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Tuesday at OSCON, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has continued the celebration of 20 years of open source. A blog post at the OSI reflects on how Open Source fits in with pre-existing intitiatives.
Open source did not emerge from a void. It was consciously a marketing programme for the already-15-year-old idea of free software and arose in the context of both the GNU Project and the BSD community and their history (stretching back to the late 70s). We chose to reflect this in the agenda for our celebration track at OSCON.
But that doesn't mean its inception is irrelevant. The consensus to define open source at the VA Linux meeting and the subsequent formation of OSI and acceptance of the Open Source Definition changed the phrase from descriptive to a term of art accepted globally. It created a movement and a market and consequently spread software freedom far beyond anyone's expectations. That has to be worth celebrating.
Wikipedia's entry on Open Source provides a great deal of information on its origin and application in multiple fields besides just software.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday July 18 2018, @08:17PM (12 children)
Time has proven me wrong. It's not harmless, and Stallman was right.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by DannyB on Wednesday July 18 2018, @08:59PM (11 children)
I am curious how the "open source" brand is not harmless.
Stallman was right about some things. GPL was perfect at preventing a Microsoft from stealing . . . here I say that word . . . open source. (because it rolls off the tongue and I've said it for so many years.)
There are other large ecosystems of non-GPL open source that are more friendly to commercial developers leveraging their work. I would point out the Apache foundation for starters. Or Eclipse. Or Mozilla.
For a long time Stallman was right about "the Java trap", but now Java is GPL + classpath exception. Really the best of both worlds. A viral license on all the Java tech, but it is non viral for anything that "runs on" Java.
Microsoft has been beaten. They even admitted that they're embracing Linux "to get the developers back". Not that Microsoft can be trusted. And they are still a danger.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday July 18 2018, @09:17PM (10 children)
Because it's viewed as a purely technical innovation. Free Software was a technical innovation but that was the least important part of it.
The Open Source brand gives cover to those who wish to take advantage of the technical benefits as if they were some sort of voodoo - while disavowing the underlying principles that cause it to work. It's cover to abide by the letter of a license, while completely perverting its spirit. It's cover to produce 'Free Software' that's used to take away human freedoms.
"Microsoft has been beaten."
You're too optimistic. They're not beaten, but Google is giving them a run for their money. That's no reason to cheer, though. It doesn't matter which one of these 'win' when the game is to screw the rest of us. The best that can come out of that game is a protracted battle that damages them both, but that's not good enough.
And the only way to change the game is to repeal or overturn a huge string of bad court decisions extending copyright into something that it was never supposed to be.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 18 2018, @09:29PM
Maybe I should say: Microsoft's best days are behind it.
It doesn't have the monopoly any longer.
Microsoft cannot squeeze and demand in the ways it once did. It can't pressure its OEMs so much any more to make only Windows devices. And once Microsoft OEMs now make all kinds of devices even as they continue to make Windows devices.
Microsoft has thrown in the towel on smartphones. No surprise since Ballmer laughed at the iPhone. Unable to see the potential.
A surprisingly sized chunk of the population needs nothing more than a Chromebook. Microsoft's once deepest Netscape fear come true. The OS has become irrelevant. Most good things are cross platform, or run on the web, and probably run on phones, tablets, etc.
Intel's future is not quite so bright either due to their integrated approach of both designing and fabbing chips. The rest of the world has design houses who hire fabs to build their chips. AMD is giving Intel a run for its money as Intel has had a stumble. ARM chips still might become "a thing" in servers. Simpler architecture might be more secure in the wake of spectre like attacks.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 18 2018, @10:18PM (8 children)
And, then, there are those of us who prefer to work with LGPL, MIT and BSD licenses, because those are "free and open enough" for our purposes.
The last thing I need in my business or hobby is some sniveling GPL SJW sniffing around demanding a copy of the source. Maybe I want to share it, maybe I don't, and why should you be able to impose legal proceedings on me if I'm not in the mood to share today?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 18 2018, @11:13PM (6 children)
Because you are building your software on code that has this as licensing condition. For some libraries you pay with money, for others you pay with your source.
And yes, I see why you prefer libraries that are gratis. But you have no right to complain that others don't give you their code gratis, especially if you are not willing to give away your code at all.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:18AM (5 children)
No, most explicitly: I am not. Code which is GPL licensed is persona-non-grata in my professional and hobby work, and I am far from alone.
The GPL license is overboard, toxic, and it does shrink the potential developer pool significantly. I'm not complaining that people want to make their own rules and play in their own sandboxes - that's their right. I do get a little peeved when a particular technology is GPL only, that's a situation that will obviously right itself with time, but I'm impatient and I wonder why it's so important to defend your sandbox with lawyers instead of just sharing?
