An Open issue.

[Lakshmipathi]

I have seen this too. Big companies ,hire a bunch a guys to develop wrapper around an open source and they will use them internally or they will supply them to their "paid" customers. These wrapper will never reach the open source world again.

I always thought , open source should be open to only companies that supports open source not for all companies.

From OpenSSH

Please take note of our Who uses it page, which list just some of the vendors who incorporate OpenSSH into their own products -- as a critically important security / access feature -- instead of writing their own SSH implementation or purchasing one from another vendor. This list specifically includes companies like Cisco, Juniper, Apple, Red Hat, and Novell; but probably includes almost all router, switch or unix-like operating system vendors. In the 10 years since the inception of the OpenSSH project, these companies have contributed not even a dime of thanks in support of the OpenSSH project (despite numerous requests).

[Freston]

I'm not a lawyer, but if I'm not mistaking the BSD license specifically allows for this usage. You could take the entire BSD codebase and call it LakshmipathiOS, refuse to share the source and become a billionaire selling it.


But a funny thing happened. Your question reminded me of one of the credits you see flashing by when you install reiserfs, so I googled for it and I found the quote I was looking for on giis.co.in

So I guess you already know it

Continuing core development of ReiserFS is mostly paid for by Hans Reiser from money made selling licenses in addition to the GPL to companies who don't want it known that they use ReiserFS as a foundation for their proprietary product. And my lawyer asked 'People pay you money for this?'. Yup. Life is good. If you buy ReiserFS, you can focus on your value add rather than reinventing an entire FS. [emphasis added]

So that's also possible... but the GPL is more protective in this area than the BSD license.

[GNU-Fan]

I think the GPL is a tool as good as it can get to keep free software free,

I further think if one deliberately chooses to use non-copyleft licenses like the BSD one, one should not complain later.

[Lakshmipathi]

I'm not a lawyer, but if I'm not mistaking the BSD license specifically allows for this usage. You could take the entire BSD codebase and call it LakshmipathiOS, refuse to share the source and become a billionaire selling it.


But a funny thing happened. Your question reminded me of one of the credits you see flashing by when you install reiserfs, so I googled for it and I found the quote I was looking for on giis.co.in

So I guess you already know it

I'm not good with licenses, I heard about BSD. People suggest that it provides more credits to developer.

So that's also possible... but the GPL is more restrictive in this area than the BSD license.

GPL is more restrictive on developers - but not on big companies.
Its not about refusing the code and becoming rich. Its about people misusing open source code and benefiting from it. I have an "example" - I'm working in Big company. A customer comes and asks for website. The big company hires 10 people to modify an open source software. say for example drupal.all most 99% of the code will the same. These 10 people will modify something here and there - then the company sells "their" product for the cost of 1 million dollars.

This company never contributed to open source in any form and never even thought about support it.But they earned a million dollar without doing anything. Even the open source developers community .,in this example drupal gets nothing out of it.



Ps: It's an example - not a personal experience
Sorry if you found this thread repeated. I think I raised this issue in LF sometime back,
I can't digest this stuff.

[GNU-Fan]

I'm not good with licenses, I heard about BSD. People suggest that it provides more credits to developer.

It doesn't.
Once there was a old version of the BSD license around, which didn't qualify as a FOSS license. The reason was that you were forced to have the program print all of the former copyright notes. People quickly realized that there was a big pileup of "credits" bound to happen. This means, everytime you start a program you would have to read a list of hundreds copyright disclaimers. The copyright bearer is not always the developer, mind you.

GPL is more restrictive on developers - but not on big companies.
Its not about refusing the code and becoming rich. Its about people misusing open source code and benefiting from it. I have an "example" - I'm working in Big company. A customer comes and asks for website. The big company hires 10 people to modify an open source software. say for example drupal.all most 99% of the code will the same. These 10 people will modify something here and there - then the company sells "their" product for the cost of 1 million dollars.

This company never contributed to open source in any form and never even thought about support it.But they earned a million dollar without doing anything. Even the open source developers community .,in this example drupal gets nothing out of it.

I can see what angers you, but I don't think this is unfair. Why? Well, because either the work done by the company is worth a million or it is not. Everybody else
would have to do the same work, but everybody else is actually able to go fetch Drupal and build on it just likewise.

What I mean is: If the client is willing to pay 1 million for that, please sent him over to me. Maybe I'll do it for $750,000


PS: I fail to see where this is "misusing open source". "OpenSource" was invented because they wanted just that to happen, wasn't it? Companies leech OpenSource and make money from it without being bothered by moral principles. Mission accomplished, OpenSourceInitiative.

[Lakshmipathi]

It doesn't.
Once there was a old version of the BSD license around, which didn't qualify as a FOSS license. The reason was that you were forced to have the program print all of the former copyright notes. People quickly realized that there was a big pileup of "credits" bound to happen. This means, everytime you start a program you would have to read a list of hundreds copyright disclaimers. The copyright bearer is not always the developer, mind you.

GNU-Fan,thanks for the clarifications on the licensing.

I can see what angers you, but I don't think this is unfair. Why? Well, because either the work done by the company is worth a million or it is not. Everybody else
would have to do the same work, but everybody else is actually able to go fetch Drupal and build on it just likewise.

Say for example-
you have written open source project with a file called "file.php" . This file contains an copyright
which reads something like
/* file.php - this file is written by GNU-Fan. Can be distributed under GNU-GPL */

As i'm working a big company. I edited your code as
/* file.php - this file is written by "Me". Can be distributed under copyrights provided by "BIG Company" */

Thought I haven't changed anything except license and author name. I earn money .
You will get nothing. The client things, the entire code base was written by "me" alone - he don't
know it was an open source project - which we modified.

What I mean is: If the client is willing to pay 1 million for that, please sent him over to me. Maybe I'll do it for $750,000

Ha Ha Believe me , it happens - I have seen 1.5 million $ dealings

PS: I fail to see where this is "misusing open source". "OpenSource" was invented because they wanted just that to happen, wasn't it? Companies leech OpenSource and make money from it without being bothered by moral principles. Mission accomplished, OpenSourceInitiative.

Something is missing here. Open source was invented to share code among every one,in a fair manner.Its not that, I can take a project and modify it and then sell it client (by fooling him) with statement like I wrote all this code and its my own creation and no one ever contributed to it.
And no-one can modify it without my permission.

[GNU-Fan]

As i'm working a big company. I edited your code as
/* file.php - this file is written by "Me". Can be distributed under copyrights provided by "BIG Company" */

Thought I haven't changed anything except license and author name. I earn money .
You will get nothing. The client things, the entire code base was written by "me" alone - he don't
know it was an open source project - which we modified.

That changes everything. I assumed they were complying. But this one is copyright infringement and blatant swindling. If the original copyright holder is finding out about this, the culprit is going to be sued*.

*Actually, usually the first thing one gets would be a friendly phone call asking you to please fix things. At least this is how the SoftwareFreedomLawCenter handles things. Software Freedom Law Center

[Lakshmipathi]

That changes everything. I assumed they were complying. But this one is copyright infringement and blatant swindling. If the original copyright holder is finding out about this, the culprit is going to be sued*.

Yes,this is the issue. So GNU allows you to modify the code and resell it - but you can't modify the license and sell it - right?. This is where big companies misusing open source projects.
Customer never know It was built from opensource , he will thinking that the product was completely written by BIG company.

*Actually, usually the first thing one gets would be a friendly phone call asking you to please fix things. At least this is how the SoftwareFreedomLawCenter handles things. Software Freedom Law Center

I didn't heard of it so far - I'm glad to see this , we have something like this to protect open source software ! I'm sure this is will be very useful,for me in future

[coopstah13]

no gnu gpl allows you to modify the code to your hearts content, but if you distribute anything it must contain the original license and you must provide the source code for it

you can take any GPL code and use it internally while making whatever changes you want, and never release it back

you are confused, BSD/MIT/X11/Apache2 license are BUSINESS friendly
they allow you to take code, modify it, and do whatever you want with it and never show anyone anything, where do you think apple got the base for its product from?

[GNU-Fan]

you are confused, BSD/MIT/X11/Apache2 license are BUSINESS friendly
they allow you to take code, modify it, and do whatever you want with it and never show anyone anything

The above case of removing copyright statements would be an offense even with these licenses, I might add.