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.
"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)
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.