Open Enterprise Interview: Fabrizio Capobianco

On Open Enterprise blog.

History Repeats Itself

One of the pleasures of blogging is the fact that no day is the same: the stories are always different, and the mix changes constantly. Well, usually, anyway. Yesterday I wrote a couple of stories that seemed to have repeated themselves slightly later.

The first, about Microsoft's "half-open" Windows Live Writer was echoed by news that it will be making a development kit for the Xbox 360 available to everyone, in what it claims

will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry.

Of course, another big beneficiary is Microsoft, which gets more games, plus the commitment of end-users. But it's still interesting as a recognition of user-generated production as an important part of the equation.

The second story concerned the Honest Public Licence (HPL). And now here we have somebody who wants to modify the GNU GPL to forbid military use.

Again, however laudable the intentions here, I think it's misguided - even more than the HPL. First, it will be even harder to police: how are you going to find out if some top-secret army organisation is modifying the code but not releasing it? Worse, though, is the fact that it will simply discourage people from using open source at a time when the US military, for example, is increasingly adopting it.

Let's get the world using free software first, and address the niceties afterwards.

Just What We Don't Need, Honest

One reason why work is going on to produce version 3 of the GNU GPL is that things have moved on quite a bit since version 2 came out in 1991. For example, the idea of providing software as a service across the Internet was in no one's mind at that time.

Today, of course, it's the backbone of companies like Yahoo and Google, and therein lies the problem. As I've written about elsewhere, the issue is that they use a lot of free software to provide those services, but give relatively little back to the communities that write it.

Now, in this they are (currently) quite within their rights, since they are not distributing any code based on free software, which is the trigger for making it open. But the larger issue is whether they should be distributing it anyway.

Someone who thinks they should is Fabrizio Capobianco. And he's come up with what he believes is a solution: the splendidly-named Honest Public License (HPL). As Capobianco explains:

The goal of HPL is to keep the community honest with itself. The use of the name "Honest" is ABSOLUTELY not intended to mean that GPL or any other licenses are dishonest. It is quite the opposite, actually. But some people are taking advantage of a GPL legal loophole and are defeating the spirit of the GPL. HPL is just GPL extended to cover the distribution of software as a service to the public. It does not take away any freedom (i.e. you can use it internally in your corporation), it just covers when someone distributes the code to the public (whether with a floppy or as a service). It is meant to keep people honest with their community.

I think this is a laudable attempt - laudable, but misguided. The last thing we need is another open source licence. In fact the plethora of licences is one of the banes of the free software world. Adding one more - however well intentioned - is only going to make things worse.

There are also practical objections. For example, releasing code under the HPL will discourage companies from using it; or they may use it and fail to open up their code, in which case it will be hard to discover that they are in breach.

I think a better solution is to get GNU GPL 3 right, and let companies that offer software as a service based on open source do the right thing. After all, as I suggested in my Linux Journal column, enormous amounts of goodwill can be generated by giving more than the licence requires, and such a development would be far better for the free software world than burdening it with yet another licence. (Via NewsForge.)