Re: BCS OS Licence

[hippy]

		  Hi

I realise that I am a little late to this discussion, but I have only just discovered the ossg.

The discussion about licenses is all too often viewed from the perspective of a very narrow band of users. The idea that the GPL is not business friendly is an interesting case in point. What this really means is that it is not friendly to that small groups of companies who wish to take an GPL'd OSS project, make some alterations to it, and then sell it as their own work. This is a small group of OSS users but it is by far the most vocal in the software industry.

In many respects the GPL is very friendly to business:

1. As a business that uses an unaltered GPL'd OSS project I can be assured that I will always have access to any improvements that are made to that project. 

2. As a business that contributes to a GPL'd OSS project I can be assured that my contribution will not be used by a competitor in an unfair way.

3. As a service provider (rather than a software seller) GPL'd OSS can be altered by me, and integrated into my systems, to give my service unique capabilities. The fact that the derived works clause is only important if the alterations, or derived works, are distributed ensures that any competitors that are selling software, rather than providing a hosted service, cannot use the GPL'd OSS to compete with me.

As a business contributor to OSS I view GPL and LGPL projects more favourably because I have no wish to contribute my code to projects that I might have to pay for later down the line when my code has been incorporated into a commercial product. It is my code, it is my investment, it is my choice.

The other aspect that is often overlooked in the license debate is the position of the, largely volunteer, developer. In addition to code contribution as a business, I contribute to a number of OSS projects as a private individual. I view the licenses on those projects as an expression of the desires of the developers. Most of them are GPL or LGPL but some are BSD-like licenses. The license is generally chosen by the individual that instigated the project and it is an important element in forming the culture of the project. Where projects are entirely volunteer driven the choice of license should rightly be left to the developers themselves to decide. It is appropriate that good information is available to ensure that they know the consequences of their decisions but no one has the right to criticise the developer's choice. 

It is interesting to note (and this is not from any careful study) that the proliferation of licenses has come largely from releases of code from commercial organisations. Each company appears to want to have their own lawyers draw up the license. This is exactly the same as non-OSS software releases, where there are almost as many licenses as there are products. 

We should not complain that dedicated volunteers choose to place constraints on how their hardwork should be used. We should be vocal in our appreciation that they choose to allow us to use it at all.

If the BCS wants to invest in helping the licensing issue it would be well advised to help establish a UK/EU equivalent of the EFF. The is a dreadful lack of good legal opinion and support on the applicability of license clauses to UK/EU law. There is a great deal of ill-informed conjecture on the subject but very little from good legal minds. How about getting some of the Profs from our university law departments to look at the existing licenses and give their opinions?
 
Regards

Richard


Subject: Re: BCS OS Licence
From: Anonymous User
To: licensing@ossg.bcs.org
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 11:42:00 +0000


		  Hi Richard

I had very similar views to yours before I started my research. At the beginning I expected my research would conclude that the GPL was the licence which was driving innovation in the Open Source market and that businesses should support it because of this fact. 

It became clear as my research progressed that the GPL was not the sole source of the innovation which was clearly happening at a pace in the market. The reality was more that any licence which promotes public collaboration and communication was equally effective.

The biggest example of this is the Apache Foundation. None of their products are GPL licenced and yet they are by far the most professional and widely used products in the Open Source arena. The Apache web server has held a clear market share lead over Microsoft's  offering in the same space for many years, a feat which even Linux cannot claim to match.

The major difference between the Apache Foundation licence and the GPL is legal clarity. Whether the GPL is business friendly or not is not 'totally' clear, whereas it is very clear in the Apache licence. This adds perceived risk and makes it somewhat 'business unfriendly' even if in practice it is not. I agree with you that a formal investigation by UK lawyers would be valuable, but would probably not give the clear answers you want.

In order to claim that the GPL (and so the FSF) is the most important licence for Open Source development you would need to explain:

- The success of the Apache Foundation despite not using the GPL.
- Why Apache products are not being hampered by being 'stolen' and used in commercial products as you claim the GPL protects against.
- The fact that the FSF does not approve of what we now call 'Open Source' development, which is the driving force in this market area. See http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-software-for-freedom.html

What I saw happening is a market driven re-balancing between the ideology of the FSF , business needs and consumer needs. This is a very good thing, it means business has to deliver what consumers want and they need to collaborate openly with each other and individuals which prevents them building large monopolies. It also vastly improves the potential for individuals to create startups because of reduced lock in (providing the curse of software patents were not present of course).

So, we have a lot to be grateful for from the FSF and GPL licence. They are fresh thinking innovators in their field and set in motion a cultural shift which has lead to better products in all senses. 

note (If anyone is not totally familiar with the FSF ideology it is worth researching fully on their website (http://www.fsf.org). They are up front and honest about their thoughts on a great many things, which is refreshing.)

However, whilst we needed a strong ideology like the FSF's to provide some inertia to start the cultural shift it does not automatically follow a total re-alignment to that ideology will yield further benefits. 

I think the interaction of Business and the Open Source development model is mutally beneficial, something the FSF does not seem to share my optimism on. 

- There is no great incentive for business to 'steal' open source software as the resultant product would be competing in a market with a no cost competitor ! 
- There is real incentive for them to collaborate via an Open Source process to provide infrastructure on which to build 'value added' services / products at lower cost. 

The balance a business has to consider is the potential reduction in costs from using / collaborating on Open Source products against the inability to lock in customers to your product to enable higher prices. More and more businesses are seeing this balance as favourable to them, which is good news for innovation in the industry as a whole (in my opinion of course).

Lee