[wos] Open API panel: Open Source Licenses are Obsolete

[Janko Roettgers]

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/08/open_source_licenses_are_obsol.html

Open Source Licenses are Obsolete

By tim on August 01, 2006

Last week at OSCON, I made the seemingly controversial statement "Open
Source Licenses Are Obsolete. During the Q&A period, Michael Tiemann
of Red Hat and the Open Source Initiative took issue with my
statement, pointing out just how much value open source licenses have
created. I don't know whether he really didn't understand what I was
saying or whether he was just intentionally misunderstanding to make
his own point. But it's clear to me at least that the open source
activist community needs to come to grips with the change in the way a
great deal of software is deployed today.

And that, after all, was my message: not that open source licenses are
unnecessary, but that because their conditions are all triggered by
the act of software distribution, they fail to apply to many of the
most important types of software today, namely Web 2.0 applications
and other forms of software as a service.

I've been banging this drum for many years. In fact, in preparing for
my talk, I looked up an old discussion I'd had with Richard Stallman
in Berlin during the summer of 1999. I had just given a talk (pdf) on
what I was then calling infoware and now call Web 2.0, and made my
point about the failure of open source licenses in the world of
software as a service. Richard came up to the mike after my talk, and
said:

    "I came up to the mike again because I wanted to address the topic
that Tim O'Reilly raised....a proprietary program on a web server that
somebody else is running limits his freedom perhaps, but it doesn't
limit your freedom or my freedom. We don't have that program on our
computers at all, and in fact the issue of free software versus
proprietary [only] arises for software that we're going to have on our
computers and run on our computers. We're gonna have copies and the
question is, what are we allowed to do with those copies? Are we just
allowed to run them or are we allowed to do the other useful things
that you can do with a program? If the program is running on somebody
else's computer, the issue doesn't arise. Am I allowed to copy the
program that Amazon has on it's computer? Well, I can't, I don't have
that program at all, so it doesn't put me in a morally compromised
position."

He just didn't get it. I was surprised to see Michael still
misunderstanding the import of my comments, even today. What's more, I
more or less made this same point in my Open Source Paradigm Shift
talk at OSCON in 2003 (pdf) , and specifically addressed the licensing
issue in an Infoworld interview that I did at the time. But it seems
that I'm finally getting out of the Cassandra zone, and getting a
little bit of attention on this issue.

I don't think that the answer is to try to make free and open source
licenses that restrict the behavior of web applications, so that, for
example, the GPL would bind Amazon or Google and keep them from using
Linux. Instead, what we need is a new "open services definition,"
which is what I began calling for at OSCON. We need a set of
guidelines for open services that is as thoughtful and provocative as
the original open source definition. And Michael may just have been
yanking my chain, because OSI has already been giving this topic some
thought. I've begun discussions with OSI for a brainstorming meeting
soon. More soon on my thoughts for what ought to go into an open
services definition and an accompanying open data definition.


-- 
          Janko Roettgers
Journalist - Los Angeles
roettgers at lowpass.cc

http://www.lowpass.cc
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