Is Open Source the Answer To Giving?

uctpjac writes "Mark Surman, Shuttleworth Foundation fellow, writes that open source is the answer to philanthropy's $55 trillion question: how to spend the money expected to flow into foundations over the next 25 years. While others have lashed out at 'Philanthro-Capitalism' — claiming that the charitable giving of Gates and others simply extends power in the market to power over society — Surman believes that open source shows the way to the harmonious yin-yang of business and not-for-profit. Sun, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Yahoo, and Facebook are big backers of Creative Commons; Mozilla has spawned two for-profits. Open source shows that philanthropy and business can cohabit and mutually thrive. Indeed, philanthropy might learn from open source to find new ways to organize itself for spending that $55 trillion."

Comments

You Can't Ever Win

[eldavojohn]

I haven't had a chance to read the entire essay, just the article and I must agree that there's so many caveats to 'giving.' There's no way in hell you're going to please everyone.

Open source shows that philanthropy and business can cohabit and mutually thrive ...

I'm not certain that everyone shares this view. The article seems to posit that open source is a 'perfect' donation vehicle with no down sides but I know several people who directly disagree. Why just this week, The Standish Group released a report (that you can have for a mere 1000 USD) and this is the summary:

Boston, April 16, 2008 -- "Open Source software is raising havoc throughout the software market," said Jim Johnson, Chairman, The Standish Group (www.standishgroup.com).

"It is the ultimate in disruptive technology, and while to it is only 6% of estimated trillion dollars IT budgeted annually, it represents a real loss of $60 billion in annual revenues to software companies," said Jim Johnson, Chairman, The Standish Group International, Boston, MA.

Five years of research has gone into this new report titled "Trends in Open Source". The Open Source report discusses The Standish group's research study of the top 10 drivers that are influencing decisions on how IT is adopting open source technology.

"The Standish Group's new study clearly shows how pervasive Open Source Software is used in industry today. It is a shocking examination of Open Source usage by commercial and government organizations," said Timothy Chou, Ph.D. former President of Oracle OnDemand and author of "The End of Software: Transforming Your Business for the On Demand Future," "The Standish Group has successfully quantified both user and market behavior so that we may more fully understand what is driving this IT trend."

"The Standish Open Source Report is a thoughtful, objective and extremely useful tool for understanding the impact free software is having on the entire IT industry. Every CIO, CFO, and CEO of any corporation with large IT expenditures should read this report," said Wayne Sadin, CIO, Loomis USA, Houston, TX "The impact of Open Source on IT will be profound and The Standish Group research helps business as well as IT management make vitally important investment decisions."

The Standish Group's "Trends in Open Source" report is available free of charge to Standish Group subscribers. Non-subscribers may obtain copies directly from The Standish Group at: http://www.standishgroup.com/market_research/index.php for $1,000 per copy.

Emphasis mine. So you can see that there is definitely a mentality of open source "costing" industries. I'm sure the people at Brittanica and other encyclopedia publishers claim millions in losses to Wikipedia.

Allow me to point out something I think the article missed which is that when you donate to open source, you're avoiding a huge loss of donations through third parties and local governments. Example, say I donate a 100 dollars every month to an African village through Africa Needs Help International (made up, it applies to almost every organization though). Well, I'll bet that ANHI takes a cut of that to run staff and transportation and such so let's say we're down to 75 USD. That 75 USD is probably used to buy from a predetermined company (usually not in Africa) and not at the best possible rate so we could probably estimate that 5 USD is trimmed off in pre-arranged agreements so we're down to 70 USD. Then whether or not that 70 USD of goods actually makes it to the village is another story. It could very well be intercepted by local guerillas, Janjaweed or the Mujahideen (often the very reasons the local villages are in need) which would actually be directly contradicting what you are trying to do.

