Open Source Advocates' Attitudes Toward Profit

jfruh writes "Marten Mickos, ex-head of MySQL, was discussing his new open source cloud initiative with the New York Times when he mentioned in passing that 'Some people in open source think it is immoral to make a profit. I don't.' This has set off some predictable hand-wringing within the movement. While some community members are ideologically opposed to profit-making, that attitude isn't held by a majority, or even a plurality."

Comments

Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[khasim]

In a large enough group, there are always "some people" (more than 1 person) who believes X.

Whether X is that they've been kidnapped by aliens or whatever. In a big enough group there will be "some people" who believe it.

So knock it off! If you cannot point to them, shut your mouth.

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[recoiledsnake]

Stallman is some person now?

The problem comes from Stallman's idea that all software should be FOSS and money should be made from support(Stallman isn't opposed to selling the software, but having a buildable source will allow any user to post the software for any cost or free). So the money to be made is squeezed into only support. Take RedHat. The community immediately took the sources and made CentOS which is used in many small businesses instead of paying for Red Hat.

Maybe some companies and developers can live on giving support, but for the vast majority of software developers, thats not possible when anyone out there can take your code and build their own. Apply this model to the Android or Apple app stores and there would disaster with the software clones. Already games are being cloned without the source code available and this is a huge problem. Forcing the apps to be open source will lead of chaos and there will be no incentive to create big games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Infinity Blade(cost a million or more develop). What should they do? Sell support for Angry Birds?

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[tlhIngan]

Stallman is some person now?

The problem comes from Stallman's idea that all software should be FOSS and money should be made from support(Stallman isn't opposed to selling the software, but having a buildable source will allow any user to post the software for any cost or free). So the money to be made is squeezed into only support. Take RedHat. The community immediately took the sources and made CentOS which is used in many small businesses instead of paying for Red Hat.

Maybe some companies and developers can live on giving support, but for the vast majority of software developers, thats not possible when anyone out there can take your code and build their own. Apply this model to the Android or Apple app stores and there would disaster with the software clones. Already games are being cloned without the source code available and this is a huge problem. Forcing the apps to be open source will lead of chaos and there will be no incentive to create big games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Infinity Blade(cost a million or more develop). What should they do? Sell support for Angry Birds?

Problem is, "sell support" doesn't go very far when the "buyers" are cheapskates.

Stallman's model works fine back in the day when computer operators were revered people, but falls down flat these days when 90%+ of computers are used to accomplish some task, and those knowledgable enough to fix/understand computers are tiny minority. The majority want computers that work, but they also don't want to pay for it.

If you don't believe me, tell your family member to go to Geek Squad to get their computer fixed. They'll balk at the $40/hour charges, and see no reason why you can't spend the 20 hours it takes to fix up their computer.

And if you're trying to do computer support, be prepared to have your clients spend hours dickering over every hour you charge. You billed 10 hours, they'll ding it down to 9 and waste 4 hours of your time doing so.

And no, it doesn't matter what profession the client is - lawyers will dicker just as hard (or harder) over that hour that they charge $200/hr for.

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[Vanders]

Take RedHat. The community immediately took the sources and made CentOS which is used in many small businesses instead of paying for Red Hat.

Well hang on a minute. Yes, let's take RedHat as an example. CentOS and it's cousins like Scientific Linux may well exist, but RedHat are still turning $1b a year in income. RedHat add enough value to their products that apparently there are plenty of people out there who are very happy to pay them rather than use the free alternatives.

If anything I'd argue that the likes of CentOS actually help RedHat. If a company starts on CentOS they may well decide later to "trade up" to RedHat to get access to the benefits of RHEL (perceived or real).

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[ozmanjusri]

"Bill Gates is an evil profiteer!"

1. He is.
2. Profiteering is not the same as making a (fair) profit.

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[hairyfeet]

Actually its quite simple, although I get called every filthy name in the book for daring to point out what SHOULD be simple common sense. You see while the GPL works in SOME cases it does NOT work in ALL cases and in fact can be counterproductive in those cases. Case in point why you will never have a real world class desktop.

Its simple, look for yourself how many companies have already died trying to bring that to you, gOS, Linspire, Novell, Xandros, Mandriva is on life support and soon Canonical will joining them, why? Because the ONLY way to make money with the GPL is by using the support model just as the company in TFA does but this model DOES NOT WORK in desktops. Consumers don't buy support contracts and if you try to write in the cost of support into the OS you've just raised your price above and beyond the competition, which has a hell of a lot more hardware and software support. this is because the OEMs can balance and even make a profit with some SKUs by putting trialware onto the systems. This is why Sony charges you $50 to have a trialware free system, because you are cutting into their profits by removing it. Since so few people will pay for software with Linux trialware is not an option for the most part and is certainly not gonna bring in enough to allow a GPL desktop company to stay afloat, much less spend the $50-$100 million required to bring Linux up to the same level of ease of use and stability as OSX and Win 7. You have to pay for regression testing and tons of docs and help files to be rewritten (or written in the first place as it still amazes me how many only give you CLI use flags or a "to be done" placeholder) along with QA and probably either a complete rewrite of the driver model or for a team to backport to keep from breaking drivers with the frankly insane speed the kernel keeps changing.

