Posted on

Commons Clause is a Legal Minefield and a Very Bad Idea

Image from page 256 of Bugle-echoes : a collection of the poetry of the civil war, northern and southern (1890)

I recently received a question from Christine Cardoza, journalist at SD Times:

I am writing a story on all the controversy in the industry going on with the Common Clause license. I know it is not an OSI approved license, but I was wondering if you had a statement you could provide on this. Some of the sources I have talked to say they do believe this still promotes open source and that the OSI needs to change some of its rules, so I would really love to include OSI’s take on this if possible.

Her article will be out soon, but she gave me permission to publish my response now:

Hi, Christine. I believe there were plans for OSI to make an official statement on this kerfuffle, but I don’t know where that is in the process. What follows is my professional opinion as an open source strategy and policy consultant for businesses and should not be construed as an official OSI statement.

First of all, terminology: Commons Clause is not a license. It’s a clause that can be applied to licenses. Specifically, it’s intended to be applied to OSI-approved licenses. By restricting people from making money from a project where it is applied, the Commons Clause directly violates Item 6 in the Open Source Definition. As the Open Source Definition is no longer applicable to those projects, they—quite literally by definition—are no longer open source. At best they can be called “source available.”

The Commons Clause FAQ states that “[t]he Commons Clause was intended, in practice, to have virtually no effect other than force a negotiation with those who take predatory commercial advantage of open source development,” however at no point have I seen a statement from either the Commons Clause creators nor any project(s) applying it that they attempted other approaches to encourage collaboration from those they see to be taking “predatory commercial advantage” of their projects. For instance, Redis recently applied the Clause to a few of their modules due to “…today’s cloud providers…taking advantage of successful open source projects and repackaging them into competitive, proprietary service offerings.” Their statement on the change does not say, “We approached the cloud providers and asked them to collaborate, but they refused,” or even “We approached the cloud providers and asked why they do not collaborate and how we can improve this experience for them.” From the outside looking in, it does not appear as though Redis tried to encourage collaboration before throwing a tantrum and relicensing to this proprietary license. That’s not how to be a good free and open source citizen.

As far as that is concerned, their stated reason (“taking advantage of open source projects”) does not square with their actions, as instead of relicensing the project (Redis) that is being taken advantage of it relicensed a few modules instead. While this could be seen as them testing the waters prior to a large relicensing of the main project, the core developer has stated that this will never happen. Therefore it does not seem as though the relicensing will gain Redis much beyond some major damage to their reputation. It feels as though they—an open core company—looked at that open core, decided it was a little too large and they could be a stronger business by shrinking it by a few modules. That’s a completely valid business decision which I would not fault, but it’s not the stated reason for the relicensing. The entire situation is quite perplexing.

And then there’s the Commons Clause itself. Heather Meeker helped to write it. She’s no fool and is a very accomplished and well-respected intellectual property lawyer who has a career of experience working with free and open source licenses. Despite this skilled help, the Commons Clause team came up with a restriction against selling that is so broadly stated that it puts an impressive number of people at risk of license violation should they come into professional contact with any project that is under a license tainted by the Commons Clause:

“…practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software…”

According to this restriction, I as a freelancer would violate the license if I helped a client who used Redis and happened to use one of these modules with the tainted proprietary license. I would probably be held liable even if I were unaware of the use of those modules. I’m far from the only freelancer who looked on the Commons Clause with horror. For instance, Jim Salter, a freelance system administrator, network specialist, and author, says he now feels he can’t work on any project that involves Redis lest he put himself at risk. He’s only one of many freelancers I’ve heard express these thoughts and state outright that they will not work on projects involving Redis. They simply can’t afford to lose their livelihoods due to a legally vague license.

As to the question that open source needs to change, I’ll simply direct you to my blog post on the subject and summarise it as: Open source does not need to change; people simply need to learn how to do business. Stop using open source and expecting it to do the hard work of creating a successful business. It’s a tool, and it’s a great one, but it’s only a tool.

Posted on

Open source is NOT a business model (and your business will fail if you think that it is)

Southern Pacific Sunset Limited Diner, Budd Company, from SMU Collections, Flickr

Consider this conversation:

Person 1: Did you know that 60% of restaurants close within three years of opening?

Person 2: Oh no! We should change the fundamental definition of “food”. That will fix it.

How does that sound to you? Ridiculous? Good, because it is. Now compare this conversation:

Person 1: Did you know that a lot of “open source” companies can’t make money?

Person 2: Oh no! We should change the fundamental definition of “open source”. That will fix it.

This conversation is just as ridiculous, yet I’ve seen many versions of it recently. Some misguided souls are saying that the Open Source Definition must be changed to include matters of revenue and profit (AKA “how to make money from open source”), because open source is a business model. Let’s just get this settled once and for all, OK?

OPEN SOURCE IS NOT A BUSINESS MODEL.

According to Harvard Business Review, it’s difficult to define ‘business model’. Some of the definitions they’ve collected over the years are:

  • “All it really meant was how you planned to make money.”
  • “…assumptions about what a company gets paid for…”
  • “…a good business model answers…How do we make money in this business?”

There is a great number of potential business models, but “open source” is not one of them. It is, instead, one of the many tools that can be employed in order to make a selected business model work as expected. The most common form of employment here for open source is in open core, which is itself just a variation on the freemium model. In this model, the open source is the tool that is used to entice potential customers to come to the company and hopefully to hand over their money for additional features or advanced support.

Going back to the restaurant example above, saying that open source is a business model is like saying “food is a business model.” Both are things that can attract potential customers, but each is just one of the tools that get customers there. Usability, suitability (market fit), advertising, good service, open source… Each of these is among the many elements that can help convert a prospect into a customer, and each is employed differently depending upon the market and business model.

Therefore open source has not, does not, and should not concern itself with business any more than food concerns itself with business. If there is a business that has a business model that is not living up to expectations, and if that business model uses open source as one if its tools, it’s illogical to blame open source for the failure. That business is asking the tool to do all of the work, rather than learning how to use the tool effectively.

The best way to have a successful business is not to rely on trendy business models and buzzwords. It’s to learn and practice business administration, to learn what the customer needs and values, and then to find a business model that will deliver that value while also supporting the profitability of the enterprise. For some companies, that business model may be open core, but it’s worth researching the past performance of open core companies before taking that plunge.

In 2015 John Mark Walker published a series of articles on Linux.com under the title, How to Make Money from Open Source Platforms. In the first article of the series, he makes the astute observation that no successful product has come from an open core company. The rest of the series investigates other business models that companies can explore related to open source products and projects. He shows how it’s possible to make money and build a successful business around free and open source software, but that success is due to savvy business acumen and not necessarily due to the free and open source software itself.

So, please, take more care when selecting a business model for your company, and please stop thinking that open source itself is anything more than a tool to help execute that business model.

Posted on

Redis Labs and the Questionable Business Decision

Redis Enterprise is Everywhere
A screenshot from the Redis Labs website, taken 2018-08-21.

I’ve been trying to take a bit of a break from writing, but considering what I do for a living, how I spend my free time, and the baffling level of WTAF of today’s news, taking a break from break-taking seemed in order.

Today Redis Labs announced that it was adding something called the Commons Clause “…to certain components of open source Redis.” It acknowledges that this means those components are no longer open source, but hand waves that away and implies that it’s not a big deal.

It’s a big deal, and it’s a bad idea.

The Commons Clause is intended as an add-on to OSI-approved licenses. Its primary purpose is to remove “the right to Sell the Software.” Unfortunately, it goes on to define selling as:

…practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software.

Which, you know, is monumentally vague and won’t at all cause problems in court, now will it? Yes, it will. Despite that, the Redis Labs legal and executive teams decided to go forward with this relicensing. What did they hope to accomplish?

Did they hope to force Amazon and other big corporations to stop eating the Redis Labs lunch? If so, they’re going to fail. What will happen is that Amazon, probably in conjunction with Google, will fork Redis to avoid this problem. While it could continue using and developing this fork internally, it’s more likely that they’ll release the fork as a FOSS project, thereby wooing away the existing Redis community and contributors. This will allow them to continue operating as they already are without having to bear the entire burden of maintaining the newly forked project. Redis Labs, on the other hand, will be left with the entire burden of maintaining the original Redis project.

But maybe the problem was that Redis Labs was already carrying this entire burden. Their statement does, after all, include this line that implies this may be the case:

Redis Labs is leading and financing the development of open source Redis and deserves to enjoy the fruits of these efforts.

A review of the Redis project contributions (which I have not done) would reveal whether this is what’s happened. If it is, then there are better ways to play nicely in the free/open source playground than to take your ball and go home when someone does something you don’t like. For instance, you could evaluate why there are so few other contributors to the project and then take action to improve those numbers. Or you could approach the biggest users directly and ask them why they aren’t collaborating more, then cooperate with them to help encourage contributions. Or, if you’re relicensing everything anyway, you could switch to something like the AGPL, which would cause other enterprises either to release their own source code or stop using Redis. Of course, this would probably just lead to a fork as mentioned above, but at least Redis Labs would come out looking like a shrewd member of the FOSS community rather than a foot-stamping child.

The entire situation is just perplexing. This sort of change undoubtedly had to receive approval from a lot of very smart people at Redis Labs, and that approval undoubtedly happened after many hours of discussions and emails. Despite that, they decided to go forward with this unfavourable change. If I were one of the investors in Redis Labs, I’d be raising a skeptical eyebrow and taking a good hard look at just what in the heck is going on over there. Questionable decisions like this shouldn’t be able to get through so many layers of leadership without being shot down.

Anyway, you can look forward to a bevy of thinkpieces from free and open source software luminaries in the next few days, all doing the same sort of finger wagging and WTFing that I am. None of us think this is a good idea, which is to be expected from our ilk and is not really news. What interests me now is seeing how the rest of the market reacts. What will AWS, Google Cloud, and the others do with this news? And how will this affect the revenues and profits of Redis Labs? Will they be able to keep up their streak of 10 quarters so far of double-digit growth?

Let’s find out.

Posted on

Open Hardware: Good for Your Brand, Good for Your Bottom Line

Article originally published in the June 2018 issue of Linux Journal

I don’t know how to put this, but Hardware is kind of a Big Deal, and thanks to the Internet of Things (aka IoT), it’s getting bigger every year. The analyst firm IDC expects spending on IoT to reach nearly $800 billion USD by the end of 2018. A study by Intel shows that by 2025 the global worth of IoT technology might be as high as over $6 trillion USD, whereas Forbes reports that the global market could be nearly $9 trillion USD in 2020.

These statistics are based on the traditional model of closed design and development of the chips, boards, and objects that will make these devices a reality. However, what if hardware developers were to learn from and leverage the popularity of free and open source software (aka FOSS)? What if the future of IoT were Open? It’s my belief that the device developers who apply the lessons of FOSS to hardware development will be those best positioned to become the powerhouses of that $9 trillion market. Similarly to software, open hardware will be seen first as a differentiator (rather than an eccentricity) and later, as the industry matures, as the default operating mode for hardware development.

Open hardware will require a lot of evolution before it becomes the default development paradigm for IoT. The current state of open hardware closely resembles that of free software thirty years ago: it exists, but in a nebulous form. While organisations such as the Open Source Hardware Association and the Open Hardware Repository are working to change this, the fact remains that there currently are few clear legal, social, or procedural norms around open hardware development. There is no hardware equivalent of the Open Source Initiative‘s list of approved licenses, or agreement on whether a license is even needed at all. The diversity of tools required for hardware design makes collaboration and interoperability more difficult. These legal and procedural questions contribute to a very high barrier to entry for releasing designs as open hardware. That barrier isn’t insurmountable, however. Already advancements in 3D printing as well as emulation and virtualisation through digital twins are enabling types of collaboration that were impossible just a few short years ago. As these methods continue to adapt, the resulting emergent and open processes and norms will drive further and faster innovations.

