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Ask Slashdot: Can Closed Source Software Transition To the GPL Successfully?
colinneagle writes "Open Source guy Bryan Lunduke has experienced the difficulties of migrating a successful closed source project to an open license first-hand, but still believes — or at least wants to believe — that it can be done. He writes: 'Occasionally, someone makes a go of it, to take a good piece of closed source software and release the source code under a nice, open license. In fact, I did just that about a year ago. I tried to take a software development tool (along with some video games) that I had developed (and was earning a good living from) and migrate them to the GPL with continued development funded via donations. The results were...disastrous. Within a very short period of time of going Open Source, the total funding for the projects fell to less than 20% of what was being brought in via sales when the software was Closed Source, which almost completely impeded the ability to fund continued development. Luckily, I was able to recover and get things back on track, but it was definitely not a fun experience.'" How viable is migrating a closed source project to something open?
OpenOffice started as StarOffice. Seems pretty viable.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
But is there a good, reliable way to fund this sort of transition? To allow a company (however large or small) to stay in business while transitioning to an Open Source license?
This article is asking the wrong questions. The question should be: what are the appropriate scenarios to move a closed source license to the GPL?
Because his scenario doesn't sound like one of those cases. If your sole source of income is taking something you've written that you consider a finished product worthy of sales and selling licenses to it then the GPL route for that entire product is most likely not for you. Now, if you can extract a framework from these games/tools that you feel could be improved by the open source community but your specific work (like textures and dialogue for the games or complex/efficient algorithms for the tool) where you feel your worth is demonstrated remains proprietary, then you can open source those frameworks and benefit from community improvements.
When I write software, it belongs to the person that bought it from me. They are the sole copyright or whatever holders of that code. Only once has a customer open sourced it and several times it's just been shelved even though I've told them that open sourcing it couldn't possibly hurt anything. I don't do a licensing model for my income, I do a "Software as a Service" model. You pay me, you get what I write. I'm like a drug dealer except the first time is still expensive. I know you'll come back for more, everyone always does! Now if ten years down the road you're looking at my code and it's outdated or missing features and I died in that majestic fireworks in space accident then just open source it and see what happens.
Projects that don't start natively as open source rarely transition well to the GPL in my opinion but when they do, they're not a cash cow based on a licensing model sold as a solitary piece of software. I'm a huge fan of the GPL but you had to have seen that one coming a mile away, right? There are scenarios for open sourcing a closed source project. You've got mouths to feed, this isn't one of them. And once it's GPL'd you better start offering your services to augment that software and go back to working your ass off because I don't know how you're going to get licensing revenue again.
My work here is dung.
I read the question and though, "What? How can it be hard not to succeed? You just switch the license." Then I read the summary and realized the real question was "Can closed source software transition to the gpl profitably?" That is a question I understand a lot better.
I don't know a clear answer. I do know that donations for that kind of product are not too likely to be a good way to bring in income.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Surely, if your business model relies on selling copies of your software, then going GPL is not going to work. What was he expecting?
Open source is a nice idea... But if you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer, you're likely to download the source, compile it, and leave the donating to the other end users who you're sure are contributing... Obviously everyone thinks like this, so very few actually donate. As far as viability goes, as long as you don't intend to continue making a living on your work. Go for it.
Common Sense (+1)
The HTCondor (formerly known as Condor) distributed computing project has always been free to use, but transitioned from a closed-source to open-source license a few years ago. Development of the software has been continuing unaffected, so far as I can tell. So: yes, it's definitely possible.
I was heavily involved in this on a github project last year. The concept is good, especially if you have enough of the source with clear copyright to put it under a GPL or change license gracefully. But the transition was really painful because all the weird, internal, badly done source control and essentially randomized selection of Perl components came home to roost, and were so embarrassing and so unstable in a more open environment that it was very difficult to get things re-integrated well. Basically, if you don't *tell* anyone you're running Apache 1.3 and storing SSH keys unencrypted on every system you touch, not that many of us will notice besides the crackers until it's far, far, far too late.
The cleanup was destabilizing and, frankly, cost me my job. But the project is far more secure and on track for safe deployment worldwide now, so I don't feel bad about that.
1. Last May, this guy announced he would GPL his stuff once he gets $4,000 in monthly donations.
2. Eight days later, he received a total of $4,000 in one-time donations and released his code under the GPL.
3. About a month later, he discovered that one-time donations and recurring donations are not the same thing.
4. Apparently until today, he is whining around how bad this all is and that open source is evil.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
HTH
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
From TFS of all places: " In fact, I did just that about a year ago."
