Beyond the Code
or, how to win friends, influence people and make a living by writing open source software. It's not just about the code.
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Thursday 2 April 2009, 6:38 PM
FAT replacement licensing must be pragmatic
Most of the open source world appears to have agreed that the one thing that must come out of the TomTom case is a free replacement for FAT. This is a technical challenge that I have no doubt the open source world will rise to and overcome quite easily. The requirements are more remarkable for what the new system won't need — security, journalling, mount points to name a few — than what does need to go into it. All this filesystem is going to be used for is removable media and portable devices, and speed and ease of use take precedence over access control and — for better or worse — reliability. A replacement for FAT won't succeed if it involves users, particularly non-technical ones, having to alter their behaviour in any way.
Code alone won't make a free FAT replacement a success, though. It may be that the objective of having a replacement for FAT conflicts with some people's views, particularly hardline Free software advocates.
There won't be a problem getting support for the new filing system into Linux, or even Windows. Adding a new filesystem to a PC operating system is straightforward. The success of any FAT replacement will depend on its use in millions of devices like digital cameras, MP3 players, mobile phones and yes, satellite navigation systems. Here the situation is somewhat different. The manufacturers of these devices want consumers — who have no idea what a filesystem is, much less which one their removable media uses — to be able to swap cards in and out of devices and PCs, and just be able to read and write files. That's what currently happens with FAT, so it needs to happen with any replacement.
That, in turn, isn't going to happen if hardware manufacturers find the licensing requirements for the new filesystem too onerous. Even if the will is there within a company to use and abide by the licensing requirements of open source software, it may not have the facilities to fulfil its obligations if that involves publishing their own source code. For these companies, a licence without a copyleft requirement is needed. While this idea horrifies some developers and is less than ideal, it's the reality of the situation. It's a case of choosing the lesser of two evils: A patent-encumbered filesystem being dominant in removable media and consumer devices, or having to release non-copyleft versions of the code.
A liberal licensing scheme for the new filesystem will mean a greater take-up among device manufacturers, and those of us who want to use free software will still be able to use the filesystem, modify its code and redistribute under the terms we prefer. Given the lawsuit that led to the need for a FAT replacement, a licence with a patent clause in it would be wise. This is one situation where principles must come second to objectives.
PreviousComments on this post
It seems you're new at this IT stuff. If what you mean by onerous licensing terms is that royalties must be paid to the IP holder, no, Open Source doesn't do that. Did you know that if you enjoy yourself in a certain way, hair will grow on the palms of your hands? Did you know that if you use Open Source code an army of lawyers will break down your doors and demand that you reveal all your code to the World? Both of those myths come from the same place. Some people though, fall into the trap of believing that Open Source code is free for the taking because it's written by a bunch of sandal wearing, long haired, greasy hippies living in their Mother's basement. Those unfortunate business people are becoming few and far between now. It seems natural selection is alive and well in the IT world.
Thanks for the compliment — I've been feeling my age recently, so for someone to suggest I'm just a youngster who's only just entered this industry is quite reassuring.
Believe it or not, there are people in the world who either don't understand or don't care about Free software. They can't see the benefits to the user and the developer, and do see copyleft requirements as being onerous — even more onerous than paying continual licence fees, maybe. While we can continue to try to educate these people, and explain why their fears are unfounded, if they remain unconvinced there's little we can do about it. People have a choice about what hardware and software they buy and use, even if they make choices we wouldn't agree with.
FAT's replacement must by ubiquitous to succeed. That means that we need to let even people who aren't willing to open source their own code use it. It doesn't stop us using Free software, and it will mean companies like TomTom can't be threatened just for wanting to make their products easy to use.
A replacement for FAT might not be technically challenging, but might well be socially. Not only does it have to have characteristics that allow it to become ubiquitous, it must also be interoperable with the millions of devices already using FAT. The greater the extent to which media carrying such a filesystem would not be interoperable with the really huge installed based of FAT devices the less attractive such a product would be to the market.
As far as onerous licensing goes, indeed there still many, many companies who have this old-fashioned idea that code they paid to have written belongs to them and are reluctant to distribute the source even to customers. Which they would have to do (on request from that customer) if they adopted a GPL'd filesystem implementation.
I'm rather disappointed at how much misunderstanding of the GPL there is here, of all places.
If someone produces a GPLd, complete packaged filesystem to replace (and hopefully improve on) FAT and publishes a full API then any code that connects to that filesystem is NOT subject to the GPL, as it merely uses it, and is not a derivate work nor a modification. Therefore full propriety rights remain on their own work.
The only obligation they are under is the make the source of the GPLd section (the filesystem itself) available, for which they are entitled to charge a reasonable handling fee. 'Making available' includes simply providing a link to the original website that hosts the work.
How on earth is this onerous?
Tezzer,
What you say is only true for code under the LGPL -- for full GPL code you still need to share all source code of the "derived work", as the licence puts it.
As for what's onerous, remember we're not necessarily talking about reality here, but perceptions. It's easy to think through the repercussions of buying a licence for proprietary software: You cough up, you get the code, and your bank balance goes down. If you're not used to releasing source code, trying to think through the repercussions is much more complex. Sun Microsystems, when it was in the process of releasing Java under the GPL, had to do vast amounts of checking to see if it actually owned all of Java, and it turned out it didn't.
If you start as open source, continuing that way is easy, but please don't think that for an established piece of closed software the process is simple, especially if it's a corporation releasing the code rather than an individual.
