ZDNet UK

CNET NETWORKS UK BUSINESS SITES:
atlarge.com
BNET UK
silicon.com
SmartPlanet.com
ZDNet.co.uk

ZDNet.co.uk - Winner of Best Business Website 2007

You are here: ZDNet.co.uk > News > Software

Desktop platforms Toolkit

Expunging the myths of open source

Eileen Yu CNETAsia

Published: 23 Nov 2004 17:45 GMT

You compared the works of Beethoven and Mozart to software development in your speech.
I made a specific analogy between software and symphony which is a useful analogy in certain ways. The analogy is that they're both large collections of details, but they embody ideas… and you combine many ideas to make one piece, and even more different ideas to make one program.

Imagine if music can be patented, like a patent on a technique or a chord progression. Then imagine you want to write a symphony without being sued. Beethoven is a great composer because of his ability to combine many known music customs and create his own unique symphony. Nobody can re-invent music from ground zero, likewise in software development. It's an unfair challenge for anyone to put that requirement on anyone.

A software program can contain thousands of ideas, and if only 10 percent of those are patented, it is harder to develop software safely without breaching the patents. That hampers improvements to software. Users will find themselves like Gulliver, being held down by different ropes.

Software developers share the same interest -- to be able to develop freely without having to worry about patents. Sustainable software is only found in free software.

So if you composed a piece of music, would you expect the same things of it that you do of the free software movement?
Absolutely. I put on a licence on anything that I publish that gives the kind of freedoms that I believe is the ethical requirement for that kind of work. If it's a program or a manual or a reference work, something that's useful for doing a practical job, then I make it free with the four freedoms.

If it's an essay of opinions, I don't think it's a socially useful thing for people to rewrite other people's opinions. I put on a notice giving permission for verbatim copies. If it's art, I'll probably make the art free as well, though I don't feel all art has to be free in the same sense as a software, manual or encyclopaedia has to be free.

There has to be a minimum freedom that everyone must always have for any kind of written or artistic work, and that is, the freedom to non-commercially redistribute exact copies. It's tyranny to take that away, and only a police state could succeed. You can see the worldwide campaign for the war on copying gradually being ramped up… more and more harsh punishment, more and tighter restrictions on what people are allowed to do. And I think that's completely wrong and it has to be stopped.

For works that you use for a practical job, those have to be free, you have to be free to publish a modified version of those, even commercially. Because that's the only way that they become fully useful to society… that's when people are free to take advantage of them in all the useful ways.