COMMUNITY Free Projects

An up-to-date look at and its makers PROJECTS ON THE MOVE The recent discussion concerning the future of Thun- derbird is one example of the needs of a corporation vs.

those of the user community. BY CARSTEN SCHNOBER

he relationship between the open source community and software suitable for professional deployment, Tvendors has always been tricky. and even making Linux the standard Uncompromising supporters of free soft- product in some cases. The GPL (GNU ware avoid using – General Public License) typically forces especially on the operating-system front The community’s opinion of compa- these vendors to release their patches to – and many community members view nies and organizations that produce the general public. , Thunderbird, market leader Microsoft as an evil-doer. original free software or develop existing and Open Office are helping free soft- In contrast to this, the most widespread products is divided. The companies in- ware gradually make inroads into propri- free system, Linux, offers a safe haven clude numerous Linux distributors who etary platforms and have been praised for open source advocates. commonly add major enhancements to for propagating the idea of free software. One should avoid this kind of oversim- the Linux kernel or various applications. On the other hand, companies who plified view of application software ven- Mozilla [1] has become popular thanks earn money with free software are often dors. Some classical software manufac- to Firefox and Thunderbird, and Open- accused of making a profit out of modi- turers produce and sell proprietary-only Office.org [2] develops the free Open Of- fying volunteer development work, thus applications, and their standing with the fice suite. creating a product that they can sell for a open source community is generally not Nobody would deny that corporations profit. Cases that have become public in much better than Microsoft’s. These ven- such as Red Hat or SUSE have genu- recent years have given rise to skepti- dors can only expect more community inely helped advance Linux. cism concerning companies that earn acceptance if they develop products for One contribution has money with Linux; in some cases, free operating systems. been making Linux manufacturers have used free-

94 ISSUE 85 DECEMBER 2007 Free Software Projects COMMUNITY

An up-to-date look at free software and its makers than it would if the foundation relied on Asa Dotzler, who mainly takes care of voluntary hackers. community issues for the Mozilla proj- The main problem with symbioses be- ect, turned the tables by referring to one tween paid programmers and volunteers of the principles of free software devel- is that the “employer” – the Mozilla opment in his blog, saying that free soft- PROJECTS ON THE MOVE Foundation, in this case – defines where ware only works if users do not act like the project is headed, which patches classical consumers and instead make make their way into the official code, contributions themselves. and which new features have top prior- Dotzler asked Thunderbird users ity. These decisions might not always be whether they bothered to report bugs to what the users and the developer com- the developers, or tested pre-release ver- munity prefer. sions, or wrote patches to fix the bugs The current bone of contention centers they had discovered. If people really on an announcement by the Chair of the wanted to help Thunderbird, they Figure 1: , the Chair of the , Mitchell Baker (Fig- should also promote the client to their Mozilla Foundation, wants to introduce a new ure 1), that Thunderbird development families, friends, and colleagues or on organizational structure for development of was being completely reconsidered [4]. their own home pages, he said [6]. the Thunderbird email client. Thunderbird is not nearly as successful as Firefox, which is why most of the Diplomacy ware as device firmware but refused to Mozilla Foundation’s energy is directed The Mozilla Foundation has demon- disclose their code modifications. On into developing the browser. Compared strated a flair in the past for marketing several occasions, the courts have en- with the browser, Thunderbird is a wall- open source software without exploiting forced GPL compliance. The GPL Viola- flower, and Mozilla has long since community contributors, so the Thun- tions page [3] documents these cases ditched the original roadmap, which derbird conflict is unlikely to escalate. and lists GPL violations by brand name, envisaged synchronizing updates and Transparent, blog-based communica- such as D-Link, Lidl, Aldi, Gigabyte, version numbers of the two programs. tions also help to establish trust, while Sitecom, and Asus. Baker has listed three options for the demonstrating the challenges in the rela- Even some completely free Linux dis- future development of Thunderbird. The tionship between the open source com- tributions are regarded with skepticism first would be an independent Thunder- munity and corporate business. by open source proponents. Critics view bird project, which would be financed Many corporations are far less than ex- Red Hat’s Fedora and Novell’s SUSE, by a separate foundation on the lines of emplary in their dealings with the devel- both of which are free distributions, as the Mozilla Foundation and promote the oper community. Some companies that experimenting grounds for the corpora- mail client as its objective. Baker views regularly receive patches from volun- tions’s commercial products. this model as one that would give Thun- teers still tend to ignore user requests derbird the most leeway, and at the same and present changes without waiting for The Mozilla Issue time, it would mean the biggest organi- community input. On the other hand, Mozilla actually has a good reputation zational changes to consume resources. people tend to forget that free software with the open source community’s anti- Baker’s second suggestion – setting up development can only work if users Microsoft lobby. The project was a result a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation share their abilities rather than just of the browser competition between Mi- to handle Thunderbird development – make demands. ■ crosoft and in the 1990s. After would mean less administrative effort, losing the battle for browser-market but it would mean less freedom. The INFO leadership, Netscape published its third option would convert Thunderbird [1] Mozilla: http:// www. mozilla. org browser source code, and the Firefox to a genuine community project with [2] OpenOffice.org: browser, which was based on this code, volunteer developers who would be as- http:// www. openoffice. org has since become one of the most popu- sisted and advised by a small company. [3] GPL Violations: lar open source programs of all time. Many users feared that the Mozilla http:// gpl-violations. org The email component of the former Foundation might use reorganization of [4] Mitchell Baker on the future of Thun- Mozilla Suite gave birth to the the Thunderbird project as an excuse to derbird: http:// weblogs. . popular Thunderbird mail client. devote even less time to the mail pro- org/ mitchell/ archives/ 2007/ 07/ email_ Recently, conflict has been brewing gram. Baker refutes these claims in her futures. html between the Mozilla Foundation and blog. Instead, she says a new organiza- [5] “Thunderbird and the Mozilla Mis- sion,” by Mitchell Baker, http:// Thunderbird users. The Mozilla Founda- tional structure would ensure commit- weblogs. mozillazine. org/ mitchell/ tion uses contributions to sponsor the ted, ongoing development of Thunder- archives/ 2007/ 07/ thunderbird_and_ ongoing development of Firefox and bird by protecting the project against the the_mozilla_mi. html Thunderbird and pays programmers to danger of funds being transferred from [6] “Firefox and More,” by Asa Dotzler, work on both open source projects. Of Thunderbird to Firefox development http:// weblogs. mozillazine. org/ asa/ course, this system helps development should Mozilla’s powerhouse product archives/ 2007/ 07/ thunderbirds_no. to progress more quickly and effectively need more resources [5]. html

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