Note: As usual, I have over-analyzed an issue that normal people wouldn’t spend two minutes thinking about. I apologize to my three readers in advance, but unlike more famous commentators on open source I often find that it is not possible to explore the nuances of issues in our community with a couple of short sound bites.

I have been in Italy for the last week scouting locations for our Italian headquarters. I’m thinking Positano would be a great place:

I was also able to take a few days off for a short holiday, but I couldn’t stay off the Internet for long. As I was skimming through my news feeds, I came across a post by Brian Aker about dual licensing open source software, and it stuck in my mind. It wasn’t necessarily the topic but it was the, well, harshness of his post. It was full of absolutes and hyperbole which is very unusual coming from Brian, and it must have struck a chord with others as it managed to appear on Slashdot as well.

For a little background: Brian was one of the early contributors to MySQL, and MySQL pioneered the idea of “dual licensing” open source software. The legal basis for open source is based on copyright law (distribution of software is considered in the same fashion as distributing “copies” of other works, such as books and music). The holder of the copyright is able to set the terms by which copies can be made. MySQL published its code under the GNU General Public License (GPL) which allows for derivative works to be created and distributed as long as the requirements of the license are met. By its very nature the GPL makes it difficult to commercialize the code itself, since when it is distributed one is required to include the source.

However, MySQL retained 100% of the copyright to its code, and so it was also able to offer it under a license that was different than the GPL. Thus if a company wanted to embed MySQL into its product but didn’t want to be subject to the GPL, they could purchase the rights to use the software under a proprietary license. This enabled MySQL to create a revenue stream from the code, which allowed it to hire more people, advertise, etc.

In my very first post on the subject of open source licensing and business models I mentioned this model as being an acceptable way to fund open source development. The main caveat was that there may be some resistance from the community to contribute code if they had to transfer the copyright to MySQL, but it didn’t appear that the MySQL community cared.

Well, times change. It is my understanding that as MySQL grew they started to offer code to their commercial clients ahead of the community, and they may have even adopted more of an “open core” model where some of the code was never offered under an open source license (I’m not 100% sure of the details). Eventually, MySQL was bought by Sun and now Sun is in the process of being purchased by Oracle.

And this is where the trouble begins. MySQL was one of the first, if not the first, open source database projects that aimed to provide an alternative to commercial products such as those sold by Oracle, so one has to wonder what Oracle will do with MySQL. It is doubtful that a company like Oracle will focus on undermining its main product line with an open source alternative. I’m not saying that they will kill off the product as I seriously doubt that, but the motivations behind it have changed (see the 451 Group for a better timeline on this).

This has resulted in some turmoil in the MySQL community and the announcement of a number of code forks to MySQL. At issue is that since Sun, and possibly now Oracle, holds the copyright to the code there are some limits placed by the GPL for anyone wanting to commercialize those forks or even create free alternatives. Brian Aker works on a fork of MySQL called Drizzle, and I believe that his involvement in, and possible frustration with, the whole copyright issue lead to his post on “The Peculiar Institution of Dual Licensing“.

He starts off with a quote from Richard Stallman that ends:

With excellent management and considerable trust within the user community, MySQL became the gold standard for web based FLOSS database applications.

I think the key phrase here is “considerable trust”. In the case of MySQL, there must have been some considerable trust within the community to contribute code since it became the property of MySQL. More on this in a moment.

To move on to Brian’s comments, the first sentence that struck me as odd was:

Dual Licensing is nothing more then the creation of yet more software, where the end result is the creation of not more open source software, but the creation of yet more closed source software.

I had to think about this one. The only way I could make it work was that if open source code is available under a dual license, then that code can become part of closed source software through the purchase of a commercial license. That code is by definition closed source, since there would be no reason to purchase a license if it was open source code. But my guess is that any real open source software company would use the money raised from such licenses to focus on the main open source product, thus increasing the amount of open source software. Also, if the “Bubba’s Inventory ‘n Stuff” application chooses to license and embed MySQL, its distribution will probably be more limited than MySQL itself, so the ratio of open to closed software is relatively unchanged and may even increase with respect to open source.

Brian continues:

The GPL’s approach is to provide a stick or carrot. If you are open source, then you don’t pay, assuming of you are “the right” sort of open source. If you are close source or pick a license which is not compatible with the GPL you are forced into paying for use of a commercial license. When you “pay” for open source the freedom that was originally offered to the end user is removed.

I don’t understand this talk of “‘the right’ sort” of open source. It’s like the guy who compared the GPL to DRM. The creators of open source software have a wide variety of licenses they can use, from the very permissive Apache and BSD licenses to the more restrictive GPL. Brian seems to be making the case that some are better than the others. He used the word “forced” – who is “forced” to use open source software? If you don’t like the license, don’t use the code. It’s not about forcing people to use software but offering a choice. Dual licensing actually increases freedom – you have the freedom to use the software at no cost under the open source license, and you also have the freedom to purchase the right to use it outside of such a license.

Recently I’ve been giving a talk about what it is like to run a business based on open source software. While the presentation is constantly evolving, it starts off with the two main options for creating powerful open source software. One is to form a “foundation,” preferably non-profit, that is funded by companies with a vested interest in seeing a certain type of application created. This has resulted in a number of amazing projects such as Firefox and Apache. A company like IBM may want to have an alternative to Microsoft Office without having to own such a product line, so they fund OpenOffice. Rackspace may need the benefits of a project like Cassandra, and so they keep people on the payroll to make it a reality. In many cases these projects are published with very permissive licenses so that the commercial entities behind them can take full advantage of the software without many restrictions like those imposed by the GPL. Since permissive licenses allow easy integration into closed source software, I’m not sure if Brian would consider this the creation of more of the same, but in any case it is hard to argue that certain projects have thrived very well under the foundation model.

The other way to produce large scale open source software is to create a company to support the project, such as is the model with OpenNMS and The OpenNMS Group. In this case funding the effort is more problematic. Without a “patron” supplying the resources like in the foundation model, a business has to look more seriously at the bottom line. It has to build up a customer base and a brand, and in the case of a bootstrapped company like OpenNMS this takes time. Despite that we have created some really amazing code, but without a more restrictive license like the GPL someone with money could take our work and quickly commercialize it. It is important that the ownership of OpenNMS is controlled by a single group to enforce the license and to prevent this. Brian has his own comments about ownership:

At the heart of dual licensing is “ownership rights”, which inevitably come into conflict with the nature of open source. Open Source projects that preserve the ability to do dual license come into conflict with the developers who contribute the code. For the project to continue it must ask the original developer to give up their rights to the code via copyright assignment (there is some debate on whether copyright can be held in joint, but this is often disputed by lawyers). Thus dual licensing forces any developer who wishes to contribute into a position of either giving up their rights and allowing their work to end up in commercial software, or creating a fork of the software with their changes. In essence it creates monopolies which can only be broken via forking the software. Forking software over small changes is for the most part unviable because of the cost of keeping a fork of the software up to date, but it is not impossible.

I really dislike this paragraph since it tries to paint in shades of black and white a subject that is anything but. Since the entire concept of open source software is based on copyright law, by its very definition it requires an “owner” to enforce the copyright. At OpenNMS we found out the hard way that when the copyright is held by multiple parties it makes it very difficult to enforce any license.

I also don’t think that it is “inevitable” that these rights will cause conflict. Brian is probably experiencing some friction between Drizzle and MySQL, but I don’t think that one example makes conflict “inevitable”.

He then brings up my original criticism of MySQL’s contributor agreement which required that a developer assign all rights to any contribution to MySQL. Think about it – suppose some person came up with a cool algorithm that improved performance and contributed to MySQL, assigning all rights. This would not only give MySQL complete ownership of the work product, but it would prevent the developer from using his work in another project.

This is why at OpenNMS we adopted the Sun Contributors Agreement which allows for multiple copyright holders. Contributors assign copyright to the maintainers of the project, which allows them to more easily protect it from abuse (as well as dual licensing the code if they so chose), but they retain the copyright to their work. For example, Bobby Krupczak contributed a data collector for XMP, a new network management protocol he is developing. He assigned copyright to that work to OpenNMS so we could use it in our project but he retained the rights to his work so he could also contribute that code to another project or create one of his own. The contributor loses no rights yet the project can maintain some form of control over the whole work. I think this is an awesome concept but Brian states that “this is often disputed by lawyers”. He doesn’t link to a single example and while I am certain there are one or two lawyers who would be willing to raise an argument against it, in my experience it isn’t a concept that is “often disputed”. It reminds me of the fear, uncertainty and doubt spread around the GPL and its enforceability, but as time has shown the GPL does stand up in court and I think the idea of dual copyright will as well.

In addition, dual licensing provides an option for companies that would like to use open source software and perhaps even contribute to it but for a variety of reasons cannot. One recent example would be Apple’s use of ZFS. It was obvious that they were considering support for ZFS but for some reason they changed their mind, and the rumours indicate licensing. As it would have been in Apple’s best interests to contribute back to the project, this would have been a win for ZFS, but now that option for improvement is gone.

I think that Brian is reacting more to a problem specific with MySQL than with open source as a whole. His frustration is evident with such loaded phrases as “take the rights from others” and “lack of imagination”. I don’t believe anyone’s rights have been taken away, except for those that freely gave them to MySQL. If there is some assumed right that open source code can be used by anyone at any time for any reason, then we are no longer talking about open source. The creators of open source software have always been able to protect both their work and their rights through a variety of means, but there has never been a real or implied right granted to end users that wasn’t specified in the license. It seems Brian wants to move the slider from “open” to “free” but I don’t think that is sustainable in many cases.

What I do think is sustainable is a 100% open source project that also has a dual license option. It does involve a level of trust between the copyright holder and the community and the implied covenant that profits from such licenses will be fed back into the project, but it is definitely doable. In this instance Stallman got it right.

Win.

This is one of these introspective Sunday posts that have little or no OpenNMS content. As usual, feel free to skip.

Many years ago I was lucky enough to see Kurt Vonnegut give a talk on narrative. He went to a whiteboard and drew some axes. On one was time and the other ranged from “bad” to “good”.

First, he examined the story of Cinderella. The story starts with her father remarrying due to her mother’s death (bad). She has to deal with her evil step-mother and step-sisters (worse). Then she meets her fairy godmother (better). She goes to the ball (good). She dances with the Prince (great). Then the spell breaks and she has to flee (bad), etc.

The line he drew was a curvy swing from bad to good and back, eventually ending with good. Quite a few of our popular stories, movies and shows have a curve very similar.

Then he talked about Native American narrative. This was much more along the lines of walking through the woods, seeing a stream, spotting a deer, etc. The line he drew was almost completely straight, and pretty much neutral between good and bad.

With these two graphs on the board, he then examined one of the most classic stories of all time: Hamlet.

Hamlet starts out with the death of Hamlet’s father and his uncle’s ascension as king. (bad) Then his father’s ghost tells him that he was murdered by his brother (bad). To see if the ghost is right, Hamlet stages a play about murder and watches his uncle’s reaction. When his uncle leaves the room he believes the ghost is right (bad). Then he accidentally kills his girlfriend’s father (bad), she kills herself (bad) and everyone dies at the end (bad).

It was a straight line, very much like the Native American one, only, well, bad.

I don’t remember anything more about the talk, but it struck me that the serious stories, the real stories, sort of plod along without these great swings.

Which brings me to The Wire. The Wire was an HBO television series set in Baltimore, Maryland (USA). It consists of 60 one-hour episodes over five seasons, and has been called the greatest television show of all time.

I started watching it as a way to pass the time on airplanes. I finished the show today on a flight from Oregon to Texas, and while I will try my best not to spoil anything with my thoughts on the it, if you are strict about such things stop reading now.

Each season focuses on a different aspect of life in the city. You know something is up when the second season departs so radically from the first it may leave you wondering if you missed something, or if you are really watching the same show. As I watched it I always thought it was good, but just like each season could stand on its own, each show could almost stand on its own. There weren’t any great cliffhangers, although there were many times when things happened that shocked the hell out of you. Good guys died; bad guys died. Good guys lived; bad guys lived. The powerful were brought low by the weak, and the powerful were made even more powerful by abusing the weak.

Up until today I would have said that The Wire was good, but not necessarily the greatest television show ever, but the final episode changed that. It wasn’t even that the last episode “revealed all” – for the most part it played out like any other – but the final five minutes consisted of a montage that literally left me shaken. It consisted of short, 10-30 second scenes of various characters in the near future, and it is only then that you get a real idea of the scope of the show and how well it was written and how well everything fit together. It was truly amazing.

And if you were to plot it out on a whiteboard, it would be a straight line.

I keep that image of Vonnegut up at the whiteboard at Pomona College in my mind. It reminds me that the greatest and most powerful things in life don’t come in big swings, but mainly in just moving forward.

We have been crazy busy over the last few months and since fourth quarter is historically our busiest time, I don’t expect it to get any less hectic any time soon. I expect blogging to be very sporadic and out of chronological order (as I’ll get to things as I think about them) so Faulkner fans rejoice.

On second thought, true Faulkner fans would run away screaming and have nightmares at the mere thought of comparing my writing abilities with that of the venerable author, so scratch that.

[Re-reading this, I’m not happy with it, so stop reading and go watch Auto-tune the News. I’m going to post it anyway since it will help me get back in the groove.]

We had training at OpenNMS headquarters this week. This will be the last training of the year, as the next one would need to be scheduled in November or December and rarely do people like to travel during the holidays (although I always end up in Chicago for some reason). Look for training to return in January.

It was great. We had six incredibly smart, amazingly handsome people in for the week. Two of them came all the way from Chile, and one guy rode his Ducati from Pittsburgh. It was fun, and the guys from Chile had replaced Netcool with OpenNMS, so that was even better.

In other news, I’m in Portland (Oregon) for the weekend working with a client, and while I was traveling yesterday I came across a post by Terry Hancock called “Is free software major league or minor?”

It’s worth reading.

Open source and free software detractors often try to paint the community as a bunch of zealots who hold ideals over practicality with no room for compromise, and while it is true that there are some notable examples of such behavior, the vast majority of free software users prefer open software over proprietary programs but use a combination of both.

Hancock points out that on one hand we in the community state that open source is just as good as expensive “major league” software, but when we are called on the carpet for a lack of documentation or usability, etc., we cry “but we’re just volunteers” and take a “minor league” stance. Which is it?

Obviously, I liked this article. Hancock had me at:

“Free Software” and “Open Source Software” is the exact same artifact, no matter who is promoting it, nor on what advantages of it they promote.

which is something I’ve been saying for some time now.

I can’t improve on his post but I would like to add a couple of thoughts.

The first is that open source software often gets rid of the cruft associated with proprietary software. In terms of the major league analogy, does one need a huge stadium with luxury skyboxes, designer uniforms and a private team jet to play great baseball? One of the reasons that open source software tends to be more stripped down than commercial software is that we tend to focus on what is important from a functional standpoint versus what looks good. Since open source software is not “sold”, there is no need to make it all bright and shiny.

But at what point in time does this focus on the basics start to impact usability in a meaningful way? To return to the baseball analogy, you can strip away the stadium but you can’t, say, remove the pitcher’s mound.

When it comes to usability, Apple products are hard to beat. They are also experts at controlling the user experience.

They spend lots of money on the little details. I can’t find the post now, but apparently the message displayed while emptying the trash changed from Leopard to Snow Leopard. It was a small change, along the lines of “This action will delete your Trash items permanently” to “This action will permanently delete your Trash items” but it serves as an example of the level of detail they track.

Since Apple customers pay a premium for their products, there is an expectation for this attention to detail. But the “user experience” doesn’t necessarily mean “usability”. While I’m impressed with the changed text in the example above, it doesn’t do a thing to improve usability (there are a number of other features in OS X that do, however).

With OpenNMS, we really need to focus a more on usability. While large changes in the webapp are not coming in the next few months, one of the things that is holding up the release of 1.8 is that it won’t be released without greatly improved documentation. The second most frequent comment we get in our training classes is “I didn’t know OpenNMS could do that” (with the most frequent being “This class is great!”).

The second thought I had comes back to this concept of freedom in free software. Open source is free software (and those that tell you differently are selling something – probably software). However, as Hancock illustrates, people who focus on “open” tend to be more concerned with how open source software can be used to solve problems than those who focus on “free” – who tend to be more concerned with freedom as an ethical issue.

I am more in the “open” camp, but like others I do get concerned about freedom when it extends beyond the realm of code. I don’t care that I can’t have access to the code that runs my microwave oven, but I get a little more concerned when it comes to the code that runs my car. Not because I plan to hack that code, but as cars become more and more dependent on their computer systems it could become impossible to work on the car without access to the software. Plus, this software could be collecting data that I might want kept private. I think it is important to focus on freedom in software since control of software is becoming synonymous with the control of information.

Last weekend at the Atlanta Linux Fest, Jeff’s wife teased me about my old LG phone. I got it over 3 years ago with Sprint. It’s not a bad phone but it is a little dated. The problem is that I can’t decide what phone to get next.

I have an iPod Touch and so the iPhone is a contender. The augmented reality stuff is really cool, and it was only possible because Apple created a phone with a solid SDK, a video camera and a compass. But working on the pre-alpha OpenNMS iPhone showed me what a royal pain it is to develop an open source application on that platform.

Chris Dibona was kind enough to send me a G1 handset. Even though it is open, the only way I could find to sync my contacts was through my GMail account. Now I like Google as a company, but I don’t want anyone to have access to my contact list. Even Apple, as far as I know, lets me keep that information private. So I gave the phone to Ben so he can make an Android OpenNMS app. I’m still waiting on some of the newer Android phones to come out as possible contenders.

The question I’ve been asking myself is: how open and free does my phone have to be? Is it like a microwave – something that can easily be replaced or has substitutes, or is it something I must have to control my information. I’m not sure.

Perhaps the whole idea of using a game analogy to describe what’s going on is a FAIL. People keep talking about open source “winning”. Lots of people find open source software useful and it is a viable alternative to proprietary software in many cases, so it has “won”. I also think it has “won” by delaying, if not preventing, those who would control all of our information. Anyone with hardware and an internet connection can get a web server running and to send mail. But has it replaced all proprietary software? No.

My guess is that we need a better goal than “winning”. For example, while I want OpenNMS to replace OpenView and Tivoli everywhere, my first goal for OpenNMS is to make it easier for first time users to get it installed and know what it can do. When we have achieved that goal I want to make the configuration files easier to modify. Each step is an improvement, each step brings us closer to the “major league” and in such a fashion that we can deal with the pragmatic need to pay for it all.

Eventually, if we do it right, people will see that they should choose OpenNMS, not because it is cheaper or that it is open source, but because it is, quite simply, better.

As Sun Tzu said:

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.