Businessweek Recommends License Switch for Linux 548
MadFarmAnimalz writes "BusinessWeek has an article about the perceived threat of patents to linux, citing the SCO case, the opening of OSRM, and the Munich situation as evidence for the veracity of their conclusion that Linux isn't safe. Their solution? Relicense to the BSD license or the Mozilla license. On a positive note, the article's author does link to RMS' article Why Software Should Not Have Owners; good to see Stallman being quoted and linked to in a publication Like BusinessWeek."
Not going to happen. (Score:5, Interesting)
a) Anybody with significant (as in more than 20-30 lines or so) contributions to the kernel give their approval for the switch, and it ain't gonna happen because even if Linus went for it, Alan Cox is very much pro-GPL and has large chunks of code all over the kernel
or:
b) Somebody strip out or rewrite all parts of the kernel copyrighted by people who objected to the license change, which in the end would probably amount to an effective rewrite of the whole thing.
Relicensing? No thanks! (Score:1, Interesting)
Firstly, everyone who has contributed code to the kernel would have to give permission for the license to be changed, or have to re-submit their code.
No, it is nowhere near as easy as saying "lets change the license".
Secondly, the Linux kernel has got some pretty darn cool code it in now. The GPL ensures that companies cannot take that code and do anything they like with it without releasing their modifications, eg Microsoft + BSD Networking code.
Re:DUPE (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure I understand the "advantages" the writer is laying out. A BSD'ed Linux would be cut off from a lot of the improvements that come back whenever someone modifies it to suit their own needs. Doing so would also lead to an immediate fork, wherein improvements could not be exchanged between the two branches. Finally, knowing that your work can be tied up into some black box, proprietary product will be a problem to a lot of the people working on Linux right now.
All this to avoid the patent situation? 60 of the 283 patents are owned by IBM, which has said that it won't enforce them (although I would prefer to see them grant a non-revokable, free license to use each in the Linux operating system). I would guess that 90% of those which remain are owned by companies that have entered into cross-licensing agreements with IBM, so starting a patent war would be a very drastic measure for them. Those which remain, hopefully, can be worked around.
The worst case scenario is one involving some company that has a patent portfolio, a demon lawyer horde, and enough money to keep litigation going for a long while. Think SCO II. But Linux survived that with little ill effect.
I think Linux is in a pretty good position, and I don't believe the patent situation doesn't justify the sort of remedies the author suggests.
Re:Less incentive to develop (Score:1, Interesting)
If my code is changed, the changes are not mine. They have nothing to do with me, I had no part in them. The changes should belong to the person who put the effort in to make them. The code I wrote is still freely available and the only possibly proprietry parts could be those I had no hand in helping with. I don't see why I should enforce rights over changes that I put no effort into.
Your "nobody would slave away" argument holds no weight. The BSDs have plenty of developers. So do apache, mozilla and many others.
Busenessweek troll (Score:2, Interesting)
Second, the author advocates a "more commerce-friendly license" for Linux. However, he fails to give any reasons why the creators and contributors to Linux want to make it more "business friendly". Persumably, all the Linux contributors know they are releasing their code under the GPL and want to release it under the GPL. They are also free to contribute to *BSD if they like the BSD license better.
Third, the author cites Apple as an example of a company that chose FreeBSD over Linux because of the "commerce-friendly license". However, he completely ignores the fact that Linux has a much bigger mind and market share in business than *BSD, despite the "business unfriendly" GPL, and despite the fact that *BSD proponents constantly harp about the technical inferiority of Linux.
How would a switch protect against patents? (Score:4, Interesting)
I do see how it would make it more "commercial" friendly, but IMO, that's all it would do. If it were licensed under BSD, then companies such as MS, Apple, etc. could take the kernel, use it, change it or whatever w/o showing the changes... just like Apple has done with much of the FreeBSD code.
Two words.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey, Businessweek, stuff it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a clue for Businessweek and the rest of that crowd: Most OSS developers started their projects to be free from the advice and oversight of the business community. You're barking up the wrong tree.
OSS developers are professionals, they're business people themselves quite often. They're very good at what they do and have thought through the licensing issues a long time ago. You can't tell them what to do and it's never been about market share.
If you don't like the GPL, then don't use it. It's your loss. I think about a 100 companies chipping in to make improvements to OpenOffice. They get back a product that saves them thousands, maybe even millions in license fees. I'd call that a pretty good investment. Yes, other companies and people that didn't pay will get those improvements and savings as well. Too bad. You still saved millions, it's still a good deal and economically more efficient. Thousands of companies all paying for the same software that does the same thing is economic insanity.
Invest in sanity, invest in OSS.
Re:buzzwords (Score:4, Interesting)
buzzwords. buzzwords. buzzwords.
BusinessWeek's readers are businesspeople.
Business is about making money.
There are two ways to make money.
1. Visionaries and geniuses can create buzzwords.
2. Everyone else can jump on the buzzwords as soon as they realize that the buzzwords are buzzwords.
BusinessWeek caters to the second group because it's a market several orders of magnitude larger.
buzzwords. buzzwords. buzzwords.
buzzwords. buzzwords. buzzwords.
Linux is a buzzword. *BSD is not.
This means that all the buzzword people jumped on Linux.
This guarantees that in the future, Linux will have more buzzwords than BSD.
buzzwords. buzzwords. buzzwords.
buzzwords. buzzwords. buzzwords.
The next important rule with buzzwords is that you have to take a convoluted path to get to your buzzwords.
This is the rule that explains why we have a group of people working hard at developing Linux for the Macintosh as well as a group of people working hard at developing Darwin for the PC.
buzzwords. buzzwords. buzzwords.
buzzwords. buzzwords. buzzwords.
