Generating Value Through Open Source: Software Service Market Regulation and Licensing Policy

There are many ways to license open source software. Given the attention paid recently to the General Public License (GPL) and its latest version (GPLv3), you may be interested to know that there are other licenses that satisfy the principles of free and open source software without the confusion and polemics that surround the GPL. Other open source licenses have been approved by Open Source Initiative and adopted by commercial companies and by open source projects. Most of those other licenses are professionally written by lawyers to express clearly the licensing objectives of software copyright and patent owners and to ensure that they are valid and enforceable in all important jurisdictions. I wrote one of those licenses, the Open Software License. The third version of this license, OSL 3.0, was approved by Open Source Initiative in 2005. This article explains why it is a better license for software than the GPL. Software licensors choose their licenses based upon their particular philosophy and business models, and they intend their licenses to define the expected behavior of their licensees around the world. Because philosophies and businesses differ, so do licenses. In the open source world, there are two general categories of licenses: (1) Those licenses that allow derivative works of the software to be used and distributed as part of proprietary programs, and (2) those that require derivative works to be distributed under the same open source license as the original. The BSD license is the archetype of the first kind, what I call academic licenses. The GPL (version 2) is the most popular of the second kind, the so-called reciprocal or copyleft licenses. The license philosophies of these two categories of licenses are inherently irreconcilable, the first being compatible with proprietary derivative works and the other not, but they each make a valid point about the freedom to copy, change, and use software. I pass no judgment between them, since it is a licensor's right to choose a license for his own copyrightable works, not his lawyer's choice. The complete text (which is shorter than this article) of OSL 3.0 and its companion licenses is posted at www. rosenlaw.com/OSL3.0-comparison.pdf.

Open source software (OSS) is computer software that has its underlying source code made available under a licence. This can allow developers and users to adapt and improve it (Raymond, 2001). Computer software can be broadly split into two development models: • Proprietary, or closed software, owned by a company or individual. Copies of the binary are made public; the source code is not usually made public. • Open-source software (OSS), where the source code is released with the binary. Users and developers can be licenced to use and modify the code, and to distribute any improvements they make. Both OSS and proprietary approaches allow companies to make a profit. Companies developing proprietary software make money by developing software and then selling licences to use the software. For example, Microsoft receives a payment for every copy of Windows sold with a personal computer. OSS companies make their money by providing services, such as advising clients on the GPL licence. The licencee can either charge a fee for this service or work free of charge. In practice, software companies often develop both types of software. OSS is developed by an ongoing, iterative process where people share the ideas expressed in the source code. The aim is that a large community of developers and users can contribute to the development of the code, check it for errors and bugs, and make the improved version available to others. Project management software is used to allow developers to keep track of the various versions. There are two main types of open-source licences (although there are many variants and subtypes developed by other companies): • Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Licence: This permits a licencee to “close” a version (by withholding the most recent modifications to the source code) and sell it as a proprietary product; • GNU General Public Licence (GNU, GPL, or GPL): Under this licence, licencees may not “close” versions. The licencee may modify, copy, and redistribute any derivative version, under the same GPL licence. The licencee can either charge a fee for this service or work free of charge. Free software first evolved during the 1970s but in the 1990s forked into two movements, namely free software and open source (Berry, 2004). Richard Stallman, an American software developer who believes that sharing source code and ideas is fundamental to freedom of speech, developed a free version of the widely used Unix operating system. The resulting GNU program was released under a specially created General Public Licence (GNU, GPL). This was designed to ensure that the source code would remain openly available to all. It was not intended to prevent commercial usage or distribution (Stallman, 2002). This approach was christened free software. In this context, free meant that anyone could modify the software. However, the term “free” was often misunderstood to mean no cost. Hence, during the 1990s, Eric Raymond and others proposed that open-source software was coined as a less contentious and more business-friendly term. This has become widely accepted within the software and business communities; however there are still arguments about the most appropriate term to use (Moody, 2002). The OSMs are usually organised into a network of individuals who work collaboratively on the Internet, developing major software projects that sometimes rival commercial software but are always committed to the production of quality alternatives to those produced by commercial companies (Raymond, 2001; Williams, 2002). Groups and individuals develop software to meet their own and others’ needs in a highly decentralised way, likened to a Bazaar (Raymond, 2001). These groups often make substantive value claims to support their projects and foster an ethic of community, collaboration, deliberation, and intellectual freedom. In addition, it is argued by Lessig (1999) that the FLOSS community can offer an inspiration in their commitment to transparency in their products and their ability to open up governmental regulation and control through free/libre and open source code.

