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Examining Some Open Source Myths
Neil Gunton writes "I wrote an article distilling some thoughts on Open Source myths. Perhaps unusually, these are not myths propogated by the anti-OSS crowd, but rather dogma that is more frequently spouted by OSS proponents. It is not intended as an anti-OSS argument, but really more as observations and reactions to specific things people say without really thinking about it, such as 'You shouldn't complain about it if you don't want to put effort into providing a fix', 'OSS lets you get under the hood to fix problems', 'All software should be free', 'Scratching the personal itch', etc."
On "All Software Should be Free"
Carpentry is a bad analogy. No one says that I should be able to take tables made by carpenters for free. However, the effects of idea creation are much more ephemeral. Or rather, they are much easier to duplicate than a well crafted table. This is exactly why analogies to "stealing" items in the real world do not carry over to the internet. I don't believe in copyright, any of it. But I still think things should have value. I just don't think that the government should grant monopolies on any idea. So, to go back to the analogy, I think you should be able to charge for what you make, be it software or tables. But I also think that the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own, and give it away or sell it or whatever. So comparing the internet to the real world we see that copyrights are just a legal entity, they are not real things, they do not exist outside of a goverment's promise to enforce them. So you can tables, CDs, and even bandwidth, but you can't steal information.
So, let's take this point and compare it with the previous point made concerning "scratching an itch". People in many professions get paid for their expertise. A plumber comes in, does his job, gets paid, and goes home. He doesn't make royalties on his work. He enjoys no monopoly on information, but of course, his job makes this unnecessary. But what we see from the case of the plumber is that people will still need software written, even if there are no monopolistic copyright protections when it is written. People will have "itches", and they will need to be scratched. And maybe they won't have the time to do it themselves. And so, others will be paid to scratch that itch. All of this takes place without any mention of copyright. It's not needed.
You seem to be making the misconception that "free software" means "gratis software" - this is incorrect.
/maintainance licenses can pay for things like offices, developers, food, water, bills, etc :)
"Free Software" refers to freedom, not price. I can sell my piece of free software at any price I like, whether you choose to buy it of course, is your own freedom.
For example; a business selling a database product may choose to release it as free software, and offer a gratis download, but offer a support/maintainance license for a fee. The software is still free, and the money from support
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A discussion where bashing the soft points of OSS doesn't get modded -1 Troll.
I can see the next article: "Understanding the GNAA"
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
This guy clearly doesn't understand the meaning of the word 'free.' He goes off about price and payments... that's not the kind of free we're talking about. Perhaps he should try to learn a little about a subject before presuming to lecture others on it.
s/a business selling/a business producing
It's also worth noting that 'kicking the ass' of Windows is not the goal. The goal is freedom. If users have freedom, it doesn't matter whether their system is better or worse. That's not the issue.
Join the Free Software Foundation
Many of this guy's comments are very good. In many ways, the programing industry is being hit by a much more general sweep of what I call 'copyright depreciation'. The really huge piracy with games, music and movies at the moment is a symptom of copyright depreciation and so is programing. I think a key cultural change in this century will be the rise in the difficulty of the ability to make money off copyrighted works.
In the past, a company could assemble a team of programmers and pay them to write a program for you. Really, the only way you could assemble such a team was under this structure. With the invention of the internet such teams can be assembled on-line and can work in their spare time. Couple this with the ability to be able to duplicate en mass for effectively zero cost makes this form of development very effective.
In the end, the programmer has to get paid or they can't make a living off it. What we're seeing is the destruction of huge profit margins and the market force establishing the 'true' value of a programmer.
Simon
That's news to me. I always regarded Windows to be ahead until w2k, and then the Linux apps quickly got their shit together. Since, they are more or less equal. Now, there's another system that kicks both their asses, MacOS X. That is to say, it kicks Linux' ass, but afterwards, it comforts Linux and give gentle hints on how to improve (Safari -> KHTML (or whatever)).
Now if I complain I don't have an OSS option for somethig, people won't shout at me "Well, why don't you contribute to it then?"..
That is, if they read this article...
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Why is it this gets posted on slashdot? This sounds a hell of a lot more like his opinion to me. And look, I'm not getting posted on slashdot for saying Apache is cool.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
Then why do these form the backbone of the philosophy of nearly all FOSS hippy I have met ? Sorry, but these so-called myths *DO* represent the FOSS movement. You can't have the good without the bad. There is tons of good in FOSS, but these so-called myths are the baggage that comes with it. Or is the author trying to portray the FOSS movement as all good, and trying to sweep dirty laundry under the rug ?
"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
This is not a problem. Not only is it not a problem, but it is at the core of getting great software out.
I'm sure many have heard how many photoshop users have complained about the GIMP, about its problems from their point of view, and often it's the same little dramas. the GUI, CMYK, whatever.
How long have we been hearing this argument now? 3 years? 4 years?.
Now imagine what a phenomenal product GIMP would be in the eyes of graphic artists who now use photoshop if only the people who had complained about it could be bothered to FIX what they see as problems. A few small years worth of effort in total, very little from each person who has seen something wrong, and the free tool would have surpassed the proprietary one years ago. Instead, all we get are more complaints.
Of course, the making of a noise may be the whole be all and end all to the complaining, with no intention of wanting a fix in the first place. Some people are like that, and that's just unfair.
RST
The idea that OSS is easy to get under the hood does not mean that every single user should (or even could) fix it - that's just a total strawman argument. There are enough programmers out there that the moderately popular projects will get input from outside and they *are* better as a result. 95% of project development comes from 'internal' development, but that extra 5% is sometimes crucial.
Plus, it opens the opportunity for a business to hire someone to fix it/make it work as you want. There is no such opportunity with closed-source software.
Someone else has mentioned the free vs gratis confusion. The whole article seems to have been written to wind up the slashdot crowd... I bet it's succeeded too.
Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements.
Sorry, I don't agree. To me the Windows GUI of XP is a cludge. Call me crazy but I personally find that the Gnome (Metacity) MUCH better suited to me. Also, I think it's idiotic to have a web browser built into the OS. I mean, who the hell needs a web browser in your file browser? Is that the "usability" he's writing about?
Of course, everyone is different. But I find Linux much easier to get around and work in than Windows. Your taste may vary.
Choice is good...
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I actually agree with this guy, but the title put me off. :)
You can keep saying it's unrealistic to expect users to help fix problems with OSS software, but the fact is that only people who do put in the effort make any difference.
The only people who can effect changes are people who do code, who don't accept this defeatist version of 'reality'. If everyone simply accepted it was unrealistic to be able to personally contribute to anything, well, this world would be a much worse place.
What is 'realistic' to this guy is just not relevant to OSS development. Thats what makes OSS different, and special.
No, it's not 'realistic', but its happening, and it's happening regardless of how 'realistic' you think it is.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Did you notice?
The article, right at the very top, said (c).
They guy should just have gone right out at the start and said "I am in Microsoft's pocket, Bill Gates Rocks." How dare he write a piece about open source, and then make that piece closed source.
Information MUST BE FREE. Open it up. Publish yur article under the GPL. Allow others to edit it, improve it develop it.
Ask yourself, would you rather be the author of one little closed source essay, or would you rather your essay grew (like Linux) to be a Shakespeare of literature? You might have created the next Macbeth.
But no; you chose the shallow, short-sighted route of copyright and closed source.
I despair.
--- My dad's political betting
Rather than talking about OSS as a whole, we need to try (as far as possible) to discuss the motives of individuals or the objectives of specific projects.
I was betting from the excerpt, that the article was not well done, even very poorly done. :
...
It's worse than that, it is pretty stupid too.
Well, taking the myths one by one
1 : Red Herring. People who receive this treatment are generally whining or complaining. That's a way to shrug them off, because developers have no time to waste with such people. People who want to help post on bugzilla, explain to the author, tell him about the problem, without feeling compelled to say that the product "sucks".
2 : Never in the explanation did he explain why Open Source doesn't allow you to go under the hood. YOU CAN. That's a fact. If you don't, that's no fault of Open Source (or Free Software)
3 : classic misunderstandig. We're talking about freedom here, not gratis. Stupid really, as all he says is then offtopic.
4 : I've never heard this one. Clearly, nobody sane would state that. Perhaps he forgot the word "often" in the sentence.
5 : Nobody said scratching personal itch was a good reason, that's just a fact. So where is the myth ?
6 : Even if people choose for you, more choice is always better (think monopoly). Even more stupid. Having more choice doesn't prevent you from having a choice pre selected for you. The other way around does not work.
7 : Conclusion : worthless article
To fix it, you need to be able to give a clear description of the problem to the developers. "It doesn't work" is not a clear description; "It doesn't correctly read 192-bit-per-pixel multilayer tiff files, because it loses the last 8 bits of each channel" is.
why do we have to have this discussion every month?
if some 'famous' (weblog) person doesn't write an article about open source and its benefits/disadvantages, a slashdot user will; just to have it posted when it's been more than one month since we've had this discussion
so i can proudly say: i did NOT read the article, and i'll probably never will... unless someone replies that i really, really missed something new
The only reason to run OSS software is because you care about the software that you run and are expected to use on a day-to-day basis. This is for the following reasons:
1. You don't want to be locked into a particular vendor's proprietary protocols, data formats, etc.
2. You want full control of your system. Why should you waste system overhead running a GUI, for example, on a system you just need to be a web server? You get that level of choice with OSS.
3. You want to feel part of a community. Unlike commercial software, you cannot expect the software programmer to bring what you want straight to you in a format you want - it just doesn't work that way because there is no marketing of OSS software. You have to be prepared to feed likes and dislikes back to the programmer or team who created the software.
4. You don't want to / can't pay for software. This is different to saying "All software should be free" and I'm all for voluntary donations to OSS projects. But it does mean that you can turn old hardware into a working usable system and in poorer countries, where people do not have the income to pay for software, this allows them to have exposure to the Internet, programming and gaining computer skills.
5. You don't support piracy. This follows on from 4. above but surely it's better for everyone to have people paying for commercial software and not using illegal copies while those that won't pay for software just use free software instead.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Whether or not they will, or whether it will be any good, isn't really relevant. I doubt that GIMP has hurt Photoshop's sales much, or MySQL is making a dent in Oracle. It's the perception in the mind of VCs and investors that matters.
And I think it has many interesting points that are worth thinking about and/or taking to heart.
But, I have a critique of point 3 (All software should be free) and an observation about point 5 (Scratching the personal itch).
First, there is profitable Open Source software out there. The biggest example I can think of is LiveJournal. Sure, what LJ sells is premium features for their site, but they wouldn't have a thing to sell without their software, which they've wisely chosen to Open Source. LJ makes enough money to afford some pretty hefty server farms in back of it. There are many clone sites out there that use their software, and are free to make money in the same way, but none of them have come even close to putting LJ out of business yet. In fact, I think they've just strengthened LJs business.
So, software can be free, and still make money.
In point 5, Neil Gunton cogently observes in the last sentence "A commercial company, on the other hand, can afford to scratch the personal itches of its end-users, because the end-users are the ones paying the bills.". This very true, and I think it provides a useful illustration of a means by which an Open Source company can make money by directly selling software.
I think I ought to be able to go into a store and bu a copy of gimp. In fact, I think there are several Open Source packages which would lend themselves well to being sold seperately from distributions. This would do a lot to raise the visibility of these packages from a consumer perspective.
I just answered a question by someone where they were wondering about Open Source packages for doing various things. I gave them a list of them. But every single one of those packages usually comes with a distribution. This person was totally unaware of this.
These packages need marketing and distribution seperately from the OS. That marketing and distribution would raise their profiles, and provide a valuable way for end-users to get involved in how a package is produced. Their money would pay for support. They could be introduced to the concept of Open Source and how to effectively contribute constructive criticism and development money for their pet features to Open Source projects. The distribution company could provide a focal point for this, and a project could put things up on its homepage about how well it was being served by various distribution companies.
This would both generate revenue for Open Source projects, adressing point 1. And it would provide direct consumer involvement that could drive feature development, addressing point 5.
If I ever make consumer oriented Open Source software, I intend to sell it on my webpage, and not provide it for free download. I will tell them that if they can't afford the download, they should get a copy from their friends. I will provide source with the download. If someone wants to grab my source and try to compete with me in selling it under a different name, they're welcome to try, but I'm fairly confident that I can continue to add value to this software that I originally wrote better than anybody else, and they will eventually decide to rejoin my project anyway.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
To a certain degree I agree with most of the points presented in the article. However, I disagree with the statement (point 6) that there should be less choice and more "funnelling" of projects, e.g. commingling Gnome and KDE.
Keeping a "collaborative competition" where new ideas are tried out, imitated and exchanged is a healthy practice. Of course having only one perfectly-managed project would be better, if you drop the question of how you get perfect management.
A single project will make some mistakes at one point or another (see Gnome's spacial browsing or whatever they call that devilish desktop-cluttering insanity), but if there is more than one project, the best idea will win. I'm actually worried by Gnome's problems, right now KDE is poised to become the One And Only® desktop for Linux in the heavyweight class. What will I migrate to if Gnome is not there anymore? I hope the goneME guys manage to turn the wind there.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
perhaps the mods are on crack again.
As a former software entrepreneur, I think this fellow's points are well taken. I remember one of my employees--a Linux guru--saying contemptuously, "If people can't use the command line then they shouldn't be using computers." No, he wasn't joking. Most open source software remains written by engineers for engineers. I think the recent movement by OSS proponents towards identifying market economics and user requirements is therefore a very good thing. Mr. Gunton's list of myths is an excellent starting place.
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
Few people actually say that. It's more like "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't demand a fix either." Usually people who get to hear something like that have treated the programmers who do the actual work like they owe the users something, which simply isn't true.
The idea seems to be that Open Source is better than closed source because you can "tinker" with the code. But how many people actually do this?
That's beside the point. Fact is, you can if you want to. It may be a less attractive solution than having the original author do it, but what if the more convenient option is unavailable? Even the chance of having someone else fix it is better than having to rely on the original author alone.
3. "All software should be free"
A better phrase is "Information wants to be free". Some people try to avoid the argument by saying that information, being an inanimate object, doesn't want anything at all, but that's just ignoring the metaphorical nature of the phrase. Information wants to be free means that information ending up in the public domain is a natural tendency. For various reasons we erect artificial gates which slow this process down a little, but the tendency remains. All software should be free is just an extrapolation of the natural course of information. You, as a developer, will have to find ways to deal with it.
"Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
That is obviously not true. What people mean is that Open Source software has a higher chance of producing better software than a closed source development model. That of course is more of a religious issue than anything else, but some of the arguments are quite convincing. Empirical studies are not very meaningful because we have yet to find a universally acceptable metric for "good software". In short, this is excellent flamewar material. Doing things one way or the other does a lot more to prove your point than discussing it.
5. "Scratching the personal itch"
It's still one of the main motivations for initial Open Source development. However, it's just that, a motivation, not a design goal. Most programmers realize that for a program to be of value to other people, it is not enough to write it so that the programmer's itch is scratched.
6. "More choice is always better"
All else equal, more choice IS always better. In that case, a random choice would always end up with something equal to or better than a situation without choice. The main argument is that choice is not detrimental to the quality of the single elements because the programmers choose between not helping development or writing an alternative.
The first point is just a matter of opinion. I feel that its counterproductive to hold this opinion, but its an opinion, not a myth.
/can/.
:-) (and hey, where would we be without opinions being challenged?)
More importantly, FOSS does let you tinker under the hood. That it not a myth. The importance of that is not whether you do, but that you
This is an important difference and one that is necessarily true for FOSS, so its cetainly not a myth.
Of course, if anyone claims that everyone does tinker, they're in cloud cuckoo land... I've done it three times. That will be out of several hundred programs I use. Most people want to use their computer not tinker...
There is a fair amount of opinion in the article rather than fact, but it is well presented and not zealot like
Helping to fix things doesn't necessarily mean contributing code. Fixing bugs and/or adding features is a support issue, and nobody ever said that support for open source should also be free. If you don't pay for support, then you're basically relying on the charity of strangers, and don't have the right to be surprised if you get rebuffed sometimes. If you are like most people and can't do fixes or enhancements yourself then try to convince someone who has that ability, by paying them perhaps, to do it for you. This is, in fact, one of the oldest and most successful ways that people thought of to build a business model around Free/Open Source Software.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I'm assuming the author posted his essay and pointed Slashdot to it in the interests of getting comments. Well, here are mine:
IMPE (In My Personal Experience), this statement is rarely the first thing out of the developers' mouths. It's mostly used when firing back at those who try demanding certain features be put into the projects. Anybody has the right to comment and criticize, and the open source developer community probably handles that as well as any audience does for that type of comment. However, nobody can demand things be done unless they're paying for it or they're doing it themselves.
Does a casual user do this? Probably not. Does this mean that no user does this? Of course not. It's mostly a matter of how much import you put on the fix and getting it soon. And in terms of the complexity...that depends on the project. Like the essay author, I am "an experienced developer" and I've already helped fix bugs in rsnapshot (small Perl script) and as an experiment rewrote part of the TightVNC Java client to use as a Swing component instead of an applet (not huge, but not exactly simple, either.)
or more specifically:
No, that's one of the central tenets of the Free Software movement, which is approximately a subset of the Open Source movement. And their concern is "free as in speech" more so than "free as in beer", which is more of a side effect. Yes, this philosophy, if carried to its practical conclusion, means no more shrinkwrapped commercial software. Just like the existence of Habitat for Humanity, if carried to its extreme, means no more business for home builders ("free as in siding"? ;-). But it doesn't eliminate the market for home improvement stores (e.g., Home Depot), as homeowners still have to "scratch their own itch" and fix things around the house. It therefore similarly does not get rid of the markets for lumber, bricks, shingles, nails, power tools, etc.
Actually, I agree here -- anyone who says that literally is nuts. If you put "All else being equal" on the front, then the statement is fairly decent, but rarely is all else equal, meaning a project's open source nature is one of many features, each with their own weight in the eyes of the decision-maker.
The author admits that this is true in the first sentence of his argument. If it ain't a myth, don't list it as a myth -- it hurts the essay overall.
Like with the proprietary "myth" above, as a literal statement, this probably isn't a great statement. With "all else being equal" on the front, it is. Certainly, the inverse -- less choice is always better -- or the contrapositive -- more choice is never better -- are even worse statements, so the "myth" ain't so bad in comparison. (and forgive me if I got my inverse and contrapositive mixed up, as it's been a long time since I covered that in middle school).
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
Yes opensource is much better.
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Yes indeed, we don't all dive into the code when we find a problem. I also develop code. Having someone test it that has no insight as to how it functions underneath is very important to me. Having a second opinion to guide my aesthetics and so forth is imperative. I thus consider feedback on OSS projects on a "Higher level" just as important as contributions to the actual code development. You will quickly find out if your software is userfriendly if you give it to a 50 year old working in the natural gas industry (my industry)! Greetz, Frans
!
This "all software should be free" is part of the
movement around the Free Software Foundation, which
admittedly has done some great work, but is only
a small part of the Open Source community as a
whole.
Take, for example, the BSDs. We don't mind - we
even are lucky - if our software is taken by some
large company and makes their way in one of their
products, with our name being mentioned in the
manual.
As for the other points - sure, you've got a point,
but open source - again, especially the BSDs - is
not only about using, desktop friendliness etc.
but also about learning. Learning a different way
than with Windows, Mac or GNU/Linux.
If a user of our OS has got a problem, we'll fix
it, but also tell him how it's done, so he can do
some of the work himself next time. If he's got a
problem with the usability, we teach him how to
use xterms in evilwm or icewm *devilish grin*
instead of recommending KDE or even *shudder* GNU
GNOME to him. - This usually makes them either
stop using our system, or better understanding
users.
Sure, this is a bit unique to the BSDs - our OS
has a special goal: small- to medium-sized servers
and desktops for developers. The BSDs in general
don't want "world domination", but to use the
right tool for the job (this means some $otherbsd
or even GNU/Linux for SMP machines, or Windows®
for playing modern games such as Diablo II). Take
my posting just as a "heads up!" that there are
people who are different.
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
"Now imagine what a phenomenal product GIMP would be in the eyes of graphic artists who now use photoshop if only the people who had complained about it could be bothered to FIX what they see as problems. A few small years worth of effort in total, very little from each person who has seen something wrong, and the free tool would have surpassed the proprietary one years ago. Instead, all we get are more complaints."
The thing you missed is that when Photoshop gets complaints, those complaints come from someone who has paid $500 to Adobe. This is a graphic artist, not a developer. Adobe pays the developer some of that $500 in order to fix the problem.
In the OSS world, the user that gives feedback gives exactly that: feedback. But what do the developers of the OSS project care about that feedback? After all, if the user wanted to get their feature implemented right, they could have paid someone else to develop it, or picked up a few books on development.
Fundamental assumption: users are not developers. Hence, we have commercial software.
The author must be a happy man,
RMS et al, for whom I have nothing but respect
which is, sadly, not returned. Richard Stallman wants all software to be free, and doesn't respect closed-source software companies. If you want to make money by selling binaries, better find someone else to respect. Like Linus maybe, he doesn't seam so political.
I grew up in the 1980's assuming that I would one day be able to write some really cool software, then *SELL IT*, and make some real money for my trouble. But if I were to do that today, then in all likelihood someone would write an Open Source version of the thing, which sort of takes the wind out of any commercial startup.
Newsflash: You can not make money by writting software that people don't mind developing themselves for fun, or to satisfy their own needs. Write something that needs an effort of a big team, or rigourous quality assurance, and you might still catch your dream.
But it's also true that in many respects, Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements.
*shudder* Windows UI is vulgar and slow. I think it's the reason many people shy away from computers, or doing anything non-trivial with them. The author must surely mean MacOSX?
"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
How is this a myth? Nothing prevents me from doing it, whether I want to is my choice. And those that do are always going to be in the minority.
"All software should be free"
Aaaagh. How many times do we have to reiterate it, not as in beer? Another "software is manufacture" argument.
"Scratching the personal itch"
So the desire to rule out leeching wasn't a valid itch in the case of bittorrent. Or the wish for a fast uncomplicated window manager made blackbox the choice of only programmers. My particular itch has nothing to do with programming. This might have made sense maybe five years ago, now it's laughably easy to shoot down.
"More choice is always better"
This is a bad way to put it. "A bunch of bad choices is worse than a few good ones" is a better argument, and has much better application to software.
This was lazily written and needed more thought before /. got hold of it. Bad move :)
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
if you need to make a piece of software, and can't work alone, because it's too much work for you, or because you don't everything about everything
...
taking your project online as a free project might help!
or if you can do it alone, taking is online might help improve it, more hands, eyes, legs, bugs, and everything you can imagine
another reason to make a software free, is increasing it's chance of adoption, so if more adoptions have more value to you, then maybe making your program free, is a good idea
moral is, there is a chance that making a sw project open source, is the only way to make use or money out of it
the internet, and the millions and millions of the net citizens, increases the chances that you will get what you want from makin a project free
more volunteers who share similar interests
cheap distribution
more adoption
so evaluate the situation, and choose
free or close
don't forget, that making closed source software, costs a lot, companies likes Redhat, mandrake, suse, would have never existed if the main software component they work on (linux-kernel) wasn't free, because at one point in their life, paying for the development and marketing and distribution for a new OS was way bigger then their pocket.
so it can be very practical and economic to make a sotware free
Attracking the right volunteers, in my opinion, remains the make it or break it
so one should not set his hopes too high
maybe you will make a piece of code free, but no one will bother
or maybe the skilled volunteer poll will be satured, all the skilled ppl are busy and taken
but then of course, i am sure, many many many, closed source sw maker, bankrupt for less then that
Point by point:
1. Willing to help fix != write code. While there are only very few people doing the "no help, no complain" line, it is IMHO a very fair line of reasoning. "X sucks" or "Y does it better" is not helping at all. If one does not like a product, one should either not use it or help improving it. This improvement can be as simple as taking part in a well-informed discussion.
2. It does not *matter* if you do it or not. A lot of people in democratic countries do not vote, yet think democracy is probably the best political system we have. The point is that anyone *can* get under the hood, not that anyone *must* do it.
3. Free != gratis, free == freedom (in the FSF domain).
4. There is no such thing as 'better' without a context. From some contexts, all free software is better than all non-free software, just ask RMS. Without supplying a context, this argument is moot.
5. Absolutely no point here. If you don't like a free s/w project, then do not use it. No one is forcing you. If you do not like what I have written, bad luck for you. If you do like it, feel free to use it and even improve on it if you like.
6. He seems to state that choice is good, but too much choice is not. He fails to draw the line, probably because it all depends on the point of view of the end-user. He also fails to mention that *anyone* can fork/start another distibution with 'less choice'. Again a moot point.
7. This is not a new point, but simply a rehash of all above.
The article is nothing more than it states: "Thoughts on some frequently-stated dogma promoted by the Open Source community", and that is all it is: thoughts. Not good particularly accurate thoughts though.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
I agree
And gratis != free is just plain stupid.
If you distribute your sources to your first customer, he is able to redistribute them. And your product, suddenly, has become free.
Most of the time, a list of myths provides little more than an opportunity to trot out a consignment of straw men-- willful distortions of the opponent's arguments, to be hacked, burnt, and slashed at for the the audience's amusement.
Perhaps I misunderstood the title of the article - I think the use of the word "myths" is misleading, since almost none of the points brought up are verifiable, but merely the author's opinion.
:^)
2. "Open source lets you get under the hood and fix problems"
Some examples:
Just my humble comments on an otherwise quite interesting read.
The idea seems to be that Open Source is better than closed source because you can "tinker" with the code. But how many people actually do this? Hardly anybody in real life. In reality, it's generally very, very difficult to fix real bugs in anything but the most trivial Open Source software. I know that I have rarely done it, and I am an experienced developer.
Not sure where this comes from - I never heard anyone recommend OSS on the basis that anyone can fire up their editor and happily fix bugs in any software in minutes, because it's Open Source.
The advantage that Open Source has over closed, proprietary source because of its "tinker friendliness" still holds true, irregardless of the author's conclusion that it is "very, very difficult" to fix problems in OSS. The source code is still available, right?. This means that it is at least possible for someone motivated enough to try and fix it. You just don't have that when the source code not is avaliable (legally).
Just because the percentage of users actually contributing their own patches is low, doesn't mean that the advantage of source code availability is reduced. To me this sounds a bit like "Oh, they say that this brand of car can be driven faster than the other brand, but since almost no-one is skilled enough to push the car to those speeds, it's a myth."
4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software" People rant on and on about how much MS Windows sucks, and it's true, it does in many respects. But it's also true that in many respects, Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements. It's widely recognized that the Linux desktop is still a work in progress playing catch-up to Microsoft, and people continually wage religious wars on each other's OSS projects.
Come on. I don't think I ever heard someone even on Slashdot seriously put forward the idea that Open Source "always is better, just because."
Not really sure where this argument is going. Shall I read it as "The idea that open source always is better is wrong, because some proprieraty alternatives do stuff better." Hmm. Again, only the most fundamentalist zealot would not know this.
6. "More choice is always better"
[...] For example, a new Linux user has to choose between all these different packages (e.g. which desktop) without knowing anything about either choice, or else just admit defeat and click "All", which results in a bloated system. Reducing the choices would reduce the bloat and clutter that seems to be in danger of overtaking the Linux of today - how many CD's are there now in the average distribution? [...]
This is a comment on distributions, and _not_ Open Source in general. Reducing the number of choices (or at least putting them under some "advanced options") in the most "user-friendly" distributions may be a good idea.
...and you'll find he *is* part of the community that he's talking about. see http://www.neilgunton.com/ and especially http://www.neilgunton.com/reasonsfor details.
Boring Old Fart (40, married, 3 kids...er no...make that 49, married, 3 grown up kids...it's been a long time)
"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
Agree. (i.e, agree with the author's disagreement to this statement). However, the statement is generally only aimed at someone who simply flames developers without offering anything constructive, in which case its valid.
"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems".
That statement is aimed at companies, not home users. Know why gimp is popular in hollywood, despite competing proprietary software having a lot more features? That's right, studios can (and do) pay dozens of programmers, and with gimp they get the source.
"All software should be free"
Hello? That's RMS's philosophy, and maybe the philosophy of the Free Software movement. The "open source" movement differs from RMS on precisely this point. Author's long rant about this is completely wasted, because it is a minority of FS/OSS proponents who believe that all software should be free.
"Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
Find me 5 people who believe that.
"Scratching the personal itch"
Well, that's the explanation of how unpaid OSS gets written. Commercial OSS is a whole different thing. I don't think anyone confuses the two. The author assumes that people do, and then goes on to explain why they shouldn't. Duh.
"More choice is always better"
Yes and no. That's why we have distros. If you are a linux vendor, more choice is always better. The vendors pick and choose and put together a coherent product so that the end user needs to make one choice (which distro to use) and nothing more. They get a usable system right away. If the end user wants to choose, they can, that's why you have debian, gentoo etc.
Conclusion: these statements aren't myths at all, except in the author's mind, or have important caveats which the author ignores.
The article is biased because it, seemingly deliberately, omits crucial parts of the discussion. For instance:
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
The author says that the idea that OSS allows you to tinker with the source code is a "myth". He is totally missing the point; The freedom to fix the software is important, not because every user will be able to do so, but because they will all ultimately benefit from this access being available to the programmers that will submit patches.
- Brian.
Unfortunately, the GIMP cannot be fixed by everyone just fixing the little bit that's bothering them. That's more like the way it got into the current (imperfect although still very useful) state.
What it needs is for a _small_ group of people to look at and, where necessary, restructure the _whole_ edifice. Having each complainer fix the bit that they are complaining about is not a scalable way to create an application.
There's a lesson there in there for OSS development in general. Possibly.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Why would someone download Gimp, when they can get Photoshop for free? Why should they even try it?
Ciryon
At least commercial software does give you support, the uncertainty of software failing as soon as you do something the designer never thought of, and then having to start understanding 50,000 lines of code before you can start debugging is a serious problem. Eventually you find that it chokes because a temp file in /tmp was left behind and is corrupted. You spent a month debugging, you mail the programmer and he says 'I know that already, just delete the tmp files you fuckhead!'
Being insulted as an adult by a 15 year old developer who has abandoned it at version 0.92 because he lost interest, yet feels superior to non-programmers is also something that nobody enjoys.
It's Free as in Freedom, Goof ball.
See http://www.gnu.org
The idea seems to be that Open Source is better than closed source because you can "tinker" with the code. But how many people actually do this?
This is a crock of shit argument anyway. Just because the author has personally never suceeded in modifying someone elses code does not mean there are people who can and do. I know I've fixed bugs, ported a whole heap of software to new platforms, used code between projects and I've recieved all sorts of patches from all sorts of people the world over.
Just because you choose not to modify the code yourself is not a problem or a myth of Open Source Software; it's your problem.
"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
Personally I've never heard this one, although I've fixed quite a few things, then submitted the necessary as it kills that one dead.
"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems" - Maybe you'll poke around a bit in the code, and if it's trivial then you can fix it - but again, this really isn't something your average user is going to do.
Look! Over there, other side of the road, travelling in the other direction...it's the point...
The point of this 'myth' is you have the ability to. That's it. Whether you submit the patches or not, you can make any modifications that your little heart desires.
"All software should be free" - I write something independently, then there is basically not a chance in hell of being able to sell it or make money directly from it.
There is money being made, but I think the point is that all software should be free in terms of usage rather than monetary cost. Frequent mistake, but a schoolboy error for someone with 20 years experience.
"As a developer myself, this prospect is profoundly depressing"
Why the hell should it? I'm currently developing like there's no tomorrow; people pay for my ability to make things work how they want them to, they don't care about which tools I use. You don't stand over your plumber's shoulder and demand he uses branded Stilsons; you'd get one in the mouth after a short amount of time.
"Yeah, I know, some will say "Go ahead and try, it's a free world". But you know as well as I do that if I am successful then inevitably some kid in his parents' basement will write his own Open Source version of the thing, for free."
Unlike the corporation that could also do the same thing and just slightly undercut you? Grow up. Competition means going out there and seeing if your product/service will fly, and the capitalist ideal means that you could find yourself competing against an eight-year old wunderkind. On a long enough timescale kids will always kick your ass.
"the Linux desktop"
'The'?
"Some of these benefits include having a more focused direction for the team, given the fact that there is (usually) just one manager and team leader, firmer schedules and deadlines, tighter management, profit incentives, salaries and bonus motivations. While this can also be true for open source projects, the "design by committee" that goes on with community projects often results in a more bloated and less focused product that tries to be all things to all people."
Have you worked in a closed source environment? For one thing the manager generally doesn't code, the bonus motivations are usually in place to sweeten the complete lack of innovation and flair that are endemic to a heavily specified job and the deadlines usually slide for whatever reason. OTOH, you'll find that most of the _successful_ OSS projects actively try to cut down on the 'committee' element to the extent where someone usually throws their toys on the floor. Same shit, just slightly more transparent and vocal when it happens.
"A commercial company, on the other hand, can afford to scratch the personal itches of its end-users"
If it listens. Experience has shown that frequently features are thought of as more important than fixing problems, which has led to the current bloat cycle that usually results in the various companies talking about thin-clients...until they bloat the client again.
"Some people will inevitably condemn me for putting down Open Source"
Personally I'm disappointed that you appear to have such a narrow viewpoint. Your major concerns appear to be your own inertia, a couchlock attitude when faced with the idea that you can no longer simply code a product and leave it, that you may be faced with competition and that convienience should be paramount
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
I can understand why the larger software companies are getting very twitchy about Open Source - after all, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and so on are rapidly becoming mature enough to be real competitors to the major software vendors.
..... So rapidely they are here and you did not see it ?
Rapidely becoming mature
In order to solve this problem, open-source business models based on free-as-in-freedom software and support are invented, which is admittedly not as straightforward as the traditional model based on proprietary software and copyright, but is less costly (in terms of reduction of the usefulness of software) to implement as well. This applies whether or not the software is free-as-in-beer, although making the software free-as-in-beer reduces the I-can't-afford-it kind of cost, while reducing the programmer's reward at the same time.
I think it is all about cost. Programmers deserve to be paid, but the infrastructure to reward them should not cost too much in terms of the usefulness of the software, just like you cannot collect tax on a road by collecting money on every crossroad. If no acceptable way to pay the programmers can be found, at least we can make them government-sponsored, just like how many mathematicians are paid currently, although I doubt if this is necessary.
Actually the same applies to patents too. The current system of rewarding inventors by using patents costs rather high, too, since everyone else is shut out completely, without even the option of rewriting the code when it is copyrighted with a non-free license.
So anyone can create a webpage with his or her rant about a topic and it will make it onto Slashdot? Wow, great.
As soon as you said OSS advocates said all software should be free, I decided it wasn't worth my time because you don't even know what you're talking about.
Look out!
As a developer, you want to make the most money using the least amount of effort, so competition scares you. As a consumer, I want the best software for the cheapest price. The fact that you are whinging about competition from open source makes me happy.
No one has a right to make money from their creative effort. A product is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. If people won't pay for your software, than it has a price of $0.00 no matter how valuable the programmer thinks it is.
Well here's some news for you: that model doesn't work anymore. Never did except for a small minority of developers. The vast majority of the money in the software world is in in-house and speciality software, or in large enterprise software where the support is the actual cash cow, not the licensing.
General-purpose software that sells in the millions and makes you an instant millionaire, while you spend at most the equivalent of a few thousands of dollars while writing it... AKA easy money... AKA won't fly. Never did. Before it was Microsoft that was going to commoditize it, now it's the Open Source community. If neither existed, it would be someone else, it's just too damn easy. General purpose software for mass audiences is just not THAT hard to replicate. You're not going to get rich selling boxed copies of your app for luxury prices, so you might as well deal with it now.
Let MS enjoy their Office cash cow while it lasts... it won't be forever either.
I applaud this guy for sticking his head out (or nose, or wahtever you say in english). But I believe some of his myths are misunderstandings.
:-), but, hey, then he will have to develop another application. If you don't like change, the computer bussiness is a silly business to be in...
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
Clearly that is bogus. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. OK on that one.
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
This, most definitively is not a myth. He argues that only a few actuallky does this, and yes, he is right! But they point is, that you can actually do it. Or, if you can not do it, you can pay somebody else to do it. He seems to miss this point and writes "Most of the time, what really happens is that you tell the actual programmer about the problem and wait and see if he/she fixes it." An alternative is to pay that programmer to fix the problem. And, that is a lot easier to do with open source software. Even for large projects (apache, perl, linux), where there is a good chance that you can get a developer with the required knowhow to work for a reasonably pay.
This is not a myth, but rather the author is to restricted in perception here.
3. "All software should be free"
OK, here the author seems unable to make the basic distinction between free as in free-beer, or free as in free-spech. I adressed the money thing in the previous point. Wrt. free-speech, all software I use/depend on, is free. However, most of my games are not (and I even paid for them).
As the writer realizes, and perhaps his worst problem, is that the work he does can be copied. But, that just forces him to keep working. The Microsoft model of charging for breathing may very well be a thing of the past. But that does not mean that people are not ready to pay money for software that they can really benefit from. An obvious example for e.g. Linux is movie editing software (where people pay for MainActor) and 3D modeling programs (people pay for AC3D). Yes, eventually these areas will also be covered by open source program (insert shameless plug for kino, the Linux DV editor
4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
Of course, this depends on your metrics. As I wrote, I have several commercial games. Most of these are "better" than the open source games I have access to.
On the other hand, my primary criteria for "real-work" software is "will the time I invest in this tool, be accumulated for me, will I be able to use this tool as long as I like, for the purposes I wish?". Example: I used to use a windows 3.11 closed source program to manage my bank accounts. After having typed in all my transactions for about 2 years, this program was not available when I upgraded to windows 95 (and later Linux). No migration path. With Open Source software I know that I can always migrate my data. And, if I develop needs the program does not address, I can pay someone to extend/fix the program. Because that is my main metric, yes, open source software is always better! (To me!).
Because people do actually perceive this "myth" in the general sense, I give him a "so and so" on this.
5. "Scratching the personal itch"
I have to take a slight sidestep here. The author writes (under point 3):
"...it's also true that in many respects, Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements. It's widely recognized that the Linux desktop is still a work in progress playing catch-up to Microsoft.."
and
"The Gnome and KDE projects remain a bit of a mess, and while they are making great strides they remain far behind MS Windows in terms of real usability for the kind of "my grandma" users that Windows caters to."
This is BS, and negatively impacts my impression of the authors opinions in general. I have yet to see any grandma users that are more capable of anyth
I like his points, but I'm not sure I agree with point #3. I'm not a programmer, but a lot of my fellow consultants make pretty good money off bespoke software for clients. It _is_ related to the point the author makes, regarding "I have some cool ideas, how do I make money off it?" insofar as a lot of people focus on a particular area for development (web services, smart card interfaces, mobile applications, whatever.)
Customers, especially large firms, don't buy that software, but they will hire a consultant to help them by writing an application that plugs a certain gap, period. The "sale" is the money they pay you for your time.
No, you probably won't get to release that application to the public under the GPL, but you may very well obtain future business based on reference projects, business which involves writing similar applications for different projects.
What I don't see nearly enough for my tastes is a "middle of the road", use-whatever-works-best approach in choosing or writing software. We live in the real world and gotta solve problems; if you have the time and energy to devote to writing programs idealistically, I salute you, honestly. If you don't, considering for example that you have to make things work for a client, or simply don't have the resources for it, nobody should give you s*** for it.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it" I agree with Mr. Gunton here. Constructive criticism does help tremendously. 2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems" I disagree with him here. I certainly wouldn't buy a car if I couldn't open the hood. Not everybody does, but you should have the right to see what's going on inside you're hardware. After all, it was your money that paid for system, and software. 3. "All software should be free" All software should be free. In Shakespeare's time, authors weren't paid for their work. The publishers made all the money. IP rights came along to help protect the authors, and to a limited extent the do. But they really just protect the profits of the publishers. Even in the computing world, the early work was just given away. The money was in hardware... physical, tangible hardware. IBM, Digital, and many, many programmers didn't think somebody would throw away money for something etherial. In many ways, open source is simply a return to the beginning. If my work benefits society as a whole, do I need compensation. Sure, you can't do it for a living, but what about in my own time? The long term societal benefits outweigh my short term personal ones. As for paying for it, why not governments? They're taxing the people to provide benefits for the people. If something benefits everyone, then it is the government's buisness to provide it to the people. Hence, schools, sewage systems, and law enforcement. This was common with DARPA projects in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Another good example would be this internet thing you're using right now. It was government financed. And it benefits the people. 4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software" Windows is easier to use than Linux. Mac OSX is easier to use than Windows. Mac 6.0.5 was much easier to use than them all. But ease of use doesn't sell. Otherwise, we'd all be using Macs that never went away from their compact, memory efficient roots. And while a small team can be more efficient, and focused, the arguement has nothing to do with open or closed source. If me and some friends get together and work on a free project, we can have the same focus as a team. Design bloat, and incentives (cash or otherwise) to reward quick, shoddy work are far more common in the closed source world. I cna think of a certain Washington State based company that personifies those qualities in software. 5. "Scratching the personal itch" I disagree with Mr. Gunton's conclusions here. Programmers and other developmental staff are end users too. So what is GIMP isn't as full featured as Photoshop today? At some point it will be. And it is MUCH easier to use. Cinelerra is great. And most of these FREE alternatives are alternatives to very expensive programs. Most of the closed source world doesn't care what the end user wants, they just want to sell him/her a new copy every year or two. So far the work is mostly aimed at the upper level of tasks, but that's not a bad thing. You've gotta have a good foundation to build on. 6. "More choice is always better" It is. The problems Mr. Gunton lists with installation choices are simply problems with the installer. One of those "Typical, Minimal, Custom" interface menus to simplify things would solve most of these issues. That the problem exists isn't in dispute. He's right, they do. But it's not a big issue. But having a choice is better than not. I don't care if everyone else eats Wonderbread. IF I go to the store, I want to see Wheat. And Pumpernickle. And Rye. Even if I end up leaving with Wonderbread, I still want to have the choice. 7. Conclusion: It's Not So Simple No, It's not, but it's not so hard either. I admire him for getting his point out, and he had some very valid ones. But I believe, that in the end, the "myths" of open source benefits, are a lot less mythical than say the "myths" of closed source security.
OK,OK. All software is free, ergo, we all have to get jobs in support. Big problem. But this hasn't happened. Just look at RedHat.
What is happening out there in the real world is that applications, components and OSes like, OpenOffice, MySQL, Linux are all fully opensource. But when a shop meets a customer and provides a solution, by using these apps and stringinging them together with scripts, GUI's and web pages, to make a solution, that solution is a de facto cloded source solution. The owner is not going to want anyone else to see the code, the code is robobly too specialised for anyone to care, and the programming team won't be able to use most of it on the next project anyway.
I think the primary use for open source, is for the components of a solution. I'm not overly worried if the glue that holds a solution together is locked up in a companies comms room, as that code was once off anyway.
The great thing about open source, is that it actually manages to create standards in the computer industry. Every car that's sold has to be scrutinized and observed by outside people, and so is every FOSS App. Closed source Apps are essentially cowboy application, where the user is held hostage by something which has passed no standards and may crash at any moment. At least FOSS makes things a little more transparent, and maybe accountable?
But real money is made stringin all these apps together into a customised solution for an individual business. This is usually the closed source part that even OSS companies engage in. A customer will not want his competetors to know what his software does. Fair enough. It was a once off solution anyway.
FOSS makes up the skeleton structure which SHOULD be open to scrutiny. But we may never know all of the nuts and bolts that tie them together.
Should we?
May the Maths Be with you!
Apart from the fact that this guy has a totally ignorant understanding of open source and especially free software(read: Free software doesn't mean software cost $0.00), what left me disoriented was the fact that he said Windows was usable.
/. Mac is just weird to me), though I haven't upgraded to Panther. And believe me, that's a compliment to the GNOME developers.
Now that's a joke. My girlfriend was having issues in her Windows XP box, just yesterday. Me, being the geek that I'm, and ex-Windows hardcore tweaker, decided to see which virus I was going to have to remove.
So, I booted her machine. I still don't understand why she turned it off. Then proceeded to click on the start menu. Lord Have Mercy! My medulla oblongata was overwhelmed by the chaos that ensued. Talk about menus that have no order. I'll stop there.
Now, I hadn't used XP is over 6 months, and even then only briefly. But when I compare the usability of GNOME to that of Windows XP. Call me a troll if we wish, but GNOME is a millenia ahead of that mess Windows XP is. I never realised how just aweful and ugly the Window's start menu is, at least when compared to GNOME's.
Even KDE notorious for it's horrid usability is eons ahead of Windows XP. Oh, and that is just the start menu. I'm not even going to talk about menu layout, consistent behaviour, intuitive icons, dialogues, graceful failure, look and feel, etc.
I agree that the Windows XP desktop is ahead of GNOME and KDE is several aspects, but usability is not one of them. Now if you were talking about the availability of applications. I'd shut up!
When it comes to usability on the desktop in free software land, look no further than GNOME. I even find GNOME easier to use than OS X(Yes, crucify me
Obviously, you haven't used recent incarnations of GNOME or KDE. Because I doubt Grandma will find Windows XP easier to use than GNOME in 2004.
"My logic is undeniable."
I realize that the majority of slashdot readers are the very linux zealots to which this article speaks. The interesting thing is that the author doesn't realize that said zealots are incapable of accepting criticism, positive or otherwise. I am a longtime software programmer who shares many of the author's beliefs. When I go searching for a tool I am looking to accomplish a task in minimal time. I don't want to have to "get under the hood" to fix it. I don't want to have to jump through hoops just to get it to build. I don't want to read the faq, rtfm, or check the groups for it. I just want the app to do what it says it does and right now! Nine times out of ten the OSS tool requires me to do one of those, and the windows alternative does not. Take notice that I am not opposed to OSS or modifications to programs. I have added modules to my kernel, etc. The difference is that one is pleasure and the other is work. When I am fiddling with OSS for pleasure I don't mind spending time to learn its nooks and crannies. When I am trying to get OSS to do something for work, I don't have time to play its games. Another problem with OSS is that it generally has no direction. As soon as someone doesn't like the way a project is going, they fork it. That is why for every "itch" there are at least five different ways to scratch it. This is not a good thing. No, diversity is not always a good thing. Generally four of those five "scratchers" are not feature complete and lack good documentation. If all five "scratch" developers were to work together, think of the ultra-claw they could develop.
I have no problem with people using copyright to charge for their software - it seems to me both parties get something from the deal. But it has to happen in a free market, and in the free market the price of information has fallen and can't get up.
As Shirky says: The price of information has not only gone into free fall in the last few years, it is still in free fall now, it will continue to fall long before it hits bottom, and when it does whole categories of currently lucrative businesses will be either transfigured unrecognizably or completely wiped out, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Nor should we. Industrialization wiped out the weavers' guilds, most of the farming population and the horse-cart manufacturers - and we're better off for it. The winds of change are blowing again. Let's tear down the windbreaks and build windmills instead.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
1. This one understates the real problem. SOME open source developers may just as well be writing shareware. Naming no names, but I know at least one mail package that's completely closed to third party modifications... and I've run into other programs where the developers are nearly as hostile to patches.
2. This one, however, is no myth. The vast majority of open source software is very approachable, easy to get into and fix things. I'm no "super programmer" but I've submitted patches that have gone into programs from AMANDA to THTTPD... hmmm, I guess I better see what I can do about Zeroconf, I'm a few letters from the end of the alphabet.
Anyway, not "getting under the hood" is a choice. It's not hard and lets you scratch *your* itch.
3. There are many many people in the OSS movement who have no objection to closed source software. I was at Usenix when someone asked McKusick what he thought about someone "stealing" the TCP code from BSD to put it in closed source software. His response... he welcomed it. It meant better software all round.
4. You're assuming, again, that there's some basic conflict between the two approaches. Combine them, you get better software than either... there's hardly any significant proprietary system out there that isn't using OSS components. Apple is the obvious example, but Microsoft uses a lot of OSS in NT... they're even shipping a package containing GCC these days.
5. "Scratching the personal itch". Proprietary software publishers do that too. They talk about being "technically led" or "market led", but the result is the same... if their "personal itch" makes their software less usable or less secure, the user loses. Integrate browser and the desktop? User loses! Abandon GUI guidelines in favor of the New Metal Look? User loses!
What keeps them in check is competition, not any "market driven vision". And the same thing keeps OSS authors honest... PLUS with OSS you have a chance of getting into the source and scratching your itch as well in a way proprietary software can't equal.
6. "More choice is always better". You don't want to choose? That's a choice as well... and one you get to make. There's lots of prepackaged OSS-based systems that have someone's idea of what the "best choice" is.
7. Conclusion: it's not so simple. There isn't any one "Open Source" world, like there isn't any one "Proprietary world". Some OSS models are better than others. Some proprietary systems are better than others. Some OSS advocates have not-so-hidden agendas that you can learn to avoid... but most of those "myths" are simply a matter of your choosing *not* to take advantage of what OSS can offer you.
If your business model can be (legally) derailed by a kid in his spare time, then what does that say about your business model? It says to me that it's got a hole in it big enough to drive a truck through. Perhaps it is just not a viable business model. Perhaps it never was.
Sure, most people and developers are used to being able to sell shrinkwrapped software as a business model, but that doesn't mean that the model isn't flawed. Maybe just now with the internet, reality is catching up.
If the culture doesn't support the idea of paying for software (and music, and movies, etc) in some way, then we are basically just denying artists and programmers the right to make money from what they do
But you don't have a right to get paid for what you do. If you can't sell your work or effort for whatever reason, then you need to go do something else which people will pay for.
--
Simon
Are you sure about that? I think MJ supports Open Source.
I'd like to rebut the major points of this article:
Most Open Source projects are the work of only a handful of people at best -- and not all of those people are coders. In my project (the jSyncManager), we have a total of TWO primary coders for the core project. And sometimes a user will suggest a feature or enhancement that, while useful or cool to do, is something we just don't have the time nor developer resources to complete.
Two recent Requests For Enhancement illustrate this well. The first is a feature that would take a decent amount of work, and for which the end result, while interesting, would be useful to a very small minority of users, making it a very low priority item we may never get around to implementing. The second requires skills the existing developers don't possess (internationalizing into other languages. The code itself is already internationalized, but needs more translations).
In these cases all I can do is tell the requestors that while I'd like to add the functionality they're requesting, we simply don't have the development capacity to consider them right now. However, if they're willing to offer any help, we'd be happy to accept it.
The sentiment is analogous -- I just try to phrase it in a much less confrontational manner. Open Source developers don't have unlimited resources to implement everything -- any project of any significant size needs to ultimately rely on volunteers.
And just because you haven't done so yet doesn't mean you never will. Yes, it's sometimes better to get the core developers to implement a fix or change because you don't want to figure out their code (I often dispair the level of code commenting in OSS projects...), or to ensure that the modification becomes part of the default install of the subsystem. But what happens if you need an innocous modification to fit your special needs, and the core developers are unable or unwilling to implement it? Doesn't it make you feel better knowing that you can fix the software to suit your needs if absolutely necessary? Or of being able to hire anyone you choose to fix it for you?
Rowling received a grant from the Scottish Arts Council in 1997, and wrote part of the Harry Potter series while on the dole. Perhaps we should consider OSS subsidies as an alternative to draconian penalties for unauthorized copying.
I thought the article was well thought out and the numerous people who are accusing him of confusing free as in beer and free as in libre are being unfair. The guy clear understands OSS, but if your software is libre then those you distribute it to can redistribute - meaning that you can't charge very much if anything for the code itself.
Of course you can charge for support etc. but the article explicitly discussed that. It annoys me (as someone who is considering a career as a developer) that people seem to be deliberately misconstruing what the man wrote.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
Until recent times, artists were supported by patrons. For example, Gibbon had the Duke of Cumberland as his patron. A man who famously replied to Gibbon on being presented with the third Volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, "Another short, thick, sqauare book, eh, Mr. Gibbon".
Today, mass marketing takes the place of patrons for authors. This necessitates targeting the tastes of the masses. Whether this is good or not is another arguement.
Patronage still exists. It is now in the form of grants from such government agencies, museums, philanthropic foundations and corperate donations. Aas an example, the Mozilla Foundation relies on both corperate funding and private donations.
Any form of art that does not appeal to mass consumption requires some form of patronage so the artist doesn't starve more necessary. Programming is often refered to as an art, and should be similarly supported. I heartily agree.
Individual contributions are a real necessity if we want open source to continue to be open source.
people should SFTU about bugs unless;
a) they a trivial GUI things (see gnome button order)
b) they submit a patch
c) they put up money for the bug. Which also, by the way feeds into "all software should be free" and the "I want to get paid for it".
All software should be free, people should develop to scratch their itches, and others should pay for others to scratch their itches.
One bunch of people seem to like open source/Free software because "closed source is evil". RMS is an example. They want all software to be Free.
Another bunch develop stuff because "open source is good". They don't mind closed source software, they just like open source - for a variety of reasons.
I agree with the second guys. Windows has helped my Mum do lots of things she could never have done before. That's good. I hope soon there will be a linux distribution that is as easy to use for her - or much easier (she still finds computers, ie Windows, very frustrating to use)! That will be awesome. Kudos to the Gnome team for trying to bring that dream to fruition.
At least, in this quote, the author really uses the word free (in free world) with the same meaning than in free software
Free source means the freedom to modify it. There is no reason a commercial vendor couldn't create a license wherein it's clients may freely alter their sourcecode on the condition of not distributing it outside the entity (ie. a company) and/or selling it, perhaps with a time limit.
Just imagine a world wherein Win95's source would be copyright-free about 10 years after it's release.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
It's all "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.2; Linux) (KHTML, like Gecko)" here but I could be "Mozilla 1.8a2 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040709" if you liked. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I've seen that idea recited for years now. Make Free Software, give it away, and make money by selling support. Well, this sounds great if you are developing software for the corporate enterprise, which is the predominant purchaser of support services. Most corporate IT groups won't even consider a particular software package UNLESS they can buy a support contract for it.
But what if you are a developer of desktop software, designed for home users or small business? By and large, those users don't buy support services. More importantly, if you are developing desktop software such as an organizer or an email program, it should be designed well enough that it doesn't require support.
How many home users would use a particular program that was free to download, but required paid support services because it was such a bitch to use and maintain?
The "Free Software, Paid Support" model simply breaks down at the desktop level. And as long as there is no profit incentive for developing Free desktop software, you will see that software continue to be developed by hobbyists in their spare time. And this certainly won't further the cause of Desktop Linux.
http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html
Speaking of myths, this seems to imply that the only way one can start a business is with venture capital. Many businesses are started without VC or include a VC for their business experience not for their money (for example, Microsoft falls into the latter category).
Acquiring VC can backfire since you need to give up some control to the VC. There have been cases where the VC grabs the company from the founders or there have been unproductive friction between the founders and the VC.
It really is as simple as welding the car hood shut. Just because I can work on my car doesn't mean I have to, but it also means I can pay someone else to do so. People do this all the time without going to the dealer. In a recent court case, some bigass jerk company used the DMCA to prevent a customer who had BOUGHT equipment from having a third party service it. That is EXACTLY the point of having access to the source. It is EXACTLY what RMS yaps about all the time. It is EXACTLY why I use free source software as much as possible.
Infuriate left and right
...are in the author's imagination.
"constant mindless re-iteration of the same old tired dogma"? most of the "myths" he lists are the first time i've _ever_ heard them.
they sound like strawmen to me, not "myths".
Nah, I just condemn you for this...
Not even RMS, the most fanatical of all free software developers, thinks that code should be developed for "free". RMS charges for his coding services and GNU has paid developers to write code for free software like EMACS. Red Hat pays all their developers to work on Linux. IBM is paying their own FLOSS developers. The Sun guys get paid to write code for OpenOffice. Look at all these people getting PAID to write free software.
Seeing as you even write "Open Source" a dozen times it's not like you can claim that you misunderstood that "Free Software" means libre, not gratis, because you weren't talking exclusively about Free Software. You knew what you wrote was a falsehood. So why the hell did you publish it?
Now I just think you're a trolling dickhead.
To bring back a famous euphemism... *plonk*.
I hound people on this all the time, so I may as well hound you too :-) The point is not that you yourself can do the work, but that ANYONE can, so you can pay someone to do the work, just like you can pay some third party to work on your car; you don't have to take it back to the dealer for all service. How many people actually work on their own cars, other than changing oil or plugs at the most? THAT is the point of free source software.
Infuriate left and right
Oops... hit enter in the subject box (ouch). What I was trying to say was that the clipboard and selections systems on X are very simple and work very much like Windows and Mac OS (as jwz points out)... I'm sure there's a focused rant somewhere, but I can't find it now... simply, it's the applications that get it wrong. PRIMARY Selections should not interfere with CLIPBOARD Selections, such that one doesn't notice PRIMARY Selections unless one knows of them in advance (ie. CLIPBOARD should not change just because you highlighted some text)
I have mixed feelings about this. It's true that Gimp is unlikely to have much of an effect on Photoshop --- not unless it changes dramatically, at least. The existing Photoshop userbase is presumably weighted more towards the less technical people, and the entire Photoshop UI (which Gimp doesn't emulate) is something that its users seriously like it for.
Databases, on the other hand, I see as quite different. If Oracle does things successfully then it can probably do quite well, but there's a huge threat approaching from Open Source databases.
Mysql and PostgreSql (which I'm more familiar with) are not large commercial databases and they don't have the support of a massive corporation as Oracle does. They clearly can't compete on those grouds. But really, how many of Oracle's customers actually need all of Oracle's features to do the job that they're doing?
PostgreSQL has transactions. PostgreSQL supports SQL syntax. PostgreSQL is reasonably efficient, at least with medium sized databases. PostgreSQL supports stored procedures, albeit requiring at least minor adaption from any existing Oracle procedures. It doesn't support replication very well yet, although that's certainly in the pipeline. In essence, PostgreSQL is something that will probably do the job "quite well" if not perfectly, depending on the job. And it's free.
For the majority of jobs and with a competant administrator, which although not everywhere is more likely to be found near a database than an image editing program such as Photoshop, PostgreSql is completely sufficient for the majority of tasks. So with the exception of marketing and support, why would a business necessarily need to fork out and buy Oracle licences for most or possibly all tasks within their business, if it only needs Oracle for a few at most?
It's these smaller tasks that have the potential to really hit Oracle database market where it hurts. Oracle is selling in a marketplace where people are often competant enough to understand and deploy open source products. It hasn't entirely happened yet, but they are in a situation where open source developers might soon have the potential to pull much of the market out from under them if they're not careful.
This guy fundamentally doesn't get it. Myth 1: "Fix it or don't complain." This
came around because for every developer, there is 5 bazillion users, each wanting something different. If it's a bug, the developer will fix it. If it's a feature-request, in all likelyhood, the developer has better things to do with their time than develop the fix for you for free. You don't have a fundamental right to have your feature incorporate in another program. You do have a fundamental right to fix it yourself, or the flexibility to hire someone else to do it.
Myth 2: "You can go under hood/fix it." I do this occasionally, actually. So did the author. The power of this doesn't come in because I, personally can do it. It comes in because I do it, the guy who wrote the article did it once or twice, and so did a bazillion other guys, and so as few programs are really, really featureful or polished. This also matters a lot for big corporations, or large-scale projects, or similar, where having someone take two weeks to muck around with Apache or the kernel or something can make/break a project. I've been on very expensive software projects stopped dead by some Windows bug. Having a guarantee that this won't happen is powerful.
Myth 3: "Software shouldn't be free 'cause I want cash." Oxygen shouldn't be free, 'cause I wanna get rich selling it. In fact, my parents told me I'd get rich that way. Waaaa!!! The world doesn't have a responsibility to guarantee anyone getting wealthy. Not artists, musicians, programmers, businessfolk, etc. It's a free market. If you've got something to sell that people want, go for it. If you don't, don't complain. Practically, 95% of software is vertical. You won't become a multimillionare on it, but you can make a living. This section also confused free as in beer with free as in speech. Very muddled thought.
Myth 4: "Open source is always better." Depends on your definition of "better." For freedom, it is. For technical reasons, I've never heard anyone claim it is. It's very often better, but not always. We've got a better kernel and web server. They've got a better desktop publishing program. Big deal.
Myth 5: "Scratch itch." This is a motivation, not the only one. Others include business reasons (IBM, Sun, etc.), desire for freedom (RMS, FSF, etc.), acadamic interest, prestige, fun, and loads of others. The motivations vary.
Myth 6: "More choice better." He's right. More choice is better, if it is properly managed. Having 50 crappy tools and one good one sucks. We do need better defaults in distributions, and better knowledge dissimation (knowing which choices to make) in the form of comparative reviews, more complete sites like freshmeat, and so on. Ideally, this should be integrated into package management reasonably.
IMHO those myth are more opinions than actual myths.
But the most controversial myth I have confronted as an open source advocate is the following:
"Open Source has just as many security-holes as
closed source, it just happens to be that hackers are not interested in exploiting software that is not popular"
A powerful myth..a myth nevertheless.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
You wanna know why?
:)
Today we all deal with more or less programmable devices such like TV or CD/DVD/MP3 or whatever players, cameras, and even cars (that have full-blown onboard computers). Everyone learns to program to some extent, be it via remote or by plugging a notebook to a device.
Generally speaking, every user interface is also a programming interface. Today you just drive your car or change the channels on your TV, tomorrow you will somehow program it to find your favorite movie or you will program your car to automatically park the way you want it to park in the backyard. Would you share your parking sequence with friends? No doubt about it.
Now consider in just 100 years everyone in this world becomes a programmer as long as interfaces become more usable, intelligent and simple at the same time. Finally, you will program your robot nurse by simply telling what to do. (Now go ahead and improvise
We'll be able program every thing that surrounds us, like we humans are talking to each other now. Do we charge those who listen for just speaking out? Or do we copyright everything we say at lunch with a mouthful of pasta? (Well, sometimes...)
And since interaction with devices and robots will become as simple and as natural as with humans, we'll simply share our 'programs', or sequence of commands or whatever, like we share stories and opinions now.
Finally, there will be no fundamental distinction between speaking and programming. Proprietary programming will exist as long as proprietary speech exists nowadays (lectures, books and shit like that) - no more than 1% of everything that's said.
Nice perspective. Now go program your closed-source commercial app. Or tomorrow will be too late to make money out of it.
That was pointed out by the author. Serious projects like those flagships of OSS are or were maintained by big corporations. Niche software wouldn't ever get that kind of support, but may still very necessary (medical software, for instance) and extremely complex and expensive to maintain.
The model itself is not scalable to the vast majority of the development going on in the world, and you're trading your freedom - you depend on those large corporations to continue funding these projects.
Not directed to you, but I'm sick of reading people defending the tech-support model and the customization model as Universal. Not everybody is developing CRMs or Linux distros. Most software just CAN'T be marketed like that. Take for instance professional audio or video editing software; you're not maintaining that by putting some google adwords in your page! It's software for a very small minority of professionals who are going to make a lot of money out of it and thus can justify paying for it.
fairytail 'economIE' payper liesense stock markup FraUD softwar gangster execrable mined meld.
no contest. the handful of greed/fear/ego based dupes who gave the whole 'community' a bad name (stock markup FraUDsters/nazi puppets), is worse than fuddles could have ever done buy himself.
it all washes out?
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... distributing mythical kode that really wwworks since/until forever. see you there?
The article does have a good analogue with books...If you expand on that example: we have 2 types of library systems--"paid for" systems & subscriptions (i.e. technical journals, commercial content) and the "basic public library" system (which usually contains donated commercial content and OSS-like content or paid through taxes). Which system is the bigger and more valued (a la Metcalf's law)? The public library system of course... If OSS follows a similar path, I think it will find "a place in the software world" and strike a good balance with business (services) and social needs (content).
but the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series is protected.
This is not true: try to make a piece of fan art than builds on the characters established in that series and will will be found in violation of copyright.
The definition of "derivitive work" is vague and allows copyright to be very stifling.
Application to software, then: if a company spends thousands or millions of $CURRENCY developing a product, and then the first person they sell it to can make as many copies as they want and sell them on for half the price, that person will make more profit per copy, because they didn't have the overheads, and will sell more copies to boot. The only way to avoid this is to sell it to that person for the price of developing, which means that there will only be incentive for a company to write software if it's in-house or built-to-order. There goes company innovation.
Most software IS already made this way. Unless you are talking about Microsoft's version of "innovation", nothing of significance would be lost.
He forgot the most important Open Source myth:
8. Every writer on the internet thinks he understands Open Source better than enyone else, and knows the future of Open Source.
siener's youtube channel
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In the end, the programmer has to get paid or they can't make a living off it. What we're seeing is the destruction of huge profit margins and the market force establishing the 'true' value of a programmer.
... it's that he's made entirely irrelevant when his project is forked. He may have spent years or decades developing the background for a system, and then some kiddie with zero background investment decides that he prefers things done slightly differently and forks and takes the concept away from its originator.
What you say is true, but the key aspect of OSS that has this undesireable effect is rarely identified. The problem isn't really that an independent open-source developer isn't paid
That's hardly fair to the original developer, yet all open-source licenses have that same feature. Not a single one dissuades against forking. Even the open-source Artistic License which allegedly tries to ensure that the author can retain some artistic control over a project fails in this. It's pretty sad.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
1. "if you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it."
The line and attitude do exist, but to my experience it's often in response to people that ask "why does not include features from Software Y?".
And the answer is "because noone has implemented it".
It doesn't automaticly mean "fix it yourself", discussing the issue, hiring a coder, promoting the feature, there's many ways to get it fixed.
Also, if you put the same question to the company behind a 'closed' software they'll most likely say "we'll put it on the list for possible inclusion in the next release" or "you can have it as module, for just $X.XX extra".
So even if it's not "do it yourself or shut up", it's darn close.
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
You've missed the key word, "allows", it doesn't say "requires".
It not only allows you to do it, it allows anyone to do it, and it allows anyone to share the fix.
If it's closed source you're in the hands of the company/developer and there's n othing you can do except whining or dragging them to court.
3. "All software should be free"
You still seem to mix up "free as is speech" and "free as in beer".
Nothing stops you from writing a piece of software and sell it.
If someone would write an Open Source version allowing anyone to use it for free and people stop paying for your version, then your version ain't worth the money.
Like many developers (and software companies) you assume that the 'value' of the software is the cost it took to develop, which is false.
The value of any software is the value it provides for it's users.
And more important, most software (except games) doesn't actually 'produce' anything, they add value by increasing the productivity of someone/something using the software.
But all software has a value, most likely a different value for different users. If the value of the software exceeds the cost of the software, it's a good software, and the better value vs cost ratio you get, the better the software.
And the famous Commoditization of Software doesn't mean that developers doesn't get payed, it means that a large number of users have found that they all have a common interest in a piece of software, and that the users, as a group, will add the resources needed.
If a company decides that they will use an opensource/free software for business critical operations they will make sure that they have the resources needed to do so, either with in-house developers or by buying the service.
And with the fixes done they can decide if they want to keep the fix in-house, or if they'll release it (and cash in some karma).
But it's always about value and cost, if you can provide better value for lower cost, you win, otherwise, you lose.
And that's not an effect of free software, it's an effect of a free market economy.
We've always had the choice, buy shrinkwrapped, pay a developer or develop it in house (or yourself). What free software has added is the community effect, a group of users with similar requirements pool resources to develop the software.
It doesn't replace the previous three, it just add a new model. And ruled by the market economy, the model that provides the most bang for the buck, in a particular setting, wins.
4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software".
I agree, it isn't always better, it just adds another model, sometimes it's better (more valuable), some times it's not.
5. "Scratching the personal itch"
Yes, it's not only a good way, it's the best way.
It's called "based on requirement". It doesn't have to be the invidual developer s itch, it can just as well be the one who funds the developer's itch.
You seem to envision all free soft developers as student or kids sitting in their parents' basement. Wrong, many are being
Executive Pope (small) Kallisti Engineering
The conclusion says it all: "It's Not So Simple."
Anytime you hear a person dismiss the concerns, ideas, suggestions of others with a simple one-liner such a, "Free Software is good for society," etc. you should know immediately that you're dealing with a "true beliver" who lacks the ability to understand how complex things actually are... someone who is only repeating what he heard someone else say w/o having any real knowledge of the issues.
I see this a lot in investors. 99% of Americans know nothing about investing, yet 99% of them will tell you that diversity is a good thing and that a mortgage is *good* debt and that 401(k)s will help them retire. When in reality, the concept of diversity is used by stock brokers to get more of Other People's Money (OPM) for gambling with in the markets, *no* debt is good debt unless you happen to be the lender and 401(k)s are just one more way for banks and insurance compaines to get more of OPM (their main focus).
So before repeating what you hear, take a deeper look and you may start to see how things really work.
This happens a lot. I'll grant you this point.
Survey all of the OSS out there, and how much of it is targetted to the Grandma sector of the computer using population? Very little. Most OSS projects out there are targetted to other developers, otherwise known as integrators. If what you do as a full time job is use JBoss, Ant, JUnit, JCoverage, and Eclipse to write 100 - 200 classes, you're pretty much an integrator at that point. The value of OSS at that point is that when a stack trace appears in a logfile, with a line number next to it, you can go into the OSS source code, look at the line that's throwing an error, and gain an understanding of "what's going on" in the block of code that's throwing an exception in your external library.
For example, when WebLogic spits an error that originates within one of their classes, you have to unjar their library, decompile their class, then re-compile their class, re-execute your test, and then you can finally look at the code that is causing the problem. In open source, you see an error occurred on line 253 of class Foo, and you look at line 253 of class Foo. It's just that simple.
The value is not so much in your ability to change the OSS, but more in your ability to view the OSS, understand it, learn from it, and solve a problem yourself rather than invoking support.
The article's main argument here is the classic "the world isn't free, why should the software I produce be free?" argument, which shows a narrow understanding of OSS.
.
If you develop a standalone product, you should be compensated. How many people develop standalone products? Very few. Most people are integrators that are customizing a general solution (n-tier via J2EE) for a specific use (fulfillment of book orders at Amazon.com). The software they write to facilitate this integration has no use outside of the customer who is paying for the custom software job. If only the customer sees value in your solution, how do you expect to sell that software?
Flipping the coin . .
Let's say that while working on a custom solution (which is honestly what 75% of us do I'd say), you realize that OSS library X would be *great* for this integration, except it can't do A, B, and C. A, B, and C are valuable to other integrators out there. So, you make those changes, add them to the OSS library kit, continue to get paid, increase the capabilities of the library you're using (thereby giving back to the community that is keeping you employed by giving you (for free mind you) build systems, testing frameworks, application servers, etc, etc). The customer doesn't care that you've added namespace capabilities to an XML parser - all they care about is: do orders flow from the web site to the warehouse.
It normally is better. Closed source companies earn the majority of their revenue from service and support contracts. The initial up-front cost of an application server is dwarfed by the yearly subscription fees to support (which, by the way, usually extend for years). Closed source companies (rightfully so) are going to protect their revenue streams (support) and as a result are going to try to stifle any communication between two end users of their product.
Let's say that you and I are users of Product X and both have the same problem. If you determine (or receive from support) a solution, and post it on the Internet, then I can then find your
Do it for da shorties
That statement does not mean that the average user can fix problems. It applies to a medium to large company that adopts the product for many of its computers. If there's a bug or required feature, the company can afford to hire developers to fix the problem or add the feature very quickly. Compare this situation to using commercial software, where bugs or feature requests generally take a minimum of months to be acted upon. Often, the company needs to pay a significant upgrade fee to obtain the needed fix or feature. Why not use that money to pay someone to fix the problem right away?
By using open source software, companies can have exactly the product they want for less money than commercial software. The larger the company, the more sense it can make to use open source software. And as features get added and bugs get fixed in this way, it becomes even easier for other companies to use the product, too.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
....there's a good work out there called "I, Pencil" which addresses the current real world effort needed to manufacture another (mostly) simple wooden product. And this was written in 1958, it's even more complex now with the interactions.
t ml
The bottom line is it takes a lot more than one persons efforts usually to get to a wooden table.
Here is a reference to the essay, it's quite long so just the url:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.h
The trends for software for the next ten years are for programming tools to get better, to the point virtually anyone may write their own programs easily. Right now it is commonly taught and used even in the less developed nations and societies, it is not the arcane science limited to a few thousand people it was when mass adoption of computers was just getting started 40 years or so ago. The business will be forced to change as it's quality gets greater combined with ease of creation. That means it will be worth-less. Not "worthless", but worth-less. Just like the references to copied art forms, when the only way to get an art form was to create or purchase the only copy in existence, it was worth a lot more, as it has become easier to re-create that effort, it naturally follows it is worth-less, all the way to the point now that copies of audio and visual "art" can be created for under a penny in actual cost and at minimal effort. The original creation of the work will have to be priced accordingly as well, as more people can "do it" compared to years past. The businesses of "art" and "software writing art" will eventually have to adjust to that reality. They can postpone the diminishing of "cost" to the consumer only with legislation, but only temporarily, societal changes will eventually force recognition of reality.
Hard to do + Hard to copy = limited over all use or enjoyment, limited to a select few, very expensive, your base paradigm.
Hard to do + Easy to copy = Greatly expanded use to members of society, more universal enjoyment, costs start dropping, distinction between originators and users starts to merge, beginning of the paradigm shift
Easy to do + Easy to copy = The paradigm shift completes to a new one, costs negligible, universal enjoyment and use, society must change, including their "laws", or stagnate
In my way of looking at it, we are almost exactly at the tipping over point between step 2 and 3.
I'm a terrible programmer. I can kinda read other people's perl and C sharp, but in most cases, I can't really be bothered.
Still, I find with Linux and OSS I don't run into the same brick-wall when troubleshooting that I do Windows. Tools like strace or netdump or ethereal ornc are readily available, and help me see exactly what my program's doing at a given point in time - even helping me find bugs.
99% of the time when an app segfaults, it's because there's a file missing. A good example of this is a bug I found in a closed source app - Sophos Anti Virus - using Open Source tools like strace. The app doesn't know about Great British English - if you install the English version, it requires American English is installed.
To do the the same thing on a Windows box, I'd probably pay Systernals a lot of money for a Windows strace equivalent. But the thing is, I wouldn't - cause I couldn't be sure that tool would fix the problem. Maybe I need another app to help me fix it and a Windows strace would be a waste of money? Maybe there's another, cheaper way for me to fix something? I'd be hesitant to pay for a tool that wouldn't help me fix the prob. And expensing it would be a hassle.
Linux provides me with a shitload of the troubleshooting tools I need to do my job out of the box, and it does that cause they're OSS.
I have gotta say that I agree with this guy on every point. I'm a linux and open-source enthusiast. I am using SuSE 9.1 Pro right now, and I love it. But, as this guy points out, there are problems.
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it" -- I think this idea is promoted most by overwhelmed FOSS developers. And, on the surface, it sounds like it makes sense, but, really, it doesn't. Most often it's not realistic for users to fix stuff that's broken.
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems." -- I'm a moderately-skilled programmer, and I can understand most kind of source code when looking at it, and even hack on it. But getting under the hood and fixing problems with open source software is something I've tried to do more than once. Invariably, the procedure of setting up a proper build environment is long, drawn-out, poorly-documented, and riddled with problems. Which library is being used? GTK+ or Qt? Which multimedia libraries are being used? Gstreamer or aRts? This feeds into the "choice is not always good" thing, see below. Assuming the build environment is properly duplicated, including all development libraries, development toolchain, shell, version of Python used to generate the Makefile, or whatever else, there are other hurdles. What format of patches does the developer want? What's the ONLY CODING STYLE in which the developer will even accept patches? Are we using CVS, SubVersion, RCS, or just whatever mess happens to unfold in a subdirectory of the developer's home directory?
3. "All softwarew should be free" -- Well, I don't have much commentary here, the article pretty much has it covered. You get what you pay for, and if you really think ALL software MUST be free (RMS, as mentioned in the article), then you're a silly communist.
6. "More choice is always better" -- No, not always. My choice of Mozilla over Konqueror isn't better because Mozilla doesn't integrate with the desktop environment at all. My choice of Konqueror over Mozilla isn't better because Gmail doesn't work with Konqueror. My choice of Gaim over Kopete isn't better because for some reason Gaim on my system doesn't detect my idle time. My choice of Kopete over Gaim isn't better because then I can't use my favorite plugins.
Most of the time, users of Linux distributions must choose multiple tools for the same job. I'll use the OpenOffice.org Writer sometimes because it has better interoperability with MSOFFICE files, and I'll use KWord sometimes because I like its frame layout thingie better. mono or pnet, bash or csh, Evolution or Kmail... they're both GOOD, but in some ways, each option is better than the alternative. And personally, I don't like using two web browsers throughout the day, two IM clients, two office suites, two (or three) shells. If possible, I would rather have one tool that has all the best capabilities of each choice.
I have gotta say that I agree with this guy on every point. I'm a linux and open-source enthusiast. I am using SuSE 9.1 Pro right now, and I love it. But, as this guy points out, there are problems.
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it" -- I think this idea is promoted most by overwhelmed FOSS developers. And, on the surface, it sounds like it makes sense, but, really, it doesn't. Most often it's not realistic for users to fix stuff that's broken.
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems." -- I'm a moderately-skilled programmer, and I can understand most kind of source code when looking at it, and even hack on it. But getting under the hood and fixing problems with open source software is something I've tried to do more than once. Invariably, the procedure of setting up a proper build environment is long, drawn-out, poorly-documented, and riddled with problems. Which library is being used? GTK+ or Qt? Which multimedia libraries are being used? Gstreamer or aRts? This feeds into the "choice is not alw
samrolken
Most of the anti-copyright posters here always roll out the candard that they don't "believe" that people should be granted a monopoly of ideas. By presenting this issue as one of personal belief, they try to transform any discussion of it into an attack on their own personal beliefs (as if we are not allowed to do that.)
Ideas are noncorporeal things that cannot be possessed. If something cannot be possessed, it obviously cannot be monopolized. To use a very simplistic example: "2 + 2 = 4" is an idea. Everyone in the world can hold that idea simultaneously, yet no one can possess it. IT cannot be copywritten. A piece of paper printed with symbols understood to read "2 + 2 = 4" is not an idea. It is a symbolic representation of an idea created at a specific point in time. The person who created it owns it and retains absolute rights to it (a monopoly, if you will) until that person decides to transfer some of those rights. Copyright is the legal framework that protects that right in balance with the larger needs of the oublic.
An argument that attempts to make the case that the creator of a work does not own it has to make that case for all works, not just things that can be copywritten.
In truth, most anti-copyright rants here are simply windowdressing used by unprincipled people who want free stuff.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Hey, a carpenter can keep making the same table over and over and do OK. But the shelf life of information is a lot shorter than that of a physical skill like carpentry. Most authors don't get much income from their old books--they have to keep writing new ones. Revising an old book doesn't make it. The days when a company could prosper for years making small tweaks to the same program are waning. So if you can't develop software for money, working full time, faster and better than people can create in their spare time simply as a service to the computer, then you need to either look for another line of work or come up with a more new ideas for software.
[quote]4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
It normally is better. Closed source companies earn the majority of their revenue from service and support contracts. The initial up-front cost of an application server is dwarfed by the yearly subscription fees to support (which, by the way, usually extend for years). Closed source companies (rightfully so) are going to protect their revenue streams (support) and as a result are going to try to stifle any communication between two end users of their product.
Let's say that you and I are users of Product X and both have the same problem. If you determine (or receive from support) a solution, and post it on the Internet, then I can then find your solution (via Google most likely), learn from your mistake, and drive on. But, in that process I didn't write a check to Company Y (that sells Product X). Company Y doesn't like that, even tho it makes me happier in the long run (I received a solution lots of times faster than had I used support). If you feel confident that customer support can help you, by all means, use closed source software. I haven't had much luck tho.[/quote]
I did read the article, and the author only say it's a myth that ALL (as in always) OSS is better then CSS. He merely state that CSS has it's own advantages that OSS doesn't have. Some might include better control over development cycle and profit incentive.
Not all profit incentive are bad. Profit incentive is a massive coin, on one side in promote innovations (better software = more profit), on the other it stifles it (other have better, similar software = less profit). Unfortunately, many companies starts going for the latter side of the coin.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
The author is obviously an unsuccesful dev'er who is frustrated at his inability to function in a new paradigm. First off, free as in liberty not as in lunch.. how often do we have to say this? OS dev'ers make money, big fat hairy salaries at companies like IBM, Oracle, HP, RedHat why heck even in government so our dear authors vision of rag-tag hacking proletarians is a little exagerated.. furthermore, OSS is BETTER, anyone who states "it's widely recognized that the Linux Desktop is a work in progress playing catch-up to MS" is off his rocker!! Linux desktops aren't widely recognized in the first place and in the second I fail to see the catch up game? Really I do.. I see more movement towards OS-X from the Gnome champs but MS never.. Windows simply works differently.
The argument that closed source development has one team leader etc.. what a crock of baloney to think that collaborative devellopmetn doesn't have team leaders and efficiency in the division of labour, come on really, how the hell did something like Egroupware become the Sourceforge hit it is today then? And does Samba.org simply code away in anarchy? Quite smoking pot buddy...
The personal itch.. dude, that may have been the case 10 years ago but nowadays most of the good SOurceforge projects start out as a work for a client or in the least an implementation for a client. Usually by an independant contractor/consultant.
Again.. "my grandma" kind of users... is that what you aspire to? really you haven't worked with a Enterprise 3 box, that much is obvious.
Choice is good, well it is, and you have it, whether you like it or not. Go ahead, you should use a Knoppix bootable because you haven't understood a thing about OSS and hence with a Knoppix even YOU can run Linux, grandma...
In short, Neil, you haven't grasped it, you'r out of date and eprhaps it is time to consider a career change. Fishing in Alaska is nice this time of year.
So I fail to see the reasoning behind the suggestion that I should be expected to provide the fruits of my labor to the world for no financial reward. How did that happen? Well, it's easy to see the foundations for it, which are perfectly noble and valid - this all started because some people (RMS et al, for whom I have nothing but respect) wanted to share code with fellow developers, which also has its basis in the longstanding scientific traditions of sharing knowledge
Perhaps I have been out of the "inner" loop for too long and I know that RMS is not everyone's favourite guy, but based on his early talks and papers I am not aware of anything which even suggests that "free" software needs to be provided without payment.
RMS himself had a successful mail order situation going with emacs. He just didn't require people to get it from him for payment. If you could get it from a friend for no charge, then by all means go for it. This seems, to me to be similar to the approach taken by any number of musicians who responded to the "dentistry music playing" topic elsewhere when they say that they just want to produce music and have people hear it.
Sure, people could obtain emacs from a friend or associate but it was surprising how many chose to buy it from RMS.
I could also direct the reader to Bittorrent (no requirement for payment) or even Winzip. These items do not absolutely require payment for use although there is some degeee of nag involved - less for Bittorrent, more for Winzip. But ultimately, the thing doesn't die on you nor render itself crippled if you don't pay.
Both, however, give the user an opportunity to "contribute to the providers of the product" one way or another and both have now gone through several versions and are still being developed. If purchases aren't being made then the income is coming from somewhere and I can only assume that that income source sees a good reason to support it.
Sourceforge, on the other hand, provides little information on how to contribute. Sure there may be a link to a homepage where a request might exist but to a downloader, they will only tend to see the pages on sourceforge. Finding out how to contribute requires extra work in seeking it out. This, in itself, doesn't help that process.
I have put any number of clients (individuals, small businesses and corporate) onto items such as PDF Creator because it is such a bloody good and useful thing which directly supports their business needs. However, I'm pretty sure that several of my corporate clients have not chosen to take it up because it was seen as "freeware". Something as simple as a voluntary registration would have put it on the same footing as Winzip, which they have absolutely no problem with paying for.
Businesses are used to paying for services and products and include these payments on their assets, profit and loss and taxation statements. If it is worthwhile, they seem to be fine with paying for it. (Many businesses, that is. I am very aware of others who will even bring legal actions against providers who have delivered in order to screw them over and avoid payment. Just in case anyone thinks I am a complete professional ignoramus.)
The article seems to have fallen into the FUD propagated by some companies I will not mention in conflating "free" as in beer and "free" as in freedom. I was very pleased to read the response from Dr Nunez of Peru which explicitly demonstrates that this linguistic trick / sleight of hand is a specific problem of the English language and that trying to use it in Spanish (for example) is a fool's errand.
Let's not be fools. If RMS can handle the idea of receiving payment for software and could demonstrate that it was economically useful, then it appears that it can be both viable and ideologically watertight. I'm not sure why this article chooses to propagate FUD. Unless the Open Source community has already fallen for it, of course.
I don't disagree with the piece, but it makes the mistake of viewing OSS from a developer's point of view. Almost by definition, access to source is an irrelevancy to users. If software has bugs, they want its developers to fix the bugs, and make the rational assumption that developers -- open or closed -- will have access to the code they wrote.
The piece also highlights the innately conservative and non-innovative nature of all software development, including open source. By focusing on fixing bugs, developers make the assumption that existing software is sufficient to meet consumer desires. This is far from the case. The presence of bugs will repel users, but the absence of bugs will not attract users.
The OSS source world needs to make a concerted effort to actively involve ordinary users in the design and creation of new software. It's a bad analogy, perhaps, but the auto industry does not let mechanics design new cars. The software industry should pay attention.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
For you to create your creation, were all your steps yours alone, or did you build on the efforts of others? Did you design your own OS, build your own kernel, develop your own code language, code your own compiler for that language, design and build your own computer, all from scratch? If at every step of the way you were restricted to non-use of any of those tools or very expensive use, and if the knowledge of HOW to use what you have was further restricted, are you sure you could have built this application?
If having the tools and prior knowledge of others in the past is useful, then having them cheaper all the way to free is even more useful to use for your own new creation, yes? But wait, all those other folks insist on a huge sum of money, a non trivial amount, and want to dictate what you can do with their creations, they want it severely restricted. But wait again, those people themselves had others they relied on, and THOSE people further back up the creation-food chain want to restrict their efforts to a huge level as regards cost and what they allowed others to do with their products. And the folks ahead of them, and so on.
We had those times, it was called "the middle ages".
How far into restriction and huge cost do you want to go, just so that YOU can be creative? Do you wish to be able to cheaply and easily and completely "use" others works so that the work you are interested can be accomplished or attempted? Wouldn't that be a better deal for you? If so, isn't it logical that others would want the same, as regards your work?
You can't have it both ways, you must choose one way or the other.
Neil misses one very important point in his analysis. If you reduce the problem down to cost, which is what most companies like to do, the cost of paying for their developers to work on open source can be much cheaper than paying those developers to enhance or implement proprietary solutions.
The idea is that the company USES the open source software that is being developed for something important to their business, instead of paying for a commercial solution.
Typically even after you spend a large amount of money on a commerical software, you end up paying large amounts of money for integration and support. If a couple of your developers were on the open source team, those costs are built in with your payroll.
These are mostly not "frequently spouted"; rather, they are occasionally produced perversions of the real points. As such, yes, they're bogus, but so what?
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
The real form is "If you're not willing to fix it, don't expect me to do it for you; complain all you like, but it won't have much effect unless I happen to care about this problem".
2. "Open Source software allows you(singular) to get under the hood and fix problems"
Correctly, this is "Open Source software allows you(plural) to get under the hood and fix problems". You personally might not be able to do it, but you can pay somebody else to do it.
Some people would say that you can do this for proprietary software too. But think - who are you going to pay to fix the bugs in IE? MS won't take your money and nobody else has the source.
3. "All software should be free"
That should read "All our software should be free". Non-free software can exist, but we shouldn't have to use it. You can if you want to.
The rest of the objections to this are just a lengthly failure to realise that money can be made in ways other than selling software.
4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
This one's stated correctly but interpreted incorrectly. The mistake here lies in assuming that "better" is a simple quantitative comparison. The meaning of the statement is "free software is always better than proprietary software, in the respect that it is free"; the misinterpreted form is "There exists no proprietary software which I prefer over comparable free software".
5. "Scratching the personal itch"
No myths here. I'm not sure what this guy's point is. Yes, free software primarily serves the needs of the people who write it. So what?
6. "More choice is always better"
Not much here either. If you don't know how to build a system, pay somebody else to do it for you.
He raises the question of who will pay the developers if all software is free.
The answer, of course is "anyone who wants software that has not yet been developed".
Of course, they might be lucky and find a developer who is scratching his/her own itch and prepared to do it in his/her own time, but the bottom line is that developers need to eat, so if people want them to have time to code, then they are going to have to pay them.
Bizarrely, this is actually the same as the traditional commercial model of development, where you sell somebody some shiny new software and then go and code it. The only difference is that you only get to sell it once.
Slightly off-topic, but: I wonder if Linus Torvalds doesn't wish, somewhere in his heart, that he had made some money off Linux. I don't really mean that maybe he should have charged for it -- I realize there would be no way to compete with MS early on. But to spearhead something that has become a major business tool, saving businesses millions of dollars and helping them amass and manage their billions or trillions... you'd think he might sometimes wish he'd received more than geek cachet and the inroads into his next career move. Or am I totally missing the mark, and he's actually a zillionaire somehow?
What is the goatse man really trying to communicate? ;-)
McLuhan's "The medium is the message" covers this.
He claims that it's hard and that nobody does it "in the real world."
No, he doesn't. Direct quote from the article: "But how many people actually do this? Hardly anybody in real life." There's a BIG difference between "nobody" and "hardly anybody".
that the article's author missed completely what is meant by "Free software". "Free" means at the very least that one is free to use the software as you see fit and have access to the source code, not that the software *must* cost $0.00. I can hear RMS now....
"It is a good divine that follows his own instructions" - Portia, The Merchant of Venice
Here's a hint: a for-profit corporation only has one motivation, and that is to make money. If IBM, RedHat, et al. did not think that supporting OSS was a money-making endeavor, they wouldn't be doing it.
http://neokosmos.blogsome.com
The author complains:
"The idea seems to be that Open Source is better than closed source because you can "tinker" with the code. But how many people actually do this? Hardly anybody in real life"
Depends what you mean by 'hardly anybody' - sure, Joe Average user isn't going to be recompiling OpenOffice before writing a letter. But I'm sure I suspect many tens of thousands developers have benefited from tweaking open source software at some point, and in many cases have submitted the patch back to the project.
The bigger point though, is that there are millions of developers out there, who can *potentially* fix a problem. And if the issue matters to one of those developers enough, there is nothing fundamental standing in the way of getting it fixed.
Compare that to the world of commercial software, where if there is no business case for making a fix , or if the company that makes the software has gone bust, you won't get a fix, period.
This doesn't mean that OSS is perfect, or bug free. But it does mean that users of OSS benefit indirectly from the ability of others to make changes and fixes to the code, even if they themselves don't have the ability or inclination to do so.
(e.g. this is it a large part of the reason that an OSS package like Imagemagick supports just about any image format under the sun)
OpenOffice (Sun), Mozilla (Netscape/AOL). As the author pointed out... The Gnu Image Manipulation Project doesn't have the end-user market share (yet I would also point out that this "End-User" project is the result of 'developer', not end-user, tools).
Programmers are a commodity, good developers are not. For every 100 programmers, you'll find 1 developer that has a good idea. After hearing the idea, 95 of those programmers will say, oh, yeah - that sounds obvious (yet, they had not thought of it). That's the crux. You have 95 commodity programmers who are willing to give away 1 developers good idea, because - in hind sight - it seems obvious. Maybe a general or interesting application is actually a new idea. I'll admit that this isn't always the case, but this does happen. THAT is why copyright exists, the idea has value. ...There are underlying social reasons for this as well that I'll be happy to get into.
Further, I don't think it's bemoaning to point out that in the 80s (and much of the early 90s) the software industry was still open to the single developer, and also not hobbled by open source efforts. This was also before massive consolidation of the software industry. Seems to me, just a simple statement of fact.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
That said, I don't think this is useless. Yeah, I disagree with most of it. What makes it intersting (and he admits to this at one point) is that this is how OSS is percieved. Is it a common perception? Who knows...but that's where I'd concentrate on instead of ripping his points to shreds.
The one point I agree with is the point about OSS telling people they need to fix it if they don't like it. That's a useless reply and doesn't capture why open source is useful. The point is if it breaks, YOU have the source. Having the source doesn't mean you have to fix it, it means you can fix it how you want (kinda related to the freedom thing). If you want to take it to your developer buddy and have him knock it out as a favor, go for it. If you want to contract an IT firm, go for it. I like it because I know how to program, so I can take a wack at it myself. But that doesn't mean I expect everyone else to fix it themselves also. I think it's unrealistic and counter-productive to spout that line all the time.
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
I think I've said this before on /., but well -
What the RIAA are learning these days is that when a virutal copy of your product is just as good as the actual product, the business model is finished.
It doesn't matter what artificial contraints you put on people - (i.e, Copyright, DMCA, Broadcast Flag) in the end, the business model must change. In the music industry, for instance, I think the future of the industry will be in Live performance, one example of a product that has no digital equivalent.
The same is true for Software. We have come to the point in the history of humanity at which certain products are no longer saleable because they are so easy to copy. Software as a manufacturing industry is finished - if you are trying to make software to sell in a retail store as an off-the-shelf product, you're going to be disappointed by your sales. One person can buy it and then copy it a hundred million times without incurring any cost. (For that matter, so can you, so it really wouldn't be fair to charge a significant amount for each unit anyway)
The code is easy to reproduce - the product is easy to copy. That can't be where the money is. Instead, follow the AOL software model - the CD is free, the service is not. Let's say you write a database application to put Widgets on the Web. Give away the software, charge for each transaction. That's the only way to make money in software today.
Design your software so that students and tinkerers can use it without having to pay. Small-time websites and businesses are more likely to remember you when they make it to the Big Time if you gave away your product to them in the beginning. Uniform pricing policies presume a fixed value for the software, which isn't true - prices should be adjusted based on the business the software will leverage for the client. Obviously, Microsoft should pay a little more for a MySQL license than MountedArmadilloSkulls.com.
Hmmmm.... I don't buy that one either.
It is a sad truth that software pricing is feeling the pressure of low price or free products. And yes, they are products. If they weren't, why would we create them according to milestones or other "production" models?
But the author only replays the same old arguments without clearly defining a solution. Microsoft made this argument just weeks ago at an Asian market meeting where he claimed that open source and free software would undermine intellectual property development. No shit? Gee, Bill! Do you really think so?
No one has completely solved the problem of how to create wealth from free software. If they had, Bill and Company would have moved on it in a flash and we would all be complaining about how Microsoft has dominated free software. The low cost leader ALWAYS wins in an economic battle. Don't believe me? Go check out Wal-Mart sometime. 90% of the stuff they sell there will break in half the time of the next higher quality product. But the low cost stuff flies off the shelves.
I know there are exceptions. There are folks out there who will pay good money for quality products. And I know that there are companies who are making comfortable livings from free software via support contracts. But the idea expressed by the author is true:
"But you know as well as I do that if I am successful then inevitably some kid in his parents' basement will write his own Open Source version of the thing, for free."
Aye, so there's the rub. How do you create a world where one person can create a great software tool while simultaneously restricting the ability of that "kid in the basement" from doing likewise.
You can if you have the money to buy a congressman.
I don't pretend to have any solution to this problem. Now that more people have affordable power tools, they do not have to rely on the village smithy or the local carpenter for small repair jobs. There are even fewer jobs for stable hands. Economics often kill job categories. I think that people will still make a living writing code, but there will always be someone who can step in and write an application that performs the same task for free. The trick is to make as much money as you can before the kid in the basement strikes.
Perhaps this is an evolutionary progression from commodity closed source to an entirely open source software world. When one group has to rely on legislative action to maintain their economic model, that model has failed. A new model will eventually arise from this heap of smoldering dung we are currently being lowered into. Until that happens the only people making money from software will be lawyers and politicians.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Actually, I get in there and fix bugs when I can. I've helped with the Linux kernel in version 1.3.38 and I tell you what, it just feels great and I luuuuuvvvvv doing it. And I'm not one of the "tens" the author alludes to, I'm more like one of the thousands that has contributed a small bug fix many years ago. Money is a seperate issue -- yes we charge for crappy commercial software that's not really gonna make a difference to the world at large because we need to eat, but this is not my motivation. My motivation is pure creation with a multiplier of 6 billion potential users; that's a lot bigger than the tiny number of people worldwide that can afford the luxury of playing the WIPO game. The complaint about most people not fixing bugs is irrelevant. If you don't like participating, then this movement is not about you. Find the spirit that moves you and follow it. This is not a myth it is our dream becoming our reality.
IP is the ultimate in regressive property law.
It's the gift that keeps on taking, a la Sonny Bono Copyright Extension. Let's all take a moment and remember that we earn money to live, we don't live to earn money. I am curious what is your real reason for doing what you do.
--Rudi Cilibrasi
You're talking about trademarks, jackass, which are completely different. What is really annoying is that you knew it: the arguments he makes about copyright don't apply to "its siblings," and that's why he didn't talk about abolishing patents and trademarks too. You're not playing fair; you're trolling.
there are two aspects to copyright: The economic rights (the right to make money off your work, and preventing others from doing the same) and the moral rights -- attribution and the right to control how your work is use, in what context etc.
With software in the USA, there is only economic rights. The US grants moral rights only for visual works (see the 1997 VARA bill.)
The Anglosaxon style copyright has mostly been concerned with the economical aspects of copyright.
Ehrm, I think you mean the American style copyright. Pretty much every anglo nation (Canada, the UK, etc) have strong recognition of moral rights.
A piece of paper printed with symbols understood to read "2 + 2 = 4" is not an idea. It is a symbolic representation of an idea created at a specific point in time. The person who created it owns it and retains absolute rights to it (a monopoly, if you will) until that person decides to transfer some of those rights. Copyright is the legal framework that protects that right in balance with the larger needs of the oublic.
An argument that attempts to make the case that the creator of a work does not own it has to make that case for all works, not just things that can be copywritten.
In truth, most anti-copyright rants here are simply windowdressing used by unprincipled people who want free stuff.
People who impose copyrights aren't trying to hold controll over their original rights. If that was so, they're free to keep it to themselves and I could come up with the same "2+2=4" indepentently and spread it all over the planet without consequence. No instead, they want to spew it all over the planet, and then use the force of government to microregulate how people use it after the cat's out of the bag. The concept of copyright ownership has nothing to do with a person controlling the information they create, rather it has to do with controlling every other person on the planet who happens across that information.
When every piece of information was attached to a physical piece of paper, the burden of carrying out this scheme might have been workable. But now in the information age where all information is digital, microregulating every piece of information everywhere for the sake of a poorly thought out construct will simply rip society apart.
The idea seems to be that Open Source is better than closed source because you can "tinker" with the code. But how many people actually do this?
All of us who do not wish to be trapped under unworkable, unfixable bugs and discontinued software products. You may take control of your destiny in the event you deem it necassary by incorperating free software. With closed software, you are at the mercy of the owner.
Just becouse your not one to take advantage of this, does not mean their is not a fair amount of us. I personally use it to help me sleep better at night.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
I didn't realize how much I liked open source software until I started developing with open source tools. Most of these myths don't apply when it comes to this area. For example, authors are quite willing to fix things if they have the time, if only to make their offering better. After having worked with a lot of closed-source development environments, using OSS is quite refreshing. Though I am writing closed-source commercial software, we intend to give as much back to the community that we can in the way additional tools or modifications to existing OSS tools.
Note that when I say "OSS" I am not just talking about what RMS defines as "free" software, I am talking about all OSS.
One of the central tenets of the Open Source philosophy (as it seems to be understood by the average person, at any rate) is that all software should be free.
No, that's not the central tenet of open source. The central tenet is that you "should" get the source to binaries that you use and that you "should" be able to redistribute it.
But this "should" isn't some kind of moral imperative. The reason people say that you "should" do this is because it's the economically rational thing to do if you take a long-term and global perspective.
That doesn't mean that in the short term, it may not be cheaper to choose proprietary software--it probably is. But if everybody makes the same choice as you, then, in the long term, you end up paying many times for software what you ought to have paid, and you condemn other people to the same fate.
It's little like littering: if you do it only rarely and most people don't do it, it's not much of a problem. But if everybody does it, it's a huge problem, and it is self-reinforcing.
You may agree with that argument or you may not, but either way, it's not some kind of philosophical principle or communist conspiracy. When OSS advocates tell you that you "should" choose OSS, they are making an argument about how rational economic beings ought to behave in order to maximize their profits.
As a developer myself, this prospect is profoundly depressing - as I said earlier, I develop applications just like a carpenter makes tables or an author writes books.
Well, have you noticed that carpenters don't make a lot of tables anymore? They have largely been replaced by mass-produced, self-assembled furniture. That was probably depressing for them as well. But that's the way life is: our economy is constantly changing. We aren't willing to accept inefficient production methods just because you have some quaint attachment to an old way of making a living.
Why should software be any different [than carpentry]?
Because, unlike the product of carpentry, software can be copied and distributed at almost no cost. So, 1000 carpenters can produce 10000 tables and still charge for each table. If carpentry were like software, then once 1 carpenter would produce 1 table for free for fun which then could get copied 10000 times at no cost to anybody; nobody else would make a profit.
but to make this the dominant way of developing anything worthwhile just seems like shooting ourselves in the collective foot.
That appeal won't work: there are too many people who can and are willing to produce something for free (like myself, for example). If you want to make a living writing software, you will have to write custom software. There is still a huge market for that, but you have to change the way you work.
Ok, everyone here who has actually made money by writing a program and opening the source please post your income from it, whether by direct sales, support, or even selling t-shirts.
One way or another this should illustrate the merit of his central question about OSS, which is how do I make a living developing open source programs? I know you can do it as a developer for a large company like IBM, I know about dual-license examples like Sendmail, etc., it would be interesting to see how many typical small company stand-alone programs make money this way.
Let's drop the religion for a day and look at the numbers. No fuzzy math, I'm looking for direct sales. If you can prove him wrong, do it. If not, go back to work and enjoy your hobby and contribution to the world's software ecology.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Another myth I've seen that has been touted goes something like this: "If it's open source, then there's no legal problems as it is open and everyone can see what is there. If there's a legal issue, someone will catch it before it causes problems."
Ah, no. Unfortunately, that's not the case (wish it was). The SCO case proves this, that even if it is open source, there still might be legal problems that no one has cared to deal with yet or bring up. Companies don't review each and every thing that comes out, but if they make enough ripples they will look into it. Take Unisys and GIF for an example there.
One of the largest things that I've run into is the issue of indemnification; essentially, the ability of a company to point a finger at someone if the software breaks and say, "It's not our fault, THEIR software broke. THEY'RE responsible." Open source almost never has indemnification -- no one gives a statement saying, "Yeah, if our software is found to contain things that were stolen or if it breaks, we'll take care of it." Very few are willing to accept the responsibility of damages if something blows up.
For this reason, the company I work for will not allow OSS usage in any project that we resell. We've been advised this by lawyers who do not want to get us into a situation where there isn't someone else to point fingers at if something goes down because of the tool we used. Whereas our closed-source tools that we use we make sure we have legal policies with them, warranties, and indemnifications (which they are willing to give because they're being paid for their software) to cover our legal ass.
I'm sure there's ways to mitigate these risks, but for a lot of companies I'm guessing they're not willing to take the leap until more precedent has been set in the courts for OSS and its legal profile.
Blog,Twitter
Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements.
While I spend more time on the command line, I have to strongly disagree with this statement. Neil correctly stated that Linux distros are a work in progress, but in my opinion KDE has finally pulled far ahead of MS in usability and gui refinements. As is true in every other aspect of the Linux world, with KDE you just get more without having to pay more. The best thing is how fast things improve. Features and instability have always been one of my complaints about GNU/Linux, but KDE 3.2 is IMHO much better than what MS has to offer, and 3.3 will be out soon.
Last year I had little hope of interesting others in trying out a Linux distro. I just didn't have an easy solution to some of their user concerns. Now, however, all those concerns have been answered with utilities added directly to KDE.
I don't use Gnome regularly, but the last time I tested it, I felt it was easily equal to or greater than MS in ease of use, etc. I also prefer the feel of Gnome over MS. It just has a couple of irritating bugs that are still there after all these years.
I might be biased, though, I am the Net Admin for over 100 windows workstations. That is enough to make anyone hate windows.
Two years ago I set up a few multi-user Linux workstations for those employees that don't have a direct need for a computer. They are used constantly, and I only touch them when I upgrade them to the latest version of Mandrake. Interesting how systems that for whatever reason will no longer reliably run windows seem to work perfectly under Linux.
--dingletec--
This guy needs to be modded down as a troll. This guys spouts the same tired miss informed "how OSS could be better so I can make money from it" tripe. Geez... OSS is not free as in gratis.. but free as in open.. Just because you can change the code doesn't mean you have to... If you're going to use something for free... then don't bitch about how much it sucks (because more _vocal_ criticism isn't polite and constructive, but whiney). Nobody said all OSS software is better than Proprietary... Usually they say there is some that is better, and mostly the OSS _philosophy_ is better.
The very title of the article shows that the author doesn't understand Open Source Software. Very few blanket statements will apply to all open source projects or developers. His blanket statements are no different.
"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
I've heard this, but it has been rare & is becoming more rare. In fact, I most often see it in conversations between two end users (and often on F/OSS for Windows). This can usually be seen as noise--in many cases the developers are quick to offer a much better reply, saying it is on the TODO, or offering short suggestions of how one might start to make a patch if they are so inclined. In other cases, complaints aren't expressed in the right forum--if this was the "last word," as the article's author states, it is often because no developers are able to read it. End users should be better educated how to voice their gripes & have something happen--search bugzilla (or a developer's mailing list) & if you seem to be the first one with the complaint, make it politely in what appears to be the correct forum for bug reports/feature requests!
"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
Well-written ("maintainable" or, as ESR says, transparent and discoverable) and highly used Open Source Software almost always receive patches or plugins not written by the development team. The Linux Kernel Team might keep tight reigns on what they maintain, but there are plenty of kernel patches that find their way all the way into the vanilla kernel, or are at least popular enough to be found in non-vanilla kernels. Many, many, more can be applied by end users.
Diff/patch are proof to me that this really isn't a myth. You might not choose to fix or even look at someone else's code, but you usually can (and, importantly, others are likely to).
All software should be free
There's still a not-insignificant amount of contention on making more libre software & what that exactly means. See numerous licensing arguments of BSD vs. GPL, etc. As for making all software gratis, as the article implies, I don't really hear this too often. Most people in F/OSS are quick to point out that "Free" doesn't refer to "free beer" & will offer numerous F/OSS projects which are sold (a boxed linux distro, for example).
He doesn't really seem to understand the "Commoditization of Software." There are a few different types of applications & F/OSS has pursued most of them & certainly all of the popular ones. Sometimes development is unpaid. In other cases, commercial companies "who get it" or national labs/universities which receive public funding have done the authoring. The thing is that once that F/OSS alternative is out there, it will often develop into something people want to use & want to make better so that others will use it too.
Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software
Better in what way? No one really claims that GNU-CAD is yet at the level of commercial counterparts, but it is foolish to say it is impossible for them to get to that level. (I also disagree that Windows has a better GUI than *nix.) For popular projects, the development is usually always better--code gets fixed faster & the number of users often indicates that the "Return on Investment" is better enough that losing some things (compatibility with proprietary binaries often being the biggie) to be worth it.
Scratching the personal itch
The thing is that many developers are end-users as well. Evolution and Firefox are fine examples. It is also very likely that F/OSS will try to satisfy the end user needs--anyone can voice gripes about it. The thing is that many end users also happen to be developers. The other thing is that those who don't want to adopt F/OSS want a 1:1 replacement of the commercial software they've become locked-in to. Patents and some restrictive licenses ma
The point has probably been made several times here, and I know I am coming in to the conversation nearly 5 hours late, however what really bothered me about this paper was the complete apparent lack of understanding about the philosophy of 'Free Software'.
;-)
*All Software Should Be Free*
We're not talking about money here. Anyone is quite welcome to charge for free software as much as they want and think the software is worth. However, when we talk about free software, we're talking about freedoms and rights of the developer and end user, not the cost of the package.
This is one of the biggest and most fundamental misunderstandings that people seem to love throwing around. Microsoft is one of the worst examples at this. Perfect example would be the whole TCO BS that gets waved around in everyones faces every time MS talks about Linux platforms.
Neil, you claim to respect RMS yet you have failed to understand the very core of his philosophy in your third point.
As was once done to me many many moons ago, I again now point out that someone should have read the philosophy behind Free Software before making those statements. I say this quite clearly given that RMS was used as an example in this part of the document.
What is Free Software? http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Is Selling Free Software OK? http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
Why Free Software? http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
Having said that, a lot of the other points I do agree with. Feature bloat has become an issue for me in Linux distros. Knoppix is a good example of a distro that doesn't try to do and be everything, but has everything you need as well as a lot of extras you might want. The fact that it fits on a single CD and doesn't need to be installed also works very much in its favour.
As far as the 'scratch that personal itch' section goes.... I disagree in part. A lot of projects start out as someone putting together a tool to solve a problem they're having and then releasing it. A lot of these tools are not unique and finding alternatives is not very often difficult to do. However, the fact that these have been made available to everyone means that no one has to reinvent the wheel if they don't want to. Chances are, someone has already written the tool that does what they want. If not, go for it and release it so others might find it useful also.
This leads me on to one of the biggest problems I have with 'itch-tools'. Many of the developers expect the same sort of response and instant assistance that Linus got with Linux. Thing is, this is just not the case. 99% of the opensource or free software projects out there are going to be completely ignored as far as developers go. Its on a few projects like KDE, Gnome, GAIM, Mozilla, Linux, Apache HTTPd and Samba (just to name a tiny fraction) that will get support and a lot of people willing to contribute to the project over time.
My point is, the itch tools are definitely useful. Releasing them as GPL (or better yet, LGPL or BSD) means they're guaranteed to be available for as long as possible. It does not mean that anyone HAS to contribute to them or even use them. They're just there in case someone decides to.
Kinda frustrating to see people ripping these commonsense points apart one by one. Really, these are all obvious and valid points. If you're all bent out of shape about them, even to the point where you need to rip the author on Slashdot, then you might just be part of the problem. Open Source is a simple and clean concept, but it is very secondary to good application design. "OSS" is not any kind of magic pill, and it certainly isn't an end unto itself.
(And personally, while I'm here, the number one most important tenet of open source should be SIMPLICITY. No one can safely modify code that isn't beautifully clean and understandable.)
And not finding much. In the article, the author states: "...a closed-source approach to a problem can have some benefits. Some of these benefits include having a more focused direction for the team, given the fact that there is (usually) just one manager and team leader, firmer schedules and deadlines, tighter management, profit incentives, salaries and bonus motivations. While this can also be true for open source projects, the "design by committee" that goes on with community projects often results in a more bloated and less focused product that tries to be all things to all people. Also, sometimes a simple lack of funds on the part of the developer can hamper the development."
Closed source projects suffer every bit as much from 'design by committee' as do closed source projects. In fact, ALL large engineering endeavors are prey to this, regardless if they are open or not. So, this assertion doesn't offer anything of substance to differentiate between open and closed settings.
However, here's something that does offer something of significant and relavent meaning: because closed source often occurs in a large corporate environment, the 'committee' is all too often made up of people with little or no critical thinking abilities. That's because people rise through the ranks of corporate management by being good at politics, not critical thought. In an open source setting, when there are 'design by committee' situations, the 'committee' is more likely to be made up of people well-versed in critical thought, as well as a good number of real-life end users. This rare in the closed source setting.
Thus, the alleged benefits listed above for closed source projects are for the most part not accurate. I've seen it happen frequently that a closed source product just doesn't do what it needs to, and evidence of 'design by management' seen in an inconsistant grouping of functionality compared to software comming from an open source setting.
The last sentence is curious in that it is pure FUD. Perhaps revealing is a better word.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Most OSS projects were started and nurtured by the developers when they were not paid by anybody to develop such software. Ofcourse, once some of them made it real big, companies started funding them in their own interest. There are hundreds of developers of OSS (including the linux kernel) who do not get paid at all to develop OSS. Seel #down loadw s.html
http://www.winischhofer.net/linuxsisvga.shtm
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design3/ne
Who pays for them anyway ?
For every OSS developer who is paid for his/her OSS work there are hundreds if not thousands who never get paid. And many of these unpaid developers are developing usable and quality software. Why don't we take a look at the developers of the several hundreds of usable software packages that are part of any standard linux distro (redhat, mandrake, suse, gentoo, slackware) and find out how of these developers get paid for their OSS work?
Processes are patentable but not copyrightable. The expression of a process is copyrightable but not patentable. The idea of getting from point A to point B in the development of a product for which the process is developed is often not copyrightable or patentable either one (although sometimes point B itself is patentable).
In short, the idea having value is in no way related to copyright. Copyright is about the expression of the idea having merit.
If your mother was in the intensive care unit, and you found out that all of the equipment around her, heart monitor, ventilator, dialysis machine, etc., were running 100% OSS, how would you feel?
"Medium" vs. "Message".
With "a book, a song, a chair, a pie", you own the medium. If someone takes your pie, it's theft.
If someone bakes ANOTHER pie, you don't have any say.
If you have a chair, someone else can make a chair, no harm.
The book and song are different. And that's copyright. You can't copy them (you CAN copy the chair and the pie). Someone else, never having read the book, or having heard the song can produce them, but the gov. doesn't permit them to copy either.
Marshall McLuhan:
"The Medium is the Message"
From the man who coined the term "media".
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
This is why you don't fix bugs in the programs of others.
I think that there are inaccuracies on most of the statements made (not to the point that completely reverse the analysis, but the issues are more complex than they are being made) but point #3 is obviously the impetus behind Neil's questioning "Open Source Myths".
I have seen similar to this quite a bit: "I grew up in the 1980's assuming that I would one day be able to write some really cool software, then *SELL IT*, and make some real money for my trouble." I think that this is *not* a valid argument. While stating a personal opinion and emotional state quite clearly, one could say the same about the farmers who "expected to make a living on the farm" or factory workers who "expected to continue to make a living in the industry".
Efficiencies continue to increase in the world, displacing people from jobs, many times leaving them few good alternatives. Is this good? Surely it seems not to be for those displaced. Yet, few people today would want to be contrained by the living conditions of the early 1900's, or earlier. We live lives that the kings of old would have killed for, by standing on the broken backs of those displaced by efficiencies that were created by new technologies and methodologies. I myself would find it difficult to give up modern amenities while simultaneously understanding the concerns of outsourcing and open source. Hypocrite is one word for it, I guess. At the end of the day, I have decided that luxury trumps a living wage for my fellow man.
So how does this apply to OSS? Simply: we are outsourcing the development of potentially commercial work to *ourselves* and creating the infrastructure for software to be "worth less in dollars spent". If I build operating systems, web servers or databases, I'm pretty sure I would be feeling just like the farmers and factory workers of old: there is a pressure building that is not going to go away, which will sap the monetary reward for what I do.
Does this mean I am against OSS then? Surely not, for I realize that the end result of this change is software development is not the destruction of an industry, but the creation of a bedrock of new technologies and methodologies which will allow me to produce better and better solutions for my customers at lower and lower costs. I can't dream of writing the next "big word processor", but frankly that is an empty dream anyway with the established commercial vendors in place today. The only difference here with OSS is when a type of software reaches a certain threshold of maturity, commercial exploitation of that type of software becomes harder and harder as the OSS packages catch up.
The main difference with our industry is the *speed* at which the effects are felt: it took a generation to destroy the factory worker's job, it took several generations for the farms to be destroyed. We are seeing an industry created and destroyed in one lifetime. Myself, I'm glad I didn't get the opprotunity to get comfortable with the old model and had the chance to learn how to produce viable solutions for my customers using the new model. You see, for every dollar my clients don't spend on commercial operating systems, SQL servers, etc, there is a dollar available for me to apply honest work to solving the problems they are interested in having solved. Where OSS won't work, I'm more than willing to pay the commercial vendors for the parts and pieces I need: because in *those* cases they provided real value for my dollar.
Sig under construction since 1998.
*blah blah Gunton makes a couple decent points blah blah*
Statements that "it's not so simple" and that not everyone has "time to 'get under the hood'" are true; however, Gunton seems to be making it too simple, himself. As mentioned, he's ignoring the whole gratis/freedom distiction. But even then...
Guntun identifies the cost of free software as programmers' inability to charge for their work. But has free software really *decreased* my profits from using a computer? Thanks to Linux, GNU utilities like make, Gentoo's distribution, gcc, X.org, Apache, Perl, Qt, XFCE4, Vim, Gnumeric, aterm, Firefox, CVS, Pine, and dozens more than I'm fogetting *because* I take them for granted, I can pay the cost of hardware for the ability to use my computer and develop programs, and I can change and examine all that software as I see fit. If not for free software, I'd pay for an OS, a compiler, an IDE, a source-control system, access to "real" source code for educational purposes, and so forth, and I might need to go to great lengths to customize them or fix their problems (assuming it's even legal and possible). How many $5 shareware registrations would I need just to make up for that, let alone to profit from my software development as Gunton assumes to be possible? If I want to charge for the software I create, I'd better be willing to give back to RMS, Daniel Robbins, Bram Moolenaar, Ben Goodger, and so forth. And it's still not that simple. How many of the products I listed would even exist without one another? How many free-software organizations shelled out for Microsoft IIS, and what would have happened if they'd needed to? How many of their programmers started by looking at others' code, and what would have happened if it hadn't been available?
This is a rather long rebuttal to the recent posting about open source "myths". While I feel there are kernels of truth in the posting, I
think the author has missed several vital points.
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
The author seems to focus on equating fix to program. I realize that if you're a programmer then fix can quickly become program, especially when talking about open source software.
However, I think "fix" should be used in a much broader way. Clarifying requirements, writing a detailed explanation of a problem, writing documentation, and contributing ideas are all "fixes" that open source software can benefit from. You don't have to be a programmer to do many of these.
When you're complaining about how software doesn't work, how about writing up a detailed view of how you would like it to work (requirements). When you have a problem with some software, how about writing up a detailed, repeatable scenario (bug report). Once you've finally figured out how to install, upgrade, or manage something with open source software, how about writing it up (documentation). If a piece of software doesn't do something you would like it to do, write up a short explanation of what it is and how you envision it should go about performing the task (enhancement).
You don't need to be a programmer in order to do these things. The comment should probably read: "Instead of using your energy to throw rocks, use your energy to build houses".
2. "Open software allows you to get under the hood and fix things"
I like the car analogy. There are some things that I can fix on my car, and there are other things that I pay a mechanic for. Paying a mechanic doesn't preclude me from learning about the car and doing it myself. I have a choice.
An advantage of open source software is that potentially more people have looked at (are willing to look at) the source code. With more eyes, there is a bigger chance that the issue will be fixed (in the absolute sense).
However, I think the problem is with the narrow definition of fix. Sometimes fixing includes writing better documentation, coming up with better requirements, or understanding how an implementation solves a particular problem.
3. "All software should be free"
I am a systems architect, systems administrator, program designer, and sometimes programmer. I don't have a lot of trouble with freely available software. I don't have a lot of trouble with low cost software.
I also don't have a problem with high priced commercial software, provided it does the job intended, and does it well. I use both since I feel that software is a tool that lets me get my job done.
However, I think the cost of software should be based on ideas, fitness for purpose, and craftmanship rather than some commodity metric.
Exploring the carpenter example a little more fully might reveal this. If I purchase a table, why would I pay more for one table than another? Here are some reasons.
a) Materials are better
b) Form is better - it's more esthetically pleasing
c) Works better for my application
d) Constructed better
All of the above reasons reflect my appreciation of the carpenter's knowledge, rather than the intrinsic value of a table. I am paying for the carpenter's knowledge and skill.
Applying this to computing is fairly straightforward. As a consumer, I am paying for better code, code that fits my requirements, and code that is constructed well. I am paying for a programmer's, designer's, architect's thoughts and capabilities. I am paying them for their ability to solve problems. The model becomes not so much can you build tools, but what can you do with the tools. The model for the toolbuilder becomes can you craft a tool uniquely fitted for a particular purpose. The consumer pays for capability, not capacity.
4. "Open software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. I'm tech-savvy, but I'm an engineer not a programmer. I've done some programming in Unix and am comfortable with the command line though by no means an expert. I'm very interested in Linux and strongly hope it will succeed (I hate MS), but there is no way I'm going to install it on my desktop anytime soon. Life is short and there are always better things to do than mess around with the computer (even though I LIKE messing around with the computer). If I have to deal with a new OS (like when I buy a new system) I want it to be up and running and user-friendly as fast as possible. I need a web browser, email, word processing and games. (I'm not doing any programming these days.) Windows does the job well. AFAIK, Linux does not.
If the culture doesn't support the idea of paying for software (and music, and movies, etc) in some way, then we are basically just denying artists and programmers the right to make money from what they do. There needs to be a balance somewhere between the draconian strategies being pursued by the RIAA, MPAA and other "intellectual property" syndicates. We should be able to make money from our labors, without screwing over the user in the process.
He confuses 'the right to make money with' with 'should be able to make money with'. The first states a deterministic given, the second is a probabilistic statement.
I like the probabilistic statement more, because the deterministic claim gears the software market towards a tight ruled unflexible, toplevel controlled system of laws and rights. Software and digital media have commodotized the human intellectual produce into binary streams, and the internet has become the carrier. Where every other commodity item has been subject to market driven law and economic interest, the world finds itself afraid to deviate from that strategy, but in the back of it's mind, there is a question that ponders whether human intellect and derivatives need to serve a higher cause rather than just filling pockets.
I am all for protecting and rewarding invention and intellect, but I am far from sure that patent offices are able to make that call. Let the market itself make the call. You want your artists to continue? Fine, donate. You want your software to be written? Fine, donate. You want to play that next game? Fine, donate.
It's as simple as that, and potential could be huge, if you press the 'right keys' (pun intended). Donations are much more rewarding, much more flexible, much more able to express what the honest real need expects you to do. It's completely in line with eXtreme Programming. But of course, they are not the ever guaranteeing money-making machine, which I agree is a bit scary, but then, what is not scary these days.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
You should also disagree with section 3 ("All software should be free") because the author purposefully uses the wrong definition of free (the one pertaining to cost, not freedom) to conflate the differences between the two movements. Furthermore, the author apparently has no idea what RMS stands for:
This is wholly untrue. The open source movement has never pitched its message based on software freedom, it was founded to reject software freedom and pitch instead a practical software methodology message--programs are better when they are less buggy, cheaper to develop, and run faster--because it is believed that this movement's audience (chiefly businesses) are scared with freedom talk. There's nothing wrong with these practical values, but they are not the values of the older free software movement, they don't give you software freedom, and they don't speak to the same audience as the free software movement. Continuing with the article:
RMS has never said he was a member of the open source movement nor did he start the Open Source Initiative which defines that movement's goals and terms for license acceptance. RMS has asked explicitly not to be lumped in with the open source movement. RMS started the free software movement about 20 years ago, well before the open source movement started, and co-wrote the GNU GPL with Prof. Eben Moglen, and RMS started the GNU project in order to spread software freedom (the freedoms to inspect, copy, run, distribute, and modify computer software at any time for any reason).
This author is making (and getting lost in) his own economic-justification message. Meanwhile the Free Software Foundation tells us that distributing free software for a fee can be okay, and that we should make as much money as we can from distributing free software for a fee and building paid services atop the software. I would add that it is not the FSF's or the free software community's job to define how businesses can make money with free software (however the FSF does have some suggestions which they give us in their talks). It is a businesses responsibility to define how they will make money. The FSF is not a business plan nor was it ever intended to be. If the open source movement wants to be seen as such, they are choosing to take on that job.
Also, in section 6 ("More choice is always better") the author falls into the trap of thinking choice is a key value: Freedom of choice is deceptively attractive because people who focus on choice can easily be undermined. If we only had 3 web browsers to choose from (say, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Netscape) choice would be satisfied. We would not have software freedom, however, because none of those browsers are free software. They are all proprietary programs. Choice is not bad to have but it is not the heart of either the free software or open source philosophies and choice alone will not bring you the ability to share and modify software.
I'm left thinking this report is little more than his view of what's right and wrong with software today, not an informed essay on busting "open source myths" by examining what the open source movement stands for and how it goes about pursuing its goals.
Digital Citizen
But you know as well as I do that if I am successful then inevitably some kid in his parents' basement will write his own Open Source version of the thing, for free. If that happens then maybe your project isn't worth the money. If some kid in his basement can code something that replaces your project then you don't deserve to get paid for it.
Time makes more converts than reason
There are several key reasons software has no value. One of the most important is people like me. I have a degree in engineering plus significant experience in programming any language you care to stick in front of me. I, however, do not work in a field which has even the remotest relevance to my education, and vice versa. I write open source programs during my free time for no other reason than it amuses me. I continue to support them and fix bugs because I am obsesive compulsive, but if I managed to single handedly destroy the entire programming profession I wouldn't loose any sleep over it. One of the key rules of economics is that something that is being given away for free has *no value*. I and others like me are ensuring that it has no value. The unwritten rule is that you won't take my idea and make money from it because nobody in their right mind would pay you. I'll admit that you can sell "support". The reason is that as programming goes, support sucks. nobody wants to do it, so you have a market for it, and a limited supply. This is true for software which is no fun to write (i.e. financial systems, accounting, etc...) nobody will touch it, so you can still make money writting these programs, but operating systems are really cool to play with, as are mp3 players, video software, compilers, etc... That makes these areas of programming far less likely to be profitable. The only reason games haven't fallen to the oss jauggernaught as well is because it takes non-programmer resources to produce a fun and competitive game, and those resources are once again limited, but fun programming is something that will be harder and harder to get paid to do, because people like me will do it for free.
-=geoskd
http://www.geoskd.com/
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
This goes for the people who gripe about it constantly in off-topic locations. Then you ask "did you report the bug/flaw/issue?" and the answer is usually "no". It's the same people who complain about the government but don't vote.
A part of fixing the problem is reporting it to the right people.
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
This is a positive regardless of how many people actually do it. By your rational, a weapon unused is a useless weapon. So we should close all source and start nuking every other country!
3. "All software should be free"
Yes, but as free meaning Open, not dollar$. Obviously you have the right to earn money for your work. No license prohibits that notion either.
1. He's absolutely right. You don't need to be able to write code (or that particular code) in order to identify problems and have suggestions about designs. People writing code benefit from the advice of others.
2. In my experience, this misses the point, but the original myth does as well. The real reason to go under the hood is not to fix anything, but to figure out what's really going on. Chances are you won't change the actual code, but you may change how you're using it to account for its behavior. It's often really useful to be able to trace into provided code in order to resolve ambiguities in the documentation.
3. He makes the mistake of assuming a direct connection between the people who end up using software and the people who initially commission it. It is common and getting more common that a developer will be employed by someone who wants some software to exist but doesn't care who else gets it. They may intend to use it as part of their process, use it to enable them to sell hardware, or use it to enable them to sell other software. In all of these cases, OSS means that the company's employees don't have to do all the work.
4. This myth is widely cited as something that OSS people think by non-OSS people. But I haven't actually heard anyone seriously claim anything more than that particular projects are better than particular products.
5. Developers have a wide variety of hobbies and a wide variety of needs. Developers' itches do include things like personal accounting software and image manipulation tools. The problem with the GIMP is not that it isn't someone's itch, but that user interface designers and Photoshop users are intimidated by the need to code in order to affect the project. See #1; if some graphic designers unhappy with Photoshop's price tag explained in detail how the GIMP should work, and the GIMP developers were willing to take this advice, the GIMP could get over its unusability. For that matter, a graphic design firm could hire developers for the GIMP to make it suitable for their use.
6. I agree with this. Give users the ability to select a program by name and the ability to ask for someone else's choice of a program by function. For that matter, include a button for "This web browser is driving me crazy. Give me a different one."
I would add to this that even if we do have the time, that time gets sunk into maybe 1 project, or a smattering of 1-line patches in a handful of projects, not into every single OSS application we use.
Tinkering with the code is something that hardly anyone actually does, except for the core developers.
True, but I think that it is the knowledge that one could if one had to, that is the real issue. The fear of flying is largely due to the fact that one is powerless to save yourself should something go wrong; the much-more-dangerous act of driving a car is more comforting because you are in control. OSS fans look at software the same way -- the car often feels like a better choice, because you know how to fix it (even though you generally don't). Sometimes it really is the better choice, since airplanes don't always go where you're going.
Saying that all software should be free ignores the hidden price - including your own ability to make a living from writing software.
Most software is not written to be a commercial product. It follows that most software developers make a perfectly decent living by writing software that was never meant to be sold.
Closed source software can be just as good, sometimes even better, than Open Source.
The quality of software is proportional to the number of eyes on it. Just because a package is open-source doesn't mean it has many eyes. Most packages are handled by 1 or 2 people, and can't compete against a professional team of 4 developers, 2 testers, 1 designer, a technical writer, a couple of managers, and a support call center. An OSS package with a couple dozen regular contributors will compete fairly well, however.
Having a lot of programmers "scratching their personal itch" just ensures that a lot of programmer tools get written.
Which is a Good Thing if you are a programmer.
Sometimes restricting the choices might not be a bad idea.
I'd rephrase this as: sometimes it's nice when a reasonable choice is made for us. Don't give me 12 different examples of a particular app and stick them all in monstrous start-up menu, forcing me to research them all to figure out which one I want to use. Choose one and pre-configure it for me. If I don't like it, then I can do the research.
This is not exactly how I see it. If someone contributes to any OSS project or supports open source, then they are part of the whole movement as far as Im concerned, and they have every right to complain..
Moreover, when making progress/new inventions, one of the mostly underestimated parts is the mere detection of needs. Developing a knife obviously requires some creativity, but so does realizing you need one or other cutting device.
Z
So, to go back to the analogy, I think you should be able to charge for what you make, be it software or tables. But I also think that the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own, and give it away or sell it or whatever.
The problem with tables versus software is that it is far easier for me to replicate software then a table. That is the whole point of copyright. Because the fruits of that kind of labor are so easy to replicate you are granted protection against people replicating your work and not compensating you for the efforts. As a programmer do you work any less to produce your one copy the program as the carpenter did to produce his first copy of the table.
If I could use a Star Trek replicator and create a table based on that first copy made by the carpenter then how would the carpenter earn a living? Perhaps if the design of the table protected by copyright he could charge me a fee if I wanted to use a replicator to make his design of table.
You say people have "itches" to scratch and thus software as needed will be created. Would that not lead to only custom specialized software being made? If I create something that is used by many but only one guy pays me for it then I'll most likely starve to death. Or I've got to charge a huge amount for that first copy.
Just because it is easy to replicate doesn't devalue the worth of each copy. Quickbooks cost me $400 to purchase or I can get a pirated copy for free. Either way my ability to do work increases just the same. Thus the program has value in of itself just by the amount of work it helps me produce. Without copyrights the author can only get money from me if I feel generous enough to find and pay him. Which often doesn't happen. Ask any shareware author or even donatation asking OSS author. A plumber fixes a leak and that work is of value. But I can't really replicate it. I can do the work myself but that is paid by me in the loss of my time. A programmer creates a program do perform some function and that is also of value. Why is his work allowed to be stolen simply because you can copy a CD? Is this not a slave labor of sorts?
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
you'd make a good lawyer. You have a knack for just picking out the parts of the OSS model that you don't understand, and making plausible (but flawed) arguments against it.
An uninformed jury would eat it up.
I'd first put some effort into understanding the open source model, and understanding how you can build software to sell with it, before shooting down the concepts behind it.
You have a few red herrings in your current args...
Some examples of open source companies and software authors that are doing quite well selling open source software include, but are not limited to:
Covalent
Tripwire
JBoss
Apache Foundation
Saying that open source software is not better than closed source, because Windows is better than KDE, is a little like saying that windows 98 is better than windows 2000 because 98 plays more games. Sure it is if you play games. What if you run a web server?
OSS is more than KDE or Gnome. In the applications we run, we don't even use a windowing system. We run web servers and databases on linux. We don't need a windowing environment, so this argument is meaningless to me.
Judging by the fact that we have servers with over 1 year of uptime, and the windows servers run by other parts of the company are rebooted daily... I'd have to say OSS is kicking windows' ass in terms of security, aggravation mitigation, and reliability.
I'll take the CLI over windows any day of the week.
"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
I take this a step further and bypass the griping. I just fix the thing. I offer the fix to the developers who may or may not use my fix.
"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
See the last "myth"
"All software should be free"
If you use free software to build your own software, you have to give it away for free, or pay the authors. What is the problem with this?
If you like reinventing the wheel, by all means be our guest. If you don't, find a project with the right license and develop your proprietary software, but don't complain about paying people (or following their licensing rules) who have already done 90% of the work for you.
"Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
The first paragraph of your argument about this line, is devoted to windows vs. kde. Like I said earlier, OSS is not about the windowing system. There is a lot more to it.
In my professional life I use:
ssh
mysql
apache
php
java
oracle
perl
jboss
Not one of these requires a windowing environment, so a kde vs. windows argument is making a moot point. Windows is not important for jobs that OSS does very well without a gui.
Not only that, but Windows is a poster child for bloat. I have built linux systems that have a sub 500MB footprint on the hd. This includes databases, apache, the os, ssh, application server, and all the trimmings I need to do my applications. Linux can be as small as you want it to be. The amount of bloat suffered is in the user's hands, 100%.
Last I checked, websphere by itself is over 1 GB on the hd. How's that for bloat?
I have yet to see a piece of OSS software that even comes close to being all things to all people, or even tries to be. Generally there is a configure script you run where you may trim out the stuff you don't want, or add the stuff you do, down to individual libraries. The bloat is up to you. There is an installation program with most linux's that allows you to only select the packages you want.
"Scratching the personal itch"
only one thing to say, if you have the itch, someone else does too. If they pay me, I'll scratch it for them. Otherwise I scratch my own itches. I do it all the time.
Development for end users is done by companies using open source tools. The tools are built by programmers, for programmers. The end product is built by p
"Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
Find me 5 people who believe that.
You must be new here.
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
I mostly agree. When I first started using an OSS OS, I tried to use BSD, because I knew it. But I already had the hardware, and nobody had drivers for it. While I was a developer, I had very little time to get this system up and running; writing a SCSI driver was not an option. Nor was there time to pay someone else to fix it. I went with Linux.
I agree, people should help where they can. I have worked on OSS projects. I buy a copy of any Linux distro I use, to help pay for development. But to expect my wife and kids (all of whom use Linux just fine) to help fix problems (beyond reporting them) is *utterly* luidcrous.
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
Yes, it does. And that's great. I've done it at times; others I have not. But again, my wife and kids sure won't. Neither will my parents or any of my siblings except one.
3. "All software should be free"
WHY?
I know this is the mantra. It has been for years. And I still don't buy it (sic). This is purely a philosphical (religious for some) debate. I have never seen any really solid reasons for this. It generally boils down to "I believe". That's fine, go ahead and believe. But recognize that's what you're dealing with.
Don't even get me started on the "software/information wants to be free" crap. Neither software nor information want anything. There are arguments for both free software and software for sale. I'm glad we have both, as a rule.
As far as the related arguments go-- that we should only pay for a service, or for software for hire, and everything else should be free-- again, I have seen no compelling arguments. It's purely a war of philosphies. In many ways, it's like a microcosm of the communist vs capitalist cold war.
In summary, this is one of the most preposterous statements to come out of the high tech arena since the dawn of the computer age.
4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
Well said. VMS was closed and proprietary, and it was one of the best OSes ever developed.
5. "Scratching the personal itch"
I both agree and disagree. The fact is that many developers have interests other than development. Two of the best software packages for Windows I have used are free; a power supply designer and a tone stack calculator for guitar amps and similar things.
6. "More choice is always better"
I can't think of much to add, here. This is one of the single, biggest problems. People don't want choices in things they don't understand. And they don't want to have to be educated just to make the choices.
7. Conclusion: It's Not So Simple"
And how.
Great job, Neil.
Funnily from the people in my environment those
with photoshop installed all have an gimp installed, too. Even some windows fanatics have
the windows version of gimp installed, because
it offers things they cannot do with photoshop...
There seems to be a contradiction between two of this author's arguments.
First he argues that gratis software undermines the market for commercial software. Because anyone can roll out a "free" version.
Then he argues that OSS is not always better and that there are advantages to closed production methods and commercialization.
The reason why Photoshop, MS Word, MS Outlook, SPSS, SAS, Illustrator and Endnote are not hurting very much is because rolling out a "free" version is easier said than done. The open source equivalents are still a bit scruffy behind the ears.
If you are going to compete in any market, you have to offer something that your clients consider worth paying for. You are also going to have to continue to innovate to stay one step ahead of the competition. This is true whether you are talking about software or publishing.
I don't really think that this deserves the status of a "myths" page, since it simply responds to catch phrases with personal opinion. Usually a myths page responds with facts.
Anyway, the author seems to be deeply confused about a number of things. The most obvious is the distinction between the creation of software (which is a real service and which cannot in any sense be "free") and the duplication of software (which, as technology increases, has increasingly more negligible costs). None but the most deranged would argue that programmers should not be paid for the services that they render, should they choose to. Of course they must be, because there is nothing special about that service. On the other hand, the ability to duplicate and share software (and other digitized works) makes them a significantly different kind of product than food and clothing. Like the author's, any argument that fails to realize this distinction is likely specious.
One can argue that it is difficult to directly compensate programmers for their service, and that selling software provides a good indirect way to compensate them. I believe this model is ultimately doomed to fail because of free(dom) software alternatives, as the author also apparently does. But because we will typically have to pay for the service of creating software, this does not threaten the livelihood of programmers (except inasmuch as it reduces inefficiency and so makes some services not needed).
I've heard most of this stuff for years. Some of the user interface issues were once true, but they are no longer. Gnome back in 1998 was about as good and in many ways better than Windows 98. The people in Redmond would love for free software users to read this kind of tripe and n
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I recently-ish switched from a pure Win XP setup to a dualboot Linux/Windows setup*. Using Linux is completely different than using Windows.
While I spend much of my time running Windows inside the Explorer. The keyboard is mainly used for shortcuts.
In Linux (using KDE) everything's different: I only use Konqueror if I have to move lots of individual files. Everything else is dome from a Konsole. If I need a file manager I use the Midnight Commander. Often I favor running a program from the Konsole over just clicking it in the K Menu.
Even though Linux is getting more like Windows (GUI-wise) it still has a long way to go before it is as point-and-clicky as every Slashdotter's "favourite" OS. Until then, Windows will beat it in the popularity ratings without even trying.
* Windows is necessary if you want any serious graphics editing without having a degree in GIMP usage. The GIMP has easily the most awkward and confusing design of any graphics editor I have ever seen.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Even if we are developers, most of us have real jobs, or at least other projects that we are working on full time. We don't have time to "get under the hood" (see next section) and find out how the Linux kernel works...
Would you like some cheese with that whine? I guess the question is, how do the thousands of other developers who are doing just that provide feedback? I think the issue you bring up here is just an issue of dedication. If you desire the fix or new functionality bad enough you will do what it takes. Your first point does nothing to mythologize the key strength of open source.
In reality, it's generally very, very difficult to fix real bugs in anything but the most trivial Open Source software. I know that I have rarely done it, and I am an experienced developer. Most of the time, what really happens is that you tell the actual programmer about the problem and wait and see if he/she fixes it.
This is just an extension of the same argument above. Furthermore the author acknowledges that he has 'rarely done it' himself; he is making assumptions about what other programmers are doing. Someone is doing it (which they obviously are, as I have seen in various changelogs of various packages) and as such provides a testament to the amazing swiftness of fixes to open source bugs that is unmatchable by proprietary software.
Sure, I can sell "support", but to be honest the idea of answering phones and emails all day really isn't my idea of a fun time... It's a bittersweet situation, because on the one hand, I am able to build some wonderful software as a result of Open Source, but on the other hand, this comes back to bite me in the butt when I want to write something to be sold for real money
This sounds like the author has the wrong business model to me. Just because you don't like doing something a certain way, doesn't mean that is the wrong way for someone else to do it. The fact of the matter is there are some niche markets for software - but by and large, the free software packages out there provide users options other than proprietary software packages. You can't turn back the clock, if you want to make money in this new environment, you will have to get good at providing service in the form of personalizing your software for the specific needs of your users on an iterative basis. If you hang up your shingle in the virtual marketplace, you also need to have some infrastructure, if the popularity of your package(s) goes beyond a few emails a week. The days of phenomenal growth by simply shrinkwrapping software are over.
While this can also be true for open source projects, the "design by committee" that goes on with community projects often results in a more bloated and less focused product that tries to be all things to all people.
This same argument can be leveled at proprietary software. Also, a sample of open source projects does not support the theory that this is 'often' the case.
On 'scratching a personal itch' the author says, But is this a good way in general to do things? For example, this implies that most of the things that get implemented will have direct relevance to developers and programmers.
This is not the case, even as the author admits (open office, and other 'user centric' as opposed to 'programmer centric' tools). However, his assumption that usability of these projects is 'not there' is an arbitrary judgement; there are a growing number of projects that scratch the itch of the end users, as opposed to the desires of the programmers exclusively.
On 'More choice is better' the author states, While this might seem like a Good Thing at first (biodiversity), it could also be argued that eventually trying to reduce the choice somewhat for the end-user would also be beneficial...a reasonable pre-selection of options is better for people who don't have the time or inclination to make their computer be their life.
This is the case of the gla
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I sent Neil Gunston some comments in response to his article. I have amplified some of those comments and expanded upon them here.
Title: "I liked your comments about open source"
And I happen to agree with the points that you have made. But I don't necessarily believe that things are as bleak for the small developer as you make them. You have just as much risk that if you develop something successful that some larger company may develop something similar as well as someone else developing an open-source product that might also compete.
But you take that risk when you enter any business. The buggy-whip manufacturers and horse carriage makers were in a great line of work until the automobile killed them. Some of those companies switched over to building parts for automobiles. They adapted to the environment.
Certainly it would be nice to be someone who wants to make money writing programs and not "spend all his time on the phone doing support." But unless you are working for some large company that can hire the people who they need to do that stuff, you're going to have to do some support yourself of your product. I do it with the software I write.
I think what you're complaining about is that the "low hanging fruit" and the "easy" stuff that was very lucrative without a lot of effort has already been taken. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But I do know this: trying to get by in a market by going after the "easy" and "simple" stuff is a sure way to be marginalized by others who have the same idea (or, as in your examples, to be usurped by some open source application.)
But let me push your own words against you: If it's not something that will "scratch the itch" of some open-source developer, you're not going to see an open-source application come out in competition to it. Some kid in a garage is unlikely to develop an open source payroll application to compete against some commercial one, or we should have seen open-source payroll packages by now. It should not be that hard to do, there are even plenty of source code modules in existence going back to the 1970s. So it's not like someone even has to do this from scratch, a lot of the work has already been done.
Now, looking at, for example, financial applications, while there is a development of GNUCash, a clone for Quicken (which basically is a system for managing personal finance, something an individual as a programmer might be interested in), I have yet to see any interest in developing complicated financial software for businesses such as the complete package (payroll, Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Trial Balance, Accounts Receivable) even though it's been done - with source code publicly available - in other areas, as I noted above.
That's just one example.
Just think of other applications that programmers have no need for, and you're unlikely to find someone else coming along and writing an application in competition to it at the free-software level.
Also, most of these people involved in stuff in that environment tend to migrate to Linux; very little of it filters back to Windows. So if you hang around Windows applications it's unlikely to filter over.
Another thing: push for and strive for better interfaces, easier to use and more intuitive development for the non-programmers who might use such applications, and this will also raise the bar to the open-source movement in developing competing alternatives to what you might create. They are extremely weak in developing good quality software that is easy for the average person to use. Their usability factors are often very weak. If you target the parts they are weak on and market to those, you can often stay in areas where unpaid labor is not going to try to compete.
Just think of other applications that programmers have no need for,
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
If this guy wants to be an ISV because he has a really novel and profitable piece of software in mind, he's going to get considerably stiffer competition than "some kid in his parents' basement". If his software turns a decent profit he's going to be up against other businesses that will be happy to invest serious resources to build a product that makes people want to pay them instead. The kid in the basement can try to build something better, and if he's got the resources to do that on his own, he'll be tempted to go commercial too.
People release things open source because they know that they don't have the resources to produce something complex on their own and to an agressive timescale needed to get to market while the money is still there. The super-successful open source projects draw their resources from a large number of contributors and take a while to get going. If these projects could reach new and lucrative markets while there was still big money to be made in them, the temptation to go commercial would be too much for many.
Good software costs millions to develop. It is a product. Just because it's duplication efforts are minimal does not mean that it can't be sold as a product. I've paid for thousands of dollars worth of software that I've never needed support or customization on. The only reason free (as in beer) software even exists is because we are in the ONLY industry that has individuals who have this odd determination to help capitalists profit more by working for free.
There's a lot more to software than programming. Good software combines usability experts, UI designers, subject matter experts, market research, testing, and so on. For example, I use some incredible software for music related endeavors that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. There's no OSS equivilant because it takes lot more than just "C++ skills" to create this type of software. There's no way this software would ever exist if it wasn't sold as a product. I don't need any services from these companies.
