Open Source Archive

In the world of "free" open source software, there is no greater villain than SCO, owner of the Unix operating system. But the spread of Linux could be hurt by another group--and ironically, it's the free-software proponents themselves, Forbes says.

"Two companies announced this week they've been financially slapped around--one to the point of bankruptcy, and the other to the point where Wall Street is screeching warnings to all who will listen. That both companies are in trouble is a clear fact--whether one will recover is still up for a debate that I don't really want to get into." Read the editorial by LinuxToday's Brian Proffitt.

What will happen as more corporations see the open source light? Paul Ferris editorializes: "Like it or not, zealots and heretics are finding common ground in the open source holy war."

Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation, took time to discuss many current issues with Open for Business' Timothy R. Butler. Stallman provides straightforward answers on SCO, GNU/Linux distribution choices, Digital Rights Management, dual license schemes, and more. Read the in-depth interview at OfB.biz.

"SCO's contract dispute with IBM has been accompanied by a smear campaign against the whole GNU/Linux system. But SCO made an obvious mistake when it erroneously quoted me as saying that "Linux is a copy of Unix." Many readers immediately smelled a rat--not only because I did not say that, and not only because the person who said it was talking about published ideas (which are uncopyrightable) rather than code, but because they know I would never compare Linux with Unix." Read RMS' editorial at ZDNet.

Intellectual-property expert Richard Wilder says the liability issues raised by SCO's Linux lawsuit will force distributors and developers to rethink assumptions about open-source software, IP rights and customer protection. Elsewhere, TheInquirer explains what OSS is.

"This page isn't here to debate whether OpenSource Software(OSS) is high quality or not. The majority of programmers already know that OSS is responsible for the bulk of today's most superior software. In addition, BSD licensed software is known to be generally even Higher in quality than most other types of OSS. This page is here to explain how BSD and similar licenses hurt the OSS community more than they can ever help it, and why developers should use GNU licenses or similar instead." Read the editorial at FreeWebs. Our Take: Yeah... right... :P

"Free software is ego-propelled. People don't get paid, they get famous. Yet we as a community do far too little to prominently credit the names of the authors. I propose we change that by adopting a few simple practices." Read the editorial at NewsForge by Hans Reiser. In Greece, we have a saying: "Many hated money, but no one hated glory..."

Open-source software is indeed vulnerable to claims of patent infringement. But lawyer Steven Frank says that doesn't mean the legal floodgates are about to open.

"We often forget that that idea of software as a boxed, mass-market, proprietary product is only about 30 years old. During these three decades, the software industry has made a number of individuals wealthy. But this era may be over. The future of software may not have room for new billionaires, even though there is a growing demand for new software, and opportunities for people who write that software will continue to grow along with that demand." Read the article at NewsForge.

The GPL is a wonderful license for community works, for the basic reason that it starts out with the premise that the point is the source code. The program, someone is trying to make. Not the programmer, not the programmer's company, or the programmer's pay check. What it basically says is that there is no way for one to act as a stop-gap to the flow of code development and the organic way that code tends to build upon itself.

"The GPL, GNU General Public License, is a license boilerplate that the FSF, Free Software Foundation, has put forward to be adopted by software developers that are creating software. The GPL has some fundamental flaws that may actually make one wonder if people using the GPL license really understand the license." Read the editorial here by Chris Davies.

Red Hat and Intel have settled a licensing hiccup that threatened to prevent the Linux company from contributing to Intel's open-source project--a reminder of the frictions that can arise between the commercial tech world and the open-source community.

"The Open Source community's answer is to ignore Microsoft's incredible technological lead - because it is proprietary and not a standard - and instead focusses on their own cool thing and self-gratifying cool features, because they think they can do better (which is where the ignorance combined with ego comes in)." Join the discussion at Advogato.