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Open-source has become so co-opted by mainstream IT, so transformed by "accidental open-sourcers" simply looking for a better business model, that its lost its cherished moral edge.
I guess this summarises the majority of the clueless assumptions in one hit. The original concept (way before there even was an "Open Source" branding), was the software should be free. It's been said a thousand times but obviously that isn't enough -- free speech, not free beer. When Richard Stallman talks of "Free Software", he means software that provides freedom to the user... regardless of what this actually costs in financial terms. In particular:
The term "Free Software" is confusingly ambigious. People just can't help themselves and want to keep thinking about price. That's one of the reasons why "Open Source" started gaining traction as a key term -- don't think about price, think about the source code. Open Source still is not quite right because it fails to emphasize the concept of freedom. One of the most accurate terms is "Software Libre" which is not strictly English but actually, English is a mangled grab-bag of root languages anyhow and the term "Software Libre" is perfectly clear and unambiguous to any English speaker. The real reason that "Software Libre" hasn't taken off is because deep down, everybody hates the French.
Back on track... talk about morality. There's one, exactly one and only one moral statement that free software stands for -- which is that the open and unimpeded exchange of ideas between people and the ability for each person to build on the ideas of others in an unencumbered manner is the best possible creative environment to develop more ideas and better ideas for everyone.
This can be expressed in many different ways. Software is one particular manifestation of creative ideas but it applies to other areas of endeavor. In a word, it's all about freedom. The freedom to create, exchange ideas and build on the work of others.
How does this relate to the corporate Open Source movement (IBM Eclipse, Sun Solaris, MySQL, etc)? How do we test to see whether the "moral edge" is still the same as it ever was? Check the license, check the freedoms listed above -- if they are still available then the moral statement is as strong as ever. Indeed, the fact that such a diverse group of people are choosing to license their software under similar terms can only serve to strengthen the moral statement -- this really is the right way to do things.
Haff cites IBM's release of its VisualAge software development tools to the open-source Eclipse Foundation in 2001, a move he argues has dealt near-fatal blows to commercial Java Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) such as Borlands Jbuilder and Symantecs Cafe.
Say it one more time, free speech, not free beer, price is not the issue and never was. The only moral question relevant to Open Source is, "did IBM's release of Eclipse increase or decrease the sum total software freedom in the world?"
Do no wrong, do no right.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is someone suggesting that a few eggs need breaking?
Yet few have taken notice of what might be seen as ruthless or even treacherous action because of the positive reputation HP enjoys as a champion -- second only to IBM -- of open-source.
That's mainly because the business interests of HP's competitors and partners are of zero relevance to Open Source advocates. Someone signing up a contract with HP over a sales, partnership or support deal needs a good understanding of how likely HP is to be ruthless and/or treacherous. Someone making use of Open Source software released by HP does not need to care about HP's future treacherous action -- Open Source licenses cannot be revoked and do not expire. HP can do what they like -- that is what freedom is about... and we can do what we like with their code -- that's our freedom. OK, important correction here: we can do anything except take away the freedom of other people to also use that code.
By contrast, bad companies like Microsoft can't catch a break, argues Haff.
They are about the most dominant and successful company in the industry, both financially and with respect to user-base and in terms of breadth of products. "Can't catch a break" huh? They seem to be doing alright (for now). If they have gone past their peak and are into decline, am I supposed to be sorry for them? Would they be offering sympathy to me? Simple answer to both questions is an emphatic "no".
For instance, if in the late 1990s Microsoft, then in the midst of the Department of Justice's anti-trust case, had decided to release its Visual Studio 97 development tools for free, "What do you think the general reaction would have been? Applause for Microsoft's generosity? Or widespread condemnation for using its market power to make such a transparently anti-competitive attack on other makers of development tools?"
Well, since the title of the original article included the term "Open Source", we might presume that the hypothetical question asks whether Microsoft would release all of Visual Studio under an Open Source license. It's very hypothetical, MS would never do that, we all know they would never do that... but if they did actually do that, then yes a lot of people would applaud their generosity, including myself.
The basic premise of Open Source is the unencumbered sharing of ideas. However, what about the unencumbered sharing of lies? What if these ideas are actually dishonest and designed to confuse people?
The actual heart of Open Source does not make a stand on honesty, even though a lot of Open Source advocates are also advocates of honest dealing. As it turns out, when the freedom to share ideas is available, honesty auto-magically gets sorted out by an older and deeper ideology -- the Scientific Method. Freedom gives each player in the game the ability to collect the information required to make decisions. The Scientific Method gives a system for testing the information for self-consistency and for integrity. This is rather similar to the legal methodology of cross-examination by the way.
