Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?

morrison asks: "In recent years, the Open-Source movement has increased dramatically. Harnessing the power of thousands of developers and testers has proven successful, to varying degrees, in developing operating systems, graphics applications, and web tools, including Linux, POV-Ray, Blender, Gimp, and Apache. In a SIGGRAPH 2005 discussion panel, the questions will be raised as to whether the open-source model is relevant and useful to the graphics community. Does the model of proprietary application research, development, and usage serve the industry better? Or will commercial facilities continue to primarily choose off-the-shelf solutions? Can all models work together? As a large portion of the Slashdot and Open Source community will be at SIGGRAPH, I'd really like to hear some moderated arguments beforehand before stepping up to the microphone."

Comments

The Vibrant OS Community

[gbulmash]

All in all, whether your goals are open source or closed source, you can benefit from the OS community's efforts. There are a lot of bright ideas out there, being developed at no cost to you. The great thing is that if a project can find one motivated developer, it doesn't need to pass muster in a committee or get management buy in. Stuff that would get dismissed in a corporate environment can get made in an OS environment. Things that might not look good on paper, but are actually really cool once realized, get realized.

I'm not going to say that corporate environments stifle innovation, but the motivation to innovate in a corporate environment is necessarily dollar-driven. The motivation to innovate in an OS environment is desire driven. If enough people desire to see it done and turn that desire into action, it gets done.

The OS community may not be regularly churning out Adobe killers or MS killers, but you get tweaks, utilities, apps, and sometimes that off the wall genius idea that ends up defining a new industry segment because no CYA suit saw the value in it until a passionate OS developer/group proved it.

As for the GPL, remember that it is not an exclusive license. There are a variety of licenses out there and a number of projects offer different licenses depending on your intended use of their code and whether you'll pay for the license.

- Greg

Re:The Vibrant OS Community

[DrEldarion]

I'm not going to say that corporate environments stifle innovation, but the motivation to innovate in a corporate environment is necessarily dollar-driven. The motivation to innovate in an OS environment is desire driven. If enough people desire to see it done and turn that desire into action, it gets done.

Isn't dollar based on desire, though? If enough people want said feature in the product, it will get put in since the feature would make the product sell better.

Re:The Vibrant OS Community

[qwijibo]

It is if you have to aggregate desire and turn it into dollars before it can become action. Of course, enough people have to communicate the same set of requirements in a way that it's understood that a group of people are asking for particular functionality.

This process is a little too esoteric and slow for some, so they just do it. This is one of the cases where one lone lunatic can make a difference. A lot of the really good ideas, like virtual memory came from people who could just sit down and solve a problem without having to convince anyone else first. Try coming up with a business case for virtual memory in a world where it doesn't exist. The value of most really innovative ideas isn't realized until long after they have been implemented.

Coexistence

[s20451]

As I am typing this post on a Windows machine running Firefox (not to mention Cygwin, Openoffice, and a few others), I think that answers the question right there.

And as for graphics specifically, I'd love to run GIMP on Windows, if it weren't such a pain in the ass to install.

Re:Coexistence

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I bypass the GIMP GTK+ installer completely and let the Gaim releases manage updating GTK+, and it doesn't break GIMP at all.

Look Around

[Ridgelift]

Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?

Can libraries and bookstores continue to coexist?

They MUST Co-Exist

[AKAImBatman]

Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?

Yes. If they allow each other to. There are a lot of areas where Open Source fails to deliver, particularly in the areas of comprehensive solutions. Using an on-topic example, PhotoShop still has several killer features that GIMP doesn't. InDesign provides a far easier to use typesetting environment than Tex. Many users still wish they could have MS Office on Linux despite the amount of functionality in OpenOffice and KOffice. Game Creators expect to be compensated for the blood, sweat, tears, and massive overtime they put into their games.

The truth is that the two MUST co-exist if we want to get anywhere. The problem today is that they are not allowed to co-exist. Most distros today use a packaging system that pulls from a central repository. While this has many advantages for the usability of OSS, it sucks for commercial software. There's no *good* way of delivering commercial software to a Linux system. (I know, I've tried.)

These OSes are closed systems where no new software can be introduced without the blessing of the distro maintainers. That's not only not good, it goes against the very ideals of an open computer! A computer is a device that allows you to provide instructions on how to complete a task. While the door is open for "approved" OSS software and personal C++ development, where's the door for commercial software?

I've heard a lot of arguments that packaging systems can be fixed to allow for commercial repositories. Unfortunately, no one has actually explained how this would work. And as I've pointed out, the math says it's can't work. Having 2^P (where P is the number of packages available) as the possible number of software combinations (any of which can interfere with each other) is not a good situation to be in!

