March 1st, 2007
Who decides what is open source?
If the code you build from is not GPL it's easy to build a proprietary company on an open source base. PostgreSQL, for instance, uses the BSD license. Thus EnterpriseDB can build proprietary extensions and offer them to the market.
Are they an open source company? No, they have no community, and don't want one. Should they be allowed entry into an "open source" conference? That's up to the conference organizer, and they too should consult their community before risking trouble.
Is EnterpriseDB a good citizen in the BSD world? Yes, they are, and BSD is an open source license. EnterpriseDB contributes time and code to PostgreSQL, which is a BSD database. They just hold their own stuff as proprietary, which is how BSD is designed to work.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that open source and the GPL are one and the same. They are not. In fact the whole open source movement was designed in opposition to the FOSS movement advocated by Richard Stallman and others.
But experience tells us that the more open your license — the more it conforms to the GPL framework — the more community support you will get. If you don't need or want that support, then use BSD code and make your own stuff proprietary.
EnterpriseDB is quite frank about what it's about. A shark is not the cute, cuddly mascot we associate with open source. You buy from an outfit with a shark as its mascot, you know what you're getting into.
Since everyone is being open about what they're doing I don't see a problem. Do you?
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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