path: root/free-software-notes.txt

Creative commons gets a lot of recognition, but when you say "creative commons" what do you mean? There's so many different licenses it's hard to know. Whereas with open source you know you have the right to copy, the right to etc



I help VCs with open source, most companies have a mixed model. AMA recommendations system, for a time A was the only company that had that recommendation system and so they couldn't open source it, but no everyone has that so you might as well open source it, then you get community based improvements.

The GPL if creating a hook, but there's no requirement to support open source.

The GPL is there to protect that. There are economic reasons that choose the licesnce. BSD is a good licence for creating a standard, works with propreitary software, easy to compile. GPL 
Busybox, embedded companies added it to their products, they added 100 commands. They were each other's biggest competitor, but they could work together on busybox. Users tend to become development partners.

There was, before open source, a reasonably large history of educational use only software, distributed.

The central myths of American business revolve around hard-nosed businessmen chasing better bottom lines and extolling the virtues of selfishness. Free software belies these myths, or at least operates outside them to a considerable degree. The largest single contributors to projects across GitHub are Perens' assessment of the economic paradigm of open source 

I couldn't help but be struck by the parallels to ecology. Open source as a whole has often been called an ecosystem, but it seems that, as with nature, there are ecosystems within ecosystems. Considering an open source project as an ecosystem means thinking in terms of generosity. 


It may be that free software is more of an ecosystem.




A good example of exactly that is what might be the original open source success story -- the Apache web server.
Instead Beanbooks the software suffered a fate that may well await Redis and MondoDB -- neglect and obscurity. 


## What does work

The Apache web server grew out of the Apache Group, which later became the Apache Foundation we know today. The Group came before the software. At the time (1994-5) working on open source software was something of a novelty. The founders of the Apache Group knew that to wrangle code contributions from volunteers spread across the globe without an organizational ties would be difficult. This was the first problem they [set out to solve](http://mockus.us/papers/apache.pdf), and the solution at the time was the Apache Group. 

Only after the community structure had been established did the developers move on to writing code. 

As System76's experience with Beanbooks illustrates, this lesson -- that the community is more important than the code -- is one that open source software projects .

Apache went on to become the poster child of successful open source software projects, eventually becoming the most widely used server on the web, displacing Microsoft's IIS to the point that today it's a mere footnote in the evolution of web servers. gg




These licenses are not open source at all. In fact, these licenses are the reason open source software licenses exist. 

The first attempts to define free software, and give it a coherent legal structure, came about because companies were taking software, using it and not giving anything back to the creators. Yes, the reasons MongoDB, Redis and others give for not sticking with open source, are the same reasons that drove Richard Stallman to create copyleft licensing in the first place.



edis has recently created something called the “Commons Clause”, which takes the Apache license and makes it a non-Open-Source license. And they still call it the Apache license. This is a problem. Someone creating yet another non-Open-Source paradigm is not a problem, if they do it correctly.

Redis doesn’t deny that it’s not an Open Source license any longer once their clause is added.

It’s a bad idea to add a any text whatsoever to an Open Source license, and still call that license by it’s old name. Once the Commons Clause is added, it’s no longer the Apache license, and calling it so confuses people about what is Open Source and what isn’t. Hopefully that’s not meant deliberately. Now stop it. Take the license and the clause together, and title it the Redis license or another name of your choice that doesn’t confuse people that it’s an Open Source license. “Commons” is the name of an Apache project, so that is probably a bad choice for the name of the overall license.

You’ll note that I worked on the Business Source License with MariaDB. They paid a day’s consulting fee. I made it very clear that they were not to tell people it was Open Source, and I made changes that made the license less ambiguous and confusing than their previous version. Please follow that example.











It's worth asking, given it's success as a company thus far,  what is Redis worried about? What is MongoDB worried about? 

There is an elephant in the cloud. The elephant's name is Amazon AWS.

You might be wondering, how is this different than say the license that governs Microsoft Windows? Well, you can look at the code. You can even modify it. It seems to fit the letter of the law, but it only seems that way. If there are restrictions on what you can build, then what you have is not open source software. the Redis tk license is the definition of a proprietary license -- it restricts what you can do with the code. 




It's hard for MongoDB to compete with a service that offers MongoDB and every other infrastructure tool on the internet. License of the sort that MongoDB is suggesting would allow their software to be called open source, but limit how that software could be sold.





For MongoDB this isn't a rhetorical question. 

Redis, MongoDB, Confluent and others have changed from open source licenses to proprietary licenses in recent months. The new licenses limit what you can do with the software, making it no longer open source software.

Every good story starts with conflict. 


Redis and MongoDB claim that open source licenses, specifically the GPL, are making it possible for other companies to take their ideas, wrap them in a cloud service and sell them without contributing anything back to the source project.







The differences in the license: "My sense is that it's not philosophical... we're going to iterate until we get it right."

There has been only one official release of the license, "We've been continually evolving the license, updating the language" 

Monitizing open source with support contracts has never been a great business model". Critics of this statement might point to Red Hat, but then for every Red Hat there are countless examples of those for whom this model did not work out. Ever heard of Yellow Dog linux?

