Open Source Software License Changes. Sampo Savola & Olli Anttila TOL 2012

Transcription

1 Open Source Software License Changes Sampo Savola & Olli Anttila TOL 2012

2 Abstract 1. Introduction 2. Open Source Software Licensing 2.1 License Change 2.2 Problems with license changes 3. Cases of license changes 3.1 NetBeans IDE, SPL -> CDDL -> dual (CDDL & GPL v2) 3.2 Qt Framework, FreeQT -> QPL -> GPL -> LGPL 3.3 MySQL MySQL RDBMS MySQL client libraries, LGPL -> GPL 3.4 Mono, GPL -> MIT/X Java 4. Conclusions

3 Abstract In Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) licenses play a big role, and sometimes owners of the software want to change the license for some reason. In this article we go through some examples of license changes in various FOSS projects that we found on scientific literature, and outline what were the motivations for such change, how those changes were implemented and what effects those changes had to those projects. We also give some recommendation to those planning to change the license in their project.

4 1. Introduction Usage of Open Source Software is increasingly popular nowadays in all software development. Good examples of popularity of Open Source Software is Apache Web server, which powers approximately 58% of all the Websites on Internet (Netcraft, 2012). Also many of the most popular Websites are heavily relying on Open Source Software in their implementation, for example Facebook which is the most visited Website and social networking service in the world (Netcraft, 2012; Pingdom, 2012.) By using Open Source Software companies can have many benefits and competitive advantages over the closed source software components. Open Source software is said to be more reliable as there are more eyes watching the code and defects can be detected and fixed faster. At the same time Open Source software is more stable. Open Source software also provide transparency to the code and thus is more audible than closed source application where users need blindly trust to the software vendor. This makes it possible for users to be sure that there are no hidden backdoors or other filthy things. Maybe the biggest advantage with utilizing Open Source software still are the possible cost savings. Most of the Open Source software components are available for free without any license fees or royalties. Getting certain software component for free instead of self implementing the same functionality or buying needed component can have very big impact on company s economic situation, especially in case of small and startup companies (GBdirect, 2012.) When Open Source Software Project is created authors will choose some Open Source Software license that the project will be licensed under. Once the license is taken in to use, it is not very typical that it will be changed. In the past many of the research has been focused in the Open Source Software licenses itself, Open Source Software license evolution is something that is just now becoming understood (Jensen & Scacchi, 2011.) There has been not much research of the license changes, motivation behind the change and how the license change actually happens (Jensen & Scacchi, 2011). This article tries to find reasons for a license change and to describe the problems that license change may cause through case studies found in the existing literature. In this article we will also try to describe what obstacles there maybe when trying to change the licensing (Linux kernel lock-in, not possible due to thousands of different copyright holders, no contribution agreement). This article is literature review of the existing research of this topic. 2. Open Source Software Licensing

5 Open Source software is typically licensed under some of the widely used Open Source Software license accepted by OSI (Open Source Initiative) or FSF (Free Software Foundation). Most popular Open Source licenses today are GNU General Public License (GPL), GNU Lesser General Public license (LGPL), BSD License and Apache License (Black Duck Software, 2012). Why is it important to understand Open Source Software license change and migration? Many companies are building their software products by utilizing Open Source components. For many companies it is essential to understand what Open Source Software components they are using and under which license they are licensed. This will eventually affect the use, modification and the distribution of the software product. Wrongly used Open Source software may also compromise the possible Intellectual Property Rights hold in the software product by leading in to a patent or copyright litigation ( Jensen & Scacchi, 2012.) 2.1 License Change Why the software license needs to be changed? Open Source Software license evolution is caused by many reasons. One reason described in the literature is the desire of the copyright holders to adapt the licensing according to the new legal landscape. This may mean adding new specific requirements in the license. One reason for the license change can be that originally the license was created to satisfy the needs of the organization implementing the particular Open Source Software, however this license may not satisfy the users of that Open Source Software (Di Penta, German, Guéhéneuc & Antoniol, 2010.) Usually users want license to adapt more to their needs which often means license to change more permissive. Good example is the original BSD license (4-clause) which has evolved to more permissive variants (3-clause and the newest 2-clause variant) (Di Penta & al, 2010). Sometimes license can also change to be more restrictive. For example GNU General Public license version 2 was changed more restrictive to avoid hardware locks and digital rights management in GNU General Public license version 3 (Di Penta & al, 2010). In addition to these, licenses can change due to external pressures. For example Mozilla s license from Netscape Public License to Mozilla Public License was initiated by open source community due their objection to some of the licensing terms in the Netscape Public License. This made Mozilla Foundation to address its users concerns and they changed the license (Di Penta & al ) What enables the license change? In Open Source software development usually multiple developers from very different kind of sources are collaborating in to the project with different motivations. In order Open Source project to change its licensing it needs an approval from each contributor / developer / copyright holder to do that. In many cases it may be very difficult

