Open Source Limitations?

_aargh writes "This ZDNet article by John Carroll makes the claim that open source is flawed because there isn't a way for programmers to earn money by developing open source software. It annoyed me so much that I wrote this response to it on the O'Reilly Network."

Comments

Getting paid

[Daetrin]

Is it necessary? I'd always thought of open source as something you did in your free time or between jobs, not something you did expecting to get money out of it. As long as everyone knows that, is it really a problem?

Of course you could always go with the paypal donation type aproach, although i don't know if that's approved of by mormal GNU type licences.

Re:Getting paid

[scott1853]

Unfortunately this is the reason why a large amount of open source software isn't deployed for enterprise applications.

When you just have some programmers writing code and fixing bugs on the weekend, you can't rely on that software for things that need to be up and running all the time unless they are thoroughly tested in the environment you plan on running it in. And that of course gets back into TCO. And should something happen, and the server goes down, you have the source code, but does that mean you can quickly read hundreds of thousands of lines of code to find the problem?

Re:Getting paid

[dfung]

> When you just have some programmers writing
> code and fixing bugs on the weekend, you can't
> rely on that software for things that need to
> be up and running all the time unless they are
> thoroughly tested in the environment you plan
> on running it in.

I understand the argument that you're making (and understand the traction it has in the CIOs office), but that logic doesn't really hold. The act of paying somebody to work on something doesn't mean that they will be capable or available to fix a problem when something critical arises - ask your CIO if he's been assfscked by a fatal bug but had to wait 3 months to the next maintainence release to get resolution. If that never happened, then you must work at a Fortune 25 company, cause everybody else is going to have to wait for the next train to leave the station.

Making the code free and the source open doesn't free it from being a balloon filled with spaghetti either. But if a bug is hosing me, then there's a good chance that it hosed someone else too, and that creates more pressure for a fix. And if a problem is so critical that my company's life depends on it, then I can't think of a better reason to find/grow a (highly-paid) person who understands this code and can fix it. Going open source means that I have a chance to do this, as opposed to paying a big support yearly support fee and hoping somebody inside Microsoft/Sun/Oracle headquarters sees fit to escalate my bug report.

I think the real problem that scares decisionmakers from open source is that the roadmap is often unclear and almost certainly un-influenable. One guy wants better multiprocessor support in Linux and another guy wants a faster filesystem - I still haven't figured out how half the customers aren't mad at the end of the day.

Re:Getting paid

[uncoveror]

You can always make a living supporting users of software, and creating things with software. If money is John Carroll's only motivation, then he needs to get out of computer programming. People who jump into computers just to get rich couldn't find their ass if you gave them a map to it. I suggest robbery as a new profession.

Re:Getting paid

[KingAdrock]

Look at this scenario:

1. You write software for company X.
2. You get paid.
3. Company X uses this software and makes money.
4. Company Y finds this software useful and doesn't add to it.
5. Instead of Company X having the competitive advantage, they just gave the software to Company Y for free.

Now open-source isn't looking as appealing! I think open-source may have it place, but not in every instance!

Re:Getting paid

[reemul]

You're missing a few points:

6. Companies A thru W in the same industry also find this software useful, especially after Y added to it. None of them, however, add a single thing to it, since none of them have programmers on staff.
7. Instead of paying programmers, companies A thru W spend that money on their core business, using the exact same code without spending any money.
8. Using their competitive advantage (less money for same resources), companies A thru W kick X and Y's respective asses in the marketplace, which is the source of all the money being used to pay the coders.
9. X and Y go out of business, with the scraps bought up cheap by megacorp Z.
10. The Open Source programmers at companies X and Y, and all of their co-workers, are out of jobs. The programmers no longer make any money writing Open Source code.

Sure, if everyone using Open Source code was obligated to contribute something back, the model would work and work well. But as long as freeloaders can gain the benefits of the paid programmers without having to spend any money themselves, they will. Companies cannot base a business model on altruism. Using limited resources to benefit not just your own business but every business with a similar need, without getting anything back from the others, is just not workable in the long term.

But if you think of a way, please post it here. I'm sure that the CEOs of RedHat, VA, Mandrake, &etc. would love to hear it. They've had to concentrate on services and proprietary code to keep paying their bills, though I know they'd really prefer to be writing Open Source.

Re:Getting paid

[>:^D]

Right, because most traditional enterprises use in-house software developed most likely in COBOL.

If you're talking modern enterprises, more likely than not they are using any one or a combination of the following top-of-my-head list: BIND, apache, perl, SQL, GCC, GLIBC.

Sure, some open source screensaver or MyRecipePHPapp will not be used by Wal-Mart any time soon; but you sure as hell know that Wal-Mart uses Open Source Software.

Re:Getting paid

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Fortune 10 companies here, and of the 6 or 7 critical bugs I've seen during rollouts, only twice have I seen a software vendor with their ass on fire and hot enough to do a quick fix. Of the remaining times, they were still $8-22 million rollouts, and we either waited, or found workarounds. You could be King of Planet Earth, Emperor of the Milkyway Galaxy, and sit at the right side of the Throne of God, and still have to wait half the time, I think.

Hell, Micro$oft is a financial behemoth, and I can't think of a single piece of their software that is even half as reliable as some of the worst open source software.

My girlfriend insists on windows, so I upgraded her box to win2k... thought it was almost tolerable: rock solid for M$ crap. Then last weekend, it barfed up pieces of the sound card driver. She looks at me when I can't fix it, and says "I thought you were supposed to be some kind of computer expert". Sound card works in every one of my boxes I test it in, and her ISA slot works with the nic I threw in it. It is, without a doubt, windows' fault. It *ALWAYS* does this, just took awhile for win2k to show its true colors.

And now I have to read about people ranting that OSS just isn't suitable for enterprise solutions?

Re:Getting paid

[Archie Steel]

You're also missing an important point, one that is not often discussed but which holds the key to that "unfair competition" problem you talk about. The thing is - and correct me if I'm wrong - the GPL requires to to distribute the source code along with the binary, but it does not in fact require someone to actually distribute any new software created from GPL'ed code at all! In other words, if you build something out of GPL software and it somehow gives an advantage to your company in its industry (which I presume would not be software-related), then there's nothing to force you to reveal it and distribute it. Just keep it! But if you do release it - perhaps when the competitive edge it gave you is gone - then you have to give the source code as well.

What OSS really means is that there will be less money in the software industry itself, but more programmers working for companies in other industries, and more programming "studios" that will do work-for-hire. Anyway, do you know a lot of programmers who receive royalties on their creation? There's not going to be less money around, not even for programmers, but it's not going to move the same way. The industry will transform - that's okay, programmers will still be able to make a living; that's what's important, isn't it?

Re:Getting paid

[mscheid]

They've had to concentrate on services and proprietary code to keep paying their bills, ...

As long as it's the service that's perfectly ok. It's a well-known fact that at least 90% of the cost of software goes into maintenance, which mostly qualifies as service. So making money out of service makes a lot more sense than making money out of selling the software and giving (bad) service for free.

Re:Getting paid

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Actually, it is the M$. But even if it weren't, it lasted 3 moonths with no problems, then self-destructed spontaneously. The way windows always does.

That you don't know this suggests that between the two of us, it isn't me that is the moron.

Re:Getting paid

[Archie Steel]

Well, actually you said it in a much more concise way than I could have, which is a precious skill! (I know, I'm a writer and I always have to rewrite stuff to make it shorter...) However we end up saying it, it really sums up why the "Open Source will starve programmers" argument is just some more FUD from Redmond. (I don't understand why you got modded as Flamebait, though...)

Re:Getting paid

[reemul]

It's not FUD, it's a real problem. Sure the programmers are paid for their skill, but who will pay for them? And where does the money come from? If a company can freeload, they will, so no pay for coders there. And the company that does pay for programmers, only to have the output released freely to all the world, how do they recoup that cost, a cost that all of their freeloading competitors don't have? Some work will still get done, even if just as a goodwill gesture, but goodwill won't pay for too many mortgages for the programmers of the world.

I have no doubt that programmers writing internal or proprietary code, that is never released into the wild, will always have jobs - they contribute to the function of that company, providing a resource that has value. That value to the company goes down if the work goes out to the world as Open Source, as that investment in programmers (and testers, and tech writers) now benefits your competitors, too. It would be offset if the competitors also were contributing code, with everyone absolutely better off through using Open Source, as each got the benefit of all of the programmers instead of just the ones that worked for them. But the freeloader problem remains, and I haven't seen any good way to correct it. Ignoring it won't make it go away.

Re:Getting paid

[Archie Steel]

I'll repeat it because you don't seem to understand the essential underlying point: the company does not have to release the code if it doesn't release the software. We're not talking about software companies, here, but other kind of companies which have software need. In this model, they hire programmers (either permanently, as part of a in-house team, or on a work-for-hire basis) to satisfy such a need. The team can use OSS or code everything from scratch if they want - though they'll be more competitive if they use OSS because a lot of the work will already have been done. Once the company gets the software it needs, it just keeps it for itself and enjoy its competitive advantage. It's as simple as that!

The GPL doesn't require you to release software built on GPL'ed code! (Reread this line a couple of time, it helps to dispel the FUD...for it is FUD.) The only thing that it requires is that if you decide to release the code (i.e. sell it, give it, ram it down people's throat), then you must give the source code with it.

So the moral of the story is: internal code can be built on open source software. When that code no longer gives you that competitive advantage, then you can release it for the good of the community if you want - or not. This is a fundamental misconception most people have about OSS (and one that Microsoft consciously exploits to its advantage). There, I've solved your problem. Now go out and spread the good news.

Re:Getting paid

[reemul]

You're missing *my* point. I never said that a company is required by the GPL to release all of the code they write based on OSS. Such a statement may well be FUD, but I didn't make it. The problem is that not releasing the code is bad for the community. As long as freeloading is permitted (and the GPL, including that bit you mention, does permit it) there will continue to be limited financial advantage to writing *and releasing* Open Source code. Using it? You bet, they can save themselves huge money. But writing it for all the world to use? Nope.

If no-one releases new code until there is no competitive advantage left to keeping it in house, then that company is a freeloader, too. They are leeching off of the folks who wrote the original code and released it as OSS, without themselves giving anything back to the community. The OSS movement doesn't gain a damn thing from that company, or any of the "Open Source" programmers they hired, except maybe some column inches in some trade journals about how another firm saw the light of OSS. Code goes into the hole, and stays there.

Great, the company gets to pat themselves on the back and tell themselves what wonderful folks they are for using Open Source software and hiring Open Source programmers. But if it never gets released, and they are the only ones to use it, is it really Open? I don't think so, no matter that the loophole exists. As far as I'm concerned, all of the changes made are proprietary code right up until the moment the source gets posted. It's absurd to assume that all code is open until someone starts distributing binaries - is M$'s next release OSS until the first shrink wrapped box ships? Um, no. It's closed and proprietary up until the moment Bill makes the source available, and I'm not gonna hold my breath. Same with any other product, no matter that every last scrap of it is based on GPL code and was personally blessed by RMS besides. Doesn't mean that this is necessarily wrong---it doesn't make any sense to make every dev change available until after the bugs are hammered out, that causes problems to the end user and makes the developers look bad---but no source means it isn't yet fully open.

The distribution loophole is there because of practical issues, not philosophical ones. There is just no way to enforce it short of requiring that every single OSS dev have his CVS available for read access to the world, so that all of the code is open always, even before release. This doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a good idea, or that the pioneers of OSS didn't want everyone to release all of the code they produced based on someone else's open code. It just isn't possible in the real world. It's similar to making copies of a friend's CDs for your own use. Technically it's still illegal, but no-one is going to come after you for it, since there is just no way to police it. But if you try to sell that copy on eBay, all bets are off. Same with modifications and extensions to Open Source code. If you keep it to yourself, there isn't any way to pursue the matter; but as soon as you make the binaries available, you'd better have the source available, too.

Re:Getting paid

[fferreres]

The problem is many american always think people will be in a Z company, saving cash and not spending a dime to ad to the product, yet getting the benefit.

Well, they are partially correct only. X and Y know the product better and can better use it. They can plan of modification best suited for THEIR needs. They also have their own additions sooner than their competition. They probably also hold some parts of patches inhouse for a fair time (4 months or so, untill a further keeping may turn it unmaintainable or out of sync with the branch).

As an example, you can see IBM and many other taking avantage of Linux and contributing to it. They like it free they like it open, the know it well and it works for them. The work with open source. If it's working for this big monsters and for many small companies.

I think we should not worry much about the Z companies. They will be just hurting themselves in the long run. They will be always following the trend and losing the competitive edge.

I think he's right in a way

[martyn s]

I think he's right that open source is flawed in a way.

This is my position. You don't need profit incentive to make good software. You just need money. If there was a public organization that was investing just as much money into open source software as Microsoft invested into Microsoft software, you'd find open source would be just as good (just as easy to use for average joe).

If we had public investment in free software, the software would be just as good as anything you can buy, plus it would be free.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[meta-monkey]

By "public investment," do you mean from governments? In that case, your idea is flawed on several levels.

First, the results, the open source software, would not be free as in beer. They would have been paid for with money seized from taxpayers, so if you have a job, you're paying for the software anyway, whether you want to use it or not.

Second, do you honestly, really truly and honestly, think a U.S. Department of Software Development would result in better software? In less buggy, easier to use software? Just like the Department of Education makes schools better and the FBI stops terrorists, right?

I think the reason computers (hardware and software) have had such a fantastic run for the past few decades is because governments haven't had a clue what's going on, and therefore haven't been regulating and dragging them down like they do everything else.

And on a side note, the author of the original article critical of "free software" completely misunderstood the difference between free software and open source.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[BlowCat]

And what happens if that organization pays some developer money for working on the project, but he just does nothing or works on something unrelated, i.e. adds a new cool feature instead of writing user-friendly documentation? Who is going to punish the developer and on which grounds? The question becomes especially interesting, if the developer and the fund reside in different countries.

As far as I know, FSF had this problem - they paid some company in Russia for writing GNU SQL server. I heard this in 1996. GNU SQL server is still not ready (last version was released in 1998), the money is gone.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[caduguid]

By "public investment," do you mean from governments? In that case, your idea is flawed on several levels. First, the results, the open source software, would not be free as in beer. They would have been paid for with money seized from taxpayers, so if you have a job, you're paying for the software anyway, whether you want to use it or not.

Pick an average-sized government department in one of the major economies. Odds are, that department is currently spending a few million bucks a year for software licensing. Now, as a small experiment, imagine if just that department switched to OSS.

You'd likely see a drastic reduction in licensing fees. (90% sounds about right to me, but in reality I'm just making that number up.)

This isn't new expenditure... that department _already_ is spending that money. They are also already spending money on i.t. support.
Take some given amount, say, 25% of the difference, and hire a small number of motivated and interested developers to work on contributing towards localization problems that may be unique to your department... and, for fun, contribute whatever they come up with back to the community. Couldn't hurt.

Yes, it is "public funding", and if those words make you cringe, well, so be it. It isn't by a long shot the same thing as calling for a department of software development, and it isn't the same thing as 'seizing' new money for OSS development. It's just one small way that some programmers might get remuneration for their work, and the commons of OSS could expand.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[Xzzy]

> They would have been paid for with money seized
> from taxpayers, so if you have a job, you're paying
> for the software anyway, whether you want to use it
> or not.

This already happens. Using stuff I know about directly as evidence, look at the fermilab tools homepage. Now granted this stuff wasn't developed spontaneously, every last bit of it is an internal tool that was made freely available to the public, but the point still stands. Fermilab is operated by universities across the country, but is owned by the DOE.

> think a U.S. Department of Software Development
> would result in better software?

Not by default, nor every time, but it's definetly capable of it. Again I'll use fermi as an example. Nedit is a really well done GUI text editor, I call it a "second tier" editor because it's not directly a vi or emacs clone, but it's very own beast. These days it's a highly developed, well maintained editor.

So while I'd agree to an extent that the government shouldn't have a Department of Open Source that leeches taxpayer money to create free software, I *do* have to butt in and inform you that many (if not all) government owned laboratories across the US already produce and release free software. ;)

So it *can* work.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[caduguid]

Fine, fine.
So, instead of "hire a small number of motivated and interested developers to work on contributing towards localization problems ", how about contract a small number of motivated and interested developers to work on contributing towards localization problems?

Perhaps there's a competent OSS developer out there somewhere who might be willing to take the gig for a few extra bucks? Or would the fact that they're willing to gasp! take money from the government de facto switch them from competent to trained monkey?

Re:I think he's right in a way

[digitalunity]

Government employees are government employees because they can't get a job any place else.

That's just not true. Have you ever considered that some people just like their job, even if it is government?

they make too much money, work too little, and you can't fire them.

That's some pretty good motivation for Federal Government work, wouldn't you say?

In all honesty, the only employees not working very hard for the money are probably doing something mundane. The government does have software developers, they just don't sell it; they are the consumers. You should read some stuff from RMS on software development, and that often the best reason to make software is to use it.

Self as first consumer.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[martyn s]

It would be free as roads are.

steal this idea, amazon.

I'm not good at explaining stuff. Read this book with an open mind, and you might understand.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[meta-monkey]

gah!!! nedit's my favorite editor, and to think I've been using gub'ment software. :) Well, I still think there's a slight difference, though, because those tools released by labs are written generally by scientists in support of scientific research, as opposed to software written for use by the general public, as the original author suggested. Much of this work is also performed off site through Universties by students. For example, my lab produced a scalable failure detection service called Gossip, and all our funding came from Sandia National Labs

Re:I think he's right in a way

[meta-monkey]

Localization problems, sure. They do that already in terms of consultants. I'm sure microsoft has several contracts with government agencies to provide support, and that's basically the same thing. Any code open source developers could write for the government could be released. I'm all fine with that...that's the way people in open source development make money a lot of the time, by selling support services. I just don't like the idea of giving people tax payer money to develop software for the sake of developing software like the original poster suggested. That sounds like a boondoogle if I've ever heard one.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[OwnedByTwoCats]

NIST, Don Libes, expect. Reality sometimes works like that.

Your anti-government rhetoric is worn out. Try living in the real world for a while.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[gartogg]

Actually, nothing has 0 marginal cost in the real world. There is bandwidth, cost of explaining an idea, or cost of making a floopy or cd of a program.

In any case, making no monet from distributing a product disincentifies distribution and makes no sense. This "fact" is simply rubbish. It artificailly limits the number of people who will use it, but only in an ideal market, with perfect knowledge and no need to advertise or actually download or deliver anything.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[martyn s]

This is why we pay for *bandwidth* to those who properly distribute a product. But when the distribution can be done from someone separate from who creates the product, why don't we pay just for distribution, as we do. You don't actually believe that when you pay 200 dollars for windows xp pro you're paying for distribution, do you?

Re:I think he's right in a way

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Well more kids graduate highschool with calculus credit now than in the 1950s, for sure. Its also true that the US experienced a significant drop in its crime statistics during the previous administration. (This was the first sustained drop I can ever remember.)

