[COFF] Standing on the shoulders of giants, free or not

[Theodore Y. Ts'o]

It seems that you are primarily arguing that the idea of "Open
Systems" predates that of the Free Software and Open Source movements.
That's no doubt true, chronologically speaking.  However, for those of
us who came up a bit after you, from our perspective, the "Open
Systems" movement *failed*.  Source code for Solaris, Ultrix, AIX, was
very hard to get, and when we could get it, we were not able to make
changes and share them with others.

I've told the story before about how MIT managed to obtain a Unix
license without the infamous "methods and concepts" clause.  It was
able to continue to renew it because, quite frankly, AT&T needed
access to MIT researchers more than the other way around, so it was a
matter of sheer power politics.  But AT&T refused to *acknowledge*
that MIT had a Unix license to Digital, so the only way MIT Project
Athena got access to Ultrix and OSF/1 sources was through back
channels where MIT alumni working at DEC passed unofficial source
tapes complete with editor backup and coredumps.  But officially, once
AT&T refused to acknowledge that MIT had a valid Unix license (even
though we did), MIT wasn't able to get *legal* source snapshots from
Digital.

So this is why I don't view the Open Systems movement with quite the
same rose colored classes as others.

It's also why I like the GPL license, because it forces people to give
the code back.  Essentially I have *zero* trust that corporate
entities will do anything other than maximize shareholder value, and
if that means taking BSD licensed code, and adding their own secret
sauce, and not returning it back to the commons --- which is part what
led to the mess which was Solaris, HPUX, AIX, etc., that's exactly
what companies will do.

Companies may have mission statements saying things like "don't be
evil", but sooner or later, that phrase will quietly disappear and
companies will start making more and more compromises in pursuit of
the almighty dollar.  So if it helps, consider thinking of the GPL
license as a commitment device[1] for the philosophy of Open Systems.  :-)

[1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/save-me-from-myself-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

						- Ted