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Of free beer and WINE: xGPL vs. BSD
A guest column by Roland (Feb. 20, 2002)

This guest editorial offers a perspective on the relative merits of copyleft licenses like GPL and LGPL vs. less restrictive open source licenses such as the BSD license, and considers their respective impact on projects such as WINE and the ability of companies to profit from using (and contributing to) open source software.


Of free beer and WINE: xGPL vs. BSD


Background

I wrote this article during the recent discussion of the change of license by the WINE project, which has decided to change its BSD-style license to an xGPL-style "copy-left" license. I just wanted to add some thoughts about that.

The ongoing discussion about this topic has brought me to think about licensing open source in general. I think a broad discussion involving all major OS advocates is long overdue. There should be made a webpage somewhere to start focusing on this topic on a serious basis (maybe here at DesktopLinux.com?) Perhaps, a dedicated area of an online discussion forum? Or, why not use the Usenet Newsgroups? There is already a group comp.software.licensing, but it doesn't seem very focused on this specific question.

Let's consider two important open source licenses -- xGPL (GPL or LGPL); and BSD-style.

xGPL and its issues

The GPL basically says that you can use the source and change it the way you like, but everything you change and every software of yours that uses that code has to be licensed under the GPL also, which means that it also has to be made freely available.

Many projects are started with the xGPL nowadays. It just seems natural. Any other license for open source looks unnatural at first glance. I think the popularity of Linux has contributed to this. But is the xGPL a good license?

I think one of the main reason for the xGPL is that developers have the fear that their project might be hijacked and their work used to make profit by some companies. As Brett Glass pointed out, this is not a fair point of view.

After all, if a company adds value to a project by adding new features, why shouldn't it be allowed to sell it and make money out of it. The GPL prevents this from happening; but where is the advantage in that?

I think the GPL restricts software development because many good projects can not be done by companies because they are not allowed to use any GPL code as basis of their products. The sad thing is that this affects mostly small companies. Big companies can allow themselves to reinvent the wheel, coding everything they need. I think a lot of small businesses could make money out of open source if the licensing allowed this.

Linus Torvalds wrote: "But _personally_ I don't want to do significant work under that kind of copyright and having to wonder whether the best version of Wine will be free in the future . . ."

Personally, I keep wondering what would be so bad about having a company produce a better version of WINE than the free one. Why would that be bad? If you don't like it, you still can use the free version. And look at FreeBSD. Apple has based its OS X on BSD. They even released the core of their new OS as open source. This certainly wouldn't be possible with the GPL'd Linux. In fact Apple's contributions to BSD have helped to improve it. I'm sure any open source project could benefit from this kind of symbiosis.

There is also the point of contamination issues. Any commercial programmer looking at GPL'd code is at risk if he later works on a similar proprietary product. A claim of copyright infringement could be made, since it may happen that some new code is based on what the programmer has seen in the GPL'd source, even if this just happened involuntarily. The Beatle George Harrison was once found guilty of this same sort of infringement, because he produced a piece of music that sounded similar to one heard years before on the radio.

There is also an intrinsic dishonesty in the GPL, I think. I wonder if no one else has noticed this: but the FSF always claims that the "free" in their licenses means "free like free speech and not like free beer". I'm not quite convinced. If all your source code has to be made available, and if all users have the freedom among others to DISTRIBUTE your program this of course means in effect, that anyone can get any GPL program for free (like free beer).

Can it be that the GPL is the biggest mistake of Linux and for many other open source software? I don't know.

The BSD alternative

Finally there is the BSD license. It is one of the least restrictive of all. Basically, it allows you to do anything. If you want you can take the code and make a proprietary product out of it. Many dislike the BSD license because of that. They feel like someone is stealing their code without giving anything back.

This is an illusion. After all, if someone wants to sell something based on open software, he will only succeed if he invests a large amount of work in order to add real value to the project. Otherwise, people will just continue to use the free product. In other words he is getting paid for the value he added onto the free software.

Since we are talking of WINE, look at Lindows. If they start selling their product one day, it will only be after they worked on it for many months, potentially investing millions of dollars. I think it is fair that they receive something back for what they have invested and the risks they have taken.

The GPL prevents this kind of business model. But who is winning with that? I daresay nobody -- rather, everybody loses:
  • Companies lose, because they can't make products out of the code.

  • Open source developers lose, because they won't profit from the eventual contributions made by companies who base their product on the free code (e.g. Apple's use of BSD).
This is the problem I see with the GPL. Maybe someone can help me to see the advantages of it?

Best regards,
Roland


Talk back! Do you have comments or questions on this article? talkback here


About the author: Roland works as a programmer in Brazil for a small company which uses Linux mainly as a desktop OS for development. The company's servers are currently running OpenBSD or FreeBSD, but may be moved to Linux in the near future. Unfortunately they still have to keep some machines running MS Windows because some very specialized apps they require that don't exist for Linux. Roland's says he is interested to see Linux succeed for three main reasons: (1) it is free; (2) it is the only way he knows to break the current Microsoft monopoly; (3) he likes it.


Please note:   The opinions expressed in this guest editorial are those of the writer, not of the management or staff of DesktopLinux.com.
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