This is the first in a series of blogs by MAI personnel to stimulate discussions within the community about Open Source software and its future impact on your business. This blog is purely introductory and will be followed up by blogs which specifically address both technical and business issues.
What is Open Source software and just what does it mean for your business? First, Open Source software does not mean “public domain”. For software to be in the public domain, the author must disclaim the copyright in the code. Open Source authors retain their copyrights. The difference lies in what the copyright holders elect to do with their rights in the code.
It is important for a business to understand that open source is fundamentally grounded in intellectual property law. There are five basic rights in copyright: the right to perform, the right to display, the right to copy, the right to make derivative works and the right to distribute. All software licenses grant the first two. The most significant differences between open source and proprietary software are the rights under copyright that the licensor grants to the licensee and the use philosophy behind each. The proprietary licenses restrict the use of the software as much as possible while the open source licenses have the aim to encourage wide use. Additionally, do not confuse Open Source and not being commercial. Open Source software can be commercial and in our case the “Free” in “Free Software” equates to “Freedom of use” not price.
There were some exceptions in the early nineties when the larger commercial software companies allowed “restrictive” inroads into their applications through the use of “Macros” (this practice quickly dried up once the larger firms saw this as a threat). This practice continues through the use of proprietary code such as (Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). However, businesses must carefully examine their licenses if they want to redistribute the modified code.
There are several good sources on Open Source licensing. One is “Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing” by Andrew M. St Laurent and another is titled “Succeeding with Open Source” by Bernard Golden. The knowledge of the fundamentals of intellectual property (as it pertains to software) helps in understanding what open source means to the several classes of users: (1) Small and medium-size businesses; (2) Enterprise customers; (3) Original equipment manufacturers (OEM); (4) Independent software vendors (ISV); and (5) Educational software and schools. Each of these categories has its unique requirements and issues which must be managed. Although having varying degrees of complexity, depending on your category, these issues are manageable. This is witnessed by the entrance of the major commercial vendors’ (Sun, Oracle, etc…) entrance into the Open Source arena at various levels.
Stay tuned….
