporting back enough for projects they are using. That's it. They should be shunned for it, but that's not earthshattering, and it's definitely not a condemnation of other cloud vendors (Microsoft and Google) who support open source massively.

<comment><USER29> > There is really just one thing to complain about Amazon's use of open > source, they aren't supporting back enough for projects they are using. > That's it. They should be shunned for it, but that's not earthshattering, > and it's definitely not a condemnation of other cloud vendors (Microsoft and > Google) who support open source massively.

That was the author's point, was it not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> We have two contrasting terms that work perfectly well right now:

Open Source, a set of licenses that allow users to run and modify software for personal or commercial purposes without your permission.

and Source Available, a set of licenses that allow users to see and modify your source code provided they meet some kind of criteria you set up, such as not using the code for commercial purposes or not doing things you don't like with it.

These two terms already perfectly encapsulate the entire range of new licenses that are being proposed for databases like Mongo.

But a nontrivial number of proponents for SSPL dislike this distinction because they want the goodwill and reputation that comes from being able to say, "we're Open Source." They want to be categorized the same way as MIT or GPL licenses, even though they fundamentally disagree with the worldview behind them.

> _The OSI believes it owns the definition of open source and refuses to > update the definition of open source, which is short-sighted and dangerous._

No. The OSI believes that Open Source has a widely agreed-upon definition, and that definition shouldn't be hijacked just because it's inconvenient for some company's software monetization strategy. The level of condescension in this article is really infuriating. Literally nothing is preventing any developer or company from using the SSPL right now: nobody will judge you, nobody will call you evil, the _only thing_ the Open Source community is requesting is that you do not call it Open Source.

Open Source was not invented so you could use it as a PR strategy. We don't need your help.

<comment><USER29> > and Source Available, a set of licenses that allow users to see and modify > your source code provided they meet some kind of criteria you set up, such > as not using the code for commercial purposes or not doing things you don't > like with it.

GPL is source available, then?

<comment><USER30> Some people have argued that, yes. I've even argued it occasionally in the past.

The short justification given is that even though the GPL doesn't let you do everything, it still doesn't interfere with the 4 essential freedoms that Open Source guarantees. You may or may not agree with that justification.

But the people arguing in favor of SSPL as an Open Source license are moving in the wrong direction. If TechCrunch wanted to make the argument that the GPL wasn't free _enough_ for inclusion into Open Source, they could do so. Instead, they're arguing that because the GPL might stretch the definition, we should just go whole hog and introduce straight-up end-user usage restrictions as well.

Techcrunch is taking the, "your thing isn't perfect, so we should all make it worse" position.

<comment><USER4> > _The short justification given is that even though the GPL doesn 't let you > do everything, it still doesn't interfere with the 4 essential freedoms that > Open Source guarantees. You may or may not agree with that justification._

Wait, what? "Four essential freedoms" are part of FSF philosophy, not Open Source, and GPL is literally _the_ canonical example of a license that guarantees and safeguards them. Many Open Source (not Free Software) licenses do not, in fact, guarantee these freedoms.

<comment><USER31> Yes, the open source definition has its own rules. The one that seems most relevant here is:

"No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

"The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research."

[https://opensource.org/osd-annotated](https://opensource.org/osd-annotated)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Open Source has been so well understood to mean a certain set of things within the technology industry now that making changes to that definition would just cause unnecessary confusion (beyond what already exists between OSS and FOSS ...). Quite possibly the author is just annoyed his portfolio companies get pushback when taking about "source available" or proprietary licenses to potential customers, but leaping from there to "our customers want open source, thus open source must change to mean what we want to give our customers" is fairly dramatic.

Honestly, I think this editorial could have done with toning down the rhetoric a bit - calling people / groups names ("wonk tank") and generally implying those with the opposing view are irredeemably "short-sighted" isn't particularly persuasive and just detracts from the author's points.

</comment><comment><USER33> I speak to a lot of Open Source software users in Database space and they tend to love DBaaS offered by AWS and other cloud vendors. It is not convenient for my business but that does not make it a bad thing.

The competition is how great things are born. Some Open Source is being pushed towards proprietary model (Open Core, Shared Source etc) while others will find a way to have sustainable business in the new reality with Cloud Vendors.

</comment><comment><USER34> For a few years I've wondered about the viability of a "source-available" license with a lot of user-friendly terms (like being able to distribute modified versions which anyone else can use as long as they themselves have a license for the original work, etc...) and a built-in GPL/BSD/etc... conversion after N years.

IMHO, the maximalist position of the RMS camp, while rightfully paranoid about the dangers of fully proprietary software, isn't the optimal solution. Yes, certain kinds of open source projects have been extremely successful, but a lot of this has been driven by corporate interests (i.e., people working on open source projects as a part of their work) and the software that gets built reflects and reinforces these interests.

I'd be happy to pay to have the latest version of some really useful software that respects my rights in lots of other ways (e.g., more control over and access to my data in the app, and be able to tinker/adapt it as I see fit, with full source), particularly if the alternative is that this software doesn't exist. If feels like, at least in some software domains, that the alternative are either (1) user hostile proprietary software or (2) nowhere close to the proprietary alternative in terms of features and robustness.

Obviously that's not the case for stuff like databases and operating system kernels, but that's what it often feels like out of these back-end type packages.

</comment><comment><USER35> When I open source code, I use MIT. I have introduced open source strategies at places I work, and guided teams through the process.

Ok now that I've established my OSS cred: I'd be really interested in a license that is effectively MIT, _except_ for the 20 largest software companies, for whom there is no license and any use is restricted (you'd need to clearly define what makes a company a software company, and what it means to be the largest, but that's what lawyers are for). They could pay for a commerical license if the customer demand was high enough.

This seems like it would address the main issue as I see it, that is, I want almost everyone to be able to use my software to build cool shit and make money... But if you're FAANG or some shit, come on. The rules are different.

<comment><USER36> >that's what lawyers are for

One of the reasons the standard open-sources licenses such as the GPL and the permissive licenses are as popular as they are is the lowness of the probability that lawyers will ever be involved.

There was widespread use of GPL software in the 1980s and early 1990s for about 15 years IIRC before the first lawsuit involving GPLed software. Stallman and his legal advisor Eben Moglen did a great job in reducing ambiguity when writing the text of version 2 of the GPL and in explaining the ramifications of the license to developers and prospective users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Amazon has continually moved to keep source open. They have actively worked to distribute Open Distro Elasticsearch (keeping it under a fully-free license), Apache Corretto (binaries for the OpenJDK to make it more accessible to end- users), etc. Using similar APIs increases consumer choice and interoperability, making it easier to go from open to hosted but also from hosted to open.

These proposed licenses neither are open-source nor free software and are very poor ideas. The SSPL clearly breached the boundaries of open source and the OSI's opinion was only "premediated" in the sense that that was the agreed- upon definition.

</comment><comment><USER38> The author is suggesting to curb source-available licenses by modifying open source licences to become... source-available licenses.

</comment><comment><USER39> Amazon isn't perfect in some areas, but I think FreeRTOS should be pointed out. This is a pretty valuable contribution in the embedded/IoT space. [https://www.freertos.org/](https://www.freertos.org/)

</comment><comment><USER40> More whining from Sunil Deshpande. He's upset that no one on license-discuss was dumb enough to fall for the Commons Clause or SSPL. It'll be a happy day when he gives up his anti-open source abuse campaign.

<comment><USER41> I wonder what your opinion is of Kyle Mitchell [https://writing.kemitchell.com/](https://writing.kemitchell.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> There is an elephant in the room, and the elephant is called dual licensing. In my opinion, this is a more severe abuse of open source than what Amazon does.

When RMS introduced GPL the idea was to make everyone share their code, and make the world a happy place full of free Software. Dual licensing abuses this sincere intent to induce fear in commercial users and make them pay.

So using a dual-licensing scheme prevents people from considering authors of SSPL the new leaders of the open-source community.

<comment><USER12> You might find it interesting that Stallman supports selling exceptions to the GPL (i.e. dual licensing). You can read more about it on the FSF blog [1] but the post ends with the following:

> I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I > will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed.

[1] [https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling- exceptions](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions)

<comment><USER42> OK, if RMS approves it, it's not an abuse, who am I to argue? Still, the goal of open-source, copyleft and permissive flavours alike, is to "get programs freed", not to establish a fairer distribution of the cash flow. So when someone introduces a new superrestrictive license and starts selling exceptions right away, their earnesty can naturally be questioned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Hopefully, this is illegal in two-party consent states (for audio recordings)... but I bet that they will get those laws repealed.

</comment><comment><USER44> Open-Source is alive, well and functioning as intended. Tens of thousands of Open-Source projects are producing the software that is driving most of today's tech.

To a venture capitalist, Open-Source is a marketing strategy. VCs would like to profit from the popularity of Open-Source by inserting themselves in the cash flow. But the cash flows in Open-Source are periphery. And the periphery is a humble position for a VC.

</comment><comment><USER45> This article calls it a lack of leadership in open source, but the reality is Bezos is exploiting _everyone_ using Amazon, from people selling shower curtain hooks to video encoding software, open source deployed across AWS, corrupt tax deals and more. Leadership in open source won't instill ethics or charity in the world's richest man who demands his own not-employees work so hard they must sprint to their lunch break or be fired.

Amazon is accused of using sales data belonging to companies selling products on their platform to help them select 10,000s of products to clone and sell in direct competition to their vendors.

[https://www.geek.com/news/amazonbasics-is-copying-all-the- be...](https://www.geek.com/news/amazonbasics-is-copying-all-the-best- products-on-amazon-and-selling-them-for-less-1652879/)

They have copied software hosted on AWS in the past too, whatever proprietary software you're hosting on AWS is hemorrhaging privileged usage data they will happily use against you.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/amazon_copies_partn...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/amazon_copies_partner_products/)

<comment><USER46> > Amazon is accused of using sales data belonging to companies selling > products on their platform

Why does this sales data belong to the companies and not Amazon, if they are using the platform? Is it unethical to copy a product or software in a non- infringing way?

<comment><USER45> I think that data belongs to the merchants, just like an S3-buckets logs belong to the developer. It has to be that way or who else has a claim on the data? HP for printing it? Microsoft because it was sent by email in Office? The EU suspects it is anti-competitive to allow Amazon as a vendor to cherrypick items to clone based on data Amazon collect as a platform.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-27/amazon-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-27/amazon- s-copy-cat-products-targeted-as-eu-quizzes-smaller-rivals)

<comment><USER47> So Amazon shouldn't be allowed to create any products, or must ignore the data it needs to plan logistics?

<comment><USER45> If you host your website on AWS and store invoices on S3, Amazon can blindly enter your market with a competing offering and it might lose money, or they can go through your invoices and decide to copy your product because they see how profitable you are. The EU's theory is, if this is what is happening, it gives Amazon an unfair advantage and they shouldn't be leveraging your data against you to compete with you.

<comment><USER48> > If you host your website on AWS and store invoices on S3, Amazon can blindly > enter your market with a competing offering and it might lose money, or they > can go through your invoices...

it is totally absurd to suggest they're looking through customers S3 data.

<comment><USER49> Who's going to stop them and who's going to investigate them?

I think Americans often ignore the reason behind the EU's deep concerns around privacy and regulation is simply because EU lawmakers have _no other power_ over American corporations. Simply none. The most they can do is excessive financial penalties. They cannot jail Bezos. But what they can do, is impose an absurd financial penalty. Amazon will appeal. It will go to court, and the US State Department will try to help Amazon (an American corporation after all, representing American jobs and American workers) and the penalty will be reduced. The EU public is happy, the EU stuck it to Amazon! But they didn't face any significant consequence for their action, and never will.

If however, this happened in the US, it can get thorny for Amazon. A "lowly" judge in Texas can compel Bezos, the richest man in the world, to appear in court. The implicit threat being that, being in non-compliance would escalate the case until it reached the highest courts, which can compel the Federal Govt. to take action to compel Bezos.

A US judge has that power. No judge in any other country has it. Every other country has no reason to believe Amazon will do as it says. Only some have the power to impose the kind of regulations like GDPR, EU being America's close trading and diplomatic partner.

<comment><USER47> You can. You can supply your own keys if you think a company is insane enough to tank its multi billion dollar platform to steal your product.

<comment><USER49> I mean sure, for the specific case of storing financial reports in s3, you have a technical solution that works. My point still stands for abhorrent monopoly behavior of some US corps outside of the US.

