“INFECTIOUS” OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE: SPREADING INCENTIVES OR PROMOTING RESISTANCE? Greg R. Vetter* ABSTRACT Some free or open source software infects other software with its licensing terms. Popularly, this is called a viral license, but the software is not a computer virus. Free or open source software is a copyright-based licensing system. It typically allows modification and distribution on conditions such as source code availability, royalty free use and other requirements. Some licenses require distribution of modifications under the same terms. A license is infectious when it has a strong scope for the modifications provision. The scope arises from a broad conception of software derivative works. A strong infectious ambit would apply itself to modified software, and to software intermixed or coupled with non-open-source software. Popular open source software, including the * Assistant Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center (UHLC); Co-Director, Institute for Intellectual Property and Information Law (IPIL) at UHLC; biography and additional background available at: www.law.uh.edu/faculty/gvetter. Relevant to this Article is that my background includes a Master’s degree in Computer Science and full-time work experience in the business-to-business software industry from 1987 to 1996. Research for this Article was supported by summer research grants from the University of Houston Law Foundation and a grant from the University of Houston’s New Faculty Research Program. I also thank UHLC’s IPIL Institute and its sponsors for support of my endeavors at UHLC. My thanks to UHLC students Jason Williams, Cuong Lam Nguyen, Stacey R. Vause and Nivine Zakhari for research assistance. My special thanks to UHLC student Kristin Brown for comments, suggestions and research assistance on this Article. I also benefited from input and discussions with Joe Dryer, a UHLC alumnus whose Houston-based company is involved in open source software applications. In addition, I am thankful for exceptionally capable support provided by the staff of the University of Houston Law Center’s John M. O’Quinn Law Library, including Peter Egler and Nicole Evans, and by UHLC’s Legal Information Technology Department. My special thanks to Craig Joyce, Ray Nimmer, Heather Meeker, and Ron Chichester for helpful discussion and comments. Finally, I thank Peter Yu, Director of the Intellectual Property and Communications Law Program at Michigan State University College of Law. I presented elements of this Article at that program’s Conference on Intellectual Property, Sustainable Development, and Endangered Species: Understanding the Dynamics of the Information Ecosystems. My thanks to audience members and co-panelists for comments and feedback. 53 54 RUTGERS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 36:53] GNU/Linux operating system, uses a license with this feature. This Article assesses the efficacy of broad infectious license terms to determine their incentive effects for open source and proprietary software. The analysis doubts beneficial effects. Rather, on balance, such terms may produce incentives detrimental to interoperability and coexistence between open and proprietary code. As a result, open source licensing should precisely define infectious terms in order to support open source development without countervailing effects and misaligned incentives. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................... 56 II. OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AND INFECTIOUS LICENSE TERMS............... 70 A. Open Source Licensing and Software Development....................... 71 1. Conditioned Permissions for Copyright Protected Software ................................................................................. 74 2. Open Source Development Norms and Practices ..................... 79 B. The General Public License (GPL) ................................................ 82 C. The GPL’s Infectious License Terms............................................. 88 III. THE TECHNOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR INFECTIOUS AMBIT............... 94 A. Noninfectious Scenarios for Aggregated Software......................... 95 B. Modifications and/or Extensions to Source Code........................... 97 C. Intermixing Code in the Development and Runtime Environments.............................................................................. 103 D. Coupling and Integrating Software in the Runtime Environment.. 107 IV. THE INFECTIOUS GPL TERMS IN THIS FRAMEWORK ........................... 110 A. User Programs and the Linux Kernel ........................................... 113 B. The Lesser GPL – Intermixing Libraries and Other Software...................................................................................... 119 V. THE INCENTIVES EFFICACY OF INFECTIOUS LICENSE TERMS.............. 125 A. Isolating the Infectious Terms ..................................................... 127 1. Upfront Fees for Intermixed Software and Open Source Software ............................................................................... 131 2. Ongoing Service Fees for Intermixed Software and Open Source Software.................................................................... 135 B. Efficacy Model ........................................................................... 137 C. Infectious Effects ........................................................................ 144 1. Purported Benefits of Infectious Terms ................................. 146 2004] “INFECTIOUS” OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE 55 2. Problems with Infectious Terms ............................................ 152 3. Striking a Balance: Limited Quarantine for Infectious Terms? ................................................................................. 156 VI. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................... 162 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 1 – Modifying and Extending Software......................................... 101 Figure 2 – Intermixing Software .............................................................. 106 Figure 3 – Coupling and Integrating Software.......................................... 108 Table 1 – Summary: The Technological Framework for Infectious Ambit ...................................................................... 109 Table 2 – Certainty Enhancing Measures within the Infectious Framework............................................................................... 124 Figure 4 – Modify the Original Open Source to Intermix with Other Software .................................................................................. 128 Figure 5 – Open Source Software Ready to Intermix with Other Software .................................................................................. 130 Figure 6 – Efficacy Model Illustration – scenarios for the infectious “whole” ................................................................... 141 56 RUTGERS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 36:53] I. INTRODUCTION Copyright offers both incentives and deterrents to derivative uses, protecting derivative works as well as prohibiting their unauthorized production. Paul Goldstein, Derivative Rights and Derivative Works in Copyright 1 The GPL requires that works “derived from” a work licensed under the GPL also be licensed under the GPL. Unfortunately what counts as a derived work can be a bit vague. As soon as you try to draw the line at derived works, the problem immediately becomes one of where do you draw the line? Linus Torvalds, The Linux Edge 2 Too often, the open source software debate has an all-or-nothing flavor.3 One might hear: open source software is better because the production process taps debugging efficiencies and harvests volunteer effort on an impressive scale.4 Or hear: proprietary software is better because it 1. Paul Goldstein, Derivative Rights and Derivative Works in Copyright, 30 J. COPYRIGHT SOC’Y U.S. 209, 239 (1983). 2. Linus Torvalds, The Linux Edge, in OPEN SOURCES: VOICES FROM THE OPEN SOURCE REVOLUTION 108-09 (Chris DiBona et al. eds., 1999) [hereinafter Torvalds, The Linux Edge]. 3. See Peter Wayner, Whose Intellectual Property Is It, Anyway? The Open Source War, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 24, 2000, at G8 (describing that “the war of Open Source . is being fought in conference rooms, law offices, hacker redoubts and university dormitory rooms and in the hearts of millions of people surfing the Web”); Eben Moglen, Freeing the Mind: Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture, Address Before the University of Maine Law School’s Fourth Annual Technology and Law Conference (June 29, 2003) (describing the “fundamental choice” between free software and a “dead [proprietary] system of inefficient distribution”), at http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/maine-speech.pdf; see also David McGowan, SCO What? Rhetoric, Law and the Future of F/OSS Production 10-16 (Univ. of Minn. Law School, Research Paper No. 04-9, June 12, 2004) [hereinafter McGowan, SCO What?] (describing the rhetorical strategies used by both sides of the debate and their accompanying exaggerated claims), available at http://www.law.umn.edu/uploads/images/830/McGowanD-SCOssrn.pdf. 4. See, e.g., Yochai Benkler, Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm, 112 YALE L.J. 369, 376-77, 415-23 (2002) (noting that one advantage of open source software and peer production in general is that “it allows larger groups of individuals to scour larger groups of resources in search of materials, projects, collaborations, and combinations than is possible