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Ok, let's go over this. One. More. Time...
Your favourite open source projects are not being corrupted, or closed, or selling out, or whatever else you want to be afraid of, and here is why!
[Thread]
Your favourite open source projects are not being corrupted, or closed, or selling out, or whatever else you want to be afraid of, and here is why!
[Thread]
What I'm going to talk about here applies to most popular open source projects. We're going to use Blender as an example, but of course it is up to you to check the specifics of whatever project you are worried about.
Let's start from the beginning...
Under most jurisdictions worldwide, there is this thing called "copyright law". It specifies that if you create a thing (say, a piece of code), you have full authority over it. And, by default, anyone else can't do much more than look at it.
Under most jurisdictions worldwide, there is this thing called "copyright law". It specifies that if you create a thing (say, a piece of code), you have full authority over it. And, by default, anyone else can't do much more than look at it.
Now, that's not very useful if you want people to actually use your software. So you write up a legal document, called a "license", and in this document you specify a couple of things that you want to allow (license) people to do with your work.
The license cannot add restrictions on top of the copyright law, but it can add any conditions to the extra rights it is giving. And keep in mind that the copyright holder still retains full ownership of the work. Licensing is *not* a transfer of copyright!
Another important fact to keep in mind is that generally, if all the terms of the license are being respected, it is irrevocable. This means that if I license something to you, under certain terms, provided that you comply with said terms, I cannot take it back.
But, as the copyright holder, if I license something to you, I can also license it to someone else under whatever potentially different terms I want. Say a big company approaches me, and offers to buy my software, I can license it to them, or even transfer the copyright to them.
But this does not change the agreement I had with you. You can keep using what you licensed under the terms you licensed it. So if the license allowed you to, for example, redistribute and/or modify the source code, you can still do that.
Going back to Blender... It is distributed under under the GPL-2.0 or later. We'll not go into the specifics of this license, but mainly, it allows you to redistribute, modify, and even resell Blender, provided that you also distribute the source code with it.
So now you know that the license is irrevocable, and the main rights/conditions it specifies, and that even if it were to be changed, all the code that is already available under this license will remain so, and we can all continue developing it under the open source freedoms.
"But what if a big company buys the rights from @blender_org, and uses all their might to further develop it under a closed license, creating a product that the open community cannot compete with?" I hear you say.
Well, yes, they could... If @blender_org actually owned Blender.
Well, yes, they could... If @blender_org actually owned Blender.
You see, here is the twist, @blender_org doesn't actually hold the copyright to Blender...
I do! And 500+ other people.
Everyone who ever contributed to Blender, just agreed to license their code under the GPL, but never actually transferred the copyright to @blender_org.
I do! And 500+ other people.
Everyone who ever contributed to Blender, just agreed to license their code under the GPL, but never actually transferred the copyright to @blender_org.
So that means that changing Blender's license would require tracking down all those contributors, and getting all of them to agree to a license change or copyright transfer.
I think you can appreciate the impracticality, or rather, borderline impossibility of such endeavour.
I think you can appreciate the impracticality, or rather, borderline impossibility of such endeavour.
Keep in mind that there are currently 507 contributors listed in Blender's git history, but this does not even account for all contributions that were not directly committed by the authors, and all the code absorbed from other open source projects.
Tracking down all the actual contributors is basically impossible. And it goes further. Some contributors are sadly already deceased, so in those cases, it would require determining and tracking down their legal heirs.
A legal nightmare!
A legal nightmare!
What a company could do, is develop a competing open source version of Blender, but I think it is pretty obvious that it wouldn't exactly be a profitable business decision.
So instead, it is easier and more effective, to just contribute to the project itself.
So instead, it is easier and more effective, to just contribute to the project itself.
Bottom line is... Blender, and most large open source projects, are pretty safe. And are *not* selling out or getting closed!
A much bigger threat to open source projects is death by lack of funding, so just be thankful that large companies are investing, and stop freaking out!
A much bigger threat to open source projects is death by lack of funding, so just be thankful that large companies are investing, and stop freaking out!