(** note: The author realizes that there are indeed practical reasons to make many of the decisions mentioned above. In fact, he has jumped on a couple of the bandwagons mentioned above, both for practical reasons and because of buzzword bandwagoning. The problem is systemic, has been around for thousands of years, and can only be solved by the GPL.)
Flawed assumption (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact the article has it 100% backwards. Rather than Linux switching licenses to appeal more to the business crowd (which of course ain't gonna happen), business should start thinking of software in terms of software as a service -- not a web service, but a service like electricity or plumbing. Once that happens and businesscritters start realizing that you can use Linux in your enterprise without scaring off your employees or having to release all your internal software into the public domain, the arguments over lower TCO will start to take hold.
Re:All your software are belong to us! (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly the business world seems quite happy with the concept that if you pay for it you certainly can't do anything you want with it. Witness software licensing, the RIAA, and many other practices that amount to "You bought it? So what, you can only do what we tell you to do with it". It seems odd that while this is perfectly acceptable practice, if they get something for free they can't comprehend that there might still be the same sort of strings attached.
Jedidiah.
I wrote to BW, and said this. (Score:5, Interesting)
The GPL has rarely been to court precisely because its implications are clear. Violators settle quickly because the alternative is to stop shipping product. Grumblings about "murky" license terms amount to nothing more than sour grapes.
In any case, changing Linux's license is a practical impossibility. Hundreds of people and companies own bits of it, and all would have to agree to a change. Linux is condemned to retain the source of its success indefinitely.
Re:No protection (Score:1, Interesting)
If you do fork anyway, any improvements you do in the forked code that might be useful enough to be included in the official version, will be included (since the GPL requires you to release the code for your changes). Thus the only remaining difference between your fork and the official version will be changes that are either useless or interesting only for a small group of users group, and that will likely not attract the userbase you version will need for your version to be successful and it will eventually silently die.
Or let us assume Linus would really start misbehaving (not that I think it could happen with Linus in charge, but it has happened in other projects), and you start a fork that is much better maintained. Then eventually you might attract the majority of users and your version will become the official version and the old version will eventually die off, or likely, Linus might just notice that you do a better job and pass the ball. In any case in the end it is likely that there is still only a single version that attracts the vast majority of users.
As a comparision, look what has happenend to BSD. The free BSD systems are really great operating systems, comparable to Linux in many ways, but they do each not even get close to the Linux userbase. The various free BSD systems are not that different from the various Linux distributions, although, you will be able to find more differences between say the OpenBSD and the FreeBSD kernels than you will find if you compare say a RedHat and a SuSE Linux kernel. However there are also a commercial forks of BSD that might be even more different.
The BSD license leads to more forking than GPL, not less. Even an Anonymous Coward knows that!
Re:I wrote to BW, and said this. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No protection (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux has many forks.
Main-line linux, as on kernel.org
Red Hat Linux, with a modified (forked) kernel.
Various patch sets that haven't (yet) made it into the main line.
By applying different combinations of patch sets, you can have more different possible kernels, this is before you start configuring, than there are places to put those kernels.
The critical difference is that Red Hat 2.6 is a fork from the main-line 2.6 not a 2.6 fork of Red Hat 2.4. Forks that aren't worth keeping up with just wither and die. Linux gives the outward appearance of not forking, because there is about as much merging as there is forking.
Re:No protection (Score:2, Interesting)
Your examples are still good ones in refutation of that, as I believe they are under licences that permit others to make proprietary derivatives, but your actual comment seemed to be based on a misreading.
Re:And of course... (Score:5, Interesting)
James
BSD License -- An Investment POLICY (Score:3, Interesting)
What has always struck me about the widsom of the BSD license was that it was a way for Regents of the University of California to make available work that was presumably owned by the State of California for the benefit of all commercial entities -- the lion's share of which are/were? in Silicon Valley.
But the work of tens of thousands of individuals across the world, unaffiliated except by a mutual common interest, would not be protected by such a BSD license. The GPL is better suited for that, as several other posters have noted.
All your examples are OK w/ GPL (Score:3, Interesting)
Red Hat can use GPL code.
Government can use GPL code.
The Red Cross can use GPL code.
Excluding parasitic evildoers is good.
Now, go read the Halloween document [opensource.org] collection.
Re:No protection (Score:4, Interesting)
Please remove your head from the clouds.
This is not a battle which is at the capitulation point of a killing stroke. Microsoft would love to have a chance to sink their programmers into Linux. They would devote 250% manpower to it. Within a year Microsoft would patent every single functional feature which they add to Linux. They would patent a "window manager integrated with a kernel" by stuffing KDE into the kernel. Within two years Linus and the FSF would receive a cease and desist order for violation of patents.
So what bad came out of the for the BSD folks?
The BSD folks are poster children and special cases. They were granted their immunity when they beat the AT&T suit. BSD won the AT&T suit only because of its social and political connections. No modern programmer could even pray for such a blessed immunity.
Re:No protection (Score:0, Interesting)
BSD has (at least) six incompatible versions. There are only a couple of forks for Linux, which deal with specific hardware goals (mULinux, etc.)
Linux gives the outward appearance of not forking, because there is about as much merging as there is forking.
So you're saying that 1+1-1 does not equal 1?
Re:Simple BSD allows rape (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't you think it's a bigger gift if you ensure that not only your work, but extensions of your work are freely available to the community too?
Quoting RMS... (Score:3, Interesting)
They will only quote him when it serves to illustrate their point - in this case that these 'looney' 'commie' GNU / OSS folks are out of their minds when it comes to solid business practice.
I would say - wait for the IBM/SCO GPL ruling before jumping to any conclusions.