Slashdot Mirror
Developers Lose With Proprietary Software
An anonymous reader writes "Appgen looked like a nice cross-platform accounting program independent software developers could use as a base for custom applications, and lots of them paid $2000 or more for the company's development kits. Then Appgen went out of business and left all those developers stranded. They can't even generate license keys, and their support has disappeared. Nobody knows who now owns Appgen's code, so it looks like all those developers and their clients are screwed. This couldn't happen if Appgen was Open Source. There's a strong lesson in this story for those who choose to listen." Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
The place where I work used a proprietary closed source library for Borland C++ Builder. The project was developed 5 years ago and the library was purchased from some vendor whose name I forgot.
When faced with updates to the version 2.0, we found out the vendor went bankrupt. Luckily, they open-sourced the libraries and just put them up on SourceForge. I didn't really use their source code, just was thankful the libraries were there andfit the project under Borland C++.
I was pretty sure I agreed with him until I tried iTunes last week. Now, I'm not so sure that a Web browser is really the right platform for every application.
There seems to be a working Appgen web site here, although the for-pay downloads aren't working.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
It probably would cause a shake up but with java there are several eggs in different baskets. What would perl do without Larry Wall? They would get over it and move on. Besides Sun is more likely to be an aquisition target than it is to flame out.
In Republican America phones tap you.
"Learning is fun!" - Bender, Futurama. If you know this quote, you know that these people just learned an important lesson.
"Code Escrow"
If I am going to purchase components or make a decision to commit, I make sure that there is some sort of safety-net just in case the company fails. Often this comes in the form of a code escrow service. Every X days, the company ships off a copy of all their code to the service. If the company fails or there is a serious event, the escrow company releases the code.
As a small developer that is a large expense, so for my customers, they already have the contact info for my off-site backup person. If anything happens to me, that person is instructed to freely distribute all source code. It is someone I trust.
Or you could use your attorney.
Off-site backups are a Good Thing(TM), and it only takes one extra small step to ensure that, should you perish, your work isn't left inaccessible. Whether that means a closed-source app or just your notes on an open source project.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
When companies sell closed source solutions that other companies build on top of and come to be dependent on it's true there's big risks. The solution that seems to be suggested here is to build on open source projects. The problem: good luck finding a good, well documented, open source accounting system. Another solution is code escrow. Before you buy into a system like that make sure the vendor puts the source somewhere where the customers can get it if they fold and grants them the right to do so. There's several companies that provide services like this and if software consumers start insisting on it we can see problems like this become less frequent in the future. Even for closed source projects.
The paradigm where things start and end free just means developers never get paid.
My last job paid for writing and supporting Free Software because that's what the company did (and does -- they're still around, and I understand in better financial shape now than when I left). My current job is at a company that writes proprietary software -- but we use Free Software to do it, so when we need a bugfix or an extension, my present employer, a proprietary software company, still pays me to work on Free Software.
My employer before the last two was a car dealership; they hired me as a contractor to move their base platform to Free Software. Before that I spent some time helping a school district set up some servers running on (you guessed it) Free Software. Same kind of business: They hit a bug or need a feature, I'm the guy to write it. (Not that either of those two *did* hit bugs or missing features, but the capability was one of the things they got when they hired me).
This myth that folks never get paid for working on Free Software is just that -- a myth -- and needs to die.
A proprietary software company goes out of business and screws its' customers along the way.
Thus, proprietary software is by nature a bad thing. AND, by the linked story's own formula, you're more likely to profit by going with open source.
This is simply foolish. If all proprietary companies did this, then yes, you could draw this conclusion. But this was one (very badly run) company, and a small one at that. Small businesses close their doors all the time, sometimes leaving their customers high and dry. You think Appgen is the only one that's ever done this?
How about all of the software companies that have suceeded? How about all of the companies that have supported their customers in good times and bad? For God's sake, IBM supported OS/2 for years, even when it was clear that few people were using it. There are hundreds of other examples I could give of software companies doing the RIGHT thing.
Open Source is a software development model and philosophy.You can argue that it's a morally superior way of business, but not a more profitable one.
And even if Appgen's code was open, that still doesn't get their customers off the hook. Where will those customers go for support? The VARs? There's only so much they can do. Even if the app was turned into a large coordinated open source project, it would still take time to assemble the proper volunteers and get the app back on track. And the customers are STILL screwed out of paid support.
I have to agree with some other posters here. Mod the article -1 GNU/Preachy.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Why do you think businesses exist? If you walk into a marketing meeting of any business of a relatively large size, what is the key word you hear: Market Share. And what is market share? A partial monopoly which gives the company partial control over the market price of something.
.
What if there was an industry that prevented anyone from gaining a lot of market share. What would it look like? Such industries DO exist:
Doctore
Lawyers
Accountants
Plumbers
etc . .
There are exceptions to each of these examples (HR Block, Large auditing firms, Large law firms), but the great MAJORITY of these professionals make their living as PRIVATE entities, which means you'll never know how profitable they are.
These professionals can't gain market share because, though it takes time and money, the barriers of market are far, far less than, say, competing with MS on THEIR platform. Hence, when standards are OPEN, competition increases and the needs for financial leverage decrease as a result of smaller barriers to market.
So, your observation of just a view PUBLICLY OWNED (or business large enough for you to note their existence) entities making profits from OSS are correct. However, your inability to observe the earnings of PRIVATELY OWNED entities (or individuals who can live comfortable with just a dozen clients) using and creating OSS is not reason enough to come to the conclusion that OSS is flawed in the area of profitability. Our current system is simply limitted to requiring only public entities to publicly release their earnings and the majority of those benefitting by writing OSS are too small for you to even take notice.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
A couple interesting stories from our past and our present along these lines:
The 1960 and 1970 US Census tract level data (tract level means a subdivision of a county) are available only in a proprietary compressed format. This is because the US Government hired a programming firm (Dualabs) to write a compression scheme to be used on this census data. Dualabs wrote the program, compressed the data, and distributed the decompressor program. Census data archivists around the country only got the compressed version of the data. The US Government never made it a point to get the complete corresponding source code to that decompressor program, nor did they get a license to share and modify the program (which would have required source code to do well). The computers people initally used with the decompressor program became outmoded and the decompressor program only ran on that obsolete platform.
Dualabs went out of business in 1974. Therefore, we, the public, paid for Census data we cannot completely read even to this day without reverse engineering the compressed data format. Census data is unarguably important and few people know about this lack of foresight on the part of the US Government and Dualabs. This story has many lessons, most of which still have not been learned.
Recently the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign switched from using 5 web-based programs to do class-related stuff online (display student's grades, allow students to receive class material, discuss class projects with each other, etc.). Not long ago, UIUC dropped support for all of these programs and began supporting only Illinois Compass ("powered by WebCT Vista", as the program's proprietors tell us). Illinois Compass is non-free software and costs UIUC one million dollars a year (which UIUC is paying).
UIUC is widely known for having talented software programmers and a highly regarded college of engineering. For orders of magnitude less than $1M/yr UIUC could have paid a few students to leverage the huge pool of capable, tested, and time-honored Free Software out there in order to make a web-based bulletin board system to replace the 5 programs UIUC dropped support for. Now, with Illinois Compass, UIUC pays a team of local support staff (on top of the $1M/yr program fee) to support the new program. UIUC has no source code for Illinois Compass (let alone a license allowing them to share and modify the program). So now UIUC risks running into the same problem the US Government ran into should the proprietor's support for Illinois Compass disappear.
Sometimes these lessons take a long time to learn and cost the public a lot of money.
Digital Citizen
Our supplier companies have been bought out, dropped production, decided that just stopping and giving us source was more cost effective than making all the fixes our contract demanded, etc.
Due to the enormous length of our software development life cycle (10+ years!) we end up supporting a LOT of CAS.
And we do it by buying the source.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.