2 ms·

In practice: there are many companies that built interesting networking products on top of BSD kernels and had no compulsion to release the source, and meanwhil

by geofft 7y ago

In practice: there are many companies that built interesting networking products on top of BSD kernels and had no compulsion to release the source, and meanwhile the performance of Linux's networking stack slowly beat it, because companies were working upstream.

mikece 7y ago
"Have no compulsion to release the source" -- reminds me of the interview on the Bryan Lunduke show with a FreeBSD maintainer who talked about Juniper, Comcast, EMC, and Netflix engineers who contribute back a lot of code to FreeBSD, just not the code that specifically makes their work a competitive advantage for their employer, a definition that changes over time. I might be conflating the Lunduke interview with something else but I thought that the Netflix engineers that build their ISP-level caching servers ultimately decided that none of it constituted a proprietary advantage so they released it all. Had the project been based on closed source this wouldn't be an option -- and GPL was out the question all the way unless it was known up-front there would be nothing that could give the makers a competitive advantage. Programmers have to eat; permissive licensing is the best compromise between openness and needing to make a living. History has shown that eventually the code comes out rather than being socked away in proprietary hell.
- mistrial9 7y ago
  although you make some good points, sadly, the permissive license structure is arguably enabling a new Feudalism, at least in the West, with seasoned programmers reduced to share-cropping, while finance rules the castle (and its dining halls).
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Permissive license structure for computer programs (or, for that matter, anything especially about computer programs) has nothing to do with that, it's just the normal labor-capital relationship of capitalism. There is, literally, no conceivable software licensing regime that avoids that effect, as long as the broader economic system is predominantly capitalist.
- geofft 7y ago
  For the most part, I don't disagree with you, but it's also the case that Linux has gotten many contributions from companies that decided that they were okay with being required to give source to customizations they redistribute. Both models work, and both models have downsides. It's also true that Linux has gotten contributions from companies like Facebook (and Netflix?) that are not redistributing Linux itself and so are not actually under any compulsion to release sources. I've seen enough cases of private contributions to BSD code not getting released, even when they're clearly not a competitive advantage anymore, that I don't think waiting it out is reliable. There's a particular vendor product we used at my last company that was based on an extension to some FreeBSD kernel code. In the next version, they switched to a userspace app, it sucked, and I'm pretty sure they never released their old kernel implementation. (In fact there are plenty of well-known cases of license-violating private contributions to GPL'd code being a pain to compel through the legal process.)
- belorn 7y ago
  > History has shown that eventually the code comes out rather than being socked away in properietary hell. When people talk about reforming copyright there is usually a comment about GPL with a standard answer: copyright escrow. If we just have rules in places that guaranties that the code eventually comes out rather than being socked away in properietary hell then 99% of the purpose of copyleft has been served. Last Friday in tech news there was an entry about a deal between a DRM company and a game company that expires, so "owners" of the game can no longer install the game. Proprietary code for games do not usually come out, so there is some real worry that the games are now closed down forever. I wonder how supportive Juniper, Comcast, EMC, and Netflix would be to copyright escrow.

by geofft 7y ago

mikece 7y ago

"Have no compulsion to release the source" -- reminds me of the interview on the Bryan Lunduke show with a FreeBSD maintainer who talked about Juniper, Comcast, EMC, and Netflix engineers who contribute back a lot of code to FreeBSD, just not the code that specifically makes their work a competitive advantage for their employer, a definition that changes over time. I might be conflating the Lunduke interview with something else but I thought that the Netflix engineers that build their ISP-level caching servers ultimately decided that none of it constituted a proprietary advantage so they released it all. Had the project been based on closed source this wouldn't be an option -- and GPL was out the question all the way unless it was known up-front there would be nothing that could give the makers a competitive advantage. Programmers have to eat; permissive licensing is the best compromise between openness and needing to make a living. History has shown that eventually the code comes out rather than being socked away in proprietary hell.

mistrial9 7y ago
although you make some good points, sadly, the permissive license structure is arguably enabling a new Feudalism, at least in the West, with seasoned programmers reduced to share-cropping, while finance rules the castle (and its dining halls).
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Permissive license structure for computer programs (or, for that matter, anything especially about computer programs) has nothing to do with that, it's just the normal labor-capital relationship of capitalism. There is, literally, no conceivable software licensing regime that avoids that effect, as long as the broader economic system is predominantly capitalist.
geofft 7y ago
For the most part, I don't disagree with you, but it's also the case that Linux has gotten many contributions from companies that decided that they were okay with being required to give source to customizations they redistribute. Both models work, and both models have downsides. It's also true that Linux has gotten contributions from companies like Facebook (and Netflix?) that are not redistributing Linux itself and so are not actually under any compulsion to release sources. I've seen enough cases of private contributions to BSD code not getting released, even when they're clearly not a competitive advantage anymore, that I don't think waiting it out is reliable. There's a particular vendor product we used at my last company that was based on an extension to some FreeBSD kernel code. In the next version, they switched to a userspace app, it sucked, and I'm pretty sure they never released their old kernel implementation. (In fact there are plenty of well-known cases of license-violating private contributions to GPL'd code being a pain to compel through the legal process.)
belorn 7y ago
> History has shown that eventually the code comes out rather than being socked away in properietary hell. When people talk about reforming copyright there is usually a comment about GPL with a standard answer: copyright escrow. If we just have rules in places that guaranties that the code eventually comes out rather than being socked away in properietary hell then 99% of the purpose of copyleft has been served. Last Friday in tech news there was an entry about a deal between a DRM company and a game company that expires, so "owners" of the game can no longer install the game. Proprietary code for games do not usually come out, so there is some real worry that the games are now closed down forever. I wonder how supportive Juniper, Comcast, EMC, and Netflix would be to copyright escrow.