Software is Not Beer

[David E Jones]

A note for the Moqui Ecosystem mailing list: I intend to publish this more widely, but wanted to share it here first, with people I know and respect and who might have feedback that would improve it.

Software is Not Beer

As my 20th anniversary in free software approaches, the state of the world weighs heavy on my soul. Okay, I'm being dramatic, but there is some seriously messed up stuff going on. The nice thing about seriously messed up stuff is that as it gets worse it also becomes more clear. Nothing is ever completely 'bad' (by whatever values you judge), and there are always alternatives being explored. In the light of more effective ideas, the reasons why other ideas are less effective also become more clear.

This is what I hope to offer in this article: a little clarity and a little hope. To get there, we first have to open some wounds.

The Argument

The argument of gratis versus libre is the wrong argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre

Libre is considered superior to gratis, but when it comes to software what does libre even mean without gratis? So called 'libre' software is nothing of the sort. It has little to do with any sort of general liberty or freedom for software or users of software. The way libre is popularly defined in the context of free software permits only a small set of carefully selected liberties while creating new burdens on users.

For example, the burden of 'copy left' is sufficient that many organizations are willing to pay for a commercial license to be free of the encumbrance. By my rough reckoning it took about 15 years for companies to figure this out and capitalize on it at scale. By around 2005 it was increasingly popular to use the GPL license, and later more hostile variations on it like AGPL, for pseudo-commercial software that cannot be modified and used without paying for a commercial license.

It is yet another example of how using force always has unintended results. I won't go so far as to say that this was intentional because if it was then free software was a bait and switch fraud from the beginning. I do not believe it was.

Here are a couple of definitions of liberty from the Oxford English Dictionary (oed.com):

"The condition of being able to act or function without hindrance or restraint; faculty or power to do as one likes."
"Unrestricted use of or access to a specified thing; free run of a place."

How can software be 'free as in liberty' or 'free as in speech' (a key aspect of liberty) when it has restrictions, hindrance, and restraints? How can software, or software users, be free when it is encumbered by any price or policy based on copyright or patent law? There is only one real form of 'free' software, and that is unburdened and unencumbered software.

The term 'open source' is even worse. The Open Source Initiative (opensource.org) stands as the arbiter of the definition of 'open source'. Over time the organization has lost its original purpose and become little more than a forum for political discussion dominated by corporate interests. Because of this, the term 'open source' has become meaningless. There is no longer much difference between 'open source' software companies and proprietary software companies. Most companies employ individuals who have contributed on paid time to an open source project. Does that make them open source companies?

Apparently yes. It is fantastic marketing. With each bait and switch there is a little noise, a little pause in the upward march of corporate valuation, but no lasting harm and it often invites more speculative investment, more reward from the market. This is especially true in a market flush with excess liquidity looking for any place to go that (hopefully) won't lose value over time.

The whole purpose of free software was to allow individual developers to collaborate without encumbrance and create software that anyone, anywhere, is free to use. The problems began before day one and were encoded in the GPL license that embraced copyright law, which protects institutional profit instead of individuals, in spite of claiming to be anti-corporate. It didn't turn out that way. Using force never turns out as intended.

But "wait!" you say, "how would developers get paid without copyright protection?"

How would developers get paid without using the threat of violence to get paid?

"Wait, what? Threat of violence? I never said anything about violence!"

That is the nature of law. It may be done civilly, endorsed by society, in fancy courts by fancy people using fancy words, but the decisions of those courts are meaningless without the threat of force, the threat of violence. When threats are not sufficient actual force is used, and sometimes that turns into actual violence.

The Bazaar is Empty

Intellectual property is a matter of ideas, the ultimate expression of human intellect, and the most important reason for speech. Restriction on hearing speech is just as effective and socially harmful as restriction on expression of speech. It is not 'free speech' if an individual is barred from receiving the speech or using ideas by threat of force. To call this free as in liberty or free as in speech is simply not correct.

Software is not beer, it's a pile of bits representing ideas from people. It can be copied and reused as easily as ideas by those who know how. That is not true of beer, if you drink it no one else can (don't get creative with that analogy, it gets ugly fast!). Why do we interact with each other over ideas the same way we do over limited resources with alternative uses? We are missing a MASSIVE opportunity to collaborate and unleash the genius of humanity.

So how would developers make money? If developers are not smart enough to make money without the threat of force, then how smart are we?

Software has been around for a few decades now. We've seen the effects of copyright and patent law in a legal system that heavily favors corporations. Do developers make more money because of it? No, not the developers who actually write code anyway. The commercial software industry is so entrenched that the vast majority of funds spent on software go to executives and shareholders. The effect of intellectual property has been to make it difficult for developers to work for any company that is not a software company, and it has diverted the majority of funds spent on software away from those who write the software.

For developers who work on open source software it is much easier to see software as a tool and not as a 'product'. The money spent on software comes from people who use the software and goes to the people who develop the software. If our goal as developers is to produce tools to meet real world needs and wants of the people who will use the software, then it is natural to collaborate and share so that we can deliver the best solutions for the lowest price.

Yes, I said it. We should produce the best solutions for the lowest price. In an open marketplace we would have to in order to compete. The problem is we cannot because a select few corporations own so much intellectual property that grants them a monopoly that there is no open marketplace.

The bazaar is mostly dead. Very few people are out there any more. Most developers have moved to the cathedrals being built around the bazaar where they hunker in padded chairs in gilded cages.

This is not just happening in software. There is far more market manipulation and monopoly protection in the overall economy than there is in just software. Just like intellectual property law, the claim of these policies is to protect the workers. The reality is it makes it difficult for workers to work anywhere except in a cathedral, in a large public or private institution.

Is this what we want? I cannot speak for you, but this is not what I want.

