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"FOSS Business Model Broken" — Former OSDL CEO
liraz writes "Stuart Cohen, former CEO of Open Source Development Labs, has written an op-ed on BusinessWeek claiming that the traditional open source business model, which relies solely on support and service revenue streams, is failing to meet the expectations of investors. He discusses the 'great paradox' of the FOSS business model, saying: 'For anyone who hasn't been paying attention to the software industry lately, I have some bad news. The open source business model is broken. Open source code is generally great code, not requiring much support. So open source companies that rely on support and service alone are not long for this world.' Cohen goes on to outline the beginnings of a business model that can work for FOSS going forward."
Do IBM sell software? No, they sell you a solution. They'll sell you Linux, AIX, Solaris (IBM is Sun's second-biggest seller after Sun themselves) or Windows.
Don't sell "software", sell "a solution to the customer's problem." This sounds cliched, but it's amazing how many people and companies work around actually doing so.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
how supposed "experts" can be so dumb.
support != hand holding.
All software has bugs. If your customer finds a bug in the software they can report it upstream and wait around for the bug to get fixed or they can report it to you and pay you to fix it now. That's support. Same goes for features. Maybe they want to use the software for something that upstream thinks is worthless. They could beg upstream to add the feature. Or they could hire developers to add the feature. Or they could outsource that to you. That's support.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Open Source development is an absolutely amazing and powerful tool... ...for everyone in the world whose livelihood comes from something *other* than selling software.
Bankers need to run their banks more efficiently so they get together to cooperatively develop some banking application software that makes them all work more effectively and efficiently. This is the magic of co-op software development. There are other people who have the same problems you do, and if you get together you can produce really useful software for vanishingly small cost, and the result can be replicated without limit or expense.
Bankers don't, on the other hand, create free, zero-income banks.
Commerceial software companies making free software is, and always has been, a really dumb idea.
If you find yourself in this position, my suggestion is to move up the food chain towards applications of the software you've developed. Eventually you'll find a level where people have problems they're willing to pay to have solved because they're not common enough to make an open source / co-op solution viable.
If your business plan reads:
1) Invent really cool new product.
2) Give it away for free.
3) Enable the community to do all their own support and enhancements.
4) ????
5) Profit!
let me save you some time and point out that there is nothing you can put in step 4 that leads to step 5.
Open source development is not a segment of the software indusrty, it's a segment of the every-other-industry.
G.
The model of investor expecting to make a quick buck off FOSS is broken. Not FOSS.
Dead weight being thrown away? Shocking!
Software is in a race towards zero, as all IP does when there's no copyright-holding monopoly to pay. Support is becoming increasingly less needed.
Hardware always has value, especially hardware designed to go with the open software. See Asterisk. Services, even just a steady data stream, has value, see TiVo.
The code itself might be great, but generally, the front-end (which I'm distinguishing as separate from the back-end nuts and bolts "code") is a mess. Installation and use difficulties are generally greater in randompackageX off of SourceForge than, say, MS Word or FoxIt. There are some OSS programs that are near hitchless, like Pidgin or Firefox (had noticeable problems with crashing on exit in Vista, though), but if you go beyond the star players, you'll quickly find this argument doesn't hold up to empirical scrutiny.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
...the traditional open source business model...
It's been around long enough to be "traditional"?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I'm not crazy! Everyone else is!
Ha.
Programmers are like bloggers -- a dime a dozen. Why hire when there are plenty of others working for free just to get their name known? Being a signal among the noise is merely a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
Sure, some are good(or lucky, mostly lucky) enough to be hired and paid salary to code but there're a hell of a lot of fully-enabled latchkey kids who've been writing apps since age 5 and they're willing to code without having to worry about things like paying rent since they live in their parents' basements, Bram Cohen being the canonical example.
Open source serves the greater good as long as people don't have to worry about paying rent or buying their own groceries or making their own car payments unless they want to give up every hour of their free time. CS grads -- unless you have rich parents and a fat trust fund, you can count on writing Actionscript for 16 bucks an hour for the rest of your life!
Don't pay any attention to people that use business babble like "going forward'.
Think about it like going in with others on a pizza.
Great! now that's all I can think about.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
let me save you some time and point out that there is nothing you can put in step 4 that leads to step 5.
adverts? didnt that work for opera for ~9 versions.
Bankers don't, on the other hand, create free, zero-income banks.
Id like to see a banker code, all this work gets outsources and id bet if you have a big name in foss your name will come up sooner than others.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
It is shocking to still see Lusers spouting the same tired old garbage after the Linux Haters Blog spent months completely eviserating the idiotic crap these clowns continue to post here on Slashdot.
The Lusers sound like they are happy wasting their lives away in their daily little Slashdot circle jerk, high fiving each other while pretending they are taking over the software world.
It isn't a broken business model. It isn't a business model.
Saying the open source business model is broken is like saying open source doesn't work as a cheese sauce. It also isn't a very effective screw driver. On the other hand, I have yet to hear a business model you can dance to.
--MarkusQ
The CEO of a company that promotes collaboration and community between companies says that the traditional model of OSS is broken.
Instead, he says, successful companies will work with each other to form communities and collaborate with one another to make money.
Film at 11. /vertisement.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
As far as FOSS being something that has serious business problems in regarding to sustaining the developers who work on it, this is indeed a serious problem. It generally can be very hard to raise revenue with FOSS, projects can ask for donations and sell packaged versions, but you often end up with just a trickle with these sorts of things. Programmers should obviously be able to work full time developing software. With FOSS directly competing with commercial software an eroding those markets, could it be that programmers will end up waiting tables during the day just to support the time they spend writing code? fOSS does indeed wipe out commercial software markets and it can actuall
I am supportive of the freedom aspect of FOSS. For far too long commercial software has shut down innovation and stifled the development of improvements through cooperative development with its closed model. FOSS is on the other extreme, its an open model but it leaves programmers in a situation where they cant afford to live. Perhaps a solution for some projects lies in the middle, with a commercial source tiered licence system, where the source code is provided with all licences, the developers are receptive to improvements from customers, and the cost of software is set according to the ability of the customer to pay, a hobbyist who is using the software for fun would pay far less than someone using it in a high revenue business. This assures that the software does have a high degree of openness and accessibility to all, but also assures revenue can be raised to develop the software.
How about a financial model of bidding to develop software, functional modules, or related services such as security upgrades and support by 'selling shares'? The developers would specify what they propose to develop or offer and describe how much time and other resources would be involved--and thereby set a value on the project. People who wanted the proposed software would buy shares in the development project, and when they get enough people, then they commit, collect the money, and start doing the work.
Oh yeah, the "reverse auction" part. They shouldn't cut the auction off right away, but allow some extra time for getting more people to buy into the project. That would reduce the per share cost while also increasing the user base.
After the project is completed successfully, the shareholders should get some recognition, perhaps being listed on the project website. If the developers don't succeed in delivering what they promised, then they should be remembered unfavorably. Essentially the developers would be gambling their reputations.
Lots of variations possible. For example, a developer could release already developed software and set up the share auction for the next version or the ongoing support.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I think it is completely reasonable for these companies to go under when the code base becomes stable enough to undercut their business model. They're getting paid for providing a software in which they didn't pay for a large portion of the development costs.
If they want to stay afloat, they will need to stay on top of developments in the open source community to provide consulting for multiple products.
Loser.
I'm trying to be objective here.
Appliances produced by Tumbleweed, Allot and Radware are all heavily adopting FOSS. They can secure their VC investment, their brand and their business; their staff contribute back to FOSS community and keep it growing. They wouldn't whine, do they?
we all know it's nonsense, when he said no FOSS software giant exists. What he actually meant was 'No FOSS Software Giant that can cash in big profit for small group of people'. If it can't take huge profit, it's then a failure. Bullshit. People paid overprice product just because there're no other better alternative around. Things changed, face it.
I really fail to see how FOSS is supposedly falling down as a business model. There are tons of businesses that make money as outsourced service providers sitting on little or no IP. Strap the existing service delivery model on top of FOSS, you could build your support business, offer a package, but with a sole benefit you can wave in front of the client: no licensing costs or restrictions.
Any problems arise from it not being done properly.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
One thing i think we will see FOSS project's movng away from is giving away the software. if you GPL something, it doesn't mean you have to give it away, it just means who ever you sell it to gets the source code along with the program.I could for example write some software, sell it to others and then give them access to the source where only paid customers could make commits and see the source. source is only required if you distribute something....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
the investors expectations are flawed?
You do not have a right to profit, and you certainly don't have a right to irrationally high profit.
Were that I say, pancakes?
The business strategy of "free software, pay for support" is almost as bad as the "ad supported social network" business model. Who comes up with these plans to make a buck?
