Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Research Looks at How Open Source Software Gets Written
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | "Open source defies conventional wisdom about collaborative projects.
> | For example, most office workers know that the slowest member of the
> | team sets the pace for everybody else. But in open source projects,
> | work moves at the speed of the fastest member of the team, and adding
> | more hands speeds things up rather than slowing them down", Devanbu said.
> `----
>
> http://www-pubcomm.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=7871
It's actually a bit ironic. For several years, the NCSA WAS Open
Source at it's best. The federal programs provided the infrastructure
for several critical projects which were often seeded with federal
funds but supported and enhanced by volunteer contributors such as Marc
Andreeson.
When Spyglass approached the NCSA for permission to sell "Branding
Rights" to Mosaic, they figured that a few hundred companies would pay
a few million each to have their logo installed on a version of mosaic
that had their bookmarks, logo, and home page preconfigured as the
system was started.
Several companies did purchase those branding rights, but things
quickly got ugly when prodigy decided to remove the textbox for
entering ANY address, effectively keeping their users "trapped" in the
prodigy web site. The contributors cried "foul" and reminded spyglass
that the NCSA license under which they had contributed the software
made very explicit limitations on how the source code could be changed.
It wasn't a requirement to ship the source code with the application,
but altering the application and then shipping it in unalterable "no
source code" form, was a problem.
Prodigy quickly returned the text box and opened up their users to the
entire web (though they did try to warn users than non-prodigy sites
were "dangerous".
When Microsoft wanted to purchase the rights, they were willing to pay
$7 million, or some similarly rediculously small amount of money, but
they demanded that they get an unrestricted license which allowed them
to distribute their own proprietary direvative works. Spyglass agreed,
and somehow got the NCSA to go along with it.
The NCSA simply unilaterally rewrote the entire license, kept the
source code, and claimed that it was their right to offer the license
they gave to Microsoft. Talk about an ex-post-facto law, this was a
prime example. A bit like "now that you have built a hotel on this
property, we have decided to sell the property and the hotel to someone
else, and you must now leave, and you will recieve no compensation.
The contributors were being evicted from their own software, without
due and proper consideration.
The contributors to Mosaic, many of whom were now working at Netscape
by now, were furious, and in retaliation started to boycott NCSA
software. They released all of their patches under a license that was
more like GPL or LGPL. It allowed plug-ins, but it did not allow
alteration of the core code. Eventually a team coordinated all of
these patches and released the "Apache" server - rumored to have been a
respelling of "A patchy" server.
Source code contributions to the NCSA have since nearly dried up. They
get much less bang for their buck, because contributors never know when
something they have worked for months to develop, will end up in
Microsoft windows, putting them out of business.
An now, the NSF wants to "study" the OSS development process.
It could be funny if people simply refuse to talk to the interviewers.
:D
What happened to the developers of Mosaic, especially those who left
government research positions to work for Netscape, only to be laid off
or otherwise displaced because Microsoft was using THEIR software to
drive THEM out of business, was criminal. It was unconstitutional. It
was a breach of contract and copyright license.
At the very least, it was fraud, decieving people into contributing
millions of dollars worth of time and expertise, as well as capital
resources, and then selling those contributions to a private interest
in a way which was clearly intended to harm the very people who
contributed.
Microsoft go a key element of what turned out to be a $2 trillion/year
market in a very short time, and was able to leverage that into nearly
$40 billion/year in revenue, AND they were able to expand their
monopoly from the PC and a few applications into control of information
itself.
Not a bad deal for $7 million.
Bravo Billy!
Now, good luck with the study. Bring the lawyers along.
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