Delayed Open Source Publication (DOSP) is the practice of distributing or publicly deploying software under a proprietary license at first, then subsequently and in a planned fashion publishing that software’s source code under an Open Source license.
Software producers have practiced DOSP throughout the history of Open Source software. This document is a selective survey of that history. It collects and categorizes some examples and tries to identify patterns and trends.
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Authors
Seth Schoen is an independent consultant in San Francisco. He was the first Staff Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and was a part of the team that created the Let’s Encrypt certificate authority. He has a long-time interest in copyright and licensing issues and has published research in computer security, as well as testifying before several courts and government agencies.
James Vasile is a founding partner at Open Tech Strategies. Previously, he was founding director of the Open Internet Tools Project, a Senior Fellow at the Software Freedom Law Center, and Director of the Freedom Box Foundation. James serves on the governing or advisory boards of
Horizons, Brave New Software, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Karl Fogel is a founding partner at Open Tech Strategies. He is the author of the popular “Producing Open Source Software” and a founding developer of the Subversion project. Throughout his career, Karl has advised a wide range of projects and companies, including Google, Canonical, O’Reilly Media, and Code for America / Civic Commons. Karl has also been a board member at the Open Source Initiative, an Open Internet Tools Project Fellow at the New America Foundation, and is a member of the Apache Software Foundation.
Acknowledgments
This research was made possible thanks to a donation from Sentry and OSI’s individual members.
