I am real mad about the Elastic relicense so I'm going to vent a bit.

Say that I contributed some code to Elastic, under the original open source license. That license defines the terms of our engagement. Me: "hey I improved your code, can you include this fix so I and everyone can use it?" Elastic: "sure!"
They require a CLA, which assigns ownership of my fix to the project steward. The idealistic reason to do this is to protect the long-term health of the project: if copyright law gets totally rewritten, we can update the license to reflect our original intent!
But this also requires me to trust in the steward organization to do the right thing. As the copyright holder on the project, I gave them the power to update the license to *anything* they want. Which, in this case, Elastic did.
Elastic didn't pick another open source license, which would provide the same guarantees for how I can use, contribute to, and redistribute the software. No, instead they said "thanks for contributing, your code is proprietary now, f off so we can make more money"
As a consequence of signing their CLA, I can no longer use MY OWN GODDAMNED CODE in their future releases however I want. I've signed my rights away.
By using an open source license and accepting contributions, they asked the community to trust them with their CLA. Implicitly: not just at the time the public made contributions, but for the life of the project! Instead they chose to set that trust, and their community, on fire.
I don't care if you use a proprietary license. You've been clear about your intent. I can make an informed choice not to work with you.

Replacing a FOSS license with a proprietary one is a violation of trust and a giant "fuck you" to everyone who worked with you in good faith.
This is why I won't contribute projects that require a CLA without community governance. If there isn't a CLA, the project can't change the license unilaterally and must continue to honour the original terms of my engagement.
I give away my code for free so *everyone* can use it for free... for better or for worse.

Elastic: If you're going to exploit people, you could at least pay them for their contributions. I hear you have a 14B market cap. 🙄
to conclude.....
To give you an idea of the approx. number of non-(elastic employee) contributors affected by this:

$ git clone [email protected]:elastic/elasticsearch.git && cd elasticsearch
$ git log -- . ':!x-pack' | grep Author | sort -u | egrep -v 'elastic\.co|elasticsearch\.com' | wc -l
1676

More from For later read

How I created content in 2020

A thread...

Back in Aug 2016, I started creating content to share my experiences as an entrepreneur.
Over 3 years I had put out 1,200+ hours of content - posting every week without


Little did I know that something I started almost 4 years back would give my life an entirely new direction.

At the end of 2019, my biggest platform was LinkedIn with ~700K followers.

In Jan 2020, I decided to build a team that would help me with the content.

I ran a month long recruitment drive to hire a team of interns.

It comprised 4 detailed rounds - starting with my loved 20 questions, then an assignment, then a WhatsApp video round and finally F2F.

Through 1,200+ applications, I finally selected 6 profiles, starting March.

I am a firm believer in @peterthiel's one task, one person philosophy
So the team was structured such that everyone was responsible for ONLY one task

1. Content ideas
2. Videography
3. Video editing
4. LinkedIn (+TikTok) distribution
5. FB+IG distribution
6. YouTube distribution
Excited we finally have a draft of this paper, which attempts to provide a 'unifying theory' of the long economic divergence between the Middle East & Western Europe

As we see it, there are 3 recent theories that hit on important aspects of the divergence...

1/


One set of theories focus on the legitimating power of Islam (Rubin, @prof_ahmetkuru, Platteau). This gave religious clerics greater power, which pulled political resources away form those encouraging economic development

But these theories leave some questions unanswered...
2/

Religious legitimacy is only effective if people
care what religious authorities dictate. Given the economic consequences, why do people remain religious, and thereby render religious legitimacy effective? Is religiosity a cause or a consequence of institutional arrangements?

3/

Another set of theories focus on the religious proscriptions of Islam, particular those associated with Islamic law (@timurkuran). These laws were appropriate for the setting they formed but had unforeseeable consequences and failed to change as economic circumstances changed

4/

There are unaddressed questions here, too

Muslim rulers must have understood that Islamic law carried proscriptions that hampered economic development. Why, then, did they continue to use Islamic institutions (like courts) that promoted inefficiencies?

5/
Nice to discover Judea Pearl ask a fundamental question. What's an 'inductive bias'?


I crucial step on the road towards AGI is a richer vocabulary for reasoning about inductive biases.

explores the apparent impedance mismatch between inductive biases and causal reasoning. But isn't the logical thinking required for good causal reasoning also not an inductive bias?

An inductive bias is what C.S. Peirce would call a habit. It is a habit of reasoning. Logical thinking is like a Platonic solid of the many kinds of heuristics that are discovered.

The kind of black and white logic that is found in digital computers is critical to the emergence of today's information economy. This of course is not the same logic that drives the general intelligence that lives in the same economy.

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