Re: Fwd: Wall Street article on a new Cooperative

Larry M. Augustin wrote:

>Benjamin J. Tilly [email protected] wrote:
>  
>
>>Russell McOrmond <[email protected]> wrote:
>>[...]
>>    
>>
>>>  Suggesting that this co-op is Open Source is like saying that a
>>>dictatorship that has greater than 20 people in the governing council is
>>>really a democracy.  It isn't a democracy unless citizens outside the
>>>governing council have a vote and a say in the operations and makeup of
>>>the government, not just existing council members.
>>>      
>>>
>>Nobody has said that this is Open Source.  Lots of people have
>>said that it is not, and there has been discussion about whether
>>this represents a step *towards* open source.  That is, will this
>>lead to participants realizing that this strategy is better than
>>what they had, but open source would be better still?
>>    
>>
>
>One of the arguments I've been making for years (and one that others
>certainly made long before I started making it) is that Open Source provides
>a framework for companies to cooperate on creating infrastructure software
>that benefits all and does not provide a competitive advantage to any of
>them.
>
>Avalanche seems like a great first step.  Even if Avalanche is not Open
>Source, I like that the founders are taking Open Source concepts and
>applying them in a new way to solve their business problems.  (See Tom
>Abate's recent SF Chronicle article.
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/19
>/BUGH865P5O1.DTL)  That's a positive thing for Open Source.
>  
>
It's not clear to me that the second step after Avalanche is FLOSS.

I'm still uncomfortable with Avalanche.  At some level, I think it's
a really neat idea, but I have a feeling similar to looking at a
"Rolex" on some street vendor's stand...

1. The site is filled with Open Source rhetoric, and explicitly mentions
Open Source several times.  If I weren't steeped in FLOSS I could easily
come away with the impression that this really is an Open Source project.
It makes me remember regretfully our failed attempt to trademark the term
"Open Source".


 From the Avalanche FAQ:

> *_Q: What is the Avalanche Corporate Technology Cooperative?
> _*A for-profit initiative, chartered by a group of companies, to 
> reduce the cost and increase control over mission-critical software.  
> Members of the Cooperative share intellectual property (IP) and 
> collaborate on projects that generate IP.  Our subscriber agreement 
> enables IP to be shared by and between the Cooperative and our 
> members, and collaborations to be pursued, without legal liability 
> risks.  The Cooperative was incorporated under Minnesota Cooperative 
> Statute 308B.  Consultants, as well as hardware and software vendors, 
> may also become members.
>
> **

2. This is one of several references I've run into on the site to "legal
liability risks".  Am I reading in too much to say that this is exploiting
some anti-FLOSS FUD about legal liability surrounding contributions to
FLOSS?

3. They appear to be forking gforge, and possibly other GPLd code.  This
is obviously permitted by the GPL.  It's pretty clear they are operating
under pure clause 3a, giving source code to every binary recipient, thus
relieving themselves of the burden of publishing their changes to the world.

While not legally objectionable, it tramples on the culturally granted
Lockian rights of the owners of these projects.  If they are agressive
about pushing their changes back to the respective parent projects, they
will have met their cultural obligations, but the web site simply does
not address the issue.  Time will tell.

4. Am I really excited about seeing a vibrant ecology of such cooperatives?
Is this another way to introduce the Corporate World to FLOSS, or is this
a competitor to FLOSS that might be successful enough to sap the supply of
Coprorate-backed FLOSS developers?

On the whole, I wish I'd thought of it.  I will certainly watch them with
great interest.

-- 
  Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell's sig