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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."
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
Start a happiness pandemic
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.
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OOS is where the comerical stuff gets all its stable code... :ducks flying fruit:
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
Yes.
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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!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
They have coexisted for fifteen years or more, so I don't see why they can't continue to do so into the future.
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So many questions! I can't handle them all!!!!!
Oh, OK....the answer is it depends. Thank you. That will be $1,000 please. Deposit it to my pay pal account.
The company I work for uses a proprietary billing system with an open-source back-end interface to our customer database. The proprietary system was sold to us from a commercial vendor and has as its major requirement a Red Hat-based OS, which is of course open source.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
Let's eliminate commercial, and find out.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
How many people does it take to come up with acronym SIGGRAPH?
Fewer than it took to come up with PCMCIA (People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms) but more than it took to come up with INTERCAL (Computer Programming Language With No Pronouncable Acronym).
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
As a large portion of the Slashdot and Open Source community will be at SIGGRAPH...
Last I checked, just the Slashdot crowd (based on ID #'s) was 800K+.
There exist companies like MySQL AB and Trolltech who are commercial, but are "Open Source."
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.
Sure they can co-exist until we "replace" them. I don't work for a software house we use software not produce it. Nearly all proprietary software is a royal pain in my butt and the faster it is obsoleted with OSS software the better.
Take for instance the other day we upgrade a piece of software then immediately run into trouble since the vendor decided to make more money so he put some sort of per page processing keys in it and changed the licensing requirements. Two days of production down time while sorting that out. I am now in the process of finding a oss alternative to his product or I will write an new oss alternative....I don't feel bad not one bit for software shops going out of business because of OSS products.
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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.
Are you insane? That's like mixing matter and anti-matter, or pouring Pepsi into a Coke glass! The universe will no longer exist as we know it!
Synaptic or Kynaptic provide one.
Open source at times forces commercial software to improve. Just look at blender, after you get past the hissy fit that lightwave users have about the interface it has surpassed lightwave in capabilities and speed. We switched all our 3d artists over to it here 1 year ago and after the massive whine-fest over the interface and controls the guys will never go back, and so far has saved us several thousand dollars annually by not having to buy 4 licenses each upgrade cycle. one of the artists has become quite a guru with perl scritping for blender and is doing some amazing things that are almost pixar quality in a free "toy" that the supposed professionals poo-poo as worthless.
they also enjoy using gimp and find it easier to make tileable textures in gimp than in CS... and the biggest thing the guys like is being able to take copies of their software home and use it there. something that is 100% impossible with lightwave and photoshop CS.
They still have the older versions on their machines of the legacy lightwave and CS, but they use them both less and less.
I cant wait to see how the apps continue to shape out over the next 5-10 years... open source never has to add worthless features to entice users to buy the software yet again as is the requirement with commercial software... and that is how it can get better in the long run.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I think this whole "one or the other" type of argument is a red herring.
The software industry naturally tends towards 'killer aps' which is a nice way of saying that it tends towards monopoly, even more so than traditional industry does. Being able to design a program once, and then produce millions of copies for profit is just too big an incentive to consolidate. It also makes for an incredible economy of scale, so that small companies have a hard time competing.
Look at Adobe's recent purchase of Macromedia to see which way the industry is going.
It's hard for a startup to compete with a readily established killer ap. Take Photoshop, for instance. If someone said "I'm going to start up a company that tries to do what photoshop does" I wouldn't want to invest my money there, unless it pandered to a special niche market - maybe designing 3D skins.
Competition is vital to keep the cost of proprietary systems reasonable. Also, monopolies have a bad history of abusing their customers.
Because OSS software is the most reliable model for giving sustained competition to programs which would otherwise come to monopolize their industry, open source is a vital suppliment to closed source software. It can't be bought out in the same way a private company can, and its low cost puts some downward pressure on the price of closed source systems.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
It seems to me that companies will continue to use what works best. Sometimes OSS will fit the bill, while other times commercial software will best serve the need.
Off the shelf solutions offer many advantages that OSS will find difficult to duplicate. An example of this is technical support. I am well aware that the vast majority of OSS projects have a large and acitve community that is capable of helping with many issues that may arise. However, this is not something that a project manager can look at and assign a cost to. With commercial software, you get commercial support. RadHat has shown that a successful business can be formed around open source software, but I don't know if this business model will form around other OSS projects.
Where OSS shines is research and development type work. The large code base created by OSS projects are useful to people who just want to try something out. I don't want to pay money to fool around with speech recognition in my new app, so ViaVoice or Dragon Naturally Speaking SDKs are out of the question. However, the CMU Sphinx project offers a speech recognition system that I can play with for free.
