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Why We Shouldn't Begrudge Commercial Open Source Companies
Thinkcloud writes with a followup to recent news that Mozilla is once again looking into a do-not-track mechanism after having previously killed a similar tool, allegedly under pressure from advertisers. Canonical COO Matt Asay wrote in The Register that this is not necessarily the case, nor is Mozilla's decision necessarily the wrong one. "It's quite possible — indeed, probable — that the best way for Mozilla to fulfill its mission is precisely to limit the openness of the web. At least a bit. Why? Because end-users aren't the only ones with rights and needs online, a point Luis Villa elegantly made years ago. It's not a one-way, free-for-all for end-users. Advertisers, developers and enterprises who employ end-users among others all factor into Mozilla's freedom calculus. Or should." OStatic adds commentary that "Like it or not, commercial open source companies are still companies, and the economics of the online world have everything to do with their present and their future.
Tracking users without their consent is just evil. In no other medium are ad recipients tracked: Not in TV, not in print magazines, not on billboards.
If they are tracked in other marketing efforts (eg. loyalty cards), the consumers gave their consent first.
Richard Stallman was selling tapes of Emacs and GCC back in the 80s and made sure the GPL allowed selling.
Here's his essay about how to do it but at the same time ensure it doesn't end up funding proprietary software:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
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That is to say, commercialising a project can be done without spoiling the software.
In the 80s, distributing tapes was one model. Teaching classes is another model (which RMS also did for GCC). In the 90s, service companies sprung up.
Commerce isn't inherently bad. But it's also not inherently necessary.
Advertising funds such a tiny amount of free software development, we shouldn't worry about losing it. There are other business models. Ones which rely on doing something useful which people choose to pay for.
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Is it just me, or is the author completely confusing the notions of privacy online with the open source movement? He mentions the comparison many times, yet the only relevant factor I can see is that Firefox happens to be open-source.
In any event, if Mozilla is caving to the tracking mafia, I will cease to use it. And if Google is behind it, I'll have to rethink their services as well. The notion that I have to tell them everything I do to use online services is preposterous. Get a business model that doesn't depend on spying.
I think Matt's portrayal of FSF is disingenuous.
He says that pressure from Google convinced FSF to not "close the ASP loophole", but that's not how it was.
FSF wanted to close the ASP loophole (by putting the Affero clause into GPLv3), but many software developers and many companies were against this.
This left FSF with the choice of producing their ideal licence, and few people using it, or producing a licence that was an improvement compared to GPLv2, and more people using it.
The licence exists to give freedom to users and to protect distributors from patent attacks. It can't do these things if no one uses it! So FSF reluctantly left the Affero clause out of GPLv3.
Same goes for the patent clause. FSF could have put a waaay broader patent grant into GPLv3, but then the patent holders simply wouldn't distribute any GPLv3'd software.
Instead, FSF started with GPLv2 and looked at every section where they could get more freedom and more protections for the distributors and the users, while ensuring that it would be used by software projects and that companies would distribute GPLv3 software. That's what it means to be pragmatic.
(Selling out your users is completely different and shouldn't be called "pragmatic")
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Once again, this conflates free as in beer with free as in freedom. Few of us would begrudge others the opportunity to make money. That's not the same thing as parting out our privacy. And if we do as he suggests, adopt the so-called "reasonable" position in the middle, then you can be quite sure our opponents will take that as our position and further demand to meet in the middle.
No thank you. I insist on an open network that values freedom.