There are no open source companies. There are companies and there are open source projects.
Some companies work on open source projects, some parent open source projects, some don’t.
Some of those companies are good at fostering a community that contributes to these open source projects. Others are unwilling and some don’t yet understand the process. And again others have many open source projects being done by teams that do get it and have at the same time other projects being done by teams that don’t get it. Actually that last dual situation is the most common among the large companies. You know, the ones that often sponsor your community’s main conference and the ones that employ your heros.
If you do a quick reality-check then you’ll conclude there are no black / white companies. Actually, nothing in life nor in ethics is black / white. Nothing at all.
What you do have is a small group of amazingly disturbing purists who do zero coding themselves (that is, near zero) but do think black / white, and consequently write a lot of absurd nonsense in blog post-comments, on slashdot in particular, forums and mailing lists. These people are the reason numéro uno why many companies quit trying to understand open source.
It’s sad that the actual (open source) developers have to waste time explaining companies, for whom they do consultancy, that these people can be ignored. It’s also sad that these purists have turned so vocal, even violent, that they often can’t really be ignored anymore: people’s employers have been harassed.
“You have to fire somebody because he’s being unethical by disagreeing with my religious believe-system that Microsoft is evil!”. Maybe it’s just me who’s behind on ethics in this world? Well, those people can still get lost because I, in ethics, disagree with them.
Now, let’s get back to the projects and away from the open source vs. open core debates. We have a lot of work to do. And a lot of companies to convince opening their projects.
Open source developers succeeded in (for example) getting some software on phones. The people who did aren’t the religious black / white people. Maybe the media around open source should track down the people who did, and write quite a bit more about their work, ideas and passion?
Finally, the best companies are driven by the ideas and passions of their best employees. Those are the people who you should admire. Not their company’s open core PR.
How dare you speak sense? This is important stuff here that’s getting debated by important people!
@Shane Falco: Oeps! sorry :-)
“Actually, nothing in life nor in ethics is black / white. Nothing at all.”
You know that’s a black and white statement, right?
@Josh Adams: Hmm, yeah. Good point :). OK, so I meant “most things in life”. I blame rhetorics.
Again Phillip, you speak truth. The vocal minority tends to rule the perception of open source software.
Thanks for bringing clarity once again.
Black and white guys just need to evolve … look pixela are no more black and white today … there is some hope :)
It’s not just the free software purists. There’s also the problem of understanding which people’s purely technical criticisms matter and which don’t. For example, when a company tries to push something into the Linux kernel, understanding who needs to be satisfied and who doesn’t matter takes some time to figure out.
we all need to know where the line is before we can know how far/close we are from the line and make an informed decision if we want to get closer or away from the line.
We all need to know where the two extremes are before we can know how close we are to one of them or the center of the two extremes.
Those vocal minority may be annoying, but they serve a purpose, you may know where the boundaries are and these discussions maybe useless and annoying to you but what about the guy next to you? or that coder with knowledge and time looking for a course to support who has never heard of free/open source software?
@mtz, the inherent properties of open source make “the line” a moot point. Once a license has been slapped on a collection of code then there is your direction.
The only person who decides that license is the owner of the code. Not the community, nor the vocal minority or whoever else. After a piece of code has a specific license then that is that. The only thing that will affect the direction from that point on is if the license gets changed. Which isn’t really something that happens a lot.
now OSI and FSF can bicker about what license should be considered free software or open software, which is all really interesting if you are into that. But that doesn’t affect the applications one bit. It’s all just meta talk.
As is this whole open core crap btw. Just meta talk, only 1 step up from marketing buzz words.
@erik,
There is an open source umbrella community and sub communities within the umbrella and each community is represented by a license it uses.
A person who wishes to contribute code must first know where each sub community starts and ends and hence it is necessary to show where each sub community start and ends to avoid any misunderstandings
A new sub community is created every time a new license is created and the owner of the code must first join a community before submitting code to that community. New code slapped with a particular license only reinforces the sub community, doesnt create anything new or change any directions.
