Both open standards and open source are related but evolving. Given recent events, we could even say that Open source is maturing. Today, rather than considering the dichotomy between open source and proprietary software; we are now evaluating specific open source licenses, how they work with various business goals and how they will play out in the future.
In many ways, our forum topic this month addresses that issue. Stacy says: The answer lies in licenses: not the patent licenses, but certain open source software licenses. James says: Demands for royalties are becoming rarer, in our own domain.
My thoughts specifically to these two comments are as below. I also extend this discussion with implications for the future.
1) Open source licenses are not incompatible with IPR: Open source licenses are admittedly complex but they come down to one basic principle. (No, it is not about ‘free’ or ‘paid’). Essentially, Open source licenses come down to the ability to modify and distribute derivative code. The two positions are: Either you have to contribute back any modifications to the original code and redistribute the modifications as per the original license (copyleft) OR you can ‘keep’ and distribute the modifications and add any conditions (IPR, payments etc) to the modifications as long as you indicate the original license of the code and do not violate anyone else’s IPR. The two best known examples of the two perspectives for Open source licenses are GPL v 3 (copyleft) and Apache.
The Apache License, does not require modified versions of the software to be distributed using the same license. In every licensed file, any original copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices in redistributed code must be preserved (excluding notices that do not pertain to any part of the derivative works); and, in every licensed file changed, a notification must be added stating that changes have been made to that file.
This means there is no conflict between the Apache license and IPR, patents, payments etc.
2) Demands for royalties increasing depending on domain: In the domain I work with (mobility, convergence, sensor networks etc), we do see increasing (and not less) IPR issues. Mobile technology always had to deal with IPR right across the stack (network, device, services etc). My point is: When it comes to hardware and firmware integration (SW-HW interface), IPR has always played a role and it is getting more significant as the entire mobility sector gains in significance. Many of the royalty free arguments arise from the ‘software only’ domain. This may not be valid going forward especially as implementations become more complex and they span software and hardware with blurring boundaries (see below).
Implications:
As Open source matures, here are some of the implications as I see them: (there are many more but I choose three for brevity and focus)
1) Transparency is the key – not Open/Closed
2) Community engagement and trust
3) Blurring the lines between software and hardware
TRANSPARENCY IS THE KEY – NOT OPEN/CLOSED: Today, the biggest challenge for Open source is not the business model or IPR, (the Apache license certainly provides that) but that of trust and transparency. Most people today recognize the difference between Governance models vs. development models. I can explain this simply as: The leverage of control for open source is not who can change the code but rather whose changes will be accepted into the core product. Take the example of Android. The development model is open sourced (anyone can see the code and change it) but the Governance model is (ultimately) managed by Google i.e. if developer A and developer B both modify a specific code segment, the governance model (Google) decides which changes are to be included in the core product. This can be perceived as a barrier depending on the trust, transparency and engagement of the provider. Certainly, the traction gained by Android demonstrates that there is a degree of Trust in Google and indeed benefits for the licensees.
However, staying with Android, last week saw something much more complex i.e. the lawsuit between Oracle and Google over Android. The crux of this lawsuit arises from Sun’s original Java supposedly ‘open source’ terms and is explained by David Vellante via Gigaom which I summarise as follows:
In the license there is a “Classpath Exception” which is a crucial provision that allows developers to link their code to Java without the need to fall under a GPL license—meaning developers can make their own licensing terms and not be bound by GPL. Sun only included the Classpath Exception for the core Java platform – it’s not included the mobile edition.
This meant that it was really neither open nor closed source but rather a lack of transparency on the part of Sun which Oracle is attempting to monetize post its acquisition of Sun. Which brings us to the second point: Why would anyone want to ‘open source’ in the first place?
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND TRUST: Open source, by definition, needs engagement with the community (specifically with developer communities). Community engagement can occur at many levels. Many successful products have developer programs and the product itself is not open sourced.
Historically, this has worked well for many products. There are two commercial reasons for ‘open sourcing’ a product.
a) Extending the product along unpredictable directions: The first is to extend the product along unpredictable directions. This is the benevolent reason for open sourcing a product. Your product becomes a platform. Others can add value to the product by adding features. This works because the rate of change of products is now too fast. It means that the community ‘morphs’ the product in directions which you (as product owner) could never have anticipated. This could gain you competitive advantage because you gain an early market lead by allowing the community to shape your product in a direction that is beneficial to the community itself(who are often the users/customers of your product)
b) Getting traction for a challenger product: This is often the hidden reason for open sourcing a product. The real reason for open source is to get developer traction for a ‘challenger’ product. Would a Java community develop if Sun launched a proprietary software language? Who would buy license it from (what was mainly) a hardware/server company? So, Java had to ‘appear’ to be open sourced to get community traction.
It is interesting to see the love/hate relationship between open source product owners and the community. Sun clearly misled the community on how ‘open’ its source really was. Following the Oracle lawsuit, Google has suddenly developed a love for the open source Java community, which it had hitherto ignored in favour of its own Android community. Oracle, which has never open sourced its products, has a developer program but no record of any serious engagement with the Open source community. The ASF (Apache software foundation) represents the open source community in the minds of people but does not seem to have any real say in this game (which is between big corporations like Oracle and Google)
BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE: I said before that the boundaries between hardware and software are being blurred. In future, this will get more interesting when we get into the realms of Open source hardware. Today, one of the hottest products in the open source community comes from a university in Italy – Arduino. A trailer for a documentary for Arduino got 75,000 views in one day. Arduino comes from a university setting. It does not have the baggage from other corporate open source products with hidden agendas. Yet, developers can create commercial products from Arduino because it supports the LGPL license. The hardware is also completely hackable i.e. open and modifiable. This indicates to me that the boundaries are going to get a lot more complex and blurred both for HW/SW but also the management of IPR will be more complex
This is a much longer post that I originally thought and I could add much more but I will stop now.
Based on the above, my only conclusion is: We are going to see a lot more complexity, variety and increasing maturity when it comes to Open source and IPR.
Join the Forum discussion here: http://www.talkstandards.com/questions-for-standards-and-oss-open-forum/
