Linux Voice News Analysis
Linux Voice News Analysis
Open source is for you, yes, but it's also for unknown others.
Opinion
Unknown Others
Being close to an open source project, it's easy to imagine that everyone sees the project the way you and your fellow community members do. This especially applies to the corporate sponsors of a single-company project; anticipating use by competitors, they often want to apply controls to who can use the code.
A core objective of software freedom is to ensure that the code can be used not only by your collaborators, but by unknown others with undisclosed goals. All OSI-approved licenses ensure everyone is permitted to use software for any purpose without further permission, delivering this core objective.
Random code liberation leading to unexpected application (aka "innovation") has always been and will remain a hallmark of open source. Borrowing portions of great code – from elegantly executed algorithms to useful libraries to entire components – is an intended mode of exercise for software freedom and not an artifact. Leaving it available is essential.
The same provisions that allow code reuse also enable the crucial pressure release valve of open source: the fork. The ability to take the code and do something the original author or the current community don't want is an essential freedom, not an unwanted side effect. Indeed, it is the origin of many of the most significant moments in open source.
It was a fork that rescued OpenOffice.org from corporate neglect, giving us LibreOffice. A fork allowed ForgeRock to rescue Sun's identity management software from abandonment, thus saving huge investments in its deployment and creating a highly valued "unicorn" startup in the process. The MariaDB fork is keeping the MySQL project focused on community. Even the Firefox browser was a kind of fork from Mozilla, albeit a strategic one.
Making open source code freely available to unknown others is thus axial and not tangential to open source. That's why I get extremely concerned by anything that wants to be seen as "open source" but still tries to lock out the outsiders, the rebels, and the aliens. Attempts to do this range from the crude, like using a "time-locked" license that only becomes open source after a significant delay for "monetization," to more subtle approaches, like requiring an account to access the source repository and then only allowing paying customers to have an account.
The code may be under an open source license, but software freedom is not present if accessing or using it requires being or knowing an insider. None of this is theoretical; indeed, ForgeRock and MariaDB are themselves playing these games despite their origin story being rooted in software freedom.
So remain skeptical when software freedom is abridged or diminished in pursuit of a business model or "safety." Whatever that's called, it's not open source.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.
-
ZorinOS 17.1 Released, Includes Improved Windows App Support
If you need or desire to run Windows applications on Linux, there's one distribution intent on making that easier for you and its new release further improves that feature.
-
Linux Market Share Surpasses 4% for the First Time
Look out Windows and macOS, Linux is on the rise and has even topped ChromeOS to become the fourth most widely used OS around the globe.
-
KDE’s Plasma 6 Officially Available
KDE’s Plasma 6.0 "Megarelease" has happened, and it's brimming with new features, polish, and performance.
-
Latest Version of Tails Unleashed
Tails 6.0 is based on Debian 12 and includes GNOME 43.
-
KDE Announces New Slimbook V with Plenty of Power and KDE’s Plasma 6
If you're a fan of KDE Plasma, you'll be thrilled to hear they've announced a new Slimbook with an AMD CPU and the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop.
-
Monthly Sponsorship Includes Early Access to elementary OS 8
If you want to get a glimpse of what's in the pipeline for elementary OS 8, just set up a monthly sponsorship to help fund its continued existence.
-
DebConf24 to be Held in South Korea
Busan will be the location of the latest DebConf running July 28 through August 4
-
Fedora Unleashes Atomic Desktops
Fedora has combined its solid distribution with rpm-ostree system to make it possible to deliver a new family of Fedora spins, called Fedora Atomic Desktops.
-
Bootloader Vulnerability Affects Nearly All Linux Distributions
The developers of shim have released a version to fix numerous security flaws, including one that could enable remote control execution of malicious code under certain circumstances.