Why just celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Open Source Initiative when we can argue about it - Open Source Software Up the Stack

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February 08, 2008
Why just celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Open Source Initiative when we can argue about it

Bruce Perens, one of the thought leaders of the open source software (OSS) movement via his actions in founding the Open Source Initiative (OSI), has issued a State of Open Source message celebrating the 10th anniversary of the founding of the organization, which began on February 9, 1998.

Congratulations to the group, which I have written about often on this web site.

Also see our podcast with Michael Tiemann, the current president of the OSI.

Please read Perens' document.

Now here's where I disagree with it

1. I date the idea of community development of software with liberal redistribution rights (which is what OSS is really all about) to a much earlier time period. I look back to COMMON, Share and DECUS--along with Bell Labs' awkward hand off of Unix to Berkeley--as the real beginnings. Even in the modern era, the creation of Apache would make a better beginning point. The original Apache license is copyrighted 1995, three years before the founding of the OSI, and many would argue that Apache-licensed OSS is the most prevalent open source software.

I am not going down that rathole. But my first point is that if you think the open source movement emerged up out of the moors as primal matter just 10 years ago, you will have a poor understanding of the software industry. And that will cloud your software choices as a user, vendor or investor.

2. I can't quickly think of any (never mind "many") "business computing category" in which open source software is a leader as Perens claims. But that all depends on how you measure leader (e.g., installed base, annual revenue, downloads, and so forth) and how discrete your categorization is.

OSS does not lead in the operating system, database, middleware, ERP, BI or standalone applications categories, which is a holistic categorization of the entire market. I could probably slice or dice one of these six in a way that makes his claim true but again the result, although mathematically accurate, would mislead you.

3. I have never understood the vehement Microbashing by the OSS movement.

But it's old news. Even as I write this, Microsoft is the "Platinum Sponsor" of the Open Source Think Tank, a gathering of the open source software elite. It's self defeating for the open source movement to wallow in whatever bothered it about Microsoft in the past.

And here's where I agree with Perens' retrospective:

4. The combination of the Free Software Foundation's GNU utilities with Torvald's Linux kernel did change "the way software works." (Although I would never add "forever" to any observation.) I assume Perens means the software market and not software itself (which works the way it has always worked, one step at a time). Large systems and software suppliers quickly realized that they could both reduce their R&D expenditures and make their customers happy by adopting the open source development model.

This was a two-fer no chief financial officer could ignore. Later many of these same companies (IBM, Oracle, and so forth) also adopted OSS terms and conditions, realizing that most software was becoming a commodity and that their real value proposition was in the accompanying maintenance and other services.

5. Open source has not achieved much penetration on the desktop. I am not sure why that was ever a goal.

The Red Hat strategy vis a vis desktops outlines why it doesn't matter. (Caveat: the linked blog post is based on an interview of Tim Yeaton who subsequently left Red Hat. I have requested an update or reconfirmation from Red Hat multiple times but have not yet received an answer.)

6. Software ought to be copyrighted rather than patented.

As long as copyrighting is as acceptable as copylefting.

Which apparently is why the OSI separated itself from the FSF 10 years ago.

Happy birthday, OSI!