Meet the man who helped bring the General Public License (GPL) into German Law
Bringing Open Source licensing to Germany in the late 90s
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When Olaf Koglin and his comrades helped establish the “Linux clause” in German copyright law in the early 2000s, the rebels of the Open Source Movement still had a clear nemesis: The Microsoft Corporation.
It was the time when Bill Gates was caked and was generally regarded as the Devil — the head of the mighty Microsoft Goliath that was openly trying to crush the young Open Source David. The Open Source scene even had their own Jesus — the mocking nickname awarded to Richard Stallman for his important contributions to the Open Source Community and his eccentric personality including his long, flowing hair, paired with a propensity for wearing sandals (at times eccentric, but at other times inappropriate — Stallman resigned from MIT and the FSF in 2019 after strong criticism of remarks made by him, that were widely seen as highly insensitive).
It’s kind of funny. At the time when Olaf and his comrades Till Jaeger, Axel Metzger, Carsten Schulz and Till Kreutzer put a stake in the ground in German law for the GPL, the little band of Open Source renegades was just a bunch of “greenhorns” as Olaf puts it — barely out of college. And yet they were able to make a dent for their Open Source champion, despite the rage coming from the giant in Seattle that employed thousands of people and had all the resources in the world.
CCC Cologne & How it all started
When you first meet Olaf, you will notice this sparkle in his eyes that instantly tells you of his good natured, approachable charm, but also the kind of brain power that hides away behind his down-to-earth modesty.
He currently has two jobs side by side: One as the Director of Legal & HR at upday, the other as an author, speaker, and lawyer in the context of startups & IT. He has always been someone with a ton of energy it seems — so it’s no surprise he helped shape Open Source law in Germany in the early 2000s.
What might be surprising though is that unlike other Open Source enthusiasts he’s not a hacker — he’s a lawyer.
Olaf first came in contact with Open Source, when his best friend during his studies in Cologne helped found the local branch of the Chaos Computer Club. The Chaos Computer Club (short “CCC”) is Europe’s largest hacker-organization and has been active since the 1980s. When the Cologne Branch was finally founded, Olaf joined the club as the treasurer, taking care of the finances.
That’s when he first got in touch with the Open Source Licensing model and the GPL — and he was hooked.
Drawn to the juris-prudence of Open Source
Lawyers and programmers seem to have to have a weird thing in common: They both love well structured, logical text. Lawyers get this sense of beauty out of a legal text, while programmers get this joy out of the logic expressed in good source code.
I asked Olaf what he found so “fascinating” (his words) about Open Source licensing, and the way he described it made a lot of sense: There were (are) two kinds of licensing models — Proprietary and Open Source.
The proprietary licenses were the ones legally protecting software like the Windows 95 OS from being copied, modified, or distributed by third parties other than Microsoft and their distributors. In a world where 80–90% of all computers were running on Windows, and Software-as-a-Service was non-existent, these licenses were the legal backbone to gigantic revenues from global software sales.
Open Source licensing on the other hand, offered the polar opposite. Not only did the GNU General Public License and its cousins grant anybody the rights to copy and modify software — it even allowed people to make money off of distributing the software or derivatives thereof.
It must have felt anarchistic to Microsoft executives — and to the Open Source community it did feel like a social movement, too. Far beyond code, they did see Open Source as a way to share access with as many people as possible, not just to software. Today the spirit of Open Source licensing actually far extends software, through concepts like Creative Commons and Open Access.
Establishing the GPL in Germany
After Olaf passed his official exam in law, he went on to write his dissertation about the GPL. That’s when his work of helping establish the famous license in German law started.
The way that law-suits in continental Europe work, is slightly different than the “Common Law” system in the US & the UK. Instead of relying on the precedent of previous judgements (fans of the show Suits will know what I mean), law suits and arguments are instead based on legal opinions and interpretations that are published in legal literature & journals.
Through his dissertation simply titled “Opensourcelaw” (German: “Opensourcerecht”), he got in touch with two other enthusiasts (Till Jaeger & Axel Metzger) of matters of Open Source law in Germany. Together they joined forces as the “ifrOSS” — the “Institute for law (German: “Recht”) in Open Source”, in the early 2000s.
Through their institute, they gave talks, consulted companies and wrote books and legal opinions on Open Source Licensing. In the early 2000s they even created an addendum to a reform of copyright law in Germany, that specifically protected the free-of-charge provision of access to copyrighted work through Open Source licenses. It was dubbed the “Linux clause”.
Today, 20 years later things are more grown up.
Olaf has three kids by now and Microsoft has become an important part of the Open Source community through their work on Typescript, currently the second most beloved programming language in the world, and owning Github, the largest code sharing platform.
Open Source has turned from being the rebellion to the front and center of modern software development. And at least in Germany, that’s thanks in part to the work of Olaf and a handful of other lawyers passionate about Open Source Licensing, including the GPL.
Connect to Olaf:
Olaf on LinkedIn
Olaf on Twitter
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