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A Remarkable Reversal

It was a surprise to see Richard Stallman's signature on a letter to the European Commission calling on them to block the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle with its proposed acquisition of Sun. The surprise wasn't primarily because of that position. Clearly we are all concerned, and clearly there is scope for free software advocates to differ in their conclusions, as the intervention by leading European free software lawyer Carlo Piana shows. I have my own views on the acquisition as well, which I hope one day to be at liberty to share openly¹. But the direct subject of the letter was not the surprise.
For many years, Stallman's advocacy of the GNU General Public License as the vehicle for creating software freedom has been a familiar and regular refrain. He has been happy to largely ignore other attributes of the open source communities that surround the various free software commons, and rely purely on the provisions of the cleverly-crafted license to promote software freedom. Amazingly (although not incorrectly), the letter describes that view as "naive". Following the lead in fixating on licenses alone, OSI differs only in trusting more licenses than just the GPL to be the "it's OK" indicator, even after a decade of experience.
The letter's arguments imply that the dual-license model used by MySQL is the origin of the potential loss of freedom its authors fear. This model involves a vendor having aggregated copyright ownership of the free software commons at the heart of a particular open source community. While every other member of the community is bound by the terms of the open source license governing the commons, the copyright-owning company is free to do pretty much as they please with the copyright, making it available under whatever commercial terms it wants, in sub- and super-sets of function and packaging.
Those terms can even include clauses that restrict the freedom of community members who choose to buy from the company - I have for example seen commercial terms that include "no fork" clauses preventing customers working on or with any version of the code apart from the one the company supplies. While commonly used in combination with the GPLv2 as the community license, dual licenses with GPLv3, LGPLv3, the Affero GPL and even with weak-copyleft licenses such as CDDL are all easy to find. The license makes no difference to the actions open to the copyright holder, who is not bound by it.
Dual licensing is everywhere in commercial open source. So the letter from Stallman is a surprise because it's the first time I have really seen him acknowledge that the license alone can be no guarantee of software freedom. It takes more - including community governance, trademark and copyright ownership and administration, the percentage of core function in the commons - as partial indicators of software freedom. They need to be taken together to get the full view.
In my previous postings, I've compared "open source" with "organic", called for an expansion of the definition of open source to embrace more "inputs" and proposed drafting a "Software Freedom Definition" and creating an "Open Source Audit" scorecard to help people identify the key software freedom characteristics of vendor product offerings. My goal is not to have some nannying organisation passing judgement on open source communities, or the companies that work in them. Rather, it is to expand the number of indicators available to us all of basic open source hygiene, so that when we choose to work in any imperfect community - and they are all imperfect in some way - we are aware of the issues and have handholds when we decide to address them. Transparency and truthful labelling is the key to intelligent choice and advancing freedom through informed compromise. The alternative - the One Approved Distribution - works for almost no-one.
It seems that this is an initiative whose time has come. I'd love to see Stallman and the FSF join in taking action to broaden the definitions, now that it's been admitted that the license alone is no guarantee of software freedom and that we must consider more factors in reaching a conclusion on its promotion.

1: As a current employee of Sun Microsystems and a Sun shareholder I'll not comment for or against the transaction with Oracle. Please also note that nothing said here is necessarily the position of Sun Microsystems. Also posted to my OSI blog.

posted at 5:58 PM (UK) | |

Comments:

I think you should read the letter more carefully and think a bit more before proclaiming here and on the OSI site that this is an RMS "reversal".

-t

# posted by

dasht : 7:04 AM

@dasht

If you want to be taken seriously, you probably should post your argument, instead of taking the easy way out and making generic claims that the OP hasn't read the letter properly.

# posted by

Gary Pendergast : 6:43 PM

I started as a total RMS fanboi many years ago - what would you think of the guy who wrote stuff like GCC and invented Free Software?..., then I when down to just admire and respect his work and leadership, then to just respect his past work... In the last few years Stallman has unfortunately become a dinosaur, he's already at odds with many high-profile FOSS leaders, and common developers/contributors are increasingly losing that remaining respect at each stupid move.

Sun is the single company that contributed most code to FOSS projects, and very likely, even to GPL projects. One could expect RMS to be slightly grateful for this; but no. As the adage says, who needs enemies with friends like these?

# posted by

Osvaldo Doederlein : 6:57 PM

Simon, you haven't been listening that closely if you think RMS hasn't been very skeptical and concerned about proprietary relicensing (a clearer term for "dual licensing, as the latter phrase has multiple unrelated meanings related to FLOSS licensing).
RMS has always called MySQL's model "barely legitimate", and when I was at FSF, I did the same.
For my part, since leaving FSF, I've been even more outspoken against the idea of a single, corporate, for-profit copyright holder for any FLOSS project, and GPL'd ones in particular. See my recent blog post for my most recent thoughts on it.
As you know, I've been saying for years that we need more non-profit charitable homes for code that aren't tied or controlled by any single corporate entity. This situation confirms it, and it's why no license can really solve the problem with Oracle owning copyrights on MySQL.
The best we can hope for now is a GPLv3 release, so at least forkers are protected from Oracle's inevitable patent attacks on Free Software databases. I doubt that will be forthcoming, though, sadly.
--bkuhn

# posted by

Bradley : 7:04 PM

I see Mr. Stallman has a point in his arguments. So, i don't think he's wrong in stating his fears in the letter.
It's something only time will tell if will happen.
If Oracle really feels threatened by MySQL, chances are the worst will happen.
But, isn't a fork of MySQL on progress??? Just to overcome a situation like this ???

# posted by

A : 7:58 PM

@Gary Pedergast

Fair enough. Simon wrote:

"Stallman's advocacy of the GNU General Public License as the vehicle for creating software freedom has been a familiar and regular refrain. He has been happy to largely ignore other attributes of the open source communities that sound the various free software commons, and reply purely on the provisions of the cleverly-crafted license to promote software freedom."

That is simply false as can be seen by RMS's work against software patents, his work against DRM, and his work against proprietary web servers. He has always been very clear that licenses are an important tool in the fight for software freedom but that the mere adoption of GNU licenses does not guarantee software freedom.

Simon writes: "Amazingly (although not incorrectly), the letter describes [the view that licenses secure software freedom] as ``naive''".

What the letter actually says is that it is naive to believe Oracle won't withdraw support for improving the free software releases of MySQL and that since MySQL may not be freely moved to GPL v3, Oracle might further interfere by refusing to move MySQL to GPL v3.

Simon writes "Following the lead in fixating on licenses alone, OSI differs only in trusting more licenses than just the GPL to be the ``it's OK'' indicator, even after a decade of experience."

Neither RMS or the FSF have given any leadership in "fixating on licenses alone" - quite the contrary as I earlier pointed out. RMS' fixation is software freedom. The OSI stands alone in its poorly chosen fixation on licenses alone.

Simon writes: "The letter's arguments imply that the dual-license model used by MySQL is the origin of the potential loss of freedom its authors fear."

No, the letter doesn't imply that. The letter states that Oracle is likely to reduce investment in improving the free version and asserts that Oracle has a commercial interest in doing so and is likely to do so.

Simon writes: "So the letter from Stallman is a surprise because it's the first time I have really seen him acknowledge that the license alone can be no guarantee of software freedom."

We surely can't argue that this may be Simon's first awareness of Stallman's acknowledgment but that mainly show's that Simon hasn't been paying attention. (E.g., see RMS about DRM.)

More to the point, the letter does not argue that Oracle can make MySQL less free, it argues that Oracle can thwart competition by disrupting and diminishing progress on MySQL (and therefore the acquisition should be blocked on anti-trust grounds).

Simon writes: "It takes more - including community governance, trademark and copyright ownership and administration, the percentage of core function in the commons - as partial indicators of software freedom. [....]"

At that point he is writing about his own agenda, not anything found in the letter. His agenda is not clearly aligned with RMS, the FSF, or the free software movement. For example, "community governance" is contrary to traditional GNU project practices.

-t

# posted by

dasht : 8:06 PM

Your footnote link points to http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3650155#footnote1 . You may want to update that to http://www.webmink.net/2009/10/remarkable-reversal.htm#footnote1.

# posted by

Evan Prodromou : 9:18 PM

Bradley: I recognise what you are saying about RMS view (which as you know I share), but I regard this letter (which seems to not have been written by RMS) as being remarkable in its lack of confidence in the ability of the GPL to create software freedom. I'm not sure I share your belief in the inevitability of patent attacks; why do you believe they will happen? That assertion, like the ones in the letter itself, is not supported by the history I have seen of their engagement with FOSS projects.

Evan: Sadly this is a bug in Blogger, the link is supposed to just say "#Footnote1" but Blogger's code generation prior to FTP has made this happen.

Osvaldo: I'm afraid I disagree. Stallman's single-minded leadership continues to mark the end-point of software freedom. I just don't think this letter represents his voice on the matter.

Tom Lord: Having consulted others who have done so in the past, I choose not to respond to you.

# posted by

webmink : 10:25 PM

Bradley,

What evidence do you have that an Oracle patent attack is "inevitable"? Besides, as an OIN licensee Oracle's has already promised not to assert its patents against MySQL and PostgreSQL

# posted by

Matthew Aslett : 10:50 PM

Thank you for pointing that out, Simon. I'll follow up with the attorney general (again).

-t

# posted by

dasht : 2:44 AM