Towards A Real Business Model For Open-Source Software

[kraftman]

Hmm.... Mac OS X is a BSD. It just has a custom GUI slapped on it (Aqua GUI with Cocoa frameworks instead of GNOME with GTK or KDE Plasma with Qt).
Last time I checked Mac OS X exceeded Linux' desktop market share by far.

What a bull some people are writing here. OS X is not bsd - it just took some bsd parts, it's far more usable on desktops and user friendly, but it's nothing special and it's only marketing product which is greatly advertised. Bsd's and Linux aren't advertised, so this affects popularity, but Linux has much greater market share then *bsd.

@Sprewell

Many software libraries, like zlib compression or the TCP/IP stack, are written once as open source and integrated widely, particularly when they are BSD-licensed.

And so? Libraries aren't whole operating systems or applications! Linux many other GPL products are more popular then many bsd licensed systems and applications.

Start with a codebase that is open source, under a permissive license such as the bsd license or the cddl.

To let company steal "my" work?

Btw. why something like this appeared at Phoronix? Some bloggers thoughts?

[kraftman]

Do your homework. Mass stealing is *nothing* like anarchy, it's just mass stealing.

Probably anarchy in sense that everyone can do what he want with bsd licensed software and where there aren't rules there's anarchy.

[sal-e]

I wrote the original article, I thought I'd respond to some of the misguided comments I'm seeing here.

Hi Sprewell,
When you want to promote an idea the worst thing you can do is to insult the people who took the time to send you feedback. You might not like the feedback, you can think they are not as smart as you are, but you have three choices only:
1. Listen carefully and try to correct the course in order to see the success of your idea. Or,
2. Try to address their concerns by explaining how your idea will work in their examples.
3. Just ignore it, and keep moving forward. But if you fail remember that people tried to help you and say: 'Thank you'.

sal-e, it won't be that easy because parts of the codebase are closed, so anyone who wants to fork will have to clone or license those closed sections.

Let see. My example was based on individual programmer or small company let say up to 10 programmers. This means that your product will be mostly FOSS (70%) and closed source (30%). Now Microsoft downloads 70% of your product for free and puts 30 programmers to rewrite the rest of them. Let assume that your team is the best and MS programmers are average. Still 30 programmers will get the job done faster then your team can do. And here is the biggest problem you are facing. Their code does not have to work as good as yours. In fact if it crashes your programmer is even better. Then MS will bundle their version into Windows and every user got it for 'free' (we know there is no free lunch, but most users will not care about that). How long you think you can keep your program a live and your 10 programmers employed?

Microsoft did that to so many companies even when their software was 100% closed source. The only option left for you would be to get a patent and become patent troll. I don't know about you, but most programmers will not spend their time sitting in the court room in order to get paid, and never to work as programmers, because MS has more then 10000 software patents and I am sure they will find at least ten to sue you back. If SUN get bankrupt over the lawsuit with MS what are your chances?

But, Hey any successful person sounds crazy or stupid, until he/she succeed. So Good Luck to you. Only real problem you have is that your hybrid model has been tried before and had failed against MS. That is how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs become what they are today. I can admire your ambition only.

[nanonyme]

GPL is PROTECTING your work from being stolen. It protects your intellectual property from being missused. With BSD everyone is free to lock source down and steal for free. This aint freeom, this is anarchy

Note that GPL also reduces the freedom of the original author though. If someone distributes sources over GPL, they stay GPL. If the author later decides it wasn't such a good thing, sure they can distribute the sources the way they want to but there still will always exist a GPL-set of the sources that people who originally contributed nothing to the project can use or extend if they want to. GPL pretty much is communism in the manner that the author doesn't really own his code so far that it could be stolen. The community owns it and can extend it without hearing the original author.

[kraftman]

GPL pretty much is communism in the manner that the author doesn't really own his code so far that it could be stolen. The community owns it and can extend it without hearing the original author.

The most community friendly license.

[yogi_berra]

The most community friendly license.

I'm sure Cisco, BestBuy, Samsung, Westinghouse, and the other SFLC lawsuit victims feel the same.

[KAMiKAZOW]

MacOSX opensource? No.

Darwin, the whole BSD part of Mac OS X, is fully open source under a license recognized by the GNU project as Free.

Desktop environments are not developed as part of the base OS of all BSDs. Therefore its not of any interest which DE is used to make it a BSD – be it GNOME, the old CDE, or Apple's Aqua+Cocoa.

Does it steal from BSD code. Yes.

Apple acts fully in compliance with the BSD license. That's not stealing.

What a bull some people are writing here. OS X is not bsd - it just took some bsd parts

Darwin, the operating system that consists of everything in Mac OS X that isn't GUI-related, is a BSD. That is because for all core functionality it uses BSD code.
OSX/Darwin's kernel is XNU. XNU is a hybrid of a classic BSD kernel and Mach. Mach in turn is also a BSD-derived kernel. That makes XNU a reunification effort of two distinct BSD kernels.
Granted, its design is different from the approach of "traditional" BSDs, but today's OpenBSD/FreeBSD/NetBSD/DragonFlyBSD is also very different from the original Berkeley Software Distribution (=BSD).

OSX/Darwin's LibC is a variant of the FreeBSD version with some OpenBSD and NetBSD code thrown in. Sure, Apple put in its own code as well, but that doesn't make it "not BSD".

And here's the excerpt of the header of a XNU source code header:

* Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993
* The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
* (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
* All or some portions of this file are derived from material licensed
* to the University of California by American Telephone and Telegraph
* Co. or Unix System Laboratories, Inc. and are reproduced herein with
* the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
* must display the following acknowledgement:
* This product includes software developed by the University of
* California, Berkeley and its contributors.
* 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
* may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
* without specific prior written permission.
*
* THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
* ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
* IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
* ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
* FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
* DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
* OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
* HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
* LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
* OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
* SUCH DAMAGE.
*
* @(#)init_main.c 8.16 (Berkeley) 5/14/95
*/

/*
*
* Mach Operating System
* Copyright (c) 1987 Carnegie-Mellon University
* All rights reserved. The CMU software License Agreement specifies
* the terms and conditions for use and redistribution.
*/

[monraaf]

I'm sure Cisco, BestBuy, Samsung, Westinghouse, and the other SFLC lawsuit victims feel the same.

So companies who engage in copyright infringement are 'lawsuit victims' now? LMAO. Anyway I don't get why on earth Michael is giving this guy a platform. He's as irrelevant as his 'business model'.

[kraftman]

I'm sure Cisco, BestBuy, Samsung, Westinghouse, and the other SFLC lawsuit victims feel the same.

If they didn't follow GPL rules those are their problems. Companies are rarely community friendly, because they care only about their interests. They should choose the bsd if they didn't want to give the code back. This is why bsd sucks, because nobody has to give anything back to the community.

[kraftman]

@KAMiKAZOW

My point was OS X isn't another *BSD. Cut OS X from quartz, graphic drivers, proprietary apps and then nothing interesting will remain.