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The reason we are confident that the comparative decline in the use of the GNU GPL family of licenses and the increasing significance of complementary vendors in relation to funding for open source software-related vendors will continue is due to the analysis of our database of more than 400 open source software-related vendors, past and present.

We previously used the database to analyze the engagement of vendors with open source projects for our Control and Community report, plotting the strategies used by the vendors against the year in which they first began to engage with open source projects to get an approximate view of open source-related strategy changes over time.

For example, we found that the engagement of vendors with projects that used strong copyleft licenses peaked in 2006, while the engagement of vendors with projects using non-copyleft licenses had been rising steadily since 2002.

Analysis of our updated database shows that the the number of new vendors engaging with open source projects in each year has risen steadily in recent years, from 26 in 2008 to 44 in 2011. However, as noted last week, we have also seen a shift towards ‘complementary vendors’ – those that are dependent on open source software to build their products and services, even though those products and services may not themselves be open source.

2010 was the first year in which we saw more complementary vendors engage with open source projects than open source specialist, and that trend accelerated in 2011.

As previously explained, complementary vendors were responsible for over 30% of open source software-related funding raised in 2011, and we should expect that proportion to remain high given that over 57% of the vendors engaging with open source in 2011 were complementary vendors.

We have also seen that complementary vendors are more likely to engage with projects with non-copyleft licenses (38% of complementary vendors have engaged with projects with non-copyleft licenses, compared to 24% that have engaged with projects with strong copyleft licenses).

If we look at all 400+ vendors in our database in terms of open source software license preference, the trend towards new vendors engaging with non-copyleft licenses is clear.

There has been a strong shift from vendors towards non-copyleft licenses in recent years, accelerated in 2011 by the likes of Apache Hadoop and OpenStack in particular. This does not mean that the number of projects using strong copyleft licensing has decreased (although as we previously saw the proportion of projects using the GPL family of licenses has declined).

It is indicative, we believe, of the shift away from specialist open source vendors using vendor-led projects and strong copyleft licenses towards multi-vendor collaborative projects and proprietary implementations of open source code, however.

This trend should not really surprise anyone. For some time we have seen open source becoming part of the fabric of modern software development and licensing strategies, rather than a competitive differentiator. Back in 2009 we predicted the increased importance of business strategies that relied on vendor-led development communities, rather than projects dominated by a single vendor.

We called this “open source 4.0″ and later suggested that it might be considered the golden age of open source, based on our belief that vendors had learned that they stand to gain more from collaborating on open source projects and differentiating at another stage in the software stack than they do from attempting to control open source projects.

Updating the results of our analysis to the end of 2011 and 400+ vendors indicates that, from the perspective of the commercial adoption of open source business strategies at least, we were not far off.

Some might not consider the proliferation of multi-vendor open source communities and proprietary distributions of open source software as the peak of achievement for open source. Each is of course entitled to come to their own conclusions about the implications.

Our perspective, as always, is that open source methodologies present a potentially disruptive, and also valuable, asset that complements the way both vendors and enterprise IT organizations conduct their businesses.

Our analysis indicates, however, that open source methodologies are increasingly being employed by ‘complementary vendors’ with a leaning towards more permissive licensing.

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One of the favourite blog topics on CAOS Theory blog over the years has been our quarterly and annual updates on venture capital funding for open source-related businesses, based on our database of over 600 funding deals since January 1997 involving nearly 250 companies, and over $4.8bn.

There are still a few days left for funding deals to be announced in 2011 but it is already clear that 2011 will be a record year. $672.8m has been invested in open source-related vendors in 2011, according to our preliminary figures, an increase of over 48% on 2010, and the highest total amount invested in any year, beating the previous best of $623.6m, raised in 2006.

Following the largest single quarter for funding for open source-related vendors ever in Q3, Q4 was the second largest single quarter for funding for open source-related vendors ever, as $230.4m was invested in companies including Cloudera, Hortonworks, and Rapid7.

As with Q3, however, the list of vendors presents us with something of an existential dilemma, as we see an increasing amount of activity by what we have referred to as ‘complementary vendors’ – those that are dependent on open source software to build their products and services, even though those products and services may not themselves be open source – as opposed to open source specialists.

The list of complementary vendors has grown rapidly in 2011, particularly around projects such as OpenStack and Apache Hadoop. If we examine the figures in more detail we find that over 30% of the funding raised in 2011 was raised by complementary vendors, compared to just 4% in 2006.

