Life Is Rich

Oracle tonight just dropped a proverbial Daisy Cutter on the computing community. Everyone is abuzz on the impact to Android and Google – the direct targets of the Oracle lawsuit, but this whole action will likely have a chilling effect on the Java community (and conceivably MySQL as well).

First off, to get this out of the way, IANAL. That stated, Google’s creation of the Dalvik runtime for Android always reeked of underhandedness if not infringement. It was very clear that they didn’t want to be beholden to Sun and it’s licensing and restrictions surrounding J2ME / J2SE and Java, and attempted to skirt the letter of the law (or the contract / license to be more precise), by creating an alternate “universe” or run-time that just happened to be near perfectly compatible with the Java language and frameworks. Of course, Sun was a weak opponent at the time, and didn’t have the money or the muscle to take on an opponent like Google. I’m sure Sun’s pitiful state of affairs did not go unnoticed by Google in this decision. Who knew that Oracle would acquire the IP and technologies? So, do I think Oracle has the right to go after Google? Absolutely.

Unfortunately, for Java proponents, there is a much greater concern here. I’ve been somewhat critical of Java in the past. I feel entitled – I worked in the language full-time for nearly seven years (Java in my mind is fast on its way to becoming the next Cobol, but that’s really irrelevant to the purposes of this post!) Sun always maintained Java as the benevolent Dictator – or your idiot Uncle who always wore a leisure suit at family reunions – depending on your perspective. Numerous efforts were made to share control and input, but let there be no doubt – Java was under Sun’s control.

As Sun became weaker and more senile with age, it’s governance of Java also became even more incoherent. To be honest, while Java’s founders and a number of brilliant engineers at Sun managed to build a wonderful language, the strategic and business management of Java from the very beginning was a disaster. It never seemed that Sun ever knew what to do with Java, first pushing it on the client-side, then finding at least a justifiable position on the server-side. Of course, even then, it never provided Sun with a significant competitive advantage over the influx of commodity server vendors and seemed to be more of a distraction than anything else. If not for a number of “angels” – IBM, Oracle, BEA, and the fear of the common “enemy” in Microsoft, Java would have likely fallen into irrelevance long before it reached the ubiquity found today (noticed, it dropped from the #1 spot for the first time in 5 years last month). Interestingly, Oracle, and especially IBM, did know how to leverage Java within their organizations for competitive advantage.

When Oracle acquired Sun, the first thought running through my head is the literal fear that must be running through the minds of those saddled to Java – particularly IBM. While Sun was either a benevolent dictator – or incompetent stooge, they at least maintained a benign, if almost altruistic attitude towards Java. Sun was safe. The past has proven, Oracle is anything but benevolent — ruthless and cutthroat (and very successful) are more appropriate adjectives. Since the acquisition, the Java stalwarts at Sun including the primary inventor himself, James Gosling, have quickly exited the doors of the tall oval buildings in Redwood City (UPDATE: check out James Gosling latest blog entry). Outside of these unnerving departures, Oracle remained relatively mum on their stewardship of the language.

While this lawsuit seems perfectly justifiable, I think it’s definitely clear that this steward has teeth and will treat the technology much more as an asset to be protected and to be profited from than a philanthropic duty to the computing community. Oracle isn’t Sun. They aren’t going to sit idly by while a technology they own profits others with no consequent benefit to themselves. These are interesting days indeed, not only for Google, but IBM and a huge outsourcing community who built their organizations around Java.

No matter, with Microsoft relegated to lame duck, it’s exciting to see someone other than Apple and Google in the technology news these days!

UPDATE: This whole mess made me recall an excellent blog article I read on this very subject almost three years ago; seems almost prophetic now.

So, Pandora will live another day [in the U.S.]

Head in the sand, dying technology, idiot comment of the day by National Association of Broadcasters guy:

“This is good for music,” said Dennis Wharton, the executive vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters. “It sets a rate where artists will receive royalities for the music they produce.”

Wharton said although these “pureplay” Webcasts are popular, he doesn’t see this decision affecting local radio stations. He said the 235,000,000 people who listen to the radio every day will probably stick with it. “It’s hard to beat a free and local option,” he said.

Haven’t had much to blog about lately, so it was good to find this excellent article to provide fodder for discussion while also dovetailing deeply with my own life and some of my recent commentary. I no longer watch TV. I watch a few shows, which I would just as well download or watch over the Internet than through a broadcast medium at the time I desire rather than some predetermined schedule to force me to watch the news or some other tied in show. Most of my entertainment now is interactive – be it Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or online games. My favorite new “shows” are 5-10 minutes shorts on YouTube or one of the other social video sites – often made by a ragtag group of folks on a shoestring budget – and completely divorced from TV as we currently know it.

Once again, the people in-between the content and the consumers are facing extinction and are doing everything they can to stop it. They are no longer necessary – like the appendix – a vestigial artifact of a past age. The Internet has made them irrelevant. Like any cornered animal fighting for its life, its willing to do about anything to survive… be it nasty DRM or attempts to past protective and draconian legislation – usually at the expense of both the consumer and the content provider. Fortunately, these attempts generally only prolong the inevitable death and rarely disrupt it completely.

Can’t really say it much better than Marc Hedlund at O’Reilly. Content Providers are a bunch of morons. They have customers standing at the cash register waiting to pay for a product – and instead of selling you the product, they would rather treat you like dirt and tell you screw off – the only way you can get it the way you want it is to steal it. That’s smart.

That strategy really has been working for the music industry (not). People don’t want to steal content. They just want to be treated fairly and respected in exchange for their purchase. Look how successful Amazon and iTunes have been – selling non-DRMed content in a way that meets the needs of the customer.

Wake up “content providers” – before we start finding different providers of our content – be it music, TV, movies, or anything else.

The other day I came across an interesting article on the death of software patents (and many other patent types for that matter). I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t verify the validity of the claims – maybe my young uber-smart lawyer brother can comment, but taken at face value, this poses an interesting conundrum for the technology industry.

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In parts I & II, I talked a bit about my distrust of free software and open source’s legacy. Where do the evil corporations fit into this and where is all the money coming from? I already stated that developers have to eat and most of those working on open-source are being paid by someone. Corporations are purely based in self-interest and therefore would never subsidize or support an industry that does not have fiscal reward. The little moneymaking secret is the GPL.

GPL does not assign the ownership right. If you GPL your work, you still own it (unless you assign it over to the FSF and Richard). Of course, anyone can pretty much use your software for free (as in beer) – or at least the current version of it, as long as they don’t want to use it in proprietary software. So there’s the rub. If I want to do anything but create other open-source software, I can’t do it with your GPL code.

So what is an enterprising company going to do? Since they still own the code, they are going to release the code under a non-free (in either sense) proprietary license and charge you for it. No harm done right?

The harm is that these organizations sell themselves as philanthropic shepherds of the code. As people modify and improve the code, the ownership rights are generally relegated back to the original owner of the base project. The only problem is, these shepherds then turn around and sell the hard work of the community to others. They restrict how all of the contributors use the code and only allow true “freedom” when you put up the hard cash.

No one forces these developers to give their free time so someone else can profit off the work of their labor. I just think it’s ethically and morally wrong. The “owners” of MySQL are “revered” for their use of GPL, but are truly just seeking a buck. As a matter of fact, the GPL crowd berates the proprietary crowd for their money-seeking ways but are completely blind to the fact that they themselves are facilitating profiteering.

Woe be to the indie developer who wishes to sell a proprietary application to feed his family. He’s a capitalist pig. Companies profiting off their GPL software, idealist saviors of all, are fine and good. It’s just bogus. At least it’s very clear the indie developer’s motivations. They don’t hide behind a thin veil of philanthropy.

What is mildly amusing is the recent announcements of the sell of MySQL AB to Sun and Trolltech to Nokia. Both of these companies (MySQL and Trolltech) make money by selling software under proprietary licenses while marketing themselves as virtuous purveyors of GPL code. A single license of Qt from Trolltech can easily cost upwards of $3000 or more. Those who truly understand the licensing can see the possible fun. Either of these companies could stop licensing their code under GPL tomorrow. Sure, you could still use the version of source code available today in your GPL projects, but you would ALWAYS be required to buy the proprietary version for use in your own proprietary code. Of if you wanted the latest and greatest. Of if you wanted the support that only the parent company could likely provide. How is this free?

There is such a sense of security in the GPL. It is purely a fallacy. I will note, some GPL (primarily owned by the FSF) is not dual-licensed and can only be used in other non-proprietary uses – and therefore can’t be monetized really at all. I still don’t consider it free – but it at least isn’t being leveraged hypocritically to make money.

Without the poison pill of the GPL, the other free licenses encourage healthy participation by corporation and individual alike. At least its a straight up proposition. Interestingly enough, I think some of the best of the free software is licensed under the BSD / Apache licenses. At least it truly is free and not tainted by veiled commercial interests (the commercial interests are out in the open for all to see). If a company wants to contribute and make their source available – great. At least it isn’t encumbering my potential use down the line. As much as I dislike IBM, I think they may offer the best example of honest and positive use of open-source (with mostly BSD-style licensing). They employ developers to work on open-source code – returning most of the benefits to the community, then monetize proprietary additions and services based on these open-source projects. This would be nearly impossible with GPL (NOTE: I’m avoiding some pretty complicated licensing / legal nuances regarding GPL’ed operating systems such as Linux and referring primarily to everything else – libraries, applications, etc).

The fact of the matter is that software is something worth paying for – whether it’s IBM paying for it or some indie writing proprietary software for sale. It has value through the labor and innovation required to build it. The GPL dual-licensing tries to hide the fact that it is worth the effort to do in the first place, pretends that software should be “free” from some morally superior high ground, then turns around and forces you to pay for true freedom.

Before I conclude, I want to make one thing very clear. Many amazing developers from many different motivations, both philanthropic and to feed their families (both perfectly reasonable mind you) have created some incredible free software (GPL and otherwise). Nothing in these articles is intended to detract from the work and effort of these developers.

My intentions were twofold. First, I just want to make sure that software development is not seen as a worthless or valueless task. In my mind, software development is nearer art than engineering, or at least I hope it be so. To be honest, whether art or purely manufacturing, it still deserves remuneration.

Secondly, I want the corporations who deceptively hide behind the veil of the philanthropic motivations of the GPL and “Free Software” while monetizing the free labor of others to be exposed for the ilk they are. At least no longer idolized as generous and benevolent with little monetary interest while indies are demonized as capitalist blood-suckers. That’s probably more my own failing than anything else – being bothered that so many venerate what I see as hypocrisy then torch those who are honestly just trying to feed their families.

As a developer and heavy consumer of software, I find myself using both free and proprietary software all the time. I generally seek the best value for my buck. Sometimes it’s proprietary, sometimes it’s free. Sometimes I value free because of the freedom it gives me to extend and control my data. I certainly intend to continue using both. Will I steer clear of those who try to envision the ideal of free software while luring you into the trap of use restrictions? Absolutely. Especially when two good products exist for which to choose (i.e. PostgreSQL vs. MySQL). While open-source can be very positive, the GPL for me will always incite distrust, and those who use it for monetary gain at the expense of developers and the rest of the software development community, with disdain..

In my last post, I talked a bit about “free software” and those who work on it. So, where did free software come from and what exactly is free software?

Richard Stallman could be considered the granddaddy of the open source movement. I mean, he even looks like a socialist hippie – not that I’m judging! He pretty much invented the GNU Project and set up the Free Software Foundation. The GNU Project spawned the GNU General Public License (GPL) that is pretty much THE defining legal license for free software. More about that in a moment. This guy pretty much believes that all code should be free. As a matter of fact, he bristles at the term “open-source software” and requires those who interview him to use the term “free software”. Like him or hate him (and a lot of people do both), Richard really believes that software should be free. I truly believe has has no ulterior motive to profit in his stance. He truly is the antithesis of capitalism and free-market in regards to software.

Obviously, even the term free or open-source software is often debated, even though they are generally used interchangeably. And what does free even mean? The actual purists believe free software should be called, “free, libre and open-source software” or FLOSS. What does it really boil down too? Software can be primarily grouped into one of two classes on the “free” scale:

1. The Libre Doctrine or Free as in Speech: Freedom to run, study, modify, copy and improve the software – which obviously requires source (hence open-source).
2. Gratis or Free as in Beer: No cost.

Obviously, if software meets the free as in speech test, it’s unlikely that it won’t also be free as in beer – i.e. Firefox or Linux. Although it is entirely possible to have gratis software that is proprietary (closed-source), such as Internet Explorer.

Free software is generally defined by its license. Probably the most common free license is Richard’s GPL. GPL is basically a license for software that states that the software may not be redistributed without its source, and any modifications or additions to said software must also be redistributed as source. This meets all the criteria of both free as in speech and free as in beer. What’s interesting is the “poison pill”. If you included any GPL code in software that you are intending to distribute, that software in essence becomes GPL as well. Therefore, a commercial entity cannot include any GPL in their proprietary software or it would no longer be proprietary. In my mind, the GPL is inherently not free as it places serious (but intentional) encumbrances on its use.

A number of other popular open-source licenses exist that meet the libre freedom test I define above but do not include the “poison pill” – such as the Apache License, BSD License, LGPL (Lesser GPL), etc. Funnily, most in the Stallman camp do not consider these truly free, as derivative software may become proprietary. In other words, a commercial entity could use the software in their own applications or modify it and not be required to release the source publicly (or give it away gratis). As a matter of fact, the Stallman camp considers the poison pill part of the Libre Doctrine outright – software is NOT free without the requirement to redistribute all modifications and additions.

These two camps and the philosophies for which they follow could have likely instigated a thousand year war to the death if it weren’t fortunately impossible to kill someone via flame-messages on the Internet.

The GPL is a funny thing. As stated, I really believe it was created with some utopian image of nirvana, where developers coded for free and were fed grapes by harems of adoring hot women. Or at least something idealistically similar. Actually, Richard Stallman does not believe developers are creators:

“please let’s not call them creators, they are not gods but authors”

…although he denies them the same rights of authors of other “types” of works. The irony is what the GPL has become – the tool of corporations to pillage developers and reap the monetary rewards. This can conceivably be done with the other free licenses as well, but no where near as mischievously. How? You’ll have to wait for the next entry in As the Free Software Turns…

Ok, I sorta lied in Part I. At the end, I stated I would answer the question to who would pay developers to give away the hard work of their labor and what they get from such expense. I haven’t quite done that yet, but I’m almost there, and now I’ve stated that GPL is the evil tool of the corporate empire and is taking advantage of the poor, helpless developers. Part III (the last I promise) will answer all of that – coming soon…

This whole “free software” and open source thing has always made me a bit uncomfortable. I’m a developer by trade. I write code for a living (or manage those who do). The thought of giving away my hard work conjures wonderful images of plumbers and electricians and carpenters sweeping into my house to overhaul my horribly outdated kitchen, producing a beautiful work of art that my wife has been wanting for years, then waltzing out with nary a hint of payment.

“Ah, but information is supposed to be free! Software is just information.” Bullcrap. If you want to follow that slippery slope argument to it’s conclusion, it’ll be hard to defend that tact without generally accepting a deeply socialist society. Or, you’ll have a bunch of starving programmers, artists, journalists, authors, musicians, etc… or more likely, very few of them at all. The other tact states that developers can make money from support. Yeah – developers are generally really good at that. They really enjoy it too. During their spare time from coding. Again, bullcrap.

So, where does that leave the world of open source? In most parts of the world, if you don’t work, you don’t eat. Or at least don’t eat well. If you have to make money to live, the only people who can work on free software are either 1) independently wealthy, 2) living off the bounty of others, or 3) being paid to work on open source for some greater capitalistic motivation.

Option one is pretty rare – and could conceivably find itself in about any field. If you happen to know any independently wealthy plumbers who can come fix my sink and run a line to my fridge for free, please contact the email address on this web page. Option two is a bit more common – I mean, I spent a lot of time coding as a kid while sucking my parents dry. Most of it ended up in games for BBS’s. Ahh, how I miss those days when I didn’t have to worry about pesky plumber bills. You can also include those people in option two who are trying to kickstart their careers in software development by putting in some time in the open source world (usually while under the parental umbrella or working in another field to pay the bills). If I had to guess, I would say options one and two relate to about 10% of open source contributors – and that’s probably inflated.

So, that leaves the lion share of the mysterious open source developers in option #3. Capitalistic motivation. Hardly philanthropic. So, who would pay developers to give away the hard work of their labor and what do they get from such expense? Probably not something that’s “free”.

In my next post, I’ll talk about Richard Stallman, the GPL, and the answer to that question…