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Do Companies Take Software, And Not Give?
SirDaShadow writes "The Inquirer has an excellent article that describes how companies take from the Open Source Community and how few are giving back. At the end of the article, it says it might be tax deductible. This made me think...wouldn't it be great for the OS community if we could provide a law to facilitate tax cuts to companies who give to OS, or at least make it mandatory to for-profit organizations to give a certain minimum amount and take it out of their taxes?" This piece ignores the obvious and large contributions that some companies have made in money, programmer time, code release and even just lending their name and credibility to projects like KDE and GNOME, but it does have some truth -- see for instance the Busybox Hall of Shame.
The busybox link is already slashdotted.
At the end of the article, it says it might be tax deductible
"Tax deductible" effectively means that the government pays for it and not the person/corporation that deducts it from their taxes. As in this case -- it is effectively the government that would be donating, and not the corporations. Another example would be tax-deductible charitable donations -- if you donate money to a charity and then take it out of your taxes, then effectively, you haven't donated one cent to the charity. The government reimbursed you for that donation.
Do you happen to work for Microsoft?
Google cache
Blogzine
wouldn't it be great for the OS community if we could provide a law to facilitate tax cuts to companies who give to OS
Absolutely not. As soon as you get government involved, OS becomes political, and influenced by political forces. This is the last thing we want.
Corporations want to take before they give. That's the sad truth. If there's no extra profit in it for them, they're less likely to do it.
Articles like this one are going to have to be published in places like the Wall Street Journal or other papers that corporate paperpushers look at. Then perhaps they'll catch on. Hopefully.
Good karma is sometimes worth a lot more than immediate profit -- if a company pitches in to help, and gets their name in the changelog or thankyou files, who knows? They might get a few customers that way.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Isn't this what we all advertise OS as being, so companies will start using it? Obviously not everyone is going to give back or contribute to the OS community, but there will always be a percentage. As the number of users grows, so will the number of contributors.
What I'm most afraid of is companies abusing OS software and commercializing it beyond recognition, to the point where the OS community is lost.
Nonetheless, incetives such as tax cuts do sound like an interesting idea.
It would be nice is software companies could deduct some of the cost of developing the software if the released it in to the publicdomain after it has been disbanded.
They'll just use the deductions to write off archaic and useless code, like drivers for ports that no longer exist. Do you really need punchcard access?
The programmers released their code under a BSD license, not GPL.
Don't put a "free food" sign on your buffet if you want $5 in exchange. Gee.
Well, of course there are two sides to every coin. I expect there's more corp sponsored free software hacking going on than you might think though. Remember that it's not always official - at my last job I submitted patches to various open source projects that I did on the job, because they happened to be basically what we needed and along the way I felt it was necessary to improve them. Often the only indication that they were done on paid time was that I sent them from my company email address.
I find this article somewhat naive. It's certainly true that there are lot of companies abusing GPL and OSS for commercial purposes some of them probably modify code and never release their changes.
;-)
The article also suggest that instead of spending, and I quote
"If you replaced 10 $30,000 Nokia firewall with a free NetBSD implementation, but it lacks the ability to report to your management software, why not do something about it?"
This is not as easy as it sounds. Nokia probably payed through the nose to get the specs for that management software or signed more NDAs and deals that your company has seen in its lifetime. It's not always an option to do stuff yourself. Further most phb's will automagically raise the (valid) point, who to blame when the shit hits the fan. When something goes haywire and you payed some college kid $500, you can't call him in the middle of his exams and expect him to fix it. You can ask him, but he/she is certainly not obliged to fix it.
If you go with Nokia, you can give their tollfree hotline a call and tell them your problem and the chances are that the hotfix/patch is already available.
Things aren't so black/white as the article wants it to be, IMHO it's a pretty shitty article and doesn't really add anything to the scene apart from entropy. The busybox-link however, was interesting
The idea that users should be forced to contribute based on their collective status as a powerful organization, or their wealth, lends credence to the notion that OSS\copyleft are communism.
just today, it was about heaters on the space shuttle and how it might blow up, nows it's this.
Rant brought to you by a Squadron of Constipated Nuns.
That is the point of Open Source. If you start requiring companies to give a donation, then whats the point? They will use M$, most don't care if they have the source code or not, they just ask does it work, and what is it gonna cost? I cannot believe this was even brought up.
Maybe I am mistaken in my understanding of the post, and if so, please clarify.
Those of us who know Erik Andersen know his personality, and how he loves to rant and proselytise about anything opensource and Debian, with that ever-so-annoying patronizing holier-than-thou tone, and that he loves to find himself enemies that don't believe him or don't take him as seriously as he'd like.
..
The people/companies he lists on his hall of shame page may very well have violated the GPL, or otherwise not have played nice with the community, but only Erik Andersen would make a page to denounce them all, then astroturf Slashfot to show it to the world (oh the humanity!)
Trust people in Utah who have worked for a shitty Caldera dot-com to behave a little differently from the rest of us
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What taxes do you think that companies pay? In the US, individual citizens pay the majority of taxes. Corporations have successfully moved their headquarters offshore, or "convinced" Congress to provide loopholes. Corporations don't pay their share of taxes; they don't need any more deductions.
I personally wonder, how many "close source" companies secretly and illegally include GNU-copyrighted code in their products, and sell it without source, violating GPL, but nobody knows they do, just because nobody ever sees the source.
Of course if the source was to be ever revealed, that is some serious risk, but if the company plans to keep it always secret - why not?
[environment-friendly post, contains recycled material]
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
If you believe that the government should keep out of the business of "picking winners" in the market, then you must be against this clear subsidy. We have to win by the same rules everyone else plays by.
I say FUCK NO!
Or one acronym, rather:
GPL.
GPL earlier and GPL often.
Anything less would be to sell yourself down the river. Don't let corporate interests convince you it is somehow 'noble' or 'just' to forfeit the rights of users to have access to the source of the applications they run, to run them without restriction, and to modify and distribute them as they see fit to benefit the greater whole.
Do not let them convince you of this. I tell you, they are laughing all the way to the bank.
How many times does RMS have to tell us before we will hear?
This was just what Erik did not need, and would be an excellent site that could benefit from such a program.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
god bless blind liberalism
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
The chances of the OSS community getting any kind of a favorable law passed are zero. Period.
Assuming the submitter is talking about the USA, face it: corporations rule. Money talks. Does the OSS community have the money to hire lobbyists and spread some "cheer" around in time for the elections? No. But companies do: and thats why they win.
On top of this, you're wishing for a mandatory "tax" on for-profit organizations?? Dream on!
What is possible is some sort of a tax-writeoff for corporations that donate source to the OSS community. But this won't fly anyways. Why? Because corporations don't pay much taxes, thats why! Most of them register offshore, and on paper their profits are zero. Checkout the writings of Nader and others (here's such an article from a little Googling).
give it time, people learn to contribute more.
if anything lets not bring taxes into this.
What incentive does a company have to contribute back to the open source community when its first responsibility is to protect it's intellectual property?
The only incentive right now is that by submitting bug fixes back to the communal code, the company can avoid having to maintain its own copy of the code, saving time in the future when new version of the software are released.
However, by sharing new feature additions with the community, the company could inadvertantly be also sharing its intellectual property with its competitors, which is bad for its shareholders.
Because they become major contributors they end up all but hijacking a project for their own exclusive usage. Ever see a project start out in one direction and then all of a sudden end up being something completely different? Sometimes that's a good thing, but I'd rather have it by general consensus of the community rather than muscled into place by a company with money to burn.
Paranoia taken to extremes here but couldn't Microsoft themselves build on a few projects out there to help steer them away from being truly competitive?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
If the whole point of Open Source was to make sure that people "give back" then it would have failed long ago. The whole point was that here was the source, and everybody in the world can get at it, no strings attached except for the license requirements.
Has Open Source benefitted from these corporate "leeches" that just take and take and never give back? Of course, even if just a little. If there was a problem with the software, then if the company that is using the software feel that it's important that it be fixed, then they will either bitch about it until someone does, or they will switch software, or perhaps, once in a long while, they might have someone contribute to fixing it. But in any of those cases, bad software that are not actively maintained go away. Good software that a lot of users, corporate or othrewise, find useful, will get a large community of users that will use it, possibly complain about it, but if they stay with it, they are contributing to it.
Open Source is not always about the code, though it is by far the most visible aspect of it. The important thing is to realize contribution comes in many forms, and software, after all, is no good if there are no users for it. If you are using a piece of Open Source software, and you find it useful and continue to use it, you are already contributing. Anyone who believes money, development, testing or documentation should be required contribution in any way is just looking too narrowly.
Obviously, a sufficient fraction of those companies are "giving back" for there to exist a lively and productive open source community. And even "mere users" are useful for open source projects: they make feature requests and report bugs.
most open source licences don't require a "give back" as a provision for usint the software. Besides, based on how some people promote the philosophy of open source software, they aren't "taking", just making a copy for their use, it isn't as if there is less open source software as a result of a company using it vs. not using it. The very fact that companies are employing people to maintain installations of open source software is a plus if anything.
Publishing is assymetrical. The efficiency of sharing info comes largely by its consumers outnumbering its producers. The network effect, where returns on investment increase when a platform's deployment footprint increases, makes the rapid spread of software deliver more to its users, especially its provider at the source. A little good software goes a long way.
This is not to say that publishing software is a one way street. Opening the source is a great move towards interactivating the communication along the publishing pathways. At the very least, sourcecode servers provide an infrastructure where feedback from consumers can input meaningfully to the revision process, including patches, and especially structured test results. Many one-to-many relations, bidirectional, gives OSS development the definitive advantage in efficiency and robustness.
--
make install -not war
The United States is a huge supplier of aid to many countries, even those we view as "enemies." Did you know that the United States was the largest giver to North Korea? And despite this, they lie and threaten the United States and its allies.
