Slashdot Mirror
Is Commercialization Killing Open Source?
An anonymous reader writes "IBM, Sun, Novell, and Red Hat all have a very significant open source element to their businesses. In addition to these juggernauts, there is growing investment in various open source models. Will money flowing into open source destroy its roots? Mark Hinkle just posted an editorial asking the questions Is Commercialization Killing Open Source? in which he comments on 'opensville' and gives some actual investment data, and a lot of insight into the growing trend in 'open source commercialization'. Is there such a thing as 'too much money' when it comes to developing software?"
Is there such a thing as 'too much money' when it comes to developing software?"
Just like the movie industry, you're pushed to release sequels as frequently as possible even when you really don't have anything new or innovative to release.
God spoke to me.
I'm happy about all the money coming into open source. If it wasn't for Red Hat's persistent support, GNOME would have died due to its awkward choice of technologies - and without that competitive pressure, Qt would probably have stayed closed-source, so KDE would have been dead in my book too. Big money in open source is win-win.
Just like investment of capital ruined the roots of the automotive industry. However, cars are much cheaper now than they would have been being produced one by one in a garage. The roots of any industry or technique usually suck compared to results after the industry has been fully capitalized. So, yes it will probably ruin the roots, but its a good thing.
Production here at work has ground to a halt. we just bought 20 of the bar-stool racing go-karts and the programmers haven't done a thing since they started shopping at the Ferrari dealerships. If we did not get that $29Mill in venture capitol we would have been still working hard here.
But no. Now we have a 6 hour golf meeting every day for all employees, Caviar and wine spewing drinking fountains.
I heard rumors of $1000 a hour hooker fridays starting next month!
Morale is high, but productivity has dropped way down.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The author's problem stems from takers no givers. The problem of the common green where everyone takes and no one gives back. But wasn't the right kind of licensing supposed to address this? Aren't companies supposed to be prohibited from doing this?
The artists moved to the Mac in 1984 for the user interface to make their art. They generated applications, hypercard stacks,applescripts, performance spaces like the apple store soho would eventually become, text and picture clippings, art galleries (tekserve).etc., due to their highly developed aesthetics.
these artists-- these creative designers, musicians, scientists, and programmers-- stayed on the Mac during the interregnum when apple was a decaying mess and, respecting the Gestalt manager, built their applications out of dilapidated but beautiful Toolbox code.
The pencil-pushers and accountning brats saw all of this and said, "Hey, that looks cool." "Daddy buy me some of that." But these switcheurs have nothing to contribute except a talent for demanding crap like glossy screens. just what the fuck are you spreadsheet fiddlers doing? nothing beyond fueling the demand for ugly, tragically misdesigned, cookie-cutter applications like Firefox and Azureus. That is why the Mac community has so rapidly gone into its Rococco stage.
The Mac community continues to change and it is becoming very clear that we are loosing our edge-- the subcultures that once thrived on the Mac are all loosing steam to the mainstream. art, music, nightlife, web development. The Mac is so over. very sad indeed.
mailto:acaben@macslash.org
Open Source being commercialized is another step in it's evolution. It is obvious that having the source code FREE of royalty issues is an asset to any company. In addition to the regular services you get when procure other commercial products, that puts OSS companies and indeed OSS at an advantage. Think before you speak!
Since when are the big players the backbone of Open Source?
Sure, some things will be dominated by commercial needs, they kind of have to be to compete. Anyone who pretends surprise and wants it to be otherwise is deluding themselves.
I've been an Open Source coder for six years now. Last time I checked the state of Red Hat et al made not a mote of difference to my project. I'm pretty certain that I'm not alone.
Among the many aspects of the Open/Free Source cultures is the essential characteristics of Choice and Free Will.
/. seem to love, beer, either Metaphorically or Analogously, Did the EXPLOSION of Micro-Breweries in the last decade kill off Beer?
As we all on
Or did it offer many people the chance to experiment and introduce new types and varieties of beer to an entirely new audience?
Sure, as the the Giant Commercial Software Shops have participated in the process, they have occasionally Big Footed their way through some issues.
Sure, as they have ponied up large numbers of developers and other resources to promote their vision of Open/Free Source, they have inflected the growth and adoption rates of Linux, et al.
But would anyone seriously suggest, for all the real difficulties this has caused, and will cause in the future, without the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS that the Giants have poured into the world of Free/Open Source, that its adoption, growth and technological improvment would be anywhere near where it is now?????
