The word "free" can mean different things in English language. The distinction between free software and open source software is that open source software is the description of the development process while free software mean "no price". Free software is most often also open source software, open source software on the other hand is not always "no price" soft.
In recent years there have been made efforts to bring the open source software closer to the business world so that the open source projects could get a bigger user base and be applied to the business world. The initial founder of the GNU license does not approve this approach and does not want to make any compromises between commercial software and open source software - seeing the commercial software and IP principles to be rotten to the core.
I would support the approach where the open source software has commercial applications as well. The good example would be Wordpress.org blogging software where there are both "for price" and "no price" plugins available while Wordpress product itself is open source solution.
The world of open source and free software can also be kind of grey sometimes - such as in cases of "buy me a beer" donation Wordpress plugin software makers for example. It can also be argued that open source software products get the wider user base if the development is motivated by financial situmulus. For example - designing premium commercial Wordpress themes motivates the developer himself, it also increases the number of available themes/plugins for the Wordpress product and thereby increases the overall Wordpress market share.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Applicability of copying restrictions
The copying restrictions is the issue between the user and the producer. It is the free choise of a consumer these days whether or not he ties himself to some software producer because there are usually open source and free options available for any kind of software today. You can either use Microsoft Windows products or Mac and you can use either Microsoft Excel or Openoffice products.
The issue of copying restrictions is not therefore as critical as it used to be several years ago when internet was not around and the internet communities did not create open source software in such manner as they do it today.
The copying restrictions are not technically applicable in most cases today as cracked software is easy to make and use. It is more like an ethical issue - if you do not like that the product is licensed - then go and use some other companies open source software- however - if you like the capacity and features of the lienced product - then you need to allow to the terms attached to it.
The example of trust comes to mind when it was announced that Estonia´s biggest accounting software maker HansaRaama required from its clients the renewal of the software with the corresponding 2000 USD fee, otherwise they threatened to switch off the old versions ompletely. As scandal was coming to emerge they also played with reducing the prices ( initial 2000 USD changed to 500 USD in case of some clients who complained actively ). On the other hand the software maker warned their clients beforehand and on time that they do not intend use the old versions of their accounting software soon and therefore legally everything was correct from their part.
And it is difficult to imagine using open source software for accounting purposes these days - commercial versions are better and more suitable and they are updated often and the software is too country-specific and law-specific. Also it is easy to detect which accounting software is used for the companys balance sheet. You just need to choose the software product that can be trusted and the software producer who cares about you at the end of the day.
The issue of copying restrictions is not therefore as critical as it used to be several years ago when internet was not around and the internet communities did not create open source software in such manner as they do it today.
The copying restrictions are not technically applicable in most cases today as cracked software is easy to make and use. It is more like an ethical issue - if you do not like that the product is licensed - then go and use some other companies open source software- however - if you like the capacity and features of the lienced product - then you need to allow to the terms attached to it.
The example of trust comes to mind when it was announced that Estonia´s biggest accounting software maker HansaRaama required from its clients the renewal of the software with the corresponding 2000 USD fee, otherwise they threatened to switch off the old versions ompletely. As scandal was coming to emerge they also played with reducing the prices ( initial 2000 USD changed to 500 USD in case of some clients who complained actively ). On the other hand the software maker warned their clients beforehand and on time that they do not intend use the old versions of their accounting software soon and therefore legally everything was correct from their part.
And it is difficult to imagine using open source software for accounting purposes these days - commercial versions are better and more suitable and they are updated often and the software is too country-specific and law-specific. Also it is easy to detect which accounting software is used for the companys balance sheet. You just need to choose the software product that can be trusted and the software producer who cares about you at the end of the day.
Software licensing landscape in 2015
The software licensing landscape will the growth of open source software as it as happened in recent years.
The web software products like CMS will have couple of dominating open source CMS packages like Wordpress, Drupal and Typo3. Even today the White House uses Drupal web software for its home page and Estonia´s biggest energy produer Eesti Energia is using Typo3 for its web page engine. This means that the commercial CMS systems will loose the user base even more rapidly during the years 2010 - 2015 and the use of commercial web software becomes nonsense by 2015. The reason for this is mainly the fact that open source web software is improving and in many cases is better than commercial - largely due to the software developers commmunities who make new developments - plugins etc. Some plugins may have paid versions though.
The same applies to the other web software besides CMS - the web development tools, ftp tools, server software, development frameworks - open source will take over. For example - Dreamweaver which has been one of the leading web development tools until now will loose its market share and will have a minor user base by 2015 among the web development professionals.
On the other hand - the market of offline software remains basicly the same as it is today. For example the commercial closed source designers programs like Photoshop, CorelDraw or AutoCad will be also the major players in 2015 and they will also have the same market share. Thier products have become standard already and they are preferred by the niche profesionals. The price for this software is not so remarkable ( lets say 500 dollars ) if you compare the productivity of this software and the fact that it is a standard in the commercial field. Professionals will still pay the money for the good programs they have used for years and will start to use some new open source competitors if they arrive. For exmple the GIMP is the open source competitor to Photoshop but serious professionals still prefer Photoshop.
The web software products like CMS will have couple of dominating open source CMS packages like Wordpress, Drupal and Typo3. Even today the White House uses Drupal web software for its home page and Estonia´s biggest energy produer Eesti Energia is using Typo3 for its web page engine. This means that the commercial CMS systems will loose the user base even more rapidly during the years 2010 - 2015 and the use of commercial web software becomes nonsense by 2015. The reason for this is mainly the fact that open source web software is improving and in many cases is better than commercial - largely due to the software developers commmunities who make new developments - plugins etc. Some plugins may have paid versions though.
The same applies to the other web software besides CMS - the web development tools, ftp tools, server software, development frameworks - open source will take over. For example - Dreamweaver which has been one of the leading web development tools until now will loose its market share and will have a minor user base by 2015 among the web development professionals.
On the other hand - the market of offline software remains basicly the same as it is today. For example the commercial closed source designers programs like Photoshop, CorelDraw or AutoCad will be also the major players in 2015 and they will also have the same market share. Thier products have become standard already and they are preferred by the niche profesionals. The price for this software is not so remarkable ( lets say 500 dollars ) if you compare the productivity of this software and the fact that it is a standard in the commercial field. Professionals will still pay the money for the good programs they have used for years and will start to use some new open source competitors if they arrive. For exmple the GIMP is the open source competitor to Photoshop but serious professionals still prefer Photoshop.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Science Business and MIT OpenCourseWare
There has been an attempt made by the MIT to make their lectures available to the wider audience for free. The project is called MIT OpenCourseWare. It includes about 1900 course materials.
The site presents the core academic content–including lecture notes, syllabi, assignments and exams–from substantially all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate curriculum freely and openly to support formal and informal learning around the world.
Each course published on the MIT site require an average of 100 hours of effort to produce.
While the MIT faculty devote 5-10 hours of their own time for each course, it would be impossible for them to produce OCW courses alone. In order to publish materials from 200 courses each year while minimizing impact on MIT faculty time, OCW maintains a publication staff of twelve people who work directly with the faculty to collect and compile course materials, ensure proper licensing for open sharing, and format materials for our site. We also employ two intellectual property staff and four production staff who support our publication team.
The project is funded partly by the university itself and partly by the sponsors. The annual cost to make the courses available online is 3,5 million dollars.
Although it could be argued that this is MIT-s long range marketing trick to make their university name virally spread (its the degree that counts these days - not what you know - so you still need to attend to some university to get the degree ) , on the other hand it is a generous project that makes education available to the global audience and reduces the digital divide.
And there are contributions made by the faculty members to produce these materials. These lectures cost thousands of USD just some years ago, now they are available for free.
The site presents the core academic content–including lecture notes, syllabi, assignments and exams–from substantially all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate curriculum freely and openly to support formal and informal learning around the world.
Each course published on the MIT site require an average of 100 hours of effort to produce.
While the MIT faculty devote 5-10 hours of their own time for each course, it would be impossible for them to produce OCW courses alone. In order to publish materials from 200 courses each year while minimizing impact on MIT faculty time, OCW maintains a publication staff of twelve people who work directly with the faculty to collect and compile course materials, ensure proper licensing for open sharing, and format materials for our site. We also employ two intellectual property staff and four production staff who support our publication team.
The project is funded partly by the university itself and partly by the sponsors. The annual cost to make the courses available online is 3,5 million dollars.
Although it could be argued that this is MIT-s long range marketing trick to make their university name virally spread (its the degree that counts these days - not what you know - so you still need to attend to some university to get the degree ) , on the other hand it is a generous project that makes education available to the global audience and reduces the digital divide.
And there are contributions made by the faculty members to produce these materials. These lectures cost thousands of USD just some years ago, now they are available for free.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
GPL licence, compared to BSD
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project.
The GPL is the most popular of the strong copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft
GNU is used in about 70% of all free software projects. Although GPL licence is free it also strogly emphasises the initial authors rights to determine the faith of the created works - the pieces created by the GPL licence can be used, copied, distributed, modified for any purpose as long as the it is distributed under the same conditions - the next user of the piece can have the same rights and must obey these same GPL conditions. Therefore its not possible to make GPL licenced software into a proprietary piece.
Under this philosophy, the GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses are the standard examples. BSD licence allows to make commercial and business versions based on the BSD software.
The GPL requires any derivative work that is released to be released according to the GPL while the BSD licence does not. BSD´s only requirement is to acknowledge the original authors, and poses no restrictions on how the source code may be used.
The GPL is the most popular of the strong copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft
GNU is used in about 70% of all free software projects. Although GPL licence is free it also strogly emphasises the initial authors rights to determine the faith of the created works - the pieces created by the GPL licence can be used, copied, distributed, modified for any purpose as long as the it is distributed under the same conditions - the next user of the piece can have the same rights and must obey these same GPL conditions. Therefore its not possible to make GPL licenced software into a proprietary piece.
Under this philosophy, the GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses are the standard examples. BSD licence allows to make commercial and business versions based on the BSD software.
The GPL requires any derivative work that is released to be released according to the GPL while the BSD licence does not. BSD´s only requirement is to acknowledge the original authors, and poses no restrictions on how the source code may be used.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Two schools of IP rights
There are two different schools of intellectual property rights law. One is European system and the other is Anglo-American system. The Anglo-American system only covers the use of authors economic rights ( varalised õigused ) related to the intellectual property.
The European law system on the other hand differenciates the economic rights and the authors moral rights ( isiklikud õigused ). Moral rights are the aouthors right to be an author , the right to be called an author of the piece, the right to change or not to change the intellectual property item or its appendixes, it also involves the right to protect authors good name.
Moral rights also involve the authors right to say whether or not certain IP item should be published and distributed and made public or not so. Moral rights can not be separated from the person who created the piece and also they can not be transferred to anyone else.
The American system gives all these rights also to the owner of economic rights. This means that the owner of property rights also has the right to do whatever he or she wants with the protected piece.
European system of IP in general presumes that employees who are also authors must transfer their pieces economic rights to the employer.
In some countries it is done so automatically, some other countries ( Finland, France , Germany ) demand that the employer and employee must make a separate agreement on whether or not the employer has the right to economic rights of its employees pieces or not. But even in these countries there is exeption made which is related to the software industry - all the software related works economic rights belong to the empoyers by law also in these countries.
Si it can be said that these two schools of IP laws are not that much different in case of software industry - usually the economic rights belong to the employer. If it werent so I would assume that it would bring and endless flow of court cases where the bitter ex-employees of software companies claim their rights to the software businesses and it would take very long time for the courts to analyse and prove who invented what and who can sell what. In that case a software-lawyers-industry would have beem created - and that court battle industry would produce no good at all to anyone.
So the exception made in the European software industry - that employers get all the economic rights to the software that is produced by the employees - was a wis thing to do. May be Americans are even wiser - as they dont bother with the authors moral rights at all.
The European law system on the other hand differenciates the economic rights and the authors moral rights ( isiklikud õigused ). Moral rights are the aouthors right to be an author , the right to be called an author of the piece, the right to change or not to change the intellectual property item or its appendixes, it also involves the right to protect authors good name.
Moral rights also involve the authors right to say whether or not certain IP item should be published and distributed and made public or not so. Moral rights can not be separated from the person who created the piece and also they can not be transferred to anyone else.
The American system gives all these rights also to the owner of economic rights. This means that the owner of property rights also has the right to do whatever he or she wants with the protected piece.
European system of IP in general presumes that employees who are also authors must transfer their pieces economic rights to the employer.
In some countries it is done so automatically, some other countries ( Finland, France , Germany ) demand that the employer and employee must make a separate agreement on whether or not the employer has the right to economic rights of its employees pieces or not. But even in these countries there is exeption made which is related to the software industry - all the software related works economic rights belong to the empoyers by law also in these countries.
Si it can be said that these two schools of IP laws are not that much different in case of software industry - usually the economic rights belong to the employer. If it werent so I would assume that it would bring and endless flow of court cases where the bitter ex-employees of software companies claim their rights to the software businesses and it would take very long time for the courts to analyse and prove who invented what and who can sell what. In that case a software-lawyers-industry would have beem created - and that court battle industry would produce no good at all to anyone.
So the exception made in the European software industry - that employers get all the economic rights to the software that is produced by the employees - was a wis thing to do. May be Americans are even wiser - as they dont bother with the authors moral rights at all.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Against intellectual property - Brian Martin
Brian Martin makes a case against intellectual property in his books Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property".
He argues that intellectual property rights often slow down innovation and exploits Third World countries. He argues that most of the common arguments for intellectual property do not hold up if examined more carefully. He also claims that big part of the products prices these days comes from the IP rights and these costs are hidden usually - consumers dont know actually how much they pay for IP rights - in case of medicine drugs etc.
One of the common arguments for IP is that the authors depend on the royalties. Martin claims that only a few individuals make money for living from royalties - probably only a coupld of hundred writers who could live from royalties in the USA for example. Most of the rewards go to big companies instead. He proposes that the authors should receive some kind of salary instead of royalties, like most scientists do these days.
The other argument for IP rights is usually the argument that protecting authors would stimulate the creativity in the society as a whole. Martin argues that this is not true because most scientists and other creators are creators because of intrinsic motivatiors - the inner drive and natural tendency to be creative, not because it is financially stimulated in any way. Some research even suggests that financial rewards actually slow down the creativity and production in sme cases.
Martin proposes that the whole economic system and the way of thinking needs to be changed along with the IP law and the system to support the creators must be worked out.
Martin proposes several strategies to move from the old system to the new IP system in the world: 1) Change thinking - the awareness of the pluses and minuses of the IP rights in societies 2) Expose the costs - people must be aware of the indirect costs related to the IP rights - such as lawyers etc. This would change the attitudes towards the IP system 3) Reproduce protected works - to copy the protected materials and exploite them as much as possible. It is not possible to change the whole system if all people obey loyally the old IP law system, he argues 4) Promote non-owned information. This means promoting all the information and materials such as freeware software for example. This software distribution usually involves the obligation not to protect the software in any ways and most often also it is prohibitted to re-sell the open source software packages for a price. 5) Develope principles to give credit for outstanding creative innovations. This means that the scientists or other creatoes who have invented something should be credited as the initial innovators - even if the initial ideas and solutions would be distributed freely afterwwards. It could be argued that this is important also because most often the initial innovators get more exposure and have better possibilities to a wealthy life after the initial invention.
I would take the example of the Ruby on Rails programming framework here. The programming language is currently one of the most popular and fastest growing web programming languages because of its ease of use. On the other hand the guy who invented the language - David Heinemeier Hansson - developed it for his company for the project 37signals.com - this was the first case ever where the Ruby on Rails was used for a web project and this is widely known fact in the world. This is a project management software company where the guy works and where he is one of the owners. Although the language itself is an open source framework - Hansson and his company receive much publicity because of the Ruby on Rails. And this helps to sell the product quite well, in fact 37signals is a multi-million dollar company. If you want to get rich also - you might want to watch how Heinemeier teaches the secret of web business.
He argues that intellectual property rights often slow down innovation and exploits Third World countries. He argues that most of the common arguments for intellectual property do not hold up if examined more carefully. He also claims that big part of the products prices these days comes from the IP rights and these costs are hidden usually - consumers dont know actually how much they pay for IP rights - in case of medicine drugs etc.
One of the common arguments for IP is that the authors depend on the royalties. Martin claims that only a few individuals make money for living from royalties - probably only a coupld of hundred writers who could live from royalties in the USA for example. Most of the rewards go to big companies instead. He proposes that the authors should receive some kind of salary instead of royalties, like most scientists do these days.
The other argument for IP rights is usually the argument that protecting authors would stimulate the creativity in the society as a whole. Martin argues that this is not true because most scientists and other creators are creators because of intrinsic motivatiors - the inner drive and natural tendency to be creative, not because it is financially stimulated in any way. Some research even suggests that financial rewards actually slow down the creativity and production in sme cases.
Martin proposes that the whole economic system and the way of thinking needs to be changed along with the IP law and the system to support the creators must be worked out.
Martin proposes several strategies to move from the old system to the new IP system in the world: 1) Change thinking - the awareness of the pluses and minuses of the IP rights in societies 2) Expose the costs - people must be aware of the indirect costs related to the IP rights - such as lawyers etc. This would change the attitudes towards the IP system 3) Reproduce protected works - to copy the protected materials and exploite them as much as possible. It is not possible to change the whole system if all people obey loyally the old IP law system, he argues 4) Promote non-owned information. This means promoting all the information and materials such as freeware software for example. This software distribution usually involves the obligation not to protect the software in any ways and most often also it is prohibitted to re-sell the open source software packages for a price. 5) Develope principles to give credit for outstanding creative innovations. This means that the scientists or other creatoes who have invented something should be credited as the initial innovators - even if the initial ideas and solutions would be distributed freely afterwwards. It could be argued that this is important also because most often the initial innovators get more exposure and have better possibilities to a wealthy life after the initial invention.
I would take the example of the Ruby on Rails programming framework here. The programming language is currently one of the most popular and fastest growing web programming languages because of its ease of use. On the other hand the guy who invented the language - David Heinemeier Hansson - developed it for his company for the project 37signals.com - this was the first case ever where the Ruby on Rails was used for a web project and this is widely known fact in the world. This is a project management software company where the guy works and where he is one of the owners. Although the language itself is an open source framework - Hansson and his company receive much publicity because of the Ruby on Rails. And this helps to sell the product quite well, in fact 37signals is a multi-million dollar company. If you want to get rich also - you might want to watch how Heinemeier teaches the secret of web business.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)