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
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Find SysAdmin Jobs
News
-
Escuelas Linux 8.0 is Now Available
Just in time for its 25th anniversary, the developers of Escuelas Linux have released the latest version.
-
LibreOffice 7.5 has Arrived Loaded with New Features and Improvements
The favorite office suite of the Linux community has a new release that includes some visual refreshing and new features across all modules.
-
The Next Major Release of Elementary OS Has Arrived
It's been over a year since the developers of elementary OS released version 6.1 (Jólnir) but they've finally made their latest release (Horus) available with a renewed focus on the user.
-
KDE Plasma 5.27 Beta Is Ready for Testing
The latest beta iteration of the KDE Plasma desktop is now available and includes some important additions and fixes.
-
Netrunner OS 23 Is Now Available
The latest version of this Linux distribution is now based on Debian Bullseye and is ready for installation and finally hits the KDE 5.20 branch of the desktop.
-
New Linux Distribution Built for Gamers
With a Gnome desktop that offers different layouts and a custom kernel, PikaOS is a great option for gamers of all types.
-
System76 Beefs Up Popular Pangolin Laptop
The darling of open-source-powered laptops and desktops will soon drop a new AMD Ryzen 7-powered version of their popular Pangolin laptop.
-
Nobara Project Is a Modified Version of Fedora with User-Friendly Fixes
If you're looking for a version of Fedora that includes third-party and proprietary packages, look no further than the Nobara Project.
-
Gnome 44 Now Has a Release Date
Gnome 44 will be officially released on March 22, 2023.
-
Nitrux 2.6 Available with Kernel 6.1 and a Major Change
The developers of Nitrux have officially released version 2.6 of their Linux distribution with plenty of new features to excite users.