Oh for crying out loud, like we don't have ENOUGH jargon to parse through!
So, that makes Linux an OS OS then?
SOS! I'm drowning in acronyms!
You can't take the sky from me...
An audience. No artist wants to perform without one.
They also give a niche for OSS people to use the programs daily under real workloads, allowing them to practise and deepen their understanding, and test their work out in the "real world".
They also give y'all OSS-based jobs, where you don't have to put up with Microsoft Sodding Windows.
In other news, big corporations also not giving employees free pony rides and lollipops.
And how many slashdotters who are NOT programmers have downloaded and used free software and never gave the authors any money for it? Isn't buying a Linux distro a way of giving back to the community if you're not a programmer.
Typical Open Source hypocrisy: Programmers that whine about paying for programs and demanding that it has to "Be Free as in Freedom" and then get pissed off because someone takes you up on that. Don't want someone to rip-off your work? Don't make it Free.
The price of "freedom in programming" is the freeloader.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
The whole point of free software is freedom, the minute you begin adding forceful restrictions is the point it is not longer free software, like the internet freedom comes at a cost.
If the cost if people dont need to give anything back then so be it. But if you start adding a requirement to give something back you will end up with shoddy code, less chance of anyone bothering to use it at the enterprise level and probably increase the TCO quite a bit.
If you start adding more resrictions like this to free software you begin walking down the EULA road that the GPL and its siblings are supposed to be the opposite of.
So, how many companies just take the Microsoft C compiler without contributing back any improvements to it?
while digging through some source code I came across a comment that some of the code was copied from syslog.c. syslog.c has a BSD header, but the code I was looking at certainly did not... I'm more of a GPL person and was about to blow the whistle until I realized it was BSD. IS this a violation? And how does one gently tell their employer to comply with a license without getting fired??
I read the article, and it's one of those rare times that there's nothing much in it that isn't contained in the Slashdot summary. Anyway, isn't it totally to be expected that most companies would take everything they can get from open source, and not give anything back in terms of time or money?
But so what? What Linux needs more than anything else is to capture more than 20% of the desktop market. Once there's a foothold of that magnitude, we'll start seeing practically everything, from Doom III to Quickbooks, released in Linux.
So, as for those companies who aren't "giving back," -- I say, that merely by virtue of adding to the pool of Linux users, they are giving the open source movement exactly what it needs most.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
It's only natural. That's how our free econony works. Nobody wants to pay if she can get the same for zero costs.
Kudos to Bruce Perens for doing The Right Thing. We need to give to the Fortune 500 even more for free (as in gratis). Otherwise they won't use our great libre software. And without them using it, Linux will never go conquering the enterprise desktops.
It is only straightforward then to ban the greedy Qt/KDE developers who don't want to give gratis. These guys now praise the GPL to high heaven (asking Fortune 500 to give back in source code... how ridiculous!)... Alternatively sell'em a 3000.- $US per developer annual license (how naive -- when companies can have the magnificent, cross-platform, stable and supported GTK+ platform for free!).
I am all for UserLinux and hope they do succeed.
I wanted to respond to this when I saw it on the inquirer.
Quite simply, the corporation adopts an open source project. A bunch of their employees use it. THEY know whether or not THEY like it, not the company.
How many individuals help out an open source project after the start using it from their business? That's what's important.
Instead america offers them money and help that they'll certainly spend on more WMD's.
Of course. As the principal supplier of WMD's, this is great for American industry.
Who's going to pay to put something back?
In many jursidictions companies have a legal obligation to maximise shareholder value, so can't take the money from shareholders.
If they put their prices up the customers will go elsewhere, so they can't take the money from customers.
Which leaves employees. "Hi guys and gals, you won't mind a 10% pay cut to fund our contribution to the open source community, will you?". Yeah, right.
At least some fraction of the pay these programmers earn at those companies should be counted when figuring the corporate effect on open source.
Open source feeds the non-contributing companies, but those non-contributing companies enable more people to work as programmers, increasing the pool of people who are able to work on open source as individuals.
Please leave the Orwellian double-speak to MS, the IRS, Homeland [In]Security and the rest of the opposition. It has no place in Open Source.
or at least make it mandatory to for-profit organizations to give a certain minimum amount
A modern day witchhunt.
And if you want government enforcement - sue.
If you attach conditions to a gift it is no longer a gift.
The moderators on slashdot are Pro Gnome. When I made the Argument for KDE, I got -1 troll!
No disrespect meant to Erik, but I took a look around the hall of shame and it's not really as shocking as it first appears. Buffalo's wireless router has a statement at the bottom of the Linked page stating they comply with the GPL and source code is available. The PDF link appears to be an exact copy of the GPL, in PDF format, for some reason.
This leaves three products (counting the bottom three DVD players as one naughty entity) which appear to be breaking the GPL and are doing nothing about it. Considering Erik's 'Products' page, we're doing alright. It would seem that the other companies aren't really kicking up a fuss over having to have the source code available, maybe they just didn't read the GPL when they first used the code?
From the viewpoint of the code actually being used, I think this is a good thing. It represents a shift towards OS. A previous poster said that if even a small percentage give something back, we're doing pretty well. How many closed-source companies can claim to have had constructive feedback on their products that OS has the potential to enjoy?
Perhaps if we are receptive to this use of OS code, we will reap the rewards later when companies realise what a good deal they're getting? Patience is a virtue?
Bruce
Actually, Bruce P. put forward 2 decisive arguments justifying his decision as a great project leader:
... The extent to which our software penetrates the business world will govern our effectiveness in getting the legislative changes we need."
* "It was clear from the discussion that while GNOME and KDE each exceed the other in some areas, when you weigh them all together they are of equal technical merit. However there is a critical business difference between the two GUIs: GNOME does not require a royalty in connection with proprietary software development based upon their SDK. Qt, the widget set upon which KDE is based, does have a proprietary developer licensing fee connected with it."
And:
* "You know the issues: software patents, DRM, etc.
We *need* to win over big business to our camp to win the fight against software patents and other crap....
A masterful troll, sir. I praise your abilities.
if you write code for "free" then dont act surprised when people take your code. Writing code for "free" is "dumb".
Did you ever wonder why there are maybe a half dozen people who make money off of "free" software?
Many companies lack the skills to maintain code--they simply don't have developers (or at least not the right sort of developer). To meaningfully contribute monetarily would erode at the cost savings. If the company is public, there may even be further complications.
If you create a model where software is available with no license fee, then you need to accept that is the rules you play by. Certainly you can go after the company if the start to make money off extensions to the software (i.e. violate the license), but, as someone noted earlier, you can't put a sign that says "free food," and complain that someone didn't chip in.
I believe American corporations could already contribute to open source projects and receive R&D tax credits. The only difference would be the open source project would not be "in house" but if they could show they received something from the "donation" then it should work. Then again, I'm not a tax man. Of course, if the open source project was administered by a non-profit foundation, then a monetary contribution would be a charitable tax donation (Mozilla Foundation?)...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Did I read this right? Did someone forget what the "O" in "OSS" stands for? Did someone miss the point in "Free as in Beer"?
I know Slashdot is a magnet for anti-capitalist left-wing wannabe-geeks, but this throws the cake. We have finally had a story in which someone pretends to be so concerned for the state of OSS that they'd want to tax, legislation, and otherwise force corporations to contribute to OSS applications. We call people like that hypocrites. The level of cognitive dissonance here is only matched by the incoherent rambling of ideas, none of which will have positive benefits.
Look folks, OSS/FSF/GNU is going to be like any public resource. There will be takers, and there will be givers. Deal with it. If if bothers you that the oss ecology is being exploited, then you have the choice as a consumer to not deal with companies who don't give back. But just like any end-user of OSS software, it's their right not to give back just for using free software.
Let me make sure I get this *really* right. Your reasoning is like this: we need to help businesses work easily with UserLinux and other Free Software. This means, e.g.:
* They should be able to build proprietary apps and tools easily and cost-free
* They should be able to protect their Intellectual Property with anti-circumvention technology
Then, once they're fully dependent on our platform, we'll pressure them to lobby to change the laws so that
* We can obsolete proprietary systems
* We can legally circumvent IP technologies
??
Is that it?
From what I have heard, setting up a 501-c3 is extremely difficult. Because of the benefits it provides, there are a lot of obstacles.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
RMS, or your employer? Your answer should be quite clear.
drivers for ports that no longer exist. Do you really need punchcard access?
//gs looked like. But maybe someone will care in 200 years. Who knows?
Someday, concievably, historians might.
OK, so maybe having a bunch of "useless" or obsolete software dumped into the quasi-public-domain isn't of much public good. But I still would think it is better than having all of that software simply lost to time forever.
We are going to have a relatively massive memory hole in the future's conception of what programming at the professional level at this time was like caused by the fact that all of the source code of the software we use today is going to be simply lost, since no one has copies except for the companies that made them, and those companies more than likely are not going to bother maintaining or keeping track of that code. No one today cares what the source code for Clarisworks versions 1 through 3 for the Apple
And then there's all those little "what if"s. For example, what if there's some huge quantity of deteriorating tapes somewhere containing some information important to someone, and it is determined these things need to be moved off and onto less fragile media, but the tape drives that read them can only be used from old, scarce and broken PDP-11s because they are the only platform for which drivers exist? In that light, device drivers for a dead platform don't sound so useless after all.
Things of that nature. Really, who can say what code that someone someday cold consider "useful"? I say, the more code preserved by the GPL in our cultural memory, the better.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
A company is only going to do something if it's beneficial to them. You're suggesting that because of the hypothetical tax cut they'd write archaic code, but why? There are two possible scenarios that I see:
1. They write code just to get the tax break - this doesn't really make business sense because its likely the only thing they would be able to write off is the programmer time they spent on developing the code, and the programmer time costs more than the money they're saving in taxes, I.E. they lose money on the deal.
2. They need this archaic code - this does make business sense and more importantly makes open source sense, somebody needs a piece of code, so it gets written and added to the community to the benefit of anyone else who needs it. Further it makes a certain amount of sense that if no one in the community was willing or able to write this code it was in some way expensive or impossible to develop. A company might have at its disposal resources that the OS community at large does not which allow them to develop that code that otherwise would've have been written (think big expensive pieces of hardware).
I don't agree with the tax break idea, but I don't think this is a valid argument against it.
Here y'go:
http://tinyurl.com/33yqv
Don't worry about the 'tinyurl', it's just to include username/password in the actual URL because Slashdot strips such things out.
Opensource adds another element, companies see the possiblity of leveraging "free" stuff. That's pretty good for the bottom line.
I haven't meditated on this for a long time but it seems like eventually as more and more companies rely on free software that the providers of free software become a much more valuble person to have around. Subsequently, properly licensing said software to protect those people makes more and more sense (a la GPL.) Commoditization can be outsourced but you have to have "something" to out source, producing that something is valuble.
I'm just rambling but I think that more companies taking is a good thing in the long run, fuck 'em if they don't give back, that's not why it is free in the first place. Moreover, they are just establishing themselves in a position whereby they can be replaced with Indians and Romanians working for American holding companies.
Government is already deeply involved and the decisions you make are already political. This cannot be escaped. Government is what set up and controls copyright and patent regimes, the laws under which computer software are chiefly distributed, copied, and modified.
Government and big businesses are colluding to expand these regimes to include more behavior, making it impossible to do ordinary things without involving at least one of these regimes.
Your post speaks to a typical Slashdot mindset that precludes getting involved in government to affect a beneficial change for citizens. Your post is hardly insightful.
Digital Citizen
There are no barriers to entry, everyone has access to the information necessary to produce the goods, and new companies can enter the market to drive down the prices if other companies are making abnormal profits.
The only potential failing if barriers are introduced - such as branding due to advertisements etc.
Hey, me too!
Or did I just reply to my own post? I can't remember, I'm too stoned.
Qt is GPL-d software, KDE is GPL-d and LPGL-d (for the kdelibs) software. After such a long time, flinging the GPL character in its face is somewhat ironic. Is UserLinux an effort to encourage proprietary software development? The first of the above snippets gives that impression.
I am a user, not a developer. And I am not interested in upsetting anyone: sorry, Bruce and others. But, I thought this UserLinux initiative would be a useful thing. Now I realize that, already at the outset, the one choice is made which (a) has divided the community for ages, and (b) leaves me out in the cold. I will just as simply choose another Linux distribution, but maybe it helps if I voice the above concerns anyway. I would rather have UserLinux succeed in a way that makes it a choice for me also.
The companies don't give anything back, ever?
Never reported a bug? Never recomended it to a friend/sister company who might have reported a bug? Never worked on a patch in house and had a developer at the company release it back from there e-mail?
This article is pretty bullox, I think that many companies are making contributions to the OSS movement; just not in the 'money talks' way that the author would like- Bug reports are important, espically if there WELL DOCUMENTED bug reports; Heck you help mozilla just by running there automatic bug report version. As well as is allready mentioned, a lot of times when someone working at a company develops a patch they submit it, because it's there path, they did it on company time, maby, but they wrote it, not the company.
As well not everyone can code, and a lot of houses that have adopted open source, did so because of the $0 pricetag; so what? That dosen't mean they don't contribute to a better OSS software project by reporting bugs. Bug reports are important damnit!
-Millions of Monkeys, Millions of typewriters, 6 hours of sorting through faeces encrusted pages to find: This post
If you take a picture of my source code it will steal my soul!!
I know I want to spend my tax dollars subsidizing Red Hat's executives and sales droids. (Or did you really think that the tax breaks don't get subsidised by the taxes the rest of us pay...)
Sheesh. Must be a Bush Republican to have that little understanding of finance.
...do you really want some companies contributing? As bad as their commercial code is, they could bring the state of open source down a few pegs.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
At work, we use almost all OS to keep our costs down and increase profits. It's called CAPITALISM. Why in the hell would we want to just freely give something away to the "community"? That's COMMUNISM.
Before you say I'm trolling, we do buy the support contracts for the OS so we can get tech support when needed. That is our only "contribution" to OS. Also, with all of the layoffs and increased workload, why would a company want to throw away precious few resources on a "free" project? We're not a charity, we're a business and need to make money to put food on the table and roofs over our heads.
from the article: "The end result of these studies is always the same, a grinning person telling us about how they won with open source software. Almost all of these companies say that they have cut their head count..."
I am familiar with many projects that cut staff as result of deploying easy to use/administer open source software. You'd think companies would do the opposite - hire people with the money saved - but, sadly, that's rarely the case. Just another bonus for the directors of the company. Sadly, as the article stated, very few companies ever contribute a cent towards open source. I don't see this trend ever changing.
So, these greedy companies have more money to buy Ferraris, big-screen TVs and hot women, eh? Do you realize that a company is merely the employees and shareholders? Money that a company spends on taxes (or anything else) is money that is not going into YOUR paycheck. And money spent on paychecks, dividends, etc, is certainly taxed. There's not this large amount of untaxed money sitting around. It all gets taxed sooner or later, at one point or another.
There is a statistic that is relatively untrackable.
A better article would be "How many companies are contributing to open source without even knowing it?"
Ask yourself do all these programmers work on free code and not get paid? Of course not. Most have jobs in the industry. I'd bet that a significant portion of their code is done on some unknowing companies dime. Furthermore, those same people probably use the companies money to send them to the classes they need to do more work. Much of development is also correspondance. How much company time do open source developers do during work hours?
Companies consume open source but do not contribute. Puh-lease.... give me a break!
First of all, they're giving the OSS community their support by using the code. Not much, but knowing that makes a difference.
Then, they're giving employment to the geeks that roll out the code. I've built a successful career... well, a career anyway, out of being paid to run,use and tame free software, and I owe it not only to the free software I work with but to the people who chose to use the free sotware. My career, and the things my employers can do, would have been a lot more limited had they not had another option but the roadmap laid down for them by a well known developer of feature limited and proprietary software.
It's a commercial world out there chaps, let's not forget it. Every one of you who gets paid to do something based on free software has been given something by your employer that depends on that choice of theirs: your liveliehood. If you still feel that nothing's been given back then dont break the chain, give something back yourselves and write some free software of your own.
Oxford Dictionaries Online
Oh yeah....
also many companies provide laptops and home internet connections to employees. Just think about it, I'm sure you'll come up with more.
If a company hires folks to build upon open source projects, then the costs of writing the code (salaries) are already fully deducted, and as there's no additional material cost for releasing their code, there would be no additional deductions.
IIRC, an individual's labor donated to non-profit causes are not deductible for the individual. And keep in mind that in the US if your individual enterprises don't turn a profit in three years, it's a hobby and expenses are deductible only to the extent of income received.
I disclaim here, I am not an accountant.
How about a law that gives corps tax breaks for giving me cash and gifts? Makes just as much sense as giveing tax breaks for using Open Source software.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I would hardly call that article excellent. Of course businesses do this. The Free Software movement identified a licensing mechanism that allows them to do this long before the Open Source movement existed. The Free Software movement even has a name for this mechanism in licenses--non-copyleft licensing. Businesses love this because it is essentially a donation to their organization. The Open Source movement doesn't distinguish between licenses that have this and licenses that don't because their message is chiefly aimed at businesses.
And it wouldn't be the Open Source movement if it didn't work this way. That movement doesn't say users should have software freedom, that movement throws out ensuring all computer users the freedoms to share and modify computer software in order to pitch a message of practical advantages (which aren't always true). The Open Source movement puts you in the position of pleading for improvements (as Charlie Demerjian's article does) instead of giving you the freedom to either do the work yourself, build a community of like-minded programmers you can rely on, or purchase support from a set of programmers bidding for your business.
Demerjian's article also doesn't demand software freedom, perhaps because the movement he aligns himself with doesn't want you to talk about such things. But he does ask for increased representation which still falls short of real support:
With so many people signing up to put on chains (and paying for the privilege), there's no incentive for any proprietor to do this (and as a result few do).
Both you and Demerjian (author of the Inquirer article) should read the FSF's essay on Why ``Free Software'' is better than ``Open Source'' which includes a great description of the practical weaknesses of the Open Source movement:
The Open Source movement eschews the one thing that would keep you from choosing non-free software--freedom. Without talking about software freedom, when so-called "Open Source" software fails you, you have no reason to reject a proprietary alternative.
Digital Citizen
If you expected to get paid, maybe you should have released your work under another license.
IMHO, there is nothing worse than a hypocrite. I'm not calling out specific names here because thats not the emphasis of the article, and it would also be trolling. BUT if you believe in releasing your software under the GPL or and even less restrictive license and you expect something in return outside of the license, you are a hypocrite. Give it away, or don't. I personally don't care, just pick one.
This is just one baby step on the path to Linux (OO and everything else really) one day being not free or free. As soon as a money source is found, I still personally expect things to go the way of MS. I could be wrong, but if someone out there is bitching about not getting paid already...just look out is all I'm saying.
Businesses don't actually "pay" taxes. The citizens that buy their products and/or services do.
...counting pennies in a zero-sum game does not help the cause of Open Source at all. So what if some people use it and don't contribute - even if all they contribute is bug reports that has value, as anyone who works in a testing center will tell you. And the whole idea of gifting is not to demand anything in return.
But most of all, it will make crap worthless, like the damn Microsoft Office. Don't be cheap. Give what you got to give and let the users allow. Keep you penny pinching zero-sum ultra-capitistic self-righteous judgements out of this!
"The Inquirer has an excellent article that describes how companies take from the Open Source Community and how few are giving back."
My gf pulls this shit too. "Oh don't get me anything fancy for Valentine's Day." Now technically I've been let out of a trip to the jewler's, but boy am I gonna be in trouble if I don't cough up that tennis bracelet.
Lesson learned folks. You want corps to give back? Ask. Free free free. Who's supposed to assume one should give money?
"Derp de derp."
The article talks about how nice it would be if companies offered to do additional programming on the OS software they use. This is nice, but is not required, assuming the software in question is GPL'ed. All that is required it that the licensee make an offer to provide source code if they distribute binaries outside their organization. If these companies are in compliance, there is no issue here and the article is just wishful thinking.
The Busybox Hall of Shame is a different animal altogether. These corporations are (supposedly/probably) not in compliance with the Busybox license. These are the *real* corporate bad guys, and the OS community should work to bring them into compliance, just like we did with Linksys et al.
Bottom line: if you want users of your software to do more than just make source code available, create a new license with contribution requirements. Its highly likely that such a license won't be truly open source and that no-one will want to use your software under such terms.
How many employees contribute, without the contribution being officially tied to the employer?
I just sent an email to four of the companies that are listed on that page.
:-)
If enough of us do that, it might enlighten them as to the issue. (even if to respond with "uh, we don't think so")
Everyone has to do their part!
...because many companies wouldn't realize the economics of it. There is no requirement to contribute anything, unless you redistribute the software. So the economist starts thinking "Well, if we develop a patch for this software, costing us $$$, why should we give it away for free? Or go through the extra effort to find the right place and provide a good bugreport and patch description?"
Which of course, completely misses the point. Developing the patch is an expense to the company. Maintaining a separate branch is an additional expense to the company. Code can change around it, so the patch doesn't work. Or that it wrecks havoc on some other assumptions the code makes. Or that it is fixed, but you don't realize and patch around it anyway, wasting time and money.
Companies should contribute back because it is the economical thing to do, because getting the main branch fixed is cheaper for the company. Most likely whatever you fixed was a bug or limitation that was pretty specific to your company. It's not like you'd be giving the competitors an advantage.
Maybe if they pick up a GPL program and make a huge contribution, they shouldn't, from an economic perspective. But it's the sum of many tiny improvements and bug fixes that make a program solid, mature and of high quality. There's always enough people with grand plans and great new features they'll add in a half-assed fashion. But it takes work to make it work well.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
> wouldn't it be great for the OS community if we
...or at least make it mandatory to for-profit
> could provide a law to facilitate tax cuts to
> companies who give to OS...
And have government define OS?
>
> organizations to give a certain minimum amount
> and take it out of their taxes?"
When I release a piece of software under a particular set of terms and conditions I damn well intend for it to be subject to those terms and conditions and no others. If I want to require certain types of organizations to be subject to special conditions I will damn well say so. I don't need politicians trying to tell me what is good for me.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Seeing as you used government and beneficial in the same sentence I'm opting to not listen to what you say.
This isn't a problem, the freeloaders don't cost anyone anything when it comes to copying opensource software, infact they help it by broadening the base for potential services, applications and general viability. It's the contributors who make he product great. How many people have contributed to Linux, or do you just use it? Did you pay for it or get a free download.
The point is that copying software is almost free, there's no harm done when you take. It doesn't subtract from what is already created, sure contributing helps it get written, but merely using the software helps it grow in many ways and it's no skin of anyone's nose.
"...or at least make it mandatory to for-profit organizations to give a certain minimum amount and take it out of their taxes?"
.
So let me get this straight, you want to force for-profit corporations to give OSS projects money and you think that sugar coating this insane government abuse with a gussied up tax-shelter will make it OK? ARE YOU MAD?!?!
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
Well that is your choice, but do note that modern economic theory considers government necessary for certain things that the free market is not adequate for. I'm probably more wary of government control than most people, but to believe that government brings no benifets to the people is a stupid and extremist notion.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
"Obviously, a sufficient fraction of those companies are "giving back" for there to exist a lively and productive open source community"
I don't get it. Is this the SCO "Linux is like a bicycle to our car without massive contributions from companies such as IBM?"
You are suggesting that there could "exist a lively and productive open source community" without commercial companies giving back.
It may be that such companies influence which features the community produces, but corporate dollars certainly aren't some sort of requirement.
It seems to me that OSS (and in particular software under the GNU license) exists to let people who want to mess around with software code do just that. Making money off of OSS is, in this sense, an issue unrelated to the production of OSS.
/. article has too much to do with human insticts, and little to do with the production of OSS.
Open Source Software is supposed to be messed with and exploited by anyone who cares to do so, isn't it? I don't think that for-profit businesses/corporations/etc. should be unfairly penalized for doing what anyone else has the right to do.
Looking at these profit-making enterprises and thinking, "Gee, why do they make money and not spread it around to those who made the software?" runs counter to the philosophy most OSS represents.
Many of the people who make OSS do so for all kinds of private reasons (like for fun) - only some of them get paid to do it. If this is viewed as the default state of OSS, then why are those who wouldn't get paid anyway now perceived to be losing out? I think that this
Let people do what they want with the software. The government already makes allowances for non-profit organizations to get $. Turn an OSS project into a non-profit and voila, a charity that a profit-making enterprise can donate to, that will simultaneously make their web-servers (or whatever) better.
Bruce Perens is known for being a great communicator. Being a communicator he needs to simplify things. But here he is over-simplifying to the point where it becomes counter-productive.
He poses it as a simple question of "a royalty in connection with proprietary software development". Remove the royalty, and -- voila! -- your platform gets magic attraction and becomes the accepted one in big enterprises.
Apart from a few other facts, namely....
--> ...that many companies are happily paying royalties if they get something in exchange [[in the case of Qt that is: superb API documentation, extremly stable releases, world-class support for your developers, an extremly well-working "help-me-port-my-Windows-MFC/VC++-app-over-to-Linu x" set of tools, a solid cross-platform development framework, a quick "time-to-market" timespan, re-use of our developers' prior C++ knowledge... I should know, because our company decided in favour of (paid-for) Qt, and against (gratis) GTK. GTK simply didn't cut it on all these fields I listed]].
He is also missing another factor, namely that...
--> ...Linux in the Enterprise does not just magically appear. It is brought there by people who have prior experience. Prior experience and prior preference. And likely, these people will have a KDE or a GNOME preference these days -- maybe both, but they'll have their favorites. Excluding one of the two for whatever reason alienates its supporters big time!
I, personally, prefer KDE, just because I've worked with it for a long time. If I had a voice in a Linux choice in my organisation (and I do have, but we are not quite there yet), I will make the strongest possible stance against a product which excludes KDE -- for merely the experience reason. I would not deploy UserLinux for this superficial "royalty freeness" reason, although the underlying idea seems great to me.
Not that my personal decision matters here, I am sorry to bring it up. What I am trying to say is - there will be a lot of people out there for whom a similar reasoning may hold: And that creates a roadblock for UserLinux by design. I would see that as a significant risk.
Look how sane the KDE guys have formulated their own proposal ( http://desktop.kdenews.org/strategy.html): they do not just want to base themselves on their own creation, they want to include GNOME and GTK-apps. They say they are working on a tight integration of Gimp, Sodipodi, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Evolution and other GNOME apps into their Desktop Environments to turn it into an integrative environment. I have even seen links to a few very promising screenshots (using KDE fileopen and print dialogs for Sodipodi) -- and I can say this is exactly what we in our organisation need, to see Linux desktops ready for rollout.....
Sorry for the long rant.
The submitter said: "or at least make it mandatory to for-profit organizations to give a certain minimum amount and take it out of their taxes?"
If things went this far, it wouldn't be free software any more. Whether we like it or not, part of the freedom of free software is to be able to do things exactly like this; to be able to take the software and not give anything back. It's because of a lack of such restrictions that OSS/FS has been so successful.
Besides, companies may give in other ways. They may use free software, but give to, say, a charity to help fight against AIDS, or to feed the homeless, or to reduce global warming; causes that many would argue are more important than free software.
Now there's a great idea - force people pay for free software. Now personally I like free software because it is free like free speech. And I can understand why some people like it because it is usually free in the way that beer usually isn't. But how the fuck does someone get to be a proponent of free software when they apparently don't like either kind of freedom?
Usually it is pretty hard to contribute back. We use a number of havily patched GPL programs and submitted a number of patches back to mantainer. Some of them were rejected because the mantainer had a different sense of direction for development. Some were rejected because of low quality. The only contributions which came through were bug reports.
Bug reports is the easiest way to contribute.
Your post speaks to a typical Slashdot mindset that precludes getting involved in government to affect a beneficial change for citizens.
If that is the typical slashdot attitude, then good. The most beneficial thing that government can do for its citizens is to leave them alone to live their lives the way they want to as much as possible. This includes not forcing people to subsidize things through hidden taxes that have nothing to do with the business of government. Why the hell should we have have a tax subsidy for open source development? What possible reason does government have for this sort of action? If OS is good, it will survive in the open market. If not, well then it deserves to fail.
We have had endless attempts by government to influence economic decisions through the tax code - examples include programs like the subsidies for alternative energy, you name it. What has been the overall result of these programs? Constant meddling by bureaucrats and people pushing not-readt technologies.
The fact is (and I speak from long industrial experience) that private companies will pay zero attention to this - government is notoriously fickle when it comes to these programs - and the paperwork necessary to take advantage of them seldom pays for itself. This program will cost taxpayers far more than they get in return, it will inject government into an area it has no business in, and will inevitably distort the OS from a remarkably "free" completely international process into something that governments have a distorting influence on.
wouldn't it be great for the OS community if we could provide a law to facilitate tax cuts to companies who give to OS, or at least make it mandatory to for-profit organizations to give a certain minimum amount and take it out of their taxes?