But then TFS then goes on to say that he almost went broke doing it and we find out that the real (but implied question) is actually "How can I get people to donate to my pet project?"
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I've done it myself (with the original version of OpenToken). It worked out great for everyone. The community got a great tool, and the company got accellerated development and code excercise out of a tool they were previously using in-house. Everyone was a winner.
However, that doesn't appear to be what he's asking. It appears that he was defining "success" as donation revenue being higher than proprietary software "toll" revinue, in particular for a game. That's a totally different question, and has almost nothing to do with Open Source licensing. Proprietary "freeware" games face exactly this issue, so the sensible thing to do is look at how they work. I'm not an expert on this model, but I understand they generally have a very low donation rate. So if you want to may it pay better, it would have to be something that will gain way more users as freeware than would have bought it as a traditional "toll booth" model game. Here's an SE question on this exact subject (warning, the answers aren't encouraging).
Most folks making money in OpenSource software that I'm aware of do it by selling services associated with the OpenSource software. For instance, that's how Red Hat makes money off of cywgin, and how AdaCore makes money off of the gnu Ada compiler (Gnat). I'm unaware of anybody doing that with OpenSource games. Possibilites in that space that come to mind are taking donations for feature additions (top grossing feature gets coded next!), or hosting ads on the game server.
In this case, don't RTFA.
OpenJDK seems pretty successful to me.
Lots of Sun stuff did - OpenOffice and Java being two of the most well known I'd question if is worth it though.
Moving Java to GPL took about 5 years and used up an insane amount of time and resources at Sun. It is basically why so little of importance has happened to Java the language since 2004.
So what have we gained?
1. Free developers? But most of the development work is paid for and done by large commercial companies - Oracle and IBM are by far and away the largest contributors.
2. Wider developer pool? Sun found other ways of taking contributions in (via the JCP) without the need for a full open source transition.
3. Better Security? An often touted advantage of FOSS but the truth is Java has been hit by a plague of security problems since the move to open source; I'm not saying that this wouldn't have happened anyway, merely that being Open Source hasn't helped.
4. Wider adoption? Java is still the most/second most heavily used programming language on the planet (depends which metric you use) but it was before. It has been in steady decline for a while. There's no sign that going open source has stopped/reversed that.
5. Early feedback from developers? You can readily achieve that by shipping builds to developers - Apple, for example, uses that model very effectively in iOS and OS X.
Anything else?
on the Linux Action Show
ROFL. Terrible example.
If you want to open source your code and keep a viable business model open selling one off licenses, you should look into a dual license. Also, there's nothing wrong keeping some of the assets closed (e.g. art, game music, etc.) and keep the source open. This allows the end user to benefit from the source code freedom, while protecting your commercial interests.
MIT license is superior for all parties concerned.
I tried to take a software development tool (along with some video games) that I had developed (and was earning a good living from) and migrate them to the GPL with continued development funded via donations. The results were...disastrous.
Well what did you think was going to happen? It doesn't take much business acumen to foresee your income going down when you stop selling a product and give it away for free. Did you think donations would exceed your sales? I don't get it.
You have to go on tour, and charge for live performances of the bits you created.
"It's because for a very long time Star Office/OpenOffice/etc was crap."
Says you.
However, it's as easy to claim MS Office was crap. Or WP Suite.
But the reason why office suites make no money, closed or open, is that "if it doesn't do what MS Office does, it's broken". This includes breaking. If MS Office would break it, then it is the fault of the data or other program that created the data.
Exactly. Lunduke's software is bought mostly by retards who don't know better. When it was open sourced, it was shown to all just how shitty his software really is.
It's easy to take a closed product and go open source with it but there are some caveats, especially for games.
If it's a game, with single player, then fine, no real problem. If it's predominantly multiplayer that drives user-base / community then you don't want to release it as open source. Security via obscurity blah blah blah, but the fact it once you open up a multiplayer game it gets full of cheaters MUCH faster than the closed version. Unfortunately, it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the whole damn community. I've seen opened games go back closed, even when no money is involved, simply because of all the damn cheaters. For these types of games you want the current version to be closed source, pending a release, and the older released version to have significantly different enough modifications (esp. networking) so that the released version doesn't give too much insight to cheaters. You might have to go longer between releases, but at least it's getting opened. If it's a (dying) multiplayer game with no more user base, then it's fine to GPL it because it'll be mostly just friends playing with each other and they police themselves. Adding a user registration system helps with cheating somewhat, but email addresses are free. The trick is to create positive incentives for folks not to ditch their account, not negatively reinforce punishment. I.e., instead of wielding the ban hammer, give kudos/karma/in-game-cred and have there be perks, like voting for the next level takes your karma into effect; I digress...
The think people have to realize is that you need to work to make money. You can't just work once and then repeatedly sell the configuration of bits you just made. That closed model is dumb, it relies on artificial scarcity, it's economically untenable; What's scarce isn't the bits it's your ability to configure the bits that's scarce, that's what you sell, and that's how you make money with open source. Lots of people can't wrap their head around the fact that they need to be adding real (visual) benefit to get paid when they go open source because FLOSS users don't put up with moronic artificial scarcity models. Good will or no, donations don't cut it unless your project has a huge install-base. You have to keep working otherwise.
This means, let's say you create an awesome engine and level design tool set. Cool. Now, you can open source it, then do Kickstarters or other donations for adding a new game editor feature, or building an expansion pack of levels and kick ass assets that modders can use in their own maps (new textures, a new power or gun, mechanic, etc). Or, bring the game to a new platform. See? WORK for Money that you know you'll get. Don't work for free, that's dumb.
If a car mechanic fixed your car without asking, because they noticed it was broken, then that's great, but if they complain about people not paying them for the service then they're dumb. Don't work for free. Mechanics (and all other laborers) will give you a bid for their time -- An agreed upon price for manhours or to complete a job. Once a fair price is agreed upon, then the work is done, and you get paid ONCE for that work. You don't get recurring payments even if your work ends up benefiting lots of people -- say you fixed a bus, you don't get money for all the folks that thereafter ride in it.
I don't know why it's so damned hard for Closed Software devs to figure out how all other labor markets work. This isn't hard to understand. Much bigger software with more users can get away with more good will funding, but smaller shops have less users, so they need to not work for free then hope to get paid. They need to decide to do some work for an agreed upon price.
On the contrary: If you're just selling copies, and now you want to give them away for free and you're not improving anything, then I'm sorry, screw you, you don't get paid for not doing any damn work. Protip: That's why bands make most of their money via performing.
Has anybody come up with a formalized strategy of "partial" open sourcing? For example, a core engine is released under a BSD model, convenience library APIs provided under a LGPL model (dual licensed to a closed license), core standalone utility applications released under GPL (dual licensed), and all other parts of the "solution" (such as the main user interface parts) released under a closed license.
The idea is to get the "ideas" of your application out for general contribution and access but still make a living off your particular implementation.
When will people learn? Information has worth only to those who doesn't have it.
You have the leverage and money-making potential as long as you are in sole possession of information (e.g. a computer program, a literary work, a work of art, movie, news, etc.). Make your bargain for your whole profit while it is still the case, sell copies of your work exclusively to the highest bidder or deliver them only to your subscribers/kickstarter supporters, and then stay away from the market! You got your planned share of profit, then let your customers get their return on investment through reselling copies further on. ...
Make another work, rinse, repeat
Trying to corner someone into paying you for your past services and merits is pointless. You strike iron while it's hot.
I have seen it go the other way, and it's a much easier transition. Examples include Android and OS X, where the code is only Open Sourced after release, since the license does not require development to occur in the open, it only requires the code be handed over on release, and then only if it's requested, in most cases. Other examples include WINE, which begat Crossover Office, which has proprietary chunks, and MySQL, which has proprietary back ends available, if you want actual transactions instead of pretend ones.
If you GPL the entire product, someone will start nightly builds outside your organization; this happens today with both Android and ChromeOS, and there's no way you can control this to the point of preventing it, at least without going to a secureboot option, and keeping the binary signing keeys internal to your organization.
Given the above, there is almost not a chance in hell of you getting as much income from an Open Source model as you will get from a closed source model, unless your closed source version isn't really in demand anyway, or unless you intentionally leave features out of the Open Source version, as has happened with both WINE and MySQL.
The best you can hope for is to Open Source the tactical portions of your product in a way that's (A) useful enough to third parties that they are willing to commit some development resources to maintaining the code, and (B) that it's still useless enough that you don't end up with some zealot coming up with a fully Open Source version of the product you are attempting to sell based on its strategic values (something BitKeeper failed to do successfully).
There have been several posts over the past couple of days complaining about not being able to use derivative works of proprietary (copyrighted) data files for things like Windows registry/crapware cleaners, etc., all of which are complaining about the inability to lock down the strategic value (or, contrarily, complaining about companies attempting to lock down their strategic value).
In general, the Open Source model is not a good match for vertical markets. E.g. if I owned a moving company, there'd be no way I'd want a competing moving company getting out from under their moving software license fees (which are onerous) because of software that I funded development on in order to get myself out from under those same fees -- the entire application has strategic competitive value for my company.
The Open Source model is also not a good model for projects where the strategic value is in the glue code between Open Source modules -- as stated previously, this allows someone to compete by stringing the parts together using their own business logic, at a very low cost, and my margins are completely dependent on barriers to entry for third parties. To go back to the moving company example, with heavy fluctuations in consumables, like truck fuel, my company is already at a heavy disadvantage compared to large companies, since it's a cash flow business for smaller companies, and the larger companies can make capitol investments in long term fuel pricing contracts, which can get them steep discounts.
I have also seen the "Give away the software, well service/support" model blow up on people; perhaps the most spectacular example of that would be Cygnus Software, which has become a shell housing something totally different than compiler development.
My general sense of things is that if you are a programmer, there are companies who will pay you to work on Open Source; Google is a good example, since they have more money than God from advertising revenue, and are willing to spend it on buying street cred/prestiege by hiring prominent Open Source people. If you want to found a company on it, you are going to be hard put to make it pay off.
*drops mic*
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
I get the feeling that people open source closed projects to get the community to do free work while they continue to receive revenue through donations. If that is the case then your doing it wrong. Also, in the article linked in the summary, the author does not say if he also GPL'd the content along with his game code. The content is where the money is.
If I had a closed project that was making me money I would not open it until it was no longer a profitable project. At that point I should a) have a new closed project available that is a new source of income or b) finding another source of profit altogether. If the stagnant project is no longer making me a significant amount of money then why keep it closed and let it die? If there was still a use for it then I would open it up and let the OS community have it for free. If they make it better and it once again becomes useful then that is awesome, they did something that I couldn't or didn't have the time to.
Another example is if I made a game and the game engine or framework was decent enough to give to the community then by all means, I would open source the game code. BUT I would keep the copyright on the content and continue to sell the game. Its like what id does for their previous generation tech. Everything from Wolfenstein to Doom 3 is open source. Why? Because the game engine is no longer profitable to license and the game itself is old and no longer selling. So their technology does not die and gets to live on. But of course the game content itself is not free. The levels, textures, sound, music and models are all under copyright and are not free. You don't get the content when you download the game engine. You also might not get event scripts, AI scripts or other bits that give them a technical edge. In gaming, the content is what makes your game an actual game. Content probably costs more time and money to develop than the actual game code. You don't give that away unless you really want to.
If your software is a tool then you either keep it closed and continue to profit from it or you face the fact that once you open it, it may no longer be a source of profit. Single use tools cant be modified into something else unless there is an API or framework beneath it that could be used for other tools. That can be opened up without impacting your existing tools profitability.
There are plenty of dual-licensed open source projects where the community gets a version that is only community supported and may lack certain features or content. Then if someone wants the full features or build a commercial product using the software, it must be commercially licensed.
That article lacks a lot of important information and also the very first sentence don't make any sense at all.
Commercial software going Open Source doesn't happen very often.
Commercial Software and Open Source Software are not orthogonal concepts. There are many Open Source Software that are commercial. For example RedHat Linux, MySQL.
The first question is what is "success"?
You can take any software and re-license it under the GPL or BSD (if you have the copyrights). But what is your goal? What are you defining as "success"?
Do you want more users, more money, more developers?
I guess the author wants more money. So if you are taking your product and offer it now for free, how are you suppose to make more money? The GPL do not forbid you from taking money for your product!
Going open source will bring you more developers, but only for some kind of projects. For example, a game engine will not bring you many new developers, just because game engines are normally very complex. A finished game is the same, games are complex and not many want to develop your game.
You can have more users with an Open Source license just by offering it as package for the Linux distributions. Maybe your software will get into the main repository and will be shipped with every copy of Ubuntu, Debian or some else.
You see, it's a very complex. You can't just go Open Source and except to get a shitload of money. Open Source is in the first to share information, not making money. Of course by sharing information you can get money.
The results were...disastrous. Within a very short period of time of going Open Source, the total funding for the projects fell to less than 20% of what was being brought in via sales when the software was Closed Source, which almost completely impeded the ability to fund continued development.
What a surprise. He offered his product for free and wondered why nobody is paying for it. If my baker tomorrow will offer their bread for free, why should I pay for it? Why didn't he made his stuff Open Source and sold it? Or sold a premium version that is Open Source for a higher price?
The Humble Indie Game Package was a success because there is a big market for DRM free and portable games. All gamers are just took in the ass from big publishers with rootkits, always-on, Windows-only, DRM-crap games. And then came Humble Indie Game Package. My only source of games is right now the Humbe Indie Packages and http://www.gog.com/
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
And besides the point: let's say you specify in your will that you want daisies on your grave and you leave a sum of money in order to do that, then afterwards your relatives get the money and use part of it to buy a marker to draw a daisy on your gravestone. Breaking a agreement, a license or a contract like that doesn't translate to revenue loss in most cases ("he doesn't mind, he's dead and the goose is in the bag now"), but it still feels like a d**k move.
uhm...
Blender3D may have done this more successfully than others. It started as closed source, shareware app, but was opensourced in 2002 after the company went bankrupt and raised 100000 euros worth of donation. They continue to be successful, making much of their revenue from training and projects using their materials.
If Microsoft made their Windows Phone 8 GPL then Nokia and other phones on this platform would flourish overnight rather than struggle to find developers who don't want to touch a both unpopular market trailing and closed platform.
When I write software for other people, I explicitly retain the rights to anything I write, unless the client pays extra.
As a contractor there's no reason to do work-for-hire. Legally it will not be considered such unless it [a] falls into a protected category, and [b] an agreement is signed saying that the work is "for hire".
And yes, the reason that I retain rights is so that I can open-source anything I please. We can have a separate discussion about the copyrights, but your words had better be writ large on a stack of banknotes.
Between open source products, SaaS, and the Internet in general, the idea of selling copies of software seems to be dying an unlamented death.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Here are a couple of posts I've made in the past about OpenSTA, an open source "Web load and stress testing tool", which
was released under the GPL
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=116421&cid=9853594
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=155207&cid=13011524
The web site is still there, but nothing seems to have happened since 2007.
I have a goal of owning my own house, since my mom doesn't own hers, and doesn't have a basement. Open source, open toed sandals, and a long beard seem unlikely to move me meaningfully toward this goal.
Additionally, I have 2 sick brothers - my mom will eventually wind up relying on me. So I pay my own bills or they don't get paid. Dad and 4 grandparents are dead already, leaving nothing. Mom is essentially broke, 2 brothers are both broke and on disability. Some of us have responsibilities and f*ing around with giving away our time for free will not meet those responsibilities. Unless you can get everyone else to work for free too, in which case i'm becoming a full-time gamer.
The business model of selling copies of software is becoming scarce. You're essentially arguing that this is solely due to licensing. I see it more as a market adjustment where we're collectively deciding to treat non-scarce commodities realistically.
SaaS is the same pig (selling copies) in a different blanket, so you should adjust your rant accordingly. The three pillars of the open source model are selling services, donations, and advertising. You might add a fourth in monetizing big data, but that pretty much tends to go hand in hand with advertising anyway.
The idea that people will stop writing software if they can't sell it is ludicrous. Taken to a logical extreme, you're implying that if you could not sell MS Office, people would not need word processors. If there is one concept that needs to be forever laid to rest as an argument, it is that people will stop doing something intrinsic to human nature because of some external phenomenon. People will stop writing code, and needing to have code written, just after we create the last piece of art, and sell it as the last business transaction. Approximately never, in other words.
Now, as far as your proposed licensing goes, since you haven't stipulated terms under which the binaries can change hands, they can't. Simply providing software to someone does not grant them the right to redistribute it. You must explicitly grant someone the right to modify and redistribute copyrighted works, or abrogate these rights by making the work public domain. Whether or not they have source code is pointless if they have no legal right to do anything but read it. So, as stated, your scheme is not compatible with the GPL and doesn't fall into any meaningful category of "free software".
Further, unless you've made something public domain, there's no way for downstream vendors to change the terms under which the code is distributed. If you have made it public domain, your ability to enforce control is null and void.
In summary, your licensing as written is a great way for customers to get sued for copyright infringement. Fixing that flaw either makes it public domain or mostly identical to some sort of copyleft license. To summarize the summary, you may want to read more about copyrights and basic economics. To summarize the summary of the summary, people are a problem.*
*with apologies to D.A.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.