Re: [unrev-II] License Model: Preliminary Suggestion (fwd)

From: Eric Armstrong (eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com)
Date: Mon Apr 24 2000 - 22:27:12 PDT

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    Ouch!!!!
    I'm afraid I don't see any counter to the points ER raises.
    If semi-open source is not option, then I am back to question #1:

       Under what circumstances is an open source VC-fundable??

    Again, support contracts are nice, but do they provide the kind
    of exciting revenuses and growth opportunities that VC's like to
    see? (If already covered in his book, a page reference will do
    -- finishing it is still on my todo list...)

    Jon Winters wrote:
    >
    > I've attached Eric S. Raymond's reply to my post last night.
    > Eric was mentioned in the open source lecture during the colloquium.
    > You can learn more about him and read some of his writings at his home
    > page: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/
    >
    > Enjoy!
    > --
    > Jon Winters http://www.obscurasite.com/
    >
    > "Everybody loves the GIMP!"
    > http://www.gimp.org/
    >
    > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    > Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 02:09:08 -0400
    > From: Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
    > To: Jon Winters <winters@obscurasite.com>
    > Cc: unrev-II@egroups.com, rms@gnu.org
    > Subject: Re: [unrev-II] License Model: Preliminary Suggestion
    >
    > Jon Winters <winters@obscurasite.com>:
    > > Successful open source projects do this nicely.
    > >
    > > > There's only so much you can make from support contracts.
    > > > If we're going to enable GM to make or save an extra 10 billion
    > one
    > > > year, as a side effect of getting the software we need to save our
    > > > collective skins, it's hard to see how it would be wrong to get a
    > > > slice of that, so we can do a better and faster job of (hopefully)
    > > > saving our skins. On the other hand, for some reason the open
    > source
    > > > standard seems to have completely ruled out that option, even
    > though
    > > > it appears to me, on the surface at least, to be completely
    > reasonable.
    > > > Do you have any insight into how that decision was reached? Do you
    > > > know of any good sources that give a rationale for it?
    > >
    > > ESR and RMS, help me out here... you're more qualified than I am to
    > > answer this.
    >
    > I think the question you're asking is why community practice (and the
    > OSD) excludes "semi-open" licenses that have restrictions or fees
    > attached to commercial use, but not to noncommercial use or
    > development.
    >
    > There are at least three reasons:
    >
    > 1. "Commercial use" is not a category for which there is a legally
    > accepted
    > bright-line test. Thus, "semi-open" licenses with conditions on
    > commercial use
    > entail legal exposure risks that many potential users and codevelopers
    > have
    > great difficulty evaluating. These risks and the concomitant
    > uncertainty
    > exert fatal chilling effects on many kinds of behavior the open-source
    > community would like to encourage. As a concrete example, consider a
    > CD-ROM packager making decisions about what to include on a CD-ROM
    > anthology.
    > If he includes software with a "commercial-use" restriction and makes
    > a
    > profit on the sales, is he violating the restriction?
    >
    > 2. Semi-open licenses create privileges by which some parties to the
    > development may profit from the software in ways forbidden to other
    > parties. This sort of power asymmetry is flatly unacceptable to most
    > open-source developers -- it feels like exploitation to them. This
    > is a gut issue that generates a lot of anger in the community.
    >
    > 3. Non-fee restructions in semi-open licenses (for example, clauses
    > assigning a privileged design role to a named organization, or
    > forbidding forking) are felt to interfere unacceptably with the
    > croitical peer-review process.
    >
    > The OSD reflects a strong community consensus, based on experience,
    > that the putative benefits of semi-open licenses are simply not worth
    > these costs.
    >
    > > > > If Sun had delivered Java with an open source VM code base on
    > day one,
    > > > > there would never have been this hord of over 100 slightly
    > > > > incompatible reimplimented JVMs all over the place -- making
    > reliable
    > > > > Java code delivery to an arbitrary end user the nightmare it is
    > today.
    > > > > That is why Java is considered by many to be dead on the browser
    > for
    > > > > end users, and is now being used mainly in servlets. I use this
    > as a
    > > > > cautionary tale -- pick the wrong license and much effort and
    > good
    > > > > intentions may go for nothing and the wheel gets reinvented
    > (badly)
    > > > > anyway.
    > > > >
    > > > One wonders what the result would have been had the results been
    > freely
    > > > available to the "evil empire", without the financial resources to
    > carry
    > > > on a legal battle -- or to fund the small army of developers who
    > have
    > > > developed the GUI libraries, multimedia libraries, and other stuff
    > for
    > > > the platform. It would have been nice if it had been truly open
    > source
    > > > -- or would it. Would the result have been as useful for servlets,
    > or
    > > > any more standard for browsers?
    >
    > We actually know the answer to these questions from parallel cases
    > such as Perl and Python where the code is open. In these cases, the
    > languages (a) have not fragmented, (b) have in fact developed huge
    > support
    > communities and well-developed libraries, and (c) have spawned
    > substantial
    > money-making businesses who do, in fact, fund continuing development.
    >
    > Sun's Java strategy has therefore been a quite unambiguous failure.
    > --
    > <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>
    >
    > Let us hope our weapons are never needed --but do not forget what
    > the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An
    > armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the
    > final defense against tyranny.
    > If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only
    > the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of
    > our rulers. Only the government -- and a few outlaws. I intend to
    > be among the outlaws.
    > -- Edward Abbey, "Abbey's Road", 1979
    >
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