Why Open Source Software/Free Software?

dwheeler writes: "I've just posted a major update of my paper, ``Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!'' Many sites give qualitative reasons for using OSS/FS, but this paper emphasizes quantitative measures (such as experiments and market studies) on why using OSS/FS products is, in a number of circumstances, a reasonable or even superior approach. The paper covers market share, reliability, performance, scaleability, security, and total cost of ownership." Bookmark this for the next time your boss asks.

Comments

Open Source is good for whom?

[Sanity]

Here was a post I sent recently to the SiliconValley forum which hosted a debate between some Microsofties and Open Source luminaries which, while slightly off-topic, may be of some interest to readers of this article:

Open Source advocates: A strawman argument?

I think that I see the disconnect here, and it actually lies in the distinction between Open Source, and Free Software. As I see it, the difference is that the motivation behind Free Software, as advocated by Richard Stallman, is to advance humanity as a whole, without concern for commercial viability. The motivation behind Open Source is that a company can benefit commercially from use of an Open Source license. Now, it is clear that there are definite benefits for a company to use Open Source software, however I think a good case can be made as to why it may not be in a company's best interests to create such software, and I suspect that this is the case that underpins Craig's argument.

The question then is - which argument are we having here? I think that it is fair to say that advocates of Open Source tend to shift their position as it suits them - effectively using a strawman argument. Since we are discussing Microsoft's use of a Shared Source license, and Microsoft is, of course, motivated by profit, it seems that at least partially the Open Source advocates, in criticizing Shared Source, are making the weaker case that it is in Microsoft's interests to create Open Source software. It is also clear, however, that most of their justifications for this position are, in fact, justifications for the stronger case that Open Source is in the public interest.

This is a strawman since in arguing with Craig they imply that he is trying to say that Open Source is not in the public interest, and argue against that (which isn't hard). The reality, however, is that Craig is actually thinking in terms of a for-profit corporation's best interest (which is perfectly natural), and then presumably relying on the Ayn Rand philosophy that capitalism will ultimately advance the public interest.

I therefore challenge the participants to make their position clear. Do they feel that:

• It is in a for-profit organisation's interest to create Open Source software
• It is in a for-profit organisation's interest to use Open Source software
• It is not in a for-profit organisation's interest to create Open Source software, but it is in the public interest
• It is not in anyone's interest to create Open Source software

I think that we need to acknowledge that for-profit corporations will do whatever they can, within the law, to advance their own interests, and it is the responsibility of government to protect the public interest.

--

Re:Open Source is good for whom?

[Jason Earl]

Bruce's response is nothing more than the cold hard truth. Just because you want to make a living selling software, doesn't mean that you can make a living selling software. It doesn't even really matter whether you use a commercial or a Free Software license. In fact, in some cases you have a better chance of making money under a Free Software license than a commercial softwrae license.

A case in point is database software. No one would even consider using MySQL if it was just another proprietary database system. There are plenty of commercial products that are much better. But since it is Free Software, people use it. In fact, enough people use it so that the author and a fair amount of other hackers have a full time job selling service and support.

The fact of the matter is that there are a whole pile of software niches that it is basically impossible to enter as a commercial software vendor. Try making a living selling a proprietary web server or web browser (if you aren't Microsoft, of course). Commercial software firms fail all of the time.

Now, if you happen to have a successful business selling commercial software right now, then you would be a fool to release your software under a Free Software license. Unless, of course, you are started to see increased pressure from a Free Software product that does essentially the same thing, in which case you might have to rethink your strategy.

Re:Open Source is good for whom?

[sheldon]

I've noticed many Open Source advocates resort to pretty weak arguments to try to further their point.

Generally the chief one is in defense of the GPL they point to all the wonderful Open Source software that has created the Internet. BIND, Apache, Sendmail, etc. They do this without acknowledging the fact that none of this software has been released under the GPL, rather it is the non-GPL nature of the software that it is successful.

In the Silicon Valley forum the most disturbing point came when Craig Schmidt asked Bruce Perens a question about earning a living with Open Source.

"Bruce, Your argument that the best business model for open source software is to sell hardware (or something else) may be correct, but it is disheartening to someone who would like to just make software products. "

Bruce didn't acknowledge the point Craig was making but rather told him he should get over it and go do this other type of work that Craig already said he didn't like doing.

"Craig,
Consider consulting for one of these companies that profits from the use rather than the sale of software. There is also some chance that a subscription scheme will work for you if your value-add is extremely high - this seems to work for an electronics CAD business that provides a time-to-market advantage to their customers by exercising the latest capabilities of the chip fab, but service is also an important component of their business."

I leave it up to an excercise to the reader to understand why Bruce's response felt like Marxism to me.

Re:Open Source is good for whom?

[bockman]

Open Source isn't really good for anyone. It primarily serves to devalue the economic worth of software development, thereby reducing standards of living for professional programmers and impeding the technological advance of software.

You mean : how can we make money by writing software, when there is around so much software for free?

Answer :making _really_ _new_ software. Really innovating, building on the solid basement of open-source software.
You don't have to open-source the software you write, if you dont feel to (and don't brag on 'viral' GPL : most of libraries are at least LGPL, or distributed with more liberal licences.

