Keeping It Simple

Category: software

  • Free Software vs. Gratis Software

    A lot of folks are unclear on the subtleties of free software and open source. Mike Hogan writes a blog article”Is Hybrid Licensing of OSS Hypocrisy?” to try to shed some light on this. With respect, I think he has missed part of it.

    We’re talking about two orthogonal things here. One is open-source versus closed-source, and the other is whether we charge money for software licenses or not. As Mike points out, the former is about development methodology. The latter is about business model.

    There ought to be nothing wrong with charging money for open-source software. In fact, there isn’t — even the GPL permits this. This is related to the origin of open-source in the Free Software movement. “Free software” to them is about what the user is licensed to do with that software, not whether they paid anything to license it. In fact, some companies package free software and charge for it (presumably with some added value).

    The marketing interpretation of “free software” is the “free chips & salsa” concept Mike mentions. It’s a way of encouraging the market to adopt this product. It’s a loss leader, usually followed by upselling the customer with other products or services.

    There’s also a case for no-charge versions of closed-source software. Typically these have either limited features (“crippleware”) or they expire after a limited time (e.g. “demo”).

    Few companies have found a way to use open source methods to develop full products they then charge money for. But this could simply be because it’s hard to drive adoption of any software product, regardless of whether it’s open-source or closed-source.

    On the issue of hybrid licensing, I see this as no hypocrisy; I see it as more freedom. If I develop some code, offer it under the GPL license, and you use my code as part of your project, then you are obligated to license your project with a GPL-compatible license. This is termed the “viral” nature of the GPL license, and it’s clearly intended to promote the free software movement.

    What if you don’t want to adopt a GPL-compatible license for your project? Well, no one is forcing you to use my code. But my code is really amazingly good, and you want it. You want it so much that you’re willing to give me money if I grant you a license to use it under different terms. If I’m willing to do that, now you have more freedom — you can choose to contribute your own code to the body of free software in the world, or you can choose not to. But the latter choice may have a different price tag associated with it.

    This should still promote the principles of the free software movement. It would be wrong to charge someone for their freedom. But in the hybrid license model, you can avoid paying for a license simply by joining the movement, by spreading the freedom. If you want to stick to your closed-source model, you can pay for the privilege of using my code in that way.

    I don’t see any hypocrisy in a software maker using a hybrid licensing model, as long as they are consistent and honest about it.

  • Can I Use Example Code from Internet Q&A Sites?

    A user recently asked:

    Scenario:

    • A developer is working on a project and encounters a problem.
    • They ask a question on the internet somewhere (ie stackoverflow.com)
    • Someone answers their question and provides a nice code snippet that just about does what they want.

    Where does one legally stand if the developer includes the code verbatim in their project’s code?

    I know I’ve done this before…and I’m sure others have too…but I’d really like to know what the legal or ethical answer is to this question.

    Note: never make business decisions based on legal advice you read on the internet — including mine! Confirm this with a qualified legal professional.

    StackOverflow seems to offer its content under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 license. See the logo and link at the bottom of the page.

    This means you are free to copy, distribute, and transmit any content you see here, or to remix or adapt the content.

    However, you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (though I can’t find where this is specified on StackOverflow), and if you alter or build upon the content, you may distribute it only under a compatible license. So it’s similar to LGPL, in that respect.

    I would recommend that you do not copy code or other content from StackOverflow verbatim, if you need to use it in a commercial project.

    • Should one use the example code and move on?

      No. You need to be aware of the license and comply with it, or in theory you could get your project into trouble. Realistically, this is very unlikely. But it is still possible to cause problems.

    • Should one use the example code and provide a comment referencing its origin?

      Yes, attribution is required by the Creative Commons license used by StackOverflow.

    • Should one inform the provider of the example code that they’ve used their code?

      You are not obligated to do so, so it would be a courtesy and that’s up to you.

    • Should one not use the example code at all and use the basic idea to create your own code?

      Yes, this would be a conservative and safe policy. Plus, it’s always better to understand how the code works, which you would have to in order to write code with similar functionality.

    • Is it ok to use said example code in proprietary closed-source projects?

      No. The license would require you to make your project available under the same Creative Commons Share Alike (or compatible) license.

    • Is it ok to use said example code in proprietary but internal-use-only projects?

      Technically, yes, because like GPL & LGPL, the licensing requirement only activates when you distribute a derived work. But how can you be sure that code from the internal-use-only project will never be duplicated into a product that gets distributed? Do you plan to annotate code fragments within your internal projects? I would not recommend relying on this.

    • Are the legal implications currently undefined?

      No, they are spelled out in the Creative Commons license mentioned above.

