Maybe the author should consider a more explicit proprietary for liability purposes and clarity about revocability, exclusivity, transferability, et al, but for now any user should assume he can choose to do whatever tomorrow and proceed with caution.
Because open source has a very specific definition which the licensing on this application does not conform to. The ability to produce derived works is a key attribute of open source.
And I understand that these are your thoughts, but what I'm looking for is a clear and legally enforceable license, which seems to still be missing.
I would love to know the very specific definition of open source you are referring too. I believe there are multiple very specific definitions that are drastically different, from Stallman's "Free Software" to "Open Source" to "Creative Commons" and the flavors in-between. The proliferation of Open Source Licenses seems to suggest that it's not as clear as your myopic viewpoint suggests.
"The ability to produce derived works is a key attribute of open source." Where did you get that gem from?
"but what I'm looking for is a clear and legally enforceable license, which seems to still be missing." As far as I know the only OS License that has been deemed enforceable is GNU General Public License.
It's free software and the code is viewable, what's so hard to understand?
> As far as I know the only OS License that has been deemed enforceable is GNU General Public License.
The OSI recognizes a number of different licenses, as do the attorneys of the numerous individuals and companies making use of them.
> It's free software
It's not, unless I have a legal right to redistribute a modified copy.
"Open source" and "free software" both have requirements to meet their respective definitions. And additonally, "source is viewable" is not the same thing as a license.
OpenSource.org doesn't own the definition of "Open Source." It's a concept and idea interpreted and implemented by lots of people in different ways meaning different things.
No one gets to "own" what open source means.
But, in their definition: "The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software."
All that says is that derived works are allowed under the same terms as the original software, which technically could enforce a royalty payment to the original for any derivative, how would that sit with you?
You're conflating community and cultural definitions with legal precedents and enforceability. GNU GPL is the only enforceable one in a US (and I think UK) court of law.
In the end of the day, what's the argument - you want the software creator to use a LICENSE you approve of or else not call their software release "free" or "open" because you feel that misleading?
Literally the purpose of the Open Source Initiative is to provide definition to what open source is and is not, and to prevent openwashing by companies and individuals presenting their non-open software as open source.
I'm not going to argue with someone who thinks open source is a feeling subject to their own personal interpretations in lieu of license.
> OpenSource.org doesn't own the definition of "Open Source."
Don't they, though? "Open Source" is not even a natural turn of phrase like "Free Software" is. Open Source is a strange phrase made up to describe a specific thing, and that thing is not that the source is available to be viewed.
edit: Also, thinking that the GPL is the only enforceable software license is just strange.
I was watching a stream at one time (wish I had a link, but it was a Microsoft project), and they called that concept 'source open' (viewable but not not modifiable).
"Open Source" is not a strange phrase. It's the natural phrase for software that doesn't keep its source secret (or "closed", a common synonym for secret). This is so natural that the intelligence community has a parallel definition of "open source" that refers to non-secret/publicly available intelligence sources.
I understand that in practice, ESR successfully muscled others out and claimed effective cultural ownership of the phrase, but that doesn't mean that no one else is allowed to try to stake their claim and see if it sticks.
I personally think the unlimited redistribution clauses that are mandatory for "Open Source" licenses have caused some serious problems. Commercial vendors have improperly conflated the distribution of source code with the complete inability to make any money from it.
The problem, of course, is not that the source is available and people are free to tweak and understand what's happening on their own machines, but that the licenses which open-source programs grew up under made serious commercial sales effectively impossible. The only business model that's viable is selling support. Compare the market caps of Oracle and Microsoft to Red Hat for an illustration of the comparative effectiveness of these models.
Stallman at least swapped commercial viability out for the infectious nature of copyleft, intended to keep as much software free and shareable as possible. Permissive BSD/MIT family licenses just give it up.
The argument you've started here isn't meaningful. The project we're talking about doesn't (AFAICT) declare any license, so the fact that it's not open source (in the usual sense of "released under an open-source license") hardly warrants arguing.
The "problematic" bit is that the project's page describes it as open-source, says "you can even make improvements", etc., though the project isn't actually licensed that way (or at all).
