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Caldera Mulling Alternate Licenses
edoug writes: "Ransom Love (CEO of Caldera) said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL doesn't make much business sense. And so, Caldera is mulling a non-GPL licensing mechanism -- most likely one based on the BSD license. Love said: "Microsoft is attacking open source at its weakest point: the GPL." Check out the article here ." Update: 05/10 7:30 AM by michael : Newsforge has an interview with Love.
How long before Webster includes words such as fudding and slashdotted into their dictionary? These are awesome geek creations.
In a previous discussion about a week ago, one guy quoted a Microsoft employee. He said that the BSD stack was to hard to port over cleanly, and thus they created their own. They obviously looked at the BSD stack as a reference, but wanted to make a nicer implementation for their OS.
The ftp example is nonsense, since its basically standard code and almost a pure compile on any other system would make it work. Microsoft has no reason to dislike BSD and similar licenses because at the very least they are given hints and references to how to implement something.. but with the GPL-like licenses, many companies strictly forbid their employees to read over the code. The fear is that they will mistakenly (or lazily) take it, and the company will be in big trouble. I believe Microsoft had this policy for Mozilla.
GNU/LINUX and MS are very similar, as both look at BSD-like code for references and both have reasons of intelectual property, etc. for recreating it or embracing its code silently. Microsoft with the tcp/ip stack reference, GNU with utility reference (vim). The difference in these two is MS did it out of programming methodology, while GNU did it out of license frenzy.
Nothing new comes out of MS
1) Office is and will continue to be the office suite standard. Believe it or not, people (lots of people) love Office, with good reason. (StarOffice: I might be able to judge it, come back to me next week when it has loaded up. KOffice: not enough developers to make it as mature and complete as Office. Anything else?)
2) As much as I hate to admit it, you must concur that the optimal web-browsing experience to be had today is on IE. More plugins, more sites that are designed for it, more useable. Parly due to their shady bundling, but alsy partly due to the fact that IE actually does a good job of web browsing. (You won't catch me dead using it though)
Open Source development could easily be their R&D department.
Other than the TCP/IP stack that everyone loves to jump up and down about, can you name another thing they've taken from the open-source community? (The Mac GUI? Since when was that open-source? You can't stop them from taking ideas. And Apple knew this when they stole (stold?) the GUI from Xerox. And the big two desktop environments for *nix knew it too, when they duped it from their predecessors.)
The fact is that multi-billion dollar companies don't really need to copy code . Apache was (and is) the server of choice when IIS was in development. They didn't copy that too, did they? Why? Because they have tons of smart people on the payroll thinking up their own ideas/implementations (e.g. http://research.microsoft.com).
My last point is about the GPL. Do you really think that if Microsoft put GPL code in their closed stuff, they couldn't get away with it? They're high-priced lawyers would eat the GPL for breakfast. (Not to mention the fact that I've spoken with more than one lawyer who thinks the GPL will not stand up in court.)
(Moderators: this post is pro-Microsoft. You have no choice but to mod down.)
Mr. Love has been espousing these beliefs for YEARS!
This thesis.
This keynote at Summer Comdex '99
This 'Presidents letter' at Caldera...
Let's not just say 'heresy'...let's THINK for once!
They have done some work on the kernel and hardware drivers and that sort of thing. Of course, that stuff's gonna stay under the GPL so there's nothing to worry about.
[root@eclipse linux-2.4.2]# grep -ri caldera *
gives plenty of examples. 27 lines in the source contain Caldera, mostly giving credit and e-mail addresses in such things as IPX drivers, SCSI, and sound.
Caldera has always felt that the only way to make money with Linux was to bundle it with proprietary software. In fact, that's probably the reason that they aren't in RedHat's position right now. They have always had a solid, easy to use distribution, but it has also always been more expensive than everyone else's distribution, and it has generally always included proprietary bits that made it illegal to simply burn copies.