Re:I think he's right in a way

[j_w_d]

The author of the parent article argued in a response to comments that one particular area where he thought OS was the wrong way to go was in government software requirements. The author implied that to get adequate software for government purpose, the government should go with closed source software. My feeling is that this is outright stupidity. For years the federal government assumed that for most government products the public had ALREADY paid for the right to the data, service, or product. As a result Soil Conservation Service county reports were (and still are) free. USGS topo maps were of minimal cost, largely just covering printing. Recently there has been a decline in the availablilty of quality government information due to the fallacious argument that private sector entities could do things better. Sometimes this is true, but by and large even when it is, the private sector costs for equivalent products are much higher than government sources are or were. This shuts out large sectors of the public from products, which if produced by the government, would be readily available as long as the government reasoned that paying taxes paid for the product.

An example of a government initiated software product that was not only free, but was also open source is GRASS (Geographic Analysis Support System). Developed originally by the US Army Corps of Engineers, GRASS was released to public domain. The USACE is no longer involved in the development GRASS, having apparently surrendered to pressure to use private sector software.

GRASS remains the most available GIS analysis system for most people since it really is free, open-source software. Private sector (closed source) software of equivalent power (ArcInfo, MapInfo, MicroImages TNTmips, etc.)costs thousands of dollars and usually requires a hardware key. GRASS compares favorably in raw power with any commerical product. It is presently more opaque to learners but is improving quickly thanks to an active development community. It also supports more platforms than any of the commercial products.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[sean23007]

If every person on an airplane that was being hijacked had a gun, the terrorist would die, sure, but the plane would go down an awful lot faster. The hull of a commercial airliner simply cannot take a hit from a bullet at such close range. One miss has the potential to bring the entire plane down and kill everyone inside it, and I don't think you want everyone on the plane to have that choice. If every person on every plane had a gun, that even opens up more options for terrorism. Imagine a highly coordinated terrorist attack in which the terrorist organization had a man on every plane above the US, and every single one was destroyed at the exact same time. A single man with a gun can do this. That's why the airline companies have so much interest vested into keeping guns off planes.

Your argument is weak, and I hope the world, when they see it, can choose wisely.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[gartogg]

But Windows doesn't have 0 marginal cost per item, because there are support costs, and in any case, the point is that saying a company should charge 0 dollars per copy of windows, because it did cost them a ton to produce (admittedly more than it's worth) and they need to make their money back.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[extrasolar]

Whats the stigma against public funding? I can only trace it down to certain libertarian leanings.

But a lot of really nice things are funded publically. In the United States the best of it is funded by our local and state governments.

And free software fits this well since developing free software benefits everyone. I know Stallman has advocated a software tax in the past. His reasons are the same.

It seems that after five or so years since free software has made it big, its pretty obvious that the commercial market isn't doing so well with free software. The only thing keeping free software alive are the volunteer hackers.

If free software needs money (which I don't necessarily agree with), the commercial market doesn't seem equipped to provide it.

Public funding seems to make the most sense. If you ask every tax payer that by dedicating a small portion of their taxes to free software and the result would be that they will never have to purchase another version of Windows again, I'm sure they will see it as a bargain. And the publically funded free software can just as easily be used for commercial purposes and for more free software by anyone.

I think software should be seen as a public resource whose only cost is in development.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[HiThere]

I suppose I could come back with so stories about consultants I've worked with and we could have an enjoyable set to.

I suspect that the main difference is emotional attitude. Sometimes after we hire a consultant for awhile, we make them permanent. When I ask why the changed the story seems to be: "Well, we don't make as much here, but we don't get stiffed as often."

Now personally, I don't like the idea of getting stiffed. Not by a consultant, but particularly not by an employer. That's the main reason that I've stayed with my current job. (It sure isn't because it's technically challenging!) And staffing does need to be sufficient to handle peak times, so when things are slow, you do find people playing solitaire.

Consultants, however, are hired to handle particular jobs. If they aren't working, something is wrong. I can see why this might be annoying to them, but it can be a bit difficult to just drop a person in the middle of a project.

Of course, there's another thing going on. Empire building. Sometimes consultants are hired instead of using internal staff not because of need, but to make the manager feel important. I always find this annoying, but there really isn't anything that I can do about it. Except come along afterwards and repair the damage. That's happened a few times, but I always have to wait until after the consultant has left.

You are right, however. I don't like deadlines. They seem to imply poor planning. Or rushing the code and insufficient debugging. Or both. If I must deal with them, then I will, but I do prefer to avoid them.

P.S.: I am a government employee in a small agency. I can't really say that things are the same elsewhere, but I would expect that they were. I would also expect that as the size of the agency increased that some of the less desireable factors that I mentioned would increase. And I don't believe that it really matters whether the agency is public or private. I've talked with some people who came from Kaiser Engineering, and they said that much the same thing happened there, only more bureaucratic and a bit worse, but then it's a larger company. One difference was that the people from Kaiser tended to puff themselves a bit more, and try harder to make what they were doing seem more important than it was. This probably has to do with either having a history as a consultant or with the problems of operating in a large organization. I really doubt that government or private makes much difference. (This may have been less true before Unions, when large organizations felt freer to act capriciously and take more advantage of being in a stronger position [i.e. to ride even more rough-shod over the rights of their employees].)

Re:I think he's right in a way

[caduguid]

I swear this is the first time I've ever read a post on Slashdot that effectively says "Careful! You don't want to irritate Microsoft!" :-)

Beyond that, I _do_ miss your point, you're right.

I don't know what you are talking about when you say they would require/control how it was done. Control what? How what was done? Control how their internal implentations are done? Why shouldn't they? What else could they control?

If the UK Industry Ministry or the Canadian Department of Fisheries for some reason deemed it in their interest to control open source... what could they do? Copyleft is copyleft. Beyond something destructive like disallowing clickwrap or shrinkwrap warranty disclaimers, (wait a minute, I think UCITA is already threatening to do that. What else?), what can anyone do that would harm the mechanism of copyleft, short of abolishing copyright?

I try not to make rash generalizations, but I'm tired, so what the hey: I find this level of government-phobia nuts and unsustainable logically. How is it that a government department buying closed source software would be any less subject to the constraints you mention?

Re:I think he's right in a way

[WNight]

Yeah, I think it's paranoid libertarians complaining.

I'd much rather have the government spend money buying software from open source companies (thus funding software we could all use) than buying it from MS, funding software that we'd have to pay another purchase price to use...

I'm going to be taxed anyways. And for things I feel are worth it (roads, defense, etc) so if the money I spend on that can buy me other incidental benefits, why would I complain?

It's like how the interstate highway system was partly built for defense reasons. We paid the cost in order to help the armed forces respond to attack, but it also got us cheaper goods, better personal transportation, increased mobility, etc.

Really, if the government buys MS products with my money and I don't get to use them, that seems more like a crime than if they fund public software to get what they need.

It also makes sense from the point of view of the government wanting to increase competition. "The People" benefit from increased competition, and nobody really loses, unless you count the CEOs who only get mega rich, instead of being insanely rich. So if my tax dollars can go to helping increase useful competition I'd appreciate it.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[WNight]

Your ranting about public funding is quite silly because you're completely off base with it.

Both options being considered involve the government spending just as much tax money. In one case it goes to companies like MS for the development of something the people have to pay to use. In the other it goes to companies like Red Hat and IBM for the development of something the public gets for free.

Assuming that "the public" is trying to decide how to spend its money, which do you think will win?

You could pay taxes, allowing the gov to buy MS licenses, and then buy your own license.

Or, you could pay taxes, allowing the gov to customize Linux, and then use Linux, including those customizations if desired, for free.

Really, it sounds like you're arguing for corporate welfare. You want taxes to be payed to a company that provides less value than the competition. Do you own their stock?

Re:I think he's right in a way

[sean23007]

Yes, air marshalls can carry guns on board an airplane, but their bullets travel slowly, fragment inside a person's body, and they don't miss. If you had 100 people shooting guns that sent a bullet traveling over the speed of sound with hollow pointed or armor piercing or otherwise ridiculously dangerous bullets, and most of these 100 people are panicking and not very well trained, a lot of bullets would be hitting the hulls. You have attempted to refute my arguments and have failed.

I ignored your attempted argument about schools, because it was merely residue from your bitterness about your own education.

Re:I think he's right in a way

[sean23007]

If everyone else had guns, why would the terrorists keep their boxcutters? Rather, they would upgrade to a weapon that was equally as far above a handgun as a boxcutter is above a fingernail. And if 1 or 2 people on every hijacked flight tried to do something, a lot more people would probably die. The September 11 hijackings were completely different from every previous hijacking. Usually terrorists have demands, and the best way for the individuals on the plane is to give in to the demands, not to attack them.

free as in free speach, not free as in free beer

[oncee]

It looks like people still don't get want the free software movement is all about: free as in free speach, not free as in free beer.

Call me ignorant if you like...

[Ignorant Cocksucker]

But hasn't John Carrol hit the nail right on the head when he points out the fatal flaw of Open Source software ?

How do the open source programmers feed their families ? And don't suggest they sell T-Shirts.

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[elfdump]

"Open Source Programmers" is a bit of a misnomer. As has been pointed out, many programmers who contribute to free/Open source software do not work on it fulltime, and have primary jobs that either pay them through their service as a programmer or through licensure of commercial software.

While the FSF believes all software should be free of restrictions and government should contribute money towards it, those are not the only economic models that have been suggested. Personally, I believe having unrestricted access to software is increasingly important, comparable in ways to other generic services: telephone, water, etc. It seems reasonable that governments would consider switching to an unrestricted, open, and generic form of software.

(Does anyone else feel that government should also provide free beer? ;)

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[Shade, The]

I think the general consensus is that if a corperation pays for the development of Open Source software, then they would probably have less work to do, as outside hackers who use the software could fix bugs and improve it as they like. The engineers employed by the company would be paid out of the money charged for support, which is, at the end of the day, a more substainable revenue source anyway.

That's how it's -meant- to work, at least :)

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[cscx]

Well, as one of the KDE developers puts it, his wife pays him for playing Mr. Mom and watching his own daughter.

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[ftobin]

But hasn't John Carrol hit the nail right on the head when he points out the fatal flaw of Open Source software ?

No, since it obviously isn't a fatal flaw, because Open Source/Software Libre programmers do feed their families. If it was a 'fatal flaw' then there wouldn't be Open Source/Free Software.

How do the open source programmers feed their families ?

Possibly just as I do (minus the family bit). My company sells complete systems (hardware+software+support+training). And I write a fair bit of Software Libre on my own too.

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[rgmoore]

How do the open source programmers feed their families ? And don't suggest they sell T-Shirts.

Even if you make the incorrect assumption that it's impossible to make money selling Open Source software, that's not a reason that a profitable company won't spend money on developing it. Many big hardware companies like IBM, Sun, and HP are spending real money on Open Source development because they think that it will help them sell more hardware. Take Sun's development work on GNOME, for instance. Sun feels a need to have a nice, standardized desktop environment available for their hardware because they don't think that it will be as attractive to purchasers without one. It's cheaper for them to hire programmers to work on an existing Open Source project- even though that means giving away their code- than to try to develop one from scratch. So Sun is paying a bunch of programmers to write Open Source code.

Their are other reasons for a company to do that. O'Reilly, for instance, hires Larry Wall to work on PERL, partly because it helps them get the right to sell his books and partly because it gives them credibility. Transmeta seems to have hired Linus Torvalds at least in part because it gave them extra influence in the direction of the Linux kernel. There are admittedly a small number of positions like that available, but they are out there.

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[ftobin]

To liken programming to any kind of assembly work is one of the greatest fallacies one can perform.

A better analogy would be an artist who does commercial graphics during the day, but exquisite panaramas at night. It's a more correct, and appealing analogy.

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[bay43270]

One thing I really like about working on open source projects - you get a chance to write code the way it was meant to be written. You don't have to make concessions if you don't want.

I work a regular 8-5 job. Sometimes its fun, but most of the time, I putting a hack in my otherwise beautiful code, so my boss can give a demo 20% into the project. When I'm just about to blow my stack from all of the compromises and business limitations, I go home and write some code for fun. If its important to me, I do it right, if not, I don't have to do that part. If someone else feels the need to fill in those gaps, they can.

The author is correct in some ways. There aren't many good open source accounting packages (who wants to work on that?). At the same time, there are no end to Tivo hacking projects and file sharing clients. People pick projects that they need, or they think will be fun. The author does, however underestimate the types of projects some people find fun.

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[ftobin]

That doesn't exactly answer the question, does it moron?

There are two possible inferences you could have pulled from what I said. One is that I don't feed my family (which is vacuously true, and not the intended semantics), while the other is that I don't have a family to feed (unless you count the 1 person family that is myself).

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[Angst Badger]

How do the open source programmers feed their families ?

Except for the minority who get paid specifically to write free software, most of them do it by working day jobs. Artists, writers, and musicians -- among many other serious "hobbyists" -- operate in much the same way.

All this being said, I think one incredibly important point is being missed, namely, the existence of several free operating systems and hundreds of high-quality free applications. The question is not "how will open source programmers make money?" but "how have open source programmers been making money all along?". Obviously, the status quo works and it works pretty well. Whether or not Linux or some other free system will ever seriously challenge Microsoft on the desktop, and whether the open model will work for end user applications my grandmother could use are separate questions. In the fairly substantial realm in which open source software operates, it is doing really damn well. It has felled SCO, cornered Sun, invaded IBM, and has Microsoft seriously concerned. That's pretty damn good if you ask me.

Are there business models that would enable substantial numbers of programmers to work on free software full time? Obviously not yet. Maybe there never will be. But I rather suspect -- given the unique nature of software as compared to other kinds of goods -- that there eventually will be.

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[pjrc]

How do the open source programmers feed their families ?

Leading questions like this are founded on the Microsoft vision that all software is created by "software vendors", where it is "manufactured", and sold to "end users" in shrink-wrapped boxes, with no user servicable parts inside.

John Carroll, a .NET developer who specializes in "distributed systems" ought to know this. The whole article reads as if it was written by Microsoft's PR dept (despite the lack of the word "ecosystem"). It's classic FUD... open source is great, so it begins, but there's that big "if" (5th paragraph). You wouldn't want to risk your gov't operations on such a "if'ey" economic model, that John Carroll believes is somehow destined to failure (despite it's amazing success in recent years)

Anyway, to answer the specific question, there are several widely believed theories... the one I like best is that there will always be companies that hire programmers to customize software. This happens today, even when the level of customization possible is limited by closed-source. It will usually be in a companies economic self interest to contribe improvements back to the public pool of code, assuming the application is "generic" and not something that gives the company an advantage over their competitors. That way they reap the benefits of everyone else's contributions and their patches are "maintained" by the community (of which they are a tiny part) rather than maintaining a fork of the code themselves.

But even then, there will always be plenty of programming to be done that is central to a company's mission and the code can not be shared with competitors under any circumstances. There will always be plenty of these jobs for programmers.

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[evilviper]

I don't believe that there is a sound way to make great gobs of money on Open Source. So what?

If I'm a major entity in a company, I'll throw some money around to get SMP support in OpenBSD, because I need it. Now, I SAVE MONEY because I payed only to add a single missing feature. It doesn't cost me anything to allow that feature to be shared, and I save money not being locked into the licensing of a propritary OS.

So, in answer. You simply have to look at it from a different perspective. Instead of thinking of software as a product, think of it more similar to a partially written book, or other document. It's reasonable to write a feature you need (you wouldn't get paid for that anyhow) or pay for someone else to add that feature. Again, you wouldn't make any money. You'd loose money going the closed-source route.

So, Open Source isn't something you just take and sell at what ever price you wish as you would with propritary software. Open Source is something you provide as a cheaper, better option, and people will happily pay for it. Or, they will get it for free and end up contributing code to the project. One way or another, people will all pay just a little bit, and the whole idea behind open source is that all is needed is a little from everyone.

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[Seeker5528]

"How do the open source programmers feed their families ?"

If you discount the college students who program in their spare time or as a class project.
The hobby programers who do it just because they like it.

You are left with tech people who have unrelated jobs, but contribute becuase they use the software and want to make it better.
People who work for hardare companies that have a vested interest in making sure the software gets better.
People who do contract programming that involves the projects they contribute to.
Writing books, doing seminars, teaching etc.
Gettng a job at a company that uses the software and is willing to pay to further it's development.
Get a job at a linux company that may or may not be making money, but at least pays it programmers.

Later, Seeker

Re:Call me ignorant if you like...

[Shade, The]

> How do *those* people get paid?

They don't; at least not by said company. It seems to work currently, after all, as those hackers have other jobs. Ok, so in a world where there is no proprietry you could argue this wasn't true; but then companies may instead look upon programmers as Research and Development. No initial gain, but an implied gain through support. Other companies could offer the same support, but the company creating the software would have the edge. And whoever said that all software had to be open source anyway?

Cuts both ways

[x-rayed]

IMHO, only some open source software projects are going to funded by corporations (who pay the salary of the programmers). This tends to only happen when the corporation has something to gain (ie, free labour for outside contributors, free marketing, free press),or alternatively when they know they will have the competitive advantage in spin-off services like deployment and support. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but is there anywhere a full time non-subsidized open source programmer?

Re:Cuts both ways

[peddrenth]

"but is there anywhere a full time non-subsidized open source programmer?"

You might try looking in the Mandrake, Suse, RedFlag and Lycoris offices for a start (although admittedly they are not all "free software" in the true sense)

If an open-source app needs writing, and public wants the software, it makes sense for the programmers to sell the open-source product. Although much is made of the 'charity' aspect of people paying for something which is 'free' ("charity" means something which benefits the community, b.t.w.), anyone who takes a moment to think about it will realise that unless you pay for your free software, you're not gonna get any updates or bugfixes later on!

As for companies programming widgets (device-drivers, PDA apps, productivity tools) which they need anyway, there's often no commerical disadvantage to making it free software. If they just made it open-source, they might have cause for concern, but by going a step further and making it free software, they protect themselves from having to compete with another version of their own software.

Many are starting to say now that governments (who represent the community for its own benefit) ought spend some of their microsoft tax on funding free software, which is a spending decision for each government to make. Good for them if they do buy free software.

The other model of couse, is individual programmers paying themselves (through use of their time) for software that they need. Such programmers may not be getting paid, but they get the money they would have spent on equivalent commercial software!

I Always Wondered....

[quakeaddict]

if an open source programmer toils day and night "for fun", is it fair that someone takes all that work and sells it as if it were his own...like any Linux distro?

Open source is great for people out of work, or screwing around. It sucks if you have 3 kids and a wife, and need insurance, and all the other perks a job offers.

Whine all you want about it, but precious few people make money from open source, and I don't see those folks sharing all that much.

Re:I Always Wondered....

[_Sprocket_]

I Always Wondered.... if an open source programmer toils day and night "for fun", is it fair that someone takes all that work and sells it as if it were his own...like any Linux distro?

First, the whole concept might be lost on you if you only associate coding with "toil" and can't understand how it could be "for fun". Still...

