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Shared Source vs. Open Source
leonbrooks writes "Microsoft are fond of touting Shared Source as being "as good as" Open Source, with a view to muddying the waters as much as possible, and so keeping as many people away from the benefits of Open Source Software (OSS) (particularly Software Libré AKA "Free Software") as they can.
This new article analysing the differences arrives just in time for Microsoft's Australia-wide series of "Competitive Hour" misinformation sessions on Open Source, and includes a handy list of potentially showstopper questions.
We'd like your help in putting these and other questions to the speaker during such misinformation sessions, with the dual aim of opening the eyes of many of the audience, and reporting back to us what was said so that we can refine the questions to close whatever loopholes are employed in evading these important issues."
While this is a very informative article, I get a very 'preaching to the choir' felling about it. The bias seeps through and undermines the effectiveness of the article. I think the best advocacy of open source software could be realized through: 1. case studies of successful industry/governemnt deployment of oss. 2. summary of development/use of open source superstars like apache, postgres, etc. of course, its always fun to pick at ms, but the idea is to change minds, not appear dogmatic.
I'm not sure thats a reflection on shared source, more an indication of a poor PM. Shared source is realistically the only advance MS can currently make in the direction of fully open source. They are a large corporation with many shareholders who will not accept the source, excuse the pun, of their honeypot suddenly being made available to the public at large.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
A very nice and concise review and discussion. The questions, in particular, are a great preparation for a rebuttal. Polite and informed disagreement will go lot farther in an audiences opinion than shouting "LINUX ROXORS". In extreme situations, it may still be necessary to fall back on that technique :^)
You shank my Jengaship!
That document was poorly written, I was expecting a business quality doco. The linux community needs to realise that if they want to be taken seriously in big business, they have to act in a mature business like manner.
For example: Stop refering to closed source companies as being evil. Treat them all the same - did you know that there are more closed source software companies that just Microsoft? Such as Lotus, IBM, Apple (surely not Apple???) and most of these guys have borrowed code from BSD, Apple even got praised for it, rather than berated. (Which I still can't believe to this day)
Imagine if MS had taken almost all of BSD and started selling it, because they couldn't be arsed to develop their own OS.
" In the lecture of John 'Maddog' Hall on the history of open source (this weekend on Fosdem), his slides had 'livre' software on it. Several times..."
Maybe he copy it from a portuguese or brazilian webpage. In Portuguese, is LIVRE. Take a look here: http://www.softwarelivre.rs.gov.br/
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Marketing and reason seem diametrically opposed to my mind.. can you imagine slander campaigns similar to election ads?
"Do you want your enterprise code written at 4am by a community of hackers?!"
I doubt any such marketing campaign could convince people who already appreciate the benefits of OSS.
I think the main danger is providing management with misinformation, making a tech's job harder justifying OSS. Most people wouldn't blink as long as the name "Windows" was mentioned.
Once OSS becomes more of a household name (and it is) M$ will have a much harder time suppressing it.
I don't understand why people rant about MS ads on Slashdot. MS are paying to keep the site up, even though they get bashed and flamed continuously. Just take their money and shut up.
I suspect that something like 90% of Slashdotters are using some sort of MS product somewhere.
Apple is much more closed than M$. Could you imagine the reaction here if Microsoft "went Apple" and made sure its big ol OS only ran on its company hardware platform....which M$ then jacked the price ridiculously high on? Yet this is what Apple is doing.
I have a deep respect for many of those who coined the term "Open Source", especially Bruce Perens.
But, I think we're about to find out that "Open Source" was a mistake.
Microsoft will clearly claim that their "shared source" encompasses all the benefits of open source, and for those who do not allready understand what Open Source is all about (which is to say, most people), it will be a compelling argument.
We can go "uh, no, you see, it is about, free, and I mean free as in speech, not beer, uh, if you know what I mean". And they don't. And they won't read this paper. When they can see the source, the source is open enough to them. What more could you ask?
