Compulsory checkin clauses.

[Ross N. Williams]

At 1:11 AM -0700 5/8/2000, David Johnson wrote:
>On Fri, 04 Aug 2000, Ross N. Williams wrote:
>
> > Based on some recent feedback, I have deleted it in the current
> > draft. However, now I'm not so sure whether it's best to delete it
> > and am thinking of putting it back in. Here are some examples of
> > why it might be a good thing:
> > 
> > * A programmer discovers a bug and fixes it, but doesn't tell anyone!
>
>It's a private bug fix. In my opinion, it should be no one's business
>but the user. No harm to the author can possibly come of it.

Well, yes and no. It depends on your attitude towards bugs I guess.
Think of the case where a bug can cause a user to lose all their work.
Not reporting such a bug when you've got as far in understanding it as
to actually be able to fix it, seems like a crime of omission against
the user community to me.


> > * Two companies A and B in some market are competing. They both install
> > some free software. Company A then modifies the free software to improve
> > productivity, but it doesn't publish the change, so company B can't make
> > use of the change to increase ITS productivity. 
>
>Again, it is still a private modification. Even though B is not helped
>by it, neither is it harmed. Trying to "equalize" the benefits amongst
>all the users sounds too much like social engineering, and I don't
>think that's the proper role of a license. Requiring that a developer
>labor unpaid for his competitor is grossly unfair.

Which is exactly what happens when we modify free software for a client!
Why do you want to protect software developers in non-software industries
from such unfairness, but not software developers in the software industry?

One consequence of protecting private changes: A manufacturer who
outsources the modification of free software suffers a competitive
disadvantage relative to a manufacturer who performs the changes in-house.

If isometric software battles between software vendors are undesirable,
then what makes isometric software battles within other industries
any less undesirable? If such battles are all desirable, why don't we all
just go back to proprietary licences? :-)


> > * A company adds 10,000 lines to some free software to make it much
> > better, but simply *couldn't be bothered* checking it in. After having
> > spent $100K on improving the software, they say "Why should we waste
> > a programmer day checking this stuff in just to help OTHER companies?".
> > Many companies are this ruthless.
>
>If they release the modified software, then they need to release the
>modified source code. But if they don't release the software, they have
>already lost $100K, so why punish them any more :-)

They haven't been punished because the $100K made them a profit.


>I really wouldn't consider this "ruthless" by any stretch of my
>imagination.

I think it's a little bit ruthless when a company finds itself in a
position where it can perform one unit of work to benefit society to
the tune of 100 units and doesn't choose to do that. Clearly the company
can't do this to the point where it goes broke, but there's a reasonable
level where the win to the public is so much greater to the cost to the
company that in my view it is ruthless for the company not to do it,
at least to some extent.



>If this software is for their own private use, then
>spending $100K to improve it is no different than spending $100K to
>improve their facilities or buy new equipment or whatever.

Yes, but with software, once it's created, there exists the opportunity
to benefit others at a near-zero marginal cost. It doesn't work that
way when you buy a table, otherwise we'd have open-source furniture
wouldn't we?

I sort of feel that if the company gets the benefit of 100,000 lines
of free software, and adds 2000 lines, then it should share the 2000
in the spirit in which it accepted the original. However, if it has to
choose to do this voluntarily, then it will suffer an evolutionary
disadvantage for its altruism. Hence the argument for a compulsory checkin
clause - to create a level altruistic playing field.



>Basically, the reason I am against restricting private modifications is
>because it is really restricting *usage*. It's like selling a book but
>telling the reader that they can't make any margin notes unless they
>publish them, or selling sheet music but forbidding improvising on it
>unless it is recorded and uploaded to mp3.com.

Yes, I think that a sound argument can be made on the basis of freedom.
And, depending on the software, privacy. But seems to me right now that fixing
bugs and digging useful code out of lazy corporations is more important.
Hence my bugfix and >300 lines checkin proposal. I don't know what the
right answer is.


Ross.

Dr Ross N. Williams (ross at rocksoft.com), +61 8 8232-6262 (fax-6264).
Director, Rocksoft Pty Ltd, Adelaide, Australia: http://www.rocksoft.com/ 
Protect your files with Veracity data integrity: http://www.veracity.com/