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Trouble With Open Source?
George Russell writes "Stephen J Marshall, writing in the BCS online magazine, provides a cogent argument detailing the ills of Open Source Software for the software industry - namely, the lack of conceptual integrity, professionalism, and innovation together with the issue of ownership of OSS developed under the current Intellectual Property laws. Do these issues concern you?"
Do these issues concern you?
No.
Where do these people think up these imaginary problems? "Lack of conceptual integrity"? "Lack of innovation"? The open source community has been a source of quality software and helpful guidance for as long as I've used it (YMMV of course). But I've never had the troubles which always get paraded about in the media.
He points out things like 'conceptual integrity' and 'professionalism' and 'innovation', things that can be found in many OSS projects. What bothers me about writing open source code is simple: Where is my money.
Many say, that you should make money off support. However, that is plain stupid because the software is the hard part, the part that interests me, the part that I want to be paid for instead of something like support.
The reason I support many OSS is one thing: excellence of product, like Linus.
Professionalism: wrong - all in all most of the OSS I see is more professionally done than the closed sourced crap I have to work with.
Conceptual Integrity: Totally wrong, see above. Yes, there are damn good closed source products, but the same is true for some OSS stuff. I cannot be assed to provide examples, but it's easy for everybody taking having have a clue. Yes, there is totally rubbish OSS around, but first, it's just a function of the mass of what is out there, and second, the same is also true for closed source stuff.
Innovation: Half true, but OTOH, there are many examples where the fact that something is OSS drives innovation in a way that wouldn't be possible with closed source. Internet Explorer for example would've been forked long ago if it was open source.
There is, of course, anecdotal evidence pointing to the contrary, but I would definitely agree with this diagnosis. I would, however, argue that this is exactly where the strength of OSS lies: in producing reliable software (reliable because its strengths and weaknesses are well-known). It's like common sense -- not always the best answer, but it works.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
The absence of design leadership in the OSS development process and a motivation for OSS developers to create free versions of their favourite proprietary software may also explain why there would appear to be a distinct lack of imagination in OSS projects. The open source community has so far tended to create facsimiles of proprietary packages rather than the next killer application.
A continued shift towards OSS solutions at the expense of proprietary ones is likely to result in many of the companies that develop proprietary software going out of business. This might not be such a bad thing, as I'm sure that many of us would secretly welcome the collapse of the virtual monopoly that currently exists in the desktop software market. However, the first companies affected are likely to be the small but highly innovative firms, which are the lifeblood of the software industry, not the giant corporations that we all love to hate.
Open source doesn't have imagination or innovation, yet is likely to put innovators out of business? This makes no sense. OSS will tend to put non-innovators out of business IMO, while innovators will still be able to sell proprietary software because of their innovations.
Then later the author pooh-poohs OSS because "it is clearly not the panacea for all the software industry's ailments". Who ever said it was? Reading blatant strawman attacks like this make me wonder what the author's motivations are.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
You took the words right out of my mouth :)
Seriously, if you don't like open source then you're free to get your software somewhere else. The fact that people even write articles like this really says something -- that the traditional industry is afraid of open source. It makes sense that an industry that sells virus-infected software for $200 a pop is afraid of a kind of software that doesn't cost any money and has most of its critical bugs fixed in a week.
But, if you don't like that, nobody's forcing you to use it. Don't like Linux? Don't use it! Whining about how it's unprofessional or unsafe or whatever isn't going to solve any of your problems. Try writing software that's better or cheaper... if you can't do that then you need a new industry. (Oh, I have an idea. Let's make OSS illegal since it hurts business. It worked for P2P and the music industry, right?)
My other car is first.
I found the whole IP thing completely ridiculous. Why shouldn't an employee be allowed to create software for himself on his free time without the rights going to the company? Especially if the software doesn't have anything to do with the specific company. Hooray for IP capitalism!
If you limited your idea about Open Source to the stereotypical smelly hacker in his basement, sure, this article may have merit. When you come out of that delusion though, you see that IT industry heavyweights are contributing to Open Source. Sun, IBM and others brings tons of rigor and professionalism to Open Source.
Is he saying IBM and Sun aren't professional or have conceptual integrity?
I'm sometimes concerned by some of the issues that were brought up, but then go back to thinking that these problems generally aren't solely the province of 'open source' but software in general.
Conceptual integrity
We only have to look at the history of the electronic computer to see that the greatest advances in technology have been made by brilliant, strong-willed individuals, usually supported by a small team of dedicated engineers - not community-based projects.
