Top all-time · #5568
Chad Whitacre
Personal blog · openpath.chadwhitacre.comprogrammingeconomics
Chad Whitacre's personal blog at openpath.chadwhitacre.com covers programming and economics. Since 2024, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “Relicensing and Rug Pulls”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Chad Whitacre's blog for its essays on Fair Source licensing, open source sustainability, and the history of source-available licences, including reports on self-hosted usage of Sentry.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Relicensing and Rug Pulls5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-03-22
- The Historical Case for Fair Source3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-06-24
- Towards Software Commons3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-02-23
- The Open Source Sustainability Crisis3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-01-22
- Questioning "The Value of Open Source Software"3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-01-25
- Open Source is a Restaurant2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-04-22
What Hacker News says?
Yes! We aim to launch https://fair.io/ next month to promote the term Fair Source for this purpose. Early feedback is guardedly positive, e.g., ESR's take was "very clever." https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/the-historical-case-f...
Comment linking /2024/the-historical-case-for-fair-source/
on “Making the Kinopio source code public”Submitted Questioning "The Value of Open Source Software" as a story · 60 points
HN discussionYou might be interested in fair.io, launching next month. We ran into a similar problem a year ago that ended up stirring up a lot of drama, so we are now promoting the term Fair Source instead of Open Source. Fair Source: https://fair.io/ Our drama: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36971490 Lots more context: https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/the-historical-case-f...
Comment linking /2024/the-historical-case-for-fair-source/
on “Making the Kinopio source code public”Submitted The Open Source Sustainability Crisis as a story · 13 points
HN discussionAgreed. When it first came out in January, I did a write-up and emailed Frank for comment. It wasn't until both my critique and his paper appeared together on HN for the first time that he responded ... with a total non-answer. :rolling_eyes: https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/questioning-the-value... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39340146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39340277
Comment linking /2024/questioning-the-value-of-open-source-software/
on “The slow evaporation of the free/open source surplus”Submitted Relicensing and Rug Pulls as a story · 11 points
HN discussionWith 10,000+ self-hosted users[0] I assume that a number of them do, but I do not have solid receipts. I'm curious as well. [0] https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/widespread-use-of-a-f...
Comment linking /2024/widespread-use-of-a-fair-source-product/
on “GitButler is now fair source”Submitted Relicensing and Rug Pulls as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSentry's experience suggests otherwise, as 10,000+ users from hobbyists up to FAANG companies have been using Sentry under Fair Source terms for five years now. https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/widespread-use-of-a-f...
Comment linking /2024/widespread-use-of-a-fair-source-product/
on “GitButler is now fair source”Submitted The Historical Case for Fair Source as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIn addition to our 100,000 SaaS customers, we also have 10,000+ (unmonetized) self-hosted users: https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/widespread-use-of-a-f... Fair Source is working quite well for us. You should try it. :^)
Comment linking /2024/widespread-use-of-a-fair-source-product/
on “GitButler is now fair source”Submitted Open Source is a Restaurant as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI referenced Dirk's original "single-vendor" paper in the FAQ, "Why should I adopt Fair Source at my company?" fair.io/faq I engaged heavily with a lot of Dirk's work in my historical deep-dive: https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/the-historical-case-f... > Dirk asked in 2021, “What’s next after ‘source-available’?” Our answer is Fair Source. I’ve made the case that it is a good way to resolve tensions that have…
Comment linking /2024/the-historical-case-for-fair-source/
on “Sentry is now Fair Source”Submitted The Open Source Sustainability Crisis as a story · 3 points
HN discussion[disclaimer: Sentry employee] > don't act sad when you alienate swathes of your contributors This is ill-informed, for what it's worth. Our relicensing had essentially no effect on the ratio of commits from outside the company: it went from 3.5% to 3.4%. I wrote about this when OSI published the DOSP paper that we underwrote. https://blog.sentry.io/nows-the-time-for-delayed-open-source... > the company effectively d…
Comment linking /2024/relicensing-and-rug-pulls/
on “Sentry is now Fair Source”Submitted Relicensing and Rug Pulls as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> 'sponsorware' I consider this a case of "Open Source subsidization, not sustainability": https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/the-open-source-susta... Sustainability strongly defined means no hoops.
Comment linking /2024/the-open-source-sustainability-crisis/
on “The Open Source Sustainability Crisis”Submitted Towards Software Commons as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> The solution to open-source sustainability is straightforward: people pay for what they genuinely need. Commercial open-source excels in this aspect! I define this in the post as "Open Source subsidization, not sustainability." https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/the-open-source-susta... It's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. It works for products, but it doesn't work well for libraries, fra…
Comment linking /2024/the-open-source-sustainability-crisis/
on “The Open Source Sustainability Crisis”Submitted Towards Software Commons as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> I'm not sure what your visibility is inside teams, but seeing one of these "BSL" or "fair source" licenses usually terminates the product evaluation with a laugh. Eric Raymond had a similar take. I wrote this response for him: https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/widespread-use-of-a-f... tl;dr Sentry, in addition to 100,000+ SaaS customers, has 10,000+ unmonetized self-hosted users from hobbyists up to FAANG com…
Comment linking /2024/widespread-use-of-a-fair-source-product/
on “Fair Source”Submitted The Open Source Sustainability Crisis as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The historical case for fair source as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Open Source Is a Restaurant as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Relicensing and Rug Pulls as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Post-Open: Towards a Software Commons as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Questioning "The Value of Open Source Software" as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
