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Can an Open Source Project Be Acquired?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Apr 26, 2005 10:11 AM
from the i-just-don't-get-this-one dept.
from the i-just-don't-get-this-one dept.
prostoalex writes "Can an open source project be acquired? ZDNet's Between The Lines says yes, one just did. Software startup JasperSoft acquired Sourceforge-based project JasperReports, which involved acquiring the copyrights and hiring the lead developer for the project." I guess the point he tries to make is that the new corporate overloads can essentially have a free and non-free version of the code, and more or less orphan the free version. The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.
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Not possible in the EU (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not possible in the EU (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Urheberrecht translated. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Not possible in the EU (Score:3, Insightful)
a. there's the WIPO Copyright Treaty, to which Germany is a party [wipo.int]
b. there's the Berne Convention, to which both Austria and Germany are party [wipo.int]
c. there's the European Copyright Directive, for which the deadline of 2002-12-02 has passed, and thus should be implemented in Germany. As for the last one: European Law was determined in the "Van Gend en Loos Case" to have preference over local laws. So where th
Re:Not possible in the EU (Score:5, Interesting)
In the US, you can buy the copyright to an artwork, and then vandalize it in any way you like and sell the vandalized copies (the classic example is painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa). In most of Europe, this would infringe the creator's moral rights, and moral rights cannot be sold. The exploitation rights cover the rights to make money from the work in a way that does not damage the integrity of the work.
Parent
Re:Not possible in the EU (Score:3, Informative)
Under US law, several distinct rights exist as part of copyright law:
- reproduction (the right to make copies)
- distribution (the right to sell or otherwise distribute copies)
- adapation (the right to create derivative works)
- performance and display rights
The owner can sell or license any of these rights separately. So you can sell a right to copy without selling the right to make modifications (derivative works). Just because someone can sell prints of the Mona Lisa doesn't mean they can cre
Re:LOL (Score:3, Funny)
AMD is German!
Um, no. [amd.com]
AMD is and always has been a U.S. corporation, headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA from the very first year of its existence. They do have a fab in Dresden, but that makes them German about as much as Nike's sweatshops make them Chinese.
What's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
JasperReport announcement text (Score:5, Informative)
A new company called JasperSoft (http://www.jaspersoft.com) has formed to invest in JasperReports and offer support, services and complimentary commercial products for JasperReports. I will be joining JasperSoft as Founder and Architect for JasperReports. This will allow me to work full-time on JasperReports enhancements, and direct a new team of professional open source developers to accelerate the JasperReports roadmap.
JasperReports has become more popular than I ever imagined it would. And the community has been demanding a higher level of investment and advancement in JasperReports than I alone can deliver, even working full-time. JasperSoft will help to increase the investment in JasperReports by adding full-time professional open source developers to the project.
JasperReports will stay open source forever, and its advancement will accelerate with the additional resources now being applied to it. JasperSoft and I are committed to investing in, and building the best open source reporting products available.
JasperSoft will also offer Support and Services for JasperReports, which a number of JasperReports customers have been requesting. See http://www.jaspersoft.com/services_tech_support.p
JasperSoft is a new company, headquartered in San Francisco that was formed by a combination of open source and commercial reporting domain experts. We have some of the brightest minds in the world now working on JasperReports. JasperSoft also has a commercial product line, JasperDecisions that will offer complimentary capabilities for advanced functionality to the JasperReports community. The JasperDecisions product line consists of:
Scope Server: a java server-based operational reporting solution for interactive, self-serve reporting and analytics.
Scope Designer: a swing-based report designer for Scope Server report development.
JasperDecisions is currently deployed in over 50 leading corporations and ISV's including IBM, British Telecom, Informatica and the US Department of Defense.
Today, JasperDecisions is based on its own XML report definition, called RDL (Report Definition Language) and does not support JRXML at this time. However, future versions of Scope Server will have support for JasperReports. For more information on JasperDecisions, see http://www.jaspersoft.com/products_jsps.php
This is a significant day for JasperReports, which has graduated from an open source project developed and supported by me when I could find time, to an open source product supported by a community of developers around the world, and now backed by a company and a team of professional open source developers who are committed to building the best available open source solution. I hope you will continue to work with me to make JasperReports better than ever.
Teodor
Parent
Re:JasperReport announcement text (Score:5, Informative)
Well, then it's a good thing.
