Do we need to rethink what free software is?

[mjg59]

Licensing has always been a fundamental tool in achieving free software's goals, with copyleft licenses deliberately taking advantage of copyright to ensure that all further recipients of software are in a position to exercise free software's four essential freedoms. Recently we've seen people raising two very different concerns around existing licenses and proposing new types of license as remedies, and while both are (at present) incompatible with our existing concepts of what free software is, they both raise genuine issues that the community should seriously consider.

The first is the rise in licenses that attempt to restrict business models based around providing software as a service. If users can pay Amazon to provide a hosted version of a piece of software, there's little incentive for them to pay the authors of that software. This has led to various projects adopting license terms such as the Commons Clause that effectively make it nonviable to provide such a service, forcing providers to pay for a commercial use license instead.

In general the entities pushing for these licenses are VC backed companies[1] who are themselves benefiting from free software written by volunteers that they give nothing back to, so I have very little sympathy. But it does raise a larger issue - how do we ensure that production of free software isn't just a mechanism for the transformation of unpaid labour into corporate profit? I'm fortunate enough to be paid to write free software, but many projects of immense infrastructural importance are simultaneously fundamental to multiple business models and also chronically underfunded. In an era where people are becoming increasingly vocal about wealth and power disparity, this obvious unfairness will result in people attempting to find mechanisms to impose some degree of balance - and given the degree to which copyleft licenses prevented certain abuses of the commons, it's likely that people will attempt to do so using licenses.

At the same time, people are spending more time considering some of the other ethical outcomes of free software. Copyleft ensures that you can share your code with your neighbour without your neighbour being able to deny the same freedom to others, but it does nothing to prevent your neighbour using your code to deny other fundamental, non-software, freedoms. As governments make more and more use of technology to perform acts of mass surveillance, detention, and even genocide, software authors may feel legitimately appalled at the idea that they are helping enable this by allowing their software to be used for any purpose. The JSON license includes a requirement that "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil", but the lack of any meaningful clarity around what "Good" and "Evil" actually mean makes it hard to determine whether it achieved its aims.

The definition of free software includes the assertion that it must be possible to use the software for any purpose. But if it is possible to use software in such a way that others lose their freedom to exercise those rights, is this really the standard we should be holding? Again, it's unsurprising that people will attempt to solve this problem through licensing, even if in doing so they no longer meet the current definition of free software.

I don't have solutions for these problems, and I don't know for sure that it's possible to solve them without causing more harm than good in the process. But in the absence of these issues being discussed within the free software community, we risk free software being splintered - on one side, with companies imposing increasingly draconian licensing terms in an attempt to prop up their business models, and on the other side, with people deciding that protecting people's freedom to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is more important than protecting their freedom to use software to deny those freedoms to others.

As stewards of the free software definition, the Free Software Foundation should be taking the lead in ensuring that these issues are discussed. The priority of the board right now should be to restructure itself to ensure that it can legitimately claim to represent the community and play the leadership role it's been failing to in recent years, otherwise the opportunity will be lost and much of the activist energy that underpins free software will be spent elsewhere.

If free software is going to maintain relevance, it needs to continue to explain how it interacts with contemporary social issues. If any organisation is going to claim to lead the community, it needs to be doing that.

[1] Plus one VC firm itself - Bain Capital, an investment firm notorious for investing in companies, extracting as much value as possible and then allowing the companies to go bankrupt

Comments

Indeo codec telemetry DLL

[yuhong.wordpress.com]

You are well aware of the Indeo codec telemetry DLL debacle, right?

Re: Indeo codec telemetry DLL

[(Anonymous)]

You're all over the internet talking about this "debacle". Are you okay?

[brooksmoses]

I think there's also an interesting contrast between some of these things and one of the big drivers behind "open source" software (i.e., non-copyleft, BSD-ish rather than GPL-ish) is corporations finding it an effective way to collaborate on large infrastructure projects without needing all the red tape and complexity of cooperation contracts.

