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Shared Source vs. Open Source
leonbrooks writes "Microsoft are fond of touting Shared Source as being "as good as" Open Source, with a view to muddying the waters as much as possible, and so keeping as many people away from the benefits of Open Source Software (OSS) (particularly Software Libré AKA "Free Software") as they can.
This new article analysing the differences arrives just in time for Microsoft's Australia-wide series of "Competitive Hour" misinformation sessions on Open Source, and includes a handy list of potentially showstopper questions.
We'd like your help in putting these and other questions to the speaker during such misinformation sessions, with the dual aim of opening the eyes of many of the audience, and reporting back to us what was said so that we can refine the questions to close whatever loopholes are employed in evading these important issues."
As a geek, I'm convinced Open Source will eventually vindicate over Closed Source -- no matter what. Whatever argument Microsoft could come up with, there'll always be a better counter argument. IMHO, the only thing their $50 billion could buy is better software, and this will work only on the short term. But I'm prejudiced...
So my question is: Would it be possible for Microsoft to kill Open Source solely through a media campaign?
I work on a scientific project that is supossedly an "open source" project. In reality, it is really shared source. What it comes down to is users from the community reporting bugs and even submitting patches that are never incorporated into the code. The "czar" of the project often refuses to apply these fixes or doesn't do so in a timely manner. It just doesn't work and is just about as pointless as not having the source at all...
It appears that Microsoft's famously successful Embrace and Extend strategy can apply to concepts as well as technologies. Expect to see Shared Source (i.e., Open Source with proprietary extensions for improved performance on Windows only) heavily promoted as a new Windows development tool.
Any-one fancy going throug the M$ code and looking for patent violations, M$ still has a lot of finincial muscle.
"Can I provide this fix to others? If not, why not?"
I'd recommend losing the bit about the Borg on that site unless it's a page meant only for geeks and techies -- name-calling cheapens the rest of your arguments. It doesn't matter that they started it. </FourthGradeTeacher>
Just point out the uselessness of Shared Source and the piles of responses to Microsoft FUD.
woof.
What kind of paperwork, NDA's, and other obligations do I need to sign on before looking at the shared source? With GPL I can look at the license (and only that!), and know that if I do not like the source I see, I can put it down, not use it, and be free to continue my life as if I had never seen it.
And it's less confusing that shared source is proprietary and open source is Free? To the lay person, they would sound like the same thing.
Face it, MS is making up their own terminology here, so we should stick to ours too. He who controls the language controls the mind too.
Wouldn't it make more sense if you were a company that produced a large, bloated program that has a long history of poor performance that you would want to get input from people that might be able to streamline your program and optimize its performance? We were always taught in computer classes that the best programs where the ones that got the job done, correctly, with a minimum of code and in the quickest possible way. As much as we all might dislike Microsoft, Windows has the ability to be a good OS, it just hasn't been allowed to get anywhere near that ability. It seems each iteration of Windows creates more bugs and more bloated code rather than the reverse (which would would expect in most software programs). So, IMHO, Microsoft should move to open source, perhaps just releasing large segments of Windows code so they can protect their business (otherwise why release anything?). Ask programmers to streamline the code, even to the point of optimizing it for AMD, Intel, and Cyrix chips individually (Make Bill happy that he can market 3 versions of Windows).
It is not free as in "you are free to make my day". It is free as in "this software code has been freed from any restrictions, to the point that no man or woman may hide it or stop it from living its life to the fullest".
Law of nature? Law of freed information!
Question 1: Does any software actually exist which has gone through a full life cycle as shared source and not demonstrated major problems e.g. with respect to security, monopoly law, cost effectiveness?
Point 2: Open source is critical to proving that software is secure in a concrete case: security of one's private machine and data. If Microsoft is only sharing source, how can it be known (without resorting to blind trust of unknown coders/governments) that the source you saw is the source that made it into the final product?