Why are we so bent on lowering the value of our skills in our industry? Do research engineers at Boeing have an "open airplane" project, where they give away valuable IP to for profit companies? Do you really like helping the executives of companies get a bigger bonus each year while your salary diminishes and job opportunities dry up?
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
About as sophisticated a set of arguments as "Gee! I really don't understand this OSS thing!"
Basically a set of tautologies.
"The average user can't fix software".
Duh!
This idiot completely misses virtually every point due to an inability to see where they properly apply and an inability to contrast OSS with closed source where NONE of the points apply.
How moronic does it get?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
From the article: But where is all this going? Ah yes, the famous Commoditization of Software. So all software will be free in the future, simply because it will be dominated by Open Source and free software. But who is going to pay for it all? You can't develop in a vacuum, *somebody* has to pay the developers. It seems to me that the only way to do it is for all the Open Source developers to be working at large companies, with the large companies paying a salary for the developer to work on the Open Source project for some portion of their time. That's fine, I have no problem with that concept, but it's *not* "free". The software is effectively being supported by the charity of corporations.
...well, complex and requires more man/hours than a single developer can provide.
Where did he see charity? "Big corporations" support open source software because they __use__ open source software. They pay for development and get benefits.
What he does complain about, I think, is that software development has stopped to be a "cottage industry" from which a single developer could make a living.
It is true - for each trivial piece of commercial software there will appear an open source alternative. And complex software is
There are exception, though. Nick Bradbury makes a living out his two retail applications: TopStyle and FeedDemon. Both have open source equivalents, but each is an excellent pieces of software and the best in its class.
--
You know what really bugs me about Free Software browsers? When you enter something into a text area, they don't keep a copy on disk in case the browser crashes.
No, I don't have a patch for it -- oh, right, forget I mentioned it.
"Scratching the personal itch" isn't the only reason OSS has so many developer tools. The entire notion of "give back source to the community" assumes a community of programmers.
The "classic" OSS apps were developer tools. The model succeeded here because the community was so limited. It's perfectly reasonable for a programmer to work on a compiler, and swap it for a linker or an editor or a lint tool. Everybody in that community needs all of those things. The programmers value the programmer tools enough to swap.
The other category of successful OSS apps are the generic tools so widespread that "everyone" needs them -- including the programmers. This category is stuff like GIMP or Apache or OOo. Again, programmers might be willing to work on such things because they can swap their products for the products of others.
It should be obvious that this is just a barter system for programming wares. It's like a medieval village, where everyone grows their own vegetables, but one villager grows a few extra to swap to the cheesemaker, who swaps some cheese to the guy with a couple of extra cows. Everybody needs to eat.
With a realistically complex economy and increased specialization, barter causes problems. OSS fails in the same way. It's hard to convince someone to write an open auto body shop paint color matching and mixing system by offering them your pig inventory and feeding tracking system. Unlike the generic tools everyone uses, your average programmer just won't have any use for your "contribution to the community" and will thus not value it, nor will such things get created, because you cannot find anyone in the little village that wants it.
The solution to this problem has been known for millenia, and works quite well -- even those it pains any number of Slashdotters to admit it. It's called "money". The chief characteristic of money in this context is that it's a "medium of exchange". I don't need your pig farming software, and you can't use my auto shop software. So we can't swap, not matter how open and community-oriented we might be. (You can, of course, fantasize about communisitic utopias if you like.)
But I can sell my software for quatloos to an interested party, and give you the quatloos to you. You're happy to take the quatloos because you can swap them for something you do want -- maybe cheese from the cheesemaker that bought milk from the guy with extra cows. The existence of a medium of exchange decouples the transaction from the necessity of being a direct barter, and opens up a lot more freedom to create and distribute different products. As long as you can find the niche buyers (and the Internet works wonders here), you can be successful, rather than only being able to follow the well-worn career path of the village occupations before you.
For some, the value of work is that they get a paycheck and they are able to support themselves and their families.
For others, that is not enough. They have creative intelligence which is not fulfilled mearly by getting a paycheck, and is not fulfilled by doing someone else's bidding. They are a skilled software engineer, but most jobs that are available are run by suits who whose primary responsibility is not to provide their empliyees with a sense of fulfullment, ownership, and belonging.
So in search of some real fulfillment, a developer starts fiddling around with developing some software at home that he does not have the opportunity to create at work. This starts as a hobbie. But being skilled and persistant, he ends up creating something that he is quite proud of. Not only that, he discovers that other people are also interested in his creation and want to pitch in.
This creates a feeling of self-worth and self-esteem that does not come from "ordinary" work. It produces a community which has a camaraderie and fellowship which is also not available in many workplaces.
These currents of personal and community fulfillment are among the main motivating factors for open source software. And a discussion about the "myths" of open source is completely irrelevant to these factors and will have very little impact on the real reasons of why open source software is created.
If you build me a wheelchair ramp, and tell me that it's a gift, then I will be greatful. If it doesn't have the "non-slip" flooring feature, I'll still be grateful. If you know that you built in with pressboard sides, and you've installed this outside - should you tell me that I might be in danger? Should you offer to replace the pressboard with plywood? If you said nothing... if the edge falls off, and the ramp dumps me out of my chair, I might be very, very pissed off.
You gave me a something that I didn't pay for. However, all appreciation for the gift disappears when it dumps me on my lawn. After I've been dumped, I'll surely buy a ramp from a reputable manufacturer (even if my next door neighbor offers to build me one at half the price)... My neighbor's work is probably better, and will probably last longer than the one from the reputable company. Yet, I will still pay more. Why? Because you dumped me on my lawn.
So, if the Apache Group has a major security issue that they decide to not fix, and fix immediately, they are deciding to dump me across my lawn. Hmm, perhaps - some things require a little bit of alarm. Perhaps I should shut-up and drag myself up the front steps?
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
I'd like to be able to switch to 100 percent free/open source software for everything I do on the computer, but I can't because the options aren't quite there yet. I try to use as much OSS as I can. I really don't much care what software your grandmother uses, however. Seems to me "free" software starts with freedom of choice.
Breakfast served all day!
+1 super duper insightful.
Well the piece seems a little Bias.
All though OSS is not always the best option for everyone.
It does allow you to get under the hood if you want to.
As far as software being free. (As in Beer)
I think only the OS should be absolutely free and open source.
That is the only way to maintain stability, and choice.
The points this guy raises are not thoroughly researched, presented as fact when they are opinion, and misses the point way to often.
That my 2 cents worth
Tetalon
Linux is user friendly; it is just particular who its friends are!
Often I do look for OSS free-as-in-cash projects as alternatives to CSS
However, often enough I'll also have piece of CSS software X, which does function Y but not Z (or not easily). Then, I go looking for a piece of software similar that X in the OSS world, that somebody else has written. And if I'm lucky, perhaps they'll see the same requirement, and have added the functionality I need to do Z.
Also, one cannot begin to overestimate how nice it is to use CLI tools with such wonderful scripting languages as Bash/PERL.
It's great even just to be able to CMD1 && CMD2 && CMD3, rather than me needing to return and click a button repeatedly, (long operations I often chain whilst I am away from the PC, or overnight).
If there is anything most GUI apps lack, it's good batch chaining. I think that that mentality has wandered into OSS programs like VirtualDub, where one has "Job Queues" for overnight activities, etc.
The whole discussion is the wrong direction.
Actually, Stallman is in one part of the right direction. It clearly shows that by his moves into adopting other licences apart from software licences.
And what I mean is, GPL is in fact one expression of anarchy. But not in the 'smash and destroy' act of the word anarchy, but in the sense of democracy without hierarchy and property.
It's a nice theory - for many people concidered to be a utopia - which is possible to exist but it surely doesn't.
There's always been this community of people that didn't believe in property but only in sharing and Richard Stallman is one of them. True democracy without rulers and property is a beautifull thing to believe and that's why people love richard stallman's ideas even though they think he is a lunatic.
In fact he is not. HE just believes in something it can exist but it doesn't.
To return to the article, it is normal to say that you can not expect sharing without property when discussing it only on software! Of course you can not build a 100% free software deal in this world without having 100% a community without property but only sharing.
Is it a utopia? I think not. But is it possible in our lifetimes? Possibly, yes.
If you expect to wait for a customer to come to you, and say "I want you to create this software for me", do you expect them to fund the whole thing themselves? It'll cost thousands at the least, unless perhaps it's just a bug-fix in code they already have. OK for Companies, bad for individuals.
Also, what about Gaming companies? Are they going to spend $5 mil on a game that a customer asked them to make as a SERVICE to that customer, who won't be able to afford it? Not a chance. They'd go out of business during development of their first title.
Software as a service is perhaps ok for the "software rental" concept, but requiring development to be done as a service, rather than as a product to sell at retail, is one of the least thought out things I've ever heard.
Why do copyright supporters always make the assumption that in a copyright-ridden world, people will somehow be unaware that there are no copyrights, and say "damn, they ripped off my latest work again!" every time?
In a copyright-ridden world, people will simply create books for the love of creating books, and nobody will "rip it off" because by definition, copying it will not be ripping anyone off.
You are akin to the person who says: I hate pickles! I am glad I hate pickles because if I liked pickles, I'd eat pickles all the time, and I just hate pickles!
Where do you bring your facts about the irresistable temptations?
:) and posseses quite a bit of knowledge about Linux (as he did go under the hood, many times).
I can bring a simple and powerful counter-example.
A friend of mine is a talented coder, who happens to code really fast (and well
He went and created CoLinux, it took him about 1 or 2 months to get something running, and 5 months to get to a damn-stable release, working almost exclusively by himself. Let me assure you that his reason for not attempting/thinking about going commercial are not the "money to be made", but simply ideals of Free Software.
Indeed, what makes this easier, is that by creating such oss code, you are effectively advertising yourself as a super-talented developer to hundreds/thousands of employee-hunters who seek to pay you a lot of money to code, some of them willing to pay you for free code (Opensourced drivers, or a non-software-centric business).
Now consider the opposite. As I sit in front of MKS Source Integrity which has the same bug that pisses me off every single time I use it and I can't fix it. It's rare that a bug will piss me off as much as this. If only.. I know, where's that debugger. Uh huh, I've found you little window call, say goodnight. Damn... I can't even patch the binary because it is written in some protected native java shit. God I hate closed source.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Doesn't this depend on how the application is built? The Mozilla codebase, for instance, uses a lot of JavaScript and XUL .. which is quite easy to tinker with. I submitted a patch myself the other day. It didn't get used -- someone came up with a better one -- but that's not the point. Probably only a small minority of an app's users can read enough C++ to locate and identify a bug in the codebase .. but nowadays kids are learning scripting languages at school.
[ UNSIGNED NOT NULL ]
You appear to have mixed up linux and windows in your post.
what obscure net driver he needs for his internal VIA network adapter.
It looks like you were putting down linux in the above, yet linux somehow manages to recognize those componants out of the box. I just installed windows 2k on a bunch of old machines, and had search for drivers. On one "designed for windows 2000 and ME) machine I was only able to figure out which driver to use after I pried the heatsink off the northbridge and googled the numbers on it! Linux somehow manages to find every adaptor, and just knows how to deal with most of the obscure hardware I throw at it. Last time I tried to use hardware that linux didn't support (a wireless network) linux told me that what it was, and that it didn't know how to use it!
Scrolling works on my USB mouse as soon as I plug it in. As soon as I tell linux what to do, it does it. Suse 9.1 pro is a nice distribution, these are not the days when slackware 3.0 is the most popular distribution anymore. If you want to do it all yourself linux will let you, but a good modern distribution solves the end user problems that linux used to have.
Useability is not the same as learnability, except for the case of a kiosk where nobody uses it twice.
True useability goes beyond grandma using the machine the first time, to grandma emailing the grandkids daily (weekly or however often). True useability may even go so far as to time how long it takes to press each key, and re-arranging the keyboard to save 1/10th of a second. (AT&T did this once for their operators, a case where spending a couple days in training saves money in the long run once they know the new layout the saves the thousands of seconds per person per month)
Linux is very useable if you are a programmer. KDE is very useable if you use your computer daily. And if you have never used a computer before KDE/gnome is just as useable as windows. (each has its own quirks though) If you are an expert at windows linux and the desktops are not as useable at first, if you take the effort to learn them they are at least as useable, perhaps more so depending on what you want to do with them.
As an example: I ran spell check on this post and corrected 7 errors. (there may be more, but speelcheck didn't find them) This is much easier to do in KDE than in any other desktop I've used. However there is something else that you can do easily that I can't easily do in KDE.
I think that Neil Gunton missed the true concept of software freedom. The GPL does not suggest that software must be distributed without monetary exchange. The concept is that a user should be free to see and modify/fix at will the software that he or she has running on their system (and hence be able to detect malicious and malignant code). And if he or she fixes something and wants to make money from it, then he or she needs to release the code for other users to see and fix if so desired.
I think the idea nowadays is that if you write decent free software, then companies such as Novell, IBM, etc. will look to hire you, and pay you to keep contributing, because they are the ones that make money providing service for and hardware to run free software.
Gunton's ideas on software freedom sound like those of someone who is set in his own ways and vices. In the 80s/90s, yes, you could accomplish the greedy pursuit of writing the "killer" app. and make tons of money off of it. Today that just isn't so, and that is a good thing. Software freedom brings about equality. Why should only one person or company make most of the money in software? They shouldn't because they become stoggy and create proprietary barriers to remain on top (a very bad thing). Software freedom promotes new ideas, growth, development, open standards, and sharing. All of these concepts are good things like the racial and gay social equality movements (of new ideas, growth, and sharing).
Software freedom is just another movement toward a truely even idealogical playing field. With all changes, you will find biggots. The proprietary software zealots will still be wearing their white gowns and hoods 100 years from now burning lower-case T's at the doorsteps of free software advocates. Equality is truely the ideal that we should seek in all venues. Free software promotes equality.
At the risk of sounding obvious.
Why not just sell the source code? For that matter, sell the source code with a license to modify it and distribute your MODIFIED PORTION only. (No sneaking modifying it, then reselling the whole ball of wax)
This way, the end user gets to tinker if they want.
Personally, I can understand commercial software.
It takes time and $$ to write code. Selling it, without source code, is IMO like selling a car with the hood welded shut.
I don't know what the stolen editions of Photoshop are like now, but I have heard from others in the past that the cracks would frequently cause instability. Photoshop is much better than the Gimp, but the Gimp is much cheaper. 90% of home digital photography users don't need the functionality of Photoshop so whzy pay for it (or even steal it).
See my journal, I write things there
Not all open-source developers are "super-talented". I have seen some bad habits demonstrated in open-source code just as I have seen bad habits demonstrated in "closed" source code.
I think that PHPBB is pretty good open-source software. Same thing for MySQL, and Linux (in general). However, none of them have gone without some kind of patch at some point to fix some kind of problem. (Yes, even some security-related problems.)
Now, after reading that, some people are quick to change their argument to something like "open-source code has less bugs than closed source because of the fact that all these other people can review it." However, not everyone that is reviewing the software is a truly exceptional developer either. Bugs still get through; check your favorite open-source project for any security-related patches for some examples. Incompetient people write software all the time, in all kinds of languages, in both open-source and "closed" environments.
I am not bashing open-source here, but you have to maintian a firm grip on reality when defending it, otherwise you look/sound like some crazy street-corner preacher.
-=- James.
I've always thought the real value of OSS was simply the price. I can't afford the cost of most non-OSS products. With Microsoft's new licensing policies I doubt that I will be able to afford the next generation of anything. I won't have anything beyond Windows XP and Office 2000 will be my last office edition.
The tradeoff is that I am an expert in my own arcane little patch of code and if I give it up to the collective good we all benefit. You can use my code if I can use yours. Without OSS there would be no Internet and most of us wouldn't have jobs in this industry.
I don't need to hide something to enforce my legal rights to it. If you copy that chair without my permission then you are in violation of my rights and I will enforce the law against you.
... a bum buys your book from the book store, digitalizes it and puts it on the internet and millions share and copy it. Well, fine the bum is liable for 100 billion dollars to you - good luck on collecting.
That's the point though, youre not holding your rights to it. When you take a cup of water from the ocean it is yours, when you pour it back it is the commons. Your action releases it to the commons. So is with the action of putting your chair in a place where everyone can see - you may still hold the physical rights, but any claim over reproduction is gone.
You may believe this is wrong, but your beliefs do not change the law or shield you from its enforcement.
When something starts to become impossible to effectively enforce without drastically crutailing other freedoms, that should be a hint to you that it is not a natural law right. Todal all information is easy to digitalize and put on the internet. On the internet there is no technical difference between free speech information, copyrighted information, or any other type of information, it is a "sea" of information. If you let a person or institution judge controll over any of it, you must let that institution controll all of it. The fact that this situation exists at all should be a big hint.
The government did not grant me a monopoly on the reproduction of the chair. The government protects a monopoly that is mine by natural right: As the creator of the chair, I own it and I have exclusive rights to its use, reproduction and distribution. Anyone who acquires that chair without my permission is engaging in theft; anyone who copies it without my permission is in violation of my rights.
If you wish to refute that, you will need to demonstrate that the creator of a unique object or work, in the absence of any rights transfer, does not own that object. I assert you cannot do that.
I don't need to refute anything because simple facts are on my side. I have that book you wrote right here, I've digitalized it, I'm distributing it to all my friends, who are in turn distributing it to theirs. What are you going to do about it, how are you going to demonstrate that I'm violating you. How are you going to secure your percieved right without violating millions of innocents? Good luck, you'll need it.
Or maybe you see it like this
points: 2 - Having access to code is not only about "fixing problems" but also allows other programmers to pick up an abandoned project and keep developing it. In the closed source world such products simply die. At the same time knowing that your peers can and will audit your code at any time forces most programmers to be more careful. 3 - The question is not as much that *all* software should be free but rather that ideas should not be copyrighted. Anybody should be able to pick up on your idea and try to improve it. And art is a good example! 4 - Since Closed software can only be audited by "the company" we have to rely on their good will to test it thoroughly. In many cases, pushed by corporate constrains, they will only do a halfassed job expecting users to report bugs, and maybe even charge for a future version fixing them. (Microsoft comes to mind). 5 - Programmers do not only have "programming needs" and they do not only program tools for other programmers, period. The fact that user-side OpenSource progs didn't have enough of an impact yet has nothing to do with this argument and should be an entirely different subject. 6 - Restricting choice is NEVER a good idea. Offering an option of a basic, barebones installation is.
n/t
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Definitely a problem. Why don't developers appreciate feedback from regular users? Heck, I've submitted detailled bug reports including steps to reproduce, and been told to fix it myself. Hey, assholes, I'm not learning an entire programming language just to fix a bug in your program! You're welcome for nothin'.
And even if I do know the language, it's not efficient for me to dissect an entire project and figure out the "correct" place to change its behavior. Last time I did that, it was a patch to rioutil... which was graciously rejected. At least the developers acknowledged it and made a real fix in place of my crude hack.
"More choice is always better"
Good point. The #1 reason Linux hasn't taken off on the desktop is that there's too much choice. Ever tried to distribute a binary for Linux? Good luck supporting 50 different distros. Distributing source is only marginally better; ten to one, your users won't have the libraries they need to build it.
Linux needs a desktop-oriented distro created and supported by somebody big enough to make its particular collection of libraries and utilities the de-facto standard. I was holding out hope for RedHat to achieve this, but they punted with Fedora...
PLEASE, IBM... DON'T LET IT BE MICROSOFT!!!
How do you know how much people will write?
How do you know that there will be noone willing to pay authors to write, even without copyright? Books were written since before copyright, and probably after it.
How do you decide if the limitation of copying information on every person in society, especially as it becomes easier and more accessible with time, is worth the extra incentive for creators?
This limitation on freedom is commonly underestimated, especially considering that copyright law was founded when individuals could not practically copy, and thus barely limited freedom.
I think you meant to say no more proprietary software. Nothing about software freedom precludes using a thin plastic layer around a physical copy of software or distributing that copy of software for a fee.
Digital Citizen
His main beef with gratis software seems to be that he doesn't want to be in the business of selling customized software (why not?) and can't create a "general" version because of free competitors undermine him.
He brings carpenter as an example of a person who CAN do that, but is that true? I don't think so. A lone carpenter can not make a living by selling handcrafted woodworks that are exactly the same as those sold by a factory next door, only the factory can mass-produce million pieces a day and sell them ten times cheaper. No, he needs to differentiate himself to get a market, a carpenter is in customization business just as much as a lone developer is forced to be in area dominated by cheaper (free or not, as long as it's less expensive) alternatives. I'm sorry to say, but days of writing über-simple generic app and living off it are gone, even without open source, you just can't pull off "McAfee" any more.
Also, this all seems very contradictory to his point (which is probably, for some projects at least, true) about open source not "scratching an itch" of users, but only developers themselves - if that's the case, you CAN compete in software market, without being solely in customization business, just scratch your users itches better and open source versions should be no threat.