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Douglas E. Phillips is author of The Software License Unveiled: How Legislation by License Controls Software Access, which reframes the debate between proprietary and free software to ask whether “legislation by license” should control either kind of software access.  In the article below he looks at Google’s new Chrome operating system.

Google recently announced plans for a new PC operating system, the Chrome OS. Within minutes, the media reported an OS war and began telling us who loses and who wins. The Chrome OS will smash Windows! Or else Chrome is actually good for Microsoft and (despite running on a Linux kernel) threatens Linux! Who knows? We might actually have to wait until the new OS comes out, which Google says won’t happen for another year.

Whatever becomes of the Chrome OS, though, Google’s decision about how to license it tells us something about where the software license itself is going. And that’s worth looking at now, given that how software is licensed shapes how it’s created and used.

Google promises open source licensing, which points to an approach the company already uses for the Chrome browser. This approach combines a royalty-free source code license to developers with proprietary end user terms. Expect to see more of this hybrid model across the software industry in the years to come.

Source code for the browser is available under the BSD license, which is short, sweet, and (in licensing jargon) permissive. You can use BSD-licensed code in a new work and distribute the new work any way you choose.

The separate terms of service for the browser’s executable version don’t impose a fee, but they do authorize Google to deliver targeted advertising when you use it. So the browser – and most of Google’s other services – are free, but only in the sense that broadcast television is free (or was free, before cable and satellite found a way to charge for it). You pay (some would say dearly) for broadcast TV, not by sending money to ABC, CBS, NBC, or Fox, but by tolerating a high-fat diet of ads we hate.

You pay Google in more or less the same way, except that the advertisements usually tend to be more relevant. In return, you get access to content that compares to network TV, in scope and depth, as the Pacific Ocean compares to a puddle (taking into account that the Pacific Ocean also has its shallow parts and sharks). Most people seem to like this bargain. It works, however, only if you agree to let Google keep track of what you’re looking for online and serve ads in response. Without this proprietary element, there would be no Google as we know it and, among other things, no Chrome browser or Chrome OS. The hybrid license lets all this happen.

The main objection to permissive and hybrid licensing comes not from the Microsofts of the world, but from advocates of the GNU General Public License. You can borrow source code from a GPL-licensed work and include the code, royalty-free, in a new work. But if you want to share the new work with others, then the GPL requires that you also license the new work – including the parts that weren’t borrowed – under the GPL. In the GPL philosophy, protecting software freedom means denying the freedom to mix free code with any code that is subject to proprietary licensing terms.

According to Google, the Chrome OS will consist of the Chrome browser “running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.” Because the Linux kernel is GPL-licensed, Google will have to provide that part under the GPL. The GPL’s “copyleft” condition applies, however, only if the new work is a “derivative work” as a matter of copyright law. The Chrome browser clearly is a separate work, and the new windowing system apparently will be as well (as is the existing X11 windowing system, which is often used with Linux but not licensed under the GPL).

Google’s not likely to license the non-Linux parts of the Chrome OS under the GPL, and for good reason. Consider the Web itself. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the Web, at first wanted the Web software to be licensed under the GPL. He changed his mind after people told him that the strings attached by the GPL could severely limit the Web’s reach. So he arranged instead to have the Web software dedicated to the public domain. The Mosaic graphical browser included parts of the original Web software, which meant that avoiding the GPL was key to making Mosaic something on which for-profit companies could build. Without the freedom to monetize Web technologies, the private investment that helped the World Wide Web live up to its name almost certainly never would have occurred. That’s why a combined open source and proprietary licensing model probably makes sense for the Chrome OS. It’s also why your next software license, like your next car, may well be a hybrid.

On writing

First up, something skimmed from the lovely and talented Cassandra, who attended the Asilomar conference a week or so ago. She reports having heard Jim Averbeck say this, and I have to say that the longer I work at being a writer, the more I understand the truth of this remark:

"You have to love writing, but more importantly, you have to love learning to write better."

