Canonical, Ltd. On Record: Seeking Open Core

Whlie I agree with the whole article, there is something wrong with it.<p>Nokia changed Qt's policy from dual-license, half-open model to a totally open, community based project, because they werent looking at Qt as a product to sell.<p>TrollTech's product was Qt. They used dual-license model to sell it. And it was partially closed.<p>Nokia's product is NOT Qt. Qt is a platform which they try to find partners, developers and community around it. They dont want to make money through Qt. They want Qt to be a perfect platform and complete transparency and openness is the way they achieve it.

In the last millenium I had a few emails trading with the author. The FSF take the view that there is one definition of Free: It's their way or the highway. Canonical don't conform to this definition of Free, instead they have something different, that probably works better for them.<p>In a previous life I worked at an Open Source company and we had to put up with zealotry on a daily basis, both externally and internally. On the one hand the FSF see themselves as guardians of the Free Software Movement - a mantle nobody else seems to want to take up. On the other hand, sometimes they act like douches. This is one such time in which the douche element of the FSF comes up for air (in my opinion, and yours may differ, there doesn't appear to be a clear right of wrong).<p>Canonical own Ubuntu. It's up to them to run it the way they want to. If they want copyright assignment under their terms, that's their choice, not the FSF's. If they don't like it they can always fork it, but of course their fork won't be nearly as popular. This implies that Kuhn wants to have his cake and eat it, or at least eat Canonical's cake and tell them how to mix the ingredients.

<i>...the copyleft itself...actually keeps us harmonious.</i><p>How can this be said with a straight face in a most unharmonious essay that decries 1) the practice of adding copyright assignment (above &#38; beyond the terms of the GPL) to a non-FSF entity and 2) suggests that the GPL is not sufficient and that additional promises must be made by that entity.<p>Either the GPL is sufficient to keep participants harmonious or it isn't.<p>This essay embodies everything that keeps the free software movement from greatness. I'm grateful that free software was there for me during the dark ages of computing, but I wish it could be more than an escape valve from monoculture. Alas, the movement is perpetually suspicious of those who want it to flourish.<p>Edit: jdub, I appreciate your reply. Could you be more specific about exactly which statement of fact is incorrect? "This is factually incorrect" sounds ominous, but I don't see where you contradicted anything I wrote. Nothing about our perspectives seems mutually exclusive at all.

The danger of individuals with vast pools of funding is that they can afford to cause havoc in the community &#38; their bank accounts for years before finally giving up on ideas that are simply unsustainable inside the ecosystem we have grown&#38;cared for for so long.<p>Something to be said for a profit-imperative to keep conversations honest &#38; feet on the ground.<p>Canonical has grown a strong brand in huge swathes of previously Microsoft territory.<p>They would do well to follow RedHat's example and trade on a reputation for competence&#38;quality rather than trying to place their faith in various recipes of secret herbs&#38;spice.

<i>UbuntuOne, integrated on nearly every menu of the desktop, ... might help Canonical, Ltd. make a few bucks?</i><p>If you don't like it, fork it, right? Isn't that the main strength of F/OSS? For example, CentOS is a white-label fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The same argument could be applied to Canonical's inclusion of Adobe Air and Flash in Ubuntu.<p>Canonical is targeting a market previous unserved by other Linux distros. To get to these users, the experience needs to be polished and complete. There's a reason that, for example, Slackware, isn't going to be installed by your grandmother...it's too difficult.

A reply from Alex Hudson <a href="http://www.alexhudson.com/2010/10/17/bkuhn-on-canonical/" rel="nofollow">http://www.alexhudson.com/2010/10/17/bkuhn-on-canonical/</a>

In the humanities, one way into a text is through close reading. So here goes (just the first paragraph mind you because this can get tiring).<p>&#62;&#62;&#62; I've written before about my deep skepticism regarding the true motives of Canonical, Ltd.'s advocacy and demand of for-profit corporate copyright assignment without promises to adhere to copyleft.<p>There is nothing wrong with Canonical requiring copyright assignment. The FSF do it, SUN did it, I would guess Microsoft does it. It is not unusual for a corporation to be a for-profit entity. There is no way someone would do unpaid work for somebody else and get nothing in return unless they were a slave or forced to do so. How would it be even possible to contribute to a Canonical project if you are not part of Canonical if the codebase is not freely accessible or at least in some way open?<p>&#62;&#62;&#62; I've often asked Canonical employees, including Jono Bacon, Amanda Brock, Jane Silber, Mark Shuttleworth himself, and — in the comments of this very blog post — Matt Asay to explain (a) why exactly they demand copyright assignment on their projects, rather than merely having contributors agree to the GNU GPL formally (like projects such as Linux do),<p>That's interesting because the issue of copyright assignment arose when SCO started the whole litigation thing against Linux (well, Linux companies). Also, again, canonical is a for-profit corp, Linux is a (as you say) project so you can't compare them. I wonder what the policy of the Linux Foundation is?<p>&#62;&#62;&#62; and (b) why, having received a contributor's copyright assignment, Canonical, Ltd. refuses to promise to keep the software copylefted and never proprietarize it (FSF, for example, has always done the latter in assignments).<p>Why should they promise? It's not their job to promise such things. The, again, are a corporation and have to look after themselves. They are not the FSF which is as far as I remember, a charity. What does Redhat do? Or Novell? We know that SUN required copyright assignment for OOo so it's not unreasonable for corps to have this requirement. If your issue is with code being worked on by individuals not employed by Canonical, with that work then being used in non GPL projects and with the copyright assignment of that work being handed over to Canonical then fair enough - please show me how this happens and where.<p>&#62;&#62;&#62; When I ask these questions of Canonical, Ltd. employees, they invariably artfully change the subject.<p>Seriously. Citation please.

Anyone care to explain how Canonical requiring copyright assignment for contributions to their projects is different from Red Hat requiring a Contributor License Agreement for contributions to Spacewalk, their now-open-source Red Hat Network code-base?<p>At first glance it seems that Canonical ask for copyright assignment and then 'grant a very broad license back', while Red Hat let the contributor retain copyright but ask for a similarly broad license for their use of the contribution. Other than the name in the copyright statement, it's difficult to see there's much difference in the control over downstream use of the contributed code, and it's potential for downstream (mis-)use that the original article seems to be primarily concerned about.<p>Yes, the disparity between the contributor agreements is confusing and requires potential contributors to put their legal head on to work out what they're agreeing to for each project they want to contribute to. That's where the free-software/open-source licenses were a few years ago before efforts were made to catalogue them and reduce their number somewhat (largely by The Open Source Initiative, I seem to remember). And that seems to be the problem that Project Harmony is trying to tackle.<p>So, are there real differences between these two instances? I'm having trouble spotting the objective difference between 'This set of policies has some flaws' in one case and 'copyright assignment intimidation tactics' in the other.

It's too bad that Canonical has, in effect, surfed the wave of free software, but refused to be a integral part of it, as they really could be. It's disappointing that they are "open-source" but not free.<p>Including Adobe Air and Flash in their repository is really disheartening, but so is UbuntuOne.<p>I'm not exactly pro-Red Hat either... <a href="http://tinyurl.com/27x6c59" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/27x6c59</a><p>No bias here folks, I'm using Ubuntu right now! I also use Fedora, Trisquel, and gNewSense, but Ubuntu is my "main" OS. I also like how they've cleared up some of the cryptic messages in their software center (Licence: Unknown to Licence: Proprietary).<p>I'm just <i>very</i> concerned about free software.

I think Mark Shuttleworth is right, when he tries to improve the Ubuntu ecosystem. I needs more than code to have a great computing experience. People miss the point, when the critisize Canonical so often.

I'm not intimately familiar with the details of this debate. So I have the following semi-organized line of thought, and I'd love feedback.<p>This line of thought comes from curiosity, not because of an agenda. I really don't know what tack I should be taking here, so insight is welcome.<p>Is there a problem with a company taking source code that I've licensed as free to use (code that I haven't bothered to make consumer-friendly, just well-written) and then turn that into a viable product, where the core of the product--my core--is very much open source? If not this way, then how will the vast majority of open-source products find acceptable use to the everyday consumer in the market of applications?<p>It seems to me like many open source programs don't strive to improve the user experience, at least very rapidly. For example, OpenOffice (to me) could use a lot of tweaking, at least in GNOME. For such an open product, I can't modify very much about the interface as a user. Of course, I could go in and recode part of the application to my liking. But I probably don't want to expend that kind of effort just to get a suitable (to me) looking product. Evolution also comes to mind. There are changes that I find obvious and pressing--appearance settings, more minimalist interface, better interface with an external contacts manager--but have yet to improve. Where will the impetus for these kinds of changes come from if there is no monetary incentive?<p>If allowing a company to add proprietary UI goodness on top of an open source core means that we get solid products with a secure, beautiful, open base, what is not to like? If a developer can develop solid, clean libraries and then license his product for other companies to follow through with design that he doesn't want to do, why not support his decision to do so?<p>Especially in an arena where standards and interoperability are valued, it seems like allowing a company to use open source code in its proprietary software won't harm data portability or open source ideals. For example, say some startup X takes OpenOffice's core and redoes it using slick GTK and innovative UI elements. The company will likely fail unless its quasi-proprietary software supports open document format standards. (Interop with existing standards is likely key to success in current data processing markets.) If indeed it does support those standards, and I know what the core source code is, what do I care if the UI code is proprietary? I get a solid program out of it and can take my data elsewhere without conversion if I become dissatisfied.<p>It seems to me like the alternative to a hybrid model is a developer-centric platform and ecosystem that lacks many end-users to develop for. I love Ubuntu because its commandline and developer tools are fantastic, really a pleasure to use. But I have maybe 10 friends who also use Linux. So I could develop useful applications for myself or other developers, but not for too many end users. Without compelling UI, this situation isn't likely to change, right?<p>I know that Ubuntu is making headway in the UI department, and I think 10.10 is slick. Is that a result of the movement toward OpenCore described in this article?