A few months back they removed free enterprise license that allowed 10 dev seats, some smaller companies were holding back the updates and looking at the OSS version - I guess, not anymore
First they offered a Free Enterprise tier for 10 seats, they've removed this a few months back, their OSS lacked even some basic things as language support, building it was impossible due to lack of documentation/breakage in the build process for several months and they didn't offer sourcegraph-oss images.
At some point, one individual on Github managed to get it working and his images got 10k+ pulls on DockerHub. That's hardly "nobody". Also, some people removed telemetry from OSS version so Sourcegraph didn't even know that anyone is using it.
Also, they were open-closed-open-closed in the last 5 years.
Their website is a mess, even employees on github are providing contradicting information. Original commit message that relicensed bunch of stuff had errors in it regarding what exactly will be closed source now.
I am using the version you can install via `brew install sourcegraph`, though they seem to have abandoned it to make people install Cody (which requires an account even for local use). I will probably use the Brew version for as long as it works. The major pain point is that it seems to have a timeout for repo discovery at 5s, so you can't just clone all of your GH starred repos and search them this way.
> Individual devs will still be able to use Sourcegraph for free on public code at sourcegraph.com and within our self-hosted free tier on private code.
> Very few individual devs or companies used the limited variant of code search that was open source. The vast majority (99.9%+) used the enterprise product. Maintaining two variants going forward was a big burden on our engineering team that had very little benefit for users.
> Released code can't not be open source anymore...
It can be. You can release under a "source available" license barring it from being used (even compiled), derived, incorporated into other works, making it basically "for eyes only, or we sue you to oblivion".
Many people consider licenses as window decorations, but they are not.
Yes you can't retroactively change licenses, but it's also important to know that just because you can read a source file, the file in question is bona-fide open source or free software.
Many people lack this knowledge from my experience.
We had a Windows CE dev license back in the Cambrian Era which included visibility of the source tree, but God help you if you tried to change it and make your own build.
Solely being able to view source code without other rights absolutely doesn’t make it open source. In general if something isn’t under an open source license it isn’t.
ADDED Unless it’s public domain and then it effectively is.
Further distribution can be put under any license they want but any copy anyone received in the past that was Apache 2 licensed remains such and can be used as before.
So if anyone wants to put a past release online they are free to do so (unless there are parts of the code that were restricted before).
It would be prudent to remove branding where possible but that's mainly a precaution.
nope. If something in jurisdiction would make license invalid that would not mean you can do what you want with the code, that would mean that you can't use that license.
If a jurisdiction releases you but does not prevent you from performing an obligation, licences do not typically consider that a reason for invalidation of the licence.
I think most understand the idea that a project can change its license at any point, but that doesn't apply to previous version. (In this case, any version prior to 5.1.0)
Did anyone actually use the open version? I dimly remember that I looked into it like 2-3 years ago, but all the really interesting stuff was not included in that. The pricing for enterprise was absolutely bonkers, something like 100$ per month&developer, which already made it clear that they are obviously only targeting big players with infinite budget. Seems the pricing is now changed, and it "starts at 5k/year" for some "Enterprise Starter" edition, but despite lots of bullet points it is very unclear to me what the limitations really are. I'm actually really interested in this product and it might be a good addition to our tool set, it's a shame the pricing is so opaque.
OSS version didn't have official Docker images prebuilt, you had to build them yourself and for a long time the OSS build was broken.
A year or two ago they promised they'll fix it or even provide official OSS image, this didn't happen.
One person finally created a working release train on github and was releasing OSS containers, Docker Hub reports it as 10k+ pulls, which is a lot for unofficial image.
I tend to stay away from any 3rd party tool that's not really a main part of infrastructure and requires sales contacts. It's wasting my company time to deal with sales when it comes to a few licenses, just give me a number input and buy button. I also lost some confidence regarding Sourcegraph, as it seems they change their direction, pricing and rules multiple times per year
Yes, I remember the Docker thing, but I also remember that at least the language parsers we were interested in were only supported through some kind of plugin mechanism, which the OSS version did not support, so it was useless for us, so I didn't ever bother testing it.
So basically their "open source" offering wasn't really open source, it wasn't even open core, as you had to build it yourself, the build wasn't working for a long time and even if you managed that, some languages were enterprise-only.
Nice. How to get free marketing by strapping Open Source to your product and writing a bunch of announcements.
I’ve had a few consulting calls with companies where they (or their VCs) want to call their software open source but have no interest in community development and want to block competitors from taking any advantage of it.
I remember looking for Sourcegraph submissions on HN, their CEO's (sqs) first submission to HN was titled "Which Open Source License Should Your Project Use If You Want to Raise VC$?"
It is a good product, so we're tying to put our org in a position to pay for it. But I really don't like this model of intentionally frustrating or obfuscating whether it is open source or not, or not listing/hiding what is or isn't in enterprise vs OSS versions. For example, the fact that starting off open source (assuming you succeeded running the maze of figuring out how to run it), explicitly blocked the path to goto enterprise is a shame, and seems like a bit of a missed business opportunity.
We'll probably see more of these faux OSS projects who hoped for some community/network effect from being OSS to translate into either strong donations or considerable uptake of their enterprise/cloud/managed versions go this route.
To be clear, fully support charging for and paying for SaaS. Would just like be able to know what is in front of me when making build/buy decisions.
I've tried finding out if they still offer the free tier now that the OSS is gone, because one of their employees mentioned it on Github, but failed to find anything. I can see they have a free trial. Their own website is full of broken links and contradicting information due to the frequent licensing/product changes.
I've even found a page still mentioning the OSS version and telling you how easy it is to fire it up.
It also looks like they're now pivoting hard into AI bullshit, and barely want to acknowledge that the reading product even exists? Absolutely bizarre.
Because they figure there's a bigger opportunity cost in the possibility of the big clients using cheaper tiers than in the possible lost customers who won't go for tiers at the current prices if an alternative is available.
You could always add seat limits at lower tiers, truth is that almost no company in my region is paying for Gitlab, but there are plenty that are paying for GitHub. There's also the problem with big customers, you can see it in Gitlab's case, namely they demand a lot of stuff and they have the leverage. I worked at a company like this, we couldn't stop focusing on niche custom dev for Mr Big Buck while our core offering was neglected and we stagnated.
It's really healthy for a company to have a whole spectrum of clients, from people that chip in 2-4$ per month for a minor bump in capabilities and without any support included to big companies that push for exploring new features.
In my opinion, Gitlab is a primary example of feature-creep and it will be the demise of the company.
>In my opinion, Gitlab is a primary example of feature-creep and it will be the demise of the company.
Gitlab was VC funded which means it had little choice but to take on a high risk/high reward approach. It worked fairly well since it IPOed at $12b while it's last round of funding was at under $3b. Good return for VCs. Of course the stock is down over 50% since IPO but that's someone else's problem.
The marginal cost per customer is not that different if it's a small customer or a massive one, so it's much interesting for you to go after the big ones that will generate much more revenue. You miss out on revenue from smaller customers, but your margins are higher (and it's totally possible that the revenue from smaller customers isn't financially directly worth it, if the support costs around them are too much).
Of course that skips the bigger picture like more people knowing and using your products and being happy with them leads to more champions for them doing your sales and marketing work for you, which can create lots of revenue in the long term; but it's pretty much impossible to quantify.
In lots of VC funded companies I always miss a basic pricing for users that don't need much but don't want to use a free tier that will probably dissapear in a year or two when the VC gets nervous.
In every tier there are $49/month "core" users (basic dashboard viewing, no editing, no APM, no monitoring, no tracing...)
In the "Standard" tier you have $99/month "full" users, but you're limited to 5 total users, no SSO, and AFAIK very basic support.
In the "Pro" tier you have $418.80/month "full" users
In the "Enterprise" tier you have $658.80/month "full" users
No wonder people is paying for core users and then juggling generic full users. Although they limit you at 3 concurrent sessions at the same time, and monitor that, and will contact you if you login from different IPs and browsers to the same users.
The most interesting part for me is Pixie... but you can do that for free.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that you need “infinite budget” to pay $100 per month? I pay more for several products and have a quite limited budget. But tools making me more productive or help my business is definitely worth to pay for.
100 USD per developer per month is 1/2 of our whole infrastructure cost at my company.
You could get GitHub enterprise seats for 1/4 of that.
Dealing with sales, contracts and licenses also has some non-zero opportunity costs.
There's life outside the United States, and $100/month is a decent chunk of a junior's salary in many parts of that. Two places I worked at migrated off Microsoft products to FOSS solutions for that reason alone (I was fortunate enough to initiate and complete this process for one of them) — something that has zero business sense according to most HN commenters.
For which products do you pay more than 100$ in license cost per month and developer? I only know prices like these for fairly specific niches, like development environments for very specific hardware/FPGA, or sophisticated physics simulation software. But this is a code search&navigation tool - a nice one, I'll admit, but still. That's 4x the price for GitLab Premium. Almost 2x of the whole Adobe Creative Suite.
Does it make you and all your peers $100 more productive each? Sounds a bit of stretch to me for code search. I don't even think I need to do a code search that bitbucket/GitHub/gitlab search aren't able to provide me every month. To be honest, I don't even think I'd be less productive even without those. Although they are helpful when discussing code that you don't have in your ide at the moment with other people.
I installed the opensource version for fun at work, and synced about 750 repositories. I applied some patches to support OAuth2 proxy and removed the telemetry. It's great software, very fast and it works as intended.
A few months later and 70 registered users, I have a total of 3 users who used it a few times.
Maybe you could create some short demo for people?
I've done a demo and created documentation, 80% of the developers at $MY_COMPANY used Sourcegraph Code Search at least a few times in the past month, some of them are doing a dozen searches per day.
My company lives in code search. Most bug fixes and small enhancements start by investigating code search, and clicking a link from code search to start editing the file.