Software institutions are not failing, but they are failing us. They are failing developers, and they are failing users. A better way is for developers to work more directly with users. Even if largely corrupted there is still a great deal of free and open source software in the world with sufficiently low encumbrance that skilled developers can assemble solutions for any organization or individual without the need for commercial software.

This is the miracle of free and open source software, in spite of its corruption and cooption.

The Secret Sauce

I know I have used harsh language. That is intentional. Without frank words it is hard to see the reality of how this is turning out and how it is harming individuals to protect institutions that primarily benefit a select few. This does not mean that there is any sin that must be atoned, or any need to attack any person involved with this in any way. Judgment and retribution are always more harmful than helpful.

For some select few visionaries, the current batch of free and open source licenses was always just a stepping stone away from a society where the culture and law enrich and empower a few at the cost of the many. For some, free and open source licenses based on copyright law, instead of disclaiming copy rights completely, was only a way to get large institutions to open up their intellectual coffers.

Right now large technology corporations dominate industry and politics. This is where intellectual property law and other similar encumbering policy has brought us. They tell us we need them, and many of us believe it.

The truth is, we do not need them. We do not need a single one of them. Technology has advanced beyond the need for such institutions, and beyond the darkness where predatory institutions act with impunity.

As developers we can assemble and augment a huge variety of solutions using free and open source software. We can work as individuals and groups for organizations that use software instead of working for software companies. There is enough overlap between software used by organizations and software used by individuals that this provides much of the software individuals might want, and there are enough developers with individual needs to collaborate and create far better solutions for all. These solutions include collaboration aids that allow us to work in distributed groups on shared software, software that improves based on real world needs, not the speculation of a product owner who is far removed from the people who use the software.

Taking this a step further, we can also deploy large scale solutions using only open source software so that we are never locked into a hosting provider and we can easily move when a hosting provider becomes unviable. We can even host software on independent infrastructure given the prevalence of commodity hardware, internet access, and free infrastructure software.

The truth of companies is that sooner or later they all die. Solutions, ideas from people, do not have to die with them. Ideas carry on and to the extent they are not encumbered they continue to improve the human condition for all.

It would seem the time has come that we need longer need proprietary software. It will likely persist for some time because of two huge factors in markets: marketing reach and convenience. Nothing needs to be done about this except to create better, less expensive, alternatives. As more people open up and collaborate, by speech and by code, they will tap into the largest group in the world available for collaboration, which is the whole world.

Increased collaboration creates better solutions, especially for complex problems, and with global unrestricted collaboration the solutions will be better than any proprietary alternative. This has happened with some types of software, mostly lower on the proverbial stack, and is happening with more and more types of software every year.

For us as developers we can make this transition any time we want to. We can make more money and enjoy more satisfying work. We can collaborate with others we never would have met otherwise, other people who become trusted friends that enrich our lives in ways that are often not possible in a corporate environment.

My Story with Unencumbered Software

I say these things because I have done them and experienced the results. I started on this path early in my career. On 13 May 2021 it will have been 20 years since I registered "The Open For Business Project" on SourceForce. It is amazing to me that SourceForge still exists, but it does and you can see the Apache OFBiz project page at https://sourceforge.net/projects/ofbiz/ with the text: "Registered 2001-05-13".

Only a few personal experiences give me more joy than seeing others benefit from my work, especially developers who create amazing things that would not have been possible within their budget without unencumbered software to start with. That is not the reason I started in this direction. My reason was mostly selfish.

I saw how the software world worked as a young developer, especially the world of business software. I saw who makes lots of money, and who does not. I saw some of the tools and architectures they used. Once I understood some of the scope involved I figured I could compete with them from my basement, especially if I made the software open source so that I could just work on the software and collaborate directly with others instead of spending a bunch of time building a company, something I didn't know so well how to do and wasn't as interested in doing.

Long story short, it worked. It worked in ways I couldn't have imagined. Within 4 years I was speaking at conferences and contracting with giants like British Telecom and United Airlines. It was bizarre, working in the bazaar under a tarp offering software and services to fancy people in cathedrals.

The greatest benefit I've found, by far, is collaboration. After working on OFBiz for just under 9 years, and bringing it to The Apache Software Foundation in 2007, I decided to move on and start over and build what I had envisioned years before but was not able to build at the time. I registered a new domain name, moqui.org, and got to work in my spare time while continuing with contract work based on Apache OFBiz. The difference between OFBiz 1.0 and Moqui 1.0 is so dramatic I could not have done it without having collaborated with hundreds of people who shared their ideas and improvements to the open source software.

That didn't stop with Moqui 1.0. As more people got involved and more organizations starting using it the ideas kept pouring in and the software today is nothing like version 1.0. It is nothing like what I would have been capable of writing without collaboration with dozens of skilled and intelligent people, many of whom are not developers.

This is such a dramatic effect that peers from early in my career who chose other paths simply cannot keep up. Being a moderator of an open source project is a priceless opportunity. This isn't a treasure reserved for people who have done what I have done, it is available to anyone who takes on problems and collaborates with a large number of different people over a long period of time. Free software is an incredible opportunity to do this.

I do not say this to boast in my abilities. I don't believe my own abilities are anything unique. I have simply spent many hours communicating with people and gathering all of the best ideas I could find. My head is mostly a big pile of other people's ideas. That is sufficiently humbling that I could not in good faith claim copy rights for the software I have written.

Software is not beer. We don't lose it by sharing it. Unlike most things of value we are familiar with, it is purely ephemeral and because it is just human ideas we get more of it by sharing.

After Word

There may always be a place for some types of commercial software that runs locally or on a server far away. Along with speech, privacy is a critical aspect of functioning societies. Companies should be free to keep their software private, especially software that encodes private methods of production. It is also common that organizations need software for a very specific purpose and even if the code was shared it would not likely be useful to others.

