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Is Apache Or GPL Better For Open-Source Business?
mjasay writes "While the GPL powers as much as 77% of all SourceForge projects, Eric Raymond argues that the GPL is 'a confession of fear and weakness' that 'slows down open-source adoption' because of the fear and uncertainty the GPL provokes. Raymond's argument seems to be that if openness is the winning strategy, an argument Michael Tiemann advocates, wouldn't it make sense to use the most open license? Geir Magnusson of the Apache Software Foundation suggests that there are few 'pure' GPL-only open-source projects, as GPL-prone developers have to 'modify it in some way to get around the enforcement of Freedom(SM) in GPL so people can use the project.' But the real benefit of Apache-style licensing may not be for developers at all, and rather accrue to businesses hoping to drive adoption of their products: Apache licensing may encourage broader, deeper adoption than the GPL. The old GPL vs. BSD/Apache debate may not be about developer preferences so much as new business realities."
If you're trying to get a protocol or "standard" of some kind as widely adopted as possible, then you should use a more permissive license (e.g. BSD, MIT, Apache). If you want people to embrace your product, yet then have to buy a license from you if they want to modify it in any proprietary way, you use the GPL.
It's basically a business question of whether you plan to make money DIRECTLY from the code (i.e. GPL), or whether you have ulterior motives for making money elsewhere (i.e. Apache). For examples of the latter, most of the largest permissive-licensed projects (Apache, Firefox, etc) are bankrolled by Microsoft competitors as a means to block Microsoft from having full monopoly power in a particular niche.
This really is a TIRED and boring flamewar. There simply is no "one license to rule them all". It depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
One thing the GPL offers that BSD-type licenses don't: protection from competitors. When a business releases it's code under a BSD-type license, it's competitors are free to take that code and expand upon it to make new products while keeping their code secret. As a business that means that you're always giving to your competitors but they don't have to give anything to you in return. The GPL, by contrast, allows your competitor to use your code as the basis for their enhanced product only if they give you their code in return. That means that whenever your competitor uses your code to gain a competitive advantage, you can grab his code in return and match him. You're never left holding the short end of the code-exchange stick. The only way a competitor can use your code without letting you use any improvements he makes is to not make any changes to your code at all. But if he's not making any changes or enhancements, you always have the first-mover advantage and he'll never be able to offer anything you aren't already offering. From a business standpoint, if you're going to open the source code at all the GPL provides assurance that the only way your competitors can hitch a free ride is if they accept always being in second place behind you when it comes to new features.
That's assuming you can open the code in the first place. For code that's not critical to your business it's an easy answer. If the code is critical to your business, the first question you need to ask is whether or not you can open it to the world in the first place. Opening it means the entire world can see the exact thing that sets your business apart from others in that case, OTOH it also means the entire world can offer improvements and that means you're effectively getting a development department not even giants like IBM and Microsoft can afford for free. Keeping it closed means you can avoid revealing the keys to your success, OTOH it also means there's huge amounts of useful software out there that you can't use and will have to pay to get (either in cash to buy commercial versions or in time to duplicate the functionality). I can't say whether the trade-off's worth it for any particular business or not, but as a businessman you'd better be asking that question and getting a solid, well-grounded answer to it.
Yes.
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How does having the ability to close down the product a better freedom?
Actually with the GPL, you can dual license since it's your own software and thus have a free GPL version and then a privately extended version if that is what you business is looking to do...
With BSD, well, all your concurrent company can do the same and compete in the proprietary version with you, how is that helping you?
Raymond argues that GPL is bad because it's an uncertain license... what?
If Cisco can't read that it has to distribute source code, well, that is a shame with all their lawyers.
Anyone else KNOW what they have to do. So there is no ambiguity there!
Same goes for Google's Android going with the Apache license...
Basically in that super proprietary cell phone world, they are more than happy to have it under a BSD like license.
Now every company can build an OS together and all close them on their side leaving you, the user, with nothing out of that openness except the base system which might well be unusable.
See how MacOS X free part is free/useful compared to the full product? Haha! ...
So they save on development cost, like they would have with the GPL but remove the idea that they want to guarantee that this investment will be guaranteed in the future.
It's like a trap to win the cellphone OS race and then, when it's too late and they have such an insurmountable market share, they close it and we go back to business as usual...
As a user i can't trust that, I'll go with Maemo, OpenMoko or anything that has as much GPL as possible if i have a choice!
(which right now I don't really have, but this year is going to be interesting! I hope ...)
You have identified the major points though:
The GPL does not preclude the open source community from forking and out innovating me. But any innovation done has to be done in the clear, assuming those changes are beyond "customizations" for a single customer.
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
...it'd be better for business, at least in the sense that more people would find commercial opportunities with it. But would that code be open source in the first place, were it not for the GPL? I doubt it. Most companies don't want to give away source competitors could put directly in their proprietary products. Give away GPL code? To use it means the competitors would have to open source their application, turning them into a service and support company rather than product sales, where you'll beat them on accrued skill and experience. I'd also say that a lot more individual contributors subscribe to "share and share alike" than "share and kthxbye". My point is that it's not like you got two equal options, either you use GPL code or you have to write it yourself because there is no such Apache code. Would be nice if there were, but then I'd like a pony too.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Eric is basically right. I've been burned in the past, so I now pay attention to the license an application uses (something you should get into the habit of doing).
