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.

[DRJlaw]

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.

Yes, shut your mouth. There's no point in arguing that believing in X is wrong unless you can point to a specific individual with that belief. Forget that rational discourse would address the belief rather than the characteristics of the person(s) holding it. Forget that others may be on the fence concerning the belief or developing their own beliefs and would benefit from a discussion concerning the merits of the belief.

If you cannot point to the damn dirty hippy who believes it, then you have no license to speak.

Or not. Nobody needs your permission to use their mouth.

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.

[cpu6502]

"Some people say..." - FOX News, MicrosoftNBC, CNN, .....

I don't have any problem with profit. The more you make the sooner you can retire and enjoy life. (Or keep working and hand-out the excess to homeless people.)

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[HiThere]

One datapoint. I despise Microsoft, but it's mainly due to their EULA. And when Apple changed their EULA to copy terms from those MS had used, I extended my disdain to them.

I don't disapprove of their making a profit, but I purely despise their attempts to control me.

I don't believe that mine is a minority opinion. And when people write Micro$oft, I interpret that as meaning that Microsoft is eager to shaft people if it earns them more money, not an inherent disdain for profits. But I could be wrong about that, in any particular case. (I don't recall ever seeing the term "$un" before.)

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[cpu6502]

>>>"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 then they play the "I would help you if you needed help" card. Twelve years later and I'm still waiting for that payback. I don't provide much free support anymore (or free machines); if their computer really did become screwed-up badly I would copy as many files as I could to my USB: drive, insert the Windows CD, watch tv for an hour while it's being wiped, and then Copy usb: to c:

The family member can waste their time sorting it all out.

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[jellomizer]

Unfortunately the RMS method of making money means there is a economical motive to make software that is complex and hard to use. The simple and easy to use software is often reserved for closed source applications as there is a motive to make easy to use software so they can get paid for the software license, and not deal with the trouble of support.

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.

[Kjella]

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

I think that's a vast oversimplification of the problem, by far most cases people want software that works not support. I paid my 7 NOK ($1 + VAT) for Angry Birds, but I'd never pay for Angry Bird support even if you for that dollar could give me platinum 24x7x365 phone/e-mail/onsite direct-to-tier-X support. Because if it works great, if it's broken I'll move on. If I've bought a game and it's crashing and I have to spend any time in the support forums my net pleasure/utility from it quickly goes in the negative, but then I've already committed my money - at best I can insist on a refund. Support is only worth something if you know that if the software breaks I want to work with (or depending on your cynicism, fight with) support to get the problem solved and I only want that if the value is higher than the time and effort it takes.

This is particularly true if you are trying to sell support that will ask many technical questions to non-technical users. I'm not going to distribute blame for that but the fact is that many users don't feel they're able to use support and something you can't use doesn't have value. And even if you are able to work with support and reproduce the issue, it can still take a very long time if ever before it's fixed. Of course here you have support plans with code hotfixes but then you need way more at stake to balance the cost. Very often the window of benefit is right now, it is of little value to me if it'll be fixed next month or next year. Of course I know software can't be developed at the snap of a finger, but it makes support much less worth than software that would work right now.

The other problem is that most people are used to COTS prices. There you pay for the software when it works and the value of fixing a bug in support is amplified by better reviews and more sales, if fact just the idea of an enhancement that would increase sales is a net benefit. With open source you usually have to carry 100% of the cost yourself. Maybe you have an employer that's used to developing and supporting custom in-house system, but most people are not used to it. They will compare 2 days of work at minimum wage and say I can get Windows Home Premium or Office Home And Student with all the bells and whistles for that price. And if you could share the cost on a million customers, well then you could deliver for a fraction of a cent too. Using support is an incredibly expensive resource, it's one customer spending one support person's time.