There is no benefit in attempting to force people to share. There is no inherent conflict between free speech and privacy. Violation of privacy is often a form of compelled speech, very much the opposite of free speech, and very effective in creating dysfunctional societies. Such societies are neither productive nor comfortable to live in.

Just like we don't need to go after intellectual property holders, we don't need to go after people or organizations who keep things private, even methods of production that might benefit many people. Corporations can get very big and foster a fair amount of internal collaboration, but nothing compared to unencumbered global collaboration among capable individuals. Corporations maintain inferior products as long as they are profitable. The world of free and open source software is full of stories of less encumbered open solutions overtaking more encumbered commercial solutions. The problem solves itself.

This happens because of both lower price and higher quality, even if the quality of the open solution is not initially higher. Once a less encumbered alternative gets started it attracts users and developers who collaborate to make it far better than any more encumbered or more private solution.

We are developers. We are intelligent (or so our mothers tell us). We do not need force to make good money by creating value adding solutions. Collaboration on unencumbered software, freely sharing ideas, is the solution. We don't need more than that. While I have less experience with free and open design of physical things, I believe the same principles apply and will have a greater effect over time. The greatest opportunity in technology that enables small scale and short run manufacturing at a competitive cost will be in the collaboration to refine designs.

The last century of technology improvement has demonstrated one thing: quality increases with collaboration and decreases with encumbrance.

[Jens Hardings]

Hi David, thank you for sharing.

You talk about "predatory institutions" and "software companies" and I think I get the idea, but what exactly is the problem or set of problems with those? Is it the fact that there is a corporation, is it the (excessive or absolute) use of copyright which adds friction to the software development, is it the self-serving lobbying and other predatory behavior? Might it be that those same problems could appear even if we organize without organizations in a legal or even any formal way? Might it be that there are some characteristics of organizations that might avoid those problems (those aligned with the concepts of Conscious Capitalism / Firms of Endearment or Teal / Evolutionary organizations come to mind)?

How would you imagine solving some large-scale problems without those software companies, do you mean we should separate the software development and the usage of that software in large scale problem solving, so that individuals are mostly concerned with the development of the software, and corporations would limit themselves to applying that software and subcontract the individuals as needed? Would this not end up with similar problems that gig-economy workers are having now?

So is it really a problem of there being software companies, or of how some, most or maybe even all of them are behaving? Maybe there is a way to change or create new software companies that do not have those problems, and make it so this behavior is persistent even within the strong incentives to behave just like the ones we intend to change or replace?

There seems to be a typo: "we need longer need proprietary software" should really be "we no longer need proprietary software", right?

--

Jens.

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[David E Jones]

Thank you for your comments Jens, replies inline...

On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 7:29 AM Jens Hardings <je...@hardings.cl> wrote:

Hi David, thank you for sharing.

You talk about "predatory institutions" and "software companies" and I think I get the idea, but what exactly is the problem or set of problems with those? Is it the fact that there is a corporation, is it the (excessive or absolute) use of copyright which adds friction to the software development, is it the self-serving lobbying and other predatory behavior? Might it be that those same problems could appear even if we organize without organizations in a legal or even any formal way?

The notions of 'predatory institutions' and 'software companies' are two separate things, and though larger software companies do tend to become more predatory they are far from the only predatory organizations who use intellectual property law and justice systems for their ends. The problems with the two are different as well. Predatory organizations create a chilling effect on collaboration, often within their organization as well as for any individual or organization who might cross their paths.

IMO there is nothing inherently 'bad' or 'wrong' about software companies, and perhaps I need to add more to clarify that point of view. The issue with software companies who cannot survive without protection from intellectual property law is that the business model is increasingly flawed as alternatives emerge and grow, more open alternatives that allow for collaboration on a far wider scale.

The part about software companies near the reference to 'predatory institutions' is pointing out an alternative, that we as developers do not need software companies to make a living. It doesn't mean software companies are of no value to developers, and IMO software companies that do not rely on intellectual property protections have a very bright future (especially once the world's economic issues with excess liquidity are resolved, the excess liquidity that creates massive centralization... multi-trillion dollar companies... I never thought I'd see the day, but of course I am naive to the ways of financial systems and institutions).

 

For small software companies intellectual property protections (copyright and patent laws) are more or less useless. It is nearly impossible for a small software company to compete in court with a large software company, or any large company.

On the other hand, large software companies tend to be so closed and inefficient that a small software company or even an individual CAN compete with them in the marketplace.

In other words, markets or 'bazaars' are far more powerful and effective than courts of law.

Might it be that there are some characteristics of organizations that might avoid those problems (those aligned with the concepts of Conscious Capitalism / Firms of Endearment or Teal / Evolutionary organizations come to mind)?

I don't know. My experience with organizations communicating virtue, especially loudly, is that they are often justifying a significant lack of virtue in other ways.

The basic principles for evaluating the 'virtue' of an organization are all over the place. For my part I believe that force and fraud (coercion and deception) are always harmful, and in spite of stated goals when force and fraud are used the results are never what was intended, even by those who intend the best for others.

So sure, if an organization that claims to embrace 'Conscious Capitalism' or 'Environment Social Governance' or whatever else does so without the use of force or fraud then yes I believe they can avoid many issues and in their openness can encourage instead of stifle collaboration.

However, if an organization seeks virtuous ends by unvirtuous means, seeking harm instead of viable alternatives for people, then the result will always be different from what they intend. The theory that force is okay and has no consequences when applied through the proper channels is a little silly, but unfortunately commonly accepted silliness.

Stated intent and signals of virtue in marketing materials are not a good way to understand an organization or to predict the results of an organization's actions and policies. The point of looking in the past with what has happened with software companies, 'free software', and 'open source' is to show that in spite of the virtue signaling the methods used were misguided and have had many unfortunate results.

