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Open Source Licensing - Cuts Both Ways?
shortscruffydave writes "The Register is running a piece Open source databases - a sword that cuts both ways? which mentions one of the potential pitfalls of open source databases: "Open source is just another licensing model: the more accepted it becomes, the more it is adopted at a strategic level, the more it plays back into the hands of the traditional behemoths that dominate the industry". " I couldn't disagree more with the author of this piece, since I think the success of Postgres & MySQL are already contra-proof positive, but the piece is still an interesting read.
It's still a good idea as it allows third parties to write plugins and conduits more easily for it.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The arguments given in the article are inadequate IMHO, they are just as and mostly more applicable to closed source software.
The key argument for open source vs closed source is: The source is available, you can support/develop it by your own or hire in support/development/warranty, now try that with closed source.
All disadvantages for open source are at least applicable for closed source, closed source has no real advantage on open source.
Licensing is what keeps those behemoths from getting their hands on these
applications. It is interesting that the writer didn't tell us what option
he'd prefer - a closed license or no license at all. MySQL is offering a
choice of a commercial license or open-source. Money is important for the
survival of the company that markets open-source products but open-source
licenses don't restrict companies from charging for their product and MySQL
is a good example for how to deal with the issue.
Paragraph 1: Intro
Paragraph 2: Planning considerations
Paragraph 3: Existing players
Paragraph 4: Business considerations
Paragraph 5: Unsupported assertions
Paragraph 6: Unsupported assertions
Who founded Bloor Research? Who funds them? Who owns stock in them? Who are the members of their executive board and what are their social connections?
This is a really bad piece.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
The article is right, which ever piece of software, you are locked into using the program the way the author designed, you are locked into the upgrade paths the author leads you, you are locked into any future costs the author charges.
Yes you can change the platform you are based on, but this typically costs more money than it is worth.
Yes you could modify the source, but this will cost more money than it is worth in R&D.
I.E., yes you are locked in, in the same way that the traditional behemoths that dominate the industry haved succesfully negotiated.
I may have misread TFA, but the author appears to have missed the strategic value that is to be gained from investing staff and company hours into F/OSS projects for internal use.
The article seems to view the present hobbyist-driven projects as solutions procured in the same way that a company buys in commercial programming. The differences in modus operandi are so great that this cannot be the case. The trick is to find where the middle ground lies in order to profit.
Why not just say "not proof"?
;)
Or did the real meaning escape me, since that doesn't seem to be valid in just about any language?
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
"Dude, you're giving IBM free shit... they're not going to return the favor."
Except they have? Article looks like flamebait/trolling to me, or else just ignorance.
rooooar
For MySQL you could be right, but Postgres? It's not backed by a commercial group as is MySQL, and while it can be seen in a LOT of commercial (enterprise) situations, it's still a tiney speck compared to it's commercial backed friend MySQL (even though it is much more of a "real" db).
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The benefit of open source is that if the original corporation writing the code stops supporting it there may be a community behind the software that will continue to support it as you transition. Also, another company may spring up with the same codebase.
--Keith
Despite reading a lot of material online, I still don't understand the MySQL commercial license. Can someone explain to me:
1) If I use it within my company for internal database, do I need to pay for a commercial license?
2) If I write & sell software (say PHP/MySQL database application), do I need for a MySQL license even though I don't distribute MySQL itself?
the more it is adopted at a strategic level, the more it plays back into the hands of the traditional behemoths that dominate the industry
WHAT?!?!? You mean the "behemoths" can use open source too? How could this happen??!?! NO NO NO NO!!!!!
[Sarcasm off]Well what do you expect. Don't forget that opensource software != free software. of course the big guys will start using opensource too, now that they've started to see that light. What did anyone expect? Did you want to FSF to have a monopoly on opensource forever? I think not. I think the result of "big behemoths" switching to open source will be more secure software being delivered to end users. That's the whole point of OSS!
I for one welcome our opensource behemoth overlords.
A more full treatment of the TFA topic can be found in Coase's Penguin.
From the abstract:
My personal spin is that, just as the printing press broke down the medieval market on literacy, so the GPL will increasingly educate the masses.
Props to RMS, the modern Gutenberg.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I'll boil down the entire article to one sentance: "If you're implementing any type of 'strategic' software system, make certain you make sound business decisions when you choose the software."
Know what you're buying. Know who you're buying it from. Consider the entire lifecycle of the software solutions you're building. Oh, and there was a throwaway blurb about open source.
Isn't that typically called a two-edged sword, as opposed to a sword that cuts both ways?
If this qualifies as an "interesting read", I weep for the future of humanity. You know it's bad when the Slashdot summary is just as informative as the actual article.
The central point seems to be that a company looking for an OSS product which is supported by a large company, will end up going with a large company's OSS product.
Oh, wow. Insightful +1
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
I'm sure some of you may know, but many of you may be unaware that large enterprises need to be really choosy in the database solution that they use. Its not simply a matter of installing the cheapest DB. When you consider the sizable investment made by an IT department on the hardware and operating system platform, it really makes sense to invest wisely in the product that will actually retain all your company's data.
With that said, given the choice between installing a poorly supported, poorly documented open source database, or something like Microsoft SQL Server, its obvious which solution will let you keep your cushy IT position. Furthermore, as good as I have to admit MySQL is, it still does not have support for such common things as triggers, views or even basic stored procedures never mind data warehousing.
For these open source products to be taken seriously, the same sort of fundamental support and functionality will need to prevail as the costs of not having these far outweigh the monetary costs of the common retail solution.
Wow what a load. The punch line is that if you are planning enterprise scale projects you need to choose solutions that will last long enough to get a good ROI. Jimmy-joe-bob's high school DB project is a non-starter. JamesJosephRobert's small proprietary DB is also a non-starter. TFA misses the point: all things being equal you get more security if you have the source. The crux of the matter is that the definition of "equal" depends on your context.
No doubt that there are valid reasons for a commercial database vendor. But that guy makes about as much sense as the drooling drunk at 2am in front of the seedy night club in the bad part of town when it comes to "strategic decisions".
Strategic decisions by definition are dangerous. When you decided on PeopleSoft 10 years ago this looked strategically sound. Until the good burgers from Oracle came along and bought them out in order to squash a competitor. By no fault of your own you are fucking fucked when you're a PeopleSoft customer.
Au contraire I argue that especially in the db market having source access to your database software is about as strategically valuable as it comes.
Sorry mate, but I have seen to many examples of customers being fucked over by vendors of strategic software and you can go and tell the PR department of { Oracle | Microsoft | IBM } that they are just dead wrong and for an "analyst" it's bad form to just reprint their spew.
Not that I accuse you of doing that, but your "analysis" leaves a strong stench of not being quite independant.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
If your using a closed source database and the company that owns it goes down the pan you're just stuffed.
If its open, at least you have a chance to adapt and tinker to fix it.
Though in either case you'd probablly just go with a different provider.
This article is simply rubbish.
The author claims that there are too many databases available.
Too many?
I could probably list more engines just from the top of my head that are sold by the "behemoths", as he puts it. Especially since the author also includes niche products.
And why would this argument apply specifically to open source applications?
Shouldn't you take the same care when implementing a "strategic" word processor? Would you use a spread sheet from an unknown supplier that you don't kow will be around in two years?
I would say that RedHat is a perfect example of an open source initiative that is used as "strategic choice" and why would this business model not work with databases?
Rubbish, I tell you.
The article is saying that there is no money in open source, so the developers could walk away at any time and leave you stranded with an unsupported product.
For those who didn't know redhat just posted record profits, and the share price just jumped about 12%.
There is certainly money being made in open-source. The difference is: open-source will not die without money.
First off, open-source projects don't need to make money. Secondly, if users are dependent on them, they don't go away.
The "problem" that Bloor describes is either a phantom or self-correcting, whichever way you choose to look at it.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"If we take the open source database market as an example, we have MySQL, PostgreSQL (both generically and from Pervasive), Ingres, Firebird, Max DB, Cloudscape, the putative Sun DB (possibly), HSQLDB and a bunch of others."
HSQLDB adn Cloudscape are nice products. However, if you believe PostgreSQL and Cloudscape/HSQLDB are in the same leage, you do not know much about RDBMS.
"Now, some of these are niche products but, even so, there are too many of them."
The same can be said about commercial sector as well. Sybase, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Ingress, Borlad(?)... others, there just too many of them!
Market will decide who survives.
Damn straight - Open source software can be and should be strategic. When an enterprize selects strategic software they need to know that it will be around (and supported) for the long-haul. Millions of dollars could be riding on the issue.
So, in a large sense, I agree with the author and will even say that in some cases, there is justifiable concern for an enterprize to avoid open software solutions.
Having said all that, I'm far from opposing open source software in the enterprize, quite to opposite in fact. Products like MySQL and Apache prove that there is a lot of room and potential in big business for OSS.
Anyone -- including big business needs to do a sort of risk evaluation before settling on anything that has the ability to affect the bottom line. For a public company it is more than business sense, it is the law. They need to know that the people they bring in on a project can do what they say they can do and just as importantly, that they will be around tomorrow to fix anything that is broken or needs changing.
For this reason, the enterprize level open source market will probably grow through pretty conventional methods. Either there will be in-house expertiese or they will hire consulting firms with the skill, knowlege, and expertise to deliver. Those firms will in many cases be old, established, familiar names that recognize the need and make the right moves to get in the market.
