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Open Source Forming a Dot Com Bubble?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the ride-the-wave-while-it-is-here dept.

sebFlyte writes "ZDNet is running an interesting look at the sudden upswing of investment in open source products and the ensuing debate as to whether the open source business model has given us a bubble (akin to the dot-com bubble) that is about to burst. The counter-argument is that the increase in investment is just the natural progression of a robust business model whose time has come. One point that few people, whatever their viewpoint, could disagree with is that the key to a financially successful open source project rests with the community, rather than just the technology."

3 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. who pays for this stuff? by boxlight · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I use lots of open source software, Apache Tomcat, JBoss, a bunch of Eclipse plug-ins. In fact, before I tackle most tasks I check to see if there's a free open-source project that has already solved the hard problems.

    I'm really happy that these projects exists because being able to stand on their shoulders make me a much more productive and a better programmer.

    But I have often wondered -- who are these people that pay (in money or time) to develop all this stuff? I'm really glad they do, but I hope all the "funding" doesn't all dry up someday. I'd have to do all that work myself!!

    boxlight

  2. Re:Opensource isn't the problem... by dslauson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I agree with you that Open Source will live on regardless of money invested by venture capitalists. The question is, at what level. Hobbyists? Tinkerers?

    Or can it exist as a robust business model that can compete with commercial competitors?

    I've been seeing more and more paid programming positions advertised on my campus' job site for open source projects. As cool as I think it would be to take a job like this when I get out of school, I don't want to go somewhere where the floor will fall out from underneath me.

    Anyway, I'm not trying to predict doom for OSS, I'm just saying that this is a valid discussion, and I'm curious to hear what people have to say.

  3. Open source is not a business model by jhoger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    FOSS is not a business model. It is way of licensing code that protects the user's ability to user and modify the software. It can also be seen as a vast body of resuable code for projects with compatible licenses. In the case of GNU/Linux it is also a software stack with $0 licensing fees, so conceivably it only costs as much as it takes to get it installed, maintain it, and extend it for a given business's purposes.

    Paid support and customization of software IS a business model. It's called "software contracting."

    That business model is well understood. It can be profitable, and can sustain most salaried engineers at a rate ABOVE their current salary, but not usually as profitable on a large scale as a software product company can be, because as part of the bargain we choose not to leverage the amazing power of government-granted monopoly profits.

    However, given the success of the FOSS development model I wouldn't give mass-market proprietary software more than another 20 years unless the government(s) intervene to stop it, or consumers buy into locked-down platforms that will only run signed code.

    From the programmer point of view it doesn't really matter. We seem to get paid the same whether our customer can make billions off of the bits we create, or only gets to charge a markup on our rate. Weird, huh? ;-)

    -- John.