Now Caldera is looking to extend Linux in proprietary ways (Volution) and they are finding all of this GPLed software bothersome. The fact of the matter is that the GPL has almost certainly been an asset to Linux. If this weren't the case then one of the BSDs would be top dog in the Free *nix world. The fact of the matter is that software consumers love the GPL. It gives them an unprecedented amount of leverage. And in software, like in all business, the customer is always right.
Uhm, no. BSD would still be there, without the GPL. Mach would still be there, without the GPL. X Windows would still be there, without the GPL. Apache would still be there, without the GPL, Tcl/Tk would still be there, without the GPL. This list goes on and on, but what is really telling is that the most important, BSD, Mach, and the X Windows System all predate GNU :)
One more time: you do not have to accept the GPL to use GPLed software. Only when you choose to redistribute that code or modifactions / derivatives of it, you have to face the GPL.
You can write proprietary applications that interact with GPLed software. You can even look at the source to study the API at no cost and without any obligation.
It even makes sense to write GPLed software in case you want to take advantage of the open source development model. In this case, the BSD license is more trouble for companies because in that case they lose total control, with the GPL they will at least have enforced that any modifications or derivatives can be merged back if desired. But perhaps a NPL/MPL style license makes more sense as business model when writing software.
It does make business sense if you do not use GPLed libraries. The FSF deliberately promotes the use of GPLed libraries so that the community can have an advantage over proprietary developers.
So thanks for noticing that the GPL can be used against businesses, but this was intentional in this case. So let's not get mad at Mundie or Caldera, some of us did this on purpose. We just need to make clear that when it comes to libraries, there is the LGPL: it makes perfect business sense to use LGPLed libraries.
Wouldn't releasing that intellectual property under a *more* liberal license (BSD-ish) make them even greater fools?
;-)
At least with the GPL, the intellectual property remains within the sphere of competitors that also release their source. A more liberal license would expand that sphere to include proprietary competitors, which isn't exactly useful in the "prevent going broke" thing
"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
The GPL is what makes Linux a threat. They can't embrace and extend it, it embraces and extends THEM. And that scares the heck otu of them, so they're fudding it. Ransom Love's stupid enough to buy into this, but that's no suprise. This is the man who saw value in the corpse of SCO.
Sheesh, Microsoft is THRILLED about non-GPL open source. Just as Microsoft embraced and extended the internet, the macintosh-like GUI, and any other idea to get within 50 paces. Nothing new comes out of MS, they NEED stuff to copy. Open Source development could easily be their R&D department. Without the internet, their growth would already have peaked a few years ago, their whole .NET strategy is co-opting other people's ideas (the internet and Java).
If Microsoft was facing BSD right now in place of Linux, it would just fork it. Embrace and extend, bundle a BSD variant with Explorer and a Win32 API compatability library, and of course half of the office suite buried and hidden in the standard system libraries just like it's in windows now. And it would work.
But they can't do that with GPL code. So they're trying to get the Open Source movement to leave the GPL behind, so they have stuff they can fork off proprietary versions of.
The GPL is the open source movement's immune system against proprietary things like MS. Lots of people say that in an ideal world you don't need an immune system. Apparently, they live in a bubble.
Rob
The GPL makes a ton of business sense. When looked at objectively it creates the requirement for businesses to constantly improve and innovate. If they do not, then they die. However such liscenses as the BSD liscense make a lot of sense to those who want to protect the interests of the company to the point where if they wanted to fuck over the customer the company has the ability to say "too bad". I think that this is a very dangerous thing coming from a company who has been so well known for Linux and GPL support over the years. What, if any code *COULD* Caldera re-liscense under the BSD liscense? Perhaps companies are correct to question the GPL. Perhaps we should look into providing alternatives that are friendly to corporations, consumers, and the collective body that has done all the work. I guess my *BIGGEST* problem is where so called "digital" law is at the moment allows anyone to "own" technology forever. Add "encryption" to it and it suddenly becomes a mortal sin to reverse engineer it. It's sad to see that people still don't get it, it's even sadder that people who are supposedly even the "leaders" still don't get it.
