Employees of the web giants contribute most to open source software

Emer­gence and ins­ti­tu­tio­na­li­sa­tion of open-source software

The his­to­ry of free soft­ware began in the 1980s, in reac­tion to the domi­na­tion and new res­tric­tive prac­tices in terms of free­doms of soft­ware publi­shers. Aca­de­mics defi­ned four free­doms that they belie­ved should be applied, which became the prin­ciples of free soft­ware : free­dom of use, the free­dom to stu­dy the code and adapt it to one’s needs, the free­dom to redis­tri­bute copies, and the free­dom to improve the pro­gram and publish those impro­ve­ments. In order to pre­serve the free nature of this soft­ware, they also deve­lo­ped the legal sys­tem of « copy­left ». Ins­tead of using copy­right res­tric­ti­ve­ly, by pla­cing soft­ware under licenses desi­gned to exclude use and access to the source code, copy­left consists ins­tead of more per­mis­sive licenses, but requi­ring the avai­la­bi­li­ty of the source code¹.

The prin­ciples of open source soft­ware com­bi­ned with the demo­cra­ti­sa­tion of the Inter­net allo­wed the rise of a col­la­bo­ra­tive deve­lop­ment mode² in which geo­gra­phi­cal­ly dis­tant volun­teer deve­lo­pers for­med com­mu­ni­ties around soft­ware deve­lop­ment pro­jects that com­pe­ted with the so-cal­led « pro­prie­ta­ry » offe­rings : the Linux ope­ra­ting sys­tem, the Apache web ser­ver or the Mozilla web brow­ser. But beyond a new deve­lop­ment method, the free soft­ware move­ment is first and fore­most a phi­lo­so­phy and values of sha­ring, inde­pen­dence and freedom.

Although pro­prie­ta­ry soft­ware publi­shers, led by Micro­soft, saw the free soft­ware move­ment as a threat and ini­tial­ly tried to dis­cre­dit it, it was rather its ins­ti­tu­tio­na­li­sa­tion that we wit­nes­sed in the 2000s. In 2002, IBM began to invest in free soft­ware, which gra­dual­ly gai­ned legi­ti­ma­cy among com­pa­nies. Today, IT com­pa­nies [for « Infor­ma­tion Tech­no­lo­gy »] have embra­ced free soft­ware, and espe­cial­ly its col­la­bo­ra­tive deve­lop­ment mode. They are also inves­ting mas­si­ve­ly in it, fol­lo­wing the example of Micro­soft, which in 2018 bought GitHub, the very popu­lar plat­form for hos­ting and mana­ging free soft­ware development.

Unpaid contri­bu­tions ? The ques­tion of paid work

Even today, there is a ten­den­cy to asso­ciate free soft­ware with the image of volun­teer deve­lo­pers and a hacker ethic based on free­dom, hedo­nism and self-ful­filment, albeit with indi­vi­dual bene­fits in terms of recog­ni­tion in the labour market.

The rea­li­ty is dif­ferent, howe­ver, as today, for example, only about 15% of contri­bu­tions to Linux are made by volun­teers³. A clo­ser look at the contri­bu­tions pos­ted on a plat­form such as GitHub reveals that a majo­ri­ty of them are pos­ted via a pro­fes­sio­nal address⁴.

It seems, then, that a land­scape is emer­ging around open source soft­ware in which volun­teer work and orga­ni­sa­tions coexist with paid work and com­mer­cial enterprises.

Who are the contri­bu­ting companies ?

That com­pa­nies contri­bute to open source soft­ware that they use on a dai­ly basis might seem logi­cal, espe­cial­ly in a context where the free rider phe­no­me­non of using without contri­bu­ting has often been denoun­ced. Howe­ver, when we take a clo­ser look at the com­pa­nies whose employees contri­bute the most to the deve­lop­ment of the most active, highest rated and/or most contri­bu­ted pro­jects, no com­pa­ny ope­ra­ting in a non-com­pu­ter sec­tor ranks in the top 20 contri­bu­tors. In fact, although some com­pa­nies are star­ting to imple­ment open source evan­ge­lism pro­grammes, they contri­bute very lit­tle to pro­jects, usual­ly due to cultu­ral and mana­ge­rial resis­tance lin­ked to a fear of losing control of intel­lec­tual pro­per­ty rights.

