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How Open Does Open Source Need to be?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the there's-no-pleasing-some-people dept.

mjhuot writes "Doug MacEachern, CTO of Hyperic and creator of mod_perl, responds to criticism by Tarus Balog, a maintainer of OpenNMS, that his company's recent open source announcement is nothing but a marketing ploy. It is starting the debate on whether or not just releasing some code qualifies an application as 'open source.'"

3 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Example? by WinEveryGame · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Can anyone give an example of a successful open source project which spent a good chunk of its early years as a completely proprietary software?

  2. I can understand his positon.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    After starting http://www.proclanmanager.com/ I wasn't expecting hordes of people to help but I did expect at least a few. I have got a few people that have helped out but in my experience it usually goes down like this:

    1) Some guy emails me and says he is interested in the project and would like to help out
    2) I email him back with my copy & pasted response welcoming him and telling him about the mailing lists, source code, etc.
    3) I never hear from him again.

    I've been running my open source project since 2002 and since then no one has contributed much at all.

    I feel like I have contributed so much to the project and as the years go by not having anything to show for it just de-motivates me. I quickly found out that even employers are not interested with open source work you have done on your CV.

    If the guy wants to sell a better version of his code good for him I don't see what the problem here as in my experience no one is interested in helping they just want stuff for free.

  3. Semi-Open Source by zephos · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have to say I agree with the author a bit about certain projects that are "open-source" but then have more advanced closed-source versions yet champion how open source they are and how great for the community that is. The given example SugarCRM is a perfect example.

    SugarCRM does offer an open source version of their software and it seems to be pretty solid. However if you look at it versus even the lowest paid closed source version very important functionality has been removed; namely Outlook support and access restrictions. The Outlook thing may be a licensing issue [though it seems all the projects I find that do Outlook support always seem to charge for it and I can't imagine all of them use some 3rd party library they can't open source.] so I'll let it slide but to be used for almost any serious business there is a base requirement to restrict what certain sales-people can and cannot see within a CRM like that. By removing that functionality they are almost completely making the open source version useful for any business.

    This of course is within their rights and if desired anyone could branch SugarCRM and include this stuff. At the same time I wonder what's the point, why not just keep it closed and make your sales? Does open sourcing an intentionally crippled version of the software really help them at all other than the marketing aspect of them having an open source version?

    For example Zimbra has no intention of ever releasing an open source version of their Outlook adapter for their product. This smacks of wanting business to pay for the software. My question then is why not just make the bloody license "not free for commercial purposes" like plenty of other software, why make a big deal about it being open-source but then intentionally cripple the open source version?

    To me in a way it just seems manipulative.