    I’m posting to my blog the questions I’ve answered on StackOverflow, which earned the “Good Answer” badge. This was my answer to “What legal issues can I run into if I use example code (say from stackoverflow) in my projects?“

  • Is This Legal?

    A user recently asked a question about GPL compatibility with his company’s commercial software offerings:

    I work for a software / design firm and I recently found out that our “in house” CMS is actually [based on software] licensed under the GPL Ver 2. I would like to know if it is ethical / legal to be selling this to clients.

    Don’t act on any legal advice you read on a forum like StackOverflow — including mine. 🙂

    Here’s a passage about GPL from Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

    The terms and conditions of the GPL are available to anybody receiving a copy of the work that has a GPL applied to it (“the licensee”). Any licensee who adheres to the terms and conditions is given permission to modify the work, as well as to copy and redistribute the work or any derivative version. The licensee is allowed to charge a fee for this service, or do this free of charge. This latter point distinguishes the GPL from software licenses that prohibit commercial redistribution. The FSF argues that free software should not place restrictions on commercial use, and the GPL explicitly states that GPL works may be sold at any price.

    However, if your company is distributing the software under another license not compatible with GPL, then they’re violating their license.

    I’m posting to my blog the questions I’ve answered on StackOverflow, which earned the “Good Answer” badge. This was my answer to “Is This Legal? (GPL Software/ Licensing Issues)“

  • TDD lesson from Sudoku


    I am a Sudoku addict. I like to analyze the logic strategies for solving these puzzles. I even gave a presentation at OSCON 2006 about using SQL to solve Sudoku puzzles.

    The image I’m including is a screenshot from jigsawdoku.com, copyright 2008 by Rachel Lee and Gideon Greenspan. This is my favorite Sudoku web interface currently.

    It’s most satisfying to solve the puzzle with no “crutch.” That is, every number is placed in its square without having to guess, and you never have to take a number out of a square after finding that it’s incorrect. Computer-based Sudoku interfaces that give you “hints” are also unsatisfying. It’s like doing a crossword puzzle in pencil!

    I was getting pretty good at solving the Hard puzzles, but I had hit a wall solving the puzzles in about 5 or 6 minutes and I couldn’t improve my time any more. One day I was in a hurry, and I wanted to finish the puzzle and go do something else. I started guessing as I placed the numbers. I used the “hint” button after each guess, to tell me if I had gotten it right.

    I only guessed when I had narrowed down the choice to two possible squares. In those cases I had a 50% chance of being right, in which case the hint told me I had made no mistakes. If the hint told me that I had made a mistake, I knew it must be caused by the number I had just placed.

    What I found was that I immediately cut my time in half. I could solve Hard puzzles regularly in under 3 minutes, sometimes under 2.5 minutes. This was surprising and a bit discouraging. This meant that solving the puzzle with rigorous logic, and without guesswork costs twice as much time as solving the puzzle in a sloppy fashion. Where’s the satisfaction in being sloppy?

    But I’ve been thinking about this. It’s an analogy to running tests frequently during incremental software development. Let me explain how.

    When computers were massive machines operated behind locked doors using punch cards. As you designed your program, you had to imagine it running in your head, and anticipate the bugs and design flaws as a “thought experiment.” Then you thought the program was ready, you’d put a rubber band around your stack of punch cards, and put them in the queue to be run by the operator. The next morning you’d get your result and see if your program ran correctly.

    Today, in most cases, the computers can run your program thousands of times per day if you need them to. It’s very inexpensive to run a partially-finished program, so now you can use the computer instead of your imagination to find out if the code works correctly. You can even use testing tools that make it easy to run tests repeatedly and identically with the touch of a button.

    The efficiency of running repeatable tests enables Test-Driven Development, or at least a hybrid approach in which you write code incrementally and employ tests frequently to validate your work.

    Here’s where it comes back to Sudoku. As I was placing numbers in the Sudoku grid and using the “hint” button to tell me if I had made the correct choice or not, I was practicing Continuous Integration. That is, I made the smallest change I could to the system (placing a single number in the grid) and then I re-validated the result with a test that was automated and repeatable.

    I observed that I could solve the puzzle much more quickly and accurately using this approach. This illustrates the benefit of using software testing during development. You’ll get a more robust product in the end, and it will take less time than if you had to write all the code up front.

    Some people think that since writing software tests takes some time on its own, that it’ll make the project schedule take longer. But I would point out that during the Sudoku game, I had to move my mouse to the “hint” button every time I placed a number on the grid. And yet I still solved the puzzle in half the time it took me to do it in the traditional way. The “overhead” of doing the testing, which one might assume is wasteful, in fact resulted in a net gain of productivity.

    Now I don’t feel like I’m cheating by using the “hint” button in Sudoku. I’m just working in a more efficient manner.