Subscribe to feed
Beautiful Evidence
The Art of the Start
The Bootstrapper's Bible (eBook)
The Business of Software
Guerrilla Marketing
The SAAS Workaround for Open Source
The most “viral” open source, such as MySQL and Linux, triggers the requirement to distribute the source code of modifications and “static linked” modules when said elements are distributed. So hosted services, which never distribute the software they run on (save perhaps for their javascript or other client-side elements), have a legal work-around. So all you have to do is figure out how to distribute value without distributing software ,and you never have to either pay or give back in the form of new code.
In general, I am OK with this kind of backpacking, when the license has this as its intent. For example, the BSD license is encouraging redistribution, and does not attach provisions to elements distributed with BSD-licensed code. That’s why it’s popular for elements that are distributed on an appliance model.
But the idea of this legal workaround to more restrictive licenses rankles a little. If the license is meant to enforce giveback, the user/hoster/whatever should give back appropriately.
So kudos to Socialtext, which in their upcoming open source edition to their commercial product, is adding an appendix to their license (explained here) that basically requires that you make the source code you use in your wiki based on their stuff, even if you are hosting it yourself.
This model was also adopted by Affero, and was heartily endorsed by the crazypots at the Free Software Foundation.
I tend to think that this is going to be a trend - we will see an explicit discussion of what kind of license and “giveback” is expected from software delivered as a service, and the inclusion or exclusion of a clause that attaches responsibility to hosted software will be an explicit decision, rather than the oversight that it has been to date, which will be better for open-source communities, and make business models based on open-source software significantly more viable.
January 15th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
[…] This is going to change the game for hosted software using GPL software. I’ve written before about hosted software as exploiting a loophole. The hole is closing, which is in the spirit of the FSF, though perhaps alarming to some of my fellow entrepreneurs. […]