That seems to be one of the large drivers behind things like LLVM, where much of the contribution is coming from a handful of corporations, and the drivers are basically, "Having a good one of these is important to our business, but having a better one than everyone else is not important to the business." Or, in some cases with things like Kubernetes, it's also "Having what we use be both good and the accepted standard is important to our business."

The question arises as to why these projects have plenty of funding and contributions, whereas some others of "immense infrastructural importance" are "chronically underfunded" (as you mention). From my perspective of working inside a large company that does a lot of FLOSS work and also has a lot of internal-only infrastructure code, I don't see a lot of difference between this and some of the internal things we have -- the issue seems to be one of lifecycles. Mature software like OpenSSL that has become solid enough to be a fundamental underpinning, and which is deep enough in the stack not to want new features, stops being something that shows up on anyone's planning radar. All the rest of the problems flow from that root, and that's a challenging one to solve.

[(Anonymous)]

Many of those open source projects, LLVM being a prime example, got significant funding (notably from Apple in the case of LLVM) precisely because the goal was to replace a dependency on a GPL component after the GPLv3 came along.

It wasn't such a nice "let's be friendly businesses and cooperate rather than compete" but more like "let's join forces to compete against copyleft software".

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, that "good, not evil" clause sounds cool, but it's completely pointless in reality... the people using it for mass surveillance will certainly argue that what they're doing is for the pubic good, and may indeed believe it.

Current free software / open source licenses work because they can codify the behaviour they consider acceptable, with minimal ambiguity... you can use the code, but only under a well-specified set of terms. That becomes much harder if you want to encode broader ethical principles... you actually have to be able to define them in legal terms, such that you're not spending all your time tied up in court over edge cases and loopholes...

[brooksmoses]

Yup. And, in practice, it seems that nobody ends up spending all their time tied up in court over the edge cases. Instead, the potential users (or their corporate lawyers) look at the ambiguity in the license and say "I can't reasonably be sure that we won't get taken to court over this, so let's not use this thing."

[brooksmoses]

One of the other interesting things around Free Software and large companies, that I think a lot of the people coming up with license proposals don't entirely understand, is that for any decent-sized company, money is substantially cheaper than compliance paperwork.

I wonder if that's something that could be usefully addressed in future Free-Software licenses.

To some extent, it's a hard problem -- giving people the freedom to usefully modify software rather than just replace it is technically non-trivial, especially for large complex companies where the software architecture mirrors the corporate structure, and so any license that guarantees users that freedom is going to be expensive for those companies to comply with.

[tcpip]

You're raising an issue that's very similar to the "free rider" problem in economics, and especially labour economics, and it makes an interesting point of connection with the characteristics of information goods.

Arguably, free software development could be treated as a public good (and indeed it has a lot of similarity with public goods, even more than club goods). Determining the value of free software - and how it is going to be funded - is something for further consideration.

[mindstalk]

National Endowment for Free Software

A requirement to post FLOSS software usage?

[hawkinsw]

I just had this hare-brained idea, and I mean it seriously. However, please be gentle with the responses if you find it particularly stupid -- it probably makes no sense to people who are smarter than I.

One of the ways that copyleft works is by mandating that users of modified versions of GPL'd code are required to share their modifications with anyone who asks. What if, going forward, users of GPL'd code are required to post the way that their tools are being used?

Obviously there are issues with this:

1. Where do they have to post?
2. Is that posting place communal? If so, who pays to host it?
3. How do you guarantee that they are being truthful?
4. and on and on.

But, my thought is publishing can draw public attention to malicious/evil/unethical uses. That public attention is often more effective in generating change than law/license and costs less than litigation.

What do people think about this?

Re: A requirement to post FLOSS software usage?

[bwh]

One of the ways that copyleft works is by mandating that users of modified versions of GPL'd code are required to share their modifications with anyone who asks.

No, distributors of modified versions are required to share their source code (and possibly only with those downstream).

What if, going forward, users of GPL'd code are required to post the way that their tools are being used?

If this applied only to corporate users, it might be reasonable, though for very specialised software it could reveal information that they reasonably want to keep secret (e.g. that they're working on a new product line).

