Why Plan-9 licensing?

Jim Choate ravage at einstein.ssz.com
Tue Oct 23 18:48:14 PDT 2001



On Tue, 23 Oct 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote:

> Noting, as above, the majority having very low adoption.

No Open Source license has that big a penetration into the market when
compared to non-Open Source. Half a smidjen and a smidjen, when faced with
a dump trunk...

In addition, the Open Source movement is less than 20 years old, approx.
ten years old with respect to providing real alternatives to closed
source. That's a pretty short period as things go to be making claims of
stability of any sort, including licenses.

> I'm primarially looking at author/developer interactions.  However, all
> actors are considered.
> 
> Distributors are concerned with licensing

No, they're concerned with making money. They have to live with licenses.

> exposure point for commercial liability, and high-profile distributors
> will have an aversion to novel or obscure licenses. 

Sure didn't slow down the Open Source folks.

> To this extent,
> licensing is somewhat like cryptography:  well established, well
> understood licenses which have stood the test of time, are considered
> lower risk.

By this argument you should be a real proponent of the Closed Source model
;)

> Again, corporate licenses tend to speak to ghosts in the
> corporate closet

ALL license speak to ghosts in the closet. If somebody didn't have some
sort of goal involved they wouldn't license the software in the first
place (it wouldn't even be written). The distinction between some group of
teenagers or college kids and your favorite corporation is specious. The
only difference is the number of marbles in the bucket.

> Another advantage of selecting a widely use license is that it aquires a
> strong institutional resistence to sudden change.

Which is a major disadvantage in my book.

> Free software largely precludes significant revenue streams from
> software sales.

But it doesn't preclude them via other channels. To say that simply
because the water got dirty when we washed the baby we shouldn't keep the
baby just doesn't work for me. Hint, the software is not the point, ever.

The reality is that simply because the 'standard corporate model' doesn't
work with Open Source is an obvious consequence of understanding the
intent of Open Source and should surprise nobody.

> Not always -- Red Hat continues to generate significant
> revenues from box and corporate sales, though it is moving to a
> subscription (Red Carpet) and services model.  Still, in large part,
> your benefit is going to come from indirect revenues:  services,
> hardware, publications (e.g.: O'Reilly).   Eric Raymond's list from CatB
> still largely stands.

Which simply demonstrates why these failed efforts simply support the
rule. Open Source is a totaly different head.

> In this case, appeal to developers is *quite* significant, as this
> distributes your cost structure effectively to unaffiliated partners.

No users, no point in doing the software. I have to disagree. Irrespective
of intent or scale the customer must come first in all situations.
Developers don't buy products (or services as a consequence of use) at
anywhere the scale of consumers. Developers also don't do service.

> Users, similarly, should be concerned with long term viability of code.

Of this I agree.

> software" status.  Licensing compatibility emphasizes the inherent "code
> escrow" powers of free software licensing by providing the possibility
> that the compelling features of the project might be continued, or at
> least incorporated into another project, should the initial sponsor
> fail.

That's fine if you can deal with the 'inertia' of the 'escrow'...it's
actually counter productive to all concerned in the vast majority of
cases. One of the hopes (admittedly not realized to a great extent to
date) of Open Source was one of innovation. Of providing a forum for
experimentation that was low cost but high quality.

> Which is served by a mix of factors, significant among them, license
> compatibility.

For users the compatibility they care about is, will the product co-exist.
Outside of that most users couldn't care less. Distributors want to sell
whatever will solve customer issues and increase their ROI, $.

If you want to understand a situation; follow the $$$, not the lawyers.


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