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."

Comments

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[JesseMcDonald]

I disagree. While software has not been seen as a service until recently, I believe it has more potential for good as a service industry than it ever did as a product industry.

When producing a product, it is necessary to predict what will sell on the open market for the best margin. This is not always the item most needed. It is not always produced by the best programmers. The product and its quality are determined by groups of individuals interested solely in maximizing the bottom line.

As a service, software would be produced when needed, to meet known requirements planned out in advance. The best team of programmers available will be chosen (for the money those interested are willing to offer -- and they are the ones to choose the cost, since they are the ones needing the software). There are very few "failed products" because the predictions are no longer necessary. In short, the process becomes far more efficient, and the developers end up making money in roughly direct proportion to the quality of their code (and general software development methods, such as staying on schedule) rather than the competence of their marketing department.

OSS is a service "industry". Software is developed, for the most part, because someone wanted it. There was a need for it. Generally, they chose to spend time rather than money to have it developed, having already the necessary skills to develop it themselves or a willingness to learn. They did not worry about what would sell well, or what the market wanted, because those did not matter. The need existed, and they chose to fulfill it. And while many an OSS project did not "succeed" in the market, nearly all accomplished the purposes for which they were written.

The software industry is one of a very few that does /not/ market a service. Even most manufactured products are produced only when ordered -- a request for service. The only difference is that in manufacturing, most of the cost over the lifetime of a product line is in mass production, and can be amortized to the cost per item. In software development, the vast majority of the cost is in the development, which indicates to me that the payment should be for the original development and not for the copies. Once the software has been developed, most often for a corporation but possibly under government contract or for a consumer organization, it could then become public, to be used by anyone.

The software doesn't have to become OSS, of course; it can be held under trade secret (contract law) if the company does not wish the resulting code to be used by its competitors. But in the case, it would be under a service model anyway -- with one copy, there is no difference.