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

A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[etymxris]

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.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[pjt33]

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.

I could be misunderstanding you, but it seems that you misunderstand copyright. Copyright protects not an idea but an expression of an idea. Taking the kind of area where copyright originated: the idea of a series which tracks a wizard boy through school as he fights baddies has no doubt been expressed many times, but the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series is protected.

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.

To continue with the HP example, would Rowling have spent years writing and polishing the HP books if the first publisher she approached with the manuscript could rip it off and make all the profit? Maybe she would have written the first one or two, but seeing others getting fat on her work while she got nothing would have been a strong disincentive against finishing the series.

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.

If when you say

the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own

you mean that they should be able to make a clean-room implementation and sell it, then that's fair. However, copyright protection doesn't prevent that, so it's not an argument against copyright.

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.

Uh Oh!

[Zorilla]

A discussion where bashing the soft points of OSS doesn't get modded -1 Troll.

I can see the next article: "Understanding the GNAA"

Re:My thoughts.

[hyphz]

I don't think you can compare programming with music and movies. Music and movies are both entertainment products and people's demand for them is generally fairly constant.

Programming, on the other hand, can be divided into two categories: games, and just about everything else. Games are entertainment products, and thus follow a similar pattern to music and movies, with the exception that they sell less because, being interactive, they offer a greater range of entertainment experience per product.

But applications are the really nasty area. Because there, almost all of the standard applications are already written, and even if the written ones aren't ideal, the network effect is so strong that they can't be toppled. Original applications are generally frozen out of the market to begin with.

So yes, he's right to say "software can't make money". Applications software indeed can't make money anymore - because 90% of the time, it's either competing against a rock-crushing market leader, or (worse) competing against something the consumer already got for free because it was bundled with their PC. In that situation, no price higher than zero can possibly survive.

Someone got bored halfway through...

[Oddly_Drac]

"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