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GNU is Not Unix Your Rights Online

Making The GPL Easier For Companies To Swallow 144

Posted by timothy from the hey-this-stuff-tastes-free dept.
stupidNewbie writes "There is a new GPL "wrapper" gaining momentum on Capitol Hill. Dubbed O-STEP, the Open Source Threshold Escrow Program allows vendors to license their products until so many millions are made, then agree to release the code under GPL. This sounds like a good bridge for companies looking to tap into the strengths of open source distribution." Starting from zero, it can certainly gain momentum quickly -- sounds like a good idea though.
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Making The GPL Easier For Companies To Swallow More

Making The GPL Easier For Companies To Swallow

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  • Not Bad... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by MoeMoe ( 659154 )
    I'm just worried that things will get out of hand.... how many millions are we talking before source is released?

    • Re:Not Bad... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Planesdragon ( 210349 )
      I'm just worried that things will get out of hand.... how many millions are we talking before source is released?

      Well, obviously, "however much they say at the start."

      A reasonable code escrow system will be a gov't office that recieves source code, and that enters it into the public domain once a pre-set revenue from the project is met.

      Open Source should win on its own merits; not through governmental fiat.

      • Re:Not Bad... (Score:2, Informative)

        by b0r1s ( 170449 )
        A reasonable code escrow system will be a gov't office that recieves source code, and that enters it into the public domain once a pre-set revenue from the project is met.

        The GPL IS NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN.

        The BSD license comes much closer to public domain, as it has less restrictions on use. True public domain software would not require the feedback into the community that corporations dislike (it's hard to give away your IP that you've paid a lot of money for).

      • Re:Not Bad... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mbogosian ( 537034 )
        A reasonable code escrow system will be a gov't office that recieves source code, and that enters it into the public domain once a pre-set revenue from the project is met.

        So long as it is indeed based on revenue and not profits. We all know slippery [slashdot.org] companies can be when it comes to finances.

        And don't tell me that companies aren't above offering software under a GPL wrapper to gain momentum or appear community friendly without ever intending to follow through.

        The article isn't clear about this, but the

    • Re:Not Bad... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by joyoflinux ( 522023 ) <thejoyoflinux@ya ... m minus language> on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:38PM (#5549307)
      Well, anything is better than no consideration of the GPL at all..

    • Be very, very afraid (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:12PM (#5549474) Journal
      I'm just worried that things will get out of hand.... how many millions are we talking before source is released?

      Oh, infinite, definitely. This is a proposal coming from programmers, not businesspeople.

      Sun and Apple don't have to make money selling their respective operating systems. They can happily make money on "related services" and hardware.

      The problem is that every time developers try to deal with legalese, they take this basic humans-are-honest philosophy that works pretty well in development groups and would never, never work in the business world.

      The only really reasonable approach is a flat time limit. Basing it on installed seats is a tough call, even, and that's much more straightforward than "money made". Who's going to do the counting -- Sun?
    • *Pinkey to Mouth* One
      hundred MILLION....
    • I'm just worried that things will get out of hand.... how many millions are we talking before source is released?

      Give me, say, $1.5 million, and I'll write open source full-time until retirement age. (If only I could figure out a way to actually arrange this...)

  • Great Idea! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TerryAtWork ( 598364 ) <research@aceretail.com> on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:34PM (#5549275)
    I can think of a few legacy projects I'd like to see released like that - Clipper for one.

    • Blender3D (Score:2, Interesting)

      by GuruJ ( 604127 )

      Note that this has already happened for the Blender3D [blender3d.com] toolkit. Not under the O-STEP license, of course, but using a similar scheme -- raising enough funds, then open-sourcing the product.

      There was also an abortive attempt for a while to open source the GoBe Productivity suite [beunited.org]. That cost a bit too much to purchase though, apparently.

      *shrug* So it can work sometimes...

      • Softway Systems, the developers of the Interix POSIX subsystem for Windows NT put out a call to the Open Source community a few years back to find out if there was any interest in them Open Sourcing their product. This was back before Microsoft bought the product. It was an abortive attempt, but it would have been interesting.... to say the least.
    • Oh crikey! For a moment I thought you Said Clippy [visar.com]

      Dodged that bullet!

  • My target is $10,000,000,000 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by floppy ears ( 470810 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:37PM (#5549298) Homepage
    The Open Source Threshold Escrow Program would create goodwill for software vendors trying to sell products to government agencies and large companies afraid of proprietary vendor lock-in, said Tony Stanco, creator of the program, known as O-STEP.

