[ale] Are our Ethernet drivers in danger?

[Joseph A. Knapka]

Benjamin Dixon wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Joseph A. Knapka wrote:
> 
> > (1) the extension doesn't add any significant functionality
> > to the product, in which case, who cares?
> >
> > (2) the extension is so amazingly useful that, weeks later,
> > the same functionality appears in an Open Sourced fork of
> > the same code. The Open Source fork, being open, improves
> > much more rapidly in quality and functionality than the
> > closed source. So again, who cares about the closed-
> > source fork?
> >
> > The only thing I can see that would prevent this is if
> > the closed-forkers are so astonishingly brilliant that
> > they come up with code whose functionality *millions and
> > millions* of really smart people can't figure out how
> > to reproduce, in which case, more power to 'em.
> > Seems unlikely :-)
> >
> > Of course, a "credit where due" clause would be nice.
> > But I thought the BSD license actually does require
> > copyright and authorship notices to remain intact.
> 
> Of course, isn't the problem here gonna be the closed source version being
> constantly updated to the open source version under the BSD license? If
> I'm company X, and I see that you have cloned my proprietary module and
> improved it, why should I not take that BSD-licensed code, make a few
> minor modifications to improve on it just a little, and
> re-release it as my proprietary code? Certainly the race would be on for
> both sides, but the corporate side would be profiting at open source
> expense, no? Perhaps I am not fully aware of the pecularities of the BSD
> license, but it seems to me that would be a serious flaw.

I don't see it as such, provided that closed-source developers
were required to acknowledge the use of whatever Open Source code
they used (making it obvious to all that *they* are not
the source of the bulk of the functionality embodied
by the code). I am taking the position that the foremost goal
is to achieve the highest possible software quality, in both
closed- and open-source products. I don't really care, personally,
if someone uses my code in a closed-source product and declines
to make their derived product's source code available, provided
I get credit for all of my work that's used in their product.
Their proprietary extensions are their own work, and IMO
they should be able to distribute them however they wish.
(I have never produced a significant piece of Open-Source
software; it's possible my opinion would change in that
case. I doubt it, though.)

Furthermore, once this pattern (of closed-source investments
in code being rapidly nullified by Open Source development)
becomes established, the incentive to keep modifications
closed will vanish. By keeping an extension closed, all
you're doing is preventing yourself from receiving the
credit due for that extension. If you need functionality
that's not there, developing an initial iteration and
contributing it to the Open Source community is a much
better way to parisitize Open Source development
efforts :-)

-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
// http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
* Evolution is an "unproven theory" in the same sense that gravity is. *
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