Here is my decision tree for deciding to use an application licensed under any FOSS license:
1) If I plan to modify the application in any way, or use it as a library, it has to be under a BSD derived license. This means BSD, MIT, Apache, MSPL, Perl's artistic license, or anything similar. GPL, or any "viral" license is out... I dont touch GPL code anymore (actually, this is a lie, see below).
1.1) There are exceptions to the "used as a library" rule. If everybody else is using said library in their application (eg: libmysql), nobody is gonna try to GPL-ize my whole application. And if they do go after me, it will only be because I'm so successful that I become a target for such nonsense. If your library is nothing more than a CPAN module and it is GPL, I can't use it, sorry.
2) If I don't plan to modify the application for use in my project, the license becomes less important. In these cases, I look at other factors such as how active the project is. I don't like depending on projects that haven't been touched since 2005.
3) If your application or code will become a non-linked dependency of my application (for example, a GPL'd version control system), I don't really care what the license is. Since it isn't linked into my application, I won't get "infected". In fact, I might even contribute to your GPL project provided my contributions are independent works and don't come out of my own "toolkit" so-to-speak.
4) If you require me to assign copyright to you before I can contribute, you are a scam and can piss up a rope. Granted, many of the big-boys require this (most GNU stuff, Firefox(?), MySQL) and so I might be willing to cave in an contribute anyway provide what I'm contributing is an important bugfix and doesn't erode ownership my personal toolkit (i.e. the good stuff). The scam guys are companies who want ownership so they can cook up dual license schemes and profit from your work (MySQL). Scammers can pay for their own bugfixes...
Bottom line, I won't touch GPL for anything that might make my mainline code become a derivative work and force it all to become GPL'd. BSD'sh licenses cannot do this to my mainline code, so I can use their stuff and contribute anything I think they will find useful. GPL doesn't let me cherry pick useful stuff out of my code, so they miss out on some pretty cool things. Since I dont like leeching from GPL stuff (using it, but having no way to give back), I just avoid it instead.
In other words, if you GPL your project, $SUPER_BIG_COMPANY can't lift your code and make $MILLIONS$ but only at a heavy cost--the pool of people who are able to work on your project becomes much, much smaller. BSD-style licenses are attractive to business precisely because business knows they can contribute changes without getting into trouble. If I use a BSD anything, I know that I have the option to deeply embed the code into my application, still be able to contribute back any changes, and retain control over my intellectual property. GPL reduces control over my IP and thus I can only depend on it in the loosest way possible. The second I want to make any contributions, depending on how I used the GPL code, my entire portfolio might be in legal jeopardy. Not cool.
PS: IANAL
I think we have to ask: What has the GPL done for us, or at least probably done for us?
Starting a decade ago several very large corporations poured significant resources into Linux development, and were compelled to keep their contributions open-licensed and essentially free (as in beer).
Do we think that would have been the case if Linux had been Apache or BSD-licensed, or would we instead see a division into deluxe IBMLinux (that works on multi-processors and new chips and 64-bit) and open Linux that scrapes along on simple 486 hardware.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
i.e. you want to have your cake and eat it too. i.e. dual licenses schemes like MySQL's. i.e. you want to sell your GPL code.
For you "owner" of the code, yeah--especially if you are extra weasely and require copyright assignment. For contributors, it is a scam. Why the hell should I contribute to your dual licensed garbage so you can turn around and profit from my work? I never understood why such companies aren't hassled more about this. It is really a great scam--you get a bunch of people contributing to your work for free and you get to sell it all. Course, I guess the same holds true for most things on the internet--flickr doesn't take pictures, its users do and flickr profits from that. Slashdot doesn't have a script to write comments, we write them and they profit from that. So I might be wrong on this... but the dual-license guys seem way more blatant, probably because I get a lot of satisfaction posting here, but dont really get much satisfaction contributing to some faceless corporations open source project.
A sucky one though. I doubt many programmers on this board want to be in a position that the work they produce for a company is essentially worthless and the way to move up is through the tech support department. I also doubt customers would benefit either since giving away the software and charging for support creates an incentive to make shoddy software that requires a lot of hand-holding.
If you look at big companies like IBM who have really embraced OSS, they have done so precisely because of the GPL. The GPL is really the only license that makes a lot of business sense. The GPL has two major advantages over other licenses. First since you own the copyright you can dual license the code as proprietary and GPL if you wish, while making sure that code can continue to be developed by a community and protected from exploitation---the only caveat here being that you have to make sure copyrights are always assigned to you, something that many projects do. The second major advantage is that no company can use your code against you in a competitive manner. The playing field is completely level. If improving your code helps a competitor, it also helps you. Given all this, if I was a commercial company, wanted to have my projects be open source, and I owned all the copyrights, then it's a no brainer. the GPL is the only way to go. It seems like the only time people complain about the GPL is when they don't happen to have a natural copyright to the code and for some reason feel some sense of entitlement to code (if it's open source I should be able to use it how I want, dang it) just because it's OSS. It's very bizarre.
