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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.
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
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.
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 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.
Now that we have heard from Bill Gates, perhaps we can pump a little more reality into the discussion.
When I started using Linux in 1994, the Information Superhighway wasn't on the radar. MOST IT jobs were in the same sectors that they are in now: database management. At that time, I saw thousands of listings on usenet for DB administrators and sysadmins. What the hell did those jobs have to do with open source? Nothing! People got paid for computing and open source projects were flourishing. This momentary dip in open source funding does not equate to a death knell for non-proprietary software development.
But now that you have done your obligatory dance on the open source grave, keep this in mind: As long as there are programmers who are willing to collectivly contribute their spare time to a project, open source will survive. That may seem alien to you, but people contribute to all kinds of collaborative efforts without the expectation of monitary gain ($1BUSD donated to Red Cross).
You might not agree with the cooperative sentiment, but there is 400 years of history behind the open source philosophy.
"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