Service Provider: Open Source Developers Stole My Code

A small but nasty open-source battle is brewing involving a startupapplication service provider called Furthermore over what the company claimsis the stealing of its intellectual property.

Furthermore is an online service resembling a newspaper. It's a wholly ownedsubsidiary of the Literati Group, in Chicago.

Furthermore President Brian Connolly said he used two open-source developersto create parts of the service. When the project was finished, "code wastaken without our permission by a lead member of the Mambo Development Teamand put into Mambo's core program," Connolly said.

Putting the code into Mambo's core program violated a contract he has with adeveloper, Connolly said. The Mambo Development Team vehemently disagreeswith Connolly's claims, posting a lengthy statement on its Web site.

The statement reads, in part: "We have investigated these claims and believethat: 1. The dispute relates to an alleged breach of contract between Mr.Connolly and the privately commissioned developer and is thus nothing to dowith Mambo. 2. The code in question is a derived work of existing GPL codeand therefore must remain GPL. We therefore take the view that these claimsare frivolous and without substance. This matter is now in the hands of ourlegal advisors and we will be making no further public statements, nor willwe permit any further discussions on this matter to take place in theofficial forums as they have only resulted in further personal abuse."Since his code was added to Mambo's core program, Connolly said a number ofother companies have since made exact copies of his servers and, in onecase, only changed the copyright information on the page and the title.

After a recent article about Furthermore appeared in LinuxWorld, "thethieves were the first to arrive," Connolly said. Huge amounts of code weredownloaded from his servers, he said. Since then, the issue appeared in twoMambo forums with the exchanges quickly turning nasty, to the point whereConnolly received numerous "creepy notes and one death threat."

Connolly said the issue is not even close to the magnitude of the SCO Groupcontroversy. SCO has famously sued IBM, claiming Big Blue illegallyincorporated into its Linux program some source code from the Unix operatingsystem, which SCO claims to control. The case has since grown into awide-ranging attack on Linux, the freely exchanged open-source operatingsystem.

Connolly said the Furthermore issue is, for now, far less significant thanthe SCO litigation, although it could become more significant over time.

In the middle of the issue is John Weathersby, executive director of theOpen Source Software Institute. Weathersby said he is still hearing fromboth sides, but that, "what we want to do is see a win-win resolution. Idon't know what that will look like--something to where the integrity of anopen-source project or program is maintained, but also the rights oforiginal creations are maintained."Weathersby termed the whole controversy a "sticky wicket. We've got to startdealing with those issues. And we have to start dealing with how you walkthrough them."

Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group, sees this type ofissue as a potentially a significant problem in the future.

"This may happen a few more times," he said. "I think Linus [Torvalds] knowsthey have an issue. They recognize that there are issues that need toaddressed."

For the time being, Enderle said the problem is that "there is no mechanismfor [Connolly] to file a grievance. Short of litigation, there should be aprocess that [developers] can go through."

Connolly said he hopes the matter can be resolved amicably, but that"tensions are fairly high right now."Tom Dunlap is a freelance journalist.