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Profiting from Open Source Software
Secret Santa writes "Alex Salkever has written an inspiring and Linux-friendly piece about Martin Roesch -- how he went from writing open-source software to building a multimillion dollar company. Excerpt: 'Sourcefire is one of a growing number of small software players that have built new businesses around open-source code. Their business models contain various mixes of proprietary and open-source software components and span the software gamut, from other security companies such as Tripwire to database outfits such as MySQL and desktop-computing offerings like Xandros. Most are still small, with revenues well under $50 million.'"
Is it just me, or does it seem like there isn't much new in that article? (i.e., it's probably just a publicity stunt?)
You can add spyware to your app and sell it to download.com in order to make money .... cough ...cough
http://saveie6.com/
This article defines "2. ????". Dare I read it?
Let's steal open-source profits (or lack thereof) by suing people!
...a company is trying a tried-and-true business technique, this time using F/OS software.
I run a small, and growing, side business in addition to my full time job. I target only Linux, and refuse all other jobs.
My first product worked so much better than the alternatives, and cost so much less to implement, that I have no problem making good money this way.
I am currently employed by a Sourcefire reseller and must say that I really enjoy working with the company. The philosophies of most of those employed by SF fall squarely in line with my philosophies, so that helps. They don't seem... evil. Plus - they have a cool office, that helps, right?
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
This must be wrong. Bill Gates told me there isn't any money in open source software. The guy probably stole the money from SCO.
But seriously, there's not much meat to the article. Basically, what it says is:
- This is the guy behind Snort and Sourceforge
- He started a company and now he's making money
- His clients appreciate the open-source nature of the product
- He has to please the open source community, who in turn support help him support and improve the software
- Profit!
As if none of us would have suspected that there is money in open source software. I don't see how the article is that relevant, seeing as most of us here have heard of Red Hat.*is run over by rotten tomatoes*
...I have no problem with open source software.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
I think that OSS is one of the best examples of an emerging trend -- profiting from other's labour. This ranges from OSS software to P2P applications, for instance, where people commit processing power to fuel the business of an individual. Being on the profiting side, I do believe this is a must and effort contibutors should keep on.
Even though he says he wants the open source community to feel they aren't being exploited, it's kinda hard to see how they aren't. He takes the software, slaps pretty wrapping on top, and sells it to make some cash.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
Make a package that everyone loves (starting as open source), then either get bought up by some company for your copious skills at making such a well-loved package, or making a proprietary add-on ... it's something I've failed doing time and time again. I'm glad to see that it does indeed work from time to time, else we might see fewer and fewer contributions to open source than we do.
Ummm... so is the other missing 9% of effort spent on acquiring other people's software technology and patenting it? ;P Whoo boy you really are out to lunch!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
It usually means you get open source software to do all the difficult stuff, then put closed-source stuff on top of it as a sort of value add, then sell the whole package. Pretty much every small software company operates this way these days, because it's far easier than trying to implement an entirely new system by yourself. I can't help but thinking it sort of violates the spirit of the open source community, while still adhering to the letter of the law as put out by the GPL. I guess this is where ESR's "leveraging open source to make money" philosophy clashes with Stallman's "free software for everybody" philosophy.
Nearly $100 million in value in three years of commerical venture.. I'd say Roesch is doing well. There are many opensource projects that have potential for venture capital deals, Snort was just one of the first few in line. Reminds me of the 1999 O`Reilly book "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution"
Beat the computer, program your life.
This is timely; I was just thinking about a similar thing this morning. Back in the 1980's and 90's, one could start up a software company which filled a niche, and take it to profitablility and even an IPO, without the usual VC BS. Borland comes to mind, but there are many other examples. All of this was before Software Patents really came along.
I haven't seen anyone doing this lately; at least, not outside of Open Sourced efforts. It seems like if you go the closed source, proprietary route these days, you'd better have a good deal of cash to fight the Patent Wars against the freeloading lawyers who come along. I can think of several examples. Yet no one seems to target the Open Source Companies and try to shut them down. So it seems like this is the only way the little guy can hope to win, without having to bend over for the VCs.
So, my question to the community is this: Are they any modern examples out there where an individual can successfully go it alone these days (all the way to IPO)? And if not (or if these are the exceptions), to what degree is this due to Software Patents?
My suspicion is that there aren't any, or at least many, modern examples these days of people being successful without the money to create one's own patent portfolio and defend themselves, legally. And if this is indeed the case, it's a superb example of how software patents have hurt the industry, rather than helped it.
