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Why Do People Write Open Source Software?
M.Broil writes "Two interesting articles try to answer this question. One's at NewsForge, the other's at Cybernaut.com. The two writers reach conclusions that are almost exactly opposite. Which one is right? Or is it possible that different open source coders have different motivations? (That's what I think, anyway.)" I suspect as well that each developer has their own reason, ranging from ego to malcontent to benevolence.
Because opennes implies freedom. Humans like freedom.
Second, because we have bad experiences with Microsoft. Microsoft is closed. Proprietary. Restrictive. Opressive. User hostil. Unreliable.
Etc.
Because it's not there.
it seems to me that people get into OSS for the same reason they might get into local government (i.e. small town politics). if someone is interested in government and politics, they try to do something locally first, because a) people will let them and b) there is less bureaucracy. there is usually little or no pay when involved in local government, but just like working on OSS, it gives a good resume boost and gives valuable experience. i guess the only difference is that local government is not aiming to be a competitor to higher authorities :)
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
...to make the world a better place, and just because you can.
Informatus Technologicus
As the author of a cryptographic toolkit [libtomcrypt] and a bignum toolkit [libtommath], both of which are written in portable ISO C, build out of the box on any GCC equipped machine and generally perform reasonably decent I have two cents to offer.
As an OSS developer myself I have to say that it is not that I'm not willing to go all the way with a complete product it is often that the end users themselves are not willing to put in the effort to review it.
For instance, combined 500 people have downloaded the recent releases of my libraries. Which doesn't seem like a lot except that crypto libraries are generally not horded that much.
Often I will go months before receiving anything from anyone. Whenever a bug is found I often fix it within a few hours at most. Mostly I find the bugs in the libraries as I wander through it.
Though my projects are "limited" scale I bet similar reasoning applies to larger scale projects. If a developer doesn't get user feedback its not only hard to fix bugs they don't know about but often discouraging to continue development.
Tom
BTW my libs are at http://libtomcrypt.org for the curious....
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Conversely, if you charged for it, people would bitch about it all the time.
Even the "selfish" reasons that can motivate OSS developers don't involve a monetary transaction. The resume-building aspect can, in economic terms, be considered an investment in human capital, an investment made with time and effort, not dollars. For many would-be IS professionals, they may not have the financial resources to take a certified class in $hotnewtech, but jumping in on an OSS project can provide similar benefits. It's a nice alternative means of building a skilled workforce.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
They do not realize that they are taking food out of their future mouths.
What a load of crap.
Among my projects is a class I released to phpbuilder.com's "shared code library". It is a method for web servers to send emails through a remote MTA. (PHP's "mail()" function only works on *nix if you have sendmail installed)
By releasing this library into the public (under the LGPL) I've seen it grow and get better as others have used it, and occasionally, tweaked it to fit their needs.
Why people release software to the public is different for each person. It's really like asking: "Why do people drive on freeways?" or, "Why do people dig with shovels?".
Open source licensing is a tool. Different folks use that tool for different reasons. The point, however, is that we *have* this tool, and isn't it kinda neat?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I agree with the scientific discovery part, but your statement about food breaks down.
The difference here is simple. The scientist that makes a discovery is paid somehow to do that. They are just going to make another one later. If they make enough, they continue to be valuable.
Their living is new ideas.
OSS people work differently.
They have problems to solve. They make their money solving problems. These solutions typically require tools to build.
By building better tools they are more able to solve problems. Since they can solve more problems, they will make more money.
When you buy a license to run someones software, you are basically paying them to solve your problem. When you hire OSS capable people, you are paying them to solve your problem.
The difference between the two is profound.
When you purchase software, you do not own the solution. You only pay for the right to make use of their solution that you can use according to their terms. It is not your solution.
Spending your money on someone who can build with OSS means that you own that solution. How it is used and what it does is on your terms.
Given the licensing terms today and the potential per user costs they incurr, OSS provides a much better long term value proposition than closed software does.
Anyone who really understands what that means will become a lot more willing to pay for OSS solutions.
Here is another way to look at things. All the money for all the solutions can either go to Redmond, or it can go to the people you have to hire anyway to make that mess work in the first place.
Which will be cheaper in the long run?
Personally, I would much rather support and educate the folks around me and actually get something rather than pay them what I have to and also pay that big and very hungry gorilla in Redmond.
Stealing food indeed.
Blogging because I can...
Another common one is that they have a tool that gets the job done a hoarding it does them no good, so they release it for the common good. Of course most of them do it because they found value in another open source application they used and figure "hey I got something for nothing why not release this if there is a chance it will help someone." A good example of this from my personal experience is CEPS or Cisco Enterprise Print System, while there is arguably not a lot of new code there (it is based around a number of open source tools), the completed package is definitly worth more than the sum of its parts. The author was very happy at finding open and free solutions he could use to get his job done, and in return released the best print system in existance back to the world for all to use. The author gained something from the open source movement (all the free tools that allowed him to make a super low cost print system that beats every commercial system out there) and the community gained something (this great tool). Everyone wins and it costs him almost no additional time or expense to release his work as open source. To check out the project go to the CEPS page at sourceforge.net
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I just love the coding, I don't do it for anything else, except pure love. If someone else wants to make money from what i write, let them. I just want to code. If someone else wants to modify my writings, let them. As long as I'm able to code, no-one can take away the fun from me. If someone wants to write closed source software, let them. It's just fun to write, if I can in any way help some-one else, while I'm having fun, why not. It's just plain and simple fun, let's keep it that way.