You are obviously trying to underhandedly gain adoption to then turn commercial.
It's perfectly fine to give out free versions with restrictions on redistribution and commercial use. Publishing the source code in such an arrangement is even laudable.
But it is not Open Source. Those words have meaning, and I have no doubts that you know as much. E
ven if not: I assure you that 90%+ of your contributors are under the impression that they are contributing to a FOSS project as it is commonly understood.
If you are using the free Github plan, you're also breaking their terms.
Well I can't actually find the license, if one even exists.
You link to your "Thoughts on Free and Open Source." from the github repo, which gives a reasonable explanation of what you are looking for in a license and why. It concludes
> So what I’m thinking based on my experience:
> MIT License + The following exceptions:
> [...]
But I can't find anything saying you've actually released the software under such a license instead of just thinking about it. Ideally the license would reside in a license file in the git repo like is fairly standard these days.
Until a license is declared, this is (c) Wonder Unit, All Rights Reserved, which, unless I'm mistaken, is the authors intent for now.
From Github on licenses:
> You're under no obligation to choose a license. However, without a license, the default copyright laws apply, meaning that you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work. If you're creating an open source project, we strongly encourage you to include an open source license.
People generally don't want a new license or a modified license. In my experience, software licenses at big organizations are a bereaucratic nightmare. Often, you just want something on the pre-approved list.
That aside, you seem to be conflating "free as in speech" (FOSS) with "free as in beer" (freeware, or how most people treat WinRAR) in some parts of that writeup. Ardour is the usual example of software that's the former without being the latter (you can download the source code for free if you have the know-how to compile it yourself, but a donation is required to download the pre-built direclty-installable binary).
It's also problematic for educational institutions even if they happen to be tolerant of a little bit of colorful language here and there. By charging $30 a seat for the "educational" version and wanting to forbid educational institutions from distributing the "free" version, you're punishing the Goonies-tolerant organizations for Goonies-intolerance. Not to mention the need to define what "educational institution" means.
Being concerned about preventing others from making money off this ("If we struggle to make it free, you can’t be paid") seems to also run counter to the stated reason for making it free in the first place ("We will make money from creating great stories, not selling overpriced niche software.").
There's also the problem of longevity. If Wonder Unit, Inc. goes belly-up, then its non-FOSS storyboard editor does, too. An actually-FOSS license means there's at least some chance of the broader FOSS community keeping it alive, if only so that they can say "well hang on, Linux has awesome creative/multimedia tools, too - and we don't even have to pretend GIMP is one of them anymore".
All that said, the MIT license is probably not the right fit for Storyboarder itself (but is certainly a good fit for the underlying libraries; same with the ISC license) based on your criteria. A strict copyleft license - like the GNU GPL - might actually be more up your alley, since it would force anyone hoping to make a buck off your hard work to release their source code and allow others (you included) to do the same and make a buck off their hard work. If they don't comply, sue 'em.
Of course, even that one educator's little stunt of cloning your repo and removing all references to Wonder Unit would run afoul of both the MIT and ISC licenses, so you'd still be covered if you took the legal approach to going medieval on his Goonies-intolerant ass.
All in all, it doesn't really matter to me (as a Linux-using end user) what license you opt to use for Storyboarder (I use plenty of non-free software day-to-day), as long as there actually is a license so that I know whether or not I'm legally allowed to even use the software (let alone redistribute it, modify it, package it up for a Linux distro's package manager/repositories, etc.).
Even with all that aside, though, Storyboarder looks like an amazing tool, and the fact that it works on something that's not running Windows or macOS is a pretty damn big deal. Kudos, and thanks for your hard work. Whatever the license ends up being, it'll be a valuable contribution in that particular niche of "storyboarders who want to use Linux".
Which implies all rights are reserved and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from the work, which is clearly what the developer wants.
If the author reads this, I can't view the site with the latest Firefox on Android (can't check the desktop one yet). The error is SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP which means that the site and Firefox don't share any cipher so it's really the end of the story.
This site can’t provide a secure connection
wonderunit.com uses an unsupported protocol.
Unsupported protocol
The client and server don't support a common
SSL protocol version or cipher suite.
Chrome says
wonderunit.com uses an unsupported protocol.
ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
All of them on Ubuntu. Maybe browsers on other OSes are more relaxed because it seems that most people can access that site.
There have been several issues and PRs raised trying to add a license to the project. These were never acknowledged by the author, and silently closed after a while.
Honestly, I thought this must be some kind of parody, perhaps a lead-in to April Fool's? I mean if you ever wanted to know what a brogrammer is like, folks, here it is! Even including (in his weird and selfish licensing rant) the part about rms not exercising or showering. And not giving a shit about the code, only caring about the games. It's like a caricature or something. Not to mention the astroturfing happening here in this thread. This whole thing is wonky as shit, and after today I won't be going anywhere near projects created by or associated with this person. He's in the same bucket as Oracle.
I mean, if this is even a real person at a real company and not some elaborate prank. What is going on here?!
It's a strange position that the author takes. It seems that a good part of his reluctance/cautiousness comes from a run-in with some educator who forked the repo and made some aesthetic changes ("removed all the swears") and then scrubbed the fork of any mention of "Wonder Unit":
> The readme, the software, and even the images. Because of the way GitHub works, it now looks like we are contributors on his project.
IANAL, but if Storyboarder was MIT License, this forker couldn't just scrub the license of all mention of Wonder Unit (or whoever was listed as copyright holders), right? But as far as making a fork look like his own project...Sure, that's the risk with any open source venture, but by and large, forks (especially by individual people) don't seem to go anywhere. This forker isn't likely to end up with anything but an outdated buggy copy of a ostensibly popular and evolving product.
It does seems like the creator and his collaborators have put in a non-trivial amount of thought and desire into going OSS, but are also wary of running into any unseen pitfalls. It just seems strange that they've come this far developing the product and putting it in the open; why be hung up about some educator doofus who wants to clean up cuss words in the code/docs, as if he and his ilk present a real threat to what Wonder Unit have made?
I admire your optimism, but I just can't share it.
That licensing rant ends with the line "And it will only cost $30 per seat." (for and education-specific version) while also specifying a plan that would prohibit distribution either by or to education institutions.
I really don't have a problem with commercial software. But schemes like this, trying to get the best of both worlds and in the process undermining the meaning of Free Software always strike me as both destructive and pathetic.
It's not even that hard to properly execute a dual-licensing scheme: they could license the code under GPL, which would make it hard to impossible for others to commercialise. Then, they could offer a commercial license to educational institutions, and would be the only ones allowed to charge for such a version.
But the tone of that blog post makes me think there's more that's wrong with this project than just their licensing.
I didn't say the vendetta was unwarranted. It just reads more like he's getting back at one particular guy than that he's trying to build a business model in the education market.
Right, and even a cursory search would reveal that for license violations, you can file a DMCA takedown request with Github against the offending repository [0]. It literally takes ten minutes and Github is required by law to act immediately and ask questions later. And then at that point, the ball's in the other guy's court. He could file a DMCA Counter Notice with Github to get the repository reinstated, but in doing so, he is swearing under penalty of perjury that he is telling the truth claiming that he didn't violate the original code's license. If the forker didn't credit Wonder Unit as required by their original license [1], well, then clearly Wonder Unit has a case to have the code removed. This isn't Vietnam. There are rules.
> It literally takes ten minutes and Github is required by law to act immediately and ask questions later.
Technically, no. They get the benefit of the DMCA Safe Harbor if they do so, but it is not a legal requirement. If they would be liable for infringement without the safe harbor, staying in it eliminates that liability, but that only matters if GitHub would have been liable (which isn't necessarily the case if the other user would have been.)
The DMCA safe harbor rules aren't mandates, which is why the counternotice side has less compliance (because hosts would rarely be liable to their own users for a erroneous take-down, so the safe harbor on that side doesn't protect them from anything.)
The Github ToC require you to allow forks for public repositories. So a fork on Github is almost literally the only use of this software that they couldn't stop.
I'm reasonably certain that Github would check this when served with a DMCA notice, as well. The ToC read as if they are a reaction to exactly such a case. They don't want it to be possible to infringe copyright with the single click of a button.