They Pays Their Monies and They Takes Their Chances.....
I'd say we're all much better off with them, than without them. And those of us who want to work on porting LINUX or Java to our favorite Zilog 80 platform, can spend as much time as we chose to do so. Our own pet projects are, as always, up to to us.
As individual developers and contributors, we are as, "Free to Choose", as we have ever been.
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
Yeah, the author was pretty unclear on this. Certainly, using the GPL or something similar will prevent companies from legally leaching too much off of the project. At any rate, it insures that any changes the company makes should be able to find their way back to the project itself. Of course, this can still be violated, at which point it becomes a legal question. Honestly, this is one of the big reasons that I disagree with many people who favor BSD style licenses. If that's what you want for your code, then it's all well and good, but don't ever complain about leaching, since the license gives complete permission to go ahead and do that.
Without money flowing in to OSS, fewer people will be able to do useful work.
Sure there is a perception of OSS being written by the selfless hackers giving all their spare time. In reality though, people need to eat, pay the rent and buy computers etc. When organisations fund OSS development they help make it real. OSS businesses have found various ways to make money and do so in various ways.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm not sure that analogy is applicable. As pointed out in "C&B," the "commons" problem is that the value of the commons diminishes as more animals grazed there. In software, having other folks use (even if they never return anything) doesn't diminish your value of the software in any fashion.
With commercial software, the value is only in it's artificial scarcity. As AOL has demonstrated, we could blanket the earth in install CD's, so the supply/demand price of the software enclosed approaches zero.
I don't see any problem with it (companies using without returning everything/anything). They'll help fix the common roads when it's in their interest to do so. With more companies using OS software, they'll eventually end up using more of the "common roads" too.
Don't worry, they'll get around to it once all this IP nonsense is settled.
The author laments the fact that there are some enterprises that do not contribute to the community yet draw substantial benefit from that same community. This is the same problem we have with free speech in that many people will benefit from the fact that they can speak, and earn a living from that speach (read: Dvorak) yet only a smaller subset of those speaking are actually saying anything that edifies society or benefits it meaningfully. If the FLOSS community is going to espouse freedom then they'll have to suck it up that the leeches are free to use it.
Disclaimer... I personally can't program worth a crap. I get lost in my own 25 line shell scripts so I have to donate in order to contribute (go elive!)
load "$",8,1
I agree with this 100%. If you look at the work that goes into Gnome, a very large proportion of it comes from developers at Redhat and Novell. A lot of the developers are still unaffiliated with any large corporations, but certainly if you browse through the Gnome bugzilla you will see that a lot of the core developers that are pushing Gnome forward are paid for their work. And this really helps the community. Furthermore, Gnome has lately benefited from the interest of late from mobile and embedded developers, who have done a lot of work in push down the resource usage of Gnome components.
Gnome is a big project. There is a lot of code, and a lot of it is showing its age. If Gnome was an all volunteer effort, there would be a lot more focus on exciting new technologies, and less focus on fixing bugs and cleaning up old code. In a sense, this is how I see KDE. KDE is pushed forward by developing new projects and applications, but to a certain degree suffers from the fact that things are constantly being reinvented rather than refined. The hard work that has gone into Gnome by commercialization has helped reduced bugs in the code, kept it up to date, and continues to push the project forward.
#include ".signature"
Things get commercialized. If there's a profit to be made, it'll happen. As long as the licensing stays GPLish I'm totally okay with it.
As AOL has demonstrated, we could blanket the earth in install CD's, so the supply/demand price of the software enclosed approaches zero.
I don't know if usung AOL as a standard is a good thing. Yes, they were 'successful', even to the point of buying TimeWarner, but only because soooo many people are/were clueless.
You have to blanket the earth with good stuff*. Even then, I'm not sure the 'clueless ones' will not screw it up.
* for various definitions of good stuff.
So oft misquoted that sandal wearing hippy, but he knew a thing or two. It isn't money that's the root of all evil, it is "the love of money".Can there be such a thing as too much money in open source? No. Unless you're talking about inflation problems there can't be too much money anywhere. Money is blind and inert on it's own, tis nothing but a utility of exchange. Now, wealth and value, those are different things.
Let's call things what they are. The problem of commercialisation is greed, corruption, distortion of social values, profit before merit... cmon y'all know the rap sheet. Once the money comes so do the opportunists, the shallow short-termists, the psychopathic profiteers, everything that is rotten and corrupt about human nature, everything cheap and uncultured. That's business, it's a clash of cultures. You only have to look at Microsoft and their shoddy half-arsed products to know this is true.
But if the GPL works the way it should it will only allow real capitalists and industrialists to prosper. The parasites and proponents of "intellectual property" aren't invited to this party. Open source will outlive every major corporation whose name you know today, and long after they are gone it will continue to be a force for creating real wealth and value. I think the perception of "hunter and hunted" are deceptive in this regard. It isn't a question of whether business will change open source, but that open source and free software will change business forever.
Presumably the people with money will be able to hire the good developers away from the projects they are working on. That's the way it is anyway though so I'm not sure how much things will change in that regard. One difference is that the good developers will be easier to recognize; their contributions to open source are public after all. That does provide some motivation to work on open source projects; one can develop one's skills and reputation and become more attractive to employers.
All in all, it would seem that the money would attract more people into the open source world. It would also seem that, unlike in the dot com boom, the cream will rise to the top. Sounds like a good thing to me.
TFA was weak, I don't think the question of whether a few companies choose to leech off open source projects is really that important to OSS development in the long run.
But in general I think the question of what influence all the money coming into the open source community will have is a good one. If, as is increasingly the case, OSS becomes a key component in the businesses of multi-billion dollar corporations, those corporations will seek to control open source development to protect their investment.
If OSS development becomes increasing corporatized, and the coders and maintainers of large projects are increasingly professionals employed by larger corporations(whether directly or indirectly via donations to a foundation etc) I think this cannot help but have an impact on the character of the open source community.
Personally I cannot picture that an open source movement largely backed and funded by larger corporations would retain any ideals of openness, freedom or even quality software for long. IMNSHO those ideals are antithetical to the corporate live-or-die-by-next-quarters'-results mentality.
I think that the open source community should be wary. Obviously, everything else being equal, more money in open source is a good thing for everybody, more resources and more coders means more great software. But that could well come with a price of it's own, nothing comes free, especially when dealing with corporate America...
If I want an OS that Just Works, I go with Mac OS X. If I want an OS to play video games, I go with Windows. If I want an OS that's open-source, I go with Debian, Ubuntu, OpenBSD or NetBSD. I've never understood the point of the commercial Linux distros. They're generally bigger and bloatier than the "free" distros, they don't make it any easier to play Windows games or run Windows apps, and they suffer from the same driver availability issues that most non-Windows OSes suffer from (due to asshole hardware vendors that only want to support one company, but still). About their only 'selling point' is that PHB types take them more seriously-- but, then again, PHB types take Windows seriously as a server OS, and if you wanted a serious server-grade Un*x, you might as well go with Solaris.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Open source is growing, but it's not killing off its roots, it's just becoming so much more than it once was. There's plenty projects around that are still the same as they ever were, and just because there are commercial projects that go their own way, what does that bother anyone? Very often they contribute userfriendly niceties that are very handy to everyone, but that none of the "hardcore" people would bother implementing. And if someone can make up a business model where they earn money and contribute back, how can that be bad? Companies can turn into bad apples, projects scrapped or get bought out but the source lives on. If you feel the commercial interests are a problem, fork it and break new ground. I don't really care if the code came from RMS himself or a salaried in-it-for-the-money employee at Red Hat. The freedoms are the same, in particular the freedom to use their code to scratch your itch. In the end, isn't that what matters?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Spending money is orthogonal to openness. Mainstream money has simply increased the size of the pie.
As open source becomes more mainstream more mainstream companies more money will get involved. No surprises there.
Niche programmers with free time will continue to scratch their itch. No surprises their either.
The two groups exist together quite happily. Most open source programmers want their work to become more mainstream.
It's only when companies try to do an end-run around open licenses that there's problems and that's exactly the same issue as proprietary software licenses being abused.
---
DRM. You don't control it means you don't own it.
Such a bunch of hot air.... I've done my time in a handful of projects, and would love to get more done and a lot of rough edges squared away in a very specific, visual spot of the desktop. My problem was lack of money... not just the fact that what I was doing had almost no ties to any "open-source money" at all, but the market has been quite a dog, and in my town I took a year away from programming and IT work to try my hand in the production department of a newspaper, in all places. Switching careers like that can kill motivation on an open-source project.
/. post is talking about. Nagios being abused, and commercializtion of software itself killing open source... Taking open source projects and investing in project that build on top of that foundation.