So long as you are content to have a number of kinds of programs never be open source. If your solution is "Bundle with hardware if you want OSS and need money," ok then don't be surprised when people who's market doesn't deal with hardware chose money over OSS. I'm talking about things like games, or, say, video editing software. Things where you neither want or need additional hardware. Things where the idea is to use the hardware of a general purpose computer to do what you want.
This accounts for most software out there. While there's certainly things like, say, a firewall app/OS or something that it is perfectly valid to bundle with hardware, there's plenty of things that are just programs to run on a normal computer, no other hardware needed or wanted.
For programs like these, the response from many OSS advocates has been "Sell support!" However that doesn't work in a lot of cases. If you program is well written and easy to use, people won't need support by and large. Some of my favourite software packages, OSS and commercial, are ones where I don't need support of any kind. They do their jobs and are easy enough to use I need to additional help beyond what's included.
So what then? What do you do if your software is both a good product, and not one that uses hardware? Currently, the options seem to be "Open source it and give it away for free," or "Close source it and make money." In some cases, people can afford to do the former but not all. The "Just give it away for free," sounds like a nice idea when you are a broke student who would be receiving said free software. It sounds like less of a good idea when you are a programmer with a family to feed who would be getting no paycheck if you do.
So you run in to a large category of programs where you don't have a viable model. Support isn't a viable model since people don't need it. Bundling isn't a viable model since that isn't what your software is for.
An old joke goes something like this:
A customer goes to radio shack to get his printer repaired. The repair guy says it will be $300, and be done in two days. Customer balks, repair guy explains the problem, and points out that the parts needed can be bought in the store for $5. Customer is thankful, but is concerned repair guy will get in trouble for turning away business. Repair guy says.... we find we make more money if you try to fix it yourself.
Other than its use as bait, FOSS enables a cottage industry for customization or repair which gives the customer choices like they have for repairing (most) cars, appliances, pets, etc...
The service industry is good work, but there is little opportunity to launch a retire-on-it type of project.
The most important thing people capitalizing on OSS can do is offer something that no one else will offer -- an ear for listening to the customer. With customer requests being priced, customers can contribute to the progress of OSS development and in return, get EXACTLY what they want from the software tools they use. This is something that Microsoft will not do -- listen to the customer and deliver on their requests. (After all, their business model is all about keeping the customer unhappy and wanting more.)
So what if there is a segment that won't fit that business model? Sell to the segment that does fit it.
For businesses that do need hardware, sell them a pre-loaded, pre-configured system with a support contract that includes REAL support. Instead of having 100 client companies with 100 sysadmins all duplicating of the basics, sell your service of 10 sysadmins all monitoring and reporting to those 100 client companies.
Take the profit and put it into programmers who continually improve the software running on those systems.
Building a business on Free software doesn't mean that you cannot turn a profit. Just that you won't be the next Bill Gates. But you'll still be able to put your kids through college.
but FOSS is not "a business model". It is a paradigm -- a principle -- that can encompass many business models. Sun and RedHat are a part of the FOSS spectrum, as is Ubuntu, and a great many companies that supply software other than OSes.
A company has to find the right formula for its needs. The failure of some companies to make a profit does NOT mean that no company can make a profit. In just the last 5or 6 years I have read that Windows was dead, that Linux was dead, that Apple was dead, that Ruby on Rails was dead... and none of those things has turned out to be true.
There is a place for companies that do FOSS as well as a place for Windows.
FOSS is a poor business model. (It's a great software development model, though.)
My company produces both FOSS (GPL) and proprietary software. We happily sell support and service contracts for our free stuff. I estimate that the revenue from support+service of FOSS adds up to about 1% of the revenue from selling the proprietary software. (We include source with the proprietary software; you just aren't allowed to redistribute it.)
Making money from service and support is hard and labour-intensive. Making money from selling proprietary software is much easier, because once the thing is written, you can sell it over and over again, amortizing your labour costs enormously.
Sorry... much as I love, use and contribute to free software, I just don't think it's easy to build a good business around it.
I love your analogy, but I think it's an even better one than you credit it for. Programmers are like bloggers. They're a dime a dozen - but how many good ones are there? And how many of those are willing to exclusively blog about your project full-time for free?
There will always be a demand for custom software, because every business is different. That means there will always be a demand for developers to build that software. And good developers will always be able to produce better custom software, quicker, and save businesses more money than bad ones will. So good developers will be in much more demand than bad ones, and be paid much more.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Yes. There is a paradox for sure.
Make your open source, simple, flexible,
with good, interoperating default configuration,
and you're out of a support job.
I've always been suspicious of the model
because it seems to promote the foisting
of sub-par, and particularly, excessively
complex and undocumented software on the
software consumer.
Don't worry. We have a crack team of the gurus
who made this spaghetti, and they can grate
some cheese on it to make it palatable, for
a fee. Hmmmm.
What about just operating, for a fee,
information or transaction services that use software
that you helped write, and charging for the complete
delivery of the service, and the offloading of "all"
IT administration from the customer.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The new joke goes something like "A customer goes to radio shack to get his printer repaired. The teenager says that they sell new printers for $65."
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Odd, I can think how people are making your equation work with varying choices for step 4.
4) Make it do a complex task that requires skilled labor you provide cheaper than training staff to handle it internally
This works for several companies, a couple of which we pay where I work. The task of consolidating threat profiles, keeping them current, providing solid feedback and rapid response as well as managing secure channels with a variety of companies is something our company could hire a couple full time employees to manage. Rather than be out the cost of staff, we hire an outside vendor who does it very well at a fraction of the expense.
4) Build a small closed source application that utilizes the open source software. We use software built to work with a MySQL database system. The tasks done by the configuration, maintenance and integration are within the reach of a moderately talented programmer, but they are able to do it for hundreds of clients who all benefit from solid testing, research and experience of a few experienced and skilled developers who also contribute back to the open source system. This improves MySQL for anyone who cares to use it, but at the same time benefits the company who own the closed source application utilizing it. (For this example the model has to change step 1 to "Promote and contribute to a really cool product.") This is similar to the business model for Crossover Office where you pay for the expertise that has gone into the development of a product that does nothing you couldn't manage by hiring talented developers but for a price that makes sense for small business.
4) Make your staff the source for training required to manage a complex system. Zabbix is an example of this type of product. You can download and work on Zabbix for free, but it is complex enough that for significant implementation, you really need to get solid training, and that will cost you.
Our core transactional system in fact, would be a great example except that it is a closed source system. The software is good, but there is plenty of similar software that we could use. What we really pay for is the ongoing development, support and integration they offer. They protect themselves from competition by keeping it closed, allowing them to charge a higher fee, but if they were to manage a transition to open source they could potentially drop their development costs significantly, increase market penetration and undercut their competitors while still maintaining the same profits. They would have to face the risk that another company could do a better job pricing or servicing their current customers with the same software, however, and I honestly don't believe they have enough talent in programming, support and management to make it worth the gamble.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
One of my clients (a large-ish local retailer) asked me to help them create a portal so they could dish out targeted ads to a niche market under the guise of free content and coupons; kind of a Shoppers Club if you will.
I found a popular LAMP-based CMS/portal to use that would cover 80% of the requirements and since it was open source, I assumed I could customize the rest of it. Wrong. It was a pretty steep learning curve and since I had a big budget, I figured I could coax some support time out of some of the core developers or at least some of the senior users in the IRC channel. Wrong again. I couldn't make a go of it with anyone. My approach was very business-like, I even donated $150 to the project when I first started lurking and made it clear who I was, whom I represented, and what my project goals were. There was no official paid support setup, but I figured I'd be able to draw up some sort of agreement with them and get started relatively quickly, but no dice.
Perhaps the issue is a lack of business sense or organization with a lot of open source projects: how many deals are lost (or never begun) because of it?
body massage!
Opera with adverts didn't work because you can get Mozilla or Firefox for free. Also D/L those adverts took bandwidth that counteracted the extra speed of the browser. Advertisements do work (like google) and other free SaaS systems. However in Box systems running on your computer it is not so much.
Bankers use to be good software developers. But lately bankers in general have been getting Stupid.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
let me save you some time and point out that there is nothing you can put in step 4 that leads to step 5.
adverts? didnt that work for opera for ~9 versions.
It's quite ironic how an open source biased site like this, continously has people posting how they *HAVE* to have adbloc and other plugins for thier browser..
There will not be an ongoing market for custom software. Nearly every business school or other place where people talk about real business has been harping on the incredible screwing over businesses have gotten over the years from programmers, software companies, and consultants. This is what led to most of the packaged software revolution of the 1980s.
Before that, it was all custom. Nobody sold anything that was a package that didn't need some customization. In 10-15 years nothing will be custom and everyone will just be picking stuff (free or not) off the shelf and using it. Why? Because every knowledgable person will have told everyone starting a business that to do otherwise is just asking to be screwed.