No asshole! Free Software/Open Source is about "giving", not taking. Forcing someone to contribute to a community effort is Communism. I'm sure that we're all still aware of how that doesn't work.
Maybe you should listen to RMS or ESR a little closer.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Kudos to everybody who pointed out that: A.)If it's mandatory to give up money for something, it's not all that free, is it?
Now, grasshopper, apply your incisive powers of reasoning to the stuffed shirts in Washington, and everything they say.
Oh wait, this is /.
All these posts along the lines of, "You released it free, now take your lumps!" are completely missing the point. (Well, at least of the article. The point of the timothy, who linked to the article, is another matter)
The point is, if a company uses free software, it should open its pocketbook instead of whining. Instead of going, "Waaa, it doesn't have feature X!" or "Waaa, there's a bug!" it should pay someone to fix the problem. It could pay someone in-house, in which case it should release the patches back to the community, or it can pay someone externally to do it.
One point that's often missed about releasing patches done in-house: the GPL doesn't require it for most backend software, but it's still a good plan for reasons other than being ethical and nice. If you release the patches, they can be integrated into the product as a whole, meaning you don't have to handle the expensive task of being their sole maintainer in the future.
It seems to me that the article is exactly right. Companies already do this to an extent by paying companies like Redhat for support, but if a piece of software is important to your business, it only makes sense to take a direct hand in its development. The whole mentality of purely being a consumer of whatever is offered from the development community is neither productive nor cost-effective. If something is important to you, make it happen. Don't just wait for other people to do it for you. That sort of thinking gives you situations like Microsoft, where someone might get around to helping you eventually, but oh man will your pocketbook be sorry.
As with politics, money talks. If you want the best software for your business, you should help fund the developers who can make it happen. Otherwise, since it's free software, you'll be able to use whatever the community thinks is important, but what you think is important may not be considered as relevant or get done as quickly (or at all).
At no point should there *ever* be a law passed that benefits any one group of people and not others. Sure, anyone can contribute to the OS, but who's to say what an improvement is or isn't and how much that is worth in tax deductions. Fooey. This is a bad idea. It's far too subjective and extremely selective.
"modern economic theory" is a pretty ill-defined term. I'm guessing Austrian theory doesn't count in this case?
That is the point of Open Source. If you start requiring companies to give a donation, then whats the point? They will use M$, most don't care if they have the source code or not, they just ask does it work, and what is it gonna cost? I cannot believe this was even brought up.
Exactly! This is completely a non-issue. If open source projects want companies or individuals using their software to contribute back, then they should release it under a different license agreement. I release all my software under ASF or BSD licenses and I don't expect anything back. If I did, I would charge for the software, or include some sort of license that required contribution for source code access, or something. But if these companies are abiding by the licenses then who cares if they contribute anything more. They certainly don't need to.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
There is one payback for OSS and AFAICT its the one that gave us Eclipse and some other nicies like a GPLd QT and stuff.
It's called bragging rights.
That's the prime reason for companies to invest into OSS.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
do note that modern economic theory considers government necessary for certain things that the free market is not adequate for.
I accept that - environmental laws, food package labeling, SEC regulations, banking regulations and so on are things that I think government should play a part in.
But tax subsidies for OS development? Nah. Nope. Not even close.
At the end of the commercial they say "His name . . . is LINUX". It was a weird commercial, but when a heavy hitter like IBM gets behind something the guys in the suits will start to listen. I predict that within 5 years, Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop and Office suite will be all but over.
wouldn't it be great for the OS community if we could provide a law to facilitate tax cuts to companies who give to OS
For the thousands of companies that manage to avoid paying any taxes, this wouldn't be an incentive.
For those that do manage to pay taxes, the benefit of such a law would only be a slightly smaller financial disincentive to improve OSS.
It sounds nice on the surface, but in the end it the idea is moot.
Here is a hypothetical question I have often wondered about...
Let us say that we have a company, making their own branch of an opensource product (let us assume that the program uses the GPL-license).
If they use that branch as a base for the products they they sell, would they be required to let everybody download that branch?
Could they get away with hiding behind contracts, in order to keep people from distributing the product?
Could they just let everybody download the product they branched from (the original), without giving away their own changes?
What is the readers view on this?
Personally, I would think they would be required to release those changes.
Anybody disagree with me?
Putting in a law that forces the sale of linux is absolute bullshit. It's one of the dumbest things I'v ever heard. It's smart buisness sense to keep the people who make the software that runs your company going, end of story.
As for the companies who aren't complying with open source contracts, I'd think it would be a much better idea to start a funding project like the EFF accept it goes after and sues companies that infringe on the GPL and OS lisencing. This way authors code doesn't get abused all over the place by everyone who thinks they can make a quick buck by doing so. The authors can choose between money, forcing the company into compliance, or both.
I too think that tax subsidies for OSS development is getting the government too involved, especially when there are already tax write-offs for donations. However, the original poster said that government brought *no* benefits to people, which was what I took exception with.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The reason I mentioned Nokia is not because of any thing the company did or did not to, it was because of an article that touched off something in my brain. I was reading an article in eWeek a few weeks ago about open source sucess stories, and there was one about a company that did sucessfully replace Nokia firewalls with OS stuff.
It clicked while I was reading the article that while every article about OS software touted huge savings, not a single one said anything in the slightest about giving back.
So, basically, it is based on a real case study. I don't have the magazine anymore, it is on a Northworst jet somewhere, so I can't quote specifics, but the idea isn't far off. So, the point about people being stupid for dumping proprietary stuff isn't borne out in the real world, at least according to eWeek.
-Charlie
Not all support needs to be financial or code.
I would argue that IBM, while it has contributed a great deal to the Linux kernel (RCU, JFS...) is currently making a much much greater contribution with its (admittedly in its own interest) staunch defense of the SCO suit, and it's countersuit claiming GPL violation (as well as patent infringement).
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
I would ask the same question of you--so what? We already have that thanks to emulation and there are plenty of other versions of Microsoft Windows where you can be catered to so long as you're willing to give up your freedom. What we need are Free Software programs to do these jobs, not more non-free software.
Perhaps that movement is satisified, but that movement is also very shortsighted in its mission to please businesses.
You certainly won't gain popularity over proprietors by giving them code under non-copyleft Free Software licenses or by choosing to run their proprietary alternative to a free program. Treating businesses like charities doesn't make you their friend, it sets you up to be taken advantage of. I'm reminded of the FSF's response to Microsoft when Microsoft's CEOs were on the lecture circuit calling the GNU General Public License a "cancer" and "unamerican":
Or why they ask you to give credit to the GNU operating system and not just the Linux kernal:
The chase for popularity is misguided and naive. I'm sure you have the best of intentions for GNU/Linux users, but you don't seem to understand that giving up freedom should not be done lightly. Sometimes giving up software freedom is acceptable, but most of the time it is not a good strategy. We are not well served with non-free programs to get jobs done.
Digital Citizen
Yes.
Berto
Apple is on top of my list. Not only that they are not giving back enough, condierting how much they took from OSS, but they are using OSS slogans (based on, Unix like etc) to lure customers.
I don't bite when people write me about my articles, that is why I put my e-mail on the top of every one :).
That said, if the people use it and love it, chances are that corporations are getting a benefit from it. I don't think the people contributing on their own time has the same power of contributing on corporate time.
The scenario I was imagining was that a company uses the software, and saves a ton of money doing so. An employee goes to his boss, and says 'Can I take friday afternoons to code a new feature and submit patches?'. In an ideal world, the boss would reply 'sure Bob, that would benefit us as well as the community, and it is a very good cost/benefit ratio' rather than the more common 'get bent, back to the mines'.
-Charlie
Seeing as you used government and beneficial in the same sentence I'm opting to not listen to what you say.
I believe you just proved his point. Moron. Governments have a purpose. They are not inherently evil / useless. It is our job, as citizens, to democratically influence our respective governments to shape them for the good of all. I suppose a person like you doesn't even vote, eh?
you set up a system of software developement modeled after communism and you're shocked to find out that people are taking advantage of you. Communism didn't work out so well in Russia either for the same reason. You have a lot of people doing all kinds of work for little to nothing and anyone can get all the benefits with no strings attached. Because that's how the system is defined. Free. As long as companies follow the guidlines they're doing nothing wrong and you can expect nothing in return.
And you aren't being taken advantage of. The software was offered for free. You volunteered your time to work on it. You don't demand compensation and actively oppose it in many cases. You got every you could expect to get from taking part in this system. How many OSS authors sell their software in some form? Practically none. They depend on donations and then whine when they go broke and can't afford to let people keep downloading it for free.
htaccess is a beautiful thing. It makes charging a small fee for access simple and easy to do. Or you could take advantage of my "Get Paid" hosting where I handle the subscription, bandwidth, diskspace and you take a cut of the subscription fee. It's free money for those who submit files I accept to host.
And if you do it yourself you don't have to worry about bandwidth usage and paying middle men. If you want to provide a free download alternative, pop the file on Kazaa with your home connection you pay a flat rate for. Hit up bittorrent, e-mule, any other number of P2P apps. That's what they're there for.
These obvious means to aquire funds for your project aren't being taken advantage of. And you expect corporations to foot the bill.
Sorry but the OSS model doesn't differentiate between those who have and those who have not.
If I'm broke or a millionaire I can use any OSS I want without paying a dime. If you don't like the fact that it's possible, legal and guilt free, change the system. Isn't that what we're telling the RIAA and MPAA?
Ben
Work Safe Porn
"Governments have a purpose. "
Yup... steal from one group for the benefit of another.
"It is our job, as citizens, to democratically influence our respective governments to shape them for the good of all. "
I don't recall taking that job. Even assuming it was possible.
