Great post (as usual!), thought I would throw a few cents in the ring. The open source licensing community IMHO often times paint themselves into a corner with licenses — I see a separation of open source’s true ethos with what’s written in the license. Compare GPL with the MIT license: the GPL license is so onerous that it actually becomes a huge pain in the ass to abide by it. But I digress…

What _I_ value as the core of open source has been totally victorious: some software is better served as core building blocks than as a source of revenue. If you can’t sell software, then putting it under an easily digestible open source license:

1. gets the code in front of lots of smart folks who can make it better.
2. gets the code in front of lots of smart folks who think of cool new things to do with it.
3. gets the code in front of lots of eager folks who can learn from it.
4. provides ample proof that the software isn’t doing any funny business.
5. helps build economies that build value on top of it.
6. gets the authors some net fame.

That’s why so many big name open source projects have academic roots. It is why open source voting machine software makes sense. It’s why open source communications make sense (twitter?).

BUT, open source _commercial platforms_ are really a sneaky subversion of this. Companies aren’t interested in selling the platform per se; they are interested in having the platform as core to as many things as possible. Just take a look at open source licensed material from Microsoft and Adobe. At the end of the day the platform play is to take you back to a mothership revenue stream. Maybe this only occurs in aggregate, maybe you don’t care. In any case, by making a platform “open source”, you try to take advantage of all of the points listed above, but with the added twist that all the new economies it creates eventually drive revenue to the company that put it there.

So the issue for anyone looking at F8 or another platform is really: “how does this eventually feed back to the parent?” and “does that matter to me?”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/2548332533/

And this Simpson’s episode came to mind when I realized there is an intentional effort to dilute the word “open”:

Marge: Oh Homer, please! You’re embarrassing yourself.

Homer: No I’m not, Marge! They’re embarrassing me. They’re embarrassing America. They turned the Navy into a floating joke. They ruined all our best names like Bruce, and Lance, and Julian. Those were the toughest names we had! Now they’re just, uh…

John [ played by John Waters ]: Queer?

Homer: Yeah, and that’s another thing! I resent you people using that word. That’s our word for making fun of YOU! We need it!!

While you may not be able to tweak the software and distribute yourself, you will still be able to create software with very little barrier to entry. The duality of closed software with open standards of functionality will help to promote innovation in the long run. The platforms will be profitable before they become totally commoditized, to maintain an incentive to develop.

What is occurring may not be the true meaning of open source but it is certainly an evolution of the movement, not a step back.

Thats as much of a win as can be had against capitalism which demands the scale always be tipped in its favor.

Open source got close enough to equal footing with proprietary that the fulcrum had to be moved to give proprietary more leverage.