Sorry, the "custom software" game is just about done.
You do it like Apple does, free version is Darwin, commercial version is Mac OSX.
The free version is the core, skeleton, just the basics needed. The Commercial version is the skeleton with meat added on it for bells and whistles and features.
The BSD model works great for Apple.
Red Hat uses the GPL model, the free version is Fedora and the commercial version is Red Hat Enterprise. Novell free version is OpenSuSE, Commercial version is Suse.
There there are custom versions that fit a certain client's need like a glove. One size does not always fit all, and sometimes you have to custom tailor a version for each client.
Also you sell bundles as solutions and the client pays you to set it up for them.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
.. is not a Business model
...on historical timescales. The model you outline is exactly what has happened with investment banking and repackaged/renamed mortgages and derivatives. They worked under the illusion that just by redefining an existing piece of wealth-one house/mortgage, or one unit of some other commodity, that a huge amount of new wealth could be miraculously created upstream by merely writing it down in new and diverse ways in contracts, then selling these things to each other. They even borrowed against a future set of still unwritten and/or unfilled or consummated contracts, then made bets with each other how well they would do, and used those bets as a sort of collateral to write up more contracts and lather rinse repeat to this huge freaking mess we have now that they insist they get bailed out for.
It's totally crazy, that's why it collapsed and will continue to collapse, we aren't even *close* to full collapse yet because of that insanity. It only worked temporarily because enough new, real wealth entered reality, but at only 1/200th of what they were trading around in "real" worth. We now see where the collapse level is, right there. They "lost confidence" in each other because they all realized they were all crazy and thieves. Some walked away rich on the con, but most of them are stuck with utterly worthless contracts. The derivatives bubble is the big kahuna still looming, it is orders of magnitude larger than their CDOs that caused this first mortgage and crash. Hundreds of times larger. They claim quadrillions with a Q "worth" of wealth in those contracts, more than the sum total of all real wealth ever made on the Planet Earth.
And that is why it is crazy. And that is why the crash will continue and no amount of bailouts are going to work. And that is why that theory of "wealth creation out of thin air because we wrote a contract that said it exists" is unworkable for the medium or long run, it just is not possible to be brought to reality.
The only way an "ongoing revenue stream" can exist forever is if someone actually DOES some work to create wealth. That means you have to keep some real humans paying you off forever, even when it is not in their best interests to do so, and they finally cease, and your pension/stock portfolio goes to nothing, or your contracts go sour.. That's why over bid up stocks always fall. That's why going into debt against your own best interests (governments inflating currency to ridiculous levels) always lead to disasters and collapses (and usually big wars as distractions). And this isn't anything new, the "something for nothing" angle has been explored throughout human history, none have succeeded for very long, and the short term successes have been pretty much based on rather severe and heinous exploitation of other humans at the point of a government gun. That only works for so long, then you eventually get a north korea or zimbabwe..or roman empire. They all fall and fail once they think they can get a lot of something for not much of anything and make that delusion official policy. There is no free lunch. Money never "works". Humans can work. And if/when they get overly exploited, they cut you off. The western economies are now based on the theory that Asia will do their real work for them forever and for cheap, and all they need to do is write up contracts about it and keep printing currency units and stock shares to any sort of level. This is beyond la-la land. It's collapsing, and it will be a very bad collapse.
"Bankers need to run their banks more efficiently so they get together to cooperatively develop some banking application software that makes them all work more effectively and efficiently."
Bingo!
"Open source development is not a segment of the software indusrty, it's a segment of the every-other-industry."
Unless your software industry group does it for pay from the every-other-industry folks!
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
The failure or success of companies to make a profit depends entirely on how seriously they take the moniker of "FOSS". Figuring out to make people think the software is free and still have them pay for it is a marketing a sales problem and if they can do it, or package it around a product offering like Sun does, they will be successful.
Investors want to fund companies that will turn a profit, and a good enough profit to make their investment worthwhile compared to other investments they could have made. So if a FOSS driven company wants investment capital via private or public offering, they had best be able to turn a good profit or once that initial funding dries up they are going to go under.
So rather than a paradigm, or principle, the FOSS based companies have to deal with the paradox of producing good enough product that no support is needed, yet having as their only source of income being supporting said product.
Let's face it - nothing is free. If you get your software for absolutely nothing, someone else is wasting long hours of programming or some investor is investing money and getting no return. If a company uses OSS and pays a employed or contracted programmer to fix bugs and add features, that OSS is not FOSS to that company. If they have to pay an annual support contract for each software license a la commercial redhat, it is not FOSS to that company.
just like what we did to everything we invented before during ancient history, and made a part of our lives today. like judiciary, municipial services, hell, even scientific method.
none of them were perfect and in the shape they were in when they were invented, not even hundreds of years after their invention.
open source software is just 15-20 years old. give us a break.
try to suggest ways to improve it, instead of scuttling it. what would happen if they scuttled scientific method when it erred a few times ?
Read radical news here
This Just In: Many FOSS Businesses Started by People Who Assume You Can Apply a Support Model to Any Business
Just because people hopped on the bandwagon and forgot the "plan" part of business plan doesn't mean it's a broken model, only that it's a model that can't be applied to all things.
I work for The OpenNMS Group, a commercial consulting company based around the OpenNMS network management platform. We do the "traditional" open-source business model, and it works quite well. I guarantee it won't work for everyone, but in our specific case, network management is a very large discipline that tends to need custom configuration (and sometimes even code) for most environments. Everyone's network is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
That makes it ideal for the Free Software model; you'll end up spending $50k easy on solutions from HP and their ilk, and then twice that again to get consultants to actually make it do what you want. Making the software free still leaves plenty of room to add value, help scale, and teach NOC operators how to get the most out of it without screwing hobbyists and small companies willing to put the man-hours into doing it themselves when they can't afford the budget on consulting services.
Just because someone's trying to start a company selling support for the Gimp or something doesn't mean it's a good idea, but just because the service model doesn't work for some open-source software doesn't mean it's a bad one. You still have to have a business plan, and you still have to provide value to your customers. Just because the software itself is freely available and/or Free doesn't change that. That didn't stop a bunch of companies from popping up, riding the "open source" wave...
In the end, the companies that came out with a poor strategy will fail, and others will remain, and open source will be just another boring old business strategy like all the others. ;)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
try to suggest ways to improve it, instead of scuttling it. what would happen if they scuttled scientific method when it erred a few times ?
There would be no global warming, mass exterminations, nuclear wars, overpopulation... we would all be living in 18th century agrarian bliss.
This is my sig.
Look at Citrix XenServer5. Take an awesome open source product. Add some awesome features closed source, sell it.
On the FOSS adoption side without service contract:
My boss is terrified of having something go wrong while the people that know what they are doing are out of the office. If there is not a 1800 number to call if it breaks, or requires normal operation beyond the remaining staff's knowledge level, he ain't doing it. Spend the money he says.
Rightfully so, in the event that several people were simultaneously hit by the same bus or were on the same plane that crashes. Now you have a free solution that is completely awesome but without some serious documentation (previous guys used google, experience, trial and error) you're up a creek.
I know, I know, a real IT person would document the hell out of it. Unless they were jumping from project to project with a large queue and no end in sight...then not so much.
In my experience, some companies would rather engage the original authors to do extensions so that their in house programmers don't have to learn all this new stuff. If they'd have to hire new staff to do this then hiring the original authors is often more cost effective than hiring newbies.
Rarely, but increasingly, some companies are starting to see value in supporting FOSS developers even if they don't have to. Some are starting to see this as a social obligation. I've even received an unsolicited check + a thank you card.
Hopefully this will continue to grow. Companies won't just see what they can suck off the internet for free, but will also see the value and be prepared to support those that generate the value.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
he said pizza
Bankers don't, on the other hand, create free, zero-income banks.
.
Yeah, just negative income banks.
.
I see you're new comer to the current economic environment.
4) Since your code is hobby code and hence the parts of it that aren't badly formatted and terribly obtuse are actually downright hostile to comprehension, and the features you didn't find fun to implement are missing, the mid-sized company that your friend suckered into committing to your "free" software has to pay you a premium consulting rate to add features X, Y and Z.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
> Open Source development is an absolutely amazing and powerful tool... ...for everyone in the world whose livelihood comes from something *other* than selling software.
The solution to this is for people not to sell software, but rather to sell their skill at writing and fixing software.
That, after all is said and done, is exactly what all the programmers who work for a large software company sell. The don't sell software, they only sell their skill at writing software.
The ONLY entities that we don't actually need in the software business is large software companies selling binary-only copies of software, and then trying to constrain the users of the software in what they can do with it. Those entities are the deadweights in the software industry.
FOSS has a buisness model?