As a JasperReports user, I can say the system is fundamentally sound and well designed, but squirrely to use. The big picture stuff is great, but it needs a major dose of attention to detail (like documentation for example). It also needs a decent set of design tools. Out of a half dozen people working with this product at my work place, I'm the only one able to have consistent success with it.
There's no reason this product can't take out crystal reports -- it's basically sound and very powerful, it just lacks polish.
Parent
No Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.
That's only the problem for the company that bought it. It's no problem for any of us to take the open source version and de-orphan it. Having a deep pocket benefactor is actually a positive for open source. Look at IBM. They haven't acquired rights to anything yet, but in the future they may start buying up Open Source projects... you never know.
But acquiring an open source project can be a solid benefit for any business. This is good when companies take an open source project and fully fund it. That's part of the Open Source dream, IMHO. Money can still be made on services!
Who cares if it's forked into a closed area? There still is the old source to build on!
Parent
Re:No Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:No Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source has two benefits: customers of the product have access to the source, and a wider community can read, change, and improve the source. Announcements like the Jasper ones force the community to decide where they stand.
Put another way: if the lead devs decide to move, and get paid for their work, then we find out whether the project was robust or fragile. If the community does not step up to the plate, then they did not care enough.
To me, that is just fine. It makes it clear where we put our time and treasure. Projects that fail for this reason were fragile, depending on the good will of one person.
Scott
Parent
Re:No Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this breaks down somewhat when you consider the importance of the developers. In this particular case, the purchasing company not only got the code, but the lead guy who created and/or managed the code.
The FOSS community would not have a huge problem on it's hands if some company acquired and closed a branch of the Linux kernel, but there would be much wringing of hands if Linus went to the closed branch and stopped managing the free one.
TW
Parent
Re:No Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The American Dream(tm) has been a bit perverted of late. It has come to mean getting a Good Job and acquiring lots on money and stuff so that you may hire people to wipe your ass for you.
This isn't The American Dream. The American Dream was becoming independant, unbeholden to anybody, on one's own property no matter how poor one was, because land and independence is the greatest wealth. The mortgage burning party used to be a big deal. It meant you had bought your freedom. Now everyone will take you for a financial idiot if you aren't indebted to the maximum your creditors will allow, simply because you can't acquire the most money and stuff otherwise.
Free software is The American Dream applied to "intellectual property." Its dream is to insure that the code remains independent, no matter how poor.
But you may be right in that the dream of Open Source(tm) is more akin to The American Dream(tm) and that this is the primary division between rms and esr.
The GPL is still squarely aimed at independence, however.
KFG
Parent
This isn't the first project to have this happen.. (Score:4, Insightful)
But as the article plainly says -- and where the real beauty in open-source lies -- if the free version is good ENOUGH, someone else will come along, pick up the pieces, and continue making a better product out of it.
I'm sorry, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a pretty big claim.
As for open source projects getting bought up, I think that's great for everyone. The open source stuff still remains open and the programmers who worked on the project get some real (read monetary) appreciation for their work.
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://dvarchive.sf.net/ [sf.net] or http://www.sf.net/projects/dvarchive/ [sf.net]
It was GPL licensed, but the original author changed the license terms and managed to get sourceforge to delete everything that had once been available from the SF page. For a year or more he had claimed that he had lost the sources and was going to upload when the new version worked. Obviously that didn't happen.
I think this happened because the project's primary user base was not open source fans, so very few copies of the source were ever archived elsewhere. Apparently, open source developers were never interested enough to create a fork or even keep a copy of the source while the source was available.
Now the source simply is not available for the current version (3.x), nor even the last versions which were ostensibly GPL'd (2.1 or 3.0). (The license for the current version is not GPL.)
It has happened with other projects, and will undoubtedly continue to happen. It won't happen any time soon with Linux kernels or emacs, but when something isn't incredibly popular, it can and does happen.
My lesson leared from this, is to keep a copy of the source for anything and everything in which I am even a little bit interested. Still get burned sometimes though.
sdb
Parent
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:5, Informative)
I was thrilled when I found TORa, and when I found the project had a windows port. It's DDL/Data extraction is by far the best feature for my day-to-day work.
At some point, Quest Software hires the TOra developer, and closes the source on the Windows port. I was still so enamoured with TOra that I pestered the Quest sales staff monthly to find out when it will hit the price sheet, so I can buy the now closed version. I don't think they ever intended to sell a competing product, though.
So, 9-12 months later, the Windows port is defunct [globecom.net], with Quest claiming that all features of TOra are now available in Toad.
