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Diffstat (limited to 'free-software.txt')
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1 files changed, 13 insertions, 13 deletions
diff --git a/free-software.txt b/free-software.txt index 75a52d4..8c11bb5 100644 --- a/free-software.txt +++ b/free-software.txt @@ -1,8 +1,8 @@ -Free and open source software enables the world as we know it. From web servers to kiosks to the big data algorithms mining your Facebook feed, nearly computer system you interact with runs, at least in part, on free software. Free software has given rise to a galaxy of startups and enabled the [largest software acquisition](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/ibm-buys-red-hat-with-eye-on-cloud-dominance/) in the history of the world. +Free and open source software enables the world as we know it. From web servers to kiosks to the big data algorithms mining your Facebook feed, nearly every computer system you interact with runs, at least in part, on free software. Free software has given rise to a galaxy of startups and enabled the [largest software acquisition](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/ibm-buys-red-hat-with-eye-on-cloud-dominance/) in the history of the world. -Free software is a gift. It's the gift that made the world as we know it possible. It's an astounding gift to give. So astounding in fact that it made businesses unaccustomed to this kind of generosity uncomfortable. They were unwilling to use free software, it was too radical and by extension, too political. It had to be renamed "open source." +Free software is a gift. It's the gift that made the world as we know it possible. It's an astounding gift to give. So astounding in fact that it made businesses unaccustomed to this kind of generosity uncomfortable. They weren't unwilling to use free software, it was too radical and by extension, too political. It had to be renamed "open source." -Once that happened though, open source software took over the world. +Once that happened open source software took over the world. Recently though there's been a disturbance in the open source force. @@ -18,19 +18,19 @@ MongoDB is not the only NoSQL database out there, but it's one of the most widel MongoDB is also leading the charge to create a new kind of open source license, which CTO Eliot Horowitz believes is necessary to protect open source software businesses as computing moves into the new world of the cloud. -The cloud, argues Horowitz and others, requires the open source community to re-think and possibly update open source licenses to "deal with new challenges in a new environment." The challenges are, essentially, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which are all capable of taking open source software, wrapping it up as a service and reselling it. The problem with AWS or Azure wrapping up MongoDB and offering it as part a software and service (SaaS), is that it then competes with MongoDB's own cloud-based SaaS -- MongoDB Atlas. What's threatened then is not MongoDB's source code, but MongoDB's own SaaS derived from that source code, and which is the company's chief source of revenue. +The cloud, argue Horowitz and others, requires the open source community to re-think and possibly update open source licenses to "deal with new challenges in a new environment." The challenges are, essentially, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which are all capable of taking open source software, wrapping it up as a service and reselling it. The problem with AWS or Azure wrapping up MongoDB and offering it as part of a software as a service (SaaS), is that it then competes with MongoDB's own cloud-based SaaS -- MongoDB Atlas. What's threatened then is not MongoDB's source code, but MongoDB's own SaaS derived from that source code, and which is the company's chief source of revenue. -To combat the potential threat to its bottom line, MongoDB has moved from the GPL to what it calls the Server Side Public License, or SSPL. The SSPL says, in essence, you can do anything you want with this software, except use it to build something that competes with MongoDB Atlas. +To combat the potential threat to its bottom line, MongoDB has moved from the Gnu Public License (GPL) to what it calls the Server Side Public License, or SSPL. The SSPL says, in essence, you can do anything you want with this software, except use it to build something that competes with MongoDB Atlas. -MongoDB has submitted the SSPL to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the organization that oversees and approves or disproves open source licenses, but the approval process is still in the early review stages. That said, judging by discussion on the mailing lists, and the wording of the license, the SSPL is unlikely to every be approved by the OSI, at least as it's currently written. +MongoDB has submitted the SSPL to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the organization that oversees and approves new open source licenses, but the approval process is still in the early review stages. That said, judging by discussion on the mailing lists, and the wording of the license, the SSPL is unlikely to ever be approved by the OSI, at least as it's currently written. Part of MongoDB's problem is that it's not the first open source business to run into this situation. In fact, part of this problem -- companies taking software, using it as they please and contributing nothing back -- is the reason open source software exists at all. Open source licenses vary, but the gist is generally, you can take this code and do what you want with it, but you can’t make the code proprietary, and if you use it in another project, then that project can’t be proprietary either. These licenses were written this way to prevent companies from taking open source code, using it in their own code and not sharing any of it back to the original project. -Horowitz argues that wrapping a piece of code in a SaaS offering is the modern equivalent of using it into an application. +Horowitz argues that wrapping a piece of code in a SaaS offering is the modern equivalent of using it in an application. -It's a novel argument, but it's in defense of a very old problem that goes well beyond licensing. It's a problem that goes all the back to the beginning of free software -- how do you make money off software if you give it away for free? +It is a novel argument, but it's in defense of a very old problem that goes well beyond licensing. It's a problem that goes all the back to the beginning of free software -- how do you make money off software if you give it away for free? One traditional answer has been that you sell services around your open source software. But for Horowitz that's not good enough. "Monetizing open source with support contracts has never been a great business model," he tells Ars. Red Hat would likely disagree, but Horowitz believes that more protective licenses would bring more venture capital investment and spawn more software businesses based on the open model MongoDB has used. "We're unique," he says, "I want us to be less unique." @@ -42,11 +42,11 @@ Bruce Perens, co-author of the original [open source definition](https://opensou MongoDB is not the only one complaining that the cloud is raining on its profits. -Redis Labs, another data storage company, was the first to sound the alarm about cloud providers threatening its business and Redis Labs may have