Discussion on:

Fifty shades of open source

I agree wholeheartedly. I am an open source guy myself but I recognize that proprietary software has its place in the tech world. Also, profit does not mean evil. Gaining some financial reward for the hard work of writing code is really nice, and can help push projects forward. Many don't want to accept this.

As Divergex says, it takes all sorts.

Personally I'm a pragmatist. I like free*/open software, but I use all sorts. I'm not averse to paying for software - and do. But I also look to see if something free/open will do the job for me. One of the great things about free/open is (as long as you are aware of the licences you are using), you can be free of inhibition when it comes to spawning off a new box to do something - unlike some of my colleagues that spend a certain amount of time each month doing their "tax returns" to a certain commercial outfit.

But while it's easy to say "we need to be flexible", we also need the hardcore like Richard Stallman (RMS). We may (partially) agree with those that think he's "somewhat eccentric", and may find him "rather irritating" to have a conversation with (I've met him, had that experience) - but without those that have stood their ground over the years then we'd see a creeping closed-ness infecting more and more software. You only need to look at Android to see how someone like Google can take something that's ostensibly open, and start closing it off round the edges. Without the "no compromise" GPL then I think there's be a lot less free/open software around today.

And even those that will only use closed/commercial software need to thank people like RMS. Look at what happened to internet browsers once Microsoft had no competition. Not only did Windows users get stuck with IE6 for a long long time with naff all development, but also non-Windows users got stuck with a web designed for IE6. Only when others (notably Firefox) came along and gave them some real competition did MS wake up and do some work.
I've even worked with people who until fairly recently took that attitude that because company systems work with IE6 then it's my fault for using a Mac, not their fault for making systems that don't work with it. They've since had to do a lot of catching up, and they've found it a "challenging" experience I think.

* Free as in speech as RSM would say (I think).

My dear sir! I think you'll find, if you examine the literature, that RMS would object to the term "open source", preferring the term "Free Software". But then, let's not get into /that/ debate again

Open source is about sharing. If I make something, it works for me and hey maybe someone else might like it too. And if you do like it and want to improve it (say a bug fix or a new feature) please share that back to me.
This is what makes open source work. And most people who use any open source products don't have anything to share back and that is not a problem, hopefully they report bugs and can test things but if not it's ok.

Users (individuals, typically) who don't have the ability to add functionality or fix bugs (or even report them)? Are they excluded?

I use a postfix/greylisting email gateway to protect MS Exchange.

Also, Samba has the facility to auto-delete files of a type. This, coupled with Windows home directory redirection is hot. I can't tell you how many .pif, .bat, and .exe files are logged after removal; so samba is effectively another layer of virus/trojan protection.

I derive alotta joy explaining that Linux can protect MS in a way it cannot do for itself.

Hard core Open Source is justified for some projects.

Just look at what has happend to many of the open source projects out of Sun.
Because of Open Source, Libre Office was able to break off and proceed with development while Oracle diddled.
mySQL now has some proprietary components and interfaces.

From inside America, we're still frequently snobs about Apple and Microsoft operating systems as the purer choice. Go outside and look at the global community. They see the power of open source bringing them up to par with reduced committment of resources. That is real creativity: achieving the same or better with less. OpenSource puts computing in the hands of millions. Open source is a fantastic act of kindness. Bits and pieces that are "closed" are necessary to keep things stitched together. Who can't live with that?

I foresee the event in which most businesses grab open source technology for their own use, and have a resident developer adjust the code, add to the code, and modify that open source code to meet the needs of the business. Companies would be spending less money for a product that is catered specifically to their own needs.It would be within this innovation to spawn new ideas, concepts, and perpetually new software or technology. Open source software will also give businesses the ability to increase efficiency and productivity with their self-created software. It can not get much better than that.

