And so the community rips itself apart...again
You know, the one thing worse than proprietary software is watching the open source community rip itself apart. The link I'm referencing started with a fantastic case study from a Wal-Mart developer about how they're (happily) using MuleSource, the leading open source ESB.
Unfortunately, a select few have taken it upon themselves to cry foul on MuleSource, arguing that it's not actually an open source company because...it uses the Mozilla Public License? No, actually, because it uses the MPL plus attribution (the MPL allows addenda, and attribution has been used by a number of companies as one such addendum).
I am personally not a big fan of attribution, though I also feel that they are well within the bounds of the Open Source Definition. Opponents claim that they burden redistribution. Apparently these same opponents have never read the GPL, which is massively burdensome (in good ways, in my opinion, but not in many others') on redistribution.
So much so, in fact, that very few companies will touch the GPL. Talk with most Fortune 500 companies and they'll pull out the garlic and crucifix if they hear your product is GPL'd. (Though this inexplicably doesn't apply to Linux, which they happily use. Reason, thy name is not enterprise IT.)
Rather than sniping at those evil capitalists (which pay the wages of 99.999999999999999% of the world's open source developers), inflicting attribution on the world (which attribution, btw, was approved in various guises by the OSI several times in the past), why don't you try using the software? Or getting back to your day jobs?
3 comments:
Rather than sniping at those evil capitalists ... , inflicting attribution on the world ..., why don't you try using the software?
well, people actually did try to use the software and they had to reject it, not because of some technical shortcomings, but because of the requirement that the Mule logo is present on every UI screen
Did you bother to read the thread at all?
I've been following your blog for quite some time and I must say this biased post comes as a huge disappointment...
ok, it took me a while to figure out why you are so passionate about defending the Mule cause
a quote from Linux Gazette:
"A number of Web 2.0 firms, however, don't wish to cut loose from their open source roots, and (commendably) wish to have their offerings qualify as open source, but at the same time want to give themselves a business advantage over any commercial competitors reusing their published source code on competing sites. A couple of years ago, they found their chosen tool: An "Exhibit B"-clause modification to the Mozilla Public License v. 1.1 (penned originally by the SugarCRM company, then copied by an increasing number of others) -- dubbed by critic Bruce Perens a "badgeware" clause and by its proponents an "attribution" provision, requires any reuse or derivative work to sport the original sponsoring company's advertising logo on every single user interface screen. That was a couple of years ago.
One problem: SugarCRM and its imitators have been going around in public claiming to be open source, and in most cases strongly implying (or in some cases directly claiming) to be using a licence approved as open source by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), even though their licences fail a couple of the criteria that make a licence open source. Morever, they've been carefully avoiding submitting their modified-MPL licence to OSI's licence-approval process."
and then it gets even more interesting:
"(SugarCRM CEO John Roberts ignored my question of why, if his firm's licence is open source, the SPL FAQ claims its unlawful to sell works derived from it. Matt Asay, VP of Business Development for Alfresco -- and an OSI Board Member! -- similarly ignored my question of whether Alfresco would kindly suspend claims of being "open source" until its licence is evaluated, or at least commit to remove that claim if its application is declined.)"
feel free to ignore to my comments too...
I'm not sure what you mean by "ignore my comments." I am, unfortunately, one of the most overexposed open source bloggers on the planet. I've written on this topic many times (I think I may well have been the first, or one of the first, from the business side of the community). I have ignored no one (knowingly) - I think people are, on the contrary, tired of hearing from me on this subject (as well as others! :-).
I don't like attribution. I think it's a poor way to accomplish the goal of protecting investment while blessing customers and developers. I think it's weak precisely because people like you don't like it. I do think it's open source, but there's lots of open source that I don't use because I don't like the license. (I don't like BSD-style licensing, for example.)
Yes, I work for a company that uses an attribution license. It chose this path before I joined in November 2005. Have I pushed against it? Absolutely. But not because it's not open source. I simply think the GPL would serve our needs better. It's no trivial matter to move to the GPL, however, and so it has taken time.
Time, btw, is what OSI has taken in determining the attribution question. OSI is the group that should be receiving people's criticism, not the companies. The generic attribution license has been submitted for approval, and nothing has happened (except loads of discussion on license-discuss, only 1% of which is actually relevant to the question at hand).
So, if you have concerns about attribution, it's not Alfresco/SugarCRM/Zimbra/etc. that you should be criticizing. They believe they're within their rights. It's the OSI you should be pressuring, because it has the power to decide the issue one way or another.
Matt
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