Re: Linux... OK but definitely second best

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 02:35 AM 7/26/98 -0400, Jamie wrote:
 
>The issue over the relevant merits of the various licensing methods
>should consider the ability of the license to protect the user community
>from people hyjacking a public asset and turning it into a monopoly. 

Reuse of open source code in products for which the source is not available
is not "hijacking," nor does it lead to monopoly.

Let's look at a real world example. BSD, Inc. is a company that makes a BSD 
operating system called BSDI. It is essentially FreeBSD with various tweaks,
additions, and enhancements -- plus professional support.

Has the existence of BSDI caused FreeBSD to be any less free or less 
sophisticated? Not at all. In fact, competition between the two makes for
a very healthy environment and encourages innovation. BSDI must offer
significant
advantages over FreeBSD in order to be saleable; if it doesn't, why pay the
money? Therefore, BSD, Inc. must stay on its toes and stay one step ahead
of FreeBSD, since this is the value added that makes their product worth
buying.
They must continue to offer a truly excellent, advanced and well-supported
product. 
FreeBSD, for its part, continues to get new features inspired by the
innovations in 
BSDI (or sometimes directly contributed by the same developers).

In short, commercial re-use of the source code is good. It provides the
consumer
with more alternatives, and continued development of the open source
version continues 
to raise the bar for the one for which source is not available. The
entrepreneur
who builds on the code gets to concentrate on innovation; the public
eventually
gets the same features for free, and everyone has a choice. That's a win
all around.

Such benefits can never be realized under the GPL.

Some people say, "But wait a minute -- what if Microsoft were to get hold
of the
source and use it?" My answer: That's fine. If we are to deal fairly with the
Microsoft problem, we must LEVEL the playing field. An attempt to turn it
against
any one company is not only spiteful and unfair, but will ultimately lead
to more
problems. Let's suppose Microsoft builds a program based on open source
(which it 
in fact did for some of its Windows utilities; the command line FTP in
Windows is 
based on the BSD FTP utility). It can't make any money off of the product
unless it's
significantly better than what's available for free, so it must add value
-- in which
case customers will decide if the value added is worth the additional
price. What if it
incorporates the code as-is, but doesn't improve it? Also fine; it saves
users the 
hassle of installing it, but it's still free either way. 

Nor could any company that built on open source "turn it into a monopoly."
The open
source version will still be available, and will gradually be improved by
volunteers
to have all the features of the commercial verson (assuming, of course,
that people
want them). There will always be a choice.

>What if Sun had used a GPL type approach for JAVA?   For example.  Jamie

Had Sun used a GPL-type license for Java, it would in fact have been in worse
shape than now. First of all, it would not have realized any income at all
from
licensing, limiting its incentive to develop and improve the technology. (It's
still losing money on its JavaSoft subsidiary even WITH licensing fees.) We
shouldn't
expect Sun to be so charitable as to develop things like Java with no hope of
any financial return.

Second, Microsoft would have had absolute freedom to create from scratch a
version of 
Java that broke Java's "Write Once, Run Anywhere" features. Sun would have
had no recourse
(as it does under the contract which is now the subject of litigation). Had
no such
contract existed, Microsoft would most likely have already destroyed Java.

In short, because Java is a TECHNOLOGY rather than just a bunch of code,
releasing
open source without protecting the standard or the underlying technology
would have 
been a bad choice.

Not all things that are proprietary are bad.

--Brett Glass