When you donate to Open Source proj

Re:You Can't Ever Win

[FooAtWFU]

"It is the ultimate in disruptive technology, and while to it is only 6% of estimated trillion dollars IT budgeted annually, it represents a real loss of $60 billion in annual revenues to software companies," said Jim Johnson, Chairman, The Standish Group International, Boston, MA. Mmm. Then that's $60 billion dollars in broken-window spending saved every year!

Broken windows? Broken Windows (tm)? Something like that, anyway.

Re:You Can't Ever Win

[freeasinrealale]

And therein lies the crux of the problem. If the enterprises that BUY the software dont have to pay for it then they will SAVE that money and increase their bottom line. This money thing is a zero sum game. All that is happening now is that the vast majority of all this loot is ending up in the pockets of billionaire bill and his cohorts. This wealth has been EXTRACTED from users (poor and rich alike). Try looking at this as a black box with inputs and outputs only. For the poor, open source allows them to keep this extracted wealth, even to pay themselves for additional open source development etc., etc. The mind boggles. Will future society be like that portrayed in Aliens or Star Trek? Society has been co-opted by the self-aggrandizing. The web, open source and hopefully other 'open' endeavours are beginning to RETURN CONTROL to us shmucks. Democracy and Enterprise (Capitalism) have proven themselves over time. Lets take them back from the turds.

Re:You Can't Ever Win

[Nephrite]

It is the ultimate in disruptive technology, and while to it is only 6% of estimated trillion dollars IT budgeted annually, it represents a real loss of $60 billion in annual revenues to software companies In other news, prostitution industry claims they lose $100 billion annually due to marriage sex.

Re:You Can't Ever Win

[JohnFluxx]

It also seems that a lot of times companies deserve to lose out to open source.

I purchased an expensive HP printer for the office, and yet HP refuse to provide me with the PPD files for it. This _forces_ me to use, and support, open source drivers.

I simply cannot understand why HP refuse to the provide the ppd file for their printers. It's plain text and probably wouldn't take them more than a day to write. Yet they seem to actively refuse to do so.

Re:You Can't Ever Win

[Belial6]

I know that you are playing devils advocate, and pointing out the other side, so don't take this as a comment on your comment, just on the report.

It is the ultimate in disruptive technology, and while to it is only 6% of estimated trillion dollars IT budgeted annually, it represents a real loss of $60 billion in annual revenues to software companies This could easily have been written:

It is the ultimate in disruptive technology, and while to it is only 6% of estimated trillion dollars IT budgeted annually, it represents a real savings of $60 billion annually for businesses and consumers.

So clearly thier claim of "objective" is total BS.

Re:You Can't Ever Win

[dk.r*nger]

This money thing is a zero sum game. [....] This wealth has been EXTRACTED from users (poor and rich alike). Please read just a single economics textbook.

As for the zero-sum game; look up growth. For the all-caps extraction; you might consider a chapter on opportunity cost.

One thing was missing

[TubeSteak]

Transparency.

Transparency was notably absent from his discussion of capitalism, open source, and philanthropy. I don't see how you can have a discussion about philanthropy, much less "open source" without talking about transparency.

TAXES, TAXEs TAXES

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite all the claims of selfless humility. the prime motivator for "bigtime commercial philanthropy" is the tax man. Today, millions of dollars worth of valuble software products have been donated to educational, charitable and other institutions - with no incumbent financial reward. I know these products have real value, because of their extensive use, so why isn't their a mechanism for offering a similar tax reward to the authors.

The obvious reason is that they lack political clout.

Perhaps the Shuttleworth Foundation should devote some energy in this direction. Many of us have developed plans for distributing tax savings to open source authors who make valuble products freely available. If any of these plans could succeed, there could be an explosion of software development.

Re:TAXES, TAXEs TAXES

[RobBebop]

I have (one year) written off hours spent developing Open Source as "independent business losses" to avoid sending Uncle Sam a check for $1000 that my tax software told me I owed. The real value of my Open Source time contribution is obviously quite undefined, but I certainly could have spent the time (200-300 hours) that I estimate that I spent doing something for a much more profitable project - so I think it was justified.

