On Thu, 2005-09-22 at 13:19 +0530, Suchi Pande wrote: > I wrote: > >>Open source is usually one of two licence styles. BSD style and GPL style. > > Todd Berman wrote: > > But for sure, there are for more styles of licenses than those 2. > > > More explicitly, I am saying that all open source licences have > features that tend to put them in one style or the other. Licences > that tend to let a developer usurp and close the code and lock in the > user are BSD style, while licences that do not are GPL style. >
That is a pretty negative way to look at the differences, but ok :). > > The other thing that BSD code allows you to do that you are missing is > > it actually allowed greater *developer* freedom. > > Yes. However, the risk for a BSD licenced software is that the > freedom of the developers is at risk if a company forks off a closed > version and adds proprietary bits to it, and tries to extinguish the > old standard. It has happened enough times with MS windows > applications taking BSD licenced stuff. > And this was a WONDERFUL thing in *MANY* instances. Why do you think the TCP/IP stack is such a solved issue on modern operating systems? Because they all use the BSD TCP/IP stack, and they inter-operate flawlessly. Yay for people using similar code making my world a better place. > Nonetheles, it is a consequence. Vendor lock-in is much *much* harder > to enforce with GPL because you cannot close the code if you > distribute the software to others. > Incorrect. In fact, In health-care, I would argue that vendor lock-in is just as easy with the GPL as it is with BSD. Lets say you write this great wonderful amazing VistA module that solves every problem ever seen or heard of. It makes this software basically 'finished' (Yes, I know, Impossible, but this is a hypothetical). So you decide, being the good Samaritan that you are, that you will release this wonderful module under the GPL. My company, lets say SAIC for grins, takes your GPL code, and then adds all kinds of more wonderful stuff. Now, under the GPL when I distribute a binary, I must distribute source. But what happens if I don't ever distribute a binary? Then I have found one of the many truck-sized loopholes in the GPL. I can now take your wonderful code, and my amazing code, and sell it to hospitals as an appliance. No binary, just a box they can't access with my software on it. It can even be on-site, I can easily ship a computer and a person to set it up, and send someone out whenever there is a problem with it. All of a sudden, I have just sold a piece of GPL code for a high price, and with my pre-existing support and sales market, I am well on my way to cornering the market, and I *never* have to provide my code back. The enormity of this industry makes such an attempt possible, and even easy. Now. I am not saying a BSD style license solves this. And sure, SAIC could just as easily take your BSD code and do the same. But to act as if the GPL 'solves' this problem is very naive. Sending a box to a customer to retain what becomes at this point a 'trade secret' is a small price to pay for a large or even mid-sized company. Sucks. Doesn't it? > > You can still be locked into a vendor who distributes software under the > > GPL if no one else distributes functionally equivalent and/or > > interoperable software. > > Yes. But if the software is at all popular, a fork will spring up. On > the other hand, forking from a closed source distribution derived and > extended from a BSD style licence is much harder. > If something is released as an opensource BSD licensed project, you can always fork from it. You can re-license code, but you can't change the license of code that is already released. Sure, you don't get access to some other companies modifications, but as we saw above, that is not something that the GPL can viably force either. > > The GPL absolutely does allow for someone else to come along, fork an > > application and continue a long with it, however, that is a high cost > > result, and *forcing* a fork by choosing a license does not actually > > promote any form of interoperability. You have to look no further than > > the various emacs history pages to see this sort of issue re: emacs, > > xemacs, etc. > > > > Yes, GPL style code forks, a design may change, but fit code survives > and you always have access to whichever code you want. Diversity is > good, gives choice, and is self-limiting. > > More importantly, the foundations of interoperability are open > standards, formats. These foundations allow compatibility (not the > same as interoperability) to be better in open source. Close off the > source, and create your own standards and formats, and we go into > embrace-extend-extinguish territory and we have less interoperability. > When was the last time you got a real emacs configuration to load under xemacs or vice-versa? They are both lisp, they are very similar, and they have had years and years to become compat. Yet they aren't even close. The GPL doesn't force people to interoperate, nor does it even encourage it. Open standards are only useful if various parties implement them, and that has absolutely *nothing* to do with the license of any code. > > As well as this, library lock-in can be just as dangerous. > > > > The LGPL exists for a reason, and is very successfully used in many > > places, and the LGPL allows for commercial software to be built using > > it, which would for all practical intents and purposes cause this > > mythical 'vendor lock-in' that you speak of. > > > > You are saying that if the rest of the code is vendor locked-in, then > you will have lock-in with LGPL. That is not a LGPL issue - it is a > rest-of-the-code issue. It also does illustrate that the stronger GPL > makes more sense for people who want to avoid vendor lock-in. > No. I am saying that many LGPL libraries are used by companies that provide software that strives *NOT* to force vendor lock-in. Look at StarOffice/OpenOffice. Or AbiWord. Or Gnumeric. Or Criawips (I know, beta, but it does exist). There are hundreds of examples of LGPL libraries used in this fashion. Yet the LGPL allows commercial applications to use it. Just like BSD. So why the disconnect? I thought commercial == vendor lock-in according to your previous arguments? > Yes. An opensource licence just lubricates the wheels of the > development cycle, but it cannot power it. > Agreed. That is why an Open Development Model is whats important, not the license it is available under. Community driven development is the win, not the GPL, or MIT X11, or MPL, or CPL or CDDL, or any other license option you could choose or create. --Todd ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Tame your development challenges with Apache's Geronimo App Server. Download it for free - -and be entered to win a 42" plasma tv or your very own Sony(tm)PSP. 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