Ethical Dilemma Over Linux-based Website

11. January 2008 by Martin Suter.

This past week, I decided to add blogging capabilities to this site and was surprised to find that my web hosting service (1and1.com) only has blogging options in its Linux Hosted Business offering. Coming from the commercial software business, I made a conscious choice 4 years ago to opt for the Windows Hosted service. But, I was now confronted with a choice that required some serious thinking about whether the move to open source was compromising my moral code.

“What’s he talking about?”, I can hear you asking.

As an Objectivist (by choice), a capitalist (by default), and an IP licensing executive (by profession), my quandary over open source software really sits at the intersection of these three areas.

My moral compass has largely been set by the influences of Ayn Rand in my formative years. Her views on individuals’ rights to their own work motivated me to gravitate towards IP licensing. Her view on capitalism (in its purest form), is that it’s the only moral economic and political ideology and is the manifestation of an individual’s right to their work as well as their ability to profit from it. As a consequence of the nobility of the profit motive, she profoundly mistrusted altruism.

Is Linux/open source, software for socialists? Are those involved in its development doing so out of an altruistic agenda? Does its use equate to theft of someone else’s IP?

I opted to start with the last question first, and printed off the GNU General Public License that I was required to enter into if I were to switch over to Linux. It’s highly readable, much more so than most commercial EULAs, and is eminently clear about the rights and obligations assumed by developers who choose to modify the code base. While everyone has the right to do so, any changes they make must also be made available, as source code, under the exact same terms as the original license - free of charge and without warranty.

Now as a named co-inventor on only 1 patent, I’m not smart enough to be called an inventor myself. I do know, however, that most inventors will say that their work builds on the work of others. “Prior art” is an important concept in intellectual property, requiring citation in academic publications and patent filings. Is the source code that one gets not the same as prior art? What about derivative works based on this prior art?

Two of my favourite words to help answer this are “but for”. In discussions about IP licensing, a key principle that arises regarding ownership of derivative IP can be summarised as follows: “But for the existence of the background IP, the derivative work could not have been created.” This gives the background work foundational status and means that the creator of the derivative works has a legal obligation to the owner of the background IP.

In this regard, I guess that I’m OK with the requirement to forgo any claims to derivative works. Developers decide, of their own free will, to build on top of open source knowing full well what the implications are for their IP.

Next time I’ll take a swing at the question: Is open source software for socialists?

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