I thought FOSS was just FOSS, boss.
It's a treadmill. As the off-the-shelf software becomes versatile and comprehensive enough to handle any business requirement, the complexity of explaining a given business's requirements to the software you're using increases to the point where you have to be a programmer to do it. When my parents started work in computing, development was done with macro assembler or in COBOL. Now it's done in Access and Flash.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Stuart Cohen today is chief executive officer of the Open Source Development Labs. With more than 22 years of international sales and marketing experience, he is a seasoned technology industry executive and has served in a variety of executive roles. Most recently, Cohen was vice president and corporate officer at RadiSys Corporation where his responsibilities included strategic partnership development with other industry leaders including IBM, HP and Dell. Prior to RadiSys, Stuart was vice president of worldwide marketing and a corporate officer at InFocus Corporation. Stuart spent 17 years with IBM, where he held senior positions in the US sales & marketing division, and the IBM Personal Computer Company and Networking Division, with international business development responsibilities in Europe, Southeast Asia and China. Stuart holds a B.S. in Quantitative Business Analysis from Arizona State University.
LinuxWorld
So... a corporate marketdroid that never invented anything, never built a business, who coattailed himself into executive positions with minor players based on prior employment relationships with major players who has a B.S. in Quantitative Business Analysis. Who, coincidentally is trying to bridge free software and services in a for-pay model that's starving for attention?
I'm gonna go with... um... so they couldn't get an Enderle quote? Was Maureen O'Gara busy that day? How did this guy talk his way into OSDL? It's interesting that their Wikipedia page mentions him not at all.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It wasn't a hard thing for me to adopt OSS. It was a marketing idea that brought Cohen and Frye to this. They are both relentless fools.
Don't sell "software", sell "a solution to the customer's problem." This sounds cliched, but it's amazing how many people and companies work around actually doing so.
Yeah, this guy seems to think the the 'support' model equates with the kind of technical support he might get on the phone at an 800-number.
In my business, anyway, the open source support I sell is really business support. Companies want to know how improve their business with software, and I can help them figure that out, and open source is most often the best answer. I usually save them a bunch of money, deliver a robust solution, and pay some bills by doing so.
Granted, that's not what most 'investors' are looking to do - they want to mass-produce support scripts for that 800 number and charge $40/call. But in my case, what people are really buying is my ~20 years of IT experience and knowledge and its application to cutting-edge technology, which can't get mass produced by the end of next quarter.
The broken business model is applying factory thinking to knowledge work.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So often I download software for free, and it's so excellent that I want to send money. Sometimes I send a cheque directly to the author. If only the free software download sites actually asked for money, I'm sure that a large proportion of people would pay a nominal amount.
But then there's the example of slashdot. I tried to send money recently, but the form to accept my money only offered a paypal option. So you can forget that! I wanted something where I could just enter credit card details and send money.
Just as in the case of music downloads, I'm sure that free software would make good money by just asking in a simple form: (1) Do you want to pay the standard X dollars for that? (2) Or would you like to pay an amount which you nominate? (3) Or would you like it for free? I'm sure that lot's of people would send money.
Paypal was supposed to facilitate micro-payments on the net. But it's more nuisance than it's worth. So what's really needed is either a better implementation of the micropayment idea, or just plain credit card payments. At least the FOSS distribution sites which want money should ASK! I guess maybe it's just too much cost and bother to set up the e-commerce facility on one's own site. But a centralized site could collect the money and hold it in a bank account.
Maybe these blogs shed some light:
http://alampitt.typepad.com/lampitt_or_leave_it/2008/08/open-core-licen.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9945870-16.html
http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2008/12/01/the-five-ages-of-vendor-led-open-source-revenue-strategies/
"Open-source code is typically not complex enough to make money selling support."
Go look at the kind of software that is SUCCESSFULLY sold as solution bundles, or with professional services. Cost aside, does it look anything at all like free software? Make free software look like it came from the bargain bin? Well, it did.
If you want to sell support or solutions, free software developers are going to have to start coding a lot harder, and learn some very specific business needs (while still turning it into code for free).
Basically, you need FOSES, free open source _enterprise_ software. This market is not nearly as big as many of you think. I think it might have 1.5 players in all.
FOSS business model.. hah. ... but continue to buy software support agreements and professional services for software a college intern can babysit. Shit, he wrote part of it.
"Switch to free software, saving money in licensing and staffing"
I want some of what they're smoking.
Right now I can't get Fedora Core 10 to recognize half of my hardware. There's no way I'm going to buy Red Hat Linux to fix this. I just restart the computer and boot Windows instead. I think that's the eternal problem with selling support for open source software. Nobody's going to pay for help getting it working when they can pay for something that works in the first place. And the people who stick with open source tend to find ways to get it working without paying. It's like the repair shop can only sell printer parts to people who know how to fix their own printers.
How can you profit from licensing a FOSS movie to a cinema when the FOSS license presumably already allows it to screen the movie for free?
Are we talking about the same "FOSS"?
What good does FOSS adoption mean if there's no money exchanging hands? If a provider of software can't take a huge profit, then no one (outside of technology enthusiasts) really cares. Having 1m downloads and zero revenue gives you bragging rights and a large bandwidth bill -- you're not going to be driving the economy or paying for your kids' college education on that basis.
RedHat on the other hand, shows you can make a viable, profitable, large business on FOSS -- it is possible. Just not common.
The point is that, if you don't have a business model, you don't have a software industry -- you might have software being supported by other industries, but there still is a very sizeable sector of our economy that just. makes.... software. And wants you to pay for it, and would prefer to prevent you from using it if you don't.
By one (flawed) measure, such software made $450 billion in 2007, though that doesn't measure the whole industry, and it conflates services & hardware revenues at times. So let's go pessimistic, split the difference and say commercial software is around $250 billion in annual global revenue.
Open source revenues were 1.8 billion in 2006, and I would guestimate probably were $2.3 billion in 2007 given IDC's growth projection of 26% compounded.
In other words, open source revenues currently account for around 1% of the software industry's revenues. At a very optimistic growth rate, in 5 years, they'll be somewhere between 3 and 5%, mostly through growing at a faster rate (26% vs. 14%), though it's not clear how the recession will impact either number (you can be guaranteed some FOSS companies will go bankrupt or get bought ; though FOSS demand may increase to lower prices).
In any case, given these numbers, would you really bet on FOSS as a better *business* model? Certainly it's got nowhere to go but up, so it's growing. And yes, free/cheap is a good selling point. But it has a long, long way to go before you honestly can say it's going to draw investors, talented employees, etc., that all want to make a lot of money for their futures.
-Stu
A CEO in BusinessWeek is talking about a concept "failing to meet the expectations of investors."
I've heard that a *lot*. Usually means "I don't understand this, but I like to babble".
So you think you cannot make as much profit on FOSS? Isn't that sad? Perhaps you could make more money selling home loans - something your reality-dysfunct cow-orkers all seemed to agree on, some time ago.
Usually it's not worth listening to managers talk.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Until you need your CRM to talk to your ERP to your e-commerce frontend.. what then?
Go with SAP or something and pay a whole ton of cash (if you can afford it)
OR
Hire me to integrate a couple of open source solutions. With a bit of luck, I've done it before and will be able to get it done quick and easy. Then enjoy the free updates and give me a call if you need something else done. I'll be off working on the next customer's problems.
There will always be a market for custom software, because no two businesses are identical.
Don't point that gun at him, he's an unpaid intern!
What a complete moron.
It's TOO good.
Tough $hit Sherlock. You clearly sucked at FOSS and hence that is why you are no longer around.
Go back to Microsoft you loser.
Companies have long hoped to make money from this freely available software by charging customers for support and add-on features. Some have succeeded. Many others have failed or will falter, and their ranks may swell as the economy worsens.
Sounds like a true statement, only is this really unique to Open Source at all?
Companies have long hoped to make money from ______________________. Some have succeeded. Many others have failed or will falter, and their ranks may swell as the economy worsens.
What a bold statement! Now how many other business ideas does this ring true for? Almost all of them?
That's today.
Yesterday he said "Open Source is anti-business", and tomorrow he'll say "Open what?".
He's a fly-by-night sound bite machine, while his company sinks ever further towards insolvency.
It's bloody sad, for a company that gloried in epic heights of merit for decades.
Free Software is not a great money printer for business in the traditional sense. Instead of earning money they save loads of money and thats something many PHBs have problems wrapping their head around. The software cashcow where you could write an application and then sit back and reap the rewards are dead.
I think the focus in mainstream media is very wrong since they only look at the earning bit and not at how much money can be saved. In their mind Linux isnt successfull if it dont bring in lots of money even if it saves boatloads of money for the people using it.
HTTP/1.1 400
As far as FOSS being something that has serious business problems in regarding to sustaining the developers who work on it, this is indeed a serious problem.
