Maybe the problem is in mischaracterizing Google, not in its use of open source

I've been talking back and forth over email about "the Google/open source conundrum" with a few people that I deeply respect. This will all come out in an upcoming post (tentatively titled "GPL, the new BSD"), but in the course of talking with these people I'm starting to wonder:

Maybe the problem isn't that Google and other web companies aren't subject to the GPL in the same way as an offline company is, but rather that we/I think about them as technology companies at all.

This is the crux of my concern with the Web 2.0 crowd: I think of these companies as technology vendors, just as I think of SAP, Oracle, etc. But this is flawed, isn't it?

Google Adwords in action

(Credit: Google)

Google isn't a Microsoft - not for the majority of its revenue, anyway. Google makes its money through search/advertising, and is therefore much closer to a Business 1.0 company in its actual business (i.e., why people pay it money) than it is a technology vendor.

Maybe Google, in particular, is partially at fault. It does increasingly compete with Microsoft in "desktop" applications, for example. In this way, it looks very much like a software vendor. To the extent that it enters into vending of software solutions (whether web-based or otherwise), I would like to see its use of open-source software constrained by the spirit of the Open Source 1.0 licenses (GPL, etc.). But for its other business...? I'm thinking a hall pass may be in order.

One of the people with whom I've been discussing this suggested that web companies "write software almost as a side effect of maintaining the quality of our services to users and to advertisers." I hadn't thought of that. Not sure why, but I completely missed it.

I am happy to have "normal" offline businesses use open-source software and not contribute back (though I wish that they would). After all, if they're not distributing, they're not in violation of any open-source license. I guess this is how Eben Moglen and the other GPLv3 authors felt when they were drafting that license, and opted to remove the "network distribution" language.

I still think we need licenses that close the ability to distribute software over the web as a service without contributing code back, but a ray of light has finally opened in my thick skull on this topic. I've just been thinking of Google in the wrong context. I've been conceptualizing it as a Silicon Valley software company. I don't like software companies misusing open source.

But, as this person said, Google and its ilk really aren't software companies. They are the Nordstroms of the 21st Century, and just happen to use the web as their delivery mechanism.

Am I wrong?

[luis.villa]

wrong but thought-provoking, I think?

Google (despite the massive server farms) is still in the business of using mostly non-rivalrous resources to deliver mostly non-rivalrous goods. You can perhaps make the case that they aren't a software business, since they do an awful lot of service, but they sure aren't Nordstroms- Nordstroms can't give me a copy of their business- they can't copy their floor space, they can't copy their suppliers, they can't copy their goods. Google *can* give me a copy of the vast majority of their business- it might run slowly on the machines I've got laying around my apartment, and I might not have advertisers for it (yet) but it would run (or could be made to run.) That makes it a lot closer to the software business than anything else. (And that's completely ignoring what the vast majority of their employees do- which is, you know, 'write software.')

But still a very insightful post, and something worth exploring in much more detail, because you're right that there are definitely not /traditional/ software companies. (Like the title for the upcoming post too ;)

[luis.villa]

wrong but thought-provoking, I think?

Google (despite the massive server farms) is still in the business of using mostly non-rivalrous resources to deliver mostly non-rivalrous goods. You can perhaps make the case that they aren't a software business, since they do an awful lot of service, but they sure aren't Nordstroms- Nordstroms can't give me a copy of their business- they can't copy their floor space, they can't copy their suppliers, they can't copy their goods. Google *can* give me a copy of the vast majority of their business- it might run slowly on the machines I've got laying around my apartment, and I might not have advertisers for it (yet) but it would run (or could be made to run.) That makes it a lot closer to the software business than anything else. (And that's completely ignoring what the vast majority of their employees do- which is, you know, 'write software.')

But still a very insightful post, and something worth exploring in much more detail, because you're right that there are definitely not /traditional/ software companies. (Like the title for the upcoming post too ;)

[sepreece]

what problem?

I don't think there is a problem to begin with.

There's no qualitative difference between Google using free software to support its service and some other hypothetical company accepting queries and returning results by e-mail. In both cases, they're just *using* the software as the backend for providing a service. That simply has to be acceptable under a free license - no distribution is involved.

I think some community members have a lingering discomfort with the nature of their license - they don't really like the fact that people can use their software without giving anything back to the community. But, that's the very essence of free software! It's not "I'm making this software available, what are you going to give me back?", it's "Here's some software I made; there are a few restrictions on distribution, to make sure it stays free, but use it as you like."

"Distribution" has to mean "conveying of the software itself", NOT provision of a service using the software.

[sepreece]

what problem?

I don't think there is a problem to begin with.

There's no qualitative difference between Google using free software to support its service and some other hypothetical company accepting queries and returning results by e-mail. In both cases, they're just *using* the software as the backend for providing a service. That simply has to be acceptable under a free license - no distribution is involved.

I think some community members have a lingering discomfort with the nature of their license - they don't really like the fact that people can use their software without giving anything back to the community. But, that's the very essence of free software! It's not "I'm making this software available, what are you going to give me back?", it's "Here's some software I made; there are a few restrictions on distribution, to make sure it stays free, but use it as you like."

"Distribution" has to mean "conveying of the software itself", NOT provision of a service using the software.