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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.
There are two fundamentally different approaches to Open Source: capitalistic and communal. In the capitalistic approach, people and companies attempt to earn money by using open source software. The "traditional" model has been to sell value-added services while providing the open source software for free or minimal price. In the capitalistic approach, of course an economic slowdown will be reflected in the open source business sector - just like almost any other sector. On the other side represented by the communal approach, participating in open source projects provides intangible or non-monetary benefits. There is the traditional "itch" factor: you work on an open source project to scratch an itch. There is also the motivation of gaining community recognition. These aspects will not be slowed by an economic slowdown. In fact, they might become even more important: there is not as much cash moving around so a more barter-oriented approach is viable. Corporations not actually involved in developing open source may start to turn more to open source as a solution to their financial constraints. I know that the company I work for does so. They may not directly contribute to the code base, but they certainly are taking advantage of it and therefore increasing the legitimacy of open source. Again, this process is accellerated by an economic slowdown.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
..started during the early nineties, during which Finland was in it's deepest depression since the '30s. Didn't stop Linus. And it won't stop scores of other hobby OSS developers either.
However, less corperate funding may retard development, but hey: in a recession everything else slows down too.
A sophisticated donation/subscription/feature request system which automatically suppports several payment methods should really be part of a collaborative development site like SourceForge. For using Amazon's Honor-System, which is very feature-poor, 15% of any donation go to Amazon. This would be an adequate level for something like SourceForge, and here people would gladly pay the 15% because they would know that they support important infrastructure. I really can't understand why SourceForge isn't trying anything of the sort, but I haven't noticed much innovation in their business strategy anyway.
Of course, in the long term, I'd love to see a standardized electronic payment client (with a Qt or GTK interface) which supports subscription management bundled with all Linux distributions. Then you could easily pay with a single click in your browser.
The economy is in the shitter. This whole article is nearly pointless. Open-source (the business model) was circling the drain before any other sector of industry was, and this is news?
And now to burn some karma....
I think that the open-source phenomenon will quietly, undignifiably, dissapear soon. It is a lofty and noble goal to be sure, however as a sustainable movement, I believe it will become less important over time. Why? Because the high-flying VC money and gold-rush speculation that drove those fat boomtime salaries are what really paid for open-source. The time to code the time to host it, the time to collaborate, just aint there any more during the dot-bomb hangover.
Open-source is an idea; that will remain. Linux the kernel, and any derivatives; they will remain. Unix is still with us after 30 odd years, and so too will Linux and OSS. Good. But, making money and supplanting a capitalistic machine that is designed for high proiduct turn-over, planned obsolecence, and not giving the customer what they want is the sustainable model, not selling services to free products. If you pay for the product, then you will pay for support. Get a free product, and you find out its not up to par or whatver, why pay for support, just get another free clone....
As an example, look at the mp3, CDR, DVD products out there. Is there a single product (game console, entertainment device or otherwise) that can play mp3s, read and write CDR, CDRW, DVD, DVD-ROM/RAM/RW and any other format? No. It is much better business sense to force the consumer to buy a couple of different devices than one do-it all device.
As with software, you want return customers, hence the excruciatingly long path to a stable windows platform (some may argue this point, although at this time I think it's the licensing/terms of use that is the problem not the OS itself).
There is alot of uncertainty around everthing right now, both socially and economically, and open-source is a real gamble. Will it become a security threat to use OSS? Of course it isnt, we know better than that, but we don't make the law.
Where does crypto stand? Do you want to continue to code for free, or maybe you're unemployed (or facing it) and would like to see a return on your effort? I dont think selling services is the way. I can just as easily support your software as you can.
Anyways flame away, mod me down for blasphemy, whatever, maybe I forgot my happy pills this morning...
NEWFLASH! Open source projects aren't making money when commercial ventures aren't making money, therefore open source is fading!
The author of the article referenced here takes examples like VA Linux and says, "See, open source is on the way out." The point should be that times were so wild for a while there you could offer Free[dom] software and *still* make money.
Quoting a quote from the article:
"The development model of open-source software is wonderful. But let's not confuse a development model with a business model. Basic business principles were forgotten by some," said Turbolinux Chief Executive Ly-Huong Pham.
[end quote]
Mistaking open-source for a business model is exactly what this article does. The fact that open-source companies are struggling is not a good indicator that open source is "fading". That's like measuring the well-being of the Catholic Church by how much the Pope makes each year, after taxes, of course. *sigh*
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.