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Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free softwareMark Shuttleworth on companies and free softwarePosted May 18, 2011 8:26 UTC (Wed) by shmget (subscriber, #58347)Parent article: Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software
"Companies may be more willing to open up their code and participate if they know they can also offer the code under different terms. That requires that, [..] contributors be willing to give their patches to the project. [..] The "fundamentalists" who are unwilling to contribute their code under a copyright assignment [..] are simply not being generous, he said."
in other words: companies are more likely to open-up their software if they can get developers to work for free then turn around and sell that work under a closed licensed... Gee the best of both world right? Well for the 'company' at least...
And people spending their free-time writing code should not be 'selfish'? by insisting that the fruit of their labor remain open-sourced ? really ?
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Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 19, 2011 3:21 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
I don't think I agree with this objection. You seem to be saying that you would rather not have more open source software if someone is profiting from it and only have projects that no one is profiting from because contributing to a project that someone else is getting revenue for is doing work for free even though you would have rights to the code per the license.
I personally have said that I think the confusion of gratis vs. libre and a definite undercurrent of people who want something for nothing has stunted an industry which could build a lot more cool things if developers could be better supported for their work.
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 19, 2011 3:54 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Surely the ultimate choice here is down to either the developers or their employers? I'm pretty sure that the people writing the code understand the difference between gratis and libre. It's up to them whether they feel that giving away their copyright in order to let someone else gain the right to sell closed versions of their code is a net benefit or not. People who want something for nothing aren't the decision makers here.
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 19, 2011 17:49 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
I suppose that's true that those people aren't the decision makers, I guess I just get distracted by what some people post on the intarwebs. It just seems like there is a lot of peer pressure to make things gratis and a generalized contempt of companies and money that prevents many projects from having the kind of success that, for example, Mozilla enjoys.
Maybe in an alternate reality what if major open source projects were organized as corporations owned by the major developers that charged license fees or had revenue sharing agreements with distributers. Everyone who puts significant effort in gets a cut and can maybe support themselves full time working on projects. You see this kind of thing in the games industry all the time these days, single developer shops or very small companies putting out small, inexpensive, high-quality releases and finding personal and financial success. It seems a shame that this model is translated so poorly to the open source "world".
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 19, 2011 15:23 UTC (Thu) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"You seem to be saying that you would rather not have more open source software if someone is profiting from it"
no, that is not what I'm saying.
Another evil of the dual open/close model is that the company that manage the project as incentive to reject perfectly good open-source contribution because they have implemented it on the closed-source side of the house and don;t want to cannibalize their business... in other words making patch inclusion/rejection decision based purely on their business interest and not on the merit of the patch...
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 19, 2011 19:36 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
There are actually two models of operation that could involve non-open licensing, and you are making an assumption about what is involved.
one model is to have the exact same code with multiple licenses, one open, one closed.
personally I don't have a problem with this, either way supports the product (the open license with code, the closed license with money), and even RMS doesn't have a problem with this approach
the second model is the one you are concerned with where the company has a limited product under an open license, and an 'enhanced' product under a closed license.
I think this can be done sanely, and don't have a big problem with it, but it does have the problem that you describe where a company may be reluctant to implement something in the open version that they have implemented in the closed version
I believe that ghostscript is an example of this done sanely. As I understand it they develop enhancements that go into a closed version, but that version automatically becomes open after a given time period
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 20, 2011 15:06 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"one model is to have the exact same code with multiple licenses, one open, one closed."
I don't understand. why bother with the later then ? what's the benefit ?
"As I understand it they develop enhancements that go into a closed version, but that version automatically becomes open after a given time period"
That sound like a reasonable compromise I could live with...
Bear in mind that 'Corporations' are psychopathic by design (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation )
Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software Posted May 20, 2011 18:22 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
>>"one model is to have the exact same code with multiple licenses, one open, one closed."
>I don't understand. why bother with the later then ? what's the benefit ?
the benifit is that companies that are paranoid about GPL 'infection' no longer need to worry about it. MySQL's business was based on doing exactly this, selling the same code that was available under the GPL under a closed license for people who didn't want to comply with the GPL (or were afraid of what the GPL could require them to do, even if it didn't)
I agree that full copyright assignment is overkill for any of this. I'm not trying to claim that full copyright assignment is needed for anything.
however I am saying that there are reasonable ways to dual-license code, and that if an organization is going to do so, they will need some contributer agreement that gives them the right to do so with the code contributed from outsiders.
copyright assignment gives the company the ability to so this, but it's not the only way for this to happen
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