Reaching out to Richard Stallman, the father of free software.
The day after I posted Introducing Hive Commons, I was beyond stoked. Many people I admire and respect deeply read the post and even recommended it to their peers. Some of the people were people I knew and had talked with directly, other were people that I only know by reputation, all of them were intrigued by Hive Commons.
The response was both encouraging and inspiring, but I realized that there was one person who I wanted feedback from more than anybody, Richard Stallman, the father of the free and open source software movement.
I decided to email him.
It took me a little while to figure out what exactly I would ask him, and what I really wanted his opinion on.
I see the GPL as a means to an end. An end that I think I think is similar to the goal of Hive Commons — but I’m not sure if Richard Stallman would agree.
I’ve always seen open source developers as peaceful revolutionaries, people who fought for the publics benefit by volunteering their labor freely, people who had a vision for a society built on sharing and collaboration.
If the goal of the movement is to ensure that the software and any derivative works remain free then it would seem that the movement has been completely successful. The GPL license has already accomplished this goal, and it has lead to many huge projects and created a digital commons that is available to all.
However, if the GPL is simply a means to a greater goal — perhaps:
“Maximize the public benefit of voluntary public software contributions”
Then there may be variations of open source licenses that might work better.
Permissive Open Source Licenses have become incredibly popular, and despite not having the explicit viral quality of copyleft licenses, they have seen many successful projects established — that continue to grow and expand. It seems that due to greater accessibility to entrepreneurs combined with an implicit social contract that encourages commercial organizations to give back to the community, these licenses have arguably resulted in as much or more public benefit than copyleft style licenses.
Its clear that the Copyleft and Permissive approaches to open source software have had a tremendously positive impact. The GPL has magnified the altruistic contributions of developers. While, Permissive licenses such as the Apache foundation have succeeded instead based on an implicit social pressure that enables altruistic developers and self-interested entrepreneurs to co-exist within the community.
My gut tells me that both sides of the debate share the same goal, but disagree on the means to reach that goal — so perhaps a hybrid solution like Hive Commons which explicitly enforces the social contract while still providing more flexibility to entrepreneurs and enterprises might appeal to both sides and ultimately be a catalyst for a second open source revolution.
Here is what I ended up writing to him:
I was a bit anxious about how he would respond, or even if he would respond. I figured he was very busy and probably receives a deluge of inquiries ever day. But, only a few minutes later I got a reply.
If you’ve ever emailed Richard Stallman, you may have gotten this email before. Its a polite and amusing automated explanation for why it may not be possible for him to reply to emails quickly and that the sender should not worry, he would try his best to reply as soon as possible.
It was a surprise to me, because I was worried about whether he would respond or not respond, I didn’t even think there might be an auto-response. A bit ironic since it is an example of a false dilemma, which in a sense is my point about open source — you don’t have to choose copyleft or permissive when you can find a compromise that combines the advantages of both solutions.
The auto-response meant I was back to waiting for a real reply, but I had a good feeling that Richard would get my email in due time and I just needed to be patient. I felt better.
Approximately 36 hours later I got another reply, this one from Richard directly.
I took his response to mean that he felt that the goal was to maximize positive impact and that the copyleft approach was, in his opinion, the most effective solution.
I replied back, suggesting that perhaps a crypto-powered GPL might offer a compelling alternative to strict copyleft licenses, but more than likely he hasn’t seen it yet…
EDIT: He replied, saying that he was unwilling to compromise on any part of copyleft because past experience has taught him that any other approach is bullshit.
I asked him to keep an open mind because technology is always changing and novel approaches can sometimes produce more positive results.
Regardless of what he thinks of the approach at the moment, I believe that philosophically he will welcome the remixing of ideas behind the open source movement in an attempt to create a novel approach to maximizing the public benefit of voluntary public software contributions.
