Today is Software Freedom Day all around the world. We have over 330 teams in over 90 countries participating, which makes it the biggest outreach event for software freedom in the world!
Check out an event near you!
So the actual Software Freedom Day 2007 shirts are a much nicer green than originally anticipated. So for all the people who weren’t fans, I think they might like this more 
Male and female sizes available on the online store.
Having spent a long time in the FLOSS world both in community and industry roles, I started to see a serious disconnect between the industry and community perspectives on FLOSS about 5 years ago. I mean a disconnect that went beyond philosophical and into the practical, and this is largely because is a rapidly expanding userbase and industry around FLOSS. Community participants in FLOSS have a different understanding and expectation of openness than people in industry, and this difference is unfortunately being used to undermine the core values that make FLOSS more than just another technology set. The issue is that for all the well meaning of the 4 freedoms of the FSF or the Open Source Definition of the OSI, people can simply take those licences and not subscribe to any of the other attributes of openness that are expected of a FLOSS project and still get the good name of being a FLOSS project.
Openness has been proven time and time again to be the way forward. We saw it with TCP/IP, with HTTP, and now with FLOSS projects like Apache. Openness provides a platform for innovation, collaboration, an open and competitive market, and a sustainable approach to a digital future. In the same vein, a more closed approach may in some cases also be appropriate. For instance some popular and successful FLOSS projects have relatively closed development models controlled by an individual or a single company. An understanding of the degree of openness in software helps people understand the implications of the software model and also the implications in using the software.
In the spirit of discovering the core principles of openness, Jeff and I spent some time working on a model to help explain openness in such a way that it couldn’t not be undermined. We came up with 5 Foundations of Open:
As we can see, above is a far broader understanding of openness than is generally subscribed to. A project may decide to have a more closed approach to any of these 5 vectors, and sometimes for good reasons, however by looking at all software (not just FLOSS) using these vectors people will be able to have a good understanding of how open the software is and what that means for using it, developing on it, building a business around it and so on and so forth.
I’m currently building some metrics around this to help determine the openness of any software, and will announce here when it is done.
Edit: This is an idea Jeff and I have worked on for some time, so I can’t take all the credit Thank you Jeff!
Come check out the Linux Australia stand, OSIA stand and the Open CeBIT Seminar Theatre where there are talks happening about Open Source for the entire 3 days of CeBIT. Todays schedule is below:
A couple of weeks ago Jeff and I had a very interesting experience. We were invited to the 2007 Microsoft Technology Summit at Redmond. It was a small event with about 50 or 60 people from all walks of technology, and I think about 1/3 of the attendees had been invited due to their understanding on Open Source, so there were some familiar faces. Jeff and I were certainly curious to get inside Microsoft and talk to the technical people working with Open Source there.
Firstly it must be said that Microsoft are excellent hosts. They paid for our accommodation, flights, travel and all meals. They looked after us very well and it was a very pleasant trip. We even got some sunshine in Seattle, so thank you to Charles Sterling who invited us, and Nigel Watson who arranged all our travel. Both are Microsoft developer evangelists and great guys.
The summit consisted of talks by Microsoft people, including Bill Hilf and Sam Ramji. Sam runs the Open Source lab, and Bill is General Manager of Platform Strategy, started the Open Source lab and now also runs the Get the Facts campaign. There were other talks about SOA, IE7, Xbox, PowerShell and a whole bunch of stuff which was largely unrelated to our work. The talks were interesting, particularly as I haven’t really been involved deeply in Microsoft technologies for a few years, however I also spent some time in discussions unrelated to the agenda.
Some of the talks would start with Microsoft technology and then at the very end say “by the way, here is how it is better than (insert Open Source equivalent)”, which seemed a little patronising. I guess they were trying to change out minds. This was most evident in the IIS talk where at the very end the guy started seriously bagging out Apache, much to the amusement of several attendees who debated his opinion.
Bill Hilf had been talked up by several notable Open Source characters, including Tridge, however his talk (which launched the Summit) was very disappointing. It was arrogant, limited, and appeared to miss the larger picture of Open Source. He talked about how they are focused on Open Source only as a development model and business model, which would be fair enough, however he went to to rant about how he is not running a “jihad”, that Open Source is “writing and licensing software. That’s it. It isn’t freedom, it isn’t a movement”, and how he’s just here to sell licences. I questioned Bill and Sam on the sustainability of a strategy only seeing Open Source as a mechanism for driving licence revenue, as every successful company building revenue around Open Source has multiple revenue models and usually a strong services approach.
Bill’s been drinking the Kool Aid…
Sam strongly debated whether it was even possible to build a sustainable business on Open Source. Unfortunately he just didn’t seem to understand that there is already an entire industry built around Open Source that is doing very well. He used Oracle as an example of the problem. He thought it preposterous that Oracle would take RHEL, build services around it and sell those services even though they didn’t build the product. However, this is explicitly allowed under many of the Open Source licences we use, which is understood to drive an open market competing on value rather than locked down to a single supply chain.
When asked about standards Bill said that Microsoft are not interested in pushing a standard, but rather selling a product. Bill and the other Open Source people in Microsoft referred often to Open Source being used as a technology weapon by competitors such as IBM, which I guess is in many ways true, however I think they’ve let this opinion interfere with their ability to see beyond that and to why people are starting to care about Open Standards. When asked why they don’t just support ODF, Bill made some comments about how it wasn’t as easy as that and it isn’t just a standard but a whole product. The ensuing discussion driven by the Malaysian guys who are strong Open Standards proponents was almost comical as Bill simply didn’t answer their questions usefully. Sam said that it was likely MS Office would eventually support ODF as the market demands it.
Sam and Bill both also made the unfortunate mistake of painting any Open Source people who didn’t comply exactly with their views as fanatics and extreme, which isn’t a great way to endear them to the community. I had to really sit Sam down and say every time you compare the vast majority of Open Source people to fanatics, you are only making it harder for yourself to successfully participate. He was, to his credit, open to constructive criticism. I can understand his position being in between a rock (Microsoft) and a hard place (the community), however I think for him to succeed he and his team really need to keep grounded through keeping in touch with the community.
I also noticed most of the Microsoft people who mentioned Open Source differentiated between Open Source and commercial software, which was very frustrating considering how much Open Source is used, sold and supported commercially. The guys we mentioned this to were open to the issue and said they would try to fix this mistake.
I really think that Microsoft have come a long way from only a few years ago when Open Source was a “cancer”, and the Open Source people did say that every time Steve Ballmer opens his mouth about Open Source it hurts them, so I think they are doing quite a good job. I would strongly encourage them to participate more in the community so they can keep an open mind to Open Source beyond the Microsoft party line. Also I think unless Microsoft can see that there is value to Open Source beyond the development model, then they are severely limiting their understanding and missing the bigger values of Open Source economically and socially. There is certainly value to an Open Source approach when it comes to trustworthy systems through transparency (for example in electronic election systems, where access to the source code is really important to a trusted system) and sustainability through Open Standards. An open platform and approach drives innovation, competition, value and ultimately more freedom down the line. Unfortunately for them, Microsoft either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand this.
Microsoft unfortunately regard an Open Standard as something they create inhouse and publish for others to comply to them, and open community as building a new community for other people and projects to join. They haven’t yet appeared to understand that Open Source is about active participation, not about creating yet more silos.
I guess although we found in the Microsoft Open Source labs some knowledge about some Open Source technologies, we were quite disappointed with the limited views held about Open Source, openness and community.
Software freedom isn’t just an idealistic philosophy. It is a commitment to technology openness and freedom which is increasingly important when so much of our lives is based on and possibly limited by the technologies we use to vote, communicate, create, share and work. Luckily this is becoming more understood by the general population. People like Cory Doctorow are driving the charge on protecting consumer rights when it comes to a digital age. Companies like Microsoft can choose to embrace a more open approach, one that will maintain the rights of software users and developers rather than locking them in to proprietary data formats, DRM, vendor lock-in or worse. Or they can choose to be left behind.
Other blogs and interviews on the event from other OSS people:
Links of interest:
Tonight I went along to OxLUG which was a small informal gathering at the pub. It was fun and there were some interesting people there. I chatted to them about LUG structure and events, and I believe they are going to start doing meetings with talks and such, so that could be pretty cool. Good luck with it OxLUG!
I’m going to go into London and hopefully meet up with some Lonix and GLLUG people this week.
Also, Phil Harper published some photos from the Software Freedom International group. Basically we only had 4 from the board meet up in meatspace to talk about the organisation direction and event logistics, however we had most of the other board members join us by IRC each day.
From the left and clockwise — Matt Oquist, Robert Schumann, Phil Harper and yours truly
AMEX wasn’t initially set up for the lca payment gateway, however we’re in the process of getting this done now. So for all the AMEX card holders coming to lca, this should be done in the next 2-3 days, hopefully just in time for earlybirds with AMEX to pay. I suggest anyone in this boat (earlybird AMEX holders) should organise alternative payment plans as a backup for if we can’t get this in time for the 8th.
So the GPL3 forum happened yesterday in Sydney hosted by the UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre and supported by Linux Australia.
It was an interesting event, and a full recording will be made available in the coming week. It got an article from Computerworld which was great, and there were about 50 participants. Tridge was, as usual, utterly brilliant. Articulate, talking out the issues and benefits, and generally being very generous with his time and knowledge. There was good discussion between the panelists (although there could have been more crowd participation, I think Roger Clarke who chaired it was probably a little exclusive), and finally Eben Moglen joined us for a 45 minute phone call where he answered loads of questions. I asked him about the Novell/MS agreement and he had some very interesting things to say I won’t try to paraphrase however when the video is available you’ll see yet another brilliant idea from Eben that works to avoid the kind of patents lock-out inherent in such deals.
Many thanks to Professor Graham Greenleaf, David Vaile and his team, in particular to Abi who pulled it all together! Also thanks to Linux Australia who with a small sponsorship ensured the event was free for anyone to participate.
This is just too much:
…because open-source Linux does not come from a company — Linux comes from the community — the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders
No Steve, the fact that you launch a patent for loads of trivial and pre-existing technologies (I mean come on, the smiley!) is a problem for your shareholders. The software patent system is flawed in so many ways, and it is all coming to a crunch as people realise how ridiculous it is to judge the “innovativeness” of a company based on a big purse and the ability for its many lawyers to extract IP from pre-existing and completely trivial software “inventions”. People are also hopefully starting to realise that software patents have too long a life in an industry when perhaps 5 years is the longest life you have to extract value from a new invention. As Bill Gates himself said in 1991 with a confused message of foreboding and obviously the position Microsoft chose to take since then:
If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today… The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.
Anyway, what started this post was Ballmer had an interview recently where he implied the deal with Novell is all about Microsoft getting “appropriately compensated… for [their] intellectual property”.
…because only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft
Just when you think they are starting to get a clue. It amazes me the hypocrisy of the statement when significant chunks of the Microsoft software and infrastructure use FOSS, but it makes me even more angry for Microsoft to use this Novell deal to try to bully people into only using a version of Linux they will get compensated for. Novell, for all the good intentions I’m sure you had in this, witness the beast you have created.
Amazingly, Novell’s Open Letter to the community about the deal makes pretty clear that:
Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property.
Then Microsoft responded again making clear they think Linux infringes on their IP, however:
Novell is absolutely right in stating that it did not admit or acknowledge any patent problems as part of entering into the patent collaboration agreement.
Ridiculous behaviour.
I announced a GPL3 conference being held in Sydney on the 30th November but forgot to blog it! It is only 10 days away so register if you want to come. There will be Andrew Tridgell, Eben Moglen (via phone) and a whole bunch of people who want to know more. It is a good chance to understand the implications of the GPL3 on our community and possibly help you form your ideas for any last minute submissions before they finalise GPL3 early next year.
It should be a great event and many congratulations to the Cyberlaw centre for putting it on. Also may thanks to Linux Australia, as without their financial support, this event could not have been free for everybody to attend.
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