Really, what would be great would be if Shuttleworth could create a "Non-for-profit" organization that we could register hours with and then take a tax deduction in April. In a fair economy, my time value of 300 hours would legitimately add up to a $10,000 deduction and that would be a huge boon to justify me to work harder developing Open Source (to "cost" proprietary software companies even MORE!!!).

[But seriously, I saw the number $60 Billion quoted earlier in the thread, and I read that as "Open Source software SAVES the national community of software buyers $60 Billion that they can allocate to more profitable areas of their business."]

Bullshit

[Project2501a]

The idea of philanthropism (soup kitchens, clothes depots and your semi-mandatory sermon after the act) historically came about to aliviate the destitute who were flocking into the industrializing towns of the 18th and 19th century.

It's the socialeconomic structure that's broken, mostly because it *requires* penniless and poor and impoverished people in order to work. Philanthropy is not gonna fix anything, it will just maintain the current status quo.

and yes, who gives a flying circus ass about giving money to free software projects, when there's people all over the planet starving and living with less than a dollar a day?

i mean, look who the heck is proposing this "Open Software philanthropy". Someone who is on a stipend from a damn-rich institution. This is not about helping FREE SOFTWARE (yes, i'm yelling on purpose). It's about making more money.

Louis Althusser, anyone?

Re:Bullshit

[FooAtWFU]

It's the socialeconomic structure that's broken, mostly because it *requires* penniless and poor and impoverished people in order to work. Not true. We can, today, reproduce most of the interesting work done by the Poor and Penniless people with machines, operated by (fewer) middle-class-ish people. And no one worries if poor, penniless machines suffer. However, this does mean that there are fewer opportunities available for unskilled labor. Society's real middle-long-term problem is to get those unskilled laborers a few Skills so they can do something useful and won't be completely obsoleted by a robot some day that's more cost-effective.

Unfortunately, there are some significant cultural barriers which can make this difficult. School, often seen as a prerequisite for many important skills, is never going to be as cool as sports (basketball) and hanging around with friends wasting time, so you need someone around who can really push children and youth to achieve - and many don't have that.

Re:Bullshit

[shish]

who gives a flying circus ass about giving money to free software projects, when there's people all over the planet starving and living with less than a dollar a day?

You would rather we completely ignore the lower income 50% of the world (who would benefit from free software), because 1% of the world have bigger problems?

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Inner-city poor black kids with nothin' but net.

Re:Bullshit

[Cal Paterson]

It's the socialeconomic structure that's broken, mostly because it *requires* penniless and poor and impoverished people in order to work.

No it does not. Your mistake is called the Zero Sum Fallacy. There is a Wikipedia article but it isn't good enough to precisely dispel your mistake. This fallacy was basically debunked ~230 years ago by Adam Smith in the book that founded the subject of economics; The Wealth of Nations. In one of the first chapters Smith uses his own method of manufacturing; "The Division of Labour" to explain the economic theory of "Economies of Scale".

You could say that the first discovery of Economics was that Economics was not Zero-Sum, and that centuries later, most people (you included) are no better informed.

Re:Right..

[simcop2387]

We're still working on the food, but here's the formula for open source water, two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.

What I would like to see

[earthforce_1]

Even if companies made a policy of open sourcing their abandonware and old products like ID games does with their old game engines it would help a lot. Hell, even open sourcing the hardware specs on their obsolete products would be a boon - old hardware could enjoy an extended life with open source drivers, as poor people likely couldn't afford their shiny new "Vista ready" peripherals anyway. At least it keeps it out of landfills.

Makes as much sense as the RIAA

[Nursie]

""It is the ultimate in disruptive technology, and while to it is only 6% of estimated trillion dollars IT budgeted annually, it represents a real loss of $60 billion in annual revenues to software companies,""

Love this argument. It's just like the RIAA and their "We're losing billions to piracy!" argument. In fact it's worse because nobody's even performing copyright infringment.

It's as if they take it as read that they are entitled to this money. It's usually unsupported crap.

Maybe he should also look at things like the cost to companies of switching all servers/desktops etc to expensive, non-linux platforms. The coasts of everyone developing or buying their own solution to certain problem instead of making use of quality open components.

No, OSS greases the wheels for companies. If all you're concerned about is desktop software sales then you're not thinking big enough.

Re:Makes as much sense as the RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. My company is in the upper 50s of the Fortune 500... guess what? We use at least 7 F/OSS options to achieve our goals in my department. Funny thing? Other departments ask how we get so much done with such a limited budget (since they had to buy Software X for $1000 per seat, they can't afford Software Y, yet they notice we are able to do everything they could have done with Software X _and_ Software Y (and also Software Z and A, B, and C) and we still have budget available to spend on hiring more employees.

Yeah, F/OSS allows our department to spend 25% of what other departments spend and get 125% productivity out of our team.

How is F/OSS "costing" the industry money?!? Seems to me it's making us more money - perhaps the other companies are just jealous that we figured out how to capitalize on F/OSS and they are still paying a certain market hogging company for proprietary crap that stops being supported about a week after it finally works as it should.

Anywho, that's my 2 cents.

www.waterforpeople.org

[srobert]

I know your question was probably rhetorical but:
http://www.waterforpeople.org/

Couple of essays on this kind of approach

[vkg]

not from a charitable approach, but from a foreign policy approach.

http://www.guptaoption.com/2.long_peace.php - Winning the Long Peace

http://www.guptaoption.com/5.open_source_development.php - Saving the World through Open Source

(also relevant: http://appropedia.org/

Basically, if governments or foundations pay for open source innovation in key areas, like solar cookers and efficient cooking stoves, rural water purification technologies - hell, basic sanitation - they can get a very great deal of leverage on the fundamental problems of the world for only a tiny fraction of the money it would take to try and solve them directly.

It's like Linux or Apache - even counting corporate funding, not that much money went into these things, but the value created in the developing world is *huge*. Can you imagine trying to run the IT infrastructure of the developing world, where techs are rare and expensive, on Windows?

Well, we could do the same for infrastructure in general.

More at http://hexayurt.com/ - click on the infrastructure links.

Re:$1000?!

[ichigo 2.0]

In other news, The Standish Group reports that a slashdot poster is causing them a loss of $1000 dollars in revenues.

Re:There is a problem.

[qbast]

5. Because it is fun

Wait a minute...

[CSMatt]

Sun, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Yahoo, and Facebook are big backers of Creative Commons One of these things is not like the others.

Not broken window..

[Junta]

$60 billion in annual revenues to software companies They limited the scope. This may be still arguable, but by limiting the scope of discussed impact, the flow of the revenue to other companies outside that scope can be ignored getting out of having the broken window argument apply to his statement.

The report was targeted toward the software industry. I'm wagering the report in general is a warning of what software companies need to prepare for, rather than an attempt to stop it. Any attempt to even basically understand the pervasiveness of open source software would lead someone to know the software development industry can't do something to stop it. There are definitely alarmist words used in the subject, but 'disruptive' has a particular connotation to it that is not positive or negative with this sort of analyst. Cars were a disruptive technology, for example. Disrputive simply means the industry is being transformed and business's catering to the needs being fulfilled by open source software need to adjust the scale of resources used in those endeavors. If not wanting to scale down, they have to figure out how to get the revenue in different ways. Before cars, there was a much higher demand for horeshoes. As cars came to dominate, there remained a market for horseshoes, but a lot of the market evaporated and they either had to focus on other metalworking markets (cars being a huge metalworking market) or leave the market. Either way, they had to retrain and move on, but analysts wouldn't say that cars were a bad thing, just a very different thing.

And yes, I managed to cram a car analogy in.