This article is an initial exploration of the determinants of open source license choice. It first highlights how the decision is shaped not just by the preferences of the licensor itself, but also by that of the community of developers. The article then presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of license choice using the SourceForge database, a compilation of nearly 40,000 open source projects. Projects geared toward end-users tend to have restrictive licenses, while those oriented toward developers are less likely to do so. Projects that are designed to run on commercial operating systems and whose primary language is English are less likely to have restrictive licenses. Projects that are likely to be attractive to consumers--such as games--and software developed in a corporate setting are more likely to have restrictive licenses. Projects with unrestricted licenses attract more contributors. These findings are broadly consistent with theoretical predictions. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

The present work describes development of an educational web portal for performing virtual experiments. Graduate students often conduct laser based optical measurements to study fundamentals of heat transfer and fluid flow. An attempt has been made to meet the same requirements with virtualization using computational tools. OpenFOAM, an open source fluid flow simulator serves as a backbone for this initiative. A new Foam solver is developed to incorporate an additional convective heat transfer equation, account for natural convection effects, implement specific boundary conditions of interest and represent all the required class of physics as required from a pedagogical perspective. The solver is tested for accuracy by comparing results with experiments and available data in the literature. Apart from access of the source code to students, open source methodology makes it free from any licensing restrictions allowing wider deployment across multiple schools simultaneously. Even if large number of students access the web portal at the same time, all simulations can be launched without any licensing restrictions, provided computing power is available. A suite of twelve examples covering steady and unsteady flow patterns is studied in the first phase. The graphical nature of results helps students to easily recall specialized phenomena such as transients, flow circulation patterns in natural convection and vortex shedding. A comparison with laser based experiments via interferograms and schlieren images proves useful to correlate the experimental results with physically realizable temperature fields.Copyright © 2012 by ASME

Chapter 1 - Digital Forensics with Open Source Tools

This chapter examines the development of open source computer software with specific reference to the political economy of copyleft and the legalities associated with the General Public License (GPL). It will be seen that within the context of computer software development the notion of copyleft provides an important contrast to more traditional uses of copyright. This contrast symbolizes political, economic, and social struggles which are contextualized within this chapter. As the GPL is an important legal embodiment of copyleft, its legalities are preliminarily explored so as to determine its future potential. While there is some scope to further refine the legal strength of the GPL, it will be seen that it remains a strong and subversive legal instrument which will continue to underlie open source initiatives in the years to come.

Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) software has become an essential element in design, simulation, manufacturing and even marketing in the automotive industry as well as in other major manufacturing companies. Multi-physics simulation of IC engines may be one of the most challenging areas both technically and scientifically, since it requires sound basis and experience for diverse physical phenomena. There are quite a few commercial softwares currently available for various elements of CAE, which require substantial investment cost for licensing, personnel and computing facilities. There is a current consensus for the need of low cost CAE based on open sources through which professionals may contribute to new modeling features and validation through a free access web-based platform. There are several high quality open sources available under General Public Licence (GNU-GPL) which allow free utilization and development. Some of them have features as competitive as their commercial counterparts, whereas their interface in general may not be as user-friendly as most commercial software. In this work, we introduce a web-based platform with selected open source programs and their performance will be shown for some example cases. All these programs are downloadable, while remote job access and post-processing can be performed by cloud computing facilities.

Firms are increasingly moving away from proprietary technology to building commercial products on top of open source software. However, it is unclear how such commercialization of open source affects contributions from the community, as well as product quality and firm performance. Web browser technology provides a unique setting to study such questions. The largest open source project is Chromium, led by Google, which serves as the core of various web browsers. Unexpectedly, Microsoft announced a drastic change in strategy in 2018 and adopted Chromium in a complete redesign of the web browser Edge. Unique data lets us compare Chromium to other open source technologies, and Chromium-based web browsers to other web browsers. We find that overall development activity increases after Microsoft adopts Chromium, predominantly because Microsoft starts to contribute to the project. We also see a modest increase in contributions from external developers. We further document an increase in scrutiny, evident from an increase in the number of individuals performing code reviews and a surge in security vulnerability reporting. We also find positive effects for Microsoft. Edge makes a giant leap in functionality, moving it on par with the market leader Chrome. With the adoption of Chromium, Microsoft fixes more bugs, accelerates release cycles, and increases the market share of Edge at the expense of other less popular Chromium browsers. We discuss a number of general implications for managers and policy. This paper was accepted by D. J. Wu, information systems. Funding: This work was supported by Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [Grant 100013_197807]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.02886 .

