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Asynchrony: Paid Open Source Hacking?
Blackheart2 writes "Asynchrony
(one of /.'s sponsors) is a site which, like SourceForge, is hosting open source projects, but with a difference: team members hold shares in their projects according to the amount of effort they contribute, and 'whenever there is profit to be made, instead of taking the work done by members of the open source development team and starting a separate profitable company, Asynchrony is able to distribute some percentage of product revenues to the people who made the product possible, using the share ownership information.' See their Open Source White Paper for details, especially the end. " I'm really skeptical that something like this would work, but hell, it would be cool to get a few bucks when you send a diff off to a -dev mailing list ;) But its good food for thought.
How many times have I seen "Open Source" bandied about by know-nothing corporations as a quick and easy way of lining their pockets?
How many times have I seen an "Open Source" company take a nose dive after money became an issue?
How many times have I seen self-serving crap on Slashdot? Are we going to devote special articles to all the advertisers now? Somebody get the gun: Madison Avenue is here, big time. (Despite previously complaining about DoubleClick, Andover.net continues to use them. Explain the ethics of that situation)
I find it hard to believe that most Free Software Projects are founded with the intent of earning money; certainly one of the earliest, the GNU Project, wasn't created to make RMS rich. Sure, maybe some famous developers make some big bucks, but that's mostly because they manage to finangle their way into the companies that are already exploiting the programmer's labor. Most projects remain a labor of love: worked on not for money, but for the prospect of having a complete program, which both the creator and others can use.
This is where the commercial aspect breaks down: the capitalistic reward system is inherently based on the (obviously flawed) notion that all workers expect to be compensated in capital for their work. Asynchrony, no doubt filled to the brim with B-School grads, can concieve of no other system. Obviously, they think, these people work with money as their target.
As undoubtedly most people here are aware, this is far from the truth. While money is nice and useful, it is not the end-all reward. Hacking Free Software is not about money. It is about community, helpfullness, and other aims which are contrary to the capitalist system (despite what the heavily indoctrinated will tell you; any Ayn Rand book will make this clear).
In conclusion, the attempts of this "company" to turn the Free Software Commnunity into greedy, squabling, unethical money-grubbers is neither needed nor wanted. There is much wisdom in the saying that "Money is the root of all evil": it is easier to inspire jealousy, perhaps the must destructive instinct, with money than any other reward which hacking might bring. Money brings coporations, corporations bring legions of bean counters focused on the bottom line, ethics and community be damned.
It's enough of a problem already, more fuel on the fire isn't needed.
Ah no. The Idea mainly applys to closed source software. Will everyone make money that joins? That would rock. but I don't think it will happen. Will some members make money? Maybe... There is a good chance.
Will Open source projects make money? Most likly not. But if it's on Asynchrony and we do a book. or someone wants to pay the team for mods then We will be able to know who did what and contact the
persons that did it. As for "trickle the shares down." Well there are two ways a closed source project can go. They can let us support it as a Asynchrony.com application for 75% of the total (not gross) or they can put it up as shareware and collect 90%. If the App sells thats alittle more then a Trickle and alot more then Consultant firms or Corp America will give you.
Asynchrony is not trying to pimp it self as open source. That open-source white paper is burried in the site docs to anwser why we have open-source as a option for projects.
The idea is that if you just learned something to learn it or for that special project, and now you have no where to use that information. Now lets say you really liked doing it and want to do it more. Then maybe you would go to a site like asynchrony and find a project that needs your skills. Or what if you got a killer idea doing a carl sagan in the shower. But you don't know how to do it all. Then you could bring your idea to asynchrony and find others interested in taking that chance.
Let me paraphrase. Asynchrony is letting open source projects pay the same fee for using the web site as for profit projects. It's FREE.
Damon C. Richardson
Chief (or is it Chef?) something.
damon.richardson@asynchrony.com
Last one in jail is a fascist.
You're assuming that the stock exchange valuations are valid.
You must keep in mind that the system of publicly held corporations is not a free market. People own a company, and share in the profit, WITHOUT being liable for its actions, and its debts.
Combine that with laws basically forcing companies to focus on the short term profit (and worse, just focusing on the share price), and you get a fatally skewed model.
If you're judging open source business models based on Wall Street, you'll not get very far by me.
I'm the Chief Technology Officer at Asynchrony, and I wanted to briefly respond to a few of the comments that have been made so far.
We are a software project repository, both for proprietary and open source products. Our idea is that people who create products together over the Internet, (whether they are open source applications, proprietary software programs, or technical manuals) can be compensated fairly for those products and be supported by a marketing department and brand-name that they would not otherwise be able to obtain working on their own.
We don't compensate by lines of code. Our method is this: for each task that is accomplished on the project, "shares" are received. Each "share" represents some percentage of the project. When the project is complete and the resulting product is sold, up to 90% of the net sales of the product is returned to the project team, and that amount is divided based upon the way the shares were allocated during the project. If you received 20% of the shares, you get 20% of the team's portion of the money.
Also, we are not just a bunch of kids. We are a company serious about making money for our members and ourselves. We don't have a big software or hardware company backing us up, which means we have no loyalties except to our members. However, we do have investors who believe in the idea and what it could possibly accomplish. We're also a bunch of geeks at heart, and my chief system engineer (Slashdot name: mercybeat - he's responsible for making me a Slashdot addict) and I are totally pumped about quitting our old corporate jobs and starting an Internet company for developers.
Finally, we think open source can make money. If the core members of an open source project are working on our site, then that essentially makes us the logical place to go to get the latest versions and the best possible support (who better to support an application than the team that created it?). It puts a corporate face and a voice on the phone to large companies who are afraid of the "out of nowhere" aspect of open source, and we think that gives us a competitive advantage over another company who might "steal" the software. Our purpose for hosting open source is not to make money. However, as the white paper points out, the important thing is that IF THERE IS MONEY TO BE MADE, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING THE PRODUCT. We think this opens up worlds of advantages for everyone.
I invite all of you to look at the documentation available on our site, and see what you think. We love open source...we're running the whole site on massive Linux x86 boxes, and have extensively used open source tools to create the code and provide the supporting utilities (sendmail, CVS, etc.).
Here are some links that explain a bit more about how things work:
You can also write us at support@NOSPAM.asynchrony.com if you have other questions you want answered.
Nate McKie
nate.mckie@NOSPAM.asynchrony.com
CTO, asynchrony.com
P.S. Asynchrony.com was created without the use of Microsoft software...