 

How would you imagine solving some large-scale problems without those software companies, do you mean we should separate the software development and the usage of that software in large scale problem solving, so that individuals are mostly concerned with the development of the software, and corporations would limit themselves to applying that software and subcontract the individuals as needed? Would this not end up with similar problems that gig-economy workers are having now?

What are these problems that gig-economy workers are having now?

My perspective on gig economy is likely different from what you hear in mass media and from governments. If the gig economy is so bad, or working gigs instead of being employed, why is it that so many people are choosing it instead of employment? Maybe it's not the gig economy that has problems, maybe it is the employment economy which has crippling encumbrances on work that claim to help workers but really harm them. May be.

Either way, when it comes to software and the use of collaboration vs siloed intellectual property, gig vs employment is really another topic... there is nothing about open collaboration that gets in the way of the free association between people to form organizations, for profit or not for profit. In my opinion it is quite the opposite, less encumbered association between people is far superior to the point where more encumbered associations between people cannot compete (and are more vulnerable to malicious actors siphoning off resources).

In terms of scale, there are technical solutions to this social problem. Consider where we are right now, on a mailing list for an unencumbered (CC0 + patent disclaimer) set of software that attempts to meet some of the most complex and difficult software needs that businesses have. This is not the work of a large organization, it could not be.

Scaling complexity, or scaling the handling of complexity, does not require scaling a formal organization. It does benefit from widespread collaboration, even if like Moqui the results of that widespread collaboration are largely gathered and moderated by an individual.

If nothing else I hope that I have demonstrated that working as openly as possible, even by an individual, can have a significant impact and open the way for others to do far more. I also hope that I have demonstrated that doing gig work can also be far better for individual developers, and that is true whether those gigs are done by individuals who work directly with clients or those who prefer to be employed by an organization that works with clients.

 

So is it really a problem of there being software companies, or of how some, most or maybe even all of them are behaving? Maybe there is a way to change or create new software companies that do not have those problems, and make it so this behavior is persistent even within the strong incentives to behave just like the ones we intend to change or replace?

Yes, absolutely I believe there is a way. In fact, I believe that those who are building software companies would be well served to find sources of revenue that are not threatened by breaches of copy or patent 'rights'. That sort of company would be on far firmer ground, especially if it is a small company, than any company that is designed to succeed only based on protections of intellectual property law (which in reality rarely protect them anyway).

Some big corporations have already figured this out. For example, Facebook and Google could open source 100% of their software without significant damage to their revenue, and over time they are doing just that in order to benefit from the collaboration available. In the business software world SalesForce is an example of a company that relies less on intellectual property protection than others such as SAP and Oracle, and SalesForce is eating their lunch more and more over time. I don't mean to imply that SalesForce is an example to be followed, that company has many issues and their customers suffer from intense lock in that gives the company a financial advantage. SalesForce is still a demonstration of the principle that revenue that is less dependent on copy and patent protections tends to be more successful over time (even if it takes a long time as it has with SalesForce).

 

There seems to be a typo: "we need longer need proprietary software" should really be "we no longer need proprietary software", right?

Yes, thank you, you are correct, that first 'need' should have been 'no'.

-David

[Vince Clark]

David, very interesting thoughts. Requires reading through it a few times and doing a little of my own homework to fully absorb, which I will continue to do.

The first two questions that come to mind for me:

1. Target Audience - You mentioned that you intend to publish this more widely. Can you elaborate on this?

2. Objective - what is it that you wish to accomplish?

--

[David E Jones]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 8:39 AM Vince Clark <vince....@gmail.com> wrote:

David, very interesting thoughts. Requires reading through it a few times and doing a little of my own homework to fully absorb, which I will continue to do.

The first two questions that come to mind for me:

1. Target Audience - You mentioned that you intend to publish this more widely. Can you elaborate on this?

Possibly DZone, it's the only major-ish venue where I have posted before.

 

2. Objective - what is it that you wish to accomplish?

It's a good question... I suppose all I wish to accomplish is to help others accomplish more. This article could be more generally described as a case for decentralized collaboration as a superior alternative to centralized ownership and control, and point out the dangers of prior attempts in free and open source licenses to leverage copy rights instead of disclaiming them.

-David

 

[Al Byers]

Congratulations, David, on 20 years. It is sobering to think that I have been involved for 19 of those years. You would think that I would have more to show for it :0), but it is not the software's fault. I will say that I have had over 35 years of gig employment (interrupted by the occasional crash and burn startup endeavors) and have enjoyed going to work every single day. The odd thing is that I have never used OFBiz or Moqui for its intended purpose; I have only used it as a foundation library for non-ecommerce packages, but for the last year have been trying to integrate its full suite into a commercial e-commerce package and hope to start contributing back in that area soon.

I believe that there is only one step between Moqui and world salvation (or domination, if you prefer) and that is collaboration at the crust level. If there were a handful of unencumbered working vertical solutions out there, then I think you would start to see more system integrator entering the field, and that, in turn, would incentivize small developer shops to develop more vertical apps for the system integrators to sell. The key is to make sure that those core apps use all the correct Moqui architectures and methodologies. And, as we have seen with India and OFBiz, there is not much standing in the way of mass adoption but a recognizable market. I believe that the things that David saw that needed to be corrected in OFBiz will always stand in its way as a vehicle for mass collaboration. The use of Vue and Quasar were great choices to allow more of a front-end frame work to be established. What is needed now is collaboration at a scale that David cannot mange by himself.  Here are some of the things that I think need to be done to get to a critical mass jumping off point:

1. PopCommerce and PopRestStore are great starts. I would like to see PopRestStore use the Quasar library in the store and cart components. I am working on that right now, but I would rather work with Daniel and whoever else has an interest than to go down separate paths. I think the slot feature of Vue can help us develop more boilerplate code on the front-end.