Hogwash!
The software industry is competitive and margins are always thin. Full stop. It has nothing to do with FLOSS, except insofar as FLOSS is an extreme example of how thin the margins can get! :)
Some examples from my own career:
1. I started out of school writing a quicksort for a company that needed one. It came in on time, under budget, and was very well done, and got me a full-time offer from the company. Nowadays, quicksort is a standard part of the standard C library, and nobody wants to hire someone to write a quicksort. Oh noes! But the end of the market for quicksort programmers had nothing to do with FLOSS!
2. I spent a few years working for a company that made one of the first word processors. Something...happened to the market for word processors, and it wasn't FLOSS, but it was just as bad as the effects you attribute to FLOSS (unless you work for a certain NW-US company which shall remain nameless).
3. I spent several years working for a company that did custom point-of-rental software for video stores. We charged a good amount of money, but we did customization and support, and, with all of that, barely managed to scrape along, until someone entered the market with a similar product for about 1/10th of what we could afford to charge. Of course, they didn't offer customization or support, but for some reason, store owners just saw that sticker on the front of the box, and decided they'd give us a pass. We were torpedoed out of the market, and, again, it had nothing to do with FLOSS.
FOSS is on the other extreme, its an open model but it leaves programmers in a situation where they cant afford to live.
That's just ridiculous. Yes, companies that specialize in creating pre-packaged software are going to struggle just as they have been since long before FLOSS came along. FLOSS is merely an extreme of what the software market tends to do in any case. But programmers are in no danger of losing their jobs, since something like 90% of them work for companies which use their software directly, rather than making it to resell. The company I work for now uses Apache and MySQL and Linux and other free software, but they still need programmers to glue it all together into the shape they need, and there's no sign that's going to change any time soon. Plus, once in a while, I even get paid to find and fix bugs in Apache or MySQL or Linux, and that's a very good feeling! :)
But in any case, so what? Even if you were right (and you're not), what gives programmers a right to earn a living as programmers? Why should buggy-whip makers deserve a living? If there's no market for programmers (and I assure you, there is), find something else to do. It's the way of the freakin' world, man! Things change. Whining about how we should all get together and conspire to force the auto manufacturers to require buggy-whips for cars is just silly, and ain't going to happen, and your plan makes about that much sense to me.
For every successful FOSS company that made it big there are 10 that didn't.
But here's another similar fact:
For every successful company that made it big there are 10 that didn't.
Do you see what I did there?
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
People don't usually pay for software. They pay for one of the following:
1) a pure conscience
2) a zero fuss installation process
3) not having to go through the effort of finding a copy of said software and ripping it
[if 2 is broken and outweighs 3 in effort and hassle, people ripp software - one of the reasons I haven't bought any copies of flash anymore since MX 2004 Pro - the installation and registration process is an insult to any paying customer]
4) cool looking UIs and neat workflows
5) automated processes (software + hardware + the people to understand the problem and set it all up to actually save work and money + a number to call when things go south)
6) access to a professionally maintained gameserver
In fact, in the web developement industry, that a piece of software is open source is mostly a given. Wether a company succeeds or failes is rather independant of wether it offers its code as OSS or not.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It's a fair point. But I tend to think that before we get to 2020, we'll see the same schools also talking about the incredible screwing over business got from big software houses, in terms of vendor lock-in and of expensive, generic software packages that don't fit the task well enough to justify the expense. We see that a lot where I work.
In it's old form, certainly.
I think the future lies in a hybrid approach. Discrete, reliable open source components linked together in custom configurations. It's still going to be custom software, but it's going to be the difference between writing a shell script to pipe some software through half a dozen filters, and writing the whole thing from scratch, in C.
I think that, ultimately, coders are going to be like plumbers. If yo need to redo the plumbing in your house, you don't go down the store and buy a prepackaged solution, and you don't start by turning each fitting by hand on a lathe. You hire a guy to use pre-made parts to give you a custom solution.
It's the only approach that makes sense.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I don't think this guy understands why the GPL is so important. It's sticky. You can't lock away your improvements/fixes. All the increments get added to the whole. Without GPL critical mass is much harder for a project to reach. Don't wish to start a fight, but I think this is why the number of GNU/Linux users/drivers/work is significately greater then that of BSD. Irritating though Stallman is, he has come up with a set of rules that logically lead to open source critical mass. As programmers we should be able to take a set of rules and see the out come.
Bankers don't, on the other hand, create free, zero-income banks.
Well, recently they've been working quite hard on the zero income part ;-)
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Otherwise their share price would not be crap.
Why should one single product satisfy the needs of everybody?
In normal markets you have many different products targeting different niches in the market, only monopolies can ever dream to cater to the needs of all their users at the same time, if they are interested about that at all (how long it took for MS to instil some new life into IE? )
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
All the advantages of FOSS are for the customer, not the supplier. As the developer of code, there is no advantage to me in the customer having access to the source. However, customers should demand that all the applications they purchase are FOSS as it stops lock-in and offers great flexibility in future. The fact that a product is FOSS should be a major advantage to a company when selling their product. If its not at the moment, that is because of a poor level of understanding/knowledge among customers. The expectation that all software products/services are FOSS will grow in future.
... is not a guarantee of insigthfulness.
In step 3 you make it sound like people developing FLOSS put out something and then sit and relax waiting for the money to flow in.
Red Hat for example is a major contributor to the software they sell and support, since they are true insiders it is much easier for them to monetize step 4.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you make a product that is so perfect (now, something I would want to see one day) well, maybe.
Now point me to such products and lets see if there really is no space for improvement.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you really are that good as to achieve point #1 you have an assured career writing software, so licensing issues would become the least of your worries. If you aren't really that good, well, you will get paid to fix your mistakes or to provide improvements to your product.
Notice that you are not entitled to that. You have to show commitment, financial prudence and good marketing skills.
In other words you need good business acumen, this is something people going into business have always known, geeks somehow tend to forget that very simple premise.
As for somebody else redistributing your project, look, you had one year head start lets say. If your project is worth re-selling, who should be best posed to profit from that?: You, who know the innards of the project, or the guy that put it in a website or a CD and charged for that?
If you don't manage to become the recognized authority for a useful piece of software you wrote, then you have to bow to the entrepreneurial abilities of others.
Writing software, whatever the licensing terms, is just part of a coherent business model, you go into business without one at your peril.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I know it doesn't look like that now, but big companies and governments are challenging very seriously the wisdom of having their data controlled by third parties.
Enjoy the ride, it will not last forever.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The ONLY entities that we don't actually need in the software business is large software companies selling binary-only copies of software, and then trying to constrain the users of the software in what they can do with it. Those entities are the deadweights in the software industry.
Like games houses ? Good luck with trying to steer them away from the 'licensed binaries' model. The FOSS model of selling support or training will never work for games development.
Squirrel!
The model of selling support is not really broken, it just doesn't bring the obscene levels of short term profit the investors want...
Selling an item that costs nothing will obviously produce massive profits and there is very little that can match such a profit margin, but sooner or later the customers will realize just how badly they are getting screwed.
Selling a support service on the other hand, will always have lower margins because you actually have to employ competent staff to provide the service, but it's also an ongoing service with a continuing stream of income.
A lot of these investors are only out for the short term gains, and are unconcerned about the long term sustainability of the business - look what's happened to the banking sector as a result of such behavior...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Whats been going on in the IT industry in general is to create a demand for services. This has been done by making software and hardware unnecessary difficult to use and thereby creating a need for support, consultant services and other related services. If the industry focuses on creating a demand for services, that implicitly mean that they DO NOT focus on creating good products. Rather, they focus on creating mediocre products that require users to pay for additional services to function optimally (if at all). A prime example of this is Microsoft (who by the way must be the only company in my experience, that consistently is incompatible with itself). The IT industry can operate in this way because their source code is not public and can therefore not be modified or improved and because customers mostly think that "This is a stupid way to work, but I guess its not possible to do it any other way". To create good products is with todays "strategies" the same as reducing revenue drastically from the services required to make the products work. I would love to see a revolution in this area. Products that focus on making the customer 99.9% self sufficient, with clean, easy to understand instructions and intuitive handling. So far, only Apple has managed to go in that direction. They`re not there yet, and there is lots of room for improvement but so far, so good. Anyway, focusing on creating employment is basically the same as shooting yourself in the foot. With a shotgun.
They're just pretending to be one of the big boys. Not realising that the big boys don't actually talk like that , its only middle management wannabes.
.. but others might. Your arrogance is just astounding - typical I'm alright jack , fsck the rest of you.
And I'd be interested in what "making quite a decent living" actually is. I don't want a "decent" living , I want a damn good living given the time and effort I've invested in my career. You may be happy living in some tiny flat making just enough money to pay your bills and go away once a year, the rest of us however would like a bit more out of life than that.
