Summary: How the emergence of SkySQL weakens Monty’s case against the company which bought (and continues to maintain) MySQL
“SugarCRM jumps the Open Source shark claiming closed is open and it’s the rest of us who are mistaken,” wrote Simon Phipps in Twitter. Phipps used to be the Open Source symbol of Sun Microsystems (now he is in OSI), whose employees that moved to Oracle might as well attempt to pass ‘open’ core as “Open Source” (hot subject at the moment [1, 2, 3]). Roberto Galoppini has published an opinion on ‘open’ core from Giuseppe Maxia (Oracle/MySQL), who calls it the “pragmatic freedom”. As Pamela Jones (Groklaw) put it earlier this month, “I don’t share his views, but I thought you’d like to hear from an open core defender, who also happens to work at Oracle on MySQL, as he presents what’s been jokingly called the Yuppie Nuremberg Defense (“I had to pay my mortgage, etc.”).”
“SugarCRM jumps the Open Source shark claiming closed is open and it’s the rest of us who are mistaken” –Simon PhippsJones also points out that Michael “Monty” Widenius from MySQL (and from Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation) had personal financial interests while lobbying against Oracle’s takeover of MySQL (he helped create SkySQL). “Another happy coincidence?”
That is what she asks anyway. “Consider the timing of the appeal of the Oracle-Sun deal by Monty before you answer,” she adds. This is an especially hard subject for us to address because Techrights uses a MySQL database. So does Groklaw for that matter. As for Phipps, his Web site uses MySQL and he refuses to talk about MySQL under Oracle (at least in FLOSS Weekly). We are grateful to Widenius for MySQL, but this project is no longer his. He sold it and made millions. █
Open core, Open core, more Open core… the debate goes on and on, with Monty the latest to weigh in.
When you get down to it this is a fight over branding – which is why the issue is so important to the OSI folks (who are all about the brand). I don’t actually care that much how SugarCRM, Jahia, Alfresco et al make the software they sell to their customers. As a customer I’m asking a whole different set of questions to “is this product open source?” I want to know how good the service and support is, how good the product is, and above all, does it solve the problem I have at a price point I’m comfortable with. The license doesn’t enter into consideration.
So if that’s the case (and I believe it is), why the fighting? Because of the Open Source brand, and all the warm-and-fuzzies that procures. “Open solutions” are the flavour of the decade, and as a small ISV building a global brand, being known as Open Source is a positive marketing attribute. The only problem is that the warm-and-fuzzies implied by Open source – freedom to change supplier or improve the software, freedom to try the software before purchasing, the existence of a diverse community of people with knowledge, skills and willingness to help a user in difficulty – don’s exist in the Open Core world. The problem is that for the most part, the Open Core which you can obtain under the OSI-approved license is not that useful.
Yesterday on Twitter, I said “Open Core is annoying because the “open core” bit is pretty much useless. It doesn’t do exactly what it says on the tin.”
Recently, there has been debate in the press about “Open Core”. I don’t care to debate the minor points but make a simple declaration:
* “Open Core” has NOTHING to do with “Open Source”. Nearly all proprietary software, at this point, has various degrees of open source-licensed source code in its core.
* “Open Core” has none of the advantages of open source to the user and is merely a proprietary software company.
* “Open Core” puts the software user at a disadvantage in the same way that all proprietary software puts the user at a disadvantage.
While their marketing guy may claim “that overall, Sugar 6 is an open source product from an open source company”, it’s hard to see how they are anything other than a proprietary software company who share some code with a related open source project. Claiming to be “an open source company” seems an unacceptable use of the open source brand to me.
Once more there is a lot of heated discussion about what constitutes a “real” open source business model – that is, one that remains true to the spirit of open source, and doesn’t just use it as a trendy badge to attract customers. But such business models address only a tiny part of running a company – how it generates money. What about the many other aspects of a firm?
Imagine a world where code used by the biggest clouds is freely available to any developer, anywhere. A world where that code was a standard used to build private clouds as well as a variety of new service offers. In this world, workloads could be moved around these clouds easily – you could fire your cloud provider for bad service or lack of features, but not have to rewrite the software to do it. Imagine an open source cloud operating system that lifts IT to the next level of innovation, just as Linux drove the web to new heights.
Free whitepaper – 10 top tips for getting IT into your CMO’s good books
NASA is dropping Eucalyptus from its Nebula infrastructure cloud not only because its engineers believe the open source platform can’t achieve the sort of scale they require, but also because it isn’t entirely open source.
