Open source seeks to eat its young (again)

At Hogwarts, only the Slytherins seem to care whether you're a pure blood or a mudblood. In the open-source community, too, some open-source advocates have never seen a corporate open-source contribution that couldn't have gone farther or been done with nobler purposes.

For example, Adobe announced several new open-source projects "designed to help media companies and other publishers build richer Flash applications."

Alas! It wasn't open enough, at least, not for Chris Messina, who promptly criticized the move as "open washing, applying the tastes-great, less-filling label, while doing everything they can to maintain their control and dominance in a given area--further cementing the historic distinction between 'free' and 'open.'"

Messina raises some good points in his post, but what he doesn't do is come to grips with Adobe's news: it did exactly what it said it did, which was to open source code under an OSI-approved license (MPL 1.1). Messina may believe Adobe did so with devious intent, but can we at least wait for the ink to dry on the press release before hounding Adobe for its move?

Similarly, the response to Microsoft's open-sourcing of a few Linux device drivers is puzzling. Red Hat said "congratulations" out of one side of its mouth while pestering Microsoft to outdo IBM, HP, and other companies that heavily use open source in a refusal to future patent claims against any open-source developers or users.

Roy Schestowitz, perhaps predictably, argued that Microsoft only did it because Linux can't be ignored. Indeed, the argument is now circulating that Microsoft was legally bound to release the device drivers as open source. It didn't really want to! It's a sneaky company that only contributes under duress!

Sigh. In open source, no good deed goes unpunished. There is no greater enemy to open source than itself.

A more charitable view on Adobe, Microsoft, and other companies that are experimenting with open source is that they are making progress, learning to use open source to suit various business and technical needs. Microsoft says that it's learning to use open source to lower sales and marketing costs in new markets, but also to make its software development process more efficient.

Perhaps it's lying, but why start from that premise?

I think it's fair to say that Microsoft, in particular, has made significant progress in its understanding of and appreciation for open source these past few years. Yes, as Novell's leading Linux developer Greg Kroah-Hartman articulates, "companies [like Microsoft] are big" with conflicting agendas, which can make them seem insincere in their open-source efforts.

But why would anyone expect Microsoft and its ilk to continue to court a community that ridicules and second-guesses its every attempt at perestroika? I know from conversations with several companies that they're actually scared to engage the open-source community because the responses have been so intemperate and ideological.

I'm convinced that this element of the open-source community, vocal and sometimes vicious, is a minority. I'm equally convinced that we'd better off if this enemy within would spend more time analyzing its own behavior rather than shouting down the supposed "mudbloods" of open source.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

[kit_plummer]

In all fairness, one has to look closely at Canonical's logic for "opening" Launchpad too. I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

[tm_anon]

How about actually saying something rather than insinuating.

In the case of the Adobe example, they were giving a way to create more content using Flash. Adobe doesn't have a fully functional Flash plugin for Linux yet but they want to create ways to give developers more ability to create Flash content. Where's the guarantee the developers will even be able to see the content they create?

In the case of the 20k lines of code for three drivers by Microsoft, why wouldn't they just add those drivers into Hyper-V? Even better, why wouldn't they build the drivers with help from the community and use a newer version of the GPL? It would go a lot farther with the community to ask for help and the developers might actually learn something (20k lines for three drivers in Linux is a huge amount).

[odubtaig]

Not a lot Adobe can do about Flash on Linux other than what they've already done. They don't own all the code in Flash Player (it's licensed from others) so without some serious rewriting of the inner workings they legally can't release the code. As for 64Bitness, it's being worked on.

MS also can't use a newer version of the GPL for Linux drivers. Neither can anyone else. The Linux kernel is GPLv2 only so any contributions must be GPLv2. I agree it's something of a code-dump but there may have been technical limitations such as required knowledge of the hypervisor which is not available outside of MS.

[JonathanE1701]

I don't care what companies' motivations are. If they use open source only to line their pocketbooks, that's fine with me. I don't use open source for ideological purposes. I use it because I like the community, and in the long run I think it will provide the best solutions.

[Thad Boyd]

"Perhaps it's lying, but why start from that premise?"

Because we haven't been in a coma for the past 25 years?

I'm not suggesting that the community shouldn't accept code from MS or Adobe -- on that score, you and I are in agreement; they may be strange bedfellows but if their contribution allows for greater interoperability, that's a good thing.

However, suggesting that we should just assume benign motives from the company that sent the feds after Sklyarov and the one that recently sued TomTom is suggesting that we should close our eyes and plug our ears.

