Pendulum has swung in the open source debate
Eben Moglen (left) tells it like it is.
(Credit: James Duncan Davidson)Once upon a time, the term "open source" was coined to save the free-software world from itself--or, rather, from the free-software zealots, as you can read on the Open Source Initiative's Web site.
Today, I can't help but feel that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, where we're so self-satisfied with the money we're making off open source that we have neglected the essential freedoms that make open-source profit possible.
The wake-up call about the necessary freedoms came from Eben Moglen at last week's O'Reilly Open Source Conference. Some, including software consultant Stephen Walli, don't like the way Eben said it. I wasn't in the room to hear Eben. At any rate, I'm not one for handwringing and am just glad it was said.
Why?
Because it is pointless to talk about open source without guaranteeing its underlying freedoms, with the right to fork (access to source code and the right to redistribute derivatives) paramount among them. I'm an ardent capitalist who likes having money--and the more of it, the better. But I recognize that free markets depend on...freedom. It's as true in software as it is in rice commodities.
Stephen wrote in his blog about freedom and commerce as if they're somehow opposed:
Jane Jacobs (originally famous for "The Death and Life of Great American Cities") wrote a small Socratic dialog called "Systems of Survival." The characters debate that there are exactly two value systems in existence. One leads to politics (protecting) and the other to commerce (trading). These value systems are not opposite ends of a spectrum, but rather different and incompatible. For each value in one syndrome there is no equal and opposite value in the other.
I haven't read Jacobs' piece, but on its face it strikes me as complete hooey. (Scientific word for "nonsense.") The two are not in tension--they exist best in concert.
I cannot trade with Customer X unless essential liberties are in place such that she will trust me to deliver (or be punished for not doing so). Trust is the primary currency in any so-called trading system, and that trust is guaranteed by protection of critical rights.
If you wonder why everyone seems to believe that the enterprise software model is broken (including the primary beneficiaries of it), it's because it is. Have you read a contract recently? "This software will blow up at any minute and it will be your fault for being stupid enough to bother buying it. Oh, and by the way, don't you dare to try fix your own problem or discover how our magic box works or you'll violate this license and Dire Things Will Happen." Inspire you to trust the vendor? Of course not.
Enter Eben. Here's what he said:
"Tim has a television show under production where we get told in advance what we are going to say and how it will reflect Tim's underlying idea. I decided not to go with the program...
...(W)e've reached a stage where we ought to be able to tell the difference between daily business news--X is up, Y is down--and the stuff that really matters, which from day to day is not racehorse X is running faster than racehorse Y.
I think what time has done with this forum in general is to emphasize the trivial at the expense of the significant."
One may prefer that Eben didn't make Tim squeamish. (I, for one, sympathize with this view, as I think highly of Tim.) But I find it hard to disagree with the content of what Eben was saying. The pendulum has swung too far is what he's trying to tell us. And if we're not careful, we'll end up with a load of open buffoonery.
We're well on our way.
Licensing does matter. It is what guards the essential freedoms that commerce is built upon. We cannot easily neglect the one in favor of cheap marketing gimmicks around open source. We spend an inordinate amount of time chatting about Facebook and the rise of Web 2.0, which is frankly nothing new (and is beginning to strike me as so vapid as to be a waste of digital ink). It just happens to run on the Web platform. Yahoo. Literally.
I'm with Eben. It would have been more interesting to talk about why customers should care about open source, rather than to spend a significant part of the day talking about why open source is irrelevant to what really matters, which is...the ability to be "friends" on MySpace.com?
If you care to see what such a discussion would sound like, come to the Linuxworld session I'm moderating next week (11:30 a.m., August 8) in San Francisco. I have Oliver Marks of Sony PlayStation Group, John Roberts of SugarCRM, Danese Cooper of the OSI, and Virginia Tsai Badenhope of Smithline Jha talking about why open source matters to vendors and customers, and how to maximize those benefits. Should be fun. I may "go Eben" on everyone. :-)
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
But while I don't believe these value systems sit as opposites, I would observe that governments and commercial organizations are absolutely in tension. The U.S. Senate Ethics Committee exists for a reason. Business people entering politics put their businesses out of their own reach. The reverse is equally true when government legislation is enacted to control businesses. Yes -- Enron broke all the rules, but does every public company really need the entire regulatory beast that is Sarbannes-Oxley?
I do not suggest that because you choose to vote your political conscience, that you can't live the commercial value set. What I did suggest is that you can't be a civil servant and a business person at the same time.
You are clearly a business person that recognizes and celebrates the freedoms (both political and software) your business uses. Great. Me too. I'm a card carrying member of the EFF. It doesn't mean I want to work there. Indeed that's WHY I contribute. I'm a business person that relies on their political agenda.
Eben is driving an important political agenda of rights and freedoms. Tim is running a business empire. These are rightly different things.
Eben has every right to call on the commercial world to act to support a political agenda. (And he typically does it gracefully and vigorously.) We are equally free to accept or ignore that call while we carry out our commercial endeavours.
But while I don't believe these value systems sit as opposites, I would observe that governments and commercial organizations are absolutely in tension. The U.S. Senate Ethics Committee exists for a reason. Business people entering politics put their businesses out of their own reach. The reverse is equally true when government legislation is enacted to control businesses. Yes -- Enron broke all the rules, but does every public company really need the entire regulatory beast that is Sarbannes-Oxley?
I do not suggest that because you choose to vote your political conscience, that you can't live the commercial value set. What I did suggest is that you can't be a civil servant and a business person at the same time.
You are clearly a business person that recognizes and celebrates the freedoms (both political and software) your business uses. Great. Me too. I'm a card carrying member of the EFF. It doesn't mean I want to work there. Indeed that's WHY I contribute. I'm a business person that relies on their political agenda.
Eben is driving an important political agenda of rights and freedoms. Tim is running a business empire. These are rightly different things.
Eben has every right to call on the commercial world to act to support a political agenda. (And he typically does it gracefully and vigorously.) We are equally free to accept or ignore that call while we carry out our commercial endeavours.
+1
+1
I believe that Web 2.0 and software as a service have fundamentally changed the game, and that free software advocates need to go back to first principles in thinking about what freedoms matter in the new environment.
Eben didn't want to talk about that. He just wanted to score points, and position free software vs. open source as an "us vs. them." I was really disappointed that he would agree to come talk about an important issue, and then say it was a non-issue, claiming that Google is "thermal noise" in the context of free software.
When one of the people in the audience asked the question instead of me, he was a bit more forthcoming, answering that he believed that he was faced with a choice of rights, and that the rights of an SaaS provider to privacy outweighed the rights of the original developer of any GPL'd software.
That's a great point, but I really regretted that he wasn't willing to have a real conversation about an important issue, and instead built and proceeded to attack a straw man. He has a lot to say, but preferred to spend most of his time on cheap shots and insults rather than a debate.
I'm surprised at you giving him attaboys. If I sat down with him and started insulting him and the free software movement, I doubt I'd get the same kudos. I don't mind disagreement -- in fact, I was hoping for vigorous debate. But I was hoping for debate about issues, and there I was sadly disappointed in Eben.
I thought Stephen Walli's analysis was spot on.
Matt -- you've spent a lot of time talking with me. You know I care a lot about freedom. I just have a different idea about what freedoms matter than Eben does.
I thought I took his insults in good humor, but the more I've thought about it, the more disappointed I've become in how he acted. He was grandstanding. It was dishonest and disrespectful.
I believe that Web 2.0 and software as a service have fundamentally changed the game, and that free software advocates need to go back to first principles in thinking about what freedoms matter in the new environment.
Eben didn't want to talk about that. He just wanted to score points, and position free software vs. open source as an "us vs. them." I was really disappointed that he would agree to come talk about an important issue, and then say it was a non-issue, claiming that Google is "thermal noise" in the context of free software.
When one of the people in the audience asked the question instead of me, he was a bit more forthcoming, answering that he believed that he was faced with a choice of rights, and that the rights of an SaaS provider to privacy outweighed the rights of the original developer of any GPL'd software.
That's a great point, but I really regretted that he wasn't willing to have a real conversation about an important issue, and instead built and proceeded to attack a straw man. He has a lot to say, but preferred to spend most of his time on cheap shots and insults rather than a debate.
I'm surprised at you giving him attaboys. If I sat down with him and started insulting him and the free software movement, I doubt I'd get the same kudos. I don't mind disagreement -- in fact, I was hoping for vigorous debate. But I was hoping for debate about issues, and there I was sadly disappointed in Eben.
I thought Stephen Walli's analysis was spot on.
Matt -- you've spent a lot of time talking with me. You know I care a lot about freedom. I just have a different idea about what freedoms matter than Eben does.