This isn't bad at all. It brings OSS legitamacy.
This is the same view of Fortune 500 Enterprise that Toronto has of its role within Canada. Whether the other nine provinces have ceased to exist depends on who you ask.
Nice work!
That means that at some point in the future the market will consolidate and a number of these products will disappear. This may not matter too much if the products are not that important to you, but it certainly does if they are strategic.
You have to consider the above no matter what product you choose whether its opensource or not. If I have 5 products i'm evaluating and one of the companies is on very shakey ground and may not surivive chances are i'm not going to consider it unless it offers something critical that I need that the other products don't.
I agree on one point tho which he eludes to at the end. More and more companies will offer freely licensable products and make their money off of support. Which in my opinion is the way it should be...
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Bravo, my pet - you shall be champion!
"Who founded Bloor Research? Who funds them? Who owns stock in them? Who are the members of their executive board and what are their social connections?"
/. , they used to care about that stuff , but not anymore.
SHHH , this is
April Fools Day was Friday!
Sorry but until the author of the article actually does something with FOSS in the corperate world and knows how it really works he's simply another idiot spewing worthless drivel on the street corner at cars passing by.
we hafe a few ATL tape library units here at the datacenter. upgrading PAST windows NT4 means we have to pull those units and throw them away. ATL refuses to release drivers for them for 2K or 2K3 and suggest "buy our new product".
great, over $180,000.00US investment in WORKING SDLT robotic tape libraries because the company wants to drive revinue by forcing new hardware purchases. yet Linux and a couple of other FOSS packages saved that and they are now working along happily in our datacenter.
So all that development we did to support the tape library robitic units was a waste? Programmer time is dirt fricking cheap right now compared to enterprise level hardware costs. we built the platform on FOSS parts, those were free to us, so why do we needto be greedy assholes and not give out what we coded that was BUILT UPON the work already done by others?
I reccomend that everyone ignore the article as a know nothing screaming about things he read in a trade magazine.... because it is missing huge pieces of the puzzle that many many of us use every single day to save money and INCREASE revinue of the company.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The first premise stated is that there are too many (names just over a half-dozen) competing open-source databases, and that is too many to survive.
Last I looked, producing a database product cost a lot less than producing a new car - that doesn't stop manufacturers from producing hundreds of different cars a year.
Methinks the author of the article better look out for Simon (the BOfH) and his cattle prod.
If you're a business and you a DB that will be strategic to your success you will need support for it so if you're going to us an open source DB go with a DB supported by a large existing player.
But putting aside that snippy, meaningless sales argument for a moment, we usually didn't care whether the client chose Open Source or Closed Source database tech (as long as we had someone on staff familiar with it). Our thought was that if we weren't paying for the tools we didn't care which system was chosen. We started to care after a custom van shop in Arizona wanted to use an all Microsoft platform (out of fear we'd abandon them and they wouldn't know what to do with this open source stuff). Being a startup though, they ran themselves in the ground and naturally our fees weren't paid due to the heavy fees they owed to Microsoft. After that, we'd push Open Source a little more if there was any sort of financial question about the company.
But the fact that we weren't a huge company did scare many clients. They were much more comfortable knowing that their cousin could fix something in Microsoft Access if we disappeared from the face of the earth, but they wouldn't have any idea what to do with a PostgreSQL data repository. This usually meant that either we'd use their preferred closed source tools or we'd create some extra tools for them for free to dump the repository to csv and tab separated formats.
Inevitably someone would ask me, personally, which dbms I thought was a better investment. I always loathed that question (since I was a programmer and not a salesman). But it usually came down to which programming environment I preferred and which environment I thought the salesperson had recommended. But looking back on it, if you were hiring our team to design the database that's where most of your expense would be. If you wanted to pay additional money to Microsoft for the database that was fine, but it wasn't going to reduce our costs any.
I recently chaired a panel discussion on enterprise open-source, attended by representatives from several dozen Fortune 500 companies, and we turned the discussion back on them at one point. Turns out that:
1) all had made a "commitment" to open-source products;
2) almost none had done anything strategic up to that point (they all had a little Linux and a little Apache/MySQL floating around here and there, of course)
3) NONE were interested in the cost-reductions available with F/OSS
4) ALL were interested in the advanced technology which they felt was probably more available from F/OSS then from incumbent vendors
5) ALL were holding back waiting for better support options.
There was a lot of discussion about the latter point, including some really fascinating suggestions that belong in another discussion. But for here and now, the key thing is that you don't necessarily look for support for OSS DBMSs from the developers. Something like the Pervasive model is interesting, as long as they continue to maintain close ties with the developer communities. But OSS support is a service business, with linear cost-scaling characteristics, so we will need a lot of vendors to pitch in. I think it's a nascent large opportunity.
It is interesting that the writer didn't tell us what option he'd prefer
Well that's no surprise, given that the article said nothing of any substance whatsoever.
In effect what we have here is a manager of some sort seeking justification for his role in applying "strategy management" to open source. I bet the managers around him think that he's really cool and clued up on all this.
In reality, he just doesn't understand that the value of FOSS doesn't come from the financial muscle and longevity of its corporate backers at all. His entire position is 100% ill-founded, and he has no clue whatsoever about the power that FOSS can give his company. "Just another licensing model" says it all, really.
More like just another PHB or management type, totally out of his depth but still eager for control.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Read this for what it is: the wishful thinking of a soon-to-be unemployed industry pundit. He wishes that CA and IBM would take over the open source database market, because they have the marketing dollars to feed companies like his (the Bloor Group - an IT consulting firm).
Unfortunately for him, the new open source companies don't need to be behemoths, because they don't require the huge sales and marketing overhead of traditional companies. MySQL and PostgreSQL don't need to pay consultants and marketeers to shill their products for two reasons: they already have killer word-of-mouth, and anyone can try their product for free and verify any performance claims firsthand.
By taking multi-million dollar licensing deals away from the database market, open source databases will take the food from the mouths of parasites like this guy. Just ignore his last gasps.
Not all of the companies involved will be able to make enough money out of these products to stay in business. That means that at some point in the future the market will consolidate and a number of these products will disappear.
Complete bullshit. The companies will disappear, but the product will live on in sourceforge (or where ever), exactly oppositite of what this inexperienced author says. Every customer of the product will have a copy of the source, which at least allows them the option of continuing development and support internally. This simply cannot be said for closed, commericial software.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
My take is that the author is really talking about consolidation of many major open source projects into a few and that this consolidation is going to be driven by large corporations. I see some reason in this. Many OS projects have conflict at some level. You can't gracefully merge postgres and MySQL or Gnome and KDE. At some point, business is collectively going with a few products. Consolidation has happened with Apache and the GNU/Linux combo, for example, with a little help from big biz. There are other OS projects out there, but they don't have the user share.
I guess the author is saying that big corporations will influence profoundly what projects make it or don't. So if you're involved in the design of an OS project, he probably would recommend that you should consider ways to make the product more appealing to big businesses so that they support your product instead of a rival. The boost might make the difference between whether your project survives or not.
I think though that OS projects that were successful in the past will be supported by big business as well. If you have a project that fills a need and is pretty solid, using the program doesn't create any parasitic dependencies, and if your project community is well organized, harmonious, and active, then it's probably going to get support from business sooner or later.
If your business has the source, then as a last resort you could hire your own programmers to maintain the source for you in-house. Or you could contract another company to do it for you.
With closed-source, you're just fscked because there's no easy way for you to modify the app. Once the vendor abandons it, you are more or less hosed.
Open source guarantees you the freedoms you need to get maintenance from someone else when the vendor abandons it.
Many large companies prohibit open source software as the basis for any product developed for the simple reason that the company cannot fully determine if all parts of the open source software is free of contamination with copyright restricted code. (and thus possible copyright legal problems in the future).
We don't actually mind if some conservative opinion leaders fail to see the power of open source databases.
Our intent is to demonstrate to the world (and ourselves) that open source can indeed produce databases that become strategic for enterprise customers. We are also here to show that open source can produce profitable, healthy businesses. It's a crusade, and there will always be sceptics when you do something new.
Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB
If you looked at this list & expected to see it end:
Paragraph 7: ???
Paragraph 8: Profit!
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
No shit, man. No shit.
Yeah, MS documentation sucks ass. OTOH, there are newsgroups where *polite* MS MVP's will help you out with your MS software issues, whereas in OSS there's a lot of "You couldn't figure that out? You stupid! We mock you now! Ha ha ha ha!"
Of course you disagree. You're a wingman in one of the most spectacular business model failures of open source. What, were you going to get up on your own bloody site and scream from the rooftops that the OS model of software licensing has flaws that could be exploited by people who made it big by exploiting flaws in systems?
Of course, I don't see why you don't just do it. With a 2.38% share drop being less in cash than it costs to buy a piece of Bazooka Joe, it doesn't look like VA Software could really suffer too much more regardless of what you do.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Companies are trying to commoditize IT services and technologies all of the time. Non-IT companies have no desire to maintain the skills necessary to dive into the source of any open source product. They want to know that if they buy a product and invest their time in it that they won't have to replace it in a couple years. It's hard (although not impossible) to be confident of that given the business models adopted by open source companies. Therefore you err on the side of a proven business model.
I challenge that over 95% of the mid to large size companies that use open source don't even look at the code or attempt to build or change it.
The fact that the source is open for the vast majority of companies is irrelevant.
"Not all of the companies involved will be able to make enough money out of these products to stay in business."
,even if the 'company' ceases to exist, they doesnt mean the program will cease to exist, and in fact if there is a sufficient userbase it is likely that someone else (perhaps even one of the organizations using it) will pick up the ball on bugfixes/security, and maybe even enhancement - you can pretty much bet that if a company producing a proprietary licensed app goes under, no one is likely to pick that up.
They assume that every F/OSS database is a 'company' with the goal of 'making money' - which while I wont go so far as to say that any of them specifically arent (most of them I've never even heard of), I will say that it isnt inherent that they arent - being a company with a goal of making money isnt a prerequisite for writing a database engine.
I'll even throw in that even if the system they choose is a 'company' 'product', as long as it is F/OSS
A strategic resource implies a finite quantity - like oil. Proprietary software might be something like a strategic resource in that you must pay money to license it but open source certainly is not.
Furthermore, the author assumes that all open source is developed by companies and like proprietary software, if the company folds, so does the open source software. But the open source software could obviously be picked up by some other company. Or dare I say... not picked up by one company but a collection of companies and individuals maintaining the project for themselves and not to sell services.
The only strategic decision that needs to be made is to choose a project that has a sufficient number of users and developers to continue to be maintained and extended. It doesn't matter if the company who released the code folds if the users can take up the task of maintaining the project at least until they can migrate to another.
The real question being asked here is, "Who are you going to call when the vendor goes tits up?" In the absolute worst case, even recovering your data will require at least one competent programmer armed with the application source code.
What if, as the FUDsters would have us believe is likely, MySQL AB were to cease trading tomorrow? OK, we know it's not going to happen, MySQL is the most popular database server and not much is about to change that. But even if it did, you would still have the source code to the application -- any competent programmer could maintain it for you, or rescue your data and migrate it to another server. Knowledge of the source code would be invaluable in designing a migration path. You would not get security fixes from MySQL; but the chances are that you would have been running a fairly up-to-date version up until then. It's also possible that another entity could just take over the task of maintaining the software, lock, stock and barrel. The very nature of Open Source guarantees that customers lose nothing -- ever.
When a closed-source software vendor goes tits up, it's bye-bye to customer support and -- occasionally, in a very few, very rare, but very destructive cases -- bye-bye to your data. There is still no established procedure to expedite the transfer of orphaned "intellectual property" to the Public Domain. Just because a company no longer exists, and therefore can't be harmed by any action on your part, is no longer any guarantee that you won't be sued. Some greaseball could buy the mortal remains of the deceased company, claim that that purchase included IP rights, and sue.
If there is any kind of software that is of questionable fitness for its intended purpose, it is the proprietary, closed-source kind.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Dear editors - I'm all for keeping slashdot busy and filled with opinions of all kind and various perspectives, but please don't link to articles that can only be described as "bullshit" because they fail to provide even a basic logical argument. This is not an "interesting read" by any means, not even a good laugh...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
However, there are some important differences.
a. source is open and you are free to modify it, fix it, and submit patches to developer. Through developer consensus you can force a vendor to acknowledge an issue and fix it. Without source, you can't do this, and the vendor will often stonewall you.
b. you can demo it for as long as you like, on as many machines as you need to, without worrying about licensing issues disrupting your R&D. Some of us have projects with deadlines that sometimes interfere with R&D. a 30 or 60 day demo doesn't always allow us to do what we need to do. Some vendors balk when you ask for an extension.
c. you are paying for support, not the software. If you are a cash strapped company, you can use the software for free, and donate or buy support when cash becomes available. what a lot of proprietary companies overlook is the fact that by using the software up front, it can be possible to pay for it later, when you can't afford it, you never have the opportunity.
my 2 cents... no matter how you slice it, open source allows more opportunity, and profit. Eventually, everyone needs support ; )
The above is absolute rubbish, you do not need to GPL your code if you interact with MySQL, they even explicitly make this clear on their site.
The MySQL licensing works as follows: if you distribute MySQL with your commercial product or install it for the client as part of the overall solution you provide to the client, then you need to pay the commercial license fee (you do NOT need to GPL your own product or anything like that). If you distribute just your own software to the client and merely tell the client to install MySQL themselves, then you do not need to pay the commercial license fee.
The OpenSource MySQL license ONLY applies IF you are already developing OpenSource.
See http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/ for more info.
I think that everything that is said in this article is true, except that it overlooks something. There seems to be the implicit assumption that if open source helps big companies then it won't succeed. This all comes back to what you think "success for open source" means.
* If you think that success for open source means that all software companies will go out of business, and some kind of socialistic software utopia will unfold over the earth, then this is just misguided. I don't see that this was/is ever the purpose of open source.
* If you think that success means that there will be a multitude of products at every level from home users up to large corporate solutions, then this might also be a misunderstanding. It could be that we end up seeing a pyramid effect where there is great diversity amongst home users, and less amongst companies who want "strategic solutions"
Ultimately the great thing about open source is it breaks open traditional monopolistic / oligopolistic tendencies in software - and so it is a great thing for consumers. Consumers don't even need to use open source to benefit - because just the presence of open source can alter the way that software companies sell their wares, increasing consumer surplus.
Also, it ensures that on the development side, there is a continuing source ( no pun intended ) of diversity in all areas. Think of this as a healthy condition for a vibrant ecosystem. Software developers from hobbyists to professionals, and across all levels of industry benefit from this, as it ensures a wide array of techniques and solutions to draw upon, and that most of these are documented publicly.
It may be true that at the "strategic" level, only a few solutions are found that are actually widely adopted by industry - but this is just the current status quo, so nothing has changed. It may also be that these few projects absorb all the good ideas from the rest of the field, incorporating them as features, so that there is little or no reason to switch, but it still doesn't mean that open source has "failed". If these solutions end up being open source - then this ensures that these strategic applications and the know-how that goes into them remains available to anyone.
Also, most open source projects have survived very well without big corporate support, so why should we fear that they will disappear forever? Simply because they are not picked as worthy of being strategic doesn't mean they'll dry up and die. Does it?
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Some people just put the most value on that 5-7 years of paid support before a product is end of lifed and you are forced to migrate onto the next version.
Of course, some people talk about proprietary software like it is always supported forever. But then those people are probably the ones that only last 5-7 years also.
How many people have lost their support or had it degraded significantly when a company goes out of business or sells off their software assets. That seems to happen even more often than products are end of lifed. At least with open source, you have the option to support it yourself or find a third party that offers support at the bug fixing level. Maybe if the software is easily replaced and easy to migrate from, then it makes more sense to just find the least expensive third party software that meets the requirements. But if the software is central to your product or service or integral to your business operations, and all else being equal, then open source does provide an inherent additional safety net for unforseen circumstances.
Whenever I see an article criticising open source software, I do a quick check to see if the author has his head up his ass:
Step 1: Replace the phrase "open source" with "closed source."
Step 2: Replace names of open source products with the names of their closed-source counterparts.
Check if the article's arguments and criticisms still apply. If so, the author hasn't written a critique of open source software, he's written a critique of software, and probably not a terribly insightful one at that.
The article brings to my mind an interesting scenario...
... great! Until you realize that your OSS program is now the cornerstone of a BUSINESS. *YOUR* business. How will money be divided? Taxes taken out? Accounting? (Now we rue the lack of financial packages for Linux!)
You're a developer of an OSS project, along with several others (geographically diverse). You get a call one day...
"Hi, This is Clueful Manager from MegaCorp. We'd like to use your software in our business."
You say "Sure, go ahead; it's open source. Of course it'd be nice if you'd donate to our project..."
CM says "Yes, that's why I'm calling. We'd like some extra functionality added, and we're willing to pay you to add it. What do you say?"
Maybe MegaCorp will hire you; but then you're their employee, subject to their restrictions.
Maybe they hire you as a contractor; but then what about the other devels? Are they out of luck just because it's your email that's in the README?
Maybe MegaCorp's expecting to treat you like a vendor. In which case you'd need to supply invoices, bills, tax info, and all the other things a 'real' business would supply.
WARNING TO OSS DEVELOPERS: Success is coming! You need to think about what you're going to leverage the success of your software. Do you want a profit? Or just enough to pay the bills? Do the other devels agree with you? Or, do you ignore all such requests, unless they interest you as interesting challenges?
Last I looked, producing a database product cost a lot less than producing a new car - that doesn't stop manufacturers from producing hundreds of different cars a year.
Funny you should mention cars. At the dawn of the automobile era, there were hundreds of little mom and pop car makers, much like these individual DBs. Ask yourself: Where are those makers now?
(Na na na na na na na na na na)
sulli
RTFJ.
...I think the success of Postgres & MySQL are already contra-proof positive...
Okay, geeky pet peeve time: "Postgres" was an ancestor of PostgreSQL with a different development team; and Postgres had no SQL support. In short, Postgres != PostgreSQL. I definitely understand the need to abbreviate, but can't we say PGSQL or something instead of "Postgres"?
furthermore, what language are you speaking?
...mean (if indeed it means anything at all_?
...???
What does...
>>Trick is to write that software that doesnt already excist, and wont exicst (usually because its boring)
What does this word 'excist' mean? Do you mean 'exist'?
And how does one magically make money as a developer from doing what you suggest...
>>release it open source. viola, getting paid for open source.
Yeah - sure pal. Whatever you say.
If they could copy a cars at zero cost, offer them to customers and make a living servicing them, then I'm pretty sure there would still be plenty of folks doing that.
Unfortunately the fundamental economics of cars and software are about as different as you can get.
THANK YOU for an insightful reply. You've definitely made some interesting points. I still feel, however, that overall none of the above models ensure that everyone in the chain gets their due. Further, it kills IP when my input into the project is not directly linked to any funding; the original inventors of the project could easily never see any cash for their invention when a company resells support (including feature upgrades) for a product. If I develop A, I still see there is no protection keeping company M from reselling A and making additional money selling add-ons; all for a product that I created. M owes me no money, nor do the add-ons garner me any royalties.
Bloor's opinions are just another well worn paradigm: the more deeply entrenched it has become, the more novel licensing is evaluated in a myopic/short-sighted view of traditional software purchasing, the more it plays back into the hands of the traditional behemoths that dominate the industry.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I find that many developers that I've worked with in the past like open-source more for job security or as a challenge than the actual technology itself. The typical sales pitches I get all boil down to, "as long as I work here, I'll support this." My question then is, "When, in between all the other late projects?" To date, I have not heard a compelling strategic argument about adopting open-source in the companies I've been involved in.
>>Other professions such as architects, plumbers and electrical engineers do just fine.
You're missing something BIG here hotshot!
Architects, plumbers and electrical engineers cannot be outsourced or work remomotely! They need to be on-site (or in the Architects case, visit and assess the site regularly).
Software is *nothing* like these jobs! Software can be written anywhere in the world without ever meeting the client or other participants in the project! It's a job that's going to go to the lowest bidder, simple on account of market forces.
Real world jobs where physical proximity and face-to-face meetings with your clients are the valuable jobs - not internationally 'telecommutable' jobs!
Hey, Marten:
What say you sell out to CA and we'll sell out to Novell? Then we can both make pitches to IBM and duke it out in the vendor tank.
--Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Project
Not all of the companies involved will be able to make enough money out of these products to stay in business. That means that at some point in the future the market will consolidate and a number of these products will disappear.
Uh, excuse me ? Just as an example, let's look at PostgreSQL. How long has it been around ? What company might go out of business that would suddenly make it 'disappear' ? Even if IBM were to die a horrible death at the hands of SCO's lawyers in some ( completely bizarro ) alternate universe, would Cloudscape really fail to exist ? Uh, not really, since I have the source.
See my point? If your business decides to use an open source product as part of it's service offerings, it's generally a win for your company, because - get this - you are in complete control. What, you say some developers forked the product line and you have to choose between two forks. Hey, you get to choose! There's a bug and nobody has put a fix for it in a released version yet ? There's a good chance you can either pick up code for the fix, or figure out what needs to be done on your own. In practice, I've found helpful developers willing to point out fixes in CVS logs _and_ host one-off binaries.
Here I'm only addressing the most obvious problem with this short article. Don't bother. This smells of FUD created for pointy-haired boss consumption.
The points made in the article could have as easily been phrased the other way : "If you choose an open-source database, you might not be forced into expensive upgrades! The horror!". Sigh... does the Reg just write these things as Slashdot troll-stories, hoping they'll get linked here, to generate traffic as we all bash the story for it's lameness? That's just me being cynical, right?
The author makes the erroneous assumption that there is necessarily a shakeout among competing open source software packages as there is in the proprietary world. In fact, a big advantage of open source software is that it doesn't just disappear even if the sponsoring organization disappears. This is one of the ways in which open source reduces business risk.
The author also makes the erroneous assumption that the traditional big vendors will have an advantage with open source projects. Again, bad bet: big companies have donated lots of software to the open source community that ended up getting little or no traction. If IBM open sourced DB2, I doubt it would cause a lot of non-DB2 users to change (although it might give current DB2 users more confidence in the future of DB2).
Open source is not "just another licensing model", it's a licensing model that makes specific guarantees to users of the software, guarantees that reduce their risks and costs in choosing the software.
Overall, if open source is a way for big companies to screw users, then, yes, please screw us harder.
The chinese are getting into it in a big way next year, so I guess there's still room.
In certain circumstances, open source projects are very dependent on vendor support. For example, MySQL (because even the client libs are licensed under essentially the GPL, which prevents linking with many other open source projects), and to a lesser extent BerkelyDB. If MySQL AB went out of business today, MySQL (the open source database management system) IMO would likely be seriously wounded. Yes, it may continue, but I don't think it would continue with anywhere near the momentum it has today until such a time as a new version comes out with a new protocol.and completely rewritten client libs.
You can divide open source software into two groups. There are those which are dual licensed (esp. those which are restrictively dual-licensed, such as MySQL) and there are those which are real community projects. The first case could be effectively destroyed or at least set back a number of years by the vendor going out of business, while the second will continue without anyone.
The article makes the mistake of assuming that these are the same. They are not.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This article is stupid, poorly written and horribly defended... and yet it got published, and people will read it, and PHB's will read it, nod sagely and quote it as gospel to their IT staff... and if it's a mostly Microsoft shop, their staff will nod their heads sagely and solemnly agree that F/OSS is a dangerous arena for 'real businesses' to dabble in.
If you ignore absurd asserions like this one, and the people making the assertions scream loud enough, people start to give them credence simply because the critics are not as strident.
It is similar to the way Intelligent Design passed from a way to reconcile modern science and christianity into a movement that asserts that the uncertainty in evolution and the decent of man is scientific evidence of its falsehood.
When the 'movement' began, the scientific community largely ignored it because we respect people's right to personal faith. We ignored the so called 'Scientific Theories' because the science was so bad, and so biased that we didn't think anyone would ever take it seriously as science. Now we are fighting battles all over the country to prevent our schools from teaching our children that there is a compelling body of SCIENTIFIC evidence that an unknowable, immeasureable, supernatural being whose exitence cannot be verified or scientifically inferred either guided or created life on this planet.
So please, don't ignore it. Jump up and down and scream and shout about it. Shout the truth from the rafters and the rooftops lest people begin to believe the drivel because it's all they hear.
Speak the truth always and often that you may know the sound of it, lest you mistake the spoken lie for the unspoken truth
-unknown
Doesn't open source encourage customization? Isn't customization the worst possible thing for business? Don't we want all businesses forced to have the same processes when it comes to accouting, manufacturing, etc.? I would like to hear arguments against standardization or how open source helps with standardization. I just think open source is a bad idea period.
I'm not convinced but neither is it visibly wrong.
PostgreSQL is not pronouncable. The 'S' is overloaded so that it really sounds like Postre SQL - which is stupid.
Postgres is what everyone calls it - so get used to it.
MySQL is extremely buggy. Fine for dweeby-little hobby web sites where no one cares if it doesn't work, but don't bet your income on them. Take a look at the massive bug list in 4.1.10. Replication errors are frequent. So are corrupted tables. And it is so slow (create an index on a Gb table, and it copies the entire thing. Uhh... why? It's an index, you idiots!) Yeah, they made Swedish the default in version 4.1 onwards, severely buggering everyone non-Swedish up. MySQL isn't really SQL. It is crappy old ISAM with an SQL front-end. Many times it parses SQL, and just ignores the stuff it doesn't support. Buggy beyond belief. The new InnoDB stuff they promise like relational integrity and rollbacks sounds nice, but we have found are too slow to use. Rollbacks can take hours.
Firebird is much closer to real SQL, has VIEWS, TRIGGERs, RELATIONAL INTEGRITY, etc. But it doesn't have a manual! "Hey Boss, Saw this great database called Firebird we should be using. But... uh... it doesn't actually have a manual. It has a 'QuickStart Guide', which is almost as good as manual!!! Uhhh.. yeah... Sorry, Boss."
You are indeed correct that the more local a job is, the more secure it is on this age of global competition. In fact I say the same elsewhere in this news item.
Part of the beauty of open source is that it works in many different economic contexts: from state-funded research and infrastructure, to industry cartels like IBM/Novell/OSDL, to small consultancies. "Free software" does not mean "anti-corporate", and it is right to point out that the current behemoths may be the biggest winners.
Some people here seem to reason that "because Open Source is Good, all of its consequences must necessarily be positive". Better to analyze the actual market effects without prejudice, and pass moral judgement afterwards.
"As a customer Apache is so much better than IIS that there is no comparison. First it's free. Second it is more secure. "
There may be some reasons to prefer Apache over IIS but security is not one of them. Since 2003, IIS 6.0 has had exactly 3 security adviseries verses Apache's 22 in the same time period:
IIS6 adviseries http://secunia.com/product/1438/
Apache 2.0 adviseries: http://secunia.com/product/73/
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
He has valid points about the different level of expectations for technology of strategic value. The conclusions, however, are flawed because he misses one of the fundamental principles of the Open Source methodology: conformance with Open Standards! In the real world, we can replace the the refrigerator (Strategic Food Storage Unit) easily. It'll cost in capital and labor, but it's not a tragedy.
Of course it is a good practice to watch out for vendor lock-in with any technology; one avoids it by selecting suppliers that don't play the lock-in game, and by paying attention to implementation details, refusing or at least controlling the use of unique, non-standard features. Open Source is just consistently making it easier to avoid the lock-in.
Why does Open Source have less lock-in? The source availability means that truly useful features propagate to all competing systems; also, the user community expects the providers to knock it off. It is therefore easier to deploy systems that are not critically dependent on any particular component. MySQL not good enough? fine, I will run my SQL queries against Postgress. Can people paint themselves in a corner? Sure, but it is not because they had no choice.