Open Source Software Intro While knowledge is the public good, there is discussion whether or not all knowledge should free for public. Today society chose suffer the loss of knowledge for certain years. They use intellectual property law to encourage individuals to invest in research and development and creating knowledge they can profit. We want to analyze an alternative way in distributing knowledge specifically open source software and how useful it is to both creators and society. Definition and characteristics Open source licenses promise to everyone what many in the community refer to as software freedom. The terminology of Freedom is emotionally satisfying, but it has proven to be very confusing.
Not that software freedom isn’t definable. The Free Software Foundation lists four essential kinds of software freedom:
1. The freedom to run the software for any purpose
2. The freedom to study how the software works and to adapt it to your needs
3. The freedom to redistribute copies of the software
4. The freedom to improve the software and distribute your improvements to the public Confusion about the term Freedom was the very reason the term open source was created. The newer term refers to an important concept well understood by anyone who has ever written computer software: Programmers write source code to direct computers to perform specific tasks, while the computer itself takes care of the routine task of translating the source code into an executable program. For a computer programmer, understanding and modifying software requires access to the source code. The source code must be open—made available for all to see—in order that the software can be studied, changed, and improved. Let’s take Mozilla Firefox as an example: The part we mainly use is the graphical part. But programmers are also interested in the code part, that the can change in order to customize their favorite browser. Open source code is an essential requirement for software freedom, a technical prerequisite. Software freedom is the goal; open source is the means to that goal.
What criteria for software to be Open Source? 1- The program must be freely distributed 2- Source code must be included 3- Anyone must be allowed to modify the source code 4- Modified versions can be redistributed 5- The license must not require the exclusion of other software or interfere with the operation of other software

Here, in summary form, is the most recent version of the Open Source Definition (OSD) from the website of OSI.
1. Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
2. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed. 3. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and it must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
4. Integrity of the Author's Source Code
The license may restrict source code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
7. Distribution of License The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open source software.
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral
No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

One of the most frequent first questions people ask is, “Is all open source software zero price?” No. Most open source licensees will be glad to take your money for your first copy of a piece of software. But you never have to pay a royalty or license fee for the right to make copies. It would be better if OSD # 1 phrased this point better.

Legal tools concerning open source software

Copyright and software Nowadays, the laws concerning Intellectual property in many countries in the world are regulated to be within the standard set by TRIPS agreement. The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an international agreement administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Every country member of WTO has to apply this standard.
TRIPS agreement sets down minimum standards for many forms of intellectual property (IP) regulation. The software (or, Computer programs) must be regarded as "literary works" under copyright law and receive the same terms of protection. “Article 10
Computer Programs and Compilations of Data
1. Computer programs, whether in source or object code, shall be protected as literary works under the Berne Convention (1971).
2. Compilations of data or other material, whether in machine readable or other form, which by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations shall be protected as such. Such protection, which shall not extend to the data or material itself, shall be without prejudice to any copyright subsisting in the data or material itself.” Conventionally, and in all countries where the Berne Convention standards apply, copyright is automatic. The owner of a copyrighted software program has certain exclusive rights (with some exceptions). These rights are the right to copy the software, create derivative or modified versions of it, and distribute copies to the public by license, sale or otherwise. Without the copyright owner’s permission, anyone exercising any of these exclusive rights is an infringer and subject to liability for damages or statutory fines.
Licensing the open source software
Licensing means that the owner of the copyright still hold the ownership but grant a third party to carry out certain acts covered by his economic rights, generally for a specific period of time and for a specific purpose.
Open source program authors use licensing as a way to grant permission to others to use their work. It is a great alternative to just releasing your work into the public domain or granting permissions on a case-by-case basis. Since by releasing the work into the public domain, the author relinquish any copyright, and no one is obligated to list his or her as the original author or contributor, while granting permissions on a case-by-case basis can waste so much time.

Types of Open Source License
According to Lawrence Rosen “Open Source Licensing Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law”, there are 4 types of open source licenses.
“1.Bare license: A grant by the holder of a copyright or patent to another of any of the rights embodied in the copyright or patent short of an assignment of all rights

2. Academic licenses, so named because such licenses were originally created by academic institutions to distribute their software to the public, allow the software to be used for any purpose whatsoever with no obligation on the part of the licensee to distribute the source code of derivative works.

