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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?"
But he's definitely no politician. People want to believe that you can get something for nothing. He sounded a little on the abrasive side.
I found it interesting that he distinguishes between different types of software, implying that there would be vastly different business models for each -- "don't try this at home" I would have liked to have seen the interviewer nail him down on this a little more -- I think there is some good stuff there but without the details its hard to know whether he knows what he's talking about or not.
What's spaghetti got to do with hurricanes?
What the guy is saying is that he sees a lot of companies sitting around trying to make money off of other people's work (i.e. all twelve thousand linux distributions), whereas he wants to pay people to develop open-source applications. He's just saying that 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!"
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
Don't be put off by the somewhat tendentious write-up; the interview
itself is interesting, if brief. I think the case against "OSS" from a
purely business point of view is quite strong; but this doesn't worry
me, since I'm not in the business, and I prefer Free Software
anyway.
Has it, really? How many non-trivial, successful open source software projects aren't written mostly by staff paid to do the job? Pretty much all of the biggest names have some sort of commercial entity behind them, and those commercial entities expect to make money from the OSS-based work they do, by some means or other. The specific economic model may be non-traditional, but the underling economic principles certainly aren't!
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"Since his stuff is Free (if it is) you can look at it as who cares?"
Funny you should mention that, while he is a two faced sleazeball, at least according to several friends who know him and some who used to work for him, he does indeed keep his work truly open. That is the beginning though, not the end. It was also built on the backs of free authors, at least one of which was a good friend.
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.....
Now, you have to remember this is the same guy who called Jonathan Schwartz "a ponytailed clown from McKinley". Now, good old JS does sport a ponytail, but the last time I saw him, the clown makeup was notably absent. Not sure about the McKinley bit though.
All this is second hand, but it comes from people who were starry-eyed groupies until they realized the intracicies of his 'management' style and told him where to cram his philosophy.
-Charlie
P.S. If you want stories about him, ask at TheServerSide.com, especially about posting under multiple pseudonyms to back up a failing arguement.
P.P.S In case you don't notice, I don't think highly of him, but I am one of the smiling happy people compared to those who know him.
Great post. The only thing I would add is that it is still possible to keep "proprietary" projects open source. For example, look at a closed source application like ADP (or PeopleSoft, etc). Their software sucks.. badly. But they make most of their money on two things: salary processing and consulting. You can't just drop ERP packages into a company and go. You need a number of consultants to set it up, maintain it, and extend it.
That said, consulting is not a panacea. To increase revenue, you need to hire more people. In the software industry, the margins are an order of magnitude better because once the software is developed, you can simply print more copies.
Okay, ignore the business aspect for a second, look at it from my (a developer's) point of view.
Before I got involved in OSS, I was yearning to get into consulting, but I couldn't seem to find a breakthrough job to establish a reputation. People just didn't want to believe I could do the work. I'm in the magical "recently graduated college" zone where I'm not expereinced enough to be senior but not young enough to be an undergrad consultant.
After I got involved and contributed to an open source project as one of the primary developers, suddenly I had exposure. Sure, I didn't get paid for the work (and we did a lot of work in just 2 months). But that investment has helped me to get a very good consulting job, and I've gotten a lot more exposure because people talk to me about the library and what it does.
It's the best thing to happen to my career since graduating college.
No one will work for free, but who said that we're working for free? I consider my OSS work to be an investment in my repuation and my future career. It certainly has paid off in a very short amount of time.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
The build tool that JBoss use was built by us hobbiests. I hope a product built by "amateurs" with no support other than the user mail list and the defect tracking site is not so low quality that it isnt up to the 'commercial' needs of teams like JBoss. If it aint, well, they are free to fork it and do their own implementation ---let's see how far they get.
I am really pissed off with the "amateur" quote. Ant was built by its end users, but they were software developers, each solving their own little problem. As most software dev problems are common, the tool shares out. but amateur? Software professional in their spare time is more accurate.
If there is one thing that OSS has shown, it is that
1. full time software teams do not produce better quality products than the amateurs (example: Linux v. windows)
2. end user involvement produces products that meet user needs far better than a marketing department telling engineers in cubicles what to do.
Imagine if Ant was a private company. We'd have to have meetings with the VCs. We'd have a marketing department. We'd have to deliver things on deadlines, whether they were ready or not. And we' d have to convince the world we were better than a planet full of software developers collaborating to solve their own problems, and sharing the results. This is what jboss are like: they have to slag off the rest of the OSS community, to justify their very existence.
-Steve
I've actually had to deal with the JBoss guys on several occasions (I brought them in to compete for a few bids at my company), and I can't stand them. They are the least responsive vendor I have ever seen, and that's saying something. They're more arrogant and confrontational than Reuters or Bloomberg, and that's an almost miraculous achievement.
I am glad that they have succeeded, as if JBoss does for app servers what Linux did for Operating Systems, that will be a good thing. Unfortunately, I see a rocky future for them, probably. It seems that if you want to use the service business model, telling your customers to screw off at every opportunity is not a good plan, and it will hurt you eventually.
I also think their focus is slightly misplaced, but that's a minor technical issue. Presumably it will be fixed as JBoss becomes more mature. With a little time, hopefully by JBoss 5.0, they'll have a much more impressive AS, with fewer weakpoints. Perhaps then they can really strive to fix the few weaknesses they have.