Free software isn't a logo on GitHub

Microsoft loves open source. Google loves open source. Amazon loves open source. They say it at every conference, they put it in their slides, they sponsor foundations. You'd almost think they believe in it. Except their "open source" is to free software what an all-you-can-eat buffet is to fine dining: it looks similar, it feeds you, but it's not quite the thing.

And before anyone slaps a label on me: no, this isn't a "left-wing" or "right-wing" argument. I'm an engineer. What interests me is what works. And what works, in computing, for the last fifty years, is free software. The most reliable, most durable, most widely used software in the world is free. This isn't ideology. It's a technical observation.

Open source washing

Microsoft bought GitHub in 2018. The world's largest host of free code, owned by one of the most closed companies in the history of computing. The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast. Since then, Microsoft "contributes to open source". VS Code is open source. .NET is open source. TypeScript is open source. Even bits of Windows are open source. Shall we applaud?

No. Because the goal was never freedom. It's capture. VS Code is open source, but the extension ecosystem is tied to Microsoft. GitHub is "free" for public projects, but your workflows, your CI/CD, your data, all of it lives at Microsoft's. .NET is open source, but all the tooling pushes you towards Azure. It's the dealer model: the first hit is free.

Google does the same. Android is "open source" (try using it without Google Play Services). Chromium is open source, and it's become a browser monopoly that's strangling Firefox and dictating web standards at the W3C. Kubernetes is open source, and curiously, it runs better on Google Cloud. TensorFlow is open source, and you end up renting TPUs from Google to train it.

Amazon is even more shameless. They take free code, repackage it, sell it as a managed service on AWS, and give back almost nothing. ElasticSearch, Redis, MongoDB, all free projects that had to change their licences to protect themselves from Amazon. The ultimate predator of the free software ecosystem. (slow clap)

This isn't free software. It's marketing.

True libre is permissive

Free software, the real thing, comes down to four freedoms (thank you, Richard):

0. Run the program however you want.
1. Study the code and modify it.
2. Redistribute copies.
3. Distribute modified versions.

Full stop. Not "...unless it competes with our cloud". Not "...as long as you stay in our ecosystem". Not "...but we reserve the right to change the licence in two years". Free is permissive, or it isn't free.

And yes, that means a company can take your code and make money with it. That's the price of freedom. The MIT licence, BSD, Apache 2.0: they all allow this. And that's good. Because the alternative is control. And control is what we're trying to escape.

What if we actually paid developers?

"But then how do you make a living?" There's the real question. And it deserves a real answer, not a shrug and a "do consulting".

The problem isn't the free software model. The problem is that we've built an entire industry on the idea that developers' work is worthless. Or rather: that it's worth a fortune to the company exploiting it, but almost nothing to the person producing it. A senior developer maintaining a library used by half the Fortune 500 earns less than a junior salesperson at the same company. The person who wrote OpenSSL, the software securing your bank transactions, did it voluntarily for years. (awkward silence from the industry)

We should pay developers. Much more. With genuine recognition of the profession, not a decorative "engineer" title and a foosball table in the open-plan office. Software development is a demanding, creative, intellectual craft that takes years to learn. And it runs the world. Literally. Nothing works without software any more: not hospitals, not trains, not banks, not power stations. And the people who write that software are treated as interchangeable workers to be replaced by offshoring or, soon, by AI. (hollow laugh)

The deal should be simple: we pay you well, very well, and in return, what you create serves humanity. Not locked in a patent. Not trapped in a silo. Open, auditable, reusable. The developer becomes a craftsperson serving the common good, properly paid for their work, but aware that their creation isn't a product to be locked away. It's a contribution.

The absurdity of software patents

A patent was originally a contract: you make public how your invention works, and in exchange, you get a temporary monopoly to exploit it. The idea was noble: encouraging innovation by guaranteeing a return on investment.

In software, it's become a farce. They patent gestures on a touchscreen ("slide to unlock", thank you Apple, nobody would have thought of that without you). They patent obvious algorithms. They patent concepts so vague that any developer would reinvent them on a Tuesday afternoon over coffee. And then they use these patents to crush the competition, not to innovate.

Look at the software that changed the world. Linux: no patent. The web (HTTP, HTML): no patent, Tim Berners-Lee explicitly refused to file one. Python, PostgreSQL, Git, Apache, OpenSSL, GCC: no patents. The most important, most used, most reliable software in the history of computing has zero patents.

And on the other side: patent trolls, defensive patent portfolios, billion-dollar lawsuits between Apple and Samsung over rounded corners on a rectangle. That's "innovation protected by patents"? They spend more on lawyers than on engineers.

Software patents don't protect innovation. They slow it down. They enrich lawyers and terrorise small developers who can't afford to defend themselves. They're an anachronism from an era when "inventing" meant building a physical machine, not writing thirty lines of code.

You can't own an idea

And this is where we need to step back. Because behind the patents, behind the proprietary licences, behind the silos, there's a concept we almost never question: "intellectual property".

Two words that don't belong together. Property is for objects. If I give you my chair, I no longer have a chair. If I give you my idea, we both have the idea. That's not property. That's sharing. And knowledge, by nature, multiplies when you spread it.

The idea that you can "own" an algorithm, a logical sequence, a way of solving a problem. It's strange, when you think about it. Pythagoras didn't patent his theorem. Euler didn't copyright his formula. Newton didn't trademark gravity (though today he probably would, and Apple would sue him over the apple).

This is a reflection that thinkers and institutions far older than Silicon Valley have been pursuing for centuries. The idea that knowledge is a common good, that learning belongs to everyone, that locking up an idea impoverishes humanity, this isn't a hippie slogan. It's a philosophical position defended since antiquity, taken up by the Enlightenment, and reaffirmed today by voices as varied as academics, lawyers, economists, and even (you wouldn't expect it) religious institutions that reflected on the universal destination of goods long before the first software patent was filed.

Software is formalised knowledge. Human understanding translated into instructions. And knowledge, by its nature, belongs to no one. Or rather, it belongs to everyone.

Another model is possible

I'm not naive. I know developers need to eat. I know companies need revenue. I know we won't abolish intellectual property on a Thursday evening over a beer (though it's worth a try).

But we can change the paradigm. We can pay developers what they're really worth, not to lock up code, but to produce excellent code, in the open. We can fund free software through public funds, foundations, service models rather than licence models. We can treat code as what it is: shared infrastructure, like roads, bridges and libraries.

Free software isn't a logo on GitHub. It's not a marketing argument to lure developers in a job interview. It's not a licence you change when Amazon makes too much money from your code.

Free software is a worldview. One where knowledge flows, where tools belong to those who use them, and where developers' work is respected and shared.

It's about time we took it seriously.