I was looking for a simple application a few months ago to mimic functionality that is commonly found in various forms for Linux. I found a large selection of shareware apps for Windows that seemed to foot the bill, but was shocked at the requests for $15 - $35 for a very simple application. Then I found one application that listed an alternative payment method - if you were a shareware author, provide that author with a registered version of your application in exchange. It then dawned on me one of the many fundamental differences between Linux and Windows cultures.

Within the Windows world, there is very little free software (or Free software either). Especially development tools. If one wishes to have access to development tools and other nifty applications, one trades in the appropriate coin - cash.

Within the Linux world, the vast majority of tools and applications are Free. Producing your own Free software won't limit your access to other applications / tools and, if anything, is paying back those who have already provided you with software you use and enjoy. The coin of the Linux realm is gifted code.

What about those Linux distro companies? They provide a lot of various services to the communities who provide them Free code. They pay for additional development (and sometimes start their own Free projects). They go through the hassle of providing an easy-to-use package. They provide bandwidth. And they market Linux to the corporate world.

Corporate interest in Linux helps those who are interested in Linux. Why? Because Linux platforms become a valid business platform. And such a platform provides jobs and consulting to those who wish to maintain and develop custom applications (or customized extensions to existing projects).

And service is where you get the money to pay for those 3 kids, wife, insurance, and earn your perks.

Re:I Always Wondered....

[pjrc]

if an open source programmer toils day and night "for fun", is it fair that someone takes all that work and sells it as if it were his own...

That would be very unfair, and also against the term of the GPL, MPL and BSD licenses... to remove the original author's name and represent that it had been created by someone else.

like any Linux distro?

Fortunately, the distros DO NOT do that. They tend to follow the license terms to the letter.

The vast majority of all free software is under the GNU GPL license, which requires others to share (if they distribute original or modified copies). It is the specific requirement that all derivative works include or make available the source code when they are distributed that makes it "fair" in the hearts and minds of most "open source" programmers (where 'most' reffers to the majority who choose to apply the GPL to their original works or contribute to GPL'd projects).

Re:I Always Wondered....

[Erotomek]

It sucks if you have 3 kids and a wife

I hope your family don't read Slashdot — poor guys...

Re:I Always Wondered....

[randombit]

Open source is great for people out of work, or screwing around. It sucks if you have 3 kids and a wife, and need insurance, and all the other perks a job offers.

Dunno... some people at my place of work seem to manage it pretty well. AFAIK they do get insurance, though I don't know how good (If you want really good health insurance, IT/programming is the wrong industry anyway: industrial jobs have very good health insurance converage). I'm a summer employee right now, so I don't make the big bucks, nor do I get insurance, but whatever.

Whine all you want about it, but precious few people make money from open source, and I don't see those folks sharing all that much.

I'm making a decent living working on BSD and GPLed software (I may end up working there full time after I graduate this winter). Mostly it's DoD contract work that has potential commercial value. My last job was also working on BSD licensed software (which I don't think was DoD work, but I could be wrong).

I agree, not too many people do make a living this way, but it is certainly possible. I would be OK with programming proprietary stuff, but more likely than not, any proprietary stuff I would do would be Win32, and I really have 0 interest in that. Unix programming for me, thank you very much.

best response to the incentives problem...

[caduguid]

The best response to the incentives problem for contributing to open source, imho, is not the usual boring ESR reputation benefits, but rather Eben Moglen's classic "metaphysical corollary."

"The dwarf's basic problem is that "incentives" is merely a metaphor, and as a metaphor to describe human creative activity it's pretty crummy. I have said this before, but the better metaphor arose on the day Michael Faraday first noticed what happened when he wrapped a coil of wire around a magnet and spun the magnet. Current flows in such a wire, but we don't ask what the incentive is for the electrons to leave home. We say that the current results from an emergent property of the system, which we call induction. The question we ask is "what's the resistance of the wire?" So Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law says that if you wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network. It's an emergent property of connected human minds that they create things for one another's pleasure and to conquer their uneasy sense of being too alone."

And then, even more fun, he adds:
"The only question to ask is, what's the resistance of the network? Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Ohm's Law states that the resistance of the network is directly proportional to the field strength of the "intellectual property" system. So the right answer to the econodwarf is, resist the resistance."

Brilliant.

Re:best response to the incentives problem...

[caduguid]

oops. metaphorical corollary, not metaphysical corollary... That would be getting into a whole different realm of incentives, I think. :-)

Re:best response to the incentives problem...

[Dan Crash]

Wow. Thanks for the post. I've got a new bookmark now.

Well

[Gizzmonic]

I hope this didn't enrage anyone too much. I mean, who actually thinks that open source will conquer all proprietary software?

The author writes this from a very moderate point of view, and he certainly lists plenty of advantages to open source. However, he's right on the money about its disadvantages...actually, he's pretty darn nice. He doesn't even mention the problems that most open source hackers seem to have with creating software that can be used by non-computer experts.

The open source movement is too broad to be characterized by one point of view. If I had to break it down into two I would say it was these two archetypes:

1)People who think (or know) they can do it better than Microsoft, Adobe, etc.

2)Ideologues who believe "Open Source" as an ideology will spread and overtake all software alternatives.

Now, what good are ideologues for open source? It's a bad idea to convince people to use Linux for the sake of it.

My neighbor is the type of guy who thinks he's l33t because he runs a pirated version of Windows XP professional instead of Windows 98. He installed RedHat and it didn't last a week on his hard drive. You know why? Because with KDE and all the Windows ripoff stuff it has, he expected it to act just like Windows. He wasn't prepared for a different cut and paste, misbehaving X apps that take up half your screen, and odd problems with the USB bus.

This guy, who would be qualified as a "power user" by most demographic research, now thinks of Linux as a second-rate, broken Windows because some guy at his office couldn't stop telling him how great "Free Software" was. He'll probably never run anything but Windows again.

This is why ideologues are bad for open source. They make bombastic promises that won't stand up under scrutiny, such as "Linux is better than Windows in all cases," and they generally expose the nuttiness of the whole movement.

We need people who are more willing to promote open-source from its current merits, as hobbyists, gamers, and enthusiasts. They shouldn't be wearing a political banner on their arm. Pragmatism is what made America great, and it's a must in this situation.

Re:Well

[TheConfusedOne]

Let's start with this statement:
He doesn't even mention the problems that most open source hackers seem to have with creating software that can be used by non-computer experts.

Have you tried Mozilla or Open Office? They're quite easy to use.

On to your idealogues problem. It's true that some Open Source software has been over promised and under delivered, but that charge can also be leveled at Microsoft and especially at Windows. Critical items and features drop off the list as deadlines approach and pass. Serious bugs are discovered weekly in their code.

The average user, if presented with a blank box would flail around using either Linux or Windows. The real challenge is to sit the newbie in front of a pre-configured box. If you look at what you can do with configuring/customizing Linux I think you would be very surprised about how user friendly a system you could get.

This is different from the person who will throw his/her hands up in disgust merely because an icon looks a little different or has moved in the menus that he/she knows and loves.

Re:Well

[KjetilK]

Actually, I faced pretty much the same problem at home tonight.

I'm in it mostly for ideology. If Microsoft has it's way, I'm quite sure I will not in practice have rights such as voting rights in 30 years from now.

I've got Debian Woody on my parents' computer, and running KDE2.2.2 tonight, well, neither KWord nor OpenOffice 1.0 cuts it. They have lots of small bugs you just can't live with. I don't care about these apps, really, because I work more efficiently with LaTeX, but dad does.

For many users, they need to understand the ideology behind it. Perhaps it doesn't sell too good in the US, since nobody cares about freedom as long as they feel safe and have enough beer, but I know for sure that many people care about it here. Yeah, and dad, the old rioter, he is getting it. He understands that Linux isn't quite there yet, but as long as freedom is at stake, he can live with it (besides, he has to, because he doesn't go anywhere without me working on his box... :-) ).

So, if your ideology is that open source will always result in superiour software, well, then your ideology is flawed. But if your ideology is about freedom, then you have an argument.

I do of course realize that the issues are very complex when it comes to financial incentives. It will take a long time before we have established a broad range of working business models for free software, but the "enforced scarcity" model is unsustainable in the long run, so it has to happen. This is a long discussion that goes far beyond the current thread.

Yeah, and BTW, I think it is time free software developers stop running after MS when it comes to UIs. There are lots of good academic research on the topic that people could have a look at instead. But that's OT too.

Re:Well

[TheConfusedOne]

What's wrong with where they came from? A blanket statement is made that Open Source has bad usability. I point to two OS projects that don't have those problems.

Mozilla is a complete rewrite. They threw out the original Netscape code and started over again. OpenOffice started from Star Office which predates Sun's involvement.

In both cases, you have software that is at least as usable as anything coming out of the "proprietary" world.

As far as usability of Linux distros goes it all depends on the configuration of the machine. You can have super usable versions (like Tivo's interface) and you can have completely uncustomized command line versions. Look at the Linux in schools and LTSP initiatives to see how usability of Linux has been increased.

Re:I had seen this myself....

[scott1853]

Ok, you said "fund development". I would like to know what pieces of open source software you use, either personally or professionally, that you or your company have "funded". The entire argument that Carroll has is that open source programmers aren't paid. So aside from the major linux distros and StarOffice, what else is paid for?

Hmm...

[Scoria]

"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind." - Aristotle

The O'Reilly Network seems to have overlooked the fact that many individuals program open source code because they *enjoy programming*, not because they intend to generate revenue from it.

Re:Hmm...

[stevey]

True .. I code because I can, and because I enjoy it.

I'm currently working on an audio streamer. This is because I personally wanted one, and the few I could find weren't quite right for me.

So to be nice I made the code available and it appears to be growing in popularity. (In the sense that I have users, and it's in Debian GNU/Linux, Gentoo GNU/Linux, and FreeBSD ports collection.)

I have no expections that this will generate revenue for me, although I do know that writing it helped me land my current job. Other than that I've stuck a small Amazon wishlist on the front page - and if people wish to make donations they'll be accepted with suprise and thanks.

A recent case in point was somebody wanting a new feature which I did have planned, but wasn't going to get round to for a while. The requestor wasn't a coder - so we struck a deal. He bought me a DVD from my wishlist, and I implemented the feature which he wanted; Now everybody has it; which seems to be a win for all concerned.

Re:free as in free speach, not free as in free bee

[BlowCat]

The article is about open source, not about free software. Open source is about better products, not about freedom, and that ideology can be flawed.

Obviously he's wrong...

[zulux]

Look at the evidence! Free software is flourishing, and in every place where there is decent Free software available - it's gaining marketshare at the expense of non-free software.

Free OS have gone from .01% to 10% of the market.
Free Webservers continue to dominate at 60%.
Free Browsers have gone from .01% to %7.
Free compilers have gone from nothing to a lot.

We're still small - but the momentum is there!

Re:Obviously he's wrong...

[WildBeast]

"And no - companies do not pay for support. Why pay for support when you can ask a question on a newsgroup and get a better anwser?"

I don't know, besides I'm a developer and I suck at support. If my software is good enough, they shouldn't need support, should they?

Re:Obviously he's wrong...

[flacco]

err. browsers have aklways been free.

Perhaps he meant Free?

Think context.

Where are all the poor open source programmers?

[mikosullivan]

I've heard this argument before: that open source programmers are going to starve because they don't have a way to make money on their efforts. Now for a reality check: where are all these starving open source programmers? Why are all the people I know who actively contribute to open source projects so darn wealthy?

Re:Where are all the poor open source programmers?

[Sinistar2k]

There aren't any poor open source programmers because they all make enough money that they have the gear with which to contribute... most likely paid for by some means *other* than open source development.

Which was the point of the article.

Re:Where are all the poor open source programmers?

[bsartist]

where are all these starving open source programmers?

I'm not starving (yet), but I'm not too far from it. I've been out of work since early October, and I've begun selling off computer gear to pay bills. I write free software mostly because I'm bored and it's more entertaining than watching TV. Also, it looks better on a resume than an empty space.

If you're reading this and you need a Cocoa programmer - hire me!. I'm in Boston right now, but I'll move anywhere I need to. At this point I'd even work for Microsoft - principles don't pay the rent.

Re:Where are all the poor open source programmers?

[bolthole]

Why are all the people I know who actively contribute to open source projects so darn wealthy?

Becuas they got in on .com IPOs that had no actual profit, but milked the gullible greedy investors?

They didnt get rich from selling their work, or even something derived from their work. they got rich from hype. (or something completely unrelated to their opensource work)

Re:Where are all the poor open source programmers?

[Arandir]

Why are all the people I know who actively contribute to open source projects so darn wealthy?

Who?!? I happen to know ONE Open Source programmer who makes a living with Open Source, and he's far from wealthy. I know twenty others who make a living doing something other than Open Source development during the week so they can do what they want on the weekend. Maybe you run around in different circles than I do.

Re:Where are all the poor open source programmers?

[Arandir]

Then we're in agreement. Sorrry for the confusion. I keep hearing these rumours on Slashdot that there are people making big bucks giving their software away.

Re:Yeah...

[scott1853]

And how many of those thousands and thousands of programs have been fully debugged, documented and have 24/7 support options?

Sorry, I think you're off...

[Coventry]

I agree with the idea that if money was poured into open source software development it would be closer to Microsoft's software (in ease of use) - but it wouldn't get there without something else:

A Clear, unified vision.

Microsoft performs usability studies... they invest a lot fo time figuring out what feature are needed, what can help people - Yes, many times what they make can be annoying (paperclip, anyone?) - but unless we had a unified (no competing projects like KDE and Gnome) set of projects, goals for those projects, and clear and definable end-user documentation and online help, we would not get to the level microsoft has made thier software to be.

Yes - microsoft software can be 'buggy' - but its developers are Good. Microsoft understands that they can make the most money by making software that is Good Enough - making the best, bug free software possible won't make as much money, since it will give users less of an incentive to upgrade and buy the next version. Yes, this strategy stinks - it reeks of marketing, but it works.

I have no doubt that if funded like microsoft, the OS community would develop amazing systems - probably much much closer to bug-free than micrsoft's - however, the end user still wouldn't have the unified ease-of-use of a microsoft (or apple) OS. That comes with a unified vision... and a unified vision needs... A Leader.

We have Linus, but he leads kernel development and champions OS development in general. there is no one, or even any single group of people, in the 'Captain's Chair', defining what the end user experience should be. Even Red Hat just provides a Distribution of the core OS, and lots and lots of other Open Source software that happen to run on it - with thier own install and config utilities, of course.

I guess this turned into a rant about leadership - I guess we know Microsoft is lead by profitering businessmen, but Linux (as a platform, not the kernel... which I guess should really be called GNU/LINUX ;P) doesn't have anyone defining where it should really go, or what the end-user should expect, let alone gets...

This lack of leadership wasn't by design - Linux was, as Linus will tell you, never expected to come as far as it did when he started it. We (the community) spontaneously sprang forth and Developed... and developed and developed...

But an analogy can be drawn to genetics here. Just as it took millions of years of evolution to produce a mouse, it only takes man (an intelligent outsider to the natural process fo evolution) years to effect enourmous changes to the gnome (and thus the phenotype) of Mice and other creatures. Couldn't nature, through random chance and lots of time, produce the same creations we can today from ordinary mice? Yes. Thus, The semi-random headless development community could produce amazing software meetings specific goals... if given enough time.

But just money won't do it... we either need the Money and Lots of Time, or we need the money and a very clear, defined direction...

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[Peyna]

Yes - microsoft software can be 'buggy' - but its developers are Good.Developers that write buggy code are not, IMHO, 'Good'.

Note, I am not saying anything about MS software or their developers in this comment; only that I believe that buggy code != good developer.

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[Fiver-rah]

I agree with the idea that if money was poured into open source software development it would be closer to Microsoft's software (in ease of use) - but it wouldn't get there without something else: A Clear, unified vision.

Wait. Why do we want this? One of the things I *like* about open source is the fact that it's *not* unified. When you say Clear, Unified Vision, I think ... boring. I *like* the fact that I can choose whether to use Gnome or KDE. I *like* the fact that there's tons of window managers to choose from. Or that I can choose to use openoffice, koffice, or a combination of abiword/gnumeric. (In fact, I choose to use openoffice if I need to preserve formatting on a word document, but if I'm just opening something quick or firing off a letter, abiword is fast beyond comparison).

The large number of choices we have available to us with Open Source is what makes us strong. You draw an analogy to genetics. But any biologist will tell you that a diverse ecology is more robust and more stable than a monoculture.

The beauty of Open Source is that development no longer becomes dependent on a top-down imposed view of Where We're Going. The leadership view of software development need only be imposed when an entire organization needs to defend itself and its proprietary codebase against all attackers.

Ultimately, your hopes of a "clear, defined direction" could only be achieved by losing flexibility, diversity, and more importantly, a sense of fun and wonder. While specific organizations in the open source community may define directions they'd like to take, I think that it would be a mistake to try and unify everyone to march in the same lockstep rhythm.

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[Dolly_Llama]

Yes, many times what they make can be annoying (paperclip, anyone?)

If you are using the example of Clippy, then you have not witnessed the awesome destructive power of the fully armed and operational Microsoft Bob!

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[tshak]

I *like* the fact that there's tons of window managers to choose from.

Which is exactly why Linux is so successful. Because it's written by geeks, FOR geeks. It's much more difficult to write software for someone else, because what you think is important may be completely irrelevant to someone else.

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[Ryan Amos]

You must not know much about CS jobs. If you go to any of the top CS schools in the country, you'll see where most of the top of the class goes-- Microsoft. The general consensus among students in the CS dept I attend is that people working for MS are real badasses. And it's the truth. The guys working for MS REALLY know what they're doing.

The bugs arise from the fact that MS products are MASSIVE projects with literally hundreds of developers. It's simply impossible to produce bug-free products that large in a reasonable timeframe. Sure, many people cite Linux as an example. Linux (not just the kernel, XFree, KDE/Gnome and all related things) are buggy too. This doesn't mean that the developers suck, but squashing bugs takes time. Also, MANY hardware drivers in the kernel are incomplete/missing. Sure, they may not be as buggy as Windows, but if they don't do what I need them to, they might as well not exist at all.

I don't mean to bash Linux here or anything, but simply use it as a tool to point out the logistical nightmare of any large software project. Microsoft does a rather good job of keeping the show-stopper bugs away and working to fix the minor ones with service packs. Microsoft's legal and marketing departments may be Evil (tm), but their developers are top-notch.

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[Rimbo]

I see things differently.

I am glad that KDE and Gnome are competing. It means that we who use Linux, unlike the Windows-using world, have a choice. And what's more, I feel that their competition helps to make them better.

The problem I have with Microsoft is that they DO have a clear, defined direction. And if I am a Windows user, it is the only direction I can go.

I want my Open Source projects to compete. I like it when projects fork. I like the fact that there is no despot who tells us how things must be. If it weren't for dissent, no one would have tried to start any newer or better projects to begin with -- we'd all be happy with whatever OS Microsoft spoon-fed us in the first place.

In ESR's "Cathedral & The Bazaar," he explains why forking and dissension is a good thing, and although his word is far from Bible Truth, he certainly has a point, doesn't he?

But ultimately, the current success of most Open Source projects seem to me to be the result of dissension and a lack of shared vision. We haven't had one yet, and I don't think it's out of line to say we got here because we bothered to disagree -- with Redmond and Cupertino as well as with each other.

So ultimately, I think it is in our best interests to remain in disagreement, and to continue to pursue our own interests and beliefs. Because ultimately, that is what separates us from Microsoft, and what makes us stronger.

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[tomstdenis]

Here's a little reality lesson for you. Nobody, and I really mean that, writes bug-free complex programs the first shot. Check out mozilla if you need a non-MSFT example.

Tom

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[Thomas Charron]

So, instead, we should be working to a single replacement for what we complain about being a (mono means one, you know) monopoly?

LOL..

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[bogado]

The best part is that Gnome, andprobably KDE (I don't use so I don't know) is getting closer to the usnifomity the author expects. Gnome 2 do have unified key binding for applications. The API is making it easier to applications to conform to the standards. You do have a choice of using programs from diferent "desktops" at the cost of having a mess, but if you stick to one, be it KDE or gnome, you will end up with a very consistent desktop.

So what you have? The best of both worlds. :-)

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[Rimbo]

"And really having only one tool is not a monopoly."

How, then, would you define "monopoly?"

You are right that Windows succeeds because it has one interface that most everyone is used to. But should those of us who do not like Windows' interface be forced to use it for the sake of the others? I agree that this is not really a monopoly: It strikes me, rather, as despotism.

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[Coventry]

Let me clarify:

The article and statement I was responding to was about wether the OSS community could, if funded like microsoft, develop products as easy to use and as good as microsoft. The beauty of open source hurts it againt this goal alone: I am not saying that the competition is bad, just that it would hinder the one goal given.

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[sphealey]

If you go to any of the top CS schools in the country, you'll see where most of the top of the class goes-- Microsoft. The general consensus among students in the CS dept I attend is that people working for MS are real badasses. And it's the truth. The guys working for MS REALLY know what they're doing.

Sorry to have to disagree with you a bit there, dude. Compare Novell Netware 3.11 to MS LANManager 1.1 or 2.0. Compare Novell Netware 4.1x to NT 3.5. Compare Novell NDS to Active Directory (a bit harder to do, since AD was released 3 years late and 5 years after NDS). Compare Lotus Notes (or hell, even cc:Mail) to Exchange. In every case you will find that the former product was created by people who sat down and thought, really thought, about the problem domain. The resulting products may not have been perfect, but at least the creators put in some effort. While the corresponding Microsoft product was just a pale imitation (can you say "rip-off"?) of the originating product, CLEARLY created by people who DO NOT understand the problem domain but are just imitating what they have seen elsewhere.

Microsoft Excel might be the only exception to this rule, but even there M$ started out copying Visicalc/Lotus.

sPh

Re:Sorry, I think you're off...

[Felinoid]

"Microsoft performs usability studies"

Really?

Microsofts answer to e-mail viruses "Don't open file attachments" Why not remove the feature?

The Microsoft Wizard utilitys don't work.
Microsoft deffenders say you need to be an operating system expert to understand Windows and you need to understand Windows to use it.

While both clames are a bit of a strech if true it would mean you'd have to be one of the 15 top computer experts in the world to use Windows effectively.

The truth is significantly less extream...
You need a vage understanding of computers in general to use Windows and you only need to know how to code Dos applications to fully understand Windows.

So basicly the avrage expert user can use Windows. The avrage expert user can use Linux just as effectively. The avrage expert user can use anything given half an hour and a manual.

The avrage expert user dosn't need useability studys.

The whole idea of a user friendly operating system is so the avrage newbie could use the computer effectively....
Thats the Mac.

Realisticly speaking there isn't any hope of a user friendly opertaing system existing on the PC.
The system has to be user friendly from ground up.

As for leadership...
This is the diffrence between a system and a console.
A console is one core design. If something is to be added it must be part of the original design.
Everything is easy and simple and if your needs aren't part of the original design or if technology advances byond what the original design expects then you have an expensive paperwight.

A system dosen't rely on an overall vision. If you have a need just add it on.

Linus didn't consider 3D cards, sound cards, TV cards or radio cards, camras or scanners in his design.
So other people made the drivers as needed.

Bill Gates didn't consider TV or radio cards.. sorry no drivers exist.. just end user appications.
If you want to use your TV card for a security camra you have to run Linux to do it..

That's what makes a system...

Not to be down on consoles. They work great for what ever they are designed to do.
But not everyone who uses a computer is going to do the expected.

As usual, I'm a defect

[inflex]

Something must be wrong with my life... I'm a hybrid business developer, so, technically, I'm not making money from OpenSource [ in a strict sense ].

In short, I develop one 'commercial' program, of which the revenues I generate I use to fund my development of the OpenSource projects. These OpenSource projects in turn assist the commercial program because they both [Open and Commercial] share common libraries. These libraries are the most vital core.

By striking this 'balance', I'm able to keep the legal aspects happy, the financial aspects happy (I am my own business) and myself happy.

Whilst I don't make huge amounts of money, that is not the entire point. I do OpenSource because it's 'pleasurable' (most times, I wont expand on the bad times), and my 'commercial' side funds me.

Works for me.

Re:As usual, I'm a defect

[Suidae]

Whilst I don't make huge amounts of money, that is not the entire point

What? What's your damage boy? Isn't the whole point of life to amass the largest collection of resources, both financial and material, in one place, so others cannot use them?

Re:As usual, I'm a defect

[tshak]

And, of course, your Open Source software is not GPL'd, seeing as your Closed software (I'm assuming your Commercial software is Closed) would have to be Open Source as well if it was :-).

What's your motivation?

[Cheap Imitation]

It all depends on what your motivation is for writing the software.

If your motivation is purely profit, then yes, open source is a flawed model. It limits the amount of profit you can squeeze out of what you produce. This is, obviously, why Microsoft dislikes open source. Profit is their motive.

However, if your motive is the best possible end product, or saving your company money, or security, or creating something to fit your exact needs, then open source is the perfect model.

Not everything in the world has to succeed purely based on whether it can turn a profit or not. I don't choose my music based on how many albums the artist sold. I don't choose my art based on the price of the paintings. I don't choose my hobbies based on how marketable they are.

To bash open source because it's less "profitable" seems silly to me. That wasn't it's intent or goal. Was Michael Jordan a failure because he was a lousy baseball player? Or was he a success because he was a fantastic basketball player?

Open source is a fantastic success when measured against the goals it set out to reach. It's only when people try to measure it against different, inappropriate standards that it looks less than stellar.

Let open source play it's own way, and ignore the folks who try and measure it by the stats of a different game.

Re:What's your motivation?

[johnnyb]

I think the point of the FSF's position is that you don't have to extract the maximum profit possible, as long as programmers can earn a living wage, which they, and I, believe to be quite possible with Free Software. In that case, everyone wins. It's not just the developers screwing over the rest of society.

You need profit incentive.

[Nindalf]

What you're talking about is socialism. It's wasteful and inefficient. It sounds good when you assume that the money will go to the right people, but it never does, even when the officials aren't corrupt, because there are only a few officials. Capitalism gets everyone doing their best to calculate where their money will do them the most good. You still don't get perfect answers, but you generally get better ones.

Direct profit incentives from the users to the creators are possible for open source software, but require an active approach from the users, and a cooperative one from the creators. It's called open donation. It says, "Look at what this guy did! I like it so much I'm giving him money, so if you want some of my money, just be more like him!"

It's just getting rolling (there might be as little as a few million dollars a month going around as donations to for-profit groups), but it'll catch on and be big business some day. Give it time.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[martyn s]

It's wasteful and inefficient when talking about things that do not have zero marginal cost. The cost for distributing software, once it is developed, is zero. So, take roads, for example. Roads have a high fixed cost, but it doesn't cost anything extra to use it.

Capitalism works. But it doesn't work when things like intellectual property are tacked on in order to make an old model fit into to businesses. The fact is, "capitalism" doesn't work when you give people artificial monopolies. When you charge for something that has a zero marginal cost, that is inefficient.

If you are sincere in wanting to learn the truth, then read this book Steal this idea, amazon. I used to be a very strong market defender, and I still am, but in instances, like writing software, where there is a high fixed cost, but a zero marginal cost, traditional capitalism just doesn't work. I can't really explain it better than that, without writing a book, and this book does a better job than I can. Try to consider the possibility that there are certain instance when your model just doesn't work properly.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[meta-monkey]

I clicked on the amazon link your provided, and it looks like a good book. I also found the author's homepage. I find it extremely funny, however, that the book is not available for free as an electronic document.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[OwnedByTwoCats]

So, take roads, for example. Roads have a high fixed cost, but it doesn't cost anything extra to use it.

Actually, the more a road is used, the more maintenance it needs. I've seen estimates that over-the-road trucks, even with their thousands of dollars per year in taxes, are paying around half of their share of road maintenance costs.

Capitalism is fairly efficient. But only when there is reasonable competition. And the captains of industry are doing their damndest to eliminate competitive threats, denying consumers the ability to make a choice (per processor licensing fees anyone?), and reducing overall efficiency while lining their own pockets.. Recall the saga of local channels on Satellite TV.

And capitalism doesn't produce optimal results for information products. It just doesn't. Laws have been passed to grant monopoly priviledges to the information creators, but they are far from perfect. Microsoft's businss model relies on those monopoly grants. Monopolies are only efficient at lining their owners pockets and fleecing the public.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[Nindalf]

If you are sincere in wanting to learn the truth, then read this book Steal this idea, amazon.

Oh, so now we come to it, you spammy troll.

You know, it would probably be less obvious and more successful if you didn't post your referrer link half a dozen times in the same thread.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[tshak]

The cost for distributing software, once it is developed, is zero. So, take roads, for example. Roads have a high fixed cost, but it doesn't cost anything extra to use it.


Are you kidding? Do you know why states heavily tax a Semi that uses a road? Because of the incredible amount of maintenance that they cause. The same goes with software. Distributing software costs quite a bit of money. Open Source is about sharing code. However, software is not about programming. It's only 1/5th of the equation. The cost to develop may be the biggest cost, but that doesn't negate the cost to produce CD's, documentation, technical support, marketing (trust me, it's needed), general administrative costs to handle updates and customer feedback, etc.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[martyn s]

I've posted the link many other times in many other threads. In other threads I logged out of amazon.com before posting the thread so the "referrer" link wouldn't show up, but it was the same link whether I was logged in or out anyway. Is it possible I posted the link because I just don't know how to adequately explain it, and I found the book to really change my way of thinking?

Re:You need profit incentive.

[martyn s]

You're right, roads aren't even an adequate comparison. But maybe there is not proper comparison to information products. That doesn't make what I'm saying any less true.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[BadmanX]

It's obvious - if he provided the book in electronic format, then no one would buy the print copy.

Oh, wait...isn't that EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTS US SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS TO DO?

Fuck him.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[Nindalf]

Posting a link to a book for sale once is suggesting it. Posting a link to a book for sale habitually is advertising. Posting a link to a book for sale multiple times in a single thread is SPAMMING.

Bringing up arguments like, "The fact is, 'capitalism' doesn't work when you give people artificial monopolies." against a suggestion of purely voluntary donations to reward and support development of free software is TROLLING.

As for identifying the natural monopoly of road-building, for which confiscation of land is essential and a free-market solution is virtually impossible, with the anything-goes naturally free market of software... If that's not trolling, it's so mind-numbingly stupid that I'm afraid to discuss it due to the threat of intellectual
osmosis.

When you're so obviously free to give your own money to support any software development you choose, advocating government confiscation of others' money to support your preferred projects is as wicked as stealing it with your own hands. Believing that it will turn out to your benefit instead of diverting your money to support the goals of others is foolish. These are, of course, the characteristic traits of a socialist: mean-spirited idiocy under a facade of high ideals.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[martyn s]

Frankly, you can call it whatever you like, but I gain nothing from the sale of this book, so I'd hardly call it advertising.

You're right on a few points, I still believe the majority of intellectual property should be made with copyright; I just think 5 - 10 years is long enough.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[HiThere]

OK. But the marginal cost isn't really zero. It's quite small, on the close order of $5.00 for an entire Linux distribution (i.e., somewhere between $25 and $2.24). But it does exist, and it is non-zero.

I wouldn't disagree with the assertion that there is a failure of the market, but don't get mesmerized by a phantom zero marginal cost. It doesn't exist.

Re:You need profit incentive.

[fferreres]

"Posting a link to a book for sale habitually is advertising."

Not if it's on topic. And believe me this "zero marginal cost" stuff you probably think it's some new invention is the _basis_ of traditional economics. Traditional economics means that to produce 1 more item, not only you have a COST, but actually, that you have increasing costs. As more is bought, the price goes UP. UP in what amount? Well, in the amount that covers production costs. In software, the MORE you produce, the LESS it costs. So once a company has reached a dominant position, there is NO WAY a firm can compete. It's always the winner takes it all scenario.

With software, it gets even worst, because you have standalone compatibility issues (your computer) and shared compatibility issues (intercomunication, networking). Once a party reaches the top, there's NO going down.

It's predicted in every single economics introduction textbook. There's no discussion about it.

Of course they don't deal about the decresing costs of production with scale, as in the past (1800-1950) theses cases where very rare. Now they are very common.

If you read the "monopoly" chapter, you'll see how firm can leverage the monopoly to maximize revenue as he sees fit. That is, they can CHOOSE the price to sell, and people have to accept it. In a competitive scenario no single player can chose a price by itself. They can't even MOVE the price.

You can still think this is best for your country (world, universe, whatever) and, in this case, you are talking about "corporate economics". Corporations dominating the political agenda and foreign policy (and everything). This might be good or bad i don't discuss it. But this kind of economy is not "capitalism" for sure.

"...intellectual [link] osmosis [link]."

You are posting a link twice to the same exact document. I mean, you don't like people double linking unless you are the one doing it, right?

"If that's not trolling, it's so mind-numbingly stupid that I'm afraid to discuss..."

Why trolling? It's what he thinks. It may not be a perfect example (i think no analogy is needed to understand the "zero marginal cost" statement), but it may be usefull for someone to realize some times rules work differenty.

"... advocating government confiscation of others' money to support your preferred projects is as wicked as stealing it with your own hands."

Now you are _really_ trolling. First of all, the goverment charges taxes, no matter on what they plan to use that money for. You think it's great to have your mom charged taxes while buying food (sales tax, income tax, etc) and that the gov. then surrenders that money to Microsoft. And that she now owns nothing at all. Then again, using tax money to fund a company to help produce any application (same as paying to Microsoft, because they are funding Microsft in the same exact amount) is stealing. WAIT A SECOND. You are the one paying, so how can you be stealing?? Also, it's better to receive something from that money than NOTHING AT ALL.

Well, i would't have worried to answer you post, but you really really insisted on misinforming yourself and everyone else reading the thread. I couldn't resist.

GL!

Re:You need profit incentive.

[fferreres]

You are right about the road example! It's not the best example one can make. I could name a few better ones like a canal or river for traveling boats (to many the analogy better you'll have to imagine that any number of boats can accopy the same space at the same time).

But I don't agree with your other thoughts...

When was the last time Microsoft offered you a discount for downloading Windows instead of buying the CD? Or Office, for instance. Do you know how much a 200MB download costs? If not, you wouldn't be saying all this nonsense. Slakware was making a profit for selling CDs at u$s 10 or less. Wow they must have had some special CD burner or something.

Also, when was the last time you read a Windows manual? They don't even come with manuals anymore (at least the version I paid when I bought my IBM notebook and it's bundled Windows).

Also, AFAIK Open Source is NOT necesarily about sharing source. GPL and some other licenses are. Open Source is about allowing people to see the source of a given program, and giving them the ability to modify it , at least for private use.

Windows comotidizes the OS and nobody can customize it, so nobody can hve a competitive edge while using Windows. Everyone has the same unmodified thing.

And software really has zero marginal cost of production. It really does no matter how hard you try to hide that fact, it be trueby definition (of software).

One last thought. When you buy Office, you really are paying 3% for developement, 10% for marketing expenses, 2% for buying lawers and the rest if just profits. That's why Microsoft never publishes a per-product income statement. This is arguable, but i'd bet my sisters it's not far from true, at least as of now.

I didn't realize wealth was only instant money

[bons]

In my tiny small uninformed mind, I was under the impression that wealth was actually a measure of possessions, comforts, and things we begin to gather after the basics such as food, shelter, and wild sex are taken care of.

The simple truth of the matter is that there is plenty of room for closed source solutions without impacting open source at all. Games, Kiosks, and software solutions for major industries are all perfect examples of closed source that no one really minds. For example, the software that allows Visa to authorize and settle transactions probably will remain closed source for the course of my lifetime because there's no real reason to open it.

However, I don't need to be paid for all of the software I create, anymore than I need to be paid for every web page, every peice of advice, and every photo I take. many of them I can give away for free at no loss to myself.

And this is where I actually get wealthy. These contributions come back because I no longer just have access to my little bit, but I have access to everyone else's contributions as well.

When it's over I have a large photo collection, an operating system, a graphics editor, a coding enviroment, and a plethora of other tools.

As Bucky Fuller long alo realized, by giving away the right things to the right people, I can make myself wealthy.

Life is not a zero sum game.

Re:I didn't realize wealth was only instant money

[T3kno]

Actually if Porsche would release their specs you could build one yourself.

Re:I didn't realize wealth was only instant money

[dimator]

Go really fast

Re:I didn't realize wealth was only instant money

[HiThere]

Yes.

(N.B.: I'm interpreting open source to mean GPL)
Most programming is done to specialize solutions to a local environment. There's usually no particular advantage to keeping this stuff secret. And if you use GPL code as your starter, then you are more or less obligated to GPL your result. (Of course, you don't need to distribute it if you don't want to.)

What is difficult to do is to create an open source application, and then live by selling it. But be aware that it's also quite difficult to do this with a closed source application. Open source just makes it a bit more difficult.

Yeah, it's a flaw

[Henry V .009]

It takes a great deal of effort to program. If you haven't read it yet, take a look at the Mythical Man Month. A major point of that book is that the amount of time it takes to create a software project isn't directly related to the number of programmer hours invested. Unfortunately, programmer hours invested is the major benefit of open source. Organization and teamwork are second-rate when comparing open source projects to commercial projects.

To make a project work, you need one programmer investing 20 hours a week instead of (or in addition to) 100 programmers investing one hour a week. (All successful open source projects display this characteristic.)

Anybody can devote 1 hour a week to an open source project.

But the only way that we will get enough 20 hour a week programmers will be to find some way to recompense them.

Or pay them, in other words.

Re:Yeah, it's a flaw

[Stonehand]

Hm. It would seem like Sourceforge and similar sites could yield some useful statistics. For instance, what is the distribution of contributors per project, and the size of their contributions in terms of LOC or time (or, alternately, simply the number of check-ins they've done)? What percentage of projects are orphaned before they ever progress beyond buggy alpha-grade crap, or perhaps even at the design stage?