In fact, as the chart below indicates, VC funding for specialist open source vendors in 2011 was actually less than that in 2006 and 2008, and only marginally up on 2010, when again just 4% of funding went to complementary vendors.

The low amount of funding for complementary vendors in 2010 shows that the significance of complementary vendors is not growing at a constant rate, although for reasons that will become clear when we publish a follow-up post on the latest trends regarding the engagement of vendors with open source projects, we do expect that the proportion of funding related to complementary vendors is more likely to increase in the future, rather than decline.

This has implications for the ongoing trends related to open source software licensing, as covered yesterday. Examining our database of over 400 open source-related vendors – funded and unfunded, complementary and specialist – indicates that specialist vendors are much more likely to engage with projects using strong copyleft licenses than complementary vendors.

Specifically, our data indicates that 55% of open source specialists have engaged with projects that use strong copyleft licenses, while just 20% have engaged with projects with non-copyleft licenses. In comparison, 38% of complementary vendors have engaged with projects with non-copyleft licenses, compared to 24% that have engaged with projects with strong copyleft licenses.

Will will take a more detailed look at the trends related to the engagement of vendors with open source projects in the concluding part of this series of posts.

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Topics for this podcast:

*Opscode Chef extends to Windows for more enterprise devops
*Black Duck continues growth, gains new funding
*Cloudant expands NoSQL database focus, customers
*New open source Web server and vendor Nginx arrives
*The downside of Microsoft’s Android dollars

iTunes or direct download (27:35, 4.7MB)

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Oracle last week quietelyannounced the addition of new extended capabilities in MySQL Enterprise Edition, confirming the adoption of the open core licensing strategy, as we reported last November.

The news was both welcomed and derided. Rather than re-hashing previous arguments about open core licensing, what interests me more about the move is how it illustrates the different strategies adopted by Sun and Oracle for driving revenue from MySQL, and how a single project can be used to describe most of the major strategies from generating revenue from open source software.

Like most open source-related software vendors, MySQL started out life offering support, training and consulting around the open source database. The company also saw success in offering a closed source variant of the database for embedding in closed source systems, and it was this dual licensing strategy that drove much of the company’s early revenue. That began to change with the arrival of MySQL Enterprise (initially ‘MySQL Network’ – a subscription offering that delivered monitoring and (later) backup capabilities to paying customers only. While some people see this as an example of the open core licensing strategy, as we have previously explained, it is not. While open core is an extension of the dual licensing strategy with additional extensions, MySQL AB’s MySQL Enterprise, as the graphic above illustrates, actually paired the extensions with the open source MySQL Community – a subtle difference from the MySQL Enterprise licensing strategy adopted by Oracle (more of which later).

MySQL flirted with the open core licensing model in early 2008 with plans to introduce new features into Enterprise Edition that would not be available under an open source license. Those plans were ultimately reversed at the behest of new owner Sun Microsystems. To understand why Sun did this one must consider the company’s wider strategy for open source at the time. While a software freedom philosophy played a part, Jonathan Schwartz’s map of open source downloads, each representing ‘a potential customer that cost Sun nothing to acquire’, explains how Sun was less interested in driving direct revenue from MySQL (and other open source software) as it was in helping open source users to become customers for Sun’s commodity hardware and other products and services.

Sun never got the chance to prove whether this model would have worked (I’m being polite), but in any case contrast Sun’s approach with Oracle’s strategy for open source. While the majority of Oracle’s revenue clearly comes from other products, it is not looking to drive revenue for those products via open source downloads. Witness Larry Ellison’s recent proclamation that he doesn’t care if Oracle x86 server business (typically used to run MySQL) goes to zero. Instead (for better or worse) the company is focused on driving revenue directly from each individual product, whether that is a high margin server, or closed or open source software. That has resulted in an increased investment in embedded opportunities for MySQL, as well as traditional software license agreements. While customers might choose to use MySQL Community and purchase additional support subscriptions, as of November 2010 Oracle prefers that Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition customers enter into a commercial license agreement with the company. That was a strategy that was in place in advance of last week’s addition of high availability, scalability and security features, but one that clearly looks set to continue.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on your perspective. Monty Widenius does a good job of outlining the down sides to an open core licensing strategy, while Giuseppe Maxia focuses on the positives. Certainly Oracle will have to be mindful to balance the control and community aspects, but as we have previously covered (451 Group clients) there are a number of new capabilities in development for the core MySQL database itself.