So like it or not if you want a Linux desktop that can compete with OSX and Windows you really need a new license, one that will allow a company like Canonical to make money fixing bugs and making the system better instead of trying ever more crazy schemes like Ubuntu TV and Unity phones trying to keep the lights on. Something along the lines of "You can look, you can modify for personal use, but if you distribute you have to pay" so that these companies can actually stay afloat. Because I have a feeling after Mandriva and Canonical go tits up that's it, you aimply won't get another company to blow tens of millions on something that will never make a dime, in fact Novell didn't even break even until 2010!

And before you say "Well the community will do it!" I'm afraid that's a lie because of the "busted shitter" problem. You see everyone wants to be the artist, everyone wants to create new things, nobody wants to be the guy that cleans and fixes the busted shitters which is why they just don't get fixed. look at any GPL OS bug tracker and see how many bugs over 2 years are there, and then realize that don't count all the ones where the devs decided they just don't give a shit and put "will not fix" and threw it in the trash. To fix the above problems you are gonna need skilled developers to dedicate YEARS of their lives to fixing them, nobody is gonna do that, at least not in great enough numbers to matter. This is one of the reasons why communism failed, as it got so bad that they had to order soldiers to do "potato duty" simply to get the lousy jobs done. The above jobs are boring, thankless, time sucking, and overall about as fun as fixing a turd filled shitter overflowing into the floor. Would you go fix that kind of mess in a stranger's house for nothing? of course not, its simply human nature.

So the sooner the community accepts either they have to change their current model as GPL doesn't work in this use case or simply gives up on the desktop frankly the happier everyone will be. TINSTAAFL folks and while RMS may be truly happy squatting at MIT and not owning anything more than the clothe

there's a difference

[Anonymous Coward]

between making a profit for profit's sake and simply making a living.

public companies who answer to shareholders first and foremost tend to do the former (and aggressively so), while small businesses and mom and pop operations are usually happy with the latter.

Well, there's always one...

[serviscope_minor]

There's always some nutcase out on the fringe.

RMS himself is entirely happy with making a profit on software---the FSF used to sel lthe GNU tools on tape to raise funds.

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[Penguinisto]

Thanks for providing a perfect example of his point. ;)

One root of the "problem"

[willoughby]

A big part of the dispute is that some folks aren't happy with saying, "I don't sell my software for profit, I contribute it to the community." but instead insist on adding, "And I think that's what you should do, also."

Re:Profit vs. revenue vs. working for free

[larry bagina]

Why do people work for "free"? Unless they're forced to do it, they're getting something out of it -- recognition, personal satisfaction, utility, resume padding, to get laid at LUGs, etc. Hell, even if there's a gun at head, you're still getting something out of (i.e., not being killed).

Is it better if someone fixes a bug (for free) in gnumeric because it helps him keep track of all his rape victims vs someone who fixes a bug (for money) in gnumeric because he's being paid to do so?

except in 2008, when it completely failed

[decora]

and the major banks 'allocated resources' to mortgage securities that were basically garbage, and housing got built that immediately started to rot because nobody could afford to buy it at the artificially inflated prices of the housing bubble.

'oh thats wasnt capitalism it was backed by the govt and evil regulations'.

yeah, well, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Deutschebank, BNP Paribas, AIG, all the monoline insurance companies, a couple hundred hedge funds, mutual funds, etc etc etc, all decided to 'allocate capital' to this "evil govt program". They weren't objecting to Fannie and Freddie, they were aping fannie and freddie. all of these private businesses then benefitted from the govt bailout too.

in other words, these are the 'bastions of capitalism'. these are the guys who fund the Ayn Rand institutions and the theoretical economists and think tanks to push "capitalism" whatever that means. what it has actually meant in reality is some kind of unholy alliance with the govt to bilk taxpayers out of money, and has very little to do with a 'free market'.

Re:Here's my attitude...

[Barbara, not Barbie]

He's a hypocrite. He has no problem with people violating others copyrights (see here)

RMS: Napster is bad because it is proprietary software, but I see nothing unethical in the job it does. Why shouldn't you send a copy of some music to a friend? I don't play music from files on my computer, but I've occasionally made tapes of records and given them to my friends.

... but he has a problem with people violating the GPL. "Do as I say, not as I do ..." Not that Stallman matters any more - he's mostly a laughing stock and the punch-line of jokes nowadays. His Steve Jobs comments made him look more a loser (and more of a crack-head) than Charlie Sheen.