It would also be interesting, if less relevant, to learn how many of the projects there are simply derivative works (particularly common for games -- Tetris clones, *craft clones, Civ clones, Space Invaders clones, et al) instead of original designs.

Re:Yeah, it's a flaw

[Henry V .009]

You mean like this slashdot story from last week?

Re:Yeah, it's a flaw

[peddrenth]

"Anybody can devote 1 hour a week to an open source project. But the only way that we will get enough 20 hour a week programmers will be to find some way to recompense them."

Software businesses which employ hundreds of people full-time spend most of that time reinventing wheels, reprogramming things which have been done time and time again by other companies, locked away in their "I'm not sharing" intellectual-property boxes. Free software doesn't need to do that, we just write it once and it's there.

Look at Tex, Latex, gcc, grep. None of those need people to work on them, beyond perhaps a couple hours per year of minor tweaks. They don't need to spend months developing "GCC 2000/XP" just to force another upgrade, because they don't need to. It already works.

Look at Perl. It's a mature language, yet we don't see anything like the "Visual Basic .NET" department of hundreds of professional programmers working on the next release. We see Larry Wall, plus a couple of friends, writing Perl5 because it's fun.

Whenever this question comes up, it's useful to ask if we're trying to create jobs or software -- how labour-intensive do we really want to be? How commercial?

Re:Yeah, it's a flaw

[Elwood P Dowd]

It'd require a pretty significant judgment call to decide what a derivative work is. Nothing new under the sun and all... for example, someone might make a new mail reader closely based on another mail reader that they liked. Or not so closely. Drawing that line is kindof silly. All software is a derivative work to some degree.

Re:Yeah, it's a flaw

[HiThere]

Nothing wrong with a derivative work. It's a good way to learn, if nothing else.

Also, the theory of evolution is basically about derivative works. It's true that when you get people involved in the designs it doesn't work quite the same way, but I suspect that a generalization of the same priciples is at work. People usually only have a locallized understanding of the effects of their changes. (That's one of the reasons for OO programming.)

He's right, but very tunnel-visioned....

[trims]

Specifically, he's limited his view to the programmer who works for a company which is in the business to sell software. That is, where the company makes its revenue by the sales of software to someone. In that case, the programmer is the primary revenue-producing asset of the company, and there are significant reasons why Open Source isn't always the best way to do things in this market segment. In fact, I would argue, that for software-only companies, Proprietary is the best way to go for the vast majority of them. Not all, but clearly, most.

However, what he fails to understand is that software companies are at best a vocal minority of companies which produce software. Virtually all Fortune 1000 companies have staffs of in-house programmers writing custom apps. ALL government agencies have them. Hardware companies (or those whose primary interest is in selling PHYISICAL devices) have legions of programmers whose sole purpose is to cook up neat programs which help them sell their hardware. Even people such as IBM global services sell contracting time/expertise, though they produce significant software for their clients.

This second category is where Open Source makes the most sense, and where I would argue will eventually smother Proprietary. Sure, I can see companies (and organizations/governments) buying Proprietary software from the software-only companies (because it's cheaper/faster/easier to get it from them right now), but I'd expect that the mid-term results of going totally-Open Source for all code produced by them will win.

So, to quote from Return of the Jedi: "...you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." The author may very well be right in the localized case, but I sincerely think he's wrong for the general one.

-Erik

Re:He's right, but very tunnel-visioned....

[Stonehand]

It still sounds like you'd run into a prisoner's dilemma.

Action A -- spend money to fund open-source in-house development.

Action B -- mooch off those who chose Action A, and invest in your core business instead.

Nominally, the best payoff would seem to be if one chooses Action B while competitors choose Action A -- you exploit their software if it's sufficiently useful for your purposes, and treat the saved money as a competitive advantage. Of course, if everybody chooses B, then nobody has the software, heh. Alternately, if the software is so specialized so that it's absolutely useless to others (making B not possible), then action A isn't too meaningful either, because you'll probably have far fewer potential devs who know the relevant domain.

Re:He's right, but very tunnel-visioned....

[mvdwege]

No, that's the whole point: If action A saves you money, you've already won. The fact that B gets a free ride does not diminish your own profit, and is therefore irrelevant.

This is of course assuming that the potential profit of denying the free ride outweighs the profit of just being open. In the case of small incremental fixes to an already Free application this is likely to be not the case.

Only those who already have significant investments in their own proprietary tools stand to lose more than they gain. Not surprisingly, this is the proprietary software-only business. And given the monopoly, this means Microsoft and its dependents.

Mart

New poll idea?

[jcsehak]

_ I provide a donation to the developers of all the OSS projects that I use. At least, the ones that ask for it.

_ I only donate to the software projects that I feel really need my support.

_ I'm broke, but I plan to donate when I have more money. In the meantime, I'm very grateful to these programmers for their efforts.

_ I never donate any of my own money, but I convince the place I work at to use free software and donate to the developers whenever they can.

_ I never give away any of my hard-earned cash when I don't have to. Suckers!

_ Some friday nights I give CowboyNeal money to open his "source." Yowza!

WAY OFF TOPIC:
anyone else see the ThinkGeek banner ad for the green laser pointer? What do you think the chances are of them getting them to be a couple inches in diameter (rather than 532 nanometers) and stop after about 4 feet? So cool...

Re:New poll idea?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

anyone else see the ThinkGeek banner ad [slashdot.org] for the green laser pointer?

Just checked it out....I have got to get myself one of those. I nave no really need for it, but the urge is overwelming. Then again, at $150...

That's what the license says

[Kris Warkentin]

First of all, I don't think many (any?) distros are actually making money from boxed sets but let's ignore that. Lets also ignore the fact that some of the largest contributions are made by these companies (do a grep through the maintainers of gcc,gdb,etc. for @redhat.com)

The terms of the GPL make no restrictions on what is done with the source, including the sale of binaries produced from that source as long as the source is made available.

No Open Source programmer is forced to release his work under those terms but if he does, he is undoubtably aware of the ramifications. To argue whether it is fair or not is utterly silly because the author released the code himself.

Economic Ripple Effect requires Free Software

[3seas]

rather than repeating myself This usenet post covers why there is no other way.

I've posted information and links regarding commercial autocoding here and in usenet before.
Use google to do a usenet search, if you are so inclined.

Open Source:Risk and Rewards

[Mittermeyer]

The reason Open Source has not won through is twofold- large companies who could trivially pay 2-3 programmer's out of pocket change see Open Source as a huge liability (sued for misbehaving code, not getting 24x7 support because it's one guy who just went squirrel hunting or security risk), and programmers don't do it because momma Microsoft/IBM/whatever isn't there with a secure paycheck.

This cycle feeds on itself, as a major issue for corporations is not having a steady stream of Open Source programmers familiar with the major packages to support to be available and drive down costs, and programmers don't get into it due to the cash flow problem.

This kind of thinking is backwards- the risk is NOT having the source so you can bring in whatever programmer to fix or modify a problem. Black box solutions is giving the store to the vendor and increases costs, because now you have to pay for the original programmer AND his bosses AND the profit margin for the company, and if you don't your captured system will not be running long.

The lawsuit risk should be minimized (you had the source code, you had the chance to totally vet the code before running it), but that will depend on whether common sense or industry shills will win out.

For a tenth of what they pay the vendors corporate America can have all the customized secure programming they want without being held up by the vendors, and still have plenty for the programmers. This fact alone will drive Open Source into the mainstream.

As for the programmers, it's simply a matter of letting their programs go and creating a demand for their customization and service. It won't be everyone's cup of tea as the paychecks will not be regular and creativity/vision does not necessarily go along with programming skills.

BCG Study - yes, a lot are paid

[NZheretic]

A good place to start is this recent survey "BCG Study Highlights Factors Contributing to Success of Open Source Software". There is a copy of the sides for the talk in PDF format.

Actually a lot of people writing the software are employed to provide software based solutions. Open source development and free ( GPL/LGPL ) licensing provide a very productive way of encoraging participation in collaborative development. It can provide better solutions to the use of proprietary close source packages.

See Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!

90% of programmers don't work on creating shrink wrap software but on customising solutions for clients.

From a personal perspective it is far more intellectually rewarding to the joint developer/user. You really can know exactly how the damm thing works and you can in most cases fix or adapt it to your own, your client or your employers needs. Do you wish to live and work in an enviroment where every damm box has the lable "No Serviceable Components Inside"?

As for free GPL/LGPL licensing; the reality of the current employment market is that jobs come and go - BUT, you can take the knowledge you have gain though developing and adapting free licensed software and approach other users of that software for either employment or as clients. You DONT have to "start from scratch" with each job.

If you are a programmer, in the long run, the open source free licensed software model makes it easier for you to remain employed. Unless, that is, your sole career plan consists of being employed by Microsoft.

Another question, how many of those programmers expect to use the open source they contibute at their current and future places of employment?

Re:free as in free speach, not free as in free bee

[dinivin]

Although the free software movement is all about "free as in speech", if the software is not "free as in beer" in one form or another (binaries or source) it is not considered free (and also a violation of the GNU license).


Since when? I can write GPLed software and sell the binaries and source if I want. There's nothing in the GPL to prevent me from doing that.

Dinivin

Confusion About Open Source

[zentec]

This further shows the huge confusion surrounding "Open Source".

Open Source does not equate to free. Granted, most of the open source software *is* free and charging for something when you post the source on the Internet is very hard, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Open Source means that the source code is available, regardless of the purchase or licensing details. The dearly departed folks at Galacticomm practiced Open Source before there was such a thing. You purchased their BBS package and if you decided you wanted to modify it, you purchased the development kit and off you went. How Open Source can you get?

Of course, the argument is that you can't make money at that, is totally false. I sold nearly 1,000 licenses for my modules for MBBS at $299 a piece, each with the source code gleefully included on the floppy.

If the Open Source community is to survive, they need to fix this flawed perception in the computing community.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[ftobin]

I'm willing to bet that you're no longer making money like this. The 80s are over. Your story is irrelevant.

Perhaps he couldn't make money doing the exact same, thing, but that doesn't mean that as an enterprising Open Source author, he can't figure out another system where he ends up actually selling the software.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[sheldon]

I'm afraid you have confused the definition of "Open Source"...

With real "Open Source" you don't license your software... you give it away for free, and also allow others to freely redistribute it.

Personally I like your definition better, but it's not strictly accurate. Read the GNU Manifesto for more information.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[Stonehand]

You can create your own bogus interpretations of phrases, but don't be surprised when they create massive communications difficulties if you choose completely different definitions.

Providing source under expensive, restricted licensing isn't open source, despite your implication that it is. Providing source for, at most, a nominal distribution charge IS -- and if the source distribution includes such an obligation, it approaches GPL, whereas a "you can have the source and I don't care what you do with it" attitude leads to BSD.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[tshak]

You are not speaking of the GNU/GPL'd license or any BSD based license (the two most popular OSS licenses). What you are speaking of it closer to Microsoft's Shared Source license.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[_Sprocket_]

You are close, but not QUITE on the mark. True, Open Source does not always mean without compensation. But a true Open Source license not only involves inclusion of source code, but also allows the code to be further distributed.

In theory, a company could develop Open Source software but refuse to provide copies of that source code to anyone but customers. But with todays Internet environment, that would simply provide a very short delay before that source code was available and widely distributed through other sources (without the stigma of copyright infringement).

The dearly departed folks at Galacticomm practiced Open Source before there was such a thing. You purchased their BBS package and if you decided you wanted to modify it, you purchased the development kit and off you went. How Open Source can you get?

As others have pointed out, this is hardly Open Source. This is the purchase of a development kit that includes source code as part of its offering.

But could Galacticomm, or you and your modules, make a business out of open source? Perhapse. But how?

Open Source licensing and the nature of information and the Internet pretty much eliminates business models based on scarcity (which is the realm of proprietary software business). So what we're left with is service. The business model would be based on several offerings: technical support, turn-key installations, customized code, training, etc.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[Tony-A]

Real "Open Source" is SOURCE not LICENSE.
Open Source has nothing to do with giving anything away for free.
GNU is Open Source. Not all Open Source is GNU. Some Open Source is not GNU. GNU is one of several Open Source licenses.
GNU insists that whoever has the program has essentially the same rights as for a work for hire, except that these rights keep passing on.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[sheldon]

Fine... From the Open Source Definition

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[sheldon]

Fine... From the Open Source Definition

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[sheldon]

Fine... From the Open Source Definition

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[sheldon]

Trust me, I've used the same argument as you before. While it makes for interesting trolling, it simply doesn't fly.

The modern definition of Open Source, the one that everybody thinks of today is essentially free software. It has to abide by the rules of the FSF and the Open Source Initiative in that redistribution is permittable with no restrictions.

Again, I would prefer the definition that you are using, but that is simply not the reality of the situation.

Re:Confusion About Open Source

[Tony-A]

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
Exactly. Whoever has the program can do with it whatever they want, except that ALL RESPONSIBILITY now passes to whoever is selling or redistributing the software. That's why I can copy Red Hat Linux and call it Pink Bow Tie Linux but get into trouble if I attempt to give proper attribution for the stuff I copied.

SuSE

[psicE]

What about Linux Company #2, the only one with a development lab comparable to RedHat - SuSE?

Search on the Internet. No matter how hard you look, you won't be able to find a downloadable current-version SuSE ISO. You can't buy one off Cheapbytes, either. The best you can do is download 7.2, two versions behind the current 8.0; or download an FTP bootdisk, something that only Linux experts will do and that doesn't work anyway if you have no net connection.

So if you want a copy of SuSE on CD, you have no choice but to buy a box set. Which generates income to pay programmers.

Open source isn't a business model period, so you can't say whether or not it's a viable one. It's simply a software development technology. You can have software libre that's not gratis, and make a company around it; essentially, Microsoft with far better corporate ethics and the GPL. That's a business model, and it works.

Re:I had seen this myself....

[jerdenn]

I would like to know what pieces of open source software you use, either personally or professionally, that you or your company have "funded".

Sure - RTEMS. It's an RTOS that my very-large-but-not-to-be-named company uses for one of our hardware products. We buy support from the vendor, contribute patches if we find a bug, etc. It's actually a pretty good deal for us. We don't want to have to write the OS ourselves, but at the same time we need access to the source if we need to make a change...

-jerdenn

Escrow accounts for User-funded software

[flacco]

Getting people to pay for something they can download for free isn't easy. I think the answer is to get the money up-front, but still make the results of the work open source:

• Develop a product spec and series of development milestones.
• Get contributions toward the project (from individuals as well as corps) and hold the cash in escrow.
• Pay out portions of the escrow as milestones are achieved.
• Completed work gets GPL'ed as it is released.

Of course there are a thousand and one details and obstacles to this approach.

Among them: getting contributors to accept that the work they've paid for will be used for free by lots of people.

They will simply have to want it bad enough to accept that, and to understand that this funding model, while not equal, is reciprocal. They will end up using other software that has been developed under the same model, but that they did not want bad enough to contribute to. Having the cost spread out among all the "project founding members" might make it easier to swallow.

Another: There will have to be some minimalist project management involved. Policies and procedures for accepting developers into the paid developers pool - and removing them as well. How to divvy up payments equitably. Project and milestone definition itself will be an up-front task that might end up being uncompensated.

You might see mercenary developers grouping together to service these kinds of projects, particularly in regions of high technical skill but low economic activity. If it provides acceptable pay and a steady income, the groups might evolve into more formal business arrangements, and offer to take on project and milestone definition up-front, as well as handle personnel-related issues.

And of course: It would require a reputable organization to handle the funds, arbitrate disputes, etc.

If this approach yielded a few quality projects with satisfied participants, it could snow-ball. The very idea of open source / GPL software seemed simply crazy to me a few years ago. Now it's the most natural thing in the world. Open source funding models could catch on too, as open source / GPL gain more converts and respectability in the mainstream.

Software Limitations?

[anthony_dipierro]

Who makes money in software anyway? Microsoft? I'm sure if Linux was nearly as good as Windows Hewlett Packard and Dell would be happy to pay the programmers who work on it.

I don't want open source to "win"

[JWhitlock]

Some people seem to think open source wins when Microsoft looses so much money to Linux that it has to close up shop, and no one can make money at programming because the open-source horde can do it for free.

I just want a robust community of open source programmers making robust implementations for known computer problems. When Apache makes web servers easy and free, there is little money in making cheap web servers for individuals, and no programmers get stuck reinventing the wheel. Instead, programmers can get paid to take web servers to the next level, to iron out security holes, to improve reliability and scalability, and work on the really interesting stuff.

Neal Stephenson had a great model for thinking about the software world. On earth, life exists in a narrow band - a few feet into the ground and about a mile above. Some organisms survive at the extremes of temperature or pressure or lack of atmosphere, but the ecosphere really is just a thin shell.

Microsoft and other software producers live in that narrow shell. Open source takes up room in that shell, pushing the non-free producers out of easy habitats like web servers and legacy hardware support. It forces them to move into more difficult terrains, to work harder to make the same amount of money. Stephenson seems to think the software ecosphere might be restricted, that eventually open source will push the closed source developers off the map - instead, I believe the closed source developers will now be free to chart that uncharted territory, to expand the survivability sphere.

As long as there are clients that need customized solutions, there will be programmers getting paid. As long as there are general solutions that everyone agrees on, open source will be squeezing out the closed source producers. I, for one, hope that Microsoft continues to "innovate", pushing computers into new territories, and creating homogenized landscapes in it's wake that the open-source virus can take over. Because, at my heart, I'm a programmer, and I hate the thought of doing something twice...

Re:I don't want open source to "win"

[flacco]

Some people seem to think open source wins when Microsoft looses so much money to Linux that it has to close up shop, and no one can make money at programming because the open-source horde can do it for free.

No, I think open source wins when it makes it infeasible for MS to continue its predatory practices. When MS can no longer coerce its customers to do things that are in MS's interest instead of their own. When MS stops corraling its consumer-level users into greater world-domination schemes like passport. When MS can no longer get away with perverting standards.

There is a place for MS in my world, but not in its current state. It has to concede to the notion that it's part of a greater, heterogenous computing community and start cooperating with others instead of dominating, raping, and pillaging wherever it goes.

I, for one, hope that Microsoft continues to "innovate", pushing computers into new territories, and creating homogenized landscapes in it's wake that the open-source virus can take over.

First, a lot of people would argue with your claim that Microsoft innovates. It buys, assimilates, integrates, locks in, and then it markets. Where it does innovate, proprietary standards (or one-way standards support) and lock-in are first principles in its design processes.

Second, the computing landscape you describe would not be formed by natural forces; the resulting environment would be carefully engineered to be inhospitable to "the open-source virus" (if not totally uninhabitable). Think "software patents".

Re:I don't want open source to "win"

[IamTheRealMike]

As long as there are clients that need customized solutions, there will be programmers getting paid. As long as there are general solutions that everyone agrees on, open source will be squeezing out the closed source producers. I, for one, hope that Microsoft continues to "innovate", pushing computers into new territories, and creating homogenized landscapes in it's wake that the open-source virus can take over. Because, at my heart, I'm a programmer, and I hate the thought of doing something twice...