Linux (the community) NEEDS commercial software. But if it wants to attract it, it needs to be in a position to spark another Shareware revolution like the one seen after Windows 95. Make it easy for users to use their system. Make it so they can visit VersionTracker or Tucows and try everything under the sun! Give the users back control of their computers! Viva la Software!

Uh...

[MightyMartian]

They have coexisted for fifteen years or more, so I don't see why they can't continue to do so into the future.

In some cases yes, in others no

[alvinrod]

It's not always a matter of if, but rather should they?

As much as some people like Windows, I'd rather see everyone using an open source OS. Rather than having everything try to be fancy, a minimalist OS that was build for security and ease of use would be so much better for the computer world in general. The open standards would allow anyone to develop for it, find flaws in the system, or add on to the existing code.

Open source applications like Open Office are certainly a good thing, but I see the realm of applications as being much more commercial. I don't see too many people going out of their way to create open source games. Game engines possibly, but some applications will almost always be more commercial in nature. In cases where monopolies don't exist, commercial software also has the benifit of needing to be good, or people won't buy it. The necessity to provide good and innovative software will drive people to create better sotfware. It would be nice to have a choice of four or more different word processors, especially if they all shared a common file format in addition to any propriatary one that made communication a lot easier.

There are advantages to both, and it's quite clear that they can exist together given that they do in fact today.

One argument I've heard

[Infonaut]

I frequently debate a good friend of mine who owns a small software company. I tell him that Open Source software does not mean the end of proprietary commercial software. In fact, I think it ultimately might make more specialized and sophisticated commercial software practical because purchasers who use Open Source have to pay less for the basic underpinnings of their computing environment and therefore have more money to spend on narrow but highly customized applications.

His argument against Open Source isn't about the capabilities of Open Source software itself. Rather, he believes that Open Source software leads corporations and consumers to undervalue the value of software. If Open Source software is being given away freely, he argues, people will feel that software is a commodity rather than a specialized product that requires a lot of hard work and brainpower to properly develop. If the software becomes devalued, he feels, the industry as a whole will continue to slide rapidly toward commodity status.

I disagree with him on this point, primarily because I feel that computer programming is no longer the technological high ground that it once was. While it shouldn't be devalued, it is no longer reasonable to assume that software companies can command the immense profits that made Microsoft a monopoly. If anything, it seems to me that competition from Open Source will help push commercial software to innovate.

Re:One argument I've heard

[Infonaut]

Commercial software, then, is where innovation happens. Open source software excels at development and commoditization. They not only exist, but complement each other.

You put it much better than I did.

I'd add that innovation is rewarded for companies that pursue products, while development and commoditization is rewarded for companies that pursue services. It is no suprise that IBM (primarily a services company, in spite of the hardware arm) jumped on Open Source, while Microsoft (primarily a products company) has not.

Re:One argument I've heard

[stinky wizzleteats]

If Open Source software is being given away freely, he argues, people will feel that software is a commodity rather than a specialized product that requires a lot of hard work and brainpower to properly develop.

OK, a little history lesson is in order here. In the beginning there were mainframes, and computers were expensive. Along comes the PC which does everything faster and at a tiny fraction of the cost. The PC takes over the computer universe, including applications for which mainframes were previously used.

Because of the PC, the innovation of the software license, and because its early products were easily pirated, Microsoft makes a hell of a lot of money. This came not through the actual incremental cost of licensing, but because of market control granted by the ubiquity of the OS, which directly derived from being cheaper than everything else. In fact, most of the time, as a matter of practice, the OS was free. Microsoft owes its empire to software piracy and the clone PC.

Now move forward to the era of "no free lunch". Competely failing to understand the information marketplace, Microsoft decides to use invasive phone home licensing on everything it sells, effectively putting an end to the era of pirating their stuff. This has caused two things to happen - 1. - people are using older versions of Windows that predate the crackdown (windows 2000, etc.) and 2. - people are seriously looking at using free software. Face it - as if right now, Microsoft is on a doomsday countdown. Their only claim to market power at the moment is that 2000 is still a useable operating system. As soon as that changes, they will evaporate. Yes, I know - deep pockets, not going anywhere, etc. etc. - tell it to Atari. Microsoft has already begun to make the transition from a technology company to one that makes its living on IP litigation.

The point in all of this is that computing technology suppliers have consistently overvalued the technology from the beginning of the computer revolution until now, particularly with regard to incremental costs such as software licensing. They completely fail to understand the scale of what they are getting into. As such, the entire industry insists upon operating at an energy level just below that required to sustain a wildly lucrative consumer information revolution.

Microsoft blundered into their success the last time things changed, and clearly have no idea what happened or how to sustain it. The next big thing is going to be driven by people who understand the information equation.

Commercial != Proprietary

[4im]

C'mon guys, with everybody here raving about Free Software, you should know that the opposite of Free Software is not commercial software, but proprietary software!