In fact, it is among the IT giants (Micro­soft, Google, Apple, Intel, Face­book, Hua­wei, Oracle and Sam­sung) that we find the big­gest contri­bu­tors to these open source projects.

From mas­te­ring digi­tal infra­struc­ture to mas­te­ring data

Today, the entire digi­tal infra­struc­ture of the Inter­net is based on open source soft­ware (such as Linux, Kuber­netes, and more gene­ral­ly the entire soft­ware stack on which com­mer­cial clouds are built), and thus the Inter­net ser­vice plat­forms inten­ded for busi­nesses or the gene­ral public, such as search engines or social net­works. These plat­forms allow the IT giants that have deve­lo­ped them to col­lect, pro­cess and value the quan­ti­ties of data that are at the heart of their busi­ness models.

It is the­re­fore unders­tan­dable that these IT giants may have an inter­est in get­ting invol­ved in the deve­lop­ment of digi­tal infra­struc­ture, in order to define its orien­ta­tions and cha­rac­te­ris­tics to best serve their acti­vi­ties⁵. The aim is to agree on open tech­ni­cal stan­dards in order to mini­mise risks or to pool deve­lop­ment costs. But it is also a ques­tion of making open source tech­no­lo­gies com­pa­tible with the expec­ta­tions of their client com­pa­nies, which requires a cultu­ral change within the pro­jects, in order to move towards a form of pro­fes­sio­na­li­sa­tion⁶.

By control­ling the digi­tal infra­struc­ture, domi­na­tion of the data mar­ket by web giants is rein­for­ced, with all the conse­quences this may have for com­pa­nies and indi­vi­dual users in terms of inde­pen­dence and privacy.

What future for FLOSS ?

Whe­reas free soft­ware had impo­sed itself as a safe­guard against the domi­na­tion of IT by a hand­ful of players, which it cri­ti­ci­sed, it is now being incor­po­ra­ted by web giants. Des­pite speeches high­ligh­ting their mem­ber­ship of a « free soft­ware com­mu­ni­ty » pre­sen­ted as uni­form, these com­pa­nies retain its col­la­bo­ra­tive deve­lop­ment mode but place its prin­ciples and values of sha­ring, inde­pen­dence and free­dom in second place. This can be seen in the igno­rance of the prin­ciples of open source licences, such as « Inner Source« ⁸ or that of the use of CLAs (Contri­bu­tor License Agree­ments), which allow the licence gover­ning a soft­ware pro­duct to be changed.

Howe­ver, many free soft­ware actors are still atta­ched to these foun­ding prin­ciples and mili­tate for their res­pect, which is neces­sa­ry to gua­ran­tee the dura­bi­li­ty of the free eco­sys­tem, which is cur­rent­ly being cal­led into ques­tion by the domi­na­tion of IT giants. This means pro­mo­ting a diver­si­ty of alter­na­tive decen­tra­li­sed and inter­ope­rable plat­forms and ser­vices, such as the « archi­pe­li­ti­sa­tion » pro­po­sed by the Fra­ma­soft asso­cia­tion, the Matrix open stan­dard for secure and decen­tra­li­sed real-time com­mu­ni­ca­tion, or Next­Cloud, a file hos­ting and col­la­bo­ra­tion solu­tion with an open architecture.

But beyond these ini­tia­tives, the ques­tion arises as to the role of the State in regu­la­ting and finan­cing alter­na­tive plat­forms that pre­serve data sove­rei­gn­ty and pro­tect pri­va­cy. Indeed, aren’t open source pro­jects based on volun­teer com­mu­ni­ties the pot of gold in the face of the iron pot of the IT giants, which have almost unli­mi­ted resources to pay the deve­lo­pers of their own open source platforms ?