If this applied to individuals it would be an unacceptable privacy violation.

Natural persons public License

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if one could get some mileage out of making a distinction between natural persons (ie actual people) and other legal persons (eg corporations). Natural persons are the only people whose freedom we need to consider. Adding a clause to a free software license that required anyone who wasn't a natural person to follow the commons clause wouldn't impinge on the freedom of actual people. They would still be able to use the software in freedom even when working for a corporation(so no field of endeavor restriction). It is only the fake person that would be restricted. IANAL

Re: Natural persons public License

[(Anonymous)]

If the distinction ever became important, we could expect the US Supreme Court to duly decalre that corporations are also natural persons.

paradox of tolerance

[(Anonymous)]

"The definition of free software includes the assertion that it must be possible to use the software for any purpose. But if it is possible to use software in such a way that others lose their freedom to exercise those rights, is this really the standard we should be holding? Again, it's unsurprising that people will attempt to solve this problem through licensing, even if in doing so they no longer meet the current definition of free software."

This is the paradox of tolerance mapped to world of free software.

Political Dissident Infrastructure

[(Anonymous)]

You make a fair point that corporations benefitting from the free labor of FOSS movements is problematic when they don't contribute back to their respective communities. But I must ask you to rethink the implications of adding ethical qualifications to such FOSS licenses. To give you an example, I am a member of an anti-genocide group in my home country where there is an ethnic group that is routinely demonized in public. We peacefully organize members for peaceful demonstrations in the hope of changing hearts and minds against demonizations. I'm happy to report that it does seem to work with the general public quite well, and it is only a vocal minority in my country who *really* want to attack us. However, they often use lawfare to hamstring our resources (we run on less-than-shoestring budgets) and FOSS is a huge boon to us in organizing our efforts. If ethical conditions start being inserted into software licenses then they will surely (wrongly) sue us in court, and while we would probably ultimately win in such lawsuits (the government thankfully is more neutral in general than those who hate us) it will still drain our resources in performing peaceful anti-genocide demonstrations in our effort to win hearts and minds. So I ask that even though I'm sure you only have good intentions in introducing ethical concerns into FOSS, I ask you to reconsider this in light of the fact that legal enforcement will often reflect power disparities in favor of more powerful and oppressive groups. Thank you.

Divide and conquer

[(Anonymous)]

The easiest way to derail any social movement is to set them up against another social movement. This is a classic case of "I care about cause X" "Yeah but what about cause Y" - a behaviour which is normally called out as pointless trouble-making.

If we're honest about it, the significance of our FOSS contributions to horrific organisations is minimal. If they didn't have that software available they would still have no trouble carrying out their atrocities. My read on the situation is that software developers are a generally well-educated and well-meaning set of people who are frustrated by their inability to help people suffering in meatspace. If your work is software, then that's one of the few levers you have. It's tempting to use it, however ineffectual.

We will be stronger and more united if we demand the four freedoms _and_ human rights, separately and consistently.

Re: Divide and conquer

[fche]

What if entryists to social movement X care so much more about issue Y that they are willing to kill X to get there?

Here's your answer

[(Anonymous)]

"Do we need to rethink what free software is?"

No.

You feel it would be a good idea to throw away the principles of free software to stroke your transient political preferences. It probably sounds good to people addled with paranoia in the Era of Trump and seeing Nazis under every bed, but all you're doing is dancing to the tune of large corporations and governments who would love nothing more than to turn computing -- "This Machine Kills Fascists," remember? -- into a tool of social and economic control that does the exact opposite of killing fascists. Oh, they may use the power you hand them to gulag a couple of random edgelords and keep you distracted, but are they going to hand that power back once it's consolidated? Won't you be surprised when they don't.

That said I imagine you'll probably succeed, since why should free software be any different from any of the other freedoms -- freedom of association, of the press, of conscience -- that you folks would happily toss in the trash the moment they get in your way?

Re: Here's your answer

[(Anonymous)]

This.