If the shoe fits, wear it.
...for SIGGRAPH, could you please summarize the moderated arguments into two presentations, one using MS Powerpoint, and the other using an Open Source presentation app? Thanks.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
FOSS and commercial software bring completely different attributes to the table. FOSS tends to be better quality from a code perspective, so more stable. It improves as it matures - more bugtracking and less feature creep is the order of the day.
The closed source community, by contrast, is great at blazing trails. The Cathedral model means that an innovative project doesn't have to worry so much about gaining "critical mass". In fast-moving fields such as games, closed source should have no trouble staying ahead of FOSS. It's only when closed source tries to rest on its laurels that it gets scalped by FOSS.
Open source needs closed source to show it where it risks losing market share. And closed source needs open source to keep it motivated. Neither side of this equation can be expected to be very happy about it, but the resulting balance is great for the consumer.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?
What a horrible question. Reminds me of another one:
Is Duke Nukem Forever going to come out?
Everyone's got an opinion on it, and yet you expect reasonable responses are going to be the ones modded up? No, instead, you'll get about four "+5, Funny" comments and maybe one "+5, Informative" with some scattered "+5, Interesting"'s that are really about different topics, like how cool BSD's license is and some classroom examples where no one knew what open source software was anyway.
If you want legitimate discussion, ask the question in a context. Like this: "Can Commercial Software roadblocks still allow Open Source developers to provide sufficient products in the near and long term?"
Another good one: "Is Open Source development keying in on certain specific applications (Apache, PHP, MySQL), causing stagnation in development of other equally-important and every-growing more challenging OS softwares (Samba, Wine, PERL)?"
Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?
According to RMS, no.
Sorry, but wrong! RMS argues against proprietary software, but he can perfectly well live with commercial (free as in speech) software. That's also why he says:
This is why we say that free software is a matter of freedom, not price.
I agree with RMS that sometimes, it's necessary to use exact wording. This is one of those times.
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.
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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.
And, as it happens, we make graphics software. We're a small company with a product that has considerably more features, and more power, than either the Gimp or Photoshop, and we do very well with it. There is no problem (for us) having the Gimp, at no cost, and Photoshop, at relatively high cost, marketing to the same group of people. With a moderate price model, we can (and do) convince owners of other products to give ours a shot without any particular problem.
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. We did find a workaround, though... we have an offer where we'll give it to you "at a discount" (for $49.95) if you say you have a Corel, JASC or Adobe product. We really don't care if you do or not; we don't even check. :-) But people will buy that even though they won't buy it if we actually price it at $49.95. The lesson? People are funny.
Aside from the in-your-face issue of price, commercial development, large or small, by its very nature brings something else to the table that open source doesn't, and that is a constant drive to work on the product without distraction or interruption. It does this by virtue of funding the development. This ensures that the developers can be secure in the knowledge they can go home at night and get the cat fed, pay the XM bill, and so on. They don't have to work at night (though of course they can, and if the company is smart they'll reward such behavior.) They can have a rich social life. Still, they get to spend many hours a day pushing pixels, and as a graphics developer, I can tell that is a significant pleasure.
All in all, I see no reason for commercial graphics development to be concerned about open source. Certainly there is no reason for open source to be concerned about commercial graphics development, per se.
Frankly the risk/danger (to everyone) is not other developers. The danger is software patents. The danger comes from the legislature. You can -- without ever intending to -- run afoul of someone's invention and be in a world of financial hurt as you try to defend yourself and protect the time and energy (and money, if you're commercial) you've put into your legitimate development, and the legal system can crash your progress as sure as if they were the on-coming train in the tunnel. In my opinion, that is the problem that needs addressing, and that is what will cause the most disruption(s) to any project, be it commercial or open source.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Can open source software compete against commercial software? Depends on what type of software.
Gaming software strikes me as one market that will never be anything but commercial. Most of the fun of games would be ruined if you had helped design them: knowing all the twists and turns in the plot, exactly how to beat every boss, and knowing how the story ends before you take your first step ina run-though.
When designing games, you're entertaining others but not yourself-- something you'll certainly always want to be paid for. Open source OSes and the like is giving increased usability and productivity to everyone, yourself included.
So while I see promise for the viability of open-source software competing against commercial software in things like instant messaging clients, I just wanted to point out that I don't think it has a chance in gaming software.
Not if the Open Source community has anything to say about it...
Don't get me wrong. I like open source software and I try to promote it as much as I can. But there are things the open source community does that I feel is basically shooting themselves in the foot.
I think my biggest pet pieve with open source software is not the concept itself, but how OS zealots treat proprietary software. Getting to my point, take for example Linux. (I think this is where my karma goes to hell...) In particular, how Linux treats loadable kernel modules. If you load a kernel module that does not explicity state that it is GPLed you start to see messages in the log like "AHH! Proprietary software! The kernel is TAINTED! I'm melting!!!!"
Everyone complains that hardware vendor X doesn't support Linux. But then if they finally build support, and don't open their IP up to the world, they get bitch slapped for it. "Ah! you're tainting my kernel!" You know, I haven't seen whiners like that since elementary school.
Yeah, running in kernel context grants 3rd party software access that can potentially change how the kernel functions. However, most of the time the LKMs simply add the necessary support for the hardware and leave everything else untouched. The only noticable difference is that the hardware _actually_ works. (which is also sometimes debatable...)
I know, technically, according to the verbage of the GPL, all LKMs should be GPLed. I really feel that is too restricting if you want the support from 3rd party vendors. Which is why I'm guessing, that non-GPLed LKMs are still able to be loaded. But if you want the support, quit whining about it!
My question is, how long is it going to be until necessary kernel symbols are no longer exported to proprietary LKMs? When is the final bullet going to be fired into your foot where no commercial company is going to be able (or rather willing) to support Linux at all?
I build drivers for both Linux and Windows. I have YET to see Windows complain about whether or not my source code was GPLed or proprietary!
If you want open source and commercial software to coexist, we really need to get with the program here!
Ok, rant mode off... goodbye sweet karma! it was nice knowing you...
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I agree. Autopackage is an awesome advancement in Linux. Unfortunately, not even one distro has embraced it! :-(
They don't need to embrace it! A distro packaing itself with autopakages would be foolish - the autopackage developers themselves will tell you this. Autopackage will work happily with any distro, be it rpm, dpkg, tgz or source based (presuming things are in somewhat predictable locations).
It is the commercial developers that need to use Autopackage, not the distros. It matter not a jot what the distros use, all the commercial developers have to do is build an autopackage for their software, and potentially some extra autopackages for any potential dependencies they think might be unmet on some systems - not that hard to do as long as you plan ahead and write your linux version with autopackaging in mind. If they do that, then that autopackage is a simple click install on almost any distro.
Packaging commercial software for linux is easy providing you plan ahead enough to allow yourself to build autopackages. Yes, that means current commercial packages possibly have some rewriting to do, but it is unlikely to be that much, and the benefits are clear. Linux is not lacking a means for packaging commercial software for it, it is lacking sufficient publiity of what is a fairly recently developed means for packaging commercial software for it. In another year or two people will not be talking about this problem in the same way, and soon enough it won't get mentioned at all.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
The Open Source movement is just another source of competition for software developers. Just because this software is "given away" doesn't mean it turns commercial software into a commodity item. For the lower value items such as a basic text editor, I can see how a commercial developer may freak out because an Open Source text editor alternative may be viewed as a viable replacement to the commercial version. When you get to the higher priced items though, you (generally) get what you pay for. For example, people are still shelling out hundreds and hundreds of dollars for Photoshop, FinalCut Pro, other specialized apps that require some real programming know-how. Is there an alternative to these apps? Possibly. But it's the commercial developers that went through the painstaking process to write the code, make sure it fulfilled specific requirements, and delivered it to the marketplace giving end users a quality product and a sense of security that this product will work on their machine. Maybe there are some Open Source alternatives to these high priced items, but until they work as flawlessly and seemlessly as the commercial versions, the commercial developers have nothing to worry about. Until then, they just need to keep looking over their shoulders and making sure they are staying ahead of all the developments the Open Source projects are making. It's a healthy form of competition that ultimately gives us all better products and more choices to choose from.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
If you want commercial drivers in your kernel, you should be running an OS that doesn't apply the GPL to the kernel. If you want to write drivers for an open-source kernel, and you don't want to GPL the drivers, then you should write them for an OS that doesn't apply the GPL to the kernel.
What the world needs is an open source emulator that lets you run non-Linux drivers (BSD, Solaris, even Windows) in the Linux kernel. Since the interface you're emulating is not GPLed, your drivers won't need to be GPLed, even if the shim itself is GPLed.
Yes, I know this would be horribly difficult, but it only needs to be done once.
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.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I am an amature web designer, I am self taught and have been doing more and more commercial work on the side, because people are wanting to use the cheap linux web space out there and need people familiar with software like Drupal.
Recently I have been working a bit with a graphics designer that uses a Mac and Adobe to do her work. She was surprised at some of the stuff I was able to do with open source software and admitted that if the software she used was available on Linux, she would seriously consider switching.
One last thought, with some corprate backing the Mozilla SVG project would probably take the web by storm.
once more into the breach
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.