On why the SSPL: "I think we can do better... I want to see more investment in open source products. VC's intesting in open source products. 

On other's with MongoDB's model: "MongoDB is unique. I would like us to not be unique."

Legally the AGPL covers us, but the SSPL clarifies that in language that will hopefully discourage the bad actors.

Did you know about AWS DocumentDB before the license change. At first he said no comment, then he said no we did not. But if it wasn't Amazon, it would be someone.



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"""

Database guru Mark Callaghan put it this way: "I can speak from experience that 'new license' == 'must speak to lawyers'. They tend to be busy and figuring out a new license takes a long time." In other words, you've just created a legal problem, when before all you were trying to solve was a technical one. It's simply not worth the bother.

Redis Labs modules making them no longer free and open source, GNU/Linux distributions such as Debian and Fedora are no longer able to ship Redis Labs' versions of the affected modules to their users.

As a result, we have begun working together to create a set of module repositories forked from prior to the license change. We will maintain changes to these modules under their original open-source licenses, applying only free and open fixes and updates."

They're looking for help with this project.

The Common Clause sub-license forbids you from selling software it covers. It also states you may not host or offer consulting or support services as "a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the software." This is expressly designed to prevent cloud companies from profiting by using the licensed programs.

As Redis Labs' co-founder and CTO Yiftach Shoolman said in an email, the company did this "for two reasons -- to limit the monetization of these advanced capabilities by cloud service providers like AWS and to help enterprise developers whose companies do not work with AGPL licenses."

Be that as it 

Recently several open source projects have run into what they see as a serious problem. Free software


MongoDB is building a “better database for the next generation of applications,” co-founder and CTO Eliot Horowitz told TechCrunch. We aimed to “build something that makes developers way more productive.”




Still, there is something to bear in mind 

one that perhaps even the givers did not understand the significance of, but it was a gift nonetheless. 

There is almost nothing in our daily lives that Free Software has not made possible and which would not disappear if that gift had never been given. 


That might seem like overstating the case somewhat, but consider for a moment what is built on free software and what would disappear without it. Ninety-eight percent of servers of the internet run Linux, an OS kernel, a piece of Free Software which is built on hundreds, possibly thousands of other bits of code, all free software.



Agree. Private enterprise has been profiting on open-source, mostly without giving back, for as long as we’ve had open source. That’s not new. It’s literally how the GPL came about.

data portability will be the next big issue with users of cloud computing. Use MongoDB and you can move your data to any cloud provider that offers MongoDB. Use Amazon DocumentDB and you are now married to Amazon in the most Catholic of ways. There is a MongoDB API, but because of the license changes that API is pinned to a specific version of MongoDB. In other words you can get your data out, but it might not be a form that's easy to get into MongoDB running on say, Digitalocean or Azure or Google.

The way to avoid this provider lockin is the make sure you chose cloud provider services that stick with mainstream open source projects as a base, perhaps adding whatever user-friendly management on top of that, but under the hood your data is stored in an open source software package. Postgresql make a good example here. Half a dozen cloud providers offer managed Postgresql in some form. If I spin up an AWS tk DB instance of postgres and two years from now decide that's no longer the best option for my company, I can dump that data out, move it to any cloud provider -- or my own bare metal server -- and import it back into a postgres database without a hitch.

Cloud providers vary in how much they seem okay with this data portability from AWS's more or less pure disdain to Azoure and Google which have turned not competeing with their customers and supporting open standards into something of an pitch.

---

Carl at system76

The usefulness of open source is that you can connect it anything.

beanbooks, 

I'm epathetic to their cause, but there should a way to do that without wrecking OSD.

Our concern was that someone would wrap up the software and we would lose all that investment. We wanted patent protection for a few years. It ended up hurting us, hurting the platform and we shouldn't have had those concerns, we should have AGPLed from the beinnning. If it was good enught hat godaddy wanted it,

You have to be good enough and stay ahead without needing a licence to protect you. If you can't stay ahead, the license won't help.

Licenses that are more restrictive. You have to move fast and compete. 

If generosity isn't built into open source it isn't going to work.

MS has the same problem with piracy, solutions to that led to open source. you don't have to use unlicensed ms software. 

If you come up with a solution for one thing, you try to protect the brand, OSI doesn't like that, but it's easier than touching the software. Mongo always comes with the Mongo trademark.  o

The best conversation is an open minded conversation between OSI and mongo.

Open hardware is quiet a bit different, there's less copying of specific designs. It's less of an issue than backend code which has no face at all.

There is always a risk of being commodity. It depends on the bottom line, who can more efficiently deliver that infrastructure.

Differentiation is not what you've done today, but how rapidly you can advance. -- not quote: You have a head start, but where are you going. -- the only way to be successful is to stay ahead, I don't think the license has anything to do with it.

---

Bruce Perens:

In The Cathedral and the Bazaar [16], Eric Raymond attempted to explain Open Source as a gift economy, a phenomenon of computer programmers having the leisure to do creative work not connected to their employment, and an artistic motivation to have their work appreciated. Raymond explains excellently how programmers behave within their own private subculture. The motivations he explored dominated during the genesis of Open Source and continue to be effective within a critically important group of Open Source contributors today.