I fail to see where Caldera becomes relevant in this story. Rather than worry about licensing flamewars, they should spend more ressources working on their product and promoting it a bit better. OpenLinux rocks, but no one ever hears about it.
I don't know of many, but Caldera is a driving force behind Linux - NetWare connectivity... if you need that at all...
Why would a company like IBM invest a ton of money into something with the BSD license? It'd just get used by some closed source company who didn't return anything to the community or to IBM.
However, if IBM uses the GPL then they have the ability to use any innovations they discover people have made to their code.
Say IBM releases a file-system. They GPL it and Linux starts using it, and some smart person comes up with a better caching algorithm, improving the performance drastically. Now IBM can take that improvement, rewrite it to obtain their own copyright, and fold it into their closed-source version of that file-system as well. Not only that, but when Linux is reviewed and that file-system is mentioned, IBM will be known as the creators. It's a win-win situation. They gave something away, to people who wouldn't have bought it anyways, and got something back, even if only in minor bug fixes.
Their competitors didn't get anything, unless they want to link to GPLed code written by IBM, and what kind of statement would that make to investors? Mainly that IBM produces better code than they could. Every version of the competitors product would be an advertisment for IBM.
However, if IBM used the BSD license their code would be quietly snapped up and used in their competitors products, without any compensation to IBM. That's the inexcusable (to stockholders) action.
Clearly, if you want to reap the benefits of open source, you need to make sure the source stays open. That's GPL.
Hasn't anyone _actually_ read the GNU manifesto ?
The GPL was not devised to provide a business opportunity. It was devised to preserve freedom.
Getting involved with GPL'ed code, and then saying "gee, the GPL isn't a very business friendly" is totally ridiculous.
Absolute statements are never true
ZDNet's reporter, Mary Jo Foley, notes that in line with Microsoft's recent critism:
Then we go on with: Down with the GPL? Well... kinda... not really: Spin, Ransom, spin. You might not ever get that tail, but you're making a lot of noise and putting on a fine show. ZDNet's reporters, with all the technical calibre of Dog Fancy Magazine, must surely appreciate the effort.Whenever you're speaking in this forum, it might be a good idea not to appropriate the term Free Software, complete with capitalization, and then claim that it's got nothing to do with the GPL. The term Free Software (as opposed to free software) connotes a very particular meaning among /.ers in the know.
The GPL protects the software commons in a way that the BSD license cannot do. Period. The BSD license can not prevent someone from hijacking the code from the user downstream. If Linus had released the Linux kernel under a BSD license, we could already have IBM Linux*, Sun Linux*, and a thousand other locked-up codebases, not talking with eachother, and with nothing making it possible to bridge the gap because none of them would have to share their changes with anybody. Actually, Linux development probably would have suffered crib death, because who needed another UNIX workalike except the FSF-inspired community? Same thing goes for all of the GNU tools, which is probably more significant to the issue of interoperability.
Please note: I am not flaming the BSD license - release your software under whatever license you want. But don't pretend the GPL hasn't been a significant factor in the development of Free Software (in the RMS definition of the term), because it couldn't have happened without it. It might not be a cause, but it's certainly a catalyst, just as cheap hardware probably wasn't a cause. I personally think the initial cause was frustration with vendor lock-in in a supposedly "open" system like UNIX. The achievement of critical mass is a much thornier question.
I think Caldera's never really been happy with having to be more-or-less compatible with everyone else's Linux distribution, anyway. They've always struck me as a company that would be quite glad to be able to lock in their market segment.
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*I don't actually think IBM and Sun would have released versions of Linux in this scenario. They're just examples of heavyweight players that could have taken the community's freely-provided code and hijacked it to make it incompatible with everyone else's.
Right...
And herein is exhibited the difference between Open Source and Free Software. The GPL, written by Stallman to protect Free Software, says nothing about a guarantee of the ability to make money off software. That's totally orthogonal to the GPL and Free Software. They don't care.
But everybody swarming around the Open Source movement, which has been using the GPL for so long now more or less because it was most convenient, are now shocked *shocked* to find that software based on the GPL, itself, may not be a sufficient business model. Yeah, so? Who ever said it was?
