The interchange between Solveig and Gary Jefferson triggers some thoughts on the open source movement.

In South American recently, I distinguished two wings – the religious and the big money companies. There is actually a third segment, of which Jefferson is a representative: the Professionals. These are software developers who want to trade code and cooperate freely without hassling about property rights. The various open source licenses are well adapted to their needs because the terms ensure that no one can break the bargain and propertize the work of the group.

The Professionals take it a step further, though. Their attitude is that they are going to write this software for their own reasons in any case, and that, since the cost of having others free ride on their work is zero, they are happy to make it available to the world at large, again with the reservation that they want to ensure that others do not propertize their work. It is indeed a generous and idealistic stance.

What distinguishes the Professional from the Religious wing is that the Professionals do not share the messianic opposition to proprietary software. They are more or less indifferent to it. They are going to do their thing; others can do their thing; and as long as others do not try to commercialize the work of the Professionals, go in peace. Torvalds seems to me to be very much in this tradition. He is not opposed to proprietary software in toto, or to DRM; he just wants to preserve Linux as a cooperative venture.

But the world is a greedy place, and much of the Internet seems to consist of people inventing business models whereby they can free ride on the investment, including the intellectual investment, of others. The Professionals are not exempt from being targets, because there is no reason why people who are trying to figure out how to appropriate other people’s property are going to draw the line at appropriating the Professionals’ non-property.

Also - the Professionals do have to support themselves. And, if they want their ideal to survive, they must have resources to enforce their rights when others try to appropriate them. So, unless universities or foundations decide that writing software for the use of commercial enterprises is a worthy academic or charitable activity (which would be a very strange stance), the Professionals need an income stream, which means they cannot steer clear of the corruptions of the world of commerce.

They also get pushed steadily in the direction of weird distinctions, such as that it is all right to sell the services that make the software work, or the hardware on which it runs, but not to charge for the time spent writing the software itself.

Finally, they cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that they will write the software for themselves and let others use it if they choose, AND at the same time beat the drums on how superior their system is if they are not going to take account of the needs of the users.