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There are three types of FUD: the first and more genuine is (#1) the intentional spreading of falsehood, mostly to gain some marketing advantage over a competing product. While I despise this practice, I understand it. Then there is (#2) FUD spread by ignorance, when the originators are so blindly enraged by their hatred for a product that they don't care about getting the facts straight. And finally, there is a third kind, not less dangerous, which is (#3) the spreading of FUD with good intentions, when the authors believe that they have the facts straight and they want to help.

I have recently come across two examples of unintentional FUD. For different reasons, my comments to these public cases did not get through, and then I have to say something about that here in my blog.

MySQL is not ACID complaint

This surprising piece of news came in the blog of a company that calls itself the remote DBA experts.
The claim is this: if I insert a record in a table and then issue a ROLLBACK command, the record is not rolled back.
Anyone who has a minimal knowledge of MySQL knows about InnoDB tables (luckily for the poster, InnoDB is default in MySQL 5.5.6, which he was testing) and autocommit.
Reading through the example, one sees that the poster did not know about this piece of information. In MySQL, autocommit is ON by default. So if you want to rollback a record, you need to deactivate it. This is not optimal, and it can be debated, but if you read the docs, you don't claim something that is simply the result of your lack of knowledge. MySQL has shortcomings, but being unable to rollback a record is not one of them. Hence, this is FUD type #2.
Why I am writing all this here and not as a comment in that blog? Because I did post a comment, on November 23rd, but as of today, it has not been approved yet. The same is true for comments posted by other more knowledgeable people.

MySQL licenses. When it's free and when you need to pay for one.

This article is well intentioned. MySQL Licenses: The Do's and Don'ts of Open Source, or What's All the Fuss About? is a well thought piece, with practical examples, to help users decide what to do with MySQL licensing, i.e. when they need to pay and when they don't. Unfortunately, the article contains some unintentional confusion, and therefore leaves the readers with more wrong ideas than they had before.
I left a long comment on that blog, but for some unfathomable reason it was reduced to a tiny piece, and thus the need for explaining the matter here again.
The poster says this:

I make commercial software, which needs to have MySQL installed. My customers can use my commercial software, for which they do need to buy a license, in combination with the MySQL database engine, for which they don't need to pay. Because the MySQL engine is not embedded in my commercial software and I don't redistribute MySQL together with my software, I don't need a commercial license for MySQL and neither do my customers.

I am afraid that this wishful information is not correct. The GPL FAQ states it clearly:

If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that any program which uses it has to be under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license?
Yes, because the program as it is actually run includes the library.

Another quote:

However... as long as I have no desire to sell the embedded MySQL source code commercially, I can let the GPL license apply.

Also this is not true. The GPL does not regulate commercial transactions. It only deals with distribution of software. If I want to distribute a public domain but GPL-incompatible software linked to a GPL application or library, I am violating the GPL, even if I don't charge anything.

Another source of disinformation is "If you decide to pay for a MySQL license, you don't actually pay for the software."
This is also incorrect. Oracle sells two kind of things with MySQL. One thing is a subscription to services (MySQL Enterprise). If you buy this, you are not getting a license (unless you ask for it explicitly) but an agreement about services for a given periods.
The other thing that Oracle sells is licenses. They can do it because they own the source code, and they can decide to release it either as GPL (which is what you download from the MySQL site) or with a commercial license. If you ask for a license, you will most definitely get one. You can also get a license together with a subscription, if you are so inclined, but that doesn't mean that you aren't buying a license.
The important thing to understand to put the matter in perspective, is that the above information about licensing was still true before 2008, when MySQL was owned by MySQL AB, and it is still true today. Oracle, despite all the preemptive accusations of being ill intentioned, has not changed the rules of the game.
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Bradley M Kuhn published an interest blog post at the weekend explaining why he believes Canonical is about to go down the open core licensing route and heavily criticising the company for doing so.

My take on the post is that it is the worst kind of Daily Mail-esque fear mongering and innuendo. Not only does Bradley lack any evidence for his claim, the evidence he presents completely undermines his argument and distracts attention from what could be a very important point about copyright assignment.

The premise? Mark Shuttleworth has admitted that he plans to follow the open core licensing strategy with Canonical.

The evidence? Mark praises the strategy Trolltech took of selling proprietary licenses.

The problem? Trolltech did not follow the open core licensing strategy. Neither did MySQL, which Bradley suggests inspired Trollech’s strategy.