"I suppose a person like you doesn't even vote, eh?"
Nope.
You are assuming that any time or money invested in the software will have no payback. Usually it does have payback, and a very good rate of return. If you have 10 people working on maintaining a set of servers, and with judicious coding, after a year of a half day a week coding, you could add a feature that would eliminate 2 jobs, what is the ROI?
Similarly, if you could ask the author to add that feature, and said you would pay him $5000 to do so, would it pay off? That is the point I was making in my origional article, it does pay you back, you just have to take a longer term view than next week.
-Charlie
How ironic it is then that your response is being carried on the Internet, an extension of a network which began as a government program.
If people took your attitude around the Great Depression, people wouldn't have the large government programs that pulled them out of poverty and helped restore some degree of trust in the US government. These programs were looked upon with scorn in the 1980's when the rich were doing so well and they didn't have much of an alternative press to deal with. But today we can see the international problems caused by widescale deregulation and so-called "free-trade" agreements that encourage what many call 'a race to the bottom'.
Now that the US economy is circling the drain again, people will probably look again at big government programs to help them compete with low wage jobs overseas. Someday people will realize what's in store when you leave your economy to corporations that chase the lowest paid worker on Earth but want all the tax breaks the US is willing to give.
While obviously not everything governments do is worthwhile or reasonable, some things governments do are. And in a government where you have the opportunity to participate, as you do in the US by talking with your representatives, participating in the media, and voting, you share the task of making it better.
Digital Citizen
"or at least make it mandatory to for-profit organizations to give a certain minimum amount and take it out of their taxes?"
We should take free software, and make people pay for it?
KDE and GNOME have no credibility. Hell, just look at their ridiculous, "funny," acronym names typed in all-caps.
In the origional, I didn't say that you have to give (I actually think the legislation mentioned in the blurb is stupid), I just said that it would pay you back to do so. The ROI on contributions here is incredible, it benefits both the giver and the project.
I also don't think that the contributions should be used as a club or an arm twisting mechanism. Influence is just that, and can be used for good or evil. If you are giving to a project, as opposed to an atempt to subsume it, you are probably acting altruisticly. In that case, the giving and the taking will most likely benefit all.
Anyone attempting to 'put on chains' should be bounced out of a project, and probably will be in short order. Isn't a true community process wonderful?
-Charlie
Most companies I've been don't care about licenses. They install a copy of windows where they can. They never cared. Once in a while a manager comes by and asks for a status. Two weeks of licenses buying and the thing starts again.
In a culture like this, where a license is worth void, it is easy to understand why Open Source licenses are totally forgotten. There is no BSA nocking on the door here.
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
Ok, I am faced with a dilema. I have 5 moderator points, and I wrote the article on the Inq. Do I mod people up who like what I did, or mod down the people who trash me? Do I just say 'screw it' and post flames? The moderator guidelines don't help one bit in this situation, I guess they should be updated :).
Oh well, I guess this post answers my own question, kind of GNUish in it's own recursive self defeating way.
-Charlie
I am not a lawyer, but I have some direct experience as an expert witness in two court cases dealing with research tax credits, and I have read a third decision closely. The tax law already allows corporations to take a tax credit for expenses associated with research (not, to my knowledge, with development). A tax credit is much more valuable than a deduction---it means that 100% of the expense is recovered from reduced taxes.
There appears to be a lot of confusion about precisely what sort of software develoment qualifies as research. The tax law has been interpreted to require that research eligible for the credit must involve a "process of experimentation," and must "expand or refine" the principles of the relevant field. In my opinion, the expansion or refinement doesn't need to be large or deep---a lot less than a Ph.D. dissertation. But a few bug fixes, or a simple port to a different language or architecture might not qualify.
In my opinion (completely unauthoritative, unless I get called as a witness again), work contributed to free software projects has a better chance to qualify for the credit than much of the proprietary work that I have seen.
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
Out of a curiosity (as an econ student) is your knowledge of the Austrian school form reading misses.org or did you actaully study it in school?
Actually neither. Most of my actual knowledge of it came from reading books on my own while I was still in college... particularly those by Murray Rothbard.
I would much rather have a system like the one the GNU General Public License (GPL) creates and maintains for us--there is a commons everyone can partake in so long as they are willing to share and share alike. I don't need some clumsy means of figuring out a tax benefit, I'm much better off with code I can use for my own purposes.
Not according to the ideals of the movement you champion in the article--the Open Source movement. Anyone is free to build on a work in the public domain, or under the new BSD or MIT X11 licenses and relicense their derivative under a proprietary license. The Open Source movement doesn't help users understand this because they make no distinction between these licenses (or the public domain) and the GNU GPL.
Digital Citizen
Dude .. what the fuck is your website about? I've been looking at it now for ten minutes and I don't understand what the point is.
.. and go slow, 'cause I'm a bit stoned. Thanks!
Please explain
Ahh one of those werid people I see in the libary who actaully learn something in college that doesn't relate to sex or drugs.
Anyway, have you read Justin Raimondo's biography of Rothbard or his work on the legacy of the conservative movement?
Sorry, but using Wikipedia as an authoritative source to back up your arguments invalidates them completely. You lose. Go away now.
Making free software tax deductible will be implicitly admitting that software has value. And if it has value, it can be taxed. This means that anyone receiving said software will essentially be receiving a gift which, according to US tax laws, is taxable. Do you really want to be taxed for all the software you use?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Sorry, had an extra 's'
mises.org
I love you, man. When I'm lying on a cold metal tray, will you be my pathologist? It would mean a lot to me.
It would be hypocritical for open source software developers to accept compensation, of any form, for their work.
How disingenuous of you. It would only be hypocracy if the developer agreed to write horrible crap in return for money. There's absolutely nothing wrong with accepting cash for something you would likely have done for free anyway.
Besides, there's already a nice example of a Free Software developer accepting compensation for his work in RMS, who supported his work on EMACS in part by selling copies of the program and the source code.
Read, L
Wouldn't this violate the GPL, unless eminent domain was invoked or copyright law were changed? (making free software illegal for instance... either you pay the author, or pay the government.)
The whole tax-deductible idea has an amusing and ironic thought attached to it. Walk through this scenario with me:
1.) Let's say OS code is tax deductible. So you must have someone (or a committee of someones) to judge the value of a piece of code if it were sold commercially. [politics galore, I know]
2.) Once you have the value, you can then apply the tax percentage multiplied by the number of copies distributed against the taxes of the coder (or company).
3.) Since this is now a "profitable" enterprise idea, it now has to be distributed. We have three options here - package it with other software in a bundle, distribute in en masse a la AOL, or download it off the internet.
4.) Of course, just the purchase alone or download probably isn't enough for the government, so a registration card or internet page must be created to make each use official.
So, there is a possibility in the above scenario that you could get more junk mail CDs than junk mail letters.
Also, you could eventually have a legitimate file sharing program just for this OS software, with a generic registration app attached. Kazaa with legal and corporate backing.
I just think that's somewhat amusing in today's day and age - for-profit software companies being a proponent of open source via file sharing.
The RPL was designed in response to a feature of the GPL that allows a company to modify Open Source products and not disclose that changed product unless they distribute outside their organization. The resulting license is considerably more viral than the GPL-which means that many corporate users would want to buy the software under a commercial license.
mythic allows 1GB of transfer a month and 200MB of space for a fee. I do over 1GB a day. And if I made the site 100% free I'd be paying thousands a month in bandwidth costs. They're also taking advantage of cheaper high speed connections elsewhere in the world.
My version, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited space and you get paid. You're comparing apples and oranges. My service is for hosting large files that need massive amounts of bandwidth and the owners would like to be compensated for their efforts.
Mythic and freeshell are for hosting small stuff that don't demand much where owners just want some place to shove their files. The other one is subsidised by members. Which is also a method. The bandwidth fairy doesn't exist. The money has to come from somewhere. I chose the subscription route. That works for me.
And I wasn't aware that my finance records were publically accessible that you could tell me I'm not making money.
Tell that to www.windrivers.com and every other subscription based site. WinDrivers.com used to charge $50 a year. I charge $30 a year. Now they charge $29.95. They charge $5 a day to get access to their drivers, I charge $1 for 7 days and you get access to everything else on the site.
I find it hilarious when people tell me things aren't working when I'm doing them and seeing that they work with my own eyes.
It's as silly as telling birds they can't fly.
Like it or not, PayPal is the standard for on-line transactions. Nothing can compete with their rates.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Progressive forward looking companies will find it inevitable they must use open source. Its time to come up with a payment friendly mascot for all sites to use. E.g. say a penguin with a dollar bag on its shoulder and then an agreed way of writing underneath it 1. How much was paid (optional), 2. How many lines of code contributed (optional) and 3. Link to a document that describes in an agreed way the recipients and amounts (compulsory for use of the penguin with dollar bag symbol). I wonder what some of the leaders of the open source community will have to say for that because this is their call.
I'm a big fan of Justin's work, but I haven't had a chance to read either of those books yet, unfortunately. The Rothbard bio is definately on my "to read" list though.
But merely by using open source, companies ARE giving something back indirectly. They're advertising it to their staff and contacts. If they're paying for support, they're adding to the open source economy, and maybe even causing fixes to be made. They're probably using open file formats and standards, and maybe asking their contacts to do the same.
And, maybe just as importantly, by doing so, they're NOT using proprietary products, advertising them, supporting them, promoting their file formats, &c.
Yes, of course it would be nice if companies directly contributed code, money, kit, &c to projects. But even if they don't, we still benefit. A world where every company uses a particular open source project, but only a handful actively contribute, is still better than one where a few more contribute but most companies use a proprietary product instead.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Wow! Who'd 'a thunk it??
Seriously, umm, no shit?
Companies make money - and why should the government fund OS via tax breaks? I thought you did it because you love open source, now you want handouts from companies and uncle sucker?