However it’s not that bad because we work mostly on short lived research projects and it’s not that much to reuse. Public code search and ChatGPT are used much frequently.
Code Search seems a limited market so I would be surprised if their plan wasn't to go after deeper code tooling in the future. Otherwise I don't see how their $2.6 billion valuation made sense. They likely thought that an iterative approach based on human encoded code understanding would allow them to build better systems. Pretty reasonable assumption 1+ years ago. Then GPT3/4 proved that you could just dump data into an AI and probably get an even better result.
Never found a startup on the premise that someone else's product will be inadequate forever.
The recent rewrite of github search has probably made sourcegraph irrelevant. If you may recall, original github search used almost the most horrible algorithm possible. It dropped all punctuation and spacing and just searched for identifiers. No patterns allowed, no quoting allowed. One of the only meta-arguments was filename:xyz.
Now that github has improved its basic search functionality, sourcegraph might be doomed.
I used sourcegraph at Lyft which (at the time) had unlimited money to waste on software tools, and installed the open-source version at Databricks but nobody cared.
Yep I have a small shell script that caches a repo with only the last commit files and runs ripgrep on it. I'll give a go at live grep that's discusses above, that look exciting.
The button on the browser just navigates to the URL `git-peek://https://github.com/name/repo`. How your system handles this git-peek protocol is completely up to you. While the git-peek package does offer to setup a handler for this custom git-peek protocol, I went ahead and set it up manually. Now, my system calls this bash script whenever it encounters the git-peek protocol:
I tend to clone things I'm just having a quick look around in into ~/tmp - sometimes I'm intending to spelunk through the history so I don't fancy having that much data sat on a tmpfs and "running rm -rf ~/tmp/* when I notice it's getting a bit on the large size" is minimal enough effort that it's worth it for having control over when things disappear.
> The recent rewrite of github search has probably made sourcegraph irrelevant.
It only makes it irrelevamt if all your code is hosted on Github.
I'm quite tired of Github-proprietary solutions being hailed as the "industry norm." Or vendors like shipping products and integrations that only work with Github. Git is a decentralized protocol; please treat it like one.
I strongly agree with this sentiment, whether applied to github, AWS, or any other popular platform. The industry should avoid single points of failure.
Care to elaborate how the choice of a person’s equipment and browser relates to GitHub constituting a single point of failure for the industry as the prevalent Git hosting tool?
In my opinion (you may differ), Apple and Google are notorious for locking their users onto their proprietary platforms to milk as much money as they can, no matter at what cost.
So complaining about Github proprietary tools and at the same time supporting Apple and Google for doing the same is a bit contradictory. Should be using an open OS and browser.
Again, the original thread said “The industry should avoid single points of failure”. Neither Apple (Mac) nor Google (Chrome) represent single points of failure for the industry.
From a software eng infra standpoint, in general, ok. But we can look elsewhere.
In the mobile space, for example, it's hard to deny iOS & Android, Appstore & Google Play.
In terms of privacy, the internet is a complete failure with Chrome, Google Analytics, etc.
A large chunk of the most relevant software businesses go to the extent of mandating developers to use Apple products. I experienced this myself, when I wasn't allowed to use a PC running Linux for "security reasons". Like if Apple OS is safer than Arch. That's a big point of failure, in my opinion...
And that's why I believe that requesting a mandatory CLA should drive contributions down in OSS projects. Otherwise, you're basically providing free labor without the counterpart's promise of keeping the code free, which is (should?) be the reason one is making their contributions to start with.
I also don't believe they receive many non-employee contributions (probably because the software is more advanced than most open source projects). You can get a breakdown of their contributions at:
I installed and ran Sourcegraph on my laptop a year or so ago. It was cool, but I didn’t keep it around.
There is a lot of competing technology now, from GitHub’s improved search to new open source LangChain and LlamaIndex support for better document chunking of source code in several languages.
That's part of the impetus behind their Cody product. It uses the code search system as a semantic index. It actually works very well in my experience.
I remember having used a Red Hat (?) tool back in 2002 for understanding the source code of the Brazilian voting machine so we could more easily port it to Windows CE (the 2002 model ran on it initially, then on Linux from 2004-ish). It had a very Motif-like interface. Does anyone else remember its name?
Their support in the demo period sucked, their complex C++ support was lacking, they didn't integrate into modern C++ build systems well, and their prices were insane.
They kept trying to push this "campaign" feature on us, which is an overly-complex auto-refactoring tool that couldn't even support our non-proprietary, well-known build system. For the cost of their license, we instead hired two developers for code refactors, who then went on to make other tooling, and we didn't need to hire someone to babysit their crappy service integration.
I would not say that they had found their niche when speaking to us. Perhaps it has gotten better.
We hired 2 junior developers for maybe 20K more total, in total compensation, than their original quote.
But you (and child) comment made me realize that I don't remember the terms of the proposal, whether it was per year or for 2 years. So it might have been a 1:1, not 1:2.
In the end, their product was just completely insufficient for our needs, and it was clearly just gluing open source tools together. The part we couldn't do as well was the front end, and they clearly put a lot of effort into it. It looked and worked nicely. But that didn't help us when they couldn't parse the code to populate it.
What build system did you use? I thought the JSON compilation database is relatively well supported to generate these days (e.g. used by the language server in VS Code).
The problems we encountered were that they could not rewrite the targets in our build system for the automated refactoring, and any missing include path at all would cause the clang-based tooling they were using to barf.
We just asked ourselves why we would spend so much money on a product when we still had to solve all of the fundamental problems ourselves. We liked the UI, but it wasn't worth the insane license fee.
Based on your use of "campaign" (the older name for Batch Changes), it sounds like you were looking into Sourcegraph about 2.5 years ago or before that. Lots has changed since then.
We recently released a new indexer scip-clang (https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/announcing-scip-clang), which we've used to successfully index large codebases like Chromium. The indexer relies on a JSON compilation database (same as our older indexer lsif-clang) which is easy to produce from CMake, Bazel, Meson, Make etc.
https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/ is open source and very good at huge source base, e.g. for the whole android and linux kernel together, fast and useful.
Any guides on deploying it, preferably with ready-made Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml files? I looked into it a while ago and all I found was quite outdated.
it took me about one hour in the past to install it, no docker though, not really that difficult and I feel it's really worthwhile once it starts to run.
And as multiple previous sequences of events have made clear, attempting to apply obnoxious monetisation strategies to a Sun-inherited project with a substantial userbase tends to mostly be a really good way to get it forked out from under you.
I'll add something I have been working on https://github.com/boyter/cs which is aimed at a smaller scale. It works fine for multiple repositories so long as they aren't too large.
livegrep is... fine. It's literally what it says it is. It's a web version of grep. livegrep is definitely not a replacement for sourcegraph, which actually understands the underlying code, and lets you follow code paths, search for references, etc.
What is a good open-source system for code search if I want to plug 100 or so git repos into it and have it available over the web? GH search is not desirable because it would search too broadly and would not cover repos on Gitlab etc.
I looked at the Debian code search [1] in the past, but for some reason thought it required a bit too much effort and didn't complete my investigation of it. Though [2] looks pretty approachable.
Sourcegraph mentioned Zoekt [3], but I am not sure how usable it is. If it was pretty good, why did Sourcegraph OSS exist?
Finally, from all the discussion how Sourcegraph OSS was very behind in the past few years, I guess there is no serious plan to fork it?
Edit: GCS release [4] seems to have been open-sourced without a frontend.
Edit2: Livegrep [5] and Opengrok [6] were recommended higher in the thread. Quite excited to try them out but if someone has working Docker Compose configs, I would be very thankful for the head start.
Edit3: there is also Eureka [7]. Seems less powerful but easier to deploy.
[3] used to be a Google open source project as well, but it fell out of maintenance, and Sourcegraph took it over. It powers most of the basic regex/literal search in Sourcegraph.
Mozilla's code is searchable in Searchfox (https://searchfox.org/) which uses the indexer from Livegrep, combined with their own Git indexer and language-specific cross reference databases.
OpenGrok (https://github.com/oracle/opengrok) is also rather well known, but I have found it to have a slightly worse UI than alternatives.
I fundamentally believe that open-source is a model that doesn't lend itself to sustainability. We all know that lots of companies that can afford to pay for software don't because it's free and open-source. I fundamentally believe that the decision to give away software results in less revenue and therefore less money for developers to work on the product and make it better.
In the ecommerce world there is Magento, Shopware, and Spryker. Magento is open-source and massive. Shopware is open-source and very good and reliable. And then there is Spryker a closed-source platform which is very good from a product point of view. I feel if you look at the product development from those three Spryker is far ahead of the open-source options.
I think we all like the benefits of grabbing a library/tool and using it for free for personal use or when we're starting out and can't really afford to pay so want things to be open-source. But I really think the future is source-available that mixes the ability to use something for free but when they have the money to require a commercial license. This is why I choose to go with the Business Source License - which allowed for additional grants as well as allowing free use for non-production uses. I added in an additional grant for if they're generating very little revenue. As a small independent developer who is developing a billing system it seems fair that people generating revenue start to pay for a license. While it allows those who are just starting out to use it for free and pay when they start making money. As I grow I'll be increasing the amount the additional grant allows. For me this seems the best of both worlds. One where those who can't afford can use it for free and those who can pay help fund future development.
We keep seeing companies going from open-source to a source-available approach for a reason.
So you have one. One out of how many hundreds of thousands?
"But Linux" when the talk that open-source doesn't appear to be a substainable model is like using Zuckerberg as an example as dropping out of college. Lots of people drop out of college and never achieve anything. There are always going to be rare examples that can achieve something.
And the fact the open source community only appears to have one example of how you can build a profitable large business off the back of open source - Red Hat. (Who is currently closing things down to remove competitor.) Really kind hits home that it's a very bare existance for open source projects.
