Much Ado About Nothing

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Yesterday, tech blogosphere was buzzing about the Belgian Open Source developer Bruno Lowagie of Ghent’s plans to restrict certain users from using the software he developed. The gist of the story is as follows. The developer of iText, an open source Java library which helps manipulate PDF, RDF, HTML, etc. on the fly. The developer has some personal problem with the Belgian Government and he now wants to restrict the Belgian government agencies from using the software by adding a term in the license. The software is released under Mozilla Public License and LGPL right now.

Pundits are worried about the impact of such a move by the developer because this library is also embedded into other popular Open Source projects like Eclipse BIRT, Jasper Reports, etc.. They are worried that the additional restriction will prohibit Belgian authorities from using any of the Open Source software that uses this library. There are also worries about what if this becomes a trend and the potential havoc such a trend will cause in the software community.

In my opinion, these fears are overrated. The biggest advantage of Open Source licenses over proprietary licenses is that the developer or the company behind an Open Source product lose some of the control once the software is released in the wild. This offers an easy solution to the above problem. Fork, Fork, Fork. If this library is so important and if it is used by many big Open Source projects, there will be many developers who are willing to offer their time to develop the code further. If the original author runs wild, anybody can just take the code in its current form and just fork the project. They can then keep the software under an Open Source license without any draconian restrictions. This is the beauty of Open Source. No single developer or company can restrict anyone from using a particular piece of software. It is important that Open Source users (and developers) understand this unique feature of Open Source and go ahead with the life without worrying about issues that doesn’t matter the community.