JMComputer's Blog

Business and Open Source February 22, 2010

One of the things I have noticed is that a lot of companies are generally resistant to Open Source software for many different reasons, and only a few can be considered as “Valid”. I think the most “valid” is where there is a proprietary tool that they must use. But the one I am stunned by is the response of “We don’t want to give away our software, we need money”. Also, I need to preface this entire post with “I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY, DO NOT USE THIS POST AS LEGAL COUNSEL/ADVICE”.

After talking with quite a few Linux Professionals and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) people, it seems that businesses don’t fully understand the licensing or legal aspects of using Open Source in their business. Or the possibility that they do not have the time nor money for their legal department to analyse the GPLv2 (General Purpose License) and what it would mean for the company. I hope in this short post that I can clear some of that up in layman’s terms…

Businesses can FREELY use Open Source Software inside their business for ANY purpose. You are permitted to install Open Source based servers, workstations, and use any software package covered under the GPL. This means that yes, you can use a LAMP server, you can give your graphics people The Gimp, the whole company can use Open Office instead of MS Office, your programmers can use gcc, etc. Without any worry that by using Open Source software, they are committing themselves to some contract where they have to give things away.

The basics of the GPL that relate to businesses are:

• You have the right to use the code/binaries
• You have the right to distribute the code
• You have the right to modify the code
• The catch: IF you should give the code/binary TO ANYONE ELSE, you must provide the source code

What does this mean anyways? As an example, your company installs several web-servers to handle an e-business. You are allowed to use as many copies of Apache, Linux, etc as you want; for free. You are allowed to alter the code base of Apache, Linux, etc to fit your business needs; for free. You are allowed to give away UNMODIFIED versions of the code/binaries; for free (in some cases you can charge as well, so long as you give code and credit to the original authors).

What you cannot do: give away the MODIFIED code/binaries WITHOUT providing the source code including the changes.

Again, “what does this mean for a business?” A business can use anything they want in the Open Source Community, they can change it to fit their needs. If you want the quick and dirty: As long as they are not giving away OR selling the application/code to a third-party, there are no problems!

To finish, let’s have an example:

Company A downloads and installs Open Office on all desktops, this is permitted. Company A downloads the source for it and builds a customized version in order to do internal work (say edit data in a proprietary data format), this is permitted. So far Company A has not infringed on any portion of the GPL License.

Company A has a visit from Company B, Company B likes the customized version of Open Office and wants a copy of it. Company A sells them 200 “licenses” or “copies” of the application. So far, even this is permissible (with conditions). Company B wants the source code with the modifications, Company A refuses. Now we have a full breach of contract with the GPL.

Again, there is debate of whether the initial sale of the software constitutes a breach, and I have not heard of a final decision (although there is a new version of the GPL, so that’s important to look into).

So as a general rule, a business is allowed to use Open Source in may different ways and still be compliant to the GPL.