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

[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

[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

[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?

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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

[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...

[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.

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?

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.

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. :-)

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.

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...

[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...

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

[_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.

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.

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: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?

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.

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...

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.

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: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.