Proposal to Make the IBIS Golden Parser Open Source Kim Helliwell Apple Computer May 2, 2002 1.0 Introduction The idea of making the IBIS Golden Parser an open source project arose during a meeting of the IBIS Qualification Subcommittee on April 16, 2002. The discussion was about some recommendations the committee felt might be made to the IBIS Committee for enhancements that are deemed necessary for the Golden Parser, and how to get these changes into the Golden Parser code quickly. The IBIS Qualification Committee does not intend disparagement of the current maintainers of ibischk3. It is clear that they have done an excellent job of keeping up with new versions of the IBIS spec. However, we believe there are significant advantages to making the Golden Parser code an open source project. 2.0 Issues 2.1 Advantages The primary advantage of making ibischk3 an open source program is that many pairs of eyes would be looking at the code, which should help to reduce bugs. Secondly, many people with access to the code could add features that they have always wished were available, but that the current maintainers hadn’t thought of or did not feel was important enough to spend time on. Finally, access to the source would allow people to port to other OS’s and machines than the currently supported ones. Many of these enhancements and ports might turn out to be useful to other people, and the rapid dissemination of such improvements would benefit everyone who uses the parser. 2.2 Disadvantages The advantages of open-sourcing the code are pretty clear. What are the disadvantages? The primary difficulty is the concern over losing control. The primary loss-of-control mode is called “forking.” That is, the code stream gets forked into two competing streams, which has the negative effects of diluting efforts that would otherwise be devoted to a single code stream and of confusing users. While there is a sense in which any dissemination of source code represents a surrender of control, there are ways to maintain discipline and prevent forking. 2.3 Disadvantages Addressed The most obvious way to prevent forking is to make use of the weight and unity of the IBIS committee itself. The IBIS committee can certainly sanction a code stream and moderate changes to that code; presumably they already do this now. Any attempt to fork a competing stream would lead to a “competitor” that does not have the blessing of the committee. Particularly if a vigorous effort to maintain and enhance the primary code stream is carried on, there will be little incentive to invent a competing one. In fact, the argument may be made that there is currently more incentive to write a competitor now to make up for real or perceived deficiencies of the existing parser than there would be were the source code available. Admittedly, the cost barrier is higher now than it would be if the source were available. The cachet of the “Official” Golden Parser should still be enough to prevent any serious effort at a derivative version, however. The experience of supporters of both Linux and Perl can certainly bear this out. Both of these projects have very strong central control, although the internal organization of the official contributors to these two projects is somewhat different. In large part it is the reputations of the group of central contributors themselves that helps the community at large to trust them and prevents any serious effort at forking either of these projects. Essentially, trust and momentum are the two factors that help keep competitors out. It’s clear that these same factors can work to advantage for ibischk3, albeit on a smaller scale. 2.4 Concerns of Participating Companies What about the contributions of the companies that participate in the IBIS committee? Should not their continued support confer on them some advantage not enjoyed by companies that do not participate in that way? Our answer to that is: certainly. Up to now, of course, the advantage has been an exclusive use of the parser code, particularly the ability to include it in commercial products, while non contributing companies are only allowed access to the executable. However, taking ibischk3 open source need not change that distinction if the GPL is used for the general public, while maintaining the current licensing terms for participating corporations. The only difference would be that others would have access to the code, which would only make the source more valuable for the companies that contribute and have the less restrictive license arrangement. Basically, they will be getting programming talent for free. We should point out that opening up the source does not in any way preclude the IBIS committee from paying for enhancements or upgrades to new versions of the spec, as is done now. The only issue would be that any contracts with individuals or companies to do this kind of work would make it clear that the results would be open source. 2.5 Gatekeeper The final issue for making ibischk3 open source is: who will the gatekeeper(s) be? Would the committee have to pay someone to take this role? Our answer is that we believe this role could easily be made voluntary. It might be viewed by one of the companies that participate on the IBIS committee as an advantage to host the gatekeeper site and have one of its employees filling that role. Since the code we are talking about is vastly smaller in scale than Perl or Linux, we do not believe that the effort would be anywhere near a full-time one, so this could be simply a small added duty for someone at one of the contributing companies. 3.0 Conclusion Any move toward taking a closed source program open source certainly will be accompanied by questions and doubts as to whether it is the right thing to do. In this brief article we have attempted to enumerate a few advantages to making the IBIS Golden Parser an open source project. We have tried to deal with objections to this course: perceived loss of control of the code and perceived loss of value to the supporting corporations. We believe we have adequately dealt with those objections by showing that there are ways to prevent loss of control and real world examples of that process at work, and by showing how the contributing corporations may actually receive more value by having ibischk3 be an open source project. Finally, the necessary gatekeeping function can be a voluntary role for an employee of one of the participating companies. For these reasons, we contend that there is no serious impediment to making the IBIS Golden Parser an open source project. Appendix A: The GNU Public License (GPL) GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. 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If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details. The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program. You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names: Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker. , 1 April 1989 Ty Coon, President of Vice This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License. Appendix B: Golden Parser License ***********************************************************************/ /*********************************************************************** name: ibis_chk.h This source code is licensed to the company including all of its national and international sites by the EIA IBIS Open Forum. This license grants the company the right to distribute the source code only within the entire company. The company has the right to use the source code, to modify the source code, and to include the resulting executables in products or utilities for external distribution. No royality payment is required for such distribution. Be advised that modifications to the source code may result in checking functionality that does not comply with the official IBIS standard. ***********************************************************************/ /*********************************************************************** Developed for IBIS by: Paul Munsey PC Ware of Roseville California, 73053.721@compuserve.com Ron Neville Software Apparatus, 75123.3477@compuserve.com Version 3.0 enhancements by Atul P. Agarwal Apt Software Avenues Pvt Ltd P84A CIT Road scheme IV (M) Calcutta 700 010 India. atulapt@giascl01.vsnl.net.in ***********************************************************************/