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Reader's Response to "Truer" Open Source Businesses

A reader provided a good response to my post on “Truer” OSS business models.

Contributors to OSS software (such as myself) are not opposed to others profiting from their work. GPL proponents *are* generally opposed to others taking the work that they've provided and locking it away or creating derivative works that get locked away, but this doesn't apply to those using a license such as BSD or APL, which generously allows even that... You insinuation that authors and contributors of OSS software are naive about how this works is disengenuous.
I'm aware of the differences between the GPL and other OSS licenses, such as the BSD. And while its unquestionable that OSS contributors know the fine details in these differences, I don't believe general technology users or those who study innovation policy always do.

However, in my post I defended an OSS business that works under a hybrid model; code is licensed under the GPL, but for a fee, customers may work under a different license. Whether the other license was a BSD type license or not isn't clear. Yet, this hybrid business seems more flexible, and perhaps business oriented, than merely working with only one, very controversial license, the GPL.

I point to an article by Houston law professor Greg Vetter, an OSS supporter, but one with practical views on the GPL. Taking Professor Vetter’s work in perspective, the blog I referenced in my previous post can be seen as one OSS developer trying to convince another to stick with only the GPL, a license, that may well hurt his business and the technological development of his customers.

In Infectious' Open Source Software: Spreading Incentives or Promoting Resistance?, Rutgers Law Journal (2004), Professor Vetter writes in reference to the GPL: “While infectious terms may be necessary to some degree to support the other conditions that keep software open source, the debate shows that broad, infectious terms of expansive scope have a polarizing influence.” 59. Specific polarizing effects of the GPL include “inhibit(ing) beneficial software interoperability” and “increas(ing) risks for open source users.” 162. Consequently, the GPL creates “misaligned incentives for optimal coexistence between open source and proprietary software.” Id. Professor Vetter's overall take on the GPL is that it may well “impair open source software.” Id.

posted by Noel Le @ 1:46 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Since the GPL is a license based on copyright, let's discuss naked copyright for a moment.

Suppose I write a novel. Can you copy freely from it to write your own novel, or create direct derivatives by lifting sections or chapters? No. Copyright does not allow that. If an author wants to protect and preserve their privileges under copyright, that's fabulous.

But now suppose I want you to be able to engage in some of the above activities with my novel. How can I explicitly allow that?

One way would be to explicitly place the work in the public domain. But doing so means someone else could come along, erase my name and put their's on it, then claim they wrote the work. Again, that's fine if that's what the author wants -- it is their creation.

I could, instead, use a Creative Commons license, of which there are many variants. A BSD-like license is virtually the same as putting the work in the public domain, with the caveat that any derivative must give the original author credit in the form of a copyright notice. There are also CC licenses which are GPL-like for non-commercial use, but reserve full rights for commercial use (much like a dual-license GPL software package).

So, would you claim that the presence of CC licenses somehow causes damage to authors? Would Professor Vetter? Even though authors are free to choose how to license their works? Would you claim that "general literature consumers or those who study authorship policy" might not be able to understand this fully? And if so, how would that matter to me, as an author?

And if CC licenses are indeed a threat to literature, doesn't the existence of the public domain pose a similar threat? Should we eliminate the public domain entirely, and force ownership of created works to continue into perpetuity?

This is more than an analogy -- software is authored exactly as literature is. Any argument you make against the use of an author's rights in one realm has a 1-to-1 relationship to the other realm. There is little, if any, difference.

Posted by: mispoint at June 21, 2006 5:25 PM
 
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