Does 'Open Source' Have To Mean 'Free'?

Unhappy Windows User asks: "An article on AltaVista states that Microsoft will "fight to the death anything that threatens its intellectual property". The article states that, by keeping APIs closed, Microsoft has an advantage over other software vendors such as Corel. But how exactly would disclosing the source code be a threat to IP? After all, it's still protected by copyright, isn't it? Not publishing the source code simply gives Microsoft a chance to leverage their monopoly on the market. What's to stop companies distributing software with source code whilst maintaining the copyright to it? This would only allow other companies to write software that integrates with it, and the security-conscious would be able to check the code for bugs and potential security flaws. After all, when I buy a car, I cannot make an identical copy and sell it, as the design is protected by copyright. But I am entitled to look inside, and fix it if something's wrong. " Interesting thought. Would the revealing of source code damage IP rights simply because it is in the open for all to see? Your ideas still remain your ideas and your implementation of said ideas are still yours as well, right?

Comments

Re:Yes, it _does_

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, I seem to remember a few years back that Doug Lea had figured out that MS had taken his kick-ass memory allocator off the Net and used it in one of their OSes (NT?). Since he didn't have the money or time to fight them, he didn't bother. He eventually dropped the copyright and left it to the public domain.

I know I should prejudge people, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if this sort of thing were all over MS's code.

Re:Trademark dilution

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's set the facts of the past straight. The term "open source" was not owned by either esr or Bruce. It was owned by Debian, who also paid the for the domain www.opensource.org. A few months later, when the term (unfortunatly) became popular, Debian transfered it to SPI (which at the time was created and headed by force by the infamous 'gang of three'). A few days later, not only SPI was claiming ownership of the term, but also a new organization headed at different times by either esr or B. Perens (who was also the architect of the 'gang of three' at SPI. In my opinion, it was all about striking it rich. The main characters moved to grab property, one through Debian, the other one by appointing himself as a leader in the "open source" community (if ever was such thing) and talking to the media. You are all famous now, but we shall never forget how it all happened.

Re:Carmack?

[Anonymous Coward]

No let's ask Linus. He knows everything.

Re:VM Ware and WINE

[Anonymous Coward]

VMWare does not license MS's APIs: their product is essentially a CPU emulator. (Or software virtualisation to be more precise. Isn't it a shame that x86 only virtualises 16-bit mode, not 32-bit mode?)

Re:What about transmeta? [Totally OT]

[Anonymous Coward]

I've talked with people who worked on the PPRO microcode, and you have to remember a few things.. (i) the microcode can be stepping dependent (ii) the "patch space" (the only downloadable stuff) is very size constrained (I don't have the numbers.. I think maybe 1K tops). (iii) if your code is well optimized you will go as fast as microcode (however, the microcode has access to more registers and can do 3 operand instructions every time).

What's an API?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how MS will get around this. I don't mean that question in the ignorant sense, but as opposed to a normal function call. Technically, there's no difference between an external API and an internal function. A call is a call. The difference is in the designer's intent, but they are both function calls.

This is where MS can arbitrarily get around this requirement to publish API's. Just don't call something an API function and you don't have to publish it. Did the judge clearly define the difference between a public API and a private function, from a legal perspective? Are they going to be forced to document every little internal function in all the Windows source to be sure? That would be a big document.

Note that forcing publication of all their code exposes all functions and makes the API distinction moot.

Re:What's an API?

[spectecjr]

The real hidden/obfuscated API use is likely to be in Office and such, not in the devtools. (That would be why a bunch of system DLLs shipped with Office). Since April 1999 is not really all that long (About the time the MS/DOJ thing was getting going, Hmmmmmm....).

The thing is, why not suggest something that Microsoft would have an advantage over everyone else with in doing so?

I can't see anything in Office that with time and developers, anyone else could do just as efficiently or even more efficiently.

Please though - suggest something that Microsoft has an advantage over everyone else with in the Office suite - one that they gain by knowing "hidden" APIs. And I'll gladly try to provide you with my way of doing the same thing going off the documentation available on http://msdn.microsoft.com

One reason why Microsoft may have a perf. advantage over other people on this kind of thing is the fact that they schedule in performance improvements, something that I rarely (if ever) see in most other software companies. Most places, you're code complete and it goes out the door. MS actually spends time optimizing the codebase before doing that. They spent about 4 or 5 months (IIRC) doing this with IE, and about the same with Office.

Simon

Re:What's an API?

[Prior Restraint]

Did the judge clearly define the difference between a public API and a private function, from a legal perspective?

IANAL, so I can't interpret this, but the relevant portion of the Memorandum and Order reads:

7.b. "Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)" means the interfaces, service provider interfaces, and protocols that enable a hardware device or an application, Middleware, or server Operating System to obtain services from (or provide services in response to requests from) Platform Software in a Personal Computer and to use, benefit from, and rely on the resources, facilities, and capabilities of such Platform Software.

Rather than reproduce the whole document here, you can find the legal definitions of all those capitalized terms at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f4900/ 4909.htm.

Re:What's an API?

[GKlesczewski]

I guess they forgot to tell me all that good stuff while I was there. Because all our team ever used was the source code to our own product, and the documentation available on MSDN.

Question then is, did you use the publicly published Visual Studio, or an internal version? There may be a difference in the tool suite that could make a major difference in the performance of the final product.

Re:What's an API?

[sjames]

Big advantage. And they don't have to document the new API until later or not at all: it's not part of a Windows release.

Undocumented calls in MS APIs fall into three categories: The ones that really ARE stable and used by their apps, the ones that can change at any time, and the ones that will be stable until the competition takes advantage of it. MS applications developers (of course) are told which is which. The rest are stuck guessing.

Re:What's an API?

[sjames]

The thing is, I was in the devtools department.

The real hidden/obfuscated API use is likely to be in Office and such, not in the devtools. (That would be why a bunch of system DLLs shipped with Office). Since April 1999 is not really all that long (About the time the MS/DOJ thing was getting going, Hmmmmmm....).

Re:What's an API?

[sjames]

Just don't call something an API function and you don't have to publish it.

Simple, if an app can call it, it's an API. If it's not possable to call it, even by explicit addressing, it's an internal function. Given MSes habit of security by obscurity, they could be in for some real trouble. I wonder how many places in Windows code depend on code in a DLL to pre-check parameters before the kernel blindly accepts them?

I also wonder how many places MS applications bypass the .dll and do their own checking to gain a performance of functionality advantage over the competition.

Re:What's an API?

[spectecjr]

Undocumented calls in MS APIs fall into three categories: The ones that really ARE stable and used by their apps, the ones that can change at any time, and the ones that will be stable until the competition takes advantage of it. MS applications developers (of course) are told which is which. The rest are stuck guessing.

I guess they forgot to tell me all that good stuff while I was there. Because all our team ever used was the source code to our own product, and the documentation available on MSDN.

That's it. Nothing more.

Simon

Re:What's an API?

[spectecjr]

Question then is, did you use the publicly published Visual Studio, or an internal version? There may be a difference in the tool suite that could make a major difference in the performance of the final product.

The internal one. Except NT, which uses its own compiler that they wrote (kind of like MACOS using their own agressive compiler). Though the NT one is based on the VC one.

The thing is, I was in the devtools department. Until Visual Studio hits beta and starts getting agressively tested, everyone outside of developer tools is using the latest retail version of Visual Studio. Also, MSDN is available internally in two flavors; the online version (at http://msdn.microsoft.com) and one that's shared out from a network drive (it comes with an MSDN subscription, and is obstensibly less up-to-date than the online one). Which, IIRC, were both the latest publically available MSDN libraries.

I'd say that the major differences in the performance of the final products would be due to little things, like not using malloc() or free() - or even the C-runtime libs, and using hand-crafted versions instead. Reading the memory management docs carefully and thoroughly provides bonuses too - for example, you wouldn't want to use malloc() for a webserver. You'd want to use VirtualAlloc() or create a number of separate heaps using GlobalAlloc().

In other words, write to the OS instead of to the C libs. That gains you an impressive across-the-board performance increase generally.

But if you've got any specific performance problems you're talking about, let me know, and I'll see if there's any tricks I know of that I can answer.

Simon
ps. Currently, I work for Sierra Home... there's nothing that we can't do that Microsoft can do - short of shipping new system DLLs (a la Office). But since April 1999, that practice has been *stopped* from on high to improve TCO and reduce DLL hell - service packs only is the practice now.

Re:What's an API?

[jag29]

And that exposes yet more ways MS keeps the advantage. Like you said they can take internal shortcuts and use bad design, but also they can release enhanced DLL's or even NEW DLL's for the underlying system with an application release. Their exclusive knowledge and control of Windows internals gives them an advantage to do this.

If Corel wanted feature X in Windows to use in WordPerfect, say a rainbow scrolling title bar, they don't have the option to add that to the GDI in Windows, but if Microsoft wanted this for Office they could walk over to the GDI department and get it added, then release a new version of GDI on the Office CD; still preventing WordPerfect from having it because you've got to buy Office first. Big advantage. And they don't have to document the new API until later or not at all: it's not part of a Windows release.

These techniques I'm sure have been used many times in the past.

Competing with your app on top of somebody else's closed software platform is a losing proposition, API documentation or not. You're OK until the platform vendor decides he wants to make his own version of your app. The best you can hope for then is to be bought out or allowed to survive, otherwise you'll be fighting for your life as he uses the platform, which he owns and you don't, to his advantage.

Thank God for free software.

Re:Yes, "open source" has to mean free/gratis.

[Ranger Rick]

NOTE: By reading this post, you have agreed to run around the room which you are currently in, flapping your arms, and sqawking like a chicken.

I hurt myself while running around the room. Does that mean I can sue you?

;)

:wq!

Whoops.

[narf]

My scroll mouse moderated some people as offtopic. Hopefully this will undo the bad moderation.

Re:Yes, it _does_

[Nick Ives]

You do realise that in doing that you were putting your company and more importantly yourself at great risk? In the (admittedly unlikely) event that someone reported you for using unlicensed software, your company would have been liable to lose a lot of money, and in turn they would most likely have sued you as you installed the software, and if you were in a position to install software on a server then it was most likely also your responsability to make sure all the software was also legit, licensed, etc.
Like I said, this scenario is fairly unlikely, but here in the UK I have seen adverts offering rewards for employees to grass up their employer's to organisations such as FAST (Federation Against Software Theft) if they suspect that they are using unlicensed software.

Nick

Re:Reverse engineering

[Enahs]

It would eliminate the cost of reverse engineering if the source were opened.

The cost of reverse engineering would also be eliminated if they were to open the API. This would still give them a margin of safety. Look how long it's taken GNUstep to get as far as it has even with a fully documented API. And now, GNUstep has t oconten with the new MacOS X routines (now that OpenStep is in effect MacOS.)

A Rebuttal.

[Enahs]

Mr Gates, we're not fooled by the "Ambien" moniker. Stop it. Simply trying to put a spin on the ideas of open source software won't work. What gave you away, you ask? One thing was the wording of your comment. The other was the 1984 quote. :^)

OK, seriously, you're probably not Bill G., but what you say sounds a lot like things that Gates has said in the past. So, here's my own take on your comments:

>People could steal unique ideas, and use them in their own product.

True. Competitors can also reverse-engineer machine code (machine-code obsfucation only goes so far...it's undoable and just bloats and slows down code) as well. However, quite frankly, if your "product" were released under the GPL, then the software would be released under a highly restrictive, yet publicly-owned, license. Your code couldn't (legally; there's a problem in and of itself) be used in a closed-source product. Period. And anyone re-releasing your code in another "product" would have to (for legal reasons) release their source as well.

I was recently shopping in a local Wal-Mart (mecca of the midwest) and saw a boxed copy of Linux Mandrake 7.0. I think it's on par with Windows 98, if not NT, in some respects; it's superior in other respects. I mean, you get an OS with free development tools, an easy-to-use GUI (KDE), an easy graphical install (a trained monkey could do it) and such nice features as auto-configuring of hardware and autodetecting of new hardware upon boot. Sure, Mandrakesoft hasn't developed all this software on their own, and what they have developed has gone into their competitors' products. They take from other distros, as well. Who benefits? Everyone, from their competitors to the consumers such as myself.

Bruce Perens probably has some thoughts on keeping track of abuses of the GPL; he's found several cases of closed-source software with his code in it.

Re:A Rebuttal.

[kz45]

yes...but when it's not yours to give away for free, it is taking away freedoms

Re:A Rebuttal.

[kz45]

Bruce Perens probably has some thoughts on keeping track of abuses of the GPL; he's found several cases of closed-source software with his code in it

I thought you were for freedom?? Bruce perens is just as bad as the RIAA, with copyrighted mp3's

Opening Up Source... does NOT break IP protection.

[Cyclops]

If it did, then almost all the books in the world would be made of white pages, and excelent covers, so we could talk about how good they were (or sutdy with them for what it matters) without ever reading one single letter.

Yes, excelent. Can I go back to my gpl'd program and OS, please? Thank you.

A few thoughts

[substrate]

Opening your source won't necessarily weaken your IP in of itself. You're still protected by copyright law. You are however at the mercy of unscrupulous people. True Open Source software such as the linux kernel or the GNU tools that make up an operating system are protected because the community protects itself. If there are any violations it rapidly gets posted to here or technocrat.net. It usually (as far as I know) gets resolved amicably. I don't recall reading about any legal bitchslapping.

Microsoft would be faced with policing things themselves. They could handle this, they're presently a huge company. Investors wouldn't like this however, it would affect the profitability of the company and involve years of litigation. Microsoft is already facing years of litigation in all likelyhood due to the DOJ decision.

At the present time Open Sourcing Windows would hurt Microsoft and benefit its competitors. Microsoft would almost be subjecting itself to the same thing that it subjects the rest of the world to. They develop the standards, everybody else duplicates it. The only difference would be that the standards probably wouldn't be extended at the expense of breaking the real standard.

This situation may change soon assuming that there are restrictions in place preventing collusion between the MS OS company and the MS Apps company. The MS OS company only profits if they sell huge quantities of their product. This only happens if the applications are available for it and work well. Applications are a huge portion of why Microsoft won. Having Excel, Word and the other applications interoperate smoothly is a huge advantage. If MS Apps can't get access to a lot of MS OS IP then the applications will suffer. At the same time if they release information under NDA to MS Apps then MS OS would also have to entertain NDAing it to other developers.

MS Apps starts with an advantage in having an application set that integrates well with Windows already. It then becomes a business decision on whether they port to alternative operating systems. It always was a business decision, but part of the business considered had to be "will we be gutting Windows marketshare by releasing these applications for MacOS, Linux, BeOS etc?"

License != contract

[David Jao]

[A license is] part of the deal. It's a contract.

A license is not a contract. I have never signed any statement agreeing to any software license, yet the companies who wrote the license expect me to have agreed to those terms.

I have no problem agreeing to licensing terms (such as the GPL) that give me additional rights that I would not otherwise have. I do object to certain licenses that take away rights I already have, such as the right to reverse engineer, publish benchmarks, etc. The real failure of UCITA and current licensing laws is that most people, lawmakers included, erroneously equate an unsigned license agreement with a signed binding contract.

Re:License != contract

[dillon_rinker]

A license is not a contract,
That's a pretty broad statement. It's tantamount to saying "A contract(1) is not a contract(2)", where #1 is a contract, printed on paper, waiting for people to sign it, and #2 is the signed copy of same.

I agree that click-through EULAs are not contracts, though; rather, they should not be contracts. I'm afraid that most legal opinions disagree, though. I work for a law firm that (among other things) writes licenses for software packages. What it all comes down to is that if the licensee pisses off the software vendor, the vendor is going to win in court unless the licensee can show that what they did was explicitly permitted by the license.

Re:Not necessarily

[bjohnson]

VMS Windows, and DEC Microsoft.

Those days when the VMS source was available, were days when the _hardware_ that DEC sold cost tens of thousands of dollars, the number of computers in the world could still be counted, only a few of them were networked together, and the possiblity of VMS running on anything _BUT_ a DEC machine was, essentially, nil.

Contrast this to MS's position, where their software is running on _millions_ of computers, available from a wide variety of sources, connected by a network that can move gigabytes of data around quickly.

The worlds these two examples occupy are quite different.

Re:Not necessarily

[bjohnson]

Damn Slashdot and it's $#%@$# html-ization.

that first line should say

VMS NE Windows and DEC NE Microsoft..

Re:What about transmeta? [Totally OT]

[luge]

This is the last time I'm going to respond to one of the "Transmeta is closed source" trolls, I swear.
Here is the difference between Free Software and Free Hardware. Opening up the source to Linux allows each and every one of us to grab a compiler and build a kernel and the associated tools. Furthermore, since we can all modify and/or improve and/or fork the code, there is a practical and altruistic value to giving away source.
Opening up the source to the Transmeta soft/hard/firm thing (I dunno exactly what to call it) benefits all of us who have multi-billion dollar fabs in our back yards, so that we can modify the chip design and build our own. What? You mean that you don't have a fab in your living room? Funny, me neither. Guess that means that opening up the Transmeta info wouldn't benefit me, or you. Come to think of it, it would only benefit Intel, maybe AMD. Oh yeah, Motorola. Guess that's about it. Does Linus have any kind of obligation to help them out? No. Does it help him out? Nope. Is there any concievable way that it would be good for anyone except those already bloated corporate behemoths? I'm still waiting...
~luge

OpenSource is more than available sourcecode

[gustavf]

OpenSource or Free software generally means that you have the possibility to modify the source code and redistribute it. This is what the GPL esnures.

You could combine GPL (or some other license like BSD or a proprietory license) with a non disclosure agreement.

Solaris is an example where you can get the sourcecode, but it is not OpenSource or Free software.

Re:Depends on what you mean by "Free"...

[Zagadka]

Code that's already been written is no longer worth paying for, because the author clearly needs no more incentive than he got to write the code.

Let me get this straight... All that matters is that the work gets done, because once that's happened, the worker clearly needs no more incentive, since they've already done the work. So if you can trick someone into doing work for you, that's okay, and it doesn't matter if they're actually rewarded for what they produce?

Writing software and distributing software are both valuable services, and there's no reason to tie your reward for one to your skill in the other.

That's precisely what's happening in open source today though. Devlopers don't get paid, distributors do. If you want to get paid for development, you need to work for a distributor. And the only reason distributors even bother to pay the developers is PR. For distributors, paying developers is an expense, because their competitors benefit from it just as much as they do.

We should be commissioning new Free Software we need as works for hire.

That's fine. But assuming it'll take a team of 10 programmers at least a year to write the next "Killer App", do you have the roughly $1,000,000 to pay their salaries? Chances are you don't. And why would you even be willing to pay that much? One person can't get that much use out of a word processor.

Software takes a lot of time and money to develop. Certainly a lot more than the average individual can afford. Once a piece of software is developed, it can be used by many people though. It seems reasonable to require that the people who use it pay for the the costs of development. The cost becomes ammortized over the set of users.

It also seems reasonable that if a piece of software is useful to many people, then the developers of that software should be rewarded proportionatly. A free market economy with copyright is a reasonably good approximation of this. Without copyright laws, the whole cost of development would have to be paid up front.

Future conversation

[craw]

It will be highly ironic if this anticipated conversation takes place between Gates (OS) and Ballmer (Apps) after the breakup.

Ballmer: WTF are you doing putting a speech recognition application into Windows?

Gates: Define application. Besides, this is just some speech recognition internal functions and API's. I can show you the API's.

Ballmer: BS! You're hiding something from me!

Gates: Moi? Oh no, *all* of our API's are made available to all our outside developers. Just like before the breakup. *snicker* *snicker*

Ballmer: IF I EVER SEE YOU I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!

For Me, yes. For Microsoft - no

[MikeV]

It's largely mindset. I can see publishing commercial programs that I write with the code - hell, if it's good it's gonna get pirated anyway. I stand to benefit more on public scrutiny and the programmers who use my software saying "why did you do it this way when that way would be better?" So balancing the harm from piracy that's going to happen anyway with the benefit of accountability and programmer input - I would have to say that even for commercial software, Open Source would be the way to go.

But bring in Microsoft. From day one when people were trading punched ribbons with each other of software written by Billy and the Crew our friendly neighborhood Monopolist has had a conniption about piracy that transcended any kind of rational thought. He goes as far as to call his customers pirates. That was only the seed for what was to come. It would seem that every action since then has been an act of revenge. Rather than concentrating on producing a good product, he focused obsessively on anti-piracy (largely to no avail). All his efforts are wasted. Piracy still continues and there's nothing he can do about it. Now, years later he's stuck with a series of lawsuits, and a corporation that's going to be split up and a bundle of worthless software. He'll never open up on his own - he'll have to be forced to open up. And I'm not sure if I want to look at his source - with all the years of slapping software together and cramming on gizmos and garbage to his apps, I can imagine that his code is a jumbled mess.

There will always be those few out there who are unscrupulous and will pirate your software regardless of availability of code. But if you produce a quality product, the damage done will be minimal - most of us don't mind shelling out green for something that actually works. And if you open the code, you have the added benefit of being forced to keep your code clean (ego) _and_ getting more informed input from your customers.

It'd be an interesting experiment to open up something commercial to see what happens - anyone up for it? Corel?

Re:API != Source code

[Signal 11]

Opening up the specifications for the programming hooks the operating system offers (opening the API's, in other words), is not the same thing as opening up the source code.