The openness of hardware will also be hampered for a while by the limitations imposed by chip makers. For instance, the n Mark I voice assistant speaker is certified as open hardware, but includes components built upon proprietary chipsets and boards. Joshua Montgomery, CEO of Mycroft, sees this as a valuable stepping stone toward an entirely open hardware platform. “For now, a lot of open hardware is like LEGO™: while the bricks themselves aren’t open, the designs built with them can be.” This stepping stone has enabled Mycroft to iterate on the Mark I, which incorporates off-the-shelf hardware like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, to create the Mark II, which features a board custom- and openly-designed for security, privacy, and flexibility.

Chip makers are starting to catch on to the advantages of open, however. SiFive has released an entirely open RISC-V development board. Its campaign on the Crowd Supply crowd funding website very quickly raised over $140000 USD. The board itself is hailed as a game-changer in the world of hardware. Developments like these will ensure that it won’t be long before the hardware equivalent of those LEGO™ bricks will soon be as open as the designs built using them.

In the March 2018 issue of Linux Journal I encouraged companies to wait until they’re secure and established in their market before releasing mission-critical software as open source. The reason here is, of course, that it’s quite simple for someone else to take that software, spin up a new cloud instance, and create a company that competes in your market. There are very good business reasons for a company retaining its software intellectual property until the company has locked in its market.

However, that’s not currently the case for hardware. The complexities involved with manufacturing are far more daunting than those around launching a new software firm. The knowledge, regulations, testing, and tooling involved with bringing new hardware to market create a massive—and massively protective—barrier that’s compounded by those undefined legal, social, and procedural norms I mentioned earlier. This provides open hardware startups the freedom to share their designs after (or even before) product launch while still retaining prime mover advantage, simply because no other company would be able to spin up the tooling required quickly enough to impact the sales and market of that prime mover. Once a piece of open hardware is released to customers, the company creating it is already so far ahead of any others that would use its designs that there is little danger of market loss or competition. According to Josh Lifton, CEO of Crowd Supply, even after helping hundreds of creators launch their open hardware products on the platform, “…we have never gotten any report of an idea from a Crowd Supply project getting stolen.”

While open hardware does not share free and open source software’s business risks for releasing of intellectual property, it does share its difficulties in attracting contributors and building a community. While both open endeavours represent the field of dreams for creators, it remains true that if you build it, they will not necessarily come. This is especially true for open hardware where people are not only less used to the idea of contributing, they’re also often less prepared to do so. Aside from the specialised tooling required to read, manipulate, and understand hardware design files, there’s the additional problem of a knowledge gap. Relatively speaking, far more people are equipped with the knowledge and resources necessary to contribute to FOSS projects. When source files are distributed for a free and open source software project, many people already know what to do with them. When source files are distributed for an open hardware project, comparatively few people will have the electrical engineering, industrial design, stress analysis, or other related experience (let alone the very expensive tools required) to contribute effectively. While this naturally leads to considerably fewer contributions to and collaborators on an open hardware project, it also means that those collaborators are more likely to be qualified and their contributions of a higher quality.

Hope of contributions should not be the primary reason for releasing hardware designs under an open license. As Kaia Dekker, CEO of Keyboardio points out, building a business while relying on volunteers for contributions “really isn’t something that necessarily works out.” This is a consideration that’s overlooked by a lot of the new breed of “open first” software businesses springing up these days, but that the sparse contributions make impossible to ignore for open hardware.

Despite this, open hardware still allows companies to reduce the time and expense required for research and development. For instance, Dekker says, developing the Keyboardio Model 01 would not have been practical without the open platform of Arduino or the vibrant community around it. Open hardware components are similar to libraries or modules for software: they allow an organisation to add functionality without having to develop it themselves. Entirely new products, such as the Keyboardio Model 01 or the Mycroft Mark I can come to market thanks to what are essentially off-the-shelf open hardware components.

Joshua Montgomery of Mycroft AI points out that as important as the R&D benefits were to their company when they were getting started, they’re finding that opening the new design of the Mark II is also opening possibilities that they’d not have seen had they kept their hardware proprietary. Through careful design of the Mark II board, Mycroft has created a new off-the-shelf component that partners and other businesses can use, in combination with the open source Mycroft Artificial Intelligence platform, to add a voice assistant feature to their own devices. This increases adoption of the AI platform software along with the contributions and collaborators on it.

By designing their hardware to work in many different contexts then releasing it as an open solution, Mycroft also has gained the benefit of economy of scale for themselves as well as for all companies using the open component. When all companies order the component from the same manufacturer, the subsequent “run” of the part becomes cheaper for every company that uses it. This open supply chain also reduces risk for all participants. Should a supplier fail or withdraw from manufacturing a component, with open hardware it’s possible to spin up tooling in another location. With proprietary hardware, it’s possible if not likely that companies reliant upon that component will need to redesign their products when a component is no longer available. Naturally this type of economy of scale will depend a lot upon the market and company strategy, but the Mycroft example, even in these early days of open hardware, proves that the open approach can provide innovation opportunities and benefits to innumerable companies and entrepreneurs.

According to Kaia Dekker, none of these benefits would be possible without the communities that form around open hardware projects. “It opens doors to us that would be closed otherwise.” Keyboardio has found unexpected success in recruiting firmware development and other talent from their community. That same community can develop after-market accessories for the Model 01, adding, if they wish, features such as wireless capability thanks to the open hardware at the core of the device. This ecosystem of accessories as well as the supportive community has strengthened the Keyboardio brand as their community members have become their most passionate and outspoken advocates. Keyboardio has found that the transparency has increased their perceived reliability in the eyes of their target market, which itself increases the market’s trust in them. Josh Lifton agrees and says that many Crowd Supply creators have seen similar results. “A lot of these people are early adopters and innovators. This type of person usually has a strong community-minded ideology.”

The transparency of open hardware does more than build trust in its communities. It also builds trust in the entire customer base. According to Joshua Montgomery of Mycroft, the “radical transparency” of the Mark I and Mark II devices help to support their reputation for privacy and security. Increasingly, this sort of reputation can have a huge impact on companies looking to enter certain markets. Open hardware ensures that there is never a black box. Consumers, regulators, and security auditors all have equal access to the designs of the devices. In an environment where customers are more privacy aware than ever, this type of transparency can be a powerful differentiator for products.

In 1997 Clayton Christensen detailed the dangers of ignoring the new paradigms in business in The Innovator’s Dilemma. Hardware and IoT creators today are at risk of stumbling straight into that dilemma if they don’t embrace the type of innovation and collaboration that free and open source software has proved is possible. While the ecosystem and contribution norms are still taking shape around open hardware, it’s clear from the benefits listed above that the current environment provides enormous opportunities for companies willing and able to work with and mold that ecosystem. The companies that recognise this now are those that will lead the way for several decades to come.

Posted on

The Past, Present, and Future of Open Source

Last week Christina Cardoza of SD Times published an excellent article about the first 20 years of open source. I was interviewed for the article, but naturally only part of the interview was used (there were other excellent folks to speak with as well).

Here’s the complete text of that interview.

What really marked the start of open source software in your opinion?

What really marked the start of open source software was the start of Free Software. Without the genius insight of Richard Stallman (aka RMS) that existing copyright and licensing mechanisms could be leveraged to enable the distribution and sharing of software—freely and openly—none of us would be here talking about this today. There would have been no open source software history without the work of GNU, FSF, GNOME, and others. All of software development owes them a huge debt.

Any “start” demarcation beyond that assumes that open source software is an entirely different thing from free software, and that’s just not true. While there may be exceptions, generally speaking all free software is also open source, according to the open source definition. Beyond that there’s a spectrum starting at the stalwart reciprocity of the GPL and the Four Freedoms and running through to the neutral permissiveness of MIT licensed software.

Each end of this spectrum—and every point on it—is a philosophy, and each has existed since people started thinking about the nature of software. Therefore I don’t think there’s any way you can point at a single moment in the history of software and say, “There. That spark right there. That’s open source being born.” It’s not really possible. The release of Netscape or of Java may have captured mindshare and imaginations, but they’re lagging indicators of the birth of open source, not leading ones.

What did the open source landscape look like 20 years ago, and how have you seen it evolve?

Twenty years ago is right around when I was starting my tech career, so while I was aware of, used, and advocated for free and open source software I was more focused on finding my place in tech and paying off student loans than on contributing and becoming a part of the community. I didn’t become really dialed into the FOSS landscape for another three or four years, and wasn’t able to travel and explore that landscape widely for several years after that.So with that in mind…

I like to think of free and open source software as evolving through epochs or versions, much like any software would. FOSS v1.0 was the the dawn of Free Software thanks to RMS and the thousands of others who helped to bring Free Software into the world. This version is usually considered more “wild west” and programmer-driven. Programmers building tools for programmers, driven by a philosophical belief that Sharing Is Good And Right.

The launching of the Open Source Definition and the creation of the Open Source Initiative also brought with them the beginning of FOSS v2.0. In this version FOSS gained mindshare and acceptance, becoming normalised.

What we’re witnessing now is the beginning of FOSS v3.0. Free and open source have evolved from niche and mission-driven movements into Business As Usual. Version 3.0 is rocketing in—propelled by an explosion of corporate involvement, contribution, and sponsorship—but at this speed there’s a very real risk of losing sight of the mission and the bigger picture of FOSS. How are we in the free and open source software communities going to work with the corporations to teach them the human and business benefits of that bigger picture, and how are we going to help them continue to be involved, to contribute, and to sponsor FOSS, but also and importantly to understand and respect that mission? It’s a critical question and one not enough people are discussing.

What do you think was the tipping point for enterprises to realize the importance of open source software?

To be honest, most of them still haven’t realised the importance of free and open source software. I’ve seen companies shut down their open source programs. I’ve seen companies swear they don’t use any open source software and then seen the stunned looks on their faces when they’re shown how much of their stack is free and open source software. I’ve seen companies release fauxpen source, either by throwing unlicensed and unsupported projects over the wall and calling them “open source” or by releasing them under proprietary licenses and claiming they’re “open source” when at best they may be “source available.”

While, yes, there is that explosion of corporate involvement, contribution, and sponsorship, it’s fueled by a tiny fraction of companies. We’ve come a long way, and it’s been wonderful to be along for the ride, but it’s unfair to say that we’ve already crossed the tipping point as there’s still so much work yet to do. That’s our task as we develop and evolve FOSS v3.0.

What is the state of open source software today, and what areas still need to be improved?

For all the decades of their existence, the predominant development approach of most of free and open source software has been “by programmers for programmers.” That’s gotten us this far, and that’s great. However, we’re not going to move FOSS much further if we don’t shift from that approach to one of “by programmers for others.” The usability, accessibility, and documentation of most FOSS projects are in such a state as to be entirely out of reach of people who don’t spend their lives steeped in technology and software development. We’re not going to further the missions of free and open source software if we can’t start developing software that reaches out to a new market of users and, most importantly, meets them where they are rather than expecting them to read code, edit config files, or open up a terminal just to perform basic tasks. If FOSS can’t expand beyond the server and the enterprise then it will never realise the dreams that brought it to life in the first place.

Answers (c) VM Brasseur; Licensed CC BY-SA

Questions (c) Christina Cardoza

Posted on

FOSS as a Part of a Corporate Sustainability Plan

Article originally published in the May 2018 issue of Linux Journal

Free and open source software is a critical part of your company’s supply chain. Here’s why and how you can include it in your corporate sustainability plan.

In 1983 the United Nations convened a commission of 22 people to investigate the question of the worldwide environmental and social impact of human development. Four years later, in 1987, the commission released Our Common Future, more commonly known as the Brundtland Report in honour of Gro Harlem Brundtland, chairperson of the commission. This report detailed the very real socio-environmental issues facing humanity. One of its recommendations was for governments, organisations, and companies to start engaging in what it called sustainable development. That is, “…development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Since then there’s been steep growth in the number of corporations that maintain and operate according to a corporate sustainability plan. These plans encompass environmental as well as social aspects of doing business. They encompass actions within an organisation—such as natural resource usage, diversity and inclusion, and fair treatment of employees—as well as those external to the organisation—such as the sustainability operations of their entire supply chain as well as the overall impact the corporation has on the Earth and its inhabitants.

The benefits of sustainability

A sustainability plan impacts every facet of an organisation’s operations and can take a fair bit of effort to implement and maintain. If that’s the case, then why are more corporations putting these plans into action every year? While it would be nice to think that this occurs for entirely altruistic reasons—taking care of the Earth and its inhabitants is simply the right thing to do, after all—the fact of the matter is that studies repeatedly show that properly implemented corporate sustainability plans are very good for the bottom line.

Innovations and profitability

Sustainability requires partnering and collaborating not only across groups within the organisation, but also with many external to it. These collaborations expose a corporation to new ideas and innovations in market, process, policy, and product, all of which can lead to improved profitability while moving the company toward its sustainabiity goals. Without the support and engagement of all employees, a sustainability plan will fail. Therefore the execution of a sustainability strategy requires a shift in management from the old style of command and control toward a modern style of trust, communication, and employee development. By empowering and training employees, a sustainable corporation improves its ability to execute plans while also increasing employee satisfaction and retention. Beyond just innovations, profitability is increased through reduced expenditures, entry into new markets, and a lower cost of capital.

Investments

Investments are also impacted, as more investors are now looking at a corporation’s sustainability plan as a deciding factor on where to place their money. When you think about it, it’s surprising that sustainability hasn’t been a primary investor consideration before now. The strategies that support a successful corporate sustainability plan, focusing on what’s good for society and the environment, are also those that do good for the company. Protecting the organisation’s value and supply chains enables it to ensure it will be around for a good, long while. That longevity—and plan to maintain it—is very appealing to investors in search of both stability and a positive return on their investments. Despite this, studies show that most high level corporate managers still don’t recognise the importance sustainability holds for investors. This provides a great opportunity for those managers who can launch and make a corporate sustainability plan successful before their competitors.

So, yes, corporate sustainability planning (when done properly) is that proverbial rising tide that floats all boats. However, for companies that rely upon technology to keep their business operating (read: all of them), there’s a major component that’s usually left out of their sustainability plan: the software.

Open source software is a part of your supply chain

Operating systems, databases, libraries, infrastructure management and orchestration… No matter what component, all software is a part of your company’s supply chain. How much do you know about it? Do you know what your company’s software supply chain looks like? How much of that chain is or depends upon free and open source software? If you haven’t investigated this before, you’ll likely be surprised by the answer. If you look at little deeper, you’ll be even more surprised to discover just how few people maintain and support the software on which your company relies to operate and do business.

However you look at it, this arrangement is fraught with sustainability concerns. Socially, allowing so few people to perform so much work for so little compensation is inappropriate and does not scale. From a business perspective, it’s very poor practice to rely upon suppliers who may burn out and disappear at any moment. This does nothing good for the longevity prospects for your organisation and dramatically inceases its risk profile.

Open source software is good for sustainability

Don’t get the wrong idea: I’m not here to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (aka FUD) about having free and open source software projects as a part of your supply chain. Even a quick glance will show that you’re unlikely to receive as much value and flexibility from proprietary solutions (if they even exist). Proprietary software is incredibly expensive, less flexible, leads to vendor lock-in, and is at least as likely to disappear without notice. 90% of software startups fail, taking their products and their code with them. The high cost, low innovation, and equal risk of mortality for proprietary software makes it a less appealing solution when considering the longevity and sustainability of your own company. Free and open source solutions are simply the better option.

What is YOUR software supply chain?

The answer, then, is not to cut out the free and open source links in your supply chain. No, the actual answer is to include free and open source software in your corporate sustainability plan. Unlike proprietary software, free and open source (FOSS) solutions enable your company to take action to ensure that the FOSS projects themselves are sustainable. So, how can your company do that?

For starters, if you haven’t done so yet, take this opportunity to become very familiar with your company’s software supply chain. Certain links in that chain will be more important and more strategic than others. While your software sustainability efforts should include all of the links in the chain—FOSS or proprietary—you may find that it makes sense to focus more of your investment in these strategic links.

Build a culture of contribution

As you’re evaluating and integrating your software supply chain into your corporate sustainabilty plan, start communicating internally about the importance of this supply chain. This communication should be across the entire organisation, not simply constrained to the technical departments. By communicating and including the entire company, you open up more avenues for ideas and innovations in sustainability as well as start to build a culture of sharing and contribution that will aid in all your sustainability efforts, FOSS or otherwise.

That culture of contribution will be critical for the next step: empowering staff members to contribute back to the FOSS projects on which your company relies. Reporting bugs and requesting features is one way to contribute, but fixing bugs, adding features, and contributing those changes upstream to the main project is what will lead to improved project longevity. It often can make sense for a company to pay team members to work full time maintaining and enhancing strategic free and open source software projects, but even small contributions submitted by individuals scattered across the organisation can aggregate into a large amount of work toward sustaining projects on which your company relies. Making it easy for team members to contribute will make it much more likely that they will support the projects through their contributions. Remember, too, that FOSS projects need more than just programmers in order to thrive. Enabling contributions from your QA, design, marketing, and other departments will enhance the entire ecosystem of the free and open source software that enables your company to operate, adding to its longevity and reducing risk both for it and for your own company.

Share the load

As you review your software supply chain, consider the problem that each one of those links in the chain is there to solve. Your company is not the only one to have those problems. These are issues faced by many organisations, and no one company will be able to solve these shared problems.

Therefore the next step in integrating free and open source software into your corporate sustainability planning is to release the software your company has developed to solve problems shared by others. Of course this doesn’t mean you should necessarily release the software that provides legitimate market differentiation and value for your company, but there are undoubtedly several tools developed internally that are not of strategic market value but that solve specific problems. By releasing these tools, you enable collaboration with organisations that share similar problems.

By working together to solve these problems through free and open source software, all collaborators share the load of development. This allows them to benefit from the tool while also freeing up internal resources to focus on strategic value creation for their markets. In a case study created by Open Tech Strategies and released by the World Bank, collaboration on free and open source software tools led to a 200% return on investment for the collaborators. Sharing the burden of maintaining these tools ensures their longevity and stability while reducing institutional risk. The end result is a more sustainable business and a healtier free and open source software ecosystem.

Join a Foundation

Depending upon the free and open source software in your supply chain, one approach toward sustainability may be participating in the organisations and foundations formed to support projects that are strategic to your company. By joining organisations like Open Source Initiative, Eclipse Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, and the Linux Foundation, your organisation not only has a seat at the table when discussing the future of strategic FOSS projects, it also gets the opportunity to meet, discuss, and collaborate with companies it may not have had occasion to interact with otherwise. By bringing together disparate organisations and providing not only a shared purpose but also a safe environment for collaboration, these foundations enable member companies to learn from each other and to open the doors for new partnerships and innovations.

Think strategically

I’ve said it already in this article but it’s worth repeating that, just as with the rest of your corporate sustainability plan, it’s crucial that your company’s approach to supporting free and open source software projects be strategic. While it’s tempting to contribute to all FOSS projects equally—and certainly the projects themselves would not complain—from a sustainability point of view your organisation should try to focus its resources on those projects that make a material difference to your company. Material difference means that a project, were it to stop being developed or maintained, would severely impact the operations of your company. These are the FOSS projects most directly linked to your organisation’s longevity, and also makes them risk factors for your corporate sustainability plan.

In order to determine which projects are material to your corporation, you must be fully aware of your software supply chain. This involves not only looking at the free and open source software that allows your company to operate, but also digging deeper to learn on what projects those projects rely. It’s all well and good to acknowledge that the authentication library used for your product is material to company longevity, but if that library itself relies upon cryptographic functionality in another—woefully under-funded—project, your company may be exposed to unforeseen but preventable risks. Ignorance of your software supply chain is no defense against vulnerabilities. Cultivating an awareness of the entire ecosystem within which strategic and material FOSS projects operate will help secure corporate longevity and sustainability.

Make a business case

Focusing software sustainability efforts on material and strategic concerns makes it considerably easier to incorporate free and open source software into the business case for your company’s corporate sustainability plan. It may be tempting to skip this step, but if you do so studies show that it’s likely your sustainability plan will fail. When you pause to consider this, it makes perfect sense. Why should a corporation invest so many resources in shifting the way it does business, up to and including its very business model, if there is nothing in it for them? Again, setting aside altruistic appeals and the fact that taking care of the Earth and its inhabitants is just the right thing to do, being able to make a well-researched and detailed case that doing so is good for the bottom line makes it more likely that even the less environmentally- and socially-minded leaders in your company will get on board with the plan. Don’t simply list what changes will be necessary to enact a corporate sustainability plan, but also reveal exactly what is in it for the company for making this effort.

You’re all in this together

As mentioned earlier, it’s important for any corporate sustainability plan to create a culture of contribution across the entire organisation. If upper management does not communicate what the plan is meant to accomplish and why, it will fail to get the support of the employees who actually have to do the heavy lifting of implementing that plan. Without the support of the entire organisation, your corporate sustainability plan will fail. Sustainability must be a 360 degree effort, not simply something dictated from on high. All members and stakeholders of the company must understand what the sustainability plan is, what impact it will have, what part they specifically will play, and how they will make a difference to the overall outcome.

This communication is hard enough when the plan is simply about environmental and social concerns, issues with which most people are familiar, but it becomes much more difficult when unfamiliar concepts like “free software” and “open source” enter the mix. This is why it’s so important to begin the discussion as early as possible. It can take some time for people to understand that “contribute back to free and open source software projects” can be as meaningful and impactful to the corporate sustainability plan as “reduce water usage,” “use energy from renewable sources,” or “eliminate the gender/race pay gap.”

To help with this communication, rather than dictating implementation details to middle management, company leaders should instead set software sustainability goals for each team or department and then allow each group to define how it can best contribute toward those goals. For technical departments their contributions may be as straightforward as providing patches or releasing internal tools, while less technical departments may come up with less obvious approaches to helping the effort. By empowering each team to approach the problem in its own way, the company is not only encouraging innovation but it’s also building trust within its ranks. This trust, as mentioned before, increases the effectiveness not only of the sustainability plan but also of other operations undertaken by these teams. This trust also leads to higher employee satisfaction and retention. The overall culture of the company evolves into one that is more collaborative, innovative, and therefore sustainable.

Keep yourself accountable

A vital part of any corporate sustainability plan is the company holding itself accountable for delivering on its promises to itself, to its stakeholders, and to the communities on which it relies. Fostering a culture of collaboration includes supporting open communication. That openness must permeate all levels of the company. Embracing and supporting free and open source software and their underlying values can help to cultivate the communication required for accountability. Instituting inner sourcing is a good way to encourage collaboration, communication, and cross-functional accountability on your corporate sustainability plan.

Accountability can also be included at an organisational level by way of performance reviews. For this to work, each employee must understand how they contribute to the overall corporate sustainability plan so that they can work toward meeting their particular goals. This is especially important at the executive level. When leaders are held accountable for their sustainability strategies and plans, it reinforces the importance of the effort to the organisation and encourages participation by all members. Reporting on the company’s progress on its sustainability plan also provides accountability to external stakeholders like investors, partners, and customers. For many companies, it can be uncomfortable at first to embrace this form of open communication both internally and externally, but if they are able to make this shift they’ll reap the benefits of sustainability. It can be a difficult journey, but it’s one entirely worth taking.

Posted on

Do I have to use a free/open source license?

Article originally published in the March 2018 issue of Linux Journal

Man thinking at a deskA few weeks ago I ran into a neighbor, whom I’ll call Leo, while he was out taking his dogs to the park. Leo stopped me to ask about some software he’s developing.

“Hey, you do open source stuff for companies, right?” Leo asked.

“Yeah, that’s my freelance business. Do you need some help with something?”

“Well,” he said, “I’m getting ready to release my software and it’s time to start thinking about a license. Which open source license should I use if I want people to know it’s OK to use my software but if they make money from it they have to pay me?”

I blinked, stared at Leo for a moment, then answered, “None of them. No open source licenses allow for that.”

“No, you see,” he continued, “this guy told me that there must be plenty of licenses that will let me do this with my software.”

“Plenty of proprietary licenses, maybe,” I explained, “but no open source ones. According to Item 6 in the Open Source Definition, no open source license may prevent someone from making money from software released under it. That’s what you’re suggesting, and it’s not possible to do with an open source license.”

Leo did not seem pleased with this answer. “So what you’re saying,” he fretted, “is that I can’t release my software at all!”

“No, no!” I assured him, “You definitely can release and distribute your software. You’ll just have to get an intellectual property lawyer to help you write the proprietary license you want, and maybe to help you release it under a dual license (one open source and one proprietary).”

He nodded (not altogether happily), and headed off to the park with his now very impatient dogs. I continued my walk, pondering what I’d just experienced.

The thing is, Leo was not the first person I’ve spoken to who assumed that software had to be released under an open source license. I’ve had multiple conversations with different people, all of whom had mentally equated “software license” with “open source license.”

It’s easy to understand why. Of all software pursuits, only free and open source software is defined purely in terms of its licenses. Without that license, a piece of software cannot be either free or open. This leads to a greater focus on licensing than for other types of software, which then itself gains a lot of mindshare. The larger intellectual property concept of “licensing” becomes so closely associated with “open source,” and is often the only context in which someone hears of licensing, that people understandably start to assume that all licenses must therefore be open source.

That, as we all probably already know, is not the case. The only licenses that can be called “open source” are those that are reviewed and approved as such by the Open Source Initiative (aka OSI). Its list of OSI-Approved licenses allows developers to choose and apply a license without having to hire a lawyer. It also means that companies no longer need to have their own lawyers review every single license in every piece of software they use. Can you imagine how expensive it would be if every company needed to do this? Aside from the legal costs, the duplication of effort alone would lead to millions of dollars in lost productivity. While the OSI’s other outreach and advocacy efforts are important, there’s no doubt that their license approval process is a service that provides an outsized amount of value for developers and companies alike.

OSI approves or rejects licenses as qualifying as “open source” by comparing them to the Open Source Definition. A license must not violate any of the sections of the definition in order to be added to the list of approved (and therefore open source) licenses. Aside from the, “you can’t prevent people from making money from it” precept mentioned above, other requirements contained in the Open Source Definition include non-descrimination (you may not prevent certain people or groups from using your software), that the license be technology neutral, and of course the requirements of the Four Freedoms as originally defined by the Free Software Foundation. If you haven’t read the Open Source Definition before (or not for many years), I encourage you to do it again now. It’s an important and powerful work that is the foundation for much of how many of us spend our days.

It’s worth stressing again that no license can be called an “open source” license if it does not adhere to the Open Source Definition. Full stop. No exceptions. It’s illogical to think that something that doesn’t meet the official definition of open source could ever legitimately be called open source. Yet people try it every day mostly because they, like Leo, don’t know any better. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to fix this. It’s called Education.

Basically, you only have to choose from two different types of licenses:

  1. Free and open source: If you agree that the software you want to release should obey the Open Source Definition, then you should select one of the OSI-approved open source licenses from the list they provide. You may still need an IP lawyer to help you make the correct license selection, but you’ll need considerably less of their time than if you weren’t to use one of those licenses.
  2. Proprietary (and likely custom): If there are any parts of the Open Source Definition that you don’t want to apply to the software you want to release, then you’ll still need a license but it will have to be a proprietary one likely custom-written for your purposes. This absolutely requires an IP lawyer. Where licenses are concerned, you should never roll your own. Copyright and licensing are very complex legal issues that you should in no way undertake on your own without professional assistance. Doing so puts yourself, your software, and your organisation at risk of large legal problems.

To be clear here: There is nothing wrong with using a proprietary license for the software that keeps the lights on at your company (figuratively speaking). While I, personally, would prefer everything be free and open, I also prefer that companies remain solvent. To do that, it’s usually necessary for some software to remain proprietary, if only for a while. It’s bordering on business malpractice to release the “secret sauce” of your company’s product offering without a business model that will allow the company to remain or become profitable. Once your company has established itself and is secure in its market, only then should it consider releasing its mission-critical software under an open source license (and I do hope it does do so).

Companies like Amazon and Google can release critical infrastructure as open source because they no longer really compete on product, they compete by having scaled to a point that no newcomer to their product spaces could possibly replicate. If tomorrow Amazon were to release the software for S3 under the GPLv3, it’s unlikely it would at all impact their profitability. The number of companies that could take this code and spin up and scale their own product offering with it and do so in a way that could compete with Amazon’s existing dominance and scale? Vanishingly small, and those that could do it are unlikely to be interested in doing such a thing anyway (or already have their own solutions).

With open source as with all technical and business decisions: Do not do something simply because the big players do it. Unless your company has the advantages of scale of an Amazon or a Google, please be very careful about open sourcing the technology that pays the bills. Instead, hire a good intellectual property lawyer and have them write you a proprietary license for the critical software that you distribute.

Posted on

Using Slack with IRCCloud

A while back I wrote a guide on how to add a Slack team to your ZNC IRC bouncer. Soon afterward, I switched from using ZNC to IRCCloud. I’m consistently impressed by the service and stability of IRCCloud, and the handoff between desktop and mobile clients is seamless. I love it.

The one thing I haven’t bothered to do since switching to IRCCloud is figure out how to add a Slack team to IRCCloud as a network. To be honest, it’s more that I haven’t needed to than I haven’t bothered to. I’m sick to death of the constant barrage of Slacks I’m asked to join, so I’ve stopped using them altogether. I just don’t have that much time in my day. However, if I do have to do the Slack thing then I’d rather it were in my IRCCloud client so at least I don’t end up with Yet Another Damn Chat Client open on my devices.

So here are the steps for adding a Slack team as a network on IRCCloud. It’s not complicated, but it’s worth documenting in the hopes of making someone’s life just a little easier as they try to manage joining their 25th Slack team.