I really do not like the “purist” word, this is a word that is usually used against people who are to the right of almost everything. For every position you may hold, there is atleast one person who is to the left of it and you do appear as a purist to that person and hence we are all “purists” when looked from a particular angle.
So many fanboys…
Black/White
As I grew older I became convinced that the human world really is black and white. And even you agree with this since your article is full of that.
You seem to have no problem classifying people that you don’t like or agree with the term “purists” (a term that you misguided believe is a pejorative term). You and people like you are “good guys” and the people that you don’t like or you don’t like their positions or opinions are “bad guys”. Black and white world.
It’s just a pity that people that write self-righteous articles or have self-righteous never think of hypocrisy.
Every time that someone dares to criticize some company or some individual you or one your friends writes one this stupid articles and decides to publish it on “Planet Gnome”. Why on Planet Gnome? Since the people that you’re criticizing didn’t publish it here, why?
Audience!
Not the even the intellectual and moral courage to be specific. It’s all innuendos. No persons or companies named, not even specific cases…
So let’s talk the specifics: open core!
Open core products are not open source. By using this nomenclature they are trying to deceive programmers, users and customers.
Some argue, and suppose you are in that group, that by releasing something under a open source license should satisfy everyone.
But are their products really worth it? Do they really release it under a real open source license? Do they follow an open source development model? Do they have a community? Do they publicize it on the company or project page?
In over 90% of the cases those projects fail at least one those questions and some fail all of them!
They aren’t released under a open source license!
They don’t follow an open source development model!
They don’t have a community!
They don’t link to the open source product or part of product either from the company page or product page!
Open core = trying to deceive! Don’t like to be criticized then don’t try to deceive!
If their products are proprietary then don’t hide that fact, be proud of it! Just don’t try to deceive!
Purists
If someone threatens your life or harasses you then those persons are criminals not purists!
It’s just another pathetic attempt to discredit someone or some group by labeling them with words that their feeble minds think as pejorative: purists; zealots; fundamentalists; radicals; etc…
Oh the joys of being a hypocrite… Don’t you just like it when it’s done to you?
@erik
It’s just sad the ignorance of some people… the world of the lowest common denominator, the culture of mediocrity.
You said the following:
“The only thing that will affect the direction from that point on is if the license gets changed. Which isn’t really something that happens a lot.”
In fact, changing licenses are a sport for those “open-core companies”. Some of them change license or license terms every release!
“now OSI and FSF can bicker about what license should be considered free software or open software, which is all really interesting if you are into that. But that doesn’t affect the applications one bit. It’s all just meta talk.”
Of course the licenses doesn’t matter. Never did. Poor thing. Do you consume many drugs? Have considered the legal ramifications of what you said?
Oh yes, you really attract people with sense, reason and logic…
It only takes one piece of dirt to start the snowflake; from there it’s water.
I don’t expect developers to support my ideology.
I expect them to try to get my money.
OK, I was hesitant to accept Jack’s comment because he’s calling people stupid, hypocrite and self-righteous. He’s also calling Erik ignorant and insinuates that Eric is on drugs. Comments containing such insults usually get censured by me here. Yes, I’m fine with everybody knowing that I don’t allow immature discussions here; it keeps the bugs away. And if the only price for that is the occasional “you’re a hypocrite” then that’s fine. Luckily I’m self-employed so the insane people can’t harass my employer unless they’d harass me myself. Suckers :)
I’ll let this one slip because relative to the average purist’s comment, this one was still okay-ish. I’ve seen far far worse comments.
ps. It’s by the way “interesting” that of all the purists that I’ve ever seen, and they are often the same few people (you learn to recognize them in writing style, spelling errors, nicknames, IP addresses, choice of insults, choice of pet subjects to whine about, etc), I recognize none of them from any (any whatsoever) open source project. And I do know quite a lot of names in the open source world.