Yes, but if all the APIs are known, it can help with projects like WINE - making a windows-lookalike.. something poor Judge Jackson wasn't briefed on, I suspect!

All they're being asked to do in reality is provide the world with the information it should have had.

Actually, they're being told. And in addition, this means that everyone can take advantage of a new windows feature, instead of just the people who are in bed with chairman gates.

Microsoft is just being asked to play fair and do their job correctly. It's not an onerous request!

I'm just waiting to see how they "innovate" around that one. Perhaps they'll refuse to work?

Re:An example...

[Signal 11]

reminds me of that joke "How many Microsoft people does it take to change a lightbulb? None - they redefine dark as light".
Actually, it was:

Q: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None, they just define dark as an industry standard.

Cheers!

Re:because any new feature would be copied

[Signal 11]

Sounds vaguely familiar to Sun's vision of what Java-and-the-desktop could have been with every program being a "widget" instead.. or the more dated-but-implimented macintosh applescript.. a nice idea, but it never took roots.

Re:DEC used to do it.

[DLPierson]

Furthermore, VMS (at least the older versions) always shipped with the source on microfiche. Machine readable source code was a very expensive option because of the support costs from customers who would then modify the OS, break it, and expect DEC to support it (while denying that they'd ever changed anything).

What could it hurt?

[Freshman]

I don't think that releasing the source code to Windows would really harm Microsoft at all. At first I thought the idea would be absurd, thinking it would never work.

Say MS did, in fact, release the Windows source code, but still charged for it:

1) Microsoft wouldn't lose any money by selling less copies - Windows makes its money from Windows being bundeled on new systems. With broadband becoming more and more popular, it would be just as easy to "steal" the OS anyway.

2) Microsoft has the legal muscle to keep in check the folks who don't follow their "MPL" somehow.

3) Of course, the open source aspect of it would probably lead it to substantial improvements. Anyone who has a brain and knows what open source did for Linux can figure that out.

I really don't see any way that Microsoft could *directly* be hurt by releasing the Windows source. They would no longer have the advantage of using their "secret" API functions, but those days are over, anyway.

------------------

Re:The other shoe

[AviN]

People would not be willing to contribute to the development unless it were under a public license such as the GPL, though. If they opened up the source but still charged for licenses of it, why should people write software for them for the sole purpose of them making money?

Re:Disclosed Source != Open-Source

[Fyndo]

What stops companies from releasing a product with the same feature as an open sourced application, that copied the code from that open sourced application, tweaked a few things, and then released their own closed-source product, saying that they did not copy that code?

well, you have to tweak enough that there aren't large sections of the binary that are bitwise identical. If I compile my open-source program A, and compare the binary to closed-source program B, and oh, 80% of them are bitwise identical, some programmers and executives at the company B are going to be making some depositions under penalty of perjury.

Which leads us to problem 2. The need to pay your programmers enough that they never, ever, leave. Especially never leave angry, or for a competitor. Paying every employee who's "in" on this copyright violation enough that they'll never get a better deal elsewhere has to take some of the fun out of it.

Oh, you can steal the code, and possibly get away with it. But there are ways you can get caught, and that could get seriously ugly.

Re:Disclosed Source != Open-Source

[Pip]

This is obviously not possible with Open-Source, since permission to use the program is implicit; if the software exists you have permission to use it.

This is not true. It is still possible with open source software that the user has to pay for the right to use. Giving him the source-code with the software does not change that. What does change is the way users can submit change-requests or bug reports. Also the user gets the right to make changes to the source to make the program work the way he likes it.

Copyright != Ownership

[Aphelion]

Well, copyright really doesn't apply ot "ownership." It applies to the right to distribute the code. But by keeping the source code closed, Microsoft pretty much forces their "ownership" and prevents other vendors from even deriving ideas from it.

The very nature of source code and compiled binaries is probably what scares a lot of programmers. There is very little way to tell whether or not your source code is used in a closed-source program as long as said program is distributed in a compiled binary format.

And finally, the source code could certainly not be released under the GPL, as it allows redistribution.

Re:Copyright != Ownership

[iserlohn]

Copyright does not only limit distribution, it gives both the author and the reader/user specific rights and responsibilities. Attribution is one of them, there are more.

Anyhow, it is very sad to see people so accustomed to property rights that now we can apply "ownership" to ideas. It doesn't work that way and it wasn't supposed to. Copyright and patents were created to encourage publishing and dissemination of information, not to hinder it, as it does in the digital age. That's why we need real copyright reform, not just brainless hacks like the DMCA.

The reason why copyright is needed is because once an owner publishes something and distributes it, the work technically no longer belongs to him, himself. If you want to own the work, you have to keep it to yourself. However, copyright allows certain rights to exist even after you publish information, in hopes that it allows people to publish information by giving them say on distribution and attribution of the said work.

Re:API != Source code

[warmi]

O yeah, I have tried and it there is no man pages for, say "headerGetEntry()."
One has to simply query rpm-devel..rpm to see that there is nothing there.

Re:API != Source code

[warmi]

Oh well, Linux OS API is nothing more that typical posix stuff. RPM, at least on RH system, could be considered system library since it is such a importand part of the distro.

Re:What about transmeta? [Totally OT]

[Cassandra]

Want your own LISP machine? Code it up!

Yeah, or you could even make it parse Java bytecode. The code-morphing idea is pretty similar to JIT (Just in Time compilation) anyway.

But to be able to write your own code morpher you only need the specs for the Crusoe chip and the rest of the harware, not the code-morphing software.

Re:What about transmeta?

[Cassandra]

Is the code-morphing software open sourced? Unlikely, since they have one of the most closed systems on the planet.

Is the code-morphing patented?
If it is I see only advantages for them if they make it open source. After all, they sell the entire kit (CPU+code-morpher) don't they? If they make the code-morpher open source they would still sell as many CPUs.

That the main advantage with open source is that you get lots of people to track bugs, and customize the software. Many O-S projects (XMMS, GIMP etc.) have evolved as closed source initially. The source is only released once the product is working and stable. So if Transmeta actually wanted to open-source the code-morpher, it might just be natural to wait until there are machines with Crusoe chips on the market.

Re:Support / Ease of Reverse Engineering

[Cassandra]

The second reason that occurs to me is that having the source available would make reverse engineering an application relatively trivial.

Actually, if you have the source, it's not reverse engineering anymore. Reverse engineering means finding out how something works, ie. going from implementation to specs (or in this case, code), as opposed to engineering which is designing specs, and implementing them.

Re:because any new feature would be copied

[mcc]

>> or the more dated-but-implimented macintosh applescript

umm.. aren't you thinking of OpenDoc?
i mean, maybe i'm misunderstanding what you mean, but it seems like OpenDoc would make a lot more sense in that context.
Applescript is, um, a scripting language, and not really that "dated" [depending on your perspective] seeing as [unlike opendoc] it is still being updated.

Whatever.

Re:What about transmeta? [Totally OT]

[kaisyain]

Actually I think his point was more along the lines of "I hate big companies even though they are the only reason I can afford the computer I am posting this article with."

open the API

[johnnnyboy]

I'm one of those that believe MS should open the API source. Even though they own it being the industry OS standard their API should be opened.

They don't have to make it free just not out of reach by the common dude. I don't think open source should absolutely have to mean free.

This will prevent unfair breaking of competitor's software. Also if new features are introduced everyone can see it right away rather than wait till M$ release it (especially after they release their new product).

This will introduce fair competition and let the best software company win.

I don't care if people disagree with me but after years of watching the way M$ works. Opening their source would have been better than splitting them up.

Re:open the API

[cyber-vandal]

Of course corporate America is so wonderful that nobody could ever find fault with it.

Re:open the API

[the coose]

But, any one that has been released recently is shitty..compared to windows.

This is your opinion, of course, and your are entitled to it. I, however, disagree.

Slashdotters want the breakup of microsoft...because they hate corporate america.

Now, now. Your sterotyping. That's not good for anyone.

when they finally are broken up, people aren't going to use linux any more than they did before...

So? Personally I don't care if more people use Linux or not - nor do I care if M$ gets broken up or not. I use Linux because I like Linux. If you want to use Windows then fine...it's a free country. I DO believe that M$ abused it's monopoly and crushed competition. That's against the law..period. Would you disagree with that?

Re:open the API

[kz45]

This will prevent unfair breaking of competitor's software. Also if new features are introduced everyone can see it right away rather than wait till M$ release it (especially after they release their new product). This will introduce fair competition and let the best software company win.

if you are basing the breakup on things like this....they shouldn't be broken up. This is Bullshit, for ANY company. Right now ANYONE can create and release an OS(microsoft isn't stopping you). But, any one that has been released recently is shitty..compared to windows. Slashdotters want the breakup of microsoft...because they hate corporate america.

when they finally are broken up, people aren't going to use linux any more than they did before...

Re:open the API

[kz45]

no, corporate America has faults, Im not denying that, im just saying that the main reason most slashdotters are against corporate america is because they are making money. 99% of the time it includes greed, and shitty things go on, but some things should be allowed to go on. It's called FREEDOM. The Freedom to be greedy, or give your stuff away for free. slashdotters have the same greed as corporate america. They bitch, moan, get lawyers, and talk about how THEIR freedoms are being taken away(when the GPL is violated), while in the same breath are not willing to abide by rules previously created for artists(the copyright), or spend their money on the products. Why the fuck can't an artist be Greedy?? Greed is what drives Many artists to success. Many REAL artists wouldn't bust their ass and work as hard as they do, if they knew they wern't getting any money in the end.

Microsoft should be broken up, but their breakup has nothing to do with linux, and it never will. The reason Linux isn't running on 75% of the computers in the world, is because it just isn't the best.

Anyone who says the artist doesn't need or deserve money, and doesn't work for free(all the time), has no right to speak on the subject.

"The source code _is_ the documentation..."

[Zinho]

This is 3rd hand information, take it for what it's worth...

A friend of mine used to work for Microsoft as a "permatemp". If what he tells me is true, the MS API's are not documented even internally. When he asked where documentation was on the various API's, he was told, "the source code is the documentation." Evidently, the sharing of source code among the various development groups is how they keep things working across the various applications and versions.

I have no way to confirm the truth of this one way or the other. On the other hand, I've known my friend for a long time, and I trust his report. If this really is the case then releasing the source code for review would be the only way to release the API.

"Space exploration is not infinite circles in low earth orbit." - Buzz Aldarin

Rant on.... ;P

[verbatim]

Anyone who knows me will tell you I drink WAY too much coke... Way more than any human should, infact, thats probablly the root of all my problems... anyway, while I'm still on my cafene high, I'd like to say something... that car example is perfect. Hell yeah, get Ford running around to everyones homes suing them for trying to fix their Ford cars (bwhahahahahah)..

Seriously, thats really good. If these close-source companies made cars, your engine hood would be welded shut and the gaguges would be taped over. The only indication that there is a problem is when the damn thing breaks down and you're stranded on the side of the road ahead (that was intentional... hehe), calling out for help... but no one can help... only the people who run the company can help you, and you have no way of reaching them right now... why? because your cell phone was an 'integrated' communications feature of the car and, when the car broke down, it died with the car.

Now, back to my Coke thing. When I stop at a vending machine and plunk in my loonie (yup, it costs a buck for 255ml Coke.. is that good?) and it spits out a nice Cold refreshing Coke.. Umm.. sorry 'bout the ad... anyway, I open the can and slurp it down and give that trademarked "ahhhh" immediatly after. Now, Coke has licenced me a single beverage contaier containing several ingrediants listed on the side of the can. Inside of this can is a preformulated beverage that has been mass produced based on the instructions that their chemists came up with. Those chemists worked hard to create a beverage that, when consumed, would be satisfying and provide the ability for the government to control our minds... uhh.. forget that last part... yeah.. anyway, those chemists are much like software engineers (admittidly the chemists are probably a LOT cleaner and get sleep at night, but thats irrevelant) toil long hours to create a final product. And they, like programmers, artists, musicians, construction workers, etc, deserve to dictate how their product is sold.

The problem is, and this is where the DMCA and all that political shit comes in to play, what happens AFTER the sale? Most people would agree that when you plop down some hard earned cash for something, you OWN that item. You know that you don't OWN the Coke company, or the Ford company, or the Microsoft company, but you DO feel that you OWN that instance of their product.

Now, whos gonna stop me from making a small lab and taking apart Coke and creating a "clone" beverage using the ingrediants on the side? Heh, not a lot of people do this, and those who DO proballby do it just for themselves and family/friends. You're not gonna get far in live selling the "very simelar to Coke, but it isn't Coke, Coke."

I could easily download the current Linux kernel and a copy of Redhat, change all the logos and titles and copyrights and stuff, compile it, upload it and call it the MyOs 1.0... Now, after some people download it, they're gonna say "hey, this is just Redhat repackaged and fucked with." And HOW can they tell that? because every OS, every product, every person thinks differently and aims differently on their project. Their goals are different and their plans to reach that goal are different.

While the end result remains the same, the path that leads us there varies from person to person.

So that "I can't believe it's not Coke" drink of yours is obviously a clone of Coke because it tastes "just like Coke" and we all know that Coke came long before your Coke, just like Redhat came long before MyOs, and just like VMS came before NT. Whatever.

IMHO, Apple should have won against MS on terms of look-and-feel. Why? Because look and feel defines a product. It seperates the Coke from the Pepsi, the Sprite from the 7-up, the Mountin Dew from the Dr. Pepper, the Ford from the Crysler.

No matter how much a product is opened in terms of source code, ingrediant lists, product summaries, descriptions, patents, images, logos, slogans, whatever... that product is itself even in the copies of it. You can see the Linux in Redhat, much as you can see the MS-DOS in Windows 98. If DOS was made by a seperate company, you could easily see that Microsoft used it in Windows 98, even though it has been obfusticated with logo screens, thinly knit veils of tried old ways of sweeping things under the mat.

If companies are forced to open their software we will hit an end to all software development. No one will develop anything under fear that they might be accused of hiding something, keeping it back... hidden deep in the annels of unread documentation. Rather, companies should opt to do this because instead of having just clients, they now have developers. Developers who can pour invaluable insights and ideas back into the product - to help develop the software for their own needs and realizing that someone else might benifit from those additions and insights. It opens a new market place where someone else can market a widget for windows that upon startup it fires up an external Coke can opener so your programmers have extra Coke. Or implement new and exciting ideas that the origianl developer never thought of.

When will companies realize that open-source can be to their own advantage? Look at the game industry... Id software opened the game source to the Quake series and sunnenly a new market was spawned - modifications. Fans of the game could tweak things to their liking and expand the product to a new market place. More copies of the Quake series sell because it now has a much broader appeal - thanks to the openness of the game. Now think of an OS. We can add new system calls that help speed things up, or add accountability, or create a new widget for wackos, or whatever. Now think of a word processor, now an office suite, now a browser, now a database, now whatever.

Fortunatly, a lot of people do see the advantage and go with it.

W00t. thats it for me... My Coke high has expired and I'm too far from the vending machine to care..

Take care...

Oh yeah, by reading this submittion you agree to send me a $39.95CDN licence fee subject to my approval for each and every word contained herin. Failure to do so will be a copyright infringement of some sort and I'll be really pissed (not to mention poor).

Re:Trademark dilution

[chacal]

In my universe, Eric said "We have discovered that there is virtually no chance that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would register the mark ``open source''; the mark is too descriptive."

What did he say in your universe?

What part of the OSD haven't you read?

[chacal]

What part of the Open Source Definition haven't you read?

Re:Trademark dilution

[chacal]

If you were listening, you would have heard OSI say that "open source" wasn't protectible as a trademark. You are too busy talking to get the facts straight. Neither is "free software" trademarkable.

Isn't a signal 11 on compiles a good sign that your hardware sucks?

Re:Copyright is insufficient protection for MS

[nut]

It would ensure that people charged a reasonable price for their software though, just to make it easier to buy it than to pirate it.

Re:API != Source code

[aardvaark]

Yes they do make source available to certain parties after NDA. Certain parties of _their__choice_!

Yeah, they let companies like Corel and Netscape look at the APIs whenever they want after signing an NDA! (yeah right)

What the order says is that Microsoft may no longer use its API (i.e. windows) to leverage its applications. That's all. They aren't opening up the whole source or anything.

Even if this were unfair, Microsoft is continually missing the point. They have been proven to be monopolistic. They loose some of their rights because of it. If the court decides that something could be done to repair some of the damage to the computer industry, even though it be punitive to Microsoft, they must do it. Bill Gates in saying we "have to protect our intilectual property" is merely saying "but we're not _really_ a monopoly! (pout!)"

Bill: shut the hell up and pony up like the court says. The world will be a better place, and you'll still be rich as hell. Christ, I fell like I'm lecturing a little kid who doesn't understand he can't have any more cookies or something.

Yes, "open source" has to mean free/gratis.

[Webmonger]

There's a critical difference between "open source" and "source provided" software.
"Open source" means that the user is permitted to modify and redistribute the source, and an obvious corollary is that you can distribute it for free. On the other hand "source provided" doesn't guarantee the right to distribute modifications, so it doesn't have to be free/gratis.

How long would the binary be required?

[Webmonger]

I think the first thing I would do with such a program is modify it so the "module" was no longer required.

Microsoft

[delmoi]

fight to the death anything that threatens its intellectual property

Um, well then maybe the DOJ will just have to kill it. What's their deal anyway? I'd rather see windows opensourced then have M$ split up (I honestly think splitting up M$ at this point would just agrivate the situation). Don't these guys realize that they lost

Re:API != Source code

[SEWilco]

The AltaVista article makes the distinction between APIs and source code: "On the other hand, Microsoft is fighting broad language in the proposal, which it claims could be construed to mean it has to release Windows internal source code - not just external APIs that would allow WordPerfect to work smoothly with the operating system - to Corel."

It's the SlashDot paragraph which confuses APIs and source code release.

Say, does anyone else here remember the lawsuit where Lotus 1-2-3 complained that the competing Microsoft spreadsheet was using secret APIs?

Re:Split it and it only makes sense...

[JatTDB]

Your assumption has some potential holes here.

A lot of Microsoft employees own Microsoft stock. In the event of a breakup, they will probably split the stock between the two companies for each stockholder. Therefore, it is in the best interests of the employees with stock in both companies to keep the status quo as it is now.

There will be just little enough obvious cooperation between the two companies to avoid collusion charges.

Re:hit(nail, head);

[leereyno]

The only way to "take the power back from the Sun's" etc. is to write better code than they do.

They are perfectly within their rights to do what they please with they code they have created, including not show it to anyone.

Don't like it? Create something better than what they are selling. If you can't then you're nothing but a free rider.

The free software movement will founder the moment it begins preaching instead of programming.

Lee

Re:Open Source != Free Software

[yahzell]

Open Source: (Oh-pehn Sor-ss): Source code for a given application is readily available to those who use the application.

This may be a definition of Open Source but it is not the official definition of Open Source. For that you have to visit http://www.opensource.org/osd.html. The official definition of Open Source specifies free redistribution of the software and very easy access to the source code. While it is possible for you to still the source to an Open Source application at a high price your users are free to redistribute it as they wish.

While you can license your software under a license that does not permit those actions and try to call it Open Source you will not be complying with the Open Source Definition and will likely be ignored.

later,
yahzell

Re:API != Source code

[Froqen]

I always thought API meant "Application Programming Interface". Kind of like the public methods of a class in C++. Who knows how I implement helper functions, or what I call. Those aren't part of the "API" they are part of the implementation of the API. The API is the interface, not the internal classes that the interface uses to to get it's job done.

I find that the term API dates back to when you didn't really have all the layers of software that is common today. The Final Judgement definition is loose enough to describe the wire protocol of telnet as an API. However, my working definition is any public interface is an API.

An application should ONLY use APIs, not calls to lower, unpublished levels, unless it wants to risk breaking at the next release of the implementation of the API... However, an agreement to not change a certain call, because it's used by a certain app in another group...

Considering the complexity and costs of maintaining an API, its hard to believe that such a beast has time to exist. Inside a product you can do such things; you can work with the guy down the hall when things don't work and they can fix it. Exposing a private API to a seperate product; you now have different ship cycles, priorities, and its not obvious when the hidden APIs new owner (devs come and go) changes something that they haven't suddently broken another product. The other problem is generally why call a hidden API? If you need some form of functionality that is available, it is more then likly the best way to get to it is the published method. If it is pure code sharing, then great, it is thier right to not share. This is however blanced against the potential cost of denying something useful to the platform's developers (for ex: ATL started as internal code sharing and became a shipping part of visual studio for anyone). Personally, what is and isn't exposed is best left to the people who make it.

A challenge

[Waitak]

Okay, so here I am, just getting a startup going around a product that I'm developing. I like the idea of Open Source very much. And you tell me that in order to do the Right Thing, I have to basically doom my company - that I have a choice between closed source == making money, and open source == going bankrupt?

There are some of us out here who WANT to do this right. I'm not willing to live in a tent to write software. Give us a valid Open Source business model with a piece of software that we wrote in the middle of it, and we'll go for it. You don't have to "take some power back" from us. We'll GIVE it to you - we WANT to give it to you - if you can tell us how, in a way that we can live with.

There already are people who do that

[wickidpisa]

Xevil (a game for Linux) is an exapmle of a program that is opensource, but shareware. You can download the source and play with it, but the writers do expect $20 for playing the game.