Point 3: Microsoft's shared source campaign seems defined partly in terms of an attack against open source software. How does this reconcile with open source software being highly promoted by the security experts of the majority of major companies, server operators, and governments. Is it such a good idea to distance itself from such amazingly beneficial, successful, and satisfying projects? If Microsoft believes it to be critical to do so, then would Microsoft be open to funding a free (free of cost, anonymous, with results posted publically, and run by a third party) online facility to scan software (source and object code) for violations of liscense agreements (like GPL etc.) to guarantee that no GPL code is in Windows? (After all if it is then all of Windows legally must be GPL'd..)
Didnt they also mention Open Source is "cancerous"
getSexySig();
THIS ARTICLE IS SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO BE VIEWED BY ADULTS AND THEREFORE MAY BE UNSUITABLE FOR CHILDREN UNDER 17. THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING: PROVOKING THOUGHTS (PT), EXPLICIT SARCASM (ES), OR CRUDE INDECENT SPELLING (S).
Why don't things evolve?
I keep thinking about the space shuttle, and open-source, and Microsoft; also of tiny winged dinosaurs recently found in the Mongolian Highlands. All these controversies and discoveries start me thinking -- but mostly the dinosaurs. Why did those little dinosaurs sprout wings? What was the point? Don't they know that was a greater wind resistance drag, making it even harder to escape predators? Why did the space shuttle, built in 80's never upgrade? One could talk of the government and the fact that they never, ever, upgrade unless it's tanks or grenades. But the space shuttle, with it's aging tape-to-tape flight computers, and it's spray on foam insulation, and it's glued on tiles -- why evolve to serve this niche, then never evolve? Was it laziness, stupidity, or some perceived fecundity that we've reached the promised land?
I can feel there is a tipping-point here, some wisdom I'm about to understand, and yet it eludes me. Back to Microsoft. Why couldn't Novell evolve? Did they think that a different password for everything was better than one password to rule them all? Why continue to chew the prehistoric cud whilst the meteor streaks across the sky - moocow!. Now it's Microsoft, you might argue, that is starting to run a little slower, a little more gamely, who sees the big game cats bearing down in their proverbial rear view mirrors. Will they evolve? Can they evolve? What will they become?
And so open-source sits too at the precipice, but its penultimate creative spark blew apart at its evolution, splitting into various organisms wading the primordial ooze. Fascinating stuff: evolve now or later, but why not right at the beginning? Evolve on the starting line! It's a pretty awesome strain of thinking. Keep trying to get it right on the starting line -- holding back some DNA -- shooting off ideas that might work. Hyper, hyper-parasitosis. I believe it's the way of informational beings. Even WOPR decided that there might be a better way.
So why can't Microsoft evolve? I believe they can, but it must happen while, and before, the energy required to evolve is still greater than the remaining energy it has to sustain life. Can they evolve a hybrid, become open-source (you heard it here first!), jump from the abyss, sprout wings, and fly?
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Why? Why is an opinion's origin important? If it means that you can't dismiss a thought with "Oh, that's just so'n'so ranting again" then that is surely a good thing. If so'n'so really is ranting again, then the opinion should be easy enough to knock down anyway.
Are you ashamed of your own opinions.
No. I'm not the original AC. Then again, there's no proof that the AC is ashamed of them either.
Most flames are posted as anonymous.
Granted.
If you think what you have to say or do is so damn funny, than stand up and take responsibility for it.
As I say, the logical conclusion of this is to lose the rights to anonymous ballots. Anonymous ballots were a large step forward in the democratic process, and I rather feel that heading back to the days of pinning things on personalities is not a step to be welcomed.
Cheers,
Ian
Not to be a troll, and as one of those FREAK's who's never been in a dorm, putting his own ass out of a job: The world doesn't guarantee you a job, a career or money. If you don't like it, go cure cancer or something. I'm going to write software that undermines the ability of other companies to make money to write similar software, and rape their users. I'm going to do this simply for the control factor. That $1000 piece of hardware on my desk is MINE, all MINE, and no software vendor is going to take away my right to use and abuse it. And neither are you.
