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Lutris, Close Source, And The Open Source Community
sohp writes "Back in mid-September Slashdot ran the story "Lutris Closes Enhydra Source" regarding that company's decision to retract its open source licensing terms. Now George C. Hawkins has reconstructed the pre-closed source reality and discusses it at How Lutris betrayed the Open Source Community
. Short summary: blaming Sun was a smokescreen. Interesting use of web archive sites, too." There's definitely a lot of strong feelings against Lutris in the linked piece, but there's also a lot of validity as well.
While it really sucks that they would promote a product as open source and then change their minds when it became less popular, there really isn't very much that can be done in such a situation, as from my understanding of the article the code was never actually released under an open source license, so there really isn't any legally binding commitment to open source on their part, just a lot of hot air from various executives.
Duplicity isn't exactly new among the human race, the lesson to be learned from this article is that just because someone claims to support open source doesn't mean that you shouldn't be skeptical of them, particularly when money is involved. Suspicions should have been raised when the code never showed up, none of it was ever released. Other than vigilence, all that can be really done is remembering who's shafted you in the past and try not to do business with them in the future.
Why?
Does this remind anyone of what happened with CDDB and Gracenote?
This time, it wasn't just a voluntary community donation like people's submissions to CDDB. It was actual WORK that developers spent a significant amount of time on hoping that the project would be of future use to them.
This proves that even the comfort than an open source license gives to developers, can't prevent a company from acting in bad faith and running away with the results of their sleepless nights, endless frustration, and aggravated (or now non-existent) spouses.
The moral? Don't deal with a company, even under the pretense of community service, unless you know *exactly* what their intentions are, and you've taken steps to prevent them from acting contrary to the reasons you bothered to be involved in the first place.
All the complaining and licensing in the world won't protect us from cutthroats. We've got to watch our own asses out there.
InstantDB is strange in that it was often referred to as an open source product by many (including Lutris employees), but no one outside Lutris ever actually got to see the source.
"Open Source" isn't a trademarked expression, so people should watch out if someone is calling something "Open Source". There is a telltale sign: the source itself, and a licence attached to it, that gives anyone the right to do development of the source and distribute the source further under the same conditions. It should also ensure that this will continue to be so in the future. That license may be BSD or GPL or something similar, but it has to be there, together with the source. Unless that happened the thing is simply not open source.
This only serves as an example, that people should be more aware of the difference between marketing speech and what actually is reality. "Open Source" is a good 'brandmark' for marketing some products, even Microsoft tries to benefit from that with their "Shared Source". Now with Microsoft everyone understood the difference between marketing talk and what really happens. Why isn't the same scrunity applied to the rest of the business? If someone announces they will "soon" go Open Source the answer should be (more or less): "Fine, when?". When they fail to get their stuff together and fail to show some of the source (hey, we even have a term for that, it's vaporware) some scathing remarks and general awareness of foulplay should come up a little earlier than more than a year after the announced date, and a fait accompli, so the rest of the community knows them as the jokers they are and they get some negative publicity (after they cashed in on the Open Source "Trademark").
This is not meant to be critique about the article, it is asking, why the issue was raised so late and hoping the next time people will be more alert.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
One quote from one of the emails:
- 2) Over the past year, several of us received explicit permission from Lutris to use InstantDB without payment. We have proceeded on that assurance. I don't believe Lutris can unilaterally and arbitrarily rescind that. Nor do I think Lutris can limit that approval to those to whom it was explicitly extended.
Uh, can we get a lawyer in here? If I'm not completely insane, it sounds like *any* venture that was operating under the understanding that InstantDB would be available free of charge could absolutely sue Lutris for the cost of migration? I imagine that this will not happen, just because the cost of migration will probably be a lot less than the cost of legal action. Isn't Lutris responsible for these sorts of assurances? Hell, is there a case for fraud?
I realize that the answer to all of these questions might be "no" but I don't see why.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
But it seems to me that Lutris made a verbal contract with developers that they would open source the product. They went so far as to put that verbal contract in writing in various emails and on the web pages that this guy was able to pull out of his cache (pun intended).
Perhaps Eben Moglen would have an opinion about this?
Dan Barber
Mojolin: Linux, Unix and embedded jobs and resumes
My understanding is that J2EE comes from Sun in basicall three parts: specification and other documentation in natural language; the Java API; and a sample implementation. I think these parts are fairly distinct. I want to know which of these is the "problem".
Obviously, every implementor must make use of the documentation. Normally, this does not taint an implementation, but Lutris claims that "reading the specification for J2EE forces the reader to agree to the SCSL". The J2EE specification license I can find doesn't say that. Though it is fairly restrictive, it doesn't seem to prohibit a free implementation. So is the specification a problem or not?
The JBoss response says that JBoss uses "seven jars" from Sun. I'm guessing these jars define the API, ie, they consist entirely of interfaces, abstract classes, and (maybe) trivial classes. Is this necessary? Most free implementations of proprietary API's include their own header files as free software. Does Sun claim a copyright on the API itself? What is the legal status of such claims, since there is basically only one way to express an API? Or did JBoss simply choose not to write their own versions?
Finally, does Enterprise Enhydra use essentially the same Sun classes as JBoss, or do they borrow some of the sample implementation as well? Do they claim that their commercial nature, or some pre-existing agreement with Sun, makes their situation different?
Thanks if you can untangle this.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Is this at all similar to egrail? It was my understanding that egrail used to be open sourced, but is now not. Are they using any community-contributed code in the current version?
I missed the part where anyone outside Lutris contributed to the code (after its acquisition). How could they contribue when the source was never released? Could you point me to this please?
So Enhydra may have other intellectual property problems.
Lutris is starting to send people unsolicited mail claiming that JBoss may not be a reliable solution. These are unfounded, and JBoss is posting a response on their site.
It's disgusting.