6 or impossible to reach all the developers. This could lead to a situation similar to Linux Kernel, where original project was founded and licensed under Gnu General Public license version 2. Now many years later it would be impossible for Linux project to reach all the contributors to get a permission for license change (Jensen & Scacchi, 2012.) To overcome the issue with copyrights, there are different kinds of Contributor License Agreements (CLA). Contributor License Agreement is a lightweight agreement signed by the contributor (copyright holder) who grants the needed rights for his contribution to be part of the Open Source project. Contribution License Agreement typically define ownership of the copyrights and they define any licensing of the copyright generated by the project. Typically it means that by signing the Contribution Agreement contributor will give up copyrights of all contributions to the project owner.contribution License Agreement is recommended for all third party contributions to the Open Source project. Similar Contribution Agreements are very commonly used by commercial software houses where their developers are required to give up all copyright to their code developed during their employment (Gardler & Wilson, 2012.) When license is changed for the Open Source Software, it won t affect any previous versions of the code that had the old licence in use. It means that the copyright holder cannot retroactively change the whole code to closed source. This allows developers to fork the project from the last version that the old license was still effective and continue developing the software, if they are not happy with the new license (Fogel, 2010.) This of course means that the maintenance and new feature development is then done by the one who forked. In many cases this is not wise as it may require a lot of work and resources. This may possibly be more expensive than for example buying for the licensor to get project licensed under commercial license. 2.2 Problems with license changes Software product usually consist of multiple different software components, typically libraries. In many cases these are Open Source Software. For companies using Open Source Software it is crucial to monitor the software licenses of the Open Source Software components used by their products. There may be a situation where one particular Open Source software component needs to be updated. Update could be required because the new version of the component may include for example: critical bug fixes, new platform support, business critical new feature or performance improvements. In the worst case the new version of the Open Source software component may be licensed under the different Open Source Software License (Di Penta & al ) The new license can be suitable for the use in a company s product but it could also harm the whole product in couple of different ways:

7 The new version of the Open Source Software component may have a license that denies distribution as part of the closed source software. Typical example of this kind of Open Source Software license is GNU General Public License (GPL). It requires all the derived works to be licensed under the terms of GNU General Public License. GPL License for example requires all the source code to be made available and in the most of the cases this is not possible as it would compromise any existing Intellectual Properties or copyrights in the company s software product (Di Penta & al ) Second possible harm caused by Open Source Software license change could be the incompatibility of the new license with the other Open Source Software components used included in the software product. This is typically problem only with software licensed under GNU General Public License. In this case company may be developing software product that is licensed under some Open Source License that is not compatible with GPL. As a real life example of the incompatibility caused by the new license we can think of IPFilter firewall component license change in the OpenBSD Unix operating system in The author of the IPFilter decided to add an extra sentence to the IPFilter license. By the developers of OpenBSD,this extra sentence in the license was seen as a new condition that was not compatible with the license of OpenBSD. This change made OpenBSD developers to replace remove IPFilter from OpenBSD and they replaced it by their own implementation (Di Penta & al, 2010.) 3. Cases of license changes In this chapter we will briefly go through some of the license changes in the Open Source projects found in the literature. We try to find out what were the licenses that changed. Why they needed to be changed; what was the motivation behind the change and what were the possible implications of the the license change. 3.1 NetBeans IDE, SPL -> CDDL -> dual (CDDL & GPL v2) NetBeans is both an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for multiple programming languages and a platform for Java development. Like most software projects NetBeans started as a closed source project. Sun microsystems bought NetBeans in 1999 from it s original developer as Sun was looking for better development tools for java. Next year it was open sourced under Sun Public License(SPL) ( a Brief History, n.d.). NetBeans next change to license was not directly adopting new or refined license but rather an adoption of Contributor licence agreement (CLA) and in NetBeans case it was called Joint Licence Agreement (JLA). JLA stated that contributors and Sun would jointly own the copyright of the contributors code. Code from those contributors that would not agree with new licence

