Engineers have collaborated on software since they've written software all the way back through the 1950s. In the past few years we have begun to see people argue for a different definition of open source software and raise concerns for the sustainability of the ecosystem. This talk looks at the underpinnings of those concerns, and how the future of free software is an anchor going forward. https://2020.copyleftconf.org/schedule/presentation/8/

3. 1950 1960 1970 200019901980 2010
Code sharing
At Princeton
IAS in late
1940s
IBM “SHARE”
Conf & Library
Begins 1953
DECUS
Conf & Library
Begins 1962
MIT Project
Athena Begins
1983
1BSD Released
1977
AT&T Shares
First UNIX tapes
early-70s
Free Software
Foundation
Launches 1985
DoJ vs IBM begins
“Software Bundling
is Anti-competitive”
1969
IBM response is to
unbundle HW, SW, &
services pricing
1st DoJ vs IBM
Consent Decree
“Hardware Bundling
is Anti-competitive”
1956
Open Source
Definition 1998
USENIX Begins
1975
Linus Releases
Linux 1991
Apache httpd
Released 1995
Apache Software
Foundation 1999
OSDL Forms
2000
OSDL Re-forms as
Linux Foundation
2007
U.S. Congress
Adds Computer
Software to
Copyright Law
1980
GCC
1987
emacs
1975
We’ve collaborated on software since we’ve written software
Writing good software is hard work

4. Collaboratively-Developed Software
is about Engineering Economics

5. Collaboratively-Developed Liberally-Licensed Software
is about Engineering Economics

6. Collaboratively-Developed Liberally-Licensed Software
is about Engineering Economics (after 1980)
Engineering
Economics
The Open Source
Definition

7. Software Freedom
• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose
(freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it
does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source
code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom
2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
(freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a
chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a
precondition for this.

8. Outbound – never inbound
We the participants in this project community share our work
under copyright with you in this way.

9. Eric von Hippel

10. MIT Athena

11. The Open
Source
Initiative

12. The
Difference

13. Freedom Zero

14. License
Proliferation

15. 2012 Octoverse 4.6M+ repositories
2016 Octoverse 19.4M+ repositories
2018 Octoverse 96M+ repositories

16. 2012 Octoverse 4.6M+ repositories
2016 Octoverse 19.4M+ repositories
2018 Octoverse 96M+ repositories
2019 Octoverse 140M+ repositories

17. Hunting
the Next
Big Exit

18. There is
NO open
source
business
model
https://bit.ly/2GMSEvF

19. New License
Proposed

20. New License
Proposed

21. OSD

22. OSD
Dated

23. OSD
Dated
Old

24. OSD
Dated
Old
Irrelevant

25. OSD
Dated
Old
Irrelevant
DATA Ethics

26. Interix
(A Complete UNIX
Environment on NT)
• 250 Buckets of Technology
• 25-30 Licenses

27. The Open
Source
Definition

28. Open Source Won …
• Linux Foundation claims $5B of software value co-creation
• ASF claims $20B of software value co-creation
• Eclipse Foundation, Drupal, Perl+CPAN, Python, Ruby …

29. Copyleft was a leap of faith …

31. The Ethical Software Definition
Ethical Software Foundation
Free Data Foundation
Data Freedom

32. The Business Software Definition
Software Business Association

33. Be Bold
Be Creative
Dare