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20 Years Later, Has Open Source Changed the World? (infoworld.com)
"Most code remains closed and proprietary, even though open source now dominates enterprise platforms," notes Matt Asay, former COO at Canonical (and an emeritus board member of the Open Source Initiative). "How can that be?" he asks, in an essay noting it's been almost 20 years since the launch of the Open Source Initiative, arguing that so far open source "hasn't changed the world as promised."
[T]he reason most software remains locked up within the four walls of enterprise firewalls is that it's too costly with too small of an ROI to justify open-sourcing it. At least, that's the perception. Such a perception is impossible to break without walking the open source path, which companies are unwilling to walk without upfront proof. See the problem? This chicken-and-egg conundrum is starting to resolve itself, thanks to the forward-looking efforts of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other web giants that are demonstrating the value of open-sourcing code.
Although it's unlikely that a State Farm or Chevron will ever participate in the same way as a Microsoft, we are starting to see companies like Bloomberg and Capital One get involved in open source in ways they never would have considered back when the term "open source" was coined in 1997, much less in 2007. It's a start. Let's also not forget that although we have seen companies use more open source code over the past 20 years, the biggest win for open source since its inception is how it has changed the narrative of how innovation happens in software. We're starting to believe, and for good reason, that the best, most innovative software is open source.
The article strikes a hopeful note. "We're now comfortable with the idea that software can, and maybe should, be open source without the world ending. The actual opening of that source, however, is something to tackle in the next 20 years.
Although it's unlikely that a State Farm or Chevron will ever participate in the same way as a Microsoft, we are starting to see companies like Bloomberg and Capital One get involved in open source in ways they never would have considered back when the term "open source" was coined in 1997, much less in 2007. It's a start. Let's also not forget that although we have seen companies use more open source code over the past 20 years, the biggest win for open source since its inception is how it has changed the narrative of how innovation happens in software. We're starting to believe, and for good reason, that the best, most innovative software is open source.
The article strikes a hopeful note. "We're now comfortable with the idea that software can, and maybe should, be open source without the world ending. The actual opening of that source, however, is something to tackle in the next 20 years.
public domain.
I'm pretty sure I was hearing the term in the late 1980's, especially in regards to unix software, and almost certainly by the time I first heard of Linux in '92.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The internet was built on open source. In 1997 it was more curiosity or nerdy thing. By 2017 the internet is generating untold sums of money and is utterly essential to the economy. I wish I felt the same excitement for this technology as I did back in 1997.
Look at several domains of computers: free software makes up the vast majority of operating systems for servers, mainframes, and smartphones. Users are interacting with these constantly without even knowing if they are using free software and in that sense, it is so meaningful due to how ubiquitous it is. I think the primary *failure* here is in the moral and legal dimension where users don't necessarily prioritize their rights. I would sincerely hope that users will prioritize free software because it is the right thing to do, in addition to being more secure or cheaper.
free software makes up the vast majority of operating systems for servers, mainframes, and smartphones
Correct me if I'm wrong, but by "the vast majority of operating systems for [...] smartphones" I assume you're referring to devices that run Android. In that case, what's larger on an Android system image: AOSP (Linux and free components of Android userland) or GMS (Google Play Store/Services and other bundled Gapps)?
I think the primary *failure* here is in the moral and legal dimension where users don't necessarily prioritize their rights.
And the unfortunate result of this is that economies of scale associated with support make laptops made for Windows* cheaper than laptops made for GNU/Linux.
* A device is "made for" an operating system if its manufacturer claims that reasonably complete drivers exist to make the device work with that OS.
Seeing as how the most widely used mobile platform is built on Open Source and has had a major affect on the way the world communicates, I'd have to say yes, Open Source has dramatically changed the world even though it's an underlying aspect and most people don't even realise it.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
As a certifiable Old Fart(TM), I remember all too well the bizarre days of the UNIX wars. AIX had a great admin tool called SMIT; SCO had a great channel for feeding the SMBs that developed the cool applications to other SMBs; Solaris ruled telecom and other HA realms; etc. There was NO "UNIX API" as MS had, hence their subsequent success. And no one shared a god-damned thing. Device drivers, admin tools - you name it. Each KNEW that their way would bring consolidation, failing to recognize the fundamental flaw built-in to that thought. Enter GNU/Linux. Yes, I put them together for a reason - neither could exist without the other. I made this point to the first Intel Linux Conference at the mothership and glad to see the prophecy fulfilled. The world is a much, much better place because of GNU/Linux!
Redhat makes 2.9 billion in revenue with a market cap of 22.3 billion
I've been programming professionally now for over three decades...
A while ago, if you were working on projects, and you wanted to do something complex - you were buying an external library to make that happen. UI forms, even data storage collections!
Nowadays even if you are working on a closed system, you are using a LOT of open parts and libraries to help make things happen. Most people are using Apache instead of proprietary web servers. Most people are using a multitude of open source libraries that means when you switch jobs your expertise is no longer fully invalidated, because you can use some of the same libraries as you move around. Many people are browsing using WebKit, way more than IE...
Sure there are a lot of closed systems around still but they operate in a world that is dominated now by more open protocols, open source tools, and libraries and so on. No longer is it considered risky to go with open source when LAMP now is considered the conservative choice.
Even though software development is still a pain for all sorts of reasons, it's still never been better and easier than it is now and you can build things today that just were not possible to pull off 20 years ago. Open source will continue to advance as the idea has proven to be gene4rally solid and reliable, and will only continue to spread further... eventually we may reach a plateau beyond which the remaining software will generally be closed for a variety of reasons, but I don't think we are there yet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's never been anything about open source that suggests that developers should listen to the end users. Closed source is better at listening, because proprietary software developers are paid to listen to what you want. Open source developers, on the other hand, are there to do what they want and you can take it or leave it.
Respecting the end user is a different matter, though -- it's a bare minimum of not violating rights. You don't have a right to be heard, but you have a right not be given adware/malware/backdoors. Just because the software respects the users doesn't mean the users have to respect it back.
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Before quick, always-on Internet connections were available most software had to live locally, so even though it was closed source you had the entire blob. Today, more and more of the client functionality is going open source - but the essential bits have all gone online as web applications, SaaS, multiplayer/matchmaking services and so on. Google is giving away Android and Chromium (with proprietary codecs = Chrome) so you'll use Google's services. Microsoft is open sourcing things so you'll use Azure. Amazon is open sourcing things so you'll use AWS and so on. Companies that were just giving it away without some sort of plan to monetize it like Sun went under.
And in this competition with "free" services, open source is struggling in many areas. Like for example LibreOffice vs Google Docs, Google got like 3 million paying G Suite businesses, 70 million educational users and lord knows how many others, I couldn't find a statistic. They're taking on the battle of Office/Exchange open source has worked on for decades and not really gotten anywhere. Services like Alexa and Siri you couldn't really do as a local application anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if the Microsoft market falls and the desktop goes "open source" like Android. But it's not really like how RMS envisioned it...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Public domain was better because you didn't need to be an armchair lawyer to understand the license you were using.
I have published software under the GPL in the past, but these days, I don't even bother with licenses anymore. I just give away the source code and anyone can do whatever they want with it.
There are too many open source licenses to choose from, and it causes license fatigue. I lost the ability to care about open source long ago.
The ubiquity of the Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Linux on PCs (modern or ancient), IOT devices, the top 500 supercomputers, routers, etc.: All made possible by open source software.
Schools in nations with emerging economies, research labs, DIY home makers all over the world build little (or big) process control and measurement boxes: These decisions are simplified by the presence of the invaluable library of open source software.
The company I work for has 8 Odroids, 6 Raspberry Pis, about a dozen workstations, and our main product line runs on embedded boards running Linux. All of these resources are critical to our success, and the availability of system that run those machines without struggling with license-counting has left an indelible mark on our organization. Even the industrial CNC milling machines are controlled by Linux systems.
I am a certified grey-beard who has developed in and watched this industry since graduating in 1977 who is simply amazed by the easy availability of today's tools. Moore's law has helped on the hardware side (no more 500 grand for a 1 Mbyte core-memory mainframe with 90 Mbytes disk...), but in my opinion the real enabler for much of this industry has been the software toolkit. I have seen a transition from Fortran-II on OS-8 (low end) or Fortran-IV and COBOL on System/370 (high end) to systems running SciPy, Postgres, Apache, Octave, R, openssl, etc. etc., all available for download.
Open source systems have delivered power in excess of anything I ever imagined.
Of what functional relevance is a 20 year anniversary celebration of a piece of marketing nomenclature? If you want an excuse to have a cocktail party to celebrate a two-word branding phrase that is lamented as failing to meet someone's ambition, go ahead.