8 requirements would be removed from source tree. Sun adapted JLA in order to protect project in court without contributors agreement, and also to allow Sun to relicense project (as it now held all the copyrights). Introduction of the JLA resulted some push-back from the community. This push-back was not caused by the details of the new license but rather how license change was done. Sun had made the decision of introducing JLA unilaterally, without any consultation with the community (Jensen & Scacchi, 2011.) Motivation: Easier to defend project in court, possibility to change license. Result: Sun got what it wanted but received some push-back from the community by the way they handled the license change. Second license change for NetBeans was made in 2006 and was more cosmetic than anything else. SPL license was replaced by Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) that Sun had previously already used in OpenSolaris project. Those two licenses are very similar, so much that Sun consider CDDL to be SPL version 2. Change was made because CDDL featured shorter and clearer license text, and there were minor issues in the SPL ( Relicensing NetBeans, n.d.). Motivation: Shorter and clearer license text. Minor concerns in previous license. Result: Changes were mostly cosmetic. Third and so far final license change for NetBeans occurred in 2007 when it was dual licenced to GPLv2 with classpath exception ( Dual Licensing, 2007). Request for this change came from the community (Jensen & Scacchi, 2011). Sun was able to do this despite the fact that CDDL is not GPL compatible (Sun holds the copyright of the code so it can do whatever it want s with the code). Motivation for license change apart for having been requested by community were that it enabled vendors that were not able to work with CDDL work with NetBeans. Other reason was that it made NetBeans more linux friendly ( Why GPL v2, n.d.). Motivation: Pleasing the community. Allow vendors to use NetBeans that were not previously able to use it because license compatibility issues. Result: More users for NetBeans. 3.2 Qt Framework, FreeQT -> QPL -> GPL -> LGPL Qt is a multi-platform development framework. Qt has always been dual licensed but it s open source licence has gone through several changes. The first license FreeQT was very restrictive and did not allow modifications to the source code, thus not being real open source software

9 (Valimaki, 2003). First license change occurred when Qt was used in KDE, linux desktop environment. KDE gathered popularity and pressure from open source community forced then qt s owner Trolltech to release qt 2.0 on Q Public License (QPL). Motivation: License was changed to address issues raised by open source community. Result: It failed to dispel all concerns it was suppose to put out, and an additional license change was required. QPL was not yet compatible with GPL which caused incompatibility issues since many KDE applications were released under GPL. These concerns caused initiation of two projects, Gnome to offer qt-free competitor for KDE and Harmony as GPL licensed competitor for qt. Two years later qt was finally released in GPL and the license concerns caused by GPL incompatibility were resolve. This move also made Harmony project unnecessary it was thus abandoned (Di Penta & al, 2010.) Motivation: License was changed to squash competition (Harmony). Result: Harmony project was dropped. In 2008 Trolltech was bought by Nokia and qt went through it s last (so far) license change by making qt also available in less restrictive LGPL. This meant that qt was now available under two open source licenses(gpl and LGPL) and a proprietary one (Di Penta & al, 2010). Qt played central role in Nokia s smartphone strategy but company s troubles in the market led it to abandon the platforms it had used qt for. This also had impact on the usefulness of the qt itself. Due these reasons it is very hard to determine success and the impact of this particular license change. Motivation: Increase quality of the Qt (Paul, 2008). Result: Inconclusive, Nokia s switch to Windows Phone made Qt mostly useless to Nokia. 3.3 MySQL MySQL is relation database management system (RDBMS) and one of the biggest success stories in open source software, first produced by swedish MySQL AB. Later MySQL was bought by Sun Microsystems in 2008 and finally ended up to be owned by Oracle, when it in 2009 bought Sun. MySQL has gone through license changes in two different software products, in its core database software and in libraries that are used to connect third party software to the MySQL database MySQL RDBMS

