Greater threats justify stronger defensive actions

Posted Jun 4, 2004 11:29 UTC (Fri) by copsewood (subscriber, #199)
Parent article: Open source: Prepare for attack (ZDNet)

As the media here remind us of the 60th aniversary of D-Day, I think frequently of the sacrifice of freedoms which everyone involved had to make in order to defend the greater freedoms which democracy can bring.

I don't think we need regard the SCO case as the equivalent of the invasion of Poland in 1939, or Pearl Harbour. When a case arises which can be considered to have such equivalence in connection with software freedoms, and perhaps in responsible advance preparation, it will be time for another version of the GPL. This new version will require those using software licensed under it to license their own use of a pool of software patents already donated to a suitable organisation, e.g .the FSF or EFF, in exchange for granting free use of all software patents they themselves own if any, to all users for all uses of free software based on all licenses defined as such by the FSF.

This would not take away all "potential shareholder value" from ownership of such patents, as the use of these would still be possible within the context of proprietary software. Getting rid of the latter potential would require legislation preventing software from being patentable, something worth campaigning for, but not neccessary for continued use of free software if this particular defence is successfully used.

It might be argued that compelling such cross licensing by these means makes this new GPL version "non free", which somehow defeats the purpose of having free software. I would argue that the greater threat against democratic governance made by the axis powers in WW2 justified the limited sacrifice of smaller freedoms which the allied populations had to make in order to make any of the freedoms which we now enjoy possible.

Software authors could then choose whether or not to use this new license for new work. Perhaps a few organisations would succeed in avoiding use of any software made available under this new license. However, even Microsoft uses GPL software under current versions, (their Services for Unix product). MS are also believed to have made more substantial use of BSD licensed TCP/IP code. The more software organisations which refuse this new license are forced to reengineer from scratch, the greater their costs in refusing to use this new license. They will only be able to justify these costs to their shareholders if they can point to a revenue stream which justifies it.

One lesson we should learn from WW2 is that we should not be unwilling to prepare against such a threat if delaying the need to counter it results in greater damage when we are eventually left with no other options but to fight or surrender.