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The Open Source Financial Year in Review
Normally I avoid stories about the businessy side of the whole
Open Source thing, but november sent us a pretty good year in review documenting the highlights (IPOs, Mergers, and Bandwagons, oh my) jokingly concluding that Open Source was simply IBM's revenge on Microsoft for screwing them on OS/2. Its a surprisingly good story, and worth a read.
There are, at most, a few thousand companies, worldwide, who need the level of billing software I'm working with. On top of that, each one of them needs heavy customization, which really means that each one of these companies practically has a custom billing system. This means there isn't enough "critical mass" to start an "open source" project to perform this level of billing, so there are going to be zillions of dollars in it for the foreseeable future.
What I'd like to see in the future is a day when Microsoft can't make money selling Exchange because nobody pays for basic email anymore. When I set up my company's internal email, it never occured to me that I'd have to pay a dime for the software. I have to pay for the hardware. I have to pay an administrator. If I want some feature that is specific to my vertical market, I'll have to pay some geeks (possibly myself) to create that function. And that's how I like it -- email is not an interesting problem anymore, but some quirky new feature... hey, that's geekworthy!
So, there's plenty of money out there, but Open Source means it's going to the people solving the interesting, new problems, not last year's basic, recurring problems. (Yeah, that's a bit worrisome to VA Linux and RedHat...)
- Unfortunately it's a financial review and last time I looked this wasn't News for Stock Brokers
A common "nerd experience" is the entry into the workforce, either as teenage "whiz kid" or shiny new college grad, and making the observation, "Wow! I can't believe someone will pay me to do something I'd do anyway!"Maybe you make a living selling beads at crafts shows and this "nerd" thing is just a passionate hobby of yours. Good for you, if that's the case, but for the majority of us who's profession is intertwined with their interests in Things Geeky, the "business of Open Source" is Stuff That Matters.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but the business model for Open Source doesn't stand up to long term economic scrutiny very well in the same way that the business plans of many dot.coms don't either - if there is no revenue, nobody gets paid, etc., etc...
This means that to support Open Source businesses are going to have to get more into the service side of the industry which is absolutely terrible. This is terrible because service industries cost more to run, require more staff, and worse of all, requires the "consumer" to stump up cash for stuff that is free.
Perhaps I'm being ignorant, but I really have problems understanding why companies like VA and Redhat are valued as they are. A utility company being paid to deliver water to the tap is one thing, but an entire business model based on people's laziness to download the OS and on selling them tech. support contracts? This doesn't feel right.... please, explain to me how this works in an economic sense in the long term and how Redhat's "custom development, consulting, training" is not going to fail in the face of a geek with a compiler, usenet and some man pages?
In mechanics you can increase the momentum both either by going faster or by increasing the mass. In the context of this analogy, I'd say that the increased momentum of the Open Source Software has more to do with its increased mass than its innovation speed.
Furthermore, the ideological basis of the entire movement seems to be shaking. Just as it often happens with ideological movements, the Open Source community is fragmenting into more or less opposing cliques led by cults of personality such as RMS, Linus and ESR. With the implicit and sometimes explicit (Netscape) pressure from the corporate world as well as the growing discontent and disillusionment down at the grass root level, we've indeed reached the watershed. The community has got the visibility and recognition now. What to do with it? Where should it be heading? Back to the ideological roots or compromise and even try that suit on?
Now then:
A few hours ago, I learned that I am now (at least in theory) absurdly rich....That's interesting," said I to myself. "I didn't think we were going out till tomorrow." And I oughtta know; I'm on VA's Board of Directors
This sentence would explain why he is now, both in theory and in reality, no longer absurdly rich. If the members of the Board don't even know when the company is going public, something is wrong somewhere. Possibly it may be composed of morons.
VA had indeed gone out on NASDAQ -- and I had become worth approximately forty-one million dollars while I wasn't looking.