2. PopCommerce/Store can handle much of the businesses out there, but I think there is a need for an unencumbered real estate package out there that could be used as a starting place for property management, rentals, sales, services, etc (it's what I am currently working on). Ayman's excellent property management package is a good example. It used his own proprietary adaptation of the Silverton Data Models, but if there were already a working example of an app that tied the Facility and Product tables together and showed how to integrate a third party table (such as the MLS RESO standard) he probably would have used it and it would attract a lot of attention. Also, Ayman's package does not use the Quasar library because that was not a standard then. (My package integrates the OpenLayers library, which I think will attract a lot of attention). I don't know what the other key core vertical apps would be - maybe something with a social media aspect. 

3. I think that if there were smoke generated by an agreement among as many as possible Moqui agents and OFBiz agents (ready to convert) to collaborate at the next level, that there should be some government, charitable or NGO agencies who see the possibilities for ending the digital divide and they would contribute money to a formally organized non-profit group dedicated to establishing Moqui standards at the next level. That money would primarily be used to create documentation and tutorials. I think that Utah is an excellent place to look for such donors. I think such an effort will strike a responsive chord in activists who are fighting Big Tech, aid workers who wish to eliminate poverty in developing countries where the only thing standing between programmers and a better standard of living is internet access, a used chromebook and Moqui training, and whoever else might show up as allies if the banner is raised. There must be cloud providers who want to keep from being eliminated by the big guys who would love to specialize in Moqui vertical apps if there were enough volume and help us make some noise.

I feel that there has to be more synergy in effect than what David can bring to bear. The trouble is that most of us are barely keeping our heads above water trying to keep up with all the technology he is dumping on us. I'm at the end of my career and would like to help make something like this happen, but I'm not going to go off tilting at windmills (anymore). I think that we need to start with a declaration from as many players as possible, and then I could see if we can use it to find a champion to boost us to the next level. If we don't push ourselves to the next level of collaboration, then OFBiz will always block Moqui from the spotlight it needs and it will generate a relatively few cool apps before it dies on the vine. Frankly, I feel that we owe it to David and ourselves to make the effort to not just develop Moqui technically, but to market and politicize it, as well. 

Al Byers

[Warnock, Matt]

I largely second the prior thoughts expressed here. I would add the following:

1) Many of the assertions are sufficiently vague that I at least have
difficulty following the argument. For example, you assert that the
GPL has been used to create software that can't be modified or used
commercially. Can you give specific examples? Likewise you assert that
the "burden" of copyleft is so high that companies would rather just
license their software commercially. I view this as a paradigm
argument (see below) but are there specific burdens placed on copyleft
users that are NOT placed on other copyright licensees?

2) I understand your argument that law always involves violence, or at
least the thinly veiled threat of violence. The purpose of copyleft
was originally to keep public domain from being subverted for purposes
contrary to the writer's original intent. It could be argued that such
is a fool's errand, and that people will do what they want with it
once the copyright expires anyway. Interestingly, the Founding Fathers
set copyright at a term or 14 years, renewable for the life of the
writer, which is certainly a far cry from what we have today. But are
you really arguing that ONLY public domain software is truly free as
in speech? I think of Roedy Green, an early pioneer of FOSS, who
stipulated that his software could be used for any purpose except
military (he was a pacifist). Invoking law against military use is a
highly ironical way to fight violence with the threat of state
violence, is it not? (And speaking of paradigm, he called his system
Abundance, as opposed to the Scarcity paradigm that informs most
competitive enterprise today--recognizing as you do that the marginal
cost of software is zero) If you are really arguing that PD is the
only real way to go, you are probably in a FOSS camp smaller than that
of Richard Stallman--and he seems to go it alone more often than not.
But hey, he has a song, right?
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw)

3) I think paradigm explains a lot. People see the world the way they
do, and a lot of time, energy, and money has been used to try to
create the "intellectual property" paradigm. Yet China consistently
violates US norms for its own communist reasons of state, US
corporations want to fight even "fair use" and "time shifting" uses of
copyright material (which are long-established US norms), and the
terms of copyright keep getting longer, and what is the "life" of a
corporation anyway? Any big shift in popular perception (which is what
laws typically enforce) requires a huge amount of work. More
successful are the small organizations that use existing thought
trends to shape and direct new thinking, just as jujitsu uses the
opponent's own weight and inertia to defensive advantage. What is your
paradigm? If "free as in beer" or "free as in speech" is the wrong
argument or paradigm, what is the right issue? Is it that neither
patent NOR copyright should apply to code? That seems like an uphill
battle.

But I find your ideas very interesting, and would love to discuss them
further. In particular, I find that a lot of the corruption of US
capitalism can be traced directly back to Milton Friedman's thesis
that ROI to shareholders is the ONLY ethical responsibility of a
corporation. In a word, I think he was and is dead wrong, and that
only an economist COULD view ethics in such a pecuniary way. Like I
said, paradigm means a lot, and I think (and hope) that the pendulum
is swinging the other way with a renewed focus on CSR. But it is hard
to unring that bell, and for 50 years it has been the predominant
paradigm, pernicious as it is. But I am much more optimistic than you
seem to be here, at least in the long run.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/moqui/CAA4n045V0Mm75aMp4SvDVyim97NSUSbiR8z_J8Eio3nkWRwwjw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Taher Alkhateeb]

I don't have much value to add, so just sharing my reaction.

1. The article resonated strongly with how I feel. Despite appreciating their noble causes,  the FSF / RMS approach to sharing software is from my perspective the opposite of freedom, and limiting to innovation and thriving. I never understood nor appreciated the whole "copyleft" thing. I also think the open source term is being hijacked, stretched and applied in so many ways that drifted from the original ideas of sharing / innovation / collaboration. So yeah generally it's looking "bad" out there.