Damn hippy.
I have recently drafted a new open source license just to solve this problem. I feel that the most important problem of open source software is that the company may not sell just the binary of the software because somebody else will gonna clone it and distribute a free version. RHEL vs CentOS is a very good example.
What I suggest is to create a new open source license that prevent cloning of a project with exactly the same code. By forbidding this, the company would be able to have exclusive right to distribute the compiled binary and thus have the power to charge for the download and usage of the binary.
I think that the business model for selling proprietary software is very simple and efficient model, and the only problem is the closed source nature of proprietary software. If we can make use of best of both world, wouldn't it be great?
I temporary calling this license Proprietary Open Source License (POS) and a complementary library license for it, called Common Open source Library (COL). (bad naming, gonna find better ones.) And below is some details for these two licenses. I hope that anyone can give me some feedback about this license, tell me whether it would works and whether there is any possible flaws that violates the open source philosophy. This is just a very rough draft and your opinion is very valuable for me. Thank you!
General Rules of Proprietary Open Source License (POS):
1. The licensor must release all source code of the binary under this license or licenses that are no more restrictive than this license (e.g. COL, LGPL, BSD).
2. The licensor has exclusive right to distribute the original binary.
3. The licensee has unlimited right to distribute the original source code but not original binary.
4. Redistribution of binary must have the source code modified to have no more than 80% similarity than original source code at any time.
5. Redistribution of all modified binary and source code from this license must be relicensed under COL, and not this license, unless explicitly permitted by the licensor.
6. The licensor reserves the right to patch from the modified source code, provided the patched original source code has no more than 80% similarity of the modified source code.
7. The 80% similarity is calculated by iterating every source code files that are released under this license, and compare the differences in program code ignoring comment.
8. In case of similarity of source code is in grey zone, with rough calculation of around 75%~85% similarity, the licensor reserves the right to request the licensee to make further modification to the modified source code.
9. Embedding the original program into other software, whether open source or closed source, requires exclusive permission from the licensor to release the code in other licenses.
10. The licensor may not control which 80% of code a licensee may or may not copy.
11. Same as GPLv3, the license implicitly grant patent licenses from the licensor to the licensee.
Common Open Source Library (COL):
1. Software written under POS cannot use GPL libraries because it violates the terms.
2. A new library license has to be made to let different POS licensors share a common library.
3. COL Licensees are required to release all linked source code under GPL or POS or COL; hence it is more restrictive than LGPL and BSD.
4. COL allows the library to be used in both POS and GPL software.
5. Source code under COL is not counted under the 80% similarity requirement of POS.
6. This would make a healthier environment to open source. Because POSS (Proprietary Open Source Software) vendors not only would have the incentive to improve the library, but also monetary support to do so.
7. The compatibility for use in both POS and GPL means GPL software can benefit from the improvement of the library.
Benefits of Proprietary Open Source:
1. Provides monetary incentive to produce high quality software.
2. Gives ex
"I was one of the few open-source CEOs to support that deal .. The deal .. lets Novell provide important software that complements the core, or kernel"
..
How does paying IP 'protection' money to Microsoft enable Novell to 'provide important software', what was hindering them before the deal. What obstacles are their currently that prevent others contributing 'important software' to the kernel.
"It's buying into a Microsoft FUD campaign that damages the business of many members", Bruce Perens on Cohens' endorsment of the MS/Novell pact
davecb5620@gmail.com
Since when did open source become a business model? For all I know most open source projects are voluntary and for the common good; I mean why sell something that's infinite in supply, am I right?
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
And proprietary cubicles are full of dead ends also. Only the jewels see the light of day (and sometimes bombs are packaged and sold and sometimes jewels are passed over). The only difference with open source is that it is transparent. The whole world gets to see the multitude of dead ends and exploratory projects in addition to the jewels.
"The deal made sense then and still does. It lets Novell provide important software that complements the core, or kernel, of the operating system and enables interoperability between Windows and Linux"
That's a curious turn of phrase, does 'provide' man the 'important software' is covered by the GPL, or does it mean something else. And can something be considered truely interoperable if it only works on Microsoft Windows and Novell Linux.
Some Novell people have in the past refered to 'Linux' as just the kernel. And here we have Cohen saying things like 'if Red Hat relied on supporting the Linux kernel'. It was never about supporting the Linux kernel, whatever that's supposed to mean. Red Hat built on a distro, that Fedora built on, that CentOS built on, as the Open Source model is supposed to work.
davecb5620@gmail.com
What do you mean? I know a couple of bankers that managed to lose most of their invested money and still get a $700Billion gift. Seems they know exactly what they're doing.
"Right now I can't get Fedora Core 10 to recognize half of my hardware"
What hardware specifically, did you try any of the distros on bootable CDs, what was the response when you posted to the support forums, how did you manage to achieve dual-boot?
davecb5620@gmail.com
OK, I'll bite. Remember it goes like this:
Please provide at least two different examples of a complex task that requires skilled labor you provide cheaper than training staff for a software product that will fit into step 4 and lead to step 5. Remember, it can't require that your software be a piece of crap because then no one will want to use your software and/or someone will write something better. The example you provided was not related to a software product.
Then, you are not following the FLOSS business model. You are not following steps 2 and 3. Specifically, you are taking steps 4 and 5 out of the FLOSS product and moving them into a non-FLOSS product. This makes the model you suggest
In other words, make a crappy product that hard to use and maintain and requires the training. And, that only works until someone gets the training and then starts training others. Once there are a number of well trained people, someone is going to write a book, then another and suddenly, your training isn't necessary or is available somewhere else at a cheaper price.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
ahh, but games are a different beast. they aren't a tool to be used and improved. they are a consumable product. something you sample for a little while, and then put away. you don't need sustainable development there. So, they may be the allowable exception to this software discussion.
An old joke goes something like this:
.. :)
A customer goes to PC world to get his Windows laptop computer repaired. The repair man says it will be $160, and be done in a day. Customers asks can all photos and files be restored. Repair man say no, will have to do a total wiped and reinstall. Customer takes the machine to a small computer repair shop and they boot the machine on Knoppix and copy all the files to a USB device, then reinstall Windows and restore the files, all for the same price. They had to use a generic Windows CD as the customer no longer posessed the restore CD and the laptop company wanted $140 for a new one.
"The service industry is good work, but there is little opportunity to launch a retire-on-it type of project"
I've worked in the 'computer' industry for decades and I don't know anyone making money out of Windows whos name isn't billg
davecb5620@gmail.com
"I don't think this guy understands why the GPL is so important"
.. which is why they would like to pretend it doesn't really exist. As a friend of NovoSOFT we can assume that Cohens thoughts on 'open source' are in synchronization. In order of importance that would be renting software, subscription services or lastly the GPL ..
I think he does, as does MS and Novell
"in the end, it doesn't really matter if the final product is available via subscription, delivered as a service over the Web, or licensed under the General Public License that governs free software"
davecb5620@gmail.com
... but unrealistic expectations of the investors.
When investors and Wall Street analysts start looking at how well a company is run and whether it's generating a long-term sustainable income and stop whining about how much profit are you going to make this quarter, perhaps all businesses will do one hell of a lot better than they are able to today. ``Oh, sure you made a profit but it wasn't a double-digit increase over the same quarter last year. Too bad. We're going to penalize you by telling everyone to dump your stock. Who's your daddy now?'' (A year; that what passes for long-term thinking on Wall Street.) But I guess I can sympathize with these analysts to some extent. If they didn't have the job of slamming company stocks that aren't making them and their clients overnight millionaires, what else would they have to do? They aren't capable of actually performing some, you know, productive activity. I almost feel sorry for them.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Bankers don't, on the other hand, create free, zero-income banks.
Not intentionally, anyways.
Provide a total consumer stack. For instance Red Hat merging with Dell and a Telecom Company and a Content Provider. Selling a full spec multimedia PC in the shops, they make their money back on subscription services. Now that would be money to retire on :)
LinuxMCE 0704 Demo Video
These boxes would fly off the shelves, where can I buy one ?
davecb5620@gmail.com
OSS is just a tool that allows you to provide a service. I wouldn't go to clients to support any linux installs. Rather, I'd use linux for the services I would provide to those customers. IPSEc VPNs with IPTables firewalls, PKI, LAMP solutions, DNS, File Shares, multimedia appliances, whatever. I can provide the service of building and maintaining that infrastructure, and I can do it without the hassle of ridiculous licensing. A win for me and my customers. Support to me comes from the community that already exists. This is where the Redhats and IBMs of the world can turn a profit. By providing a service. Rock-solid software is simply the means to provide that service.
4) Build a small closed source application that utilizes the open source software.
