If this project has other contributors, imagine how betrayed they must be.
Opening the project as FOSS until it becomes popular and then closing it to make money is such a scummy tactic
Fork the last commit with a LGPL commit?
GPL mentions explicitly that it is irrevocable, where as LGPL doesn't mention anything about it. IANAL, but it looks like there is a case for irrevocable without violation of clauses by default https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4012/are-licenses-irrevocable-by-default#4013
For people considering contributing to FOSS in the future, maybe check for irrevocable clauses? I wish licenses selectors https://choosealicense.com highlighted this part more clearly.
Also depends on the contributions terms.
If they were a traditional FOSS, they can't change the terms without all contributors agreeing or removing/modifying the contributed code so that they no longer have ownership of their authored sections.
Either way, it's a dick move.
Can't anyone just fork one of the LGPL versions and start a new project?
@fidodo @SkyNTP Sure, but unless that someone keeps it updated that fork will be useless soon. And that looks like a lot of (unpaid) work.
I like the project (was surprised to even see my user name in the contributor list) but stopped using it because I couldn’t get accessibility working (mainly no full keyboard shortcuts).
For me, buying a yearly developer license to have a few GUI pop-ups at work is something I’ll only consider if I run out of options.
Never sign over copyright. If they didn't, they can sue.
I've had to sign specific paperwork regarding copyright for just big projects, many smaller ones take contributions without paperwork, which would leave the rights with each contributor. They be better dot their i's and cross their t's, it just the legal fees could isnk them before making any money from the commercial license.
IANAL, just in case.
If any contributors haven't signed a contract letting them close the source, this opens them up to lawsuits.
Does the LGPL really allow that or did they make all the contributors agree to allow their code to be relicensed?
Previous versions licensed under LGPL will remain licensed as such. The current maintainers have no obligation to contribute distributing the older versions, but they aren't permitted to prevent others from distributing it or modifying or doing anything else that was permitted by the license.
And, yes, to change from GPL/LGPL to another license you would need all of the contributors to consent, or to rewrite the parts that were contributed by anyone who doesn't agree with the license change. Since it looks like there only one contributor according to the GitHub page, this probably wasn't too difficult.
Was there only ever one contributor? There's only one now, but all the old commits have been removed.
They apparantly had a police of not accepting merge requests or even code snippets.
Ahh huh, I wonder if this was the plan the whole time then
Hmm that’s a scary conspiracy. Seems like checking that there are at least a handful of contributors needs to be part of adding new dependencies.
@ebits21 #PySimpleGUI #python #opensource
🎶 Another bites the dust. 🎶
Moves like this are a bit... strange? It was on github. There are 1.8k forks, with intact LGPL. What is happening here? Is their dev work worth 99$/year ? Not saying people don't deserve to get paid for their work. I'm just not seeing the business case for this.
They claim that not enough people donated, hence the change in licensing. But yeah, I don’t see the business case. I imagine commercial devs will just move on to something else.
It’s just a wrapper for other GUI libraries.
That and I’m sure it’ll be forked.
Yeah, if people didn't think it was worth donating to before, they sure as shit aren't going to pay for it now that it's also closed source. What's their value prop even supposed to be here?
How else do you expect their time to be paid for?
Donations?
Hey, A lot of people spent their precious free time to look at your project, test it out, and talking about it to their colleagues. How are you going to pay us for wasting however many minutes or hours of time spent on your supposedly open source project before you did the bait-and-switch?
(By "you" I meant the developer.)
This set of actions (making non Foss and deleting Foss code) will essentially blacklist it from any company that has used it in the past.
Last place I was at the process for getting legal to review and sign off on specific versions of a Foss was about 6 months, with one of the fields on the form being alternatives.
Whether you are a Hobbyist User or Commercial User, you can start using PySimpleGUI at no cost. To get started with a 30-day trial period, first install Python and then
python -m pip install pysimplegui
...
You can try PySimpleGUI for 30 days, after which you will need to Sign Up. Hobbyist users sign up at no cost, and Commercial Users subscribe at $99/year. For more details, see PySimpleGUI.com/pricing.
How is this trial enforced?
How is this trial enforced?
Since it's now closed source and they distribute what is possibly/probably/presumably a binary blob, the same way all the others are enforced. With some kind of DRM date checking whatever.
Does pip really allow binary blobs? That effectively makes it zero security.
To be fair it has some valid use cases, take ruff for example.