Although the Scientific Method and the Open Source Movement are quite distinct concepts, they do dovetail nicely and they do reinforce one another.
Rosenberg is more disturbed by the bandwagon jumpers: the companies, mostly startups, belatedly going open-source in order to "ride a trend," while paying only lip service to the community and its values.
Oh no, we have to make a decision... Is a company really dedicated to the ideals and morality of the Open Source community? Easy test, just go back to those basic freedoms. If they use an OSI approved license or a GPL compatible license then that's commitment enough for me. In fact, that's all I would ever ask. It's not a "lip service" issue, the license either is Open Source or it isn't. You can't be halfway.
Take Aras Corp., a provider of Windows-based product lifecycle management (PLM) software that in January decided to go open-source. Rosenberg depicted the firm in his blog as an opportunistic Johnny-Come-Lately."I'm not impressed when a company whose software is totally built on Microsoft technologies goes open-source," said Rosenberg, who even suspects that the company is being promoted by Microsoft "as a shill" to burnish Redmond's image in open-source circles.
That's just nonsense, there's no problem with people writing Open Source software to run on a Microsoft platform. Inkscape has a MS-Windows version, Gimp has a MS-Windows version, OpenOffice has a MS-Windows version. Even cygwin is a worthwhile project.
The only question is which license do Aras provide?
To be honest, I can't actually find clear licensing information on their website with regards to their source code license. I did find that their documentation license is http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/. Aras have chosen both the [A] and [B] license options which makes their documentation difficult to modify and partially encumbered by non-commercial restrictions. I for one would not regard this as fitting for list of freedoms given above. I understand that some people would disagree with me on this one, it's an issue of some contention but I'm going with the OSI and saying that anti-commercial restrictions are unacceptable. Open Source was never intended to be anti-commercial.
The documentation license probably is not as important as the source code license. I can find that the name of the license is named the "Aras Open Distribution License" and I can see that you need to register for license keys. I can't find the wording of the license document itself. To me, this says it is not Open Source. No such license is mentioned by OSI in their list of approved licences. Thus, this is a simple case of someone pretending to be something which they are not. They are not paying "lip service", they are merely misrepresenting what they have to offer. You will find dishonest people the world over... hardly a shock there. Easy to test in this case, just check their license against the official OSI list of approved licenses... if it ain't there, it ain't Open Source.
The sudden drive for ideological purity is partly due to the confusing period in open-sources evolution we seem to be in. The prevailing business model is the almost-oxymoronic commercial open-source. The biggest open-source announcements last year were all by companies traditionally hostile to open-source.
Yet again, Eric Lai demonstrates that he doesn't really understand what Open Source is about. Commercial models for Open Source are generally support oriented or customisation oriented. The ideological side is strictly limited to ensuring that freedom is protected -- after that you choose any commercial model you like. Just, that the traditional "we own the software and you pay for a license" will not be acceptable anymore... choose any other commercial model you like. Open Source is not anti-commercial, and was never designed to be. It is merely anti-ownership and commerce is bigger and more flexible than the concept of ownership.
Take Microsoft, which now touts the large percentage of users who run popular open-source applications such as SugarCRM, Jboss and MySQL on top of Windows.
Please note that SugarCRM is not Open Source either (even though it also regularly misrepresents itself). The SugarCRM license includes a rather significant "advertising clause". The Open Source world thrashed this out with the original BSD license which also included a similar clause and such licenses were rejected. UCB did indeed change their mind and relicense their code under a less restrictive license).
Licenses with an advertising clause are not GPL compatible, and the OSI does not accept such licenses are OSI approved. To this day, the main SugarCRM distribution page on Sourceforge lists their license as "License: Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL 1.1)" which is an outright lie. This is dishonesty plain and simple... as I said, there are dishonest people the world over and that's just a fact of life.
Don't take my word for any of this (by the way), I might also be dishonest. You can check it yourself, that's the whole idea of being open... use that Scientific Method and test each statement against the available evidence. Get the SugarCRM source code, read the license, get the Mozilla license read it, note the differences. Now do some research on advertising clauses and why they were rejected from the Open Source definition.
Redmonk's Governor believes the numbers of such accidental open-sourcers, as opposed to true believers, will continue to increase, because in this age of easily-developed and delivered software, "freemium" business models -- meaning a service with a free entry point and a more expensive premium offering -- simply make the most sense.
It matters not whether businesses are "true believers" or "accidental". All that matters is the license they choose and whether they respect the freedom of others. If they use an OSI license then they are Open Source.
Maybe this is just too simple which is why I keep seeing people having difficulty with it...
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