But the fork wasn't the problem. The problem was the forker scrubbing attribution, which is against the license it supposedly had at the time. Or, at least, that seemed to have been the problem at the time?
After opening an issue on the license confusion, I finally got my first ever death threat (Yeah me?): "[...] I hope you get through life peacefully. Stay away from AR-15s and don't be following any short Austrians!"
Don't you think that's a bit over the top? So the license is unclear, which maybe means you want to be careful forking it and releasing an alternative version of some sort. But how many people do that? Using the software doesn't pose any risk that I can tell.
Interesting that pains were taken to require an email before downloading, even an extensive blacklist to block throwaway email services like mailinator. Yet, the release is freely available on the linked github page.
@setpixel, your behaviour is very unpleasing and clearly violates the most important principle of hackernews: civility.
"Since long before the web, the anonymity of online conversation has lured people into being much ruder than they'd be in person. So the principle here is: don't say anything you wouldn't say face to face. This doesn't mean you can't disagree. But disagree without calling names. If you're right, your argument will be more convincing without them."
'jjeaff didn't downvote your comment, because as the author of the parent 'jjeaff couldn't downvote your comment. Do note that lots of HNers downvote every comment that complains about downvoting.
You downvoted my comment? That's cold blooded. What's your deal? Did your father not love you enough? OR TOO MUCH? Get over yourself dawg. I'm just responding to your comment. Maybe I'm new to the community here. My account is only 12 years old.
The whole paragraph makes me wonder what went through the author's head …
>And fuck Sony Pictures. They make the worst fucking movies. What does that have to do with free software? Not much. Maybe use free software to make great movies and don't waste money going to a Sony movie? Fuck.
I think that if you look into Music creation on computers you will see that most artist steal plugins and instruments all the time. When someone comes over to have me listen to something that are making I love making fun of how they purchased maybe two things. Then I have them look at my setup and their eyes get big when they see all my stuff is actually paid for.
Heck most of the time I see sublime text it isn't even licensed.
Hi, this is Charles. I made Storyboarder. I used to be in YC in 2006. We are a super small team, making Storyboarder without any funding. We're just trying to make a tool to use on our own movie project. 150k people use Storyboarder and we are struggling to keep up with the response.
Awesome product – really looking forward to playing with this! Love the website copy too :). As I was scrolling through the endless list of cool features, the expected price tag in my head was just rising and when I got to the "Why is Storyboarder free?" had such a good laugh. Kudos!
Scroll down and check out this text. Would love to get inside scoop on this.
"Storyboard Pro - Shitty software that costs $1000? Boords and other online software that just allows you to order images and costs a monthly fee?
Fuck those guys.
And fuck Sony Pictures. They make the worst fucking movies. What does that have to do with free software? Not much. Maybe use free software to make great movies and don't waste money going to a Sony movie? Fuck.
"Free software" and "open source" have very clear meanings in software industry. Nobody can force you to use them correctly but don't get angry or even act surprised when people complain that you are wrong and even deceitful (when the error doesn't seem naive).
If you go to a flight engineer and say that a plane has a high risk of stalling, first thing the engineer thinks would be a problem in the aerodynamics, not some engine problem, which would not make sense according to the dictionary definition: Stalling: Stop running, typically because of an overload on the engine. (Random example from the top of my head and my example can theoretically be very wrong, but I hope my point is clear).
I agree with you on "open source", that term was basically introduced by the OSI and people still stick to the OSI definition, but I cannot agree with you on the term "free", that word has a very long history of meaning gratis long before the FSF.
I personally understand different things when I hear that an application is "free" vs that it is "free software" [1].
It also helps to look at the more correct terms to use when talking about a different kind of "free" [2].
It doesn't actually matter, but even if we dig the actual root of the word, and its usage, we see that the "libre" meaning precedes the "kostenlos" (without monetary cost). It meant "noble, free person" in the proto-Germanic [3]. If you say that someone is a free person, no sane person would think that he/she can be owned for free. So the phrase "free software" is a very unsuitable substitute for "free to redistribute" or "free to use", even when you ignore the industry jargon. License to use it is free, not the software.
