Open Source Community's Double Standard

AlexGr writes to point out a really good point Matt Asay raises in his CNET News Blog: Why do we praise closed source companies who open up a little bit, but damn open source companies who close down a little bit? "Deja vu. Remember 2002? That's when Red Hat decided to split its code into Red Hat Advanced Server (now Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and Fedora. Howls of protest and endless hand-wringing ensued: How dare Red Hat not give everything away for free? Enter 2007. MySQL decides to comply with the GNU General Public License and only give its tested, certified Enterprise code to those who pay for the service underlying that code (gasp!). Immediately cries of protest are raised, How dare MySQL not give everything away for free?"

Comments

Human Nature

[suso]

This is human nature and it does not just apply to computers.

Example: If a girl is a real bitch then people expect her to be a bitch and if she is suddenly nice one day, then people say "Wow, she's so nice today". But if someone is nice all the time then one day gets angry people say "What's wrong with her, sheesh."

Its not a double standard, its human nature. Nuff said, discussion over.

Re:Human Nature

[tholomyes]

Well put! (Note to self, lower others expectations of me...)

Re:Human Nature

[Chris Burke]

It's not even human nature, it's common freaking sense. If you have a student who averages C- and gets a B on a test you praise them for their achievement. If you have a student who averages A+ and gets a B on a test you ask them what went wrong. If you fail to praise the underachieving student or fail to question the overachieving student then you discourage further improvements by the underachiever, and encourage further drops in performance by the overachiever.

It's not a double standard. It's a rational standard: Improvement is good, regression is bad. Becoming more open is good, becoming less open is bad. Ignoring this in order to be "fair" and avoid being accused of a "double standard" is just stupid.

Re:Human Nature

[ShieldW0lf]

They didn't write it.

It's not the product of their mind, not the product of their efforts.

It's the product of many peoples minds and efforts.

The administrators of the projects should be appreciative of that fact.

It is not their property. Laws can say what they want, lawyers and contracts and twisting of justice aside, it simply isn't theirs.

When open source organizations try to close access and extract money from people, they become malignant, corrupt, thieving organizations.

Declaring that it's legal for someone to do this doesn't change the fundamental nature of what's going on.

The misplaced sense of entitlement these organizations display is truly disgusting.

Re:Human Nature

[ShieldW0lf]

I just wanted to add to that last post...

Organizations have a lot of inerta. It takes a concerted effort to restructure.

When a closed source organization starts becoming more open, it took a lot of hard work and restructuring to make it possible.

When an open source organization starts closing things up, it takes a lot of hard work and restructuring to make that possible too.

Which means the people at the helm are working hard to start hoarding things they were given in trust for the public good.

It reveals that the organization has a poor moral character.

Re:Human Nature

[griffjon]

But, you see, if you phrase it this way, using clear logic, then the story is boooooorrrriiingggg - "Open Source Advocates: We like openness!" *yawn* "OSS Users dislike moves away from closed source, like moves towards open source" - *zzzzzz* Where's the conflict? where's the excitement? You can't have "fair and balanced" reporting unless there's a conflict!!

Re:Human Nature

[Compholio]

You can't have "fair and balanced" reporting unless there's a conflict!!

I thought "fair and balanced reporting" was giving the same amount of face time to the person with the logical and well thought out arguments as to the crazy wack-job who bases all decisions on truthiness and faith.

Re:Human Nature

[Dahamma]

I was really agreeing with you until you said: "Redhat, MySQL, and other companies like them are closing much of their source because..."

Redhat and MySQL are NOT closing their open source. That would in fact be illegal and unethical, because they did greatly benefit from (and in Redhat's case, built the whole product around) open source licensed with the GPL and contributed to by many OSS developers under that license.

But in fact, all they have done is start following the strict letter of the GPL, which is basically "you have to make source available when distributing binaries". Not only do they still follow that, but they still support and make freely available a community version of their project as well.

Based on your post I can't imagine you'd argue with that... I just found it a bit ironic that you propgated misperception that OSS companies are evil for "closing their source" when you seemed to be arguing against that FUD :)

Makes sense

[NetNifty]

Praise for companies moving towards our goals, opposition to companies moving away from them..

How is that a double standard?

[spun]

Shocking. The open source community wants software to be open source, that seems pretty consistent to me.

What?

[SIIHP]

"How dare Red Hat not give everything away for free?"

Why are they pushing this misconception of what open source means? AFAIK, it doesn't mean "give everything away for free" it means "the source is open".

Re:What?

[negative3]

Exactly what I thought. Unless I completely misunderstood everything, MySQL is not becoming "closed source", the enterprise version is just not going to be free as in beer any more. You can pay for the enterprise version, and you'll have access to the source code...that's free as in freedom. What is so hard for people to understand about that? From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html:

Selling Free Software

Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover the cost.

Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.

The word "free" has two legitimate general meanings; it can refer either to freedom or to price. When we speak of "free software", we're talking about freedom, not price. (Think of "free speech", not "free beer".) Specifically, it means that a user is free to run the program, change the program, and redistribute the program with or without changes.