  1. Have the Slack team administrator enable the IRC gateway
  2. Visit the Gateways settings on your account on that Slack team. The Gateways URL is https://$SLACKTEAMNAME.slack.com/account/gateways. Leave this tab open, as you’ll need the information from it.
  3. Log into your IRCCloud account.
  4. On IRCCloud, click Add a new network in the Account settings and info menu.
  5. Copy the Server value from your Slack team Gateways page and enter it into the Server field on the IRCCloud form.
  6. Verify that the Server port is set to 6667 and check the secure port box. Slack does not allow insecure connections, so don’t forget to check this little box.
  7. Pop open the Advanced options section of the IRCCloud form. In the Commands to run on connect field, enter the following:

    AUTH $USERNAME $PASSWORD

    where $USERNAME and $PASSWORD are the values from the associated fields from your Slack team Gateways page.

  8. Enter the $PASSWORD value from the Slack team Gateways page (the same value you used in the previous step), in the Server password field on the IRCCloud form.
  9. Click Join network on IRCCloud.

That should do the trick.

Posted on

Announcing “Forge Your Future With Open Source”: The first book to detail how to contribute to open source projects

Ever wanted to contribute to free and open source software but didn’t know how? You’re in luck! There’s now a book on the subject, and I’m honored to be its author.

It all started in Spring 2017 when I received a message from my friend (and now editor!), Brian: “Hey, did you know there isn’t a book on how to contribute to open source?”

I’d just left HPE to start freelancing, so the timing was good for me to take on this big project as well. Writing was slowed a little by my busy travel schedule, but now we’re finally ready to share the book with the world.

Q: When will it be available?
A: The beta eBook is available RIGHT NOW. We anticipate the hard copy will be out in June.

Q: Beta eBook? What’s that?
A: Beta eBooks are early releases. These books are works-in-progress, but when released have more than enough content to be useful. People who buy the beta book will receive frequent updates as new content is added and also receive the final ebook when that’s available. Beta purchasers also get the chance to provide feedback on the book before it’s released in hard copy.

Q: Why Pragmatic Bookshelf?
A: Partly because they asked me, but mostly because it gave me the chance to work with my friend Brian. However after working with the Pragmatic team for a few months now I see they’re all just as great as Brian is, so I’m happy to be a member of the Pragmatic author family.

Q: There’s probably a reason this book wasn’t written before now, you know.
A: Yes: A lot of experienced open source contributors get the “I did it the hard way, and so should you, kid” chip on their shoulder and can’t seem to lose it. That’s worked against us for decades, as thousands of potential contributors walked away discouraged.

Q: OK, so, what will you cover? I mean, it’s not like there’s One True Way to contribute.
A: You’re so right! Distilling nearly forty years of free and open source contributions into a single set of best practices that can apply to most projects is a challenge. Thankfully the years I’ve spent as an Open Source Advocate Without Portfolio (helping maintainers and organisers of all projects) makes this possible. The book covers the background and history of free and open source, tribal knowledge that trips up new contributors, how to find a project to contribute to, how to contribute for your job, and so much more.

Very importantly, THIS BOOK DOES NOT FOCUS SOLELY ON PROGRAMMING CONTRIBUTIONS. Instead, it addresses documentation, design, and all forms of contributing (including, of course, programming). There’s room (and a need for) everyone in free and open source software.

You should definitely go buy it now then leave feedback which will help improve it for future readers. You’ll be a part of what makes free and open source so great.

Posted on

The OpenStack identity crisis


Does OpenStack have an identity crisis? I think it does, and solving it will help the project establish itself in the minds of infrastructure deciders.

I spent two years working with a team primarily dedicated to OpenStack development and thanks to that had the opportunity to attend several Summits as well as observe multiple OpenStack project communities.

What I learned is that if you ask ten Stackers, “What is OpenStack?” you’ll receive ten different answers. Even in discussions with members of the OpenStack TC, I was never able to get a consistent answer to what ought to be a very simple question.

OpenStack has an identity crisis. It doesn’t appear to know what it is, or for whom. I feel this was exacerbated by the Big Tent initiative, which was well-considered and -intentioned, but in the end just muddied the waters of what it meant to be “OpenStack.”

Recently the OpenStack Foundation announced that it’s leaving the Big Tent in its rearview mirror. Perhaps this is the turning point? By moving on from the Big Tent experiment, OpenStack is now free to define what it means to be, well, OpenStack. Establishing a consistent identity and branding across this very large project will help it regain the momentum it’s been losing as several of its now-former marquee corporate members withdraw from their public cloud attempts and the OpenStack Innovation Center.

Unfortunately, the OpenStack Foundation may not take this opportunity. Instead, it appears that rather than pause to define what it means to be OpenStack, it’s considering opening the Foundation to other projects. The logic here appears to be that any technology in the “stack” can be “open,” so why shouldn’t that technology live under the umbrella of the OpenStack Foundation?

Is the OpenStack Foundation simply upgrading from the Big Tent to the Really Actually Quite Massive Tent? If the Big Tent muddied the waters of OpenStack identity, then this has the potential to convert it to opaque sludge. Without a very firm grasp on what it means to be OpenStack: The Project, how will the Foundation be able to distinguish between what’s an OpenStack Project and what’s merely an open stack project?

As well, this feels like a bit of a land grab. In the past few years the Linux Foundation (and especially its subsidiary the Cloud Native Computing Foundation) has been growing by leaps and bounds, bringing projects into its auspices nearly every week. Having apparently thrown off the limitation of tending for merely Linux business interests, the Linux Foundation now wardens dozens of open source projects, as well as bringing on dozens of new member companies. The Linux Foundation is now doing quite well, largely due to this expansion. Did the OpenStack Foundation look to LF and think, “Well, if it worked for them…”? Is this OpenStack’s move to regain relevancy and mindshare as big name member companies (such as IBM and HPE) pull away from their OpenStack-driven initiatives, throwing their support elsewhere in the infrastructure ecosystem?

Whatever the reason, it appears the OpenStack Foundation is still only considering welcoming other open stack projects into its membership. Hopefully before they do that they’ll pause for however long it takes not only to define what it means to be OpenStack in this post-Big-Tent world, but also to communicate that to all of its existing contributors, operators, and member organisations. The next time someone asks ten Stackers, “What is OpenStack?” it would be great to receive a single answer.