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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
...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
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.
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/
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?
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
Evidently not. There are many objectives and purposes of FOSS, while boxware has only the purpose of selling units. That is tough to compete with because boxware, from an investor perspective (person investing in the company selling it, not the ones buying it) it is successful when they sell so many units, and fail if they sell too few. Very straight forward.
FOSS in every way is more complicated. Investors of Red Hat want to see subscriptions sold, but that also depends on who you would call an investor. Many people profit from Red Hat's work, and any FOSS progress is perpetual. Red Hat will always live on in a way because of its nature. People can always expand and support Linux no matter what happens, By contrast, whatever way it could happen, if Microsoft one day went belly up, EVERY investor, stock holders and users are totally burned.
So another contrast. The purpose of Windows is for the software to be sold. The purpose of Linux / FOSS is to be productive. FOSS doesn't need to be profitable by the box as much as it needs to be useful, and proprietary software doesn't need to be as useful or productive AS MUCH as it needs to sell box units.
When we are talking about a movie company, there are two routes to go. Movies are not FOSS, remembering that the last 'S' means software. Movies make more sense under a CC license if you want it to be that type of free, but that is something else entirely. FOSS v. proprietary for a movie studio is the argument of whether or not the company is going to use make all their own software (very impractical, they are not a software company), or pay someone to give them the software they need. On a larger scale, individual companies can make their own software (again, makes no sense cause not a software company) or movie studios as a whole can pay one big company to provide for all their needs. In a way this can make a lot of sense, but has certain limitations when it is proprietary. The FOSS solution says use this open model, build upon it as you need, BUT if you share that code or want to sell it, you need to "share-alike". This means that movie studios can meet their own individual specialized needs, and have the benefits of a community that is 'invested' in having quality software. There is also the motivation and hope that if you choose to share parts / tools that are good for you, others will build upon it and improve upon it making it the best software possible. So if 100 movie studios work together sharing their best in-house tools for making quality movies, then many things happens. You have great software everyone can use. The software is superior than what any one company could develop. The tools are more flexible than could have been possible by one company, and profitability will come down to the ability for companies to utilize that software to make a good movie. Software engineers got paid for their work, the software is very valuable, but 'worthless' as a stand alone package. So now the questionable investment is whether or not it is going to be worth your money to invest in someone looking to make money contributing to such a project that is not directly involved in the movie production itself. Red Hat is such a company (for another industry, of course), but when such business models 'fail', the ability to quantify the failure financially for that company is 'simple' (sort of) but not for the software as a whole, something MUCH more complicated.
But again, the only thing special here is that when proprietary boxware fails, it fails for EVERYBODY and entirely. FOSS just can't be judged the same way, even if it is something very difficult for people design a business model around.
And I'll just say it now before anyone needs to point it out, I do casually program and use Linux but I am not a software engineer, and certainly not involved in the industry beyond consumer and fan. This is just my observation and opinion as an outsider with a strong belief (even if a naive one) in FOSS.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
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.
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
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.
Businesslike? I am a private individual and I donate 180€ per year to the OpenBSD project. I wouldn't even think of demanding anything to them. If you think that a one-shot donation of 150$ is generous, you live in a very strange world.
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 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
Can you think of any way that an organization could make money producing CC licensed movies?
Product placement.
Producing propaganda for a third party(probably a non profit) and charging more than it costs to produce the movie.
Providing support for people who have watched the movie(Confused by Primer? Check out the ad supported website. Remake 'Grave of Fireflies' and charge people for tissues, anti-depressants and counseling.)
Seperately,
let's not just share the cost; let's make it together so we get it just right and know what we're getting.
I think conflicts / contradicts
Unless open-source providers find new ways to add value for their customers, especially in this economic environment, the growth of their companies is at serious risk.
because you are talking about two totally different groups of people. The first totally makes sense. By its nature it drives out middle men and those that only want to profit from making the software, people that are not principle invested in the product being any good. This is a VERY GOOD THING for businesses as investors in open source software. The second is in a way exactly the type of scum FOSS enables people to easily eliminate when such entities conflict with the value that was already identified in the first quote.
The author makes some really great examples, but I am very confused with how he seems, to me, clearly express just how FOSS works, but then tries to say that this inability to merge the good with the bad is somehow a flaw. HUH?
This is where his description of the FOSS business model as fundamentally flawed is insulting, and makes me feel like he doesn't get it, but on the other hand he does differentiate in an important way the differences between users and developers. All I hear in this is that people that can't make a quality contribution are burned in the FOSS world for doing business in that way. How about "DUH! That's what we been trying to do!". This is also where I find the statement "don't use FOSS because it isn't profitable" is laughable.
A commonality I see between FOSS and Free Culture is an elimination of that line we put between producer and consumer. Each see an idealism in them being the same group.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
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