Some of the best open source project (most, really) tend to be started and grown by a single person or a very small group of people. After a critical mass is reached, sometimes things open up to a larger community of contributors, but the projects are already fairly well established. Compare PHP and Python - perhaps not the best examples, but close to mind right now. Python was/is primarily done by one person, and PHP seems now to be more 'community' driven, and the results are that PHP tends to have more problems with moving forward (witness the recent 4.4/5.0.5 references-changed-behaviour issue). I don't see these types of problems happening in projects with one figurehead - at least not as much.
Innovation
Yes, many open source projects are copies of 'closed source' software, but many closed source offerings are copies of other closed source offerings as well, all trying to address perceived needs in a slightly different way. I would say that it frustrates me that there's many more new ideas that could be implemented in mozilla or konqueror, for example, which aren't, and probably won't be until MS or Apple does them first, then there'll be a quick copy in the open source world. File upload progress bar is the first which comes to mind, and it'll be frustrating when MS comes out with it first (whenever that is) and watch others catch up (the built in WYSIWYG HTML editor in IE was another one).
All in all, 'open source' is at heart a method of software development, and has pros and cons. Most of the things that were mentioned aren't only an issue for open source projects. I'm working at a company which has paid money for a commercial product (accounting software and ecommerce addon) and things don't work. It's been two months and things still don't work right. We've paid money, had multiple vendors out on site, been on support lines, and they can't get it to work as it's supposed to. We're one of their first customers trying to use the software this way (I think) so this is a learning curve for them, and I've seen this happen dozens of times over the years. Why people think this is 'more acceptable' than having in-house developers working with free software, simply because you've 'paid' for something, is still a mystery to me. Downtime/lost productivity is not something you can get back, even if you get a refund of your purchase price.
creation science book
It's hard to know where to start. Every point in this article has already been so thoroughly debunked it's silly to be dredging them up again. I suspect the author, although well meaning, simply didn't do his homework. Eric Raymond's extensive writings would be a great place to begin. I would also humbly remind everyone of my own essay, THE CARE AND FEEDING OF FOSS which discusses several of these myths.
Maybe, just maybe, most FOSS developers treat it like a hobby because it is a hobby. If you're not willing to pay them, stop whining about how they're not doing exactly what you want.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
...is hidden in the last paragraph:
What we really need from government is an investigation of the long-term effects of OSS on our indigenous software industry, assistance to combat the threat to the industry's livelihood that OSS might pose and the development of a strategy to build on the opportunities that OSS has created. Without prompt action, my fear is that a further move towards OSS could result in the nightmare scenario of OSS at one extreme and Microsoft at the other with nothing else in between. Where would our freedom of choice be then?
in other words: OSS is going to take away my gravy train!!
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
They plague every human endeavor. The article falls victim, however, to the idea that every human endeavor is monolithic. There is no one OSS vision, not all commerce is sordid, and I doubt that many hold the opinion that they be separate. The article falls apart under the delusions of its writer. Somebody give him and those close to him a wake up call!
(Please don't bother my poor spelling, I'm no native speaker)
I'm working for a large international company (about 9000 employees world wide) which is phasing out Redmond, because it lacks proffesionalism, and they constantly change their own standards.
We use open source, because of it's better (also not perfect) consistancy and much lower maintenance cost. We don't develop software ourselves, we're just users. I must admit, not standard users, all employees are engineers. We are not interested in a shiny glammer interface, the thing just needs to work. Redmond is only compatible with Redmond and nothing else, so we cannot glue applications together. That is the main reason it is phased out.
What makes Redmond so expensive is that with every update something else gets broken. Often, our Sys. Op. thought he had tested the latest patch good enough, rolls it out and "bang" the network goes down again in an area he had overlooked. Due to the lack of good technical documentation, it takes a lot of time to get it up again.
With OSS the technical information is available on the internet and we know much better what each patch does. Moreover, because OSS obeys open standards much better (also not always perfectly), we can glue applicaltions together. Currently we are working with a system that is far more powerful than the shiny Redmond system. And the system downtime is reduced considerably.
I think all this article demonstrates is how out of touch the BCS is with the modern IT world. As I don't have a degree I've only just become eligible for membership this year as I've reached the minimum age of 35. If I'm a really good boy, they may let me become a member. However, they have no credibility in the British computing arena as it's simply a gentleman's club that achieves very little, other than patting each other on the back and saying "Jolly good show old bean" to one another.
I've been around computers since I was 10, writing Z80 assembly at 14, contract game programming at 17 and working in the industry professionally from 19. I was an IT Manager at 22 and I've been a freelance consultant for the last 9 years. I'm a web developer (PHP, MySQL), a software developer (VB), a networking specialist (CNE, MCSE, CCNA, CCDA) but mostly a technical architect (VCP) and have project management qualifications too (PRINCE2 and Project+). But the BCS hasn't represented me or other colleagues I've worked with during the past 16 years. Therefore, how do you represent an industry that you actively discourage from being a part of your organisation.
I think this article just flies further in the face of the real world. OSS is here to stay, it's too quick and too powerful to ignore. If OSS is so unattractive, why has it become so prominent, why are mainstream players looking at using this community approach more and more? Why are OSS solutions becoming more commonplace within organisations?
We live in a capitalist world, where demand exists, supply exists. People want OSS so IT managers need to exploit this area of our world, not try and ignore it. It's this short-sighted approach that has always damaged corporations, I just find it amazing that people that work in IT can be so averse to change. We work in the fastest changing business sector, if people can't stand the heat I hope they're not stupid enough to hit their head on the way out of the kitchen.
Intellectual Property: A major flaw at the heart of the open source movement is the misconception that most individuals actually have the legal right to contribute their intellectual efforts to OSS projects. In most industrialized nations, intellectual property (IP) generated by an employee through the course of his or her employment legally belongs to the employer. In the UK, this is embodied in the Patents Act 1977 and the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
He almost got it correct. Intellectual Property is a major flaw in this day and time. Could someone give me a legal definition of IP please? I believe there are patents, copyrights, and trade secrets but I am unfamiliar with Intellectual Property. Furthermore as an employess of Megacorp, being forced to agree that your employer owns any though that pops into your head 24 hours a day is unethical and wrong.
Intellectual Property needs a legal definition and employees need rights and protection against thought slavery. The problem is not OSS, the problem is that corporate greed and control of its employees know no bounds. I thought we abolished slavery in the "civilized" world long ago, but it appears to be coming back in different forms. Instead of "physical slavery" we now have "mental slavery".
All your Intellectual Property are belong to us...
Open source doesn't have imagination or innovation, yet is likely to put innovators out of business?
Yes. Consider worse is better to be a sort of Gresham's law for software: bad software that is given away for $0 (whether it is open source or not, actually) drives out more-innovative commercial software. People say that they value innovation, but in the end nothing beats the allure of free.
"Oh, I have an idea. Lets make OSS illegal since it hurts business".
You have given the best summary of what this author is really selling.
Leads off with IP laws (written before there was such a thing as software) and ends with:
"What we really need from government is an investigation of the long-term effects of OSS on our indigenous software industry, assistance to combat the threat to the industry's livelihood that OSS might pose"
No! What we need is for government to pay less attention to the "threat to the industry's livelihood" and more attention to removing obstacles to the rise of the public domain's interests, as is fostered by FOSS methods of product value development and delivery.
Pretty cute, too, use of "the industry" - as if processes and methods matter more than the public value of, and accessibility to, the product. And as if the 'proprietary' world's processes and methods are "the industry" while FOSS is not.
As pointed out in at least one other post, I think that - for example - IBM, Sun and HP would be surprised to discover that they are not in "the industry".
The article is hardly cogent. Look at his main points:
A major flaw at the heart of the open source movement is the misconception that most individuals actually have the legal right to contribute their intellectual efforts to OSS projects
The GPL is quite clear on the process you have to go through in order to be able to contribute to a Free Software project. If you're seeking employment, then get an agreement in writing that you can contribute to OSS projects that don't compete with whatever your employer does. Simple.
The process of creating software is more akin to an engineering discipline than an artistic endeavour, and this raises another point of concern with OSS.
Actually, he's wrong. The process of creating good software is more akin to an artistic endeavour. He even shoots down his own argument a bit later:
We only have to look at the history of the electronic computer to see that the greatest advances in technology have been made by brilliant, strong-willed individuals, usually supported by a small team of dedicated engineers - not community-based projects.
Yes, like such open-source individuals as Larry Wall, John Ousterhout, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman and others. There are lots of terrific OSS projects that are basically lead by one very bright person.
Professionalism
I am am professional software developer, and so are all of the developers I employ. We all contribute to OSS projects. It's a myth that FOSS contributors are students or the unemployed; by and large, they're professional developers.
Innovation
OSS is not about innovation. It's about utility and usefulness. However, innovation is often a side-effect: Witness the amazing innovations of Perl, Tcl/Tk, Bit Torrent, SpamAssassin, and many others.