NASA chief technology officer Chris Kemp tells The Reg that as his engineers attempted to contribute additional Eucalyptus code to improve its ability to scale, they were unable to do so because some of the platform’s code is open and some isn’t. Their attempted contributions conflicted with code that was only available in a partially closed version of platform maintained by Eucalyptus Systems Inc., the commercial outfit run by the project’s founders.
I was surprised to see that Larry Augustin had posted to his blog, since he does that pretty infrequently, so I assume all of the questioning about whether or not SugarCRM is open source is hitting close to home. Not as bad as a flawed cell phone antenna design, but I guess bad enough.
While his post is very heartfelt, it is full of misdirection about the meaning of the term “open source”. He refers to the word “open” a lot, but “open” and “open source” are two different things. Heck, one of the most popular network management product suites of all time was called OpenView, but the “open” in the name had nothing to do with open source software.
I’ve been staying out of the recent resurgence in the “open core” debate (check out the 451 Group for a summary). If these fauxpen source vendors would simply call their product “open core” versus “open source” there wouldn’t be anything to talk about, but they need to market themselves as “open source” as opposed to “just another commercial software company with a great API” to get any traction.
“There’s free [gratis] software and then there’s open source… there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with.”
–Bill Gates, April 2008
Summary: The Open Source Initiative (OSI) needs to rethink its methods; Groklaw asks the OSI, “have you pruned out the Microsoft toadies/partners yet?”
Simon Phipps joined the OSI only some months ago and it is encouraging to hear him speak about bringing software Freedom ‘back’ to this organisation. When a company like Microsoft can join it while attacking “Open Source” and clearly describing it as a competitor, then something is obviously wrong. Over a Groklaw, Pamela Jones wrote about an OSI group: “I was part of that original group, and I quit in short order. My answer to his question would be this: have you pruned out the Microsoft toadies/partners yet? Got a plan at least? Until that happens, I won’t ask anyone to volunteer to help and I surely won’t either. I’d rather start from scratch.”
The OSI’s mistake of allowing Microsoft entryism is still costing it. By allowing proprietary software companies on board they diluted the impact of this organisation. We wrote about the subject in posts such as:
Yesterday, one reader sent us this item of news which shows how organisations that describe themselves as “Open” (Open Cloud Community Initiative in this case) are not truly interested in openness or even freedom. It’s just a marketing tool to them.
Why does an open cloud standards proponent get the boot from an open cloud organisation for wanting more open standards?
It sounds like a bad riddle or some strange joke on the old Orwellian concept of “some things being more equal than others”. But it’s no joke for Sam Johnston, secretary of the Open Cloud Community Inititiative (OCCI) Working Group – or at least he was until yesterday when he was abruptly sacked by the working group’s chairs
The background to all of this has been over which open licence to use. Sam Johnston has been pushing for the Creative Commons licence, and arguing against the Open Grid’s own licence, which he sees as more restrictive.
Maybe it’s time to return to “software Freedom”. It’s less susceptible to misuse.
When would one expect an organisation like the Free Software Foundation to be really relevant to the world of computing at large – when there is a limited threat to freedom in computing or when the threat is increasing exponentially?
One would think that in the latter case, the need for an organisation like the FSF would be that much greater. But some people think differently. People like Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, for example.
Last week, Brockmeier put forward his views – the FSF should not just say no to the use of non-free software, things like SaaS (software as a service) and devices like the iPad, it should provide alternatives, was his take.
The function of the FSF must be properly understood by potential critics. The FSF has actually stuck to its goals for 25 years; it didn’t let itself be shaped by its environment, which in the case of the OSI meant being co-opted. █
Summary: Why the next version of your Web browser, media player or GNU/Linux distribution will probably contain VP8/WebM code; Apple and MPEG-LA continue to be the main barriers to VP8/WebM adoption
OUR last post ended with a word of warning about Microsoft patents that prevent access to one’s own videos, assuming that they are encoded using Microsoft’s own formats. The lesson to be learned from all this is that software patents which cover video compression are unacceptable and dangerous to society. This is why Ogg Theora/Vorbis and VP8/WebM are so important. The latter is currently being implemented/deployed in GNU/Linux, which already supports Ogg in all its varieties.
All in all, the Linux community has made a lot of progress implementing support for WebM in two short weeks. Given that few content providers are supporting the codec yet (Google-owned YouTube being the major exception), free-software users are ahead of the curve on this issue. And that’s definitely the right side of the curve to be on.
The Open Source Programs Manager from Google writes to inform everyone about necessary changes to the WebM licence. In his own words:
You’ll see on the WebM license page and in our source code repositories that we’ve made a small change to our open source license. There were a couple of issues that popped up after we released WebM at Google I/O a couple weeks ago, specifically around how the patent clause was written.
There used to be the issue of patents and GPL incompatibility. This is resolved. It’s all rather lovely, “but still no patent indemnification,” claims Florian Müller. Brett Smith from the FSF is more satisfied than that. “Google just updated the WebM license to make it GPL compatible,” he writes. Being a key GPL person, Smith also published the official statement from the FSF:
A couple of weeks ago Google announced their WebM project, which provided a free software implementation of their VP8 video codec and a license to exercise the patents the company held on the software. (This after we appealed to them to do just that a couple of months prior.) The license they chose was unambiguously free: a three-clause BSD license combined with a patent license based on one found in the Apache License 2.0. Unfortunately, the interaction between the copyright license and the patent license made the result GPL-incompatible. Based on the concerns of developers writing GPL-covered software, Google publicly stated that they would take some time to review the WebM license and try to address the community’s concerns. Today, they released a revised license, and it is GPL-compatible.
Google has also eliminated the incompatibility with the GPLv2 and GPLv3 licences that existed in the original language, which means that it will be possible for WebM to be readily incorporated in the GNU environment and in GNU/Linux.
By removing that part of the custom licence, what is left is a “three clause” BSD licence which is an OSI approved form of open source licence. Simon Phipps, the OSI board member who pointed out the original problem, was “pleased to say that project is now fully open source” in his blog where he congratulated Google on the “timely and welcome” correction of its “licencing and community-relations error”.
“Google open codec wins OSI love after patent shield rethink,” reportsThe Register.
Google has rejiggered the license on its open-source VP8 video codec after complaints that it wasn’t really open source.
Ars Technicaemphasises compatibility with the BSD licence.
Google is adopting the BSD license for WebM in order to address a licensing conflict. When Google opened up the VP8 codec and announced the launch of the WebM project during the Google I/O conference last month, the actual license under which the code was distributed was not an official open source software license. It was a custom license that had not yet been approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the organization responsible for maintaining the open source definition and validating licenses.
Google’s custom license posed some problems because it included clauses that made it incompatible with GNU’s General Public License (GPL), the most widely-used open source software license. It was a minor technicality, but one that would have broadly precluded adoption of WebM in many popular open source software applications. Fortunately, Google has rectified the conflict and has found an acceptable way to harmonize its licensing terms with the GPL.
[...]
To avoid the resulting incompatibility with the GPL, Google decided to use a standard BSD license instead for the software copyright and draft a separate set of terms for the WebM patent grant.
“Using patent language borrowed from both the Apache and GPLv3 patent clauses, in this new iteration of the patent clause we’ve decoupled patents from copyright, thus preserving the pure BSD nature of the copyright license,” wrote DiBona. “This means we are no longer creating a new open source copyright license, and the patent grant can exist on its own.”
There’s open as the rest of the world thinks of it and there’s Apple open, which is what Steve Jobs wants it to mean. Jobs is very keen to dismiss Flash as a proprietary product, which it is, although iPhones and iPads also run proprietary operating systems.
[...]
Google is going down a different path entirely. Last month, it released VP8, a genuinely open compression format designed to handle multimedia on the web and not be beholden to proprietary software. Unlike Apple, the company does have a genuine commitment to openness. Having said that, there is a debate as to whether VP8 is quite as open as it appears to be – and whether it differs much from H.264.
But the difference is that Google is, I believe, genuinely looking top open standards, while Apple is a law unto itself.
Separately, writes Florian Müller to us, “I’ve commented once again on WebM. As you can see in case you read this, I don’t take the same position as FSF/OSI. Their concern is to push for a “free” codec no matter what. My concern is whether early adopters of WebM would be exposed to too much of a risk and whether Google should do more to protect them. All of that is independent from the fact that I’d prefer to see software patents abolished, which would spell the end for MPEG LA and anyone pursuing a similar “business model”.” Here is the blog post which raises fair points.
Google’s WebM initiative is somewhere in the middle between a true act of generosity and an IBM-style scheme:
* There’s no reason to assume that Google wants to hurt the FOSS cause in any way with WebM, especially not in any IBM-like way. I don’t put it past Google to have that intention elsewhere: they might do anything, including the use of patents, to destroy an open source search technology that could adversely affect their core business. However, in this particular context of video codecs, I don’t think they intend to cause harm. I do believe them that they want more competition in this case.