2. I'm very appreciative of where you stand on this. Thank you for all the great work you've done and continue to do. I wish we can have more projects in the world like this one.

Best,

Taher Alkhateeb

[David E Jones]

Hi Al,

Thank you for your comments. This article isn't so much about Moqui itself or about increasing community involvement, though Moqui being intentionally unencumbered software it is a related topic. This article is more about individual choices to collaborate or isolate.

That said, some thoughts inline... (that might actually be better in a separate thread specifically about Moqui technical and community details)

On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 12:00 AM Al Byers <bye...@gmail.com> wrote:

I believe that there is only one step between Moqui and world salvation (or domination, if you prefer) and that is collaboration at the crust level. If there were a handful of unencumbered working vertical solutions out there, then I think you would start to see more system integrator entering the field, and that, in turn, would incentivize small developer shops to develop more vertical apps for the system integrators to sell. The key is to make sure that those core apps use all the correct Moqui architectures and methodologies. And, as we have seen with India and OFBiz, there is not much standing in the way of mass adoption but a recognizable market. I believe that the things that David saw that needed to be corrected in OFBiz will always stand in its way as a vehicle for mass collaboration. The use of Vue and Quasar were great choices to allow more of a front-end frame work to be established. What is needed now is collaboration at a scale that David cannot mange by himself.  Here are some of the things that I think need to be done to get to a critical mass jumping off point:

On a general note I don't see Vue and Quasar as necessary for the success of Moqui, but they are very useful tools that allow us to do things technically with Moqui that would be much more difficult otherwise.

In my opinion there is no such thing as a popular tool that if used in Moqui would make Moqui more popular, or in other words I don't think that is a common factor in decisions related to the use of Moqui. The more important aspect of third party tools used is that they are used together in an effective way to create something bigger.

 

1. PopCommerce and PopRestStore are great starts. I would like to see PopRestStore use the Quasar library in the store and cart components. I am working on that right now, but I would rather work with Daniel and whoever else has an interest than to go down separate paths. I think the slot feature of Vue can help us develop more boilerplate code on the front-end.

FWIW I am opposed to using Quasar in PopRestStore for technical reasons. The architecture of PopRestStore uses OOTB open source JS libraries to avoid the need for something like a npm build. One disadvantage of this is that large libraries like Quasar would have to be loaded over the network, parsed, and executed with the initial page load.

This would be especially problematic in the SEO friendly server rendered pages which currently use fairly lightweight JS libraries, and do not use Vue JS which is required to use Quasar.

 

2. PopCommerce/Store can handle much of the businesses out there, but I think there is a need for an unencumbered real estate package out there that could be used as a starting place for property management, rentals, sales, services, etc (it's what I am currently working on). Ayman's excellent property management package is a good example. It used his own proprietary adaptation of the Silverton Data Models, but if there were already a working example of an app that tied the Facility and Product tables together and showed how to integrate a third party table (such as the MLS RESO standard) he probably would have used it and it would attract a lot of attention. Also, Ayman's package does not use the Quasar library because that was not a standard then. (My package integrates the OpenLayers library, which I think will attract a lot of attention). I don't know what the other key core vertical apps would be - maybe something with a social media aspect. 

On a somewhat related recent question see: https://github.com/moqui/moqui-framework/issues/473

There may indeed be sufficient interest in the world, or even among people who are aware of Moqui, to attract collaborators and users for this type of application. From my experience such things are hard to predict, but there is one way to find out: build it, and share it. All it takes is for one person to take that step to get things going, even if the first version of it that is shared is mostly useless, even if was just entity definitions and notes about data requirements.

 

3. I think that if there were smoke generated by an agreement among as many as possible Moqui agents and OFBiz agents (ready to convert) to collaborate at the next level, that there should be some government, charitable or NGO agencies who see the possibilities for ending the digital divide and they would contribute money to a formally organized non-profit group dedicated to establishing Moqui standards at the next level. That money would primarily be used to create documentation and tutorials. I think that Utah is an excellent place to look for such donors. I think such an effort will strike a responsive chord in activists who are fighting Big Tech, aid workers who wish to eliminate poverty in developing countries where the only thing standing between programmers and a better standard of living is internet access, a used chromebook and Moqui training, and whoever else might show up as allies if the banner is raised. There must be cloud providers who want to keep from being eliminated by the big guys who would love to specialize in Moqui vertical apps if there were enough volume and help us make some noise.

These are interesting possibilities, though not things that I am familiar with enough to comment on.

From my experience the best setup for resources that drive open source software is a real world organization with real world needs. While it might be interesting to get general funding for Moqui, I'm not sure what we'd do with it except maybe hire someone to write documentation (something that, to date anyway, professional consulting based on open source has not naturally funded).

If someone wanted to apply for a grant that benefits Moqui, it might be better for it to NOT be for Moqui, but rather for an organization that is using Moqui and has real world needs along with need for funding assistance. Even if there was a grant specifically for Moqui, who would the money go to and who would manage it? FWIW, I'm not sure a legal entity that could do such things would even be a good thing for Moqui.

 

I feel that there has to be more synergy in effect than what David can bring to bear. The trouble is that most of us are barely keeping our heads above water trying to keep up with all the technology he is dumping on us. I'm at the end of my career and would like to help make something like this happen, but I'm not going to go off tilting at windmills (anymore). I think that we need to start with a declaration from as many players as possible, and then I could see if we can use it to find a champion to boost us to the next level. If we don't push ourselves to the next level of collaboration, then OFBiz will always block Moqui from the spotlight it needs and it will generate a relatively few cool apps before it dies on the vine. Frankly, I feel that we owe it to David and ourselves to make the effort to not just develop Moqui technically, but to market and politicize it, as well. 

