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Open Season On Open Source?
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at the possible future of open source. The article's conclusion is that it might be grim. From the piece: 'Software giant Oracle Corp. has acquired two small open-source companies and is in negotiations to buy at least one more. Many experts believe this is the beginning of a broader trend in which established tech companies scoop up promising open-source startups. While the validation is thrilling it's also unsettling. Many young idealists who set out to create an alternative to the tech Establishment now find themselves becoming part of it.'"
Now you're complaining? Millions of poets, the world over, would kill prose for such an opportunity.
Folks on slashdot are always talking about how it's possible to make money on free/open source software, and that F/OSS is the wave of the future. Well, if you *really* believe this, why are you shocked that large companies agree with you? Or that people who start open source projects agree with you?
My guess is that a lot of the people who talk about making money off of F/OSS don't really believe it in their gut. They really believe that F/OSS is always going to be a volunteer activity, not a business model.
There's nothing new in this. Big business is always trying to beat down the small guy by saying that "You won't succeed without our money and expertise. Give up now and sell to us or you are doomed." Open source is just the latest arena to get the treatment. Sometimes true, but often corporate bureaucrats prove far less adept at running a concern than the small guy who's become tough and shrewd because he's had to live by his wits with sod-all in the bank. Corporate bureaucrats are very good at overpaying, though, and you can hardly blame anyone for taking a fabulously absurd sum if it's on offer.
As for Mr Ellison, he can't have it both ways. In the interview on which this article is based, he first paid homage to open source which these days is about as controversial as calling for fresh air and clean drinking water. He then affected to find Mysql to be so small as to be beneath his radar but curiously knew all about it. That Ellison should find a company a tiny percentage of Oracle's size such a thorn says more about his tender ego than anything else. There's absolutely no guarantee that Oracle's "aggressive" buying spree will do it any good. The moment they think they've plucked out one thorn, another will appear in its place.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
They don't know what they're buying. They think if they buy an open-source company they're getting "open-source". They don't get a free community unless they understand it. They dont get the product they think they're getting. Software companies have been trying to make their customers be unpaid beta testers for years and frequently they think this is a cheaper shortcut to that end. They waste the community's effort. This isn't just the case with FOSS, it's generally the case with most company acquisitions, it's just more obviously idiotic with FOSS.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
How about "[...] Many young idealists who set out to create an alternative to the tech Establishment now find themselves successfully infiltrating it, and changing the landscape as we know it."
Software is becoming a commodity. The business is heading in the direction of services. Once Oracle has reached market saturation - everyone who is going to use Oracle, is - the only way they can grow is by selling people their knowledge on how best to use Oracle. And the fact that Oracle is dipping its toes in the sea of open source only goes to show that at some point, the commodity itself will retail at its actual cost of (re-)production: the cost of the bandwidth for downloading it.
/or so sayeth the idealist
yes, we have no bananas
Let me get this straight, people are spending big money to buy up open source companies left and right and because of that we should be concerned about the future of open source?????
..... once people figure out that they can make companies that are pratically guaranteed to get bought out at over valued prices or become profitable open-source ventures if they dont. And even better, chances are that 90% of the of the software they start their base off of is likely already developed. I wouldn't be supprised to see a nuclear explosion in the open source software industry bigger than the dot.com and the PC boom and the integtrated circuit boom combined.
How about an alternative view
If they do understand it, it scares them. I once killed a job interview by noting that my last project had been going so well, that we had operatd for six months without a manager, and shipped ahead of schedule. The developer in the room nodded and smiled. But the Jr. V.P. got icy. She had been quite friendly up to that point. And I knew I had popped the ego of the person who was going to decide whether to hire me.