[p2p-research] FW: [NetBehaviour] When Free Software Sucks

Tue Dec 21 05:07:31 CET 2010

I believe that Mako is indeed talking about the Free software that Stallman
considers to be the only worthy kind.  Mako is objecting to positions about
exactly that freedom that are so puristic as to have quality and fitness for
purpose be irrelevant concerns.  It's a little like having it that accepting
Jesus means you don't have to worry about sinning or otherwise be attentive
to how you conduct yourself in the world.

 - Dennis

MORE CONSIDERATION OF "OPEN-SOURCE" VERSUS "FREE"

There is a well-established Open Source Definition.  All open-source
licenses that satisfy the Open Source Definition provide access to all
source code and automatic licensing to create and distribute derivative
works.

Stallman's GPL license satisfies the open-source definition.  The additional
quality of Freedom that is part of the "code language" of the Free Software
Foundation is that derivative works must be relicensed under the same GPL
license (or later version).  This is not required to qualify as open-source
but it is part of Stallman's definition of "Freedom."  

The GPL that Stallman authored is comparable to CC-share-alike.  It falls in
a family of licenses that are termed reciprocal licenses and that are each
silos among themselves.  Other licenses under the open-source definition are
akin to the Creative Commons Attribution license (although the attribution
requirement can be problematic in regard to "Freedom" depending on what is
required by the originator of the license).  These non-reciprocal
open-source licenses mainly fall into a general category termed academic
licenses.  The well-known Apache license and others are in this second
category.  If you use Firefox, you are using software that has a special
dual licenses and you can choose to use GPL or MPL (or both) as a license on
a derivative work.  MPL is reciprocal with itself only, as is GPL.

All licenses satisfying the open-source definition (OSD) including the ones
for free software have a requirement for source-code availability,
permission to make derivative works, and to grant sublicensing without
further permission or any payments required.

The Free Software Foundation and Stallman have conceded that some academic
licenses are compatible with the GPL in that contributions under those
licenses can be incorporated in GPL-licensed works but not vice versa,
interestingly enough.  So there is more than one flavor of freedom involved,
aye?.

It is also the case that "open source" has been misapplied as sloganeering
about products that have licenses that are not acceptable under the Open
Source Definition and consequently not under the Free Software (GPL)
definition as well.

I investigated your list of examples and I am puzzled.  Here is what I
observed

 1. The Zimbra ZPL 1.3 appears to satisfy the Open Source Definition and
applies to the Zimbra product that is identified as freely downloadable and
open-source (though not all of the products are so available).  ZPL 1.3 is
not reciprocal and apparently not GPL compatible (although the freedom to
modify and have free access to the source code is provided for).

 2. I've never seen an Atlassian claim that any of their products are
open-source, so I am not sure what brings them to this list.

 3. Pentaho seems to use "Open Source" as adjectival seasoning on every
service and product they offer.  I didn't dig deeper.

 4. Not sure if Socialtext was ever open source.  They apparently had a
Community Edition license that was not satisfactory in terms of attribution
requirements and I don't know if it qualified under the Open Software
Definition otherwise.

 5. OpenFire has their GPL 2.0 License in plain sight on their download
pages so I don't know what the beef is there.  The source code seems fully
available, though I didn't complete the download that I requested to see
what is included in detail.  OpenFire also uses a public, open standard
(XMPP) which is nice to see.  

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: p2presearch-bounces at listcultures.org
[mailto:p2presearch-bounces at listcultures.org] On Behalf Of Samuel Rose
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 16:18
To: p2p research network
Subject: Re: [p2p-research] FW: [NetBehaviour] When Free Software Sucks

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 3:25 PM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I'm not sure if this below has been discussed below here or not...
>
> M
>
> http://mako.cc/writing/hill-when_free_software_isnt_better.html
>

Yes, there are some software products out there that claim to be "open
source", yet do not respect the definition of "free as in freedom"
that Stallman is talking about.

Examples:

http://www.zimbra.com/

http://www.atlassian.com/

http://www.pentaho.com/

http://www.socialtext.com/ (has recently obscured the "community" edition)

http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/

There are probably many more.

-- 
--
Sam Rose
Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
skype: samuelrose
email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
http://forwardfound.org
http://futureforwardinstitute.org
http://hollymeadcapital.com
http://p2pfoundation.net
http://socialmediaclassroom.com

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan

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