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Bona fide open source

Has open source become a victim of its own success?

By Richard Hillesley, 23 Nov 2009 at 16:19

Simon Phipps of Sun Microsystems recently proposed that the Open Source Initiative (OSI) formalise a scorecard "which articulates a holistic vision of software freedom against which businesses can be benchmarked," to determine whether a company is justified in describing itself as open source.

The logic for such a proposal is that "open source" has become a victim of its own success. As Phipps observes "...having businesses identify 'open source' purely on the basis of one 'input' - using an OSI-approved licence - is no longer adequate, because the success of the open source approach has led so many different companies to want to exploit the name."

Free and open source software is about more than a licence, and although there are clear differences in emphasis between free software, as represented by the Free Software Foundation, and open source, as represented by the Open Source Initiative, the differences on the ground are often less than some of the protagonists would have you believe.

A social movement

The Free Software movement emerged from Richard Stallman's project to create a a UNIX-like free operating system in September 1983.

'Open Source' emerged much later, in 1998, after Linux and free software had begun to amass a substantial following among users and developers and had made significant inroads into the computer industry.

Some saw 'open source' as a radical departure from the objectives of free software, but many saw it as a rebranding which made it easier to sell free software to a business audience, shorn of the political trimmings that gave the free software movment its edginess.

The Open Source Definition took its substance from the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

"Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement," wrote Stallman.

"For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software 'better'," which for Stallman, is an incidental by-product and a side issue.

"It's not about money", Stallman has said, "it's about freedom. If you think it's about money you've missed the point. I want to use a computer in freedom, to cooperate, to not be restricted or prohibited from sharing. The GNU/Linux system is catching on somewhat more now."

He continued: "The system is becoming popular for practical reasons. It's a good system. The danger is people will like it because it's practical and it will become popular without anyone having the vaguest idea of the ideals behind it, which would be an ironic way of failing."

Lip service

Obviously, this is a view that doesn't cut much ice with many business people, but has helped to define what is meant by both open source and free software to its primary practitioners - the developers who have chosen to contribute their code.

Whether a project defines itself as 'open source' or as 'free software' is largely political. Developers on free and open source projects may or may not care about the ins and outs of which licence is used or the issues that surround that choice, but are likely to care that the code remains free for others to use, improve or re-use.

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4 comments

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Not Strictly True

@Richard Hillesley: "The Free Software movement emerged from Richard Stallman's project to create a a UNIX-like free operating system in September 1983." This is incorrect. The Hurd, if that is what you are referring to, did not make it into mainstream use (and still hasn't). Richard Stallman had to wait for the Linux kernel before he was able to have a fully working kernel for his GNU tools.

By 6tricky9 on Friday Nov 27

Re: Not Strictly True

The statement is correct. The Free Software movement grew directly from GNU, which evolved from Richard Stallman's announcement of his intention to create a free Unix-like operating system in Sep. 1983. The free software movement was in existence long before Linus Torvalds or the Linux kernel came along.

By Ip_richardd2ec66 on Monday Dec 14

Reply to Richard Hillesley

Yes, that will teach me not to scim read Richard; I misread your article as Richard Stallman launching his OS in 1983, rather than launching his *idea* for an OS. I apologise for that, however, you have also misread my reply. I didn't deny that "The free software movement was in existence long before Linus Torvalds or the Linux kernel came along", and my point about The Hurd and the Linux kernel is correct.

By 6tricky9 on Tuesday Dec 15

What is meant by "Open Source" is less clear?

No, it's perfectly clear - it's just that some companies want to cheat and get the benefits of Open Source without relinquishing all proprietary rights to their code. With teams of lawyers parsing the wording of the GPLs, you can make it seem unclear, but it's really very simple - the code is free for anyone to use and modify, as long as any changes are made available under the same terms. How you organize the development process is your own business - but if you don't get community involvement, you won't reap the full benefits of the Open Source model.

By greenknight32 on Tuesday Dec 15