LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 30, 2006

Who is being divisive?

On November 23, the OpenSUSE project announced the first 10.2 release candidate. In its usual way, LWN posted that announcement; we tend to have a relatively large number of readers who are interested in software of great novelty and questionable stability. This time, however, a recent LWN subscriber took exception to our having posted the announcement:

We got similar comments a few years ago when we continued to publish OpenLinux security alerts with all the others after SCO started its legal rampage. Now, as then, we do not intend to change our editorial policy.

In this context, a couple of other postings are worthy of merit. Shortly after the Novell/Microsoft deal was announced, Chris Dibona posted a weblog entry which reads, in its entirety:

Comments posted on the site and elsewhere suggest that most readers found this entry to be topical and amusing.

On November 24, Ubuntu self-appointed benevolent dictator for life Mark Shuttleworth sounded off on the topic as well:

Unlike Chris's posting, however, Mark's missive was met with quite a bit of criticism. There was a fundamental difference between the two: Chris posted on his own weblog, while Mark chose to spam the OpenSUSE mailing list. Had Mark restricted his comments to his own, well-read weblog, he would likely have taken less grief.

Both people were, however, trying to do the same thing: attract developers away from the OpenSUSE project. We have also seen calls for direct boycotts of the SUSE/OpenSUSE distributions and, as mentioned above, people wishing that announcements from the OpenSUSE project would no longer be visible to the rest of the world. There is, it seems, a great deal of anger against Novell and a wish to marginalize its distributions in response. The petition posted by Bruce Perens states it clearly:

There are some problems with taking that approach at this time, however. Much of the concern in the community is about what will happen in the future - not what has happened so far. But predictions about the future are notoriously hard to get right, and things may not turn out the way people expect. In the mean time, however, we may have caused irreparable damage to our community.

The SUSE distribution is one of the oldest and highly respected available. SUSE has, over the course of many years, employed many free software developers and contributed heavily to the community. OpenSUSE is a free distribution which is slowly moving toward a more community-oriented model. There are many developers working on this distribution, and their work is worth as much now as it was last month. OpenSUSE is still a free-software distribution - especially if you avoid the proprietary add-ons disk.

As a bonus, OpenSUSE users are not beneficiaries of Novell's non-license, and, thus, get the full benefit of patent liability that they had before the deal was signed.

In addition, it is not yet clear what harm, if any, will be caused by Novell's deal with Microsoft. It could yet turn out as Novell says: more money for free software, more code, and no downsides. The fact that Novell chose to pay protection money to see off a potential bully does not necessarily make things harder for those who have not paid that money; if anything, Microsoft's attempt to start a new FUD campaign around this deal has backfired. Microsoft has now said, in public, that Novell did not acknowledge any patent problems - a statement which will make it harder for Microsoft to use Novell's protection money as a justification for shaking down other vendors.

Novell has been accused of trying to divide the Linux community. The truth of that accusation will (or will not) become clear over time. What is clear now is that calls to isolate SUSE and attempts to lure away its developer base are unquestionably divisive. Individual users and developers will certainly make their own decisions over time, and it could be that SUSE's run as a major distribution is nearing its end. Or, if things look bad enough, OpenSUSE might eventually fork away from its creator. But it is too soon for any of that to happen, and there is little benefit in trying to hurt a free software project like OpenSUSE. Companies which feel threatened by free software may well attempt to split up our community; there is, however, no sense in doing that work for them.

Comments (133 posted)

What is open source?

When the Open Source Initiative first set up shop, the plan was to obtain a trademark (in the US) for the term "Open Source," and to restrict use of that trademark to licenses which were deemed to uphold open source values. That plan came to an end when the trademark office turned down the application. Some time later, the OSI trademarked "OSI Certified" instead, but, by then, the momentum was gone. Use of the OSI Certified mark has been minimal. There is, it seems, little demand for a trademarked stamp of approval for open source licenses.