Whether I usually agree with Jack's articles or not, I think he's dead on, on this one. Agreed, who would ever heard of cheap tablets flooding the market without Android, made by one of the largest open source users in the world, albeit painted evil by some? Otherwise we'd be stuck with all-proprietary, albeit pervasive iThis and iThat devices, I suppose, or Windows motley offering, even though they're TRYING to catch up with Surface (I personally don't see that happening.)
Now that all these Android devices exist, Ubuntu gives you the CHOICE to install it with dash on them, OR choose something else like Xubuntu, for your desktop. And yes, Canonical would never have been able to get this far without making a profit off something. I don't begrudge them their Amazon integration, although I never use it and know how to TAKE IT OUT if i want (the beauty of Linux allows that, easily.)

They said "Linux" - how do you pronounce that? Or does Apache really work? As time goes by we often covered the landscape with the acronym LAMP. Even that is now insufficient. Open Source has taken on a life of its own and we can all take our opinions of what it should be and put them in the rubbish bin. What will be, will be.

So why can't the GPL include statements that take this into account - for instance, should the open source be used as part of a profitable endeavor, a portion of the profits must be filtered back to the continued development of the open source software... rather like shareware - if you use it freely and don't profit from it, then it is yours to use for free. If you profit from it, then please make a donation - only the please becomes a requirement in the legalese.

I'm sure that happens somewhere....

Just a thought.

The GPL was very carefully written so as to prevent anyone imposing restriction on what anyone else can use the software for.

The whole point is that a commercial licence is all about restricting the user - they read as "you can't do X, you can't do Y, ..." and this usually goes on for page after page. If you look back through history, pretty well all "new stuff" is built on a foundation of "old stuff" - the old "Standing on the shoulders of giants" saying (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants).

Commercial licences are all about keeping everyone else with their feet on the ground. The GPL is about making it expressly allowed to stand on the shoulders of those who've put work in before. If you were to try and impose a "we take a cut of any commercial receipts" clause then that would have two very important effects.

The first is that it would undermine the principal bit of the GPL - that you may not restrict how and for what someone else may use the software.

The second is that it would open the biggest can of worms imaginable. What is "for profit" to start with ? I'll give a real example of something I'm working on right now ...
I'm setting up a small box that we can plug inline with a customer's internet connection and it will log their traffic - broken down by IP address, and eventually by service. It's running Debian, and the customer will be fully aware of that - and if they want access to the box then they will get it (subject to the usual "don't pork around and break it" talk first).
So, what parts of that are for profit ? We won't be charging them a penny for the software - but we will be charging them for the hardware and (some of) my time to set it up.

Secondly, if it were to fall within such a "for profit" rule, then who would get the money ? Will it runs the Linux kernel, so that's one chunk. It relies on coretools, so that's another. Then it runs Shorewall, so should Tom Eastep get a share as well ? And RRD Tools, so a share to Tobias Oetiker ? There may well be other "primary" packages involved, and then a load of dependencies as well - so where do you stop ? Do I end up paying 1c each to many different developers ? How will that work given that it would cost orders of magnitude more than that to simply send them the money ?

Or should the money go to some central collecting agency like music royalties ? Same issues will apply in determining who should get the money - only this time there'll be the middleman to take his cut first. I think we all know how well that works in the music industry.

Valid points, and perhaps my view was a bit simplistic. Comparing it to the music industry is a good one though. It is out of the kindness of their hearts that these developers are sharing the code, just as it is usually the passion for music that makes most musicians write.

In an ideal world we could all do what we love and share it freely (I would honestly love to see that), but at some point, we all have to eat, build a house and feed our kids... I feel for these developers who's hours of work are simply taken and used - and then on top of that, there are those who make a profit from it! That somehow seems wrong.

There must be *some* way to give back to them for what they give us.

Perhaps if we find a way with Open Source software, we can apply it back to all the starving artists in every other discipline as well.

Thanks for the depth in your reply.

Open Source is communist in nature and is one tiny step away from being socialist. Socialists want to destroy capitalism and America. So it must follow that Open Source's goal is to destroy capitalism and thus America.

Not only is it treason but anything and anyone that wants to destroy capitalism and America should be viewed as being terrorists.

Dear Open Source developers, why do you hate America so much?