But you’re right, no one uses Apache, nginx, postfix, bind, dhcpd, ntpd, spamassassian, kubernetes, go, python, c, busybox, irc, email, sip, php, react, … and they’ll never last.
The entire premise of my comment was about being substainable. That requires making a profit.
> But you’re right, no one uses Apache, nginx, postfix, bind, dhcpd, ntpd, spamassassian, kubernetes, go, python, c, busybox, irc, email, sip, php, react, … and they’ll never last.
Again missing the point. And wasn't DHCPD the one that had a serious issue because one guy was maintaining it and he had terminal cancer so part of the things he had to do when he was dying was find someone to make sure a critical part of the world's tech infrastucure was maintained? That's not substainable.
Please show how linus has made a profit over the 40 plus years. Same with apache. Or alternately, grow up and realize that profit is not required for open source to persist. Your business model is no one's problem but your own. The world will continue on even if you need a real job.
I never said that open-source couldn‘t exist I said it’s not substainable for a business.
I get it you like open source. But as shown open source businesses are generally not substanable.
Sure you have a tiny percentage that can make a living from open source. And of that tiny percentage they are employed by businesses that operate as closed source.
I think really, you‘re the on who needs to grow up. It’s quite pathetic to act like this.
Sourcegraph CEO here. Sourcegraph is now 2 separate products: code search and Cody (our code AI). Cody remains open source (Apache 2) in the client/cody* directories in the repository, and we're extracting that to a separate 100% OSS repository soon.
Our licensing principle remains to charge companies while making tools for individual devs open source. Very few individual devs (or companies) used the limited-feature open-source variant of code search, so we decided to remove it. Usage of Sourcegraph code search was even more skewed toward our official non-OSS build than in other similar situations like Google Chrome vs. Chromium or VS Code vs. VSCodium. Maintaining 2 variants was a burden on our engineering team that had very little benefit for anyone.
You can see more explanation at https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/53528#issu.... The change was announced in the changelog and in a PR (all of our development occurs in public), and we will have a blog post this week after we separate our big monorepo into 2 repos as planned: the 100% OSS repo for Cody and the non-OSS repo for code search.
You can still use Sourcegraph code search for free on public code at https://sourcegraph.com and on our self-hosted free tier on private code (which means individual devs can still run Sourcegraph code search 100% for free). Customers are not affected at all.
Also, I appreciate all the comments here and find them fair and thoughtful, including the critical stuff. You can join our Discord at https://discord.gg/rDPqBejz93 to chat more after this goes off the HN frontpage. And if anyone wants to chat with me directly to share feedback or complaints, let me know (and we can share the recording publicly if you're OK with it).
Sourcegraph only provided non-OSS images and the build process was difficult and broken for a long time, the application itself was frequently broken in OSS version as well, searching issues for a few minutes brings up quite a few results. [1] [2] [3] [4]
It's no wonder, that the usage of OSS version was pretty low, when few were able to build it and even if they managed that, the resulting application was broken every few releases.
Both VS Code and Chromium are easy to build, due to their nature and popularity, they are available prebuilt from many sources. I would install "unofficial" Chromium build from my distribution's repository, I wouldn't keep my code in unofficial Sourcegraph build from some random person on Github. Comparing them is rather unfair, but there's another issue that stopped OSS adoption.
For a long time, official Sourcegraph Docker image came with a 10 seat free license, which suited many people and they weren't looking for alternatives like OSS build.
I would argue that announcing license change and closing of your product as a small block in change log file or when someone mentions the problem in Github Issues is not adequate for such a change.
Not using open-first principles, restricting the product by using enterprise only plugins, which others mentioned under this post, not providing open source builds and changing license without preceding announcement, while previously using open source terminology for some feel-good free marketing leaves a bitter taste. Especially with so many companies doing this right now due to interest rates.
Exactly my thoughts. I am using the Homebrew version of Sourcegraph, which I presume to be quite dead [1]. I do this because there is no packaged version of the Sourcegraph OSS. I would happily use the OSS version instead otherwise.
Right. A license change like this being done in such a silent manner would lead me to drop usage of this product if I wasn't already avoiding it due to their dubious non-foss principles.
Great straightforward non apologetic answer props. Refreshing compared to what we often get here nowadays and reminiscent of how ceos used to reply here.
(I Don like the news itself obviously but the delivery was good)
> charge companies while making tools for individual devs open source
Stop using the term Open Source. It's not open source if you apply restrictions like this, it's pretty easy to see that you're being disingenuous. These licenses are not OSI approved.
You seem to be confused about the common meaning of open source. Open Source only means the source code is available. It doesn't mean it's license or TOS is also open. That's why the acronyms FOSS and FLOSS exist as well.
“Open Source” is a proper noun defined by OSI, not to be confused with the general phrase “open source” which predates OSI. You use both interchangeably in your reply, which is invalid (apples/oranges). Please be more specific: do you mean the OSI definition or the pre-OSI colloquialism?
Open Source has a very clear meaning in the context of IT, understood by developers and lawyers, judges and policy makers alike: it means that the code is distributed with a license approved by the Open Source Initiative.
Open Source Initiative is not an authority here. We had this debate many many times. You may not agree with this point of view, but let's not make it as if yours is the universal one.
> Open Source Initiative is not an authority here. We had this debate many many times. You may not agree with this point of view, but let's not make it as if yours is the universal one.
It practically is, and they've done a good job of gathering the relevant citations to make that point.
If you're passionately against this, feel free to make the relevant edit here as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software#Definitio... (but you may have to have a litany of citations to justify why the OSI definition is not a de facto standard if you want it to stick).
I’ve heard this line before and it confuses me. What is the authority?
It seems to me that it’s OSI (around for years, reputable, etc) vs some for profit companies misusing common terminology in the, I think false, sense that people think non-open things they call open are good. Not sure if they are deluded or just wrong.
Happy to talk about some new authority for open source licenses, but it seems like the “OSI isn’t an authority, nobody is” is an argument by 8th graders who just read the Wikipedia article on communism.
OSI formed to help open source developers and users to better understand “proper” licenses from bullshit.
But "Open Source" both as a term and idea pre-dates the OSI's formation. The general definition of "Open Source" shouldn't be universally defined by a single body.
The OSI has done a great job at introducing a legally ratified and globally recognized license format to help reduce uncertainty, but it is not, and has on several occasions been denied[0], the global authority on the definition of Open Source. They have a trademark and are the authority for "Open Source Initiative Approved License" (ie: "OSI License") specifically.
Of course it predates the formation of OSI. OSI didn’t invent the term, it’s just a group of people who formed to formalize and help adoption.
It’s not like there’s some competing definition. OSI has been around for 20+ years and only recently did a few companies decide they want a different definition so they can make more money.
But the issue isn’t that there’s some word police. The issue is that open source has a definition in use and when people try to overload, it gets confusing. I wish people wouldn’t do that, but it’s free country (free as in speech, not free as in beer).
No one cares if source is “open” in that people can view it. In that case windows is “open.” The important part of open is the ability to change, reuse, and participate.
Why would anyone care if source is visible but not usable? I’ve been able to decompile forever. I can see the source if I need to. The community and reuse aspect is important.
Finally, OSI doesn’t define the term. They just certify licenses that adhere to open source principles and ideas. The community defines the term. Everyone is free to make up new licenses. OSI just helps the community filter out noise by reviewing licenses that actually are open source.
> Finally, OSI doesn’t define the term. They just certify licenses that adhere to open source principles and ideas. The community defines the term. Everyone is free to make up new licenses. OSI just helps the community filter out noise by reviewing licenses that actually are open source.
This is exactly my point, the community defines the term. The OSI definition does a good job of making the legal aspect of (their vision for) "open source" explicit, but it also adds additional definitions beyond what the average layperson might consider "Open Source".
Take section 5 and 6 of the "Open Source Definition"[0]. It states you can't discriminate against "persons, groups, fields, or endeavors". So if I wrote some software, put a MIT license on it, with a single additional clause that says the CIA can not use this software. Magically, it is no longer "Open Source" according to the OSI, even though 99.9999% of people can freely use it under the MIT.
They have a definition, they even have a pretty good definition, but the OSI shouldn't be the definition. All OSI licenses are open source licenses, but not all open source licenses are OSI licenses. (All thumbs are fingers, not all fingers are thumbs).
> So if I wrote some software, put a MIT license on it, with a single additional clause that says the CIA can not use this software.
Right, because it’s not open source and not MIT. Open source isn’t about 99.999% of people being able to use it, it’s about be free and open.
This is the commonly accepted definition of open source and there’s very few who would consider your custom license open source.
Practically speaking, it means I can’t use it even though I’m not in the CIA because I want my project to be compatible and reusable down the line by anyone. So I use a true OSI license like MIT and want all the software I link to and use compatible so users have a clear expectation.
You can make your new license, but I don’t want to use it as I only want to use open source licenses.
I don’t want to hire an attorney to review your license and see if it works or not. I want to just filter by known licenses and make sure they are compatible with my other licenses.
There are open source licenses that aren’t OSI, but they are pretty few and OSI works diligently to review new licenses and add them.
Your example license isn’t open source though, so it doesn’t fit this small group.
This is a somewhat pedantic and useless comment. Of course definitions can change, but the notion of "open source" hasn't changed in any significant and notable fashion since it was first coined in the late 90s. Feel free to disprove me.
That's probably because you've only been a professional developer for 10 years. Here's a quick history lesson:
If we go back, say, 25 years, when the term Open Source entered common usage, it was a way of describing the things that had thusfar been labeled "free software", but as a way of deemphasizing the notion of the Free Software movement that saw non-free-software as immoral. It was a term to describe things that met the Free Software Definition, but without harping on morality.