Free software does not impose moral values on how the software is used. Because for every "do not use to spy on your people" license, there would be one "do not use if it helps LGBTQ". Both are just as unacceptable.

It is not up to software authors to take moral responsibility over the use of their product. It is up to the users to take full responsibility for how they chose to use the product.

Because it is not up to an individual software author to sue a country over the license of a cog in their mass surveillance genocidal program.

With Freedom Comes Responsibility

[(Anonymous)]

Many Freed Software licenses make little or no provision for support or reward; this is anathema to business, and rightly so. Extremism always obstructs a robust market. Perhaps it'll take sociology and something akin to number-theory to come up with a functional paradigm that provides opportunity for reward assurance for benefits? Let brilliant minds (re)think! Some powerful businesses have learned some lessons taught by advocates of Freed Open-Source Software, and are now working together on common interests, yet FOSS advocates seem dismayed. Remember that groups of people are not necessarily always evil, they just need governance. Even without FOSS, many have learned that users of FOSS can be a profitable clientele. - Somewhat Reticent (It's not 'free', it's FreeD - please get it right) (Freedom without Responsibility is only License)

Re: With Freedom Comes Responsibility

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, didn't preview this, so didn't know it would throw out all formatting.

Qbix Ecosystem

[(Anonymous)]

If I may, we need to transform the Web from feudalism into a into a free market. Open source software is the way to do this, but it would be great if authors could monetize open source software anytime it is used by a hosting company to make money itself. Same goes for journalism and other content.

There needs to be a Platform and network effect, otherwise people will just clone/fork the project and not contribute anything, perhaps even compete with it. We are building this platform. Feel free to get in touch (greg at the domain qbix.com)

See qbix.com/token for how we plan to get it done. We already have the network effect and users!

Re: Qbix Ecosystem

[(Anonymous)]

Err, the free market is how we ended up with feudalism 2.0.

Is this actually even possible?

[(Anonymous)]

"If users can pay Amazon to provide a hosted version of a piece of software, there's little incentive for them to pay the authors of that software."

This isn't currently possible for paid software, is it? I don't see how Amazon or anyone else could sell a hosted version of any software without paying for a license to do so.

I'm trying to understand why you even mention this if it's not possible.....or was it to explain why software licensing started to begin with?

Re: Is this actually even possible?

[shaib]

Amazon are selling hosted versions of Free Software, as a service. Selling this service has been an important part of the business models of the producers of said Free Software (Mongo DB, Redis Labs & Elastic Search are the prime examples). That is why the Commons Clause mentioned in the post was introduced.

trying to fabricate a popper "paradox"?

[fche]

"But if it is possible to use software in such a way that others lose their freedom to exercise those rights, is this really the standard we should be holding?"

Please turn this "if" into something plausible. How could anyone's use of free software cause others to lose their freedom to use free software?

Re: trying to fabricate a popper "paradox"?

[brooksmoses]

One example: A government entity uses a Linux-based computer cluster running a free-software database (or free-software neural-network AI implementations) to collect and process information about citizens and immigrants, in order to determine a subset of those people to incarcerate.

Or at least what Open Source means

[(Anonymous)]

The definition of open source basically makes it impossible to make money off your own product unless you resort to a) begging (donations), b) crippleware (which we don't like much), c) selling services (eg support or installation) or d) developing features for a one time fee. There are not very many people making money off this at all (Red Hat, Canonical and Pivotal come to mind, but not many others).

The problem is that projects have more interdependencies, have loads more exposure (due to them being on this thing called the internet) and are way way more complex than they were when the definition of Open Source was thought up. It doesn't help much that this definition was though up by people with good salaries, working for universities and the FOSS community nowadays as a rule don't have that luxury: it's easy to be idealistic when you've got plenty of bank.

The FSFE sees solutions in ideals: during the EU Policy recommendations forum this week, you hear that they want education and more awareness. They have been barking up this tree for years. When you talk about how to allow developers to put food on the table I heard that maybe Tidelift was a good idea, but they weren't really sure how the metrics work, how the money comes in, how it's distributed, etc.

