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MS-Mundie: Why open source is still questionable

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010517/tc/mundie_why_open_source_is_still_questionable_1.html


Mundie: Why open source is still questionable

By Craig Mundie, Special to ZDNet

Responding to critics, Microsoft's Craig Mundie says the licensing model used by many open source firms turns existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their heads.

[...]

The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their heads. Some of the tension I see between the GPL and strong business models is by design, and some of it is caused simply because there remains a high level of legal uncertainty around the GPL-- uncertainty that translates into business risk.

In my opinion, the GPL is intended to build a strong software community at the expense of a strong commercial software business model. That's why Linus Torvalds (news - web sites) said last week that "Linux (news - web sites) is never really going to be a rich sell."

This isn't to say that some companies won't find a business plan that can make money releasing products under the GPL. We have yet to see such companies emerge, but perhaps some will. Recent history tells us, however, that finding a business model that works is difficult. According to ZDNet News, "Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera Systems...said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL doesn't make much business sense."

What is at issue with the GPL? In a nutshell, it debases the currency of the ideas and labor that transform great ideas into great products.

Alfred North Whitehead, the renowned British philosopher, logician and mathematician, observed: "It is a great mistake to think that the bare scientific idea is the required invention, so that it has only to be picked up and used. An intense period of imaginative design lies between. One element in the new method is just the discovery of how to set about bridging the gap between the scientific ideas and the ultimate product. It is a process of disciplined attack upon one difficulty after another."

In other words, a critical flow of information and experimental data follows every major scientific discovery and results in the verification, refutation or refinement of the new idea or theory. To facilitate this process, neither copyright nor patent protections are available for abstract ideas or theories. This is as it should be.

Legendary inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford (who held thousands of patents between them) succeeded precisely because they were able to use funding, management and market insight to deliver their innovations as unique, practical and useful products. Arguably, the creativity and inventiveness needed to deliver their products was comparable to that needed for the underlying theory or discovery that made their business possible in the first place.

When comparing the commercial software model to the open-source software model, look carefully at the business plans and licensing structures that form their foundations. This comparison leads to the conclusion that the commercial software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real economic growth. Intellectual capital has always been, and will remain, the core asset of the software industry, and of almost every other industry. Preserving that capital--and investing in its constant renewal--benefits everyone.


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