It was very much a counter-culture (it was, after all, the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement), and very much not a generic term for having access to the source. That was already super common in enterprise agreements, and nobody considered that to be open source.
Then around the early 2000s, Linux became hot shit, and some large companies wanted to avail themselves to the rising tide and began labeling their watered down versions of "source available" things as open source in an attempt to jump on the bandwagon. But that was an intentional attempt to water down the definition everyone already understood for marketing reasons.
You not knowing this history means that to some extent the marketing worked. But just realize that in arguing here, you're participating in the astroturfing. Also, get off my lawn!
I'm also often an advocate of what you're saying there, "language changes..."
But this I think is one of those cases where there is a difference, because it's also descriptive of a community, and it matters how that community sees itself. With whatever definition of open source you have, the most high traction stuff that we all rely on (I originally wrote, "most", but I think e.g. the Linux kernel matters more than a random abandoned repo on Github) is produced by people that use that older definition of open source, and mostly by people who identify with that social movement. (I for a long time was one of those people.) In this case I do believe that in that all of us now rely on open source software, that redefining it in opposition to the group of people who produce that thing is less than respectful.
Anecdotally, I've also been a professional dev for over 10 years, and have been involved with open source projects longer than that. And in my experience, "open source" almost always means you are free to modify and redistribute from the source (possibly with a requirement that you also release the code for your changes, in the case of the GPL). The exceptions are mostly companies that want to claim they are open source for marketing, without actually following the spirit of open source.
Open source doesn’t mean active authority, because you have the source code doesn’t you have some level of control on the repo that the source code is being host, having Go source code doesn’t mean you have the right to just commit into the Golang repo without checks and decisions
The readers may not like it, but you're not actually wrong. Go ask 100 developers if BSL or ELv2 are open source and the majority of them will say that it is -- because the source code is available, and for the majority of users, these licenses are less restrictive than AGPL. Not Open Source (tm*), but open source -- FOSS vs OSS.
(I do understand that Solargraph is now using a proprietary enterprise license, so this comment is directed at the OP mentioning "OSI approved" licenses, not at Solargraph's new license.)
I'm on mobile and with family today so I can't respond in-depth (happy independence day!), but have ever wondered why the term "source-available" has changed meaning, yet the term "open-source" is not 'allowed' to? (And I'd argue it already has, much to the OSI's dismay.)
The term source-available has been shoehorned to mean everything-not-OSI-approved, instead of what it used to mean: a proprietary license for a project that has its source available (e.g. Sourcegraph's license).
In reality, "open source is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent restrictions on the use and modification of the code." Which is the definition the majority of developers would say is open source.
The ELv2 and most uses of BSL fall under the "relaxed restrictions" on use and modification, similar to GPL. I'd argue they are open source.
> In reality, "open source is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent restrictions on the use and modification of the code."
Not to the general public, only to the users doesn't have to be generally available to the public, see recent RHEL PR debacle.
It's not about the restrictions it's about what you are allowed to do with the code.
> ... Which is the definition the majority of developers would say is open source.
Can you prove your claim has anyone done demographics on this?
Why doesn't Elasticsearch B.V. refer to their software as "open source", then? They refer to it as "free and open" in their marketing, so obviously they think the idea is appealing to their customers. They refer to Logstash as "open source" and specifically to the fully Apache 2.0-licensed version as the "-oss" build.
Users of the BSL refer to it as a "source-available" license that, after a period of time, converts into an "open source" license:
It's literally just word-play, dancing around what they actually mean. I'd assume because of pressure from OSI and friends (i.e. bad publicity), not from the real world. The same reason my company is "open, source-available."
If the common understanding of "open source" differed so much from the OSI standard, wouldn't these companies just say "open source" and dismiss the OSI definition as archaic, too narrow, etc.? Instead, it seems like there's been a lot of work put into maintaining a formal distinction, including working with Bruce Perens to revise the BSL:
Note that I'm not coming from a position of hostility re: the BSL and similar licenses here. I think companies using that approach can be friendly neighbors with the open source community. I just think it's important for those neighbors to share a well-maintained fence to keep malicious actors from exploiting ambiguity.
No, it's not just word-play. There are real restrictions coming with source-available code if you want to use it in your business operations. One of the reasons companies express so much interest in open-source is to have no obligations before the vendor (support contracts that cannot be terminated early even if the software is being removed, licensing that makes it hard to migrate from a few large machines to many smaller containers/VMs, other forms of lock-in) and take a risk of an open-source software going unmaintained (that they usually plan to mitigate by hiring an outsourcing firm to fix the abandoned OSS projects).
Now, that is one of the main reasons why non-OSS licenses are being adopted: many companies prepare contingencies in case an OSS project dies, instead of making some arrangements to help a bit to ensure the project doesn't die. However right the vendors are, the resulting license significantly (materially, non-word-playfully) restricts the users, which is exactly why those users are compelled to start paying for the product.
P.S. None of what I wrote means I oppose those licenses, as they may be needed to ensure a healthy ecosystem. But I oppose calling them OSS.
I've heard the term "source available" for that. Nowadays they also have "open core" which means you can't do shit with the source you do get. But that's another thing entirely.
You're referring to source available licenses. These range from the nearly open like Mongo or ElasticSearch to the almost totally closed like Windows or Solaris.
They're not inherently bad licenses but they aren't open source.
I’m a fan of OSI, and their definition of “open source” is widely recognized, but still, language policing usually turns out to be incorrect. OSI didn’t invent the term open source, and like it or not, other definitions do exist that don’t meet OSI’s standards. The term doesn’t belong to any one organization. I don’t understand the confrontational stance either, with code being offered to individuals. That far exceeds what most companies do, in terms of serving the open source community, no?
The term doesn't belong to the OSI. But the basic tenets of the OSI definition are very important to devs. And source being available but not able to be legally reused makes it useless for the vast majority of FOSS projects.
I agree. I’m not arguing against the value or the stature of OSI’s definition at all, I’m only reacting to the demand to never say the words “open source” unless you mean OSI’s definition. The Robustness Principle applies to language; be conservative in what you say, and liberal in what you hear. It’s fine to point out when a license or particular software isn’t OSI-approved open source. It’s fine to ask if people mean OSI when they say “open source” without a qualifier. It’s fine to add a qualifier too.
There is a difference between strictly following the OSI definition and the general idea of "open source." For instance, while "open source" and "free software" are effectively interchangeable category definitions, there are some minor technical reasons why the FSF definition allows a few licenses the OSI definition doesn't and vice versa. If we were talking about "oh, this is accepted by the FSF as free software, but not by the OSI as open source," then OK, sure. And you could go on with Debian and Fedora approvals and so on.
But we're not talking about technicalities here. We're talking about the vey basic idea of what it means to be "open source." I'm not telling anyone that they can't use words however they want. They can. But the way they're using the term "open source" is just fundamentally incompatible with how the vast majority of people in the field use it. So it's at the very least going to cause some confusion to use the term "open source" in the way they are.
Besides, I think people have a bigger problem with the licensing change itself than any wordsmithery.
> I’m not telling anyone that they can’t use words however they want. They can.
It sounds like we are in full agreement, and you’re with me that @xenago’s demand to not use the phrase might be overstepping a little bit, no? Isn’t this confusion easier to clear up with a single short question than with assumptions or demands?
There is a slight problem with claiming using “open source” is confusing to the people who know about OSI. To the lay person who’s not a software developer, “open source” does mean ‘source is visible’, and “free software” does mean ‘software that costs no money’ (and these definitions are included in dictionaries and Wikipedia, next to the OSI and FSF versions). The OSI and FSF definitions are terms of art that these orgs are trying to establish and control, and they deviate from what the literal words alone imply, both in meaning and level of specificity, therefore they will always be confusing to people who are neither developers nor lawyers. Wouldn’t it be better if FSF and OSI relied not on co-opting everyday words, but having phrases that are more obviously terms of art and more obviously attached to the orgs? Even something as simple as “OSI Open Source” or “FSF Free Software” would go a long way. OSI does on it’s site use “OSD - Open Source Definition” quite a bit.
> To the layperson who’s not a software developer, “open source” does mean ‘source is visible’, and “free software” does mean ‘software that costs no money’
Source available is the correct term. Laymen who don't know any better often call shareware open source as well; they don't know how the software is made and don't care. That is not a good reason to use incorrect words.
The whole point is that they are trying to use the words "open source" to appeal specifically to people, like those here in this thread, who work on free and open source software in the FSF/OSI sense.
This is a message for the exact group of people who use the term of art because they're practitioners of that art.
Oh okay. I was trying to tell you I agreed with what you said, but if you insist: Okay, fine then I disagree with you. Naw, I still agree with what you said. I don’t know what you’re disagreeing with at all, you haven’t made that clear. Consider the possibility that we might be, as the phrase goes, agreeing violently.
> they are trying to use the words “open source” to appeal specifically to people
Who is “they”? The top comment was referring to Apache 2.0, which is an OSI approved license. So, what, exactly, are you thrashing against here?
> This is a message for the exact group of people who use the term of art because they’re practitioners of that art.
Exactly! Sorry for saying this again, but I agree with that sentence. My point, which does not disagree with what you just said, is that because they are the practitioners, they are the people who know and use the term of art know better and should be the least likely to be confused when someone doesn’t use their term of art, and most likely to be able to handle the disambiguating gracefully like adults without getting upset or whinging that their term of art wasn’t used. They should be the people who best understand that their term of art has a special and overloaded meaning next to the literal words and some common non-term-of-art usage of those words.
This is all academic, the top comment was using the term of art in all of its overloaded glory. All I’m saying is that @xenago’s response is a bit inappropriate no matter what, regardless of whether it was the term-of-art usage or the lay-person usage, even if it was intentionally misleading (which it wasn’t). What you said appeared to agree with that, because you said “I’m not telling anyone that they can’t use words however they want”. So it does in fact continue to sound like you and I are agreeing on this point, among others.