How does copyrighting open-source software help?

[Cloud 9]

I am not a developer, nor do I have much experience with open source besides my occasional forays into linux. Given that, I am slightly confused as to how putting a standard copyright on source code can keep a developer from adding whatever copyrighted source they feel useful, and packaging it as their own. How do the original developers/copyright holders prove that the code was "plagiarized", short of a court order when the suspicion arises? If a person decides to release a binary-only version of their software with stolen code from an open source (including any copyleft) project, how do the original authors verify the code was stolen?

Re:API != Source code

[micahjd]

Just because the application developer knows about an internal API does not necessarily mean that they will or even can use it. In Linux, for example, anyone can find out whatever they want to know about the APIs. But because the APIs are all open, anything the app could possibly call must have sufficient enough error checking to not be dangerous. And even if a developer can use an API that might be gone in the next version, they probably won't. As another example, how many Linux developers are there that call kernel functions using inline assembly and hardcoded addresses? Developers usually want their code to work correctly whenever possible, and if things that could change are documented as such, developers probably won't use them if they hope for other people to run their app. And if it does break by the next version of the OS, it will be because of the app developer.

Re:Split it and it only makes sense...

[Bouncings]

Put simply, anyone vested in Microsoft wants to see the status quo continue. Of course. The court, I assure you, is aware of this. I beleive that in the assumption that Microsoft-OS will want to team up and share trade secrets with Microsoft-APP, the court is forcing Microsoft-OS to reveal its API to everyone, not just Microsoft-APP.

Re:hit(nail, head);

[Bouncings]

Exactly. Free software is about civil liberties. Open Source is about a business practice that agrees with civil liberties. While a free software purist will speak of freedom, and open source suit will speak of the usual business tactics in conjunction with free software.

This isn't at all a new conflict. For years, there have been businessmen who follow politics and say whatever is politicaly favorable is good business. This century, the smart companies have realized that hiring ethnic minorities to dealing with labor unions is good business. There have of course been the others, who say it isn't. Ultimately, whether a practice is good business or not, it's good business to be in popular favor. So companies like Nike give to charities while quietly recruiting six year olds in asia. Conversely, companies like Corel publicly endorce Open Source but are nearly in violation of GPL!

In this case, companies feel it is of commercial risk for them to give programmers' their freedom, just as Nike might see it as unprofitable to give a six year old worker a fifteen minute break.

Sigh, another duff Ask Slashdot

[tialaramex]

This question is full of confusion, about what Copyright is (why not ASK JEEVES, rather than Slashdot.. should we also tell you what 1+1 is?)
Also confused about Microsoft's proposals, how design rights, copyrights, and "interoperability" work in the field of IP.
Basically, this post is too confused to get any useful examples, as exemplified by the dozens of unrelated rants you'll find in the resulting discussion.

Most importantly: When I buy a car I can (for the purposes of this discussion) do anything I like with the car. Making identical cars would be (1) Very difficult (2) Unprofitable
It's not that it's illegal (if I didn't steal the actual design plans, it probably isn't) it's just not PRACTICAL.

To answer the question in the Subject: Yes, Open Source means Free. There's no reason to have two terms except market confusion. ESR coined the "new" term because he doesn't "get it" :)

Re:Sigh, another duff Ask Slashdot

[FredThompson]

That's exactly what I was going to comment on. There are no copyrights which apply to a car. Certain stylistic logos and the like may be copyrighted, but the physical entity isn't. There are numerous patents, however. Incidently, the idea of buy a car analyze it, and make a copy is how the Lexus came into existance. Mercedes-Benz automobiles where blueprinted in Asia then improved upon. This kind of thing happens all the time in the indsuctrial equipment markets. It only yields a decent return in a huge market like cars, though, because it is VERY expensive to completely duplicate a complex machine.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What about transmeta? [Totally OT]

[alprazolam]

do you really think those companies are gonna abandone what theyre doing and start shipping crusoe copies? and what about people who need hardware specs to make additional hardware or drivers or whatever?

Re:Old WWIV license and Microsoft

[bmo]

Anonymous coward, indeed.

*I* live in a fairy world?

Excuse me, but people used to release source code *all the time*. It wasn't just WWIV, it was *everything*. It was that way in the old Big Iron days. It was that way in the days of the early Personal Computers (home computers), with source code written in *books* so you could *type it in* yourself!

ALL of it was protected by copyright!

Every last single character!

As the way it should be!

Only recently *in the last 15 years* has it been the case that programs came in hermetically sealed packages* never to be poked and prodded.

As a hobbyist, I learned alot about programming back in the old days...I *stopped* learning when I couldn't look at any code anymore. I'm one of the ones that left programming when it looked like it was impossible for the *ordinary user* to get a compiler without spending huge bucks and impossible to look at source.

The Open Source movement has been a boon to me, and my computing spirit. Computing is *fun* again.

But back to the point. Just because you release source code to *legitimate customers* doesn't mean you *give up any rights*! You can still sue that punk-ass-mofo that steals your Stacker code and incorprates it into his OS.

Yes, you lose Trade Secrets. Big Hairy Deal. Most of what is written is not Trade Secret, but recycled algorithms because nobody is fond of re-inventing the wheel. What *really* protects your rights is not Trade Secret law, but trademark and copyright law. Just ask RMS amd the RIAA.

Too easy to recompile...

[MrKevvy]

Companies worried about their bottom line as much as Microsoft are not going to open source that easily. Thinking as they would: someone could easily obfuscate it and then recompile it under a different compiler (so the binaries would not be the same.) The UCITA and DMCA they themselves lobbied for could then be used make it illegal to reverse-engineer the binary (a la "reduce to human-readable form") and thus trace back the code to its source. (Of course, thinking along other lines...their code may not be worth recompiling.):^P

Re:API != Source code

[buildup]

Cliff - thnx for bringing this forth. Joe - YEA! Both the post Cliff quoted & your comments are simple and effective. The web is helping break down this wall MS put up. Linux, Java, Apache are doing what Scott (Sun) and Larry (Oracle) could not do alone. Critical mass is building and even the Unix companies are coming along to support the effort. No kingdom ever lasts. It weakens itself at the core and they never can keep the strong grip at the outer edge. His refusal to provide open source weakens him at the core. The web is weakening him at the outer parts. It will fall. US Justice helped too. Its not even all their products are bad. Office sells very well. But when you feel handcuffs put on when you put our your hand in agreement, dissent does start. But even IBM knows how to smother them. Be better at supporting MS products then MS. So with four fronts attacking, the handcuffs are coming off.
I for one have the free version of SCO UnixWare 7.1, Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 and Win 98 running on 2 PCs. Once I find that $99 version of VMWare I will have them running concurrently. Win98 will be used when the Win compability prograns on Linux and/or SCOUnix won't run the Win program. So i get to buy the highly available stuff written for Win, but I don't fear the Blue Screen of death! I use the other stuff without losing Win's strehgth's. Kinda OpenSource style even now while using Win98. And all this while I am really just an old (47) Cobol programmer using OS/390. Thnx for listenin'.

I vote for "no", too

[frederik]

RMS allways talks about the printer they used to have at (afair) the AI lab. He couldn't write a driver for it, because the company didn't give away the source to the old one. If he had the sources of the old driver, he would have known how the device worked and he could write a new driver himself (from scratch, just with the information how the printer work).

Re:I vote for "no", too

[grarg]

If I hear that printer story ONE MORE TIME! I even had the pleasure of hearing the man himself tell it at a talk; talk about a 30 second anecdote dragged out to 10 minutes...eeuughhh...

Back on topic, just how much can two companies (ie MS Inc and Windows Inc) cooperate before it's called collusion?

Re:You're Absolutely Right

[donutello]

What if it was a small company that wasn't even worth the amount of money I would have to spend on a lawsuit? It's the same as Metallica trying to prosecute all the individual kids who steal their MP3s. It's just not worth the effort.

You're Absolutely Right

[donutello]

If I was BigSoftwareCompany(tm) and I was releasing my software, I would not make it easy to view the source code. Even if we lived in a utopian dream world where everyone released the source to their software, I do not have the time to sift through the source of every product that's released out there to see what part of my code they've stolen, then engage a bunch of lawyers to prove in a court of law that that code was indeed stolen. What a sheer waste of time! You'd have to be a complete idiot to think this was even viable.

You want evidence? Consider the whole Kerberos spec deal. Do you still think someone wouldn't post the source code _without_ the license? Hello? Wake up, Dorothy. You never left Kansas.

Re:You're Absolutely Right

[sjames]

What if it was a small company that wasn't even worth the amount of money I would have to spend on a lawsuit?

Then the info doesn't lead to a successful suit and the 'loss' couldn't have been all that much.

It's the same as Metallica trying to prosecute all the individual kids who steal their MP3s.

I notice that of the people who protested being kicked from Napster (and thus got reinstated), I haven't heard of Metallica actually pursuing any of them in court. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

Re:You're Absolutely Right

[sjames]

I do not have the time to sift through the source of every product that's released out there to see what part of my code they've stolen, then engage a bunch of lawyers to prove in a court of law that that code was indeed stolen.

Just offer a percentage to anyone who provides information leading to a successful suit. If the money itself isn't enough incentive, disgruntled employees are always looking for ways to get even.

Re:Visibility is irrelevant to IP

[donutello]

MP3 files are in some senses "source code" -- they allow modification, copying, redistribution, and so forth -- and we're all seeing that copyright holders can and do vigorously sue those who violate their EULAs.

You make me laugh. What planet do you live on? The planet where I live on, MP3s are openly and freely traded/pirated and there's not a damn thing any of the copyright holders can do about it. And even if they try, they will have thousands I-am-a-libertarian-when-it-suits-my-purposes slashdotters rant about how evil they are for doing it.

Re:Isn't this what MS did to Apple?

[donutello]

It's also because some of those API calls were hacked in and weren't fully tested. It's one thing to release it to an internal customer who you get feedback from and where you have no liability. It's a whole other thing if this was released to the public, though.

Re:API != Source code but Revealed =! Open

[mr]

No, it is NOT in their best interest. If developers can't develop due to a lack of information, how do you have applications?

M$ has applications because they have users. They have users because there are applications. To break this cycle, OpenSource needs to make life as easy as possible to develop applications.

By copying/being the well known API of Unix, and having resonable licencing fees, 2 of the objections to supporting the environment are removed.

GUI development tools and rapid-code tools are starting to show up for the same price point as on the M$ side.

The thing lacking is 70+% of the market share. The many versions of Linux combined with no working LSB, and the distain Linux users/developers treat the Linux compatibility of SCO/BSD/Solaris doesn't lend itself to convincing developers of marketshare.

Re:API != Source code but Revealed =! Open

[mr]

>I think MS-OS *will* fight to keep the APIs from being open. It is in MS-OS's best interests to have good use made of its OS, but it is not in its
best interest to give that info away.

How do you come to this conclusion?

If no one knows *HOW* to call the OS to use its features correctly, how is that in *ANY* developers interest....any developer EXCEPT Microsoft?

Re:Available Source == No Money Made Ever

[sadr]

Last I checked, there was generally nothing to stop you from giving out your license key to everyone in the world. When searching for comments about software packages (that we were about to buy), I've turned up quite a few license keys on "warez" groups.

It is trivial to copy executables, CD Images, and 16 character license keys. That's why copyright law makes it illegal.

Making the source available doesn't make that kind of copying one bit more difficult. And just me, but I generally find, for using the software, a copy of the redhat install disk to be much more useful than a copy of the redhat source RPM disk.

Source is really only useful when you need to find out what something is doing, or need to add a feature. The rest of the time, it's just insurance.

SKG

I wouldn't voice this opinion to your lawyer...

[hunnybunny]

"Would the revealing of source code damage IP rights simply because it is in the open for all to see? Your ideas still remain your ideas and your implementation of said ideas are still yours as well, right?" In view of your recent spat with microsoft over them trying to retain control over publicly published material (their kerberos extension), i think this view is somewhat suprising...

Re:Disclosed Source != Open-Source

[pne]

Open-SOurce software is always evolving, but it does so in a more or less random way. You can simply not pay and wait for the features you need to evolve, but this will take a long time (and there's no guarantee the features you want will evolve anyway). You pay a consultant because you know the feature will make it into the software, and it will get there much faster than if it were simply coded by unpaid coders in their spare time.

Or you can hope that if a feature is important for you, it will be important for someone else, and wait for that someone else to pay a consultant to implement it. If the new featre is released as open source, too, you can then take it and include it in your product without paying the price (assuming the correct licensing details).

Re:Of Course Not.

[Melibeus]

I always needed to know how to calculate the surface area of a whale, now I do. I wonder if this calculation is available for free?

Defs

[crovax]

Why don't you read the Open-Source definition?

This is it
-----
If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.

VM Ware and WINE

[frank249]

Doesn't VM Ware pay big bucks to MS for a license to use the APIs? If MS has to release the APIs will the price of VM Ware go down to something reasonable? Will this hurt WINE?

The REAL Story

[GodHead]

You have to understand one thing to keep this article in context - when M$ says it will "fight to the death anything that threatens its intellectual property" what they mean is they will "fight to the death anything that threatens its ability to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!"

Anyway..

One reason why they won't open the API because a LOT of MS software uses undocumented API calls to easily provide application and OS integration. If they opened the API up to everybody, MS would lose that (unfair) advantage. And since when will MS give up ANYTHING?

G.H.

My Jesus is Better Than Your Jesus.

Re:The REAL Story

[muldrake]

M$ says it will "fight to the death anything that threatens its intellectual property"

To the death?

Hmm. . .That can be arranged.

Re:The REAL Story

[kz45]

bullshit...this is a sorry ass excuse by a linux-sheep-zealout."TAKE OVER THE WORLD"? you mean come out with better software then anyone else? YES! Microsoft has a monopoly over one thing: The microsoft operating systems. Not over all OS's in general.

If they opened the API up to everybody, MS would lose that (unfair) advantage

if coke gave their formula out..they would lose their unfair advantage too...but you're not bitching about that. Their "unfair" advantage to you is called BUSINESS in the real world.

and what would we do if they opened the API??? Put the coolness of windows in a linux GUI? It seems to me linux developers can't re-create windows technologies correctly, so they are using the microsoft breakup as an excuse for getting the source.

slashdot != freedoms

APIs are not all open

[MadMagician]

This is just a personal opinion:) Microsoft has used "unofficial" APIs in its applications to get good performance; other vendors must reverse engineer from the shipping product to be competitive. Each new revision of the OS means a six month delay before WordPerfect [or Lotus, or Netware] would work, during which you stuck with the old version or used M$Office. Most people would go back to their preferred product, but by shifting just a few percent from the competitor each time, Office eventually also becoame dominant. Remember the old slogan, "the job's not done until Lotus won't run" [or Novell, or WordPerfect]. It was only in the past few years that MS had the clout to force PC sellers to include Office with every sale, to seal their monopoly on apps.

Reasons Why MSFT Should Open Windows API Code

[Carnage4Life]

1.) The OS branch of MSFT is stranded. All other OS vendors have products that subsidize the cost of developing operating systems but them. Sun, Apple and IBM have hardware while Be, RedHat, SuSe and all the others have thousands of unpaid developers working for them. MSFT OS now has to find some way to either reduce development costs or will have to increase the price of Windows. A solution to this problem would be opening Windows for peer review (it doesn't even have to be GPL after all Sun's SCPL is doing well for Java).

2.) With the advent of the web as a new medium for creating applications and the rise of Application Service Providers, Windows needs to do something to stem the flow of developers away from the platform especially since IE and MSDN are not part of the company anymore.

3.) If they charge for the cost of viewing Windows Source or joining the Windows Community Process it might become a decent source of income.


Counterpoint: Of course, opening Windows code will also open it up for theft by less scrupolous companies and even worse having it folded (and hidden) in closed source software. After all as Bruce Perens is always quick to point out, companies already do it now with GPLed software.

Re:Reasons Why MSFT Should Open Windows API Code

[lucius]

..theft by less scrupolous companies..

Can you name one scrupulous company?

I just don't think it happens, how would you justify it to the stockholders?

Split it and it only makes sense...

[archmedes5]

The only real reason Microsoft kept some of its' API a secret was that it allowed them to make applications that get more out of the os than any other application.

If you split it into apps and os as far as the company goes, keeping the api secret doesn't make any sense since Microsoft will want to draw as many developers as possible.

Re:Split it and it only makes sense...

[HerringFlavoredFowl]

Personally, I think the real reason they don't publish them is even the people that wrote them are not always sure of what they are and how they work. Publishing the interface requires you to verify / document / and debug the interface.

This became all clear at windev2000 east on the device drivers track when the instructor implied that they did not implement the USB SYNC FRAME command (which is a required part of the USB spec.) in win98/2000 because they did not understand it.

And you don't even want to know what they had to say about IoCancelIrp ...

Windows 2000, 1970's VMS technology for the new millenium.
TastesLikeHErringFlavoredChicken

Re:Split it and it only makes sense...

[mcc]

If you split it into apps and os as far as the company goes, keeping the api secret doesn't make any sense since Microsoft will want to draw as many developers as possible.

The answer is even simpler than this.
All the government has to do is decree that any and all communication between the two MS chunks should be open.
The thing about doing things this way rather than telling MS to openly document all APIs is that it's infinately easier to police. How the hell is the government supposed to ensure that all the APIs circulating within redmond are totally open? Communications between two companies, meanwhile, are a lot easier to police.

So what you wind up with is that even if the MS-apps company gets access to source code, ability to rewrite parts of the OS at will, access to lower-level APIs, hooks to insert a web browser into the OS, etc., so does everyone else, and it's done in a way you can actually tell what's going on to some extent.

Trusting MS to go along with their punishment is a big mistake.. remember the whole Netscape lawsuit only started because MS refused to abide by a settlement where they agreed not to tie anything to the OS.. you've got to be totally certain MS isn't trusted to do anything on their own or it won't work.

-mcc-baka
CHINESE-WALL!

Re:Split it and it only makes sense...

[mindstrm]

Absolutely you are correct.. they *will* want this.

But.. part of the breakup will *forbid* the Apps company and the OS company from making exclusive deals like that. If the OS company want's to publish API's for the Apps company, it will be required to also publish them for *all* companies that want them. It will be forbidden to make exclusive deals or to keep information out of the hands of other developers.
To put it differently, the thing that shareholders want is increase in stock value. Period. So.. if they go to a board meeting and say 'we want you and the apps company to act like a monopoly to stranglehold the market'... well.. obviously they can't do that. It will be forbidden.
As an OS company, they will be obliged to maximizeprofits.. mainly, by competing against other OS, AS AN OS.
And as an Apps company, they will be obliged to maximize profits, mainly, bhy competing against other app companies..

Re:Split it and it only makes sense...

[dbrutus]

Preferential treatment of some stockholders (those holding both MS-OS and MS-App) over others (holders of one or the other firm) is illegal under US law. If anybody were so stupid as to actually do this, they would quickly land their butts in jail and the firm that acted against a group of its owners would find itself the subject of a very lucrative shareholder lawsuit.

DB

Disclosing source hinders private APIs

[jdimarco]

Not all APIs are created equal. Some are published and intended for use by all. Others are experimental or prototypical and thus subject to change -- these are rarely published. Still others may be designated "internal" by Microsoft, published only within Microsoft itself, and used only by its own applications. The last sort are what the court is worried about: it allows Microsoft to build facilities into its operating systems that only its own applications can take advantage of, thus using its operating system monopoly to give its application software packages an unfair advantage over their competitors.

It's unfortunate that this will force Microsoft to disclose experimental or prototypical APIs as well, though. Such APIs change a fair bit, and if people start using them, their applications will tend to break from service pack to service pack, and further, these applications may be exercising OS code paths that may not yet be intended for production use. Windows application software isn't all well-behaved, and Microsoft already has enough difficulties in accommodating badly written application software.

Re:API != Source code

[Mr.roboto]

Anyways, with the API, why build a clone of windows in the first place? The APIs could be used heavily in the completion of fine OpenSource projects such as Wine. It has been thought that they have mis released some product specifications. It would explain why there's a slight performance edgein some M$ products. (C) 2000 Mr. Roboto enterprises. All APIs of this rant have been published

Re:API != Source code

[biohazard99]

I am not a programer, so I'll pose this question, is it possible to write API's/Hooks that are ignored unless a particular combination of kernels, modules/libraries, and applications, If so, it would seem that my scenario would be modified to include a new library or kernel module that would interact with both the kernel and the application, possibly a module that would not be required to be placed under the GPL... An even more profitable solution as red hat/Debian/Mandrake/SuSE would have no abillity to copy or reverse engineer a similar module.

Re:API != Source code

[biohazard99]

I find it revolting as well, that's why I asked the question. We're just sitting around spitting on the woodstove, there are companies that would kill to get their stock back up to Dec/Jan/Feb/Mar levels, the question raised then is who could possibly be doing this sort of thing

Re:API != Source code

[biohazard99]

Lets take this scenario into consideration

Senior Executive at Corel: Is there any way make our "premium" distributions, valued at $50-60/box, increase sales and hopefully pull our stock out of this shithole?

Evil Software Engineer: Well we could implement a major release x to x+1 when the 2.4 kernel is released, add a hidden api to speed up wordperfect for linux and don't document it or mention in the changelog. Let C|NET/ZiffDavis/Pick-Your-Favorite-Corporate-Tech- Media-Outlet run a 2.4 kernel roundup with our premium product, we'll smoke the other distros in wordperfect performace and we can increase corporate sales at least as IT managers see this as a great feature/innovation that they can not live without.

So Corel makes a short-term illegitimate gain/pisses off a lot of slashdoters/kicks in the doors to a lot of corporate IT outlets for long-term installation of their fine products and they can play this game forever, until the boys at SuSE, RedHat, or Richard Stalman's Debian Ranch, figure out a way to pull the same stunt with Star Office, forever splintering the linux world into chaos. Wait a second, isn't it already

<Disclaimer> This is not an attack on corel, I run corel linux on my system, it's a good distro, and it provided the best example I could think up for this sort of situation.</disclaimer>

P.S. to those of you who watch ZDTV anyone notice that their support and promotion of Linux Mandrake has increased in the shows since they bought all that advertising

My $.02

[mpost4]

The following is based on what a friend of a friend said, I make not gaurantys about it,,
OK now that the BS is out of the way -------

I don't think MS will ever relice any of it source, maybe NT to people who will sign non-discloser agreements but not the 9x ones, and here is why (that part from the friend of a frined) This person was dealing with MS to get windows source code for use in a collage class, the MS rep was pushing NT but he whanted 9x, finaly the MS rep said that MS was imbaresed about the way the 9x code looked, and how it was put together.

again from a friend of a friend. take it for what it is worth.

Re:License to steal

[Andrew Cady]

Seriously now, RMS says that he copies music without a problem ... so why on earth should the rest of us respect the copyright-based restrictions on GPL code any more than he respects the copyright-based restrictions on music? None of the other GPL zealots around here seem to have any cognitive dissonance with advocating music piracy in pretty much the same breath as advocating enforcing the GPL either, for that matter. Odd, isn't it?

That's because enforcing the GPL amounts to the same thing as sharing mp3s -- i.e. making more information available to more people. And violating the GPL is more similar to copyrighting music than it is to sharing it -- both involve keeping information away from people.

Re:API != Source code

[Woody77]

Do you really think Be has ALL of thier APIs open? I seriously doubt it. Any good code will break down an implementation of a public API into smaller peices.

I always thought API meant "Application Programming Interface". Kind of like the public methods of a class in C++. Who knows how I implement helper functions, or what I call. Those aren't part of the "API" they are part of the implementation of the API. The API is the interface, not the internal classes that the interface uses to to get it's job done.

An application should ONLY use APIs, not calls to lower, unpublished levels, unless it wants to risk breaking at the next release of the implementation of the API... However, an agreement to not change a certain call, because it's used by a certain app in another group...

This is an important distinction that will have to be made so that MS-OS (?) and MS-Apps (?) can be properly monitored so that MS-Apps isn't using little "private but stable" lower-level calls that won't change in the next version of the OS.

Does Open Source Have to Mean Free?

[Rev. DOG.]

Yes.

Yes it does.
---

API's, source, its the same root problem.

[Angelwrath]

The reason why Microsoft doesn't give away its API set is a very simple one - hiding APIs benefits them, and, in their monopoly situation, what benefits them hurts their competition.

One of the rules of thumbin the business world is - if you can develop an advantage, then after you develop it you have to take steps to preserve it.

Microsoft's closed APIs have worked on numerous occasions for them. We can all recall the stories of Microsoft changing APIs to disrupt the technology of their competitors, while their own technologies remain compatible because they know what they changed.

Microsoft, by not giving out its API set, has built a dependency, a crutch, that it will have a hard time letting go of.


The second rule of thumb in business that's relevant here is that a company tends to have genetics - once it becomes a part of the company, it doesn't go away easy. Thus, Microsoft's extremely protective behavior is entrenched in the company, and the mentality of employees there.

So it doesn't matter that someone may say "Hey, what's the big deal, they're only APIs"; that is _one_ perspective. Microsoft has a very different perspective, one of protection and secrecy and the simple fact that protectionism worked for them very effectively, so why give up one of their major advantages.

For another example, look at world trade. It doesn't happen overnight, it takes years for countries to open their borders.

I guess this is an example of F.U.D. in Microsoft.

Reverse engineering

[HalB]

Opening the source code would reduce the costs of reverse engineering all of Microsoft's proprietary protocols, lowering barriers to competition. That's why they will never do it. They make much more money in a monopoly.

Bad idea

[Ambien]

If you where to open source a product and try to keep all the rights to it you would end up with all sorts of problems. People could steal unique ideas, and use them in their own product. I mean, what company would want to make a product, and then say to their compeditors "Okay folks, here's how we did it. Enjoy!" That probably wouldn't be the smartest strategy in the world.

Source code and IP

[gutier]

To answer the original poster's question: I believe that releasing source code does affect IP.

Today, most applications are "trivial" in that the way something's done is well known and well understood. Anyone can write Microsoft Outlook with a little time. Anyone can write Windows, given enough time and a lot of text books.

But can you develop an application that solves the VSLI routing problem in linear time? Or guarantee hard real-time behaviour for obtaining positive correlations in data-mining?

So the point is that within the source code are algorithms, _ideas_, which must be guarded. The code itself is just the physical byproduct that must exist in order for a computer to execute it. The source code embodies the idea. Releasing the source code divulges the idea to everyone. If you could make a billion off of it, I'm not sure you would be willing to release it.

Re:API != Source code

[mauryisland]

I'll bet you're right, and Microsoft surely is going to try to limit what is accessable. They're going to have to be careful about messing with their API's in the future, though. I'm sure they have the resources to obfuscate API's even with the DOJ watching, but it's got to become a zero-sum game at some point.

Open source and all

[HiyaPower]

The M$ software is some of the first software that I know of that was "closed source". If you wanted the complete source to IBM's OS or DEC's VMS in the late 70's, all you had to do was to pay the appropriate amount and they would furnish the full thing on fiche. Spent many a "happy hour" reading PL/M and Bliss code not to mention the down and dirty assembler back then. If you wanted it in a machine readable form, it cost you more, but even that was possible. Neither DEC nor IBM worried about infringement, since the copyright protection was enforcable. I think that Grill Bate's concience is bothering him ever since they did the knockoff of CPM. Why anyone would want a knockoff of an inferior OS is beyond me anyway. I guess WINE must be a threat to the poor boy.

I find the logic used by "Paranoid Bill" to be interesting: If we are put in the position of our competetors then we will be unable to innovate. Ergo, only we can innovate and our competitors can't. Sounds like a real good reason to be to bust em up and make the APIs public if there ever was one.

Re:Carmack?

[krogoth]

Well, even if Quake is GLPed, it's only the source. You can compile it, you can play mods that are all original content, but you still have to pay if you want the levels/textures/monsters. It's like releasing the sourcecode for a movie player program that came with a movie sold online: You can compile the program, you can play movies of the same format, but if you want the actual movie you have to buy it.

Microsoft's Idea of OPEN

[pjrc]

Here's what Microsoft thinks OPEN means:

IMPORTANT-READ CAREFULLY: This Microsoft Agreement ("Agreement") is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft") for the version of the Microsoft specification identified above which you are about to download ("Specification"). BY DOWNLOADING, COPYING OR OTHERWISE USING THE SPECIFICATION, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, DO NOT DOWNLOAD, COPY, OR USE THE SPECIFICATION.

The Specification is confidential information and a trade secret of Microsoft. Therefore, you may not disclose the Specification to anyone else (except as specifically allowed below), and you must take reasonable security precautions, at least as great as the precautions you take to protect your own confidential information, to keep the Specification confidential. If you are an entity, you may disclose the Specification to your full-time employees on a need to know basis, provided that you have executed appropriate written agreements with your employees sufficient to enable you to comply with the terms of this Agreement. You are also permitted to discuss the Specification with anyone else who has downloaded the Specification and agreed to these terms and conditions.

Microsoft reserves all other rights it may have in the Specification and any intellectual property therein. Microsoft may have patents or pending patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in the Specification. The furnishing of this Specification does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights, except as specifically set forth above with respect to certain copyrights and trade secrets.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS. All ownership, title and intellectual property rights in and to the Specification are owned by Microsoft or its suppliers.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Microsoft and its suppliers provide the Specification (and all intellectual property therein) AS IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, and hereby disclaim all warranties and conditions, either express, implied or statutory, including, but not limited to, any (if any) implied warranties or conditions of merchantability, of fitness for a particular purpose, and of accuracy or completeness, all with regard to the Specification and any intellectual property therein. ALSO, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF TITLE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT WITH REGARD TO THE SPECIFICATION AND ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEREIN.

APPLICABLE LAW. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Washington.

ENTIRE AGREEMENT. This Agreement is the entire agreement between you and Microsoft relating to the Specification and it supersedes all prior or contemporaneous oral or written communications, proposals and representations with respect to the Specification.

A great idea...

[enneff]

If everyone distributed the code with their software, even if it wasn't free, then you'd be able to see if someone was stealing your code, hence you wouldn't have to worry about IP problems.

What sort of dopes did you interview with?

[tjstork]

I mean, a pre-employment screening that assesses whether or not they think you are a thief? If there was any doubt I would have thought they would have not hired you?

I think the relevant duty in your case is to reveal what company has such a gestapo for its human resource department.

It does not have to mean "Free"

[sowalsky]

There is no reason for open source to mean free. The source code can be distributed freely, but an easy way to control licensing is that a required binary is the only "licensed" part of the software. This binary is accessed by the program independent of platform and contains registration information unique to that binary module. This "module" shows up in the program as registration information and should be unique to the program per computer (unique S/N). Very simple way for companies to make profit and track piracy. Who would ever suspect piracy on open source? Well, this would certainly help to curtail any that might occur if a company makes an open-source program and wishes to maintain a hold on licensing.

car analogy

[Jon_E]

using the car analogy and thinking out loud i find the following conclusions:

Microsoft lets you use their car design, but seals everything up into interconnected pieces and retains ownership - if you need to change out parts, you've got to remove large sections of the car, risking breaking something else and create your own parts to fit into their undocumented plugs. If you have a great enough idea for a nifty new piece, Microsoft will be happy to take it from you and resell it, making more undocumented plugs in the process.

Sun lets you use their car design, and now lets you see how everything works - if you want to change something on your own car great, but they retain ownership, so you can't modify their car and sell it as your own. If you have a great idea for a nifty new piece, you can try and give it to Sun - and if you get someone's attention they'll turn around and give it everyone.

Linux is a collective kit car design, where many people can know how different pieces work, and anybody can create their own car or pieces and sell it as their own. If you have a great idea for a new nifty piece, make it and market it on your own, and if it gets everyone's attention then you can control how everybody can get to it and use it. It's like legos on steriods .. :)

Re:It's doable, but...

[AjR]

OK but look at it this way,

If the Solaris source code was open to everyone, then the likelihood of the holes in the code being sealed would increase exponentially to the number of eyeballs looking through it.

IN fact, your example proves that "security through obscurity" is fundamentally flawed, not the other way round

Re:It's doable, but...

[cmat]

Certainly, finding a security hole (assuming the company missed it themselves) opens up the possibility of it being patched, but it also opens the possibility of it being exploited...

True, however, Company A with Security Product B are the only one that CAN fix their closed-source software because those that COULD do it and would WANT to do it can't. I'm not saying that there are a flood of people out there that actively fix buggy software, but when it comes to security, even 5 more people helping out to fix security holes are better than 5 less people.

And you're supposing that there are alot more evil people out there scanning source code and trying to break into systems through obscure un-found security holes?? Please. Most of thoes "bad" people you mentionned most likely barely know how to compile an attack-in-a-box exploit and run it, much less pour over thousands of lines of code to find that ONE buffer over-flow bug in a piece of code.

Just my two cents.

Re:Available Source == No Money Made Ever

[Mog0th]

yes it does. At least you have to steal a license key to pirate closed source programs like that. So there is some barrier. And redhat has no IP to protect, so of course they make it easy to copy their shit. A stupid, obtuse response like this is about what I expected.

Available Source == No Money Made Ever

[Mog0th]

It is that simple. Without a closed binary distribution, there is no way companies can add, for instance, a license key thing, like Mathematica has, as an example. Anyone can take the source code, file off the serial numbers, compile and sell. Or, if they have to release the source code, they can always permute it and sell a new version. But since this is such an easy task, what would happen is that servers would pop up in sweden or wherever from which you could download license free, anonymous copies of anything.

How many people here would honestly still pay for the software? Not many. This would be an end of an era. There would be no more startup VC, no more new software companies. The software industry would end, with a bang.

I wonder, how much of the open source/free software movement is about what it claims to be, and how much is simply about getting lots of software cheaply and conveniently from an anonymous server in sweden? Only the most asinine open source proponent would be unable to realize that mandating open source, in any way, would lead to this.

Re:This is why...

[Markar]

I know RMS's stand on Free software and why he uses the term. Still...'free' to most people means 'free'as in beer, when one uses the term to those unfamiliar to RMS's use of the term. I think the term 'freed' software, as in 'given freedom,' would be better to use. The use of 'freed' implies freedom, then one can explain that the software is also 'free' as in beer for download. I think the connection with 'freedom of use' is more important than 'free of cost.'

Truth in Licensing

[Markar]

That's what I'd like to see on the packaging. A code on the outside of the software box that would let the consumer know just how restrictive the software license is, before they ever break the seal on the box. Codes would indicate everything from 'unrestricted,' to 'we can turn off this software remotely.' Keys to the codes would be available in the software department to compare the codes for restrictions.

Doing this would make consumers aware of restrictions and perhaps the restrictiveness of the software would influence their purchase. Then the average consumer might start to question why some software is so restrictive, and other software is so free. They might start to questions the wisdom of laws such as UCITA. They just might start educating themselves on software licenses, and choose the software that gives them the most rights. Consumers might then demand some kind of minimum standard of consumer rights in software licenses. Sorry for the slightly off topic rant.

Does Supplying Source Code hurt sales?

[rfc1394]

In the previous article, a user is quoted as saying,

Unhappy Windows User asks: "An article on AltaVista states that Microsoft will "fight to the death anything that threatens its intellectual property". The article states that, by keeping APIs closed, Microsoft has an advantage over other software vendors such as Corel. But how exactly would disclosing the source code be a threat to IP?

What the article actually said was,

Throughout its edits of the DOJ proposal, Microsoft tried to draw a distinction between external APIs (which the company is willing to give away and already often does) and internal APIs (which it is fighting tooth and nail to keep under wraps).

I don't think that there was an issue of distributing source code, it was over the exposing of internal and unpublished APIs.

There are possible reasons which it is reasonable and legitimate not to want to release certain APIs. For one thing, the code to handle it may be lower quality or a "hack" put together to solve a problem and might not be adequately tested.

For another, once an API gets published and known, if code that is created relying on those APIs is not to be broken by changes made to them, it means the API must be frozen; any new changes require developing a new API

Even if the intent was to allow release of the source code, it is possible to do so without hurting the value of the (proprietary) program in question. In many cases, there are a number of applications - including some shareware programs - where you either get source code or get it by paying an additional fee. IBM would often sell certain Mainframe system programs with source code. In fact, a proposal to go to OCO (Object Code Only) licenses on these programs was met with severe opposition from customers because they could not be sure they would be able to customize the applications to fit local needs. IBM had promised to provide "exits" (the equivalent of callback functions) to provide certain features. But that doesn't guarantee you can be compatible with the program or know if you have to change something to fix a problem. It might be asked why did they want to do that (or why don't they leave things the way they are)?.

In Robert Heinlein's To Sail Beyond The Sunsetit was asked,

Whenever someone asks, 'Why don't they?' [or why do they] the answer is almost always, 'money'.

It was suggested the reason for moving to OCO was so IBM could make more sales of its own security product for CICS, instead of third-party companies making money selling security add-ons for IBM's programs.)

A proprietary program can be open source, meaning you do get the source with it or you only get it if you pay extra (pace the Bell Labs Unix license in which a source-code license - except for certain academic customers - cost an arm, a leg and part of the hip and shoulder).

If your product's comes with source code, you can't suddenly jack up the price to stratospheric levels once the customer is locked into the product, as has happened in at least one reported case involving a licensee of the Windows 95 source who it is said saw its fees for source code access go up by many times the original figure because they allegedly did something Microsoft didn't like or because MS decided they could impose huge raises in source license fees.

What has changed in the case of what is being done in the general Open Source market is that the programs being released may be sold or transferred by anyone.

Paul Robinson <postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>

yeah, but...

[rtscts]

pretend for a sec they are being asked to open the source, not just the APIs...

So I can see the code.. exactly what does IP protect here? Even if I don't copy a line from the code, I can easily reimplement algorithms used by MS. That's not right (IMO if a company want to stop people learning how to code from theirs, so be it. it bites, but it's their code, they paid for it to be created).

now try ENFORCE the license that says you're not allowed to use the source or any algorithms presented in it in your own work. Bwaha, not gonna happen.

OTOH... standards should always be open, no? that's the idea of having them anyway...

MS' products are the defacto standard for PCs.. taking that into consideration, perhaps the monopoly laws that cover the computer industry should be changed to state that, while your company controls more than 50% of a particular area (say, Windows or Office), that product must be completely open source. The company is free to restrict it's use however they like, provided that file formats and any other structures needed to communicate with Product in question are free from restrictions, and the source is included with the binary distribution you paid for.

the only problem I see is with technology licensed from outside companies... all the more reason for a modular design I suppose.

Fixing Proprietary source (was: hit(nail, head);)

[kerrbear]

Open Source is all about "better code" or "better security" or "faster development". Free Software is about the human (especially programmer) rights.

In what sense does this apply to copyrighted code? Would proprietary open source code be available for modification? In other words, would the programming community be allowed to fix it or add to it? If so, would we even bother, since our work would go toward the enriching of someone else.

Could a company that released proprietary open source reward people who fixed or added to it and resubmitted it? How would this work exactly?

Help a little site out

[mr_biggs]

Hey everyone, Have you ever wanted to help out a fledgling web directory? Well you have your chance now! Visit Samizdat.CX, look around, and maybe help out and add some links! Thanks for your help and time! Biggs
Visit my site at www.samizdat.cx
Biggs

Copyright is insufficient protection for MS

[GodSpiral]

The court order suggested opening up the APIs mostly.

If MS published the full source code, then pennyless 16 year old geeks would put out a release for free. MS would lose more revenue that it could get back suing those who infringe its copyright.

Re:Copyright is insufficient protection for MS

[Syllepsis]

If MS published the full source code, then pennyless 16 year old geeks would put out a release for free. MS would lose more revenue that it could get back suing those who infringe its copyright.

I doubt that MS would loose any money over a free hacker distribution. MS already has the ultimate solution to piracy of their OS software: they just make sure it is preinstalled and paid for on the majority of systems purchased. Same goes for office nowadays.

Since nearly everyone pays for windows when a computer is purchased, they could actually put win98 up for download and not loose much money to piracy. The only thing they would loose money on would be people upgrading from 95 to 98 or from 98 to 98 SE, but then again who else makes people pay $90 for an upgrade from v4.0 to v4.1 of some software?

Re:API != Source code

[GodSpiral]

Actually, it may mean studying certain parts of the source code.

Knowing a function signature does not tell you what that function does... and if its undocumented, then reviewing the implementation is a 'relevant' part of what's needed to understand it.

One way to get around it thoough would be for MS to just document it all.

incidently, encapsulation is not an OO feature. Its a restraint.

Disclosure

[brank]

Disclosing the source is nothing like opening it (people have already written a lot about that). If you disclose the source, it doesn't mean you have to give people the freedom to use it for anything. The reason MS wouldn't like disclosing their source is that they would not longer have the home field advantage. If everyone knew all the secret features of Windows and Office, MS couldn't use it as a weapon to keep the application market under control: it would be easy to create a product that did everything Word did, only better.

Most of the money MS makes does not come from coders who would be able to do anything with the source. The only reason it would matter if MS disclosed the source but kept it their IP would be that their competitors (who would be able to use the source, but wouldn't use it to avoid buying Office or Windows) would be able to use all of the secret APIs and formats that MS can use to create products that could replace Office and Windows. MS isn't worried that someone will use the source instead of a purchase, but rather that someone will use the information about how their products work to develop something that makes it unnessecary for users to make that purchase.

You can bet that very few Microsoft executives worry about WINE. But if WINE were developed by people who had complete and total knowledge of how all of Windows worked, you can bet that they would start.

Open Source licenses

[headLITE]

The most popular Open Source licenses, the GPL first to be mentioned, sort of give away part of those IP rights. Everybodys allowed to refine GPLed source code and make own products based on it. This is not true with cars, however many authors choose not to insist on those rights because this exchange of ideas has been shown to greatly improve upon all available products.

Now if Microsoft were to make their APIs public it would be perfectly valid for them to retain all IP and copyrights. Sorta you were allowed to have a look at the code but not to do anything else with it.

But the problem Microsoft is facing now is that if their proprietary APIs become public, more and more rival products will appear that are in some way compatible to their API specifications, without interfering with any IP rights. Like, being able to run on the same gasoline and to interface with the same gas pumps. Tho it would be an issue if it were OK for those engineers, um, programmers whether they had happened to take a peek at the original code.

I myself would be forced to run Windows every now and then werent it for Wine, a legal built-from-scratch Windows API workalike that doesnt do much currently but already is able to run all of the Windows software I need.

Re:API != Source code

[Twistor]

sammy baby saith:

"Your point is well taken, but re-read the court's order: Microsoft shall create a secure facility where qualified representatives of OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs shall be permitted to study, interrogate and interact with relevant and necessary portions of the source code and any related documentation of Microsoft Platform Software for the sole purpose of enabling their products to interoperate effectively with Microsoft Platform Software (including exercising any of the options in section 3.a.iii). It's not the GPL, but I'll bet you anything that Microsoft is pissing its collective pants over this."

Absolutely! The source code is a big revenue stream for Microsoft... losing that will damage the OS company. Is it also embarrassment at what lurks in the old code (its structure or lack thereof) which makes them grimace?... do they still ask their own (Msoft) project managers to sign internal NDAs in order to see another Msoft group's source code?... ... you think that's air you're breathing now, in this place? .... hmm...

{offtopic} This will be an important part of the appeal (incidentally Neukom has been working on the appeal since before January 1999, that is, before the trial was over, even before the botched video presentations--> among themselves Msoft conceded defeat early and so they have pinned everything on the Appeal (a stall tactic-- that it would take years; perhaps be overturned; be rendered irrelevant... what they forgot--> a loss opened them up to even more damage than they could imagine... oops.){/offtopic}

My two pennies: release the complete set of APIs and the Source for a previous release (Win95 OEM 2 say) and lets fix the kludge. For free. We'll call it MiniME (or something clever)...

Re:Source Code vs. Object Code

[EricEldred]

whether or not object code was even covered by copyright.

I agree we made a mistake in extending copyright to object code.

Another good reason is this: consider what happens when the copyright term expires. If the source code is available then the creative expression can become part of the public domain and be reworked into a new creative expression. If only the object code exists, then the work effectively disappears--and so is only personal property, not intellectual property that should be protected by copyright so as to enhance "the progress of science and the useful arts."

Even without getting into a debate about the virtues of "free software" vs. "open source software" one can see that there is a benefit in not protecting the object code.

Now, when the source code is copyrighted and published, it can be used in lawsuits against copyright infringement. If the source code is not available, but the alleged infringer simply "copies" the "look and feel" of what can be determined from running the binary, courts have been puzzled as to how copyright applies, and have had to come up with abstruse differentiations of APIs and whether or not reverse engineering is proper. (I still have a copy of Paperback Software's "clone" of Visicalc--it was written in Forth, not assembler, but Lotus forced it off the market because its menu structure was too similar to that other spreadsheet that 1-2-3 copied and then Lotus bought up.)

Today, for example, one can download for free the binary of the DOS 1.0 version of Visicalc, even though it is under copyright, but the source code is still protected. It's a shame--I'd love to see the tricks Bob Frankston pulled to make the code so compact and fast.

Bill Gates has always been paranoid about "hackers" stealing "his" software. It is a bit funny that rumor has it that he "lost" the source code to the first version of DOS (or so Microsoft stated to Caldera in that other suit--note that Gates did not write DOS, he bought rights to it).

Even so, Microsoft has always claimed that it has published all APIs and that other information needed to make programs interoperable can be obtained by NDAs or through MSDN. One reason they might want to do that is simply to keep applications from writing to internal pointers they might later change--or be unable to change because then existing programs would become incompatible. However, Microsoft has never been able to prevent programmers from finding "undocumented" calls that Microsoft's own programs use, and using them to make their own programs faster and better. For example, early DOS programmers were told to use the BIOS calls for I/O, but they were so slow everyone had to use undocumented calls to better routines.

I think in general the original question is good: publishing source code ought not to prevent one from protecting copyright. If source code is not available to the user, then the user is completely controlled by the software maker. And in this case that manufacturer is a monopolist in violation of antitrust law. Copyright is no defense.

Extending copyright from source code to object code has now led to this terrible situation: eBooks are now being published that are completely locked up and controlled by publishers and protected not only by copyright but also the DMCA. Will these eBooks ever become public property? No.

Re:We have to realize

[kz45]

that would take away my freedoms and rights, so it's a bad idea.

Re:API != Source code

[bcrowell]

Well of course opening the source code would prevent MS from keeping API secrets to themselves in order to make their own apps run better.

And even if you weren't dealing with someone as naughty as MS, you know how programmers hate to write documentation! Making the code open source prevents features from being inaccessible just because nobody got around to documenting them.

remember BASIC source code?

[bcrowell]

Another excellent example is how software was distributed in the early 80s: nearly all the TRS-80 software I bought came as BASIC source code. It wasn't seen as an intellectual property problem at all.

Looking into other people's code helped me a lot as a beginning programmer; I don't know what the equivalent experience would be for a young person today, in the age of binary-only distribution.

And need I point out that software was infinitely more reliable in those days? Sure, my Trash-80 crashed all the time, but that was because the hardware was garbage. The software was all super solid.

Re:Bad Analogy

[nagora]

Cloning a piece of software doesn't need source code, just the binary and the cp command.

As someone who owns a company, and left school years ago, I use open source code for everything I can (one function in the company is run by closed source code) for exactly the "we can fix it" reason.

That one piece of closed source code that we use (for finding distances between postcodes) is a constant thorn in the side of the IT department. We can't change the way it accepts data, we have little control over the output method (although the format is flexible) and it's impossible to do anything when a bug arises other than hope the company that supplies it has already had a bug report and there's a new version waiting when we 'phone.

TWW

Re:RMS Says So

[Reality Master 101]

Dude, Shakespeare said it best: brevity is the soul of wit.

There is a reason that novels are not written in script format. It makes them tedious to read.

I've tried to read your stuff, but there is so much filler that I get bored and give up. Try using a denser format (but not too dense... the other troll who writes everything in one big paragraph has the opposite problem). It would make your trolls much more effective. You could say the same thing in half the space, and it would be much better reading. I would guess that a lot of people don't even read your stuff for this reason.

Sometimes one must do their part to try and improve the trolls on Slashdot. :)

--

Re:What about transmeta? [Totally OT]

[Reality Master 101]

Actually, you don't need a fab plant in order to use the code morphing software. I believe the morphing software is downloaded on boot-up, or at least out of a flash ROM. So if you had the source code and could understand the hardware technology, you could do some very cool things with the chip. Want your own LISP machine? Code it up!

I've always thought it would be cool if Intel released the source and specs to their Microcode (yes, it's been software downloadable since either PPRO or P/II).

--

Re:What about transmeta? [Totally OT]

[namlhaz]

Unless the CPU in *your* box(en) is/are made by some company other than "those already bloated corporate behemoths", I really don't see that you have a point.
The way I see it is this: Transmeta opens whatever info is relevant. Intel, AMD, Motorola, Cyrix (are they still around?) each go look at the info at their leisure. Everyone's chip design improves, assuming they make good use of the technology. OS manufacturers look at the info and write stuff to take advantage of the code morphing (or else die from failure to produce a "modern" OS). Millions of consumers go out and buy computer systems which use this technology without even realizing there's anything "special" about it, whereas as it stands only uebergeeks (like Slashdot posters such as ourselves) would be at all likely to get Transmeta products as it stands.
Where is the lack of benefit to the consumer? Seriously, your response sounds to me much like "If I wouldn't be able to work on the design if they opened it, noone ought to be, i.e. it should remain closed."

Re:It's doable, but...

[namlhaz]

For a good example, you can take a look at the numerous companies who produce so called "hole-less" security systems, and then hide behind IP rights to protect their source code from scrutiny. These companies maintain that since their "source code" is under lock and key, it is inherantly more secure than "open sourced" security. Rubbish.
What is "rubbish" about the belief that, by letting people read the source code of your security systems, they would figure out how to break into them?
The world as a whole is not so benevolent as the pro-open-source, none-of-this-has-any-financial-value types would try to have us believe. Certainly, finding a security hole (assuming the company missed it themselves) opens up the possibility of it being patched, but it also opens the possibility of it being exploited. I'm willing to wager that the techno-savvy No-Goodniks(TM) on the planet still outnumber Benevolent Hackers(TM).

Just gettin' in before 575!

[King_of_Plow]

Windows API
Is what we would like from them
Microsoft sucks rocks

--
"You take a distribution! Rename! Stamp CD's! IPO!"
- CmdrTaco, Geeks in Space, Episode 2 from 6:18 to 6:23.

Re:Just gettin' in before 575!

[King_of_Plow]

I am king of plow
I should write no more Haikus
'cause they are real bad

--
"You take a distribution! Rename! Stamp CD's! IPO!"
- CmdrTaco, Geeks in Space, Episode 2 from 6:18 to 6:23.

yesyesyesyesyes

[Ka-YE]

After all, when I buy a car, I cannot make an identical copy and sell it, as the design is protected by copyright. But I am entitled to look inside, and fix it if something's wrong. " .. Would the revealing of source code damage IP rights simply because it is in the open for all to see?

One major difference between writing software and building cars is that not only can any person with the knowledge and time, (no matter old) do it, but that there are many ways to do anything in programming (also its strongest advantage). Source code, if given the change, can and will be reimplemented if that purpose is sought and could quite possibly be totatlly different from the original. There may be only one way to build a BMW but if reimplemented correctly one company could easily use the blueprint as a template to make a better one then claim that is was a sole creation inspired by that design. And who is to truly say whether it's true or not? That said, revealing of source code will obviously damage IP rights because it's open for all to see. One could argue that the fundamental design itself is protected from reimplementation but that would be far too ambiguous to be reasonable and destructable to promoting competition (Amazon rings a bell...).

"Today class, due to some problems concerning IP, we will be learning to write our first program, 'How ya doin' World'"

Ka-YE@debian# cat .sig > /dev/null

Re:Not necessarily

[CaptainZapp]

You recall correct...

Re:Not necessarily

[CaptainZapp]

The main difference is not the amount of boxes where the OS is running, but the fact that customers running VMS partially had a need to know what was going on in the internals of their (mission critical) systems. For a financially potent company it wouldn't have been any problem at all to acquire the VMS source code and use it to their advantage. You are correct, of course, that at that time software was an add on to the rather expensive hardware and that paradigm changed dramatically. Still, I wouldn't want to run a nuclear power plant or a space shuttle without the ability of experts looking into the inyards driving such a system.

Open-Source vs. FSF

[kaume]

Here is were R. M. Stallman has the right to get mad. Every one seems to think that Open-Source means Free. NO! Eric Raymond even said that he started the Open-Source Software Group it was because the anti-business undertones were stopping the spread of the message. see Maximum Linux - May/June - Rebels With a Cause. Copyrights and even patents are being placed on code this can be seen in recent events, amizon.com, with one click shopping. Even with Microsoft and the Kerberos standard, the information was there if you treated it as a trade secret, so could be done with the source code (aren't EULA's fun ;-)) So no nothing is there to say that just because you let people see the source code that they can use the source code in anyway against Microsoft. Stopping it from being used against them. So is there a better reson to keep the source code closed. Really, really bad code?, Secret collective conscience?, The reson behind Rob's Secret Debian Fetish (GIS)? There has got be a reson!

My Question is:

[Bozzio]

If something becomes open-source, even though it's still under copyright, wouldn't that make it easy to steal an algorithm and not get caught? You could find a kick-ass algorithm in the code, and use it yourself. I think it would be REALLY hard to prove that you didn't write the algorithm yourself, instead of copying it. I know this isn't big time stealing, but it's still something.

I may be totally wrong on this, I'm not exactly a programming god ;P

"Producing satire is kind of hopeless because of the literacy rate of the American public."

Checking MS code for security flaws

[Mike1024]

Hey,

the security-conscious would be able to check the code for bugs and potential security flaws.

I don't think Microsoft would want people to be able to check thier software for security flaws. That would make it seem like faults were thier faults. They'd prefer to portray those who discover bugs as crackers and rush out a hurried 'security fix'. Besides, if they revealed the API source, they wouldn't have a 'competitive advantage' with which to crish thier rivals before integrating said rivals' ideas into thier own products and acting like they've done nothing wrong!

Just my $0.02

Michael Tandy

Re:API != Source code

[Twanfox]

See, Unless I miss my guess, though, Microsoft Windows' Source Code is already available to a number of non-Microsoft Personel, bound by a licence agreement of non-distribution or something like that. To state that MS's code is totally closed source is not totally accurate. It is not available for peer review by anyone and everyone, certainly, but it is not as if their code is totally in-house

On the matter of the API's, though, there should be no hidden API's in any OS. If there are, in my opinion, that is a clear violation of fair trade, since you are permitting yourselves a more advanced or more streamlined way to interact with your own operating system and blocking others from doing the same. Not only that, if they hide API's, how much other stuff do they hide in there?

Re:API != Source code

[Twanfox]

In the given scenareo, isn't that a little unlikely? I mean, to my knowledge, ALL Linux distro's use the same core, the linux kernel. This kernel is written by hundreds or thousands of programmers worldwide, lead by Linus Torvalds. To 'slip an api in' would require you to modify the kernel in order to provide the proper hooks, and last I recall, it's distributed under the GPL licence (meaning you can change it, but you gotta distribute the source with it). Not only that, it means that your version of Wordperfect won't work on other distributions of Linux, OR, if the user upgrades their kernel, they won't get the hidden API to make it work right again, thus exposing the fact it's there.

Now, if you're talking about adding another library to the mix, along the lines of libc or something like that, then that's not really a core API, but a library that aids your program's preformance. To me, isn't that what innovation's about?

Re:API != Source code

[Twanfox]

Theoretically, I'd probably have to say yes, it is possible (after all, anything's possible, it's the improbability of it that makes it difficult to do). However, and even I'm not sure whether or not this is true, but I'd wager that kernel modules (ties into the kernel itself) would be required to be under the GPL, because if it's dependance upon a GPL package? That sounds a little wrong, but I'm not sure how they state the GPL for the linux kernel.

As for libraries, by all means, you can make a library that's not under the GPL and used specifically for the purpose of the Wordperfect app (again, just following the example). However, at that point, it operates as any normal program would, using it's libraries to interop with the kernel through fully known hooks. Just because noone else can use that library doesn't mean that it brings about hidden API's, and if you were going to do a library like that, so noone else could use it, why not just build it statically linked into the program that you're writing?

The only way I could see similar 'hidden API's in the situation provided would be if they embedded them within the linux kernel or it's modules (which fall under the standard kernel distro packages). How closely that makes them 'hidden' is unclear to me, since it borders on being a library enhancement and a kernel modification (if you were to embed such API's in a kernel module).

Another thought did occur to me. Embedding such API's within the glibc or other library packages, but again you get into breaking the GPL in order to distribute closed-source versions of an open-source piece of software, a notion I find revolting.

The early Compaq VS IBM days ...

[CaptRamius]

The comment is certainly well taken. I believe the car analogy works well. It sort of reminds me of something I saw long ago when Compaq was trying to clone the early IBMs... If I remember right the Compaq engineers were writing a sort of BIOS or ROM chip which would drive their cloned systems but they couldn't be the same as IBM's for copyright reasons. So the Compaq heads just told the programmers *what* they wanted done and they went, did it, then the code was compared and if there were any similarities they told the programmers to go back and write the same thing a different way...

Re:Support / Ease of Reverse Engineering

[CaptRamius]

The support issue is not a big deal -- if their source code is modified then they void their warranty, just like if you open up your computer box in some cases to work on the insides.

Re:We have to realize

[Schnedt McWapt]

If you think about it, for a book or any other copyrighted material you purchase, you acquire access to the "source."

I wasn't aware of that. Could you give me a little help, please? I've got this book I bought a copy of. I'd like your help in figuring out who I ask to get my own copies of the offset plates. I'm pretty sure it's not a hot-type book. I have a few older books as well, that are definitely 'hot type.' Could you help me head over to the publisher and lug all those platens of type out to my station wagon? I have a patch I want to apply to some of those books.

Re:It's not really open source, people.

[still_nfi]

Do you think the developers of WINE will be allowed to look at the windoze source code?

Duh, is slashdot this dumb?

[duhboy]

Duh!!!

Hell yes, Opensource will damage your IP, is that such a hard thing? People can always rip a little part of your source, recode it or what not. How will you know who rips your source? especially when theirs is closed source?

Re:because any new feature would be copied

[duhboy]

I am sure your dumb ass can't code, cuz when you spend time and research to provide a feature, you don't want other suckers ripping it off. loser

Re:Yes, it _does_

[duhboy]

Ditto!!!
Your reply gives me hope on slashdot, there are still a few realistic people. I owe you a beer.

'Open Source' Have to Mean 'Free', does it?

[moatz]

Take the case of the digital imaging group (http://www.digitalimaging.org/). They have released what they call open source for an IIP server/client (http://www.digitalimaging.org/i_iipserver.html or http://www.digitalimaging.org/i_iipclient.html)
and the Flashpix file format (https://secure.gaiatec.com/digsales/fpxtools.html ). They want to charge $35 for link to this source code. They even link to the Open Source web site (http://www.opensource.org/osd.html).

If they charged $35 for a sourc-code CD.I would call this a bit over the top, but would accept it.

But $35 for just the link to download the source code? Surely, this is not right.

Supporting the open source

[cjb110]

just a quickie...say ms were forced to release every bit of code via the open source route...who gets the job of mainting and supporting it?

Microsoft...why would they want to support other peoples bugs as well as their own? (i wouldn't expect them too either)

Nobody/Everybody...then how do the joe public's of the world get the latest version with support/manual etc (which imho is the biggest - against linux)

maybe i've missed sommit but the question seems relevant.

'Closed Source' Model Promotes Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

If Microsoft's source were opened, I wonder how much code we would find that was stolen from others? 'Closed Source' can be an excellent camouflage for wrongdoing.

Moglen: Microsoft can't assert patents

[KMSelf]

Eben Moglen, Columbia Law School professor and pro bono lawyer for the FSF, spoke on MarketPlace Radio (Minnesota Public Radio, carried on many NPR stations) last Wednesday following the court's breakup finding. One of Moglen's comments was that the FoF against Microsoft, detailing as it did a list of anti-competitive and monopolistic activities, would preclude Microsoft from being able to assert its patent IP rights.

I don't recall the precise argument, and MarketPlace doesn't provide freely accessible archives, but it might be that Microsoft would find itself stripped of its patents or simply unable to assert them. Patents are a legal means for providing monopoly advantage in a restricted area for a limited time -- an advantage courts might find the company doesn't require or has lost rights to claim.

This does raise the bar though for any release of source or APIs to Microsoft code, however. Interesting times, it seems.

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin

The other shoe

[Enahs]

The other side of this is that if Adobe were to open it's development of products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, etc. then they wouldn't have to charge NEARLY as much becuause, if the public deemed these to be good projects to contribute to, you could have a LARGE base of developers developing these products mainly because they *want* to, not a smaller group, getting paid big bucks, and most likely also getting overtime, developing for at least 60 if not more hours a week because they HAVE to.

Of course, what do I know. I've just watched the development of software such as The GIMP, Sketch, and heck, even KDE and GNOME and watched them thrive in a non-corporate (even mostly non-pay!) environment.

Moderate this up! This really happens.

[Amphigory]

I have seen many cases where vendors have refused to give out source code for exactly this reason. You'd be amazed how many organizations are out there who have one low-skilled teenager (or a secretary, or...) to manage their systems. Give that teenager a copy of VB in a nutshell, and he thinks he's a programmer. But, guaranteed, if there is a problem, the vendor will still be expected to support it. I used to work at a college whose administrative software was like this. It was UGLY. It hardly makes sense to open the source when you are going to have to provide continuing support for it on a flat-fee basis.

--

Re:Disclosed Source != Open-Source

[Millennium]

I honestly didn't know that. I doubt the OSI knew it either when they coined their term. Either way, you have my sincere thanks for bringing this to light.

However, I still think we need a new term for the system under which most Linux software is licensed. "Free Software," while certainly a good description, has the unfortunate side effect of having connotations it was not meant to have. This is due to the fact that the English language has no word for "free as in speech" doesn't also mean "free as in beer." So we need to look to other languages, I think. "Software libere" was always one of my favorites. Anyone have any better ideas?

I continue to believe...

[talks_to_birds]

...that a major reason M$ doesn't want to release its source code is simply due to embarrassment!

M$ knows that if they release the source code to any of their OS's that the first public reactions, after someone has even managed to wade through all of it, will be utter disbelief that it's mostly a crude hack, held together with the programming equivalent of duct tape...

I mean, how many billions of lines of code are supposed to be in Win 2000?

Oh! There's only millions of lines of code!

How svelte!

t_t_b
--

Re:GPL Problem

[dominion]

FSF and GPL are squarely anti-business.

Is that such a bad thing, considering the fact that most (if not all) businesses are squarely anti-people?

Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net

Wrong Question: This is the way MS wants us...

[freeBill]

...to look at the question. All of their press appearances have been crafted to make it look like this is a threat to IP.

The real question is: Does somebody else (anybody else, but Microsoft is one of the few who have ever tried) have the right to put something on your computer that allows them to do something that you cannot do?

That is theft of private property, no matter how you look at it. It is so brazen that even MS doesn't dare claim in their click-through licenses. Now they are trying to seize that right in a court of law, claiming it derives from IP rights.

The press has largely ignored this turn in MS's arguments, even though it greatly contributed to the remedies selected by the judge. They gave up claiming that they had never used closed APIs and are now claiming that opening APIs will destroy their business. Bill Gates has even made the claim Windows9X and Office could never have been developed without close cooperation between the two teams. Why aren't the TV networks showing this footage back-to-back with Steve Ballmer reassuring developers that there was a "Chinese wall" between the two divisions which was never breached?

