The Covenant - a New Open Source Strategy

Bruce Perens writes "Lexis Nexis has Open Sourced HPCC, the parallel software that they use for handling extremely large data. Databases that, for example, hold records for every consumer in the U.S. can be processed with this software and its task-specific language. As Strategic Consultant for the company while they decided to participate in Open Source, Open Source co-founder Bruce Perens designed a new Covenant between Lexis Nexis and the Open Source community that makes dual-licensing more fair to the Open Source developer."

Re:Bruce Perens dissing Free Software

[Bruce Perens]

So this is fuel on the old discussion between "Open Source" (Bruce Perens et al) and Free Software (RMS et al)?

Hi AC,

Since I did advise Lexis Nexis to use the Affero GPL 3.0, a license of the Free Software Foundation, and they have done so, I think this should not be considered as "dissing free software" :-)

And yes, it really is ironic that GPL can be used to drive commercial development and that people will pay you for the right to not be under the GPL terms. But this is not dissing free software, it's commenting on the economic paths that it creates.

Re:Per product or per version?

[Bruce Perens]

The three-year clock will start anew every time there's another copyright contribution.

Per product, or per version? How about forks?

I can't think of anything that could be used to exclude a version from the agreement, so it's every version of the work that has been contributed to (that could be more than one product) during the 3 year period. If someone other than LN forks the work they are restricted to AGPL 3.0 terms. LN, as the copyright holder, is the party with a right to issue a commercial license. We don't need a covenant with folks who can only use AGPL 3.0.

What happens to the covenant in a bankruptcy hearing? Bankruptcy judges have relatively free reign... Could it be bad?

The covenant should apply to assigns who acquire the work through a bankruptcy. Bankruptcy judges have sometimes revoked source code escrow clauses. Not sure if they could do that to us. Right now, the company is owned by Elsevier, no bankruptcy in sight.

If starting anew, isn't it simpler / cleaner to have a non-profit that owns the open source code, and a private for-profit that applies the code? If not starting anew then you've got some pretty confusing balance sheet issues with transferring ownership, in which case the covenant makes sense.

This is a 10-year-old product with an appreciable fraction of a Billion invested into it. Not a start anew. The owner wanted to stay the owner :-)

Should I care? If version 7.4 is GPL, and they close 7.5 and above, can't I just fork off 7.4 and run it myself aside from any trademark problems?

I would care if someone had a commercial version of my code that was closed, with no quid-pro-quo. Folks who don't care about that put BSD licensing on what they write. But not everyone does.

If a company is planning on taking ye olde version 1.3 and going private with it in just 6 more months, perhaps because they're insane, regardless, wouldn't that encourage them to not accept security patches from the community? Not saying this "enforcement aspect" is good or bad, just saying it "is".

Well, the purpose of the agreement is to keep the company in partnership with the community by making it sufficiently unpalatable for them to leave.

What if the management team intends to burn it to the ground to extract maximal profit for one quarter at the cost of permanent long term damage, in other words traditional American management style?

Then you get the BSD version eventually, and can go into business for yourself if you want to provide an alternative to them.

Re:Agree: not needed

[tomhudson]

In the case of HPCC's needs, this allows them to continue to own their entire product, and to list their entire product as an asset.

Whoa, cowboy. I smell a rat. A BIG FAT JUICY RAT!

The breed of rat that thinks "Let's get a portfolio of copyright assignments so we can list these as assets" rat that wants to be able to own other people's code so they can do an IPO or a spin-off to attract investors or inflate their balance sheet.

Looks more and more like this is not (just) about them selling their commercial product after all, and why they say that a license to use the code commercially specifically for their project is a non-starter.

Look behind the curtain - who owns LexisNexis?

Oh-oh ... LexisNexis is owned by paywall god Reed-Elsevier (frequent slashdot readers will recognize - and mostly hate - the parent company). This goes way beyond LexisNexis. What sort of reaction do you think you would have gotten if you had proposed that coders just hand over their copyrights to Elsevier and Co? Maybe the same as if you had proposed they give them to Rupert Murdoch?

BTW - In 2009 employee reviews surveyed by glassdoor.com lead to LexisNexis being ranked "11th worst place to work in America".

This is so a non-starter ...