I don't think I congratulated ESR when that happened, or maybe I did because I was still using my Karma whoring account back then. Anyway, it appears that again, while ESR wasn't paying attention, the company's stock price fell into the crapper. That tends to happen when members of the Board not paying attention becomes a recurring theme.
Well, that didn't last long.
How prophetic.
Trouble with the "keep it quiet" theory is that I've made my bucks in a very public way.
First, ESR didn't make any 'bucks', he already said himself that he was wealthy on paper and not in reality. Given his current situation I'm sure he knows this though. That aside, shouldn't he be losing all of this in a public way as well?
I'm wealthy today because my efforts to spread the idea of open source on behalf of that community helped galvanize the business world
Now that he is broke, does this mean that his efforts were really a failure? Certainly this must be true, if his efforts really had galvanized the business community then what happened to all of these millions he paraded in front of everyone?
Fairness to the hackers who made me bankable demands that I publicly acknowledge this result -- and publicly face the question of how it's going to affect my life and what I'll do with the money.
Yet he hasn't publicly acknowledged the result of the stock price falling into single digits. How is that affecting things?
This is a question that a lot of us will be facing as open source sweeps the technology landscape. Money follows where value leads,
In this particular context he is using market success to validate Open Source's position as a legitimate competitor of proprietary software. Lately, the only sweeping Open Source has been doing in the markets is in the basement. We can also assume that proprietary software is now the value leader, as the money is breaking north for Open Source companies.
Red Hat and VA have created a precedent now, with their directed-shares programs designed to reward as many individual contributors as they can identify
Reward, ruin, whatever. Its all the same I guess.
So while there aren't likely to be a lot more multimillion-dollar bonanzas like mine,
For the sake of the economy I hope not.
Gee. Remember when the big question was "How do we make money at this?
That still is the question. As if anyone ever needed any proof that the people who keep saying that you can make money off of GPL'd software really don't know what the hell they are talking about, you have it right here. Here is a guy declaring a victory when the battle has just begun. He's also equating making money with the stock price of the company. Maybe these guys should take a few business courses, or maybe their mindset has too much of a socialist bend, I'm not sure how to educate them other than letting the market run them out of business over and over. Whatever, that question is yet left unanswered.
The first part of my answer is "I'll do nothing, until next June...I will be wealthy in six months, unless VA or the U.S. economy craters before then. I'll bet on VA; I'm not so sure about the U.S. economy :-).
More prophesy! The economy seems to be doing well but the outlook for VA isn't so rosy. Maybe there is a future for Open Sourcers in the business world: consultants. Whatever they say, just do the opposite. Hope you got out in June.
Assuming the economy does not in fact crater, how is wealth going to affect my life in six months?
Economy = good, VA share price = bad. Enough said.
Reporters often ask me these days if I think the open-source community will be corrupted by the influx of big money
Wonder if they still ask...maybe they ask the question but in past tense. Hard to tell.
And maybe a nice hotrodded match-grade .45 semi for tactical shooting.
This is something we agree on. A nicely modded 1911 is an excellent investment let me tell you. Even though I'm more of a rifle person myself, 1911s are amazingly well crafted guns. I sincerely hope he was able to purchase one before his wealth dried up. I would probably even sell ESR some handloads on the cheap, given his current situation.
I'm not going to minimize my attachments by giving it all away, though, so you evangelists for a zillion worthy causes can just calm down out there and forget about hitting me up for megabucks.
It must be a load off of ESR's mind now that these evangelists have no reason to call him.
Ironically enough, one result of my getting rich is that I will probably start charging for speaking appearances, now that nobody can plausibly accuse me of doing it for the money
Heh, I wonder if he is charging now or no. On one hand, he probably needs the cash, on the other, people can again plausibly accuse him of doing it for the money.
But enough trivialities; I'm going to get back to trolling.
Indeed, I will now do the same. I guess I should stop knocking VA. At least they didn't buy up a bunch of other companies with their overvalued stock (like RHAT) and spread their ruin around any. Oh wait...
Cunning linguists