Exactly - I agree with this totally. People seem to be getting a bit confused about what the goals of the "open source movement" really is. The fact is, like most revolutionary movements, everyone in it has different ideas and goals.

I have written and will probably continue to write open source software, but does that mean I want all software to be free/libre? No, it doesn't. My view is simple: the platforms should be free. I use Linux, partly because it rocks, and partly because of ideology: I don't think anyone should control the platform (of which the OS is a part) because that gives them too much power - ie Microsoft. But if I was an artist, I'd pay for Photoshop quicker than you can say jack flash.

I mean really, there is a post earlier that makes the point that some/most software will never be open sourced, because nobody really cares. At the end of the day, do I care whether my painting program is open source? No, not really. Yes, the fact that the gimp is free is nice, especially since I don't have much money, but it's not necessary.

This leads me to confidently predict that commercial software on Linux will begin to thrive shortly, as people take advantage of an open platform, in the same way that the open nature of the IBM PC caused the hardware industry to thrive. There'll always be people who think that ALL software should be free, but they'll be the distinct minority.

Finally, to all the people I see posting here saying "Oh my god, OSS is going to put all programmers out of a job", I implore you to read the parent post. If there's a good piece of open sourced software that does the job, then use it, improve it, benefit from it and go make your money by pushing things forward. If the only open source piece of software that exists doesn't meet peoples needs, then make it and sell it. But please remember, operating systems, text editors, painting programs and web servers are all tiny parts of the whole computer market.

Re:I don't want open source to "win"

[HiThere]

Open Source doesn't "win" until not only MS, but all the other (insert slur here) stop being able to buy laws that can cripple it.

Open Source "wins" as soon as that happens. (Quite unlikely, says I.)

Open Source doesn't "loose" until every legislature in the world so mungs up their laws that it's illegal. (Also quite unlikely.)

Alternative scenario: Open Souce could also loose if all hardware manufacturers switch to hardware that can only work with closed source software. (Still quite unlikely, but a bit more likely.)

Alternative scenario: Open Source could also win if every major hardware manufacturer started supplying hardware that would not work without the source code for the drivers being available. (Not only quite unlikely, but not a secure win.)

So in my estimation, both "win" and "loose" are quite unlikely. Temporary wins and losses are definitely much more likely. If, e.g., Open Source ever runs on over half of the sold computers, that would count as a temporary win. I don't really consider this unlikely if China or India ever start a serious push toward computer literacy. The US could turn into a backwater very quickly. We'd better hope that it's India rather than China, or we could be faced with some tough language learning problems. (Have you looked at the Ruby documentation? A lot of it's in Japanese. Hiragana, I think. I understand that it's rather easy for people literate in Chinese to read it, but to me it's ... unintelligible. Fortunately, a lot of it's been translated into English. But many of the web pages where libraries are documented, haven't been translated.)

my simple theorem

[Dr. Awktagon]

Open Source software exists. Therefore, it is viable. If it wasn't, it wouldn't exist.

Or is that too simple??

Re:my simple theorem

[Stonehand]

Simpler -- read the bloody article next time. If you had, you'd know that the author isn't claiming that Open Source is never viable; instead, he's attacking the idea that everything should be open source instead of having coexistence between open source and proprietary software.

A different model

[Chris Colohan]

Several folks are advocating a different model. It doesn't involve programmers working for nothing. It involves both money-making companies and free software.

Suppose the government (or a school board, or a bank...) needed a disk repartitioning tool. They previously had a few choices:

1. Find a commercial package and license it.
2. Develop it in house.
3. Hire an outside firm to develop it for them.

The "new" idea here is this: the company or government in question is not in the software development business. They just want to get their job done. They can develop it in house, or contract out the programming and make sure it is in their contract that they are able to give away the source code.

Why would they want to do this? Naive reasons include it "feels good", or free support will fall from the sky. Better reasons include:

• If the software is truly useful to others and they improve it (perhaps contracting out the job of creating improvements to the same or other development firms) then the original developers could benefit from those improvements.
• If they get unhappy with their current development firm it might be easier to hire another development firm to maintain the software if the source is unencumbered.
• If a quick or minor change is needed in the software then the source is available to do this, without having to negotiate with an outside development firm.
• Once you have paid for the development of the software there are no longer recurring expenses such as licensing fees or compliance audits. The cost of maitenance may be cheaper.

My main point is this: Free software does not have to be built by volunteers. You can hire professional developers to create and maintain free software if your business or government relies on this software. "Open source" and "free software" are two models for doing this.

There exists an example of this. Gcc is licensed under the GPL. Many people rely on it for their jobs: this compiler is used by many folks to create code for embedded applications, unusual hardware, research, and mainstream applications. Often a company will need a specific improvement, or need it to be ported to a new operating system, or support for new hardware, etc. It appears that Cygnus exists mainly for the purpose of doing paid improvements to gcc. (I have worked for companies that have hired them for exactly that.) The folks who work for Cygnus don't work for free, and they often are quite good at what they do. Many other programs could follow similar models...

He has a point, but there is more

[PotatoHead]

I value open source. Things have evolved to the point where I am able to rely on OSS tools to do my home and hobby computing as well as a high percentage of business computing.

In trade for all of these tools, I chose to return the favor by writing something others could use. http://viewstl.sourceforge.net This effort is not stellar from a programmers point of view, but it does fill a need.

If you consider OSS as a barter system, it works pretty well. Those of us who can write code do. Others help with feedback, or perhaps documentation. Still others decide to buy a boxed distro from time to time. (I know this does not directly benefit the authors of the software, but it does contribute back to OSS in general.) You can follow this line of reasoning and find many ways that people benefit from their OSS work.

A very high percentage of everyday computing needs today are now able to be met with OSS tools. The effort required to get here is huge. Once we finish this task, a large percentage of OSS projects will be in update mode, not create mode.

The benefit here is indirect but worth quite a bit if you consider the alternatives. We have together built a reliable computing platform. Personally I value this highly. It is an important check on the control that software companies seek over us.

Going into the future, given that OSS does reach the masses, means that new software development can either come from closed commercially funded interests like it does today, or from open efforts, or both.

The key here is that we all need an open base to work on. OSS preserves choice while providing a necessary check on commercial software development. If there is no OSS then we basically get to develop what others think we should be developing.

I have no problems with running closed commercial binary only code on my Linux machine. If the application fills a need in a way that gives me a good return on my money, I will buy it. This line of thinking really is not any different for either closed or open computing platforms.

I will not however, purchase software that provides little return. Basic software fits into this catagory. Word processors, spreadsheets, image editors, mp3 players, mail readers and web browsers all have been done before. We know how to do them so why pay again each year for the same tools.

As soon as technology matures to the point where high school to mid-college students are capable of providing applications that fill the need, we all have paid enough and need to move on. Most of what I mentioned above fits perfectly.

If this sounds like OSS is being positioned as old tech, maybe it is to a point. Established needs are where the model works best. The audience is large; therefore, more of us have some incentive to make sure the tools are there. If we don't, then they must be paid for.

New tech works in a couple of ways though. Commercial development happens as part of a business plan. The software is written for the specific purpose of making the company shareholders maximum return. This does not mean that it is the best software or approach, it only means that it pays the company bill.

OSS new tech is exciting to me because it is free of the shareholder shackles. This also does not mean that the software is good, but it does mean that all of us have a say in how it all goes. Over the long term as the projects suffer natural selection, really good tech will emerge.

Companies will get theirs done faster, but OSS efforts will be better overall.

So really we all get paid something. Is it cold cash? Maybe, if somebody notices and people end up with jobs. In most cases though, the payback is the freedom to choose how we all get our computing done. It may not pay the bills (which is why we all have our day jobs), but it is important as this young digital age matures.

OSS is needed right now. That alone will ensure that people continue to do the work.

Re:Open source is about freedom, not profit

[OwnedByTwoCats]

I think there is a whine about how people can't make money from Open Source software because Microsoft can't make money from Open Source software. And that scares them. Their two bread-and-butter software categories: Operating Systems and Office Suites, now have to compete against open-source competitors. Microsoft has never been about being better than the competition; they started out being cheaper; once that drove out the competition (CPM-86 & P-system, mostly) they moved to "don't let anyone choose to not pay you". They crushed their competition in office apps using similar tactics.

What happens when Wine gets "good enough"? Who would pay Microsoft the $49/year that they want for their every-other-year updates?

goat sex

[bcrowell]

The reply before this one is a link to the infamous goat sex photo.

John Carrol

[theolein]

This is the second pro-Microsoft(implicit) article written by John Carrol for ZDNet. The first was a flame article about Nokia's testimony against Microsoft in the trial.

Anyone who has ever spent any wasted hours on the ZDNet talkbacks will recognise John Carrol as one of those wierd posters who would spend hours posting responses in threads very similar to these two articles (and not always shorter either). Always very, very staunchly pro-Microsoft in any situation irrespective of what the article in question was about. Once there was an article about the trial and someone posted the obvious reference about MS using shady tactics to kill off a competitor and that this formed a big hurdle to anyone developing for Win32 because if the product was good, MS would either buy it out or kill the company. JC responded with comments about how MS made better standards than the w3c or ECMA and that anyone could build off these standards.

Basically his line has always been that:
a)Microsoft is a great company
b)MS technology is the most advanced and the best
c)MIcrosoft's technology benefit's everyone
d)MS' business model is superior

So, he does seem to be a bit obsessed. (Here's a link to his trial RFC letter: John Carrol vs. the world)

My only question I would ever have for him is why is he so worried about Microsoft going down the drain if they are in fact as superior as he claims that he has to post repeated articles about it on trash mags like ZDNet? What is also interesting about him is that he used to be a "Windows" distributed software developer and he is now a "Java and .Net" developer. It seems his employers weren't as keen on a MS only solution as he was.

Re:John Carrol

[theolein]

What on earth is this meant to be?

Redhat and Mandrake proprietary? Since when?

[aquarian]

Since when are Redhat, Mandrake, and even VA selling proprietary code? Everything Redhat creates is still open source, right down to their installation program. I don't know for sure Mandrake or VA are like this too, but as a long time Mandrake user I've never seen any proprietary software, except for other companies' stuff like Wordperfect that has been bundled with their distribution. But proprietary Mandrake software? No way...

Re:free as in free speach, not free as in free bee

[Peyna]

Actually, you're not correct. You don't have to provide a free way to obtain the source code, I suggest you read this: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGP LAllowMoney and related stuff.

Re:You, and Hufschmid, are idiots

[bsartist]

they just don't need little green pieces of paper to make themselves happy.

I don't need money to be happy, but apparently my landlord does. So does the owner of the grocery store where I shop for food. So does the electric company, without whose services my computer wouldn't work, and my ISP, without whose services I'd be unable to distribute the software I write.

Philosophy

[Sivar]

I believe it was Aristotle that taught that the soul (in a non-religious context) is made of three parts:

Appetite, honor, and reason.

One's essence--that is, one's personality and the traits that define him/her, are composed of a mixture of the three, like any color is made of a mixture of R, G and B.

Appetite includes a persons need for gain (i.e. money)
Honor includes a persons need for recognition.
Reason includes a persons need for knowledge. About 80% of people are mostly "appetite." Good examples of "honor" people are soldiers and journalists; good examples of "reason" people are scientists that find interviews and talkshows "an irritating distraction from their work."

Obviously, ZDNet is mostly composed of those of "appetite" to the degree that they cannot even understand a person which cares for things other than personal gain, i.e. money. Sad...

Re:Philosophy

[BrianWCarver]

It was Plato, not Aristotle who had the tri-partite theory of the soul. Also, the part you refer to as "Honor" was more often referred to as "Spirit", though a soldier's courage was a typical example of the spirt-part taking the lead. Also, Plato thought the soul was only in balance when Reason led the way. I'm not sure he ever speculated on what % of people were controlled primarily by appetite, but 80% would be a sorely pessimistic estimate. (Not saying that it couldn't be true!) Also, while I agree it is sad that John Carroll can't seem to imagine someone caring for things other than personal gain, it seems to me that the more relevant criticism of his article is how sorely he has misunderstood Free software and open source software, constantly misusing the terms and making false assumptions about all such software being zero-cost.

Re:Philosophy

[Sivar]

Yes, all true. I'm a little rusty on my philosophy, but the core idea was there. :)

Re:Open source is about freedom, not profit

[bolthole]

. P.S. He might want to ask the people at SendMail how they make a profit :-)

I thought they made it by selling a proprietary version of sendmail that you're not allowed to use without paying them money. And you may or not get source, but are you allowed to redistribute it? or binaries even?

I'm not sure, but i think the answer to both of those questions is 'no'.which makes it neither free software, nor 'open source'

Re:Redhat and Mandrake proprietary? Since when?

[ergo98]

He covered Redhat in services, and VA has HEAVILY gone the way of proprietary code with Sourceforge (the fact that no one cries foul on here astounds me regarding that): VA had to turn to what, ironically, most of its mouthpieces cast as pure evil, to have a hope of surviving. I presume that Mandrake makes a living on services.

Re:Tells you quite a bit...

[bolthole]

There is nothing "restrictively licensed" about java.

There are free java servlet engines, and jsp generators. There are free jvms.

Pay writers, not programmers?

[aozilla]

So will you be licensing your new book "Managing RAID on Linux" under the OPL or the GFDL?

Re:The Response

[johnnyb]

What it really missed was the fact that the editorial outright LIED about the FSF's stance. They even point to the article. The FSF does NOT think that the computing effort will be done only by people who do it for fun. They, in fact, are funded in a large part by selling software development services.

The entire original article is based on a complete fabrication of the opposing side. It's always easy to beat an opponent you make up.

AHHHH! Drives me nuts.

OSS adopting the closed source revenue model

[budGibson]

Recently Redhat issued Advanced Server 2.1 and Suse Suse Linux Enterprise Server 7. Both are presumptively open source. You can get the source RPMs for the redhat product at their mirror sites. But to actually get working versions of the products, you have to shell out $1500 and $600 respectively. I would argue that the complexity of actually getting either product to work precludes just compiling from the sources, except perhaps for an expert few with time on their hands.

Contrast this scheme with the base version of each vendors product where you can get ISO images basically for free.

Enternprise Software Vendors are starting to support only the for-pay versions of Suse's and Redhat's products. For instance, Oracle 9i release 2 only has plans to support SLES 7 and AS 2.1, whereas before they supported the (basically available for free) stock distribution of Redhat and Suse. So what's the difference between open and closed source? Well with open source, you can look under the hood, and the licensing model does seem lower cost. But, the free lunch of just a year ago (when I installed Oracle 8i on RH 6.2) has gone away.

What good is a program if you're unable to grok?

[rice_burners_suck]

I have to agree that Mr. Carroll has overlooked some important facts, but I think it's because folks in the open source community, including the companies that pay those folks to be in the community, misrepresent their reasons for developing open source. Some say, for example, that they sell free software plus value added services. (That's almost as bad as when Be, Inc. defined an Internet Appliance as being a refrigerator with a computer display, and said they're shifting focus to refrigerators instead of announcing the addition of a new product line. And then all the developers freaked out and ditched the platform altogether, and I turned my BeOS comps into FreeBSD boxen. FreeBSD rocks, by the way.)

You're not selling software plus value added services. You're selling valuable technology solutions. The software, being a non-tangible detail, is supplied for free. (It doesn't matter that the software is 101 percent of the work/solution and the rest is sticking a CD in the tray and pushing some buttons. If you want people outside the software field to understand what you're talking about, you have to talk to them like the idiots they are.)

Yeah. I know Mr. Carroll is a programmer.

Re:It could be a flaw...

[johnnyb]

The GPL is great for non-profit and 'hobby' applications but just won't work for products such as, say, photoshop.

********

Or say, the GIMP? You are looking at the wrong model of software development. Instead of thinking about a software house producing a piece of software and trying to get world+dog to send them money, think about an industry that would be benefitted by software, and willing to pay a development house to build it. All industries have associations. It is in their best interest to be the ones directly funding the creation of softare for their groups - because then it works exactly as they require. Plus, it eliminates the need to keep it proprietary.

The old model is completely backwards and broken. It was similar to the lottery in how it paid it's investors back. It puts the users against the developers. It gives the developers more money by screwing over the users.

Supply, demand, and price are very linked. You can't separate them. If there is enough demand, then either a) there is a supply of people who will volunteer to fill it, or b) the market will find a way to fund the people to develop it. If the demand is for free (as in speech) software, then the market, on it's own, will find it's way to compensate enough people enough to create the software. Period. It's the way a market economy works. Unfortunately, not enough people trust the market economy, and think they have to do it someone else's way for things to work out.

Atempts to limit the domain of Linux & open so

[NZheretic]

Very few linux or open source advocates boast that Linux based solutions are the best 100% of the time, however that does not mean that a Linux/Open source based solution CAN NEVER provide a substitute in the same application domain.

The kind of argument you present is nothing more than a blatent attempt to limit the domain were Linux is "acceptable" to use.

For medium to large organizations, Linux with KDE and/or GNOME is an execelent option in terms of Total Cost Of Ownership. The technology is certainly not the limiting factor.

Exactly when did PC based Desktop systems become the 'sacrosanct' sole domain of Microsoft?

Consider Michael Tiemann's testimony...

NAAG Homepage ; Microsoft Antitrust Case Documents ; Witness Direct Testimony Submitted to the Court ; Mar. 21, 2002, Michael Tiemann, Chief Technology Officer, Red Hat, Inc.

72. Other hardware manufacturers have demonstrated similar fear of being seen as promoting Linux on the desktop, even as they embrace Linux in areas in which Microsoft does not compete. For example, in January of this year, I participated in a meeting in which Red Hat, IBM and Intel each gave presentations aimed at convincing news organization that, working together, we could deliver a Linux-based platform to which company could profitably port its popular financial services software. During Intel's pitch, however, the Intel representative projected a bizarre slide onto the screen it was the word desktop, with a red circle around it and a slash drawn through it.

73. The slide was bizarre for at least two reasons first, we were all there to convince news organization of the virtues of Linux; and second, we were pitching the company on Linux servers. The desktop remark was not only embarrassing, it was wholly gratuitous. Intel had gone to lengths to make clear to all that it had no interest whatsoever in supporting Linux on the desktop, a point that was irrelevant at best, and counterproductive at worst, while trying to close a major business deal. The slide appeared to be a necessary component of their presentation about Linux; a protective shield if questioned about the relationship.

74. These incidents are particularly informative when one considers that Dell and Intel are multibillion-dollar companies and leaders in their industry. Such giants nevertheless appear to operate with a sensitivity to the possible Microsoft reaction. It is a problem that I have seen throughout the industry and with many customers. It is one that will prevent the preinstallation of Red Hat Linux on desktop computers a critical step in one day restoring the potential for real competition in the operating system market.

So the question arises, is you line of argument just another attempt to limit the domain of open source?