If you want to make money off software in which the source is merely *viewable*, call it "Open Source" or "Shared Source" or some other damned thing, but don't pretend it is Free Software and then get your panties in a knot when you realize you will have trouble integrating with GPL software (well, if you refuse to do it "correctly"). Hey Mr. Businessman: GPL was not written for you, sorry; it was written for average joe citizen and consumer. Yes, that may be sad, because there are indeed some very cool people trying to run Open Source businesses. But if you intend to make money from software *itself*, as opposed to services and t-shirts, well, I guess then your choice has to be to make up a new license.
Sorry this sounds rantish. I'm really not an FSF troll...but I don't see why people are so amazed about this. It was inevitable that people running software businesses would realize that they couldn't capitalize on GPL-based software.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
If you want your software on one customer's boxes... doing it as work made for hire pays the bills.
If you want your software on dozens of customers' machines, release it GPL and sell the service of keeping the software up to snuff to pay the bills. As long as you can add value individually, for folks who know where to send the money and why, you can make a living with added value services. As long as you can stay ahead of the costs of finding the added value needs, you're OK. (It costs effort to discover and track that Fred needs a cancel button here, and George needs a data munger there.)
If you want your software on thousands of customers' machines, you're going to have trouble adding value individually - you have a two-ton mosquito to feed, and you'll lose a lot of blood just figuring out how you can make your consulting service worth the money. You'll have trouble just reminding everyone that it's nice to send a check.
It's at that scale and above that giving away the core source code, the part that (as Mundie points out) is most valuable anyway, starts to look astonishingly stupid from the standpoint of trying to pay the bills.
It's not surprising that Love is seeing this too. He's got to think about adding value for thousands of customers - he's got stockholders to feed. Stallman doesn't have to think about that, and Linus doesn't, and ESR doesn't - if the family's fed from their added value services, they don't have to worry about scaling it any higher. They can rebut Mundie until doomsday, and it won't change Love's problem at all.
Incidentally, this line of reasoning is why I think RedHat has a chance - everyone knows how to send them a check, and they're providing added value that can scale up above the dozens-of-customers level without pain. (Think prompt and automatic security patches - easy to find something specific which adds value for thousands of people, easy to distribute it, easy to collect the subscription money from those who appreciate it financially).
Sorry for the tangential rant, but this post triggered my lingering annoyance about Stallman's writings... despite his firm rejection of the intellectual property assumptions that make software commercially scalable, he insists on talking past the Microsofts and Calderas - which exist solely to make software commercially scalable - whenever the opportunity presents itself. I don't mind his philosophies, but it does bother me that he tries to drag them beyond their areas of application.
OK, feel free to get back on topic now...
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
"Love said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL doesn't make much business sense."
He's right about that.... As linux becomes more perfect, the need for support-based companies will go away. Imagine a day when you drop in your fav linux dvd, boot your computer, and it asks you want you want installed (or it just reads your mind). It partions and installs perfectly, auto detected all your hardware without a hitch and comes with perfectly written tutorials about everything. Your data is all stored in one area and a cron job backs it up automagically with a one button restore. The hardware will be so cheap it'll be disposable so if you're having hardware probs you'll throw out the old and buy new, restore your data and be back up in minutes. Who will need a support contract? Who would hire a consultant for install or data recovery help? Once wireless comes of age we won't need anyone pulling cat27 it'll just work.
Every database/app that can be imagined will already be written, listed at sourceforge and freshmeat and of course be under the GPL. Don't like the way your accounting program works? There are millions of variations of the same app to choose from with an awesome chooser that let's you drill down to find the one that solves your particular problem the best.
As long as there are good coders willing to work for free, this scenario will get closer and closer to reality. There is an optimal UI, we don't know what it is yet but we keep getting closer overall. There is perfect code... improve upon the typical Hello World app, can't right? Why? It's perfect. Now I'm not saying that the kernel or the interpreter or the hardware drivers are perfect, but Hello World can be since it's so simple. Larger apps are becoming more perfect every day and someday in the far-flung future we will have the perfect word processor, OS, DB, etc. We'll never actually achieve perfection but we'll get close enough.
Every time I write a little bash script to automate some little BS thing and I share it with others I'm putting another nail in Microsoft's coffin since they're in the business of selling software. At the same time I'm also putting a much smaller and slower acting nail in Redhat's coffin, who thinks they're in the business of selling support. Redhat and the others are literally working themselves out of a job.
None of this is bad the end users... we want free software that is perfect. Us IT people will be looking for work sooner than you might think though.
G
"Microsoft is attacking open source at its weakest point: the GPL"
WTF? Open Source != GPL for the 1 gazillionth time. The BSD license is still open source. And it does make more sense in the business sense. It always has. I love the BSD license and it is great for products like apache. Some things you just don't need to sell though. Not too many businesses would need to fix up a linux kernel for a software product, therefore GPL is fine. But with apache, creating custom modifications for custom needs, BSD is great. I'm sure one of the reasons Apache is so widely used is that It can be easily used in the business world.
Microsoft isn't attacking Open Source at all. Especially when they use BSD code in some of their TCP implementations on 2000. They however are attacking GPL. Yeah, it may not be the best for business, but that's my point. Choose the license that fits. There are some apps that may be better off using the BSD license. But I don't think Linux is one of them.
At least now, Microsoft sees Linux as a threat. It's good publicity to have this in the news all the time. When people really investigate it, they will find the truth. GPL has it's pitfalls. You may want to modify code, but can't cause you don't want to release the changes. But hey, that's better then not having the code at all
Want to control your intellectual property, write it in Perl. That way, nobody else will be able to understand your code. Jason.
GPL'ing your code only makes sense if you don't derive the majority of your revenue from selling software licenses. But the GPL makes huge sense for companies for whom software is overhead (stuff that doesn't directly bring in money).
For example, you sell widgets, but you thought ahead and created a widget design, inventory, and shipping system. It helps you be more efficient, but it also costs you a lot of money to develop and maintain. Companies are starting to outsource their applications to the world, and are finding out that it's cheaper, and other's who are interested contribute back. In the end they get better software.
Competition? It's not an issue, because again, they compete selling widgets, not writing software. Many company owners are realizing that software development was taking them away from their core competency and are looking to GPL.
Now, say I'm a company that has done some deep wizardry in speech recognition. We wrote it. It works and people are going to pay us big bucks for it. It would follow that said software would NOT be a good candidate for the GPL.
Just re-read the Cathedral and the Bazaar. It spells it all out plain and simple. GPL: good for a lot of things - Still room for pay-license software.
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
Stallman says add to this code and you are one of us.
Gates says use this code and you belong to us.
This is not a signature.
This could be an interesting test case for the GPL business model, but to paraphrase The Matrix: On the other hand, Caldera probably doesn't have a lot to lose - there are a lot of distributions out there, so perhaps having a modified BSD licensed one may be the gimmick they need to find a viable niche.
There's nothing in the GPL that prevents you from modifying the source. The only thing the GPL says is that you have to give the source to whomever you give the binary. And that the recipient then can do whatever they like with that source. There's nothing preventing you from charging a million dollars for that binary.
The Apache-example you gave seems a bit weird. If you make a custom modification for custom need, that sounds like a single web-site (or at least custom-built ones ("site" her might be embedded)). And there's nothing in the GPL preventing you from doing that either. You just have to give the customer the source.
M.
Nobody has this right. Not Microsoft, not RedHat, not Caldera. About the only ones who have this right are Stallman, Debian, and *BSD. Open Source and Free Software are not f'ing business models.
Of course no one is going to make money selling the code. This should surprise no one, nor should anyone care. Its not about making money. Its about making code. The BSD license says, "If you find the code useful, great!" The GPL says, "If you find the code useful, share!"
