alt Hacker NewsIf I publish my code under an open source license, you are free to take it and build any community around it you want.
If I keep my code proprietary, you are beholden to the shape of the community I dictate.
The license is first, it precedes, any notion about community.
Replies
Seems like you aren't actually disagreeing at all?
First you're just disagreeing about the relative importance of "community" vs the license used. This does not seem like an important distinction, blog rhetorical structuring aside, since the value of each is really "it depends" (in the extreme, neither community or license matter if no one ever sees or hears of the code, for instance).
Second:
> If I publish my code under an open source license... If I keep my code proprietary...
That isn't even the distinction that the author is making. They're only talking about communities around open source code. They spell out the dichotomy quite explicitly:
> This is why I don't care as much anymore about a project being under a copyleft free software license or a non-copyleft free software license.
I don’t disagree, but this ignores some of what we have learned about critical masses and network effects. If everyone can just take their own copy with no interaction, many won’t join the community and it may never reach a critical mass despite and because of its openness.