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A Social History of Open Source Software Pacific Northwest College of Art Leslie Hawthorn, Outreach Manager October 11, 2011
Introduction
What is Open Source? Software that can be freely downloaded, used, modified and redistributed. Generally: Licensed under an OSI-approved license
Before There Was Open Source..... http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolasrolland/3063011729/
The Four Freedoms ,[object Object]
Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. The Four Freedoms The Four Freedoms
The Four Freedoms ,[object Object],The Four Freedoms From the Preamble to the GPL
The Four Freedoms ,[object Object]
Fear of stagnating innovation
Enter Open Source The Four Freedoms Free as in Freedom - For Business?
The Four Freedoms ,[object Object]
Non-copyleft licenses are approved by OSI ,[object Object],[object Object],The Four Freedoms New Licenses Emerge http://www.flickr.com/photos/gisleh/3306564460/
The Four Freedoms The Four Freedoms The License Wars
The Four Freedoms The Four Freedoms Apache License ,[object Object]
Clause regarding patent litigation is key
Considered incompatible with GPL by Free Software Foundation ,[object Object]

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A Social History of Free and Open Source Software

  • 1. A Social History of Open Source Software Pacific Northwest College of Art Leslie Hawthorn, Outreach Manager October 11, 2011
  • 3. What is Open Source? Software that can be freely downloaded, used, modified and redistributed. Generally: Licensed under an OSI-approved license
  • 4. Before There Was Open Source..... http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolasrolland/3063011729/
  • 5.
  • 6. Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
  • 7. Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
  • 8. Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. The Four Freedoms The Four Freedoms
  • 9.
  • 10.
  • 11. Fear of stagnating innovation
  • 12. Enter Open Source The Four Freedoms Free as in Freedom - For Business?
  • 13.
  • 14.
  • 15. The Four Freedoms The Four Freedoms The License Wars
  • 16.
  • 17. Clause regarding patent litigation is key
  • 18.
  • 19.
  • 20.
  • 21. Influencing public opinion on 'how' things should be done
  • 22. Recruiting tool to find new employees
  • 23. Reduce training times and employment costs by using common building blocks
  • 24. Thank You! Leslie Hawthorn, Outreach Manager http://osuosl.org [email_address] @lhawthorn This presentation is licensed for your (re)use: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
  • 25.
  • 26. The photos of Richard Stallman are made available by Flickr users under a Creative Commons License.
  • 27. The OSI keyhole logo and the ASF feather logo are trademarks of the Open Source Initiative and the Apache Software Foundation. Use in this presentation is considered fair use according to each organization's logo guidelines.
  • 28. The St. Laurent book cover was taken as a screenshot from the product description on Amazon.com, 10 October 2011.
  • 29.
  • 30.
  • 31.
  • 32.
  • 33.

Editor's Notes

  1. Outreach Manager for OSU Open Source Lab What is the OSL? http://osuosl.org Tripartite mission: hosting major open source projects, providing training to student employees, outreach to help other organizations use “the open source way” Previously Google Inc responsible for their Summer of Code program, Google Code In (then GHOP) & launched dev blog
  2. Who uses open source regularly? Those that didn't raise hands: Who uses Facebook? Google? Shops on Amazon? A little bit of history on the OSI – why they exist, approval of licenses
  3. Explain who Richard Stallman is Recap the printer story: http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch01.html
  4. Explain each of the four freedoms Explain in detail what each one means in real terms Discuss ways each freedom relates back to Richard's experience with the printer at MIT
  5. There is a great deal of 'practical' information in the GPL and all software licenses – provided as is, warranty free, etc. Software licenses are manifestations of personal value systems Consider this is equally true in the case of corporate “personhood”
  6. Fears of mixing in GPL licensed code and giving up rights to corporate created works Different ideologies made for difficult conversations – think back to Sproul and the NDA Seen to hamper innovation due to lack of adoption
  7. Selling people on the same values as those that guided Netscape Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, 'blesse' the term April 8, 1998 the community elders voted to begin promoting the term open source and adopt rhetoric of pragmatism & market-friendliness For quote, see http://opensource.org/history
  8. Many, many years of arguing and consternation License incompatibility is a big source of issue; more than 100 approved OSI licenses at this time See book cover – image obtained from Amazon for this work Not particularly interesting but remember, this is a “religious” view for some people Licenses are an expression of people's value systems in addition to being legal documents
  9. Discuss patent clause in Apache license and how it helps to preclude patent litigation Apache has had a great deal of outside contribution despite not requiring it – mention mainline branch maintenance vs. internal branches Consider again the notion of corporate personhood in context of software licensing: Google prefers Apache Eclipse project sponsored out of IBM and created their own license to go with the code base
  10. Both ways have created excellent business successes Independent developers still largely value the GPL, with more than 50% of newly licensed projects on SourceForge and other hosting sites being GPL (this information is dated to around 2005, though, be warned)