I like how you include that. It makes the page different than the usual sanitized PR/marketing speak that is common. However, I don't know much about Morin and Vaynerchuk. What's are some of the annoying things about them?
Buried deep in the marketing page is a dynamic shot generator powered by typing in keywords?! I don't know much about video production but this seems insanely cool.
I'm not surprised. I'm not really in that biz, so it's just really cool to me that such a thing exists. I love coming across applications of tech that, to us engineers, are pretty simple but to the user are game changing.
> When I look at people like Richard Stallman, I just don’t know what they want out of life, but it’s certainly not to cultivate great taste, or to make great art. He seems to want to politicize some open source agenda as a religion to the detriment of taking a shower or exercising. I fail to see what he is trying to achieve. He seems to connect with only certain types of people - definitely not me.
The software looks very impressive, and the marketing page really sells it well.
I know next to nothing about storyboarding, and I can see easily see the value-proposition of it.
The author himself seems like quite the character too, judging both from the comments in this thread and on some of the off-hand remarks in the marketing material.
Wow, I feel really bad for the authors of this wonderful free software.(Even though I liked the previous Storyboard Foundation build better...) Everyone hating on the project because it doesn't have a normal license is a weird thing to complain about. This software is for artists; we just use software and we don't really care about the license. We use paid and free software. That is the only different to the end user. Is it paid or free? Software that is open-source has little to no effect on me directly as an artist. I don't edit the code, I use the software.
That is not smart. "Artist" or not does not preclude one from the enforcement of law.
Its like saying; "I'am just going to build a sculpture right here.... I don't really care about the codes or who owns the land, I am an artist so rules don't apply to me!"
This looks awesome; a quick look at the source shows it uses Electron. How feasible would it be to package as a Chrome app? I would be awesome in education, but a lot of our students use Chromebooks.
Some do, some don't. Increasing numbers of them have touchscreens though. Also, some of them have access to the Android Play store, so if it can be packaged as an Android app, that might also work. I don't know what sort of API's chromebooks have for pens though.
Alternately as a web-app, but again, not sure what APIs you have access to - I recall there being a stylus web-api about 10 years ago, created by wacom, but it died.
I would rather pay for Free Software than use zero cost Non-Free Software.
Edit:
To elaborate, if you take the time to learn how to use this, and incorporate it into your workflow, you're at the mercy of the developer. If they decide to stop distributing it, and you get a new computer, then you're not even legally allowed to install it.
Just had a play; stylus input works a treat, as does mouse/trackpad, but using a touchscreen (finger, or 'dumb stylus') doesn't seem to let me draw continuous lines at all. A _lot_ of laptops have touchscreens nowadays, much fewer have 'real' styluses.
I am no story designer and just checked it out out of interest.
For whatever reason drawing (using touchpad on my laptop) is super slow (running it in Ubuntu 16.04) - is it expected and I should be using tablet to draw, or this is some issue with my video drivers or something along these lines?
This is odd because the "download link" that gets mailed seems to be a MailChimp email subscribe link too. What the heck? I wanted a download link, not a subscription to whatever marketing you want to send my way later...
"An error occurred during a connection to wonderunit.com. Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s). Error code: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP"
This is genius! As a designer & storyteller I love this and I’d like to support you guys with my team’s UI design power (we occasionally help open source or charity projects for free). Reach out if you guys could need some UI design help. Details in my bio.
It's a nice gesture but why not email them directly with the contact info on the website? Maybe I'm being a prig but this post seems like an ad, free or not
You're not alone in your sentiment. There are a few posts around here that do not "feel" like a typical Hacker News post. So my astro-turfing alarms are going off.
Granted, this looks like a good tool (at minimum: a very good marketing page), and the practice of astroturfing is unfortunately utilitarian (aka: it works ) in many contexts. But there's something offputting about some of the comments on this story right now.
With that being said: I'm not entirely sure if this tool is best suited for the hacker news audience? Its definitely more of an art tool, while the audience around here is more programmer / technical.
https://twitter.com/charlesforman/status/909863346127671296
https://wonderunit.com/thoughts-on-free-and-open-source/