Open Source Community's Double Standard

AlexGr writes to point out a really good point Matt Asay raises in his CNET News Blog: Why do we praise closed source companies who open up a little bit, but damn open source companies who close down a little bit? "Deja vu. Remember 2002? That's when Red Hat decided to split its code into Red Hat Advanced Server (now Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and Fedora. Howls of protest and endless hand-wringing ensued: How dare Red Hat not give everything away for free? Enter 2007. MySQL decides to comply with the GNU General Public License and only give its tested, certified Enterprise code to those who pay for the service underlying that code (gasp!). Immediately cries of protest are raised, How dare MySQL not give everything away for free?"

Human Nature

This is human nature and it does not just apply to computers.

Example: If a girl is a real bitch then people expect her to be a bitch and if she is suddenly nice one day, then people say "Wow, she's so nice today". But if someone is nice all the time then one day gets angry people say "What's wrong with her, sheesh."

Its not a double standard, its human nature. Nuff said, discussion over.

Re:Human Nature

Well put! (Note to self, lower others expectations of me...)

Why do we praise slave states

who open up a little bit, but damn free states, who begin forced servitude little bit?

The issue is not a "double standard" unless you use the current "mainstream media" Orwellian definition of "fairness."

The predjudice is for freedom, openness and opportunity. When you compound closing of source by the inclusion of earlier community contributions, testing and evangelism - you then reduce freedom to a marketing tool.

Re:Why do we praise slave states

If you ignore the stupid /. editoral and read the blog, its actually questioning why its ok for some companys to have some open and closed source but not others. The example in the blog was SugarCRM, which was 100% closed, and opened PART of its code. Counter that with RH taking its code and closing it (but complying with the GPL still in all its releases).

Its not that SugarCRM will ever totally open, nor will RH totally close... the author seems to imply that both will continue with some open, some closed source. I think its a valid question... why not continue to critise SugarCRM for not opening the rest, and praise RH for not closing more?

Re:Why do we praise slave states

If you ignore the stupid /. editoral and read the blog

Wouldn't that be cheating? I bet you're the kind of guy who reads the instruction manual before putting the widget together.

The blurb is actually pretty accurate

(I normally RTFA before posting)

The problem here is: IMHO (and RMS's opinion) non-free software is unethical, because it's basically a scam: making software is a service with value; making copies of software is of (marginally) zero value. So, the GPP is right on the mark.
If a company that makes (unethical) proprietary software starts making some (ethical) Free Software, it is (1) improving its act and (2) contributing to the pool of Free Software.
If a company that makes Free Software starts making proprietary software, it is (1) starting to make unethical things and (2) contributing less to the pool of Free Software.
So, that's the reason why we praise non-free-software companies that open um and we boo free-software companies that close down.
Putting it like the GPP: would you praise a country that permitted slave labour and then passwd a law freeing some of its slaves? (like mine did in 1871...) And would you protest a country without slaves that passed a law allowing for some to have slaves?
HTH.

Re:The blurb is actually pretty accurate

beg to differ.

"making copies of software" - presuming one is collecting payment for same - is extremely valuable, as it allows for the obscene cost of software to be distributed in some fair fashion among the pool of users.

This is hardly unethical.

Free software receives free marketing in a voluntary exchange. so long as there are people who value the advertising higher than the marginal value of their technical efforts - free software will persist. But then so will direct payment software. The two markets are vastly different and cannot easily be compared. but discounting either seems somewhat puerile.

AIK

Re:The blurb is actually pretty accurate

Plenty of Linux companies make money. It's called selling support. Wow, that was hard.

OK - I write this wonderful program, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on testing and design and create it in such a way that the vast majority of users don't need any support. That's great, that's the holy grail of programming.

And I'm supposed to run this company how?

Re:The blurb is actually pretty accurate

Neither RMS nor the GPL nor the FSF says you CAN'T charge for your work; in fact they encourage you to charge as much as your customers will pay.

See here [gnu.org] and here [fsf.org].

Re:The blurb is actually pretty accurate

Again, no one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use a free software license.

If you're talking about games, there are several ways you can do a free software game. You release the engine as free software and then assert copyright on the artistic assets like textures, sound, music, character design, etc. You would be charging for your ideas, not for your software, if that makes sense, and users would not be able to freely distribute the artistic assets. I think that's a fine compromise between making money and being moral. In fact, if your game is any good and becomes popular, users will fix your engine's bugs, port it to new platforms, and start thriving mod communities around it, all while talking you up as the Awesome Guy who wrote the free software engine that made it all possible. It's not that different from what id has been doing, but Carmack's been keeping the engine proprietary for a few years to make money from licensing and then it gets GPL'ed. I have zero problem with that.

