Torvalds Criticizes Open-Source Wannabes

Wonko42 writes "In his address at Internet World '99, Linus Torvalds threw some harsh words at Microsoft and Sun, criticizing Microsoft's thoughts of opening portions of Windows source and making his feelings known about Sun's restrictive new community license. He also spoke some about the future of commercial software, and dodged lots of Transmeta questions. "

Comments

Re:What the hell?

[Bruce Perens]

Darren,

I think the point you are missing is that sun is asking for Community participation as there is with Linux, but they are not giving the community the same quid-pro-quo that they get with real Open Source software. So, people of that community have a right to say:

1. I am not going to work on this because I don't think the license offers us a good deal, and I don't think you should work on it either.

2. Hey, you out there who don't understand about Open Source but have been hearing about it! We want you to know this isn't the real thing!

The only reall difference between SCSL and GPL in this instance is that with the GPL you can go your own way and distribute it anyway [if Linus doesn't like your change].

I can't stress how important a difference that is. The right to change software without someone's approval can be abbreviated to "the right to change it", period. For Sun, it's a control thing - they can't stand the thought that Microsoft might participate in Open Source and make its own changes. This even though everyone else would have access to MS's changes in that case and could clone the good ones.

There's also the matter of circumvention. If I don't like what Red Hat is doing with some GPL software, I can circumvent them and distribute my own version, which I continually develop and for which Red Hat gets no money. When you work on SCSL software, you're essentially working for Sun - paycheck or none.

Sun sells hardware. They can afford for their software to be Open Source if they just keep making good hardware. They are going to control-freak themselves right out of the market if they keep on this course.

Thanks

Bruce

Sure, but...

[Booker]

... I think he is right to criticize them for saying one thing, but doing another, in an effort to get some free publicity and/or damage a competitor.

I too am a firm believer that the author of a piece of work has the right to distribute it under any license they choose.

However, announcing to the world that you're going to open up your source - when the world is just finally learning what that means - but actually "opening" it in a very closed and restricted way - is disingenuous, and deserves criticism.

Sun's License Is Just Not Open Source

[Effugas]

People seem to be getting into this "good enough" attitude regarding whether Sun's Community Source License is open or not.

It Just Isn't, and here's why.

StarOffice, recently licensed under Sun's Community Source terms(so I've heard), possesses an excellent charting component. While the GD Library is good for many tasks, the charting component of StarOffice is clearly superior, and would be inordinately useful for the myriad Linux/Unix based web servers out there.

Unfortunately, Sun's license restricts any productive work from being done that could web-enable StarOffice on the server side. Apache could never be bundled with mod_starchart, and fellow coders can't put out their own, less memory hungry versions of the component.

The only thing Sun lets you do with StarOffice is fix problems for them, and if Sun doesn't want the problems fixed, the most you can do is release a bulky and semi-difficult to apply patch to repair it.

I believe they even end up owning your patch as well.

Now, StarOffice appears to be a very well put together app, and I don't want to slight it for its licensing terms. But the bottom line is: StarOffice is not Open Source. It's nothing like Open Source. Using the words "Community Source" is a cynical and slimy attempt to undermine the core advantages of the open model. While Sun is allowed to derive benefit from the community, the community is placed in a state of perpetual legal risk(and thus, extortable circumstance) should they do anything at all with the code beyond mailing in fixes.

Sun's License means no web charting component for you. It's that simple.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

All wrong.

[Bruce Perens]

the slashdot community is not so huge that they can dictate what it means for something to be 'open source'

The Open Source community has broadly accepted the Open Source definition, and we really don't like people trying to re-define Open Source for their own selfish purposes. As a community, we are big enough to give Sun a real problem in the market as their customers jump ship to Linux en masse. The SCSL is a band-aid that might reduce the hemmorage of users, but won't cure it. Sun needs to get over its Microsoft paranoia - the only reason for the SCSL is to keep Microsoft from stealing the show.

by comparison, the GPL restricts companies from developing software based on GPL stuff and selling it

No, it doesn't.

What the GPL does is enforce a quid-pro-quo. Take the example of my Electric Fence malloc() debugger. I give the product and source code away to anyone who asks, and I allow people to sell it. If you want to develop something based on it without paying me, you must give the source code away to anyone who asks, and you must allow people to sell it. If you want to do it under a commercial license without giving it away or giving people source code, you give me some money and I give you another license than the GPL.

What you are looking for is something more one-sided, where I give the software away, but someone else can take it, not give me any money, add their own changes, and then sell the result without giving me back the changes or giving anyone the source code. As the original author, what possible reason would I have for making myself someone's dupe - a sort of unpaid employee who gets no benefits - that way?

In general, free software authors write free software so that there will be more free software. They aren't interested in facilitating non-free software unless there is some obvious benefit to free software or themselves, and I can't think of why they should be interested in that.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:talk is indeed cheap

[sterwill]

This isn't true. Open Source software (in a GPL-sense, even) fits perfectly well with many, many existing business models. Open Source software as a product of business does not fit with existing proprietary software business.

Free software (Open Source products) may or may not generate revenue directly (consulting is just one established business model in which Free software can pay the bills), but that doesn't mean that it can't make existing services or products more attractive. Take, for example, a company that sells plumbing supplies wholesale, and provides Free software to its customers to manage specialized plumbing equipment inventory. If you were a plumbing supplies retailer, the availability of this software and its acceptance by said company adds to the value of the proposition of purchasing and managing your supplies from this corporation. The fact that this software is Free allows this company's customers to tailor and customize it for point-of-sale workstations, integration with payroll or other inventory systems, etc.

Red Hat is an example of a company that exists in that orthogonal world, as you mentioned. But to say Free software does not fit anywhere in "traditional business models" is ignoring centuries' traditions of marketing, customer relations, and a services-driven economy.

--

Any access to the source is better than none

[Foaf]

There are a hell of a lot of Windows apps that proabably wouldn't have come about or been as useful without looking at the Windows source.

Citrix WinFrame comes to mind. IIRC Citrix did a deal with MS to get access to the source for Windows. This basically meant they could fix bugs more easily.

I've read various discussion groups where Sun developers are happy about Sun's decicision to open up Solaris because it will help them with their application developement. The same would go for Windows developers if MS, by some miracle, decided to let people see the source for Windows.

IMHO, the bulk of software developers, especially those who write for Windows, aren't really interested in helping maintain their OS of choice. They just want to make their software run better, with less bugs. Any access to OS source, no matter the license, will help them make this happen.
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