Open Source and the "Xen" of Xen

willdavid writes "In a follow-up to his original look at what happened to Xen, Jeff Gould talks to XenSource CTO Simon Crosby. Usually we hear about how open source provides freedoms for end users. However, this article talks about the difficulty a small software developer has with an open source license, in particular, the need to prevent Red Hat, IBM or Novell from running away with all the business revenue."

Comments

As opposed to closed commercial software...

[timeOday]

...where fending off Microsoft and IBM is a piece of cake.

Re:As opposed to closed commercial software...

[_Sprocket_]

At least in closed source they have to build their own instead of being able to rip off the code or design. Yep - because locking away source code has stopped the likes of Microsoft so many times in the past. It's not like they're going to offer you sweet-heart deals awash in promises of fruitful partnerships for just a peek at the code, then go on their own. Nor do they have the clout to hire away your top talent... or even come up with their own talent. No-sir-ee. Not Microsoft. Or IBM. Or...

Re:As opposed to closed commercial software...

[jc42]

At least in closed source they have to build their own instead of being able to rip off the code or design.
Yep - because locking away source code has stopped the likes of Microsoft so many times in the past.

Yah; I've long wondered why people would say such things. It seems fairly obvious that with secret, proprietary code, it would be fairly easy to rip off lots of open-source code without anyone ever knowing. You'd want to make a few tweaks, of course, so that obscure corner behavior (and bugs) would be slightly different. But from my experience with corporate software development, I'd expect that there is lots of stolen open-source stuff out there.

I've even had fun on a couple of projects convincing the management that maybe such unethical behavior really isn't right. Arguing ethics isn't the approach, of course; your argument has to be based on "What happens if you get caught? Do you want the authors of that open-source software owning your product?"

Persuading them that they really oughta share their improvements with the authors is even harder. You'd think that "It's for your own good in the long run" would work, but it's hard to demo this when "the long run" means anything after the current fiscal quarter.

Hybrid strategies

[seanadams.com]

Combining OSS + proprietary software can get complicated, but it's entirely possible to make a viable business that way and still have a positive, reciprocal relationship with the OSS community. You just need to make sure that the open source stuff actually has some value and is not a way to leech some free R&D. I.e. it should be be managed by you and hopefully mostly developed on your dime. If it is useful for your customers to be able to tweak the source, or if the software is useful by itself, then developers will work on it. However, if you're only playing lip-service to OSS, and people are really just going to run into a bunch of obstacles where they can't really edit the software because it's tied in to too many proprietary pieces, then you need to rethink your strategy.

Can't have it both ways

[bhmit1]

I think what we are seeing is the never ending desire to have the benefits of an open source model while still having the closed source control. Finding the right balance so that people use your product while still having a reason to pay for the upgraded version or support isn't easy. And what we seem to be seeing these days is that open source isn't leveling the playing field, but rather tilting the game towards the big players who can leverage lots of applications without paying for all of the developers. There's a value with knowing how to run a business that the big players are providing and the smaller developers will need to learn if they want to compete.

Yet somehow MySQL survives

[Anonymous Coward]

And propsers. As does Mozilla.

Free software, sold

[athloi]

Their reasoning is that if they released all of their stuff under GPL then Red Hat would just scoop it up and serve it in place of the very inferior management tools bundled into RHEL5.

This paradox has always baffled me. The open source community creates it, and then another company sells it, with the hope of making revenue from specialized knowledge. It's one of the two biggest flaws of the current FOSS model, in my view. The other is that FOSS software tends to clone/emulate existing commercial products.

Both of these face the same problem, which is that in a media-driven capitalist economy, ideas need to become products that are sold in order to be recognized as "part of" the economy and society as a whole. While GPLv3 is a good start toward working around this, another thought is that FOSS should operate on commercial principles from the beginning, and serve as a think tank and consultant shop that hires out its programmers to implement their own code for customers, eliminating the need for boring and unrelated "day jobs."

Re:Free software, sold

[Anonymous Coward]

This paradox has always baffled me. The open source community creates it, and then another company sells it, with the hope of making revenue from specialized knowledge. It's one of the two biggest flaws of the current FOSS model, in my view.

What makes you think this a flaw and not a deliberate design decision ?

Re:Free software, sold

[LWATCDR]

"The other is that FOSS software tends to clone/emulate existing commercial products."
I don't see this as a real FOSS problem. Most commercial products are just clones or extensions of other existing products.
You has more to do with the evolution of software then FOSS vs Closed Source.
Take a look at Excel. If you knew Lotus 123 then Excel was easy to learn because it seemed to be a lot like good old Lotus. Oh and Lotus really was easy to learn if you knew Visicalc because it worked a lot like Visicalc.
Lotus tanked when they tried to be innovative they meet with very limited success. Lotus Improve was a better spreadsheet than 123 but it was so different that people didn't like it.
There are very few original software packages and that I am afraid is going to be a continuing trend. You are unlikely to see a vastly better spreadsheet then Excel because too many people know how to use Excel.
  As to the problems with making money off of FOSS. Well yes it isn't always easy and frankly I don't believe in FOSS as a universal solution for all software problems. It is great in some areas but I think is far from the universal solution that RMS and the faithful believe.

