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What Goes Into a Decision To Take Software From Proprietary To Open Source
Lemeowski writes: It's not often that you get to glimpse behind the curtain and see what led a proprietary software company to open source its software. Last year, the networking software company Midokura made a strategic decision to open source its network virtualization platform MidoNet, to address fragmentation in the networking industry. In this interview, Midokura CEO and CTO Dan Mihai Dumitriu explains the company's decision to give away fours years of engineering to the open source community, how it changed the way its engineers worked, and the lessons learned along the way. Among the challenges was helping engineers overcome the culture change of broadcasting their work to a broader community.
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Once it has no value, it can either be discarded or open sourced.
EOM
No, that's not the reason. Nobody in the corporate world really gives a fuck about "scoring points with the OSS community". Like it or not, this community is absolutely tiny. Furthermore, the people involved with it typically have no real say in any business matters of any importance. Just look at GitHub. A huge majority of the projects on there are from teenagers, hobbyists, and chronically unemployed high school or college dropouts. These people aren't signing multi-million dollar software or hardware purchase contracts! No pun intended, but it's totally pointless to try to score "points" with these people! These "points" are totally worthless! No corporation will waste its resources on something so petty and useless.
They're the authority on what proprietary software becomes "open source".
...don't talk about why you went open source.
Open source means garbage software. The features and quality assurance are usually terrible.
Right on dude! That's why IBM is a flash in the pan money losing company. Google is just a bubble waiting to burst.
I could go on - but you beat me to it. How's the football coaching applications going? Any decent offers from the big league yet?
Actually, I think both your examples prove his point.
IBM makes about 57% of its revenue from services, not software. About 25% is from software, and as far as I know, the software that they are making money from is *not* open source.
Google doesn't even have a product that it sells. It makes more than 90% of its revenue by giving away mediocre content for free and then attaching advertising to it. They were able to implement the holy grail of the Internet Biz Model - the Internet as TV (free content with paid advertising - the content doesn't have to be good because no one is actually paying for it). Google does not make money from the software itself.
So I guess we should say "thank you" for providing two excellent examples of how companies only give away software when it is not a source of revenue for them.
OSS thread, twenty comments, four of them from non-AC. Choo choo, here come the shill train.
systemd wastes resources and creates a system that is too big (ala Windoze). Linux pre-systemd was a lean efficient programming system. After systemd it has teh same bloat and waste as Windoze.
OSS thread, twenty comments, four of them from non-AC. Choo choo, here come the shill train.
systemd wastes resources and creates a system that is too big (ala Windoze). Linux pre-systemd was a lean efficient programming system. After systemd it has the same bloat and waste as Windoze.
systemd can be configured just as well as sysvinit.
OSS thread, twenty comments, four of them from non-AC. Choo choo, here come the shill train.
systemd wastes resources and creates a system that is too big (ala Windoze). Linux pre-systemd was a lean efficient programming system. After systemd it has the same bloat and waste as Windoze.
systemd can be configured just as well as sysvinit.
Stuff from http://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-and-others-on-linuxs-systemd/:
"Systemd flies in the face of the Unix philosophy: 'do one thing and do it well,' representing a complex collection of dozens of tightly coupled binaries1. Its responsibilities grossly exceed that of an init system, as it goes on to handle power management, device management, mount points, cron, disk encryption, socket API/inetd, syslog, network configuration, login/session management, readahead, GPT partition discovery, container registration, hostname/locale/time management, and other things. Keep it simple, stupid.”
Because systemd puts so many of a program's eggs in one system basket, systemd's critics argue that "there are tons of scenarios in which it can crash and bring down the whole system. But in addition, this means that plenty of non-kernel system upgrades will now require a reboot. Enjoy your new Windows 9 Linux system!”
How the h**l do shoes have anything to do with the failings of systemd?
But we need to give credit for companies that open source their products, even if those products are no longer bringing in $$$ for them
There have been times I wrote to software companies asking them to open source their truly obsolete products, such as compilers that run on OS/2, just so that younger generations, at least those who are curious enough to look at the source, could learn a thing or two how a compiler works
They refused
Of course they have all their rights to refuse to open up the source codes of their long obsolete software - and what I am saying is that no matter what, we still need to give due credit to the companies which open sourced their products, no matter for what reason they do so
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Um, Google's search engine and the infrastructure around it (above the OS level) is all closed source. You bet they'd send serious lawyers after anyone who tried to leak it, Aaron Swartz style.
But they did release google test (unit test framework) as open source! Yippeeeee!!!!!
Um, Google's search engine and the infrastructure around it (above the OS level) is all closed source. You bet they'd send serious lawyers after anyone who tried to leak it, Aaron Swartz style.
But they did release google test (unit test framework) as open source! Yippeeeee!!!!!
Super Duper! Yippppeeee!! has become part of the language of Slashdot!
Whose point? GGP was a troll saying FOSS sucks. Isn't it kind of obvious that you can't both sell a digital good and give people permission to give away unlimited copies?
I am working on a project that has recently been released as open source. The reason for it I believe is that the company felt it needed to change their sales model in order to reach more users. The aim here is the get the return off licensing fees.
Dear coward
Actually, I think both your examples prove his point.
Which prove only that you don't get the point. IBM wasn't making money from software - but they relied on software to make money on hardware. By using Open Source they greatly reduced costs. Don't let that stop you from building strawmen from the straws you're grasping at - 'cause you know so much more that one of less than half a dozen companies on the planet that has been in continuous profit for over a century.
Google doesn't even have a product that it sells. It makes more than 90% of its revenue by giving away mediocre content for free and then attaching advertising to it.
Bullshit - where do you think they get their income from - the fucking internet fairies? Their product is targeted advertising. They use Open Source to build their systems - and Open Source to create the mediums that allow them to target their ads.
Again, you either fail to grasp the point, or are being wilfully obtuse and deceitful. Given the way you are so quick to deploy straw man and (brain-damaged) ad crumenam arguments the latter is most likely.
The desperate attempt to rescue an unsupportable position by deploying argumentum ad crumenam is particularly telling. Those that actually know business will be quick to tell you that profit is result of margins and reducing cost is a key element.
Your use of mediocre is also telling. In that you need to resort to sophistic argument in the hope of enlisting the unwary. (your logic is false, but the unwary may take mediocre as proven and fail to recognise what follows is dependant upon it being true).
If the "product" (you paint with such a broad brush) is so mediocre why all the whining from those that complain they depended on it - when it's withdrawn? Is Android another failure? Would Google hold their current market position if they based their company on proprietary products?
So I guess we should say "thank you" for providing two excellent examples of how companies only give away software when it is not a source of revenue for them.
Reality check. Your delusion is not shared. It's the bottom-line that counts when calculating whether the use of and/or support of Open Source is a business failure - and by all counts you are patently and demonstrably wrong.
tl;dr? If you do this for free - get a life. If you're a paid shill - you work for idiots that make bad investments.
Dear coward
Um, Google's search engine and the infrastructure around it (above the OS level) is all closed source.
Is their no limit to your bullshit? Go back to writing 9/11 and Illuminati conspiracies - there is little secret about what Google uses for their search engine and infrastructure ('cause they Open Source it and publicise it regularly), only the implementation is considered company property. You rely on the lazy who won't check your claims - and the stupid who'll believe that because you offer no proof it must be a conspiracy is a sure sign of bullshit. /. readers won't fall for that tired cireulus in probando. "Google relies on proprietary software - but they'll sic their lawyers on anyone who reviews it" - as there's no proof that your bullshit is true - the gullible might believe you. Telling that your desired audience needs to be gullible.
Most
It's a tiny audience that'll believe that warm feeling is not you pissing in their pocket - the rest either work for Google, have worked for Google, use Google source code for themselves - or know someone who does. Presuming that everyone who reads /. is as ignorant as you ain't a good start to your career as a shill/troll.