Open source make it hard to make money by selling _old_ software based on recycled ideas. Any real innovation would sell easily, until OSS developers can catch with it. Enough for repaying of development costs. Not enough for becoming a new Gill Bates (is that what you want?).

Moreover open source makes possible for small shop of developers all around the world to build and sell customized software solutions based on open-source item. These shops would never mass-sell boxes of ther product, and they gladly releases the source if this mean cheaper improvements and maintenance.

Developers working in vertical market segments, like me, can also benefit from the pletora of open source tools out there to build higly specialized software solution. They could even open-source their software, since usually the customers already paid for its development. And the curstomer would benefit from open-sourcing it, since il would nman cheaper upgrade and maintenance.

Conclusion: open-source is only bad for companies that sell the same old crap for years and years, keeping their customer base locked to their products by any means.
Today, a lot of software companies are like that. Tomorrow, it will have to change, thanks to open source, and for the greater benefit of users. [Even MS has been forced to put out a better OS because of Linux].

Re:Open source isn't good for *everything*

[Phill Hugo]

You miss something obvious when you talk about "Open Source" being bad for single shot, client specific applications.

These already ARE Open Source, most clients pay a service charge to have these application developed and they control the right to use the resulting application (most of those who have any ounce of clue anyway, I'm sure some are stung). In effect, the client is then free to take the work and extend it independently, redeploy it, place the code on the internet, anything. (This would be my experience from development contracts anyway - Perhaps some lucky people are getting away with harsher terms - I suppose Microsoft do).

Those choosing not to further distribute doesn't make it less like Open Source software to them - they can still have someone else work on it later and are not tied to a specific vendor (assuming the documentation is up to scratch). Many just don't realise the benefit of doing open distribution (it tends to save money to have vital, reusable parts of your system available for others to use and improve.

You force me to retort.

[QuantumG]

Sorry to feed trolls and all but I thought someone needs to respond.

When someone says the phrase "business model" people often think of various silly ideas that I would put more into the catagory of "scam". No, when I talk about business models I am talking about how you pay for software, not how to "make money" from software.

There was once a time when software was developed by companies in-house. It was secret, proprietory and built custom for that business. There was little forward progress in software methods as everything had to be reimplemented. Eventually, companies caught onto the idea that they could purchase generic tools from "software companies" which were often as good if not better than in-house development. Many companies sprang up to fill this need and the overall quality of software improved.

Open source offers a way to return to in-house development. Companies can have all the advantages of in-house development along with the free testing, debugging and features provided by contributing to community software. Co-operation can replace competition.

To address your concerns (or those who truely have these concerns, as you are obviously just trolling) I can personally state that it would be a relief if my job was not directly tied to the sale of a product. To put it frankly: customers piss me off. In-house development and maintenance is a much lighter atmosphere, without the headaches of release schedules or the lunacy of checkbox marketing requirements.

Open source isn't good for *everything*

[FortKnox]

Lets not be zealots like are closed minded friends. Open source is superior for lots of applications, but not necessarily all applications.

A very specific program for a very small client (only) isn't a good open source project. Open source is wonderful if it works with/for a large communitee. Allow me to explain a little better. Its not a good open source project if it only works/only needed for one company and will never be needed again, because it won't reap the benefits of open source (no one will check the code for errors, or want to expand the code or add new features, etc...).

I am for open/free source, but I just don't want everyone to have a narrow view of open source. This probably isn't the best example (I'm sure that several people that reply to this will point it out). I'm just trying to explain that closed source still has its advantages, however few there may be.

--
"That's one small step for man..." "STOP POKING ME!!!!"

the weaknesses of open source

[jchristopher]

I love the concept of open source. I think that those who code open source software, particularly under BSD style licenses, are saints.

But I also feel that open source has some serious issues that need to be addressed.

1. It seems that quite a bit of open-source software works "just well enough", that is, the nerds can understand and figure it out, but the usability is not there for a technophobe. An example would be the Apache webserver, which a leader in it's class, even when compared to commercial software. However, it's not easy to setup - configuration is through text files, etc.

2. Documentation and Help: It's pretty well known that programmers like to code, not write documentation or a help system. Thus, many open source programs are poorly / not at all documented and have no online help if the user gets stuck.

3. It's hard for open source to compete against pirated commercial software. If everyone had to pay $200 for Windows and $500 for Office, Linux, StarOffice, etc. is an easy choice. However when Windows and Office can be obtained for nothing (and is, by most people), it's harder for open source to compete. If Windows is 'free' and Linux is 'free', most end users will choose Windows.

4. Ease of use and user interface. Open source programmers are not icon designers, color theorists, photographers, or graphic designers, for the most part, and it shows. Open source needs to figure out how to pay people in those fields to improve the GUIs of open source operating systems and applications.

Well, that was kind of long. Hopefully there will be (more) progress in these areas. I know about Mandrake - what is needed is Mandrake times 100.

Re:On the flip side:

[mmol_6453]

My biggest problem with your article was use of words like "easier" and "faster." I saw no definitive words, no direct statements. Just statements of superiority over previous MS products. And some hints of superiority over non-MS products.

Having exactly 10 reasons gave cause for suspicion. And having only a few examples of corporations involved gave the suggestion that your data pool was awfully small.

"Modifications to the OS core to prevent crashes" ... sounds like bug fixes to me. I know guys who write patches the Linux kernel and send them in, and I have a funny feeling that the Linux kernel gets publicly released "modifications to the OS core to prevent crashes" a lot more often than any brand of Windows.

"comprehensive security" ... hmm. A few things available for Linux that (more than?) equal the playing field: pgp, gpg, ssl-telnet, ssh, scp, IP tunneling over ssl, ssh, ssh over ssl, Netscape 128-bit encryption (and I'm sure there are more that I don't know about)

IntelliMirror? Sounds like home directories over NFS, if you ask me.

And it really does sound as if you copied it off MS's website...

gaps in the report

[tim_maroney]

The vast majority of issues cited applied only to server systems. Desktop systems were discussed only in a speculative way, not in either qualitative or quantitative terms.

Reliability used an oversimplistic methodology, probing only for crashes and freezes based on random character input. This is not a metric that has anything to do with the average time between software failures and the seriousness of those failures in real-world software usage; it's yet another uptime-based quality claim. No commercial vendor would ship software that had been QA'd only through this ridiculously simplistic process, which would miss virtually all bugs.

Performance discussion dealt only with the speed of the base OS platform, not of applications.

The first numbers were based on abstract benchmarks rather than on comparison of real-world software packages. Instead, let's compare building a project with GCC vs. CodeWarrior, or browsing the web with Mozilla on Linux vs. Explorer on Windows or Mac.

When claiming a win on database performance, the article fails to note that the winner, while running on Linux, was DB2, a proprietary product from IBM, not an open source or free software database. Let's try MySQL under load against a commercial package instead.

The third performance test cited was for custom-built software, not applications which are used in the field. Again, it's quite possible the base kernel is faster, but in real-world conditions application performance usually predominates.

The web server benchmarks appear to be for static pages. Apache is known to be slower than IIS for dynamic content.

Security I'll grant is much better on Linux than any flavor of Windows, though a desktop Mac OS (not X) system is more secure than either.

The total cost of ownership issues associated with inferior user interfaces and typically inferior application software performance were not addressed. For instance, compare a shop of graphic designers using GIMP on Linux with one using Photoshop on Mac or Windows, and you'll arrive at a very different TCO conclusion. Ditto for a software engineering team using GCC vs. one using Codewarrior.

In short, it seemed to me a very partisan piece that ignored most of the issues associated with real-world desktop usage.

Tim

Here's the crucial quote...

[megaduck]

Historically, proprietary vendors eventually lose to vendors selling products available from multiple sources, even when their proprietary technology is (at the moment) better. Sony's Betamax format lost to VHS in the videotape market, and IBM's microchannel architecture lost to ISA in the PC architecture market, because customers prefer the reduced risk (and eventually reduced costs) of non-proprietary products.

IMHO, price is the reason that Open Source is kicking ass. Betamax, Microchannel, the Amiga, and a hundred others lost to inferior competitors that were simply less expensive but good enough. Consumers are almost universally concerned with getting the best "bang for the buck", and nothing delivers that better than Free Software(tm).

That's why Microsoft is so paranoid about Linux and the GPL. There's absolutely no way that they can compete with a superior product that's free (as in beer). People only buy Microsoft stuff because it's perceived as having value. As Windows licenses get more and more expensive, that value proposition gets shakier and something like Linux that's free (as in beer) looks a heck of a lot more attractive. The fact that Linux is faster, more reliable, and more scalable is just sweetener that helps seal the deal.

Thanks to Mr. Wheeler for this beautiful progress report. It's news like this that keep us Open Source advocates going.

And your Boss will say...

[XBL]

... why should I believe this guy? Anybody can post some stats on a web page and say they are true.

... you explain ...

Sorry, I am too busy at the moment to verify his references. Some of these don't look credible anyway.

(Two weeks later he makes an order for some MS products based off an advertisement from MS, without thinking twice).

Real-world examples? Wither slashdot?

[screwballicus]

Sure, open source works in practice, but will it work in theory?

Um, excuse me but I have some issues with this...

[Chromonkey]

Looking over the "paper" I noted some interesting things on just a quick viewing: 1)under "Performance Date" item 2 "GNU/Linux was the May 2001 performance leader in the TPC-H decision support (database) benchmark (``100Gb'' category)"
Um yes, they did, but they did it on a machine that costs $948966.00. System description It was one of the most expensive machines in the running. The number 2 machine is an Win2k / SQL Server 2000 machine for a third the price. The Top Ten price / performance list is dominated by Windows 2000 / SQL Server 2000. TPC.org
2)The count of web servers in operation is a bit misleading as the source of the information states that "...host addresses of the .edu domain were used..." and if you look at the report there are NO .com domains represented. Well, gee. I wonder why there are so many linux boxes in the report? Just pointing out that statistics represent those that present them.