I suppose it was too much to expect Facebook to adopt a permissive open-source license for its application platform. It's too bad, as it had the chance to forestall growth from Ning, Ringside, and other social networking upstarts by making competition impractical.
Instead, by choosing CPAL, Facebook has ensured that it can be open source without anyone actually using its source. Was that the intent?
As OStatic explains, CPAL requires display of an attribution notice on derivative works. This practice, which effectively requires downstream code to carry the original developer(s)' logo, came to be known as "badgeware." It was approved by the OSI but continues to be viewed with suspicion within the open-source community.
I've written before about how most open-source licenses don't apply themselves well to the networked economy. Only the OSL, AGPL, and CPAL contemplate web-based services. It's not surprising that Facebook opted for one of these licenses, but I am surprised it chose the one least likely to lead to developers actually modifying the Facebook platform.
If the point was to protect the Facebook platform from competition (i.e., derivative works), Facebook chose a good license. If it was to encourage development, it chose the wrong license.
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We answer to a higher authority
(Credit: ConAgra)My good friend, Dave Rosenberg (CEO of MuleSource), has finally capitulated to the open-source gods and has licensed MuleSource's software under the nearly the exact same license as before (CPAL instead of MPL+attribution), only this time it's blessed by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
It's like the hot dogs we buy in the Asay home: Hebrew National. I don't know that they're any different from any other hot dogs, but I like the fact that a rabbi blesses them and guarantees there aren't any non-kosher things in them (like rat hair and excrement).
Anyway, MuleSource ("Our open-source ESB answers to the OSI") is now blessed as open source, and Dave does a fine Q&A with himself to discuss the move, and why MuleSource didn't capitulate to my GPL (GNU General Public License) fetish. In the self-interview, Dave captures a fair amount of the good and bad in open-source business today, and manages to be a lot more interesting than most interviews.
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NOTE: I am not speaking for the OSI in this (or any other) blog entry.
I will admit to entering the OSI's deliberations of the recently approved Common Public Attribution License a little late, and leaving early, so I don't have the full context as to how or why it was approved (given the stink around attribution licenses last year). I'm not a big fan of the license (having developed a distaste for this form of license in last year's brouhaha over attribution licenses), but I applaud Ross Mayfield in the way he went about it.
It's interesting that last year's anathema is suddenly mainstream, as Michael Tiemann notes:
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