• cjk@discuss.tchncs.de
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    3 months ago

    Apple deployed a library I wrote to every mac on the world, and additionally bundles it with Xcode.

    Apple users reported some bugs, that‘s how I found out.

    I never heard a word from them. No patches, no bug reports, nothing, they didn’t even bother to refresh the bundled version.

    I think in the meantime they removed it from macOS but still bundle it with Xcode.

    I mean, I didn’t any money, but some appreciation would’ve been nice, and a version refresh…

    If you are curious: it is this library: https://github.com/ckruse/CFPropertyList

    Edit: appreciation as in: a mail with a notice that they did so.

        • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          You can use your library for commercial projects that you have. Just have dual license that requires payment for commercial use or something similar. You don’t have to pay yourself

          • cjk@discuss.tchncs.de
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            3 months ago

            To be honest, I wasn’t aware of this option when I wrote this library. Nowadays I would chose this path.

            • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              I think that’s why Github suggests MIT as default. Unaware people will just put that. Most open source people just code things they want without thinking much on other aspects. We really need some sort of enforcement to stop companies banking on voluntary work done for the community.

    • Matt/D@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      Really funny/interesting that they use an external library to handle a format that they created!

      • cjk@discuss.tchncs.de
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        3 months ago

        Yeah, I was surprised, too. I guess they implemented stuff using Ruby and didn’t bother to write an in-house implementation. 🤷‍♂️

    • Nighed@sffa.community
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      3 months ago

      It’s probably a single dev that made the decision, then moves onto something else. They (probably?) don’t have the ability to just raise a recurring PO etc to easily pay you and don’t care enough to worth through the paperwork.

      If you had a paid licencing model they may have done it, or just found another lib/ wrote their own.

  • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Make your MIT-licensed library big enough that the corpos use it, then switch it to AGPL just before you add a really important and tricky feature they’ve been waiting for.

  • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I really wish we could have a license like if your revenue is 5mil + you have to kick in something to the devs

  • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    So how difficult would it be to update the library to include a blacklist to those big corpos taking advantage of your code?

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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        3 months ago

        I really like the GPL license for that reason. Take it, use it, be merry. But don’t you dare use it in a closed source project, and you have to give me credit

    • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Just use a GPL license instead. It allows use with credit, but requires that usage also be released for free. Meaning that it can’t be used by corpos and their closed-source projects.