    Here's how O-STEP would work: A vendor puts a piece of software in escrow with Stanco's Center of Open Source and Government, based at George Washington University. The company determines a sales threshold that it wants to reach before the software is released under an open source license. After it hits that threshold, the software is released as an open source product.

    Great, so I want to get on the good side of the government and big companies by signing up for this license. I think I'll just set my target for $10 billion so I don't have to worry about it ever actually going open source, god forbid.

    • Re:My target is $10,000,000,000 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:58PM (#5549413) Journal
      Great, so I want to get on the good side of the government and big companies by signing up for this license. I think I'll just set my target for $10 billion so I don't have to worry about it ever actually going open source, god forbid

      But the point is, the amount is declared up front. The buyer sees that the seller won't open up until he makes 10bil, and another that is looking to make 150mil, then he looks at the 150mil knowing it will go open source sooner, and his costs of licensing will go down on an already installed infrastructure.

      I don't know if this really is the way to go, and at first I though, 'eh, sounds silly'. But the more I looked at it, the more interesting it is. The one thing that I DO like about it, is the fact that it assumes that being 'open source' is important and desirable to the end user. While appearant to you and I, to other consumers who don't know or care what OSS is, it exposes them to the idea.

      As to the application of it, I have always thought that Microsoft should release the source for DOS 6.x and 16 bit versions of Windows. Of course, the time to do it would have been when 98 came out.
      • As to the application of it, I have always thought that Microsoft should release the source for DOS 6.x and 16 bit versions of Windows. Of course, the time to do it would have been when 98 came out.

        Well, first you have to consider that DOS, for the most part, is 100% assembly; some of the tools aren't but the OS itself? Assembly. It just isn't complex enough to warrant being written in a compiled language like C; and back when DOS was used rather than Windows, the speed hit (and 'bloat') from compiled l
        • Aladdin (maker of GhostScript) has been doing something like the O-STEP license for years: If you want the latest version of GhostScript, it's available under a non-Free license. If you want the Free version, use the 6-month-old one they generously re-licensed under the CPL last week. I don't know anything about Aladdin, but they've stayed in business for a long time now. Does that mean we can take their continued existence as a test case for an O-STEP-like plan?

          Also.. the article didn't mention whether ea

        • Well, first you have to consider that DOS, for the most part, is 100% assembly; some of the tools aren't but the OS itself? Assembly. It just isn't complex enough to warrant being written in a compiled language like C; and back when DOS was used rather than Windows, the speed hit (and 'bloat') from compiled languages was considered a 'big deal' back then. Remember compilers were also quite a bit less advanced back then..

          I feel compelled to point out that C was invented expressly to write an operating sy

        • Well, first you have to consider that DOS, for the most part, is 100% assembly;

          No its not, the source to MS-DOS was floating around a while ago, mostly C (depends if you are talking about just command.com and the other key files, or "userland" apps as well).

          The comments in the header of fdisk.c included something along the lines of (paraphrase) "I only recently learnt C so this is a bit messy". Sure was.

        • The Me$$yDO$ kernel, certainly, is ASM. But many of the tools are obviously written in C.

          I'd kill for the sources to be opened. Beats having to don my pegleg and rip open fourteen .RAR files, and delete the stuff because I didn't have room to transfer it to my home PC.

          -uso.
    • Well, I suppose Windows has already hit that...

      Wait no it hasn't, not if it's counted as different products. So, to get around the threshold, simply stop selling the sw before the threshold is reached, and sell a new version instead. If keeping the older version on the market is mandated, simply find a way to lock customers into the new version, just as vendors do now with the proprietary model.

      For example, who even buys Windows, personally, now? The way a vendor with an almost totally monopoly in a pl

    • The basic problem with the O-STEP license is the same one with copyright. If goverment puts a limit on the money gained by the developer before the software goes OS, big corporations can lobby to raise that limit before it is reached.

      O-STEP may seem a nice idea right now, but its a baaad movement for the free software in the long term.

  • w00t! (Score:5, Funny)

    by trmj ( 579410 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:38PM (#5549305) Journal
    Now I only have to wait for a couple more million copies of RedHat 8 to be sold before I get access the the source!

  • Is it time for re-runs already? (Score:3, Informative)

    by WebCowboy ( 196209 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:38PM (#5549308)
    ...because it seems I've seen this episode before [slashdot.org]!

    Perhaps there are so many cooks in the slashdot editorial kitchen that a few dishes get made twice due to lack of communication...

