New Scientist Tries Out Copyleft

uchian writes: "New Scientist has an article about The GPL, open source, and how attempts are being made to apply the philosopy to areas other than software. Little new ground is covered, but it is interesting that the article itself is "Copyleft", so you are free to redistribute, modify and copy as long as long as your derivative work is also copyleft."

copy

@Title: The Great Giveaway

@Intro: Good ideas are worth money. So why are hard headed operators giving them away for free? Join our experiment to find out says Graham Lawton

@Body: IF YOU'VE BEEN to a computer show in recent months you might have seen it: a shiny silver drinks can with a ring-pull logo and the words "opencola" on the side. Inside is a fizzy drink that tastes very much like Coca-Cola. Or is it Pepsi?

There's something else written on the can, though, which sets the drink apart. It says "check out the source at opencola.com". Go to that Web address and you'll see something that's not available on Coca-Cola's website, or Pepsi's--the recipe for cola. For the first time ever, you can make the real thing in your own home.

OpenCola is the world's first "open source" consumer product. By calling it open source, its manufacturer is saying that instructions for making it are freely available. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, release their recipe into the public domain. As a way of doing business it's rather unusual--the Coca-Cola Company doesn't make a habit of giving away precious commercial secrets. But that's the point.

OpenCola is the most prominent sign yet that a long-running battle between rival philosophies in software development has spilt over into the rest of the world. What started as a technical debate over the best way to debug computer programs is developing into a political battle over the ownership of knowledge and how it is used, between those who put their faith in the free circulation of ideas and those who prefer to designate them "intellectual property". No one knows what the outcome will be. But in a world of growing opposition to corporate power, restrictive intellectual property rights and globalisation, open source is emerging as a possible alternative, a potentially potent means of fighting back. And you're helping to test its value right now.

The open source movement originated in 1984 when computer scientist Richard Stallman quit his job at MIT and set up the Free Software Foundation. His aim was to create high-quality software that was freely available to everybody. Stallman's beef was with commercial companies that smother their software with patents and copyrights and keep the source code--the original program, written in a computer language such as C++--a closely guarded secret. Stallman saw this as damaging. It generated poor-quality, bug-ridden software. And worse, it choked off the free flow of ideas. Stallman fretted that if computer scientists could no longer learn from one another's code, the art of programming would stagnate (New Scientist, 12 December 1998, p 42).

Stallman's move resonated round the computer science community and now there are thousands of similar projects. The star of the movement is Linux, an operating system created by Finnish student Linus Torvalds in the early 1990s and installed on around 18 million computers worldwide.

What sets open source software apart from commercial software is the fact that it's free, in both the political and the economic sense. If you want to use a commercial product such as Windows XP or Mac OS X you have to pay a fee and agree to abide by a licence that stops you from modifying or sharing the software. But if you want to run Linux or another open source package, you can do so without paying a penny--although several companies will sell you the software bundled with support services. You can also modify the software in any way you choose, copy it and share it without restrictions. This freedom acts as an open invitation--some say challenge--to its users to make improvements. As a result, thousands of volunteers are constantly working on Linux, adding new features and winkling out bugs. Their contributions are reviewed by a panel and the best ones are added to Linux. For programmers, the kudos of a successful contribution is its own reward. The result is a stable, powerful system that adapts rapidly to technological change. Linux is so successful that even IBM installs it on the computers it sells.

To maintain this benign state of affairs, open source software is covered by a special legal instrument called the General Public License. Instead of restricting how the software can be used, as a standard software license does, the GPL--often known as a "copyleft"--grants as much freedom as possible (see http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html). Software released under the GPL (or a similar copyleft licence) can be copied, modified and distributed by anyone, as long as they, too, release it under a copyleft. That restriction is crucial, because it prevents the material from being co-opted into later proprietary products. It also makes open source software different from programs that are merely distributed free of charge. In FSF's words, the GPL "makes it free and guarantees it remains free".

Open source has proved a very successful way of writing software. But it has also come to embody a political stand--one that values freedom of expression, mistrusts corporate power, and is uncomfortable with private ownership of knowledge. It's "a broadly libertarian view of the proper relationship between individuals and institutions", according to open source guru Eric Raymond.

But it's not just software companies that lock knowledge away and release it only to those prepared to pay. Every time you buy a CD, a book, a copy of New Scientist, even a can of Coca-Cola, you're forking out for access to someone else's intellectual property. Your money buys you the right to listen to, read or consume the contents, but not to rework them, or make copies and redistribute them. No surprise, then, that people within the open source movement have asked whether their methods would work on other products. As yet no one's sure--but plenty of people are trying it.

Take OpenCola. Although originally intended as a promotional tool to explain open source software, the drink has taken on a life of its own. The Toronto-based OpenCola company has become better known for the drink than the software it was supposed to promote. Laird Brown, the company's senior strategist, attributes its success to a widespread mistrust of big corporations and the "proprietary nature of almost everything". A website selling the stuff has shifted 150,000 cans. Politically minded students in the US have started mixing up the recipe for parties.

OpenCola is a happy accident and poses no real threat to Coke or Pepsi, but elsewhere people are deliberately using the open source model to challenge entrenched interests. One popular target is the music industry. At the forefront of the attack is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco group set up to defend civil liberties in the digital society. In April of last year, the EFF published a model copyleft called the Open Audio License (OAL). The idea is to let musicians take advantage of digital music's properties--ease of copying and distribution--rather than fighting against them. Musicians who release music under an OAL consent to their work being freely copied, performed, reworked and reissued, as long as these new products are released under the same licence. They can then rely on "viral distribution" to get heard. "If the people like the music, they will support the artist to ensure the artist can continue to make music," says Robin Gross of the EFF.

It's a little early to judge whether the OAL will capture imaginations in the same way as OpenCola. But it's already clear that some of the strengths of open source software simply don't apply to music. In computing, the open source method lets users improve software by eliminating errors and inefficient bits of code, but it's not obvious how that might happen with music. In fact, the music is not really "open source" at all. The files posted on the OAL music website http://www.openmusicregistry.org so far are all MP3s and Ogg Vorbises--formats which allow you to listen but not to modify.

It's also not clear why any mainstream artists would ever choose to release music under an OAL. Many bands objected to the way Napster members circulated their music behind their backs, so why would they now allow unrestricted distribution, or consent to strangers fiddling round with their music? Sure enough, you're unlikely to have heard of any of the 20 bands that have posted music on the registry. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Open Audio amounts to little more than an opportunity for obscure artists to put themselves in the shop window.

The problems with open music, however, haven't put people off trying open source methods elsewhere. Encyclopedias, for example, look like fertile ground. Like software, they're collaborative and modular, need regular upgrading, and improve with peer review. But the first attempt, a free online reference called Nupedia, hasn't exactly taken off. Two years on, only 25 of its target 60,000 articles have been completed. "At the current rate it will never be a large encyclopedia," says editor-in-chief Larry Sanger. The main problem is that the experts Sanger wants to recruit to write articles have little incentive to participate. They don't score academic brownie points in the same way software engineers do for upgrading Linux, and Nupedia can't pay them.

It's a problem that's inherent to most open source products: how do you get people to chip in? Sanger says he's exploring ways to make money out of Nupedia while preserving the freedom of its content. Banner adverts are a possibility. But his best hope is that academics start citing Nupedia articles so authors can earn academic credit.

There's another possibility: trust the collective goodwill of the open source community. A year ago, frustrated by the treacle-like progress of Nupedia, Sanger started another encyclopedia named Wikipedia (the name is taken from open source Web software called WikiWiki that allows pages to be edited by anyone on the Web). It's a lot less formal than Nupedia: anyone can write or edit an article on any topic, which probably explains the entries on beer and Star Trek. But it also explains its success. Wikipedia already contains 19,000 articles and is acquiring several thousand more each month. "People like the idea that knowledge can and should be freely distributed and developed," says Sanger. Over time, he reckons, thousands of dabblers should gradually fix any errors and fill in any gaps in the articles until Wikipedia evolves into an authoritative encyclopedia with hundreds of thousands of entries.

