pages tagged Facebookhroy.euhttps://hroy.eu/tags/Facebook/hroy.euikiwiki2023-10-30T20:57:09ZFacebook, an open source company?https://hroy.eu/posts/facebook_open-source_company/2023-10-30T20:57:09Z2013-10-17T22:00:00Z
<p>In today’s world, communication and branding matter almost as much in
business as they do in conveying ideas and ethics. Which is why I often
wonder, what the people using the term “Open Source” are doing against
<a
href="http://readwrite.com/2013/10/17/is-facebook-the-worlds-largest-open-source-company">this</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Is Facebook The World’s Largest Open Source Company?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes, says Matt Asay–who claimed that for Free Software/Open Source to
succeed in business, <a
href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10168267-16.html">“it may need a
little help from proprietary software.”</a></p>
<p>So, one must wonder…</p>
<h3 id="what-makes-facebook-an-open-source-company">What makes Facebook
an Open Source company?</h3>
<p>I hope that, at this point, we can drop the notion of Free Software;
because free software focuses on the <a
href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html">users’ rights</a>
to be in control of the technology that affects them. If there’s anyone
in control of Facebook, it’s Mark Zuckerberg, certainly not the users.
<a class="toggle" href="https://hroy.eu/tags/Facebook/#posts-facebook-open-source-company.fsvos">↓↓↓</a></p>
<div id="posts-facebook-open-source-company.fsvos" class="toggleable">
</div>
<ul>
<li><p>Even though open source software and free software designate the
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.en.html">exact same
category of software</a>, and the <a
href="http://blog.hugoroy.eu/2012/02/23/free-software-v-open-source-community/">community
of people who develop free and open source software</a> is not as
divided as some might think, there’s no denying that the terms convey
different meaning, have a different emphasis.</p>
<p>Actually, it’s not entirely clear to me what the term Open Source
conveys any more. What hasn’t helped at all, is the belief that “the
Internet”, as Morozov would put it, can been used as the driver for
solving everything in all areas; and that the same is true of Open
Source. Open Source bears some of the same hype that “the Internet”
does. Think open data, open access, open innovation<a href="https://hroy.eu/tags/Facebook/#fn1"
class="footnote-ref" id="fnref1" role="doc-noteref"><sup>1</sup></a>,
open government, open science, etc.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>What “<a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/open">open</a>”
even means is relatively ambiguous. Ambiguous enough that Facebook can
claim as far as 2006 to be about a “<a
href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/the-spirit-of-openness/2223862130">spirit
of openness</a>.”</p>
<p>That reminds me of an <a
href="http://fsfe.org/activities/os/eifv2.en.html">internal European
Commission draft</a> that was leaked on which I worked with Karsten at
the <a href="http://fsfe.org">FSFE</a> in 2009:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Specifications, software and software development methods that
promote collaboration and the results of which can freely be accessed,
reused and shared are considered open and lie at one end of the spectrum
while non-documented, proprietary specifications, proprietary software
and the reluctance or resistance to reuse solutions, i.e. the”not
invented here” syndrome, lie at the other end.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The spectrum of approaches that lies between these two extremes can
be called the openness continuum.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With this kind of nonsense, you can say anything. I was trying to put
it into words. I remember Georg put it brilliantly: to say that
proprietary software lies at one end of the openness continuum equals to
saying that North-Korea lies at one end of the democratic continuum.</p>
<p>Maybe all this is possible, because in this context, open is meant to
refer explicitly to free software/open source software. But that’s
missing the point of what free software actually is about, and about how
you categorise free software.</p>
<p>Proprietary software isn’t at the end of the free software continuum,
it’s antagonistic to free software. They’re opposite. You can’t have
both; it’s either something’s been distributed to the users of the
program with a license that grants them the four essential rights to
use, share, study and improve the program; or it’s not.</p>
<p>Now, let’s go back to Facebook. Without thinking clearly, sure,
Facebook could end up inside the “openness continuum” of whatever.</p>
<p>But before saying that Facebook is an open source company, one must
ask: is Facebook a software company to begin with? And if not, then what
is Facebook doing that has to do with open source at all?</p>
<p>Look closely, and you’ll realise that all that Facebook’s releasing
as free software/open source is not related to the core of the service
they’re providing their users with over at facebook.com.</p>
<p>Sure, it’s publishing some of its in-house developed software, for
data centers, database, etc. In that sense, it’s quite clearly in
accordance to the current mantra, “<a
href="http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everything.html">open
source (almost) everything</a>” in which the part that’s left off is
actually the most important part.</p>
<p>But that’s not enough to call yourself an “open source company.” Or
does that mean that all manufacturers embedding a linux kernel in their
device are open source companies as soon as they release sources of
their modifications to the kernel? Of course not!</p>
<h3 id="what-makes-a-free-software-company-then">What makes a Free
Software company, then?</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>usage of and contribution to Free Software are not differentiators
for what makes a Free Software company. The critical differentiator is
provision of Free Software downstream to customers. In other words: Free
Software companies are companies that have adopted business models in
which the revenue streams are not tied to proprietary software model
licensing conditions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Georg published <a
href="https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/enterprise/freesoftwarecompany.en.html">an
article</a> in 2008 precisely about this issue.</p>
<aside id="footnotes" class="footnotes footnotes-end-of-document"
role="doc-endnotes">
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<ol>
<li id="fn1">What’s most troubling about “open innovation” is that
innovation itself is deeply misunderstood, too often confused with
merely “packaging” existing technologies–at which Apple excels, even
though Apple is far, far, from being “open.”
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<a href="https://hroy.eu/tags/Facebook/#fnref1" class="footnote-back" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></li>
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