I attended one of ESR's talks, and while it took me a long time to realize, ESR's top selling point ("you can always take development in-house"), is not a simple pragmatic argument. It is an argument based on freedom.
The top selling argument for Open Source, for Linux and for all the rest of it, is, and will remain, an argument of freedom. Not only freedom for individuals, but freedom for corporations too!
It is about politics. It is about creating a society where freedom benefits everyone, individuals and corporations alike, the whole society.
I realize, of course that "Free Software" is not a good term either, but for those of us who speak a Real Language[tm], the term "Open Source" should be abandoned, and terms like "Software Libré" or "Fri programvare" should be used instead.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
it won't take a media campaign from MS
there are a number of threats to OSS that will emerge as it becomes more pervasive. None of these would kill Open Source as a movement , but they will compel the community too temper some of their absolutism.
There WILL be a widespread virus that attacks some popular OSS platform / architecture. The community's reaction to this event could determine the viability of OS across all domains.
There WILL be a test of the GPL that effectively modifies its tenets , perhaps fundamentally changing the character and popular interpretation of the license. This will bring a reality check to the more strident elements of the OSS community , but could encourage OSS realists to adapt more commercially viable licenses.
You know, I read a lot of this nonsense on Slashdot. The vast majority of the board leaps all over anything that potentially infringes privacy, but then turns its nose up at postings from Anonymous Cowards.
Are you also in favour of losing the right to an anonymous vote? You would like all authorities to know your voting record? There is nothing wrong with anonymity. I posted for months as an AC because I didn't want to create yet another web account on something. Gradually, as I found I used this site more I decided to create an account.
Frankly, I find this anti-AC thing to be farcical. It isn't any form of moral highground to insist an opinion be identified with an individual. Instead it represents a regression - you should argue the point, not the personality.
Cheers,
Ian
It's a guide for OSS people to be able to ask the right questions at the right time at the conference.
Then see MS people squirm...
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
Red Hat Advanced Server contains the same GPL'ed code as every other Red Hat Linux distribution. Unlike some vendors (who's names start with a 'C'), Everything you get from Red Hat in the basic distro is GPL'ed. They can't "...do the same audits as Microsoft..." because they can't change the licensing. You don't need to buy a Red Hat Advanced Server license for every machine you put the OS on. You only need to buy a support contract for every machine you expect support on. There's a big difference here. Red Hat is pushing the envelope on the chief means for income for an OSS company (give away the software, sell the support), but the code is still the same GPL code you could get from any other distribution. There's no such thing as the Red Hat equivalent of the BSA and there never can or will be.
I normally don't reply to trolls, but this disinformation really ticks me off. Assuming you don't already know all this and you aren't just a 100% blatant troll, you either have never read the GPL or have no idea whatsoever what is contained in RHAS. Either way, if you don't know what you're talking about, then keep your mouth shut.
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This article looked pretty good until I hit this part:
I'm beginning to hate the GPL guys just because they have to shit on every other open source developer because they don't agree with politics of their GPL manifesto.BSD is more free; at first glance and every glance. That somebody can pervert that freedom is one of the costs of being free. Us BSD'ers are not the enemy -- look further up the list not further down.
"(My apologies to those 5 people in the country who actually know how to make free software work to help the people, not destroy the economy.)"
Hmmm... IBM comes to mind as the first of those 5 people (did you mean companies ?) who have made opensource work. Over a billion in sales just last year from free software. Sounds oddly like capitalism to me.
" Why would I trust "free" software from a vendor while at the same time pay them to support that software?"
This argument can be applied to our Government. Would you trust a closed Government to handle your needs for you? Isn't that what Communism was all about? At least in part I should say.
"Seems to me that they WANT the software to be low quality or hard to use so they can charge me more to support it."
Are you saying software like Microsoft's IIS was high quality software? That's scrapping the bottom of the barrel according to the Garner report (SP?) They even told people to abandon IIS and find another web server. Never thought that would have come from their lips.
"Plus, now I have to hire a 150,000 a year linux geek. No thanks."
But of course. You want to hire 10 MCSE's to manage a network that one *NIX geek can handle in his/her sleep.
"Freakin' communists."
Not really but it's clear you have no idea how the OSS idea works. It's like fire. If used properly it can warm your house and cook your food, or burn the whole place down. Learn to use it wisely. (just an opinion)
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I think the best route is to keep hammering on the differences. Consider our targets for conversion - it's not MS, and it's not governments here - it's potential users of Shared Source, ie companies. And, though you believe they may bess less compelling, companies only care about pragmatic arguments - they could care less about freedom in the abstract, only in the immediate. You don't have to use the "free as in speech vs. beer" argument. Just explain why seeing the source is useless if you can't touch it. I think most people of even moderate intelligence can understand that.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I suspect that something like 90% of Slashdotters are using some sort of MS product somewhere.
So, what is your point? MS have been convicted of running an illegal monopoly and you do remember what a monopoly is?
At home I used to have a 'nix only network but I had to surrender and revive one of my old Windows boxes so the kids could use it - because that was the only way they could play on many of the websites they wanted to use.
In that sense, I suppose, MS was "better" than 'nix, but not because there was some inherent flaw in free software or because in some way MS were better code wizards.
I'm sure that MS will oppose OSS at every turn , but the culture of the OSS community doesn't help either. People have a bad habit of exaggerating the benefits of OSS and the supposed inferiority of any alternatives. Constantly pushing absurd conspiracy theories about MS and the EVIL Bill Gates makes us look like a bunch of wacko's. Once OSS becomes more pervasive and it becomes evident that alot of what OSS advocates claim is BS it'll undermine the perception of OSS. The OSS community needs to mature - OSS isn't the perfect choice , it's just better than the alternatives.
...is permit the user to make custom changes and apply security hot-fixes. Whether or not this happens in practice depends far more on the attitude of the company deploying the SS than on the license itself.
Microsoft's MFC was a good example--most bugs were reported by users. Usually the solution was given as a workaround. Only on rare occasions was it suggested that you rebuild MFC and for good reason--non standard versions of MFC DLLs could break stuff, even if they were supposedly less buggy. Nevertheless, MS got a lot of feedback from MFC users.
OTOH, some of the other SS stuff was done because the companies felt pressured by OS. Worse yet, they were end-user apps like Office suites where most people don't look at the source. Since the original developers never anticipated source-level feedback from users, they just weren't "geared up" for it, or enthusiastic about it. You couldn't expect it to work very well.
Of course what SS can't do as well as OS is give the users control of the direction the code takes, or give them ownership of significant code they write to enhance the original package. So, the best you can hope for when releasing under SS is that if your product is popular enough people might send you small bug-fixes.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If the people running the project suck, you can just maintain a better fork if you want. With shared source, you might not even be able to distribute your patches to other customers suffering your fate. The point is that true OS gives the control to the ultimate consumer, and anything less isn't worth that much. Why contribute your work to something that another private entity owns and controls?
This argument is fine and appropriate for the money-making of software. However, look at it from the other side, as well. Open-source is a benefit to the consumer (no vendor lock-in, auditability, customizability, etc. Oh, yeah, price.) Capitalism is supposed to be about making compromises between the supplier and the consumer, so you can't leave out half the equation.
As for reducing the value of software (isn't that also part of the whole idea of capitalism? Reduce prices?), it does reduce the artificial scarcity, and therefore the market price. Yes, that means less money for the developers. It also means more value for society, since there are more copies of the software doing work for people. It's a more even distribution of value. (Sorry, I've got a thing against people wanting to get rich. (Yes, if you make >=$100,000US you are rich.))
I've been meaning to write up an analysis of this theory for a while, but I'm too lazy.