There's commercial free software around, and there's free (as in beer) and open (as in source available) proprietary software around.

Re:Commercial != Proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that this has to be explained ad infinitum clearly explains why OSS fails repeatedly and utterly to be taken seriously by the software-buying masses.

Geeks think that when Average Joes don't understand them, Average Joes are stupid.

Smart marketing types understand that when they can't get their message across clearly, simply, and succinctly, they are disrespecting the value of their audience's attention, time, and economy.

Note I'm in the geek category, so don't get pissy and go all brainiac on me.

Of course

[jvagner]

There are some technologies that reach a level of maturity and at that point should probably be OSS. Infrastructure pieces like email and web servers can really address most of the market as OSS offerings.

Features over and above what most of the market needs leaves a niche that can be addressed by commercial software. Commercial software will always be beholden to marketing forces that don't necessarily dictate elegance or proper form. That's why MS gets such a bad rap -- they keep trying to satisfy competing forces and usually end up screwing the end user.

"Flavor of the month" software is usually commercial -- there's an inherent pressure to produce a specific kind of solution that doesn't make it into the "infrastructure" that can be accelerated by commercial traffic. Delicious Library comes to mind -- will they really be around forever? Probably not. But $40 gets it for you right now.. and it's not a big deal when something bigger and better comes along (if it does).

The other nice thing about OSS is that it usually enforces "the right way" over time. Command line options etc. It's not really surprising that MS finally saw the light on this, though I doubt their implementation will really satisfy the unix-y small tools mentality.

Re:Reality Check

[wlan0]

Synaptic or Kynaptic provide one.

Re:Open source business model

[MightyMartian]

There's considerably more to "support" than simpling bug-fixes. There's training, management, feature implementation, upgrades and technical support. There's plenty of commercial software that's like that, where the initial sale is hardly the end of the road, and they don't want to have to hire in-house staff to do those sorts of things, and thus by a service contract.

It's not a model that necessarily works with all software, but I can certainly see, for instance, why a small company of say, fifty employees, looking to use Linux servers and some open source accounting package might rather pay a company, say, $30,000 a year for support than to have to hire an on-staff Linux tech to do that job for them (and then face the woes of having said tech leave).

In a way this has been a big part of IBM's business structure for decades. Yes the IBM mainframe cost big dollars, but the support contracts also made sure that IBM continued to have revenue after each sale.

Re:Reality Check

[qwijibo]

Even though this is a flame, it's a common and legitimate criticism. If we want this stuff to be accepted by non-geeks, we have to recognize how painful this can be for people who haven't been doing it since the dawn of time.

As a unix sysadmin, I know exactly what he means. The only difference is that I also happen to know how to find config files and can make some educated guesses as to what to try.

In defense of the existing methodology, many of us have been doing this stuff so long that we forgot what it's like to sit in front of a computer and not know what to do next. We don't think twice about putting stuff in a config file or some other esoteric place.

Re:They're better together.

[PsiPsiStar]

A private company can buy out its competitors or drive them out of business. This happens a lot with software companies, even more so than in other industries. FOSS software can't be bought out or forced out of business. Because of this, FOSS software can prevent companies from gaining and abusing a monopoly position. Because FOSS is free, it keeps commercial software companies from charging too much, because people can always go to the cheaper competition. (assuming they don't just pirate the commercial software)

Make sense?

Re:Not all commercial developers are Big Guys

[OoSync]

The only trouble we've had is when we set our prices too low -- below $99.00, no one will take the product seriously. We've tried multiple times to set it lower, as we're well down the ROI curve, but it just won't sell below $99.95.

And Wendy's doesn't actually sell many triple-cheeseburgers. They took it off of the menu once and found that sails of double-cheeseburgers (a product with good profit margins) fell off dramatically. Lesson: the availability of a higher-priced product increases sales of some lower-priced products.

If you desperate to sell your software at a lower cost (maybe selling more copies), then offer a "higher-priced" version and reduce the price on the regular version. It probably doesn't even need to be very different. Heck, print out the help pages and call it a manual you sell for $30 (and costs you $3 to print on demand).

Just an idea.

Re:Sometimes, for influential groups.

[Moofie]

Conversely, large groups with very basic needs (the Aunt Tillies of the world) are routinely ignored by the open source grognards. "What do you mean you don't know how to recompile your kernel? RTFM, n00b."

So, I guess, like with so many things in life, one size doesn't fit all.

How stupid -- it already does

[Steven Reddie]

We keep hearing about the use of Open Source Software in movie production. Even if you forget about full applications like Ardour being used, scripting languages such as Python are used to control other processes whether they be based on Open Source or not. Sure the whole thing could be done on commercial software only, but it's a case of if it's there use it, and clearly Open Source is being used.