Commercial vs. Free: Not a Zero Sum Game

Think back to 1991 and the release of GPLv2 ... the open source software community was abuzz with great anticipation that the goals of the "free software" movement would soon be achieved. Now fast forward to present day ... the open source software business is potentially worth as much as $60 billion, a small Linux provider named RedHat has grown into a successful public company, and an open source database company named MySQL has been purchased by Sun Microsystems for $1 billion. Does this prove the success of the commercial open source movement? Of the failure of the free software movement?

If the recent firestorm in the community over Sun's proposal to sell closed-source add-ons for the open source MySQL database is any example, then the open source community appears to have concluded that the success of one is only at the expense of the other. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am a MySQL/Sun employee, and these opinions are mine alone.) The community would rather punish MySQL, one of the pillars of open source movement, than applaud the prominence it has helped bring to open source through its innovative open source and business strategies.

This "zero-sum" attitude is not only wrong, but also harmful to the open source industry. Instead, the open source industry must accept that both open source purists and commercial opportunists can co-exist in the same environment without forcing an absolute choice between them. Though it appears more open source "rationalists" are reaching this conclusion, the community needs to start acting based on what is good for open source as a whole, not just the purist forms of open source.

The viability of this type of co-existence is well proven in other contexts. Take the example of environmentalism and the "greening" of the business world. Groups like the not-for-profit Sierra Club operate on the same playing field (though at the opposite end) as companies that use the "green" label as an insincere marketing ploy (I won't point any fingers). The business world accommodates this range of diversity allowing groups interested in societal change to organize as not-for-profit entities, which allows them to focus on their chosen area of social good without being subject to income tax. Entities like the Apache Foundation, Linux Foundation and Free Software Foundation play this role in the open source world by focusing on open source for the public good (and get a tax relief too).

At the same time, though commercial entities are primarily motivated by profits, the community pushes them to be "good citizens". We see the pressure the community puts on companies these days to pursue environmentally friendly policies in spite of (or sometimes in support of) their profit motives. Similarly, commercial open source companies perform good citizenship by acting in support of open source ideals, which not only builds community goodwill but also allows them cash in someday.

To make this drive to good citizenship most effective, communities need a way to differentiate commercial entities by evaluating them both their effectiveness and sincerity in pursuing. Many environmental groups act as watchdogs and standard setters for their commercial counterparts. Similarly, the open source community has taken a new focus on improving upon the traditional benchmarks of open source (choice of an OSI approved license and release of copyrighted code) with proposals to include patent and trademarks as well as business and development models in the standard definition of "open source". Another proposal is the creation of an independent body that would objectively grade companies on their "openness". While these are great solutions, they are not likely to reach their potential for effectiveness until we all recognize the importance of co-existence.

Just as we don't hold commercial entities to the same standard of environmental purity as we do the Sierra Club, the open source community must strike the right balance between pursuing its passion and pushing commercial open source companies to act in "acceptable" ways. It must not forget that open source advocates, and good ideas that can further the open source movement, can come from virtually anywhere in the open source spectrum. While it's useful to distinguish between commercial open source companies based on openness, the community must begin acting as if we are all in this together. If we don't learn to co-exists, we risk an irreparable fracture in the movement that we all support.