Finally, when it comes to new development there's very little cost sharing. With COTS it's simple, if you want the new version with the new features you'll be paying for an upgrade, a $1000 feature can be distributed over 1000 sales of $1. With OSS you pay nothing for code that's already written, so you try very hard to not use it for anything it doesn't already do. Complain about the price for Photoshop, but is one man sinking that into GIMP development going to turn GIMP into Photoshop? Not even close. You can try various micro-transactions and crowdsourcing and whatnot but the easiest way to win is not to play, it's a free chance to get the feature for free. Even if all in total would benefit more than the cost, nobody wants to carry the cost for everybody. Everybody waits for someone else to bite the bullet.

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[sidthegeek]

Some people say these are known as weasel words.

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[trevelyon]

I found an easy way to deal with this. I call it the first one's free approach. The first time a family member or friend needs a reinstall of windows I do it free. The second time they move to Linux or go to best buy. It's pretty simple and right now 75% are on Linux. Linux is also considerably easier to upgrade (the home dir is left intact during upgrades unlike on Windows). My support has gone down to about 2 hours per user per year which I am willing to do. The bulk of support for most users is spyware/adware/viruses. If I can cut that out completely then support really becomes manageable. Now I get more bad router/firewall issues than PC support. To solve this I've moved most of them to a standardized wrt54g w/ 8GB flash and 16GB ram running DD-WRT. If something goes bad I just flash a new router and replace it (which has happened once across the 20+ deployed over several years). Don't even need to go on-site, they come pick it up.. Compared to almost any commercial router this support is very low.

As for clients that argue over the bill, I've never had that happen. Of course I have a policy that I will usually (there may be extenuating circumstances where I wouldn't) refund their last invoice if they are unhappy with the understanding that I will not work with them again. I have had never has a client take me up on that yer nor have they argued over the bill. Maybe it's because I work on server and networking or maybe it's because they usually save a considerable amount after an initial outlay but I suspect it mostly has to do with setting expectations before you start the work. The market really is not as bad as you make it out to be. It is, however, flooded with a ton of MS raised desktop support people who believe in the reinstall, rinse, repeat approach rather than actually troubleshooting the real issue. These people can run up extraordinary bills with little to show for the work.

The desktop arena may be a bit more challenging but if framed right even that is manageable. For example relay the actual cost of using IE and Outlook to the clients this will set expectations for how often machines will need to be re-imaged to get rid of spyware, viruses which you WILL get. Best of luck to you, I do feel your pain only now it's a lot less for me due to moving my responsibilities to FLOSS. I now get to raise my shoulders right off when people as for vista or win 7 support since I've never used either. Mind you Ubuntu and the whole Gnome 3 fiasco is a major PIA for me right now so there are still some problems but most of the work formulating a resolution is also shared across my client base so it's not a total loss.

Re:Always love the "some people" bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Cherry picked numbers that mean nothing, are cherry-picked and meaningless. They bring in $1b in revenue, they make ~$90m in profits, and that's been dropping steadily. With CentOS and its cousins offering the free option, and Oracle's OUL's primary purpose being to bleed Red hat dry on undercutting their support, it's hurting them, and it's hurting them bad, to the point that they have to charge the relatively ludicrous rates they do. a RHEL contract will cost you more per CPU than OUL will per system, plus RH has this douchy clause in their contract that you have to pay for unbranded installs too (unbranded means Oracle and CentOS-branded).

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).

And you'd be wrong, of course. The "trade up" would be to Oracle, since it costs less and is backed by a powerhouse in the industry (3rd biggest software company, 3rd or 4th biggest server vendor, and one of only two companies who'll provide with an entire stack, top to bottom (IBM being the other)), rather than one that is struggling to stay alive.

In CentOS was helping RHEL, you wouldnt have the unbranded installation clause in the support contract, you also wouldn;t have the clause that terminates your support contract, should you make available GPL-licensed patches for use elsewhere (say, OUL or CentOS). The only way CentOS helps Red Hat is in situations where smaller companies who're reluctant to pay for support, but can't afford a full out IT staff to support and maintain their systems, they get bit in the ass by CentOS, except that the numbers would indicate that more of those instances are heading to Oracle instead.

