licensing

Mike Olson and I shared the stage at OSCON recently, talking about whether all software should be open source. I was planning to post about this, since I didn't feel that I had explained my position well on stage (having both Mike and Tim against me didn't help.) But Mike apparently also felt that he had more to say, and has blogged it here.

Unfortunately, reading Mike's clarifications (posted in response to some apparently rude e-mails sent to him after the fact, which is not appropriate) makes me think that I disagree with him more than I thought I did. Mike is a wonderful person and a great addition to the software community. But his perspective is wrong on the value of source code. Here's why.… Read more

OpenMFG just took one step forward, and two steps backward. First, the positive. The company, which provides ERP and CRM solutions for small to medium-sized enterprises, has rebranded itself as xTuple. It has also developed PostBooks, a QuickBooks competitor.

Good stuff. We need more software like this. What we don't need, however, is xTuple's flawed licensing scheme that feints at open source, but falls far short.

xTuple's license is a mess, on two primary accounts:… Read more

Today is Pioneer Day in Utah, a day when Utahns reflect on the sacrifice that brought 70,000 people 1,300 miles across the United States into present-day Utah. My own family was part of this group. In fact, there's a wonderful quote from Brigham Young about the Asays when he bumped into them while traveling in Southern Utah. He critiqued their sloth in still living out of their wagons, but said they made him the best fish dinner he'd had. Some things never change.... :-)

As I look back on what my family and others did, I'm impressed by how hardship focused and shaped the thoughts and feelings of a people. While some of the pioneers suffered greatly in making the trek, for others it was more hearty inconvenience and discomfort. But for all, it was a formative time.

Years later, a group that hadn't been through the ordeal criticized those who had for foolishly leaving late in the year, such that the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies were caught in a terrible winter. Here's the response from one who had lived through it:… Read more

I was just geeking out (to the maximum extent that I am technically capable, which means, not much) on Adobe's Apollo site at the suggestion of a friend. Wow. This completely breaks the paradigm of how we (or, at least, I) think about computing.

We talk a lot about mixed source. You know, open-source and proprietary software, living in perfect harmony. But that is nowhere near as interesting as true mixed source: desktop code intermingled with "cloud" code. What happens when the line between my desktop and the Internet blur to the extent that I neither know nor care where one ends and the other begins?

Microsoft has a desktop fetish that inhibits its ability to think cogently online. Google has the opposite problem. Adobe, however, seems to be striking the balance just right, what with its symbiotic balance between Web technologies (Macromedia) and desktop technologies (Adobe).

While I eagerly, hungrily anticipate The Big Blur, I can't help but worry about open source's lack of preparation. Our licensing debates will soon smack of silly sciolism as the Web moves offline and the desktop moves online. What relevance do 99 percent of our licenses have to this blurred world? Not very much.… Read more

It might not have sails, or an anchor, or a mizzenmast (isn't that a great word?) but this Jeep is probably the most legitimate pirate vessel you'll see all day, unless you happen to be logging onto Crave from the beaches of Tortuga. This vehicle was spotted by blogger Andy Carvin on the roads of Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago. I like to think it's driven by a swashbucklers' rights lobbyist. (Special interests, my foot!)

Almost equally awesome is the license plate holder, which says "TOO CLOSE FOR CANNONS" on the top and &… Read more

Glyn Moody has quickly moved to the top of my RSS reader. He consistently writes thoughtful pieces, and this one is no different. As Glyn explains, none but the most determined persist in believing that open source is a fad that will soon die out. On the contrary, open source has taken over infrastructure software and is gathering steam in the application space.

Oddly enough, this is where the problem starts.

The manifest advantages of being open source - to say nothing of the trendiness of the label - has led to many startups adopting the term uncritically. From being an alternative way of branding free software, open source has now become a way of branding any software where the code is available - irrespective of what other restrictions are imposed. This is bad news, because it dilutes the value of the term "open source." That, in turn, could stymie corporate adoption, as companies find themselves increasingly confused about what open source really means, and what the real value is.

More is at stake than semantics. I believe, with Glyn, that the health of the movement depends on proper nomenclature.… Read more

There has been a lot of fuss kicked up lately over the definition of open source (kicked off by Michael Tiemann), and the OSI's role in defining that term. Word on the street is that CentricCRM will be launching a significant piece of code (Team Elements) under Larry Rosen's Open Software License early next week. This is fantastic news for CentricCRM, as well as for open source (OSI-approved open source).

Why for open source? Because Team Elements is cool and very useful technology. It's a 100% open source, Java-based "Enterprise 2.0" product. It ties together discussions, wikis, blogs, RSS, issue tracking and trouble-ticketing, project management, document management, and federated search into a single, unified application running on a relational database.… Read more

I took a look at Mindquarry today, a new open source collaboration company funded by Hasso Plattner Ventures. The company is based in Germany. Mindquarry licenses its software under the MPL.

Mindquarry's core product is a collaboration server that allows teams to collaborate on documents, as well as via wikis and shared tasks. It's an interesting product now, but should get much better with the release of its email integration, due out this summer according to the company's roadmap. All in all, it feels like a simple alternative to Sharepoint or Basecamp, a comparison the company has made.… Read more

Stefano Comino and Fabio Manenti have written a useful paper [PDF] on dual licensing in open source. It's a decent resource for helping developers and vendors figure out why, if, and how to dual license their software. (See here for a useful explanation of what dual licensing means, and Heather Meeker's piece is a must read for anyone interested in the legal ramifications of the practice.)

I found myself agreeing with much of the authors' conclusions, but not necessarily the tone or conclusion, because they seem to see dual licensing as a way to drive sales. Of course, it sometimes undoubtedly is - for some time a large percentage of MySQL's, Sleepycat's, db4o's, etc. sales were motivated by a proprietary license waiting to "rescue" the OEM/customer from an open source license.… Read more