What do you care whar a corporation does with your open software, your shitty GPL makes a lot of open source sw useless for corporate use anyway.
The whole thing seems childish.
Or providing a ${product} that is using open, compatible standards for its data/ storage/ communication (if applicable)?
;)
Yes, it'd be fantastic if they contibuted money, or code fixes, whatever, but even bug reports as a result of trying to use the software could still be considered 'contributing'.
Plus, they've given the community some sort of hardware/thingy (perhaps, depends on their product), thats *RUNNING OS*, which makes it infinitely more 'tweakable', and compatible with other types of things - look at Tivo - now tell me OS geeks dont *LOVE* the heck out of those. Heck, being able to record all the sci-fi, anime, (insert desirable TV genre here) shows automatically and watch them at a conveninent time probably helps them manage their coding time more efficiently
I gave away all my software for free and people just TOOK IT!
Sometimes OSS people make me want to slap someone.
This is not a troll or flaimbait: just my frustrated opinion.
-no broken link
...and this post is all me. Having worked on projects using many products made by my company, bugs have often been found. These changes go through quickly as we all work for the same boss. This is not to say that other customers do not get fixes made to products they use. A popular server or two we sell has acquired many features and fixes directly as a result of requests by external customers.
Blar.
Banking on a liscense unproven in court seems kinda silly. I mean, any company could take OSS, change the source enough to make it theirs and nobody would be able to prove they stole it.
Blar.
Or even mostly with modern projects and the BSD license. You see---
as long as the company is promoting, testing, or even just using the free software they are contributing by exposing others to it. Think of it as free marketing at the very least. If they can give bug reports, that is better. If they buy from a distributor such as Red Hat and rely on their support, they are helping Red Hat make bug reports, etc. That is all OK.
The whole point of free software is that it gives companies and individuals the freedom to contribute to what extent they decide is in their best interest! This can be anywhere from simply USING the software to contributing back code.
Why are people so hostile towards users? I just don't understand...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Hiring a code maintainer is exatly what a company does not want to do.
Every company should have someone who is responsible for tracking what software is used, who is using it, and what releases are used. They should check at least monthly to see if there are any updates, what the updates do, and whether the updates are critical or desirable for the company. This person is usually an administrator with no programming skills. This applies whether the software is all proprietary, all OSS, or mized. It is REQUIRED if proprietary software is involved to track the per-person and per-server and per-CPU licenses.
Maintainers are very expensive, and you can't hire them in pieces.
I cannot be the only consultant who works hourly. Companies hire me when they need me. I go away when my task is done. They know I am available if they need more assistance. Does that fit your definition of "hiring in pieces?
The closest you can come to this is to hiring a company which specializes in maintaining the package you wanted.
Does it matter if it is a company or an individual? 1099s are 1099s regardless of how many people do the work. Hiring a company does mean you can have a better SLA than an individual can deliver. I had 4 companies want me in their offices for the same day in May; I was able to keep them all happy, but that is because my relationships are based on my controlling the schedule while making them happy, and they all know and accept that. I am hired through consulting companies, so the customers could ask for someone else from the consulting companies if there was anyone else who could handle the tasks.
Why do they need to specialize in THIS package? I am often shown the systems where some critical application is running and asked to fix something. I have to figure out where the files are, what language they are in, where the issue is, write the fix, and attempt to test it without destroying the live system. (The last time this happened, they pointed me to the wrong server!) A good programmer can work on anything. If you know the programming language, then you can narrow your search to people/companies that specialize in the language, but why limit yourself to somebody that knows THIS product? Maybe it was on the resume because they did some little fix for another customer. Check the list of active contributors to the package and see if one of them is willing to accept money from you in return for guaranteeing that your needs are filled. If not, then either find someone willing to become a (paid) contributor, or just find someone who is really good at programming.
In that case, you've lost the price advantage you had, and you've not gained the source.
It does not stop being OSS just because you hire someone else to look at it. I believe support for most OSS is equal or less expensive than equivalent support for proprietary software. It may have something to do with people being able to read the code. Or it might be that people who work with OSS tend to like software much more than people who just do it as a job.
You don't have people on site who can actually read the source,
Depends on your contract. Did you ask for someone onsite 24x7? Do you really need that? If you are hiring a company for support, then get a 4-hour SLA for critical issues. If the system is mission-critical, it should have enough redundancy that there is never a critical issue.
and if your service provider goes under, you're left without an escape.
Do you understand OSS? If your service provider goes under, you choose another service provider.
What's the advantage of this over buying from Microsoft?
When Microsoft goes under, there will be no updates. No bug fixes. No security fixes. With OSS, there is always somebody who can fix it. Your worst case is that you hire the best programmer you can find and give him much money to work on the software. But your company does not fall apart because you cannot fix/patch your productivity apps and web servers and every other piece of software you depend on.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Why not just make people pay for the software? You could even take it a step further and create business models which encourage companies to produce software for paying customers. I might be insane. I've heard that some countries have actually been grown from the ground up on this sort of philosophy. Of course, for all I know, they might be worthless, suffering countries with little or no future.
Linux a new religion. The kernel is the bible, the internet the church. Coding is done as a volunteer. All of it tax deductible. Who we pray to I'm not sure, but we all know the devil...
The point of the Open Source movement (at least as I see it) is that you don't need to force contributions.
Those who oppose Open Source, and those who first began trying to shoot it down said that it could not sustain itself. Their argument was that it was impossible to continue releasing free code to the world's eyes and not a) burn out b) go bankrupt.
That is not the case, and I have some reasons why:
By these premises, forcing or regulating in any way the OS movement would be a severe fallacy.
eh, I dont see the point in taxing corporations... either tax people or businesses, but not both, double taxation is wrong.
Ok, first off. You use big words where minute ones would suffice. Not everyone on this site believes that just by using the longest word in the dictionary means that you have a clue about what you say.
I've seen namy people who speak fluently in many languages about nothing, and have not been impressed. But who impresses me most are the people who can tell a story about something and have each member of the audience understand.
And yes, I did understand your post just fine.
--Forest C. Adcock--
"Corporations want to take before they give. That's the sad truth. If there's no extra profit in it for them, they're less likely to do it."
What on Earth is sad about this? This is like saying "Water flows down hill, that's the sad truth." The truth isn't sad, its just the truth. If a company doesn't make a profit, they don't have any money to spend on their IT department. Why is this hard to understand?
The whole purpose of having a company is to make a buck, don't you think? If you aren't going to make money, it isn't a company. Its a hobby. Hobbies are good, but they don't pay the rent, you know. If my company can save a whack of dough through the generosity of Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman, I will certainly take advantage of that freely given gift.
Point being,if its free, its free. You have no moral ground to expect gratitude and contributions in return. Human nature being what it is, those things will inevitably come. But not from everyone, and you have no right to whine about those who do not reciprocate.
By the way, my total savings due to Open Source software so far are about $2500.00 Thank you to Smoothwall, Linus, Richard, Mozilla and Open Office.org. Beauty software, don't hold your breath for much more than free advertising in this space. Thanks also to Bill Gates, even though I had to pay money the stuff works. If my billing software becomes available on Linux, maybe I'll buy a copy of Red Hat.
As to the business of getting an income tax rebate if you contribute to open source, think for just a frickin' millisecond about how a thing like that would have to be managed. Imagine the cost to the company and the government as they duke it out over what unique line of code constitutes a contribution, and the exact dollar value thereof. You want to trust the Tax Department with a thing like that?
What a nightmare.
That's fine if your employer is happy with this policy, but I suspect even with good employers, most people's contracts explicitly say that the company owns the copyright on anything you write during work time. Hence releasing it back into the original project without permission is breaking the rules, and both you and the project you're trying to help are likely to get in trouble if your employer finds out. :-(
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
network department's use of ntop, mrtg, snort
programmer's use of emacs, ant, jEdit, gcc, etc
Production Systems: vital functions running via perl
Add this stuff up roughly and then say, gee we pay 190K for commercial snmp agent licenses, and we would actually be way more screwed if we didn't have perl - and with perl 6 there are some things we could do that we can't now. So let's chuck 125K at the perl 6 effort. And let's send some of the Ultra 20's in the storeroom in the basements to the ntop guys if they want them. Forward $5000 from our corp amazon account to Tobi's for the priceless contribution of mrtg/rrd to the world of network monitoring, without it we would have had a hard time tracking down xyz problem last month - god knows that is nothing compared to the XX millions we spent on Tivoli, Openview and Cisco software. Our most productive programmers use emacs, so send that powered down, 6 CPU Sun E4500 with the faceplate ripped off to the GNU boys. We are going to move one of our most speed sensitive systems to Opteron, so send SuSE $8K and ask that they put us on their early 64bit release list.
For a big company, these are not even blips on the financial radar.
Here is a personal example:
For doing some on-demand reporting, I needed to check that the bloated, overpriced, under performing Report Server *Achoo* [...hate when that happens, excuse me] that we were using was producing the correct numbers. It took forever to run the reports with this software and the license costs for it cost in the 18K - 38K per CPU range. I used htmldoc to spin a pdf version from a raw query of the data via a sh script sweet, easy, fast - I couldn't get htmldoc to take more than 1 second regardless of how long the report was. The other software took at least 8 minutes to produce the same report from the same dataset on the same server(s). Now, I know what you are going to say - they are already making a dogbone buck on htmldoc. But there is no reason that we couldn't have thrown them 25K with a note that said:
Because otherwise when Adobe comes out with pdf spec 19.0 - uberpdf, Mike may say screw it, that's too much work to update htmldoc to all the new uberfeatures for the $ we are making... Hell, adobe should pay them and distribute it - why? to de-value report server products - there was a great paper that I read about how one of the economic benefits for Oracle from linux is that it de-values Operating Systems (cost-wise), thus freeing up money to be spent on database products, but I can't find the paper now.