Without getting too personal, all I will say is that the vast majority money invested into open source is anything but... It's invested into companies that have a handful of people working on a handful of high-profile cases, usually doing a 20% job: 20% on open source, and 80% on projects that actually bring in cash.
Now, back to the article, those links support anything but what the
Because you have a free option on money. You don't want it? Don't use it. You want it? Use it. It's plain simple. I see people complaining about money in the movie business. Well I saw plenty of expensive movies which I enjoyed very much, and plenty of inexpensive which I enjoyed as well. Some good things need money to be done, some don't. Money is just a tool of exchange, it has no intrinsic characteristic, it merely reflects that of his owner. Someone despising money is really despising his own goals and thus is very self.
\u262D = \u5350
No.
(well, I can't think of a better response to such a silly question)
In all this discussion of Big Business "Open Source" software let's tip our hats to the thousands of Debian Developers who help keep software FREE. Not just free in monetary terms, free of the stranglehold that big business can place on software development when they decide to move on to the next big thing.
I hope big business keep pumping money into worthwhile open source projects. I really hope they truly support free software. I'm smart enough to know that at least some of these players are only in it to foister some competition against the Microsoft camp and whether that is good enough for the community remains to be seen.
Moore's law is not a law. Theory, yes; Predictable trend, certainly; Law, no.
>>In software, having other folks use doesn't diminish your value of the software in any fashion.
While the animals are consuming something that can be copied infinitely, strangely, they still poop.
I think we can all agree that the poop has been piled pretty high.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
What worries me is you don't have to release your code unless you are planning to sell your software under the laws of the GPL. This is something that many open source advocates misconcieve.
Insinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
One day you'll need to fix something or write a replacement for some piece of software out of sheer annoyance and you'll release the code because that's the sensible thing to do.
;^)
That's our worth, freedom will always be more than a career path
Does anyone think that GNOME, KDE, Mozilla (all of their major apps), OpenOffice and the kernel would be where they are today without the help thrown in from companies that have a vested interest in seeing these products get built and mature? MySQL, Mono, Mozilla and OpenOffice wouldn't even exist without commercialization. So yes, no. Far from killing OSS, commercialization has been the biggest help OSS has had because it's made people want to invest time and money into it.
Be fair to AOL, they started out with a better product at a better price. The fact that once they made it to the top and bought out Time Warner they lost their edge and spiraled into a vortex of overpriced suck doesn't change that.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Points have a time-to-live of one year, extended by three months for every major maintenance cycle, two for moderate maintenance, and one if the updates are thrown off the back of a lorry at high speed.
Have three leagues. One league being major corporate entities, one being the smaller companies involved, and one for the genuine collective projects.
My guess is that IBM, SGI etc, would not care in the slightest, but I seriously doubt they'd refuse a plaque commemorating a successful year, either. The smaller companies - now, they might care. Publicity is the lifeblood of the small business, and this is easy free publicity - as well as steering them the right way. Collective projects SHOULDN'T care - if they do, their members have lost sight of the project and are focussed on the kudos. Bad mistake. Projects that do that are doomed, doomed I say!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Is Slashdots unholy association with Intel killikg Slashdot?
Open source products are making inroads in most vertical markets, deposing commercial product after commercial product. Their user base is soaring, their legitimacy is solidifying, their media presence is expanding. It's actively difficult to find servers that aren't open source.
Exactly what definition of "killing" are we working by, again?
StoneCypher is Full of BS
A lot of projects have benefitted from having some money behind them. The article cites several examples, so I don't have to. But, if a open source project is really going to be threatened, it is likely not only because of the money, but also because of greed.
Do we need a better reminder than SCO to demonstrate that greed is what would kill open source? And while their recent actions seem limited to their legal battle against Linux, this same company used to be called Caldera (and was selling a Linux distribution of their own).
So, if there is an issue of too much money in open source, it really comes down to whether that money is being justly used to support the development of open source products or if that money is being used to line a greedy manager's/executive's pockets.
The link, in TFA's list of businesses who've raised $12 million to fund open source software/services, points to Black Duck Inn and Properties..
Did he even check his references??
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
For what I remember, companies when they take up open source seem to contribute back to the main project instead of forking off and making their own version to compete. More then corporate support, I believe overzealous forking of projects is what would spell the death of open source. Sure some protects are the better for forking, but it is often not the corporations that are the cause of the forks. Just a thought...
AOL sucked way before they bought out Time Warner...
