Compulsory checkin clauses.

[David Johnson]

On Sat, 05 Aug 2000, Ross N. Williams wrote:

> >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.

Crime of omission? Interesting. If the bug actually causes damages and
the fix will prevent it, it might actually be a case of negligence.
However, it would still be a case of negligence regardless of what the
license said.

> >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?

There is a big difference here. In the case of modifying a free
software client, the developer is getting paid. By the client. They
have to follow your rules because they are distributing and publishing
your software. They are profiting from your software. If they kept the
modifications for private internal use they are not profiting only
benefiting (a small but crucial distinction).

> 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? :-)

People use open source and free licenses because they want to share
their creations with others. 

Some people may want others to share their original works as well, but
they aren't using software licensing to do it. Including the FSF. The
primary goal of the GPL and other copyleft licenses is to ensure that a
*specific* work is always free. It says absolutely nothing about other
works that are not in some way derivative. Although Richard Stallman
may fervently believe that all software must be free, he did not write
the GPL to accomplish it, preferring didactic and evangelical means
to accomplish that goal.

Once you go beyond your normal rights as a copyright holder, such
as regulating the distribution of your works, you encroach upon the 
rights of the user. Although many proprietary licensing schemes do this,
I am aware of no open source license that does.

> >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.

If they kept this internal to the company then it is not a profit, but
it may be a benefit. A farmer who spends $100K plowing his field,
sowing his crops, and harvesting the produce certainly has a benefit in
full silos. But he doesn't profit until he takes it to market. An
accountant will still have him listed as $100K in the red.

> >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.

Selfish maybe. Ruthless no.

And requiring that the company release its private modifications may
actually be a zero gain for society. If the release denies them the
means to earn sufficient profit for that $100K, they won't make the
modifications to begin with. 

> >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?

A fallacious argument. Even if there is a near-zero cost to
distributing the modifications, there is a definite cost for
releasing it. One example is support. Someone will have to pay for
supporting this new nonstandard version of the software. If they do not
offer support they may lose sales of their other products simply due to
angry customers. And if the software causes damages to the user
somehow, then the company may have to pay the costs of a court battle. 

> 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.

Making people be altruistic is always a tricky affair. I don't know of
too many situations where it has worked successfully. Philosophically,
I feel there is a greater moral gain if one out of ten people
voluntarily choose to share than if ten out of ten people are forced to
share.

But regardless of your philosophy or mine, is a software license the
appropriate vehicle for promoting them?

> >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.

According to the FSF, that's the whole point of the thing.

-- 
David Johnson
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