A response to Richard Stallman

COMMENTARY--There are a number of people in the open sourcepantheon, among them Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond. However, Richard Stallman, as author of the GPL andone of the most prolific authors in the open sourcemovement, certainly fills the role of Zeus. Perensand Raymond serve many purposes, though a number oftheir recent writings seem aimed at channeling theopen source community’s ire towards an enemy (usually Microsoft, who is portrayed as an evil Zelig that they inevitably see standing in the shadows in photo opportunities with open source critics). Stallman, however, rarely dirties his hands with such things, leaving him free to operate in the ethereal realm of open source philosophy.

Stallman serves his purpose well, even if I oftendisagree with him. What motivated me to write thisresponse, however, were six simple words included inhis recentarticle: Free software does not mean "gratis".

Anyone who has followed my ZDNet writings knows that Iam skeptical about open source as a foundation forrevenue generation. If you are writing a utility thatis designed to be used for free, as in gratis, thenopen source is a great model to drive usage. In fact,that’s what I did with my CLR Proc Container freeware, a product from which I had no intention of generating any revenue (though I used an MITopen source license so that both proprietary andopen source developers might adapt and extend it). Ifyou are trying to generate revenue, however, you arefighting against a structural issue in your businessmodel, one that gives the recipe by which you madeyour product to competitors as well as consumers. Theproblem is deepened through use of a GPL license,which is currently the most popular open sourcelicense.

In short, most open source (and all GPL) software isof the free, as in gratis, variety, because the sourcecode is available for all to see. Furthermore,Stallman’s encouragement to replace proprietarysoftware with free alternatives would complicatematters for makers of open source software, as itwould remove one of the few areas from which opensource software generates revenue: licensing the codeto makers of proprietary software.

Why is open source software usually free (as in cost)?
Unprotected CD Music is a bit like open source software. Songs are, for all intents and purposes, "open source," as access to the song provides the ability to alter and extend it as one wishes (think sampling in techno music). The "source code" of the song, as it were, is part and parcel of the song itself. Just as most listeners wouldn’t be able to pick up a guitar and make the same song from scratch; most people who use the Apache web server would be unable to write a web server on their own.

Many of the justifications used by those who trademusic apply to software pirating. CDs are tooexpensive (software is too expensive). The musicianonly gets a fraction of the revenue from sales (theprogrammer only gets a salary, while the company makesthe big bucks). Data is made to be free anddistributed to all and sundry (Ditto).

Music companies, however, are finding it harder tomake a buck in the music business. You can’t blame itall on music trading, to be sure, as technology-driven reductions in the cost of music production have led to more competitors in the music production business. However, you can’t say that it ISN’T related to musictrading, at least if you pay attention to file trading statistics.

Consider now a product that explicitly grants everyonea right to share the code with anyone they want. This"right to share" is explicitlygranted by the GPL. Simply receiving workingbinaries or source code does not require that therecipient pays the copyright holder a licensing fee. A distributor might charge for your right to download, but given that that distributor has no exclusive right of distribution, a recipient has the right to place that working code on their own site and NOT charge for it.

This means that most GPLed code is available, in somecapacity, for free in the traditional sense of theterm.

Where GPLed code generates revenue
Distributors can charge a fee for the right todistribute, but that’s fairly useless in that no onecompany has exclusive distribution rights. They cancharge for support, but that is a SEPARATE serviceunrelated to the base product (you can have a supportcontract for Windows, too).

Open source companies can add proprietary extras totheir distribution and charge for them, as there isnothing which forces add-ons to be GPLed. However,Stallman rejects that model out of hand asfundamentally unfree, and thus not welcome:

For instance, what should we say when the non-freeInvidious video driver, the non-free Prophecydatabase, or the non-free Indonesia languageinterpreter and libraries, is released in a versionthat runs on GNU/Linux? Should we thank the developersfor this "support" for our system, or should we regardthis non-free program like any other--as an attractive nuisance, a temptation to accept bondage, a problem to be solved? (Twentyyears of free software: what now?)

The last area of potential revenue rests in charging proprietary software companies for the right to integrate your software. TrollTech does this with its Qt product, which is the library used, for free, in the KDE window manager on Linux. For commercial (read: proprietary) products, however, the developer must pay a licensing fee for the right to use the product.

This revenue model is useful...provided people aremaking proprietary software. Unfortunately, Stallmanis on a mission to convince everyone to consume andcreate only GPLed software. If he succeeds, TrollTechwill find that it makes less and less money from itsQt product. Given that TrollTech is a corporation,and corporations are interested in profit, what arethe odds that TrollTech will continue to spend moneyupdating Qt?

The likely response from the open source communitywould be that the code is available under a GPLlicense, and so they can extend and change it as theywant, whether or not TrollTech opts to continue withit. This is, of course, true. However, it doesn’tchange the fact that corporations who make development frameworks, such as TrollTech, would have a hard time making money from GPL code in a market where no one made proprietary software anymore. Likewise, it doesn’t do much to defend the notion that GPL is a great foundation upon which to base a business model, at least if companies have any interest in making a profit.

Why Stallman wrote the article
Open source needs a philosophy that motivates peopleto forego monetary compensation and donate their laborto "the community." This will cause them to earnless, a fact that Stallman admitted in other writings(this is the third time I’ve quoted this over the pasttwo years, but here it is again: If we take awaythe possibility of great wealth, then after a while,when the people have readjusted their attitudes, theywill once again be eager to work in the field for thejoy of accomplishment (Stallman, WhySoftware Should be Free)). As "compensation,"Stallman endeavors to instill in developers thebelief that they are fighting for "freedom."

Ask your average consumer if they feel less freebecause they lack the schematics used by drugcompanies to make a particular medication. What aboutlack of inclusion of manufacturing details for thelatest brand of bike made by Schwinn? Lots ofproducts are released without detailed schematics asto how it was built. However, few consider it afundamental restriction on their freedom to lack suchdetails. Quite simply, consumers are buying a servicefrom a company -- the manufacture of a particularproduct -- not the ability to make the product forthemselves. Most would consider it very odd for acompany to hand out the blueprints with which tocompete with them. Yet, that is exactly what Stallmanappears to demand of software companies.

Here in Switzerland, Hip Hop music is huge. TheH&M store in Geneva (to those who’ve never heardof H&M, it’s a clothing store popular in Europethat has lots of ads with supermodels wearing,ironically enough, practically no clothes) plays lotsof rap music, French or otherwise. Hip Hop music isnot known for being polite. Not too long ago I wasperusing the sales rack at H&M, which happened tobe next to the women’s lingerie area, while a SnoopDogg song blasted throughout the store in all itsunedited glory. Cover the children's ears!

No one seemed to care, and the reason is that, to French-speakers, it’s just a foreign language. Profanity is only considered as such when you think itis profanity. To english speakers, Snoop Dogg’slyrics might be considered profane. To Frenchspeakers, however, English words are not consideredprofane, while the words spoken by the Merovingian in"The Matrix Reloaded" would be.

In other words, proprietary software is a limitationon your freedom only if you believe that to be thecase (how very existentialist of me). This is whyRichard Stallman spent a lot of time callingproprietary software "ugly," "nasty," and"enslavement." In most cases, consumers wouldn’t viewthe lack of the blueprints for a particular product asa problem. If they have been instilled with a faithin the fundamental unfairness of proprietary software,however, they will demand "blueprints," as it were. Similarly, developers will be motivated to donatetheir time to open source development efforts.

Richard Stallman is peddling a new faith, and it’s thefact that others share his faith that makes his worldview a reality, not some fundamental unfairness inproprietary software.

Conclusion
GPL software is not a bad thing. It isconducive to community development efforts, and helpsto prevent forking to a certain extent (a problem morelikely to be faced by open source products) given thatthe source code for alterations is public, allowinguseful additions to be merged back into the original codestream. It guarantees access to source code in all cases, and for certain products, this is immensely useful.

GPL software is NOT, however, a great generator ofrevenue. It is great for ensuring widespread usage,but its very nature all but guarantees that the codewill be available for free (as in gratis). In myopinion, the first step in building a proper opensource business model, one that attracts investment,generates revenue and provides jobs, is to admit thefree, as in gratis, orientation of GPL software. Starting from that foundation, proponents have adecent chance of working out a credible revenue model. Repeating the fantasy (without explanation) that GPL software is a generator of revenue while advocating an end to practices which have proven important sources of revenue for GPL-oriented companies is self-destructive, and not likely to help companies struggling to find a way to build profitable companies based on open source software.

biography
John Carroll is a software engineer now living in Geneva, Switzerland. He specializes in the design and development of distributed systems using Java and .Net. He is also the founder of Turtleneck Software.