So then RedHat, et al, come along and say, "If you find the code useful, give us money!" But they are having problems reconciling the "share" the with "make money". This is not a weakness of the code nor the license, nor the nonexistent "open source business model". It is a weakness of their business model. Of course they will fail, but the code will still be there long after they are gone.
If they had truly understood Open Source and/or Free Software to begin with, they would have gone the same route as FreeBSD: Non Profit Corporation.
As a non-Caldera Linux user, I'm curious to know for what contributions to the Linux community Caldera is directly responsible. I'm sure they have a whole host of server and desktop applications bundled with their distro, but would this shift in license preference affect the software we commonly use? The article wasn't helpful in mentioning how this would affect any software of any type developed by Caldera.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I mean, just look at this guy, his name is Ransom Love. Did this guy change his name or something? He sounds like he is straight out of a comic book.
--
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Love admits that he does "have a problem with those members of the Linux community that are more Religionist, than Pragmatist." Love puts himself squarely in the Pragmatist camp.
Translation: Love admits that he does "have a problem with those members of the Linux community that are not Capitalists, than socialist." Love puts himself squarely in the Pragmatist camp.
While I admit that I *do* understand not everyone involved in GNU/Linux writing GPL code are 'like me'. One of my main images of GNU/Linux is a shared, libre, gratis alternative 'owned' by The People, where engineering decisions and technology choices are made the right way - by the DEVELOPERS unfettered by the BS that is involved in the Capitalist desire to build a product and market a fantasy brand. I do see GNU/Linux as an opportunity to bring technology the worlds poor, to help bootstrap their young IT industries in an equal and full manner. I do see GNU/Linux as part of a bigger worldwide movement to reduce the power capitalism has taken in the lives of people.
Mr.Love - The GPL's purpose is to provide Freedom - that also means Freedom from Technology Companies who bully the public and dictate technology options. I am an atheist, and Linux is *NOT* my Religion; I too am a pragmatist. I see GNU/Linux as a libre/gratis gift to The People - one that cannot be exploited by people such as yourself.
Not all things are for profit. Pursuing Profit with regards to all things is not justified. Not all things should be involved in the economy.
All that GNU software wouldn't have been free for Caldera to capitalize if it HADN'T been for the GPL. This guy is clearly off his rocker.
Bryguy
Does anyone else think the Caldera icon looks like a blue mickey mouse on a balloon?
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
OK. Redhat does not make their money selling Linux-- they sell Linux to make their other products more profitable: consulting and support (the former is more important than the second).
If you are a business, you want to know that you can call someone at 3am when your server decides to kernel panick randomly so you buy an expensive contract from RedHat.
More importantly, you need some help making some modifications to your existing installation (either implimentation changes or actual software changes) and so you buy help from Red Hat. Their annual revenue is now about $100 Million.
Not all Linux users are both competent network architects and programmers... That is where the money is to be made. Note: People make similar money with NT, so this is not unusual in this industry except that these consultants in the case of Linux comapnies is that the consulting company distributes the software to ensure consistancy in their ability to provide quality consulting.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Caldera has always understood the rules as well or better than anybody else, and has played a fair game with the community. Why don't you all hold off on the flames until they release something under a different license model, and then make a judgement as to whether their intentions are honorable or not.
Y'all bemoan the fact, daily it seems, that OSS companies keep going broke, but when somebody tries to find a way to make an honest buck, you crucify them. Lighten up. Caldera will do the right thing based on their past performance.
Stallman says add to this code and you are one of us. Gates says use this code and you belong to us.
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The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
Personally it's allways puzzled me how we can have all these companies selling what is basically a free product.
I can see how they can sell services, manuals and so forth, but the service market for Linux isn't as lucrative as for other software sectirs for the simple reason that most Linux users know what their doing.
With bradband becoming more prevelant, the distributors are really going to have tp try hard to make a buck on the distros themselves.
He may think that the GPL is ineffective but as long as he wants to develope something better to further the open source effort I'm all for it. Getting stuck on one way of combating big corporations is stupid, we have to constantly evolve to combat tyranny where ever it pops up.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire