Disruptive Tendencies

The Open Source Red Herring

The biggest problem that I have with the open source ecosystem is that it obfuscates its commercial motives behind this banner of altruism.

The attempted distinction between commercial vs. open-source, with the implication that open source is somehow not commercial, is a red herring. Open-source is also commercial. Look at the companies behind Linux - IBM, Google, Oracle, Sun, Novell, Red Hat. Does anyone really believe their support of Linux is altruistic or that they’re motivated by the distribution of “free” software? If profit is not their motive, someone better tell their shareholders! 

In the mid-80’s, the Canadian government reduced the patent protection afforded to pharmaceutical companies from 20 years to 10. From this, tremendous wealth was created for the owners of two generic drug manufacturers, Apotex and Novopharm. Were these companies acting out of the interest of the general population or were they parasitic offspring from a flawed premise? Each of these companies chose to remain private, and therefore able to keep their financial records away from public scrutiny, while the “commercial” pharmaceutical companies opened their books to the market, and to criticism. The owners of the generics became billionaires, not because they were running charities, but because they were able to monetize others’ IP and risk capital. 

Sure, Big Pharma is profitable, but it is not at the expense of society. Rather, it is frequently to the benefit of society. Look at how the invention of H2 receptor antagonists changed the treatment of ulcers and reflux esophagitis. Twenty five years ago, ulcers often required surgical intervention, but Tagamet changed the rules of the game. Did the profit that SKF made come at the expense of society or did the invention of a disruptive technology (if you were a GI surgeon!) warrant these profits? 

Under what terms does Google license Linux? How much does it “give back”? I’m suggesting that it is highly selective as to what it “gives back” to the open source community, and makes these decisions based on its own self-interest, not out of some altruistic motive. Google search algorithms are deeply guarded secrets, and its vaunted server farm architecture is “proprietary”. Is there anything wrong with this? Of course not. Just don’t pretend that you’re somehow better than the “commercial” vendors because you promote open source development opportunistically.

"This is what [Summer of Code] is really about: infecting students with the free software spirit, giving them the opportunity to grow into a community like ours."

There's another more subtle benefit, as DiBona explains. Thanks to the Summer of Code, "Google now knows all the people working on all these software projects, on which it depends," he says. "That's incredibly useful to us. Every once in a while we'll come out with a new API and there'll be some projects in the open source world that might be useful in either using that API or being a customer. You can just call them up and say, 'hey guys, it's Google, we're your pal,' and let them just check it out."(http://redmondmag.com/features/article.asp?editorialsid=2395)

I have never heard, nor do I ever expect to hear, any allusions from Microsoft that it is anything but a profit-driven, commercial software vendor. As a shareholder, I expect nothing less.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

martin.suter (at) iplicensing.net

 

 

Ethical Dilemma Over Linux-based Website

This past week, I decided to add blogging capabilities to this site and was surprised to find that my web hosting service (1and1.com) only has blogging options in its Linux Hosted Business offering. Coming from the commercial software business, I made a conscious choice 4 years ago to opt for the Windows Hosted service. But, I was now confronted with a choice that required some serious thinking about whether the move to open source was compromising my moral code.

"What's he talking about?", I can hear you asking. As an Objectivist (by choice), a capitalist (by default), and an IP licensing executive (by profession), my quandary over open source software really sits at the intersection of these three areas. My moral compass has largely been set by the influences of Ayn Rand in my formative years. Her views on individuals' rights to their own work motivated me to gravitate towards IP licensing. Her view on capitalism (in its purest form), is that it's the only moral economic and political ideology and is the manifestation of an individual's right to their work as well as their ability to profit from it. As a consequence of the nobility of the profit motive, she profoundly mistrusted altruism. Is Linux/open source, software for socialists? Are those involved in its development doing so out of an altruistic agenda? Does its use equate to theft of someone else's IP?

I opted to start with the last question first, and printed off the GNU General Public License that I was required to enter into if I were to switch over to Linux. It's highly readable, much more so than most commercial EULAs, and is eminently clear about the rights and obligations assumed by developers who choose to modify the code base. While everyone has the right to do so, any changes they make must also be made available, as source code, under the exact same terms as the original license - free of charge and without warranty.

Now as a named co-inventor on only 1 patent, I'm not smart enough to be called an inventor myself. I do know, however, that most inventors will say that their work builds on the work of others. "Prior art" is an important concept in intellectual property, requiring citation in academic publications and patent filings. Is the source code that one gets not the same as prior art? What about derivative works based on this prior art?

Two of my favourite words to help answer this are "but for". In discussions about IP licensing, a key principle that arises regarding ownership of derivative IP can be summarised as follows: "But for the existence of the background IP, the derivative work could not have been created." This gives the background work foundational status and means that the creator of the derivative works has a legal obligation to the owner of the background IP. In this regard, I guess that I'm OK with the requirement to forgo any claims to derivative works. Developers decide, of their own free will, to build on top of open source knowing full well what the implications are for their IP.

Next time I'll take a swing at the question: Is open source software for socialists?

That's my .02!

Martin Suter

martin.suter (at) iplicensing.net