License to Copy

Up until very recently, I found the licenses under which programs are distributed to be very boring. Similarly, when I installed software on my computer I clicked the ‘I agree’ button without reading through them carefully, as I know I’m not planning on doing anything that anyone would mind me doing with it. Consequently, I think it is quite weird that the thing that has caught my interest above everything else in the discussion about free software is the various licenses.

From what I understand by what I’ve read about the various licenses is that the default one is the copyright. Basically, when you write code and state that it is copyrighted, no one but you may copy the code or make money from it.

Free software can either be copyleft or copycenter, both wordplays on copyright. Both kinds of licenses grant the right to modify and redistribute software. The difference between these is that modified copyleft software must continue to be copyleft, meaning that no following modifications may become proprietary. Copycenter software does not have that restriction. A famous example of a copyleft license is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), whereas Berkely Software Distribution (BSD) licenses are permissive (modifications may become proprietary should the modifier want to) and copycenter.

I can very well understand the need for copyright, as it’s an incentive to write code that you can earn money from. If no one may copy your code it might be easier for the people who want to use your program to buy it from you than to make their own version. If the program is copyleft, it might not be freeware, but it will be much easier to make your own version of it.

The copyleft alternative is an even better alternative, in many cases, as it gives people the right to help make software better. What I can’t understand is why a programmer should wish to use a copycenter, permissive license. If the programmer likes free software enough to decide to distribute her code freely, why would she decide to let other people make money from it? Of course, businesses like Microsoft or Apple will be thrilled to be able to use free code and turn it proprietary, but why let them?

The only answer I can find to that is that writing code and seeing others use it, even if the others make money from it, may feel like a big enough accomplishment. However, it does feel like a sucker’s payoff.

Paranoid Programmeroid

I think free software is great. I mean, really great. People ‘working together’ to build helpful applications is, naturally, generally a very good thing. But there some small drawbacks and even some scary parts.

The first thing is a matter of feeling ‘this is my code’. In most (if not all) licenses for free software, a central part is that you need to include the name of the author of the code you borrowed from. But that can be easily bypassed if you want to; if you just alter the code sufficiently and hope no one will read your code carefully enough to recognize its similarities with that of another programmer. The free software licenses to some extent depend on trust, and it’s not always easy to trust people you don’t know.

To look at this from a slightly different angle, if you steal the free software code from another programmer you could simply modify the code to make it look different from some free software, take it off the free software license and sell it for money. No one will have the right to look into your program to notice that you are basing your program on someone else’s code. I have no idea if this is something that happens, or happens enough to make it a big problem, but it feels like it’s very possible. Also, I don’t know if any free software license organization has lawyers employed who could help people who feel like they have been stolen from. It could be an interesting idea, if the funding was available.

Another thing is that someone could deliberately sabotage code, opening security gaps in it to be exploited at a later time, or installing spyware at the same time as the ‘benevolent’ code. Of course, this is very possible also in software that isn’t free. It’s probably also less likely to be the case with free software as other users may have read through the code and found weird parts of it. Why I added the thought here is that it anyone can use your code for whatever, you have no control over its final destination. Sort of along the lines of how a clock is innocent until it’s the timer of a bomb.

However, the problems I have listed here are more paranoid than valid. Free software is still a good thing, and these points don’t really take anything away from that. In my next entry, however, I will explore some more valid issues with free software.

BBC = Bye Bye Commercial?

It's quite interstesting to see that BBC reasons that development of open source software is a part of Public Service.

Free as an Ogg

A week ago, the FSF (Free Software Foundation) launched a campaign called 'Play Ogg', to get people to use the 'ethically, legally and technically superior audio alternative to the proprietary MP3 format'. I must say I had no idea that the mp3 file format was patented.