Then you are selling closed source software. if it was open source, it would be something else entirely, which is the point of the article.
I'd rather be sailing...
The article says that the "open source" model is broken because the software is great, but closed source is successful because the software is crappy. That's an interesting paradox!
We use Network Box (network-box.com) and they do perimeter virus scanning, IDS/IDP, firewalls for internal and external systems including our DMZ, VPNs to secure communications between ourselves and three other vendors and for our staff, feedback, smtp relay and stand in with anti-virus scanning, traffic analysis, policy filtering and reporting for all of that. They do this for about one tenth the cost of an employee. Pretty much everything they're using is OSS, but the care and feeding and expertise is beyond our budget to handle in house. I don't know if I can provide a second example, I suspect we could handle any two of those tasks without requiring additional staff, but not all of it and probably not as well.
I hesitated to use Zabbix as an example because I haven't decided whether or not to pay them yet, but I have used their product and recognize the need for significant training to use it more effectively. We currently use other products for most of the functionality but not as effectively as Zabbix could provide it if I had trained to configure it.
The point of the closed software collusion system is not that it is an FLOSS model, but a way to generate income which couldn't be done as well without a FLOSS contribution. No argument there, I actually think your outline is beautiful except it ignores the ongoing development cost of the FLOSS portion.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Except that you have to pay for development and support of the OSS, with the payoff of being able to reap the benefits of community contribution toward it. So you can't ignore the OSS development and support cost as part of your business model.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Sometimes the bankers need software that they can't write themselves. So they hire another company to write it for them.
They could hire the company, then keep the code in their little cabal, or they could release the code, so that any software company could be hired to support it. Those companies would be open source companies, and might not own any code themselves.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Tim O'Reilly seems to have made it work for him.
What is most disturbing, is where businesses adapt the way they do things to suit the software they're using, rather than the software complementing their existing way of doing business.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
And by that, I mean that Cohen is entirely writing to support his perspective, upon which his business is based on. While it is true - and has always been true - that profiting on open source software has always been hard, he doesn't provide any new evidence of this.
Moreover, he doesn't provide any novel solution. He's just replacing "Open Source" with "Collaborative", in such a way as to suggest more ownership for the businesses in question. He's saying he can provide this; but not what 'this' really is.
Really, I feel like this is the same sort of marketing article as all those articles that try to push 'The Web 3.0'; at least 'Web 2.0' spoke to a shift in how to build the underlying architecture. 'Collaborative' software, like '3.0', like a grade-schooler naming their fictional robot the Terminator 4 Million, he isn't talking about any real fundamental shift in either how open source is run, or how business is run. He's just come up with a new branding and buzzwords.
[Ego]out
Network Box are not a development house nor do they provide open source software. They do not follow the open source business model. Just because they use open FOSS, it does not follow they use the FOSS business model. They are selling a service, not developing software. You should provide a first example before you try to provide a second example.
Zabbix is providing software and, by your own admission, it is complex to use and configure. Why not use something easier to use and configure? Many people will pay for software that is easy to use and configure rather than use overly complex and obtuse free software.
Let's assume you get trained to configure Zabbix. The company can charge to train you. The cost will have to be pretty high to cover both training and software development. Once you are trained, you can then market your new skills as a Zabbix consultant and train others. You can write a book on configuring and using Zabbix and sell it, cutting further into the money making end of their operation.
You seem to miss the difference between using FOSS to provide a service or product and developing and releasing FOSS as a business, which is what TFA and the GPP are both about. The former is doable, the latter is rarely even a break-even proposition.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
In general, how many business ventures fail? How many fail within the first few decades of their industry existing? Until you can show that business projects in general fail less than 80% (assuming for a moment that's an accurate number), an 80% failure rate is not necessarily bad.
'Everything computers' has not been a disaster. Unfortunately, this is just not true. It is true that most computer related exercises are disasters, but most of those still have some value - possibly significant. AOL sucks, but a lot was learned from it. OS/2 is in the same boat. And for every software project that was ultimately abandoned, chances are that it carried some work load for some period of time. It may not have been the best possible solution available, but it still has facilitated useful endeavors.
Windows is a pretty good example of this; it is rife with problems, even if you like it. But apart from the innumerable businesses that use it, it has allowed for and pushed things like personal games, which in turn push video cards - and having evolved graphical capabilities has been a huge boon for everything from media to medicine.
Computers are not an unmitigated disaster - to claim that is way off base. Those countless failed projects are also, in their own right, useful. The port of LA, when initially built, was hopelessly unprofitable. It failed and it's parts were sold off. Those cheap parts let new investors come in and piggy back on previous work, making a now wildly profitable port. In the same way, those failures are pushing current profitability.
And for that reason, numbers like '80%' are terribly misleading.
[Ego]out
The trick to avoid going out of business because your code is good is to sell support for shitty code.
MySQL figured this out years ago.
Game... blouses.
BITCOM FAQ's: What is a bitcom? It is a sitcom distributed by BitTorrent. Who can view a bitcom? Anyone with a computer, high speed internet, and custom BitTorrent software. How much does it cost to view a bitcom? Nothing. How do I view a bitcom? You download custom BitTorrent software, create an account, and log into the website. Once logged in you search for a bitcom you want to view and click on it. How much to set up an account? Free. You do need to provide a name, email address, zip, age, and whether you're male or female. We also would like you to answer one survey question per week to build a profile of you. How can it be free? Advertisers pay all costs. You will have to view a 30 second commercial before you can watch the bitcom. It is a part of the BitTorrent file and is targeted to your profile. I don't want advertisers knowing this info about me? They won't. They will only know your profile. Your name will never be provided. The closest they can come is your zip code. I'm still nervous... Then make up a name. Please try and be honest about your profile though, it is for your benefit. Is it limited to sitcoms? Nope. I just haven't come up with any witty names besides bitcom. Anything that has not been copywritten and can be uploaded to the website can be viewed. In fact, the concept is completely scalable. Local programs such as weather or sports can be created that would include advertising targeted either by national or local business. Who owns the file? As soon as the file is uploaded it is considered copywritten by the creator. The creator and the website are the only ones that can get revenue from the file. Who can make a bitcom? Anyone with a video camera, computer, high speed internet, and custom BitTorrent software. They will also need a creator account. Who gets the revenue from the advertiser? Fifty percent goes to the creator of the bitcom. Fifty percent goes to the website. How much do ads cost? Advertisers will bid against each other based on the number of advertisements they want to send out and the demographic they wish to target. Why do advertisers have to bid against each other? Because I have no idea how much per person an ad is worth. But I bet advertisers do. What does the website do with its fifty percent of the ad revenue? Technology and development, employee salaries, headquarters. Possibly advertising the website using other mediums. Why can't I start a company producing bitcoms? You can. In fact, it would probably be a good idea. If I produce a bitcom how do I get paid? All transactions will be made electronically through Paypal and/or Automated Clearing House (ACH). Ideally I would like to have as little latency as possible. Advertisers would pay nightly and creators would be paid as soon as that batch is run. It would all be automated. Why would advertisers agree to pay daily? Because this is a more effective way to advertise. It will also be easier for them to evaluate the effectiveness of an ad by being able to target specific areas and take note of any changes in sales. Are you one of those guys that hates network television commercials? No. I just don't think it is a very effective way to market anything. You really don't know who, if anyone is watching. How do you know people will agree to watch one commercial? Because the business model will be done in the spirit of open source software and available for anyone to look at. They will see that half of the revenue is going to the creator. How do you know they wouldn't agree to watch more than one commercial? I don't. Maybe users can have preferences and if they are willing to watch more than one in order to support the artists that create the programming, they can choose to do so. Why does the website get half? Seems like the logical place to start. Maybe it will need to be adjusted. How do you know people won't upload crap? Well, nobody would watch it. And then they wouldn't get any ad revenue. There are incentives for everyone involved. Chances are your return on investment would increases as you increase t
Bankers need to run their banks more efficiently so they get together to cooperatively develop some banking application software that makes them all work more effectively and efficiently. This is the magic of co-op software development.
But they don't. They should work together, like almost all businesses, but its rare that businesses actually do participate in a software co-op. Why should any non-computer business buy an OS or Office suite, rather then participating in a co-op? But that's not how free market capitalism has evolved: you try not to focus on things that aren't essential to your business.
Open Source is important (in part) because it actually gets businesses to participate.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Well, Ballmer did try...
A Human Right
While I haven't used Zabbix much, preferring the competitior Zenoss, I do see that even paid software for these tasks require a lot of work to get implemented in an environment. Why? Simply because no company has (without doing custom work for you) created a network monitoring system that:
1) talks to every possible server, switch, workstation and generic device you might want to monitor
2) talks to it in the way you want (maybe you want WMI rather than SNMP because MS SNMP sucks, or you want to use SSH because you don't want to open up SNMP to your network for security reasons)
3) displays the info how you want
3a) provides reports how you want
Even if there are plugins for every device in the method you need to communicate, they may not monitor what you want monitored (flat text logfiles on Windows for instance).
Do you know of software that is both easy to use, and easy to configure (or even how you'd create software like that) for this sort of network monitoring task?
No matter how GUI or scripty or easy an interface is, it isn't going to read your mind, and you're going to spend time configuring who gets what alert for what, how often you poll this device vs that device etc. The problem I see is you can make it dead simple, at the expense of what you can do (can you take a syslog sent to you and modify it's severity based on several other devices status? Not going to be simple to implement that).
The other thing I've noticed is that there's an intermediary area where you're right in using something easier to install and configure. But if you reach that by being a set of problem solving that is the same for everyone, eventually there does seem to be either an integrated to a larger system or oss solution that people start using (i.e. it becomes free as in beer somehow).
I'm thinking trumpet winsock eventually getting supplanted by Windows 95 built in networking (based on BSD stack?). Or the inroads of OpenOffice to MS Office for more and more uses. Firefox and IE forcing Opera to free (without ads) eventually.
Where am I going with this divergence into closed source software? Just that if your software is needed by enough people, and easy enough to do (smallish problem domain) you can't sell it either (it can be closed source). Look at AIM, Opera etc sold via ads. Well, the rise of Pidgin or Firefox sort of made them either much less used or made them drop ads. I imagine GMail really killed the Yahoo paid mail accounts. Thunderbird along with webmail pretty much made paid IMAP/pop3 clients go out of business (I certanily don't hear about people spending money on e-mail clients unless it's Outlook - which isn't really the same thing).
Then there's software like PuTTY - who is going to pay for a Windows terminal app now? Why? (IBM mainframe connections will, but for ssh?)
All that said, I'm not sure you and the GPP are disagreeing so much as using different terms:
Software companies using OSS are going to be selling their programming time and expertise more than the software.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Put a "laser" on the moon and demand 1 "million" dollars!
The GPL doesn't allow a software author to demand that persons who receive and use his software pay him a fee, because this effectively limits GPL's freedom-to-run condition.
However such a requirement to pay the original author can be made compatible with licences that also permit unfettered source redistribution (which is where most of the benefit of Open Source Software lies).
I use such a system at Rails Wheels, along with methods to make payments easy, affordable, and honourable for all who receive a copy of a software package.
"If you find yourself in this position, my suggestion is to move up the food chain towards applications of the software you've developed. "
"Make your staff the source for training required to manage a complex system. "
Apparently somebody in this company started out writing software to train customers to manage complex systems, then decided to move up the food chain. Considering that, this doesn't even refer to the business plan you are talking about.
How do you sell water? You clean it up so it tastes better, package it for convenience, and brand it. (Branding provides both convenience in selecting a product as well as assurance of quality.)
Anyone could do the same for themselves of course. Water is freely available, and it can be purified and bottled if you have time and effort. Many people appreciate the convenience but don't have time to do it themselves, nor the inclination to spend money on filters, distillers, or disposable bottles.
When you buy water, you are paying for service and convenience.
Most people don't have the time or knowledge to download linux, build a distro, figure out how to install it, tune an installation, fix issues, etc. And having the source code to everything is nice... if you have the skill and time to actually do something with it.
In a pure FOSS world I think maybe there would be no software companies. There would be businesses that have software staff to develop and maintain the software they use, and software outsourcers providing these services to smaller businesses. But programmers would be similar to maintenance personnell: they provide support and infrastructure, but are not producing product for sale. Software becomes like the water inside a plumbing system, and programmers are the plumbers that design the system and keep it flowing.
To get there, businesses would need to stop viewing software as an asset that they can own and sell, and start viewing it as overhead, even a raw material. Hard to see this happening any time soon.
And here are the items from their "solutions":
A business model is a framework of creating value. If I were to agree that Opensource doesn't bring the investors what they want (which is typically just a high return), I can still say they it brings value in the sense of efficiency through stability, security and performance.
So just because whiney stock-holders aren't getting their X% increase yearly doesn't mean that opensource is broken as a business model.
resetting fonts stil leaves many menus buttons etc at the same small size.
the solution is to get her a bigger monitor. but no, you had to go swing your computer dick around and prove how big a man you are. congrats, you are the big bad IT guy and she is a lowly dumb secretary.
are you happy now you fudouchebag?
It's getting increasingly common for companies and especially universities to object to vendor lock-in for some of the data formats, even if they don't care about the openness of the source. It can *store* its data in a proprietary format, but if it can't at least export to some sort of interoperable format, that can raise objections.
My own (large) university is in the midst of a huge mess trying to migrate off of Exchange, and is not likely to make the same mistake in the near future. The new integrated email/calendaring/webmail solution replacing Exchange (just about done being rolled out) is actually open source as it turns out, Zimbra, though that wasn't a large factor in the decision.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I might quibble on details, but overall you're exactly right. The problem with a five sentence business plan is that it doesn't really provide enough detail to determine things like goals, tactics and marketing.
Zabbix makes money by training people and servicing a product, the development and maintenance of FOSS are crucial and beneficial, but not profitable alone. NB uses and, to quibble, contributes to FOSS, but they do it in order to provide a service for which they can charge. CodeWeavers contribute in a variety of ways to FOSS, but they do it in order to have a better product to sell. RedHat and Novell do development and make significant contributions to FOSS, but they do it in order to make their services and support attractive enough to be marketable. Third Brigade's Ossec is an outstandingly useful FOSS product, but the income generated comes from support. Sun, though I hesitate to use them as an example, do significant development and maintenance on a variety of products but if they ever manage to make a buck from it, it will be because they sell their bundle of products as a whole, not directly because of what they've given away.
The whole point of FOSS as part of a strategy to generate income is to have something that people want to use and trust. FOSS is valuable because it can be thoroughly tested by a million monkeys and improved by anyone who has a need. Giving away software makes it a viable option for people who might not try it otherwise and when they do have money to spend, there is a tendency to buy from the companies that make it possible for you to do a better job with things you already know and trust.
In the end, I must agree that people get income by exchanging a service of some kind for payment, not by offering service for free. The part I wanted to highlight is that they can develop and contribute to FOSS for the good of many as a part of their strategy to make money. FOSS isn't a business plan, but it can be a part of a business plan.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Agreed, now to move on to a broader subject: where does this all lead?
I think that FOSS and particularly GPL do something extremely valuable for society, it forces innovation. FOSS is a lever that changes the market from one where ideas are sold over and over into one where services are sold until they are no longer valuable. Closed source software used to be the only game in town, but with FOSS alternatives, it becomes a race to improve enough to still provide value.
Take OS virtualization as an example. MS Virtual Server 2005, Hyper-V, VMWare Player and Server are all free and solidly develop(ed/ing) products. I don't think that any of them would be free however, if it weren't for the pressure that Suse and RedHat applied to the market when they started offering Xen based virtualization in order to make their own systems more attractive. Xen by itself didn't make much in the way of money, but it both gave leverage and increased value to FOSS based solutions and changed the value of CSS similar solutions.
FOSS comes at a price and value to everyone. The cost is that it makes CSS without innovation less valuable, but the value is that it forces companies to innovate or lose profits. In my opinion, the greatest value of FOSS is that it makes innovation and service more valuable in a competitive market.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
There is lot of scope to improve or sell FOSS on Usability front. http://www.openusability.org/
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
Is he related to Brian Cohen, CEO of RedHat?
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
The people paying had no understanding of what portion of their needs are already available in the public domain. The people being paid had no motive to educate their marks. Salesmen are just conmen who haven't been convicted yet.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
The corporate open-source business model that relies solely on support and service revenue streams is failing to meet the expectations of investors
... would have been correct, but would have violated the one taboo of his corporate audience. It would have admitted the free market superiority of the independent contractor business model.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
"Those ports are used for an external hard drive on USB and DVD burner on Firewire .. It appeared to combine them into a "Logical Volume" that I can only guess is some kind of raid setup .."
I'm sorry but no one in their right mind runs parts of the Operating System on hot swappable devices, you are asking for trouble. What parts of Linux resided on the external drive. You don't ever mount an external device into a Linux directory structure - it don't like it. Like, what happens if the USB device fails, you've lost your entire system.
"did you try any of the distros on bootable CDs", rs232
"No. I needed to be able to save settings and files", AmberBlackCat
I meant, boot from the CD and see if it picks up the hardware, before installing. Personally I have found the bootableCDs are very good at identifying hardware. Later on if the distro doesn't identify it, you know it's a missing driver or something.
"I didn't post to any support forums. I just went back to windows"
What part of Windows reside on the external harddrive ?
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