Those companies who steal GPL code have no doubt stole code from other companies too. Corporate spying has been around since the invention of business; if you make it easy for your competitors to find your code, they will steal it. Period. You can whine about license violations or ethics or other such things, but they will have made millions of dollars by then, which is the only thing that matters in business.
I am a member of the SkyOS team, and I am curious as to what parts of SkyOS you believe are licensed under the GPL? I have seen very little GPL software in my usage, and that which I have seen is unmodified from its POSIX version... if it's not modified, then the source code is already available elsewhere.
"We are not well served with non-free programs to get jobs done."
Oh, I don't know. Total expenditure for billing software for a doctor's office, plus Mickeysoft XP, plus a computer to run it on, less than $2000.00 CDN.
Yearly cost of updates for the unending idiotic changes in billing codes etc.is $200.00, which the vendor has to keep up with. (He's going to do that for nothing? No way.)
$2200 bucks for automated billing, that's pretty freaking cheap. Close enough to free for me. Particularly considering I'd have to hire a billing clerk at $30k+ per year without it, two clerks for a really busy office.
Should the billing software vendor or Mickeysoft at some point go belly up, what's my cost? Another $2200 bucks to another vendor, plus I have to get my billing files translated over. Another maybe two grand at worst. Less than ten grand even if I have to replace all the hardware.
Or, I could spend endless hours trying to find and maintain an Open Source solution, which would require me to learn programming AND accounting AND update all the code changes myself, plus I'm holding the bag if it blows up.
Let us not forget, if it blows up I can't bill, and if I can't bill I have no income. I'm going to lose one hell of a lot more money than I could ever save by using Open Source software.
Furthermore, if I'm the doctor all the time I spend dicking with the computer I'm not generating income. Doctor time is worth $300+ per hour even in Canada, that's some damn expensive system administration. I'd be further ahead to hire the billing clerk for $30k, right?
With my money for my non-free software, I get a really cheap solution to a problem I can't afford to solve on my own. Plus, I have recourse if it breaks. This is called payment for services rendered, also known as Capitalism.
It is in my best interests that the software vendor makes a ton o'cash, if only because there will be an employee with a clue on the phone when I call them up. Should the vendor stiff me in some way, I can jettison their product and pay somebody else.
If I want a car, do I design and build one or do I pay General Motors or Honda for one of theirs? In what way am I not free if I buy software the same way?
On the other hand, if a beauty solution exists in the Open Source world for something I can afford to have blow up occasionally, like an office suite or a browser, I'm all over it. Free is good too, just depends on the application.
My doctor's office uses Mozilla and Open Office on Irix (SGI boxen are cheap these days) and on XP, Smoothwall firewall/router, Samba and Sharity to communicate between evil proprietary OS's and virtuous Freeware, and Klinix billing software running on aforementioned Wintel monopolistic Microsoft Windows XP. If all the freeware stuff craps out the money is still safe. Nice, functional and cheap in time as well as money.
Bottom line, more doctor hours spent on patients, less on friggin stupid paperwork. Win, win, win.
Don't let ideology clog your colon, dude. ~:D Allow the fiber of practicallity to clean out all that bullshit once in a while.
Compared to say socialism
Or this page analyzing the downfalls of communism in practice anti-communism
A summary of Marx's criticism of capitalism
Now assuming a person reads these and other articles about what communism is and compare it to OSS, it's damn obvious the two are not equal or remotely equal. the worse part of it is the main stream media often have people talking about capitalism, when they barely understand the differences. Hell many of them don't understand the principle of supply and demand.
I'm not trying to take the Government should stay out of everything except the military and legal areas side, but one of the areas that's shown big improvement lately is the meat packing industry, which has been pressured largely by the fast food chains into cleaning up a lot of plants. If you want safe meat, buy from a packer that has a contract with McDonalds, or Pepsi (KFC/Taco Bell/PizzaHut).
Couldn't food package labelling be improved by getting the grocery store chains to line up with customer interests in a similar way? And environmental laws - surely there are plenty of industries that are downriver or downwind from other industries?
I don't know how we could take the government out of financial regulation, as some of the economic forces involved can do enormous danage. (The US had no less than three depressions in the late 19th century, triggered in each case by a different couple of guys that tried to corner the market on some metal, such as copper, and jack up prices. In each case, the idiots who started the problem were short sighted in the simplest of senses about the consequences, but still screwed up the economy).
Tax subsidies for OS development fall firmly in the leave the government out category, simply because it's unneeded. Even if the government might do a good job, there's so many alternatives that are already working well.
Who is John Cabal?
I think the point he was trying to make is that it's like getting a cake, cutting it in half and then only eating one half of it while letting the other half go stale and/or mouldy.
No, that would be "halving your cake and eating it too".
Of course, if you use the word "having" to mean "having sex with" (a term from the 1970's that (as far as I know) is no longer used), and "eating" has a similar sexual connotation, then "having your cake and eating it too" takes on an entirely different meaning.
if it's not modified, then the source code is already available elsewhere.
Which is irrelevent. They're still required to distribute the source code.
Also, vlc, grub, and khtml are modified for use in SkyOS. Having said that, the SkyOS developers have promised to make the source available for SkyOS 5.0 when it's complete, which is good enough for me.
Dinivin
Your glib response failed to address that you can pay someone to maintain Free Software for you too. And you get to pick from a competing array of programmers who can help you. Buying into a monopoly for help (which is what all proprietors are) doesn't serve you in the long run because there's no way you can get help when the proprietor stops helping. As Microsoft shows, no matter how much you pay them, they will terminate support for old versions of their software leaving you with nobody who can fix bugs or add features. I would much rather have the flexibility of a free market for fixing my computer software just as I enjoy a free market for fixing my car or the plumbing in my house.
Digital Citizen
I agree that it wouldn't cost them much. Nobody is arguing that point. I think the key here is that if there was legislation forcing companies to participate, then you've just lost a lot of the openness of open-source.
Also true, but the end does not justify legislation as a means.
Hey do any of you remember the concept of the GPL. It's free. I do a piece of software and give it away. No strings attached. Now I know it's always better to have people turn around and say hey this is great thanks. But the GPL itself say they are not obliged to. The next problem I see is that no government could really impose an OSS tax or similar because you can quite probably class this as discrimination (the government is helping out open source, perhaps they should be paying for MS's activation systems as well). Anyway the government itself makes use of OSS.
Other problems:
Its underhanded. To say a product (or anything is free) and then charge you extra on the back end is well devious. The OSS community has gained a reputation for always beingclear and honest. Raise your hands if you want MS's reputation for dishonesty.
Broader Reach: OSS has a far broader reach than any proprietary software. Who remembers Brasils comments on taking up Linux. One of which was they couldn't afford MS products. Ford Europe because they didn't like being restricted by MS's licenses (I may be wrong on that. Its been a while).
Less Penetration: I remember reading about how Caldera got started. It didn't necissarily sell Linux to companies. It simple sold licenses to those companies who found their IT blokes had already started using it and they were feeling a little uncomfortable about it. NO IT employee of any sort is going to simply use Linux for the odd job if in three years someone audits them and hits the company for a major tax bill (or anything else for that matter). Geuss who loses their job. Stick your hand up if you would still do it (No zealots here just common sense please).
TCO: The big thing that MS is pushing at the moment is TCO. MS says the TCO for it's products is far lower than Linux. Add the tax to OSS and they will certainly be right. Remember those companies that are 'defecting' to OSS. Part of that reason is MS's move to renewable style licenses. You pay MS every year over and over. It wasn't a popular move. In fact from memory it was very unpopular. From memory one of Munich cities reasons for going OSS was that they didn't like MS telling them when to upgrade (as a result of the licensing scheme). Add taxes to OSS and it will suffer dramaticly. It will be a point against it. Quite possibly a very large point against it. Would IBM have tried out Apache if it had been taxed. Probably not. Why because no one would have been looking at it, for fear of the taxes.
Solutions:
I don't think forcing a company into paying for what they have been told is free, is either moral or going to win any of the browny points that has made software like Linux the great avengers of our time. Alternatives.
1. Try establishing a very large, very very public foundation for OSS, and I'm not talking about the GNU Foundation. Guilt people and companies into giving a little back. But don't force them. Think about it. You can always look benevolent when you donate money. Paying you taxes is simply what you do and has no PR benefits.
2. Don't OSS it. If you don't like the possibility that somebody will use it and not contribute, don't OSS it. It has to be said. Not everyone out there shares in that same community ideal. Would you prefer them to use MS products (this is for the zealots).
I can probably go on all day about this but to keep it brief, I shall stop here.
Consider how much money MS has sunk into PR, and how much OSS has. Though I don't have any figures, I can imagine MS spends far more. Think about every benchmark MS has put out. How many times have they been challenged. I get the impression that these days no MS benchmark goes without dispute. Linux fairs far better. Why, one reason I submit is simple goodwill Linux benefits far more often than it hurts. The simple concept of free software lends far more than you might realise. I can use Linux experiment and then toss it, without consequence and without losing out. To try the same with MS products I would still
I have been told that for all GPL software used, an agreement has been reached with the authors of the GPL'd software to release any modified source code with SkyOS 5.0, which will be in a few months. So yeah...
You're kidding, right?
- GCC
- Newlib
- Grub
- Khtml
- FFMpeg (LGPL)
IT DOES NOT MATTER IF THEY ARE UNMODIFIED! A copy of the GPL must be included with the binaries. Except that everything I list has been modified, some of it heavily. Where is the source? Robert always replies with "I'll email it to you...oh I forgot" whenever anyone asks.Yeah, I'm sure Redhat and the FSF were more than happy to allow Robert to distribute Newlib & GCC under a different licence.