I appreciate the thought, and the consideration of what would help Moqui. In my opinion the best way anyone can help Moqui as an open source project is to use it and do great things with it. This is even better if it grounded in real world needs, which generally go along with real world resources to meet those needs (some resources are always necessary, what Moqui offers is the ability to do much more with far fewer resources).

Right now I see Moqui as having 'arrived', or rather that it is to a point where enough is established that it can be used for quite a few different things, both OOTB and as a part of custom applications, that heavy development and moderation is no longer needed. This doesn't mean there are not infinite opportunities for additional domains and such that Moqui could be used in, and opportunity for collaboration between those interested in those domains. All I mean by this is that Moqui is a sufficiently solid foundation for many such things, creating opportunities to create independent applications.

Again, most of this really should be in a separate thread as it is getting off topic from 'Software is not Beer', so if anyone wants to discuss this further I would recommend starting separate threads on particular topics (to make our collaboration easier).

 

One topic that will see more discussion on this list in the near future is increased community collaboration, including a Discourse server that Michael Jones has been working on setting up. 

In addition to that if there are new domains (like property management) that people would like to get into and collaborate on, they could be done in public repositories completely independent of github.com/moqui, but we might want to discuss something like separate tentative repositories so that other Moqui resources can be more easily used for collaboration, like 'Moqui Labs' or something. That could be a discussion thread of its own... along with various other topics here.

-David

[David E Jones]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 9:08 AM Warnock, Matt <ma...@rcherbals.com> wrote:

I largely second the prior thoughts expressed here. I would add the following:

1) Many of the assertions are sufficiently vague that I at least have
difficulty following the argument. For example, you assert that the
GPL has been used to create software that can't be modified or used
commercially. Can you give specific examples? Likewise you assert that
the "burden" of copyleft is so high that companies would rather just
license their software commercially. I view this as a paradigm
argument (see below) but are there specific burdens placed on copyleft
users that are NOT placed on other copyright licensees?

This is a tough question and I'm not sure the best approach, ie whether to include specific examples.

I didn't want this to be some sort of 'moqui is better' sort of thing so I avoided mentioning any specific 'open source' competitors like Odoo, ERPNext, Dolibarr, ADempiere, Axelor, xTuple, etc, etc. FWIW I didn't list these off the top of my head, google remembers such things far better than I do. Pretty much every open source ERP system out there uses either GPL or AGPL and is run by a commercial entity that offers alternate commercial licenses that will allow you to modify the code, add your own code, and use it on a publicly accessible server (even if just the login screen) without open sourcing your code.

Many argue that with GPL simply making the software available on a publicly accessible server does not constitute distribution and so does not require that modifications and extensions be GPL licensed. AGPL and other similar licenses explicitly close this loophole.

For business software, or really software for any formal organization, it is likely that you will want to automate things without sharing the exact details publicly. For example, custom logic to determine the box types and packaging needed for an order might be something you are okay with sharing publicly, but custom pricing logic might be something you want to keep private. With AGPL licensed software you cannot do that without violating the terms of the license, and with GPL it is too risky.

Perhaps more important is the chilling effect on community under such models, ie where a central commercial entities controls the license and demands contributors either transfer rights or grant rights, often including the right of the central entity to change the license of the software.

The danger in that is demonstrated by semi-open software like MongoDB with its famous licensing change, and more recently ElasticSearch. So, there are a couple more examples of projects starting with more liberal licenses (even Apache 2.0 in the case of ElasticSearch), but because they are controlled by a central entity that entity can change license as they deem fit for their purposes.

There are countless other examples of companies that have gone down these paths, these are just a few. My thought in writing is that the concept and pattern is more important, but maybe some examples are needed...

What do you think? Are examples needed, and if I include examples will it distract from the message by implicitly comparing Moqui to other open source software like Odoo?

 

2) I understand your argument that law always involves violence, or at
least the thinly veiled threat of violence. The purpose of copyleft
was originally to keep public domain from being subverted for purposes
contrary to the writer's original intent. It could be argued that such
is a fool's errand, and that people will do what they want with it
once the copyright expires anyway. Interestingly, the Founding Fathers
set copyright at a term or 14 years, renewable for the life of the
writer, which is certainly a far cry from what we have today. But are
you really arguing that ONLY public domain software is truly free as
in speech? I think of Roedy Green, an early pioneer of FOSS, who
stipulated that his software could be used for any purpose except
military (he was a pacifist). Invoking law against military use is a
highly ironical way to fight violence with the threat of state
violence, is it not? (And speaking of paradigm, he called his system
Abundance, as opposed to the Scarcity paradigm that informs most
competitive enterprise today--recognizing as you do that the marginal
cost of software is zero) If you are really arguing that PD is the
only real way to go, you are probably in a FOSS camp smaller than that
of Richard Stallman--and he seems to go it alone more often than not.
But hey, he has a song, right?
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw)

That song is nothing short of fantastic. This is the first I've seen it, so thank you for sharing. I watched this just before a call today and mentioned it because the others on the call are all big into FOSS, and to my surprise not only was one guy aware of it, he knew the words from memory! Where have I been? :)

Due to the heat around the name 'Richard Stallman' I didn't reference him directly in this, that was a conscious choice. This is extremely unfortunate because Stallman has long been one of the most significant advocates for free software. My impression of Stallman's choices is that with GPL he underestimated the good in humanity, and in his choice to defend Marvin Minsky he underestimated the bad in humanity and ended up dying on a hill that maybe isn't even all that important to him. FWIW, this is why I tried to make it crystal clear that even in an opinion piece like this I am not in favor of going after anyone or anything, just making choices that have better results over time.