On taking risks in your writing

Laurie Halse Anderson, whose new novel, Wintergirls, comes out in about 10 days' time, took time to answer some reader questions earlier this week. I know her blog is named "Mad Woman in the Forest", but I find nothing crazy at all about most of her posts. She talked about taking risks with her writing, and somewhere in the middle of her wonderful blog post, she said this:

"There is no way you can please everyone. Neither can you write a book that will appeal to everyone's tastes. First and foremost, you need to write the book that is in your heart."

And then, in closing, she said this:

"We cannot control how people react to our books. Our job is to write; write honestly, write with passion and compassion, write the true."

On reading poetry

I was fortunate to catch not one, but two, John Green live chats this week. On March 4, 2009 at about 11:53 p.m. ET, while in the midst of reading some poetry selections to his viewers, John said this, which is, I think as good a reason to read poetry as any other:

"One of the things I like best about poetry is that it allows us to be quiet and contemplative."

On what to write about
The next evening, John hosted a vlog featuring poet extraordinaire Katrina Vandenberg, whose debut poetry collection, Atlas, appears to be out of print, but I will nevertheless persevere and track one down, based on the loveliness of the poems I've heard John Green, and now Katrina herself, read. During the live interview/reading, Katrina read a poem about records (of the vinyl persuasion), the title of which I cannot recall. Afterwards, in conversation with John, she said:

"I like writing about things you can't get back to – [writing about] the thing that you get rid of, and you later wish you hadn't."

It occurs to me that a lot of us write about just such a thing, whether it's a feeling or an object or a person, and whether we write fiction or poetry or memoir or songs, or whether we make visual art.

On the life of a writer

Last night, I read a novel entitled Gods Behaving Badly, which I found extremely diverting. It was witty and clever and amusing, and I liked the way the author, Marie Phillips, envisioned the Greek gods in their modern-day incarnations: Artemis is a dog walker, Aphrodite runs a phone-sex line, Athena is an academic, and Apollo is trying his hand at television psychic. At the end of the paperback edition of the book (which is what I purchased), there is "book group" material, including an essay by the author called "Marie Phillips on her approach to writing fiction". I commend the entire essay to you for its entertainment value and its truth, but here is a quoteskimmed version:

When I meet people at parties and I tell them that I'm a writer, the first question is always the same. "Are you very disciplined?" "Oh yes," I say. . . . And it's almost true – about the discipline, I mean. My approach to writing is like improvised acting: I lose myself in my characters and let them do all the work. So I can write large amounts over long stretches of the day. However, I try as far as possible to avoid conscious thought while I'm writing, because it interrupts the flow and pulls me out of my characters. Before I start on a novel I have to do a huge amount of thinking, for months on end, without writing a word. I don't like to begin until I have a destination in mind and at least a vague idea of how I'm going to get there, otherwise I am liable to write around in circles.

I'm not a comfortable thinker, however. What am I supposed to look at while I'm thinking? What should I do with my hands? Research is my favorite way to think, as it gives me something tangible to do. I like spending the entire day reading, and then sounding like a harassed intellectual to friends in the pub ("God, I've been reading all day, I'm knackered").

. . . But reading is ultimately distracting as I'm dealing with other people's thoughts, so sometimes I have to put the books down and just think. I think in the shower, doing the shopping, tidying the house, and I get vast amounts of thinking done on the bus. I think in bed, last thing at night and first thing in the morning, because being half asleep pushes open the door to my subconscious just that little bit wider. Mostly, though, I lie on the sofa and think (I have a special sofa in my study for this purpose – chosen by stretching out on all the sofas in Ikea to find out which one was the thinkiest). This causes untold problems in the pub ("God, I've been lying on the sofa all day, I'm knackered").

I think until I can't bear it any longer and then I start writing, but it's never long enough. I get myself stuck and have to take weeks out in the middle of drafts just to think some more, and then I get furious with myself for "not doing any work," force myself back to the computer too soon, and end up with writer's block, which is basically just thinking plus self-loathing.

. . . What made sense when I was thinking can make no sense at all when I'm writing, as once I'm inside my characters' heads I discover that there is no way that they would behave in the way I have so carefully set up for them. So the writing takes me in a new direction and the thinking falls down like a game of Jenga after the rash removal of the wrong brick. And then it's back to the sofa to start over and build all my thoughts back up again.