> I’m a fan of OSI, and their definition of “open source” is widely recognized, but still, language policing usually turns out to be incorrect.
I'm no fan of the OSI, but language policing usually turns out to be correct. There are other definitions of open source - the free software definition, the DFSG - but in practice they're all close enough that the differences don't matter.
> OSI didn’t invent the term open source, and like it or not, other definitions do exist that don’t meet OSI’s standards.
Very few. I don't think there's any nontrivial software that doesn't meet the OSI's standards but is recognised as open-source by anyone who isn't a) a paid shill or b) a self-important provocateur who wrote it.
> I don’t understand the confrontational stance either, with code being offered to individuals. That far exceeds what most companies do, in terms of serving the open source community, no?
Companies are trying to salami-slice away the rights users expect from open-source software. The response to that has to be a firm line in the sand.
Open source concept existed before OSI, it has originated from Debian Free Software Guidelines. OSI has only standardised it. To claim something else is disingenuous and at this point it's proven to be a robust definition. FSF has their own, older and not too dissimilar.
> other definitions do exist that don’t meet OSI’s standards. The term doesn’t belong to any one organization.
And all attempts to redefine what open source means fail, because both FOSS camps OSI and FSF/GNU as well as everyone in between see it for what it is: attempts to muddy the water in order to deceive users and customers. Your software is either FOSS or it's not, there is no scale here, it's a social contract. Just because there are a bunch of ambiguous licenses that no-one knows what to make of, doesn't mean there are two or more concepts. There's only one concept for both "open source" and "free software" and the difference is philosophical.
'Open source' generally gets read to mean 'available under an OSI or OSI-like license', and 'free software' as 'available under the GPL or a GPL-like license' IME - if the license is commercial only but the code's still freely -readable- albeit not freely -runnable- then 'source available' is clearer.
(note that sqs clarifies elsewhere in the thread that 'open source' was being used to refer to the stuff that's (still) Apache 2 licensed, not the source available parts)
Free software is largely coterminous with open source. Even Stallman uses the term 'copylefted software' to refer to software under a so-called copyleft license -- one which, like the GPL, forbids license changes upon redistribution. Stallman will tell you that he'd rather your free software be copylefted, but it doesn't have to be.
You're right about source-available though. It's what we used to call 'shared source', after a failed attempt by Microsoft to promote that as an alternative to the viral, cancer-like open source.
I am one of the few people who used the open source version and really liked it, and I'm disappointed by the changes.
The challenge I had with Sourcegraph is that it's out of reach of developers working on personal projects. There isn't a hosted plan, and for my projects I can't easily open source them due to my employer.
I was really excited when the Sourcegraph App was released, since it allowed me to give Sourcegraph a try on my project without going through the complex self-hosted setup. I went as far as getting scip-clang working with my Bazel-based project, and then tried out the docker-compose setup on my home lab.
Now that code search was removed from the app, and this change, I'm concerned that I won't be able to use Sourcegraph for my personal projects in the future.
This is a missed opportunity. I think individual developers using products for personal projects are powerful advocates, since those developers may convince their employer to purchase the product. If I could I'd gladly pay, but I'm just one person and can't justify $5k/year.
We have lots to reflect on given the feedback here on HN. We were honestly a bit blindsided by the number of people who appear to be using open source Sourcegraph, or who really wanted to use it but found the process too difficult. Part of this is because we had a zero telemetry policy for the open source distribution. Perhaps that was a mistake in hindsight, but introducing telemetry there would've been another can of worms!
Now that the usage is more visible, it's actually kicked off a lively internal discussion. We're going to take some time to gauge the size of the user community and figure how we can best support it. Aside from individual use being free (still the case) and making deployment more straightforward (through something like code search in App), are there other things we can do to make it easier to adopt? Sorry about the confusion here, we should have handled this better. But the silver lining is we realized there were a lot of users of Sourcegraph that we didn't know about and we're now discussing how best to engage and support you all. I do hope you'll take the chance to pop into our Discord and say hello and continue with feedback that can help us make the best decisions for our users.
Just wanted to add that some simpler option of buying the license would be sweet, it tends to be much easier to get signed up for something that doesn't require contract and we can just use company credit card. Maybe it could be available while offering something akin to previous Free Enterprise (without new, cutting edge features) license but with higher seat limits? I don't know, just spitballing.
I like paying for things that I use and bring me value, but at the moment Sourcegraph is a hard sell due to high cost compared to small company size and being based outside of Western Europe and US.
Hey there, I'm an individual dev who uses it only for personal projects. I use the docker container for on-premise, private usage only in a VM with no internet connection that I run at home. I use it to index all my personal projects and open source repos... 100 or so repos.
I really wish the enterprise stuff was available to the single user case like mine. Everything past v4.3.1 is hot garbage, as you guys really nerfed it for non-enterprise users ever since you removed "showEnterpriseHomePanels" among a few other things. I regrettably can't upgrade to anything newer because of that.
I would LOVE to have the ability to pay you guys say, $100 a year or something reasonable for just a private onsite enterprise license for one person -- myself. I continue to advocate for your products in all the enterprise contracts I work as that's what I'm most familiar with and tinker with when I work on my own personal stuff on my own free time.
I think it would be great to just have all those features for one user, and for a reasonable yearly fee for a single developer to be able to afford.
If you guys are concerned about being ripped off -- For example, some company buying this "single user enterprise license", I don't think they would if you limit it to one admin user. No company is going to risk sharing creds for a superuser account / keys to the kingdom, and if they do, they are some fly-by-night company with no sense of security that was never going to give you guys money anyway.
That's my two cents.
tl;dr: I can care less if it's open source or not. I just care that enterprise is affordable to the home user and that I can still run it on premise and in a semi-airgapped network environment.
When you say Sourcegraph has a zero telemetry policy for the open source version, can you tell me where in the pipeline the events are dropped?
From my prior code inspection, I recall seeing OSS code making regular “pings” back to Sourcegraph even when telemetry options are disabled by users. Survey toasts also appear to send information to HubSpot when answered.
For what it's worth, I'd advocated to adopt SourceGraph at work for a long time but the open-source version being impossible to deploy essentially blocked us from ever considering it.
I don't doubt that your perception of the OSS version's lack of success is accurate, and it is definitely easier to close off the source, but at the same time the outcome of this is that one funnel into it is closing with the calculation that the effort spent to keep that funnel open wasn't worth the people coming in through it.
The other possibility, and one that I subscribe to (not that it isn't self-serving) is that the funnel was never open enough to see success in the first place.
Do you see any potential trademark conflicts you may run into against Google due to Codey[0]? I don't know which was announced/branded first, but I imagine a big co like Google is tough to win against even when you're in the right.
I asked for an enterprise trial once because my company was seriously considering a purchase, despite not being able to properly evaluate the OSS version.
The response was basically "sorry, we're too busy".
Yet another concrete example of why copyleft licenses are better than pushover ones and why CLAs are bad. It would have been illegal for them to do this if the old license were copyleft and they accepted contributions without a CLA.
I don't understand your comment. What do you think would have happened if it was GPL instead of Apache? That a person would come out of nowhere willing to rewrite all the SourceGraph owned code in the repo?
No. If it were GPL instead of Apache, and it had contributions from other people without a CLA, then Sourcegraph wouldn't have been legally allowed to change the license, so nobody would have had to rewrite anything.
Yes, but they'd have had to rip out everything from all of the external contributors, and that'd be a big enough deal that it'd probably change their mind.
266 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 273 ms ] threadIt seems like the author of Sourcegraph OSS containers announced that his release train is now dead
https://github.com/jensim/sourcegraph-release-train/
It also says they offer a free self hosted version for individuals, but I couldn’t find that on their site.
At some point, one individual on Github managed to get it working and his images got 10k+ pulls on DockerHub. That's hardly "nobody". Also, some people removed telemetry from OSS version so Sourcegraph didn't even know that anyone is using it.
Also, they were open-closed-open-closed in the last 5 years.
Their website is a mess, even employees on github are providing contradicting information. Original commit message that relicensed bunch of stuff had errors in it regarding what exactly will be closed source now.
P.S. Started a discussion regarding the Homebrew package, but pretty sure it's canned: https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/discussions/54589
> We remain committed to Zoekt, the open source code search engine, and will continue to upstream changes to it.
https://github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt
> The source code will remain publicly available.
> Individual devs will still be able to use Sourcegraph for free on public code at sourcegraph.com and within our self-hosted free tier on private code.
> Very few individual devs or companies used the limited variant of code search that was open source. The vast majority (99.9%+) used the enterprise product. Maintaining two variants going forward was a big burden on our engineering team that had very little benefit for users.
It can be. You can release under a "source available" license barring it from being used (even compiled), derived, incorporated into other works, making it basically "for eyes only, or we sue you to oblivion".
Many people consider licenses as window decorations, but they are not.
Many people lack this knowledge from my experience.
ADDED Unless it’s public domain and then it effectively is.
So if anyone wants to put a past release online they are free to do so (unless there are parts of the code that were restricted before).
It would be prudent to remove branding where possible but that's mainly a precaution.
Personal use doesn't free you the obligations GPL brings, for example.
Well sure, but that's a really big caveat.
One person finally created a working release train on github and was releasing OSS containers, Docker Hub reports it as 10k+ pulls, which is a lot for unofficial image.
I tend to stay away from any 3rd party tool that's not really a main part of infrastructure and requires sales contacts. It's wasting my company time to deal with sales when it comes to a few licenses, just give me a number input and buy button. I also lost some confidence regarding Sourcegraph, as it seems they change their direction, pricing and rules multiple times per year
Nice. How to get free marketing by strapping Open Source to your product and writing a bunch of announcements.