3. Reciprocal licenses also allow software to be used for any purpose whatsoever, but they require the distributors of derivative works to distribute those works under the same license, including the requirement that the source code of those derivative works be published.
The GPL license, written by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen at the Free Software Foundation, is the archetypal reciprocal license. Anyone who creates and distributes a derivative work of a work licensed under a reciprocal license must, in turn, license that derivative work under the same license. Reciprocal licenses, like academic licenses, contribute software into a public commons of free software, but they mandate that derivative works also be placed in that same commons.

4. Standards licenses are designed primarily for ensuring that industry standard software and documentation be available to all for implementation of standard products. These licenses sometimes require that any differences from the industry standard be published as a reference implementation so that the standard may evolve if necessary.
Content licenses ensure that copyrightable subject matter other than software, such as music, art, film, literary works, and the like, be available to all for any purpose whatsoever. These licenses are discussed more fully on the Creative Commons website at www.creativecommons.org. While the Creative Commons goals are not directly related to software freedom, there are many similarities of objective.”

Copyleft

Copylef is the practice of using copyright law, specifically lisencing to grant the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work.
To implement the copyleft concept, one needs to use one of the licenses that complies with the concept. The most famous copyleft license is GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL. The GNU Project gave the following definition of copyleft in their website.
“Copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well.”
Other source for the open source software licenses
There are more than 60 approved open source licenses listed on http://opensource.org/. This webpage was created by The Open Source Initiative. Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation dedicated to promoting open source software. It is founded in February 1998, by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond. Open-source licenses make it easier to contribute to a project without having to seek special permission. It also protects the original creator, making sure they would at least get some credit for their contributions. It also helps to prevent others from claiming these works as their own.

Economic theory in the Open Source

In this part we will do an economic analysis of the Open source.
Indeed, in Open Source programming there is two interesting points:
- The development is done by persons who are not necessarily paid for it
- The Software won’t be sold
However, these softwares are growing every day and a lot of Open Source Software are ruling the market: Firefox has 32% of the web browser market, Apache is a dominant web server, Linux is an important server operating system, MySQL has 20% of the database market.

To understand why Open Source is still growing considering its paradox we will explore different subjects: first of all the more advantaging between Open Source and Closed Source programming in the section 1, then the motivation of the programmers in the second section, after that in the section 3 we will see the advantages of the Open source for people. The section 4 will explain the contribution of companies; and finally, in the last section (5) will be exposed the characteristics needed for Open Source.

1- Would it be preferable to choose Open Source or Closed Source programming?

At first sight, Open Source seems better: it is a benefit of money and time. Everyone can easily have an access to the source code without spending money and can work on it or use it (for example in class).

We might think that it is only a first approach but with a further analysis we still have the same conclusion. The signalling incentive (this means the gratification for the developer; this notion will be explained more preciously in the next section) is stronger with the Open Source for three reasons:
- A better performance measurement: outsiders can have access to the code and can appreciate the work (it is not the case with a closed source)
- The full initiative of the open source programmer is recognized (on the opposite, in a company the programmer of a code stays unknown)
- The fluidity is greater in an Open Source environment (specific rules are less present than in a closed source environment)

2- The motivation of an Open Source programmer

As we have just seen, Open Source seems more interesting than Closed Source programming. Considering the fact that Open Source programmers represents 2.1millions of employees in the US (in 1998) that to say 25millions of code lines and around 3150 projects; is it only a question of personal gratification?

The first motivation of an employee or a worker is often the money. People want a positive net benefit and this benefit comes from the following formula:

Net Benefit = Immediate Payoff + Delayed Payoff

With {Immediate Payoff = Current Benefit – Current Cost} {Delayed Payoff = Delayed Benefit – Delayed Cost}

Working can also have a cost which is not related to money but to the time of working. During this time the programmer cannot work on another project.

These conditions are depending on the type of worker, there is a huge difference between an independent programmer and someone who is working in a company:
- The one working in a company hasn’t money issues but time issues: he can have the problem of being really busy with his program and not focusing on his primary mission. - The independent one has mostly money issues.
In these cases the advantage of OS programming is that good results come easily and quickly. It is explained by the fact that the code is given and they can contribute or be helped by contributors, so results are improved.

More than a motivation, an Open Source programmer obtains a reward for his work. The reward obtained is in his work and future career with the career concern. Indeed, it gives a better reputation to the developer and can offer to him opportunities of career on the job market. It is the benefit of sharing innovation even if it is sometimes at the beginning only a hobby for the person concerned.
It is also a reward for himself with the ego gratification incentive caused by the recognition of his work by his peers (a study has shown that it was the motivation in 43% of the cases) and the identification to a community.
These two advantages are often linked and grouped together under the appellation of “signalling incentive” in the Economic Theory (Holmström, 1999). The first condition can also be a motivation for others programmers: programmers will want to work on programs which can attract a lot of programmers (that is also the reason why some programs progress a lot and others aren’t).

