Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software [LWN.net]

Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software

Posted May 17, 2011 20:39 UTC (Tue) by aryonoco (subscriber, #55563)
Parent article: Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software

First of all, unlike what many people are saying here, I thought the piece was very well done, insightful, and balanced. Thank you Jake for the piece, and thanks you Jonathan for running it. Whether you use Ubuntu or not, UDS is an important conference (doubly important this time with the presence of Linaro people there) and LWN is right in covering it.

On the topic of contributor agreements, as a long time sceptic of contributor agreements, this was the first time that I began to understand Mark's vision and where he is going.

If free software projects generally own their own code base, and design a business plan to generate revenue around it and become self sufficient, this could strengthen the whole free software ecosystem. Unfortunately for Mark, I don't think this will happen.

Shuttleworth has poured his resources and years of his life contributing to the community. Even if you are not an Ubuntu user and have never benefitted from a Canonical-developed technology, I doubt that his creation of Canonical and Ubuntu have hurt anyone, so I find the level of antagonism and hostility by some community members towards him, baffling.

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Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software

Posted May 17, 2011 21:29 UTC (Tue) by aryonoco (subscriber, #55563) [Link]

He is NOT arguing for proprietary software. He is however advocating for projects to own their copyright, so that they can build a revenue-generating plan around it. If that plan happens to be dual licensing, so be it. Even RMS has acknowledged that dual licensed software can be acceptable, sometimes.

Has the world really suffered that much due to the availability of Qt under a commercial license, as well at GPL and LGPL?

Just to make it clear, I am not arguing in favour of contribution agreements. I believe they don't work, simply because they introduce a barrier to participation which discourages many to join, as well as the fact that most free software is developed by the "lone hacker" or collection of "lone hackers" who are not necessarily interested in building a business around their idea (and might not be good at doing so either). But the man has a vision and he's earnt the right to try his hand at it. It's perverse to twist Shuttleworth's words to claim that he is advocating for proprietary software.

Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software

Posted May 17, 2011 21:54 UTC (Tue) by moofar (guest, #70283) [Link]

"He is NOT arguing for proprietary software. He is however advocating for projects to own their copyright, so that they can build a revenue-generating plan around it."

The second sentence is equal to "He is advocating selling proprietary software." Owning copyright gives you only one kind of revenue-generating power. All other ways to generate revenue do not require copyright ownership. My statement is valid, he is arguing for proprietary software to help free software.

I am not saying he is wrong, but the fact that he, like you, tries to skirt around and obfuscate the rather simple way that free software people see things is really not going to help his cause.

Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software

Posted May 17, 2011 22:01 UTC (Tue) by moofar (guest, #70283) [Link]

And there is one minor exception to my above statement. See, http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/10/19/proprietary-relicens.... Also, I am personally in favor of contributor agreements, but not for revenue-generating purposes. Project Harmony seems like a good idea to me.

Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software

Posted May 18, 2011 10:09 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]

Owning copyright gives you only one kind of revenue-generating power. All other ways to generate revenue do not require copyright ownership.

The above quote has probably the most insight per word of the entire discussion. Copyright assignment is not merely about one specific kind of revenue generation: it is about exclusivity with respect to that kind of activity. And although people try to bring copyleft licences into this as some kind of problem - albeit only a "problem" if you want to make proprietary software and you're left staring at a copyleft licence - the actual issue is not which licence is attached to a "code drop" from an entity owning the code; it is the presence of double standards from the owner: that the community should believe and participate in the development of Free Software, but the owner would like to make some money from proprietary software.

This isn't problematic if the owner really developed the code themselves or rewarded those who did - there's a discussion to be had about whether a contributor is "rewarded" by being able to participate in a project and to use that project's code in the first place - but when a community of people have made the project into what it is, those people might regard the financial exploitation of their work as unfair. Economists and others might argue that the inequality of the roles in such projects should naturally lead to a smaller community of outsiders.

People who care about the availability as Free Software of their contributions might be more likely to contribute to projects which employ copyleft licences. However, such people may object to their contributions being used in proprietary software through copyright assignment or special licence grants. But if companies want to build a community around their software, they have to consider such issues carefully.

No company would enter a new field completely uninformed, so I don't really sympathise with the sentiments about people being unfriendly to clumsy businesses.