As far as being evil for writing non-free software? Well, yes, it is evil. There are different degrees of evil; if I don't want to buy your game because it's nonfree, then I don't have to. But if you write software that blocks DVDs from being played on machines you don't like, that's a lot more evil. And if you were to, say, extort people for money to fix bugs in your mission-critical software, that's about as evil as you can get in software. For those of us who believe it to be a moral issue, not acting morally is evil. Personally I'm more of a realist than some people I could name, and I respect the individual's right to make his own choices. I've even written proprietary software before, and I'll probably write more in the future, but doing so is always wrong to some degree, and I have to choose if it's far enough over the line that I won't participate.

Re:Human Nature

They didn't write it.

It's not the product of their mind, not the product of their efforts.

It's the product of many peoples minds and efforts.

The administrators of the projects should be appreciative of that fact.

It is not their property. Laws can say what they want, lawyers and contracts and twisting of justice aside, it simply isn't theirs.

When open source organizations try to close access and extract money from people, they become malignant, corrupt, thieving organizations.

Declaring that it's legal for someone to do this doesn't change the fundamental nature of what's going on.

The misplaced sense of entitlement these organizations display is truly disgusting.

Re:Human Nature

I just wanted to add to that last post...

Organizations have a lot of inerta. It takes a concerted effort to restructure.

When a closed source organization starts becoming more open, it took a lot of hard work and restructuring to make it possible.

When an open source organization starts closing things up, it takes a lot of hard work and restructuring to make that possible too.

Which means the people at the helm are working hard to start hoarding things they were given in trust for the public good.

It reveals that the organization has a poor moral character.

Re:Human Nature

I'll borrow your formatting and respond in kind. :)

The purpose of running a business is to make money.

Businesses that do not intend to generate profit become nonprofit organizations.

Businesses that attempt to capitalize off any aspect of society, in any way, exist to make profit.

Companies that attempt to make money from open source software eventually exist to make money.

The moment a company accepts investments, rather than donations, it's nature changes to a for-profit model.

Companies that attempt to compete with major commercial enterprises WILL become like those commercial enterprises.

Redhat, MySQL, and other companies like them are closing much of their source because open source and significant profit are not particularly mutual, and are only pushed into appearing so by those who want to turn everything into open source.

The blame belongs to those who wish to contort open source software into what it was never meant to be, and into what it's creators never intended for it to be.

If you want to get rich, close your source and do your own work. If you want to contribute to society, open your source and ignore money.

If OSS is written well, it provides more alternatives to - and methods of - performing tasks than retail can ever hope to accomplish. However, if it is placed on a pedestal and designed to "beat" the "evil" proprietary options, it will, and so far inevitably DOES, become much like what it seeks to eliminate.

The end of an open sourced program's freedom begins when it's creators become an ever-expanding company. It shouldn't work like that, people believe it doesn't have to work like that, but somehow it always does.

Re:Human Nature

I was really agreeing with you until you said: "Redhat, MySQL, and other companies like them are closing much of their source because..."

Redhat and MySQL are NOT closing their open source. That would in fact be illegal and unethical, because they did greatly benefit from (and in Redhat's case, built the whole product around) open source licensed with the GPL and contributed to by many OSS developers under that license.

But in fact, all they have done is start following the strict letter of the GPL, which is basically "you have to make source available when distributing binaries". Not only do they still follow that, but they still support and make freely available a community version of their project as well.

Based on your post I can't imagine you'd argue with that... I just found it a bit ironic that you propgated misperception that OSS companies are evil for "closing their source" when you seemed to be arguing against that FUD :)

Re:Human Nature

That would in fact be illegal and unethical,
Unethical? maybe, illegal? I am not sure about MySQL, as the sole owner and proprietor of the copyrighted code, MySQL AB can provide the MySQL technologies in any license they want. I guess it is like the OpenOffice.org foundation, every piece of code you give to them, you *must* waive your rights to make them the proprietors of such code.

But in fact, all they have done is start following the strict letter of the GPL, which is basically "you have to make source available when distributing binaries". .

Maybe RedHat, but again, MySQL does not need to follow the letter of the GPL, at least for MySQL database, as they are the ones who hold the copyright... YOU must comply with the GPL if you want to modify and distribute their software.

Do you see how it works?

Re:Human Nature

It's not even human nature, it's common freaking sense. If you have a student who averages C- and gets a B on a test you praise them for their achievement. If you have a student who averages A+ and gets a B on a test you ask them what went wrong. If you fail to praise the underachieving student or fail to question the overachieving student then you discourage further improvements by the underachiever, and encourage further drops in performance by the overachiever.

It's not a double standard. It's a rational standard: Improvement is good, regression is bad. Becoming more open is good, becoming less open is bad. Ignoring this in order to be "fair" and avoid being accused of a "double standard" is just stupid.

