By Serdar YegulalpInformationWeek
Google's the cause for much of the worry, since it's known to have built its Internet services empire using open source. Yet this question could reach well beyond Web companies. Do we include online banking or Internet stock-trading companies that rely on servers running heavily customized Linux?
Some open source advocates consider this a huge threat, and that such use in SaaS violates the spirit, if not the letter, of open source and must be stopped. I disagree, for a variety of reasons.
Still, there's a big problem of impermanence. A company that provides a Web service, open APIs or not, might go bust or lose interest in the service. If that service is contributed to a community, it's more durable. This is the toughest issue, because it plugs into something open source does best: letting software survive calamity.
This argument assumes, however, that no one can replicate that work. Instead of vilifying the creators, the best response to a closed source Web service built on open source software is to create something like that service that does give back. A duplication of effort, surely, but it wouldn't be the first time that happened.
A MORE 'HONEST' APPROACH
A key distinction in this debate is between transforming software and simply building with it. It would be a gross misinterpretation to say that anything built on a Web site with, say, the open source scripting language PHP is open source. Wrong, of course, but we've seen how fast fear and misinformation about open source can spread. The point is to make sure people who transform projects, especially those who use them for commercial ventures, aren't freeloading.
The best response to someone creating a closed Web service from something open is to create something similar, if not better, and open it up. But if you're just now creating something new that lends itself to being reworked as a service, the Honest Public License or the AGPLv3 might make sense, at least until the more mainstream GPL deals with the SaaS loophole. There's nothing wrong with adopting, pre-emptively, a protective measure against something like SaaS that may indeed be "unstoppable."
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