3- The advantages of an Open Source contribution of someone

The contribution of someone on Open Source has advantages on both sides: for people and for software.
On the software side, the advantage is that it has been created by one person (the initial programmer) and can be improved a lot of times by other persons. The result is obviously a better software.
For persons, all are recognized even if it is more the case for the initial programmer who has a leader status. We can for example talk about Apache (an HTTP server which is an Open Software) which quote all of its contributors on its website.

4- Why companies contribute in Open Software?

As we have previously seen the market of Open Software is growing every day and companies are acting in this way. They are usually using three types of contribution (sorted in decreasing order of use): - The project coordination in most of the case
- The collaboration to code development
- The provision of code
A study on SourceForge (the largest OS repository) has shown that 32.33% of the 300 most popular projects are counting the involvement of at least one firm. In the case where a firm is involved, the company is often the creator of the project (or is becoming the leader) and those projects are larger than the others. The reasons why companies are investing in OS are not obvious and that is what we are going to explain in this section.

The most important advantage for a company is the reduction of costs: by using OS they can reduce the development costs and also the maintenance costs with a support available online (forums, etc).
They are also doing profit because as the code is public, bugs can be found and solved more quickly. Moreover, even if they cannot sell the software (the IPR is impacted by the Open Software), the OS can be a basis for preparing a software solution to the customer; or, they can sell the support (it is for example the case for the databases) or even though sell an additional hardware.

5- Characteristics of an Open Source programming

In order to be sure that the Open Source file will find contributors and that they will be able to help, it needs to follow some rules:

- First of all, the program needs a leader which is often the initial programmer (or someone of the company when a firm takes the lead on a project). This person has to provide a vision about what the program will be, like that programmers know in which way they are going to work. This leader can also help by making choices when two proposals are made or when a major change has to be done.
- The second characteristic of a good Open Source file is to be divided in different parts called “modules”. With these little independent programs, it is easier for programmers to work on the part they are the most efficient; also, bugs are detectable and solvable easily; and a lot of persons can work in the same time on the same project.
- The last thing needed for a project is to be attractive because once few people are interested in, others will come.

References Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole, The simple Economics of Open Source, December 2000 http://www.people.hbs.edu/jlerner/simple.pdf (visited March, 10th, 2013)
Bruce Perrens, The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source, February 2005, http://perens.com/works/articles/Economic.html (visited March, 11th, 2013)
Wikipédia, Business model for Open Source software, March 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-source_software (visited March, 11th, 2013)
GNU, Vendre des logiciels libres, February 2013, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html (visited March, 11th, 2013)
Modèle économique de l’Open Source, http://rdorat.free.fr/Enseignement/EcoNum/III6/Modele%20Economique%20open%20Source.pdf (visited March 11th, 2013)
Chaim Fershtman & Neil Gandal, A Brief Survey of the Economics of Open Source Software, June 2011, http://www.tau.ac.il/~gandal/opensource_survey.pdf (visited March, 13rd, 2013)
Andrea Bonaccorsi, Dario Lorenzi, Monica Merito & Cristina Rossi, Preliminary evidence on firms’ participation in Open Source projects, 2006, http://perso.univ-rennes1.fr/eric.darmon/floss/nice/papers/BONACCORSI_ROSSI.pdf (visited March 13rd, 2013)
Richard E Hawkins, The Economics of Open Software for a Competitive firm, November 2012, http://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/hawkins.pdf (vistied March, 20th, 2013)
World Trade Organization, "Part II — Standards concerning the availability, scope and use of Intellectual Property Rights", Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

"Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works Article 5". World Intellectual Property Organization. Retrieved 2011-11-18.

Eric S. Freibrun, “Intellectual Property Rights in Software: What They Are and How the Law Protects Them” By Esq.< http://www.freibrun.com/articles/articl2.htm >(visited March 13rd, 2013)

Richard Stallman, “The GNU Project” < http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html > (visited March 13rd, 2013)
Lawrence Rosen, “Open Source Licensing Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law”. Prentice Hall, July 2004. < http://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm > (visited March 13rd, 2013)

Group members
SONRIW Nitidhorn
GOZLAN Pierre
Fatima Zahra
TALLA Ousman