I wouldn't call this a successful acquisition, unless you count Quest Software (for squishing a competing product) or the original developer of TOra (which, I admit, has to make a living some how). Perhaps you could count Mac and Linux users as winners here, as they still enjoy an open-licensed version, whose developer is now on a steady payroll related to the project.
Had they kept TOra intact for Windows users, and priced it competitively with TOAD, I would have been happy to be a paying customer.
Parent
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a wrinkle that many devotees of open source either don't know about or don't talk about: Open source projects can get acquired by commercial software companies.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Or don't care about. If you're a user of open source, you're free to continue using the open source version you received before they were acquired. If you're a developer of open source, it's your source to sell or not to sell, depending on how idealistic you are versus how hungry you are.
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:5, Insightful)
Taco, please tell me you're not really having trouble wrapping your head around this one, and that you're just pretending to be staggeringly obtuse for the sake of, well, whatever reason you'd want people to think that you're staggeringly obtuse.
If I own a piece of code, I can do whatever the hell I want with it--including sell it to somebody else. It doesn't matter whether or not I've licensed it out under the GPL or other such Open Source license. Unless I surrender it to the public domain, I own that code, and I can license a GPL version, sell a closed version, offer a crippled demo, auction off a signed copy of the source code for a million dollars, and build an extra-shiny-and-nifty-for-my-eyes-only version--or whatever else I'd like to do with it.
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:5, Informative)
There are some subtleties that most people don't realize, however.
For the sake of example, assume a given project has only a single author. Said author owns the copyright to the code, and distributes it to the public in an unrestricted fashion under the terms of the GPL.
If a random member of the public wanted to fork/commercialize his code, they are bound by the GPL to keep re-releasing their changes under the GPL. However if the original Author wanted to fork his own work and make a commercial effort out of it, he can do that and make his future contributions proprietary, as the GPL doesn't apply to the Author himself (he didn't license it to himself, he owns the copyright to begin with).
Therefore, it is entirely possible for an individual author to write and maintain a peice of free software for years, and then fork his own work into a proprietary commercial derivative that nobody has any future rights to the code of except him. What he cannot do, of course, is revoke any code he already published under the GPL. This leaves his user community able to pick up the work from the last GPL version the Author released and continue the effort under the terms of the GPL.
However, most significant projects have multiple Authors, and all of the Authors would have to agree on this course of action in order to do it. That's why such a thing can't really happen to a body of work like glibc, gcc, or the linux kernel: there are far too many authors with the copyrights in the code all over the place, and you could never get them to all agree to come under one commercial roof together and make a proprietary fork.
Parent
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Copyright Assignment at FSF (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, that's because the FSF purposefully doesn't have them available online. The reason is that the FSF has several different assignment forms depending on what kind project you are contributing to (e.g. original work or an implemenatation of something else), on what kind of contribution you're making (new original code or old code) and depending on whether your employer (if any) possibly has claims to your work.
Too many people were filing the wrong forms, and it was wasting time.
Does anyone know what this thing looks like? Surely it involves more than emailing the maintainer and saying "I assign the copyright of my contribution to the FSF?"
Yes, they want a paper form, signed and mailed. Typically it'll require you to confirm that all your contributions are your own original work and that your employer does not have claims to your work.
(This being the form for original contributions where the employer has no claim. If you have an employer who might have a claim they want a different form where the employer waives all claims.)
Parent
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:3, Insightful)
It looks like these guys followed the proper channels. Bought the rights and hired the author. This is the same procedure as any other SW project (like a shareware author).
Nothing wrong with that (Score:5, Interesting)
So, the corporate buyout angle is a red herring. This is no different from any developer taking their ball and going home.
Re:Nothing wrong with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
GPL not retractable (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, the corp can buy the original copyright (and maybe some important later contributions) but that only gives them the ability to relicence the code.
Practically speaking, they'd have to make substantial improvements/service (ala sendmail) or market to the uninformed before the product would be saleable. And any improvement likely could be added into the free tree.
Re:GPL not retractable (Score:3, Insightful)
(This assumes that the code has a single owner. Code with many significant contributors will need to have all of the contributed code rewritten before it can be relicensed.)
Re:GPL not retractable (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing I can't do is revoke the GPL from code I've already released.. you are still free to distribute that code as long as you follow the terms. I myself, however, have no obligations towards you.
Parent
Depends who wrote the code... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Bob writes a program, releases it under the GPL, and incorporates contributed code into the project, that's another can of worms. I would think if he wanted to "go private" with the code base at that point he would need to get the permission of everyone who contributed any code, much like Mozilla did. If he couldn't get their permission he would have to rewrite those chunks of code.
Of course, IANAL, but that's what logic would seem to dictate; though logic has little to do with most software licensing schemes...
Re:Multiple contributors (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. You might have given them as gifts.
But if you didn't, and you released the code under the GPL, then the other guy must have agreed to your licensing terms in order to use your code. You own the copyright to your own portions of the code unless you transfer it.
If the person who owns the copyright to the rest of the code wants to release a non-GPL'd version, he either needs to get your approva
No, the sky is not falling. (Score:3, Informative)
JasperReports will stay open source forever
So it's probably premature to cry wolf.
Author relicenses work! News At 11... (Score:5, Interesting)
The good thing here is that the original work is still covered under the TOCs of its original FOSS license, so the original author and others can continue making improvements and otherwise maintain the software.
Otherwise, move along. Nothing to see here.
So what? (Score:3, Informative)
The difference with open source is that you have to track down individual contributors. With any popular open source project, it's going to be very difficult to find and get all those contributors to sell you their copyrights.
Even still, versions released prior to the buyout would still be subject to the GPL (for example) and only new versions could be made non-free.
Yes, it can happen. No it isn't anything to worry about.
I'm not sure this is entirely evil (Score:3, Interesting)
Having said all that; I really hope it's not a continuing trend.
It can be tricky... (Score:3, Informative)
Unless each developer who submits code to the project also turns over the copyright to a single entity, it can only take 1 developer to dissent and prevent the aquisition from happening except under the terms of the original license.
No problem! The new products are "complimentary" (Score:3, Interesting)
A new company called JasperSoft (http://www.jaspersoft.com) has formed to invest in JasperReports and offer support, services and complimentary commercial products for JasperReports.
Unless, of course, he meant "complementary"...
Seriously, the above statement seems to be saying that they will be offering mostly support and add-ons, not taking the core product private. The JasperReports software is currently under the LGPL [sourceforge.net], so there is some assurance that the original will still be available in the future, if anybody cares enough to fork the project.
Not very good recommendation (Score:4, Interesting)
Another company forked, and brought us GForge, which incorporates SVN and other improvements. Too bad GForge isn't used by the SourceForge site itself.
Food for thought.
This isn't the first time (Score:4, Interesting)
Both "bought up" by corporations, but the free versions are still very much alive and kicking.
At least these JasperSoft folks have tried to answer the obvious questions and they'd continue with the free version.
Article missleading: project not exactly bought! (Score:3, Informative)
It says, black on white, that the company "(...)called JasperSoft (http://www.jaspersoft.com) has formed to invest in JasperReports(...)". "Has formed to invest in". Not "has bought the project". The project has spawned a company, that it.
Again, a wannabee journalist spinning some "news" on the basis that its brainwashed readers won't read the original announcement.
Could some please teach those guys how to read, and how to report unpartially?
--
Arkan
Re:Corporate Overloads = Insightful Freudian Slip (Score:3, Insightful)
sounds like a typical IT department to me
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Can we moderate an entire story as "Flamebait"?
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Can we moderate an entire story as "Flamebait"?
No, but people with mod points can refrain from moderating any posts in the story. It may not do much, but it's something.
Re:Hrm, there's a wrinkle here, I think (Score:3, Insightful)
Others could not do that, but the copyright owner can!
Re:Hrm, there's a wrinkle here, I think (Score:4, Interesting)
The creator (aka "lead developer") owns the copyright to the software. The GPL does not transfer ownership of the copyright. All it does is license the software for others to use. GPL or no GPL, the copyright stays firmly in the hands of the creator.
The creator, of course, does not need to license the software to himself. That would be silly. So the creator, unlike everyone else, is NOT obligated to abide by the "licensee" terms of the GPL. The creator must still uphold his end of the GPL, which is to ensure that the software AS IT WAS when it was licensed to the licensee remains licensed to the licensee as long as the licensee abides by the terms of the GPL.
However, the creator can re-license NEW versions of the software under any license he chooses.
In theory, I imagine you could create a license which could restrict the creator's rights to license future versions of the software. This would be akin to a "promise" to not license the software EVER under anything but, say, the GPL. The GPL as it stands, however, has no such clause, and I can't imagine that most creators would want to tie their hands in such a way.
Parent
Re:Looks good to me... (Score:3, Informative)
for 3 years only copy of the gpl [tortoisecvs.org]
Of