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Can Open Source Companies Stay That Way?
JoeGee writes: "According to this article on ZD Net, more and more companies born from open source projects are beginning to move towards closed source products as a source of revenue. Version 5 of GFS will be closed source, and even SuSE's director of sales Holger Dyroff has a quote that seems to disparage the service model of revenue. The one company that refuses to change its operations is, surprisingly, Red Hat. Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann says 'We believe the Red Hat brand stands for open-source.'" Yes, this is a dupe. Bad Tim! *whack*
It's the developers you are paying. Why are we paying for software? It doesn't cost anything to copy software, just 5cents or so for the cd and however much for the printer manuals and box, if you even buy that part. We should be paying for developers time instead, this is where open source fits in.
Let's take an example. The Linux kernel is free, everyone can download it. So how do people make money off of it? Contracts. A company can hire out a person to write a kernel module for their new hardware. The developer gets paid by the hour to write the module and the module can be released open and free. Then later another company can hire someone else to make another module and add it to the kernel. All these contracts may be small, but they keep adding to one big project.
Now this only works with Free Open Source software that can be incrementally improved. A large game for end consumers won't work with this model. What company is going to pay a large group of developers to make a giant game and then release it for free? Maybe as Open Source, but not free.
So Open Source developers should get into contracting to work on open source projects that can help large companies. If a project is Open and Free, it can help everyone and save money for large companies as they don't have to pay for large software packages and then upgrades... and Open Source developers can still be paid.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
The vast majority of open source software available has been produced by individuals or not for profit groups. Look at most of the major projects, the Linux Kernel, GNOME, KDE etc. These are not funded by companies, and if all of the companies trying to make money off of open source were to disapear tommorow, they would carry on.
Sites like ZDNet are fundamentally biased towards thinking about the world in terms of companies and their success. This is how they have always worked and why they don't understand the os world.
Yes, corperate help can speed up developement of a system but it isn't critical.
The way I see it, there are three business models that can, and have worked, and two that won't.
The Red Hat way - Selling totally open systems with support and (shock!) manuals etc. Adding something to a fundamentally free product.
The IBM way - use free software as a base for your proprietory products. Why make your own UNIX when there is a free one. Mabey give developement back to the community.
The QT way - Create a product that people have to pay for if they make money out of it, but is free if they don't
The VALinux way - This is just another dot com and isn't really about open source, they just work off the open source community. The sourceforge model is broken in the same way as...
The sistina way - Provide a product that is both open and closed source. This will fork. Unless the closed version is a long way ahead of the open version people will not pay serious money for it. GFS is not protected by the GPL in the same way as QT. I could package GFS (gpl version) with a closed source product and sell it, I can't use QT in closed source without paying.
Of these, only the first three will work. Red Hat does not depend on a massive in house development effort to produce its product (unlike sistena). IBM and QT are both profitable companies. IBM is using Linux and Apache to reduce costs, and gives a little back in return, especially where specialist development is needed, but again it does not involve a major (relative) developement effort. Trolltech makes money, but gives its product away to people who do not make any money out of it, thus increasing its visibility. I hadn't heard of QT before KDE came about.
VA Linux is just a web publisher like any other. Sistina is fighting a loosing battle against its own technology. Once something is GPL'd you can't unGPL it.
Whatever ZDNet says. Open Source will continue for the same reasons that it got started in the first place, because people enjoy writing software and creating and sharing something, and mabey for the kudos. These are the same reasons that I want to start my own project (a developent env for Prolog), not for the money, but because I enjoy it, and it would be an interesting challange. OS has never been about the money. If it had been, GNU would not exist, nor Linux, nor any of the other major components of the OS panthion (*BSD etc).
End sermon
Paul Leader