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?"

Comments

Just ask Clippy or Madden 200X

[CrazyJim1]

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.

Re:Just ask Clippy or Madden 200X

[buswolley]

Yeah and these open-source roots are like movie extras; They all must die in the end.

Re:Just ask Clippy or Madden 200X

[cshotton]

Is there such a thing as 'too much money' when it comes to developing software?"

The issue isn't about whether too much money or commercialization is killing open source software (culture/roots/projects). It seems to me that the root cause has to do with the nature of the widely publicized open source projects. As open operating systems (Linux, NetBSD, etc.) and applications (Mozilla/Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.) grow in complexity, they outstrip the abilities of ad hoc, grass roots "open source" organizations to develop and maintain them.

Simply put any serious, valuable, widely-used open source project today is very likely a large and complicated one. Open Source has outgrown its own infrastructure and the only one available that can pick up the projects and move them forward are those operated by commercial organizations with the resources to throw at these hard problems.

Re:Just ask Clippy or Madden 200X

[Arker]

I think you have it exactly backwards.

As projects become larger and more complex, they outstrip the ability of anything but a decentralised network of programmers. The resources of a traditional centralised software company, even the biggest in the business, is nothing compared to what decentralised networks of programmers have. The linux kernel team being one excellent example. And commercial software houses - *many* of them - are definitely involved, but the model is still distributed. No single company could handle that task - a widely distributed team from all around the world, with both commercial and noncommercial interests contributing, can and does.

Projects that attempt to decentralise their development while still retaining a monolithic structure internally may find that doesnt work so well, of course. For this to work the project must follow the 'unix way' and have many more-or-less self contained modules that work together, rather than building monolithic do-everthing apps. Not everyone seems to grok that yet, but give it time.

Re:Just ask Clippy or Madden 200X

[jacksonj04]

It's a good point, however there *must* be something specifying how those modules should behave when errors occur, handle input etc or the whole thing reaches the stage Linux has now where it works, and works well for the vast majority of tasks, but only if you remember the right combination of switches to make one module talk nicely to another module provided that you pipe it through a shell script to do something trivial like remove blank lines, because the first app includes them for readability but the developers of the second app decided that they should correspond to an EOF.

The 'unix way' is great, don't get me wrong, but it's now reached the stage where there should be a central body saying "Here are various behaviours, you should use these switches to achieve them. Here is how you should format your output. If this happens, throw this specific error." and so on. People, especially businesses, don't like to have to learn the nuances of every individual app because the developers use -E and not -e.

Re:Just ask Clippy or Madden 200X

[owlstead]

"For this to work the project must follow the 'unix way' and have many more-or-less self contained modules that work together, rather than building monolithic do-everthing apps. Not everyone seems to grok that yet, but give it time."

You are completely right on that. Just have a look at the Eclipse framework (yes, I'm a Java user), and you'll see this executed in a very clear way. It's a complete set of modules. Even the base install contains many tens of modules. The number of plugins available for Eclipse is simply astounding. What's more, you can install quite a few of them and still leave a working system, even though the whole thing runs in a single process. The reason why this works is that it's pretty clear how to use and extend the module system (it's using the OSGi framework). If you don't know: Eclipse is both a Java Development platform, but the same components are used to create Azureus, the BitTorrent file sharing application.

You will see that many great open source systems will use these kind of frameworks. Of course many already do. The firefox/thunderbird extension framework is a great example of it, but also the apache module system, the openssl crypto engines. What I do think is needed are frameworks with good documentation (including overview pictures, pretty please) and protection from malfunctioning modules. Of course, the extention points must be well documented as well. Also, the modules should have a very clear versioning system so that people don't need to install all the components of the framework again and again.

The next step will be that applications will be running in parallel with each other, leaving the idea of a single process running everything an old fashioned concept. But - as the parent states for modules - this will definitely take even more time. The current idea that this has to be done using XML and HTTP is just - well - STUPID. On a single system you get problems like configuring sockets, authentication, doing complete validation on each packet send and - yes - a huge overhead. All this just to overcome the (important) principle of compatability. But look at concepts of ESB's (enterprise service bus) to see other ways of handling this problem.

Just my point of view.

Re:Just ask Clippy or Madden 200X

[samkass]

Ironically, the commercial and military software development industries have recently been heavily promoting a methodology that could enable this sort of specification without requiring a central authority. Software Product Lines is a formalization of hundreds of "good practices" of encapsulation and interoperability into a single methodology that is transforming the way some software is written. I see this as the next step in software development evolution, and one that the open source community might get more benefit from than others.

As a GNOME fan

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

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.

Probably.

[m0rph3us0]

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.

Re:Probably.

[owlnation]

How about a law for the first person to make a useless Wikipedia link?

There's such a thing as a useful wikipedia link?

Re:Probably.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

There's such a thing as a useful wikipedia link?

Sure there is, though as I write this, its utility is questionable...

Yes, there can be too much money.

[Lumpy]

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.

eh?

[rucs_hack]

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.

Re:eh?

[chris_eineke]

Last time I checked the state of Red Hat et al made not a mote of difference to my project.

Is your program written in C? Or is written in a language that uses C as its intermediary? Or is it written in a language whose interpreter was written in C? Then RedHat does made a mote of difference since, afaik, they're one of the bigger contributors to gcc.

Are Micro-Breweries Killing Beer?

[darkPHi3er]

Among the many aspects of the Open/Free Source cultures is the essential characteristics of Choice and Free Will.

As we all on /. seem to love, beer, either Metaphorically or Analogously, Did the EXPLOSION of Micro-Breweries in the last decade kill off Beer?

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.

Re:Wasn't the right kind of licence going to fix t

[ricree]

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.

As a developer and a fan...

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Money is good.

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.

Re:As a developer and a fan...

[garett_spencley]

I agree as well. The last time I did any "real" OSS development was when I was a teenager. I wrote really crummy code back then and didn't make very many useful contributions. But I had a ton of ambition and a "do-good" attitude.

Now that I'm an adult and have a family to support I really wish I could get back into the game. I know I could really make a useful contribution. I'm am much more experienced, have vastly more knowledge and am thus in a much better position to contribute.

I just don't have the time anymore. Now I'm profit driven. My kids need to eat. The only way I see myself doing open source work is if I get paid for it. I wish I had more time to devote to hobbies but I spend 100% of my professional life sitting at a computer and so my hobby time is reserved for non-computer tasks.

So if companies can take people that are in my position and enable them to contribute to the community then that can only be a good thing.

Re:As a developer and a fan...

[kestasjk]

Money is good.

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.

I think there's a distinction that has to be drawn. There are companies that hire programmers to work on Open Source projects, and return that source to the project. They'll do this to get their own features and be compelled by the license or otherwise to give the source back into the project. I think this is a positive thing, because it gets better as more companies use it.

With things like Red Hat where they are making money out of the source it's not so clearly beneficial, because conflicts of interest arise. If Red Hat can get more money for support by making things more complex or more likely to break they will; they're no longer necessarily in it to improve things, but to make money. When the two objectives are the same things improve, and have improved, but when they're not you get things like security patches being sold.

Re:As a developer and a fan...

[zsau]

I doubt there's a true conflict here. It's in Red Hat's best interest to minimise the amount of time they spend doing support. They went as much profit from their support as possible, and every time they have to do something, it eats into their profits. Red Hat would do much better using other funds convince everyone we need their support.

Re:As a developer and a fan...

[mackyrae]

my hobby time is reserved for non-computer tasks.

Hobbies without computes? Those exist?

Re:Wasn't the right kind of licence going to fix t

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

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.

Opensource = Free Speech

[fishthegeek]

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!)

I completely agree

[eklitzke]

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.

Re:I completely agree

[Kjella]

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.

Well, I'm not that familiar with the KDE toolkit beyond being a KDE user, but I'd say the Qt toolkit is certainly being highly refined by Trolltech. With the release of Qt4, pretty much the whole KDE project has gone into a big upgrade cycle, with KDE4 out in late October. So while it might seem KDE progress has been slow in the last year or two, I think it will raise the bar when it arrives.

It's going to happen

[MrNormS]

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.

Good Question, weak article

[Conspicuous Coward]

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...

No

[Kjella]

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?

No, open source is growing

[bit01]

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.

Money flowing into open source? Ha!

[Rahga]

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.

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 /. 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.

Open Source != Free Software

[Snospar]

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.

Re:Open Source != Free Software

[petrus4]

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.

What about Gentoo, Fedora, Linux From Scratch, Gobolinux, and Blag? (To name but a few other non-commercial Linux distros) Don't they count too?

Debian is *not* the only non-commercial Linux distribution in existence. Please don't give me the usual crap in response about it being the only "serious" non-commercial distro in existence either, because that's entirely subjective, emotive bullshit too. The other distros I've mentioned are perfectly serious to the people using/developing them.

I'm very tired of Debian advocates' lack of awareness of Debian's alternatives...although actually, I'm really just plain sick of Debian advocates in general.

It happens organically

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ;^)

Sinple solution

[jd]

Draw up a league table, but credit all kinds of giving, in relation to their net worth to the community and to their magnitude. I reckon something like 3 points for an application or significant module, 2 for extensive reworking or contributing moderate code, 1 for minor bugfixes and applets, +1 for each significant political or legal hurdle crossed, -1 for every such hurdle added, 2/3 points if it's open source for a closed-source environment, 1/2 points if it is closed source for an open-source environment.

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!

Er.

[stonecypher]

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?

Money won't kill open source, but greed will...

[nologin]

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.

Quick answer: No

[Sigma 7]

Will money flowing into open source destroy its roots? If there is no money flowing into open source, the programmers will be limited to those who have time on their hands. This forces the exclusion of students undertaking exams, programmers with girlfriends, professional programmers bound by contracts, and so on. In addition, hosting resources will be limited to "free" services or be on the dime of the maintainer(s) - which will result in some problems if the project gets Slashdotted.

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.

Re:Quick answer: No

[pipingguy]

programmers with girlfriends

Too easy, I refuse to comment.

Re:Wasn't the right kind of licence going to fix t

[NovaX]

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).

Commercialization? No

[iminplaya]

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.

Re:Wasn't the right kind of licence going to fix t

[chromatic]

BSD developers don't complain, but in fact see it as a compliment.

The OpenSSH developers certainly complained.

False dilemma

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

as long as they get the licenses right

[nanosquid]

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.