I must take issue with RMS and others' use of the term "freedom" to define a contractual agreement. Of course a contract represents freedom -- the basis of contract is voluntary association. Open source and proprietary contracts are both examples of freedom. It does not matter what the terms of contract are; if the contract is engaged through voluntary association, then it represents freedom.
Freedom is defined by the lack of force, and nothing else. Freedom does not know the difference between open source and closed source. Freedom does not know what software is. Freedom knows only two states: coercion (force) and voluntary association. If an individual engages in an interaction with another individual or group, and the interaction is voluntary, then the interaction represents freedom. If the interaction is non-voluntary, i.e. an initiation of force, then the interaction does not represent freedom.
Therefore it is meaningless to define your terms of contract as "freedom". Microsoft's shared source contract is no more or less "free" than an open source contract, because you are equally "free" to engage both. What you really mean to say is that one vendor's terms of contract are more restrictive than another vendor. Freedom has nothing to do with it.
As a previous poster noted, this post ignores the other side of the economic equation. It also ignores the production side of the equation. Open Source software means that there is a lot of good, well-written, software out there for all of us progtrammers to learn from, steal techniques from, critique (on a source code level, rather than the flame-ranting of the OS wars). In fact, the only problem with Open Source software is that Microsoft can't make money from it.
It does not involve profit from software sales.
It is about business.
Software was originally written by companies to make that company better able to do its primary business. An automobile manufacturer uses software to make and sell automobiles. A retail store uses software to assist selling merchandise.
All the "business cases mentioned by OS proponents are" about how to make money selling software.
But what if most software was developed internally?
- What if the programmers shared with programmers from other companies to ask for help?
- What if it was easier to maintain the software publicly than to pass around copies every time you had an issue?
- What if it meant you received fixes for things you had not encountered yet?
- What if it meant you received fixes for things you had not NOTICED yet? (Like that bug that affects payroll.)
This is the world of GPL open source applications.
- We need an application.
- We download a database program.
- We build our application.
- We realize the database is missing a feature.
- We add the feature.
- While programming, we notice a bug.
- We fix the bug.
- Our application does exactly what we want, and we send our changes back to maintainers of the program.
- ?Profit? There is no profit from the software sale. The only benefit is that the company has the application that allows it to compete better.
The programmers may have been a consultant, so maybe they profited. Or an employee, who got paid. Or a student, who gained experience and a line on an rather empty resume. Or a hobbyist, who had fun.It would be nice if the company sent a few dollars to the program maintainers or mirrored the site, but it cannot be required. I doubt there is money there. The program maintainers COULD sell their services to help with implementation. But so could anybody else. This is where your four business models fit.
But none of this is necessary to make open source a good investment for a company. Even if the company is the only source for improvements for years, eventually someone else may start to use the software (such as the company your former programmers join. Programmers hate solving the same issue twice.) And if they use it, they will add value. (If you fork the code, you lose the benefits of what everybody else is doing. If there is any development progress, you quickly lose the ability to apply your patches to the maintained version.)
Open source is about programming to support business models that are not based on selling intangibles like software. That is why companies that are completely based on selling software will do anything to destroy it. That is why companies that have trouble selling software packages are embracing it. That is why every non-software company should be embracing GPL open source software whenever they can. And they outnumber the software companies.
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About the financial value of software, there is none. Software's value is what it does to help you. Hopefully it helps your primary business make money. (Even if it is just the extra alertness from walking and getting coffee every time you need to reboot.)
Imagine if information transfer was free, because there is no method to record it so it has to be person to person, or because something like the internet removes the cost of the transfer. With the personal method, I can tell you an idea, or sing you a song, for free. With the internet, I can send you a million word idea, or send you a recording of an opera, for free. Words went from spoken to written to printing-pressed to websites over a very long period, but music and 2D video have only had about a century between the ability to record and the ability to freely transfer. The companies that were created to deal with the difficulty in distribution are complaining loudly now that they are obsolete.
You can put artificial constraints around software, music, and other intangibles, but this is not good for society. The whole patent system was created to make sharing easier. Today was built on yesterday, and tomorrow will be built on today, if we remember what we did today. Most examples of creativity, whether software, music, or doodles, is thrown away after a very short period. The example of creativity with music is the performance. Recording it allows me to share it with others. If I do not record it, it is lost forever. If I record it and bury it in the backyard, it is useless. Only by sharing can others improve on my work. This goes double for software: you probably cannot improve my songs; you can probably improve my programs.
Ideas are free for those who can hear them. Stop trying to silence them to increase the scarcity so you can increase your compensation. The world that requires no new software is a world without progress.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
2. Your paper doesn't cover using Open Source, only creating it. Since it already exists, I don't see any reason not to use it. In fact, most of the pro-Open-Source literature concentrates on why using it is beneficial. (And they tend to do a good job of explaining it -- customer control probably being number one.) And since Microsoft is trying to get people to use Shared Source (or proprietary) and stop using Open Source, I think usage is the real issue here.
3. You've missed a lot of things in your paper. For example, the Internet was built on Open Source. Ever heard of Sendmail? How about NCSA httpd (and Apache, its follow-on)? BIND? These were (and still are) core components of the Internet.
4. GCC is not the fastest compiler. But that is not its primary goal. It is however, the most portable. This was one of the primary goals, and it has been successful as the most widely available compiler. Still, on x86 systems, it is competitive with even Intel's own compiler. I also believe that it was the first compiler to be completely ISO C++ compliant.
5. How can something that can be copied for virtual nothing be scarce? Any scarcity you create is artifical. And competition tends to remove such artificial barriers.
6. By artificially increasing the value of software, you are increasing the costs to all consumers of software. Thus you reduce the amount of productivity savings to all those customers. It's not clear which is more beneficial to the econmony/society as a whole. But I expect that spreading the wealth around would be better.
7. If people want to give away their labor, who are you to complain about it? If someone offered to cut your grass for free, would you turn them down because it is depressing the economy? Maybe they want to have an excuse to be outside, or maybe they enjoy doing it, or maybe it makes them feel good to help others.
8. The issue of why people want to work on Open Source without monetary remuneration have been covered in several places. ("The Cathedral and the Bazaar" probably being the best.) Such reasons include making a name for one's self, generosity, no value seen in the software beyond using it for one's own purposes, wanting others to work on the product, etc. Also, don't discount the fact that if someone creates some software and releases it, he tends to end up with a better version than what he released.
While your paper makes some good points (I moderated it "Interesting" in another thread) I don't think you've spent too much time doing your research. You provide reasons why people shouldn't work on Open Source, and yet they do. So you're busy explaining why this shouldn't happen, when you should be figuring out why it does.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
From Microsoft's shared source policy is not equivalent to open source:
Good programmers are not willing to sign the non-competition and non-disclosure agreements that Microsoft requires. They fear that would put them at risk of a Microsoft lawsuit. Even if they were found in court not to have infringed on Microsoft's contract, the cost of the lawsuit would be enormous. Also, they could lose their jobs over any such dispute. It is possible that the only real effect of Microsoft's shared source policy is to cripple an organization's best programmers, so that they cannot work in any field in which Microsoft has an interest.
Microsoft's policy of allowing government programmers to see source code is not equivalent to having open source code. A thorough review of the more than 40 million lines of source code in Windows XP is far more than even a government can attempt. It would be easy for someone to hide spy instructions that could be controlled from outside. This is not unlikely. The U.S. government's spy agencies, the CIA, NSA, and others, have an essentially unlimited amount of money. They can and do exploit any method of spying. The U.S. government has bombed 14 countries in 35 years. Organizations should not assume that those who think killing is a way of solving problems will suddenly become moral when they consider computer software.