Re:Human Nature

But, you see, if you phrase it this way, using clear logic, then the story is boooooorrrriiingggg - "Open Source Advocates: We like openness!" *yawn* "OSS Users dislike moves away from closed source, like moves towards open source" - *zzzzzz* Where's the conflict? where's the excitement? You can't have "fair and balanced" reporting unless there's a conflict!!

Re:Human Nature

You can't have "fair and balanced" reporting unless there's a conflict!!

I thought "fair and balanced reporting" was giving the same amount of face time to the person with the logical and well thought out arguments as to the crazy wack-job who bases all decisions on truthiness and faith.

Makes sense

Praise for companies moving towards our goals, opposition to companies moving away from them..

How is that a double standard?

Shocking. The open source community wants software to be open source, that seems pretty consistent to me.

Re:How is that a double standard?

It's shocking how the current generation is all about "gimme, gimme, gimme". I want free stuff!!!

Really? Is that what you see? Where are you looking, and who are you listening too? Because from where I'm sitting, it isn't the current generation that's the problem, it's the 'Me' generation. The baby boomers are the most selfish generation imaginable, at least in America.

What?

"How dare Red Hat not give everything away for free?"

Why are they pushing this misconception of what open source means? AFAIK, it doesn't mean "give everything away for free" it means "the source is open".

Re:What?

Exactly what I thought. Unless I completely misunderstood everything, MySQL is not becoming "closed source", the enterprise version is just not going to be free as in beer any more. You can pay for the enterprise version, and you'll have access to the source code...that's free as in freedom. What is so hard for people to understand about that? From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html [gnu.org]:

Selling Free Software

Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover the cost.

Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.

The word "free" has two legitimate general meanings; it can refer either to freedom or to price. When we speak of "free software", we're talking about freedom, not price. (Think of "free speech", not "free beer".) Specifically, it means that a user is free to run the program, change the program, and redistribute the program with or without changes.

Free programs are sometimes distributed gratis, and sometimes for a substantial price. Often the same program is available in both ways from different places. The program is free regardless of the price, because users have freedom in using it.

Non-free programs are usually sold for a high price, but sometimes a store will give you a copy at no charge. That doesn't make it free software, though. Price or no price, the program is non-free because users don't have freedom.

Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price isn't more free, or closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.

Free software is a community project, and everyone who depends on it ought to look for ways to contribute to building the community. For a distributor, the way to do this is to give a part of the profit to the Free Software Foundation or some other free software development project. By funding development, you can advance the world of free software.

It's not even a valid argument.

RedHat still provides the source for free. They're only charging for support; they just don't provide you with the build formats you may want of the binaries they built and tested.

You can get it all for free, and build it yourself, or get it from someone else who does just that (still for free), such as CentOS or Scientific Linux. You could even get the source, build and test it, and do the same thing RedHat does for less money. You might be hard pressed to make a living that way, challenging the big gorilla, and you'd have the /. community yelling at you, but you're free to do it. Or not.

The GPM doesn't require you to give away binaries or support.

Mod parent up please

It makes an absolutely crucial point: there may well have been howls of protest, but they were from people that either wanted to spread confusion or else were completely ignorant. There's another point: Fedora is the basis of RHEL not the other way around. Fedora is a very aggressively moving distribution that tries out new technologies. Red Hat looks at how succesful those are in Fedora and rolls any that work out well into its supported product: RHEL. It's in a good position to do so because many of the engineers that it hires are involved in the Fedora Project and so know intimately what features are stable and easily supportable. It galls me that Red Hat as a company is so open, adhering in both letter and spirit to the ideals of Free Software, makes money from selling support for that software, re-invests the money in hiring top-notch hackers that contribute Free Software for everyone and then are shit on by people that know that they're doing this work and yet a company like Canonical with a non-Free "launchpad" are fawned over. Feh.

It's not a double standad.

It's double penetration.

The open source community wants to penetrate throug the business worlds, and throught the personal world. This is why the open source community has adopted a double penetration strategy.

We can only hope that the double penetration strategy is successful.

I don't think its really a double standard...

I mean to put it in a more exaggerated analogy, thats like saying abolitionists would have had a double standard for praising states that started giving up slavery and crying foul when a free-state adopted some slavery.

The open source community wants open source. They'll applaud when a company goes towards that goal and they'll get upset when a company moves away.

I don't think that qualifies as a double standard.

If find this surprising too

After all the GPL only requires you to give source when you give executables. I think this is perfectly fine. And as long as you get a devcent version of the product for free, having a "special" version for paying customers is also fine in my book.

Because Open Source is a philosophy.

Is this really so hard to understand? As a parallel, consider the following statement: "Why do we praise countries that ease up on censorship a little bit, but damn countries that impose a little bit more censorship on its citizens?"

Many people in the Open Source community believe that open source is the natural and correct state of software -- indeed, that it is equivalent to free speech -- and that closing it is comparable to throwing political dissidents in jail. Naturally, every move toward it will be lauded, and every move against it will be demonized.

Its own worst enemy

The open source community, that is... This is the type of behavior that will forever keep it 'second tier' to the big commerical/closed groups. That is, the for-profit type companies. Making the source available to those who buy the package is completely in keeping with the original intent (as far as I understand it) of open source. It was by no means a push for free software, all the time, every time. And as long as the latter stays the focus of the OS community, it will always be second fiddle.

Like it or not, companies rely on solid sources and suppliers. A supplier that does not have a reliable revenue stream just can't be relied upon. And not every company has the resources or desire to staff up and do all its own software development in-house. Commercial, for-profit software has a serious role in business. And that means all involved in it need to make money. Giving away everything - for free - puts a big crimp on that.

When I work with some of the big boys in the consumer electronics market to qualify a new factory, they don't just audit the floor, the QA department, and the PMs. They look at the suppliers, they look at financials, they look at receivables, they look at other customers. Because if they are going to rely upon this new factory, they want to know it's got a future outside of just them. It's got to be stable.

It's REALLY HARD to make that case when your products are available for free, and you're trying to rely upon pure support as your only income stream...

Someone doesn't know what a double standard is.

A double standard is when you are inconsisent.

There is nothing inconsistent about praising people for opening up a little bit, while condemning those that close down a little bit. We praise ANY move towards openness, and condemn ANY move away from it. How is that a double standard.

Allow me to illustrate using the oft neglected fruit analagy:

I gleefully watch my strawberry plants grow little fruit that ripen into perfect sweet strawberries, but watch me complain when my delicious strawberries start rotting and become ever less their original strawberry goodness.

Why oh why do I praise the things as they become ripe, but criticise them as they rot! I am such a hypocrit. Hmm.

We did not cry out because RH charged for RHEL

When RH changed their business model it hurt a lot of people because prior to that, there was paid support available for the free product. We felt waylaid because we used RedHat Linux as the foundation for our critical applications. We knew we could pick up the phone and call (for a fee) if we were stuck and we felt secure with a reasonably long life cycle of security updates and support.

For example, a product my company created required 80+ hours of testing for minor version changes in critical software components. With 5 people on staff, that was an incredible expense, therefore we craved stability. Then, RHL was gone. *poof* just like that. We thought we could count on them and they changed the game on us.

I don't dislike RedHat's new business model, but I felt that after such a sudden and unexpected change in their support policy I could not trust them any longer. Later that year Ubuntu came out and I began experimenting with it (and debian). Now I have Ubuntu LTS which is supported by the vendor for 5 years, and I can call the nice guys in Montreal whenever I have a problem.

Open source is

The open source community is full of misguided evangelicals. If open source is so great it should stand on its own merits, not need some political figures shoving its virtues down our throats. When I installed Ubuntu(which I love, btw) on one of my boxes that happened to have an NVidia card I was confronted with a message that talked about how bad closed source drivers were before I could enable them and get a good resolution for my display. If some notice needs to be there due to licensing that's fine, but don't try and mold my views or express your personal beliefs in place like that.
If the NVidia drivers really are so hard to maintain, then they should break in the future... if closed source software really does run slower with more bugs then I should notice it.
I'm all for open source software, and I can identify with the ideals of the FOSS movement, but I also see that there is sometimes a need for software that works well, even if it is closed source.
I would rather have a closed source project that worked perfectly than an open source product that is a work in progress.
Linux has grown by leaps and bounds and is perhaps one of the best examples of open source does right, but the political figures in the linux world, while entertaining, do nothing but hurt the product with their constant bickering and injection of personal politics into a product that should be "free".

Because

One's a step in a direction we like, and the other's a step in a direction we don't like. Next question.

What??

MySQL decides to comply with the GNU General Public License and only give its tested, certified Enterprise code to those who pay for the service underlying that code (gasp!). Immediately cries of protest are raised, How dare MySQL not give everything away for free?"

Right, so so how is this closing the source? The source is still available, and it's still open source. I think the author here has confused open source with "free", and their not interchangeable terms. There is plenty of open source software that also happens to be free, thats F/OSS. There is also plenty of software that is free, but isn't necessarily open source, thats Freeware. This is really a non-issue, the source is still available, and they also continue to have and support a F/OSS version of code base.

Personally, I think this is a positive move for them. It's a positive move for the technology community as a whole as well. When my team looks at investing in technology for our business, we usually like to have a positive feeling that the technology will still be relevant 5 years and 10 years from when we purchase it. This move will make it easier for me to deploy MySQL in the enterprise, as I can now say to my review comity - "Look, they have a revenue source. They'll be around 5 years from now, and they'll be there to honor any support contract we purchase from them". Whereas in the past, I could only argue the point that they've been there a while, they should still be there a while from now. So, positive move in my book, not just for them, but for the technology community as a whole.