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is increasingly being the choice to strengthen health information systems (HIS) in Low and Middle Income Country (LMIC) contexts. FOSS is becoming a commercially viable option in today's software industry. In LMIC context, bridging the gap between generic open source design and specific local contexts calls for the participation of multi‐sector stakeholders to realise FOSS implementations. This multi‐sector stakeholder network, together with the FOSS platform can be theorised to form a software ecosystem (SE) around FOSS implementations in a resource constrained setting.In this new paradigm, governing the open source acquisition and implementation process becomes a central challenge, which is distinct from the governance of open source developer communities. This paper attempts to identify the essential stakeholder categories involved in FOSS HIS implementations in a LMIC context and; to understand the stakeholder interactions in this SE at different stages. The analysis is based on a longitudinal case study of two open source HIS implementations and an attempt to establish a FOSS governance body in the State health sector of Sri Lanka during the period 2011–2014. The paper contributes by suggesting a model to understand the essential stakeholder categories and their interactions in FOSS implementation SE in resource constrained settings.

Open source software is widely used in the software industry and the academia. Licenses applied to open source software provide the terms for its further use and distribution. Decisions regarding licensing for new software systems are essential for the system's future use. In this paper, we introduce findOSSLicense, a license recommender that guides users into choosing the appropriate open source license for their software under creation. We also introduce our license modeling concept that is used in the recommendation process. The license modeling captures the properties usually found in existing open source licenses following an analysis performed on license texts. The recommendation process of findOSSLicense is based on a hybrid recommender that uses constraint-based, content-based and collaborative filtering giving also space for flexibility in the use of the system by its end-users who can adapt some system properties. User input, but also external sources of information including existing open source projects, are considered for the creation of the recommendations, whereas licenses used in third party software employed in the software are examined on a limited basis. findOSSLicense has been evaluated with the participation of users of various expertise.

“We do not appreciate being experimented on”: Developer and researcher views on the ethics of experiments on open-source projects

Open-source software abbreviated as OSS is computer software that is available with source code and is provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software. For the commercial software the source code and certain other rights are normally reserved for copyright holders,i.e. the company who developes the software. A group of people in a collaborative manner often developes the Open source software, not under the roof of a large organization. This strategy makes open source software cheap, reliable and modifiable if needed. In this context we shall discuss mainly the features of Open Source Software, differences of open source and free software and open source software movement in Indian perspective.

The software license is one of the most important non-executable pieces of any software system. However, due to its non-technical nature, developers often misuse or misunderstand software licenses. Although previous studies reported problems related to licenses clashes and inconsistencies, in this paper we shed the light on an important but yet overlooked issue: the use of non-approved open-source licenses. Such licenses claim to be open-source, but have not been formally approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). When a developer releases a software under a non-approved license, even if the interest is to make it open-source, the original author might not be granting the rights required by those who use the software. To uncover the reasons behind the use of non-approved licenses, we conducted a mix-method study, mining data from 657K open-source projects and their 4,367K versions, and surveying 76 developers that published some of these projects. Although 1,058,554 of the project versions employ at least one non-approved license, non-approved licenses account for 21.51% of license usage. We also observed that it is not uncommon for developers to change from a non-approved to an approved license. When asked, some developers mentioned that this transition was due to a better understanding of the disadvantages of using an non-approved license. This perspective is particularly important since developers often rely on package managers to easily and quickly get their dependencies working.

The software industry has evolved toward complex supplier-user networks that cooperate and collaborate in many ways. We hardly see any longer the traditional way of software development in which one company handles design, production, sales, delivery, and service. Business models, engineering life cycles, distribution channels, and services have changed dramatically. A key driver in these new value networks is open source software (OSS). Open source refers to software that we may freely use, modify, or distribute, provided we observe certain restrictions with respect to copyright and protection of its open source status. OSS is not freeware and generally has a copyright. IEEE Software, through this paper, has assembled this minitheme to provide a glimpse of where OSS is heading.

We introduce a simple-to-use graphical tool that enables researchers to easily prepare time-of-flight mass spectrometry data for analysis. For ease of use, the graphical executable provides default parameter settings, experimentally determined to work well in most situations. These values, if desired, can be changed by the user. PrepMS is a stand-alone application made freely available (open source), and is under the General Public License (GPL). Its graphical user interface, default parameter settings, and display plots allow PrepMS to be used effectively for data preprocessing, peak detection and visual data quality assessment. Stand-alone executable files and Matlab toolbox are available for download at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/prepms