Jason Wacha is our corporate counsel and in house GPL licensing expert. If you’ve never heard him speak you ought to go register and listen to one of his recorded webinars. He will frequently exclaim that “software is software” in an attempt to get the audience to realize that the licensing and intellectual property issues faced by teams using open source licensed software are the same as those facing proprietary.

Our friends at Red Hat have shown themselves, again, to be fans of not just open source licensed code to fuel their products but of community developers as well. Red Hat had been sued for patent infringement by Firestar Software for patents related to their JBoss products. Rather than just do the customary pay-off or cross license deal Red Hat did something different. They settled in a way that covered downstream users of JBoss (their customers) and the upstream developers of JBoss. The settlement also covered people making derivative works of JBoss even if they aren’t Red Hat.

I’m just an engineer… but this seems to be a very unusual settlement. Firestar and Red Hat settled out of court as often happens. Rather than just making their peace Red Hat extracted what seems to be quite broad protection for many other developers and companies other than Red Hat. It can only be hoped that this sets a chilling precedent for those who would wish to pursue alleged patent infringement against open source companies an open source projects.

With respect to Red Hat: Bravo!

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I was just doing one of those vanity searches on technorati.com where you search for your name or company just to see what others think. I feel bad admitting it… but fess up. You know you do it, too.

Anyways I noticed many posts where people were speaking about their phones (often from Motorola) and about wanting to reconfigure the MontaVista Linux software that they claim is on the device. I say “they claim” only because I’m not in a position to confirm or deny anything about anyone using our product. Don’t ask… I won’t tell.

I’ve also seen emails come in from time to time requesting (usually politely) that MontaVista provide the source code to a phone that is claimed to run MontaVista Linux. These requests are impossible for us to satisfy because we at MontaVista are usually never in possession of the code that is actually on the phone. I’ll explain.

In the enterprise world if someone says their server runs Red Hat Linux 5.0 then if you go and fetch RHEL5 from Red Hat you’ve likely got exactly what makes that server run. Red Hat prevents their customers from modifying RHEL by tying the support contract to their binaries. If you modify the binaries then Red Hat won’t support it. Read the support scope of coverage document.

That just won’t fly in the world of embedded software that powers the devices you love. All of our customers (save a few) modify the software we provide to them. Some modify it extensively.

We also support a wide range of hardware configurations and do most of it through static kernel configurations for some technical reasons. RHEL runs as unmodified binaries on every piece of hardware it supports. MontaVista Linux is designed for a different usage model and therefore is different. Companies typically don’t want to design in extra flash to support hardware they aren’t using.

So while MontaVista is a supporter and adherent to the GPL license and other open source licenses we are not the right people to ask. We don’t have the crucial code that you need to help you hack your phone, television,  or any of the 10’s of millions of devices that run MontaVista Linux. Our customers don’t provide these crucial code modifications to us. They are under no obligation to do so, of course.

The best thing to do is to contact the manufacturer of the device. Most of them intend to comply with the licenses they are using and will do so. We often advise them on the right path to satisfy both the letter and the spirit of these licenses which make the world of open source work. Companies like Sony and many others do so wonderfully.

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Robert Lee Hotz in a recent Wall Street Journal article “Revenge of the Freeloaders” summarized a set of fascinating experiments that characterized “antisocial punishment” in cultures around the world. Antisocial punishment is the tendency for individuals to sanction others that behave in a way that benefits society. Prosocial behavior, I had thought, was something that would have been at least tolerated if not universally respected as a noble pursuit. Proves what I know, I guess.

The experiment use groups of four who could contribute to an investment pool anonymously. At the end of the round a dividend would be paid to all. As you can quickly see this is an invitation for freeloaders to withhold their contribution but still reap a benefit. Previous research has evidently proven what we all know to be true… that if there is too much freeloading going contributors will withhold their contributions.

The research indicated that offering the participants the ability to punish those who were freeloaders kept the contributions flowing. The need to punish freeloaders was so essential to the participants that they would punish even if it cost them something to do so.

This triggered some thinking about the relative merits of the BSD and GPL licenses. I’m a fan of both… but given this new observation about the need of those who behave prosocially to chastise freeloaders I have new questions. We know that there really is no practical way for an author who licenses software under the GPL to effectively punish freeloaders. There is no reason to even do so, in fact. Software is meant to be used and it is likely that any author who uses the GPL will in fact desire wide usage of the software in question. Might it be possible, however, that the GPL’s oft derided “viral” aspect assuages contributors internal fears that freeloaders will run rampant without the opportunity to discipline them?

Maybe this explains a recent observation over at the Google Open Source Blog: “The trend around licensing is obvious: GPLv2/GPLv3 represent 42.6% of the projects, and Apache is 25.8%. MIT, BSD, and LGPL are at about 8% each, Artistic at 3.5%, and MPL 1.1 at a mere 2.7%.”

More next time on a compelling and surprising role that cultural attitudes towards prosocial behavior may play in the patterns of open source software development.

Brad

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Last month David A. Wheeler hosted a can’t miss webinar for those of you in the defense industry that have questions regarding the GPL and how that impacts your plans to either use or create open source software. I attended the webinar and David’s analysis was quite enlightening.

• “DoD and OSS” - OpenDocument
• “DoD and OSS” - PowerPoint
• “DoD and OSS” - PDF
• A audiovisual presentation is available via Google
• The Q&A.

There were enough questions afterwards that David wrote up a slew of questions covering a dozen different categories. Read the Q&A… do not skip it.

If you would like to hear a complimentary webinar that is focused on commercial usage of open source within embedded design projects you should take some time to listen to noted legal expert Jason Wacha’s presentation:

• GPL and Open Source Licensing Review: Join MontaVista Software and distinguished open source licensing authority Jason Wacha for a review of issues surrounding open source licensing. Starting from base principles of differences between laws, licenses, and commercial agreements, Mr. Wacha moves on to issues surrounding the use of a General Public License (GPL) and how it affects Linux and other open source software.

You’ll need to register but I think it is worth the trouble. I’ve listened to Jason’s GPL talks at least a dozen times and I still come away learning something new each time.

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