Apple Open Source License Draws Criticism

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March 23, 1999 (5:17 PM EST)

By Malcolm Maclachlan,

Major high-tech players may be adopting open source business models, but the open source community has been slow to embrace these corporations.

Apple Computer is learning this lesson as its new open source initiative has sparked a wave of debate throughout the community. The company announced last week that it would release portions of its new Mac OS X Server as open source. Developers who want to use the source must sign the Apple Public Source License, or APSL, which outlines the rights and duties they have when using the code.

At the announcement of Darwin, the open source version of Mac OS X server, the Cupertino, Calif., computer maker was able to get two open source notables to publicly endorse the APSL. Both Eric Raymond, a vocal open source evangelists and founder of the Open Source Initiative, and Chip Salzenberg, an OSI board member, gave the APSL their blessing.

However, three other noted open source luminaries have now weighed in with several concerns that are outlined in a document titled The Apple Public Source License-Our Concerns.

The authors are Bruce Perens, another co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, Ian Jackson, president of the group Software in the Public Interest, and Wichert Akkerman, the leader of the Debian project, a non-profit development group that did one of the first releases of Linux.

According to the document, the APSL is misleading in multiple ways. The document states that much of the material released under the APSL came from work done at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of California at Berkeley. This code, the document said, was already freely available.

The document goes on to state that Apple's license requires developers to notify Apple any time they make a change, via a special Apple URL. The problem, according to the document, is that tying an open source development effort to a company makes it dependent on the existence of that company. Other open source efforts generally depend on an independent group, such as Mozilla.org, which oversees the open source code for Netscape Communicator 5.

"We think we've done a pretty good example of an open source agreement. We're still learning."
-- Russell Brady
Apple

Finally, the document says that the license does not meet the standard for open source, because Apple reserves the right to terminate a developer's right to the code. Such a clause puts a developers time investment into the code into jeopardy, the document says.

"An arbitrary termination could cause us to suddenly lose that investment at some future date, with no chance for appeal," the document states. "The licenses accepted by our community do not provide for the possibility of termination in this manner."

Apple should get some credit for being the first major OS vendor to open up some of its own intellectual property, said company spokesman Russell Brady.

"We really sought to engage the open source community when we put together the plans," Brady said. "We think we've done a pretty good example of an open source agreement. We're still learning."

The Concerns document has led to an active online debate. Richard Stallman, a long-time open source figure who is seen as the leading purist in the movement, has joined in the criticism of the APSL.

Raymond, in turn has jumped to his own defense, noting that he has criticized open source moves made by big software vendors in the past.

In January, Sun Microsystems tried a version of open source, opening up the code to its Jini platform, Sun is pushing as a standard for networking among home appliances. The Jini license drew a mixed response from the open source community. In a January interview with TechWeb, Raymond openly criticized the Jini license.

"It betrays an utter failure to understand either the community or the dynamics of open source development," Raymond said.