;-)
It's called capitalism at it's best. Keep making software better than the rest of us OSS FREAKs can do, and you'll continue to make money. Oh wait, maybe you'll suffer the same fate dozens of companies did when Microsoft choose to put some special thing in their OS (like cd-burning, or video playback, or web browser, or file compression) in their OS...
-Chris
Are people free to view the Microsoft source, or is there an EULA type agreement that any person with access to Microsoft Source is not allowed to work on Open Source or Microsoft competitive products. I would think that this would be a very restrictive license term that would get in the way.
Say the anti-competitive period is 5 years. This means that anyone who sees the code is contaminiated and restricted from what they can work on. Possibly a career limiting exposure.
Of course there could be no such terms attached to the source. Anyone have insight?
The one question that really shows the difference between "open source" and "shared source", obviously has to be "Can I create my own fork"?
Disagreements with the original author about the direction a software package should go, or the apparent abandonment of some software, are two of the many good reasons for creating a fork. This approach allows for competition, and may the best version win. It may piss off the original author, but it allows for improved evolution of the software.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
From my seminal paper, written in 1999 (BEFORE the dotcom collapse):
The High Priests of the Bazaar
This paper presents a case against the open source movement and explains why the open source model does not work for the vast majority of those involved. There are several arguments against the OS (open source) model.
Open Source Doesn't Make Economic Sense For Most
The open source organization has presented a few cases that supposedly explain why OS works economically. However, if you examine the cases objectively you will find that the cases are flimsy and non-specific and do not address any specific concerns. They attempt to bolster their case by pointing out a few "successes", among which Caldera and Red Hat are displayed as shining examples.
The real economic question of the OS model is how is money made, and who is making the money. Who is being rewarded financially for the enormous development effort? The open source initiative claims that there are at least four different models that allow someone to reap rewards. Oddly, it is not mentioned that it is not necessarily the people who did the development work that gain financially.
The four primary business cases mentioned by OS proponents are "Selling Support", "Loss Leader", "Widget Frosting" and "Accessorizing."
The first case proposes that money can be made via selling support for the free software product. This is by far the strongest case and is proven to work, for a few small companies. The two companies that are shown as positive examples of this business model are Red Hat and Caldera, who distribute and support the Linux operating system. What is never mentioned is that neither of these two companies has contributed significantly in relative terms to the Linux development process. Its important to note that using this business model, the people that make the money are usually not the ones who have invested in the development process. So much for the strongest case.
The second case is based on the idea that you give away a product as open source so you can make money selling a closed source program. This also can work, but it should be noted that the money is being made off the closed source product and not off of the open source. An example of this model would be Netscape, who gives away the source code of their client browser so the OS community can do development, but keeps their "cash cow" products completely closed. Obviously, this case may only work if you have a software product that lends itself to this sort of "give away the razor and make money on the blades" system. The truth is that the vast majority of software is monolithic. So much for the loss leader case.
The third case, "Widget Frosting", sounds completely practical. The premise that hardware makers produce open source software so that the OS development community will work for free to produce better drivers and interface tools for their hardware products. It sounds great on the surface, especially for the company that produces the hardware: they get free drivers and do not have to pay for expensive developers. The OS community wins by getting presumably stable drivers and tools. What is not mentioned is the reason hardware makers usually don't do this is because they do not want to reveal trade secrets regarding their hardware design. Production of efficient drivers requires an intimate knowledge of the hardware the driver is for. It is almost always the case that it is in the hardware developers' best interest to keep their hardware secrets close to home. This also brings up the question of why isn't hardware "open"? So much for the frosting case.