Then of course there all those integrated solutions, Avaya for example bundles CentOS (and Solaris) in almost everything. They don't have to pay RH, and they're fine sinking the support cost themselves since they're making a killing selling their support anyway, so why would they?

I know Red hat is a slashdot darling and are invincible and powered by pixie dust and IDDQD goodness, but the reality is they have nowhere near the rigor they're believed to have by the community.

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

Profit vs. revenue vs. working for free

[MrEricSir]

It seems there's really three different situations we're talking about here, not two as the summary suggests:

• For-profit: the goal is to make money
• Non-profit: the goal is to have a steady revenue stream, but only to break even.
• Working for free: no money ever enters the equation.

The majority of major open source projects are one of the top two options, but I'd venture to guess the majority of open source projects in general are the later.

In any case, I wouldn't want to confuse the last two options in the list as they each have a different place in the open source ecosystem.

Re:Profit vs. revenue vs. working for free

[DangerOnTheRanger]

I think you hit the nail on the head. As far as I've seen, it's just part of third group that frowns upon commercialization - why, I don't know. But anyway, the amount of people who hold this view aren't very numerous.

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?

Re:Profit vs. revenue vs. working for free

[gman003]

I'm currently employed at a small local software shop. Closed-source software, but heavily built on open-source frameworks and resources (Linux, Apache, Postgres, PHP, OpenOffice, and so on). That pays the bills.

In my free time, I work on an open-source video game (expect to see a /. story on it as soon as I can kick my artist's ass into gear). Beyond some vague pipe dreams of selling "Limited Edition" boxed sets with all kinds of feelies, I have no plans or expectations of profit. I make it two other reasons:
1) To try to break into the game industry (it would be one hell of a resume if I ever finish it)
2) For fun

So yeah, it's entirely possible to make a living, and also run an open-source project. Not as the same thing (that's possible too), but separately.

Mother Theresa Principle

[theshowmecanuck]

My brother calls this the Mother Theresa Principle. No matter how much of a saint you are, someone will hate your guts.

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[Anonymous Coward]

Might be a bad example, Mother Theresa was a strong opponent of women's rights. Lots of people, particularly women, had good reason to dislike her.

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[Penguinisto]

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

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[Forty Two Tenfold]

Mother Theresa [...] a saint

NOT!

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[theshowmecanuck]

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Isn't it nice that by the time of her death what she started wasn't needed as much and people had/have the luxury of bitching about things that are obviously much more important than when people with leprosy were being tossed out of society like garbage, or people died of tuberculosis because they couldn't afford simple treatments, or many poor died in the street from starvation or diseases due to poor diet because they couldn't afford to eat good food. Or people being crippled because they couldn't get bones set correctly because they couldn't afford a doctor. Or any of a number of things the lady started bringing to the poorest of the poor when no-one else would. Sure people can bitch now about her bringing her religion into it, or some of her methods, but at least she was actually doing something about a very bad situation at a time when others were content to just overlook the severely disadvantaged. It is easy to play armchair quarterback 65 years after she first started her work, in a completely different day and age.

I am definitely not a fan of churches in general (in my view they seem to bring a bad taste to religion for me). And even though she was a devout catholic and also witnessed her faith at the same time as giving her help, she did a lot of good for a lot of people when very, very few others were. And anyone who wants to call her down because of these relatively minor complaints compared to the work she did in the times she did it in, isn't worth my time nor consideration. And for the record I don't hate the catholic nor most other churches/religions, nor do I dislike its followers, nor most other churches' followers as long as they don't espouse discriminating against or hurting "non-believers"... or try to counter scientific knowledge and teaching.

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[icebraining]

Influential? In what? She did nothing but support the status quo.

"Well-known" != "Influential".

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[Forty Two Tenfold]

any of a number of things the lady started bringing to the poorest of the poor when no-one else would

Like what? Hoarding gifts and financial aid? Sick, delusional fascination with suffering misconstrued as care ("I think it is very good when people suffer. To me, that is like the kiss of Jesus.")? Go fuck yourself and take your catholic "saints" with you.

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[Darinbob]

I agree. Maybe she wasn't perfect, maybe she has some ideas that people don't like, maybe she had ulterior motives, but she did something. Someone who has never even once volunteered for a soup kitchen has no ground to claim that she was an bad person. As Christ never once said, "let he who is without sin be the first to do a good deed".

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[zonky]

She also thought it was ok for Rich, famous people to divorce, but not the poor.

Horrible, Horrible human being.

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[Genda]

Au Contraire, Mother Teresa's devotion to the untouchables and her commitment to the sick and starving were very much not the status quo when she began her mission. In fact she met tremendous resistance from Indian officials and members of upper Indian castes. I can't think of a single person who I respect or admire that doesn't have at least one opinion I disagree with highly. That simply make me, me and them, them. This by no means detracts from or diminishes the greatness of a great person, it simply punctuates their humanity.

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[tehcyder]

she did something

Yeah, and Mussolini got the trains running on time.

Re:Mother Theresa Principle

[tehcyder]

And she also failed to relieve a lot more suffering directlyin front of her than most of us would manage in a lifetime, because we would help the poor fuckers instead of spouting Christian shite about the nobility of suffering.

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.

Lack of profit is why I killed my projects

[rongage]

I developed a couple of programming libraries for talking to industrial PLCs - Allen Bradley stuff. It started to cost me some pretty significant money to keep up with new hardware releases. The amount of money I made total (gross) was maybe $500. An entry level PLC costs closer to $3000.

So yeah, nobody willing to spend money on my work killed the work right off.

Re:Lack of profit is why I killed my projects

[rongage]

It started off as a "scratch an itch" sort of project: Rockwell Automation basically threw down the gauntlet when I asked them about Linux support and they responded that communicating with a PLC from Linux was not possible. I proved them completely wrong - first with the PLC5/SLC-500/Pyramid Integrator series, and then once again with the ControlLogix/Micrologix.

Profit wasn't the motive at first, then after I exited the industrial automation industry, it became a burden - a huge burden - to continue to support the packages. I also started to have a change of heart regarding the value of my time. I started off by asking for donations - and got absolutely nothing back. I then took the software off the free ftp server and got a total of 2 sales. Underwhelming to say the least.

As of today, I know personally of 2 different commercial software packages from 2 different software companies that are built on my software - as in sections copied verbatim (no, neither IBM nor SCO are involved there). Do I get so much as a thank you let alone a commission of any sort, nope.

Have I learned, you bet I have. My software packages today are commercial only with no source code available. It's a matter of survival at this point - gotta take care of number one first.

Re:Lack of profit is why I killed my projects

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Have I learned, you bet I have. My software packages today are commercial only with no source code available. It's a matter of survival at this point - gotta take care of number one first.

And this is going to be a growing trend. The open source model only works for some software, and it may have already peaked. The "we'll sell support" model doesn't work - if it's so broken that it needs continual support, people would rather pay $X and get something that "just works." This applies just as much to commercial software as it does to consumer stuff like games.

It's why you'll never see a "year of the linux desktop". It's why companies like Adobe are not going to continue to waste resources on linux. It's why developers are making a billion a month in the Apple Market, and next to nothing with Android (Android is just too fragmented).

It's not popular to say it, but free software (using the FSFdefintion), in terms of market share, is actually declining. Free in too many cases is just to expensive, both to the end user and to the developer.

Re:Lack of profit is why I killed my projects

[sydneyfong]

Don't give out your time for free if you're not willing to entertain the possibility that people will just take the fruits of it without paying back.

Don't allow commercial software packages to use your code if you don't want that to happen. Use GPL if you care about your source code staying open, or use a non-commercial license if you're against commercialization in the first place.

Choosing to release your work under a OSS license is just an option -- it may be a popular one, but nobody's saying you must take it (particularly if it's a matter of "survival"). Not even RMS is going to hunt you down because you're not using the GPL...

Mickos says...