10 MySQL was first released using it s own license, MySQL Free Public License. Licensing term allowed limited free distribution on unix based systems and included strong copyleft statement. Windows systems were excluded from using the software on those terms and MySQL was distributed as shareware on Windows systems (Valimaki, 2003.) In 2000 license was changed to GPL on all platform while keeping the proprietary licensing option available for paying customers (Valimaki, 2003). License change was done to increase user base for the software and thus increase number of users willing to pay for the software. Rather than being simple license change, this was more a open sourcing the software since it was previously closed source for Windows users. Motivation: Increase the number of paying customers. Result: MySQL became one of the most used database management systems MySQL client libraries, LGPL -> GPL Additionally to database software MySQL also released libraries that programmers could use to connect their software to MySQL database. There libraries were first licensed under LGPL v2.1 but in 2004 libraries were relicensed under GPL v2. This was done in order to prevent companies from using the libraries and the MySQL database without paying for the commercial license. License change had some unintended consequences, as change made libraries incompatible with PHP systems since PHP license is not compatible with GPL. This forced MySQL to make further changes to the license. That was done by adding MySQL FOSS License Exception(Di Penta & al, 2010.) Motivation: Prevent companies for using software without paying for a license. Result: Incompatibilities with other software products, forced to make further changes to license. 3.4 Mono, GPL -> MIT/X11 Mono is an Open Source implementation of Microsoft s.net framework produced by Novell to allow.net development under other than Microsoft Windows operating systems. The Mono project was originally licensed under the GNU General Public license version 2. Developers criticized that using GPL license it could potentially create a problem when running.net framework. They were afraid that applications could be seen as derivative works of Mono project which would mean that applications were required to be released under GPL version

11 2. This fear of the developers made Mono developers to change its license to permissive MIT/ X11 license which allows to be used as part of software distributed any commercial or Open Source Software license. Other reason for the license change was the requirement from Hewlet Packard. They had set license change as a condition for their contribution to the Mono project (Di Penta & al, 2010.) Motivation: Concerns of the developers of possible viral effect of GNU General Public license and conditions from major contributor to the project Result: License was changed to permissive MIT/X11 license to satisfy the needs of the developers and the contributor 3.5 Java Java is a set of computer programs and programming language originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Originally Java and Java JDK (Java Development Kit) were license under specific Java license. That license had a sentence denying making copies of the software other than one copy for archival purposes. This was major problem for Linux distributions as they were not allowed to include Java. This forced users to manually download and install Java separately from the distribution. In November 2006 Sun Microsystems and Free Software Foundation Java 5.0 under GNU General Public License version 2 with an addendum known as CLASSPATH exception. License change allowed Java to be included in the Linux distributions and it made it possible for Open Source Community to modify and develop Java under the terms of GPL without Sun Microsystems (Di Penta & al, 2010.) Motivation: Allow Java to be included in linux distributions. Result: License was changed to GNU General Public License version 2 with CLASSPATH exception to allow the distribution. 4. Conclusions In this article we have covered some of the license changes in Open Source Software projects that we were able to discover from the existing literature. License changes that we found were initiated from different reasons, depending of the project and we were not able to distinguish one common reason for the change. License change can happen multiple times during the project life cycle as we saw with NetBeans and MySQL cases. The motivation behind the change varied a lot. In our case studies we are able to identify following reasons for the license change: - Better defendability in the possible court cases (NetBeans) - More clear and better understood license text (NetBeans)

