Bruce Perens, one of the authors of the Open Source definition and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, believes that the Open Source paradigm has reached a point where open licenses no longer provide adequate protection, and it is time to create a revised concept of Post-Open Source that will harmonize the relationships between open-source developers and commercial companies.
The GPL was originally developed solely as a license and is not a contract, meaning it is aimed only at granting rights but cannot take them away. According to Perens, the new licensing model should include contractual terms that are regarded according to the requirements of the field of law regulating contractual relationships. Currently, companies have learned to bypass the GPL license requirements regarding providing unlimited access to source code. To limit code availability, loopholes are used related to imposing additional contractual conditions on end users that restrict the secondary distribution of the open code underlying the product.
For example, when purchasing a RHEL distribution, the client signs a support and update agreement with Red Hat, which restricts the redistribution of data and mentions the right to terminate the agreement if there is a discrepancy between the actual installed and purchased copies of RHEL, forcing the choice between the freedom to manage the software and maintaining the status of a Red Hat client. The patches provided for RHEL that address vulnerabilities apply to GPL code, and according to the license, the user has the right to distribute them, but this may be perceived as a violation of the agreement with Red Hat and become grounds for terminating the company's services. Previously, when changes were published in the CentOS repository, the community turned a blind eye to such manipulations, but after the policy change regarding access to the source code of RHEL packages, there emerged a need to revisit the interaction mechanisms between developers of open projects and companies that utilize their work.
As part of the Post-Open Source concept, it is proposed to expand the definition of Open Source by adding elements that impose additional conditions on commercial use and define the interaction between developers and corporations in terms of receiving fair compensation. Companies are encouraged to compensate for the benefits derived from using open source software either by participating in development or by paying royalties that will be distributed among the direct developers. For non-commercial applications and individual users, the code will remain free and, as before, will be reduced to a single license without contractual components.
One proposed option is to implement annual compliance audits, after which the company receives all rights to use the software distributed under the Post-Open Source principle. The funds allocated to obtain permission will help stimulate development. Moreover, the existence of payments will allow not only coding for oneself and for specialists familiar with the technologies but also spending time creating user-friendly applications for end users, taking their interests into account.
Among the challenges that need to be addressed in implementing the proposed Post-Open Source model is the necessity of establishing an organization that will study contributions to development and distribute the received funds. The organization should employ transparent processes in its activities, and financial mechanisms should be established by the developers.
Source: opennet.ru