@Jack
“So many fanboys…”, “You and people like you”
“It’s just a pity that people that write self-righteous articles or have self-righteous never think of hypocrisy.”
LoL
For your reply to me, I’m not even sure if it is worth replying to that. Since you are only able to come up with something which is blatantly not true, and a ad hominem.
Which I assume means that you don’t agree with me, but can’t find any argument why I might be wrong.
@mtz,
I can not say that licenses don’t have communities, who knows, perhaps they do. But I think you have the flow backwards.
The license is not the import bit. The software is.
The community around gnome is not the GPL or LGPL, it’s gnome. Same with KDE, apache, mysql or mozilla.
Yes we have the apache license, and the mozilla license. But the community is around the software, not the license.
Now you can say the license is built to support the direction of the community, which is fair enough and just about exactly what happens. But it is still the owners of the code who choose to use that license, and after they have chosen a license then the software is licensed as such and no amount of community talk is going to change that without getting the license changed.
Which In most cases is almost impossible to change because you have to track down all the contributors.
And knowing where each community starts and ends? How does that even work? Just to illustrate, where would you draw the line for the gnome community? Near jdubs feet?, near pvanhoof’s feet? perhaps near my feet?
How are you even going to define that line, because I wasn’t planning to stand still. My involvement might increase or decrease.
Just anyway I look at it, it is a silly notion. But I’ll give you that I am probably misunderstanding with what you mean with draw the line. So please try to clarify.
> The community around gnome is not the GPL or LGPL, it’s gnome. Same with KDE,
> apache, mysql or mozilla. Yes we have the apache license, and the mozilla license
> But the community is around the software, not the license.
This is among the most insightful viewpoints I have ever seen on the matter. I fully agree with this. For me the (open source) license is just a useful development tool that allows professionals and hobbyists to cooperate in peace. Not some sort of religion, and definitely not honey to attract nut people who insist on turning it into a religion in the name of the actual doers.
> And knowing where each community starts and ends? How does that even work?
> Just to illustrate, where would you draw the line for the gnome community? Near
> jdubs feet?, near pvanhoof’s feet? perhaps near my feet? How are you even going
> to define that line, because I wasn’t planning to stand still. My involvement might
> increase or decrease.
Exactly. And I’d like to add that on top of this it depends on the observer’s point of view. Which makes it recursively undefinable.
But hey (not you, Erik), listen to the purists who think they know better than the actual open source developers! Sometimes it looks like these people actually believe that since they don’t code and therefore they can spend more time on thinking for us about ethics, that they contribute said ethics to open source.
Which is so absurd, so arrogant, that it renders me speechless …
Not entirely speechless: I philosophically disagree with these people. They do not talk for me. And I develop open source software. Go check.
A license is what defines the community, not the software. Gnome community exists inside the GPL/LGPL community and hence the limits of the gnome community must start and end within the limit of the GPL/LGPL. All code released within the same community can easily be shared.Code released under incompatible licenses can not be shared and hence belong to different communities.
“The license is not the import bit. The software is.”
The above statement is what leads to words like “purists”. It comes from people who put software and software functionality first and find incompatibilities in software licenses a nuisance and dont like when they are asked to respect licenses or interpret them in a not too liberal way to suit their particular need.
How will you feel if you release your code under the GPL because you believe in what the license represents and then somebody else take your code and incorporate it in another code release with an incompatible license producing a final product slapped with yet another incompatible license and then call you a “purist” if you asked for your code not be used in such a manner? How will you feel if somebody else is called “purist” because they point out the violation of the licenses?
Licenses are everything, you can not take GPL code in linux kernel and slap in at the heart of a BSD kernel “contaminating” the kernel in the process because you like the functionality of the code and call “purists” those who will disagree with you, they will burn you alive if you do that. :-)
With the same token, you can not take a proprietary blob and slap it at the heart of gnome desktop because you like the resulting functionality and call “purists” those who will disagree with you.
With the same token, you can not expand any community in whatever direction you want to expand it to and then call “purists” those who will disagree with you.
Finally, it is a bit extreme to call anyone with a less liberal interpretation of licenses and how they can be mixed “a purist”. It does not matter how liberal you are, somebody else is more liberal than you and you do appear as a hypocritical “purist” if you dont see yourself as a purist but call somebody else
@mtz: I disagree completely. “Licenses are everything”: oh my God, that statement is so misinformed that it’s not funny anymore. You should also take a closer look at GNOME: GPL and LGPL aren’t the only licenses at all. And you need to take a closer look at GNU and the FSF too. Because not even between the GPL and LGPL you can easily share code (definitely not in both directions. You understand that both are different licenses, do you?). By your logic does software that is LGPL per definition belong to a different community than software that is GPL. Good luck convincing Richard Stallman that he needs to split his GNU community up! I guess GNU is lucky as they require copyright reassignment. I don’t know how else mtz’s logic could ever work out between LGPL and GPL licensed works.
Oh crap, I’m working on an open source project that has its libraries in LGPL and its code in GPL. By mtz’s logic I’ll have to convince the other team-members to split up our project! Of course, because we can’t easily share code between the two (and we actually do ask our contributors each time this is needed, in either direction). I’m just going to stick with thinking that mtz’s logic isn’t logical at all. And that Erik is right. Zero – one for the useful memes.
@mtz,
Now firstly I haven’t used the word purist, so I can’t really respond to that. Although I will say that it is a rather apt label. A purist, someone who wants something to be pure and without contamination. Seems rather fitting if you ask me.
Secondly, you seem to be talking about a problem that does not exist. Licenses specify what you can do with software. So if a license allows for a proprietary binary blob to be included then that is just fine.
If you think that isn’t fine, then that license obviously doesn’t suit your needs and you either need to find or write a different license.
A good example of this is for instance the nmap license. Which is GPL + modifications.
“GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; Version 2 with the clarifications and exceptions described below.”
http://nmap.org/svn/COPYING
This really isn’t rocket science.
Now if you are saying “I don’t care what the license says, the project should concede to the will of the community” Then you not only invalidate your earlier claim that communities are built around software and not licenses, but you also imply that a community somehow has ownership of a project. Which is a really misguided idea. Only the authors have ownership of a project, and they defined their direction when choosing a license.
If that license includes the ability to link to binary blobs, then tough luck on the people who don’t agree with that.
Please note I am not trying to put words in your mouth. I am simply anticipating a possible reply.
@pvanhoof,
I know there is a difference btw GPL and LGPL, there will only be one license if they were 100% the same. RMS already created two sub communities with his two licenses and developers choose their sub community by choosing a license to release their work under. Communities already exist around existing licenses and new communities are build with new licenses.
@erik,
I never said “communities are built around software and not licenses” and i have no idea how to understood me as saying that, i said “communities are build around compatible licenses”. A license a program is released under is at the core of the community that program belong in. I put a license above all, you seem to have an opinion that licenses dont matter that much and communities are build around software and pvanhoof agrees with you.
A contributor expresses his wishes of how his work is to be used by a license he chooses to use. Minimizing the importance of a license minimizes the wishes of the person who contributed the code and that is not very communal
@pvanhoof, why is the program you are working in under two different licenses? And if the final result is what is important, why bother at all with splitting the code into two licenses that arent 100% compatible in both directions? My explanation is that the two licenses represents two communities and the code is split the way it is because it targets two different communities per wishes of project contributors, what is your explanation for splitting the code in such a way?
@pvanhoof will you be ok called a “purist” when asking for your wishes to be respected if somebody take the two chunks of code and mix them up in an incompatible way because they care more about the final result and “licenses dont matter”? and are only “tools” and “not some sort of a religion”?