Who Works In Gated Communities?

interstar asks: "This report in Upside Today suggests that big software companies are attracted by the "gated community" model - unsurprisingly as it seems to be classic "help us debug our software and we'll keep the copyright, thanks". Upside (in my opinion, naively) presumes that because this idea is attractive to software companies, who will invest in it, it's obviously going to take off. But is this likely? Who works for gated community projects, and why? If it's just for the "bounty" isn't this just programmers working as contractors? Surely for there to be any special open source goodness, these projects must attract collaboration over and above that which is payed for. But are they? And why should I contribute to a gated community rather than a true open source one?" Such a model seems awfully one-sided to me. Sure the software companies like it, but what do the developers get out of it?

Comments

It's all about the Benjamins

[Brento]

I manage software development for a very small "gated community", as the article calls it, and I have to say that the copyright policies never come into discussion when I interview candidates for positions. I just don't find a level of awareness amongst conventional Windows programmers. For example, in our local user's group for our development platform, we were doing a show-and-tell on web sites, and nobody in the entire group had even heard of Slashdot.

But you'd better believe they all frequented Amazon.

It just comes right down to daily life concerns for these people. They want to make the most money they can, spend it in the manner they choose, and they're not really about supporting causes unless it's an easy cause to support. You know the kind of people I mean: they recycle their trash, but they don't carpool.

Software licensing is the same way. Sure, it's easy to say you support open source when you're downloading somebody else's work, but when it comes to your paycheck, that's a much harder concession to make. If I wanted to hunt around for an open source employer in this market, I'd be hunting for quite a while. Instead, we all contribute to each other's programs out of a community experience. We all learn from each other, we all profit from the other's knowledge, and better products come out of it.

Some times you just need to fix that damn bug

[xeos]

Yes, in the ideal world we can all use open source software and contribute to it. But right now there are several large systems that I have to use daily which are closed source. And they have bugs, and other really annoying bits of user interface that might as well be bugs. I'd love to spend a few hours and fix those problems, because I'd end up saving time in the long run. So there is personal gain to be had (i.e., motivation to contribute), just like in the open source model, even though an outside company would be profiting from my work. I doubt I'd want to contribute major amounts of time to a "gated community" project though - the time would be better spent on an open source alternative.

mv gated_community_model /dev/null

[grahamkg]

My guess is it won't work, not that it can't, but it simply won't.

Look at Netscape and Mozilla. Here's a project that has the potential to benefit everyone. Furthermore, it has the potential to draw attention and support from anyone in the Linux software development community. It's almost a captive audience. What other integrated browser, mail, and news tool works as well under Linux? The reality is Netscape is the proverbial only game in town.

Now look at the reality of Mozilla.

"Code Rush" (Public Broadcasting System special on Netscape and Mozilla) certainly shows a glimpse into the effort these people are expending on Mozilla. It is hard work, and I have considerable respect for these people. Ultimately however, they've yet to deliver. There's something here that's not working. Is it statistical, where the model is good but it isn't going to work all of the time? Is it a bad model that cannot work?

For a "gated community", a company would need to establish an infrastructure similar to Mozilla.org, at least as regards function. Make the code available out of house, and integrate changes from outside contributors. That costs money. It requires equipment, comm, and staff. If a "gated community" project is to have a chance to succeed, the infrastructure better work.

So, a "gated community" project is established, announced, and initialized. Who is going to contribute? What's the incentive? Mozilla has some degree of incentive. Netscape is respecting me as a potential contributor by giving me certain corresponding rights. Why would I contribute to Acme Software's Foo project if in return they give nothing? My guess is there will be little return on investment on these projects, and will therefore be unattractive to the software companies.

I believe that the "gated community" model is destined for /dev/null.

Graham

PT Barnum explained

[PD]

Barnum explained why people would work for free, not even getting the benefit of being able to use the product of their labor for themselves.

int main () {

struct sucker {
int dummy;
} *s;

while (1) {
s = malloc (sizeof sucker);
/* after the sucker is born,
we leave it to fend for itself.
*/
sleep (60);
}

return 0;
}

I don't like this...

[Millennium]

It's not an ideological thing either. It's simply bad business.

First, I really don't like the misconception here that all Open-Source software has to be free-beer as well as free-speech. That's a really big problem for this community, namely that we're seen that way. I suppose it's understandable, since pretty much all Open-Source software to date has been free-beer, but that doesn't make it right.

What's my point here? With true Open-Source development, the developer does get compensated. Not necessarily in terms of money, to be sure, but there is the fame aspect, or even just the right to use one's own code as one wishes. And other rewards stem from this too, of course, but I can't list them all here. Consider, for example, Linus Torvalds. I seriously doubt he even needs a resume anymore; all he has to do is say "I wrote Linux" and he could likely just walk into any computer job he wished (well, maybe not at Microsoft, and there are formalities that need to be taken care of, but he could certainly at least get an offer anywhere else).

Perhaps I misread the article, but it seems that a "gated community" developer gets nothing at all. No money. No right to use the software (since it looks like you have to have already purchased it before you can develop, so that right is not a benefit of coding). And the company takes all the credit. Who would want to work in a model like that? It takes the OSS and proprietary models and it mixes the worst of both.

Of course, I could have been misreading the article about the compensation bit. But the fact remains, I see a lot of people here who say this is better than not being paid for OSS. Who says you can't get paid for OSS? You can make some serious money off of software, and in the end the business model you use won't make that much difference. I wonder which piece of software will prove that once and for all. Perhaps Mozilla/Netscape, once it's released, can make its way to obtaining this. Or maybe it will be Darwin; granted it's currently only the core of OSX that is Open-Source, but if the core succeeds there's no reason to believe that more of the OS couldn't possibly follow. Or maybe it will be something else. I don't know. All I know it's only a matter of time before someone hits it. And once that happens, maybe people will finally really see the advantages of the model, unhampered by the myth that you can't make money with it.