the better solution. Redis Labs initially changed its license to include something called the Common Clause sub-license, which forbids anyone from selling any software it covers. Software licensed with the Common Clause is not, by anyone's definition, open source, which Redis Labs acknowledged. It has never described those portions of its software as open source. +Redis Labs, another data storage company, was the first to sound the alarm about cloud providers threatening its business and may have the better solution. Redis Labs initially changed its license to include something called the Common Clause sub-license, which forbids anyone from selling any software it covers. Software licensed with the Common Clause is not, by anyone's definition, open source, which the company Labs acknowledged. It has never described those portions of its software as open source. As this article was wrapping up Redis Labs made yet another licensing change, in essence dropping all pretense of being open source software and adopting a homegrown proprietary license for some of its modules. To be clear, most of Redis is governed by the Apache 2.0 License, but some modules are not, namely RedisJSON, RedisSearch, RedisGraph, RedisML and RedisBloom. -The license Redis Labs applies to these modules says that while users can view and modify the code, use it in their applications, it restricts which types of applications they can build. With Redis Labs' new license you are not free to build anything you want. You cannot build database products, a caching engine, a processing engine, a search engine, an indexing engine or any kinds of ML or AI derived serving engine. You cannot in other words use Redis Labs' code to compete with Redis Labs. This violates one of the core tenants of open source licensing -- that there be no restrictions on derivative software. +The license that applies to these modules says that while users can view and modify the code, use it in their applications, it restricts which types of applications they can build. With this new license you are not free to build anything you want. You cannot build database products, a caching engine, a processing engine, a search engine, an indexing engine or any kinds of ML or AI derived serving engine. You cannot in other words use Redis Labs' code to compete with Redis Labs. This violates one of the core tenants of open source licensing -- that there be no restrictions on derivative software. This is the same sort of protection MongoDB also wants, but MongoDB wants to retain the open source label. @@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ Perens tells Ars that this was one of the key motivations behind the intimal ope Redis Labs' new license puts companies in the position of needing a lawyer, and GoodFORM becomes the more logical choice. This also may hint at why MongoDB wants to remain open source. -Other open source projects which have changed to closed source licenses have not faired well. The Xfree86 project was the defacto standard for running X Windows for most of the 1990s, up through the early 2000s. In 2004 Xfree86 began shipping code that the Free Software Foundation felt was counter to the GPL. The downstream operating systems using Xfree86 decided that was unacceptable and a fork, X.org, was born. Today X.org occupies the place Xfree86 once did and Xfree86 is abandoned. +Other open source projects which have changed to closed source licenses have not fared well. The Xfree86 project was the defacto standard for running X Windows for most of the 1990s, up through the early 2000s. In 2004 Xfree86 began shipping code that the Free Software Foundation felt was counter to the GPL. The downstream operating systems using Xfree86 decided that was unacceptable and a fork, X.org, was born. Today X.org occupies the place Xfree86 once did and Xfree86 is abandoned. Other examples are easy to find, LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice, MariaDB came out of license changes in MySQL, Wireshark came out of Ethereal, the list goes on, but the key thing to note is not just that the forks happened, but that they took with them the developers, the community, the momentum that sustains open source software over the long haul. Lose the goodwill of the open source community and it can be vicious in exacting its revenge. It's also efficient in doing so, Xfree86 was effectively dead six months after X.org began, OpenOffice disappeared into irrelevancy similarly quickly. @@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ If open source history teaches that there is no going back, it's worth consideri After years of using Quickbooks to appease accountants, I got fed up with it. I looked around for some open source accounting software and stumbled across something that fit my needs, [Beanbooks](https://beansbooks.com/opencode), a little project spun out of Linux computer manufacturer System76. -System76's Beanbooks is a perfect example of what Peren's sees as an ideal open source software scenario. In <cite>The emerging economic paradigm of Open Source</cite> Perens argues that a company's non-differentiating software is its best scenario for open source software. That is, open source the infrastructure of the business, not the core. +System76's Beanbooks is a perfect example of what Perens sees as an ideal open source software scenario. In <cite>The emerging economic paradigm of Open Source</cite> Perens argues that a company's non-differentiating software is its best scenario for open source software. That is, open source the infrastructure of the business, not the core. To put it another way, Beanbooks was not System76's profit center, but it is an enabling technology for System76's profit center -- building Linux-based computers. @@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ Everyone loves an underdog, and Redis Labs and MongoDB want to portray themselve Redis Labs and MongoDB both look like very healthy companies. Redis Labs just raised $60 million dollars in funding and, based on the companies doing the funding, looks poised for a successful IPO. MongoDB's IPO last year was, by all accounts, a huge success. It's stock IPOed at $24 and has steadily climbed ever since then. Today it trades at at around $100 a share. Just before this article went to press one of MongoDB's biggest users, Lyft, did defect to Amazon, but after a slight stock drop, MongoDB's stock was right back up where it was before Lyft defected. -Neither company seems to be hurting in anyway. Yet. The fallout from their license changes remains to be seen. It could be that they end going the way of Xfree86 and OpenOffice. It could be that they are able to survive as proprietary software companies. The fate of either is unimportant to the fate of the larger open source paradigm. +Neither company is hurting. At least not yet. The fallout from their license changes remains to be seen, but given that much of the development of MongoDB comes from employees, it will likely be fine regardless of whether it's open source or not. The fate of either is unimportant to the fate of the larger open source paradigm. The open source paradigm doesn't work for everyone. As Perens put it in a conversation we had as I was wrapping this up, "you can use any license you want as long as you don't call it open source, that's your freedom. But we have certain rights that come with open source it doesn't make sense to give these up to protect a business model." |