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Economic Slump hits Open Source
adamjone writes: "C|NET and Yahoo! are running a story about the hit that open source software is taking during this economic slump. Open source development is a hobby for me, not my full-time job. I find that I have more time to work on my project during times when my full-time job is slow, or we don't have enough work. Is open source truly being driven by those who make it their full-time occupation? If so, is there a happy medium for keeping bread on the table and still working within the open source community?" At least Microsoft is doing well.
It can't be. Has any open source company ever turned an actuall profit? GAAP or pro forma? Truth is it's like any other new business. 95% of the new companies will close their doors within the first three years and the survivors will probably survive for a while because they have good management and a real business model.
Sure, there are some smaller and lesser known open source programs out there. Heck, lots of little solitaire games and remakes of Breakout (Arkanoid, for you young 'uns) are released under the GPL. But those are not the programs that give open source it's high profile. We're talking about:
1. Perl & Python
2. Apache
3. the Linux kernel
4. gcc
5. KDE
6. X
There are certainly commercial interests behind most of these, in that some people--not all--have full time jobs working on them. gcc especially wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today without the input of a number of large companies.
Because a lot of people are getting laid off their jobs, I'd expect Open Source to skyrocket. When the very few jobs actually start hiring, they'll want people that kept busy, and aren't going rusty. Not to mention you can show you're great coding style on open source projects (ie - during the interview, say "yeah, I wrote anim.h & anim.cpp, please open them up on the website and see how I animated this spline using the super-quick algorithm").
If you unemployed are smart, you'd log off of slashdot, and get your coding groove on.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
OK, the article is actually interesting. Having founded JBoss Group, a commercial entity behind JBoss I relate to many of the points.
But somehow the thinking is backwards still, thinking with old filters. One of the fundamental flaws of business in open source is that you give away your core competency.
But then OSS existed before companies tried to grow on its ground (Linux) and very succesful service companies existed independently of Open Source (EDS). So there must be a middle ground.
I believe part of the problem is that is that business folks out there (mostly VCs, I have met my share of arrogance back in the good ol days of the valley, confusion!) well VCs try to apply the old model of company building on the new way of producing software. It doesn't work. Open Source CANNOT support fat and overhead and corporate structures, just because IT CAN'T.
My (small) company is profitable and we are growing but I clearly see that I cannot AND SHOULD NOT grow with employees, just not flexible enough. As research on business plans goes, I understand that JBoss even though it is in the very rich field of enterprise software (and there is a lot of service), well JBoss for all its success cannot support a massive company right now. And again it is probably not the right structure ANYWAY. VCs got it wrong, most business men are scratching their heads, we at JBoss Group are trying, trying hard. Can't say we got it, we don't, but like many others in open source we make a living.
We offer many services around our free product are thinking about subscriptions and paying for information. The product is free, the service is not. The information is not (documentation, help, support, training (plug: http://www.jboss.org)).
Training is our biggest gig, people want to meet the developers of the framework. Also I don't think this would work with "GUI" frameworks. Just not enough customization to go by. If it is hard in the J2EE field, I can imagine how much harder it is in other fields.
Had I taken VC money (not that it was offered) or had I hired anybody left and right with borrowed money (what VC money is in the first place), well I WOULD BE DEAD TODAY.
It's a bitch out there, but I for one still believe, believe strong, we'll get it
marcf
The real mnf999 always posts as anonymous coward
Companies that pay employees to debug and add features to open source software, because they don't feel the need to reinvent the wheel just because they want two features that aren't in the original program.
Not having to buy licenses for much or all of the software on their un*x workstations saves departments huge amounts of money. Moreover, they can build workstations from commodity components. This allows them to provide more machines for students, and simultaneously exposes huge numbers of CS undergrads and grad students to free software.
Also, the dot-com bubble bursting caused CS graduate school enrollments to swell enormously. Grad schools have traditionally been places where much free software is born, as student researchers put their work out there for everyone to see.
The problem is that only a few schools really do research in user interfaces and similar areas that will advance free software in the mainstream. But in a lot of less visible areas: like the core-OS, distributed computing, networking, scientific computing, high-performance graphics, AI and robotics, free software will continue to progress and improve through universities. In the process the universities will continue to graduate students who are used to working with free software, and who will wonder why they should buy licenses for software when so much is available for free.
I was laid off ten years ago (when I was 30) and went out and started a company. I was doing okay, but the bills were racking up fast and I needed to stem the cash flow problem. I took a job that I have held ever since.
Where would I be had I kept the company going?
Who knows?
It might have panned out beautifully.
Risk can be a good thing.
If these people are willing to take a short-term risk and keep coding, they may actually be in a better position in the long term.
If you think that certainty comes with age, talk to me again in 10 years.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Are the capitalistic and communal fundamentally different, or aspects of a common creature? Consider our current 'capitalist' president. How did he get there? By being a part of three groups - the Yale-Harvard axis, the Texas-oil axis, and the Connecticut old-money WASP contingent - which look out for their communal interests. Those with wealth and power in our society generally get there by being communal with some significant group of their counterparts. It's how the capital is accumulated to allow for capitalism in the first place.
So the question for those of us in the computer trades is whether we can achieve a quality of communalism among ourselves that will make us a true center of economic and political power. In the 90s we were getting there, centered largely on new West Coast elites. Wall Street was threatened by this, so it blew it into a bubble in order to (1) take East Coast profits on it and (2) make it go away.
If we quit being communalist now we're being penny wise and pound foolish. Do we want real power down the line, or do we want to be the sadder sort of "honest tradesmen" who have to rent their basic tools before they go out to the jobsite?
Remember, capitalism isn't about being some mean-ass son-of-a-hound to all and sundry, capitalism is about accumulating capital. Tools are a form of capital, productive of future earnings. Sharing capital within your communal group is the proven method by which Bush gained shares in several oil companies and a baseball team. And it's why he will be so good at paying back his friends - these values run deep enough in his character that his friends were comfortable sharing their monetary piles with his campaign.
The bottom line is that computers can do tremendously productive work. Those who can make the computers do that work can always get a cut of it. We individually have more capital if our tools are better - and the more we can share this capital as a group, the more politically and economically powerful we become.
In the old European empires knowledge of trade routes was capital, to be merged with the monetary capital of those who'd - largely out of pursuing the communal interests of their class - collected and preserved it. In the new empires knowledge of computer routing is capital....
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton