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Securing the source

In the prominent example of the Linux kernel the GPL can be seen to have helped preserve the continuity and integrity of the project. Without the GPL, the corporate user (be it SGI, IBM, HP or any other) could find advantage in hijacking and forking the kernel, as happened with UNIX, thus discouraging wider contributions from other corporate users. Forking would have been inevitable, because advantage could be found in pushing proprietary enhancements that were unavailable to competitors. In the long run, the proprietary divisions of UNIX were damaging to the individual UNIX companies. Each proprietary UNIX had its own distinctive advantages over the others, but each was weaker for the collective disassociation from the whole.

The immediate advantage of adopting Linux was that there was a collective reduction in the cost of development - the code that one company gave came back in the contributions of others. Companies felt enabled to share their code contributions, and Linux has become a collaborative project across several industries, which almost certainly would not have been the case without the protection of the GPL.

The advantage to everybody is obvious, costs are shared, and development goes at a quicker pace. (The kernel developers are employed by a variety of companies, and often work from home on what they would be doing anyway.) It is highly unlikely that the Linux kernel would have retained its current level of integrity if it had been released under a more liberal license. The GPL secures the source for all participants, and everybody is allowed to be a participant.

The viral paradox

The myth used to be that the GPL is hostile to business (because business can't appropriate the code), and that the BSD license, for instance, is business friendly (because the corporate user can do what he likes with the code, close it, spin it, market and enhance it, without any obligation to return any enhancements to the community).

In the real world, the opposite has proved to be true. The GPL was not only the best protector of the principles of free software, but was also the most business friendly of the licenses available, for one simple reason - companies like IBM, HP, and SGI could openly contribute to the kernel, releasing large chunks of code under the GPL, in the happy knowledge that the developments of their competitors would also be fed back to the community, and their contributions could not be laid open to exclusive development by third parties.

Paradoxically, the supposedly "viral" element of the license, which so many people objected to because it wasn't "business friendly", made the license more business friendly, and worked to the mutual advantage of all contributors and to the benefit of the project as a whole.

Next: An unfinished symphony

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