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Open Source Community's Double Standard
AlexGr writes to point out a really good point Matt Asay raises in his CNET News Blog: Why do we praise closed source companies who open up a little bit, but damn open source companies who close down a little bit? "Deja vu. Remember 2002? That's when Red Hat decided to split its code into Red Hat Advanced Server (now Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and Fedora. Howls of protest and endless hand-wringing ensued: How dare Red Hat not give everything away for free? Enter 2007. MySQL decides to comply with the GNU General Public License and only give its tested, certified Enterprise code to those who pay for the service underlying that code (gasp!). Immediately cries of protest are raised, How dare MySQL not give everything away for free?"
They didn't write it.
It's not the product of their mind, not the product of their efforts.
It's the product of many peoples minds and efforts.
The administrators of the projects should be appreciative of that fact.
It is not their property. Laws can say what they want, lawyers and contracts and twisting of justice aside, it simply isn't theirs.
When open source organizations try to close access and extract money from people, they become malignant, corrupt, thieving organizations.
Declaring that it's legal for someone to do this doesn't change the fundamental nature of what's going on.
The misplaced sense of entitlement these organizations display is truly disgusting.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
When RH changed their business model it hurt a lot of people because prior to that, there was paid support available for the free product. We felt waylaid because we used RedHat Linux as the foundation for our critical applications. We knew we could pick up the phone and call (for a fee) if we were stuck and we felt secure with a reasonably long life cycle of security updates and support.
For example, a product my company created required 80+ hours of testing for minor version changes in critical software components. With 5 people on staff, that was an incredible expense, therefore we craved stability. Then, RHL was gone. *poof* just like that. We thought we could count on them and they changed the game on us.
I don't dislike RedHat's new business model, but I felt that after such a sudden and unexpected change in their support policy I could not trust them any longer. Later that year Ubuntu came out and I began experimenting with it (and debian). Now I have Ubuntu LTS which is supported by the vendor for 5 years, and I can call the nice guys in Montreal whenever I have a problem.
I just wanted to add to that last post...
Organizations have a lot of inerta. It takes a concerted effort to restructure.
When a closed source organization starts becoming more open, it took a lot of hard work and restructuring to make it possible.
When an open source organization starts closing things up, it takes a lot of hard work and restructuring to make that possible too.
Which means the people at the helm are working hard to start hoarding things they were given in trust for the public good.
It reveals that the organization has a poor moral character.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
OK - I write this wonderful program, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on testing and design and create it in such a way that the vast majority of users don't need any support. That's great, that's the holy grail of programming.
And I'm supposed to run this company how?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
To all Slashdotters,
Your comments are appreciated and we take your input seriously. Just to make sure that all facts are correct: we have not closed the source. MySQL continues to be GPL as before.
We have only made a change in relation to binaries. Community binaries are available as before, MySQL Enterprise binaries are provided to our customers. We are highly grateful both for those who count themselves as users and those who count themselves as customers. And the binaries are produced from GPL source code so of course you are all in your full rights to modify, compile, redistribute etc. as before.
The rapid innovation rate in and around MySQL is very much a reasult of the product being licensed under the GPL. Look for instance at MySQL Cluster and MySQL Proxy which are innovations from us, or at the SPASQL modification made by Eric Prud'hommeaux: http://www.w3.org/2005/05/22-SPARQL-MySQL/XTech
I look forward to more of your comments and suggestions.
Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB