Open Source Hypocrisy

While browsing the Open Source Community blog I found a post by Amy Stephen about managing open source projects. Or more succinctly, what it takes to manage one, and who is/isn’t a good fit to manage such an effort, written by Matt Asay for c|net.

The original post is based on research published in the Academy of Management Journal on the topic. Ultimately open source projects need specific skills in growing and nurturing the project and the project community and that need gets more and more prevalent over time as the project evolves.

I’d like to add my personal view that these skills are most definitely not technical skills, and despite the popular notion that open source projects should be managed by elite alphageeks, they scream for an exact opposite personality to manage.

I’ve seen several projects run into the ground due to a few developers who, despite making major contributions to the code, had a complete lack of skills needed to manage a project. For the alphageeks out there:

"eleet skillz" != "competent management"

Looking around the open source world, there are actually many famous personalities that although being technically gifted with brilliance, they are also notorious for being, er, less than approachable.

I’ll end this post with the moneyquote from Matt:

“in other words, a jerk is a jerk, even if he/she writes great code. You may want them on the project, but you don’t want them running it (into the ground).”

In a previous article Fake Steve Tees Off I covered some humorous-but-biting posts from Fake Steve Jobs, specifically regarding his disdain for open source extremists which he refers to as freetards.

Once again, he’s teed off, this time in a post titled Freetards Turn On Google which in turn is a response to a Wired article about some open source advocates finding Google’s Android as a sinister threat.

The whole point being made by Fake Steve is that there are people that call themselves open source advocates, but they sound a lot more like intolerant GPL extremists in that they actually consider other open source licenses a threat. Note the comments in the Fake Steve post, showing how far apart the two open source camps are.

That is the hypocrisy that caused this site to be launched in the first place.

The open source community should be excited that a company as big and powerful as Google has chosen to release their mobile platform on an open source license, regardless of the license chosen. Even if you don’t like the more free Apache license, you must accept the simple reality that this move provides even more incentive for the industry to shift toward an open source model for mobile platforms.

Here’s the money quote in the Wired article, from Jim Zemlin:

“Google is proliferating the use of the Linux kernel as the standard for mobile devices,” says Zemlin. “Similar to the server operating environment, the world will likely end up with two camps: Linux-based phones on one side with Microsoft and Symbian on the other. My guess is Microsoft and Symbian will continue to lag due to the lack of agility from their proprietary development models. It’s difficult for them to compete with open-source licenses, no matter which specific one.”

(Yeah the emphasis was mine.)

The Apache license gives the user the freedom to make whatever changes/enhancements to the software, and the freedom to decide how those are redistributed. If you disagree, please grab the nearest dictionary and look up the word freedom, and note the specific reference to freedom having a lack of restriction. :-)

Anywhoo, just thought it was bizarre that what is obviously a big win for open source gets panned by supposed open source advocates, and some even go as far as to say it is a threat despite being released by a license that is compatible with GPLv3 (see “GPL Compatibility” section at the end of the document for one explanation, many others found easily online).

I’ve been using the excellent Vienna RSS reader for the majority of my time on this Mac, and have to admit that I’m just getting overrun with all the reading and simply cannot catch up. One such feed category that I stopped looking at was the Apple one, that had a bunch of interesting and entertaining feeds.

So I took a quick gander today just to see if I’d missed anything. Other than the whole Leopard launch (sorry, off limits until Digidesign updates ProTools, grr) there were not that many interesting items, but there were a few that made me chuckle.

One of which is the Diary of Fake Steve Jobs and I have to presume you’re not living under a rock and know of the site, famous for a comedic/parody of a guy openly saying he’s pretending to be Steve Jobs.

The first post to make me chortle was Stallman to Dvorak: Welcome to freedom, your rulebook is in the mail. This is penned as a parodied response to Dvorak’s recent column where he chastises Redmond for giving him so much frustration that he’s seriously considering switching operating systems.

NOTE: As proper punishment I’m not linking to John’s original article, as I do occasionally try to follow the age-old advice don’t feed the trolls .

Of course, the most entertaining aspect of this is how he also deftly pretends to be a father figure of open source, Richard Stallman, who writes an open letter to Dvorak giving him instructions on how to comply with his newfound freedom.

He (Fake Steve, that is) then takes it one step further with PJ to Dvorak: Please schedule a re-education course ASAP, panning another open source celebrity.

However the point he’s shrewdly trying to make – while making fun of his victims of course – is that there are some pretty extreme people hanging around the open source world and they have some less-than-tolerant views on those who don’t subscribe to the exact same views of theirs.

That is one of the things that led me to launch this site, in the hopes of bringing to light the alarming rapid separation of open source and free software ideologies. The open source folks are totally hip with the free software gang, however there have been repeated examples of how intolerant the free software folks can be toward other open source efforts – some of which have been chronicled on this very site (not that anyone other than my mom reads this site, that is).

I had to write this article as Fake Steve really hit that nail on the head, while not bashing open source he clearly targets the more extremist types.

When are these people going to realize that enforced freedom is an oxymoron?

I don’t know how I missed it, maybe due to an overloaded feed reader, but the folks behind Quicksilver have posted their code up on the GoogleCode project called blacktree-alchemy.

As a Mac homer, I have to say Quicksilver is one of those apps that I cannot imagine living without. To see it go to the Apache License 2.0 puts a big fat smile on my face, that’s for sure!

Not only is this post about one of my favorite utilities for the Mac, but it also includes one of my favorite licenses. The venerable Wikipedia has a great write-up on the Apache License and how it fits into the jigsaw of open source software licenses.

Right on Blacktree! Now we gotta start working on all the other great tools on the Mac (giggle).

Matt Asay writes on his C|Net blog about a company contributing some code back to the open source community, and then being realistic and humble enough about their efforts to understand only a certain segment of the audience will even care about their contribution.

I say this with a smile on my face, as for once someone contributes something without thumping their chest and trying to make it look like the human race would falter and implode without their colossal efforts.

The open source project that benefits is PostgreSQL, and the most entertaining quote is this one, a comment to the original blog post by a user named elmulfuh:

“If anyone was borrowing and modifying code it would have been End Point Corporation. However, you made it perfectly clear that they developed a new solution, named after a mountain goat, to suit their needs. You should get to work on those open-source licenses that encourage sharing rather than just mooching off the ones that are already there.”

The software they contributed is called Bucardo, which was named after a rather hardy mountain goat. It is a multi-master replication solution that does provide a significant and unique set of features, as evidenced in Backcountry’s press release:

Backcountry.com has been battle-testing Bucardo in live production for nine months. Bucardo has already exceeded the specialty retailer’s expectations, seamlessly shepherding it through its highest traffic day yet of more than 2.35 million page views. That’s approximately 1,600 page views per minute, all managed by Bucardo. Good news since Backcountry.com anticipates traffic levels to surge to near three million page views per day this holiday season.
 
It is uncommon for a major online retailer to release its internal tools to open source, but as Bresee put it, “The open source community has basically been our sugar mama for years. We’re just stoked to give something back.”

John, I’m just as stoked as you are. Congratulations, and I hope your contributed code finds a great many people willing to help it along. Excellent!

I was just pointed to this forum thread over in the land of XOOPS.

(As a side note, at a previous Joomla core summit Jean Marie-Simonet and I were joking about how all the open source content management systems named themselves after noises. Take the following sentence:

(NAME)! I just slipped and stepped in some (NAME)!

You can do this for about any FOSS CMS out there and it is absolutely hysterical.

Joomla! I just slipped and stepped in some joomla!

Or maybe…

XOOPS! I just slipped and stepped in some XOOPS!

Ok, back to the topic at hand)

The forum thread in question has a pretty alarming tone, as well as overall meaning. Without getting drawn into the fight, can someone explain what is going on over there?

In a previous article I mentioned a spat between some BSD developers and some GPL developers, with the SFLC getting pulled in to find a resolution.

It does appear that a resolution has been found, and it looks like the right thing was done.

Logic Prevailed.

In an excellent follow-up article at Linux-Watch by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, the SFLC asked for a quiet period to finish their research and analysis of the situation.

This of course allowed tempers to cool off (I’ve seen Eben do that before, because it was me and it worked) and provided minimal distraction for the SFLC to investigate and collect the data needed for their findings:

There the matter has sat until now. According to the SFLC, “All the copyright holders of the Linux ath5k-driver code, derived from ar5k, have been contacted and have agreed to license their changes under the ISC license, thus allowing improvements to be re-incorporated into OpenBSD. One of the three historical branches of the code reviewed by SFLC, however, included portions that are only licensed under the GPL, and SFLC has determined that it would be very difficult to re-incorporate that code into OpenBSD.”

You can read the analysys of the wireless driver’s development history at the SFLC site directly. Talk about transparency!

Ath5k-driver (discussed in Section 2) currently carried by Linville represents a clear and documented line of descent from ar5k to an ath5k driver for Linux. In addition, all new copyright holders in ath5k-driver code have been contacted and have agreed to license their changes to the ar5k-derived files under the ISC license.9 SFLC has provided a patch to Linville that provides correct attributions for all copyright holders in question. Therefore, SFLC recommends that development under the ISC license continue from what is currently in Linville’s commit c1928199c27de433d1e81b78e3178be4f0e978d2 in his ath5k branch of the wireless-legacy git repository.

I was unsure if the SFLC would take this course, and it is a pleasant read for me, as the SFLC demonstrates an understanding and cooperative approach to non-GPL projects.

Perhaps the most useful of this all is their article about originality requirements which discusses what they believe are reasonable and logical guidelines for determining the copyright status of software.

As well, they have published a guideline for developers who wish to maintain permissive-licensed files in a GPL project.

These last two documents are of great importance to the open source developer community, and I recommend every single one of you take the time to read these. They have thoughtfully been provided in PDF and PS formats for reading offline or printing.

Excellent, excellent work done by the SFLC.

Monsoon Media has been caught in clear violation of the restrictions of the GPL license with one of their products, which appears to be running Linux and other GPL software, and Monsoon not making the source available to customers at their request.

The Software Freedom Law Center(SFLC) was called in to get these knuckleheads to play fair ball, and at that point Monsoon threw in the towel and sent out press releases that they would come into compliance.

So far, so good. So what?

Well, the SFLC isn’t happy with that. They are going to take them to court anyway.

As reported by C|Net:

“Simply coming into compliance now is not sufficient to settle the matter, because that would mean anyone can violate the license until caught, because the only punishment would be to come into compliance,” Ravicher said, though he declined to say what other actions the SFLC is seeking.

And the SFLC doesn’t want to be a pushover. “If you start getting a reputation for being a pansy, then people are going to conclude they don’t have to do anything,” he said.

On a personal note: There is absolutely no possibility of pansies in the SFLC offices. When you get instructed by an attorney how to reset your DHCP client from the command line, you better know your GNU, punk! Shoulders up! Get that stomach in, boy!

Let me get it clear that I agree 100% that the GPL must be taken for real by everyone, even those that don’t agree with some of the restrictions of the GPL. Whether you like the GPL or not, whether you agree with the tenets of the GPL or not, it is still a license, and must be complied with and respected. Without someone like the SFLC willing to bring litigation on those unwilling to comply with the license, the GPL is lost.

And in that case, where does that leave us with all the other open/free/libre licenses? Oops.

On the flipside, the SFLC is now on the offensive. To me this is curious as the whole purpose (I thought, at least) was to protect open source projects. That would be defense.

Sometimes Offense is the Best Defense

This is the approach the SFLC is taking, and I sure hope it works out for them. Because it would be a pretty ugly loss if it didn’t, and they already made their point IMHO.

If you violate the GPL and we are made aware, we’ll come to you and make sure you comply. That is what the message should be. However this is taking it one step further, which of course raises the bar.

Glass Houses

The approach Monsoon took is a common one: Continue until someone actually bothers to haul you into court, because 999 times out of 1,000 nobody will.

Some of the projects that the SFLC represents are practicing that same philosophy, by willingly violating copyright in some instances. It is the assumption that nobody wants to fight the SFLC in court over a copyright violation (me included, as I simply don’t have the resources).

So bullying the bully is okay, until you are outed as another bully. Then bully on you. It may only be a matter of time before one of the bullied parties decides to help one of the parties on the receiving end of the bullying, as long as the SFLC is the eventual target.

This puts the SFLC in the crosshairs of some folks. Maybe that is the intent behind the SFLC, as they plan on the legal enforcement of the GPL and so expect to have some folks that aren’t exactly fans.

I sincerely wish them luck, and watch from the sidelines on this one.

I read an article on Slashdot (ok, actually a RSS feed) about a public spat about a wireless driver getting relicensed without respecting the original copyright or license. Basically the argument is brought public by a mailing list post by Theo de Raadt, founder and leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH efforts. There’s also a public request for an explanation by the original writer (and copyright holder), Reyk Floeter.

I’m not sure where to start on this one. There are both legal and ethical issues involved here, and I’m personally more intrigued by the ethical ones. Since I’m not an attorney I’ll leave the legal debate to folks that, well, know a heck of a lot more about copyright law than I.

However, that leaves the ethical issues as fair game.

We’ve written before on the suspicion that products and open source software don’t mix all that well.

TechCrunch writes an article titled How Grey Is Your Valley: Making Money From Open Source where they question the motives of Matt Mullenweg.

Matt owns a company, and also is a lead contributor to an open source project. The issue stated by TechCrunch is that the main product provided by Matt’s company depends on the open source project – or more importantly, the lack of a competitor provided in the open source project.

There are some loud protests at the accusations, one of which titled TechCrunch Questions Matt Mullenweg’s Ethics at OpenSourceCommunity.org.

I remember several core developers on some open source projects I once contributed to coming under fire with the same allegations. While I defended them at the time – as my own understanding of the logic made sense, as the things that were turned into products were not multi-purpose and had deployment requirements that just didn’t fit being default – I cannot really defend Matt’s predicament as spam filtering to me seems like an obviously stock thing that needs to be done.

On the flip side, Akismet is more than a product, it is a service, and providing that service carries a cost. How can such a service be provided for free?

It is my belief that anyone that plays a major role on an open source project cannot really profit from that effort, lest they have thick enough skin to tolerate the backlash of accusations and so on. This isn’t new, folks.