The code I work on professionally is not my own, I am paid a good salary by the people who actually own that code. Whether or not I agree with their decisions on code sharing, they are their decisions to make, not mine. I was actually at a meeting yesterday where we clarified our current quality and sourcing situation: Open source code is not only free, but it also does not trigger tremendously expensive (hundreds of thousands per vendor) risk assessment, vendor reliability and disaster planning activities - the $50 per copy we might spend on a proprietary solution is something less than half the true cost of the proprietary solution over the life of the product. In the particular case in question the proprietary vendors are maybe 5-10 years ahead of the semi-free open source alternatives, so I'm in favor of keeping them on-board, but the process costs to do so are staggering.
If I ever get time for hobby code, it's MIT license now. Check back in 6 months to a year, I might have something interesting.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @03:06AM (2 children)
I don't get it.
Either:
- you really need that code, so that code is important to you (and your question about "what it is so important" is misplaced); *or*
- indeed, that code is not "so important" for your work/hobby and can be replaced, thus, why are you complaining?
What's the name of that psychological phenomenon when someone can hold as true two contradictory positions without blowing their mind? Cognitive dissonance?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 19 2018, @11:18AM (1 child)
The position in a professional setting is: occasionally, a piece of GPL code would meet one corporate objective while simultaneously violating multiple standing rules.
As a cog in the machine it is frustrating, like wandering through the desert potentially dying of thirst and coming upon a well labeled: drink this and you have a chance of dying from a lawsuit in 5-10 years.
As a hobbyist, I have precious little time to work on my own code in the first place, and I hate lawyers, so I will not use my hobby time to give them work or value.
Where's the contradiction?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:20PM
sounds like the easiest course of action would be to change the corporate policy ;)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @04:38AM (1 child)
I would think that a capitalist would understand when he is not in the market for a certain product. Software should be GPLed specifically when it may have commercial value because you, proprietary sir, are not one of the end users we are developing for. I am not even developing for my daytime self (check with a lawyer, kids). All the MIT stuff is an ecosystem for proprietary programmers, so off you go to your dysfunctional pre-socialist sandbox!
It is you who are not sharing the economic proceeds from our hard work when we license MIT or similar. Either a.) it has market value, and you need to compensate us if you intend to use it as capital; or b.) it does not, and therefore you are no worse off for not having it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 19 2018, @11:44AM
I am not the proprietary sir. I am the schmuck stuck working for a living because I don't have a place where I can get food, shelter and medical care without a J.O.B.
I understand that there are millions of people around the world who live in a fairy land where they can spend all (or some significant part) their time doing whatever they want and not worry about a thing so mundane as a paycheck, and some part of that population writes and shares code. And, sure, there are even people paid big professional salaries by real corporations to work on GPL code, but they are even more fancifully rare than the independently, if not wealthy at least self-sufficient. Call it jealousy if you like, maybe it is jealousy, but from this side of the "has to/doesn't have to" work for a living divide, it just looks like a bunch of spoiled kids having a fancy party where they make their own rules about a fanciful utopia where all code is free and then turn around and smack people with lawsuits when they get the means and opportunity.
The world is as it is because of how we got here, and I don't think we would have gotten to where we are today without GPL. Structurally, it has enabled the Linux OS to thrive in the world as it was and has become. I do think that GPL has a place, however twisted (because the world itself is deeply twisted, so it's entirely logical that practical constructs within it will be equally so...) in the operating system, especially the kernel and I would wish up through the hardware drivers stack. In my fairy-land, all those licenses would be BSD/MIT equivalent and people would just share and share alike because it's better for everyone. I understand all too well the reality of corporate, IP protection, traditionalist greed and how GPL is fighting fire with fire on this front. Getting closer to the applications layer, LGPL starts to make more sense, and many of the applications oriented libraries have migrated there (Qt and GMP come immediately to mind, but there are many others...) I'm on board with LGPL where it makes sense, which (as the L is sometimes used) is in the Library Level.
The reason I champion MIT is: freedom to practice. If I publish an algorithm, or even a patent-worthy description of an algorithm, or protocol, or other "innovative" whatever that might be patented "for use in X", as an application in X and diligently develop it, that won't stop the big money players from patenting it tomorrow, but it will stop them from attempting to enforce that patent when the publication and practice history comes out (usually in pre-discovery before suits are even filed.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Arik on Thursday July 19 2018, @05:46AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?