BeansBooks Public License, a cautionary tale

[maiki]

Continuing the discussion from Touchscreen laptops with Ubuntu:

@maiki

System76 isn’t getting any money from me, and not just from their past treatment of me: they are making bad decisions in their new ventures, and I won’t support a company that takes steps backwards after I personally warned them.

Hindsights:

• I always wish I spoke better; my ego appreciates “impact” more than “being right”, these days
• That project is dead

Beansbooks is available “as is” and will no longer be maintained. We would like to thank everyone who has used and contributed to Beansbooks.

And no one will touch it, because it isn’t “open source”. It’s just “source”.

[mlinksva]

I’d forgotten all about BeansBooks, thanks for noting its status. Seems the unmaintained note was added last year and there’s been near zero development for five years. Too bad they didn’t/haven’t released under a real open source license since whatever business (SaaS based on last archived copy of beansbooks.com) they had planned for it evidently didn’t work out.

FWIW I’ve not been following closely but have had an overall positive impression of System76 the last few years, particularly some progress on open firmware for some of their laptops, open hardware design for some of their desktops, Pop!OS seems to be well received, and they employ the lead developer for RedoxOS.