Both MySQL and Trolltech utilised a dual licensing strategy, which means that the same code base is available under on open source license or a closed source license (also known as “selling exceptions”. This is not open core licensing, although it is related since open core sees vendors dual licensing and offering extensions only available in the closed license version.

A significant difference between dual licensing and open core is that Richard Stallman has explained why, in his opinion, it is okay to sell exceptions to GPL code via a dual licensing strategy. In fact one of the examples he uses is… Trolltech.

So Trolltech is not open core. Or is it? Perhaps it depends on how you define it. Bradley has claimed, at least twice, that there is no agreed definition of open core.

If that were true you could forgive his confusion, but it clearly not. In fact the term open core was delivered fully packaged with a specific definition, courtesy of Andrew Lampitt. As I previously noted, you have to wonder whether many of the people that use the term open core regularly have even read Andrew’s post.

Since Mark’s comments about Trolltech are the only evidence put forward that Canonical is going open core I’m not going to debate that any further.

It is worth considering a couple of other claims Bradley makes, however – such as the idea that Nokia abandoned Trolltech’s business model. It is pretty clear that a company like Nokia has very different motivations and business drivers compared to a company like Trolltech. A strategy that works for Nokia does not mean the strategy that worked for Trolltech was wrong.

However, it is worth noting that in fact Qt business continues to operate the dual licensing strategy. What has happened is that the company has added a new LGPL option and launched a public repository for the software and abandoned the previous requirement for copyright assignment.

This is not a change in business strategy – this is a change in the licensing, development and copyright strategies. Just because Nokia is in a position to open up the development project to encourage more collaborative development (which I agree is a beneficial arrangement for everyone) does not mean that Trolltech’s closed development strategy wasn’t successful.

Undoubtedly Trolltech’s insistence on copyright assignment limited its outside contributions, but copyright assignment does not equal open core, despite Bradley’s insistence that there is “no other plausible & logical conclusion”.

We saw a similar reaction last month in reaction to Diaspora’s copyright assignment policy. However, open core is by no means the only possibility. Dual licensing is another. And as we have seen that comes with RMS’s own seal of approval… except where it results in a version of the code that is only available as closed source (such as open core).

Richard Stallman’s advice on that issue is to “insist that the contribution agreement require that software versions including your contributions be available to the public under a free software license. This will allow the developer to sell exceptions, but prevent it from using your contributions in software that is only available under a proprietary license.”

This is good advice for any developer concerned about open core, and this is the message that gets lost amid Bradley’s anti-open core agenda.

It is absolutely fair to ask why Canonical demands copyright assignment, but to insists that the only reason that they do so is because they are going open core, especially on such flimsy and misleading evidence, is scaremongering and distracts attention from the real issue – which is copyright assignment.

It should be noted, incidentally, that Bradley and Mark have some previous when it comes to copyright assignment, which was also, I believe, caused by confusion rather than malice.

See also this poston the difference between copyright assignment and participation agreements.

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In my time at MySQL AB in the Community Relations possition (2004-2006) I wrote several articles on MySQL’s licensing for the MySQL web site. The core reason for having to explain anything was (and still is) the dual licensing of MySQL, in particular the client library. I left MySQL AB years ago, but people still ask me licensing questions. Below is an excerpt from one such question, and my response.

> Hi, Found a post on the mysql website from Arjen Lentz to do with the whole
> mysql licensing question.
> Do you know if the issue with, php scripts (that use a mysql database) issued
> under a proprietary license require you to have a commercial license for
> mysql, or will the issues be covered for the GPL version through the fact
> that the scripts run via php which in-turn connects to the GPL mysql server
> for which the FOSS exception applies.

Note: I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice.

The issue might be a bit fuzzy since you are actually dependent on MySQL server, whether or not you are “linking”. So the linkage could be there anyway (there’s no consensus on this interpretation of “linking”, it is however the viewpoint of some – hence the fuzzyness).

My recommendation to you would be to not fuss with any nasty licensing for the PHP code you create for clients. While this provides the client with more freedom, you are the expert and thus the first choice for any support and future development. Providing clients with freedom tends to bind them more to you, while restrictions tend to make them look around for alternatives.

Your clients are in whatever business they’re in, which is probably not PHP code development; it’s not in their interest to go spend time on that or undermining you, unless you were to provide bad service.

If you approach your software in this way with your clients, you can generally GPL it and do equal or better business while not having to worry about nettly licensing questions. You don’t want to base your business on a legal argument, as you just don’t want the question to get raised to begin with… it’d be costly and distracting (if not destructive).

