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.

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!

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.

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.

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: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.