Licensing

The freedom to fork is the essential right of open-source software. Until Oracle's attempted acquisition of Sun/MySQL, however, few realized just how important it would be to retain the right to fork one's own code.

After all, just because you have the letter-of-the-law right to fork doesn't mean you have a meaningful ability to do so. So long as you're not the primary copyright holder, you're always going to be second place, with second-place commercial opportunities in the software.

MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius hints at this in his letter to the European Commission, citing … Read more

Enterprises and other users deploy open-source software because it works. For those of us in the open-source vendor community, however, too often we waste time talking about issues that have relatively little resonance for the vast majority of users.

We miss the mark on open-source marketing. In fact, it's often the case that the very standards we seek to set for the software world--interoperability, transparency, etc.--are better observed and delivered by open standards than by open source.

As a case in point, Red Hat and other open-source companies (including Alfresco, my employer) routinely advertise "no lock-in" … Read more

In the cloud, no one cares about your software license. That is one of the most liberating--and frustrating--things about cloud computing.

Depending on your perspective, it either opens up computing or closes it off. Customers don't seem to care one way or another, happily shoveling data into cloud services like Google, Facebook, and others without (yet) wondering what will happen when they want to leave.

Cloud computing may just be the Hotel California of technology.

I say this because even for companies, like Google, that articulate open-data policies, the cloud is still largely a one-way road into … Read more

Microsoft dominates enterprise IT and likely will for a long time. But the software giant is struggling to match the nimble pace of open source on the Web, a pace being set by Google and others.

As but one example, Microsoft's Internet Explorer lost market share to Mozilla Firefox in September. To compete effectively on the Web, Microsoft will have no choice but fight open-source fire with fire.

This isn't about a need to appease the proverbial "community." It's about broad-based development, low-cost distribution, and, frankly, revitalizing its brand with developers.

Google gets this. While … Read more

Microsoft is launching an open-source foundation. Google is promising to keep user data portable. Both moves seem to cut against the financial self-interest of the two technology giants. Have the gods gone crazy, or are the business strategies of the industry's biggest players more subtle than "Embrace. Extend. Extinguish"?

With a steady adoption of open-source business and development strategies, Microsoft has gone from open-source hater to open-source embracer in just a couple of years:

Richard Stallman, godfather of the free-software movement and co-author of the GNU General Public License (GPL), has apparently found a home:

It's not clear whether it's a retirement home, a private club for members, or what, but I'm sure they'll welcome him anytime he's in London, where it's located. Let's hope it's nearby Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's Zune House, as the man doesn't seem to have much love for the iPhone, according to this story in Ars Technica.

(I think GPL, in this case, actually stands for Garden Picture Library, … Read more

Open-source proponents have traditionally been anti-patent, and for good reason. Patents are tough to track and can hinder the very innovation they're designed to encourage. Oddly, therefore, IBM argues that patents have fueled the growth of open source.

Patents have the potential to become a minefield for innovators. Companies like ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures (IV) arguably make things worse by turning patent licensing into a standalone business, as Timothy Lee writes … Read more

Just how valuable are the Linux-related patents that Microsoft recently sold?

The Open Invention Network (OIN), a patent defense coalition for Linux whose members include IBM and Red Hat, trumpeted the news that it had bought 22 Linux-related patents from Allied Security Trust (AST) in a bid to protect Linux. Microsoft, which sold the patents to AST, claims the patents "weren't important," as noted in The Wall Street Journal.

Did the OIN get value or garbage?

Microsoft has long presented itself as the looming patent threat to Linux, once claiming that 235 of its patents are violated … Read more

The GPL version 2 has been in decline for some time, and has just dipped below a 50 percent adoption rate among open-source projects, according to new data released by Black Duck Software.

While some of this decline may be due to GPL version 3's increased adoption, at least some may derive from growing commercial interest in Apache-style licensing.

One of the best indications of this shift is Red Hat's decision to license the JBoss HornetQ project under an Apache license, rather than the Lesser General Public License, to which it had previously defaulted.

Having said that, it'… Read more