As an OSS developer myself I have to say that it is not that I'm not willing to go all the way with a complete product it is often that the end users themselves are not willing to put in the effort to review it.
End users don't want to review products. They just want to learn the minimum necessary to use them, to get done what they need to.
Companies have teams of people that they pay to review and test products. This is the only way for them to get large amounts of feedback during development; if they just threw their unfinished product at end users and said "Here, find out what's wrong, and by the way, we won't pay you," the end users would go "Pshh, find out yourself. Then deliver it to us."
The coolest voice ever.
...because they love what computers could be.
I've always thought that the great thing about computers is their mallability - the way you can change the way they act.
Then comes issues like licensing, and the way that proprietary software can only be extended using special macro languages.. These things drop artificial flexibility barriers onto a completely open system - a very sad waste of the potential of such devices..
Because malleability is the best trait of computer programs over specific, fixed systems, it is only at its best if no such artificial barriers are imposed on the system.
The open source model really just seems like a natural method of software development that avoids such wastage...
My company pays for the service of writing custom embedded software for the product they sell. My previous company paid me for the service of writing custom software for their internal use and for their web site. A vast majority of programmers work this way.
Other than that, I think you make a good analogy. What you fail to mention is that scientists get the benefit of the scientific research of others. My main motivation when I contribute to open source projects is that I want the free software that others contribute. I realize that if everyone just leached off of the system then Linux wouldn't exist at all so I try to do my part.
This space intentionally left blank.
hiding under the pillow of the "Open Source" mantra.
This article should really be titled...
"Why do people write Unix software?"
Right? I mean, that's really what we mean here right? All those things about being creative and experimenting and having fun coding...well, I mean that can all be done with closed source programming too...right? The only difference is that when you are ready, you throw your code to the hounds for inspection, and acceptance.
Anybody can "code". Whether it is closed source, open source, shared source, bla source doesn't matter. I've been coding for years. All my code is closed in the manner that I haven't released it. Yet, I still get joy out of being creative.
Most, so called "open source" coders are simply programmers who want their codebase to "take-off" so they won't be so alone in the world and they can be recognized with fame and possibly fortune. It works that way in the "closed source" world too. How do you think people like the "Woz", McAfee, Norton got started?
If anything you do is included into a greater whole it will give you more security. Open source coding is possibly a "vice" for some people, a "coping strategy" for others. Some people drink too much, smoke too much, do drugs, gamble, talk on the cell phone too much, there are many vices in this world for coping.
I suppose many code "open source" to support and protect their knowledge base. That's what this is really about right? You spend years learning and perfecting your skills in an OS, or language, and you don't want someone to just take all that away. You don't want Microsoft to "win" and Unix/Linux/Open source to just die, right? I mean, that's what E.S.R was doing when he wrote his famous paper right? He was protecting his investment.
Well, what happens when someone who has invested their life in Microsoft products and tools sees that others are encroaching on their turf? Don't they fight? Don't you fight to defend and protect your life and investment? Don't you write more code that people might use freely so that you won't lose everything you have in your head?
In short, there are many reasons people "code". Some learn, some create, some research, some use that code to support an existing infrastructure, some want success, fame, and money. These things have nothing to do with "open-source" per se, except supporting an infrastructure, and even that does not require you to "release" your code.
Off soap box.
-2 cents.
I take it you don't have much of a connection to the scientific field in your daily life.
Sure, there is a vast international academic community that shares their discoveries and operates on a beautiful principle of cooperation (but only within the acadmic community). But for a biotech/pharma company, scientific research is an unnavigable tangle of patents and licences. You think that tech patents have gotten out of hand? For years it's been much worse for biotech - anything and everything is patentable and patented - sequences of only a few amino acids, genomes of whole organisms, very basic research methods, etc. For a long time companies have been submitting patent applications containing hundreds of pages of any sequence they could come up with, in the hopes that some of it might be useful later. In many areas you have to pay off millions of dollars in licenses to large pharma companies just for the privilege of doing research on that particular subject.
No, it's a very long time before a very large portion of scientific discoveries make it to the public domain. And don't forget, it's the industry not academia which does most of the science that directly affects our daily lives.
First, most OSS developers do not think they can make money selling their software. They think that software that sells needs to be super stable and perfect, with a perfect UI.
Oh, btw, I just assumed you were joking here - they are free software developers, not blind morons with no understanding of what software is. Incidentally, please do show me just one example of an application that's "super stable, with a perfect UI", commercial or otherwise.
sic transit gloria mundi
You conclude open source is based on the principles of communism. Not sure how you come to this conclusion. Most open source authors write the software because *THEY* wanted the software, not because someone else did, specifically. It just so happens that the software might be useful to someone else too, so if the source is openned up, a lot of people can work on it, and the original author gains directly from other contributions as well. Communism? No... it's quite selfish, actually. It just happens to be an interesting upshot of this form of selfishness that a lot of people happen to get something out of it.
It might also be worth adding that real success is measured not by a bottom line on a bank statement, but solely by the measure of satisfaction that one has with oneself. Anyone who says anything other than that is probably trying to get you to do something for him.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
probably isn't a project that resonates well with most OSS programmers. write a program that'll do the opposite to php and I'll beta test the hell out of it. Might eve get inspired to help you.
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