"The world don't move to the beat of just one drum. What might be right for you, may not be right for some.
Mr. Griffin may as well have been speaking in defense of Apple's open source initiatives; the company's business strategies often fail to please either end of the spectrum, sometimes for the same reasons.
“How far can Apple go with open source? Many argue that Apple should decisively push into expanding their open source efforts, but how? There isn't just one way to embrace open source as a strategy."
I'll compare these two styles with Apple's participation in open source. I'll also dissect some of the rhetoric surrounding open source, and later look at areas where Apple could open things up, and detail some of the challenges they face along the way.
BSD-Style Open Source
Open source serves several goals. In the case of BSD, open access to source code encourages rapid and compatible development based on shared technology.
If it weren't for BSD's contributions to the TCP/IP networking stack, which they freely shared, developers of Internet tools and devices would not have been able to reuse BSD's code to build their networking products. Instead, they would have to buy code or develop it internally. Either option would have slowed down the pace of Internet development and made everything more expensive.
In addition to efficiency and interoperability, the BSD model seeks to provide a third benefit: commonality. It engenders foundations and platforms that others can build upon.
BSD-style licensing allows anyone to reuse code as they see fit. Some vendors use BSD code and then publish their enhancements and extensions; others do not. Microsoft, for example, has benefited from using BSD's networking code, but did not return their derivative code in Windows as open source. The BSD license allows this type of one-way sharing, which makes it more attractive to many commercial developers.
BSD isn't interested establishing a world where software is community property; the goal of BSD-style open source is to prevent the world from unnecessarily reinventing the wheel, and stabbing itself in the eye in the process.
Apple's Open Source
The model Apple is using for most their open source projects is based on BSD's approach to licensing. Apple finds ways they can reuse available code, and they provide access to code that others might be able to reuse in mutually beneficial useful ways.
In addition to making sure that the various products that use Bonjour (many vendors include Bonjour in their printers, for instance) work together seamlessly, Apple's free and open Bonjour code release also accelerated the adoption of Bonjour as a standard. Apple didn't release Bonjour solely to polish their halo, they did it so the technology would gain traction rapidly.
GPL Style Open Source
In other words, GNU doesn't give things away to make the world a better place, they give things away with the hope that a communist paradise will overturn the greed and vice of capitalism. That may sound controversial, but it's the exact premise of what the GPL is all about, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Stallman wanted to see software develop as a collective of shared technologies, where no one company could appropriate basic ideas or algorithms and seal them off from reuse and implementation for other purposes, on other platforms, or by other people.
Apple and the GPL
Apple bundles GPL software with Mac OS X, and contributes some things to GPL projects, but like most commercial software developers, Apple prefers to work in a model closer aligned to BSD.
Apple is a business shipping a product to sell, while the intent behind GNU advocacy is to develop free alternatives to replace proprietary software.
An increasingly absurd degree of rhetoric is being passed off as the official creed of an unofficial open source community. In my next article, I'll examine the value proposition behind open source and an emerging peanut gallery of critics who are trying to hijack and betray the free software movement. Stay tuned!
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