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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?'."
It's a trick question. "IPR" isn't natural, it's an invention (and a relatively recent one at that). So asking where its "natural boundaries" are is silly. Where is are the "natural boundaries" of Rap? Or of lavender? Where is the natural boundary between Spanish and Italian?
It's a silly question.
For the vast bulk of history (and for all time before that), there was no such thing as "Intellectual Property." There isn't even any analogy in the animal kingdom (just imagine Monarch butterflies issuing a take down notice to other butterflies that have infringed on their trademark look and feel). The "natural" state is for people to thinks, say, and do whatever they want, and to copy good ideas wherever they see them. That, in a nutshell, is how culture works. But very recently there has arisen the observation that some good ideas are hard to copy unless the inventor is willing to explain the trick to you. And one way to induce them to do so is to ameliorate their fear that by so doing they will create a host of competitors, by promising to prevent other people from using the trick for awhile provided that they share it.
Sounds like a fair deal, but, like many things, a little greed is all it takes to spoil it for everyone.
-- MarkusQ
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.
If I ever read the phrases, "kindred spirit," "more blessed to give than to receive," and "the meek shall inherit the earth" in a tech blog again, I'm going to scratch my eyes out.
Don't get me wrong, kindred spirits are nice and everything, but if you're discussing IPR from a business standpoint (which is what the essay is really about) why would you reference the Bible?
The bottom line is that there are no natural boundaries for open source or for IPR. All boundaries are created by government law and structure of markets. Take away the law, and you've eliminated all boundaries, since business will have to compete on different things.
I think what the author should have asked, is "With the current US IP law structure, what markets will be best served by open source?"
Or perhaps," Can everyone tell me what markets are underserved by businesses with open-source as a model, so I know where to direct my investments?" That's the question I'd ask. Especially with the glut of VC in the market coming up, there is a fortune to be made by the wily early investor.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I happened to be a victim myself and it made me very aware that some people who do not understand FOSS that they only use because of the lower costs, but don't manage their business policies to account for FOSS licenses.
I was a student on a school where they had a contract that said that anything I did create for my study they got the ownership rights of (of which the right of use is derivated from, typically arranged using licences). That contract you had to sign along with other papers needed to register to their administration (saying no means you can't follow the study) . As a bachelor student I helped out 2 students who where about to be kicked off from their master programme (this I heard from their mentors..). I used a plenty of GPL software (also LGPL audio libraries) and I made myself some GPL software too. The project became a succes, the two students I helped out suddenly got all the credits (that's another story, not relevant now) and the school wanted to sell their succes story en help the two students to form a company after their succesful graduation.
This is where the situation of fundamental ignorant behaviour towards the GPL became apparrent to me. The schools opinion was that all of my source code belonged to the students. The conflict couldn't be worse, since I transferred all my rights to the FSF (including my copyright). The schools point was that this tranfer was not legimate, since my school was convinced I made this code for a school project. So the GPL licence was not valid in this situation. They also said that if I would use anycode, I would be sewed to court and that if I would need any information that I had to write to their lawyer
So I did. I explained him the importance of GPL software for universities and other educational organisations. I explained also that this contract made it impossible to use any LGPL or GPL software. I explained this was especially a problem for the audio technology faculty of this organisation, because they did a lot of programming using Free Software and even got courses in some software that was Free (as in freedom). If there was a conflict for me, it was for the large part of this faculty. The other problem was that almost nobody of the students was aware of the contract nor its consequences. He took my point and said I was right and this should be taken account for. He would speak to the board about it. I said I wanted to write an article called "How educational organisations embrace Free Software".
After kept waiting for a long time I decided to go to the board myself (I was luckily graduated very succesfully). This guy didn't understand one bit of it, nor would he be so smart to get informed by the experts from his organisation and thought that I was threathening somehow, to use my publication to get my GPL'ed software back. I explained him this was not the case, but I still got a very stupid ignorant reply. This proved lack of policies which account for the GPL and the right to learn and write Free Software.
But this isn't one case on its own. There are more schols with this kind of problem. Maybe this is why MIT has it's own "free" licence? How to fight for your rights to party with freesoftware on your school? How do we begin to fight?
"ownership" of intellectual "property" "rights" is just an absurd term to use for "exercising certain monopoly powers granted by governments to restrict other people's freedoms so you can make money." And given the absurdity of many recent patent claims, I think there's a good chance that the word "intellectual" doesn't really apply either.
"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it." -- Olin Miller
I've owned a couple of startup software companies. I've sold a few and closed a few. In almost every case, I am personally liable and must put many of my assets on the table to operate the enterprise. I do need to be rewarded for this type of risk or I'm just not going to put my butt on the line like this and thus goes a couple hundred jobs.
Greed is the reason we don't live in caves...that and beer
On the other side of the coin, the right to create and invent is a natural right, and has been with us since the beginning. It is only in the past several centuries that this natural right has been eroded by idea monopolists and those who want to tie up exclusive rights to natural discoveries through physical force, in the form of patent and copyright law.
Rubbish. The market isn't a god, it's a mechanism, and a poor one for managing ideas. Ideas and creative works are something which are naturally plentiful; when you get right down to it, the moment they come into existance, their value (measured in terms of the benefit created) increases the more they propagate. Using the market to determine who gets funded and who doesn't and having artifical restraints on the propagation of these things is NOT a good system. It destroys a huge amount of the value of creative works in the name of rewarding and motivating the creator, and we'd all be much better off with a system that rewards and motivates creators without reducing the real world value of their creations in the process.
Intellectual property concepts are deeply flawed, terribly inefficient and incredibly wasteful, and about as well suited to the modern world as horseshoes on my car.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.