Free programs are sometimes distributed gratis, and sometimes for a substantial price. Often the same program is available in both ways from different places. The program is free regardless of the price, because users have freedom in using it.

Non-free programs are usually sold for a high price, but sometimes a store will give you a copy at no charge. That doesn't make it free software, though. Price or no price, the program is non-free because users don't have freedom.

Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price isn't more free, or closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.

Free software is a community project, and everyone who depends on it ought to look for ways to contribute to building the community. For a distributor, the way to do this is to give a part of the profit to the Free Software Foundation or some other free software development project. By funding development, you can advance the world of free software.

It's not a double standad.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's double penetration.

The open source community wants to penetrate throug the business worlds, and throught the personal world. This is why the open source community has adopted a double penetration strategy.

We can only hope that the double penetration strategy is successful.

If find this surprising too

[gweihir]

After all the GPL only requires you to give source when you give executables. I think this is perfectly fine. And as long as you get a devcent version of the product for free, having a "special" version for paying customers is also fine in my book.

Why do we praise slave states

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

who open up a little bit, but damn free states, who begin forced servitude little bit?

The issue is not a "double standard" unless you use the current "mainstream media" Orwellian definition of "fairness."

The predjudice is for freedom, openness and opportunity. When you compound closing of source by the inclusion of earlier community contributions, testing and evangelism - you then reduce freedom to a marketing tool.

Re:Why do we praise slave states

[plague3106]

If you ignore the stupid /. editoral and read the blog, its actually questioning why its ok for some companys to have some open and closed source but not others. The example in the blog was SugarCRM, which was 100% closed, and opened PART of its code. Counter that with RH taking its code and closing it (but complying with the GPL still in all its releases).

Its not that SugarCRM will ever totally open, nor will RH totally close... the author seems to imply that both will continue with some open, some closed source. I think its a valid question... why not continue to critise SugarCRM for not opening the rest, and praise RH for not closing more?

Re:Why do we praise slave states

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ignore the stupid /. editoral and read the blog

Wouldn't that be cheating? I bet you're the kind of guy who reads the instruction manual before putting the widget together.

Someone doesn't know what a double standard is.

[vux984]

A double standard is when you are inconsisent.

There is nothing inconsistent about praising people for opening up a little bit, while condemning those that close down a little bit. We praise ANY move towards openness, and condemn ANY move away from it. How is that a double standard.

Allow me to illustrate using the oft neglected fruit analagy:

I gleefully watch my strawberry plants grow little fruit that ripen into perfect sweet strawberries, but watch me complain when my delicious strawberries start rotting and become ever less their original strawberry goodness.

Why oh why do I praise the things as they become ripe, but criticise them as they rot! I am such a hypocrit. Hmm.

We did not cry out because RH charged for RHEL

[mattnuzum]

When RH changed their business model it hurt a lot of people because prior to that, there was paid support available for the free product. We felt waylaid because we used RedHat Linux as the foundation for our critical applications. We knew we could pick up the phone and call (for a fee) if we were stuck and we felt secure with a reasonably long life cycle of security updates and support.

For example, a product my company created required 80+ hours of testing for minor version changes in critical software components. With 5 people on staff, that was an incredible expense, therefore we craved stability. Then, RHL was gone. *poof* just like that. We thought we could count on them and they changed the game on us.

I don't dislike RedHat's new business model, but I felt that after such a sudden and unexpected change in their support policy I could not trust them any longer. Later that year Ubuntu came out and I began experimenting with it (and debian). Now I have Ubuntu LTS which is supported by the vendor for 5 years, and I can call the nice guys in Montreal whenever I have a problem.

The blurb is actually pretty accurate

[hummassa]

(I normally RTFA before posting)

The problem here is: IMHO (and RMS's opinion) non-free software is unethical, because it's basically a scam: making software is a service with value; making copies of software is of (marginally) zero value. So, the GPP is right on the mark.
If a company that makes (unethical) proprietary software starts making some (ethical) Free Software, it is (1) improving its act and (2) contributing to the pool of Free Software.
If a company that makes Free Software starts making proprietary software, it is (1) starting to make unethical things and (2) contributing less to the pool of Free Software.
So, that's the reason why we praise non-free-software companies that open um and we boo free-software companies that close down.
Putting it like the GPP: would you praise a country that permitted slave labour and then passwd a law freeing some of its slaves? (like mine did in 1871...) And would you protest a country without slaves that passed a law allowing for some to have slaves?
HTH.

Re:The blurb is actually pretty accurate

[Deadbolt]

Neither RMS nor the GPL nor the FSF says you CAN'T charge for your work; in fact they encourage you to charge as much as your customers will pay.

See here and here.

Re:The blurb is actually pretty accurate

[Deadbolt]

Again, no one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use a free software license.

