Viral software on business, open-source, GPL and 'freedom'
If you are a kid, you don’t even care about software. If you’re an adolescent you try, you experiment, and you’ll probably have copied software ‘illegally’. When you’re a student, you become (a bit) more serious, and start using open-source tools and start hacking it together (or obtain the really cheap educational licences if you’re not so much into hacking). But what if you’re grown up?
When you are in the business of creating software you’ll soon find out that not all software and business models allow for what you’ve probably done before: hacking, creatively programming things together. When you’re working within a real business legal will suddenly find out for you, or you’ll discover for yourself: not all open-source libraries are as free, as in libre, as you would like them to be.
The famous GPL requires you to license your derivative works with the same GPL as well. Not only your modifications to the library you are using needs to be open-sourced; when the GPL component is integrated deeply in your software package, you’ll need to open up everything. You would just hate Richard Stallman for that, wouldn’t you? Why on earth is not everyone just using the BSD/MIT license (which allows you to do just whatever you want to do), or at least the LGPL license which allows you to use it as a library without virally infecting your own product (which the boss doesn’t want to open-source as that would be giving away our core business)? C’mon, isn’t this open-source thing about sharing?
Think again. You are using the library because it is useful, and someone has invested time to write it. Instead of choosing GPL the author could have chosen to ask money for it and distribute it in a binary format only - a format which can’t be read by a programmer’s eye. Not allowing for creative reuse. Not allowing you to experiment with new concepts. Not even allowing you to learn how to set up a certain type of software. Instead he chose GPL saying essentially that in a fair world we all share. Leeching those open-source library programmers with your closed source money machines isn’t fair play. Not because someone makes money, and the other doesn’t (open-source isn’t about money), but because this particular programmer, or group of programmers, thought it would be more fair if everyone would share their products in a similar way when they adapt, adopt and benefit from it.
Is opening up a too high price to pay? Go elsewhere and pay, continue to search for a more free option and go with that, try to contact the authors and find out another way to use their software, but why not rethink your business model? Why would you mould your product in such a way that it becomes inaccessible to scholars, just like you once were? There is more than one way to make money. And consider the advantage that being open-source may mean to your (paying) customers: it means that they can trust your solution and move elsewhere if they want to - no vendor lock-in (probably one of the reasons why you are so fond of open-source in the first place). Which means hard work for you as a business developer in serving the customer well. But that is fair, right? If not, go out and check out that other one business opportunity in the infinite space of opportunities.
Image by jeanbaptisteparis under a creative commons share alike license; you may hence reuse this image, and this article under the same license.
Show comments and/or reply