I don't want to fiddle with config files buried /deep/in/your/ass. /etc and ~/.etc are good enough for me, thank you.
From the article: "Anyone could look at the software's underlying code, but reselling Snort was proscribed under the rules of its open-source license." This is, of course, not true. You can sell snort, as long as you provide the source code as well. Perhaps the author should take a look at the GPL, it's a really quick read. /me sighs
Some people have a way with words, and some people... erm... thingy
1) The article could just as easily be titled "Failing to Profit from Open Source Software".
2) What it seems to suggest is that hybrid models combining some open-source goods and a general use of the "open-source culture" with some proprietary products is the way to go, especially for a product where you can't expect to create a lucrative consulting business.
3) I suspect 2) works a lot better when you market to businesses than if you tried to sell to individual users who are allergic to paying for software and have a sense of "You owe it to The Community!" entitlement that corporate users lack.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
How can a company that makes a front-end for Snort be worth $100 million!
Anyways, there you have it folks. Free engineering from a large community. Thats what the buisnesspeople want out of open source. And the profit comes from making the interface.
But... is it possible for Interface design profit to sustain code design in the long run? Once open source interfaces catch up, will this niche remain?
Stallman's "free software for everybody" philosophy is utopian. While it'd be great if all software didn't cost a dime, it's neither dramatic nor heroic when you can't support your family by doing the thing you do best, write software.
Truth be told, services and support cannot always pay for the bills, especially when you're a small company with a relatively small number of customers. Sadly, people like Stallman would rather get caught up in the political melodrama of the idea that "commercial software is evil" than deal with reality.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
You must be new to our planet, everything causes suicide in japan.
I see most of the money being made off of Open Source in exactly the way Stallman envisioned - service. So far as I know Suse and Redhat are publicly available, what you pay for is the service you get when you buy it from them.
"brxref
Software industry is moving to subscription model anyway - once it completes the migration, open source and closed source will cost the same.
Some here mention RH "making money off OSS" - they are because others are debugging and developing for them (they do have their own contributors, true) but for less popular OSS apps if you have to develop and debug by yourself and you collect maintenance and support money only, how do you do research and development within the same budget? You can't innovate significantly on a shitty budget - you can only GPL-code what has been done by someone else.
Those who charge for maintenance and support alone can't by definition be much more cost-efficient from closed source competitors who do the same (perhaps the OSS guys wouldn't spend on ads and lawyers, but apart from that, I just don't see why would OSS be more cost effective - at least not to the 99% of corporate customers that aren't interested in the code itself).
And RH-like companies' ability to make money off OSS is proportional to the lock-in effect they can create with their distribution or application. If transparency and portability between different versions of Linux becomes 100%, then price becomes the only remaining differentiation which pushes the distros in deadly price competition.
Just imagine how easy it would be to ask RH for a discount if you could migrate your Oracle on RH to Oracle on Debian in an hour, or move from one OSS firewall to another by simply loading the exported settings into another tool...
1) Create some open source program
2) Give it a horribly obfuscated command line only interface
3) Create a "for-pay" Proprietary UI for PHB types
4) ???
Now where did that profit thingy go? Doh!
That depends on if you're a realist, or a moony pie-in-the-sky idealist. The fact is that having the open stuff wrapped in a proprietary interface is good for everyone. The company is motivated to fix bugs, the software gains more acceptance, and the community is motivated to make a new interface. Everyone wins.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
OK, Marty Roesch is a big-name guy, but I would like to hear about relatively lesser-known people starting a profitable business with OSS.
when they say "with revenues well under $50 million" does it mean very very low ~$5? My income is well under $5 billion too. Yeah well under ...
-a
>
>Anyways, there you have it folks. Free engineering from a large community. Thats what the buisnesspeople want out of open source. And the profit comes from making the interface.
Great developers seldom make great user interface designers. The skillsets are wildly different.
Great developers solve problems and scratch itches. They're not so great on making it usable, because they don't need usability to scratch that itch.
How many times have people whined about, say, how hard it is to set up video capture on Linux, only to be shot down with an arrogant or condescending "Hey, luser, I didn't write this for you, if you don't like it, code your own!"
"Well, fine, but I can't!", screams the UI dude. Because great UI designers aren't only "not great developers", many "aren't developers at all!". Some UI folks work on a project from genesis to release without ever seeing a line of code; they just talk to humans, mock up UI designs on storyboards in Photoshop (sorry GIMP fans :), take prototypes to humans, watch the humans use the prototypes, talk to the humans some more, and then come back with long lists of changes for the developers to make.