Amazon did not get where it is by being nice (in fact, this HN post is about that aspect of their behavior). They're rational, they will abide by all laws _where they need to_, including regulations (you can't call in favors all the time). Without regulations, this behavior is incentivized. Even with regulations, there is an ultimate get out of free card if the regulation is non-American.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> These are the bullets from the article:

 _It takes open-source code produced by others, runs it as a commercial service and gives nothing back to the commercial entity that produces and maintains the open source, thereby intercepting the monetization of the open source._

 _It forks projects and forcibly wrestles control away from the commercial entity that produces and maintains the open-source projects, as it did in the case of Elasticsearch._

 _It hijacks open-source APIs and places them on top of its own proprietary solutions, thereby siphoning off customers from the open-source project to its own proprietary solution, as it did with the MongoDB APIs._

Check, check, check. Remember RMS' screed? "Only the _writing of software_ should be paid for, the using of it is an inherent right of everyone and should not make any remuneration requirements on the user."

Back when he wrote that he was mad because companiies wrote code and charged big fees just to use it. He felt that was unfair. But now the shoe is on the other foot, and big companies are just "users" they aren't writing the software, so why should they pay for it? And while RMS was happy to have an architect use CAD software that someone else paid to have written, to design the houses that they sold for big bucks to their own clients, I don't think he thought it all the way through.

The missing bit here is that the "using of software" has a value. Whether you are using a better C compiler than your competitors so your compiled code runs faster than theirs, or you are using a distributed database to offer a scaled up database service that is impractical for an individual to equip and maintain. The whole reason people paid for software in the first place is because _it accelerated the value they could create._ And when that delta in value, that was worth significant money to them. Still is. That is why electronic CAD software still gets big bucks from its users, the same with packages like Adobe studio.

And guess what? When you use someone's software, and you are getting additional value that is accruing to you, if you didn't pay anything to the person who created it and maintains it, they feel cheated. Surprised? I am not.

When the software manufacturers of old found people that used their software without paying for it, they called them Pirates, and Crooks, and all manner of ill names. They turned to technology, and licensing legalize, to create ways they could pursue those people to make them pay. Not unlike the folks at Redis changing their licenses to make it harder for people like Amazon to "pirate" their software. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

There is nothing "free" about Free Software as RMS envisions it, it is just a structural way for the users of the software to rip off the people who wrote it by capturing all of the value gained by using that software to develop or provide a product or service.

It has always been true that software vendors were often extortionate in their pricing while escaping all liability by disclaiming the software did anything. If you fixed _that_ problem, then we will be in a much better place.

</comment><comment><USER51> Isn't this what GPLv3 is suppose to prevent ? Commercial Entities seems to hate it, there must be a reason, probably because they cannot 'cheat' with it.

<comment><USER52> IANAL but as I understand it, GPLv3 prevents "tivoization" and AGPLv3 prevents running modified services without releasing the source code. Corporations particularly hate AGPLv3.

<comment><USER53> what's the difference? unmodified vs. modified code?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Unpopular Opinion: Maybe it would be a good if API's were subject to copyright protection.

<comment><USER55> Wasn't that part of why Oracle v Google was disliked?

<comment><USER54> Yes. That's why it's an unpopular opinion! But I'm still not sure it's a wrong one.</comment></comment></comment>


Functional Programming in Python - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-prog.html

<comment><USER2> According to Guido, he wants to drop functional programming constructs in Python.

<http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=98196>

What's interesting is the reasons he gives:

"Why drop lambda? Most Python users are unfamiliar with Lisp or Scheme, so the name is confusing; also, there is a widespread misunderstanding that lambda can do things that a nested function can't -- I still recall Laura Creighton's Aha!-erlebnis after I showed her there was no difference! Even with a better name, I think having the two choices side-by-side just requires programmers to think about making a choice that's irrelevant for their program; not having the choice streamlines the thought process."

Basically he wants to dumb down the language to make it more appealing to the mainstream programmer crowd. He wants another java. In the end, I think that mentality is a death sentence for the language.

<comment><USER3> People continue to bring this post up. It is 2 years old, and Guido has said he will not be dropping functional constructs in Python.

And the reason he wanted to remove them is not because he wants to 'dumb down' the language, but rather because list comprehensions do what filter/map/reduce can do 9 times out of 10 but end up a lot more legible. He says as much in that post. But again, if you really want those functions, they still exist in Python and will exist in the future.

<comment><USER4> I was under the impression (from documentation, not from experience) that map/filter were the more "optimal" way to do things when you had a choice. I certainly find them more intuitive then the alternatives.

Another feature is the nested defines - that is quite nice (considering that you can put very little into a lambda).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like a good read... sadly, it was useless since half the code blocks lost their formatting and linebreaks, rendering it unreadable.

also: article is from 2001, talks about _new_ features in Python 2!</comment>