Open Source Business Found Parasitic, and the ADCL

[James Harrell]

Dear Open Source Friends,

This discussion has been quite interesting. I believe it was earlier
pointed out that "quite often" a commercial entity comes along and
asks this group, what license should one use (or can a license be
created) that creates a symbiotic relationship between commercial and
free software. I for one have personally asked this question, though
I've found the standard answers and methods are simply not appealing
from a business perspective. Existing licenses set forth either too
many restrictions, or are not sufficiently templated to allow a company
to adopt them without giving up control of the license. ie: many of
the commercially-viable or even commercially-interesting licenses are
controlled by one company, which is generally not the copyright holder
of the software being published under that license. 

Now, I must admit there are a few success stories of commercial
Open Source products. But I would argue these are far and few between,
and the overhead of accomplishing such a success is cost prohibitive
for most smaller entities.

Further, a common "suggestion" from the Open Source community to a 
commercial entity is to "sell support" rather than "sell software".
Though a services and support business does not scale well, whereas
the sale (rather licensing to be precise) of soft goods has proven to
be a very effective business model.

So we have two diametrically opposed forces- the free world and the
paid license world. It's interesting that when the "not-free" world
tries to move in the direction of the "free" world, there is little
or no budge from the free world to accomodate this. The snippet below
exemplifies what I beleive to be the net sum of how the free world
has no interest in a truly commercially viable Open Source license:

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rick Moen [mailto:rick at linuxmafia.com]
>Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 11:15 AM
>Well, at the risk of being a bit blunt, if you simply intended all along
>to write proprietary software, what are you doing _here_?  Lobbying for
>alterations to the OSD to accomodate your business model?  Looking for
>free advertising?

Though I cannot say for sure, most likely this individual or company was
not looking for free advertising, but instead looking for a way to provide
contributions back to the Open Source community; but hasn't yet found a
method of doing so that will protect the investments in intellectual 
property.

I obviously cannot speak for all commercial entities, but from my own
perspective, one major point is being overlooked here. Generally speaking,
there are very small portions of a product that contain truly proprietary
algorithms and/or intellectual property. Thus, there is generally a
significant portion of a product that a company may be willing to open
source (without a Capital "O" and Capital "S").

Perhaps what these commercial entities are seeking is a way to publish
an open source product that:
 1) Protects the commercial investment in developing
	the intellectual property of the company
 2) Provides significant source contributions to the world

So what we're really looking for is a license called "Partially Open
Source" or "Commercial Open Source" that will allow a company to
protect small portions of a larger product. In other words (pick a
number) X% of the product is truly Open Source, while Y% of the
product is not. Maybe 90/10, who knows. But the key here, is that
the commercial world does "want in" to the Open Source community,
and we're looking for some form of viable comprimise that will let
us work together and be embraced by (or in) the OSD.

Though I certainly understand this concept may be well outside of
the charter of your organization. Thus, I would be happy to offer
to begin to charter an organization for Commercial Open Source. I
would prefer not to do so, particularly if OSI is interested in
working towards incorporating and accepting such a concept into 
the OSD. But if there is zero interest here in a Partial Open Source
license, then I believe that ultimately the commercial world will
form a consortium to address this concept.

Regards,
James Harrell, CEO
Copernicus Business Systems


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