But pip/pypi does not have any proper security at all, and just blocking binary blobs wouldn't make a difference when you can freely execute any python code during installation - Much like downloading an executable from any site online, you are expected to make sure you can trust whoever uploaded what you are downloading. You could say the same about other sites like GitHub too.
There is a fair difference still between source available and binary blob. The blob has essentially no chance of ever being audited.
Take a look at the Source Distribution files: https://pypi.org/project/PySimpleGUI/#files
As far as I can see, it's still all just Python.
The user has to have a key to use the software, no free account then no key after 30 days unless the developer paid for the key.
The amount of people who feel like they're entitled to the previous code and are calling the license change scummy make me sick.
This developer put their own free time into this project, they made sure to not accept anyone else's code, and they understandably felt they deserve to be paid for their time. Whether this was a smart move is another matter entirely.
The one case where I can understand being upset is if you donated shortly before this happened. But otherwise, you should really reflect on how you're giving back to the people who make the tools you feel oh so entitled to.
The previous code exists under an irrevocable open source license, so they are entitled to it. Also, fuck off.
Is the license revoked because the dev deleted the previous code on their side?
Of course it isn't. At least have your points make sense if you're gonna behave like an ass.
The amount of people who feel like they’re entitled to the previous code and are calling the license change scummy make me sick.
But you're not sick at the fact that they licensed it as LGPL just to get their product popular and then said "I got the eyeballs I wanted, time to milk this!"
This developer put their own free time into this project
When your code is open source the expectation is that you are sharing code with people for free so that the community can enjoy the work and hopefully you gain respect and popularity as your product matures and a lot of people utilize it. People might even fund you for your hard work if you become popular enough. Maybe a whole new product gets developed on top of your product and you become important. That's how a lot of successful open source projects work.
If you are entitled to quick success, we are entitled to our ideology around FLOSS.
they made sure to not accept anyone else’s code.
So they just wanted people to test their product and market them for free? Who's entitled here?
(Also that argument is not going to work in court when people sue them for violating LGPL terms)
and they understandably felt they deserve to be paid for their time
What about the compensation for people who beta-tested this product for free and recommended them to others?
But otherwise, you should really reflect on how you’re giving back to the people who make the tools you feel oh so entitled to.
The giving back part is increasing respect, popularity, and a community of contributors who will grow YOUR product for free. Don't act like this small project is a gift from God.
Also, the author literally didn't accept contributions. That just means they were looking for free marketing and eyeballs. As soon as it was convenient for them to pull the rug they did so without even thinking about the community. Who's the scumbag, you tell me?
I wonder if you typed that with a straight face. If so then you are wildly out of touch with how FOSS and the democratization of FOSS development works.
You use words like “entitled” as a derogatory term when you clearly don’t understand that yes, the community is entitled because that’s how these FOSS licenses work. And people have every right to be upset when the status quo changes for a project they have also helped develop and helped get popular.
So either you are trolling, or you are clueless. Either way you should be ignored and this is as much time I’m going to waste writing this comment.
Fuck off
You don't have any good counterarguments, so you resort to insults.
I wanted to elaborate, but then decided that a simple fuck off is much more appropriate and gets to the gist of the content, you know?
fuck off isn't really an insult.
Although rug-pulls like this are dubious to say the least, neither should FOSS contributors be hauled over the coals simply because, to justify continuing to commit more and more time to a project. they need to generate some kind of revenue. If more FOSS advocates donated reasonable amounts of money to the projects they use, this kind of bollocks would be much less frequent, and the long term stability of projects would increase dramatically. Sadly, way to many people donate nothing. And way too many companies, as well.
This is so sad. I'm especially bothered about the force push to change history. This was a great library. Now I guess it's time to either use the fork or find something else.
The history change was probably to avoid violating the LGPL. If any contributors don't agree with the change (or you don't want to do the onerous task of getting consensus as required) you should remove their contributions from the work you make closed source as the contributions still come under LGPL until the original author consents to the change.
Or at least that's what people said here.
That's incorrect in that you have to remove the contributions from source code or get permission. Rewriting git history doesn't get permission or remove history. It just hides it.
Bruh. This is why I hate all the open source license that are not GPL. Are not free software. I am not bother to pay for it. But I am bother to not see the code :(
Only to a certain extent.
The problem is that a lot of software is very complex and requires full-time development/maintenance. It's simply not possible to work on stuff for free unless this is just a hobby and you can sustain yourself with a main job.
The main thing I have a problem with this instance is the following sequence of events
This tells me:
Welcome to the Python community on the programming.dev Lemmy instance!
Past
November 2023
October 2023
July 2023
August 2023
September 2023