Is 'open source' killing commercial products? Are they killing each other? Or is this a messy transitional period which will give rise to a user-driven business model? There are an enormous number of proprietary products which have ceased to exist as 'commercial' products and have flourished as open source technologies with a support component. It is not that either are 'killing' the other, but rather, there is a demand for a mixture of both which is emerging as the preferred model by the market.
Money is not killing open source. If anything, open source software offers more ways to make money than just shoving a disk in a box. I've seen interesting ways of selling open-source software, including subscriptions and bug bounties. Don't forget that you can sell documentation and support!
There's no place like ~.
For open source to become more popular, money must flow in. The result is that some projects request donations to keep the project alive.
Now, I'll play devil's advocate for a second - would you prefer a version of Firefox that isn't up to modern standards (i.e. bloated, memory leaks, CPU hog, and won't render properly), or would you spend money to make it the best browser (i.e. lightning fast, lightweight, and perfect rendering)? I've considered allowing you to spend time to help the browser, but a project the size of Firefox isn't something that most programmers can jump into.
LinuxLand is filled with great solid hacks. People, like Linus, put together code sets based on affinity and desire and a lot of blood/sweat/tears/tribulation and just plain brain power. So much the better. Stallman put together a pure kit of utilities that mimed the functionality of core Unix components. He did it for free, and forever free. So much the better.
It's ok to put money into these things to advance them and move them along. Money will follow good code that people need (ok, maybe some bad code, too-- it's the functionality that's important). If MySQL goes public, I like it. StarOffice, and OO get money, although not enough. So much the better.
I'm willing to back up my needs with cash-- I can't code my entire universe, and neither can you. I'll pay for what I need. It doesn't queer the product, or make it worse to have paid or putting incentive into what you or I want. There is no taint to commercial products. If it advances IBM's gains, great. If it's GPL and free, it advances mine, too. Close the source, or put restrictive licenses on the code, and you constrain it, and you constrain my ability to update the code, or use it subject to licensing constraints. Otherwise, cash hurts none of the effort. It's basic market capitalism at work-- not the socialism/communism that's often used by nitwits to describe how open source software works.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
BSD developers don't complain, but in fact see it as a compliment. Their philosophy is that the license promotes the distribution of good code. (And if you have ever worked as a developer, then you'd know that by and large, good code is rare)
I have seen GPL supporters whine and pretend that somehow BSD code in proprietary systems is suddenly no longer free. There was quite a bit of FUD by the FSF regarding FreeBSD, claiming that the FreeBSD Foundation could go private and leave companies locked in. This was of course when FreeBSD was seen as more mature than Linux, and we had the SVLUG making quite a number of outlandish stunts trying to get Linux publicity. So many GPL supporters are pretty well known for publically stating their beliefs are better and all others are simply wrong.
Please remember, leaching to you is a compliment to others. Some of us enjoy doing good work and simply want to be appreciated for it (aka the Beer license).
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
The dotcom I did time with didn't waste their venture money in an obvious fun way... no, my dotcom took the money seriously and made the product more complex, all in the name of "raising the bar for competition", to make the Intellectual Property more unique, etc...
Of course that just ruined a simple "good thing", and it become bloated and so expensive that nobody wanted it...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Although technically maybe a bad comparison, the "evolutionary" steps of the early Internet (cryptic tools, free, available to a small elite) to today's WWW (GUIs, price tag, but available to the "masses") indicate that money will make Open Source most probably bigger and more common.
The question though is: does it get also better?
Only one thing can hurt open source. Licensing. Too many licenses. Enough to make a lawyer jump for joy. Unless I'm a law firm, I would have great difficulty deciding to use OSS in my business. So far it's ok in the server market, but as more desktop apps come in from a wider variety of programmers, each with their own silly little license, it can only spell trouble. The solution is easy and obvious, but won't come about for many years, due to plain old stubbornness.
What?
GP poster is obviously too young to have met AOL or their users back then... Like when they first invaded Usenet. Between the users, the fact that *each* "Me Too" post was posted *twice* for a while, they made a reputation in no time...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The OpenSSH developers certainly complained.
how to invest, a novice's guide
that i dont have to suscripe to the cult to use it, then hell yeah, go for it!
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
It looks to me like the most successful open source software projects are basic tools that stick fairly close to the subject of computer science.
An interesting group of open source projects are in what seems to me to be a "stalemate". Stalemate means there is a proprietary program holding a large audience, and the open source solution is not gaining user share. I wish that if we think hard about specific problems with open source software we can open a gateway to more applications becoming the leaders in their subject area.
