One of the founders of the Open Source Initiative is dissatisfied with the current state of the open source movement. What is his first action in a "post-open source world"? Repeal the General Public License (GPL). In a post-open source world, Bruce Perens, one of the co-founders of the open source movement, envisions a simple compliance program that companies must go through every year in exchange for all the rights they need to use open source software. These companies will fund developers to write software for everyday people, rather than highly technical programs.
He has described this world in several papers and recently outlined his ideas to The Register.
Perens is particularly interested in what has happened since the 30-year-old movement. He believes that this movement is in urgent need of reform, starting with the GPL, because the GPL is full of loopholes and can easily be exploited by companies. In the current environment, this model no longer works. Perens argued that "enforceable contract terms" were more effective than licenses.
He points out that one-third of paid Linux systems are sold circumventing the GPL. He's particularly frustrated with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which stopped providing source code in June due to a GPL vulnerability.
Under IBM's control, RHEL became a proprietary product and stopped releasing the free RedHat fork CentOS. In addition, IBM also prohibits Red Hat customers from sharing the source code of Red Hat security patches. It also does not allow employees to provide patches to upstream open source projects as required by the GPL license.
"So I think IBM is getting everything it wants from the open source developer community, and we're seeing a middle finger," Perens said.
Another problem with open source is that it fails to serve the average person. If it is used, it is through the software company's infrastructure, while the application is proprietary code. Perens pointed this out, citing iOS and Android as examples. This dynamic creates a situation that is completely at odds with open source and what it has stood for in the past. Perens said it has reached a point where the average user is unaware of the freedoms advocated by open source initiatives. "In fact, open source is now being used to spy on and even oppress users."
His vision of post-open source, in which individuals and nonprofits can use it for free under a single license, would solve many problems. Chief among them is that post-opening terms will define the financial relationship between developers and the companies that use their products.
Currently, open source developers tend to write code for themselves and others in the community. If companies pay them, they get the necessary support and motivation to develop more user-friendly applications.
"All of this has to be transparent and adjustable enough so that you don't have 100 different ways to fork," he said. "So, you know, that's a big question for me. Is this really achievable?"