Free the Code: Solution for ip headaches or mp3-like suicide?


The ‘viral effect’ of the licenses and their different scope



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1.2 The ‘viral effect’ of the licenses and their different scope.

Different types of licenses have been written for free software so as to encourage their distribution.


There are two different types of free software licenses: these, which have a viral effect, and those, which do not.

The viral effect of the license refers to the subsequent use of the work: once the user has modified or copied the code and wants to redistribute it, he has no choice but to redistribute it under a similar free software license, including -or not- his own improvements as it may be. He cannot use it in closed source software, for instance.



This viral effect goes even further: if it is added to a separate piece of code, it “contaminates” it in that the whole software has to be released under a similar free software license.
The following licenses are the probably the main licenses following ‘the copyleft’ philosophy:


  • The most popular license implementing copyleft is the popular GNU General Public License. This license has been written by lawyers on the demand of Richard Stallman. Regarding the later right of modification, the Free Software Foundation proposes that the user of the free software is entitled to make modifications to the source code and use them privately in your own work or play, without mentioning that they exist. However, provided that the developer intends to distribute the modified program (for a fee or for free), he has to provide the full source code -including his value-added- under the GPL license. 19

  • Other types of licenses for free software exist. In particular, the Berkeley Software Development License (BSL or BSD) is quite widely used as it is simple, easy to read and to understand. The main points are:

        1. This is copyrighted material, owned by me [the author of the program];

        2. You [the user] can use it however you want, including selling it for a profit, as long as [the user] includes a credit to [the author of the program], and do not claim [he] (the user) wrote it [the moral rights stay with the author];

        3. Whatever happens to [the user] because of this material is [his] responsibility and [the author of the program] is not liable. There are no warranties, guarantees or refunds.

        4. The name of the [author(s) of the software] may not be used to endorse or promote product derived from the software without specific prior written permission."2021

The major difference with the GPL is that the modifier of such a BSLed software is free to distribute the work under the licensing obligations that he desires.

  • The Artistic License is another type of free software license quite similar to the BSL. In addition, it entails a definition section for more complex works, prohibits selling the actual material22 and states requirements for any redistribution23.

  • Yet another free software license is called X11. It grants its users the following rights, namely to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute and/or sell copies of [the software]", provided that such a copyright notice and the herein permission granted to the users appear in all copies of the software and the enclosed documentation.24 As opposed to all licenses detailed above, the X11 is a “non viral” licence, i.e. it does not spread by ‘contaminating’ the subsequent improvements made to the software.

The developers who have added code to the software can release their improvement under the type of license they chose. It could be noted that the reasoning followed by the creators of the X11 makes it quite similar to the old Berkeley license25, i.e. little restrictions are placed by the license, the important thing being to advertise to popularise the use of the license. As a result, bits of code or even the entire software can be turned into a proprietary or ‘closed source’ software. This has the advantage of attracting ‘traditional’ software companies to develop those software.
Such “free software” licenses are really an alternative to the public domain, where all the exclusive rights granted by copyright law to the author are erased. Anybody can do anything with the code: modify it, rename it, claim it their own…

1.3 The success of open source products

The "free software" initiative of Richard Stallman met the enthusiasm of the hackers'26 community. Numbers of products in open source have been released under the GNU GPL license or another. The targets of such products are networks as well as desktop (operating systems and applications). One really important role of open source is to keep standards open to everyone, away from the monopoly of one single company. As pointed out by some open source advocates, open source communities' achievements include the Internet itself and the World Wide Web. Indeed, the TCP/IP protocol was developed as part of UC Berkeley networking, and so were the HTTP language and the XML standards.27


Similarly, the most widely used application on the Web is the server Apache, an open source project which is now installed on more than half of all publicly accessible Web servers, dominating Microsoft and Netscape's software.28 Users of such software find it "faster, more reliable, more up-to-date" than its commercial counterparts. It was originally initiated by a graduate from UC Berkeley29. He wanted to improve the then-most-widely-used NCSA Web server program (National Centre for Supercomputing Applications). This Web server software being in the public domain, he was entitled to access and modify the source code. He wrote a piece of new code as a 'patch' to the NCSA server allowing it to handle password authentication at a large scale. At this time, nobody was taking care of the NCSA server and 'patches' were growing uncoordinatedly. A believer in the co-operative software development, this programmer, Behlendorf, contacted 7 other programmers to rewrite the source code of NCSA. This project took the name of "A PAtCHy server". Once the rewriting completed, the group took the name of 'Apache' group. All original developers agree to say that there was no boss or person in control of the development of the program. For this reason, the Apache server is considered as "one of the most successful stories of open source software (OSS)"30. It has notably succeeded in keeping Internet protocols open.31 Accordingly, the Perl language, most widely-used language for creating dynamic sites, is also an open source project32 and so is the Sendmail e-mail server, the heart of the Internet e-mail backbone. An argument for the success of such Open Source Software is that they are directed towards public networks, while the most profitable part of the computer business happens behind the firewalls of the Web servers, i.e. in Intranets -Netscape is first provider in this field- and desktops programs -Microsoft Windows Operating System has 85% of rate penetration worldwide.33 However, open source advocate Raymond states "the Internet is our killer application."34
However, the best-known Open Source Software is targeting this part of the computer industry: the Operating System Linux has managed to get 20% of penetration rate in the business world. Linux is a free, UNIX-like operating system, developed originally for home PCs, but which now runs on a variety of hardware platforms. The kernel35 of Linux has been developed by the then-undergraduate student from the University of Helsinki Linus Torvalds and released under the GNU GPL license. Originally designed for a single processor and a mono platform system, Linux has benefited from the co-operation of numbers of programmers and can now be used for a wide variety of purposes including networking, software development and as an end-user platform. In particular, Linux is now the most popular Unix-like operating system and can be downloaded for free via the Internet or purchased on CD-ROM.3637 Linux is distributed by commercial companies such as Red Hat or SuSe. An increasing number of applications are available on Linux, including games previously only run under Windows Operating System. One of the advantages of Linux as an OSS is that it can be fleshed out of his non-relevant bits and customised for a specific use. Thus, it has been endorsed by the first commercial MP3 car-stereo-cum computer Empeg. This device can also surf the Web, send e-mails, and store dates and addresses.38 Another OSS is X Window released under the X11 license and therefore not obliging developers to release any improvement they made to the source code. This slows down the improvement of the OSS. The GNOME project is a program aiming to develop an interface for such an OSS. It is distributed by few companies including Ximian company. 39

Governments themselves have found interest in open source projects: the major reason for this change is economic, as those developing countries had to cut costs40. Thus a bill was passed in 2001 in Argentina requiring all government's branches to switch to open source software41. Similarly, Mexico, Brazil and Peru embraced the switch to Linux. Africa is considering it too.42 Even in the USA, the program 'Linux for schools' makes the free OS a serious alternative to Windows for financially restrained schools.43 Another deeply noticed move is the prototype for a more secure kernel SELinux developed by the very secret and serious NSA. It hopes to develop a secure OS which would have user-specific access controls comparable to Windows NT but would make them compulsory instead of discretionary. Such a wide adoption of open source pieces of software raises concern from the traditional software industry.





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