Open Source Business Models

[ReuabLeahcim]

I did an analysis of about 35 "Open Source Businesses" a little while ago. The analysis was informal but it's pretty clear you just can't build a scalable business on open source. Sure, you can build a nice little consulting business, but you just can't build a significant margin-based business. Simple economics. Hasn't worked. Doesn't work. I'm not going to argue the ethics of this, just the economics.

I tried to address this issue of programmers not getting paid with a larger article about Open Corporations that advocated that open source emulated the music industry more and compensate programmers like rock stars.

Re:Open Source Business Models

[Alex Belits]

Why would anyone want to build a large business? To hire more middle managers who will eat a lot, and demand higher margins?

I must agree with carrol

[pfharlock]

I love open source, I don't use closed source because I disagree with it and don't which to support it. I believe that the GPL is the best open source liscense because it is the most restrictive on those that would try and captialize on something that by it's nature should be free, however, I can see no argument in this mans logic. He is not attacking open source, he is simply stating that proprietary software has a place and indeed it does. If I were a buisinessman that needed software to do something, and I had the means to hire somebody to write software to fill my need to the letter, then fine. I currently do not fit into this catagory, but I don't think there's anything wrong with it. The danger of closed source software is that it becomes so pervasive that people start getting used to the idea of idea's being owned. An algorythm cannot by it's nature be owned any more than mathematical formuli, but corps stand allot to gain by playing the lets trade patents game. Keeps them in buisiness and undersirables out of the equation. They will learn that in this arena things are different, indaviduals do have a voice, and left with no other option we will use our voice to undercut them at their own game, helping ourselves, and ultimately them by making idea's that they trade to the point of stalemate anyway free for anybody to use. Software is meant to make things possible, not to be a commodity itself, but to make things in the real world run more smoothly, (ie product tracking systems, assembly line controls, calculations that automate safety systems, etc, etc, etc). Software is the platonic substance of legend, it doesn't exist anywhere but in the realm of imagination and yet it makes so many things possible. The value of software is not how much you can sell it for, but what it can do for you in your real world work. I realize that I seem to be countering my own point, however, a company paying to have software written and then keeping it to themselves for their own use is fine in my book. It's their attempt to invent standards for common use and make money off of the software itself rather than it's fruits that grates me. Microsoft has invented a buisiness model that totally goes against capitalism, in which the cost of production is nothing or next to nothing, but the returns are astounding. When they sell software, it's almost all profit, why do you think they have as much standing cash on hand as they have and they can afford to pay their company officers as much as they do, because they have nothing else to spend it on. This is not capitalism people, it is artificial monopoly enforced by copyright and patent law. Copyright and patents were never designed to be misused in such a fashion. All right, my rant is over, I'm sorry, Hope I didn't blow anyone's eardrum out.

if it's not open source, it's something else

[g4dget]

Programmers and software companies have gotten used to a level of pay and profit that is simply not economically justified. Right now, software companies are reaping enormous profits by re-selling the same software over and over again, as well as through various monopolistic practices. Like any other industry, profit in the software industry should tend towards zero as the industry matures. And open source is a good way of getting there: with open source, you just pay for the increment in functionality you need. If the mechanism weren't open source, it would be something else: industry consortia, government mandates, software buyers organizations, etc. On balance, open source is probably by far the best mechanism of making the software market efficient.

That doesn't mean that people can't earn a living at doing software. Even with open source (or other, equivalent mechanisms of an efficient software market) customers still pay for enhancements, consulting, deployment, training, and documentation. But it means that what you will earn with software is the equivalent of a decent hourly wage as for any other profession; instant riches through the stock market or persistent market domination must sooner or later become a thing of the past for software.

Re:Linux Community? What's That?

[jred]

Lots of other people are using, too, but that doesn't make us some kind of community. It just makes a bunch of people with one shared interest.

Actually, from dictionary.com:

community Pronunciation Key (k-myn-t)
n. pl. communities

2. a. A group of people having common interests: the scientific community; the international business community.

So, yes. We are a community. *I* feel like I'm a part of the "Linux Community". I don't contribute much, but I can help with the dummie newbie questions (without snide superiority complexes). I give what I can, and take what I need.

Damn, I'm starting to feel like a communist :)

what are you talking about?

[Erris]

Open source is great for people out of work, or screwing around. It sucks if you have 3 kids and a wife, and need insurance, and all the other perks a job offers.

Who says you have to be unemployed to use free code? If you want to get things done, the fastest, cheapest and most sustainable way to do it is now with free code. The world is realizing this as trolls like you and ZDnet authors continue to write nonsense about not being able to earn money as the sun sets on boxed code. People who get things done will always be able to earn a good living. Free code is available to do anything non-free code does and generally does it better. Those who know how to use it will do just fine. Those who ignore it will continue to suffer for their ignorance.

The very idea of the article, that software can only be developed the way M$ does things, falls on it's face when you look at all the fantastic free software available. M$ has managed to develop one GUI with several minor variations and facelifts in ten years. There are several unerlying graphics managers available for Linux, BSD and other free software. On top of that there are dozens if not hundreds of window managers, all of which have significantly better performance and features to Windoze. Virtual desktops and pannels are common to most popular window managers. All are easier to use and configure, with text configuration files for each user and customizable popup menues in easy reach rather than at the bottom corner of the screen. Yet each window manager retains it's uniqueness so that users can chose which one they prefer before they start customizing or, if they chose, modify to their particular purpose. No comercial entity can keep up with the develpment pace. Monetary intrests inherent in their develpment model can hamper them, delaying the release of a new feature in order to sell a new version for example. Oh yeah, can you tell me what M$'s One Billion Dollar promotion of XP did for the quality of XP? Once again, free software can do anything non free does and generally does it better. The amount of free software available will continue to grow exponetially, unless blocked by bad laws.

The only thing free software keeps you from doing is violating the rights of others. Your children will not go hungry because of this, unless your company's business model is to keep others from being able to do what your software does. That, however, is a business model that will make all of us poor.

Re:what are you talking about?

[Arandir]

Let me paraphrase the original poster: Open Source is great for weekend coders, but there's no way to generate sufficient revenue by writing Open Source Software to feed the wife and kids. Sure, a few people here and there are doing it, but they're the exceptions.

I love Free Software. I write Free Software. But I'm not so stupid as to quit my day job to start writing Free Software full time. Maybe if I win the lottery I might, but until then I still need a revenue stream that will get me to the weekend so I can write the stuff I really want to.

Earning a living in open source

[Arandir]

I see five potential ways of making a living by writing Open Source Software:

1) Distribute the software. Redhat, SuSE, Cheapbytes, LinuxMall, etc. You're not selling the software, you're selling the convenience of having the software prepackaged on a CD. I expect this way will get harder and harder as broadband becomes more ubiquitous. Another big problem is that most developers of this software will never get a dime. That's because the distributors use the software written by thousands but only hire a few dozen.

2) Beg. Ask for donations. Write articles saying "send me your money and together we'll prove that you can make a living selling software." This is where most of the FSF money comes from, with a little coming from number (1) and (4). Big problem with this one is that you start to feel like PBS after a while.

3) Make Open Source your loss leader. Your real revenue comes from hardware, support, proprietary add-ons, flipflops with the company logo, etc. This is part of the Redhat and SuSE revenue streams. It's how Trolltech pays its employees. For some kinds of software it works and it works very well. But the problem is finding out what to sell instead of the software. Not all software is suited to be a loss leader for hardware. Not all software requires support. And of course, selling proprietary add-ons is detrimental to the whole concept of making money with Open Source.

4) Consult. Don't sell the software, the addons or the support. Sell your services. Again, this works for some kinds of software, but not for others. Any consultant that's been around a while can tell you the drawbacks to this one.

5) Sell the software. I don't know anyone making a living by doing this. Not one. If you think anyone is, you're probably think of one of the other four categories. But this is the category all the pundits are looking at. Commercial Open Source Software is theoretically possible, but in reality it is fictitious.

So what software doesn't fit any of the above models? That's easy. End user applications. Try making any money by selling support for your first-person shooter. Try selling CDs for a word processor that twenty different distributions have available on their ftp sites. And frankly, users are going to be much better off with a checkbook program that doesn't need support than one that does.

hype is bad in general

[Erris]

...thinks of Linux as a second-rate, broken Windows because some guy at his office couldn't stop telling him how great "Free Software" was. He'll probably never run anything but Windows again.

That's too bad, but never say never again. That user was mishandled, but it won't take them long to hate XP.

I'd never leave a newbie to install a box themselves and I'd never promise them hardware that won't work will. USB is not something I know how to work, nor am I good with sound, yet. The more people I get using reasonable software, the faster I'll get help.

For computers that sing and dance, I recomend keeping a clean copy of whatever M$ junk the computer came with. People generally look for XP when their 98 (as 60% of all windoze computers still are) fails them. They are sick of the reinstalls, and generally unaware of why 98 fails. Used only to access difficult pieces of hardware and blinded to the network, 98 lasts much longer.

I will however, tell them that free software can now take care of most of their computing needs and is generally superior to comercial alternatives, especially pirated junk, for issues of control, privacy and the ability to block adverts and other trash. A quick demonstation of Mozilla, Balsa, pretty window managers works well.

As for win2k and XP, pure crap. Win2k's USB support is the pits. I thought 98's support was bad because 98 gets confused and has to be rebuilt once in a while. Win2k has managed to make USB a non hot plugable device manager! When you remove a USB device, it give you this pathetic warning about impending system instability and data loss! Geez. When you combine that kind of performance with the rapicious advert pushing of XP and terrible lack of security, privacy and control, your friend is going to think computers suck in general. Too bad, but now you know why no one is buying new PC's. M$ has hyped their new junk over the moon, but it provides a much less enjoyable experience. So sad, too bad.

Free software will eventually replace non free device drivers and these issues will go away. Hardware makers are not going to be able to withstand poor sales forever and will do away with the major problem soon enough. In the mean time, I try not to raise anyone's expectations over reality and enjoy all the sofware I legitimatly own, and share what I can.

Problem is unix people and not open source?

[Ilan Volow]

If a certain group of developers doing open source work come from a developer community that:

• has for the last 30 years told confused newbies to shut up and read the manual
• has attributed end-user confusion to "people not wanting to learn"
• has never cultivated the necessary "let's make it easy to use" design ethos
• does not consider making usable, high quality GUI-driven software to be fun
• has up until recently derided GUI's as toys for children
• has not built up the necessary usability-design infrastructure, and in fact have done just the opposite by claiming the field of UI design is BS and telling usability experts to "stop whining and shut up and code"

is their lack of mainstream penetration really due to the fact that they are not getting paid for their work, or is it because they might be the worst kind of people you could have ever tasked with designing software for the average joe?

Perhaps the success of open source in the server arena and its failings on the desktop have to do with the fact that the current batch of people doing open source stuff have certain skillsets/mindsets that lend themselves well to doing one type of design but are totally lacking in the skillsets/mindsets needed to do a different type.

Re:job is good

[Arandir]

Why is it that you can't use free software for your day job?

Oh, but we do! We just don't create it.

But I think you missed my whole point. I KNOW that people are creating free software, because I'm one of them. But that doesn't mean there's a whole lot of money in it. As a programmer, I would much rather be programming than waiting on tables. I just don't see a lot of monetary opportunity in free software.

A clear unified vision

[Tony-A]

Who's clear unified vision?
Imagine the perfect meal.
Now eat that, and only that for the rest of your life.
There is such a thing as too much diversity, but somehow too much diversity seems a lot safer than too little diversity.

Personal itch...

[rew]

The "personal itch" model is starting to take on larger forms.

It all started out when someone had an itch, did something about it, and released the code. Now, companies are starting to do this. See for example the slashdot article at

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/09/0236 22 1&mode=flat&tid=152

Another model where companies are making money by releasing code as open source is hardware.

Some manufacturers pay developers to develop an open source driver for their hardware, and then hope to sell more hardware because they support Linux. Granted, some hardware manufacturers think they can get away with releasing binary only drivers.

The "pay to get some Open source stuff further" principle varies from: not forbidding an employee to work on open source during his work, to: paying an external developer to work the open source project...

Roger.

Re:free as in free speach, not free as in free bee

[mvdwege]

Because you are not a trusted source, and the original seller is?

Unless you massively undercut the original source, and your 'customers' don't need any of the added value the original source could provide, people will prefer to get both binaries and source from the original author(s).

That was the way Cygnus Solutions has always operated. The GPLed software coming out of their labs had more value than any copies anywhere else obtained, simply because Cygnus is a trusted source, and they provided additional services (like porting GCC to new architectures).

Think of it: everytime a release of a major piece of software takes place, what is one of the first things you read on Slashdot? That's right, a cry for mirrors, because everyone starts hitting the project homepage. Now think in terms of a marketeer: how many eyeballs is that hitting a single page? How much is a brand and market goodwill worth?

Obviously, simple rational economic thinking is not the determinant factor in the marketplace. In spite of the possibility of getting the same product for cheaper somewhere else, people will prefer to get it, even at a higher fee, from the original supplier. That's contrary to theory, but that implies your theory is wrong, because it does not conform to the observed facts.

Mart

Re:There is a bigger fatal flaw

[mvdwege]

The proprietary folks [...] reduce their users' expectations.

Sometimes even by actively manipulating their users' expectations. Think of it: if Microsoft software is so good that those 95% of computer users run it voluntarily, why do they need such whopping big Marketing department?

Not to single out Microsoft of course, every proprietary vendor does it. I sometimes don't know if I should laugh or cry if I see yet another crummy program being advertised as the greatest thing since sliced bread, when I know that a better and Free alternative already exists. Microsoft is just the most visible exponent of this mode of thinking.

Mart

Pity the reply is crap

[nagora]

The ORA article which is supposed to answer the accusation that Free Software can't make money boils down to "Of course it can't, but you can become a tech support company instead". Well, why bother with writing the software then? I could make money doing support for MS's buggy crap.

As ever, the hole in the equation is what happens to programmers that produce high quality software that doesn't need a lot of support? They're screwed by the GPL model. "Thanks for the work and the nice product, now piss off."

The GPL is of no import to programmers working inside large organisations as redistribution is largly unimportant and programmers working on their own are forbidden from making money (in reality, that is - the GPL allows the programmer to charge for their work much in the same way that I'm allowed to try to sell my 5 old car for more than I paid for it).

It is perhaps, as someone else said, just a case of "That's the new situation - adapt or die" but the GNU world is not a better situation for programmers, particularly those with original ideas who have no hope of ever being rewarded by people who find their ideas useful.

We need a new, fairer, way of distributing software. It should be the right of all users to have the source code, but it should also be the right of all authors to control the distribution of their work free from persecution from (rich) fanatics like RMS or exploitation by (hyper rich) bastards like Bill Gates.

Alas, I don't know what that way might be. But I'm working on it.

TWW

Software is a means, not an end.

[Karellen]

I'm a programmer, but I look at software as a way of getting something else done, something that makes money.

The company I work for sells real things to people (toasters, etc...). That's the business we're in, that's how we make money. We compete in the marketplace on the range of goods we offer, the price we offer them at, and the after sales service we provide for when these real things wear out and break down. We use software to help us achieve that goal as efficiently as possible.

To us, it doesn't really matter if the software we use (web servers, word processors, email programs, databases) is the same as the software used by our competitors - in fact it's quite likely they're using a lot of the same software from the same supplier. Our only goal is to get our software to do what we want as cheaply as possible.

So if we can hire 2 shit-hot hackers to work on this open source database system to control our stock, and that turns out to be cheaper or even comparable to however many licenses of the closed-source product we need, great. Because not only do we have the database we need, but we've got our own guys supporting it in-house who know it inside and out, who we can just *ask* for support.

It doesn't matter if our competitors have their own hackers working on the same product, becuase the more our guys _and_ their guys improve this software, this means to an end, the better we can all compete in the marketplace on what we do - on selling toasters, and not on what software and support contracts we happen to have.

K.

Re:Software is a means, not an end.

[Spunk]

Suppose you and your competitors need the expensive software package X. You discover the open source program Y which is almost what you need, and turn it into Z, which is a cheaper substitute for X, with the bonus of expertise and transparency when you find bugs.

This is very good for your business (and really just a paraphrase of what you just said) but I want to know what the incentive is for your company to release Z to the public.

If your competitor is still using X, you now conduct that portion of your business more efficiently than his, and thus have a competitive advantage over him. Release Z, and that competitive advantage is gone. In addition, he now has an advantage over you in that he didn't fund the coding effort on Z!

From your last paragraph, it seems your company's answer is that you want to play fair, and the efforts of one help the many. That's a great attitude to have, and you should be proud of it. But it seems more profitable for a company to go the selfish route - keep Z to itself. Will an altruistic company soon find itself at a disadvantage?

Re:Software is a means, not an end.

[HiThere]

There are a *lot* of intermediate positions to take here. They could put their name on it:
"The Fribitye Jib Company Emfoozler!"
And distribute it to their customers under, say, the GPL (or some other variation, e.g. the NPL [and I don't mean the MPL!]).

This wouldn't keep it out of their competitors hands, but it would act as an advertisement. And their competitor would always be a version or two behind them (use the latest version in house, distribute the prior version to the customers...) etc.

If you release your updates as diffs, then anyone who has removed your name won't be able to do the updates. So they would fall further behind (and you would save download costs). Customers could submit changes, and you could incorporate them, which saves a bit on development costs. Or at least they could submit bug reports. (Need to establish a bugzilla web page, and someone to prioritize them, and respond to customer reports promptly. Everyone else could be handled through the mailing list.)

Special attention could be sold as an add-on benefit. Wouldn't cost too much extra, as this would mainly be cost recovery for something that you would have needed to handle anyway. But there would need to be some personal contact which would cost a bit. Still, it would highlight problems needing to be dealt with.

So the imposition on others would be, say, a Title bar on the main dialog window that says, say:
"Emfoozler by The Fribitye Jib Company"
And this would be in a block of code that the diff engine used to establish it's position, so it could figure out at what relative position to insert the changes. A low key ad campaign that isn't all that offensive. If your competitor uses your product, then it's advertising you to it's staff. If it distributes it, then it's advertising you to it's customers. If it refers it's customers to you for support, then it's giving you a list of it's customers.

Yes, they could fork your project, and do the same thing, but they always could have done that, and they didn't want to bother. You've got the first mover advantage, so it probably wouldn't be worth their while.

Now, of course all of this depends on precisely what an Emfoozler does. It might not apply at all. But it frequently would.

Not true

[DrXym]

I get paid a nice salary and my full-time job is almost exclusively writing open source software.

The "trick" as far I can see is to put enough effort into a piece of software that a company sees the value in hiring you to work full-time on it.

There are two kinds of software

[ngunton]

1. Custom software for the place where you work - this is the kind that most people get money for. Open Source is not really a good fit for this, because the application is usually very narrow, specific and often tied to proprietary business systems, databases and business logic.

2. General tool software which is applicable to lots of different situations - this is the type of software that Open Source is good for. Look at all OSS, it's general stuff. Tools. Utilities.

