Open Source licences- An Ecology of Options for Riding the Formations of our Connectivity. by risa
A Piece of my MA thesis. By Risa Dickens.
Open source protects the rights of the user of information, (versus proprietary software, which protects the rights of the inventor or, more accurately, the rights of the company which finances the development and distribution of the software,) in a digital environment where that information is effectively endlessly reproducible. Though there are many different types of contracts used by developers committed to open source, the Debian social contract was rewritten by Bruce Perens and Debian Linux developers in a month long email conference in 1997 to serve as the basis for the Open Source Definition.
The Open Source definition consists of ten specific guidelines, which I have included in their complete form here:
1.Free Redistribution: The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
2. Source Code: The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
Derived Works: The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
Integrity of The Author’s Source Code: The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form if the license allows the distribution of “patch files” with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups: The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor: The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
7. Distribution of License: The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product: The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program’s being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program’s license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software: The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.
*10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral: No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.
“The Debian social contract clearly prioritizes the rights of users, to the point at which it recognizes that many Debian users will choose to work with commercial software in addition to free software. Debian promises not to object or to place legal or other roadblocks in the way of this practice. The basic principle is nondiscrimination against any person, group of people, or field of endeavor, including commercial use.” (Weber 86)
The user can install for free then make changes to the software that make sense to them, and then, so long as they keep the original developers names in place, they are also free to sell it as their own.
The license Richard Stallman wrote for the Free Software Foundation includes another clause which takes the open source logic further, or perhaps just in a slightly different direction.
It does not allow the use of GPL’d code in any proprietary implementation at all. It is not permitted under the GPL to combine a free program with a nonfree program unless the entire combination is then released as free software under the GPL. This last point is sometimes referred to as the “viral clause” of the GPL.(Weber 49, and http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html).
This element of open source’s struggle has garnered much attention and debate. The decision to not include the viral clause in the Open Source Definition was a major point of controversy between open source developers. This choice represents a pragmatic decision to allow different communities with different values to interact with the process.
These are two major branches of this process, but there are many others, each one premised on a group or individual’s idea of the right or best way of doing things.
An ecology of options has flourished around this swelling resource of source code, changing the environment within which companies compete and individuals communicate. Software was always being written by other people than those employed by Microsoft or Apple. Open source lets loose a floodgate of knowledge by offering up their architectures for others to learn from or begin to build with. And not just the source code, but the documentation of most open source projects is opened and collaboratively expanded as well, so what they can show is a way of coordinating contributions, and of using the Internet to ride and survive and even prosper from the formations of our connectivity.
Open source makes the best meaning of all the possible connectedness of the Internet, I think.
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