Does that sound like "fun" for anybody here? Let's face it - UI design, prototyping, and testing is a time-consuming job, and there are very few "fun" things about it (when compared to, say, coding on a problem you think is really interesting).
Corollary 1: Due to the nature of the work, most UI designers tend to want to get paid for it. ...and therefore, spend most of their time in commercial shops, where they don't have much contact with OSS developers, even if OSS developers wanted their contributions in the first place (which, as a browse of any Linux-PVR thread will reveal, they don't :)
Corollary 2:
> But... is it possible for Interface design profit to sustain code design in the long run? Once open source interfaces catch up, will this niche remain?
Bottom line: You cannot assume that open source interfaces will ever "catch up" with their commercial equivalents, because the gap between UI designer and "open source coder" is cultural, not merely technical.
OSS is a magnet for developers. The community holds no similar attraction for UI designers.
Stallman and the FSF don't have anything against commercial software. In fact, you can buy software from the FSF if you wish (though I suspect that you're the one that doesn't want to pay for software).
In case you're actually not a dishonest scumbag but simply ignorant, here are some clues for you:
Free Software != Gratis Software
Commercial != Proprietary
PS: Yes, it's very difficult to make money by just selling GPL'ed software, but that doesn't make it any less dishonest to claim that Stallman is against commercial software.
and it's a common misnomer in the OS world that people think that GPL provides them some protection from someone else coming along and selling it. Anyone can sell it for any price, as long as they provide the source. People need to learn how to read.
click me
"Most are still small, with revenues well under $50 million."
OK, so how much revenue is that? Is it good or bad? I make $50,000 a year, which is well under $50 million. Not exactly multimillion, is it?
I must say this stuff is just rediculous. We have been profiting on open source software for almost 5 years. Taking Linux PC's, configuring them for average people (internet, java, music, etc.) and selling it. People completely underestimate the frustration with Windows. I think to succeed in in the business of open source it depends more on a business sense and less on a demand by the market. Seems the people I know who use Linux are so afraid to let a Windows user get lost that they don't push it. Quite the contrary! Linux is coming just like Firefox has. Sell your product and stop worrying about the monopoly you're up against!
Jesse Jarzynka
Cyber Source
http://www.jessejoe.com/
Rowan: Gareth, quick trust exercise, ultimate fantasy?
Gareth Keenan: Hmm?
David Brent: We're just doing the ultimate fantasy, we're all doing it.
Gareth Keenan: Two lesbians probably, sisters. I'm just watching.
Rowan: OK. Erm. Tim? Do you have one?
Tim Canterbury: I'd never thought I'd say this, but can I hear more from Gareth please?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
It's not a dream anymore for some, it's a reality. Just like Matt Mullenweg was recently hired by C|Net because of his work on WordPress.
Source "fire" is a funny name for a company. It must be American.
Having done some work with SourceFire's products (I worked on a contract that accounted for a majority of their total deployed IDS boxes in existence at one point), I have mixed feelings about the company. Yeah, meeting Marty is cool, and the pink pig T-shirts are cute, and it's worth some amount of geek points to say that I've used their stuff. But the products they sell and the company itself suffer from the exact same problems that plague all other IT companies.
Even though the under-the-hood technology is k3wl and using Snort sigs is l33t, the admin and management tools are frankly not up to par compared to other offerings out there. I mean, it's not as bad as ManHunt, but it still takes waaay too many mouse clicks and unnecessary repetition by a human to get simple admin tasks done. I've seen gigs of sensor data lost to DB corruption (thankfully nothing critical) and have gone through the whole oh-crap we'll-get-that-critical-bug-fixed-next-release trip with them more than once. Support is a mixed bag, sometimes excellent, sometimes okay, sometimes really slow and annoying.
Bottom line is, companies are companies, there's nothing magical about open-source ones that make their products inherently better or more desirable for any other reason than to boost one's ego and to say that You Were There Back When. If I were recommending an IDS product line to a customer (which I probably wouldn't do anyway), I would encourage them to do some careful research before settling on SF.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
If you aren't part of the solution, there's good money to be made prolonging the problem.
http://www.despair.com/consulting.html
maybe if you stopped fixating on stuff /deep/in/your/ass your could also stop trying so hard to compensate for your tiny penis.
oh, and PowerPoint? guess it explains (what passes for) your grammer and spelling.
A bigger problem is the lack of tax-sheltered savings for small companies. You cannot "save-up" money very efficiently, because at the end the year the tax man takes so much of your savings.
So you are forced to go begging for any capital you might need to expand. And small companies are forced to try to spend all profits by the end of the year to avoid taxation.
What we really need is something like an IRA for small companies, to save money tax-deferred, until there is a big enough pile to make the investments required to grow to the next level.
New Web Cartoon: Jendini.com
I based my previous post on the fact that Stallman has been quoted as saying that selling software ought to be considered immoral.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
Go watch it and if you're curious, read on. If not...that's good too as I'm only going to ramble a bit;
What I take from it is that the developer should reject the impulse to build everything from scratch and build just the core tool kit for others to use. After all, you can't know what other people are thinking or what they want...even if they tell you.
Along those lines, I look for projects like Plone that build on the work that preceeded it (Python to Zope to Plone) and make it easy to design extentions (Plone Products) that interoperate with the lower levels. I avoid monolythic projects that don't seem to be flexable enough to incorporate other toolkits. This is not pre-made integration, though. Quite the opposite.
Having the lower levels available and modifiable (Python source of Zope and Plone) means that you're not locked into one and only one way of doing things if you need to make changes. The vendor or core developer(s) don't dictate what you do or how you do it. Yet, along the chain each part works well with the levels above and below it.
Additional link; Erik Von Hippel.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I am on a first name basis because I sat through a dog & pony show he did at SANS last year...
They work pretty hard on Snort. It works really well. I can make it work really, really well for my net. Thanks! It sounds like you resent that they incorporate users' patches and such. That's the point of Open Source. If you don't like it, fork it. It's cool that they can make this great tool available to us, do some value-added work and profit. They aren't shipping Snort as cripple ware, a teaser, or come-on. They are selling stuff that they pay developers to come up with. If the add-on is worth the money, people can buy it. If not, or the money isn't there, the world still has a free tool that kicks ass.
They aren't evil, they are heroes.
a good way to make money out of OSS that is... Shareholders and employees be damned as long as Darl the CEO has a fat paycheck
Most are still small, with revenues well under $50 million.
If only my small company was making well under $50 million...
See my Home Theater
A good summary of how to do this can be found in ESR's article "The Magic Cauldron".
In it he explains the difference between 'sale value' which is usually realized by selling proprietary bits, and 'use value'. Also why even though it is theoretically possible to derive 'sale value' from OSS, it is practically never done. The fact is that the real value in S/W (not just OSS) is in the 'use value', and that value is mostly derived from support, upgrades, training etc. etc. The software business is really a service business, not a manufacturing business, and OSS forces s/w mfg's to confront this fact.
And RH-like companies' ability to make money off OSS is proportional to the lock-in effect they can create with their distribution or application
"Lock-in" is exactly what customers should seek to avoid. Customers will continue to use your services if you prove to be skilled and conscientious at using the software in question. Our own experience is that we are more attractive to customers by the very fact that they feel they can up anchor and shift to alternative support / suppliers if necessary.
So where's the R&D? Well between 10 and 20% of our turnover goes into R&D, much of it supporting external OSS projects (Debian, Moodle, and a few of our own as well). I think we are in good company. About 50% of IBMs turnover comes from services. Same goes for about 80% of IT companies.
So, not only is the model sustainable due to highly motivated and skilled enthusiasts, it sustains the industry, which frankly was beginning to flag and stale under the proprietary model (hence the popularity of gouging schemes like software patents).
PS, the stupid in the subject line is not to be taken personnally, like Bill Clinton, I have it pinned above my desk, least I forget).
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
``Software industry is moving to subscription model anyway - once it completes the migration, open source and closed source will cost the same.''
Nope, OSS will be cheaper. There are various reasons for this.
First off, retail price being the same, OSS is cheaper. If you want new features, bugfixes, or other changes, you can do it yourself or go with the lowest bidder. With proprietary software, you would have to pay whatever the copyright holder charges you.
Secondly, OSS is prone to fewer risks than proprietary software. The "many eyes" argument is debatable, but there are other issues. OSS doesn't become unsupported when the company behind it folds, or EOLs the product.
Thirdly, OSS is cheaper to produce and maintain. You can reuse code developed by others (without paying royalties) and get free extensions and bugfixes from interested parties. This would all have to be paid from your own pockets if you were developing proprietary software.
OSS is thus cheaper to produce and more valuable to the customer. Whether or not you will actually be able to turn these advantages depends on the case. Generally, this will be more difficult for commodity software than for custom software.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
you think ur pretty fucking funny don't you? Asshole. You knoe exactly what I meant. I was talking about lunix's stupid and illogical filing system. Nothing is where it logically should be like in Windows. If I want to look for configuration data in Windows, I use regedit. One stop shopping for me thank you very much. then if I am forced to deal with an archaic text only config file, I know they are all in C:\Windows, C:\Windows\System or C:\Windows\System32. I know that all programs are in only one place as long as they are older than 1995 (which is when Microsoft finally ruled the desktop with the best OS ever). All programs are located in C:\Program Files. I don't have to go looking in /dev/stupid/place/for/programs like you lunix nutjobs. The only way you guys will ever get any market share is if you set things up like this: /lunix_os - where your OS goes /program files - Oh look! Microsoft rulez you again! /unix/is/stupid/configurations - One place for your config files. Only one!! But I buried it so you'd still feel at home ebcause your'e stupid /home directories - where your user's data gos /my_stupid_computer - where your disk drive icons go (Oh yeah and ditch all that mount stupidity. The computer should just connect to all your storage drives when it turns on or whenever they are inserted. But I forgot, your OS is too old and stupid to understand how to do things on it's own like Windows can! LOL!)
And learn to use real characters instead of that line noise crap like ~#!$. What the fuck is wrong with you people. Get some drive letters too. How are you supposed to know where anything is when you don't have drive letters? You asshats are fucking stupid. Lunix, the choise of the stupid looser generation.
The more I think about it, OSS programmers aren't pioneering a radically different way of doing business. When I get the oil changed in my car, I know what's being done, it's just that I don't want to mess with my car and possibly screw something up, so I take it to a professional I can trust. With open source software, you can check out what the program does, and then hire the professional to make it work in your system/situation.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
>> Who, in this day and age, wants to edit just text
um, ever hear of source code?
If someone writes a compiler that changes behaviour based on colours or fonts, I will personally bury my foot deep/in/their/ass.
Ur all trying to be smart asses but you have no idea how stupid your comments look next to mine. it's obvious that you people know nothing about computers because if you did you would realize that the only people working with text based source code these days are troglodyte retards. I write all of my programs in PowerPoint and Macromedia Flash. There are no better tools for the modern code warrior. Anyone playing with text today is a fool. It's all anout the GUIs baby! But no matter because your kind will be wiped out by the legal system once we get things whipped into shape and people realize that open sores are just a bunch of freeloaders who steal great ideas from people who work hard. Idiots.
I thought it said "Pulling Open Sores from /deep/in/my/ass/"! Haw haw haw!!! Lunix will take over the destop THIS YEAR!!! We promise this time!!!
According to the following news item in InformationWeek, 60% (35%-mix of commercial and open source+25% mix of commercial and open source with growing % of open source) of the IT departments use a mix of open source and commercial. With most of the companies out of these opting for supported open source software, there is no doubt that there is money to be made in the open source market. http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=51201599
You now have to personally bury your foot deeep into Chuck Moore's ass:
A dialect of Forth that uses color to replace punctuation:
http://www.colorforth.com/
If you don't like it, don't use GPL code. Contact the author(s) and pay them for a different license, the author can do this but you may not. Being the inovator has its perks after all. But don't link to GPL code in your closed-soruce project. You are viloating the letter and spirit of GPL.
This is exactly why the BSD folks don't like the GPL. They want the users to be free to do what they want to with the source. All they ask is that you don't plagerize their code. If you can live with someone else's name in your source code, then this may be the license for you. You always have choices, but violating the license should not be the one you choose.
Think global, act loco
The funny part is that revenue does NOT equal profit. I'd rather be CEO of a $10 million profitable company than the CEO of $10 billion non-profitable company. Serously, companies need to start thinking smaller rather than larger.
Selling "proprietary" closed source software...
I agree with him. If I purchased a machine to form part of my business, I'd expect to be able to service it myself. I'd almost certainly take a out support contract if one was available at an acceptable price.
But have my business curl up and die because the supplier of one of my tools decides that they'd rather I gave them another tranche of money?
European law enshrines the right to reverse engineer software to correct faults and interface extensions, precisely because of abuses of this nature.
Too right its morally reprehensable.
Only the software industry imagines that its acceptable to sell a product that's a welded shut box that the user is completely disempowered from repairing or servicing or fixing its design deficencies, that can be obsoleted at the supplier's whim.
Watch that change as companies get what is on offer in open source.
its not like an ipod mini (even maybe the regular one) had any size problems :P
but i'll be damned about that $99 price.
I am pleased for Mr. Roesch. But what if someone else sees this article and thinks, "Hey, I can do this too." Goes and starts up a company that also sells Snort and a different GUI. Would that be ethical.
Disclaimer: I am not said person. I don't do development; I don't even program. That's right, I am not even much of a nerd. Lynch me if you will. :P
But seriously, what if someone did do a copycat move like that. Or say a big security company like Norton decides to get in the game. I believe that would be totally legal. But would that be ethical?
Does that sound like "fun" for anybody here? Let's face it - UI design, prototyping, and testing is a time-consuming job, and there are very few "fun" things about it...
...and therefore, spend most of their time in commercial shops, where they don't have much contact with OSS developers, even if OSS developers wanted their contributions in the first place (which, as a browse of any Linux-PVR thread will reveal, they don't :)
Spoken like a true developer!
I guess I'm a UI designer at heart. Your description of UI design sounds much more fun than "stare at source code for 8 hours a day".
Corollary 1: Due to the nature of the work, most UI designers tend to want to get paid for it.
Well, yeah, in the same way that programmers tend to want to get paid for programming. (We don't think it's a shit job. If we did, we wouldn't do it.)
Corollary 2:
Here you've identified the real problem. It's not that there aren't any UI designers who want to help with Linux: it's that we get flamed out of existence when we suggest changes. It's not about money; it's about being able to make any difference at all.
Bottom line: You cannot assume that open source interfaces will ever "catch up" with their commercial equivalents, because the gap between UI designer and "open source coder" is cultural, not merely technical.
It is. But the culture of these communities do change. It's gotten better since I started paying attention, and by all accounts, it appears to be getting better all the time in this respect.
Is it just me, or does this article lack on the business plan side?
I've been looking for a way to start an open source project that can pay my rent for years. Still haven't found a way short of witting something everyone needs that doesn't yet exist and then sell it with the source being open. I'd love to rewrite the gimp's ui code to make it usable, if I knew I was going to be able to at least pay for a sixer of beer because of it.
How does a poor starving geek turn his oss hobby into a rent paying business? That's what I like to know. We aren't all in high school you know. Some of use do live outside our mother's basement...
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
Having done a couple projects on the side now, getting paid either by the hr or fixed price hasn't worked out to be that worth it. There's a very real limit to how much you can work after the Real Job while remaining sane.
I'm all for open source, but expecting to profit from software you release under an open license will lead to disappointment.
Personally, I think I'm going to go the crippleware route. And sell the source to commercial users so I never have to spend my nights/wknds supporting it again.
Can someone explain to me why this is flamebait? It seems like an honest enough opinion, eloquently expressed...
-a
> 1. Open Orifice.org (hello? Ha it even reached 1.0 yet?)
Eh, It's OpenOffice.org (OpenOrifice, incidentally, is what's used to root your weak Windows security -- don't look at me that way, you mentioned it, bub. Oh, and "great" is spelled G-R-E-A-T, by the way. See, you used "grate" as in "to grate on one's sensibilities" -- I know, your Microsoft Word spell-checker didn't catch it, so it must be correct, right?). OpenOffice, yes. It's at version 1.1.3 last I checked, completely useful, and proceeding to outstrip the capabilities of Microsoft's Office Suite at 0% the price.
> 2. Mozilla (No one even knows what this is. Yeah real bright. Base your project on dead code from a dead company)
Well, actually, Mozilla and Firefox have been in the news quite a bit lately (usually with headlines like "Firefox recommended over IE for security and ease-of-use" and "Will Firefox kill IE?"), so I daresay that there are quite a number of people who know what it is, and more growing daily. Of course, the code isn't dead, it's being updated and improved continuously. Dead code is code that hasn't been improved or updated in a while -- like Internet Explorer's code. It's already (has been for a while now) a better browser than IE, by the way. You should try it. There's even a Windows version for babies.
> 3. vim or emacs (Who, in this day and ag, wants to edit just text? Where are the fonts and the colors? I use VIM (I'm a programmer, like many others who still use text editors) on a daily basis, and love the colorful syntax highlighting (fave color-scheme is "Elflord") and the beautiful fonts I can use in X.org!
As for Emacs... *heh*. (The poor children in Uganda compelled me to say that.) ;-)
> We don't need no stinkin text editors, we want PowerPOint)
Eh, well many programmers such as myself detest pointy-headed apps like PowerPoint, preferring to spend our time working instead of waving our hands in front of bar-charts, but if you really like that stuff, there's an absolutely great presentation application in the previously mentioned OpenOffice.org suite (now at version 1.1.3, just in case you forgot) called "Impress". "Impress" is a wonderful word, though you likely have never heard it used in your presence.
> That's just a few, the list of all the failed open sores crap goes on and on.
Which ones were the failed projects? I must have missed that part, but then I'm obviously not as perceptive as you are... The only open sore that was apparent to me in your post was the one on the top of your head through which your brain leaked out.
Seems to me that the value-added closed-source stuff on top is often the user interface. Sure, it may not do much computational heavy lifting, but if it were easy to develop good interfaces, you would see more good user interfaces on Open Source software. To relate it to the story, I use Snort, and sorting through the alerts on a busy network can be time-consuming, even with the Open Source add-on tools you can use. If I were protecting an important network, a proprietary data correlation system and pretty front-end for Snort would be worth considering against the other commercial offerings in the application space.
If the GUI is a seperate application that calls the original via a shell or system() function, then you can keep your gui closed source. If, however, you edit the original code and add a GUI to it, you need to open the source under GPL.
click me
Eh, It's OpenOffice.org (OpenOrifice, incidentally, is what's used to root your weak Windows security -- don't look at me that way, you mentioned it, bub. Oh, and "great" is spelled G-R-E-A-T, by the way. See, you used "grate" as in "to grate on one's sensibilities" -- I know, your Microsoft Word spell-checker didn't catch it, so it must be correct, right?). OpenOffice, yes. It's at version 1.1.3 last I checked, completely useful, and proceeding to outstrip the capabilities of Microsoft's Office Suite at 0% the price.
If u want a battle of witz, then uve picked the wrong guy pal. Watch as I cut u down in an instant. FACT 1: OpenOrifice is at version 0.7 at last check. Don't believe me? Go here: http://www.openorifice.com/ FACT 2: Great or grate both mean the same exact thing. They are two alternate spellings. If that weren't true, then why is the band called "The Grateful Dead"? Hmm???? FACT 3: None of those old school appz like BackOrifice work on Microsoft's latest and gratest. So u are wrong again there buddy, get used to being called on how wrong u r!!
Well, actually, Mozilla and Firefox have been in the news quite a bit lately (usually with headlines like "Firefox recommended over IE for security and ease-of-use" and "Will Firefox kill IE?"), so I daresay that there are quite a number of people who know what it is, and more growing daily. Of course, the code isn't dead, it's being updated and improved continuously. Dead code is code that hasn't been improved or updated in a while -- like Internet Explorer's code. It's already (has been for a while now) a better browser than IE, by the way. You should try it. There's even a Windows version for babies.
The only thing I've read that is of note (not from the open sores controlled media) is that Mozilla and Firefox are full of security holes. IE is 100% safe and secure if u configure it properly. Proof that u r an idiot is that u don't knoe that. Not to mention that Firefox is riddled with spyware from the open sores camp. They want to spy on ur machines and see how much pirated proprietary software u have and then report u to the BSA so that they can argue that their crap products are better which is bullshit! Don't trust open sores, they are all lying to u and putting a big spyware network in place on all Linux machines and Windows machines that use open sores programs!!
I use VIM (I'm a programmer, like many others who still use text editors) on a daily basis, and love the colorful syntax highlighting (fave color-scheme is "Elflord") and the beautiful fonts I can use in X.org! As for Emacs... *heh*. (The poor children in Uganda compelled me to say that.) ;-)
I don't even knoe what the fuck u just said. That's the problem with all you open sores Lunix users, you don't speak english. Intead u talk about all this stuff that DOESN'T MATTER. Elflord? Bitch please! What the fuck is that shiznitz? I'll bet u haven't done one productive thing in ur career. I am the owner of a fortune 1000 company that does database design. We pay attention to what the users want. We design the user interface first to make sure it's beautiful and easy to use. We used to have coders on our staff who wrote the backend in C and Perl, but it turned out that they didn't do much and cost too much. So now we outsource all our backend worthless crap to cheap consultants. ALl that backend shit doesn't matter because the users never see it. What matters is a beautiful interface done in Photoshop, Powerpoint or Flash. The rest of the stuff is crap factory work that I don't care about. C and Perl coders are just stupid assholes who don't know any better.
h, well many programmers such as myself detest pointy-headed apps like PowerPoint, preferring to spend our time working instead of waving our hands in front of bar-charts, but if you really like that stuff, there's an absolutely great presentation application in the previously mentioned OpenOffice.org suite (now at vers
Making very big money with very little cost and effort is unethical. Microsoft has done that, and other lesser evils, oops, I mean companies, are following suit.
Do you really think a bigger evil would mind doing less evil things because the less evil things are "unethical"? Ha!
If a small, nice guy wants to survive among the big monsters, he must be smarter, instead of going to the weigh room everyday to get more muscle. If he is smarter, he will win small wars, and he will survive. The big monsters cannot watch every little corner, and confront every side. If they do, they will die.
Besides, programming is not easy, neither is designing a good user interface. People who are more creative can do better in these areas than people who are only smart in manipulating money and mindless people's mindless minds.
This is what I love about the 'net. Endless entertainment. I'm really sad I can't respond to all of your brilliant points, lacking the time to do so, but some of these are too golden to pass on:
> "If u want a battle of witz, then uve picked the wrong guy pal."
No, you see, if I wanted a battle of wits, I'd pick on someone who actually had some to spare.
> "FACT 2: Great or grate both mean the same exact thing."
[*sigh*] OK, let me help you: http://www.m-w.com/
Since you seem to like facts, here's one: it might not be a bad idea for you to take a peek in a dictionary once in a while.
> "IE is 100% safe and secure if u configure it properly. Proof that u r an idiot is that u don't knoe that."
Believe it, do you? Hmmmm. ;)
> "Not to mention that Firefox is riddled with spyware"
Show me the lines of code in Firefox where this spyware exists, then? The great thing about open-source software is you can actually see for yourself what the software does, unlike, say, IE.
> "I don't even knoe what the fuck u just said. That's the problem with all you open sores Lunix users, you don't speak english.
Hehe, obviously. ;)
> I am the owner of a fortune 1000 company that does database design. We pay attention to what the users want. We design the user interface first to make sure it's beautiful and easy to use. We used to have coders on our staff who wrote the backend in C and Perl, but it turned out that they didn't do much and cost too much. So now we outsource all our backend worthless crap to cheap consultants. ALl that backend shit doesn't matter because the users never see it. What matters is a beautiful interface done in Photoshop, Powerpoint or Flash. The rest of the stuff is crap factory work that I don't care about. C and Perl coders are just stupid assholes who don't know any better."
Eh, Photoshop, Powerpoint, and Flash (and Windows, and anything else you misuse on your computer) were written by those "stupid assholes" you mention. In fact, it seems like your entire way of living was created by them.
> "Whose got the pointy head here? The reasonable and user-friendly executive software architect like me, or the geeky coder who can't speak english like u? ... I can't wait until the president makes open sores illegal. U communists have been making it hard for businesses to compete because u don't follow the rules. Ur day is coming though. Mark my words jerkwads, u folks are the next people to go to places like Abu Grahib in Cuba. I will laugh with glee when the videos and photos of u pepoel being sodomized by military women with strap-ons come out. U all hate America, but ur day is coming. The lord god will make certain of that when Bush brings judgement day."
"Reasonable"... you know, that's exactly the word I was thinking of when I read this! If I wanted to write satire, I couldn't do better than this. Bravo!
How does open-source relate to money? I don't understand why Thawte was worth so much to Verisign, that they bought it for so much money .. seeing that Mr Shuttleworth developed digital certificates and encryption services using the open-source model .. surely if the software was freely available why would Verisign not just use the software and not reward Thawte/Shuttleworth at all?
i ent=fire fox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=%24575+ million+shuttleworth+thawte+verisign&btnG=Sear chh w ww.markshuttleworth.com/c e.com/D )/AROR-4 F8NV5?OpenDocument
I've been watching the "Go Opensource" Tv programme in South Africa, but the explanation He (Shuttleworth) gives leaves me mystified. I don't understand the business logic at all.
--Mark Shuttleworth is now a prominent promoter of open-source and linux, also a philanthropic supporter of education,maths and science, esp in South Africa. He was also the first African in space, and major mover behind the newish Ubuntu Linux distro.
If u're reading this, great stuff, Mark! especially for the school computer labs!
some links:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&cl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttlewort
http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/
http://
http://www.africaninspa
http://m1.mny.co.za/422567C900402532/(UNI