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Where are the Boundaries to Open Source?
Andy Updegrove writes "In the last several days there have been several stories in the news that highlight the increasing tension between ownership of intellectual property rights (IPR) and the opportunities that become available when broader, free access to those rights is made available. The three articles that struck me as best proving this point were the announcement by Sun Microsystems that it had released the design for its new UltraSPARC processor under the GNU GPL, a speech by Tim Berners-Lee to an Oxford University audience in which he challenged the British government to make Ordnance Survey mapping data available at no cost for Web use, and reports that a Dutch court had upheld the validity of the Creative Commons license. Each of these stories demonstrates a breach in traditional thinking about the balance of value to an IPR owner between licensing those rights for profit, or making those same rights freely and publicly available. They also raise the question: where - if anywhere - are the natural boundaries for 'open IPR?'."
To fall back on the often misued automobile example. I can design a car and sell the plans. Or I can design it and give the plans away. Or I can give them away under a license that says you can use them, but never charge for them. In fact, I can build the damn car and try to sell it. Or build it and give it to whomever I wish.
So you might think that, in your spare time, writing software and giving it to the world is a good thing. I may, contrarily, write software and try to sell it, needing to feed the kids and pay the rent. Or you can sell yours and I can give mine away. In any case, the market will decide if our creations have value, and are worth what we ask.
Your choice. My choice.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Your choice. My choice.
I agree, except that it really isn't a choice for the end-user. How long before the automobile goes the way of modern IP? Right now, if I buy a car from you I can do whatever the hell I want to it. I can take it apart to see how it works. I can build another car similar to it if I have the time and the skill. I can take the engine out of your car and put it in a different car and you can't say a word about it. I can even *GASP* remove the alternator and sell it to someone else. Or I can sell the entire car, which may be nothing like the car you designed because I modified it. I can drive it on dirt roads, I can use it to deliver pizzas. I can autocross it, or add a rollbar and better suspension for a road rally. That is my *right*. I bought the damn car, I own it, so I'm going to do with it what I please.
I realize that at some point the analogy breaks down because a car can't be put into a replicator like a DVD can. However, it seems to me that we are becoming less and less of an ownership society and more of a "borrow" society. I talked to someone the other day who works for a large firm, and they pay 160 grand a MONTH to license some software for their business. That does not include any changes they want made to the software - that costs extra.
I don't have a problem with profit. I have a problem with racketeering. I don't really know where this whole "you don't own it, you only licensed it from us and we can screw you anytime we want" started, but it is one reason why I'm such a big fan of OSS. I don't mind paying for software. But I get really pissed when I'm told I a) have to pay for it continuously and b) am not allowed to do anything with it except that which is outlined by the lawyers for giant-corp who wrote it and took my money for it. What a scam. DRM is coming to hardware near you, and it is going to compound this problem. Until now, it was _mostly_ software that kept the consumer on a leash.
How long until we have to pay a fee to (GM|Ford|etc) before our car will start every month? When will our GE fridge start requiring a dollar every time we open it? I don't like rent-an-appliance places because they're a rip off. You never get to stop paying for the item (unless you rent to own, at about 2-3x the cost you could have bought the item).
Am I paranoid chicken little here? How many of us as kids tinkered with everything in the house, but find today that if we do, we're breaking the law?
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
I've finally put my finger on the problem with the idea that open-source software is bad for the economy: It employs the Broken Window Fallacy of economics.
The fallacy goes something like this: A boy breaks a shopkeeper's window. The shopkeeper must then buy a new window from the glassmaker, who then buys bread from the baker, who then buys shoes from the shoemaker, making the child seem like a boon to the economy for having broken the window.
The problem with this thinking is that the money the shopkeeper spends on the window is money he does not spend on something that he actually wants. So the boy who breaks the window isn't a boon to the economy after all.
People argue that the creation of stuff like OpenOffice deprives the fine folks working on MS Office of their jobs. What's ignored is the fact that every company who once spent $300 a pop on Office licenses can now put that money toward projects that didn't exist before, or better yet (but more unlikely) pay it to their employees. And the guys at MS Office are now free to work on something that doesn't already exist.
Money is just a placeholder. The economy is actually about value, and OpenOffice adds what was previously considered hundreds of dollars of value to the computer of everyone who downloads it - at no actual charge.
When software can be distributed to the whole world for free, it's actually better for the economy than paid software.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.