Free as in speech is an interesting topic. I sort of redefined it from the common perspective on speech, being to protect the speaker, to also consider encumbrance on the listener as having a chilling effect on speech. In the context of the 1st Amendment in the USA, and general rhetoric around freedom of speech, I don't hear this very often but I do believe that protecting the listener is just as important as protecting the speaker when it comes to the free flow of ideas necessary for human collaboration.

So, yes, in a way I am saying that copyright law is an encumbrance on speech. And yes, if this were taken to its logical conclusion it could perhaps be used to argue that copyright law is a violation of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. That is getting WAY beyond anything that I am personally qualified to argue, but I do think it is the logical conclusion. I would be fascinated to have a chat with someone like Senator Mike Lee about this (he is an 'expert' on the US Constitution, regardless of his disclaimer of that term for himself), I was highly inspired by his recent conversation with Jordan Peterson. My guess is that arguing encumbrance on the listener would not hold legal water, but who knows.

For my part I don't think that trying to get rid of copyright or patent laws is really necessary because those who choose legal IP protection will simply find it more and more difficult to compete with those who operate in such a way that they do not need such protections.

 

3) I think paradigm explains a lot. People see the world the way they
do, and a lot of time, energy, and money has been used to try to
create the "intellectual property" paradigm. Yet China consistently
violates US norms for its own communist reasons of state, US
corporations want to fight even "fair use" and "time shifting" uses of
copyright material (which are long-established US norms), and the
terms of copyright keep getting longer, and what is the "life" of a
corporation anyway? Any big shift in popular perception (which is what
laws typically enforce) requires a huge amount of work. More
successful are the small organizations that use existing thought
trends to shape and direct new thinking, just as jujitsu uses the
opponent's own weight and inertia to defensive advantage. What is your
paradigm? If "free as in beer" or "free as in speech" is the wrong
argument or paradigm, what is the right issue? Is it that neither
patent NOR copyright should apply to code? That seems like an uphill
battle.

Maybe I need to reword that part in the beginning about the wrong argument. I'm mostly trying to argue against the premise that software is still free as in freedom even if it is not free as in beer, and that with encumbrance like the GPL it is still free as in speech. When it comes to the effect on collaboration those ideological theories don't hold water.

I suppose if I were to summarize the paradigm briefly, it would be that collaboration is far more valuable to all individuals who create than any benefit that could come from intellectual property monopoly.

As a case in point mostly unrelated to software, in the conversation I referred to above between Mike Lee and Jordan Peterson they discussed the trends in media engagement that are moving away from single speaker content (from an individual or organization) and toward conversation and dialect, toward collaboration. For what it's worth I don't think this is a small movement, I think underneath some of the great cultural issues around the world is a recognition that collaboration is better than monopoly, that it is better to collaborate and compete for improvement on common ground than on ground monopolized by a single entity.

I guess in other words, while this seems like an uphill battle there are enormous cultural shifts going on right now. It may be that we are seeing some of the predicted effects of the internet playing out in a sort of culture war. Young people who grew up with easy access to information, and endless opportunities for online collaboration, are increasingly telling us older people that the old ways make no sense to them... and for good reason, they make no sense to me any more either.

 

But I find your ideas very interesting, and would love to discuss them
further. In particular, I find that a lot of the corruption of US
capitalism can be traced directly back to Milton Friedman's thesis
that ROI to shareholders is the ONLY ethical responsibility of a
corporation. In a word, I think he was and is dead wrong, and that
only an economist COULD view ethics in such a pecuniary way. Like I
said, paradigm means a lot, and I think (and hope) that the pendulum
is swinging the other way with a renewed focus on CSR. But it is hard
to unring that bell, and for 50 years it has been the predominant
paradigm, pernicious as it is. But I am much more optimistic than you
seem to be here, at least in the long run.

Perhaps I am not as optimistic about these changes as I should be, especially with what I wrote above. Internally I am more optimistic than I portrayed near the end, and maybe I should clarify that, but I wanted to speak to the worst case scenario and how collaboration over monopoly works even in a system where IP monopoly is common practice and law.

Milton Friedman, ROI, and corporate ethics... now we're getting into some hot water! 

I'm not sure how much I want to speak here about my thoughts on it, but a corporation is a legal fiction defined by government and with corporations normalized by their constant presence in our everyday lives it is easy to forget that. When it comes to large corporations, especially publicly traded, how separate and independent are they from government, especially from the alphabet agencies? For my part as an outsider to such things, when I hear corporate executives and politicians argue it sounds more and more over time like there isn't as much separation and independence as is commonly spoken of.

Even the concept of ethics is complex these days, and from my point of view that is odd. IMO ethics is pretty simple: don't use coercion/force or deception/fraud to get what you want. In a simpler ethical or legal system we wouldn't need the intellectual contortions required to justify a little force here, a little fraud there, and a little more here and there over time. Unfortunately, force and fraud are pretty popular these days, with declared ends justifying the means, and that results in awfully complex ethics along with the unavoidable consequences of such means. My concern with some current rhetoric around ethical responsibilities of corporations is that much of it speaks to making corporations correct this or that ill in society, but not speaking against let alone prosecuting the use of force and fraud. With such means the ends always go awry and the results are often an aggravation of the original issue in addition to creating new issues.

I'm not sure if this is the direction you were thinking, all sorts of things have been justified in the name of ROI, and maybe reducing it to force and fraud is too simplistic. They seem to be the basis of most ills, but maybe there is more. It is fascinating how in practical terms there is no problem in the USA with using fraud to get money, because (by my limited understanding) unless damages can be shown (negative ROI) there are no grounds for prosecution. So yeah, whatever Friedman meant by what he said and wrote, the way it has been used opens the way for some pretty wild corruption.

Looping back to unencumbered software: it is a small thing compared to far more widely applicable concepts of ethics and ROI, but if one wanted to personally adopt a simple system of ethics like this and still create amazing things, I think it is a practical and effective way forward.

-David