Software freedom. Open source development approaches. Commercial business models that incorporate open source software in some fashion. These interrelated threads have always had points of conflict and that has never been truer than in today’s cloud era. In this talk, Red Hat’s Gordon Haff will take you on a tour through how conflicting notions of ownership, cooperation, shared commons, and profit has played out since the early days of software and before. But this won’t be just a history lesson. There are today real and serious questions about what it means to have commercial software businesses that can thrive in a world of mega-scale public cloud providers delivering software in a far different manner than the world in which free and open source software was originally conceived. Does open source mean something different today? Should it?

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Free and Open:
An Historical Perspective
Gordon Haff
Emerging Technology Evangelist
@ghaff
https://bitmason.blogspot.com

2. @ghaff https://bitmason.blogspot.com
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Who am I?
● Evangelist for emerging
technologies and practices at Red
Hat
● Author of How Open Source Ate
Software, etc.
● Former IT industry analyst
● Former big system guy
● Website: http://www.bitmasons.com
● IANAL

3. @ghaff https://bitmason.blogspot.com
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A (very simplified) history
Where FOSS came in
Where do we stand?

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PREHISTORY
Traditions of openness and collaboration
Some assembly required
Software as a hardware enabler

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1980s: SHARING ERODES
AT&T consent decree
Leading to the Unix wars
Continuation of vertical silos
PCs were a different culture
Commercialization of Lisp

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1990s: SILOS ON THEIR SIDE
The 10X force of the personal computer (Grove)
Wintel’s rise
Independent Software Vendors increase in prominence

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MEANWHILE IN FREE
SOFTWAREGPL (from ~1989): formalized principles for presenting
restrictions that define free software. Copyleft.

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THE 4 ESSENTIAL FREEDOMS
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does
your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a
precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
(freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to
benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition
for this.

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PERMISSIVE LICENSES
BSD (from ~1988)
MIT (from ~1985)
Apache (~1995)

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OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE
Term coined by Christine Peterson in 1998
Impetus was to reduce focus on price
Promoted by Tim O’Reilly and others
Open Source Initiative founded (also 1998)

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STATE OF THEN OPEN SOURCE
Licensing informed by then contemporary notions of
building and using software
Other freedoms associated with developers/data/etc.
gaining prominence
The Internet bringing Linux, Apache, etc. to the fore
Open source starting to commercialize

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A DEVELOPMENT MODEL
A way for organizations and individuals to collaborate
to enable collective invention
Allow greater focus on differentiating software and
services
From disruption to where innovation happens

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COMMERCIALIZATION
Support
Consulting
Subscriptions (ongoing value)
Open core
A purchased alternative to proprietary
software/services
773402

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OPEN SOURCE WINNING?
Gaining at cost of proprietary software sales
Innovation engine in new software categories
And other new categories
It powers the cloud...

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ENTER THE CLOUD

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NEW/INTENSIFIED CHALLENGES
SaaS
The commoditization/maturation of open source
infrastructure
The competition of convenience
Re-emergence of vertical silos

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NEW/INTENSIFIED TENSIONS
Tragedy of the commons
Community vs. commerce
Focus on code freedom vs. broader freedoms and value
Control vs. convenience

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Some of the arguments:
Open Source Definition is from a different time
Copyleft doesn’t protect freedoms in a cloud world
Public clouds are an existential threat to FOSS
ARE LICENSES THE ANSWER?

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NO.
OPEN SOURCE IS NOT A
BUSINESS MODEL.

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WHAT TO THINK ABOUT

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COOPETITION

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MAKE THE OPEN SOURCE
DEVELOPMENT MODEL
BENEFICIAL FOR PARTICIPANTS

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FOCUS ON DELIVERING VALUE
TO SOFTWARE CONSUMERS
THROUGH AND WITH OPEN
SOURCE

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BETTER UNDERSTAND AND
EMBRACE HOW INDIVIDUALS
AND ORGANIZATIONS WANT TO
CONSUME SOFTWARE

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DON’T NARROWLY VIEW
FREEDOM THROUGH THE LENS
OF CODE

26. CONFIDENTIAL Designator
linkedin.com/company/red-hat
youtube.com/user/RedHatVideos
facebook.com/redhatinc
twitter.com/RedHat
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Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise
open source software solutions. Award-winning support,
training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted
adviser to the Fortune 500.
Thank you