12 - Pleasing the community to gain more users (NetBeans) - Increase the quality, better suitability for commercial usage (Qt) - Increase the number of paying customers (MySQL) - Prevent commercial usage without paying the license (MySQL Client libraries) - Concerns of GPL Viral effect, conditions from major contributor (Mono Project) - Allow wider distribution and inclusion to Linux distributions (Sun Java) When going through these case projects we were able to see both benefits and also some drawbacks. License changes that are done without consultation with the community has potential to run to following problems: License Incompatibilities with other software, for example MySQL libraries and PHP. Push-back/distrust from the community, like NetBeans CLA case. It is thus recommended that license change should be done in transparent fashion with close cooperation with the users and the contributors of the software and done in a way that prevents. License change can also allow benefits to the project. License change can allow wider distribution for the project which means more users and thus better is better for the project s success like we saw in the case of Sun s Java. License change can fix users concerns about the copyright issues like we see with Mono project Increase money income by requiring commercial users to pay license fees as with MySQL case While writing this article and going through the existing research about the Open Source Software license changes, we noticed that this topic is something that has not been researched much. One reason for this could be that it is not always possible to find out the motivation for licence change or it will be difficult to properly analyze the implications of the license change. Most of the cases we could find where covering companies doing Open Source Software, it maybe totally different perspective for some smaller Open Source Software project which is purely run by community of independent developers without any company backing. As license change especially in popular Open Source Software projects can have huge impact for the users of the particular software, it should be investigated more what can be done to satisfy both, the users and the authors of the project so that possible license change will not cause conflicts and lead to a forks or other means to abandon the original project.

13 References: A Brief History of NetBeans. Retrieved October 12, 2012, from NetBeans website: netbeans.org/about/history.html Di Penta, M., German, D. M., Guéhéneuc, Y. -., & Antoniol, G. (2010). An exploratory study of the evolution of software licensing. Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering, 1. pp Dual Licensing NetBeans IDE 6.0 under the CDDL and GPLv2 with Claspath [sic] Exception. Retrieved October 10, 2012 from NetBeans website: Fitzgerald, B. (2006). The Transformation of Open Source Software. MIS Quarterly Vol. 30 No. 3 Fogel, K. (2010). Producing Open Source Software. O'Reilly Media. GBdirect (2012). Benefits of using Open Source Software. Retrieved October 15, 2012, from Jensen, C., Scacchi, W. (2011). License Update and Migration Processes in Open Source Software Projects. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 365, Lerner, J.,Tirole, J. (2005). The Scope of Open Source Licensing. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 21(1), Mikko VÄLIMÄKI. (2003). Dual licensing in open source software industry. Systèmes d'information Et Management, 8(1), Netcraft (2012). October 2012 Web Server Survey. Retrieved October 5, 2012, from news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/10/02/october-2012-web-server-survey.html Netcraft (2012). Most Visited Websites. Retrieved October 5, 2012, from toolbar.netcraft.com/stats/topsites Gardler, R., Wilson, R. (August 2012). Contribution License Agreement. Retrieved October 6, 2012, from Paul, R.(2008). Nokia Qt LGPL switch huge win for cross-platform development. Retrieved October 12, 2012, from

14 Pingdom (2012). Exploring the software behind Facebook, the world s largest site. Retrieved October 7, 2012, from Relicensing NetBeans under the CDDL. Retrieved October 15, 2012 from NetBeans via Archive.org Web site: about/legal/license-change.html Rosen, L. E. (c2005). Open source licensing : Software freedom and intellectual property law. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR. Why GPL v2 Frequently Asked Questions. Retrieved October 5, 2012, from NetBeans Web site: