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The Business Value of Open Source Examined
jg21 writes "'Open source developers have the opportunity to influence technology that is being used by companies and do it on a global scale in a way that cannot occur with any other type of software,' contends Bill Claybrook, writing in the current issue of LinuxWorld. The article is a historical overview of the open source revolution, starting in the 80s with the GNU Project, BSD, and TCP/IP and then moving into the 90s with Red Hat, StarOffice, and coming right into the 21st century with the Ximian Desktop and Sun's Linux-based Sun Java Desktop System."
I want to get paid for my effort/time/expertise. I can't afford to be altruistic until I don't have to worry about making mortgage payments any more.
Some people do programming projects because they enjoy them, not everyone requires payment. Just like some people participate in sports for enjoyment (though in this country that is declining), not everyone requires a 10 mil salary just to play sports.
I think Google is a fantastic example. They use commoditized hardware and open source software. They built a better mousetrap in a world full of entrenched corporate behemoths.
The Next Big Thing will come from someone enterprising who can use the tools and open internet standards to create the next Google. You won't have to worry about selling licenses if that person is you.
Developing free open source programs will not make you rich, but if you develop something everyone uses, it will often get you name recognition in the industry. That name recognition can help you to land better-paying jobs than you might have otherwise had access to. Granted, the vast majority of open-source programmers remain relatively anonymous, but there is the possibility, especially if you create an entirely new project that does something useful and innovative.
Obviously, you probably still won't get the millions you could (emphasize COULD) get if you wrote it closed-source and patented it, but it's also much more likely to get wide distribution, and has a far greater chance of becoming the standard way of doing whatever it is it does, if it's open source and free.
Not that I'm advocating one choice over the other. What direction you decide to go depends entirely on your own situation, your tolerance for risk, and what you expect to gain from coding whatever project you're coding.
I have agree with some of the previous postings here, in that Free and Open software no longer exists in the "hobbyist space" - we have real technological and economic implications to deal with. The one thing that we should NEVER comprimise on is quality of the code produced, either to serve a certain company, standard or set of interests. Within a company, with closed projects, this ideal is most likely impossible. But it is this very same ideal that has made a lot of the high-profile projects into the high-quality pieces of software we recognize them as. So no matter how much we get pushed towards more business-like models/applications/environments, we need to keep the quality of code in these projects as high as possible. And in the end - we ALL come out ahead.
Welcome to the world of the corporate slave. If you only live to serve your mortgage, consider selling you house.
The reality is that chances are you wont ever write something that influences technology on a global scale. Maybe you are doing amazing stuff, but then I have to ask why got got a first post on slashdot.
Your outlook is valid, and open sourcing probably won't work for you. But it did work for Linus and Alan Cox and Andrew Tigwell (sp?) and a lot of other people. Linus in particular is worth a hell of a lot more now that he would be if he'd elected never to release his hard work as open source.
These are the highest profile examples, and of course there are shades of grey down to the little guy who never even submitted a bug report because he regard his time as too valuable to donate.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
A lot of OSS contributors are in full-time jobs on commercial projects and just work on OSS in spare time.
Others are probably university students working on programming papers for degrees.
A few maybe have sponsorship from their companies to work within OSS projects.
If you're a programmer who's motivated by money then fine, what's the problem? Go work in the commercial sector, get paid and pay the mortgage.
But please don't judge everyone else by your own standards - the OSS community is blessed with a great number of altruistic people who program for fame or just because they enjoy doing it.
Deal with it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
People have been making comments like this on slashdot for as long as I can remember, and I have to wonder how many of them really get paid to write shrink-wrapped software. Statistically, it is a very small amount, with very many more writing in-house software. The thing is, for all of that large majority of software developers, open source software won't hurt you at all. The only people who will use your code are paying you up front to write it, so it's not like you need the copyright protection to allow you to make money selling it. The code you are writing is probably very tailored to the specific needs of your employer and so "the competition" really wouldn't be helped much by having access to it. In most cases your code might as well be open source, and wouldn't make any difference whatsoever to the business model which is feeding you and paying your mortgage. If anything, having the common bits - things you would otherwise license from a third party - open source will just make your life easier.
And if you really want to, you can make money directly writing open source software as well. It isn't easy, and you have to be something of an entrepreneur. But it certainly can be done, and from what I can see, the people doing it are living thier dreams, and are being compensated quite well for it. If you don't want that sort of risk, than shrink wrapped software isn't really the place to be anyway. Trying to make it big creating the next killer app is just as hard, if not harder, than creating a career around OSS programing. If you want to change the world, it will be a risky no matter how go about it - that's just life. If you want a stable job, those are going to be in IT and they will only gain from open source software.
So you write it, and it works, but you dont want to maintain it, and no one else in the company can, although they need it!
Release it as open source - the payback is that you get to use the program, well maintained and all, even after the developer has moved to higher places, be he engineer or student on day-release.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
"The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source" by Martin Fink provides a much better prospective on the subject.
So here's my problem with Open Source from a business prospective. The same issue applies to a variety of industries, not just software, but open source software is a particularly good example.
I've heard claims that the best developers are as much as a thousand times more productive than the worse developers. Open Source might actually prove that contention; all of open source seems to be the contribution of a relatively small group of highly productive developers.
I also believe it because I've seen for myself the difficulty of scaling up a successful development organization. It's usually a case of diminishing returns as you add more staff.
This applies to any industries where a small group of highly skilled super-contributors can add a tremendous amount of value to a company.
So what is the long-term value of a company if the reality is that there is a relatively small group of super-contributors that actually add most of the value? What happens to the value of the company if that group leaves?
This is not an argument for close source. Unless you're an uber-profitable company that can afford to use nuisance tactics to protect your market share, some group of super-contributors will clone your success eventually even without violating your IP rights. Particularly given the relatively low capital requirements of a software start-up.
I've heard concerns that Google will suffer when many of its long-term super-contributors find themselves suddenly able to cash out and retire. How many dot-coms seem to have evaporated overnight shortly after their super-contributors were able to cash out?
So given that indentured servitude is still illegal in most developed countries. How do companies build long-term value of the form that venture capitalists and long-term shareholders are willing to invest in?
Some people do programming projects because they enjoy them, not everyone requires payment. Just like some people participate in sports for enjoyment (though in this country that is declining), not everyone requires a 10 mil salary just to play sports.
I wish more people would think this way. Do what you love, and if you get paid for it, great! But those that are motivated by money alone usually reflect it in their work (i.e. Microsoft).