Microsoft’s caused considerable consternation in the open source community over the past month, after unveiling a shake-up to the way developers will be able to monetize open source software.
There are many examples of open source software sold in Microsoft’s app store as full-featured commercial applications, ranging from video editing software such as Shotcut, to FTP clients such as WinSCP. But given how easy it is for anyone to reappropriate and repackage open source software as a new standalone product, it appears that Microsoft is trying to put measures in place to prevent such “copycat” imitations from capitalizing on the hard work of the open source community.
In its current form, the language is seemingly preventing anyone including the project owners and maintainers — from charging for their work. Moreover, some have argued that it could hold implications for proprietary applications that include open source components with certain licenses, while others have noted that developers may be deterred from making their software available under an open source license. The policy was due to take effect on July 16 (tomorrow), but influential figures from the open source fraternity have been making their voices heard over the past few weeks, including Hayden Barnes, a senior engineering manager at open source software giant Suse. Barnes noted on Twitter that he was “disappointed” with the proposed policy change, as it could prevent already underfunded open source developers from creating more sustainable projects. In response, Microsoft executive Giorgio Sardo took to Twitter last week to confirm that the announcement had “been perceived differently than intended,” and it would delay enforcement of the new policy and clarify the wording.
For most people, the main issue with Microsoft’s policy change was the language it used. It’s reasonable to assume that the intent was probably to protect open source project maintainers and IP-owners, but the wording essentially threw all open source projects under the bus. So we can likely expect (though this is not certain) a revised policy in the future that permits the main “official” version of an open source app to continue monetizing, while others won’t be able to charge. Halla Rempt, the core maintainer behind the popular open source digital paint program Krita, doesn’t seem overly concerned with these impending changes for exactly that reason. “I’m still not 100% on the implications of the change — it seems to me that they’re actually happy with projects putting their own software in the store, but whether they’re still okay with us charging for it, I don’t know,” Rempt told TechCrunch. “For now, we’re continuing as is.”
Rempt also said that the income they get from Microsoft’s app store pays for around half of the app’s sponsored developers, meaning that a redrafted Microsoft app store policy that includes provisions that support project maintainers and IP-owners’ ability to monetize apps would be a good thing. While there hasn’t been any known third-party Krita apps on Microsoft’s app store so far, other open source software maintainers are having to contend with this problem. Robin Krom is one of the chief developers behind Greenshot, an open source screenshotting app with millions of downloads. While Greenshot is available for Windows as a direct download, it’s not yet available via Microsoft’s official app store. However, there are at least two so-called “copycat” apps in Microsoft’s app store that use the Greenshot name — and one of those apps charges $3.69 to download.
From Krom’s perspective, there are problems with this, aside from the obvious fact that someone is cashing in on their hard work. In the future, Krom may decide to launch an official version of Greenshot in Microsoft’s store, but even before all that, brand confusion could still create more work for those behind the official Greenshot project. “The [third-party] app uses our brand, [so] if there are issues with the app, the customers will come to us,” Krom told TechCrunch. Such a scenario has yet to come to fruition, given that the third-party app in question is still relatively new to Microsoft’s store. But there are examples of similar issues emerging elsewhere in the open source world. For example, Elastic’s long-standing spat with Amazon over the (formerly) open source Elasticsearch project was partly about how Amazon was using the Elasticsearch brand name in its own hosted version of the product Amazon’s cloud customers would often address Elastic with issues relating to the product, even though it had little to do with Elastic.
Trademark infringement is what we’re talking about here, and although Amazon and Elastic eventually resolved their dispute, it took a long-drawn out legal process to get there. This is something that smaller, independent open source project maintainers don’t have the resources to pursue, assuming they own the trademark rights in the first place, which many don’t — including Krom. This is why Microsoft’s impending policy change depending on its revised wording, of course will be greeted warmly by many in the open source community. “It feels morally wrong to take a free product from someone and sell it for a price, and have the original ‘vendor’ solve all the issues,” Krom continued. “[And] if due to his [third-party developer] work something doesn’t work, it is our reputation that is damaged.” It’s worth stressing that Microsoft’s planned policy change, according to its current wording, will only impact apps that are actively trying to monetize. So free copycat apps will still be permitted. But if nothing else, banning commercial copycats will serve as a major deterrent to anyone considering doing so. However, other prominent voices in the open source community are less concerned with the specific wording of Microsoft’s policy than they are about the fact that Microsoft is trying to implement any form of controls at all.
Source: This news is originally published by techcrunch