Geek Rant

I hear often that only if released under a so-called copyleft license is software truly free. This is usually presented in language that can only be described as Religious. Copyleft, without the religious language, is a class of licenses which require that distributed changes to or uses of the software must, themselves, be licensed the same way as the original. The idea is that this protects the users’ freedoms by preventing proprietary vendors from distributing nonfree software. This, as I hope to show, is misleading.

Suppose I am a proprietary vendor. My product is a slightly modified version of code that is originally under a permissive license. I have no intention of making most of my changes open source. Due to the original code’s permissive license, I suffer no legal or moral penalty for this, provided I include any necessary notices or copyrights along with my distributed product. The original software remains open source, presumably, so my customers have full access to its source code and can get a glimpse of how some of my product works. Some of my heaviest, most relevant modifications may have been contributed back to the open source community; it’s easier and cheaper than maintaining a fork when it causes no loss of competitive edge. Some of my modifications are closed source, so my customers have no access to them. My customers accepted these terms when they acquired the software. No freedom was lost in the exchange. They may have chosen the open source software of their own accord, but chose mine because it offered something they considered more important than the ability to inspect and modify its source code. This is part of the price.

Now, suppose I am a proprietary vendor. My product would have been a slightly modified version of open source code, but that code happens to be licensed under a copyleft license. I have no intention of making my changes open source. Due to the copyleft license, I have no choice but to write my own implementation which does basically the same thing. This inflates the cost of the product. The original software remains open source, but since I didn’t use it, my customers don’t even get a chance to see some of the inner workings of my product. None of my modifications were contributed back to the open source project; I had to write my own, incompatible version, instead. All of my product is closed source, so my customers have no access to any of its code. My customers accepted these terms when they acquired the software. No freedom was lost in the exchange. They may have chosen the open source software of their own accord, but chose mine because it offered something they considered more important than the ability to inspect and modify its source code. This is part of the price. However, they also pay a greater monetary value for the same product due to the extra work required to write additional, closed source software.

The latter scenario demonstrates some problems with copyleft, at least under the assumption that proprietary vendors are not going away any time soon. The users of the proprietary software pay more and have fewer freedoms when the vendor can’t use open source code due to a copyleft license. The open source project potentially loses valuable contributions from proprietary vendors by choosing a copyleft license. Nobody has benefited from the copyleft scenario. On the other hand, the software with the permissive license has more eyes and potential users due to its copyright information being included in the distribution and may have some contributions it wouldn’t have had without the proprietary vendor “stealing” it. The end users of the software also ended up paying less and retaining more freedoms.

Another common argument for copyleft I see is that vendors don’t deserve to be able to take for free and make profits on what open source developers worked so hard to give to the community for free. The contradiction is obvious if you read that closely. Open source developers give their work to the community for free. They do not expect compensation, and they will not, whether or not somebody else makes a profit from it. It simply makes no difference either way. This argument from the copyleft crowd is nothing more than a partially obscured form of vengeance. Is restriction from making a profit really something we should be calling “freedom”?

Just for the record, my current preferred license is the ISC license because it is permissive and very simple:

Copyright © 2009, Jake McArthur

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.