I thought I took his insults in good humor, but the more I've thought about it, the more disappointed I've become in how he acted. He was grandstanding. It was dishonest and disrespectful.
I wasn?t there for Eben?s comments, so it?s easy for me to distance myself from the unfair passion behind them (which is how I heard it described by everyone I talked to). I was trying to tackle the larger issue of freedom in my post but, as you noted, it may well be that I, like Eben, am focusing on yesterday?s war.
I guess the problem I have with calling it ?yesterday?s war? is that the open data war (today?s war, presumably, or one of them) is that I think data matters not at all if we can?t even protect code. If "Web 2.0" companies are allowed to use without giving back (or only giving back selectively), I?ve got to think that the well is going to dry up. People have to feed their families, and they don?t feed them with Google Adwords if they?re an open source developer.
I suppose that may be because they?re trying to monetize their creations through a ?yesterday business model,? but we?re going to be mucking through that world of yesterday for at least another 10-15 years, if history is any guide. We still have green screens on Wall Street, for heaven?s sake!
So, for the moment, I think licensing really matters. I think open data matters tremendously, too, but that?s not my battle today. I am glad, however, to have you talk about it. I know you care about freedom and do so in a way that people respect and to which they listen. Just don?t forget about the underlying freedoms that make the open data discussion even possible: the source code that powers the Internet (i.e., open source). We're still in the midst of Enterprise 1.0, which requires an Open Source 1.0 discussion.
I wasn?t there for Eben?s comments, so it?s easy for me to distance myself from the unfair passion behind them (which is how I heard it described by everyone I talked to). I was trying to tackle the larger issue of freedom in my post but, as you noted, it may well be that I, like Eben, am focusing on yesterday?s war.
I guess the problem I have with calling it ?yesterday?s war? is that the open data war (today?s war, presumably, or one of them) is that I think data matters not at all if we can?t even protect code. If "Web 2.0" companies are allowed to use without giving back (or only giving back selectively), I?ve got to think that the well is going to dry up. People have to feed their families, and they don?t feed them with Google Adwords if they?re an open source developer.
I suppose that may be because they?re trying to monetize their creations through a ?yesterday business model,? but we?re going to be mucking through that world of yesterday for at least another 10-15 years, if history is any guide. We still have green screens on Wall Street, for heaven?s sake!
So, for the moment, I think licensing really matters. I think open data matters tremendously, too, but that?s not my battle today. I am glad, however, to have you talk about it. I know you care about freedom and do so in a way that people respect and to which they listen. Just don?t forget about the underlying freedoms that make the open data discussion even possible: the source code that powers the Internet (i.e., open source). We're still in the midst of Enterprise 1.0, which requires an Open Source 1.0 discussion.
Actually, I'm pretty sure I heard Eben defend a free software user's right to keep private changes private (possibly in the Ubuntu Live keynote). The GPLv3 doesn't compel Google to share anymore than they do today.
We've shared source code as long as we've written it. The well has only gotten deeper with the articulation of software freedom, and the publishing of subsequent General Public Licenses. It's gone from a well to a tsunami with the expansion of Internet bandwidth.
While you (who programmed in English as a lawyer) and I (who haven't put code in production in almost a decade) may need to get creative in how we develop business value and use free and open source software in our businesses, the freedoms were never designed to enable us in our commercial pursuits. (Neither were they designed to prevent us from developing those pursuits.)
Freedom 0 is as important today. My asset; my license terms.
- @Matt: Eben actually defended Google's rights
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by stephenwalli
August 1, 2007 10:45 PM PDT
- "If 'Web 2.0' companies are allowed to use without giving back (or only giving back selectively), I?ve got to think that the well is going to dry up."
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(10 Comments)Actually, I'm pretty sure I heard Eben defend a free software user's right to keep private changes private (possibly in the Ubuntu Live keynote). The GPLv3 doesn't compel Google to share anymore than they do today.
We've shared source code as long as we've written it. The well has only gotten deeper with the articulation of software freedom, and the publishing of subsequent General Public Licenses. It's gone from a well to a tsunami with the expansion of Internet bandwidth.
While you (who programmed in English as a lawyer) and I (who haven't put code in production in almost a decade) may need to get creative in how we develop business value and use free and open source software in our businesses, the freedoms were never designed to enable us in our commercial pursuits. (Neither were they designed to prevent us from developing those pursuits.)
Freedom 0 is as important today. My asset; my license terms.