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 Tuesday, September 11, 2007

WebLOAD Open Source - Ain't So Open Source

"Open Source"

In the words of Inigo Montoya [The Princess Bride]:  "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means, what you think it means."

A few months back, Radview Software announced that they are releasing an open source version of WebLOAD, their web performance and load testing tool.  I was very excited about this and thought it was a fantastic move that would have a big impact in the test tool market.  I am a performance engineer and a huge Free/Open Source Software advocate, so I love to see companies in the space that interests me most come around to embrace openness.

In their press release, Radview stated:

"WebLOAD Open Source, licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL) version 2, is based on WebLOAD, the company's flagship product that is already deployed at 1,600 sites. Immediately available for free download and use, WebLOAD is a commercial-grade open source project with more than 250 engineering years of product development."

Ok cool.. they used the GPL and opened up the whole shebang.  Wow, this company actually "gets it"... right?

Umm.. not quite.

If you look through the source code that is available for WebLOAD Open Source, you will notice that only code for a small subset of the product is available.  In actuality, WebLOAD Open Source is a partially proprietary tool which is marketed as Open Source Software.  The software has significant limitations in functionality and scalability.  The source code which needs to be modified to remove these restrictions is not distributed.  So what we are left with is a crippled version of the tool.

In a recent post to the WebLOAD OS Forum, someone asked to see the source code for "proxynator", which is the recording feature in WebLOAD.

The response from the Forum Admin (Amir Shoval, a Radview employee) was this:

"Currently the source code for the proxynator is not available as part of the open source code of WebLOAD."

This is in direct contradiction to what their website states:

"WebLOAD Open Source introduces a unified script authoring environment for recording, editing and debugging."

When further probed about this, he stated the following:

WebLOAD Open Source is dual licensed:
  1. the WebLOAD Load Engine is totally open sourced and hence is licensed under the GPL
  2. but the complete WebLOAD is still licensed under a proprietary license, which grants free usage in WebLOAD Open Source.

wait.. wait.. WHAT?
I thought the press release said "licensed under the GNU Public License", and "WebLOAD Open Source is a fully functional, commercial-grade performance testing product"?  Nowhere on their website or marketing materials to they talk about this dual licensing and limited availability of source code.

Now, if we look at the End User License Agreement (EULA) that applies to WebLOAD Open Source, it gets worse:

2. License Restrictions. This License does not permit you or any third party to:
(i) modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble (except to the extent that this restriction is expressly prohibited by law) or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of all or any portion of the Software;
(ii) modify, translate or create derivative works of all or any portion of the Software;
(iii) copy the Software (other than a single copy solely for back-up or archival purposes);
(iv) rent, lease, sell, offer to sell, distribute, or otherwise transfer rights to the Software;

OK... so we have an "open source" product that is actually dual licensed, where a large portion of the toolset is proprietary.  And furthermore, by accepting the EULA, you give up all of your rights that were granted under the GPL.  Huh?

So... to reiterate, WebLOAD Open Source is *not* open source.  A subset of it is open source: the [crippled] load engine.  Contrary to what their press release and website says, it contains proprietary components that are released in binary form with no source code.  It is rather disappointing to see a company jump on the bandwagon of open source without respecting the freedom that is supposed to come with it.

In conclusion: Is WebLOAD Open Source currently Open Source?  No
Will WebLOAD Open Source actually become Open Source?  Well.. that's up to Radview

Hey, I'm all for Freedom.  I applaud Radview for any of the code they released under the GPL.  But lets be fair, if you want to call your product open source and reap any benefits that come along with that... you gotta walk the walk.

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#    Comments [6] |
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 8:10:37 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
The way I understand that portion of the GPL they have to open source the rest of their code. Section 2b:
"You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."

WebLOAD contains a GPL-licensed portion. The rest of WebLOAD is now under the GPL. Of course I'm not a lawyer, but that's how I'm interpreting the GPL and it fits in with the view that the GPL is viral.
Rudolf Olah | omouseAT NOSPAMgmail dot com
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 8:24:13 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
@Rudolph

I was under a similar impression at first. But if I am not mistaken, the only person(s) that could charge them with a GPL violation is the copyright holder(s) of the works in question.... which is of course Radview themselves (I'm certainly not a lawyer).

So as far as I can tell, this is more of just misleading marketing than any sorta license violation.
Corey
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 8:29:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
The EULA thing sorta blows my mind. How can you release software under the GPL and then revoke all the freedoms in a EULA?
Corey
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 10:13:30 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
if you look carefully in the download site you see that for each version you get the open source load engine in a separate pack and the "Full" webload in another pack. the load engine is fully open sourced and when downloaded separately, it is governed by GPL. since we did not complete the migration of all of our code base to contain OS code yet we released the rest of the code as a binary format under EULA so the community can benefit from it and use it while we continue migrating. as you can see we just completed the first part of the migration where we released the new NG reporter to the OS under GPL again and we are moving on with the analysis which is part of the console functionality.
I am sure the community can appreciate getting a free tool (IDE & Console) under EULA to work with the GPL engine and not to release just the engine and have everyone work with command line only.
HTH,
Eran
Eran Witkon | eranwAT NOSPAMradview dot com
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 2:50:59 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
I recall running a WWIV BBS circa 1993. The sources were distributed to those who licensed the software, and there wasn't even any discussion of GPL, at the time. For some reason, no-one bitched and moaned about licensing this software that you'd actually get a copy of the code with. What's happened between here and there is pretty obvious: people have gotten soft and uninformed about the time and effort required to develop functional, stable code.

You're not entitled to the sources just because of your misconception about the licensing. If you really want it "for free," go write it.
tim
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 3:21:47 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
@Tim

> You're not entitled to the sources just because of your misconception about the licensing.

.. and what are my misconceptions about the licensing?

Sorry, but if you tout your product as "open source", you better actually allow access to the source and not an additional EULA that makes it very clearly *not* open source.
Corey
Comments are closed.