Another experiment that's proved its worth is the OpenLaw project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Berkman lawyers specialise in cyberlaw--hacking, copyright, encryption and so on--and the centre has strong ties with the EFF and the open source software community. In 1998 faculty member Lawrence Lessig, now at Stanford Law School, was asked by online publisher Eldritch Press to mount a legal challenge to US copyright law. Eldritch takes books whose copyright has expired and publishes them on the Web, but new legislation to extend copyright from 50 to 70 years after the author's death was cutting off its supply of new material. Lessig invited law students at Harvard and elsewhere to help craft legal arguments challenging the new law on an online forum, which evolved into OpenLaw.

Normal law firms write arguments the way commercial software companies write code. Lawyers discuss a case behind closed doors, and although their final product is released in court, the discussions or "source code" that produced it remain secret. In contrast, OpenLaw crafts its arguments in public and releases them under a copyleft. "We deliberately used free software as a model," says Wendy Selzer, who took over OpenLaw when Lessig moved to Stanford. Around 50 legal scholars now work on Eldritch's case, and OpenLaw has taken other cases, too.

"The gains are much the same as for software," Selzer says. "Hundreds of people scrutinise the 'code' for bugs, and make suggestions how to fix it. And people will take underdeveloped parts of the argument, work on them, then patch them in." Armed with arguments crafted in this way, OpenLaw has taken Eldritch's case--deemed unwinnable at the outset--right through the system and is now seeking a hearing in the Supreme Court.

There are drawbacks, though. The arguments are in the public domain right from the start, so OpenLaw can't spring a surprise in court. For the same reason, it can't take on cases where confidentiality is important. But where there's a strong public interest element, open sourcing has big advantages. Citizens' rights groups, for example, have taken parts of OpenLaw's legal arguments and used them elsewhere. "People use them on letters to Congress, or put them on flyers," Selzer says.

The open content movement is still at an early stage and it's hard to predict how far it will spread. "I'm not sure there are other areas where open source would work," says Sanger. "If there were, we might have started it ourselves." Eric Raymond has also expressed doubts. In his much-quoted 1997 essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, he warned against applying open source methods to other products. "Music and most books are not like software, because they don't generally need to be debugged or maintained," he wrote. Without that need, the products gain little from others' scrutiny and reworking, so there's little benefit in open sourcing. "I do not want to weaken the winning argument for open sourcing software by tying it to a potential loser," he wrote.

But Raymond's views have now shifted subtly. "I'm more willing to admit that I might talk about areas other than software someday," he told New Scientist. "But not now." The right time will be once open source software has won the battle of ideas, he says. He expects that to happen around 2005.

And so the experiment goes on. As a contribution to it, New Scientist has agreed to issue this article under a copyleft. That means you can copy it, redistribute it, reprint it in whole or in part, and generally play around with it as long as you, too, release your version under a copyleft and abide by the other terms and conditions in the licence. We also ask that you inform us of any use you make of the article, by e-mailing [e-mail].

One reason for doing so is that by releasing it under a copyleft, we can print the recipe for OpenCola without violating its copyleft. If nothing else, that demonstrates the power of the copyleft to spread itself. But there's another reason, too: to see what happens. To my knowledge this is the first magazine article published under a copyleft. Who knows what the outcome will be? Perhaps the article will disappear without a trace. Perhaps it will be photocopied, redistributed, re-edited, rewritten, cut and pasted onto websites, handbills and articles all over the world. I don't know--but that's the point. It's not up to me any more. The decision belongs to all of us.

@Furtherreading: The source code of this article plus details of the conditions can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/copyleft
For a selection of copylefts, see http://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/open_alternati ves.html
The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond is available at http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/

@BoxTitle: Copyright © 2002 Reed Business Information Ltd, England
@BoxBody:THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt

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Open Company

About 2 years ago I wrote The Open Company Manifesto [webword.com]. (Sorry for the self promotion, but it is related to this posting.)

Legal Protection

How do you in force a copyleft program/item/idea/paper. Who's job is it, if the product produced is 2-3 generations or projects away from the original one? Is there any legal precedence on this?

[e-mail]

Re:Legal Protection

Neither GPL or copyleft are copyright free. Instead they leverage the power of copyright to function. If GPL were turned down in court, say, it would mean all GPL code reverts with full copyright to the original copyright owner. It would not mean the stuff would become free, quite the opposite. Their copyleft definition mirrors GPL very well, and 'copyfree' would have very wrong connotations.

/Janne

Re:Legal Protection

We better be careful of WHO modifies the story...

<snip>

Stallman's move DID NOT resonate round the computer science community and now there are NOT thousands of similar projects. The star of the movement is NOT Linux, RATHER WINDOWS XP, an operating system created by MIT student BILL GATES in the early 1990s and installed on around 180,000 million computers worldwide.

What sets open source software apart from commercial software is the fact that it HAS A VIRAL NATURE, in both the political and the economic sense. If you want to use a commercial product such as Windows XP you WILL BE HAPPY FOREVER. But if you want to run Linux or another open source package, you can do so without paying a penny--although IT WILL BE EQUIVALENT TO SUPPORTING THE COMMUNIST PARTY.
</snip>

GNUArt !!!

The problems with open music, however, haven't put people off trying open source methods elsewhere.

They actually forgot to mention GNUArt [gnuart.org] which is my attempt to apply the GNU General Public License to Art.

We also opened a Gallery [gnuart.net] which we slowly fill with whatever quality stuff (mostly music and photographs but, hey, the one who criticize are supposed to help too ;-) we get from unselfish artists.

That's it, hope it'll raise some interest.

Damn, no patch tool. How about this anyway?

It's a little early to judge whether the OAL will capture imaginations in the same way as OpenCola. But it's already clear that some of the strengths of open source software simply don't apply to music. In computing, the open source method lets users improve software by eliminating errors and inefficient bits of code, but it's not obvious how that might happen with music. In fact, the music is not really "open source" at all. The files posted on the OAL music website http://www.openmusicregistry.org so far are all MP3s and Ogg Vorbises--formats which allow you to listen but not to modify.

Replace the last sentence with:

The files posted on the OAL music website http://www.openmusicregistry.org so far are all MP3s and Ogg Vorbis. Although the files are easy to play and listen to, they are harder to modify.

Does Open Source Make a Dent?

10 people need a product. (An OS [kernel.org], an encryption toolkit [openssl.org], or an article [newscientist.com].

• 7 go to the internet looking. (3 go to a commercial source)
• Of those 7...
  • 2 find what they need the first time. Their money is *poof* gone. They've made the move. They'll do this again.
  • 2 find what they need, but it doesn't work quite right. They want free so badly, they'll screw with it till it works.
  • 1 finds something close, but it doesn't quite work. This one hires a consultant to tell them how to do it... they'd rather pay a human than buy software.
  • 2 don't find it, and buy software.

New Scientist not always good guys

I wonder when they will do a piece on spamming. They have been engaging in opt-out spam of UK Universities. It's even been taken up by JANET CERT. Here is an excerpt from a posting from a JANET CERT member

I reported to New Scientist that there had been unfavourable responses to their bulk mailing activity. They have asked if I can tell them particular sites where there were many complaints and they will consider dropping those en masse from their mailing list.

Sorry I can't find any publically accessible archive of the discussion on the UK mail managers' list.

on a similar topic...

Richard Stallman explains his thoughts on open source development at Universities and the GPL:

http://www.salon.com/tech/letters/2002/01/29/sta ll man_on_universities/index.html

"open source" cola-- whatever.

From opencola's formula page [opencola.com]

An important note: this is *not* the recipe for "OpenCola" -- that is, the canned beverage from OpenCola that you may have received at a trade show, or other venue or outlet. Making canned cola requires millions of dollars in abstruse gear and manufacturing gizmos. It's easier to make nerve gas than manufacture cola. This is a kitchen-sink recipe that you can make all on your own. It is *our* kitchen-sink recipe. We figured it out somewhere between coding the COLA SDK and debugging the Linux build of the clerver.

OpenCola

Never aware of the OpenSource idea can get to the drink business. Can we find any local distributor of this OpenCola instead of order online?

Under the essence of this, we should soon have OpenSource Burger, OpenSource Sandwich, ... Anyone dare to try some OpenSource Mediine?

Copyright vs Copy Left

Actually. I would not mind the law being changed to state that Copyright would gracefully change into Copy Left after a certain respectable period of time, with appropriiate penalties for alteration and lack of attribution, or false attribution, etc.

Also, I wonder about grandfathering older works into changes in copyright law, but I can see both sides of this one.

Things other than software?

Does the idea of copyleft make sense for things other than software? I'm thinking of the phrase: "Redistribute, copy, and modify, so long as your derivative work is also copyleft." If, for example, research results are published under copyleft, would that mean that any subsequent work that cites the research would also have to be copyleft? If the research were used to create a device, would the device have to be copyleft? The broad definition of "derivative work" is making me somewhat uncomfortable ... I want my research to be used for any reason, anywhere, by anyone, without worrying about the implications for them.

In other news :

Today, the McDonalds corporation agreed to finally 'open source' the recipe for making their trademark Big Mac 'Special Sauce' in return for the marketing rights to 'Tux the Penguin' (a popular open source icon) toys in their childrens meals.

Just minutes after signing this groundbreaking deal, the McDonalds CEO Jack Greenberg ran through the conference hall wearing a pair of bikini briefs apparantly made of 100$ bills, screaming something about salad dressing and kraft singles. More details at 11.

I hereby

Announce that my DNA is copyleft, from this day forward.
If any cute Geekgirl wishes to gain access to my DNA, please send a picture and an essay on the effects of GPL and the software industry and what effects this will have on humanity in whole.
Redheads with green eyes can skip the essay.
Thank you.

A Symbol to mark Open Content

Every article or image that is produced by copyright concious organizations is marked as being copyrighted, with the © and owners name.

Its high time that there was a unique, instantly recognisable symbol for everything that is released under one of the new copyright licences.

The article in question does not have a symbol to mark it as Open Content or Copyleft or Free Content. Unmarked articles are by default, copyrighted upon creation according to the Berne Convention, so if the article was not about copyleft content, one would immediately assume that it was copyrighted if you were to come across it. You would immediately refrain from using it for fear of being sued, and they could claim that it was not freed, because it is not marked as freed.

If this idea of freed content and the freed content itself are to spread, then all content released under these licences needs to be clearly marked as freed; as clearly as the IP that is traditionally copyrighted.

At this page [ibmpcug.co.uk] we have created a set of graphic devices to solve this problem.

Using the old © inverted is about as inelegant a solution as you could dream up. It sends the wrong signals, that in some way, Open Content or Copyleft is "upside down", "wrong way around" or the polar opposite of Copyright, which it is not. Copyright is seen, almost universally, as A Good Thing®. The opposite of a good thing is a bad thing. The use of the inverted © conveys a kind of "upside down crucifix" vibe which is counterproductive.

The new symbol solves this problem, scales graphically for both print and web, and conveys the idea that the properties that it is attached to are licenced content.

Open source Tomato

Once you look for it, it is everywhere!

I just spotted an open source tomato. Inside are little seeds, that contain all the code to construct the tomato yourself. You can do this, but you have to include the little seeds yourself as well. You can even modify it, but the seeds will have to be modified also!

The whole thing was produced by "Nature". It can be used in open source sandwiches, open source burgers etc. as well!

Re:Open source Tomato

Open source tomato, maybe... but open source CORN? No way. Many, many farmers now use "Roundup ready corn" that is patented by Monsanto. They are not allowed to save any of it for seed... and both they and the grain elevator that cleans it can be sued if they do. So, much of the country's corn is closed source.

-jbn

CopyLEFT?

Ok, I'll admit it's catchy. But how about copywrong? Or better yet, and more accurate, copyresponsibility?

Sometimes, I don't know what to thing

As someone who involves himself in a lot of these activities, (I write code, I make music, I make art, no cola yet) I'm really excited and at the same time uncumfortable. I mean, of all these things, only code has shown a reasonable business model, and even that is up for debate.
I really appreciate the concept in code and I agree with it whole-heartedly (to the extent that I tried to talk my company into an open-source production model, but they went with flash instead.) But the thing is, I'm to old to go back to working at coffee shops and flogging my stuff in my off-hours. I'd really like to make a living at something productive that I enjoy. Until we get some clear ideas of how that's going to work for music and art, I'm going to stick to the Fugazi [dischord.com] model of distribution

Oh No!

Not New Scientist!

Does that mean the GPL is impossible, too?

open cola actually closed

I thought that the "opencola" thing was pretty nifty... but it turns out, as you might expect, that it's just a PR stunt, although admittedly one for an open source supporting company. The source (recipe) they give does not generated the binaries (cola) they distribute. From the website:

An important note: this is *not* the recipe for "OpenCola" -- that is, the canned beverage from OpenCola that you may have received at a trade show, or other venue or outlet. Making canned cola requires millions of dollars in abstruse gear and manufacturing gizmos. It's easier to make nerve gas than manufacture cola. This is a kitchen-sink recipe that you can make all on your own. It is *our* kitchen-sink recipe. We figured it out somewhere between coding the COLA SDK and debugging the Linux build of the clerver.

Even so, it would be fun to try making some. But there's nothing new here: cola recipes have been around for decades, and the folklore process that propagates them is the original form of open source.

The significance of this

Glad the article is more than I thought when I read the title "New scientist tries out copyleft" -- that some new person (who happens to be a scientist) decided to try out the GPL. I mean, I know Slashdot sometimes has slow news days, but I thought they were sinking to new lows.

Open Content?

I hate to gripe (ok, not really), but where is the mention of Open Content [opencontent.org] in this article? The project released its first non-software license (the open content license) almost four years ago... Raymond's book the Cathedral and the Bazaar is licensed under the Open Publication License, as have been a variety of other books (example [reusability.org]). It's pretty disheartening to get passed over in favor of the GNU project who were *much* later getting involved in the content/non-software world formally, with specific licenses, etc. This is the kind of non-recognition that makes busy people drop their time-intensive, unappreciated projects... Geesh.

Open Audio License - meant for rave

I found the discussion of the OAL pathetic. Mainstream bands? Does this guy have no clue? The people that should release under OAL are electronic musicians or dj's, and it would probably be mostly amateurs. There is particularly a huge opportunity for amateur dj's to make mix cd's of amateur musicians' music. Since they would be allowed to sell them as long as they credit the original artist, rather than being forced to try to license all the music from record companies at ridiculous fees. Or giving away the cd's with 'For Promotional Use Only' written on them, which is actually still not legal. The techno/rave culture's focus on music that's made on computers, can be remixed on a computer, traded over a computer, and with everyone wanting to be a dj or producer or remixer seems a fertile ground for the OAL. The do it yourself attitude mimics that among the open source software community. People want to give music away, or want to take music others make and do something to make it their own. Not allowed with conventional audio licenses. Jimmy Buffet fans don't have much to gain.

What I think should be teemed up with the OAL is the 'source code' of the music. If I make a song and release just the finished .wav file, that's like distributing a binary of a program. Hard/impossible to really modify. If I release not just the song, but also all the individual .wav files that I used as samples, and a file describing how they're laid out (a .acd file for me because I primarily use Sonic Foundry products) then others are legally free AND TECHNICALLY ABLE to remix the song, use some elements, whatever. One of the neatest things that Sonic Foundry does is have remix contests on their Acidplanet.com site where artists like Beck or Madonna or the Beastie Boys make the original tracks (meaning all the component .wav files) available for a remix contest. It's then so easy to remix, cut up the samples, put in your own favorite loops, vocal samples, etc., really make the song your own. Just releasing the music would be like just selling OpenCola without the recipe on it. You need the 'source' for it to be truly open.

Counter-copyright and dedicate to public domain

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/cc.html
is an alternative to copyright. The sign [cc] indicates not copyright, but shows support for the public domain and stands for a willingness to share information the way traditional science has always operated. New Scientist ought to consider it instead of their license.

Please consider [cc] along with licenses for open or free works, which depend on copyright. As you know, all works are now copyrighted when first created and will not enter the public domain until the copyright term expires (if it ever does), some 70 or 50 years after your death. We need the public domain in order freely to recycle old works into new, now.

The OpenLaw site (http://openlaw.org) shows how Open Source or Free Software principles can be applied to legal projects, traditionally the domain of well-paid individual attorneys.

anti-plagiarism software and copyright

"What the net giveth the net taketh away"

The recent scandal by several historians shows that it becomes increasingly difficult to steal someone else's work and claim it as your own. The net makes it easy to find and copy other people's work. At the same time improved search engines make it easier to detect that this has happened.

What this doesn't address is money. Though it is easier to maintain authorship priority on the net, it doesn't prevent people from making free copies.

OGL - open gaming license

Besides OpenCola and OpenLaw, there are other places out there opening up information. Many of you might be familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, the classic RPG. A few years back the current owners (Wizards of the Coast) came out with a new version. But besides that, they opened up two different licenses (OGL (open gaming license) and D20) and opened up the majority of their game for use. A good place to get information on this is http://www.opengamingfoundation.org

=Blue(23)

Let's fix the article

I notice that lots of folks have criticisms about the article. I certainly do too. (eg: RJS must be having kittens about now for being referred to as having started the Open Source movement). And I know the ususal /. solution is to spell out these criticisms in follow-up postings.

However, this situation is different. Since the article is copylefted, rather than complain about it, let's just fix it! :-)

So if anyone posts a criticism about the article here, post a "show me the source" reply. :-)

Couple of minor points..

Though they talk about Stallman a lot, the article tends to blur 'free software' and 'open source'. I could see RMS forking this article.

And also, from the article: "[Linux source code] contributions are reviewed by a panel and the best ones are added to Linux." (emphasis mine)

Yeah, reviewed by a panel of one [slashdot.org]?

This page is illegal

Congratulations to Slashdot for now giving us ... the first Open Content Licence Conflict!

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2002 OSDN.

I'm afraid that the numerous reproductions of the article in comments on this page can't both be "owned by the Poster" and meet the conditions of the New Statesman licence regarding redistribution. Sue each other at will.

Open source music is live and well

But it's already clear that some of the strengths of open source software simply don't apply to music. In computing, the open source method lets users improve software by eliminating errors and inefficient bits of code, but it's not obvious how that might happen with music. In fact, the music is not really "open source" at all. The files posted on the OAL music website http://www.openmusicregistry.org so far are all MP3s and Ogg Vorbises--formats which allow you to listen but not to modify.

Only nerds would confuse the medium (MP3, Ogg ) with the music. To see Open Source Music in action go to a Folk Music Festival or Jazz Club. What you'll see is late-night jam sessions full of old-timers demonstrating licks for neophytes who then incorporate them into new music. You'll also see older musicians excited to learn a new style from younger musicians. These venues are hothouses of creativity where everyone is borrowing, adapting and perfecting. Sounds pretty much like Open Source to me!

Fable License

I always thought it would be amusing to license fables, folk-tales and old, graying grandfather "when I was a child..." stories.

Something like, if you take this work and make yourself the hero and make the bad guys more evil and the challenges more overwhelming and so on, then it must be released under the fable license as well.

CVS

I've asked sourceforge.net to provide a CVS repository for this document. If they do, I'll be pettitioning the editors to add the story :) Cross fingers!

Can you open source a Franchise?

<thinkingoutloud>

A franchise is a pretty simple business structure held together by common image and business processes. Normally a franchise owner pays a tithe to the franchiser in exchange to access to IP and in some cases a place to operate. Franchises are all geographically focused. That's why you can have lots of them and they all pay their dues to the slush fund at the top that grants them their right to exist.

The view from the top is pretty good. The franchiser gets to burn the advertising bucks and get to snort the coke off the stripper's tits and carry on like a mega corp exec., or whatever.

i have been trying to imagine an open sourced franchise. say for example a really cool team with some really cool software and really cool ways of developing software and tools etc decided that they'd provide the overall branding and infrastructure, and for no fee, but enforced compliance, people could adopt your franchise and your cool tools, processes, etc and your billing systems etc, and make good money or not as they choose, but rather than contribute money upstream, innovations and enhancements are fed through to all memebers of the franchise network.

a client would know that when they hire one franchise team they are getting a whole network of teams that work in very very similar ways, but with local enhancements that if generally accepted as beneficial, get accepted by the network of teams.

tools such as CVS and then sourceforge allowed open source projects to flourish. similarly tools such as p2p project management tools and billing systems, as well as automated unit testing ala JUnit, and a host of other eXtreme Programming widgets will allow teams to gather around a brand for the accelerating benefit of all. I think the so called open company manifesto [webword.com], an amateur regurgitation of the main tennents of the ClueTrain Manifesto [cluetrain.org], missed the point entirely. The Open Cola [opencola.com] experiment is a sham and a marketing gimmick. I quote "An important note: this is *not* the recipe for "OpenCola" -- that is, the canned beverage from OpenCola that you may have received at a trade show, or other venue or outlet. Making canned cola requires millions of dollars in abstruse gear and manufacturing gizmos. It's easier to make nerve gas than manufacture cola. This is a kitchen-sink recipe that you can make all on your own. It is *our* kitchen-sink recipe. We figured it out somewhere between coding the COLA SDK and debugging the Linux build of the clerver." [from their recipe].

But there is no reason why the philosophies surrounding the open source movement cannot have direct impact on the way a multinational runs, as well as the legal system, education, health care, prisons, terrorist networks, and even the military. an open sourced army? be the first on your block. :-)

</thinkingoutloud>

Article cites the wrong movement

The article is nice but I wish they'd learn the difference between the Open Source Movement and the Free Software Movement. The Free Software Movement is what RMS started in 1984, what is properly associated with copyleft and what should be mentioned so frequently in NewScientist's article. Open Source advocates are, ironically enough, anxious to avoid talking about freedom and ethics. The Open Source Movement encourages you to license your copyrighted software under the new BSD license or another license that essentially makes your software a gift to business. It's the older Free Software Movement that stresses greater societal software rights, using a copylefted free software license (such as the GNU GPL) so derivatives of your work can't be made non-free.

Re:Wow... News for nerds

New Scientist is not "some dumbfuck magazine", it's a respected and well-founded source quoted and linked to regularily on Slashdot. It's not like articled on the GPL are abundant in the prominent non-IT press, especially not ones considering wider effects of copyleft.
Incidently, German c't (computer mag, as you might know) ran a similar, long article in one of their past issues, describing how the open source could affect other parts of the social and economic world.

Re:Your post is buggy

Unfortunately page widening works just fine on SGI Links

Re:Woo Hoo!

No, no, you've got it all wrong. It's OK to control the chickens. Controlling the eggs is heresy. You've goaded me into posting my grocery store piece about the GPL. It's also available on Google's USENET archive if you search for it:

Nevermind where they are getting the value from, the bottom line is: are
they getting it?

As a customer, I look at a product and say: Does it do what I want? Is the
price reasonable?

If the answer to both these questions is YES, I buy the product.

The only way Free Software loses is by failing the 1st question, and that
happens quite a bit. Either a system is efficient at answering my two
questions, or it isn't, and Free Software is not the efficient system that
its advocates would like you to think it is. It's like, I want to buy eggs,
and the guy at the supermarket says:

"we have no eggs, but we have chickens. You can take the eggs for free when
they lay".

There is a long line for the free eggs, and the guy estimates the wait will
be 6 hours. Do you sit around waiting in line for eggs, or do you go next
door and buy them? Then this guy walks in and says:

"Hi, I'm Mr. IBM. I'd like to buy a chicken".

"Fine" says the clerk. "That'll be $1500."

So, Mr. IBM gets fresh eggs every day any way he likes them.

"This is ridiculous" you say. "I'm going next door".

"No" says the clerk. "selling eggs for money is evil. Eggs want to be
free".

"But you just sold a chicken for $1500. How is that any less evil than
selling eggs?".

"Don't ask me to explain it" says the clerk. "There is this bearded guy who
comes around preaching every day at 11 and he has a lot of followers. I'm
afraid to upset them".

The clerk had a wild look in his eye, so I stayed the full 6 hours. Quite
frankly, I was afraid what he might do with the meat cleaver.

I never went back to that market.

--$teve