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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?"
This is human nature and it does not just apply to computers.
Example: If a girl is a real bitch then people expect her to be a bitch and if she is suddenly nice one day, then people say "Wow, she's so nice today". But if someone is nice all the time then one day gets angry people say "What's wrong with her, sheesh."
Its not a double standard, its human nature. Nuff said, discussion over.
Praise for companies moving towards our goals, opposition to companies moving away from them..
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
Shocking. The open source community wants software to be open source, that seems pretty consistent to me.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"How dare Red Hat not give everything away for free?"
Why are they pushing this misconception of what open source means? AFAIK, it doesn't mean "give everything away for free" it means "the source is open".
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
It's double penetration.
The open source community wants to penetrate throug the business worlds, and throught the personal world. This is why the open source community has adopted a double penetration strategy.
We can only hope that the double penetration strategy is successful.
I mean to put it in a more exaggerated analogy, thats like saying abolitionists would have had a double standard for praising states that started giving up slavery and crying foul when a free-state adopted some slavery.
The open source community wants open source. They'll applaud when a company goes towards that goal and they'll get upset when a company moves away.
I don't think that qualifies as a double standard.
After all the GPL only requires you to give source when you give executables. I think this is perfectly fine. And as long as you get a devcent version of the product for free, having a "special" version for paying customers is also fine in my book.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
who open up a little bit, but damn free states, who begin forced servitude little bit?
The issue is not a "double standard" unless you use the current "mainstream media" Orwellian definition of "fairness."
The predjudice is for freedom, openness and opportunity. When you compound closing of source by the inclusion of earlier community contributions, testing and evangelism - you then reduce freedom to a marketing tool.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Is this really so hard to understand? As a parallel, consider the following statement: "Why do we praise countries that ease up on censorship a little bit, but damn countries that impose a little bit more censorship on its citizens?"
Many people in the Open Source community believe that open source is the natural and correct state of software -- indeed, that it is equivalent to free speech -- and that closing it is comparable to throwing political dissidents in jail. Naturally, every move toward it will be lauded, and every move against it will be demonized.
Like it or not, companies rely on solid sources and suppliers. A supplier that does not have a reliable revenue stream just can't be relied upon. And not every company has the resources or desire to staff up and do all its own software development in-house. Commercial, for-profit software has a serious role in business. And that means all involved in it need to make money. Giving away everything - for free - puts a big crimp on that.
When I work with some of the big boys in the consumer electronics market to qualify a new factory, they don't just audit the floor, the QA department, and the PMs. They look at the suppliers, they look at financials, they look at receivables, they look at other customers. Because if they are going to rely upon this new factory, they want to know it's got a future outside of just them. It's got to be stable.
It's REALLY HARD to make that case when your products are available for free, and you're trying to rely upon pure support as your only income stream...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
A double standard is when you are inconsisent.
There is nothing inconsistent about praising people for opening up a little bit, while condemning those that close down a little bit. We praise ANY move towards openness, and condemn ANY move away from it. How is that a double standard.
Allow me to illustrate using the oft neglected fruit analagy:
I gleefully watch my strawberry plants grow little fruit that ripen into perfect sweet strawberries, but watch me complain when my delicious strawberries start rotting and become ever less their original strawberry goodness.
Why oh why do I praise the things as they become ripe, but criticise them as they rot! I am such a hypocrit. Hmm.
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.
The open source community is full of misguided evangelicals. If open source is so great it should stand on its own merits, not need some political figures shoving its virtues down our throats. When I installed Ubuntu(which I love, btw) on one of my boxes that happened to have an NVidia card I was confronted with a message that talked about how bad closed source drivers were before I could enable them and get a good resolution for my display. If some notice needs to be there due to licensing that's fine, but don't try and mold my views or express your personal beliefs in place like that.
If the NVidia drivers really are so hard to maintain, then they should break in the future... if closed source software really does run slower with more bugs then I should notice it.
I'm all for open source software, and I can identify with the ideals of the FOSS movement, but I also see that there is sometimes a need for software that works well, even if it is closed source.
I would rather have a closed source project that worked perfectly than an open source product that is a work in progress.
Linux has grown by leaps and bounds and is perhaps one of the best examples of open source does right, but the political figures in the linux world, while entertaining, do nothing but hurt the product with their constant bickering and injection of personal politics into a product that should be "free".
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
(I normally RTFA before posting)
The problem here is: IMHO (and RMS's opinion) non-free software is unethical, because it's basically a scam: making software is a service with value; making copies of software is of (marginally) zero value. So, the GPP is right on the mark.
If a company that makes (unethical) proprietary software starts making some (ethical) Free Software, it is (1) improving its act and (2) contributing to the pool of Free Software.
If a company that makes Free Software starts making proprietary software, it is (1) starting to make unethical things and (2) contributing less to the pool of Free Software.
So, that's the reason why we praise non-free-software companies that open um and we boo free-software companies that close down.
Putting it like the GPP: would you praise a country that permitted slave labour and then passwd a law freeing some of its slaves? (like mine did in 1871...) And would you protest a country without slaves that passed a law allowing for some to have slaves?
HTH.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
RedHat still provides the source for free. They're only charging for support; they just don't provide you with the build formats you may want of the binaries they built and tested.
/. community yelling at you, but you're free to do it. Or not.
You can get it all for free, and build it yourself, or get it from someone else who does just that (still for free), such as CentOS or Scientific Linux. You could even get the source, build and test it, and do the same thing RedHat does for less money. You might be hard pressed to make a living that way, challenging the big gorilla, and you'd have the
The GPM doesn't require you to give away binaries or support.
Personally, I think this is a positive move for them. It's a positive move for the technology community as a whole as well. When my team looks at investing in technology for our business, we usually like to have a positive feeling that the technology will still be relevant 5 years and 10 years from when we purchase it. This move will make it easier for me to deploy MySQL in the enterprise, as I can now say to my review comity - "Look, they have a revenue source. They'll be around 5 years from now, and they'll be there to honor any support contract we purchase from them". Whereas in the past, I could only argue the point that they've been there a while, they should still be there a while from now. So, positive move in my book, not just for them, but for the technology community as a whole.
http://www.accelerateglobalwarming.com
It makes an absolutely crucial point: there may well have been howls of protest, but they were from people that either wanted to spread confusion or else were completely ignorant. There's another point: Fedora is the basis of RHEL not the other way around. Fedora is a very aggressively moving distribution that tries out new technologies. Red Hat looks at how succesful those are in Fedora and rolls any that work out well into its supported product: RHEL. It's in a good position to do so because many of the engineers that it hires are involved in the Fedora Project and so know intimately what features are stable and easily supportable. It galls me that Red Hat as a company is so open, adhering in both letter and spirit to the ideals of Free Software, makes money from selling support for that software, re-invests the money in hiring top-notch hackers that contribute Free Software for everyone and then are shit on by people that know that they're doing this work and yet a company like Canonical with a non-Free "launchpad" are fawned over. Feh.
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