LarsG's Journal: "The Free Software Lunch" and GPL fear-mongering.

What do you know, an economist that is doing consultant work for MS thinks that the GPL is a very bad idea

As per tradition, any true Open Source advocate worth his salt must immediately write a rebuttal ;-)

Thus is the following created:

"But some programmers with a taste for the counterculture or an aversion to corporate life have gone their own way. They have chosen to write software collectively for no pay and then publish the source code and allow anyone to use and modify it for free. In some cases, altruism meshes neatly with more self-interested motives - the wish to impress fellow geeks and maybe even win a great consulting job with a Silicon Valley behemoth."

Ignoring the ad hominem for the moment - there are a lot of reasons for why someone decides to develop and release Free Software/Open Source Software. Altruism is only one of them.

To give one example: IBM supports Linux and spend money to make sure that it works well on their lines of hardware. Why? Because it increases sales of their hardware and services, and makes IBM less dependant of Microsoft.

"For one thing, some governments (Taiwan) openly favor open source software in their procurement policies as a means of distancing themselves from giant (usually American) software makers."

Well, if Open Source - due to the special licensing terms - provide features that governments see that they need (say - for example the carte blanche right to tailor and modify, or ensure that it is possible in the future to read data stored in file formats used by current software), what's the problem?

Like you, I have a problem with governments requiring open source software. However, if governments set up a list of features they need and open source software happens to fit the bill better than commercial software I honestly don't see the problem.

"The Pentagon is flirting with open source, justifying its infatuation by the as-yet-unproved assertion that open source software is less vulnerable to hackers because responsible volunteers correct errors before the cyber-vandals find them."

I have not read any Pentagon policy papers, so i don't know why they assert that open source software is more secure. I have been following the general discussion regarding open/closed software and security in some detail.

There doesn't seem to be a real consensus yet in the computer security community regarding whether there is any inherent quality that automatically makes an open source program more secure than an equivalent closed source program. However, open source does provide two features that closed source does not have:

- The possibility for independent review of the source code.
- The ability to fix the problem yourself instead of relying on a single vendor.

If you are a large entity like Pentagon, those two features might be reason enough to prefer an open source solution.

"Under the GPL, created by the non-profit Free Software Foundation, anyone is free to use and to modify software. But unlike other open source licenses, any modifications must also be licensed under the GPL."

That is true.

"Thus if Sun Microsystems were to borrow a bit of code from a GPL program developed under a government grant for its proprietary Solaris computer operating system, Sun would have to distribute Solaris under the GPL or stop using the "borrowed" code."

That is either a gross misunderstanding of the GPL or a blatant lie.

The GPL license is 'viral' in the sense that it infects code that is based on GPL'ed code or is linked with GPL'ed code.

Solaris is a huge system consisting of lots and lots of discrete components. If Sun includes GPL licensed code in one of the components, only that component would be 'infected'.

It is the normal modus operandi of large software companies to license code from other companies for use in their products. In that regard, the GPL is just another license agreement. Their lawyers should be perfectly capable of looking at the GPL and see when and where GPL'ed code is suitable in their products, and what risks are contained in the use of the GPL.

The fact that many companies are using GPLed components in their products today would imply that they find the risks and the requirements in the licence acceptable.

"This "viral" property effectively bars commercial software makers from incorporating ideas from GPL software - which is precisely what the ideologues at the Free Software Foundation had in mind."

Also a misunderstanding or a bald faced exaggeration of the scope of the license.

The GPL is a copyright license. It sets forth the requirements for using copyrighted works licensed under the GPL.

Copyright protects an expression. Ideas are outside the scope of copyright. Let's say that I write a crime novel about a butler killing the cook in the library of an old english mansion. I have the copyright of that particular expression of the idea, but I can't stop others from writing traditional british crime stories.

Microsoft - or anyone else - is free to read GPL software, note the ideas contained therein and write their own based on those ideas. However, Microsoft is not free to verbatim copy (or 'pirate' or 'borrow') the source code.

"But allowing taxpayers' money to be used to promote the GPL through NASA or the Sandia National Laboratories - both of which have developed software licensed under the GPL - is another story entirely."

See above. Commercial software developers are not denied access to ideas created by government funded development. With the GPL, the ideas are there - free for anyone to look at.

It sounds to me that the resistance to the GPL is not founded on the fear that ideas created at NASA or SNL can not be used by commercial companies, but that the commercial companies have to write their own software to implement those ideas instead of just taking source code.

"Imagine where we'd be if pharmaceutical companies had not been allowed to use government research, and the development of drugs based on that research had been left to non-profits or government agencies. Thousands of people would be dead who are now alive, courtesy of some of today's "miracle" drugs."

You are ignoring some very important economic differences between the software business and pharma.

1) Labs and tools for drug development are expensive.
2) Getting a drug approved for human consumption is a very costly process, and is something that would be impossible to do for a non-profit run by a group of bio engineers in their spare time.
3) Drugs tend to be expensive to produce.
4) Drugs tend to be protected by patent law, not copyright.

1) Sufficient equipment for software development is in the $1000-$2000 range.
2) It is perfectly possible for a group of CS engineers to codevelop a piece of software in their spare time.
3) Once a piece of software has been written, it can be duplicated at very low cost.
4) Software tends to be protected by copyright law (and to some extent - trade secret and patent law).

You also have the very important factor that software tends to "stand on the shoulders of giants". The software at the bottom - like operating systems or networking protocols - create an infrastructure that other software can use. You often have situations where creating a cheap and ubiquous infrastructure create entirely new markets for software and services running on top. We are actually using one of the best examples of this right now - the Internet infrastructure was largely created by government funds and open source software.

"The General Public License amounts to an insidious attack on a hybrid system of public and private enterprise for developing software that has served us well. Washington has no business joining the free software conspiracy."

The GPL is a counter reaction to the commercial software companies sucking dry the Public Domain. Microsoft receives copyright protection for their binary software without having to show the source so that other people can get access to the ideas - which is essentially a breach of the tit for tat idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law.

The GPL doesn't deny anyone access to the ideas. In fact, within the limitations of license and copyright law, the GPL tries very hard to make sure that the ideas embodied in a piece of software will always be available to everyone.

Let's return to the core of your argument - that government should not fund the development of GPL software.

I actually agree with you. It should not be the government's task to decide on one model of software development over an other. If the GPL can not survive by the merits of the model and the software produced by it, it should die. It would be far better to release government developed software as Public Domain thus making it usable for both open source and proprietary instead of encumbering it with licenses that only benefit one party.

Calling the GPL a free software conspiracy is disingenuous when anyone who has ever read the license knows that the very preamble contains a candid and up-front description of the goals of the license.

I would contend that it is easier to understand the goals and implications of the GPL than it is to understand the implications of clicking 'Accept' on a modern End User License Agreement.