My realm is embedded systems: high reliability systems with 10-20 year designed service life, using a variety of CPU architectures, and evolving into very high complexity System On Chip designs. These systems would not be feasible across this timescale without a stabilized and evolving GPL'd tools base: gcc, binutils, and glibc, and Linux as a long-lived build platform.
20 years might be accurate for "open source" as nomenclature. It is not accurate for the underlying phenomena. My choice of monument is a GNU Emacs 16.56 source tape dated 1985, at the point where RMS had replaced the disputed display code from Gosling Emacs.
By around 1992, gcc had evolved to be usable (with a lot of configuration work for gcc and the runtime library) as a cross compiler. At the time I was working on a 68000 based embedded system, using a commercial cross compiler. The commercial product was expensive, slow, had some arcane proprietary extensions, and was abandoned by its supplier (their principal business was defense contracting) from further development, and even if I recall correctly, re-hosting beyond Sun 3.
Gcc became the clear choice to carry the project forward. I put it into place, and it supported the product for the remaining 12 years or so of active development (some new capabilities, mostly keeping up with replacements for obsolete components).
For the past 9 years much of my work has been centered around a body of proprietary software that supports certain high function System On Chip products from a vendor. This software has a history of at least 10 years, three major chip family architectures, and several steps of evolution within each architecture. It has grown to around 30M lines of C code. This is not bloatware with elaborate frameworks and libraries: these devices are sufficiently complex to require that much software to even construct a usable API (around 2800 pages for a sketchy API document, 5800 pages for a very incomplete chip hardware reference).
None of this would be feasible without a long term stable cross-compiler (gcc) and a place to run it (Linux) on large bodies of code.
Meanwhile in the un-free software world, a defense contractor friend pointed me to a recent U.S. Navy RFP for translation or other porting technology, seeking to make 1970s software written in a proprietary 1969 language (CMS-2), runnable on ordinary modern commercial machines. Today it runs on fossilized power-hungry refrigerator-sized Univac AN/UYK-somethings, built from components that went out of production years ago. Yes, our national defense depends upon stuff like this that has outlived essentially all of the original authors. The situation is similar for other long life cycle embedded products, in realms apart from weaponry.
Note that IBM mainframe OS and compiler software were freely available until the early 1970s, when compilers and some other larger products went from a $25 tape copy charge for source, to expensive licenses and restricted source code access. Some of us learned quite a lot by reading e.g. the $25 Fortran H compiler source code.
The history from my perspective, looks more like open (1970), closed (1972), opening back up (1985), usably open (1992), then "open source" as nomenclature (1997), then whatever you want to call today's maelstrom of bloated frameworks. GPL's origin in MIT / Symbolics / LMI controversies is a crucial component of the 1972-1985 evolution; that story must be mentioned, and is told elsewhere from disparate perspectives.
The decision is dictated by economics. Depends entirely on the software's purpose. Is it infrastructure or is it a source of competitive advantage?
Common infrastructure code begs to be open source. Having 20 subtly incompatible flavors of Unix does the world no good - hence linux and bsd's success. Likewise Android gives all mobile phones a common base, taking away the burden of 20 vendors each creating a mobile OS poorly. Same thing with web browsers, few benefit anymore from making a closed proprietary platform. Better to share the burden.
Software that gives companies a competitive advantage is completely different. Open sourcing that would be killing the golden goose. Yes companies can build their business model around services and support instead of proprietary code - but that decision is made very early on and hard to reverse later.
You don't see Microsoft open sourcing the windows kernel and API, or Apple open sourcing their GUI libraries, or Google releasing their web search or data center code, or Amazon open sourcing their cloud server platform (it's built on open source but the custom parts stay proprietary). These things will stay closed because that's how these companies make money. Putting this code in competitor's hands makes no sense.
As long as these companies derive competitive advantage from a piece of software, they'd be foolish to open source it. In other areas where the software is just a cost to the company, it makes sense to open source and share the burden.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
Yes, Open Source has changed the world. And I'm going to argue that the most important thing that ever came out of the Open Source community was not Linux, nor GNU (the whole of it), but specifically GCC.
GCC is what enables you to sit down and write software without having to pay a massive sum to a compiler vendor. GCC is what lets young people interested in programming experiment, learn, and ultimately become professionals. GCC is why we have the rest of GNU and the Linux kernel. GCC is the reason we have free versions of Visual Studio. And GCC is the reason C++ is the most important programming language today. In many ways, GCC changed the direction the software world has taken, allowing software to be written that would otherwise never have existed, and planting the seeds of the value of Open Source software in people's minds.