The final case, "Accessorizing", is similar to the first, but throws in the idea of selling books and complete systems with the open source software, and other accessories as well. It is obvious that selling books qualifies as support, and that it really belongs in the first case. The idea of selling computer systems, T-Shirts, dolls, again begs the question: "Who is making the money?" As with the first case, it is not necessarily the people who have done the development work. Additionally, the question of how much money can be made selling books, t-shirts, mugs, etc, is never answered. O'Reilly Associates is frequently used as an example to be a company who has made money using this case. The reader should notice that O'Reilly Associates are not the people doing the development work. Indeed, it is never asked why all the O'Reilly books are not available for free or at least at manufacturing cost? This also brings up the question of why isn't book production "open"? Perhaps they are waiting to see if they could sell enough O'Reilly T-Shirts to pay their bills. So much for the accessories.
Open Source Does Not Necessarily Produce Better Software
The open source proponents frequently state that OS necessarily produces better software. This statement is made without any evidence. Indeed, there is evidence to the contrary. GCC is a standard compiler produced by the GNU organization. It lags its commercial counterparts in both efficiency and features. The reason behind is illustrates the largest weakness in the OS plan. It is very hard to convince qualified engineers that they should do such boring and unglamorous work without any sort of financial reward. The idea of throwing large quantities of people at the source does not work in this case, since there are not large quantities of qualified individuals available.
Open Source Did Not Make the Internet Successful
Another statement made by the OS community is that somehow open source was responsible for the success of the Internet. The reason behind this is probably a result of the confusion between what is open source and what is an open protocol. It is easy to see that the foundation of the Internet was built on open protocols. This does not equate to open source, for the two are quite different. The vast majority of the machines on the Internet run on closed source operating systems running mostly closed source software, which communicate using open protocols.
Where Does Open Source Work?
Open source does work in certain cases. A good example of where it may work well is Netscape. The act of giving away the source to the OS community so they can work for free and produce a product that helps the sales of their server software was a stroke of genius and proved very profitable for the relatively few at Netscape. But is this truly making money off of open source? Isn't the money is made off of the closed source software?
Another example of where it does work is the aforementioned Red Hat. Red Hat has been successful making money off of the work of thousands of others who have contributed to the Linux operating system and the associated GNU programs that have shipped with the Linux distributions. The question is: do those who work at Red Hat deserve to be rewarded, or do the people who do the actual development work deserve to be rewarded? Should the money go to the few, or to the many? It seems that the High Priests of the Bazaar believe the former.
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Another thing I would like to point out, and which I will include in an updated version of the paper, is the fact that by contributing to Open Source you are decreasing the financial value of software. The reason for this is because you have eliminated the artificial scarcity of the product. This only serves to lessen the financia value of the product, which leads to lower compensation for those that produce software.
Music and book publishers create scarcity via the copyright mechanism, the software industry should be no different.
For those of you who have bit hit hard by the recent economic downturn in the software world may want to consider this before giving away your efforts to the corporations for free.
The origin of an opinion is important, beause that is where the nuances come from. "Freedom is slavery", when said by Orwell, sounds very different from "Freedom is slavery", said by the nazi skinhead with twisted sense of history.
I know that the Creative Commons makes licenses for other types of creative works than software, but I can't help feeling when I look at the list of software licensing possibilities in this story (Public Domain, BSD, GPL, Shared Source, Proprietary) that there's something missing here that is present in the licensing options from the Creative Commons.
I would throw in another license between GPL and Shared that allows more than just a glance at the code (ie. use it, modify it, do what you need to with it), but restricts redistribution more than the GPL does. The problems with this gap being there are several:
I know that Open Source isn't about money-making, and that redistribution of some kind is one of the fundamental Open Source requirements, but (especially in this economy) programmers need to eat too. So while many of us are compelled to make our work "as Open as possible", we're kicked in the butt when we're told it's "not Open enough". This means that a company falling somewhere between GPL and Shared Source can't use either well-known moniker, and since it's software they're talking about, can't use the Creative Commons as a point of reference either. I feel that one of the benefits of being Open Source is the reputation that comes along with it, one of not "locking people in".
So I guess my question is, why the double-standard? Or is Open Source just missing that gap and either a) willing to include qualifying Creative Commons-like licenses or b) willing to clarify its stance on the licenses of the Creative Commons?
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
One could turn your argument around: freedom as "more than just an immediate lack of constraints on action, but as a kind of security agaisnt future constraints on action" could apply just as well to the BSD license being used to prevent others from applying future constraints on the actions of those using a BSD'd codebase.
IOW, it works both ways. What the GPL does is enforce group freedom at the expense of individual freedom (no option there). Conversely the BSD license enforces individual freedom which *may or may not be* at the expense of group freedom (but the individual doesn't lose their CHOICE about whether they contribute to group freedom or not).
Sometimes I wonder if the GPL doesn't boil down to "if *you* get something, then *I* want it too!!"
Mind you, I used to be more in favour of the GPL until I started really thinking about it. (Somewhat helped along by inheriting a GPL'd codebase, and discovering that now I have NO options as to how to handle its future.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I don't buy the security by obscurity argument, but it is an argument. I just find the track records MUCH better for OS.
Under OS, all the bad guys have the schematic for all the locks in the kingdom. But all the good guys do, as well, and lets them improve the locks.
Shared Source gives a small subset good guys a look at the schematics, but prevents them from improving the locks for themselves or anyone else. The most you can accomplish is working as an unpaid and probably ignored QA engineer for an unethical corporation. In fact, you are paying THEM for the priviledge. (Debugging OS code makes you a participant in a larger community of volunteers - a very different vibe.) It all but guarantees that the SS code will leak to essentially all bad guys, who will either not honor NDAs or aren't bound by them in the first place. It also appears to taint any OS developers who look at it, so their presence in an OS project threatens it with litigation entanglements.
So - OS gives all access, SS gives bad guys access and restricts the freedom not just of code, but developers. As Dilbert says, "I gotta get me some of that!"
There is a difference between what you can do with code (i.e. the uses you can make of it) and what you can stop others from doing with it (i.e. the conditions you can put into the license you relaese it under). So for example when you say...
...you are somewhat mis-describing the situation. You can do anything you like with GPL'd code. What you are not free to change at will is the license, and the license itself has nothing to do with what you can do, but rather controls what other people are allowed to do.
Somewhat helped along by inheriting a GPL'd codebase, and discovering that now I have NO options as to how to handle its future.
Your contrast of group freedom with individual freedom is also misleading. The GPL protects individual freedom by ensuring that everyone has the freedom to use code in any way they like - but also that no one has the ability to take that freedom away from anyone else. Again the aim is not just any sort of freedom, but a freedom that cannot be taken away.
Sometimes I wonder if the GPL doesn't boil down to "if *you* get something, then *I* want it too!!"
You might be right about a lot of the people who support the GPL, but the guys who actually write GPL'd code probably hope that they will not wake up one day and find that they are not allowed to use software that is built on their work.
There are Shared Source licenses that permit redistribution.
For example the Rotor (Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure) distribution ships with the following license(which was fought for by the authors of Rotor -- David Stutz):
As you can see you can modify and redistribute your modification.
And no you aren't contaminated by reading the source (that's specifically called out in the last right granted).
You can redistribute under another license that's compatible with this license (OK, so that's not GPL or BSD but most licenses lock you into the same license not merley a compatible one).
One of the ideas behind releasing this source code was to encourage research based on the Rotor(technically the CLI is very interesting) and to help implementers of other CLI implementations and to help people who code for
David Stutz wrote a good article on this at ORA.com.
If you are interested in finding out more about the SSCLI O'Reilly has a book in the works that should appear in March 2003. The first chapter is available online. Don't worry Microsoft won't own your soul if you read about it. If you are interested in modern language design or compiler implementation then you'll find something here.
I do happen to work at Microsoft as a contractor but these are my own words. And yes, I used to think all Shared Source licenses were the same too.