* What Google does do — and what I believe the FOSS community must approach cautiously — is to shift most of the risk to others while keeping most of the benefits to itself. Businesses like to do that, but FOSS developers and users shouldn’t lose sight of the risks just out of excitement over the idea of getting a seemingly “unencumbered” codec.
Google will retain control over WebM despite open-sourcing program code and publishing specifications
A common misconception about open source and “free” specifications is that this would make something such as the WebM project independent from a single vendor or a group of vendors. Some think this puts “the community” in charge.
There are lessons to be learned from Android. Google has not yet done anything which substantially reduces trust. Control is not the main issue here; the main issue is probably patents. There’s an urgent need to get past them. █
“Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] and I don’t think we’ve done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat.”
–Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft
Bruce Perens at the launch event of GPLv3
Summary: Bruce Perens explains what he has seen Microsoft doing inside governments in order to marginalise Free software, mostly through hired guns like CompTIA and ACT
MICROSOFT IS A political problem, not just a technical problem. In previous posts we showed how Microsoft controls the United States government (along with other proprietary software companies), but it’s not just a problem in the United States.
For those who are not familiar with Bruce Perens, here are some of our posts that mention him:
It’s been obvious, whenever I talk with government, that there’s a well-staffed Microsoft lobbying organization nearby, as well as intermediaries who act for them like CompTIA. Against them, there’s been a low or no-budget representation for Open Source, sometimes just me all alone. And of course the proprietary software companies can afford more advertising and they create lavish events to promote themselves.
To level out this situation, and many others, we need required public reporting of all lobbying, including the parties present, the time and duration of the meeting, and the topics discussed. The general public should be able to see that information on the internet with no more than a day’s delay, if they are to have a chance to offset the effect of the deep-pockets lobbyists.
In addition, there needs to be legislation protecting and promoting the access of the less-grandly-funded to those in government who have or will receive other lobbies, so that there can be balance of representation.
Microsoft, where did you get those data about OpenDocument?
[...]
I already explained in another article that open file formats are essential to save money in Public Administrations and make them more efficient and that the right choice for office document is the OpenDocument Format (ODF).
Since I regularly follow these themes, in September 2009 I received this request from outside Italy:
I have read in a report that: “According to Microsoft Italian regional authorities have examined ODF, but proposal for adopting ODF as the mandatory standard have been rejected” (translated by the sender of the message). This fact probably comes from this Microsoft paper. And we are trying to fact check it… can you help?
Back then I knew, just as I know today, that there is no law or regulation in Italy, not even at the city level, that mandates ODF as the only accepted format for office documents, regardless of the context. What I did come across in the last year, instead, were cases where nobody seemed to know about ODF or law proposals that, albeit unvoluntarily, may make the situation even worse. However, I did not remember ever reading about proposals of that kind.
Over in the UK, the story is similar but Microsoft’s lobbying groups are slightly different. Tim Anderson, a British Microsoft booster, gives lip service to a company which says that the UK government only gives lip service to F/OSS. Anderson writes about the claims from Ingres:
Ingres has a direct commercial interest in this, of course, so such statements are not surprising. Shine has a point though. It takes more than a few speeches to change the software culture of the myriad departments and other state-run entities that between them compose government IT.
Anderson is being an apologist here. It’s not just about Ingres getting a contract; it’s about a nation sticking to standards and to code that it actually owns and is allowed to modify and redistribute. It’s about the United Kingdom not being a hostage of some convicted monopoly abuser from the United States. There is no need for Microsoft apologists here, as they seem not to comprehend the very fundamental issues. The same goes for accomplices like BECTA, who take a similar approach of lip service. They try to silence opposition this way.
“It is crooked politicians like Luc Pierre Devigne and Pedro Velasco-Martins who allow this to happen.”Earlier today we posted videos from yesterday's event about ACTA, which Richard Stallman calls “Anti-Citizen Tyranny Agreement”. It shows how few super-wealthy corporations (mostly from the United States, but there is one Vivendi employee praising ACTA from the audience) take control of the law and actually run the governments against the people. It is crooked politicians like Luc Pierre Devigne and Pedro Velasco-Martins who allow this to happen. Given increased transparency, we can more effectively expose the conspirators involved in these unconstitutional steps that countries are taking to pass control to other counties (specifically to corporations in other countries). Here in the UK we have Mandelson with his Digital Economy Bill (DEB). █
“Business secretary Peter Mandelson is slimed by an environmental protestor outside the Royal Society on Carlton House Terrace, Pall Mall after allegations of ‘favours for friends’ over the Heathrow third runway decision” [Courtesy of "Plane Stupid", via Wikimedia]
Move over, Richard Stallman, Microsoft will take it from here…
Summary: Microsoft folks have decided on ‘our behalf’ who is important to Open Source and who is not
IS IT not just lovely when Microsoft people get to define who is a valid Open Source voice and who is not? This way they can marginalise key people like Stallman (the founder of the movement back when it was more widely known as "Free software") and promote apologists of Microsoft.
“This way they can marginalise key people like Stallman (the founder of the movement back when it was more widely known as “Free software”) and promote apologists of Microsoft.”We are talking about MindTouch, the former Microsoft employees who are also Mono boosters. They were sucking up to people like Matt Asay last year [1, 2]. He is the man who helped Microsoft enter OSI and OSBC [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] — a fact that many people either don’t know or don’t remember.
They also idolise one of Microsoft’s gate openers [1, 2, 3], Tim O’Reilly. He has financial interests with the company from Redmond, just like the following man whom they included in this year’s list:
Miguel de Icaza, founder, Mono and GNOME projects
It’s almost as though MindTouch wants to go around publishers and disseminate this list which says, “these are your friends! Follow them.”
Now ponder all those who are conspicuously missing. IDG says:
Torvalds was named the most influential blogger in open source, however, despite ranking behind O’Reilly in the overall metric, which includes various Twitter analysis tools and Google Trends.
This is just the latest example of Microsoft redefining the landscape of Free/open source software by wrapping itself up with Geeknet, CodePlex, etc. Matt Asay is on the board of advisors for Geeknet, which got filled with former Microsoft employees as well [1, 2]. Geeknet’s news site, Slashdot, also promoted (front page) MindTouch’s list that lauded Asay as an Open Source champion.
Watch the author of this latest press release which promotes a Microsoft lobby that Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza participated in until recently. It says “CodePlex Foundation”, but it’s really just Microsoft. They try to pretend it’s something separate that submits press releases independently.
Microsoft pretends to have embraced Free software (it called it “shared source” or “open source” and bends the meaning it conveys) while attacking Free software, illegally and legally at the same time (with legal means but with accompanying racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]). We gave two examples just hours ago [1, 2]. █
“If anybody thinks open-source alternatives are free, I guess as they say, you can see me after class. [...] I will tell you that in any comparison that you would do of Windows with Linux, which is an open-source alternative, we will prove to you that when it comes to total cost of ownership our stuff is more economical, whether it’s the other patent-licensing costs that you might have to pay to use open-source software, which is kind of a big unknown right now [...]“
Summary: Microsoft is once again using the British Library to promote its own agenda and extend its grip over society’s assets
THE British Library is tied to a lot of Microsoft scandals [1, 2, 3, 4]. This post won’t discuss these older scandals, but readers can rest assured that the British Library, which is funded by taxpayers, played a role in the OOXML corruptions. It also promoted Microsoft products and DRM. It’s really that bad. The British Library sometimes seems like a victim of Microsoft infiltration into key positions (a bit like the BBC [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]), but we do not have the names of such people, except Adam Farquhar who has been pivotal to the Microsoft scandals at the British Library).
The British Library is now embarking on a project that not only brings Microsoft deeper into the heart of the public’s common property but also helps Microsoft pretend that it’s “open”. Here is an article on the subject:
The Research Information Centre (RIC) Framework v1.0 released this week has been designed to help international researchers collaborate more effectively. Hosted via Microsoft’s open source Codeplex project and based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Platform, the “virtual research environment” allows researchers to create and share content and also work on specific issues such as funding proposals, the organisations claim.
Built on top of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, the RIC extends the core MOSS functionality to meet the needs to academic researchers engaged in collaborative research projects
Gee, doc, you’re not a Microsoft shop? Even if you can connect with these resources, you’re always going to be second-class in a group project that depends on them.
Which is sort of the point. To Microsoft open source is not an end in itself. It is a marketing tool. It is a way to gain lock-in with important customer sets.
Glyn Moody, a Brit, calls the British Library the “Betrayed Library”. It’s getting easier to see why. █
Summary: The Open Source Initiative (OSI) needs to rethink its methods; Groklaw asks the OSI, “have you pruned out the Microsoft toadies/partners yet?”
