This discussion reminds me of the role of advertising back in the primordial days of the web. It's not just technology in flux: entire philosophies and ways of life flow -- and ebb. Open source serves different communities different purposes. For the altruistic, for the adventurous, for the cheap, for the cannily opportunistic: each comes to a different banquet at the OSS table.
People will always abuse what’s provided. The trick is to determine the proper response. A company putting Nagios, for example, under the covers of its proprietary services, so long as it does not take credit for Nagios and leaves the GPL code alone, makes perfect sense. A contributor to Nagios might cry foul, but after all, the code is Open Sourced. So long as the letter of the GPL is not infringed the company may do what it likes.
Open Source is akin to academia’s development of networking and the internet over the past decades. It is the labor of love, and the craving to increase our understanding and ability to create, and to make changes to the society and culture around us. Just as there is government (let’s not knock DARPA!) and academic funding, there is also private funding for new efforts. And, as those who have used government money knows, the golden rule applies: s/he who has the gold makes the rules.
I think open source has a great future. There will always be people generous and altruistic enough to give of their creativity to help the public. Or at least to help their fellow internet users get for free something they would otherwise pay for.
The flip side is the blunt, business side: the more complex a solution the more support it requires, and support is a paid, not free model. FAQs and intelligent wizards cannot replace reaching out and speaking to a competent technician. Moreover, businesses relying on software to generate revenue or curb expense require the security and comfort of an SLA. At my current position we pay for Linux support (RHEL, SLEZ), just as we pay IBM for their OSS implementations on our SANs.
As for the evil ones, those that warp OSS to their, not the common, good: there’s no solid vehicle at the moment to take these folks to court, and no way to ‘compensate’ those impacted. In the long run, bad OSS modifications and the products leveraging them will wither on the vine, while open source standards-based ones will thrive. It’s not a short-term solution, but it is, as I tell my kids, a “natural consequence” to bad behavior.
Open Source
Posted by
Dale Chatham
at
2007-04-22 12:54
Not being entirely certain where you draw the line between exploitation and reasonable use, I would suggest a few things.
Those who package for a reasonable fee and acknowledge the source of software they use I do not believe are coloring outside the lines. Building a business using nagios doesn't truly seem to be pillaging the open source community, considering logos, screen, etc. are left intact or reasonably so.
In a weird kind of way, even out and out exploitation probably benefits the OS community in that it gets the software used and seen. People who work for such an organization likely take the name "nagios" with them to other jobs and spread usage in that way, some of which probably benefits nagios directly.
The problem with all of the OS licensing is that license violations when prosecuted revolve around damage actually done. Such damage is expressed in monetary units. It's hard to show damages when the software is free.
None of this is to say that it is ethically or morally proper, or that those who do so are not a bunch of scumbags. They are. The question comes down to a simple "what can be done" and "how much energy must be exerted". As well as, "what damage actually has been done?"
I got into an argument with the founder of GNU early on when the license stated you had to release all source using gcc to the open source community. I told him he could get double damages in a law suit. 2 * 0 = 0.\
In the beginning, Open Source (GNU, as it was in the beginning) was highly socialistic environment almost reminding one of commune living. It may be a nice illusion, but in reality, in order to thrive in the world, things need to be commercially viable. Benefits even from the most egregious abuse means that the author's names become well known and this benefits them.
Open Source needs to allow for commercial use in order to be viable, else it's just a shared grad project.
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People will always abuse what’s provided. The trick is to determine the proper response. A company putting Nagios, for example, under the covers of its proprietary services, so long as it does not take credit for Nagios and leaves the GPL code alone, makes perfect sense. A contributor to Nagios might cry foul, but after all, the code is Open Sourced. So long as the letter of the GPL is not infringed the company may do what it likes.
Open Source is akin to academia’s development of networking and the internet over the past decades. It is the labor of love, and the craving to increase our understanding and ability to create, and to make changes to the society and culture around us. Just as there is government (let’s not knock DARPA!) and academic funding, there is also private funding for new efforts. And, as those who have used government money knows, the golden rule applies: s/he who has the gold makes the rules.
I think open source has a great future. There will always be people generous and altruistic enough to give of their creativity to help the public. Or at least to help their fellow internet users get for free something they would otherwise pay for.
The flip side is the blunt, business side: the more complex a solution the more support it requires, and support is a paid, not free model. FAQs and intelligent wizards cannot replace reaching out and speaking to a competent technician. Moreover, businesses relying on software to generate revenue or curb expense require the security and comfort of an SLA. At my current position we pay for Linux support (RHEL, SLEZ), just as we pay IBM for their OSS implementations on our SANs.
As for the evil ones, those that warp OSS to their, not the common, good: there’s no solid vehicle at the moment to take these folks to court, and no way to ‘compensate’ those impacted. In the long run, bad OSS modifications and the products leveraging them will wither on the vine, while open source standards-based ones will thrive. It’s not a short-term solution, but it is, as I tell my kids, a “natural consequence” to bad behavior.
Those who package for a reasonable fee and acknowledge the source of software they use I do not believe are coloring outside the lines. Building a business using nagios doesn't truly seem to be pillaging the open source community, considering logos, screen, etc. are left intact or reasonably so.
In a weird kind of way, even out and out exploitation probably benefits the OS community in that it gets the software used and seen. People who work for such an organization likely take the name "nagios" with them to other jobs and spread usage in that way, some of which probably benefits nagios directly.
The problem with all of the OS licensing is that license violations when prosecuted revolve around damage actually done. Such damage is expressed in monetary units. It's hard to show damages when the software is free.
None of this is to say that it is ethically or morally proper, or that those who do so are not a bunch of scumbags. They are. The question comes down to a simple "what can be done" and "how much energy must be exerted". As well as, "what damage actually has been done?"
I got into an argument with the founder of GNU early on when the license stated you had to release all source using gcc to the open source community. I told him he could get double damages in a law suit. 2 * 0 = 0.\
In the beginning, Open Source (GNU, as it was in the beginning) was highly socialistic environment almost reminding one of commune living. It may be a nice illusion, but in reality, in order to thrive in the world, things need to be commercially viable. Benefits even from the most egregious abuse means that the author's names become well known and this benefits them.
Open Source needs to allow for commercial use in order to be viable, else it's just a shared grad project.