  • In O-STEP, the vendors are almost "irrelevant" and would not drive the program, Stanco added. Instead, if enough large government agencies and other software customers demand O-STEP, software vendors would have to play along. "I want the financial community to say, 'You're in a dead-end industry if you're a proprietary company,'" he said. "The producers have too much power."

    Before you know it, we'll be seeing Windows GPL.
    Right after the large government agencies and other software vendors succeed in get

    • This might very well be. But I would think that a company like Microsoft would likly in say 10 years or so release to the wonderful and greatful world, Microsoft Windows 3.1 GPL. hehehe. But seriously, who knows, they might use something like this to help their image, perhaps we might even see government purchases enough to release software under this deal. I mean if I remember correctly it was not that long ago that some major nation bought the source code for windows. I believe it was right after Mic

    • I'd talked many times with friends and co-workers about the idea of making enough money to retire comfortably, then releasing everything owned by my corp under the LGPL when I shut it down.

      Quite a number of individuals think it's a great way of doing things. Unfortunately, large corporations and CEOs of those corporations never seem to be willing to settle for a tidy profit -- it's always got to be a bloodletting of every stone that might have another dollar.

      So I do expect you'll see several products

      • A problem with this plan arises if you employ anyone, as large corps tend to - unless you don't fell any obligation to the people you emply

        What about a family business? "Some day son all of this won't be yours"

        Finally corporations are not allowed to 'settle for a tidy profit' They have to maximise shareholder value, although how they do that is negotiable.

        • There are no laws that corps need to maximize shareholder profit or share values, that just happens to be the way they are killing themselves right now. Look back 20-30 years, and you'll see that supporting the community, helping the employees, long-term R&D investment, etc. have historically been at least as important as pure profit. Why? So the company would be durable and continue to survive.

          If you release a product into some OSS license after making a reasonable profit on top of the developmen

  • misses the point (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LMCBoy ( 185365 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:40PM (#5549321) Homepage Journal
    One of the big strengths of Free Software is that you can leverage the community for rapid development and bugfixing. If you've already developed the code under a closed-source, proprietary model, and it's been released long enough to sell 10^6 units, then much of the development is (presumably) already done. Plus, if development was open from day 1, the final codebase would tend to be less messy and obfuscated, IMHO.

    Not that I don't welcome such a "late release" model for proprietary code, just thinking out loud...
    • Development is never done. I can't think of a single "complete" piece of software -- people are always coming up with new features, annoyances or bugs to fix, ways to streamline the interface, etc. etc.

      And one of the big weaknesses of Free Software is a lack of revenue...

    • Re:misses the point (Score:4, Insightful)

      by erikharrison ( 633719 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @11:10PM (#5549783)

      DOOM?


      Quake?


      Guarenteeing that software which recieves a certain level of popularity becomes Open Source means that the community can pick up development where the company left off.


      There is always the danger that a company will cease to support a product which has become integral to your operation. This is one of the much touted benefits of Open Source - self and community support. This guarentees that sort of support in the long term while ensuring that the companies get there profits.



      • There is always the danger that a company will cease to support a product which has become integral to your operation. This is one of the much touted benefits of Open Source - self and community support.

        It's much touted, but is it true?

        Can you name a major Open Source development that has been completely discontinued by its original developer(s), and which has been taken on by a new team who have continued to fix up the bugs and add new functionality in the same spirit as the original? Can you name fi

        • > Can you name a major Open Source development that has been completely discontinued by its original developer(s), and which has been taken on by a new team who have continued to fix up the bugs and add new functionality in the same spirit as the original? Can you name five? Ten?

          Does it count if none of the original team is working on the project anymore? Lots of projects were started by one person, then that person lost interest and gave the project to a second-in-command. Sometimes the lead develope
    • This really looks like a fundamental misunderstanding of the GPL and the nature of source code in general. If someone uses GPL code, they have to make their mods to it available now, not after earning some supposed amount of money. Now if companies want to release their own code that works with free code, wonderful! But what's the point? Selling binaries is a dead end. Free software will always end up doing the same thing better if it does not do it first. Grab the code, use it, make it better, give i

      • Re:Agreed. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Tim C ( 15259 )
        If someone uses GPL code, they have to make their mods to it available now, not after earning some supposed amount of money.

        That's true, but that's not what this is about. The idea being discussed is that a company writes software and releases it under a proprietary licence. Then, once it has sold some certain number of units, they re-release it under an open source licence.

        There's no question of using GPL code and releasing it closed-source - it's exactly the other way around. Taking an established, clo
        • I think his point was that by following this method, a vendor denies themself the use of GPL'd code, thus having to reinvent the wheel in several areas instead of using what's available. That's not as efficient as GPL'ing software from the beginning. And it misses out on other advantages of open source, like community-contributed improvements.

          That said, I don't have a problem with businesses following the escrow model.

  • hmm... enron (Score:3, Funny)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:42PM (#5549335) Journal
    so now we will see accounting practices where the companies trys to HIDE the profits! haha

    no no no, we didn't make money at all guys! really!

    (okay, so people already do this for tax purposes, but anyhow)

  • Cooked books (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:42PM (#5549337) Journal
    This is gonan be good in theory, but just wait until someone makes it *really* big with something, and then you arent ever going to be able to find actual *revenue* charged to the product, just circumventing their responsibiility. I can think right now the money they make will be from selling 'software service' contracts and not actual software products.

  • They'll never reach the threshold. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jridley ( 9305 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:43PM (#5549341)
    I have a friend who used to (years ago) be an accountant in the record industry. Their books were set up to NEVER show a profit. It wasn't illegal, and if you didn't know about it and agreed to a percentage of profit, you were just screwed.

    Unless they're very careful with wording on this, companies will just set things up so that the threshold is never reached.

    If they ARE careful enough that no legal loophole is available, I suspect that companies will consider this a time bomb and avoid it anyway.

    • Re:They'll never reach the threshold. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:10PM (#5549469) Homepage Journal
      Exactly - all you need to do is bloat R&D expenses, or route marketing through a shell company at a bogus rate, etc. There a zillion ways to rake in the $$$ without hitting the threshold.

      Think about it - basically, if an application became a runaway hit, the vendor would only reap a portion of the proceeds. I like the way the article says that "The purchasers are very excited about this." Of course they would be - if a product takes off and becomes more desirable (because everybody else is using it), chances are that it will be available for free in a short time! What a bargain!

      Hmmm... now what's that old saying about something being too good to be true...

    • Re:They'll never reach the threshold. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by iabervon ( 1971 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:47PM (#5549656) Homepage Journal
      It's based on sales, not on net income. It's a bit harder to arrange to never show any sales, and still survive as a company.

      The idea is for major customers to demand this, not for companies to be interesting in doing it on their own. There are no benefits at all for the producer in this system, except that you may be excluded from consideration by major customers if you don't play along.
    • Movie industry too. See Coming To America [cduniverse.com]. Buchwald was supposed to get a percentage of the profits. It grossed $143M or so, which was major bucks in the 1988 time frame, yet Paramount claimed it never turned a profit.
    • Reminds me of a joke I just read:

      An athlete, lawyer, scientist and accountant are applying for a job. During the interview, they are asked "what is two and two"

      The athlete says "22"
      The lawyer says the courts have proved it is 4.
      The scientist says it is between 3.99999 and 4.00001.

      The accountant softly says "what do you want it to be?"
  • Vendors of commercial software are going to volentarily put a revenue cap on their products?

    Why wouldnt they just license it with a classic commercial license?

    Or are you saying you can use GPL'd code and keep it closed until they make X dollars then open it?

    Can I sell my own version of closed source linux until I make 200 million dollars, then open the source?
  • Wouldn't freeloaders just keep on waiting till the source is released??
    • Yup... I was going to post the same thing. It's already hard as hell to sell software for Linux and other OSs that are driven by OSS as it is. People simply want it all for free and they'll either wait or write their own clone of it. The money you make in the OSS world is through support or through customization on-site.

      Having this won't do anything at all. As someone else said, this thing was thought up by programmers, not businessmen.

    • Re:Big problem (Score:3, Interesting)

      by samhalliday ( 653858 )
      no... freeloaders will use pirated copies, like always :-/

      places of work will most likely buy expensive specialised products when they become available and the staff cry out for them; not holding back (years maybe?) for the 'free' verison.

      having source at a later stage would be a great blessing. i for one, would LOVE to see the source to older versions of maple and matlab GPL'ed. (not to mention the masses of games, which companies have produced and thrown away over the years!)

    • What a lot of people seem to be forgetting is the user base. A lot of people don't know what compile even means, let alone a compiler is. Sure, even if the source is released (assuming the publishers choose o-step) what percent of the user base of a given game will know how to compile it. Or let alone, have the bandwith to download the sources.

      If you really do like a game that just went gold, why bother waiting for the source anyway? Purchase it, that way the community can get to the source sooner and we c

  • But we didnt make any money. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zapdos ( 70654 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:47PM (#5549358)
    I am sure that with the propper acountants anyone can always break even and never make any money.

  • A better idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:47PM (#5549359) Homepage
    Instead of setting a sales threshold, it might be better for the seller to set an expiration date, at which time the software would become open source. That way buyers wouldn't have to guess about when (or if) the source would become available. Under the currently proposed system, there is a danger that your company will invest in the program, but the program won't ever sell well enough to ever be open-sourced, in which case you are still stuck with proprietary software -- just the thing the buyers are hoping to avoid with this plan.


    Of course, it's possible that some organizations would just put off buying the software since they could get it for free after the expiration date. But presumably if the organizations can afford to wait that long (5-10 years, maybe?), they probably didn't really need the software in the first place.

    • What buyers? Just sit back and wait on the expiration date and get it for free. If that is too far off, just clone it.
      • If that is too far off, just clone it.

        If that's really cheaper than just buying the software package, then it will get cloned whether or not it will be opened sourced at some point in the future. Personally, I'd be much more inclined to buy a piece of software if I thought it was going to be open sourced in the future, if only for the fact that it makes the vendor look more socially responsible (in my eyes). Also, not as many OSS programmers will want to work on cloning a software package that will be o
    • You need more than that. A fixed expiration date hurts very successful programs, and doesn't make belly-up software become open any sooner. Active development, responding to bug reports/feature requests, on the software should extend the expiration.

      A lifetime of ten years is common in software, but when a producer company the dot bombs around sometimes the consumer companies really get yanked around. I see this a lot, the ones going down are my competitors

    • Expiration dates have their own problem -- on the vendor's side:
      As a product approaches it's expiration date, a prospective seller can say to the salesman: "So why should I pay full price for this software if it's going to be free in 4 months?"

      An income threshold, on the other hand, allows the sales(wo)man a reasonable response: "If you pay full price, it will get it that much closer to Open Source." There would also, of course, be the support factor.

      That having been said, I'd add a couple of cavea

  • Reminds me of copyright law. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    One can always get the Congress to bump up the thrashold for you.

    This is a stupid idea!

  • Developing trend (Score:5, Funny)

    by JDWTopGuy ( 209256 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:48PM (#5549366) Homepage Journal
    First it was "glowing cyber balls", now "Making the GPL easier to swallow"? Is slashdot trying to make troll-friendly stories?

  • That icon... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Juxtaposed with the headline, that icon looks positively phallic.

  • Fixes OSS's BIGGEST weakness (Score:4, Interesting)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:51PM (#5549379)
    If I need a custom solution, I'm wiling to pay the $10-$50k to have it developed. However, some systems aren't really custom and someone needs it. I'm happy to pay $700/designer for Photoshop, it's critical to their function. I'm not willing to pay $20m to get 4 licenses of Photoshop.

    As a result, commercial companies can spread the development costs among EVERYONE.

    In this case, let's suppose that their is a system that would benefit everyone. They sell licenses until the set profit (cost +, it's government contracts primarily), then everyone gets it.

    This avoids lock in, but eliminates the open source problem. Right now either someone duplicates an existing product for the benefit of Free Software (how GNU started), or someone builds a custom solution and releases it (I'm discounting the hobbiest scratching an itch that results in thousands of MP3 players).

    If government agencies began to require this for certain projects, we'd get a lot more software under the GPL.
    • The only reason Adobe make Photoshop is because they can sell it to lots and lots of people. So why not get all those people together and pool your money to pay for the development of an open source product? I guarentee that you'll pay less overall.
  • the successful conversion of Blender [blender3d.com] from proprietary to GPL?

  • O-STEP Sounds like a good idea (Score:3, Redundant)

    by Landaras ( 159892 ) <neil&wehneman,com> on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:52PM (#5549386) Homepage
    In fact, it sounds as good as it did the first time it appeared and was discussed...

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/17/123025 4&mode=thread&tid=106&tid=98 [slashdot.org]

    Oh well, that was two days ago. If you hurry, you can probably regurgitate all of the +5 comments and boost your karma.
  • wow, doesnt this kind of echo how MS was saying the GPL was bad for business?
  • My stuff is so Mickey-Mouse that, regardless of common sense, the intent of the framers of the Constitution, and Lawrence Lessig, I'm just going to have to buy enough legal artillery to keep it out of the public domain.
    The WordPerfect angle is interesting. I used to think it had some crazy keyboard gymnastics, until I tried emacs. ;)
    Props and an HB to RMS nevertheless...
  • any reaction yet from Mr. Stallman? I would guess that this would not sit well, given that all software is ideally free according to the FSF (although I can see both sides...). Interesting development, either way.
  • And wasn't it called "copyright"?

    Wouldn't shortening copyright duration in general for software be more palatable than requiring full GPLing of source?
  • Original story here [slashdot.org]

  • Too many loopholes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by teetam ( 584150 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:10PM (#5549468) Homepage
    What is to prevent a company from spinning off another company and giving over the code to that, just as it is approaching the threshold? The original company can reposition itself as something else and then GPL only a small, inconsequential portion of its source code!

    I believe it will be difficult for a company that is making good money by selling proprietary software to suddenly turn open source.

    A company going downhill (like Netscape) can do this though, because they have nothing to lose.

    I think a successful company will try very hard to find loopholes and get around opening up their primary source of income. Also, if the company is public by that time, will the shareholders like it? Won't they desert the company en masse near the expiration date?

    • IANAL

      REMEBER THIS: The GPL Uses Copyright Law to Enforce It's Terms

      Licensing software with unusual terms and conditions isn't a new thing, which is what is happening in this case.

      1. GPLed software is copyrighted, and in this case is being LICENSED to Company A under the conditions that Company A will release thier code after taking in X dollars in revenue.

      2. Company A can't relicense or give its license to Company B because it would violate its license. In the event Company A or B tries a fast one
    • Well, according to the article the software is put into escro with [gasp] a group that advocates free software. That means that once that target is reached, the software is released to the public by the escro holder. I would assume that data from quarterly filings would serve as the benchmark. Companies may play games, but post enron, games with the SEC and IRS are far harder to get away with. This eliminates the vast majority of 'loopholes' that people are quibiling about.
  • allows vendors to license their products until so many millions are made, then agree to release the code under GPL. This sounds like a good bridge

    One only has to look at the accounting pratices of the recording industry or the TV and motion picture industry to see what is wrong with this concept. There are accountants out there that will swear that even a movie that makes over $200 million in a few weeks NEVER breaks even if a actor, director or another party has a stake in a percentage of the profits.

    T

  • Dupes (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ive never understood the point of bitching about a story being a dupe. WHO CARES!!! If you have read it before , DONT READ IT AGAIN. Some people may not have caught it the first time. Ever notice they play the same news at 11pm as they did at 5?

  • BAD IDEA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by trance9 ( 10504 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:15PM (#5549492) Homepage Journal
    This is a BAD IDEA. It seems good on the surface, but it has many problems.

    First, what happens if the company never makes the expected volume of sales? People using the software with the belief that it would someday become opensource would then be screwed when commercial support dries up and it is never released OSS.

    Second, what exactly is placed in escrow? And how can you know? Perhaps the company will hold back on critical components of the software and you won't discover that until after it's "released".

    Third, opensource matters in the early days of a project more than at any other time--it is at this point in time when the project is shaped into what is needed by the community, and when the most critical bugs are found and fixed.

    Fourth, there is no need for an "escrow" to do this--a company can release the software under a "community source license" which is not open source and simply state in the license the conditions under which it reverts to the GPL. There is no need for any additional agency.

    Fifth, I think it has little strategic value for the copyright owner. If the project is going to be such a great success under a commercial license then why cripple your future sales revenue? Most developers open software in order to gain access to resources they would otherwise lack, or as a means of grabbing market share without having to spend a lot of money on marketing. If a company has such a winning product and the money to market it, I simply don't see the value for them in opening it up!

    There are MANY better ways to sit on the fence between the opensource and commercial world:

    1. You can release your code under a non-open "community" license but with a sunset clause. The sunset clause states the date on which the code flips over to the GPL. New releases would keep advancing this date, but a two year old release might be available under the GPL for all.

    2. You can dual license your software under the GPL and under a commercial license. GPL users must keep all their own code GPL'd, but you sell a closed-source license for $$$ which allows closed source distribution of the product.

    3. You can take the BK approach: Provide your software under a "mostly" open license which contains some crippling restriction. Note that the BK license includes a clause that if BitKeeper goes out of business the software reverts to the GPL--not after a certain number of sales, but instead if their open logging servers cease operating for a period of 180 days. (This is not great either, but at least it's tied to the failure of the company--and loss of support for the product--rather than its success!!)

    It is really NO GOOD to tie the opening of a software product to its success, especially its financial success. This is simply a bad idea.
    • 1. You can release your code under a non-open "community" license but with a sunset clause. The sunset clause states the date on which the code flips over to the GPL. New releases would keep advancing this date, but a two year old release might be available under the GPL for all.
      2. You can dual license your software under the GPL and under a commercial license. GPL users must keep all their own code GPL'd, but you sell a closed-source license for $$$ which allows closed source distribution of the prod

      • No, they don't violate the GPL.

        The first doesn't violate the GPL because the software is not under the GPL until the sunset clause flips it over. After that it's only under the GPL--so there's no conflict.

        The second would not violate the GPL if you own all the relevant copyrights. Each recipient either gets a copy from you that is only covered by the GPL, or a copy that is only covered by the closed source license. You would be unable to do this if you used anyone else's GPL'd software as you would not be
      • When you GPL software you still keep the copyright of the code you wrote, which you can release under any license you want.

        MySQL does this. They have the GPL version, but you can purchase a non-GPL license for it if you want to base your own software off of it.
  • Start with this, the company has urned $N-1, where N is its threshold. I have a choice, I can spend a dollar to get the software now, or wait a little while until the next fool pays it, and then I get it for free.

    By a reverse induction, it would seem that few people would pay anyhing for such software, preferring to obtain it for free after the others have paid. Unless, of course, the software is obsolete by the time the threshold is met, in which case, the open source benefit is next to nil.

    I don't see

  • What about security? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Descartes ( 124922 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:28PM (#5549538) Homepage
    Ok let's assume this scheme actually would work.
    Imagine you have a piece of software that is being used by the government in some fairly sensitive places.(uh, that didn't come out right)

    Anyway, they hit their sales quota and the source gets released. Now every malicious cracker has access to code at the same time as the development community. Imagine if this were a microsoft product! I think the crackers would be finding and exploiting bugs way faster than the open sourcers could fix them.

    Don't get me wrong I think open source in it's current form is safer than closed, but that's because while it is gaining market share the security bugs can be worked out.

  • Revenue & Expiration (Score:3, Insightful)

    by diakka ( 2281 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:46PM (#5549651)
    This sounds like a decent idea. I would propose that there be some kind of time limit as well as a revenue limit. Say, 5 years or $5,000,000 in revenue, whichever comes first.

    I would also expect that you get the source to begin with so that you're not SOL when the company "changes their mind".

    In general, I rarely purchase any software, but I would be happy to purchase something if I had a guarantee that it's going to be opened up later on.

  • Good idea, but needs some work (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RodgerDodger ( 575834 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @11:01PM (#5549728)
    The first point, of course, is some agreed means of tracing the sales or revenue. After all, if a company sets the mark fairly low, and then finds out they've got a killer product, they would have to be tempted to fudge the figures to keep the revenue coming in.

    The second is that you'd probably want a nominated "end-of-life" date. At that point, the source should be released anyway, regardless of how much money has been raised. 5 years after release would be a suitable point, probably.

    You could probably combine them, so that you can have a reducing threshold of revenue vs time.

    What I would really like to see, however, is a legal requirement that companies either support software they've sold basically forever (either through patches or free upgrades to more recent releases), or release the source so that somebody else can do the support. There's a lot of machines still running Win95 out there that have major bugs, but MS will never lift a finger to help those people out. I have no problem with companies wanting to sell software, but if there's a bug that causes things to break in a product I've paid cash for, then I want it fixed, dammit!

  • loophole?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by spazoid12 ( 525450 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @11:32PM (#5550129)
    allows vendors to license their products until so many millions are made, then agree to release the code under GPL

    What if I release product "Bob" and after I reach threshold-1 licenses I discontinue the product line. But, I immediately then begin marketing product "Jimmy", which had been under development just in time for the end of "Bob", and which happens to satisfy the needs of "Bob" users. Rinse, repeat.

  • I worked for a software company a couple years ago that made Linux-based security software, including a hardened Linux distribution, that was partly funded by DoDefense grants. Even back then, I was told by the people who designed the proposals that the department was very partial to proposals with this kind of license.

  • Is there more info on this subject (not linked from the Slashdot post and not linked in the PC World article) that implies some connection to the GPL? Or is everyone just assuming that "an open source license" means "the GPL"? I even checked some history and none of the previous articles I found on it (including one from Slashdot the other day [slashdot.org]) mention it as being GPL-related.

    Anyway, I don't think I see this proposal being compatible with the GPL itself, but that's also not what the article claimed. The

  • Who drafted this? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Bushwacker ( 101443 )
    Neither The PCWorld article nor Slashdot give any reference to who is drafting this or how to contact them. I would like to start a formal letter followed perhaps by a popular petition to have this bill either tabled or ammended in a way that gets rid of the obvoious loopholes caused by the abiguity of the proposal's language. As-is, this bill if passed would be non-progressive at best, and completely detrimental to the OSS movement at its worst.

  • Most commercial software also includes many components licensed from other companies. The company doesn't have the right to open source that. It takes a considerable amount of effort to go through the code and disentangle the 3rd party bits. It may also be necessary to check all comments since there may be libellous comments that are okay within the confines of the company.

    For an example of how bad this is, look at how long it took Netscape to release Navigator after they decided to open source it.

  • The article doesn't even mention GPL. It specificly mentions Open Source (TM), but nothing about the GPL. If the company gets to choose what license the software reverts to after the target, fine, but the /. story lead me to believe this might be a stealth attempt to foist the GPL on people. That doesn't appear to be the case.

    Regardless, it's a moot point anyway. As others have pointed out, companies can just juggle the books to make it look like they never sold that much.

    I'd also like to add that t

  • The GNU GPL is never mentioned. (Score:3, Informative)

    by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Thursday March 20, 2003 @02:51AM (#5552508) Homepage
    Dubbed O-STEP, the Open Source Threshold Escrow Program allows vendors to license their products until so many millions are made, then agree to release the code under GPL.

    The PC World article linked to never mentions the GNU GPL. The article says that under the plan the software will be "released under an open source license".

    For all we know, this could be another way to get corporations to create and distribute software under self-interested Open Source non-Free Software licenses like the APSL. Or this could be a way to get more software released into freedom under Free Software licenses including the GNU GPL that also appear on OSI's acceptable license list. The statements quoted in the PC World article are too vague to jump to saying this will produce more GPL-covered software.

  • NewsMonster under O-STEP (Score:3, Interesting)

    by burtonator ( 70115 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @05:28AM (#5553427)
    I have NewsMonster [newsmonster.org] under a similar license.

    The only difference is time. We don't become Open Source based on $$$ we go
    OSS based on time. I believe this yields less animosity within the community.

    Right now it is three years. I am going to send Tony an email now telling him
    that NewsMonster will be under an O-STEP license.

    Kevin

  • Support Problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Phillip2 ( 203612 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @05:45AM (#5553492)
    It strikes me that as the threshold is approached a company will have less and less incentive to offer support on their product, because after all they will not be able to get direct revenue from the sale for much longer. Likewise development. Why release new versions? At the same time, there will be no open source version, so no one else will be able to fix it.

    I think the they key problem here is the assumption that a piece of software is created, and released at one point in time, when this is clearly not the case. Is the Emacs that I use daily 2 months old since that was when it was released. Or is 20 years old because some of the code dates back that far?

    Software does not exist at a point in in time, but is a continually developing thing. This is why many companies are moving toward a leasing model, and this is also one of the main advantages of free software...you can track the development as and when you choose, not as the company chooses to release a new version.

    Phil

    • Re:Support Problem (Score:2, Interesting)

      by elgaard ( 81259 )
      >It strikes me that as the threshold is approached a company will have less and less incentive >to offer support on their product, because after all they will not be able to get direct >revenue from the sale for much longer. Likewise development. Why release new versions? At the >same time, there will be no open source version, so no one else will be able to fix it.

      As threshold is approached it will also be harder for a company to sell the product.
      Why buy the last license, if the product is rel

  • They should do this with pharmaceuticals! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hadji Baba ( 660447 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @08:19AM (#5554118)
    Imagine the lower health care costs if the drug companies could make up their research costs, but once done, would have to distribute at cost!
  • This is just so much slight of hand BS. Think copyright and patent, The time of their viability just keeps increasing by government fiat. Think congress and lobyists. What makes anyone think the same thing wont happen here. Those who forget the past are condemed to repeat............ You get the idea.
  • Let's say I'm the head of a huge company who doesn't want to release my source to anyone even though I've agreed to the contract. My software is wildly successful but I'm reaching the threshhold soon.

    What do I do? I release version x.1 of the software. The codebase has changed. Perhaps something has been added, but the point is that it isn't the same software. My company was working on the new version anyway. As a matter of fact, it makes sense to only release so many copies of each version.

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