[chrb]

"I completely agree with you that it is a very very small minority that thinks so (and I said that to Quentin). And I am specifically not thinking of Richard Stallman. I know that he is not against business. He is only for freedom. I have no issue with RMS; on the contrary I have huge respect for his consistent insistence on software freedom. I don't think the world gives him enough credit for that,"

It seems that Mickos said "some people think it's immoral to make a profit" when he actually meant "some people don't like particular open source business models that emphasize profit over the software project". The allegation from the article is that Eucalyptus refused to integrate source code modifications that had been developed at NASA for their open source product, instead insisting that NASA should buy a license for the closed source version of their product. This sounds a bit familiar, I remember similar comments being aimed at MySQL AB when they insisted that anybody using the MySQL client library had to purchase a commercial license or GPL their application, which was also a decision that, on the face of it, benefited the MySQL corporation more than its users.

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.

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:One root of the "problem"

[Kjella]

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."

I've not really hard that one so much, most seem to agree you do what you want with your own code. But the way distros use applications and applications use libraries, I have heard people insist on adding "And I don't think you should be trying to make profit on my software either." I can sort of see that, particularly if there's a paid support sending bugs upstream to unpaid volunteers so they get the work and downstream get the profit.

Re:One root of the "problem"

[Solandri]

"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."

I disagree with RMS on lots of things, but that's not how it works at all. I'm all for selling software. Most people sell it for money. GNU FOSS folks sell it for the rights to derivative works being put under the same license. It's not "And I think that's what you should do, also." It's "And if you want to incorporate my software into yours, the price is going to be that you have to release your software under the same license as mine."

There's nothing inherently wrong or unfair about this. It's their software. You don't have to use it. If you don't like the idea of releasing your derivative software under a GNU license, then don't use GNU software. It's as simple as that. Go buy a commercial library which does the same thing and pay whatever licensing fees they ask. Don't like that? Then hire someone to write an equivalent library for you. Still too much? Then write it yourself. Can't be bothered to do that? Well the answer isn't to take GNU FOSS and incorporate it into your software without following their license requirements. That's the same as pirating commercial libraries and incorporating it into your software without paying.

Remember, nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to incorporate GNU software into your project. Yeah they let you use their software for free (as in beer) if you don't plan to make any derivative works. So what? Just because they have one set of terms for end-users doesn't mean they can't have different terms for redistribution use. Pay software does the same thing. If you just want to use it as a user, there's one price. If you want to incorporate it into your own software product, you'll have to negotiate a completely different licensing fee. Or do you think you can buy a single copy of Photoshop off the shelf, incorporate it into your "deluxe artist's software pack," and sell that for $50 each?

Interesting but...

[nitehawk214]

I would also like to know Open Source Advocates attitude towards ???.

FOSS and (business) models

[martenmickos]

All,

This is a great discussion! I am glad to be back on /.

As often with press, I was not quoted verbatim. I stated my observation that in the world of free and open source software (FOSS), you find some people (some very few people, to be precise) who are judgmental about how other people perceive or act on open source. So when you have a certain governance model, business model, or development model, there will typically be some people who will loudly rule it out as wrong or improper or something. But I didn't say that I have anything against that, and I don't.

It's one of the strengths of the FOSS world. Differences in view are aired publicly, and many times (although not always) a higher level of understanding, or a new thinking will emerge.

We need to keep these discussions going, because as the world moves into the cloud, those same principles of openness that were developed for software code will have to somehow be applied on APIs and on data too.

Marten

GNU

[hackus]

FSF GNU, it is clear. Charging for software is completely A OK as long as the person gets the freedom to change the software without restrictions. There are some, but they do not conflict with the basic tenant.

Unlike the Paytards I would call them, that believe in licensing software only, no where does the GNU or FSF manifesto declare paying for software is bad.

I am surprised how many MBA people I talk to can't get it. No wonder these people can't handle regular calc and have to take "business" math.

GNU Linux is bought and _sold_ everywhere.

Also, given that a lot of FSF / GNU people have jobs at major corps such as RedHat, I am not sure where the documentation is to support the claim Free Software people insist on non payment of all software.

Thank God too, as I make my entire living building GNU systems and would starve if that was the case.

Stallman has never said that, and the Paytards always bring that up and make the guy out as some sort of commie from the Stalinist days or even Red China.

-Hack

Re:GNU

[bug1]

With source in hand, anyone could make your software available for free. That makes it really hard to make a reasonable amount of money selling software.

This whole capitalism thing we are part of is bassed around the concept of compeition.

So when you claim that having to compete makes it hard for you to make a 'reasonable amount of money' you are demonstrating an inflated self worth.

The bait and switch

[petsounds]

What I don't like is when open source project teams suddenly decide to make the project closed-source and for-profit. System notification tool Growl on OS X is one example. Sure, a project's community can fork the project, but entropy tends to have her way. I don't think you should get into open source and then suddenly feel bitter about the time you put into it and want to make money off of it. That's like volunteering your time at a homeless shelter and then going back later and asking to be paid for the time you spent there. It's just a dick move. If you want to do something for-profit, make that upfront to the community.

Re:The bait and switch

[motokochan]

Growl is still open source, you can find it over at https://code.google.com/p/growl/ and build the source code using the instructions at http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-source-install.php. The source tracks the official releases from the developers and is still BSD licensed.

If you don't want to build from source, they do offer a pre-built binary for free, or maybe you can convince a developer friend to build it for you.

Either way, there is no bait-and-switch. The source has always been free. They just decided recently to start charging for the process of building and verifying binaries.

if i knew how i could monetize my crap...

[decora]

i would monetize the hell out of it. right now i can barely pay my bills with my day job, the open source thing is just kind of an interesting diversion that i spend way too much time on.

people make fun of 'marketing' all the time but people who can market things are actually kind of geniuses. if i knew how to properly 'market' this stuff, i could quit my day job and hack open source 40 hours a week instead of pushing paper around a desk that nobody cares about and will probably be automated within 5 years.

Re:if i knew how i could monetize my crap...

[donscarletti]

People make fun of marketing folks, not because it is unimportant, but because it is extremely important and so many people who do it drop the ball so heavily. A big problem is when a CEO from a tech background gets it in his head that marketing guys are stupid/sleezy/of-dubious-use and hires a marketing guy who fits in with his stereotypes.

Marketing is about products, a marketing guy needs to know what product we're selling to consumers and can either tell consumers why they want it, or explain the development team why consumers can't be made to want it and help them make it something that consumers do want. Idiot marketers cannot do either, since they just don't care what the company does and consider brand identity as well as product a blank slate to fill with their own delusions.

In the real world, you meet both types, sadly, most engineers treat the concept of having customers with such contempt that most good marketing people would probably avoid having to work with them, leaving the dregs forced to come to tech companies.

Re:linus actually said on NPR one time

[Darinbob]

He was born and raised in Finland, which was not a "socialist" country. It was mostly Social Democrats for a long time which are not at all the same thing as "socialist".

Revenue options for open software.

[Mandrel]

Providing support isn't the only revenue option for software that's freely modifiable and re-distributable. Other than the most common revenue source, which is using an OSS project to attract an employer, there's:

• Donations, which most OSS projects handle poorly by offering nothing in return. Kickstarter got this, or
• Using a near-OSS licence that removes the freedom to run (freedom 0) but keeps the important freedoms to tinker and to break-away, which makes it feasible to charge for the software. This could work in an app store by forcing any forked app to be listed on the same store, with the original app author getting a cut equal to the price of his original app, and the authors of the new app keeping any premium.

Re:except in 2008, when it completely failed

[shutdown -p now]

Capitalism did not fail in 2008. Unregulated (or rather, regulated not in the interests of society) capitalism failed in 2008.

As GP said, capitalism has quite a few flaws, but it has many good points about it, too. The trick is to keep as many of the latter as possible while getting rid of the former through regulation.

Re:Here's my attitude...

[Ltap]

That's because his goal is to erode copyright. The GPL is only part of it. Understand that and you will understand more of why he does what he does.