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Commercialization of free software improvements under Copyleft licenses

I planned to start this article with information that there are always significant difficulties when trying to commercialize the improvements of free software, and to cite the Redis project as an example.

But then I realized that the situation with Redis ( Redis is changing its license again ) as an example is not very suitable. And not only because of the infernal mixture of various licenses used in the project, but also due to additional confusion arising from the interpretation of the terms Open Source and Free Software.

Moreover, judging by the results of the work of cloud providers for the last quarter of 2019, and this business is mainly based on free software, this closes the question of at least one really working way of commercializing free software.

After all, the numbers speak for themselves. The total revenue of cloud providers for the last quarter of 2019 exceeded $ 30 billion . Among them, the leader is Amazon (32.4% of the market), Microsoft Azure is almost half (17.6%), followed by Google Cloud (6%) and Alibaba Cloud (5.4%).

However, for smaller companies, such a business is generally not achievable. Therefore, for them, the issue of commercialization of free software improvements under Copyleft licenses (such as the GPL) may be quite relevant.
I bring to your attention a practical way to commercialize modifications of free software under Copyleft licenses, including with respect to the legislation of the Russian Federation.

What licenses are we talking about?


This article is about free software, in the sense that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) puts into it.

Its principles are formulated by 4 freedoms:

  • Freedom 0: Run the program for any purpose.
  • Freedom 1: To study the program and change its work to fit your needs. *
  • Freedom 2: Distribute copies of the program. **
  • 3: .*

*) Freedoms 1 and 3 require the availability of the source code of the program, which must be available for study and change. It is precisely because of this that confusion often arises, since Open Source precisely means open source code, whereas the concept of Free Software refers to software rights , and for which the presence of the source code of a program is mandatory, but not the only requirement.

**) Freedom 2 allows the distribution of the program for free and because of this there is also confusion with the term Freeware , which just means a free program, but can refer to any program, not necessarily a free one.

Thus, the idea of ​​Free Software is to provide the user with appropriaterights to the software that the copyright holder guarantees to each user.

A similar principle is called Copyleft , which requires the preservation of freedoms in derivative works and prohibits their reduction in comparison with the original software product.

In legal language, this is formulated in the GPL (GNU General Public License), which requires the author of a derivative work to preserve (not reduce) freedoms compared to the original program.

It is because of the preservation of the original freedoms that such licenses are called “sticky” or “viral”.

What is the problem of commercializing the GPL?


Problem 1


The main problem with the commercialization of software under the GPL is that the very first customer who receives the program or its sources has the right to become the distributor of this program itself and the developer cannot stop it in any way: www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq. ru.html # DoesTheGPLAllowNDA , www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.ru.html#DoesTheGPLAllowModNDA

And since any official user can get the source, then any user can post the received software or its source for free and free access That will certainly create problems with the return of finances invested in the development of such a software product.

There is no such problem for permitslicenses such as BSD, MIT or Apache. They allow reduction of freedoms in derivative products, therefore it is enough to change the original free license to proprietary (proprietary) and not open the source code of the software to the user (customer).

Problem 2


The second difficulty in building a business on open source software with viral licenses is that complete freedom in managing the rights to a software product belongs only to their owner, which is completely logical.

And only the holder of exclusive rights to the program can use the dual licensing model, which implies a “non-free” commercial license for software for business customers and a GPL-compatible license for representatives of the community.

But such a scheme is not suitable for secondary projects (the so-called “forks”) or projects dedicated to creating additional modules that should work together with the GPL code, and therefore must also have a GPL compatible license.
The method of commercialization of free software improvements proposed below allows you to circumvent the problems outlined above. It is suitable for:

  • Viral licenses such as the GPL.
  • Commercialization of software improvements when the developer does not own exclusive rights to the software product.

When does commercial value appear?


According to the explanations of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the GPL permits paid distribution of the programs www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html , www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.ru.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney .

At the same time, the GPL does not impose on the developer the obligation to publish its improvements to the general public: www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic

This makes theoretically possible a business model of return on investment in open source software due to its paid distribution, when commercial value is created due to exclusive ownership of the software product, more precisely, by limiting the availability of its current version for a wide range of users. In essence, this is a repetition of the business model of proprietary software based on exclusive ownership of the resource.

In other words, you must make a temporary on the second lag between the customer's right to further distribution of the software transfer to the customer, and the advent of the purchased software under the GPL license.

In fact, it's BP is,Variable restriction of freedom of distribution, as otherwise, simply “the economy will not work,” because the condition for the presence of demand for the product will be the lack of availability of cheaper (or free) analogues on the market.

Creating a temporary on the second lag on the basis of license conditions


The first option is the creation of temporary about the second lag between the software transfer to the customer and the appearance of his right to a further spread of purchased improvements, based on the creation of the necessary conditions according to interpretation of the clause of the GPL on the part of the Free Software Foundation.

This is made possible by turning the buyer of the software product into a (co) developer: www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DevelopChangesUnderNDA

To do this, it is enough to sign an agreement with the buyer (customer) on his work, for example, as a tester for productive data, which should include an agreement on the non-distribution of copies of the software product for the duration of this contract.

The developer-user interaction scheme:

  1. «» .
  2. (-) , , .
  3. FSF . www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DevelopChangesUnderNDA
  4. .

GPL


The second way to create a time on the second lag between the transmission of the customer and the appearance of the software in his legitimate right to its further spread is possible due to the fact that the rights to the program created by the order of the computer and, accordingly, the possibility of its further spread there at the customer only after complete fulfillment of their obligations by the parties to the agreement on the completion of software

The scheme of interaction with the user company:

  1. The developer enters into an agreement with the user company to finalize the original product related to free software with a virus license.
  2. , ( 712. ; 1296. , ).
  3. () - . , .. .
  4. , .

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These schemes of work were proposed to the community back in 2014 at several conferences, but before that, the authors contacted Richard Stallman to find out his opinion on these methods of commercializing the GPL.

Of course, he was not enthusiastic, because in this scheme there is a temporary, but still a violation of the original freedoms: Freedom 2: Distribute copies of the program and Freedom 3: Improve the program and publish these changes or all the program code.

However, he had to agree that the first method with a (co) developer would not violate the GPL, unless the user's work was fictitious. In other words, the user must truly work in accordance with contractual obligations and this work must be really paid.

In the second method, Richard Stallman believes that the scheme violates GPLv3, which explicitly states that the license takes precedence over contractual obligations. However, lawyers do not agree with this, since the license “begins to work” only after the transfer of rights to the result of the work. Therefore, whoever turns out to be the result of rights can only show real judicial practice.

Finally


The creation of any restrictions on the distribution of Free Software is always perceived “hostile” by the community, even if these restrictions fully comply with the terms of the license, do not contradict the law and help the development of free projects themselves.

On the other hand, the lack of a normal way to commercialize code under the GPL significantly limits the attraction of investments and their development, because Normal methods of commercialization are available only to owners of exclusive rights to the source code.

As a result, developers are forced to either engage in non-core business or use the GPL license bypass techniques to work with a proprietary software business model based on exclusive ownership of the copyright object.

I hope that this material will help someone build a business using free software.

Authors: Alexander Ryabikov, Sergey Sereda, Ph.D.

Based on conference materials:
Open Source Summit
LVEE 2014
I would be very glad to have any comments about your experience in commercializing free software with Copyleft licenses.

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