Raymond edited The Cathedral and the Bazaar, then a year old, to replace the words Free Software with Open Source.

Neither Microsoft software nor Linux and Open Source can help you differentiate your business for long, because they are available to everyone. They differentiate against each other, they just don't differentiate your business. One or the other can save you money or make you more efficient, but in general they don't make your business more attractive to your customer.

The companies that join Open Source collaborations are seeking to use the software in a non-differentiating, cost-center role. It's not important to these companies that Open Source does not in itself produce a profit. Their profit-centers are things other than software, and software is for them an enabling technology. In order to continue to operate their profit-centers, they must make some investment in their cost centers. In the case of differentiating software, they have little choice but to make use of the in-house or contract development paradigm, because they need to prevent their differentiators from falling into the hands of their competitors. For their non-differentiators, they have the choice of the retail or Open Source paradigms. But which is more efficient?


Eric Raymond proposed that the volunteer's motivation is mainly intangible, and that a particularly important motivator is participation in a community of respect in which developers are recognized by their peers for the quality and innovation in their work. The FLOSS study surveyed Open Source developers regarding their motivation, found that many of them are motivated by technical curiosity and the desire to learn. I feel that their motivation is similar to that of an artist: just as a painter wants people to appreciate his paintings, a programmer wants to have users who appreciate his software.


---

Free software was the gift that made the world as we know it possible. It was an astounding gift to give, one that perhaps even the givers did not understand the significance of, but it was a gift nonetheless. 

There is almost nothing in our daily lives that Free Software has not made possible and which would not disappear if that gift had never been given. 

Free Software did not have to happen, arguably it should not have happened. The historical forces aligned against it were significant. And it did not happen randomly, it grew out of particular people, with particular beliefs, and today, in this world built on free software, we have lost sight of those beliefs, and if we do not regain our vision of them, our understanding of where Free Software came from, where it is leading us, and how we can keep it going, we risk losing all that we have built.

That might seem like overstating the case somewhat, but consider for a moment what is built on free software and what would disappear without it. Ninety-eight percent of servers of the internet run Linux, an OS kernel, a piece of Free Software which is built on hundreds, possibly thousands of other bits of code, all free software.



This notion of free software as a commons though requires some clarification lest someone trot out the tired old "tragedy of the commons" analysis, which has, in most fields of analysis, been long since abandoned. 

The notion that free softwareo

The “Commons Clause” is a nonfree license because it forbids selling copies of the program, and even running the program as part of implementing any commercial service. Adding insult to injury, it also twists the words “commons” and “sell.”

We urge people to reject programs under this license and to develop free replacements. Where a previous version was available as free software, continuing development of that version is an option.




“The Lord God in a particular way desired that the earth be common possession of all, and produce fruit for all; but greed produced property rights”

In fact this hostility of the church to the private property, sustained by the franciscans (led for example by Duns Scoto and William of Occam) , was oposed by the scholastics, with Thomas Aquinas using the argument using by Aristotle in the “Politics”:
“What is common to a very large number of people gets minimal care. For all are especially concerned with their own things, and less with the common ones, or only to the extent that they concern one”

It seems to me that Mr. Garrett Hardin attributed to himself the “Tragedy of the Commons” but this is a very old argument in societies where the market forces has detroyed the real communities, and the view of the world is that of individual people grabbing as much as possible of the common pie, as was the case in the ancient Greece


There are thousands of text and quotes around the injustice of private property (or property rights), for example San Ambrosius in the IV century said:
“The Lord God in a particular way desired that the earth be common possession of all, and produce fruit for all; but greed produced property rights”

In fact this hostility of the church to the private property, sustained by the franciscans (led for example by Duns Scoto and William of Occam) , was oposed by the scholastics, with Thomas Aquinas using the argument using by Aristotle in the “Politics”:
“What is common to a very large number of people gets minimal care. For all are especially concerned with their own things, and less with the common ones, or only to the extent that they concern one”

It seems to me that Mr. Garrett Hardin attributed to himself the “Tragedy of the Commons” but this is a very old argument in societies where the market forces has detroyed the real communities, and the view of the world is that of individual people grabbing as much as possible of the common pie, as was the case in the ancient Greece


In this layer, however, both community and resource boundaries are multiplied. Every single community that forms around specific instances or projects
of free software counts as a different commons, with its particular (even though
in some cases similar) rules, boundaries and systems of governance. In other
words, each group of people who not only use a certain free software, but also
help to support or develop it (in the expanded sense outlined previously), can be
seen as a commons in itself. 

Also bear in mind that there is no reason for free software occupies the position it does. 

The historical forces aligned against it were significant. And it did not happen randomly, it grew out of particular people, with particular beliefs, and today, in this world built on free software, we have lost sight of those beliefs, and if we do not regain our vision of them, our understanding of where Free Software came from, where it is leading us, and how we can keep it going, we risk losing all that we have built.