These remedies demonstrate both what the judge understands and what he doesn't understand. He has ordered open APIs, showing that he understands the APIs are the key to the abusive use of the monopoly. He has accepted the government's strange call for a "secure facility" where ISVs can examine the source code for the APIs, demonstrating he doesn't understand how it can be done.

_Rant on meaning of "secure facility" omitted._

I have proposed one way to police open APIs, which doesn't violate IP: Hire a small group of independent experts (paid for by MS) to verify the completeness of all APIs. They have to be allowed access to source code that compiles to exact copies of all binaries sold to the public. Fines if they are shown to have undocumented APIs; enormous fines if those APIs turn out to be used by MS apps.

Bob Lewis of _Infoworld_ has proposed another policing mechanism, which also does not violate IP: Take them at their word and offer a bounty for each undocumented API found by an outsider. Bounties to be paid by MS.

Do not be diverted by the Microsoft PR machine.

Re:Yes, it _does_

[otis wildflower]

In fact, I'd be surprised in Windows didn't have any code either from GPLed programs or heavily inspired by them.

Maybe this is why they're so scared of opening the source now? Maybe they want a year to vet the code and make sure any OSS release is not in violation of various OSS licenses...

And maybe pigs can fly.. ;)

Your Working Boy,

Re:RTFM

[Chas]

Actually if you read it, it says nothing about what I spoke upon.

Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicided means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable production cost -- PREFERABLY, downloading off the internet without charge.

See? It says nothing about freely releasing source code to people who haven't bought the software package. It merely says that if you don't release the source code with the binaries, you have to have them somewhere well publicized. The answer is simple. Include a source CD package with every licensed copy. Then you're NOT obliged to post the code on the internet.

All it says is that you may not restrict a party from buildig it into an agregate product distribution.

Yes, that clause DOES pretty much make it tough to control redistribution of software. All someone has to do is buy a copy of the product and make the source available. The only problem is that the community doesn't necessarily have access to the ever-evolving code base.

As long as they're not obfuscating source code or funneling output through a preprocessor binary, they still qualify for the term "Open Source".

Simple grammar. Nothing more.

Please note that I don't think use of the term in this way is "right" or a "good thing". I'm merely stating that that is how it can be construed. And until the guys at OpenSource change the definition, or someone takes it to court to define it further.

So YES I did RTFM.


Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Depends on what you mean by "Free"...

[Zagadka]

According to The Open Source Definition:

The license may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software
distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such
sale.

So if you mean "free" as in $0 (gratis), yes. If something is open source you can't practically charge for the code, because people are able to get the same code for free. That's why the open source economy has become one of "who has the prettiest box, and the best tech support?" Code isn't worth paying for, to the open source zealot.

Of course, the title for this article is nothing but misleading. The Microsoft thing has nothing to do with "open source". It has only to do with them making portions of their source "available", which is a completely different story.

Trademark dilution

[Signal 11]

Well, really this issue would best be brought to Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens / OSI. If you recall, the term "open source" was trademarked by one of the two (nobody knows which, each claims it as their own). What this COULD HAVE meant is that any company that labels its software "open source" would have been required to meet something like the Debian Free Software Guidelines to allow a company (or any individual, for that matter) to call something open source.

However, ESR and Bruce got involved in alittle pissing contest and didn't take advantage of current trademark law, and now any company could legitimately claim that they have not enforced the trademark, hence it is lost. A pity too.

However, there is another term out there that we might be able to latch on to - free software. "Always, there is another way yes, oooh" --Yodageek on programming.

Note: Excercise caution when handling this post: contents under pressure.

Re:Trademark dilution

[Signal 11]

If you were listening, you would have heard OSI say that "open source" wasn't protectible as a trademark. You are too busy talking to get the facts straight. Neither is "free software" trademarkable.

And you were too busy flaming to notice that they dropped it because they couldn't agree to who owned it. But, you don't have to take my word for it....

Ask Eric Raymond.

Or if you don't believe him, why don't you ask Bruce Perens?

Secret formula

[ch-chuck]

Ack, trade secret's are nothing new in business, whether it's the Colonel's 11 secret herbs and spices or Coke-a-cola's secret formula. But if, say, the Pepsi family of food products got together and concocted a recepie or formula such that anyone who drinks Pepsi gets sick should they eat any food products other than Pepsico's, then I think it would be totally within the jurisdiction of the FDA to say, "Hey, just what are you guys putting in that stuff that makes it do that anyway??". If you tried to eat a 'Chik fil-A' with a Pepsi and got Ill but whenever you eat a KFC product with Pepsi it was a-ok, naturally they're going to stand there and say, "See, KFC has much better products than that lousy Chic-fil-A stuff. The consumer has chosen. Now leave us alone to innovate new ways to crush any vestiage of competition. Thank You."

(the above analogy would fit better if there were a Pepsi drink monopoly (OS) they could leverage via secret chemistry to dominate the chicken industry (entre's or apps)).

Re:Support / Ease of Reverse Engineering

[geraldt]

Distribution of source code for products that others use to develop software is very useful to those developers and does not need to be harmful to the vendor. Source code for products such as games where I don't rely on knowing the intimate details of how they work is of limited interest to me. Free software is interesting, especially from an intellectual viewpoint of challenging our ideas of IP and commerce. But in my professional life I don't care if I have the right to modify and then sell or give away someone's code, just understand it and occasionally modify for my own use, giving back any generally useful modifications.

I spent 5 years developing applications with Smalltalk and one of the things that made that an enjoyable experience (besides the merits of the language) was the culture of Smalltalk vendors and other developers making source available. It allowed me to see examples of Smalltalk code and learn and adapt ideas for my own uses. It allowed me to understand the system much better than any documentation could. It allowed me to step through all the code at the source level, not just the application code I had written. Occasionally, it allowed me to find bugs in their code and it always helped me determine whether my application's misbehaviour was my bug or theirs. On the rare occasions when it was their bug, we were able to send their support staff enough detail to quickly get a fix or, more often, we were able to actually send the fix along with the bug report. We were happy to do this because we wanted the fix included in the next release of their product. We never felt the vendor should fix anything that we had done.

I wasn't interested in taking all their code to create a rival Smalltalk development product and I don't think anyone else did any wholesale copying either. I wouldn't have been interested in buying a Smalltalk product which was just a copy of another vendor's because I want a relationship with the innovator, not the copier.

The situation is somewhat similar with Java (to a lesser extent). There is less source freely available for Java (e.g. not the compiler) but much of the code I care about can be had.

So, I'm making a distinction of what source code I want made available based on whether it would be useful to me. I would like to see operating systems, languages, and development environments with source code available (others might want device drivers). I don't think the vendor should charge extra for the source. And I think that although vendors may have the fears you mention, they are wrong.

Re:Intellectual Property

[jms]

The idea of intellectual property evolved as a legal concept to protect the creative efforts of individuals.

The legal justification of the copyright clause is not to protect the creative efforts of individuals. The justification, and purpose of the copyright clause is to provide incentive for creative individuals to produce, not to protect their work. A very crucial difference of philosophy.

Copyright law provides for many different uses which might be incompatable with maximizing the "protection of creative efforts" of an individual, if that were the purpose of copyright law.

For instance, you have the fair use provisions.

Also, there is a Constitutional mandate that copyrights expire. Terms of copyright must be limited.

As another example, you have the right to record and publish your own performances of other people's songs, once they have been initially published, even if they don't want you to. In this case, you would pay a fixed fee. See this reference for more information on how compulsory mechanical licensing works, especially the link to 17 USC Sec 115. The purpose of compulsory mechanical licensing was originally to break up the player-piano-roll monopoly, which isn't much of an issue anymore. These days, it's what allows your band to include a Bob Dylan cover on your album, for instance, even if Bob Dylan happens to hate your band.

The MPAA and RIAA are heavily promoting propaganda that misrepresents the nature and purpose of copyright law. Please don't take their explanations of things at face value.

DEC used to do it.

[Detritus]

Many years ago, DEC used to distribute the source code for the RSX-11M executive (kernel) as part of the media kit for the operating system. This was probably done just to enable customers to generate custom kernels, but it was very nice to be able to read the source code. If the documentation for a system call was was unclear or incorrect, you could look at the source code. Plus it was educational to see how things were implemented.

Re:Disclosed Source != Open-Source

[DJerman]

This is obviously not possible with Open-Source, since permission to use the program is implicit; if the software exists you have permission to use it.

This is not true.

Yes, it is. Open Source means I can copy any or all of the source code for use in my derivitave work -- so I copy all of it and compile the program as "mine" and it's mine. It's still open source, but I have a right to use it 'cause it's my open-source program, based on yours. Since I have your source, I can reverse-engineer or remove any reliance on external services, cryptograhpic license codes or hardware copy protection schemes -- and it's legal 'cause it's my software, based on yours.

You may object that your license can control my right to use, but that means you're not using an open-source license, so the argument collapses.

The point is that offering Open Source software requires a company to find a different revenue stream than selling the software. The software must become an enabler for some other unique offering of product or service, that's based on tangible objects or labor. It's entirely possible to charge on the basis of labor for the software, you just have to collect up front or as-you-go, and be willing to forgo profits where others choose to supply the labor rather than purchase it from you.

Re:API != Source code

[warmi]

You know what ? I wastly prefere dealing with "undocumented" API's from MS than "documented" stuff from RedHat ( try latest RPM lib .... the only docs you get is source code and h file - how fucking considerate of external developers, one has to follow the source code to understand how to call library which , in the first place, was create to avoid that )

GPL zealots

[Graymalkin]

How did this story even get posted? Every other time a company has offered their source under a non GPL license all you get is endless bitching from all the weenies crying for the GPL. There is an open license which doesn't have to be free, we call it the BSD license and whenever you mention it the blood of the GPL weenies boils. They cry for 100% open code and they want the specs to everything. Redhat will never be a Fortune 500 company by giving their product away for free and selling support for it.

Re:API != Source code but Revealed =! Open

[orpheus]

I think MS-OS *will* fight to keep the APIs from being open. It is in MS-OS's best interests to have good use made of its OS, but it is not in its best interest to give that info away.

MS-OS will want to selling that info (conferring a competitive advantage on the buyer) via partnering agreements. Moreover, MS-OS won't want its current OS to be *too* useful -- or it'll have less basis to sell its next OS (remember, MS-OS will now live or die on selling licenses and upgrades. It has lost its other major revenue streams)

MS needs to turn all those copies of Win95 out there into copies of WinMe and later versions. The partnerships will undoubtedly include a promise from the App developers to create new OS versions and make them their new primary product lines ASAP after a new OS release. (This is the dark side of "release early, release often") It will also give them some leverage to forestall the Next Great Feature Set (for an app) until The Next Great OS version is ready

Re:We have to realize

[Cassandra]

By releasing the source code, what's to stop a competitor of from using it in their closed source-project?
It will be rather impossible to prove it.

If you know which compiler was used, you could always compare the binaries. Something similar actually appeared in court a few years ago, and it worked. IIRC is was stolen closed-source code that time, but in principle its the same.

Two answers

[Felinoid]

First (as it was allready said) open API =! open source... You simply document the interface not how the operating system works.

Microsoft is basicly saying it won't tell you how to write code for Windows. You must use our compiler or a blessed compiler (like Corel/Imprise C++.. now you see why Corel wants to give away the compiler)

Open source means yes the part of the source you give away must be free... otherwise it is liccensed source...

Even if it's not in a recompilable form (such as only part of the code) it's still free for someone to add the missing code and build a Windows clone around...

Microsoft is being anil
Microsoft wants Windows to be an operating system... part of that means documenting the API.
But Microsoft wants Windows to BE a software pacage where only Microsoft can sell software.
Think about this.. Dosn't Windows run just a bit to much like a software pacage? Everything bundled together?
I mean it makes no sence as an operating system but makes perfict sence as a software pacage.

Of course like any software pacage Microsoft wants to protect the API so no one else can write software for it.
But Windows isn't a closed develuper environment. Other companys can and do write software for Windows.
It is sold as an operating system and reguardless of how it is writen it is an operating system.

Microsoft wishes to be the only company in history to close off programming access. To limit who may write code for Windows.

IBM, Commodore and Apple went as far as to PAY companys like Microsoft to port software to the systems they make.
There isn't any reason for them to block programmers from writing code... No reason to not document the interface into the software, and hardware.
Commodore pacaged programming directions with the computers they sold.
Apples intro to computers was a programming tutorial.
It was all so importent to computer makers that they teach programming to as many users as posable and encurage free software develupment.

But Microsoft has discuraged free software develupment..

They simply don't want anyone writing code for Windows...
Microsoft has been saying "Go away" to software develupers for a long time... and this is just annother such insult...

I wish software develupers would lissen and stop writing code for a company who clearly dosn't want your code.
Write code for a platform that wants your code... code for Linux, MacOs and BeOS.

Re:API != Source code

[Surak]

"Qualified" representatives of "OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs," huh? Who determines who is and is not qualified? What determines who is an OEM, ISV or IHV?

Micros~1 already makes its Windows source code available to "qualified representatives" of certain OEMs, ISVs and IHVs through licensing and non-disclosure agreements. How does this change anything?

Aye, there's the rub.

[Black Parrot]

> Well of course opening the source code would prevent MS from keeping API secrets to themselves in order to make their own apps run better.

The willingness to die is surely over secret APIs, but not for the reason you suspect. If Microsoft is forced to reveal the "internal" (aka "hidden") APIs, then their main problem isn't the direct loss of that advantage - it's the loss of deniability. When accusations of hidden APIs are replaced by knowledge of hidden APIs, Microsoft's PR disaster ratchets up by a quantum leap. More fuel for the 200+ lawsuits. More customers just saying 'no' to Microsoft. More people agreeing with the judge that Microsoft can't be trusted on anything.

ps. - The AV article refers back to the time before the hammer came down. Was Microsoft's proposed "except internal" modification to the DoJ plan one of the accepted items, or one of the rejected items?

--

Because...

[mindstrm]

It's so simple when you get to the heart of it.

If we had source to Office, we would know *exactly* what it's file formats are. This is the "ip" that MS wants to protect.

So.. to the non-computer literate, they would see this as microsoft protecting it's technological advancements, and to those like us, we just see them keeping something a secret just so nobody else can work with it. There' snothing technically advanced about it at all.

API != Source

[mindstrm]

And that's a fact. THey don't have to give away source...
they just have to discolse, 100%, the entire programming interface available for writing windows software. The *ENTIRE* thing.

This is analogous to knowing what the linux system calls are, as well as what the library functions of the standard libraries we use are. We do not necessarily need source to any of these components to makefull use of it.

The problem with MS is that they don't release thisinformation completely,and use that fact to their own advantage.

Re:API != Source code

[Merk]

Microsoft will of course be the one to decide who's qualified right? And they'll do it by allowing only MCSE's or whatever the highest "microsoft indoctrination degree" is.

Actually, I think the judge is on to most of MS's trickery and will probably have some independant 3rd party qualify people.

We have to realize

[GauteL]

That the car-analogy is not good when it comes
to software.
Even though you might be able to figure out
how a car operates, it is still very expensive
to copy it.
Besides, it is also much easier to find out
if your competitor uses your copyrighted work.

By releasing the source code, what's to stop
a competitor of from using it in their closed
source-project?
It will be rather impossible to prove it.
Because of this, open source is not always the
right decision.
If you are afraid of other people stealing your
ideas, open source is not for you.

And now for something completely different:
the introduction seemed to talk about
open APIs. Open APIs is _not_ the same as
"open source".
Microsoft should be forced to open up all their
APIs to give competitors a fair chance.
It would however be difficult to know wether
MS has opened all of their APIs, or just some.
It is like saying: "give me all your cash", and
then _not_ strip search the person afterwards.

Re:We have to realize

[Robert Wilde]

Good idea!

In spite of what some may say, it's not even all that revolutionary. As I mentioned elsewhere on this thread, there was once a very heated legal debate about whether object code could be legally copyrighted.

If you think about it, for a book or any other copyrighted material you purchase, you acquire access to the "source." I don't think software should be any different.

Imagine this world, software vendors distribute their programs on CD entirely in source since object code is not copyrightable. The makefile has some "copy protection" scheme that binds an executable to your specific hardware. Sure, it's cumbersome to reinstall the binaries when you upgrade, but that insures you won't give away your source code CD.

I think software vendors rights could be just as strongly protected as they are now. And users would have access to the source code of the software they purchased, making sure that any evil intentions are exposed in public.

Re:We have to realize

[sadr]

A much better solution would be to require ALL software to have the source-code published to receive copyright protection. It would go on file with the Library of Congress, just like any other copyrighted work.

First, this would fix the problem of a competitor stealing your code in a "closed source" project, because there would be no closed source. I'm sure a market would come into existance for a program to search a competitor's software for bits of yours.

It would make it possible for people to make "after-market" versions, much like customized cars. The original manufacturer would still sell copies, but people should have the right to purchase a modified version of a peice of software if they require it. Patches could be distributed by any third party that you want to contract to do the work.

It might make it somewhat easier for people to copy an algorithm, but that's ok, IMO. There's always patents to protect algorithms.

Re:That is silly!

[remande]

The GPL requires that, if you distribute the software, you grant the same GPL rights that you yourself have been granted, such as right to distribute (with source code et al).

An NDA would specifically remove those rights, so NDAs are incompatible with GPLs.

Re:Disclosed Source != Open-Source

[zavyman]

Again, as mentioned by others, the reason books are "open-source" is becuase the ideas put into them are generally only specific to the book itself. There is no reason for anyone to steal any of the chapters and put them somewhere else, becuase there is not much use for them outside the scope of the book. Of course there are things that can be stolen, such as methods of characterization and development of plot, but those are not protected by copyright law anyway.

Enter software. Software's main job is simply to describe the means of getting something done. In a sense, this is just like the book on calculus as mentioned by another poster. Anyone can take the ideas shown in the book and apply them elsewhere, be it new books or a computer program. Copyright law does not cover that.

The problem we have here is that the value of software is simply the implementation of certain methods. If the source is revealed, the ideas can easily be adopted in another program. Face it, there are not too many ways of expressing an algorithm. The most important reason why software can be sold to support a company lies in the "trade secrets", if you will, contained inside the software. Many, many companies like Adobe depend on selling their methods to consumers. After all, what is computer software but a collection of functions.

Software certainly should not be patentable, and copyrights in an open source format surely do not afford much protection. So it seems that the only way for business to continue in computer software is to keep closed-source computing. It's just the way it is.

Bad Analogy

[leereyno]

Unlike cars, computer software doesn't require high-level physical universe engineering and contrsuction methods. If you wanted to clone a car, you'd end up spending more money doing so than it would cost to buy 1000 other cars just like it. I don't know about you, but I don't have the metallurgical skills to cast an engine block, then machine it out to the correct tolerances. I also could't weld the frame together. Don't forget all the plastic parts that cars use, you'd have to mix the plastics, the mold them and I don't have the machinery to do that either. I might be able to stitch together a car seat cover, but that won't do me much good by itself. Source code on the other hand, can be used by anyone who knows how to write code. All you need are some development tools such as an editor, a compiler, and a debugger. The skills to use them can be easily learned by anyone with a triple digit IQ. Making commercial software open source is about like giving your competitors keys to your development labs. I'm personally sick of all these guys who don't run companies, and who in truth probably aren't out of school yet, preaching the gospel of how everything should be open source. When you make something open-source, you're doing more than publishing code. You're publishing the ideas behind your code. Those ideas are what software companies really want to protect, not the copyright on some file. In Microsoft's case, I think the motives are far more sinister. They want to create and maintain an advantage over other developers who write code for windows. They do more than keep the implementation secret, they keep portions of the api itself secret. This is what happens when one company (or group, or person) has too much power. Everyone acts in their own best interest, or in the best interest of their community. When there are lots of companies which are actively competing with each other, it is in each companies' best interest to cater to the needs of their customers as much as possible. But when there is less competition it becomes more profitable for companies to exploit their customers. Competitors are treated as cancers which must be stomped out of existence. This is what has happened with Microsoft. Lee

Re:API != Source code

[Froqen]

Indeed, Be Inc publish their API (with extensive documentation) for interfacing with their Operating System, the BeOS.
Open API, close source. As a BeOS programmer, I can say it works fine.

Do you really think Be has ALL of thier APIs open? I seriously doubt it. Any good code will break down an implementation of a public API into smaller peices. These peices each have an API, but they are subject to change, hence they are private. Opening up private API's can only lead to people using them, and these apps would break on almost any reimplementation or change. Not having an app work on the next version of a product is bad thing for buissness and exceptance of the next version of the component.

People using private API's are the ones that break on the next version of the project. If customers really need access to certain types of internal data, as have happend with virus scanners, then the custimer feedback may lead to some clean up work and some private APIs may be come published, or a new API will be created as an abstraction layer. A public API in the commericial world is an expensive thing. The interface may need to be cleaned up code wise, documentation work including sample code, a much higher degree of testing needs to be done, and developer support will have to cover it for as long as the API is on the market (forever). From my perspective the testing is the more expensive part.

This remains to be seen. . .

[werdna]

There is a body of law, generally entitled "misuse defenses," whereby a claim that a party plaintiff had wrongly asserted patent rights in violation of antitrust (and sometimes in other circumstances) was a complete defense to patent infringement.

The defense was later extended to Copyright, and then to trademark defenses.

In its heyday, the defense was so popular and strong as to give rise to an automatic inclusion of the defense in every answer. The Federal circuit, at least in recent years, has literally castrated the defense, however.

No doubt, Microsoft has been adjudicated a monopoly. further, Microsoft has been adjudicated an antitrust violator. These two elements are by far the most expensive and difficult to prove in a misuse defense generally, and are now auto-proved in cases against MS.

However, another interesting question relates to the causation issue, whether the anticompetitive conduct must be related to the particular assertion of IP assets. In a case entirely unrelated to the government's lawsuit, involving a patent (not asserted by the government), can it be argued that the anticompetitive conduct of MS generally relates in any way to its subsequent assertion of that patent. Under applicable law, at least for Federal circuit patent law, this may well be difficult, perhaps impossible, for the defendant to prove.

For Copyrights and Trademarks, interestingly enough, it may be much easier for a defendant.

In any case, clients I represented before leaving the law had some success making this argument against Microsoft in the Copyright and Trademark context, at least for the purpose of preliminary motions. But time will tell how the law will come out on this matter.

I don't think Professor Moglen's suggestion is anything like a slam-dunk, but it is certainly one of the many new litigable issues arising from the ashes of this case.

The biggest and most interesting question is how resolution of this case will ease money damage claims by all the aggreived parties in civil antitrust actions.

Destroys Trade Secrecy Protections/EULA abuses

[werdna]

Copyright only protects against the appropriation of expression by reproduction, distribution or derivation from the original expression. It does not protect against independent development. Microsoft formerly could have relied upon trade secrecy, false and funky documentation and its EULA non-reverse engineering provisions to stick it to those who would attempt to Clean Room the products.

Open Sourcing does two things -- it exposes the technology for review and specification for independent development, and destroys all trade secrets.

It does not, however, preclude assertions of patent protections, which may ultimately be Microsoft's last refuge. Ironically, the two most seminal cases in weakening software patent protections, STAC v. Microsoft and Reiffin (sp?) v. Microsoft, may serve to limit the extent to which Microsoft can stop derivative abuse of its remaining IP rights.

Trade secrecy, while not the most popular tricks, is often the wild card that makes most software cases settle.

While not a panacea, for reasons already noted, open sourcing of Microsoft's code really is a big deal.

This is why...

[prizog]

This is why RMS suggest you use the term Free Software. Free as in Freedom. With Free Software (and software that fits the "Open Source Definition", but they couldn't get a TM on "Open Source"), you have the Freedom to modify and distribute software. "Open Source" doesn't imply this - that's why RMS doesn't like it. I agree.
-Dave Turner.

Lots of "disclosed source" proprietary SW

[isdnip]

Disclosing source is not the same as "open source". For instance, Digital Equipment Corp. long distributed source code with its VAX/VMS operating system. Typically on microfiche, to be sure, but the idea was that a user should be able to look at the source in order to figure out its behavior. I'm not sure if all of the comments were left in the public fiches, though.

Copyright remains, and they still didn't give away the right of unlicensed use. But it helped keep things reliable. Hell, Windows NT is directly derived from VMS (David N Cutler led both efforts). So certainly MS could disclose Windows sources without giving anything away.

Re:API != Source code

[UnknownSoldier]

> It's highly unlikely that Microsoft has a "Secret Win32 API" manual floating around it's headquarters

No, but they do have one for the Native NT calls.

Inside the native NT API

and

Inside Native Applications

tough for small companies...

[eries]

I work for a company that has been grappling with this for a while now. One of our big selling points (to investors) is our "proprietary technology" that we have developed. I've been pushing for us to open-source, but it's tricky because then our competitors might immediately grab our nifty new features and we'd lose our competitive edge. So, if anyone has ideas about how to convince our investors to go ahead and open-source anyway, I'd love to hear.

One argument I know will work is that by going open-source we'll attract a lot of attention from places like /. - so if you can find it in your heart to come take a look at the open-source project home page we've set up (http://enzyme.sourceforge.net) that would help too...

thanks!

Want to work at Transmeta? MicronPC? Hedgefund.net? AT&T?

Old WWIV license and Microsoft

[bmo]

Back in the day....

Back in the day, when someone wanted the source code to the popular BBS program "WWIV", all one had to do was pay a nominal fee (it wasn't a huge price, compared to a full shrink-wrapped version of Winblows). After that and a few re-writes later, you had yourself a custom BBS that nobody else had.

The owner of WWIV did not lose any rights *at all* when he sold the source code. Woe be to the one who put up an unregisterd BBS on WWIVNET without paying the piper for the source.

Releasing code != loss of IP rights.

Needless to say, WWIV was wildly popular, and spawned a couple of mutant children, Telegard and Renegade.

It is still available, at http://www.wwiv.com

Microsoft's complaint of IP loss is utter bullshit, and anyone with half a clue and a sense of history knows it. Hopefully Judge Jackson and the Justice Department will not fall for their dubious rouse.

There are lies, damn lies, and Steve Ballmer press conferences.

Source Code vs. Object Code

[Robert Wilde]

Quite a long time ago, when consumer computer software was a rather new thing - there was a raging legal argument about whether or not object code was even covered by copyright.

The arguments against centered on the claim that object code was entirely functional and not expressive (pure funtionality is not copyrightable unlike creative expressions).

Of course, computer object code was eventually ruled a copyrightable medium. It's a shame object code was not determined to be entirely functional. To protect their software, computer programs would then have to be released in source code with a makefile that bound the object code to your hardware. It would be somewhat cumbersome to reinstall software whenever you upgraded, but software authors rights would be protected and users rights to fully inspect their software would be assured. I think the impact to the software industry would have been entirely positive.

In any event, of course proprietary code can be "open source." That's why I prefer the term free code or free software since a plain english reading of "open source" (rather than Open Source) just means you have access to the code - and says nothing more.

Open Source bad for IP, Open API good.

[LordHunter317]

The fact is, Open source is bad for IP. If someone takes your source and steals it, and places it in a closed-source program, you are going to have a hard time proving it. If you haven't noticed, people really don't care about what you use open source software for, that's really what the GPL is all about (sharing software while protecting the author's rights). However, open APIs are good for IP. AFter all, what good is a piece of software if nobody can program it because all the specs are locked up? I think the answer is nothing, but please correct me if I am wrong. Second off, open APIs encourgage more people to use your software, lots of people aren't willing to pay thousands of dollars for an API they may use once. Not that any of this matters to Microsoft. For the time being, the have the monopoly, and they can do whatever they want, including force people to pay fortunes for software. They just don't have any realy competition. Now in time, this all may change, or maybe not.

Re:Disclosed Source != Open-Source

[xnerd00x]

Computer source code is no different. If released in a non-Open-Source manner, it allows people to inspect code, but not copy it. New "features" in other programs are safe; they cannot be copied from the source (and even if they were, if all companies had to disclose their source it would be very easy to check for copied code).

What stops companies from releasing a product with the same feature as an open sourced application, that copied the code from that open sourced application, tweaked a few things, and then released their own closed-source product, saying that they did not copy that code?

Or what stops companies from just looking at the source, studying it, and then implementing it the same way as the open source app they got it from? All the hard work done by the open source coders, along with the money that was paid to them would be meaningless, as any other company can just look at the source, see how things were done, and then re-implement the feature themselves - but the hard work of designing and coming up with the best alorithms would be lost since it was open sourced. No, i do not think you can open source software without it being free - as in beer, 'cause human(corporate) nature says "what's the easiest and fastest way to make money?" And that would be to copy code, then tweak it a little bit. I mean, who can really say that it was copied? And even harder to prosecute are companies that stole the design and implementation, but then coded it themselves. They did not copy the software, but they did steal the hardest part of the work - the design. Therefore, you cannot open the source without losing money, since you would be giving away the design as well as the algorithms in how you did things, and companies can just steal that and say they did it themselves and release it as proprietary with no real concrete way to prove they did copy.

RTFM

[noc]

Open Source: (Oh-pehn Sor-ss): Source code for a given application is readily available to those who use the application.

You see. Nowhere in there does it say that the people get the source for free. Nor does it state that you cannot sell the source with the application and restrict the source only to those who have purchased a license.

That's just plain wrong. Unless you're using a markedly different definition than the one the rest of the world uses. It's true that open source does not equal free software, but they're almost the same in practice. From the Open Source Definition:

The license may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost -- preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.

Support / Ease of Reverse Engineering

[sfbanutt]

I can see two reasons why a company might not want to distribute source code with their applications.

The first is that it could potentially be a support nightmare. People who know just enough about programming and software to make small, "minor", changes, but not enough to debug the problem when they go wrong. And since they paid for the software, they feel entitled to have someone at the vendor fix the mistake for them. This will probably start happening in the Free Software / Open Source world as well, but Free software maintainers can send people away without fear of lost sales. Commercial vendors have to at least appear to be trying to keep customers happy.

The second reason that occurs to me is that having the source available would make reverse engineering an application relatively trivial. Want to see how that cool feature of a competitor's package was implemented? Buy a copy and look at the source. Then have some one write a detailed description of the algorithm that can be passed to someone that hasn't seen the source for implementation. Mind you, I think this is actually a non-issue except for a few, "innovative", algorithms, but it has to be a concern.

I think the long term benefits of opening the API (greater third party support, longer product life cycles, etc.) greatly outweigh the short term benefits of keeping it closed. However, U.S. companies tend to think on a quarterly basis...

jim nutt

Re:Isn't this what MS did to Apple?

[Animats]

Didnt Steve Jobs let Gates in on some of the source code of the Mac OS and showed it to him earlier and such? Look what happened: Microsoft made windows (an almost identical copy) and now Apple is a niche market.

No. Apple and Microsoft have litigated over "look and feel", (the "trash can" case) but the internals of Windows and the Mac aren't even vaguely similar.

Gates WAS willing to "release source"

[gnarly]

As I recall at one point during the negociations Gates admitted off camera that he would be willing to settle for "opening the source code" or some language like that. The next day he denied it but several reporters heard him say it. Clearly, when bargaining you don't want to give away what your cave-in point is.

Does any one remember this incident better than me?

That is silly!

[www.sorehands.com]

GPL requires the distribution of source code. Now, how can you have an NDA on what you MUST distribute?

But, if you talk about a NDA source code licence, with a license to freely distribute the results (read executible/object code), then that might work. But it's not an NDA.

Many companies (include M$) has been doing this in a way for years. They would provide source code for libraries, which you may use to build products, as long as they are not a "new version" of what they provide to you. If you have Raima DataManger Source, you can't produce a RDM set of libaries of your own, but you can include it in your application. But M$ says in some of theirs, you can use it, but only on platforms they approve of.

Re:License to steal

[Snocone]

People will steal anything that's not nailed down...

And if you can pry it up, it's not nailed down!

Seriously now, RMS says that he copies music without a problem ... so why on earth should the rest of us respect the copyright-based restrictions on GPL code any more than he respects the copyright-based restrictions on music? None of the other GPL zealots around here seem to have any cognitive dissonance with advocating music piracy in pretty much the same breath as advocating enforcing the GPL either, for that matter. Odd, isn't it?

Anyway, I do a lot of porting work, and from what I see all source code that's made public gets used in commercial software no matter WHAT license happens to be attached it. I don't make a fuss about it, I just pretend I don't know what I'm looking at. Life's too short to try to change human nature, and hey, I'm just in this for the money :)

Isn't this what MS did to Apple?

[piku]

Microsoft doesn't want to open source because they know what would happen if they did - they did do it themselves...

Didnt Steve Jobs let Gates in on some of the source code of the Mac OS and showed it to him earlier and such? Look what happened: Microsoft made windows (an almost identical copy) and now Apple is a niche market.

The facts may not all be straight, buts its right in principal :P

Intellectual Property

[zencelt]

The idea of intellectual property evolved as a legal concept to protect the creative efforts of individuals. Not to put to fine a point on it, IP was originally intended to protect authors from publishers -- in short to help people not comoanies. Surprise surprise the companies got a hold of it and now its the basis for an anticompetitive monopoly.

OK, enough of that. What MS is trying to do here is leverage its "property" right to fight the break up. This will no doubt slow the process down. But historically, the courts have viewed IP rights in much the same way as they do property rights generally. They are not absolute rights. And MS is likely to find that its ownership of IP provides it limited leverage with the courts for that very reason.

A number of posters have noted that giving access to source code/APIs doesn't alter MS's ownership rights, MS will still own them and they can not be copied exactly without permission from MS. Opening them up would make it easier to use them for all.

Furthermore, MS would have an obligation to vigorously pusue anyone who copied without permission or used them in violation of whatever permission MS granted. Because the case law makes it clear that the only way to protect a copyright and a trademark is to vigorously pursue all violators you know of. An owner who fails to do this will eventually find that the property is in the public domain. Asprin started out as a brand name and came to be used as a label for all products containing ... well asprin. By the time the orginal manufacturer got around to fighting the trademark infringement, the courts found that asprin had become a generic name for a class of products. Through inaction, the manufacturer had lost a very powerful brand name.

Just for clarity's sake, under IP law, one can not own an idea, one can only own the way the idea is expressed. This ownership is limited to a pretty exact way of expressing the idea. No one can copy exactly the way an idea is expressed without violating copyright law. But even fairly minor variations seem to be permissible.

So, MS could never own the idea of, for example, the particular approach to connecting and communicating with a printer, but it can and does have the right to own the exact code that performs this.

The really open question is how different code would have to be to from the original to avoid copyright infringement. I don't think there is any answer to this question, not even a very good theoretical one right now.

None of this apparently applies to patents where the patent office is willing to issue a patent for a very broad idea of a task and how to accomplish it, and then, under current patent law, virtually all techniques for accomplishing that task are covered by the patent and and owned by the owner of the patent, whether or not the patent owner come up with it. But even patents are limited rights.

One final problem for MS is that opening up all of this puts all of this in a fairly public realm. No only must MS protect its code from unauthorized uses, the users will then have the right to challenge whether MS had the right to copyright the code in the first place. This question lead to the demise of Ashton-Tate (does this date me?). Just maybe MS, the bastion of 'inovation', has actually used some other folks' code without permission or copyrighted public domain code rather than innovating all of its code on its own. Competitors might also charge that certain parts of MS's code were exactly like the competitors' code and that the offending code was written by former employees who now work for MS and knew about or perhaps even wrote the original code. Even if none of these things are true, competitors would be able to argue them and ask a court to decide -- delaying and winning at least temporary competitive advantage from the use of MS's proprietary code (if it turns out to be MS's code).

Of course, if only the API (and not the source code) is "open", the source code problems don't arise. And the only reason to fight release of the API code is to prevent competitors applications from running on the MSOS as well as MS's proprietary apps. And why would anyone imagine MS behaving in such a blatantly anticompetitive fashion -- there must be some other reason that explains this and I just haven't thought of yet.

Microsoft is one thing, a small company is another

[Kogun]

Microsoft has plenty of resources to protect their copyright, and because of their size. They are the exception rather than the rule when it comes to generalizing. Small companies will always find it easier to keep their source unpublished rather than go to court to pursue infringement after the damage is done.

Visibility is irrelevant to IP

[isomeme]

Making source code available has absolutely no impact on ownership of that code (or binaries derived from it). This discussion comes up in the Perl community all the time, as the only practical way to distribute Perl is as source code. The answer to the FAQ "But how do I protect my intellectual property?" boils down to "Hire a lawyer."

Consider three examples:

1. In order to obtain a patent, giving exclusive rights to an invention, you must file a complete and detailed explanation of your invention, which becomes a matter of public record as soon as the patent is granted.
2. No one would argue that the text of a book cannot be copyrighted, yet clearly books are distributed as "open source".
3. MP3 files are in some senses "source code" -- they allow modification, copying, redistribution, and so forth -- and we're all seeing that copyright holders can and do vigorously sue those who violate their EULAs.

So, in short, distributing source doesn't matter at all on a legal level in protecting your intellectual property rights. The arguments for source hiding all stem from nonlegal arguments -- for example, small players may not be able to afford to pursue violators, or there may be fear of abuse in countries without strong IP rights enforcement.

Copyright law is very strict...

[1337d00d]

...and doesn't work well with source code. When you release the source code, you can simply look at it, extract the algorithms, and reimplement them under your own user interface, with a new product name slapped on top of it. Copyright law doesn't prevent that. Copyright law says that you can't just run the source through GCC, call it Linux Office, and sell it. However, if the actual code is signifigantly different (a different implementation of the same algorithms), then it's fine. This is why licenses were created, to fill the gap between patents and copyrights.

Not necessarily

[CaptainZapp]

As a previous poster pointed out, an API is certainly not the source code. However, this doesn't answer the question if Open Source software should be free. (You certainly shouldn't be charged an arm and a leg just to use the interfaces of a software product). Certainly there's no necessity that software must be given away, just because the source code is provided. There are huge efforts behind software design, coding, production, packaging, marketing and distribution. Giving the source code to the end customer might be an additional sales point if it benefits the customer. A noteable example was one of the most proprietary and (IMO) best operating systems ever: VMS. For an (significant) additional charge customers where able to purchase the source code ( afiew exceptions, like LAT applied). Did this hurt VMS ? I believe actually the opposite. Nobody went along and just copied the operating system. Certainly concepts where copied, but to do that the source code is anyway not required. Finding an analogy in my line of work (consulting in complex, huge and often distributed data management environments) I can't see any significant advantage of keeping customers, who pay a significant hourly rate, in the dark. Quite the opposite: Letting them in on my knowledge (or most of it anyway) is almost a guarantee for repeat business...

It's doable, but...

[krystal_blade]

I beleive this is a great idea. As the article says, integration improves, software improves, the computer runs more smoothly, EVERYONE IS HAPPY...

Except for the fact that large end software corporations feel they have the need to protect more than smaller ones. They also feel that denying the right to view the source gives them additional leverage against competing software vendors, simply because in programming, as in life, there are numerous ways to skin the same cat. Intellectual Property rights have limits, and once you find a way around a certain string of code or section, there (technically) wouldn't be a whole lot Company A could do to Company B.

For a good example, you can take a look at the numerous companies who produce so called "hole-less" security systems, and then hide behind IP rights to protect their source code from scrutiny. These companies maintain that since their "source code" is under lock and key, it is inherantly more secure than "open sourced" security. Rubbish. What these companies are afraid of is someone taking THEIR good idea, re-writing all the garbage code, and releasing a program that is good enough to put them out of business.

Companies with money to lose really don't (and I don't blame them) want to gamble on Open Sourcing themselves to other programmers, AND attempting to get an angle on the market. It's more difficult to have a trade secret if you let it out for all to see.

krystal_blade

Simple Solution

[chaillet]

I work for a small company that has mostly done contract programing. We are now moving towards a product building phase and have put together some thoughts on open source. As were are a for-profit organization we must charge for the stuff we produce. However, there has been an official management decision to make the full source to all of our [future] products (that we have licensing control over, i.e. not contract work) freely available at no charge (download from site) with no prior purchase of the product neccessary.

The framework for our developing license is this (from http://www.ipninc.com/opensource/:

Although we may license some of our products as free-of-charge for personal use, or completely free-of-charge, or even GPL'd, the majority of our products will remain under a commercial Open Source license available for a reasonable fee. The gist of it being:

• Our source code may be freely distributed as long as it remains unmodified. Community modifications to the source code must be distributed separately from our source distribution.
• In order for community modifications to be included with our source distribution they must be submitted to, approved, and distributed by us. We do not pay for community contributions
• We will never charge for any community modifications submitted to and distributed by us, but we retain the right to distribute them
• Compilation of the source for investigative or educational purposes is acceptable; Use of compiled binaries without an appropriate license is not.

This sort of license still offers the benefits of Open Source while allowing us to remain in business.

As I said, this license is still "under development" and we as of yet have no products to apply it too but we still think its a good idea.

Don't Forget About Trade Secrets

[cdickens76]

There is an important point that you miss. Besides the difficulty of enforcing Copyrights on Software, which provides a motivation to not release source code. Microsoft almost assuredly considers its implementation the Windows OS to be a trade secret. And in order to keep trade secret status for their implementation they have to keep it a secret. Whatever your feelings of the Company or their products they do have a right to protect their IP, which they have spent huge amounts of money developing.

Chris Dickens

MS should, and already does, disclose source

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft already does disclose source, not just full api's, in several different ways. First, to selected "partners" who sign non-disclosure ageements. Secondly, class libraries are fully provided (in source) for VC++, or were with the last edition I bought, which was over two years ago, though.

MS has everything to gain by revealing source, without necessarily granting rights to copy. MS is different from a small company that may be trying to market some novel idea and thinks it needs to keep the source secret to do so. MS can gain market share without such secrecy. But MS will be stranded unless it can get developers to write for its API. These developers will increasingly be migrating to Linux and other unix-like systems which open all source. Developers will not trust MS unless source is revealed, I feel, and the courts may require that it be revealed at least to court-appointed inspectors to insure that MS is honestly providing all the API's it should.