If you're talking about games, there are several ways you can do a free software game. You release the engine as free software and then assert copyright on the artistic assets like textures, sound, music, character design, etc. You would be charging for your ideas, not for your software, if that makes sense, and users would not be able to freely distribute the artistic assets. I think that's a fine compromise between making money and being moral. In fact, if your game is any good and becomes popular, users will fix your engine's bugs, port it to new platforms, and start thriving mod communities around it, all while talking you up as the Awesome Guy who wrote the free software engine that made it all possible. It's not that different from what id has been doing, but Carmack's been keeping the engine proprietary for a few years to make money from licensing and then it gets GPL'ed. I have zero problem with that.

As far as being evil for writing non-free software? Well, yes, it is evil. There are different degrees of evil; if I don't want to buy your game because it's nonfree, then I don't have to. But if you write software that blocks DVDs from being played on machines you don't like, that's a lot more evil. And if you were to, say, extort people for money to fix bugs in your mission-critical software, that's about as evil as you can get in software. For those of us who believe it to be a moral issue, not acting morally is evil. Personally I'm more of a realist than some people I could name, and I respect the individual's right to make his own choices. I've even written proprietary software before, and I'll probably write more in the future, but doing so is always wrong to some degree, and I have to choose if it's far enough over the line that I won't participate.

Re:The blurb is actually pretty accurate

[ColdWetDog]

Plenty of Linux companies make money. It's called selling support. Wow, that was hard.

OK - I write this wonderful program, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on testing and design and create it in such a way that the vast majority of users don't need any support. That's great, that's the holy grail of programming.

And I'm supposed to run this company how?

It's not even a valid argument.

[Roadkills-R-Us]

RedHat still provides the source for free. They're only charging for support; they just don't provide you with the build formats you may want of the binaries they built and tested.

You can get it all for free, and build it yourself, or get it from someone else who does just that (still for free), such as CentOS or Scientific Linux. You could even get the source, build and test it, and do the same thing RedHat does for less money. You might be hard pressed to make a living that way, challenging the big gorilla, and you'd have the /. community yelling at you, but you're free to do it. Or not.

The GPM doesn't require you to give away binaries or support.

What??

[thed00d]

MySQL decides to comply with the GNU General Public License and only give its tested, certified Enterprise code to those who pay for the service underlying that code (gasp!). Immediately cries of protest are raised, How dare MySQL not give everything away for free?"

Right, so so how is this closing the source? The source is still available, and it's still open source. I think the author here has confused open source with "free", and their not interchangeable terms. There is plenty of open source software that also happens to be free, thats F/OSS. There is also plenty of software that is free, but isn't necessarily open source, thats Freeware. This is really a non-issue, the source is still available, and they also continue to have and support a F/OSS version of code base.

Personally, I think this is a positive move for them. It's a positive move for the technology community as a whole as well. When my team looks at investing in technology for our business, we usually like to have a positive feeling that the technology will still be relevant 5 years and 10 years from when we purchase it. This move will make it easier for me to deploy MySQL in the enterprise, as I can now say to my review comity - "Look, they have a revenue source. They'll be around 5 years from now, and they'll be there to honor any support contract we purchase from them". Whereas in the past, I could only argue the point that they've been there a while, they should still be there a while from now. So, positive move in my book, not just for them, but for the technology community as a whole.

Mod parent up please

[crush]

It makes an absolutely crucial point: there may well have been howls of protest, but they were from people that either wanted to spread confusion or else were completely ignorant. There's another point: Fedora is the basis of RHEL not the other way around. Fedora is a very aggressively moving distribution that tries out new technologies. Red Hat looks at how succesful those are in Fedora and rolls any that work out well into its supported product: RHEL. It's in a good position to do so because many of the engineers that it hires are involved in the Fedora Project and so know intimately what features are stable and easily supportable. It galls me that Red Hat as a company is so open, adhering in both letter and spirit to the ideals of Free Software, makes money from selling support for that software, re-invests the money in hiring top-notch hackers that contribute Free Software for everyone and then are shit on by people that know that they're doing this work and yet a company like Canonical with a non-Free "launchpad" are fawned over. Feh.

MySQL's source is as open as before

[martenmickos]

To all Slashdotters,
 
Your comments are appreciated and we take your input seriously. Just to make sure that all facts are correct: we have not closed the source. MySQL continues to be GPL as before.
 
We have only made a change in relation to binaries. Community binaries are available as before, MySQL Enterprise binaries are provided to our customers. We are highly grateful both for those who count themselves as users and those who count themselves as customers. And the binaries are produced from GPL source code so of course you are all in your full rights to modify, compile, redistribute etc. as before.
 
The rapid innovation rate in and around MySQL is very much a reasult of the product being licensed under the GPL. Look for instance at MySQL Cluster and MySQL Proxy which are innovations from us, or at the SPASQL modification made by Eric Prud'hommeaux: http://www.w3.org/2005/05/22-SPARQL-MySQL/XTech
 
I look forward to more of your comments and suggestions.
 
Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB