Slashdot Mirror
JBoss Founder Hard-Nosed About Open Source
Infonaut writes "In this Business Week interview, JBoss founder Marc Fleury refers to "hobbyist" Open Source contributors and makes the case that "no one is going to work for free." Fleury dismisses people who contribute for something other than money as "Hari Krishnas" and makes reference to the "hippie dream". Fleury's sharp, profit-focused approach has brought him success, but isn't it in some sense built on the shoulders of the hippies and hobbyists he seems to scorn?"
makes the case that "no one is going to work for free."
Hey, 1990 called. They want their open-source-failure theory back!
If he really has this attitude, he is sadly mistaken and most likely being a jerk.
A lot of my motivation for contributing is a way saying thanks.
How does he pay for all of his foundations? Or is he just a taker?
Since his stuff is Free (if it is) you can look at it as who cares?
One thing with people who only do it for the money is that I tend not to trust them not to make things unnecessarily complex in order to earn the service/consulting money.
In any case... Go Free Software.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
There really is no such thing as a free lunch and where the rubber meets the road, it comes down to the bucks. However, it certainly makes him look like a knob to piss on very things that have helped him get to where he is now. Dude needs to chillax and smoke a bowl I say.
Seeing as he makes OSS whih generates decent revenue for him and pays for its own development, so I would assume he knows all that much better than you.
How many artists choose Art over Money?
Most of them. Some artists do actually starve for their art, although this is perhaps a romanticized minority. Nonetheless, the general principle holds true: people driven to create art have less time for day jobs -- or if they're confined to day jobs, their souls suffer for want of art.
Thus with some coders, who give it away: they are driven to create the art of open source.
-kgj
-kgj
Why are people so hate filled when it comes to the thought of people working in their spare time to help each other? Its called charity. I think this guy feels threatend. Why be so negative to a concept thats so positive?
Coding for free doesn't really have much to do with open source. You code for the WORLD, not just for yourself or for the company you directly code it for. Coders need to make a living, so we SELL products we code, and then we RELEASE THE CODE.
May the source be with you boy, you obviously have a lot to learn!
I think that you're overestimating the value of support contracts and other open source based business plans. Sure, there's some money to be made there, but it's a latecomer to the open source party and only a tiny piece of the puzzle.
Open source works because all of us are smarter than one of us. Programmers naturally look for preexisting solutions to problems, because it enables them to get to the thing that they really want to do faster. And they'll naturally return the favor when they can. It's just politeness to contribute bug fixes.
This model has serious, serious flaws. There will always be more takers than givers. But the good news is that distribution is cheap, so one giver can support hundreds of freeloaders.
Other problems are harder. Many of the contributions take place against the background of a standard closed-source project, where the management doesn't mind participating in open source as long as the real product development remains proprietary. A utopian pure open-source environment will fail; the whole thing works as well as it does only because the economics of redistribution are so cheap.
There are many other issues which are not easy to work around, and that's what this guy is really getting at: open source can't promote the non-fun stuff, like good user interfaces and (for the most part) QA. Certain crucial pieces of infrastructure (Apache, Linux kernel) have so many people banging on them that they get QA'ed anyway, and they're so integral to other money-making schemes that it ends up being in some people's interests to do the work anyway. But away from those projects the software gets buggier and buggier, and you'd have to pay people to make them less buggy.
So in the end there's money to be made in the standard business model, which is actually what JBoss is using. The difference is that some of the software they develop "leaks" around the edges into open source, because that's their way of playing nice with other people doing the same thing. The more core something is, the more effective it is to share your work and to use the shares in return; the system supports the freeloaders.
The real money is in doing specific work for specific customers, of which "support contracts" are only a trivial part. "Support contracts" are really just another name for "closed-source, proprietary software" built on top of the open source. And that's just business as usual.
As programmers, we'll share because it's fun and we'll share because we're a community that likes to help each other out. That's at the end of the day; from 9 to 5 we'll continue to write software the way it's always been done, for the same economic reasons: you have to pay people to develop the boring stuff and the stuff that involves knowing the subject domain. The kernel and Apache mean you don't have to know about anything except computers. If you want to build a ticket reservation site or a pharmaceutical database, you actually have to know something outside of computers, and that always costs money.
Read the fucking article.
He's not calling all open source contributors "Hari Krishnas", he's calling the ones who heckle him at conferences "Hari Krishnas".
The best test of your belief in free speech is when someone says something you don't like.
The best test of free software is when someone does something with it that you don't like (e.g. making money).
This guy is following the license and spirit of the GPL, and making money doing it. People should be patting him on the back, not giving him a hard time.
You are kidding right? That or your pretty wrong.
Microsoft and AOL have been adopting something called SPF that was originally presented by one of these F/OSS Hippies.
IIRC TCP/IP was originally developed in F/OSS software because it was Open.
Who did transparent GUI design?
Who first developed a XML based solution for the general group of Office Products?
Who developed and presented the rssmail whitepaper? Hippies or Suits?
What was the first tool for real time chat? IRC or AIM? Who developed it?
Was the first implimentation of a Web Browser (Mosaic) open source or coompany derived?
You forgot to wrap your comments in sarcasm tags or you are an idiot.
He does understand that as well, read the actual interview not the butchered blurb, however they're all hobbyists to him. And he is right, they are hobbyists at least those who write the actual software. What is so hard to understand about that? As you yourself said, they're motivations are different and in essence more "fluid" than that of a paid developer. They may get bored when that annoying last 5% of the app has to get done (like fixing those annoying bugs, etc.), other things may come up, and so on.
However, as he says they seem to get pissed off quite often when they realize he is able to make money of it while they can't.
The interview is pretty vague, however it appears to me that he doesn't particularly like the model where you basically sell service or whatever while using hobbyist to make the actual code. As you yourself pointed out hobbyist have different motivations, which he would probably argue aren't the best for keeping such a business model alive. Even in Linux the main developers, asfaik, are basically paid to work on the Kernel.
Except that to date Richard Stallman is responsible for FAR MORE NET WEALTH than Marc Fleury. If it weren't for RMS, Linux wouldn't exist, GCC wouldn't exist, emacs wouldn't exist. Arguably without any of those contributions, much of the infrastructure that runs the internet today would cost a hell of a lot more and the internet would be a significantly different place.
If the OSS movement wants to survive, it needs MORE Richard Stallmans and less Marc Fleury's.
you can't have a business model where you say, "Hey, guys, you write my software for me and then I'm going to make all the money off of it!"
...of course you can. Game publishers, book publishers, movie companies, tv stations, music labels and so on thrive on taking a "production" and delivering it to consumers. However, you do need to have some added value. Even though the applications are FLOSS there are many way to do that, I'm sure you can think of a few...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Now, the trick they use is to purposely not document their work, it is free indeed, but just try to use it. Oh, you want support? Write a check to....."
"One thing with people who only do it for the money is that I tend not to trust them not to make things unnecessarily complex in order to earn the service/consulting money."
My point exactly. I think the tactic is so unnecessay and counterproductive. There are always going to be real problems and opportunities and people will always pay to make their lives better. We don't need to create fake problems to get them to pay us to fix.
When I find people who do this, I try to stay well clear of them.
all the best,
drew
http://yp.peercast.org/?find=bysa&Submit=Search
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Sorry, never heard of Marc Fleury nor JBoss. Is JBoss a clothing line or something?
Anyway, I suppose I could look him up, but if he's making these statements as if people should listen to him, shouldn't he kind of be a known person? I can make statements all day long too...but since I'm a nobody like this guy why should anyone listen to me? Why is anyone even reading this post?
Don't mod me as anything.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I have nothing against Open Source. I just want to point out that people generaly have priorities. Do you think it's wrong to want a job that pays good so you can support a family? If you answer "yes" then you are an insensitive clod who thinks that volunteerism should be everybody's top priority.
:o)
The world works on money. The electric company is not going to accept your OSS as payment. They want money. Until you change that don't be hating on people that have to put making money above volunteerism.
--
This post will get modded down because it comes across as "abrasive" just like Marc Fleury did in his JBOSS story. Oh well
This guy in the front row says "You've got to stop banging on people whose motivation is something other than money." There's always a Hari Krishna in the audience: "It's illegal to make money at this. We're all garage bands, and you sold your soul to the devil for a handful of dollars."
Er, but the "guy in the front row" wasn't saying it's illegal to make money at this. He was complaining that the asshole keeps moaning about hobbyists. And the asshole used it as an excuse to go into another name-calling rant about hobbyists! It's a straw-man argument of the worst kind.
So I go, "Have you contributed anything?" and usually they say no and I stop it there.
Ad hominems too. The guy truly is an asshole.
Hey, 1990 called. They want their open-source-failure theory back!
The "hippies" writing OSS were not as charitable as you suggest. Many were getting paid or compensated, just not by their software customers. A cushy academic job where you get to choose you own area of research and/or projects, a student working school project, etc.
I'm not saying people did not give away code they wrote on their own time, I did, so did others, it just wasn't called OSS in the 80s and early 90s. However a lot of open source software was and is subsidized one way or another.
The professional programmer working on a project on the side "for free" is still a professional programmer, not an amateur. That said, there is nothing wrong with "amateur". There's also nothing about Open Source that says it should, or is likely to be, primarily produced by unpaid volunteers. It can be a purely self-interested economic decision by a company to use and produce Open Source software.
Bottom line is writing code takes time and money. There is no free lunch.
... no more profit in this sector for software. So, basically the government is paying for it .. I mean you and me if your talking about donations.
.. well .. your money.
... ya people took it hook, line and sinker.
The corporations will give a donation and get a tax deduction from it. Sort of like giving to charity. The corporation gets the code and the tax deduction. The only problem is that software market gets screwed in the process. Thus, it turns into a tool for the 'service' industry
Or how about your college prof involved in an open source project. Now the government is subsidizing the work directly.
Well, if your working yourself on your spare time its
Meanwhile, all the 'service' jobs get outsourced. Welcome to the new world, congratulations.
As a business model, in a vacuum, open source does not really add up. It only really works if its subsidized by a service industry/government. Sad part is its the programmers who get screwed out of their money for their labor and then have their governments taxes raided with deductions from the charitable giving. Meanwhile, promote a propaganda campaign to make working for free look cool
...at hobbyist, hippie projects like Geronimo, that dare to offer "competition" to his product, even to the point of passing all the relevant certifications?
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
"then I'm going to make all the money off of it!"
Game publishers, book publishers, movie companies, tv stations, music labels and so on usually have to pay someone for what they use.
Blah, blah, blah.
Just another soulless, scorched earth capitalist. "I relied on other people to make my money, but now, due to the frailty of my own nature, I'm now going to promptly forget what made me a millionaire in the first place, and get down to the usual millionaire activity of destroying the lives of as many people as I possibly can."
And before I get yet another barrage of comments from American reactionaries labelling me a Communist, let me say that I have nothing whatsoever against capitalism, provided that the capitalist in question remembers that they do not exist in a vacuum...that they're part of the larger human race...also that they actually need other people to get their money in the first place. It is capitalism with total disregard for others that I have major problems with. Mind you, the latter is the form that most Americans are familiar with anyway, so I stand corrected...a lot of you probably won't be able to tell the difference.
It's ironic that he calls the idea of people working for nothing a myth but uses a myth to prove it:
"At top of the pyramid, you have these top 2% of developers that are 10 times -- in some cases 100 times -- more productive than the rest."
This is a very popular myth with rathy shaky evidence. Even the most modestly talented develper can write one line of code in 15 seconds. Who do you know that can write 100 lines of code in 15 seconds? Of course any meaningful measure of productivity would go beyond LOC, but that just weakens the case further since there are no established standards for comprehensive software productivity. We can't define productivity in any meaningful way, but we make broad claims about it anyway.
My joke is that 98% of developers believe that they are in the top 2%.