Finally, most of the kind of code MS has in its system and applications is nothing special. It is very easy without even reverse engineering to come up with something which does exactly the same, given the API's or headers normally provided to developers today. Exceptions might be new media formats, encryption/decryption algorithms, etc. Stuff that really is unique. Again, most windowing and office productivity software is just more of the same and the techniques have been well known for years. There is nothing special about Microsoft's code - it's just that MS has been in a monopoly position regarding the use of that code (much of which is exactly the same code shared with OS2 jointly developed between MS and IBM which is not that different from what Macintosh or X uses).

If MS does not reveal the code to its operationg system then that system is doomed to rapid extinction. It can happen in a year - certainly in two years. Look how fast Amiga and Os2 and Atari went down from the leading systems for games, corporate desktops and music to not even second tier in terms of market share within one or two years.

Perhaps MS operating systems will be forced to reverse the trend of corrupting open standards and hidden apis just to survive.

On the other hand MS may have much to fear. It is likely that in revealing source hidden features that invade the privacy of users, alleged spy hooks hidden in the code in collusion with the NSA and other spook agencies, and so forth, will come to light. Maybe the risk is too great that these features might be revealed, because they are highly criminal - much worse than abusing a "monopoly". This could lead to criminal charges against MS executives involved. At least those who speculate about such hidden features could be proven right or wrong in making those allegations if source is revealed. MS cannot easily change or hide this they way they can destroy incriminating emails because of checksums and other well known tools to validate changes in software when it is recompiled and compared with older versions.

One way or another, I am not worrying. MS will open up in a reasonable manner and truly attempt to interoperate with open standards or it will go under. It will be interesting to observe the choices that the company or companies make in the near future.

Open Source != Free Software

[Chas]

Open Source: (Oh-pehn Sor-ss): Source code for a given application is readily available to those who use the application.

You see. Nowhere in there does it say that the people get the source for free. Nor does it state that you cannot sell the source with the application and restrict the source only to those who have purchased a license. Open source IN NO WAY obligates a licensee to returning any customization/debugged code to the codebase.

Open Source can be developed by a private company, without any outside development from the Free Software community. Star Office, UBB, and VMWare are nods in this direction.

Example: ThingamaWidget2000 is a popular OS program. But it's not Free Software. It's commmercial, and source code for the software is only issued to those who have a ThingamaWidget2000 license. This gives the licensee the ability to customize/debug their copy of ThingamaWidget2000 to their specific setup..


Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:API != Source code

[IntlHarvester]

One way to get around it thoough would be for MS to just document it all.

It's highly unlikely that Microsoft has a "Secret Win32 API" manual floating around it's headquarters. In many cases, I'd bet the source code (and the comments therein) is the documentation.

Microsoft shall disclose to ISVs, IHVs, and OEMs in a Timely Manner, in whatever media Microsoft disseminates such information to its own personnel, all APIs, Technical Information and Communications Interfaces that Microsoft employs

The court probably knows that a major part of this media is source code access, and therefore MS will need to provide source code to it's competitors until it goes back and rewrites all of the published documentation so that it's good enough for their own developers.

--

slashdot.org and copyright

[antic]

After all, it's still protected by copyright, isn't it?

From previous articles and comments (the 'Microsoft suing' issue specifically), one would think that copyright means nothing to some slashdot.org users...

I don't think that something being "open source" necessitates it being free, but if this group (slashdot readers) is considered somewhat representative of the viewpoints of programmers in general, then I can understand the reluctance of companies to disclose their source code.

Re:API != Source code

[JoeWalsh]

Your point is well taken, but re-read the court's order:

I see your point, but I took it as meaning they had to open their API's. It says certain people will be permitted to see "relevant and necessary portions of the source code," which I would argue will ultimately be interpreted to mean the portions of the code that amounts to the application programming interfaces. That is, the sections that show the calling procedure, and nothing more. There's no reason for anyone to see how the API itself is implemented if the API's are published fully and completely.

Hmm. Well, I have to take that back. There is one reason to look at the underlying source code: to see whether Microsoft is lying about their API's again. But I'll wager that Microsoft will be willing to go to court yet again over that particular issue.

We'll see what comes of it!

-Joe

Sheet music is the "source code" for a song

[K8Fan]

Of course revealing the source doesn't cause a loss of intellectual property rights. Every song is copyrighted. The performance could be considered the binary, the sheet music the source. Sheet music has been available for far longer than recordings, but others having that "source" does not lessen the ability of the copyright owner to enforce their IP rights. (Just ask ASCAP, BMI, SESAC or The Harry Fox Agency.)

Re:No, it doesn't. License=! enforcement

[Money__]

You're confusing licence enforcement issues with the actual licence. Yes, people copy software. Yes, some people don't get caught. No, there's not a lot people can do about that, but so what.

Re:" Who here really believes that simply by attaching a license to software, everyone will politely follow the terms of that license to the letter?"
(raising hand)
It's part of the deal. It's a contract. An agreement between 2 parties wishing to do trade. If I release a piece of software and I find that the licence has been broken, I know that, under the law, I have some course of action to try and fix the situation. Without the licence in place, there is no framework of agreement should a dispute arise.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?
___

Why MS doesn't want to do this.

[Arker]

Does 'Open Source' Have To Mean 'Free'?

Absolutely not. In an earlier era many programs (early unixices and CPM for example) were distributed as source instead of or in addition to binaries, without even attempting to be Free Software. Those two examples were just as proprietary as MS-Windows and MacOS are today, but the source code was readily available to licensees. There are still cases like that today, Star Office comes to mind as a program you can get the source to but is not Free Software, I am sure we could all think of dozens and dozens of examples. Most people will obey the license agreement, and those that don't can and should be sued and ruined whenever detected. Civil society is impossible if the majority are dishonest, and it behooves a society to recognise that fact.

That said, one of my first examples probably explains why MS hates this idea and will fight tooth and nail against it - since the evidence indicates that they probably used the source code to CPM (which they held a license to at the time) to get MS-DOS 1.0 out in time to get that lucrative contract with IBM, and eventually kill off Digital Research, the creators of that code. Ah, the irony of it all.

An example...

[ChrisRijk]

Sun distribute their Java code (just follow the click-through license) - it comes as standard with the SDK. Sun still have the copyright on Java. (this is actually the reason why Sun pulled out of the ISO/ECMA stuff - they were told/thought they'd be able to keep the copyright, but when they found out they couldn't, they pulled out)

Bill Gates will say just about anything to protect the Windows monopoly and is playing to the court of (non technical) public opinion mostly these days. He'd also tell you that Windows is 'open' if you asked - reminds me of that joke "How many Microsoft people does it take to change a lightbulb? None - they redefine dark as light".

Death? Nice term, that.

[Effugas]

"fight to the death anything that threatens its intellectual property".

[WARNING: Rant follows. That I'm ending up writing this right after I wrote this very pro-Microsoft technical defense on Kuro5hin just makes me angrier.]

Death, eh? Exactly what kind of death are they referring to?

Perhaps they're talking about the infamous "Écran bleu de la mort", better known as the Blue Screen Of Death? Quite a few companies have been dying slow, ignomious deaths due to their inability to avoid these failures. Take Novell. It's the year 2000, and they still don't have a version of their Novell Client software that won't eventually and near-irrevocably cause to die(ooh!) some poor Windows 9x machine that just wants to connect to a Novell server.

Lets see now. We've got a Microsoft developer's impending death here...we've got the individual users' Win9x machines quite dead...Microsoft themselves? Hm, they're doing just fine. Not Dead Yet. Doing Just Fine. They sure seem to know how to add a core networking layer to Win9x; why should anybody else be able to?

Actually, why should anyone else be able to do anything without delivering unto Microsoft that which the stockholders demand? Using Windows 2000 to host your secure website means you've got to pay $3,000.00 to them for the right to do so. Sounds like any small business trying to sell a few t-shirts just got priced out of the market--oops, death of a little guy who suspiciously ain't Microsoft. Oh, I should be fair though. Microsoft doesn't require you to spend $3000.00 for a license; they'd be happy to just limit you to a small number of simultaneous purchases. That way, if your small business gets Slashdotted one day, and an unexpected number of people come in to buy some product, Windows 2000 will send your customers away, as you just didn't pay enough of a (protection) fee to Microsoft.

When your expensive server hardware running an expensive server operating system dies on customers because you didn't buy an expensive enough access license, lemme tell you, it ain't Microsoft who's hurting there. It ain't Microsoft who lost any sales--sure, that server may get wiped out and be replaced by Linux. But that's after that first sale. You might say Microsoft could at least experience some pain by loss of future sales, because either a) Some business(like yours) would crumble because it couldn't recoup their losses, or b) Some business(like yours) would never again buy a Microsoft server. The former posits yet another death--this time, again, of somebody Other Than Microsoft--but lets examine the latter. How easy is it to migrate away from Microsoft?

Not at all, and getting harder. Frontpage Extensions are an explicit play at tying the desktop OS to the server OS--make a business dependent on the integration, and reap the rewards when they go down in flames trying to live without it. Yes, Linux is getting support for Frontpage Extensions. But we have to wonder how long such cross platform compatibilities will be allowed--Microsoft's already banned interoperability with one file format on patent grounds(don't try to parse ASF if you're anyone else but MS; I suppose DOC is next).

The bottom line in my mind is that, when Microsoft starts talking about fighting to the death, they mean it--they've had no problem using their financial might to crush anyone who isn't convenient to them, and that appears to include their own customers, developers, and end users.

If there's one thing tragic here, it's that good, honestly respectible technical work gets disgraced because of its association to truly ugly business practices.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Disclosed Source != Open-Source

[Millennium]

Just because a company might have to disclose its source doesn't mean that it has to do so in an Open-Source manner. Look at books. The "source" for books is right out there for anyone to see; that's just how books are. But no one's intellectual property is damaged, because just because you can see it doesn't mean you can copy it.

Computer source code is no different. If released in a non-Open-Source manner, it allows people to inspect code, but not copy it. New "features" in other programs are safe; they cannot be copied from the source (and even if they were, if all companies had to disclose their source it would be very easy to check for copied code).

Now, does Open-Source work in this way? The jury's still out on that one. My guess is that IP as we know it would likely cease to exist (it would still be there, but in a form very much unlike what we see IP as today). Other companies could copy Open-Source code, though by its nature they would have to be Open-Source as well in order to do this, so the company from which the code was copied could retaliate by copying some of the copier's code also. This very quickly becomes pointless.

Would it mean that software could not be sold? Absolutely not! This is what most suits, media, etc. don't get. It does mean shifting to a business model which is radically different from the proprietary models we see today. But that alone does not mean it is not possible. Consider this: the proprietary system works on a premise not too much unlike extortion; the user pays for permission to use the program, rather than the program itself. This is obviously not possible with Open-Source, since permission to use the program is implicit; if the software exists you have permission to use it.

However, there are other business models in the world today which could be adapted to be used for software. The one which will probably first be tried, even if it's the most annoying to end-users, is corporate sponsorship. This is what's used for television, radio, and most Websites. You do not pay for permission to watch TV or listen to radio. However, corporations pay for these shows' production, usually in return for advertising space.

Corporate sponsorship not your thing? Try consulting. A firm is paid to either develop completely new software (usually for a company which needs something) or to add new features to an existing piece of software. This is not as unprofitable as it may sound; many consultants make even more money than the highest-paid programmers as most "traditional" software companies (executives are another matter, of course, but executives don't code). Why would this work? Consider the postal service. It's cheap, and it gets the job done. But do you send really important packages through it? Not likely; you'll pay FedEx or UPS or some other delivery service to do it. Why? Because these services are faster and more reliable. The same is true for a consulting firm. Open-SOurce software is always evolving, but it does so in a more or less random way. You can simply not pay and wait for the features you need to evolve, but this will take a long time (and there's no guarantee the features you want will evolve anyway). You pay a consultant because you know the feature will make it into the software, and it will get there much faster than if it were simply coded by unpaid coders in their spare time.

There are other models. One popular idea is to have companies charge only for support. I'm not so sure this one is really all that viable, because not everyone needs or wants support. In the end you'd certainly make enough to fund the support efforts, but would you make enough to fund new programming? I'm not so sure. But this is just one model out of many; no model is appropriate in all cases.

But no matter how you slice it, there are plenty of business models which can be adapted to work with Open-Source software. And simply making companies disclose their source changes nothing at all, if you allow them to continue to keep their programs proprietary (as long as you keep the playing field level, that is, meaning all companies would have to disclose their source).

It's not really open source, people.

[sammy baby]

The popular media has grown fond of saying that the court has "opened the source" to the Windows operating system. That's not really the case. Windows isn't going to be GPLed (or BSDed, or YAOSLed) any time soon. What the document requires Microsoft to do (see section 3b of the decision) is to:

...create a secure facility where qualified representatives of OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs shall be permitted to study, interrorgate, and interact with relevant and necessary portions of the source code and any related documentation...

That's a far cry from downloading GNU Win9x to your dorm room. With all that said, you have to remember that there's a real control issue at stake here for Microsoft. The poster of the original question is on the right track when he suggests that "Not publishing the source code simply gives Microsoft a chance to leverage their monopoly on the market," but perhaps not in the way that he meant. Microsoft isn't worreid about all these people sending in representatives, grabbing copies of the operating system, then releasing them to the world, and if they are... well, they probably shouldn't be. Precisely because they're protected by copyright.

I suspect that MS is scared for three reasons:

• Microsoft isn't going to have the same advantage over other applications vendors that they once did.
• Microsoft actually will have to show the world its dirty laundry, which - if the source code is as ugly as rumors suggest - could be pretty embarassing.
• If Microsoft doesn't comply "in a Timely Manner" with updates, or obfuscates, or is even perceived as doing such, all those ISVs are going to raise a hue and cry. Which brings further investigation by the government. Which is pretty scary to them right now.

Re:API != Source code

[sammy baby]

Your point is well taken, but re-read the court's order:

Microsoft shall create a secure facility where qualified representatives of OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs shall be permitted to study, interrogate and interact with relevant and necessary portions of the source code and any related documentation of Microsoft Platform Software for the sole purpose of enabling their products to interoperate effectively with Microsoft Platform Software (including exercising any of the options in section 3.a.iii).

It's not the GPL, but I'll bet you anything that Microsoft is pissing its collective pants over this.

hit(nail, head);

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

"Does 'Open Source' Have To Mean 'Free'?"

No. That's exactly the problem.

Open Source is all about "better code" or "better security" or "faster development". Free Software is about the human (especially programmer) rights.

I don't understand why people keep trying to come up with ways that companies can release their source code "safely". What we (should) want isn't safe for companies. We want to take some power back from the Sun's, Microsoft's and Corel's of the world. Have access to the source code is just a feature. But the GPL enables a whole new "paradigm" (I don't usually like that word, but it's true here) where IP doesn't apply.
--
Wanna hook MAPI clients to your Tru64/AIX/Linux server?

Our attempt at distributing non-free source

[The-Pheon]

This is an interesting discussion. My company was not ready to dive whole heartedly into the free as in 'speech' or free as in 'beer', but we beleived that people who downloaded and tried out our newest product called dIRC should be able to view, learn from, and fix problems by being able to download the source.

First, the program is distributed in a typical "shareware" fashion. You can download a free evaluation copy and try it out for 30 days. When the program is installed, you agree to a license that says you agree to purchase the program if you continue to use it after 30 days.

We released the source code in an effort to let people learn from it, and if willing, to contribute their code or fixes. During development, we (somewhat surprisingly) had a few requests from people for the source code, as they were curious about how an IRC client would work. We feel that releasing the source does not harm our business, but does help the development community, and potentially the dIRC community as a whole.

The license under which dIRC's source code is distributed states that you may compile the program for personal use. However, modified versions cannot be distributed unless we give written approval. The biggest reason for this is that we do not want multiple, incompatible versions of dIRC floating around on the Internet. You can check out the the license here.

In our case, having the source availible does not mean that our product is free. Dragonmount still whole-heartedly ownes dIRC, but as with the car analogy, you can open it up, poke around, see how it works, make sure it is safe (security), put in a bigger engine (like a 289 in my 1966 mustang, rar!). But however you change your individual car, Ford motor company still owns the design.

This is not a troll (but slightly OT)

[dante921]

First off, I'm not a super tech-head, so I get confused about a lot of things. When I say 'source' I may be using the wrong term. And it goes without saying, IANAL. Anyway...

I realize that this is going to piss off a lot of /., but think about this. A few weeks ago there was a huge stink on /. about MS releasing the source of their version of Kerberos. Now, I know a lot of ppl were upset that MS modified it from the original, but that doesn't come into the point I'm trying to make (I don't think). What happened? /. readers began posting ways to 'get around' the license agreement, linked to sites which had published the source, and in fact on person posted it in its entirety. Some ppl posted it out of anger of the modifications, but most did it with a 'screw MS' mentality. There were arguments over whether or not MS still had any sort of IP rights over it since they had released it to the public, no matter what licensing agreement they had.

My point is this: /. clamors for MS to release the source of 'Project X' because it's only fair/right/their moral obligation. MS does so (believe me, it's not because of /. either), but tries to keep it as their own IP, proprietary, etc. They say 'You can't use any of this in your software, it belongs to us!' which is perfectly legal by copyright/IP law (AFAIK). /. users immediately jump MS case for trying something 'shady' or backhanded, when they are trying to protect what they consider their IP. Some /. readers (who are of course NAL) then say, by publishing it, its not even their IP anymore. It just seems to me that /. readers are very hypocritical when it comes to MS. MS does what is good for MS, and that's it. They don't release source if it is going to hurt them. Don't pretend for a moment that they are going to change. So quit railing against MS. I would love it if /. never posted another story about MS and just let them do what they are going to do.

as someone else's sig says: are you moderating because you agree or disagree, or because of quality?

API != Source code

[JoeWalsh]

The press keeps making this mistake. Opening up the specifications for the programming hooks the operating system offers (opening the API's, in other words), is not the same thing as opening up the source code. The former clearly describes the ways in which applications are expected to interact with the operating system on which they run. The latter is how the API's are created.

This is key. The Microsoft argument that opening their API's would kill them depends on the confusion between API and source code. All they're being asked to do in reality is provide the world with the information it should have had. After all, providing API's is the reason operating systems exist! They should always be made public, or there's no reason to have an operating system, since the application programmers will end up having to write their own interfaces.

Microsoft is just being asked to play fair and do their job correctly. It's not an onerous request!

-Joe

Yes, it _does_

[SMN]

[RANT - this is my opinion; moderate appropriately]

I'm getting pretty sick and tired of hearing about license this, license that, GPL license, BSD license, etc. I can't believe that so many people here on slashdot can sometimes be so optimistic and unreasonable. Who here really believes that simply by attaching a license to software, everyone will politely follow the terms of that license to the letter?

Welcome to the real world - people don't give a damn about licenses. If metallica put a so-called "license" on their next MP3 that said you had to buy their CD to listen to it, no one here would change their piracy practices one bit. If someone sees something they can profit off of and get away with, they'll take the opportunity in a flash.

In fact, I'd be surprised in Windows didn't have any code either from GPLed programs or heavily inspired by them. We've already seen all their other illegal and immoral business practices, and such a transgression would be nothing to them. And how would they ever be caught? If anyone here honestly puts that below them, they probably don't belong on a site like this.

I just filled out a job application yesterday that asked many questions about my opinion of people, among other topics. Questions such as, "Do you think that if an employee thought that they could steal an item and get away with it, would they do so?" and "You see a customer who repeatedly buys items with gift certificates. You think nothing of it until you see that the customer is friends with an employee who authorizes gift certificates. What do you do?" and many, many more about how trusting I am, and whether I think people would steal things if they had such and such an opportunity.

I answered every one of those questions honestly, which basically summized to my saying that I think people are evil and lie, cheat, and steal every chance they get if it benefits themselves. And while doing it, I couldn't help but think of people probably doing exactly that on the same application, on questions like "How trustworthy do you consider yourself?" and "How well do you get along well with both colleages? Strangers?"

So, to get back on topic, you can't release the source code and expect people to pay simple because the software has a license. If it's really useful, you may get a couple bucks, but the more people want it and would be willing to pay, the more likely they are to pirate it. Either provide additional services to those who pay - either more features, or tech support like the linux vendors, etc - or go ahead and give it out free.

[/RANT]

because any new feature would be copied

[Pfhreakaz0id]

Like it or not, in the consumer arena, program (and OS) upgrades because they provide unique features to the consumer. If Adobe puts a new feature in Photoshop, it takes a while for the six-zillion Photoshop clones to copy it, for example. But if they opened their source, the clones could have the new feature out a LOT quicker.
Personally, I think this would be a good thing, as it would tend to check "featuritis" that is so rampant. Programs would cease competing on features and start competing on UI, stability, security, etc. Unfortuantely, the software business (I'm talking non-games) exists now on featuritis to sell upgrades and I don't see the software companies moving away from that.
---

Of Course Not.

[istartedi]

An example of "Open but not free" would be the Thomas and Finney calculus text that happens to be on my desk.

In this case, none of the *ideas* in the book are protected. I can use any equation in the book for any purpose. However, I can't just take T and F's text, munge it electronicly and republish it.

There's nothing to stop me from writing my own calculus text (excepting of course my incomplete knowledge of the subject) but I would have to prove that the organization and presentation in the text is original and not just a rearrangement of T and F.

So, I reason you can protect source in the same manner as books are protected. Protecting ideas is another matter. The only way I can think of to simultaneously publish and protect an idea is (shudder) to patent it.

BTW, if you have a copy of T and F, look in the index for "Whales". It's good for a laugh.