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May 23, 2008

Lately, there appears to be a growing disconnect between commercial open source software integrators, some aspects of the Linux community and open source user disciples per se.

If open source vendors aren't proactive enough about writing and publishing declarative statements about their community involvement, they may find that open source users start judging them on their own terms. From the GNU comes the suggestion that a new independent organization could be formed to judge vendors that claim to be open source on a number of criteria, such as patent policy, business model and development model.

Chris Marino of SnapLogic Inc. suggests that some of the tension might be eased by open source software vendors being more thruthful about their intentions via the publication of social contracts. Examples include the Debian Social Contract and also Funambol’s Open Source Project Social Contract.

Issues happen when companies start changing how they interact with open source communities. Nevertheless, this sort of contract at least lays out the ground rules so that users and developers know what sort of vendor they are dealing with and have something definitive to refer to when misunderstandings take place.

This would certainly help to avoid debates such as "MySQL is free software but not open source" (ooppss! What was that all about?)

At any rate, most will agree that this "development model isn't open".

“Equitable Open Source” as it is called in some circles, is only a suggestion at this stage, but is an example of the caution being expressed by some users towards commercial open source vendors. As the idea is described, it would at least create a level playing field upon which vendors can be judged simply on their own merits.

Some in the Linux community have recently suggested adding open source patent and trademark definitions to the Open Source "Copyright" Definition. Does the industry need an open source definition for business and development models as well you might ask?

Some respondents have pointed out that, according to the Open Source Definition, MySQL is in fact open source, and the fact is that the OSD only defines the license used to distribute the software, not the method used to develop it, or so it seems.

Agree or disagree? Write us your comments or questions here.

Source: OSD.

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