Category: 4.2 Open Source (Society)

It is 2021 and there is still a lot of fighting about “freedom” in open source software development. Here is an analytical breakdown of the issues.

Freedom can refer to people or artifacts (source code). When it refers to people, it is typically freedom of choice regarding what to do. There are three main roles in open source: The original programmer, an intermediary (another programmer or a software vendor), and the users or customers of the vendor. I’m simplifying, but this matches the distribution use-case in which license clauses put the most obligations on people.

It is no secret that software is everywhere. No traditional product has remained untouched, whether the product is being produced using software or whether software is an integral part of it. As part of this wave of digitization, established vendors from outside the software industry need to avoid that someone else will reap all the profits from their products. That someone else would be software companies that supply needed components. In particular software platforms can have such network effects that their providers can reach a monopoly position so that dependent vendors who need the platform will face a diminishing profit margin.

Today, at FOSSC 2019 in Muscat, Oman, I gave a talk about the benefits of sponsoring open source software development to about anyone who isn’t the software vendor whose product is getting replaced by that open source software. These are the slides. I will be repeating the same message at the German Forschungsgipfel in March. Also, here is a slideshare version: