Even according to Stallman, free software never required any kind of support, open development, or commit history. You can publish a tarball on a web server, and that counts as free software.
i.e. publishing source code doesn’t sign you up for a lifelong obligation. People can fork it, or not fork it.
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Practically speaking, I might think of SourceGraph as something like Android.
Is Android open source? Yes. [2]
Does it have huge proprietary parts? Yes.
It is designed for collaborative development? Not really unless you work for a big company, and are paid to work on Android. (That said, I'm sure there are hobbyists / "people in their basement" that do meaningful things with Android source code -- and actually I think that is how some open phone companies started)
Is it better than it's open rather than closed? Yes. Multiple competitors to Google use Android source code, e.g. Amazon has built phones off of it. That is good thing IMO.
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[1] On my own open source projects, there is a community and best-effort support, and I really encourage that! But the point is that there are MULTIPLE valid project models under the name "open source".
Throwing code over the wall is actually valid open source, and it actually benefits society IMO. It's still valuable, even if you STOP doing it, as SourceGraph has done.
It's distinct from "I get free stuff that I like using"
There could be a different name for "unfunded or independently funded open source", but the funny thing is that the term "open source" originated as a corporate-friendly alternative to "free software"
[2] As a tangent, I also think Android has a really suboptimal and cloud-slanted architecture, but for this discussion, let's just use it as a an example of corporate open source
>I don't see any attempt to veil it -- there was specific mention of revenue and competitors
Here you go:
>Although very very few companies used our open-source version to avoid paying us, we did see it cause a lot of annoyance for devs who were asked by their management to try cloning our product or to research our codebase to give their procurement team ammunition to negotiate down our price. This honestly was just a waste of everyone's time.
you have misused the Stallman quote .. the idea is that the code is always available to rebuild and recompile.. the commerce between vendors or users is not specified. In the case you apparently defend, the source code is no longer available to build the complete product.
Did SourceGraph make any promises about a community or free support? (honest question)
I think your expectations may be off, perhaps learned from corporate marketing. "Open source" by itself does not mean necessarily
1. you get any support
2. there is a community [1]
3. you're entitled to all future source code by that person or company, whether under the same project name or not.
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It could be that SourceGraph has broken some promises, and that IS pretty typical of VC-backed companies.
But so far I don't see evidence of that.
Quoting my comment: https://lobste.rs/s/tg5vwi/sourcegraph_went_dark#c_vnaqxu
Even according to Stallman, free software never required any kind of support, open development, or commit history. You can publish a tarball on a web server, and that counts as free software.
i.e. publishing source code doesn’t sign you up for a lifelong obligation. People can fork it, or not fork it.
---
Practically speaking, I might think of SourceGraph as something like Android.
Is Android open source? Yes. [2]
Does it have huge proprietary parts? Yes.
It is designed for collaborative development? Not really unless you work for a big company, and are paid to work on Android. (That said, I'm sure there are hobbyists / "people in their basement" that do meaningful things with Android source code -- and actually I think that is how some open phone companies started)
Is it better than it's open rather than closed? Yes. Multiple competitors to Google use Android source code, e.g. Amazon has built phones off of it. That is good thing IMO.
---
[1] On my own open source projects, there is a community and best-effort support, and I really encourage that! But the point is that there are MULTIPLE valid project models under the name "open source".
Throwing code over the wall is actually valid open source, and it actually benefits society IMO. It's still valuable, even if you STOP doing it, as SourceGraph has done.
It's distinct from "I get free stuff that I like using"
There could be a different name for "unfunded or independently funded open source", but the funny thing is that the term "open source" originated as a corporate-friendly alternative to "free software"
[2] As a tangent, I also think Android has a really suboptimal and cloud-slanted architecture, but for this discussion, let's just use it as a an example of corporate open source