Development stalemate programs: More application users and fewer programmers. Often have no test framework to prove accuracy. Stalemate programs often have user interface problems, not programming problems.
I feel the Linux Documentation Project is a particularly painful case of "stalemate". After "Linux Undercover" I think the LDP tightened their copyright license. The result is I never see the LDP reprinted in bookstores, Here is an interesting problem; how could the licensing of LDP material be improved to make it the place of choice for authors, editors and program creators to document their application and it's usage?
---------- A short list of open source projects by "success level"
Open source projects that seem to be "successful".
the kernel, GNU utilities, Perl, Python, Ruby, Rails, the LAMP stack,Template Toolkit, MySQL
Common elements: Basic tools, high quality grammar and syntax, test suites.
Open source projects that are really great but are in some kind of stalemate:
Blender and Gimp - high centered for weak user metaphor and vocabulary
GnuCash, extraordinary for being ignored by CPA's who hold their noses and say "Quickbuhx"
Various project management software, need a test suite to match outputs against the MS product.
LinuxDocumentationProject hasn't solved problem of getting into bookstores with dated reference quality editing and indexing.
The open source alternative to various Computer Assisted Drawing CAD programs.
The open source alternative to Mathematica.
The open source alternative to circuit simulators like Spice.
Generic open source systems for common businesses: Restaurant point of sale, grocery store, wholesale business. The problem here seems to be that the free reference object never receives back the refinements needed for a production commercial system.
Common elements of the problem group: Lack of test tools. User interface challenges. Weaker feedback path from users to application publisher.
Open source projects that are a mass of time delays:
Drivers for all that hardware that comes with proprietary Windows only software.
Open source projects that need to come into existence:
A TCPIP stack for a new generation transport layer.
A test harness for any entire open source distribution.
What a lot of people don't realize is that companies that rely on projects like Nagios have a huge incentive for the project to continue, even if they don't contribute. If the original contributors decided to quit, these companies would have to pick up the slack, meaning that these projects are much more likely to continue as companies invest in 'improvements', even if those improvements are not contributed to the original code base.
Also, projects aren't 'punished' when companies take the code and run with it. Think of open source as a non-excludable good. Companies can't hurt a project by building closed software on top of it, but can only heighten interest in the project's success.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
If IBM and others take open source code, test it, fix bugs and return the code back to the author then this is good surely?
Also, many drivers for hardware come from employees at large organisations. Without drivers your choice of hardware for Linux would be severely limited.
When you pump cash into an open source project, the volunteers will tend to leave or their effort will diminish (why would they invest their precious time, if others are paid to do exactly the same?). Linux is different in this aspect, as companies focus their efforts on separate modules or internal sections of the kernel (the parts that matter to them), but the percentage of volunteer-developers has dropped over the last decade.
It's an interesting problem. I've looked into bounty-offerings from certain projects, but I don't think they really are effective. Debian has recently had issues with paid-for release maintainers. Setting up a company with enough cash can foster a successful open source community if done well and with care (see Canonical/Ubuntu), however if you were to pump cash into an existing community it would be more likely that it does more harm than good.
Just my two cents. And no, I haven't RTFA.
This sig is intentionally left blank
I really don't care what people's motives are for developing open source software as long as they get the licenses right. Any of the common open source licenses will do: GPL, BSD, LGPL, Apache, etc.
The only real problem I occasionally see with commercial open source is dual licensed software, which may be nominally under an open source license, but is usually run as a closed source project and often has unexpected hidden costs.
I don't get why whurley and hinkle are whining about commercialization killing open source. Its simple economics that help everything move forward. (of course this is only true if they use the money wisely... and not on ferraris and golf... which I assure you most VCs wouldn't allow, nor would customers pay for!)
e n-source-1997-vs-open-source-2007/
Nagios, the project that is called out in whurley's blog, is an old school open source project. It was constructed by individuals slapping together code as they needed it, with no bent for making it easy or comprehensive for the community - it served their purpose and then they contributed it. It has no way of building valuation into its product roadmap. (this explains why the first step is compiling the code?!)
You start paying people to evolve it and its better for the community as a whole as they get products that are built with the professionalism, robustness, and usefulness that they desire. Nagios is an amazing project considering how much TLC it gets from anyone managing the project. Fortunately, their longevity on the playing field has given them a deep knowledge base, so tinkerers can fiddle with it endlessly. Conversely, it means that it takes forever to get it really running and you are always tinkerin with it. You need to have that commitment to working with the code to be even remotely successful with Nagios.
Its 2007, and Open Source has evolved. Money helps provide the economic building blocks to accelerate and improve the quality and experience for the projects out there benefiting from commercial backing. Net-net - its better for the maintainers and the community.
Full disclosure: I work for Hyperic, who is in the same general market as whurley and hinkle, and Nagios. We are very passionate about open source (most of our engineers were early committers on jboss, apache - or wrote useful things like mod_perl). Javier, our CEO, blogged about this issue around the same time whurley did (not in direct response) describing the new landscape of open source with commercial backing. Check it out: http://www.hyperic.com/blog/hyperic/2007/04/06/op
It's pretty clear that the way Gnome is funded is part of it's problem. It's exactly do the fact of how Gnome is funded that:
a) it doesn't actively compete with KDE because it's got the inside track, so it doesn't have to try as hard, because there's no active evaluation of it's worth opposite KDE by most of the big distributions.
b) it stagnates in some areas where the corporate backers' ideas conflict with each other, like moving beyond C.
c) there are a fair number of people on the project who are clearly not interested in it as they once were and work on it part time while indulging in all sorts of unrelated side projects.
I actually think Gnome would greatly benefit from a shake up in it's funding, for the benefit of all. IMHO the leadership is too conflicted and complacent to make a desktop that can truly challenge the commercial offerings.
This sig is alpha and shouldn't be viewed on production machines
In truth, it appears to be the lack of commercialization that is preventing its wide-spread adoption! ...earlier this month, I tried two separate distros: Novell's OpenSuse 10.2, and Ubuntu's Feisty Fawn (7.04). The Novell product won because it would install on my dual Xeon box. Feisty Fawn, which I held out great hopes for, will load the OS core, then craps out because it "can't find the keyboard..." and fails back to the initramfs prompt. I am NOT spending my off time messing with problematic OS installs. Oh, and I hate the changes that Gnome made to the interface in OpenSuse! Instead of menus, we now have screwy taskbar applets. And nothing shows up on the bottom task bar... don't even know why it is there.
IMHO, the desire to have everything free -- viz. codecs, etc. -- is killing its marketability. Most people who buy computers, or have them and want to try Linux, just want them to work. They are not going to go searching wiki's nor compiling source code to watch a DVD movie. While the open source community has made good strides, the refusal to license software is hindering it. You can always choose not to install them when you don't need them, then pay the pay the price yourself, either by separate purchase, or the wiki/compile route.
I've had Linux since 1.1.13 in the "old days", and it sure has come a long way. Back then, I used it to explore *NIX, development, and maybe listen to a little CD music. I had changed from RH to FC to Suse Desktop 9.3 over the years. However,
Finally, again IMHO, the Linux distros need a single, good business person who knows how to make the "right" decisions about a distro. At one time, Red Hat desktop wasn't so bad (for the then SotA); then [barely] Novell; now nothing. One of the over-riding reasons for the success of Apple and Microsoft is that they have good business leadership. On the Linux side, whiners and excuse generators.
Remember, you cannot have something for nothing. None of us work for free: We cannot afford to. There is no reason to expect the distro companies to do it either! I can tell you, IBM, SUN, HP and all the others who have vested interests in OSS are NOT in it for your convenience!
You gotta be kidding. Anybody would take such an article seriously would have to very ignorant about open source, and have a poor sense of logic.
better price.
No, Compuserve, and The Well, were better products. However AOL's marketing beat Compuserve after which AOL bought it and The Well dropped it's access and went to just being an online community instead of also offering access.
FalconShould there be a Law?
What has open source accomplished that Microsoft didn't accomplish 10 years in advance?
Pretty much everything. Those open source projects that didn't pre-date the MS versions were easily coded afterwards in somewhat less than 10 years. It's not as if MS was the original innovator anyway. Did Internet Explorer come out 10 years before Netscape? Is MS not copying ideas for their browser from Firefox now? Come on! They wrote their spreadsheet after Lotus123. Their word processor after Word Perfect. Where is this technical leadership that you think they have? That has never been their competitive advantage.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
I think the trouble involved in the commers of software is killing mostly the time needed to innovate. here we have not seen any of the electronic commerce benefits... but we have paid so mucho in software but most of the software is cheap and unfunctional. thats were open source gains space, because open source means. "if you dont like it make it by yourself su.kr"
?
Check out this thread. Basically a company is selling astaro or a knockoff and claiming it's their own. Subsequently, they are claiming that they contribute to various projects but cannot seem to say which ones. This is the kind of crap that is screwing it up. Rather than doing the code, companies are trying to get credit and street cred for other people's work and that just sucks. We'll probably weed these folks out though.
In part, I was thinking of cases where a company might add support for a device that is an upgrade from something already supported by supplying a patch to an existing driver. I was also thinking of small fixes for significant issues. I seem to remember reports of a security hole in the Mozilla codebase that had pre-existed the Open-sourcing of Netscape. The patch ended up being a handful of lines, but that was a critical fix.
Ok, I guess the criticality of the patch could be used to modify the score. My system only looked at the size of the patch. If we added a whole set of multipliers, we can distinguish both the size of the patch and its impact:
x2 for mission-critical updates/fixes (mission critical would be something likely to cause tens of millions of dollars of damage or put lives at risk if it fails), x1 for a functionally significant patch (ie: it's not going to kill anyone, but you won't be able to do what you want the way you want, either), x0.5 for a functionally moderate patch (everyone'll notice the difference, but only a third to two-thirds will give a damn), 0.25 for a functionally trivial patch (it's good that it's there, but that's about it), 0.1 for a prettification patch (nothing useful is added, but it should help later developers write something that is).
There will be other problems with this whole scheme, but this patch should fix the overvaluing of a patch without undervaluing genuinely critical show-stoppers.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No, they couldnt - they can go private, but another party interested in a free project could always step in and take over the codebase just prior to the license change and go from there, exactly as what happened with the X11 codebase recently. So, no lock in available. The BSD license is absolutely no different to the GPL in that regard, what you have in your possession does not change license under your nose.
I suppose it wouldn't benefit them long term because of the already existing free alternatives and the fact anyone could adapt their last released code code and become the new 'FreeBSD'. But then again, from this point the FreeBSD foundation probably wouldn't be concerned about being fully opensource, but about some other goal like making money.
(This said, I do not believe the FreeBSD foundation would really take such a step anyway)
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
How does the license address this in any way, shape or form? It doesnt, it would be an issue regardless but it still doesnt lock users in to the FreeBSD foundation.
Theres no obligation in any opensource project - FreeBSD or whomever - to exist in perpetuity and theres certainly no obligation to make it trivial for another body to replace them.
Looking at the history on wikipedia (checking the citations too), I see quite a lot of time being wasted between the Open Group and the XFree86 project. This isn't just a simple switch as your comment at least seemed to imply.
But it happened, didnt it. People were up and running under X.org releases of X11 pretty quickly after Xfree86 decided to change the license, and literally the very first release that people were using was 100% identical to the last 'safe' release by Xfree86, all it took was someone to setup the websites, ftp mirrors and source control repositories and they were in business. Theres no reason to suggest that it couldnt be done equally as well with any other opensource project, all it takes is one intact copy of the codebase and the will to do it.
I'm not arguing the differences between the GPL and BSD, just wondering about how possible it is for the FreeBSD foundation to privatize. Neither was I, I was just pointing out that both licenses are in the same boat with regard to license changes - what you have in your hand at that moment is no different after the event.
Thats the problem with peoples understanding of the BSD license, many people seem to think that because its trivially easy to essentially relicense it (by including it in projects with more restrictive licenses, or even closed source) then the code in their possession is threatened, when its not.
I think the author is writing about something I wrote about years ago before the great karma killing of'05 when I had to abandon my username. I made the same mistake of not pointing out the importance of licences in corrupting OSS. But, money can always corrupt. It's very difficult to not be appealed by the guarantee of donation money as a reward for milestones reached in a pure GPL'd project. Sure, you start off with the intention of doing it on principle - to contribute but you can end up justifying your frustrations at reaching those milestones slowly and at personal cost with money. Suddenly, you're not doing it out of principle anymore. You're doing it for the money and the principle. The money starts to color your perspective of exactly what is the reason for doing it in the first place. You realize that you are slightly (if even fractionally) more like to take the slightly less interesting project that offers slightly more money. You have now compromised that true commitment to a project based purely on passion. Let me put it very simply. The geek who was working on a geeky game in for OSS under an OSS licence suddenly feels like a bit of a loser next to the geek getting donations or payment for a MySQL contribution or a linux kernel contribution. OVERALL: It's a win for Linux in the commercial mainstream. It's a possible lose for the identity of Linux and distro's of Linux in general. Who knows if it could take the spirit out of the fluffy geeky side of Linux? i certainly hope it won't.