Frankly I'm surprised to hear of such blatant FUD coming from someone like ESR. I think the solution to FUD is to be a bit more vocal about defending what the GPL is actually about and how it protects users, developers, *and* commercial corporations. It's not public domain software. It's source code just like source code from any other source. If it's not yours and you don't want to abide by the license, buy rights to the code or stop complaining.
The problem is that there's no incentive to contribute. You can take, but nothing makes you give back. Especially because if you give back, you're effectively working for your competitors.
So yeah, BSD is excellent from a "leech" point of view. It's not that good from the "project" point of view. It's not that good from the contributor point of view either. Why should I bother contributing when that in effect makes me an unpaid employee of every company using that source?
The LGPL exists for a strategic reason.
For some things, such as the C library, there exist many reimplementations. Making that GPLd drives people to alternatives, and loses on any potential contributions. So the LGPL is a compromise to still get contributions to that code.
Stallman considers that a library should be GPLd when it provides a competitive advantage. If it's GPL or "code your own", he hopes you'll go with the GPL one.
On the contrary, it jives perfectly fine with business.
Take Red Hat for instance, and other companies that pay for GPL development. Why do they do that? Because they know that even if IBM takes advantage of their improvements, the moment they fix something in Red Hat's code, they have to give back as well. So not only does Red Hat get better drivers or SMP support, they also get free fixes from IBM for it!
The BSD on the other hand doesn't have such things. Red Hat would write their driver, release as closed source, not contribute it back obviously, and every other company would do the same. The end result is that BSD won't get the driver until some volunteer happens to contribute it.
There's also lots of GPLd code in various devices you rarely look at very closely, such as cash registers. The companies that work for those don't sell code. They sell hardware + software + support, and have no problem with contributing bugfixes for whatever GPLd code they used, because their business loses nothing by doing so. And without the GPL they wouldn't bother to contribute, because that takes programmer time, and as such won't be done if optional.
It's only death if your business is selling software on the shelf. There are many companies with different business models, which sell routers, or cash registers, or support, and for which the GPL isn't a hindrance in the slightest.
I take a a GNU product, apply some of my special magic to it, and I'm screwed (businesswise, at least). I have to give away any enhancements I make.
That's the whole point. The guys that put in work for free don't want you taking their base and making alterations and then selling it with no obligations to give away your enhancements. The companies that put time and money into GPL software don't want that either, they contributed to the community and the condition for you getting the source and using the software is that you open up too.
That's the condition for using their work. Don't like it? Find or write another solution.
So many posts here seem to think that GPL code ought to be able to be used as if it was public domain. That's not the idea at all.
Things like the linksys hacking communities would not exist without the GPL.
There is an easy answer to this. Don't make the software as your business. Most of the successful Open Source applications are made by Open Source projects in which businesses participate, not businesses whose goal is to make the software.
Am I saying that Open Source business doesn't work? Most of the time it does not. It depends on what you are doing.
Bruce Perens.
Many dual-licensed projects are perfectly happy to accept patches, as long as you sign over the copyright or the right to relicense, and swear that you are the author of work and don't know of any infringements in it.
The problem is motivating people to sign that. I think I know a way, but I'm still working on the product for my new company so don't yet have proof.
Bruce Perens.
That assumes I have a product. What if I'm just an user?
Where's my incentive to contribute something that your company will repackage and sell?
I consider that a very weak incentive.
Yes, of course it's easier to contribute a one line fix for a buffer overrun, than to manually patch every new version.
You however have a big incentive not to contribute anything that might make you more competitive.
Long term this sort of thing will result in all the interesting technology being in the proprietary forks, and an open codebase that doesn't do anything interesting, but runs well.
And here, again, why I don't release BSD code. I don't want you to have an exclusive edge, I want you to contribute to my project.
But the second you want to distribute it, anything that the GPL considers a derivative work becomes GPL. And *that* is why some people, like myself, prefer to avoid GPL.
The only way that something you write can "become GPL" is for you to choose to license it under the GPL. There is no other way under heaven or earth for this to happen. If you've heard otherwise, you've been misinformed.
Using the GPL takes away the *option* of ever being able to distribute our work without making it GPL.
You seem to be saying that if I choose the GPL as the license for my software, I've removing your ability to redistribute software that you derive from mine under a non-GPL license. If so, yes, that is correct. That is the price I'm charging for allowing you to derive from my work. (If you ask me with a good reason, I might allow something else, but that's the default.)
If I start using the GPL in my code, my option to distribute my codebase under a license of my choosing goes out the window
No. You can distribute your code under the GPL and then switch to another license at any time for future versions. What you cannot do is redistribute my GPL'ed code under the license of your choice.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
My customers are putting Linux in new car dashboards and cell phones.
Bruce Perens.
Read the complaint. Don't do the stupid obvious license violations alleged in the complaint. Then you'll be fine.
Nobody violates a Free Software / Open Source license for a smart reason. Cisco hasn't got their compliance act together.
Bruce Perens.