Before we can talk about the future of open source, we must attend to its past. The historical dramas of open source helps us understand what needs healing in order for us to move forward as a unified community again.
Software freedoms
The beginnings of what is now most commonly referred to as “open source software” was an earlier movement that coined the term Free Software. While it’s mainly about free-ness akin to ‘free speech’ and not necessarily about being ‘free of charge’, the latter is almost always the case as well.
By the 1980s, almost all software was proprietary, which means that it had owners who forbid and prevent cooperation by users.
Source: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html
In response to the prevailing trend of closed software, a group of liberal-minded technologists devised The Free Software Definition. Think of it as a “Declaration of Code Freedoms”. It goes like this:
A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms:
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others.
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Openness licenses
Along with these principles came the first standardized and open software licenses. That’s a piece of text that explains the conditions under which you may use and remix that software program.
A license can be created for anything, not just software. For a simple example we can look at the Creative Commons license, which is widely used for artworks like music and illustrations.
Here is the ‘Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License’ – or CC-BY for short – in its entire human-readable (not legalese) form:
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Traditional companies selling closed-source software would have their own company-specific licenses. The terms would basically say: “You’re allowed to run this program, and that’s it. Don’t try to look inside or attempt to make any changes”.
The new breed of open licenses on the other hand could be used by anyone, private or corporate. Just copy the text, include it with your code collection whenever you’re sharing it with someone and presto, you’ve applied a formal license-of-use to your software.
“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
Source: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
These principles and accompanying software licenses have been adopted by some of the most widespread software applications in the world. Chief among these are the Linux operating system (powers 95% of the internet’s servers, as well as all Android phones) and the WordPress website builder (powers 40% of all websites on the internet — second place is at about 5%).
The Free Software Foundation believes that all software should be free in accordance with the four essential freedoms. It’s an honorable aspiration, but it’s been proven unfeasible in our current model of society.
Selling a free thing
While products like Linux and WordPress are free for users to study, run, change, copy and distribute, they are still run as major commercial projects. In the case of these projects it’s relatively easy to balance complete openness with commercialization, because these are server applications. As such, it’s easy to turn them into services that run on privately controlled servers that charge users for access.
WordPress.com will happily let you set up your website without a single mention of it actually being powered by free software that you could operate on your own computer should you choose to do so — but honestly you should just use their service instead, it’s much easier. The openness of their product means you can take your whole website and leave whenever you’d like, should their serviced alternative ever turn bad. You can see how this is an incredibly powerful consumer protection.
It’s quite telling that while Linux has over 95% market share on servers (the place where all the cat pictures are stored and streamed out from), while its market share on desktops (PCs & laptops) is a dismal 2%.
Free and open source software is increasingly dominant on the world wide web, but closed software still rules supreme on all the devices in our homes. That’s because it’s incredibly hard to commercialize free software that just lives on your device, rather than in some server you need to connect to.
That’s not to say these projects aren’t amazing; they are. Probably the greatest indicator of how these projects are different from your average corporate behemoth is how there is no “Linux Company.” or “WordPress Company”. Instead there’s the Linux Foundation and the WordPress Foundation, both of which are comprised of large consortiums of companies with common interests.
An unprecedented feat of global collaboration in service of a shared commons.
Freedom vs Openness
In 1998 the Open Source Initiative was founded, effectively as a spinoff of FSF.
The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape [the precursor to Mozilla Firefox] to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also believed that it would be useful to have a single label [open source] that identified this approach and distinguished it from the philosophically- and politically-focused label "free software."
Source: https://opensource.org/history
The OSI branded itself as more pragmatic and business-friendly. They did not share the FSF’s fundamentalist view that absolutely all software should be freely available under the same stringent terms. The founding members of the OSI wanted to enable the release of software with a mix of open and closed source code.
Along with a list of OSI-approved licenses, they drafted The Open Source Definition.
It is important to note that this is not the definition for ‘open source’. There is no central authority for the term, so there is no official definition. No one can claim to own the term ‘open source’, just like no one can lay a claim to words like ‘swimming pool’ and ‘computer’.
Fast forward to 2020: The grand total of OSI-style licensed software now far outweighs FSF-style licensed software, proving that there was indeed a greater appetite for more permissive software licensing that doesn’t prevent you from coupling your open source application with some sort of commercial layer.
Open source is on the rise, but if we stop innovating on open source licenses now we’ll be doing ourselves a great disservice. OSI and FSF are both winners. Both can point to multi-billion dollar industries built around the principles and foundations they have set forth. We also wouldn’t have the trillion-dollar companies of today if they weren’t supercharged by free and open source software, but that’s not really a point in their favor; quite on the contrary.