Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1999 03:01:17 -0400
Subject: Some comments on "The Power Of Openness"
From: rms@gnu.org

I just read "The Power Of Openness", and here are some comments
and suggestions.

    By banding together to assert their common interests, open code software
    users acquire an entirely new dimension of power. They are not merely 
    consumers picking and choosing from the products sellers may choose
   (or decline) to offer; they are co-producers in the creation of
    specific software to serve their distinctive needs.

This suggests that open code software is a new forum for democratic
action, as well as an individual freedom.

This reminds me somewhat of a book called L'Intelligence Collectif by
Pierre Levy.  You might want to read it.

   extend and extinguish," the company has taken open standard protocols
   such as HTML (for web pages), Java (the cross-platform software),
   RealAudio (the Internet audio software) and QuickTime (multimedia
   software), and sought to sabotage them by introducing its own
   proprietary modifications as the de facto standard. 

Are you sure that RealAudio was once an open standard?  I am not sure
of that.  Also, I think some of the algorithms used in it are patented.

   (There are, of course, other reasons why people contribute software
    and open code to the public over the Internet. Software companies may
    want free publicity or a greater influence over user "mindshare"; a
    software developer may want to showcase his programming prowess; an
    academic community may wish to collectively share its resources.)

Or a developer may care about freedom.  That's why the GNU/Linux
operating system exists.

I think that only a minority of contributors are motivated principally
by idealism, but it is a significant motivation.  So it shouldn't be
omitted from the "list of motives".

    First, Stallman in 1983
    launched the GNU Project, a collaborative endeavor to develop a free
    Unix-like operating system (free in price as well as open source code).

Actually, I later figured out that I meant "free" specifically as in
freedom, not free of charge.

    ("GNU" is an acronym for "GNU's Not Unix," a recursive pun;
    Unix, of course, is the open standards-based operating system
    developed by Bell Labs in the 1970s. Unix was the original operating
    system of the Internet and of governments and academic institutions, 

I think this overestimates the role of Unix; it came to be very
popular in these kinds of organizations only in the mid-80s.  Before
that, we used other systems, including very often the PDP-10.

    The BSD-style licenses -- based on the Berkeley Standard
    Distribution of Unix -- gives software users the option of creating
    derivative versions that can be copyrighted and made proprietary --
    without revealing the source code.

It is important to mention this class of licenses, but please don't
call them "BSD-style".  Many people call them that, but the BSD
license is actually not typical.  It contains a problematical clause
which many other licenses in this class do not have.  Using BSD as the
paradigmatic example will tend to encourage other people to imitate
that clause.

If you want to use a paradigm to name the class, could you call them
X11-style licenses?  Or call them "simple non-copyleft licenses".

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html for more info about this issue.

     Such major players as Oracle, Corel and Informix
     announced that they would be porting their products to GNU/Linux.

I hope you will point out that releasing a proprietary software
product that runs on a free operating system is not a contribution to
the body of open code software.  It does enable a certain class of
people--those who are dead set on running these products--to use the
free operating system in question, and that's better than if they run
the same products on a proprietary operating system.  But it is not
real participation in our community.  We need to replace these
proprietary software products, not use them.

     Among the barriers it faces are the lack of
     popularly accessible documentation and technical support; 

The FSF has just hired another tech writer.  Meanwhile, our first tech
writer is making progress on the "GNU/Linux Cookbook", which describes
how to do a variety of user-level tasks on GNU/Linux.  We now have a C
tutorial and a C reference manual on their way.

Take a look at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html

    Clearly the GPL offers the best protection for expansion of open code
    software. But that may not be enough. Some distribution vendors
    combine non-GPL software with the GNU/Linux kernel 

I think that here you mean "kernel" in its general English sense, and
that you are referring to more than the program that is normally
called the kernel.  If so, I suggest you pick a different word.

Note that the kernel in the GNU/Linux system is simply Linux.

     into the browser.[19] Similarly, Sun is trying to kick-start a
     community of open code developers for its Solaris software using a
     quasi-open code license which it calls a Community Source License.[20]

It may be worth mentioning that the GNU Project urges people to refuse
to work with Sun, and to instead use the free alternatives to the
non-free Sun software.

     This is only the most egregious known example of how the proprietary
     world might seek to impede the growth of open code software. It would
     be useful to explore what other discriminatory barriers to entry may
     exist and bring them to the attention of Justice Department officials
     and the computing public. Neither Microsoft nor other companies should
     be allowed to use their market power to squelch the marketing or use
     of open code software alternatives.

Use of market monopolies to discourage use of free software is a
secondary danger.  The principal danger is the use of imposed
monopolies, such as patents on algorithms or functionality, or
copyrights on interfaces, to squelch the *development and release* of
free software.

     Many feasible schemes are imaginable. James Love of the Consumer
     Project on Technology, the Nader-affiliated group, has proposed a 1-2%
     vendor tax on commercial software that would be used to finance the
     development of GPL-licensed open code software at state universities.

In the GNU Manifesto, published in 1983 and 1985, I proposed a tax on
computer supplies and equipment as one possible way to fund free
software development.

At the moment, it seems to me that we do not need to use any special
taxes--it seems that the job will get done without them.