That situation could yet change, however, as a crop of relatively new companies pushes the boundaries of the term "open source." At the top of the list may well be SugarCRM, which bills itself as "commercial open source." The company's web site says "We thought there was better way. Why not write our product in public and distribute it through an open source license?" Despite these words, the license created by this company, the SugarCRM Public License (SPL), is not on the OSI list of open source licenses - and it's not clear if it ever will be.

The SPL is based on the Mozilla Public License, but it includes (among other things) some text at the end:

These requirements on how the software is to be used are rather intrusive for what is supposed to be a free license; most open source licenses do not prescribe the layout of an application's windows. The folks at SugarCRM, suspecting that the OSI would not consider such requirements as being free, opted not to ask for OSI approval at all. But they call their license "open source" all the same.

SugarCRM's John Roberts makes no apologies for his license, stating that the attribution requirement is necessary to keep others from stealing his company's work. He goes on to say:

Ross Mayfield, representing Socialtext, has also come out in favor of attribution requirements. He has submitted for discussion a general policy statement on attribution requirements and the form they can take. It supports a relatively restrained version of the requirement which might find broader acceptance.

Not everybody buys the argument that web-based applications have a need for attribution which did not exist for prior generations of free software. Michael Tiemann says:

So there are some decisions which will have to be made here. One is: to what extent are attribution requirements simply a form of proper credit for the creation of free software? And to what extent are they an attempt to exercise a sort of proprietary control over software which, as a result, is not truly free? The SPL requirements on the presence, positioning, and linkage of logos do not look all that different from the invariant section requirements in the GFDL - and those requirements are widely held to be non-free. A programmer who borrows even a single function from SugarCRM's code base must thereafter make his or her entire application "powered by SugarCRM," assuming the licenses are compatible at all. It would not be surprising to see a consensus build to the effect that this requirement makes the SPL a non-free license.

The bigger question which is being forced by this discussion, however, is: what does "open source" mean? When the term was first coined, there was concern that businesses would attempt to use it for licenses which were decidedly not open. That sort of abuse has not been much of a problem - so far. But now we are seeing businesses apply the term to code which, to some people in the community at least, is not open source. Problems often start small and grow from there; if some businesses are able to get away with calling licenses without OSI-approval "open source," others will do the same with much more restrictive licenses. There will always be somebody who is willing to test the limits.

What can be done about any future abuse of the term "open source" is not clear, however. There is no trademark, so there is no legal mechanism available to shut down such claims. The OSI could attempt to regain control of the term with a publicity campaign and a stronger effort to push the "OSI Certified" mark. But the OSI has been largely inactive and out of the public view for some time, and it is not generally seen as a representative body. So it is an organization with a relatively small mind share and relatively small moral authority. It's not clear what the OSI can do at this point.

(See also: David Berlind's long article which started the current round of discussion).

Comments (25 posted)

The GNOME Foundation board election

The GNOME Foundation aims to help the progress of the GNOME project by coordinating releases, representing the project to the rest of the world, producing documentation, and more. The board which directs the Foundation currently has seven open slots, to be filled by an election ending on December 16. There are eleven candidates for those seven slots. A look at some of the things the candidates are saying gives an interesting view into the issues which are driving the GNOME project this year.

-- Federico Mena Quintero (not a candidate)

-- David Neary

-- Máirín Duffy

-- Behdad Esfahbod

-- Vincent Untz

-- Jeff Waugh

-- Glynn Foster

-- Quim Gil

-- Joachim Noreiko

-- Sara Khalatbari

-- John Palmieri

-- Anne Østergaard

That's one statement from each candidate (in no particular order). A few more quotes caught your editor's attention as highlighting other themes in this election:

-- Jeff Waugh

-- Joachim Noreiko

-- Jeff Waugh

All GNOME Foundation members should have the information they need to vote. May the best candidates win.

Comments (1 posted)