Re:Free software, sold

[Kjella]

This paradox has always baffled me. The open source community creates it, and then another company sells it, with the hope of making revenue from specialized knowledge. It's one of the two biggest flaws of the current FOSS model, in my view.

Funny, since it's exactly how it operates in the closed-source world too. Our company is making good money on implementing various huge software packages built by other companies. Of course then they have to pay for the software too, but that you can make money off having "specialized knowledge" around someone else's product is nothing new. How many people make money off configuring or supporting Microsoft software that aren't Microsoft employees? Very many, I would say. So it's really only a question of "Can open source software be created without a direct revenue stream?", which is a conditional yes. In part it can through hobbyists, in part it gets sponsored by those looking to sell service and support, in part it recieves donations and grants and there's various other ways.

But no, you don't get the deep investments to spend a lot of money on development and have the first person to get it under the GPL spread it around for free. The upside is that you can build on whatever that's there. I just made a quick check and found a download site with 1000 image editors. How many open source applications do you need? There's GIMP and Krita and... honestly, I can't think of a third one. I don't think you need those big investments. You just need to get the software to a state where it's basicly usable and people can start scratching their personal itches, which will continue to bring new people into that sweet spot "Now they've fixed A, B and C, so I'll just fix D myself" and it keeps rolling.

The other is that FOSS software tends to clone/emulate existing commercial products.

And other commercial companies don't? Seriously, most open source software is built by the masses for the masses, which means you're obviously entering a market where there's already competition. While a few things like a few games are blatant ripoffs, Microsoft Office cloned/emulated WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 way back in its day and it just keeps going. Open source usually implies you can't set the cart before the horse. For a lot of people to get together and build something a lot of people must know what it is and why it's useful. You can't just come out of nowhere and dazzle the masses, it just wouldn't happen. Hell, even then it's difficult, look at GIMP that *still* can't support more than 8bits/channel even though it's obviously wanted and useful. There's no shame in building a better and/or cheaper mouse trap. It's something people need even if it's not revolutionary.

Re:Free software, sold

[LWATCDR]

"I can either pay money for something I may use rarely or only once, *or* I can take a peek at the wealth of open source code out there, and write my own tailored version. I'm not trying to steal code, any more than a kid with a guitar is trying to steal music."
You are correct but also rare.
I hate to do use the dreaded car analogy but here it is.
Time to change your oil
You can pay someone to change it at the Jiffy Lube.
or
You can get the manual, get the tools, and learn how to do it yourself.

I am all for Open Source. I just don't like the Church of RMS. I worry more about Microsoft trying to lock down PCs and requiring a government permit to create software than I am about Tivo.
People need to be free to create both FOSS software and closed source software with out the anointed trying to burn them at the stake.

I just got done fixing a busted MMC driver. I will give that back to the FOSS community when I am done testing it. So I do support FOSS.

Xen didn't copy

[vlad_petric]

It was the first real paravirtualization approach. Check out Xen and the art of virtualization, it's a pretty good read.

Yes, I realize you're not saying that Xen copied, but that Open Source in general copies. Xen is a great counterexample.

Re:Sell Out?

[sarathmenon]

Why not just sell out to a company like Red Hat? That wouldn't make sense. If you are starting a company, will you sell it off in its infancy, just when you were starting to make some money and have an awesome product with very less competition? If the Xen guys knows hows to market themselves, they can be bigger than redhat is today. I wish them good luck, and looking at their strategy, I really can't find much fault with it, as long as the basic stuff remains GPL licensed.

Re:Sell Out?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were redhat why would you buy? You can get the product for free. There's no sense in buying the company.

Bad hybrid strategy may be downfall of XenSource

[Anonymous Coward]

You just need to make sure that the open source stuff actually has some value and is not a way to leech some free R&D.

Yes indeed, and sadly that is a lesson that the XenSource people don't seem to have learned.

They have virtually abandoned the Xen hypervisor code to focus on their closed enterprise offerings, as a result of which it's rapidly becoming obsoleted by KVM and OpenVZ and others. And once Xen no longer has the unique property of being the only fully working virtualization technology, XenSource will suddenly find themselves with a dramatic decrease in customer base.

And it's all of their own doing. FOSS is not a free ride to the bank. You have to keep working at the code, and you have to maintain good community relations, as you say.

It's not too late for XenSource to turn things around, but they'd better start yesterday. As things stand, their competition is not going to be RedHat, but KVM et al, which incidentally will also be supported by RedHat no doubt.

XenSource seem to be too close to the trees to see the wood, let alone the approaching forest fire.