An Open Source sustainability story in two slides. (for a coming talk of mine)

Slide 1: car brands using #curl
Slide 2: car brands sponsoring or paying for #curl support

@bagder

Let's light the fires.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/troed_how-many-open-source-projects-are-you-currently-activity-7361650475059818497-fhkA

@nopatience

@bagder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault%E2%80%93Nissan%E2%80%93Mitsubishi_Alliance

@bagder I’m sorry but, as “selfish” and unfair as it may be from these compagnies to benefit from all this free work without ever giving back, isn’t that the whole point of the software license chosen ?

I mean, the Curl website explicitly states that:

Copyright - License

Curl and libcurl are true Open Source/Free Software and meet all definitions as such. It means that you are free to modify and redistribute all contents of the curl distributed archives. You may also freely use curl and libcurl in your commercial projects.

The whole point of those licenses always has been to allow capitalists to profit from the free work of thousands of “free software” enthusiasts, and that’s probably one of the main reasons why so many “big” projects (which are almost all funded by businesses, directly or indirectly) push very permissive licenses as much as they can under the pretext of “freedom”. 😬

While I feel for you and it is clearly unfair that your (excellent) work is used everywhere without much (if any) payment for it, to me it looks like this goes far beyond the “selfishness” of a few big businesses, and is a systemic problem that cannot be solved without questioning capitalism itself, and the fact that the “free software” community accepts and even embraces it so broadly. 😕

@jor I don't think anyone has said they're not entitled to do this

@bagder

Ah, they're setting the agent string to something other than libcurl's default? How are you determining that specific manufacturers are using it?

I'm definitely aware that it's your baby; interested in how you're thinking about it.

@9v1rt libcurl has no default user-agent string, We find they use curl by them saying so. More details here: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/08/15/car-brands-running-curl/

@bagder there is curl inside Dacia 😯 ?

@mariuz yes. My updated version has many more brands

@bagder @phako So, does Bosch send money your way, or Continental?

@patrick @phako no

@bagder

Oh! Understood, thanks.

@bagder @petes_bread_eqn_xls exactly