Why the "attribution debate" aka Adware is important and Matt Asay is wrong

Today Matt Asay continued to use his Infoworld Blog to push his adware agenda. First as political think tanks have shown us, is the necessity framing of the debate. Mr. Asay frames this as "attribution", snubbing even the very positive sounding "badgeware" and our prefered "truth in advertising", "adware". He then presents us with a false delimma: GPL or MPL+adware-clause. There are other licenses. It is possible that none of them achieve what Mule wants from a business perspective. In that case they should just call their software what it is "shared source" with their partners and customers, or create a license without the adware clause that meets the definition of open source.

First off, this has NOTHING to do with BSD style "attribution". And Mr. Asay, as I mentioned in a comment to his blog, knows very well that the licenses in question violate the definition of open source. Let's look at the license in question:

This License does not grant any rights to use the trademarks "MuleSource", "Mule" and the "MuleSource", "Mule" logos even if such marks are included in the Original Code or Modifications. However, in addition to the other notice obligations, all copies of the Covered Code in Executable and Source Code form distributed must, as a form of attribution of the original author, include on each user interface screen the "Powered by Mule" logo and (ii) the copyright notice in the same form as the latest version of the Covered Code distributed by MuleSource, Inc. at the time of distribution of such copy. In addition, the "Powered by Mule" logo must be visible to all users and be located at the very bottom center of each user interface screen. Notwithstanding the above, the dimensions of the "Powered by Mule" logo must be at least 130 x 25 pixels. When users click on the "Powered by Mule" logo it must direct them back to http://www.MuleSource.com. In addition, the copyright notice must remain visible to all users at all times at the bottom of the user interface screen. When users click on the copyright notice, it must direct them back to http://www.MuleSource.com

First off, this is a horribly written license which contradicts itself. It actually can be seen as prohibiting redistribution entirely as first I have NO permission to use the trademark, but must use it prominently! However it also very clearly violates the open source definition as explained by the people who coined the term "open source":

10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral

No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

Rationale: This provision is aimed specifically at licenses which require an explicit gesture of assent in order to establish a contract between licensor and licensee. Provisions mandating so-called "click-wrap" may conflict with important methods of software distribution such as FTP download, CD-ROM anthologies, and web mirroring; such provisions may also hinder code re-use. Conformant licenses must allow for the possibility that (a) redistribution of the software will take place over non-Web channels that do not support click-wrapping of the download, and that (b) the covered code (or re-used portions of covered code) may run in a non-GUI environment that cannot support popup dialogues.

The Mule license requires me to have a UI. However, there are more practical issues. Let's pretend that Buni licensed all of its source under Mule's license and you used Buni's source in your product (with our logos in their stead). Let's also say that if you were to take this JNDI code from Mule and use it in your code. Now you are required to display BOTH the Buni and Mule logo at the same spot on the screen. That is how these prohibit redistribution. Add to this the impracticality of excessive adware display.

However, Mr. Asay probably knows this if he's been paying ANY attention at all to the 9 times it has been explained on the license-discuss list at OSI where is is a board member. I can only suppose that he chooses NOT to understand it. I don't mean to be salty, I just believe he is being disingenuous as an argumentative technique in using influence to push through the idea that these licenses and projects are open source. Mr. Asay is also characterizing us all as a "vocal minority" -- yeah...like the open source movement, registered voters and people who recycle. In actuality the number of companies with these adware licenses that are advertising themselves and their software as open source is quite small at the moment.

Moreover, my agenda is simple:

Agenda for posting here instead of my personal blog: differentiate Buni, push traffic here instead of there (besides my personal server is a bit measly). Some people "called" me on this (I thought it was completely obvious). I replied: duh.

Keep open source "open". Meaning Buni builds on a wide array of existing open source. We could NEVER build everything we depend upon (nor could Mule). We depend upon the "open source ecosystem". As a practical matter, we could never advertise every little library in our UI. If Mr. Asay succeeds in expanding "open source" to include "adware" then a slow tilt will happen.

Educate people on the subject against the misinformation being spread by those with a vested interest in expanding the defintion of open source and the damage it will cause if they succeed.

Links to get up to date:

• Wikipedia: Open Source Software
• Wikipedia: Open Source Movement
• ZDNet: Are SugarCRM, Socialtext, Zimbra, Scalix and others abusing the term "open source?"
• Nicholas Goodman's excellent post
• Danese Cooper: OSI Board considers Attribution Licenses
• Linux Gazette: OSI, GAP, and 'Exhibit B' licences
• The Buni Special Attribution License Proposal, with apologies to Mr. Swift.
• Roy Russo wrong on so-called badgeware
• SocialText's proposal to OSI
• Mule debate on TSS

update: Mr. Asay has responded to my comment in his blog:

Actually, Andy, I really do not know it. Nor does the OSI know it. In fact, there's still a lot of discussion and disagreement on it, but I personally don't buy the argument based on #10.

Here's #10, which you cite:

No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

I assume that you cite this to say that if a license requires a graphic, it can't be used in headless environments, or mobile screens, or whatever. I don't buy this. It may mean that the licenses, as written, need to allow for other forms of attribution (not sure what it would be in a headless environment - perhaps it reverts to header files with attribution?), but it does not mean that attribution, itself, is not OSD-compliant. This is just a matter of editing these licenses, not throwing them out.

Again, I do not like attribution. I think the GPL is much more effective as a business tool, and as a developer tool. But my dislike of the licensing mechanism doesn't lead me to the conclusion that it's wrong.

I NEVER said "attribution" was not OSD compliant. I said that adware aka badgeware is not. I do not object to a link and a message ala BSD et al. I also don't object to "on any title screen or (c)" banner -- although I don't "like" it. When you start requiring persistent logos on the screen at all times in specific real estate...AND they call it open source (despite two of the same license being unusable together) -- it is clear to me that a line is crossed. Sure it is an effective business tool for "conversion" but it is damaging to the open source ecosystem. Requiring everyone who uses the software to buy a license and restricting distribution of the source is a more effective tool for "conversion" but you would agree that advertising that as open source would be a simple case of fraud would you not?

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