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If the recent debate about open core licensing has proven one thing, it is that the issue of combining proprietary and open source code continues to be a controversial one.

It ought to be simple: either the software meets the Open Source Definition or it does not. But it is not always easy to tell what license is being used, and in the case of software being delivered as a service, does it matter anyway?

The ability to deliver software as a hosted service enables some companies that are claimed to be 100% open source to offer customers software for which the source code is not available. Coincidentally, James Dixon has this week highlighted one example in the form of Nuxeo Studio, a configuration and customization environment for the Nuxeo ECM offerings, which is delivered as a hosted service to Nuxeo’s Connect – Developer subscribers.

The nature of Studio’s license came up in a conversation I had recently with Nuxeo CMO Cheryl McKinnon, and I had been meaning to write a post on the subject of hosted subscription services ever since.

Nuxeo Studio is the latest in a line of value-added subscription services that blur the lines between open and closed. It started, arguably, back in 2001 with Red Hat Network, a hosted monitoring and management service. The stand alone Red Hat Network Satellite followed two years later but it wasn’t until June 2008 that the code officially became open source, as project Spacewalk.

Similarly, JBoss Operations Network was first introduced as JBoss Network, part of the JBoss subscription, in March 2005. The code for that was made available in the form of the Jopr project in 2008.

Meanwhile MySQL introduced MySQL Network Monitoring and Advisory Services as part of MySQL Enterprise in October 2006 as it continued its shift towards subscription revenue (and away from its traditional dual licensing approach).

More recent examples include Nuxeo Studio and Acquia Network’s remote site management services.

In his post James Dixon argues that the delivery of a service like Nuxeo Studio is effectively the same as the open core licensing model, in that it is the delivery of proprietary extensions to an open source core. Florent Guillaume, director of R&D at Nuxeo, and Eric Barroca, Nuxeo CEO, have responded in the comments to that post and Eric’s original to argue that it is not.

My own feeling is that Nuxeo’s approach is not open core, since the original definition of open core concerned proprietary products. However, the existence of Nuxeo Studio means that Nuxeo is clearly not 100% open source.

For that reason, I have come to believe that we need to add a new revenue trigger category to our open source business strategy model, that makes a clear distinction between support subscriptions for 100% open source code, and value-add subscriptions that offer additional hosted services.

It is also a reminder of the importance of transparency. Open core vendors are regularly attacked for misleading potential customers with the promise of open source while delivering traditional licensing. Our recent transparency test indicated that for the most part open core vendors are clear about what features are in which version, and with which license.

I spent some time the other day investigating the web sites of various OSS-related vendors and unfortunately the same cannot be said of all vendors (whether they are open core or “pure” open source).

Too often phrases like “open source subscription license”, “commercial open source license” and “value-added component” are thrown around without any explanation of what exactly is meant, and the so-called open source purists are not immune to glossing over the details.

Simon Crosby recently commented that everybody making money with open source actually has a proprietary angle. I don’t think that is 100% true, but it is getting harder and harder to identify the open source purists.

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There’s been a fair amount of attention – both positive and negative – on dual licensing in recent weeks. A few days ago Brian Aker wrote: “The fact is, there are few, and growing fewer, opportunities to make money on dual licensing.”

It is a sweeping statement, but one that is worth further consideration, especially since, as Stephen O’Grady noted it is directly contradicted by Gartner’s prediction that: “By 2012, at least 70% of the revenue from commercial OSS will come from vendor-centric projects with dual-license business models.”

Success?

I remember reading this prediction back in December but dismissing it as being based on a fundamental error – the assumption that dual licensing and open source licensing are “essentially the same thing”. As Stephen argues, and we have previously clarified, they are not the same thing at all.

Dual licensing is the practice of selling exceptions to use an open source code base using a commercial license, while open core licensing is the practice of selling extensions to an open source code base. One of them is considered acceptable by Richard Stallman, and one isn’t (more on that in a minute).

As Stephen O’Grady notes, however, the Gartner prediction is further flawed. Even if we were to accept its definition of dual licensing, the prediction is undermined by mathematics. A couple of quick calculations suggest that Red Hat’s annual revenue this year will be easily be more than the rest of the top ten open source specialists combined.

Of course, this calculation very much depends on which vendors you choose to include, and it is quite possible that Gartner’s definition of dual licensing also includes vendors that sell proprietary software that includes or complements open source software. That would make the prediction more realistic in terms of revenue numbers, but would stretch the term “dual licensing” beyond the definition of most people.

It is safe to assume then that “dual licensing” as most people understand it is not going to be as successful as Gartner predicts. But what of Brian Aker’s prediction of its imminent failure? It probably goes without saying that reports of its demise have also been exaggerated.

Failure?

While it is undeniably true that dual licensing has diminished in popularity as a business strategy in recent years (as many commercial OSS specialists have opted for open core extensions as a quicker way to monetize community adoption and proprietary vendors have focused more on open source as a R&D cost-sharing exercise and avoided the community-limiting aspects of dual licensing) there is still a time and a place for dual licensing.

Dual licensing has got itself a bad name in some quarters (“MySQL != Free Software due to dual licensing“) but as mentioned above, it has the approval of Free Software Foundation president, Richard Stallman: “I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed.”

In fact, much of the criticism of dual licensing seen recently seems to be based on the view that it is used by commercial vendors to discourage users from adopting a free open source version. That is rarely, if ever, the case.

Where we do see dual licensing used, it is more often in enabling users that are unwilling or unable to use the GNU GPL to make use of the underlying code. In that way, dual licensing can be used to serve two different user groups, rather than attempting to cross- or up-sell open source users with a commercial version.

A good example of this is OpenNMS Group. The acquisition of copyright to the 1.0 code base in 2009 out the company in the position of being able to changing its licensing strategy beyong a pure open source approach. While the company is unlikely to go open core (Tarus Balog prefers to call it “fauxpen source”, OpenNMS has delivered Powered by OpenNMS – a commercial license program:

“While the OpenNMS Group encourages the adoption of open source software, some organizations, due to trade secrets, patents or other proprietary reasons, may not be able to use 100% open source software in their environment. The ‘Powered by OpenNMS’ program allows them to purchase the right to use OpenNMS under a more traditional license.”

That in itself does not guarantee the continued use of dual licensing. But it does demonstrate. along with the comments of Richard Stallman, that dual licensing remains a valid strategy for generating revenue from open source software that is compatible with the principles of free and open source software.

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One of the issues I have with the Free Software approach is that advocates have habit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater when discussing issues that they see as in any way negative to free software.

I was reminded of this while reading Bradley M. Kuhn’s criticism of Mark Shuttleworth’s reported views on copyright assignment.

Having read the original interview with Mark, and then Bradley’s response, it is pretty clear that the two have very different perspectives on copyright assignment: Mark is speaking from the perspective of a commercial business, Bradley form that of a non-profit foundation.

The two entities have very different reasons for enforcing copyright assignment policies, and Bradley is right to point out that a potential contributor should approach a copyright assignment policy from a commercial entity with a great degree of caution.

However, the ultimate reason for enforcing copyright assignment is about control. From a vendor’s perspective the desire for control is often to produce closed versions of the code. From the FSF’s perspective the desire for control is about keeping the code, and derivatives of it, open.

However, the fact that the FSF “promises to never proprietarize its versions of the software assigned to it”, does not support Bradley’s assertion that Mark “wants to confuse us about copyright assignment so we just start signing away our software”.

This claim is especially problematic given that Mark appeared (and it must be said we are reliant on the reporting of his statements to understand what he meant by them) to be attempting to reduce confusion around copyright assignments by, if possible, introducing some sort of standardization.

This is a suggestion that deserves more consideration. However, Bradley is so busy protecting the FSF from being maligned by Mark that he completely ignores the point raised by Mark - that copyright assignment policies are confusing, complex, and potentially problematic.

As the iTWire report demonstrates, the issue of copyright assignment is not just one that impacts contributions by individual developers (which is a common way of looking at it) but also of contributions from employees of Canonical to projects led by the likes of MySQL, Zope, Novell, Red Hat, Intel and others.

As previously noted, Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, and with it MySQL, has highlighted the issue of copyright control in encouraging/restricting community development in vendor-led development projects and providing acquirers with the potential to close an open source project.

Clearly, the issue is not as problematic for non-profit foundation-led projects, but the issue of copyright assignment needs more thoughtful assessment than a response that amounts to “non-profit=good, for-profit=bad”.

For more considered analysis of the issue of copyright assignment see:
Dave Neary: Copyright assignment and other barriers to entry
CAOS Theory: On the importance of copyright assignment
Daniel Chalef: OSBC, Community Engagement and Contributor Agreements
Michael Meeks: Some thoughts on Copyright Assignment
Tarus Balog: More on Copyright Assignment

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