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**Karl Fogel:** Yeah... You know, it's funny, the argument I've been making reminds me of one I hate... I hate George W. Bush actually made this when he was governor or Texas. Basically, there were these prisoners on death row, and some of them were innocent, and these nonprofit, volunteer-run student law clinic things... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Yeah, that's you now, Karl. You're like George W. Bush. \[laughs\] |
**Karl Fogel:** Yes, so I'm sort of saying, "Look, things get really, really bad and people move heaven and earth to make the right outcome happen and like "Hey, the system worked," because they could fork. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** That's my fundamental... For coming from nonprofit background from way back in the day, it just sort of boggles my mind that... Yes, in the nonprofit sector for example, no one expects to get rich in nonprofits, but you get a salary, so there is money flowing into the nonprofit sector in some shape or... |
**Karl Fogel:** Well, the question of whether something is done by volunteers seems to me to be a separate one. There are a number of projects where someone is maintaining something on the side, where that thing helps them do their day job, but it's also kind of a personal project; they're sort of a semi-volunteer, but... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Yeah, I think that's why I'm still wrestling with the original question I've had coming into this space, of like, if you have money, where does it go? I still think it's a very, very hard question to answer, and one that is extremely delicate. But I know that the answer is that there must be more that... |
**Karl Fogel:** \[55:51\] I completely agree that that's a huge priority, and I'm glad you're focusing on it. And my answer hasn't been terribly helpful, I think, in providing any guidance on that. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** Well, I think that we're very good at fixing crises, right? If something hits a point of crisis, then we have mechanisms by which to fix it. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** OpenSSL. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** Right. We can deal with heart-bleed, but we can't deal with the situation that OpenSSL was in ten years ago when it was obvious to everybody involved in the project that something was wrong. |
**Karl Fogel:** I wish we had - and maybe Nadia should be the executive director and you all can be the board - an open source weather center, where you're funded to just keep a lookout, keep in touch with a lot of projects and identify whenever a certain kind of intersection happens. An intersection between a project ... |
**Mikeal Rogers:** I think CII is doing that a little bit, and I think that that works for projects that have been around for about ten years, or maybe even five. I think the troubling thing is that we're coming into contact with this problem and recognizing this problem at the same time that we're also recognizing tha... |
**Karl Fogel:** Or maybe it's inherently built into the nature of the solution that you're envisioning, because if you're going to allocate money somewhere, that's an inherently centralizing thing to do. The money's gotta land in some bank account somewhere, so the trick is just to identify of all these myriad moving p... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Some of it also structural, right? It's like, "Should we build this way?" or "Are there bigger ways of thinking about reorganizing entire system that that work should be happening and it's not?" And also people are thinking about this around like DevOps for example... I'm trying to figure out, shouldn... |
**Karl Fogel:** Yeah. Actually one of the reasons - I'm gonna try to squeeze in this observation because I know we're running out of time - I'm focusing a lot of my work and our company's work on helping governments get more involved in open source is that despite their reputation and despite what we see in the current... |
\[59:55\] One of the problems that we have is that open source is rooted in a personnel sense in the tech industry right now, and that's people who switch jobs every three years, and that's considered long. So the actual individuals involved, their priorities keep changing because their jobs keep changing, because it's... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Yeah, that's a fantastic observation about software in general. It came from a very fast, very high growth, very capital flush sector, so that changes how we think about it. But then if you look at it in economic terms, open source doesn't actually fit into that at all - it's much more like a public g... |
**Karl Fogel:** Yeah. Like, what is the actual level of state dependence on the Debian project, versus the level of state funding that's going into the Debian project? There's probably a huge imbalance there. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Yeah. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** Is part of the struggle getting government into open source? This differential, that they're thinking more longer-term and the communities that are trying to engage around open source are a little bit too short-term and distributed? |
**Karl Fogel:** I don't think that's what's preventing them from getting involved. I think it's partly that the actual personnel (the people in IT and government) historically they're not coming from a background that would have had them involved in open source. The managers don't have background, and especially the el... |
If you launch a technology project and it fails and only your department ever knows about it, that's okay. But if you launch it on GitHub and then it fails, now some journalist can write a report about that, and you can end up in the next weekly news and then your opponent can hold it up at the next debate. So I think ... |
**Mikeal Rogers:** Right. There's a lot of churn on GitHub. It's sort of baked into the system that if you do things as much, many of them are gonna fail. |
**Karl Fogel:** Yeah. This was the exact argument... We actually saw this debate play out with Solyndra. The US government gave some form of loan guarantee, I don't know the exact structure, but some kind of subsidy essentially, to a bunch of solar power and other clean energy companies - Solyndra was one of them - and... |
**Mikeal Rogers:** Man, I think that we have to leave it there, but I anticipate probably having you come back to talk just about this, government and open source. |
**Karl Fogel:** Alright, I'd love to do a podcast on that. And you guys, I really feel bad for talking for so long, because when I let you speak you had such really interesting things to say, and good prompting questions. I love these conversations, so I'm happy to do it anytime. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** Yes, that was fantastic. Thank you, guys. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Bye. |
**Karl Fogel:** Thank you, I'll talk to you later. |
• Heather Meeker's background and how she transitioned from a paralegal to a practicing lawyer |
• The history of open source licensing and its significance |
• Mixing commercial and open source licenses |
• Standardization of open source licenses over time |
• How the open source landscape has changed since 1996, including the shift away from license proliferation and towards standardization |
• Licensing proliferation and standardization in open source |
• Differences between various licenses (Apache 2.0, GPL, MIT, BSD) |
• Value of open source licensing as a benefit for standardization |
• Challenges of staying up-to-date with changing laws and regulations |
• Importance of self-education and networking for open source lawyers |
• Criticism of formal law education's ability to teach practical skills |
• Heather Meeker's book "Open Source For Business" and its purpose |
• The niche topic of open source licensing and its audience |
• The importance of updating technical information in books and resources on open-source licensing |
• Misconceptions about dynamic linking and GPL compliance among developers |
• Distinction between static and dynamic linking, particularly in C or C++ programming languages |
• How high-level scripting languages lack the concept of static vs. dynamic linking |
• Advanced understanding of GPL compliance among Linux kernel developers |
• Shift from technical expertise to community practice in understanding open-source licensing |
• Changes in developer self-education on open-source issues and licensing |
• Conventional wisdom suggests new developers don't care about licensing issues, but Heather Meeker emphasizes the importance of having some license. |
• Heather Meeker recommends using established licenses like BSD, MIT, Apache, or CC0 for open-source code and advises dedicating it to the public domain if no restrictions are desired. |
• Changing licenses can be complex and is often not recommended unless necessary due to major updates. |
• Licenses do not transfer ownership of intellectual property; they grant permissions for use. |
• There is a distinction between copyright ownership and licensing, with authors retaining rights while granting others permission to use their work under certain conditions. |
• The tension exists between cultural expectations and the legal reality surrounding open-source software, including maintenance responsibilities. |
• Distinction between copyleft and permissive licenses |
• Debate around hybrid models combining open source and proprietary elements |
• Fair Source License and Business Source License as examples of hybrid models |
• Discussion on what constitutes open source and license restrictions |
• Dual-license models, such as using AGPL with a commercial license for proprietary use |
• Analysis of the semantics and material differences between different licensing approaches |
• Dual licensing can introduce a "license bug" into the world |
• Transparency is key when implementing dual licensing practices |
• The model has fallen out of favor due to high transaction costs and limited profitability |
• GPL licenses aim to inject sustainability through contributions and modifications |
• Sustainable open source models often involve community projects with multiple stakeholders and funding sources |
• A company running an open source project on its own may not be sustainable, unless selling hardware or services related to the software |
• New emerging areas of interest include open data, open hardware, and intersection of open source with standards licensing |
• The future of technology and innovation |
• Discussion wrap-up and appreciation for the conversation |
**Nadia Eghbal:** I'm Nadia Eghbal... |
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