From a developer point of view open source is great! you can tell your friends that you are actually doing good for mankind, but the truth is that you do it because is the best way to take responsibility away.

Users ( we call them lusers ) are always asking for features, or they want their bugs fixed,… by giving them the source you are free to say “do it yourself”, you are giving them all they need to work things out by themselves, so nobody can touch you as developer

But there is a much poetic view of open source and its that if you did something great, but you no longer have time to work on it, the software can live by itself if someone starts working on it. It’s like software lives beyond the developer, that’s simply impossible with closed software.

And you were right, it’s not about understanding the code, it’s all about having the chance to understand the code. Everybody can turn into an expert with enough time. Just by using open source and spreading the word you are supporting open source.

About the guys that took something from you and did something better (the wireless charger) I still think that it depends on the license, if the original guy wanted to give it to public domain, with no restrictions, he/she/I should already know that there is a possibility that someone could do it better but without sharing it with others. You can think is not the right thing to do, but what matters here is that he/she was granted to do it. I could choose GPL to avoid that situation… This is like people that doesn’t patent things to give it to public domain, public domain also includes companies that could make profit of it.

Anyway, congratulations I’m proud of your open source sensibility.

And sorry for my delayed response, I was losing the time with the stupid master-thesis.

I agree with you that FSF might impose too much. But just take it or leave it, they’d say.
And I guess then that “free” means “free to do and choose whatever is best for you”. As in free will. Is this what you mean? I agree with you, but then again people should be informed about existing choices. And what’s more, I’m not so sure if for books, art, pictures and other multimedia productions, it’s *that* simple.

Now, tell me, imagine the following situation: you’ve devised this great stuff that allows you to charge all your gadgets’ batteries wirelessly, with a common wireless dock for all of them. You’re proud of your stuff and want to share it with everyone else at work. You take it, you let them use it, and some guys tinker it and improve your stuff by removing the dock for once and for all, so it’s real wireless…and they let you use it but they won’t give you your stuff back, they won’t explain to you how they did it either. How would you feel?

I guess it depends on the side you are. As everything in life. That’s why I think it’s impossible to reach consensus.

I’ve enjoyed your comment pretty much, thanks for fueling the debate. Some good food-for-thought from the experts side (i.e. dev).

*Giving and Receiving*

Talk about how beautiful is to have open source applications is one thing, but having the source doesn’t ables you to change it, even read it. For most people, the sources is completely useless they can not fix a bug even if they want to, or they can not fill a good bug report either because they are not developers. Even for me, that I’m used to coding, is hard and as me many many developers doesn’t care about the source code.

So, imagine how many people is already using open source programs but can’t do anything in return, they are just receiving but never giving. I really think that’s positive, that means that the programs are meant for many people, even for those that do not have programming skills, that’s great! but the point here is: is the source what matter most? how useful is to have something you can’t use?

*Google and Apple*

Oh, these are wolves in sheep’s clothing, aren’t they? Sure! they profit from open source giving nothing in return… well that’s not completely true. There are two issues here, first they do what they are allowed to do (I will explain this later), and second they actually help open source in some ways.

Google for example, helps developers community by giving resources as subverison webpages, mailing lists, etc. Helping others producing free software is great. Also Andrew Morton, which is the guy that tests patches of the linux kernel that will end in the final kernel’s main stream, is hired by Google since 2006. They pay him to keep on working on the kernel, and we all benefit from it.

Actually, do we really care about google not giving source of gmail? maybe is impossible given the structure of they computing network, is difficult to explain but google applications are meant to run in google servers (and it is not as easy as having an apache web server with some modules). Anyway they are giving really good webos applications, and they are free… and they are helping linux (in some ways) also they are doing some free software, the latest is “Google Chrome”.

But talking about google chrome is also talking about Apple, because they both use the same rendering engine which is “webkit”… which is a software apple made derived from KHTML which was a HTML rendering engine for KDE. So, in this case apple took free software, made free software and many others are using it. Now nokia, google, some gnome projects…

Apple even has a webpage with the open source projects they use and make: http://developer.apple.com/opensource/ The Mac os X kernel is derived from a FreeBSD, and it is public, they made webkit, improved the compilation tool chain,… so even these “wolves” are doing something positive, but remember they are still wolves. XD

* The Developer point of view *

So this is the point, after this long story about good and bad, let’s talk about the developers, those that make everything possible. When you write a code you are free to choose the license you want for it. There are many, you can do new ones, but you will probably chose one of the existing: MIT, BSD, GPL, LGPL, …

From the point of view of the FSF you should try to use “copyleft” licenses, that guarantees the well known freedoms of study, modify, copy, redistribute… but also ensures that derivatives of the software use a compatible license (probably forces the same license).

Is this what we want? imagine I’m making a beautiful piece of software, and I want it to be used. If it’s a regular program, OK, make it GPL, if anybody wants to improve it the GPL will ensure that the new software will be as free and open as mine… But if I wan’t to make a library (code that will be used by other developers) and I choose GPL, then everybody that use my code is forced to use the GPL also… this is the “viral” property of GPL, anything it touches should adopt the GPL.

Many developers think that GPL imposes too much, if I write code, and I want it to be used and I don’t really care if someone else is going to do open/closed software, then GPL will keep people away from it. In that case if you choose MIT or BSD for example, it will let you do whatever you want. Even let Apple pick a FreeBSD and make Darwin… or let Blizzard put Lua as scripting language for “world of warcraft”… So yes, is up to the developer to choose the license, if someone let apple, blizzard, google do whatever they want, we are nobody to complain (sorry guys!).

But what I find really annoying about copyleft licenses is people talking about them as if they were the truly “Libre” licenses, like the good choice. But actually a copyleft license impose the condition that any derivative should be copyleft, correct me if I’m wrong but… are you truly free in that case? Also a license like MIT, which I find completely free, is not “Libre” under the eyes of FSF, it is just compatible(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FSF_approved_software_licences)

So.. what about Firefox! it is free software but not “libre”-software (sorry again!) Let’s see what FSF says: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

Mozilla Public License (MPL)

This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; unlike the X11 license, it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. That is, a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the MPL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the MPL for this reason.

However, MPL 1.1 has a provision (section 13) that allows a program (or parts of it) to offer a choice of another license as well. If part of a program allows the GNU GPL as an alternate choice, or any other GPL-compatible license as an alternate choice, that part of the program has a GPL-compatible license.

And don’t make me start talking about the use of flash… so people, don’t get to serious on GPL-like licenses, or AGPL which is even worse, because most of the software wouldn’t have survive under that kind of licenses. I like free software, I do free software, and I think is the only way… just be careful when talking about what others should do or not, have a look at the licenses and what developers grant when they write software

And of course, for books, art, pictures, copyleft licenses are probably fine, but with software it is not so simple.