I've been talking about this for a few years now (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inGz92AHjwo&list=PLr_nEpVS6UwIsIi_P_WUcgVyiC8cQYox7&index=7&t=1388s) and it's good to see more awareness around this topic - because communities are imploding and it's becoming harder and harder for FOSS to catch up with proprietary solutions (eg. groupware, active directory, exchange, office, etc) or for FOSS solutions to not be bought up or replicated and then destroyed by the monopolist behemoths.

Robin Edgar

Re: Or at least what Open Source means

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps you refer to GPLv3-licensed software? That's Freed software.

I suspect the GPLv3 license only provides leverage for a one-time charge for software and source, since after the first transaction someone else may have the source with right to distribute/modify.

I would agree that this is too extreme, just like most proprietary licensing, and "permissive" licenses like BSD, MIT et al.

---

There's proprietary open-source software too.

Large organizations have learned to use it for collaboration on common interests, yet Freed software advocates are dismayed. Go figure!

On giving back and sympathy

[shaib]

In general the entities pushing for these licenses are VC backed companies who are themselves benefiting from free software written by volunteers that they give nothing back to

This statement is inaccurate to the point of being false. Take Redis Labs, for example; they are still developing the Redis core under a completely Free license (https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/unstable/COPYING). Further. the fact that they adopted the Commons Clause for their plug-ins, while it makes these plug-ins not Free, and so ineligible for inclusion in Linux distros, does not mean that the company "give[s] nothing back" -- I believe that for most of the volunteers who contributed to these projects, the non-free license does not prevent use of the software. It is not Free, but something - in fact, most of the value - is still given back.

I am less familiar with the other examples, but I believe similar considerations apply.

Due diligence: Redis Labs is an Israeli company, and I am a board member of Hamakor, the Israeli F/OSS association. I am not affiliated with Redis Labs in any way, and I am not speaking here on behalf of Hamakor. I oppose the Common Clause and its use, but I think it is also wrong to lose sympathy for the companies who feel forced to use it.

Re: On giving back and sympathy

[(Anonymous)]

Shaib, I am genuinely curious about this point, so I'd like to see it clarified a bit. I'll admit, by default, from what I've personally seen and read in the past, I tend to agree with the sentence from mjg59 which you quote and dispute here. But I'm definitely happy to learn about counterexamples, as it would be good news to know that another one exists. Still, it seems to me like the information you provide here about Redis Labs does not contradict what mjg59 wrote.

You quote mjg59's statement that "In general the entities pushing for these licenses are..."

1) "...VC backed companies...": Based on my quick Wikipedia skim just now, Redis Labs indeed appears to be a venture capital-backed company. (You didn't dispute this, but I was simply curious.)

2) "...who are themselves benefiting from free software written by volunteers that they give nothing back to...": Your response points out that Redis Labs contributes to the free software Redis core project. But this does not appear to necessarily contradict what mjg59 wrote. Beyond their own contributions, Redis Labs are presumably benefiting from the work of outside volunteers on said free software project; and you do not seem to be claiming (yet) that Redis Labs gives anything back to these volunteers.

None of this takes away from the fact that Redis has built a broadly useful free software project, which I think is a good thing.

But as far as mjg59's original post, what seems to me to be relevant is how Redis treats those volunteers from whose work *Redis* benefits; as therein lies the potential hypocrisy when Redis begins criticizing/legally barring other entities from freely benefiting from *Redis's* own work.

In any case, to me it seems this disagreement may be worth exploring, so I am curious to know more about what facts bear on it.

Useful idiots

[(Anonymous)]

>If free software is going to maintain relevance, it needs to continue to explain how it interacts with contemporary social issues.

Contemporary social issues like the bullying and smearing of respected figures by activists who can't read and who are dismantling everything this community stood for?

Who are also conveniently distracting from one of the worst scandals ever, implicating the highest echelons of power?

Useful idiots, the lot of you.

Very complex indeed

[(Anonymous)]

I saw this at Planet Fedora. I fully agree that these issues must be addressed, but there are a couple items that deserve some more discussion.

The "Good" and "Evil" terms in JASON must be "translated" into more legally certain and community acceptable terms that can be added to the various free software licences in use. Unscrupulous organizations and governments will always be with us; so there needs to be a mechanism for calling them to account.

As was touched on, maximum awareness of these issues and the benefits of free software must be achieved otherwise nothing meaningful will happen.

AGPL

[(Anonymous)]

One license trying to address the software-as-a-service issue is the AGPL (Affero GPL). I wonder what your thoughts on it are?

Freedom

[(Anonymous)]

Well mjg59, while I must admit I rarely trusted your opinions, I never took you for a literal supporter of proprietary software. Make no mistake, software released under a license that does not permit distribution for a fee, or does not permit the use of it for ANY purpose, is called proprietary software. There is no other name for this. Software freedom is about giving rights to users, and optionally (in the case of copyleft) making sure that all users have those rights. The core of the idea is that developers should not have the right to dictate how and when the software may be used. Whether those developers/dictators are benevolent or not, does not matter in the slightest.

gpl software should be copyrighted

[(Anonymous)]

There needs to be a change in the gpl software license. It needs to encourage the author to copyright his creation with some databank.

The change that could be introduced to the license would surround the right of "forking" the software to produce an alternative product.

The restriction would be that the person wanting to copy and take his software in another direction must present a request in writing and receive a pgp or similar signed permission to fork the originator's creation.
Also, some means needs to be included to prevent the copier of the works from undermining the rights of the original author by freely giving away the fork of originator's creation. The copyright should not be for fifty years duration.

Re: gpl software should be copyrighted

[(Anonymous)]

You do realize that this would make the new GPL proprietary? One of the basic 4 freedoms given to users is the right to fork, that is, the right to modify and publish modifications, without the need for express permission from the original author. The whole point of software freedom is that software should have no "owners", and therefore primarily belongs to the community, despite still having one or more legal copyright holders. I suggest that you reread the preamble of the GPL.
If you don't like free software, then go ahead and write proprietary software, nobody is stopping you. But don't tell the free software movement that it should give up its principles.

[indigojo]

Surely the problem with allowing restrictions on what use can be made of free software is that the developer's definition of good and evil might differ from someone else's, including the user's, or even other members of his own team. At worst, it might lead to straightforward discrimination against, say, certain religions or ethnic groups using the software. As for people who have the power to deny others freedom, e.g. intelligence services, they will not care whether the software they used is licensed under the GPL or any other licence; they will just use it.

The non-discrimination clause in the GPL is part of what means people of different ideological views can work together; we can all disagree with Eric Raymond's views on firearms, for example, or Stallman's on sex, but we can still work together. If lead developers started imposing stipulations that "you cannot use this code for stuff I disapprove of", he would be unlikely to be able to get a team together, and the contributions from the community in terms of patches would be less forthcoming than they are now.

Good vs Evil

[(Anonymous)]

What do you make of the Hippocratic License (https://firstdonoharm.dev) attempting to avoid moral ambiguity by tying restrictions to the UN Declaration of Human Rights? Surely that's not controversial?

Richard Stallman was misquoted

[ricksanchez2600]

It was a hatchet job his words were twisted out of context. There is a war going on with SJWS and Free Software.

Rethinking from what point of view?

[(Anonymous)]

Lots of thoughtful comments here, thanks.

Your two points are indeed valid concerns, and not new for the Free Software community even if revived by recent events. But I find it quite ironic that you, the guy that allowed treacherous computing to work with Linux and is working for the epitome of evil corporation (and that benefits from Free Software licenses that allow unrestricted SaaS), threatening basic human right (privacy), seems now concerned about the morality of its doings. Felling some remorses?

And your last part asking for an unwarranted FSF board restructuring is completely out of place, if of course it was not aimed at a different recent matter. It really shows what your agenda is.

I really hope you will not be part of the ones rethinking Free Software.