We'll probably see more of these faux OSS projects who hoped for some community/network effect from being OSS to translate into either strong donations or considerable uptake of their enterprise/cloud/managed versions go this route.
To be clear, fully support charging for and paying for SaaS. Would just like be able to know what is in front of me when making build/buy decisions.
I've even found a page still mentioning the OSS version and telling you how easy it is to fire it up.
When you realize that one of your products isn’t being heavily used and is OSS, you don’t close source it, you keep it open!
This shows that the value add of the paid product is actually worth it to customers.
Now?
Not so much.
Why are companies isolating themselves from smaller clients?
It's really healthy for a company to have a whole spectrum of clients, from people that chip in 2-4$ per month for a minor bump in capabilities and without any support included to big companies that push for exploring new features.
In my opinion, Gitlab is a primary example of feature-creep and it will be the demise of the company.
Gitlab was VC funded which means it had little choice but to take on a high risk/high reward approach. It worked fairly well since it IPOed at $12b while it's last round of funding was at under $3b. Good return for VCs. Of course the stock is down over 50% since IPO but that's someone else's problem.
Of course that skips the bigger picture like more people knowing and using your products and being happy with them leads to more champions for them doing your sales and marketing work for you, which can create lots of revenue in the long term; but it's pretty much impossible to quantify.
No wonder my enterprise is automatically kicking people off when they don’t use it.
In every tier there are $49/month "core" users (basic dashboard viewing, no editing, no APM, no monitoring, no tracing...)
In the "Standard" tier you have $99/month "full" users, but you're limited to 5 total users, no SSO, and AFAIK very basic support.
In the "Pro" tier you have $418.80/month "full" users
In the "Enterprise" tier you have $658.80/month "full" users
No wonder people is paying for core users and then juggling generic full users. Although they limit you at 3 concurrent sessions at the same time, and monitor that, and will contact you if you login from different IPs and browsers to the same users.
The most interesting part for me is Pixie... but you can do that for free.
A few months later and 70 registered users, I have a total of 3 users who used it a few times.
I've done a demo and created documentation, 80% of the developers at $MY_COMPANY used Sourcegraph Code Search at least a few times in the past month, some of them are doing a dozen searches per day.
My company lives in code search. Most bug fixes and small enhancements start by investigating code search, and clicking a link from code search to start editing the file.
However it’s not that bad because we work mostly on short lived research projects and it’s not that much to reuse. Public code search and ChatGPT are used much frequently.
Let's see if we get the same amount of upvotes their post got when they open sourced the thing.
> This blob took too long to generate. But you can view the raw file.
The recent rewrite of github search has probably made sourcegraph irrelevant. If you may recall, original github search used almost the most horrible algorithm possible. It dropped all punctuation and spacing and just searched for identifiers. No patterns allowed, no quoting allowed. One of the only meta-arguments was filename:xyz.
Now that github has improved its basic search functionality, sourcegraph might be doomed.
I used sourcegraph at Lyft which (at the time) had unlimited money to waste on software tools, and installed the open-source version at Databricks but nobody cared.
Their default search still sucks, IMO. But the one I mentioned is comparable to Google’s internal CS.
In some ways it’s even worse now, because it seems to only build an index of the repository on the first search, when I need a result now.
That will load a web version of VS Code, and you can then use the search from there.
It uses a temp directory, and deletes it when you close your editor.
Having it as button in browser seems cool but also horribly insecure...
Is there a reasonably legitimate reason to stop using this?
My understanding is that GitHub's on premises version doesn't have any plans to include the new code search functionality.
It only makes it irrelevamt if all your code is hosted on Github.
I'm quite tired of Github-proprietary solutions being hailed as the "industry norm." Or vendors like shipping products and integrations that only work with Github. Git is a decentralized protocol; please treat it like one.
So complaining about Github proprietary tools and at the same time supporting Apple and Google for doing the same is a bit contradictory. Should be using an open OS and browser.
From a software eng infra standpoint, in general, ok. But we can look elsewhere.
In the mobile space, for example, it's hard to deny iOS & Android, Appstore & Google Play.
In terms of privacy, the internet is a complete failure with Chrome, Google Analytics, etc.
A large chunk of the most relevant software businesses go to the extent of mandating developers to use Apple products. I experienced this myself, when I wasn't allowed to use a PC running Linux for "security reasons". Like if Apple OS is safer than Arch. That's a big point of failure, in my opinion...
1. GitHub isn’t free, especially for large private organisations 2. Source graph has much better search functions compared to GitHub
For large private organizations they are paying already so more likely to use built in search than buying a new product.
Sourcegraph appear to have had one:
https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/blob/main/CONTRIB...
https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/-...
It includes a grant of copyright licence so I guess this is nailed down.
https://imgur.com/a/UCJ6y9r
The interesting one is he second image which filters by code contributors that have contributed more than 500 lines of code churn.
Note, I'm not taking into consideration if code contributions were merged or not, just that somebody created a pull request/commit.
There is a lot of competing technology now, from GitHub’s improved search to new open source LangChain and LlamaIndex support for better document chunking of source code in several languages.
I used it quite a lot before completely moving to Emacs.
They kept trying to push this "campaign" feature on us, which is an overly-complex auto-refactoring tool that couldn't even support our non-proprietary, well-known build system. For the cost of their license, we instead hired two developers for code refactors, who then went on to make other tooling, and we didn't need to hire someone to babysit their crappy service integration.
I would not say that they had found their niche when speaking to us. Perhaps it has gotten better.
But you (and child) comment made me realize that I don't remember the terms of the proposal, whether it was per year or for 2 years. So it might have been a 1:1, not 1:2.
In the end, their product was just completely insufficient for our needs, and it was clearly just gluing open source tools together. The part we couldn't do as well was the front end, and they clearly put a lot of effort into it. It looked and worked nicely. But that didn't help us when they couldn't parse the code to populate it.
The problems we encountered were that they could not rewrite the targets in our build system for the automated refactoring, and any missing include path at all would cause the clang-based tooling they were using to barf.
We just asked ourselves why we would spend so much money on a product when we still had to solve all of the fundamental problems ourselves. We liked the UI, but it wasn't worth the insane license fee.
We recently released a new indexer scip-clang (https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/announcing-scip-clang), which we've used to successfully index large codebases like Chromium. The indexer relies on a JSON compilation database (same as our older indexer lsif-clang) which is easy to produce from CMake, Bazel, Meson, Make etc.
We've also added support for cross-repo code navigation for C++ recently. (https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/c-cpp-cross-repo)
I'm unsure what the expectation is here. I'm allowed to say we had a poor experience, you should be allowed to say how you think you're addressing it.
https://github.com/livegrep/livegrep
Demo at https://livegrep.com/search/linux
We used it at Stripe and it was quite popular; often, searching even a single repo was faster on livegrep than with ripgrep locally.
A post reviewing it: https://www.alexdebrie.com/posts/faster-code-search-livegrep...
A post by its creator, nelhage, on its impact: https://blog.nelhage.com/post/reflections-on-performance/ and another on its architecture: https://blog.nelhage.com/2015/02/regular-expression-search-w...
Yet.
I looked at the Debian code search [1] in the past, but for some reason thought it required a bit too much effort and didn't complete my investigation of it. Though [2] looks pretty approachable.
Sourcegraph mentioned Zoekt [3], but I am not sure how usable it is. If it was pretty good, why did Sourcegraph OSS exist?
Finally, from all the discussion how Sourcegraph OSS was very behind in the past few years, I guess there is no serious plan to fork it?
Edit: GCS release [4] seems to have been open-sourced without a frontend.
Edit2: Livegrep [5] and Opengrok [6] were recommended higher in the thread. Quite excited to try them out but if someone has working Docker Compose configs, I would be very thankful for the head start.
Edit3: there is also Eureka [7]. Seems less powerful but easier to deploy.
[1]: https://github.com/Debian/dcs
[2]: https://github.com/Debian/dcs/blob/main/howto/building.md
[3]: https://github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt
[4]: https://github.com/google/codesearch
[5]: https://github.com/livegrep/livegrep
[6]: https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/
[7]: https://github.com/Rajeev-K/eureka
[3] used to be a Google open source project as well, but it fell out of maintenance, and Sourcegraph took it over. It powers most of the basic regex/literal search in Sourcegraph.
Mozilla's code is searchable in Searchfox (https://searchfox.org/) which uses the indexer from Livegrep, combined with their own Git indexer and language-specific cross reference databases.
OpenGrok (https://github.com/oracle/opengrok) is also rather well known, but I have found it to have a slightly worse UI than alternatives.
[8]: https://github.com/hound-search/hound
[9]: https://github.com/boyter/cs
In the ecommerce world there is Magento, Shopware, and Spryker. Magento is open-source and massive. Shopware is open-source and very good and reliable. And then there is Spryker a closed-source platform which is very good from a product point of view. I feel if you look at the product development from those three Spryker is far ahead of the open-source options.
I think we all like the benefits of grabbing a library/tool and using it for free for personal use or when we're starting out and can't really afford to pay so want things to be open-source. But I really think the future is source-available that mixes the ability to use something for free but when they have the money to require a commercial license. This is why I choose to go with the Business Source License - which allowed for additional grants as well as allowing free use for non-production uses. I added in an additional grant for if they're generating very little revenue. As a small independent developer who is developing a billing system it seems fair that people generating revenue start to pay for a license. While it allows those who are just starting out to use it for free and pay when they start making money. As I grow I'll be increasing the amount the additional grant allows. For me this seems the best of both worlds. One where those who can't afford can use it for free and those who can pay help fund future development.
We keep seeing companies going from open-source to a source-available approach for a reason.
[1] - https://github.com/billabear/billabear/blob/main/LICENSE
Anybody know of one? Specifically interested in the "runs scripts at login" aspect.
"But Linux" when the talk that open-source doesn't appear to be a substainable model is like using Zuckerberg as an example as dropping out of college. Lots of people drop out of college and never achieve anything. There are always going to be rare examples that can achieve something.
And the fact the open source community only appears to have one example of how you can build a profitable large business off the back of open source - Red Hat. (Who is currently closing things down to remove competitor.) Really kind hits home that it's a very bare existance for open source projects.
But you’re right, no one uses Apache, nginx, postfix, bind, dhcpd, ntpd, spamassassian, kubernetes, go, python, c, busybox, irc, email, sip, php, react, … and they’ll never last.
The entire premise of my comment was about being substainable. That requires making a profit.
> But you’re right, no one uses Apache, nginx, postfix, bind, dhcpd, ntpd, spamassassian, kubernetes, go, python, c, busybox, irc, email, sip, php, react, … and they’ll never last.
Again missing the point. And wasn't DHCPD the one that had a serious issue because one guy was maintaining it and he had terminal cancer so part of the things he had to do when he was dying was find someone to make sure a critical part of the world's tech infrastucure was maintained? That's not substainable.
I also like how you listed protocols.
I never said that open-source couldn‘t exist I said it’s not substainable for a business.
I get it you like open source. But as shown open source businesses are generally not substanable.
Sure you have a tiny percentage that can make a living from open source. And of that tiny percentage they are employed by businesses that operate as closed source.
I think really, you‘re the on who needs to grow up. It’s quite pathetic to act like this.
Our licensing principle remains to charge companies while making tools for individual devs open source. Very few individual devs (or companies) used the limited-feature open-source variant of code search, so we decided to remove it. Usage of Sourcegraph code search was even more skewed toward our official non-OSS build than in other similar situations like Google Chrome vs. Chromium or VS Code vs. VSCodium. Maintaining 2 variants was a burden on our engineering team that had very little benefit for anyone.
You can see more explanation at https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/53528#issu.... The change was announced in the changelog and in a PR (all of our development occurs in public), and we will have a blog post this week after we separate our big monorepo into 2 repos as planned: the 100% OSS repo for Cody and the non-OSS repo for code search.
You can still use Sourcegraph code search for free on public code at https://sourcegraph.com and on our self-hosted free tier on private code (which means individual devs can still run Sourcegraph code search 100% for free). Customers are not affected at all.
It's no wonder, that the usage of OSS version was pretty low, when few were able to build it and even if they managed that, the resulting application was broken every few releases.
Both VS Code and Chromium are easy to build, due to their nature and popularity, they are available prebuilt from many sources. I would install "unofficial" Chromium build from my distribution's repository, I wouldn't keep my code in unofficial Sourcegraph build from some random person on Github. Comparing them is rather unfair, but there's another issue that stopped OSS adoption.
For a long time, official Sourcegraph Docker image came with a 10 seat free license, which suited many people and they weren't looking for alternatives like OSS build.
I would argue that announcing license change and closing of your product as a small block in change log file or when someone mentions the problem in Github Issues is not adequate for such a change.
Not using open-first principles, restricting the product by using enterprise only plugins, which others mentioned under this post, not providing open source builds and changing license without preceding announcement, while previously using open source terminology for some feel-good free marketing leaves a bitter taste. Especially with so many companies doing this right now due to interest rates.
https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/43231 https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/43203 https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/6790 https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/6783
[1]: https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/discussions/54589
Are you sure this isn’t just a way for you to crack down on license abuse?
Quick search reveals
https://github.com/sourcegraph?q=Lsp&type=all&language=&sort...
One of their employees maintains a Zig LSP https://youtu.be/h_7o3yroYy4
(I Don like the news itself obviously but the delivery was good)
Stop using the term Open Source. It's not open source if you apply restrictions like this, it's pretty easy to see that you're being disingenuous. These licenses are not OSI approved.
It practically is, and they've done a good job of gathering the relevant citations to make that point.
https://opensource.org/authority/
If you're passionately against this, feel free to make the relevant edit here as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software#Definitio... (but you may have to have a litany of citations to justify why the OSI definition is not a de facto standard if you want it to stick).
It seems to me that it’s OSI (around for years, reputable, etc) vs some for profit companies misusing common terminology in the, I think false, sense that people think non-open things they call open are good. Not sure if they are deluded or just wrong.
Happy to talk about some new authority for open source licenses, but it seems like the “OSI isn’t an authority, nobody is” is an argument by 8th graders who just read the Wikipedia article on communism.
OSI formed to help open source developers and users to better understand “proper” licenses from bullshit.
The OSI has done a great job at introducing a legally ratified and globally recognized license format to help reduce uncertainty, but it is not, and has on several occasions been denied[0], the global authority on the definition of Open Source. They have a trademark and are the authority for "Open Source Initiative Approved License" (ie: "OSI License") specifically.
[0]: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
It’s not like there’s some competing definition. OSI has been around for 20+ years and only recently did a few companies decide they want a different definition so they can make more money.
But the issue isn’t that there’s some word police. The issue is that open source has a definition in use and when people try to overload, it gets confusing. I wish people wouldn’t do that, but it’s free country (free as in speech, not free as in beer).
No one cares if source is “open” in that people can view it. In that case windows is “open.” The important part of open is the ability to change, reuse, and participate.
Why would anyone care if source is visible but not usable? I’ve been able to decompile forever. I can see the source if I need to. The community and reuse aspect is important.
Finally, OSI doesn’t define the term. They just certify licenses that adhere to open source principles and ideas. The community defines the term. Everyone is free to make up new licenses. OSI just helps the community filter out noise by reviewing licenses that actually are open source.
This is exactly my point, the community defines the term. The OSI definition does a good job of making the legal aspect of (their vision for) "open source" explicit, but it also adds additional definitions beyond what the average layperson might consider "Open Source".
Take section 5 and 6 of the "Open Source Definition"[0]. It states you can't discriminate against "persons, groups, fields, or endeavors". So if I wrote some software, put a MIT license on it, with a single additional clause that says the CIA can not use this software. Magically, it is no longer "Open Source" according to the OSI, even though 99.9999% of people can freely use it under the MIT.
[0]: https://opensource.org/osd
They have a definition, they even have a pretty good definition, but the OSI shouldn't be the definition. All OSI licenses are open source licenses, but not all open source licenses are OSI licenses. (All thumbs are fingers, not all fingers are thumbs).
Right, because it’s not open source and not MIT. Open source isn’t about 99.999% of people being able to use it, it’s about be free and open.
This is the commonly accepted definition of open source and there’s very few who would consider your custom license open source.
Practically speaking, it means I can’t use it even though I’m not in the CIA because I want my project to be compatible and reusable down the line by anyone. So I use a true OSI license like MIT and want all the software I link to and use compatible so users have a clear expectation.
You can make your new license, but I don’t want to use it as I only want to use open source licenses.
I don’t want to hire an attorney to review your license and see if it works or not. I want to just filter by known licenses and make sure they are compatible with my other licenses.
There are open source licenses that aren’t OSI, but they are pretty few and OSI works diligently to review new licenses and add them.
Your example license isn’t open source though, so it doesn’t fit this small group.
You might think so but I disagree.
1000 people misusing the term means the term changes. 1 person misusing the term is just a jerk.
I’m always suspicious when people overloading a term are all doing it for personal benefit (ie, promoting their product).
I think consensus is around OSI now, but it could change. I might not be right in the future, but I think I’m right now.
Anegdotally I have been a professional dev for 10 years and this is the first time I hear your definition of open source.
If we go back, say, 25 years, when the term Open Source entered common usage, it was a way of describing the things that had thusfar been labeled "free software", but as a way of deemphasizing the notion of the Free Software movement that saw non-free-software as immoral. It was a term to describe things that met the Free Software Definition, but without harping on morality.
It was very much a counter-culture (it was, after all, the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement), and very much not a generic term for having access to the source. That was already super common in enterprise agreements, and nobody considered that to be open source.
Then around the early 2000s, Linux became hot shit, and some large companies wanted to avail themselves to the rising tide and began labeling their watered down versions of "source available" things as open source in an attempt to jump on the bandwagon. But that was an intentional attempt to water down the definition everyone already understood for marketing reasons.
You not knowing this history means that to some extent the marketing worked. But just realize that in arguing here, you're participating in the astroturfing. Also, get off my lawn!
But I’m also in the camp that didn’t know this history and had a softer definition of “open source”. That’s just how language changes, shrug.
But this I think is one of those cases where there is a difference, because it's also descriptive of a community, and it matters how that community sees itself. With whatever definition of open source you have, the most high traction stuff that we all rely on (I originally wrote, "most", but I think e.g. the Linux kernel matters more than a random abandoned repo on Github) is produced by people that use that older definition of open source, and mostly by people who identify with that social movement. (I for a long time was one of those people.) In this case I do believe that in that all of us now rely on open source software, that redefining it in opposition to the group of people who produce that thing is less than respectful.
I'm pretty sure it's not, unless by developer you mean land developers and not software devs
Oh, but you can, just do it in your fork. You can't claim their trademark but that's a completely different thing.
(I do understand that Solargraph is now using a proprietary enterprise license, so this comment is directed at the OP mentioning "OSI approved" licenses, not at Solargraph's new license.)
* it ain't trademarked.
The term source-available has been shoehorned to mean everything-not-OSI-approved, instead of what it used to mean: a proprietary license for a project that has its source available (e.g. Sourcegraph's license).
In reality, "open source is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent restrictions on the use and modification of the code." Which is the definition the majority of developers would say is open source.
The ELv2 and most uses of BSL fall under the "relaxed restrictions" on use and modification, similar to GPL. I'd argue they are open source.
Not to the general public, only to the users doesn't have to be generally available to the public, see recent RHEL PR debacle. It's not about the restrictions it's about what you are allowed to do with the code.
> ... Which is the definition the majority of developers would say is open source.
Can you prove your claim has anyone done demographics on this?
Also, I'm quoting Perens' definition of open source.
Users of the BSL refer to it as a "source-available" license that, after a period of time, converts into an "open source" license:
https://www.couchbase.com/blog/couchbase-adopts-bsl-license/
https://itsfoss.com/making-the-business-source-license-open-...
Note that I'm not coming from a position of hostility re: the BSL and similar licenses here. I think companies using that approach can be friendly neighbors with the open source community. I just think it's important for those neighbors to share a well-maintained fence to keep malicious actors from exploiting ambiguity.
Now, that is one of the main reasons why non-OSS licenses are being adopted: many companies prepare contingencies in case an OSS project dies, instead of making some arrangements to help a bit to ensure the project doesn't die. However right the vendors are, the resulting license significantly (materially, non-word-playfully) restricts the users, which is exactly why those users are compelled to start paying for the product.
P.S. None of what I wrote means I oppose those licenses, as they may be needed to ensure a healthy ecosystem. But I oppose calling them OSS.
They're not inherently bad licenses but they aren't open source.
No, that's "source available." If there is no open source license, then it is not open source.
But we're not talking about technicalities here. We're talking about the vey basic idea of what it means to be "open source." I'm not telling anyone that they can't use words however they want. They can. But the way they're using the term "open source" is just fundamentally incompatible with how the vast majority of people in the field use it. So it's at the very least going to cause some confusion to use the term "open source" in the way they are.
Besides, I think people have a bigger problem with the licensing change itself than any wordsmithery.
It sounds like we are in full agreement, and you’re with me that @xenago’s demand to not use the phrase might be overstepping a little bit, no? Isn’t this confusion easier to clear up with a single short question than with assumptions or demands?
There is a slight problem with claiming using “open source” is confusing to the people who know about OSI. To the lay person who’s not a software developer, “open source” does mean ‘source is visible’, and “free software” does mean ‘software that costs no money’ (and these definitions are included in dictionaries and Wikipedia, next to the OSI and FSF versions). The OSI and FSF definitions are terms of art that these orgs are trying to establish and control, and they deviate from what the literal words alone imply, both in meaning and level of specificity, therefore they will always be confusing to people who are neither developers nor lawyers. Wouldn’t it be better if FSF and OSI relied not on co-opting everyday words, but having phrases that are more obviously terms of art and more obviously attached to the orgs? Even something as simple as “OSI Open Source” or “FSF Free Software” would go a long way. OSI does on it’s site use “OSD - Open Source Definition” quite a bit.
Source available is the correct term. Laymen who don't know any better often call shareware open source as well; they don't know how the software is made and don't care. That is not a good reason to use incorrect words.
The whole point is that they are trying to use the words "open source" to appeal specifically to people, like those here in this thread, who work on free and open source software in the FSF/OSI sense.
This is a message for the exact group of people who use the term of art because they're practitioners of that art.
Oh okay. I was trying to tell you I agreed with what you said, but if you insist: Okay, fine then I disagree with you. Naw, I still agree with what you said. I don’t know what you’re disagreeing with at all, you haven’t made that clear. Consider the possibility that we might be, as the phrase goes, agreeing violently.
> they are trying to use the words “open source” to appeal specifically to people
Who is “they”? The top comment was referring to Apache 2.0, which is an OSI approved license. So, what, exactly, are you thrashing against here?
> This is a message for the exact group of people who use the term of art because they’re practitioners of that art.
Exactly! Sorry for saying this again, but I agree with that sentence. My point, which does not disagree with what you just said, is that because they are the practitioners, they are the people who know and use the term of art know better and should be the least likely to be confused when someone doesn’t use their term of art, and most likely to be able to handle the disambiguating gracefully like adults without getting upset or whinging that their term of art wasn’t used. They should be the people who best understand that their term of art has a special and overloaded meaning next to the literal words and some common non-term-of-art usage of those words.
This is all academic, the top comment was using the term of art in all of its overloaded glory. All I’m saying is that @xenago’s response is a bit inappropriate no matter what, regardless of whether it was the term-of-art usage or the lay-person usage, even if it was intentionally misleading (which it wasn’t). What you said appeared to agree with that, because you said “I’m not telling anyone that they can’t use words however they want”. So it does in fact continue to sound like you and I are agreeing on this point, among others.
I'm no fan of the OSI, but language policing usually turns out to be correct. There are other definitions of open source - the free software definition, the DFSG - but in practice they're all close enough that the differences don't matter.
> OSI didn’t invent the term open source, and like it or not, other definitions do exist that don’t meet OSI’s standards.
Very few. I don't think there's any nontrivial software that doesn't meet the OSI's standards but is recognised as open-source by anyone who isn't a) a paid shill or b) a self-important provocateur who wrote it.
> I don’t understand the confrontational stance either, with code being offered to individuals. That far exceeds what most companies do, in terms of serving the open source community, no?
Companies are trying to salami-slice away the rights users expect from open-source software. The response to that has to be a firm line in the sand.
> other definitions do exist that don’t meet OSI’s standards. The term doesn’t belong to any one organization.
And all attempts to redefine what open source means fail, because both FOSS camps OSI and FSF/GNU as well as everyone in between see it for what it is: attempts to muddy the water in order to deceive users and customers. Your software is either FOSS or it's not, there is no scale here, it's a social contract. Just because there are a bunch of ambiguous licenses that no-one knows what to make of, doesn't mean there are two or more concepts. There's only one concept for both "open source" and "free software" and the difference is philosophical.
> There’s only one concept for both “open source” and “free software”
Well neither OSI nor FSF agree with this statement. You’re on your own there.
'Open source' generally gets read to mean 'available under an OSI or OSI-like license', and 'free software' as 'available under the GPL or a GPL-like license' IME - if the license is commercial only but the code's still freely -readable- albeit not freely -runnable- then 'source available' is clearer.
(note that sqs clarifies elsewhere in the thread that 'open source' was being used to refer to the stuff that's (still) Apache 2 licensed, not the source available parts)
Free software is largely coterminous with open source. Even Stallman uses the term 'copylefted software' to refer to software under a so-called copyleft license -- one which, like the GPL, forbids license changes upon redistribution. Stallman will tell you that he'd rather your free software be copylefted, but it doesn't have to be.
You're right about source-available though. It's what we used to call 'shared source', after a failed attempt by Microsoft to promote that as an alternative to the viral, cancer-like open source.
The challenge I had with Sourcegraph is that it's out of reach of developers working on personal projects. There isn't a hosted plan, and for my projects I can't easily open source them due to my employer.
I was really excited when the Sourcegraph App was released, since it allowed me to give Sourcegraph a try on my project without going through the complex self-hosted setup. I went as far as getting scip-clang working with my Bazel-based project, and then tried out the docker-compose setup on my home lab.
Now that code search was removed from the app, and this change, I'm concerned that I won't be able to use Sourcegraph for my personal projects in the future.
This is a missed opportunity. I think individual developers using products for personal projects are powerful advocates, since those developers may convince their employer to purchase the product. If I could I'd gladly pay, but I'm just one person and can't justify $5k/year.
We have lots to reflect on given the feedback here on HN. We were honestly a bit blindsided by the number of people who appear to be using open source Sourcegraph, or who really wanted to use it but found the process too difficult. Part of this is because we had a zero telemetry policy for the open source distribution. Perhaps that was a mistake in hindsight, but introducing telemetry there would've been another can of worms!
Now that the usage is more visible, it's actually kicked off a lively internal discussion. We're going to take some time to gauge the size of the user community and figure how we can best support it. Aside from individual use being free (still the case) and making deployment more straightforward (through something like code search in App), are there other things we can do to make it easier to adopt? Sorry about the confusion here, we should have handled this better. But the silver lining is we realized there were a lot of users of Sourcegraph that we didn't know about and we're now discussing how best to engage and support you all. I do hope you'll take the chance to pop into our Discord and say hello and continue with feedback that can help us make the best decisions for our users.
I like paying for things that I use and bring me value, but at the moment Sourcegraph is a hard sell due to high cost compared to small company size and being based outside of Western Europe and US.
I really wish the enterprise stuff was available to the single user case like mine. Everything past v4.3.1 is hot garbage, as you guys really nerfed it for non-enterprise users ever since you removed "showEnterpriseHomePanels" among a few other things. I regrettably can't upgrade to anything newer because of that.
I would LOVE to have the ability to pay you guys say, $100 a year or something reasonable for just a private onsite enterprise license for one person -- myself. I continue to advocate for your products in all the enterprise contracts I work as that's what I'm most familiar with and tinker with when I work on my own personal stuff on my own free time.
I think it would be great to just have all those features for one user, and for a reasonable yearly fee for a single developer to be able to afford.
If you guys are concerned about being ripped off -- For example, some company buying this "single user enterprise license", I don't think they would if you limit it to one admin user. No company is going to risk sharing creds for a superuser account / keys to the kingdom, and if they do, they are some fly-by-night company with no sense of security that was never going to give you guys money anyway.
That's my two cents.
tl;dr: I can care less if it's open source or not. I just care that enterprise is affordable to the home user and that I can still run it on premise and in a semi-airgapped network environment.
From my prior code inspection, I recall seeing OSS code making regular “pings” back to Sourcegraph even when telemetry options are disabled by users. Survey toasts also appear to send information to HubSpot when answered.
I don't doubt that your perception of the OSS version's lack of success is accurate, and it is definitely easier to close off the source, but at the same time the outcome of this is that one funnel into it is closing with the calculation that the effort spent to keep that funnel open wasn't worth the people coming in through it.
The other possibility, and one that I subscribe to (not that it isn't self-serving) is that the funnel was never open enough to see success in the first place.
[0]: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/g...
The response was basically "sorry, we're too busy".
Your business model is fascinating.