I'm not saying code from Adobe and MS can't be used to positive ends. I'm just saying that pretending they're doing it for any reason other than to protect their existing market share is absurd.

[Random_Walk]

"Perhaps it's lying, but why start from that premise? "

Agreed with the parent post - though I can simply shorten my version of it to this: Past and Present History.

[wshwe]

Not only is PDF not open source, but Adobe charges an arm and a leg for Acrobat. I could care less that Adobe and Microsoft make a few scraps open source. In the end they still charge a lot for the vast majority of their software.

[alegr]

"Adobe charges an arm and a leg for Acrobat"

Maybe because it needs to pay salary to the engineers who develop and support it?

[davemc]

perhaps it would also help if you didn't confuse a specification (PDF) with an implementation product (Acrobat). In 1993, Adobe published the spec, giving permission to anyone to use it to create PDF based tools. There are hundreds of PDF products, including several in open source.

And Adobe doesn't even control the PDF specification. It's now in the hands of ISO, you know, that international standards thingee. Adobe is one company in one country that contributes to the ISO 32000 standard. Adobe also released the essential patents that read on PDF as RAND-RF at he same time... so don't suggest patent blocking.
And by the way, the country votes for the approval of this standard was unanimous.

So, if giving up control of PDF, and building tools that follow an international standard that many others also follow is closed, I'd suggest reading a good dictionary.

davemc

@Matt Asay: Your blog over the past several weeks has not been horrific (in the past, about 85% were). Keep up the good work.

@wshwe: A point of a company is to make money. It is not to cator to cheapskates like yourself who want everything for free.

@Thad boyd and Random_Walk: Why do you care what their motivations or history are? If you want to live in some imaginary world where everything is free and people sing kumbaya. Good luck.

[plbyrd]

::CLAP::

[Thad Boyd]

Those are some nice strawmen you've got there. Are you planning on contributing anything to the conversation, or just poorly-spelled namecalling?

[kast5089]

Since when have companies like Microsoft been afraid of a handful of vocal open source zealots? I find it hard to believe that their "vicious" reaction is taken as anything more than what it is: the loud but largely powerless voice of the minority.

On the same note, you can't really blame open-sourcers from being suspicious. Microsoft has been trying to stamp us out for years. I consider myself to be a very pragmatic open source advocate, but I don't trust Microsoft. They built their business on theft and the assimilation of their opponents. So am I just being paranoid? Or realistic? Neither? I don't know.

It's like an episode of Tom and Jerry where Tom tries to call a truce and offers Jerry a piece of cheese. When Jerry accepts, a giant anvil falls out of the sky and lands on his head. Can you blame us for twitching?

[michaelpagz]

Why is this an issue? Of course, their motives aren't pure! But that has no baring on the community. Some people are acting like they are going to swindle the community out of something. You can't swindle something that isn't there. Open source isn't some company to be acquired. That's the beauty of open source. Businesses can either participate and gain by contribution or not participate and nothing is lost or gained. But the open source community doesn't rely on any one person or entity. I hate Microsoft, so I may choose to ignore their contribution to open source. If someone else likes tomboy, use it! Same goes for Adobe. Use it or not. Its all about freedom in the world of open source. Pretty simple.

[plbyrd]

I love watching the open source zealots eat their own children. People keep espousing history when talking about Microsoft, but they completely ignore it when talking about the tenets of the FOSS movement. Anyone who claims to love the FOSS way of life needs to do some research on a little country called the United Soviet Socialist Republic.

[odubtaig]

Is 'invoke the communism boogeyman' in the handbook or something?

[tomchiverton]

@tm_anon - Adobe have fully working 32 and 64 bit Flash v10 plugins for Linux. And have add for ages.

@thad boyd - Yup. MS act like ejits in the past, and expect is to believe they've come over all cuddly over night ? Yeah, right. And *then* it turns out it wasn't out of the goodness of their heart, or even for commercial reasons, but because their lawyers made them ? Meh !

[Thad Boyd]

Hey Matt,

Per The Register ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/23/microsoft_hyperv_gpl_violation/ ), MS released Hyper-V code under the GPL because...it was a GPL violation otherwise.

Oh, those open-source zealots, always eating their young by assuming MS might have an ulterior motive for embracing a license it has previously compared to cancer. Clearly a bunch of idiots with axes to grind, formulating conspiracy theories that couldn't possibly have any basis in reality.

[nbahn]

It's not surprising that there would be such trenchant suspicion and criticism of Microsoft. Who can forget the bad old days when it acted both immorally and illegally with impunity?