OSS can be very helpful in building the specific stuff. It's not all that complicated. People make their money developing (1), preferably using (2). In their spare time (and, if they're lucky, work time) they develop the Open Source stuff. If the open source stuff they develop becomes successful enough, then they maybe get a chance to do it most of the time, because some company will recognise the value, and dedicate some resources to paying the guy.

I really don't see what's so complex about this. People do Open Source software because they like doing it. They get peer recognition. They don't do it to get paid - not directly, in money. They get paid in reputation and self respect. Everybody benefits. People get their bread and butter from doing the specific, non-general, business stuff.

Or am I missing something here?

Being Constrained by Circumstance != Hypocracy

[FreeUser]

Oh, wait...isn't that EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTS US SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS TO DO?

And so what if he does? Unless you use PGP[1], I doubt you've ever, even once in your entire life, made use of a hard copy of some software package.

Saying that an economic model doesn't work for certain conditions isn't the same as demanding one give away one's work for free. Although, as free software's superiority over its commercial competitors by most objective criteria indicates, perhaps that is the most effecient economic model for situations in which there is an initial fixed cost, but no ongoing cost. Or perhaps there is something even more effecient than the free software model, but if their is, it has been demonstrated clearly to not be capitalism, particularly not capitalism in the form of government sponsored and enforced monopoly priveleges.

So the guy isn't giving his book away for free. So what? He has to operate in the same government sponsored monopolistic environment as everyone else, just as Richard Stallman (who opposed copyright, at least in the beginning) was forced to come up with a license that used copyright to insure the very freedoms it is designed to destroy. Just as numerous books calling for the use of hemp instead of trees for making paper have been published on dead trees ... because that is all they had to work with, and the alternative (that clowns like you seem to be advocating) is to never speak out at all, to in effect be silenced by the very circumstances one is trying to fix. Not a very reasonable, or desireable, option.

I wish we would move away from oil to cleaner, more sustainable energy that wouldn't put millions of dollars in the pockets of a culture that sponsors hatred of and terrorism against my culture. Does that mean I'm going to start living without electricity or transportation until such a belated move is finally made (if ever). Hardly. But it doesn't mean I'm going to shut up about it either, nor does it make my a hypocrit for refusing to do so, because circumstances beyond my control leave me with no other viable choice, at least for the moment.

[1]To get around US export restrictions, PGP was published in book form and shipped overseas, then transcribed by hand back into electronic format and distributed electronically from outside of the United States. No fees were charged or, to my knowledge, ever paid for that arduous bit of tedium.

Re:Being Constrained by Circumstance != Hypocracy

[FreeUser]

Calm down, I wasn't trolling. I think copyrights and intellectual property are anachronisms, too, but I just thought it was awfully funny, that his book about the evils of copyrights, intellectual property, and corporate profiteering on such works was copyrighted...

I was responding not to your post, but to the followup that basically extended your post from a humorous poke at the author's publisher to a broader accusation of hypocracy which implied the author should essentially have kept his/her mouth shut, or at least remained unpublished (which in today's world amounts to much the same thing):

It's obvious - if he provided the book in electronic format, then no one would buy the print copy.

Oh, wait...isn't that EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTS US SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS TO DO?

Fuck him.

Perhaps you were browsing at +2 and didn't notice the reply? In any event, despite the fact that the aforementioned post was a troll, it expresses a far too common assumption and very widespread meme that, unless your lifestyle or methods exclude all aspects of whatever it is you are criticizing, you somehow should have no right to criticize that thing, should keep your mouth shut, and/or are a hypocrite of the lowest kind. This is nonsense, and indeed if every reformer in history had been constrained in such a fashion no reform would ever have happened and our lifestyle would likely be little different from that of our ancesters 1000 years ago.

That particularly destructive and disempowering meme needs to be debunked whenever it rears its ugly head, or we as a society will dismiss efforts at reform we should not, and suffer accordingly. So, even though the post I responded to (not yours!) almost certainly was a troll, it needed rebutting nevertheless.

About the FBI [OT]

[MoneyT]

and the FBI stops terrorists, right?

As a person currently studing the US Government, I feel the need to correct this statement for the public. Only in recent years have we decided that it is the FBI's job to stop terrorists. The original job of the FBI was to invesitgate crimes (most notably organized crime). By nature, in order to investigate a crime, the crime must have already been commited or be in the act of being commited. Now though, we seem to have this idea that it's also the FBI's job to anticipate and stop crimes before they happen. While this would be all well and good for society, the sad truth is it's nearly impossible. In order to stop something before it happens, you need to know exactly what you're looking for. The FBI could have all the clues in the world that a terrorist attack was comming, but not all puzzles are easily solved. Case in point:

It was commisioned and built in the early 1900's

It was one of the largest of it's kind

It was designed to carry large numbers of people large distances

It's maiden launch was a major media event

It was destroyed in a tragic accident

If I asked you what I was describing, most people would answer the Titanic. And indeed it does fit the clues, however I was in fact describing the Hindenberg. You see, just because you have the clues doesn't mean you can see the answer.

Re:and CNet censors those not pro-Microsoft

[sheldon]

Fascinating.

When you read all the pro-Microsoft boards they are generally of the opinion that ZDNet is biased against Microsoft.

From reading your website, I would simply have to say you have some deeply emotional issues to deal with. Perhaps that is why your posts are being deleted?

I've made money from Free Software without trying!

[Eric Smith]

I wrote a fairly obscure little piece of Free Software (GPL'd) and put it on my web site along with a note that I'm willing to sell commercial licenses to anyone that doesn't want to use it under the GPL terms. I wasn't actually expecting any income from it, and I made NO effort to seek out customers, but customers showed up anyhow and paid me several thousand dollars.

That may not be a huge amount of money, but it's pretty darn good considering that aside from writing the software, I didn't spend any time trying to bring in money.

I can only surmise that if someone wrote Free Software with a more broad appeal, and invested some effort into attempting to make money on it, they should be able to do much better than I have. In fact, there's at least one existence proof.

Hackers in the Captain's Chair

[extrasolar]

With free software, their is a single leader and a single unified vision. This leader is you.

You are probably rather disappointed by this statement. You want someone else to make the decisions for you. I've heard countless diatribes about people's grandma's who don't want to think about the software they use. They want a system that just works. In addition, the system's that already just works, isn't good enough. I don't understand this--but I'll ignore it for the time being.

But, it is easy to make system's that don't make you think. They have already been built. What you may complain about is that they don't do anything interesting. We've had word processors turning high-priced machines into fancy typewriters for a dozen years now. Connecting to the internet has long turned into a double-click operation.

The truth is, for what you want, its as good as it gets. In all honesty, I don't think you know what you want. For some reason, you want what Microsoft provides without getting it from Microsoft.

Here's what GNU/Linux (thats what its called) provides. It provides all the software you need to build your own system. What? you may ask. Why would I want to build my own system? One reason is that you've used Windows, toyed with the Macintosh, even at one point wrote batch files in DOS. But it wasn't enough. You want something more. Another reason, is that you--like me--don't know what you want. But you'll know it when you see it. Where commercial operating system is about popularity and marketing demographics--GNU/Linux is about empowerment. That the crux of free software. With free software, you are given the power to meet your needs. The cost is that you need to learn more about your system than you'd ever need to learn with Windows, Macintosh, or DOS. But what you'd end up with is not and end-users system but your system.

How do you start? First, write down what you want your system to do. Do you want your entire house equipped with speakers playing music? You want certain songs playing during the morning, certain songs playing during the afternoon, and others playing at night? How about theme songs playing on holidays? Would you like to store appointments and alarms in your computer. As opposed to an alarm clock, you want to store several alarms with different settings for different days of the week. You want alerts for people's birthdays.

How about a graphical clock on your wall, made with a flat screen computer monitor? Expensive, yes. Useful, yes. You can display the date on it as well as the time in three time zones. It can have an icon for when you get email and warn you when your favorite programs are coming on TV.

And...if you get an email by someone important why wait for you to open it? Just have the printer print it.

You can set up a web cam or...even better yet, a web server. Have the computer give an audio alert for when you get a lot of hits.

This is only an example. The possibilities are virtually endless. You just need the money to pay for the hardware and the knowledge--all of which can be provided by books and online manuals. Once you write down what you want your system to do, research on how to achieve this system. Read FAQs and ask newsgroups and mailing lists for advice.

What you end up with is not an end-user's system but a hacker's system. And you are in the captain's chair.

Re:so you think?

[sheldon]

No, the emotional issues are pretty much something relatively unique to you.

Your website screams obsessive compulsive disorder. Instead of just letting the issue drop, you've continued to moan and bitch about it for apparently months(if not years, I stopped reading after a bit).

See a doctor, they have drugs that can help. Maybe you can then start to lead a normal life with real social interaction.

Re:and CNet censors those not pro-Microsoft

[sheldon]

There's a difference between disagreeing with business tactics, and devoting an entire website to your battle with ZDNet for supposedly censoring you.

Given the rage you apparently you have apparently locked up within you, I guess I don't blame ZDNet for not wanting to see any further posts from you. I honestly see no value in the rantings of a madman.

Related but different

[einhverfr]

Business impact.

If you want to release some internal tools as open source (see my sig as an example), then there are a couple of issues.

1: Are you giving a free ride to the competition? This can be a problem, which can be solved through careful decisions, marketing, and considerations relating to which components are being released.

2: What is the effect on your intangible assets on the company? This issue of IP dilution is one for many companies. I think that it is a red herring for most companies, and I think that most companies do better to focus on core competencies...

BTW, the link in my sig is a set of business tools I decided to release. It is still under development, but it is going well. I and my business partners are satisfied in both the above issues here. But we had to make some decisions about how exactly to manage the release.

Re:Linux Community? What's That?

[HiThere]

My off the cuff feeling was: "Do we really want this pirate in the community?", but your post clarifies things a bit.

There is a community. Being a Linux user doesn't automatically make you a member, and it isn't even really a requirement. BSD users are "welcome", though they have to put up with a lot of flack from hanger's on who think that they look smart by putting down anyone who uses anything but Linux.

The community is a community of people who have a certain attitude towards software. This is available even to Windows users, though in that atmosphere it's difficult to achieve. For some reason, Mac users have less difficulty (though also less inclination). The community is composed of people who are each a blend between a power user and a programmer. Many are also sysAdmins, but that is neither necessary nor sufficient.

There is no requirement that you be a member of the community to use Linux. The OS is separable, and not really important. But Linux, along with *BSD and the Hurd (and, to an extent, BeOS) was designed for the primary benefit of the members of the community.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make any sense to you, but it's a real thing. If one strong group of the community espouses GPL, and another espouses BSD, or NPL, or... that doesn't matter. That's an argument over tactics and goals. It is only relevant within the community. This is not to assert that the licenses only matter within the community, but if you aren't a community member, then you will need to take whichever license is offered. If you are a community member, then you may well need to choose a license. And which OS is your favorite may have a big impact on that choice.

Community is a better word than profession for this. I was a professional programmer for decades before I ever encountered the community. I am still a professional programmer, but now I'm wondering how I could contribute something worthwhile back to the community. Until I do, then my status will remain quite low. And properly so. If the community doesn't reward those who support it, then it won't continue. And the reward is status. (Sometimes this can translate into jobs, money, etc., but that's basically extra-community.)

Re:and CNet censors those not pro-Microsoft

[theolein]

Lewis, I wasted far too many hours over on ZDNet in the past. Don't ask why because I don't really know. Suffice to say that a Talkback post that I tried to post there in repsonse to John Carroll's first article (which amazed me, because he was and is truly the last person on earth that I would expect any unbiased opinion from) was immediately removed and ZDNet informed me that it was "a personal attack on John Carroll". That was OK by me. I know that ZDNet wavers between very pro and very anti everything attitudes which generally seem to have more to do with them trying to keep up the viewing rates and at times Microsoft's advertising budget (I don't think MS advertising comes without any strings attached) than any real pro or anti bias in any way. There have been very anti Microsoft articles there as well.

The thing is that ZDNet is a tabloid. They're a business that tries to keep visitors coming to their site and will post anything to keep the rates high. The problem is that they are losing visitors because of their extreme commercial slant and they know it and don't seem to know what to do about it. What happened to you is more a reaction to that than anything else.

Forget it and carry on.

No one seems to get it

[leereyno]

The idea that open source is not driven by profit is absurd, as is the idea that the profit to be found within it is defined by companies trying to make money off of "services." At least in the sense of a company actively paying for the development of an open source product and then trying to balance the books by supporting it. That might work for a handful under special circumstances, but it won't work universally, not even close. You can however sell a SOLUTION that uses an open source product. Of course that isn't the FSF party line we're all used to hearing. We're used to hearing that companies that produce open source products should try to pay the bills by selling support to others who are actually implementing the solutions based upon those products. The people who are selling the solution are the ones who make the money. This means that in order to make money from open source you have to sell solutions, not give away and then try to support for a fee the tools that would be used to create the solution.

The truth is that open source is driven by developers for developers. It is a rational self interested response to proprietary and closed products that developers have been stuck with. Open source is the response to things like the Microsoft monopoly and vendor lock-in. No one wants to try and implement an optimal solution using sub-optimal tools. Closed code that can't be changed or even truly understood is a very good example of a sub-optimal tool. Stallman and the FSF might toot their horn about how they started the show, and that might be true on paper. The real truth however is that it was the internet and the power it gave the developer community to respond collectively that made the open source movement real.

Most programs are not written by programmers working for shrink-wrap software firms where the product they are selling is the software. Most programs are written in-house for an in house need. This is the reason why VB is the the most popular programming language in history, as judged by the number of lines of code written in it. These programmers don't make money from selling code, they make money from implementing solutions using code. ALL early open source products were written by programmers for programmers. Even now the overwhelming majority still fit that description. Projects like GCC and Linux are where they are because developers could use them to make money. USE is the key word there. Stallman might have created GCC initially, just as Linus created the Linux kernel initially. Neither product would be worth a plug nickel however if other programmers hadn't found them potentially useful and began contributing to them.

In the long run this will become painfully obvious to everyone and I won't have to always be hearing the selling services while you write your code on the side BS. Selling open source code doesn't work. Selling "services" based upon open source code that you are also somehow trying to develop at the same time also doesn't work. Selling SOLUTIONS based upon open source products that you may or may not have ever contributed a single line of code to WILL make you money. At that point you are not selling the product, you are selling your personal expertise in using it to solve a particular problem. This is why open source is popular and powerful, because giving it away and making it open and free HELPS those who have developed it to make money from it. Bug fixes, patches, improvements, suggestions, even forks, at the end of the day make for a better tool and better tools make for easier money.

The Stallmans of the world can rant all day long about their Marxist utopia but its not something that will ever happen. The value of open source is that it puts power into the hands of developers and solution implementers. It makes their job easier and allows them to create better solutions to the problems they face. The fact that non-developers also benefit is nothing more than a side effect. A very useful side effect but a side effect nonetheless.

Those of you who are always harping on and on about open source as some kind of political, social or even spiritual movement should really give it a rest. Developers create open source products because it is in their own best interest. This isn't some kind of altruistic sacrifice of time and effort to further some social revolutionary goal. Developers create the tools they want and need and then share those tools because doing so does not diminish that tools usefulness to them. Groups of programmers collaborate on open source projects due to the mutual benefit of everyone involved. None but a very small few have any notions of changing the world or undermining commercial software development. They're too busy making money and too smart to begin with to get caught up in a bunch of naive left wing bullshit led by someone who has never left the ivory tower of academia and, based upon the book written about him, has very little understanding of human behavior and what motivates that behavior.

Lee

Re:so you think?

[sheldon]

Why would you assume I think that?

I just think that maybe you should see a doctor about your obsessive compulsive disorder.

Isn't it a bit late to proclame doom

[Felinoid]

Once an operating system has been out for more than five years with a large userbase it's a bit late to say it'll never fly.

It's one thing to say "It'll never work" before the wright brothers get into the air...
But to point to an airport and proclame it is just laughable.

"Linux will never fly"
"And Microsoft will never be proffitable"
"And that wheel thing..."

I'd like to remind everyone something...
To everyone who thinks providing source code is a security risk...
Unix venders would sell source code for a significant fee and companys would pay it...
Why? Becouse with out source code you CAN NOT have a secure operating system.. It's imposable to do with out the source code.
That was the reasoning back in the past... and it's proven itself. Not everyone could afford to liccens the source.

Today Microsoft still liccens the source to Windows large chunks of money. Why? Security...

You know if a cracker wanted he could get the money together and publish all the defects and back doors he finds on an e-zine like phrak.

As for how imposable it is to make money with open source..
You know Microsoft said that about closed source about 20 years ago...

Companys want to make spinoffs of my GPLed code I say hay.. Just pay me a liccens fee and you can have a closed source liccens for your production... I'm fair.

There are a number of ways to make money with the GPL.

One trick is to offer your 5 year old product under GPL to kill compeditors selling 10 year old products.

Hardware comapnsy can release GPLed driver source code to improve user support...
(In the past they always provided source code or at least specs..
Today companys are affrade of reverse engenearing that actually has nothing to do with software.)

I'm sceptical.. ZD publicications are pritty much all Windows centric so there is absolutly no reason for them to publish anything about Linux or open source.

It's not that ZD would kiss up to Microsoft but for every person who switches from Windows to Linux is a potentally lost costummer for ZD.

This is why I expect to never see anything about Microsoft Windows in LJ byond "Here is how to make Linux work with Windows"

ZD isn't a business publication so ZD's technical experts have as much call talking about the business potental of open source as a buisness expert has talking about writing drivers for Linux.

This isn't Fud as much as wishful thinking. They aren't talking to business people or anyone who might try to make money from open source.

So far nobody has been able to make money writing open source code..
But then so far nobody has tried.

Mr. Carroll has written a rebuttal...

[sdo1]

It's titled "Facing the open source firing squad".

-S

These are two different questions...

[Archie Steel]

...the first being "Is using Open Source going to decrease programmer's income as a group?" and the second being "Will using and promoting Open Source for businesses benefit the OSS community?" I was clearly adressing the first issue, and thought you were too. My take is that it is not, because companies will need to hire programmers so that they can solve specific problems (in which case OSS lets programmers do more for the same amount of money). So we seem to agree on this.

On the second question, I'm not sure I follow your argument - modified OSS is not OSS until it is released, for sure. By definition the source only gets released to the outside if the binaries are - but since these are applications designed for internal use, they are not meant to be released. Is that not giving back to the community? Perhaps, but it is compliant with the GPL, and in any case the release would not bring additional income to OSS programmers, who may or may not have been already been paid for their effort. In a sense, if you release GPL'ed software, you accept that users of this program will be de facto freeloaders, since you're not going to get any money from the release (even though you may have been paid to write it). So I fail to see what your point is, other than writing OSS code and then trying to sell it won't make you rich; AFAIK, nobody said it would. And if that takes away the incentive for programmers to write good OSS software, then we don't have to do anything about it: the market will take care of it. But so far the fact that actual sales of OSS are modest hasn't prevented it from making great advances in quality, reliability and security, so there must be other economic and social forces at work.