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'Open Source Creators: Red Hat Got $34 Billion and You Got $0. Here's Why.' (tidelift.com)
Donald Fischer, who served as a product manager for Red Hat Enterprise Linux during its creation and early years of growth, writes: Red Hat saw, earlier than most, that the ascendance of open source made the need to pay for code go away, but the need for support and maintenance grew larger than ever. Thus Red Hat was never in the business of selling software, rather it was in the business of addressing the practical challenges that have always come along for the ride with software. [...] As an open source developer, you created that software. You can keep your package secure, legally documented, and maintained; who could possibly do it better? So why does Red Hat make the fat profits, and not you? Unfortunately, doing business with large companies requires a lot of bureaucratic toil. That's doubly true for organizations that require security, legal, and operational standards for every product they bring in the door. Working with these organizations requires a sales and marketing team, a customer support organization, a finance back-office, and lots of other "business stuff" in addition to technology. Red Hat has had that stuff, but you haven't.
And just like you don't have time to sell to large companies, they don't have time to buy from you alongside a thousand other open source creators, one at a time. Sure, big companies know how to install and use your software. (And good news! They already do.) But they can't afford to put each of 1100 npm packages through a procurement process that costs $20k per iteration. Red Hat solved this problem for one corner of open source by collecting 2,000+ open source projects together, adding assurances on top, and selling it as one subscription product. That worked for them, to the tune of billions. But did you get paid for your contributions?
And just like you don't have time to sell to large companies, they don't have time to buy from you alongside a thousand other open source creators, one at a time. Sure, big companies know how to install and use your software. (And good news! They already do.) But they can't afford to put each of 1100 npm packages through a procurement process that costs $20k per iteration. Red Hat solved this problem for one corner of open source by collecting 2,000+ open source projects together, adding assurances on top, and selling it as one subscription product. That worked for them, to the tune of billions. But did you get paid for your contributions?
I have been using their software since the mid-90s with version 3. I have never paid them anything. I bought a third party book on it once, they may have gotten some revenue from that.
Red hat has hired and payed a huge number of people to develop and contribute to open source code. They've made massive contributions to Linux and are a key part of why it has become what it is today. Fedora/RHEL/CentOS may not be your favorite flavor but the simple fact is that in order to compete against them your favorite flavor adopted things made by them and had to compete with their usability. There are dozens of things in your home right now which are better because of Red Hat's contribution, not to mention all the things you use online.
I'm not rich because of Red Hat but I have gotten paid. Sadly I was a broke teenager when their IPO happened and the people I strongly advised to get in on it didn't listen.
Yeah. Turns out that when you make your software freely available, you do not get paid for it. If you're not OK with that, don't put it under an open source license. This is a feature of open source, not a bug.
That's not "shady". That's explicitly allowed by the GPL, and noted fairly often in discussions about the GPL's use. If you don't like it, pick a different license for your stuff.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
If you look at the top most contributing devs, you'll notice that they are actually on the pay roll of companies who rely on linux. If they weren't already employed by Red Hat, they would probably be at Intel, Google, even IBM themselves...
Not all programmers are poor. If they are anywhere near competent (and open-source software makes a great portfolio that is easy to show around), they'll certainly get hired, perhaps even get paid for their open-source hobby.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The freedom of other people to make money with software you write -- provided they figure out how -- has always been part of the deal.
Thee free software economy is still capitalism, it's just capitalism where you're paid for what you do for a specific customer. The proprietary software market is one where investors in effect attempt to collect fees for a naturally unlimited resource created, almost always, by other people.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Founders of the Atlanta Linux Showcase, which was the main Linux convention in the late 90's, worked their asses off, for free, to make the event happen every year. After a few years Red Hat gave the major contributors some stock, for free, as a thank you. I'm sure they did the same to others, this is just the case I know of.
In addition, Red Hat hired many contributors to open source, and gave them a good job so that they could continue to develop software, not just for Red Hat but for all of us. Remember Alan Cox? Me too, but there's many more. I'm sure all of those great technical hires got stock and each is getting a bit of the $34 billion.
Red Hat has always been less selfish and more fair than most software companies. They've always reflected open-source values, IMHO.
I got and get paid by using their contributions to the kernel, among other things. Open Source is a barter economy.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Seems a bit shady though that you put your stuff out for free that someone else can pick it up, package it and sell it on.
Open source is like science (it was more or less modelled after it). We publish scientific discoveries openly because that's the best way to advance common knowledge. But then we let engineers and salespeople make and sell products out of them. I'm OK with that, because it's a lot of work to develop/sell/maintain/support a product even if you get the science for free.
If scientific discoveries were copyrightable in the way of music and movies, we'd probably be paying the Faraday family estate for each gadget that uses electricity. You can imagine it's not a great way to advance either the science or the engineering.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
That's not "shady". That's explicitly allowed by the GPL, and noted fairly often in discussions about the GPL's use. If you don't like it, pick a different license for your stuff.
Agreed. And I just don't get this hostility.
You see it a lot in, say, Joomla and WordPress add ons. Those projects want to promote GPL use, so you have to use GPL to get in their add on directories. Many add on makers therefore whine all the time about their software being reproduced and distributed without their approval. Um, guys, you released it under a license that specifically allows users to copy it. That's a big part of the whole point of the GPL.
A lot more companies, organizations, and individuals have made money selling services, support, and consulting from their F/OSS codebase.
What RedHat put to the table were a number of things that take time, money, and trust:
1: Hardware HSM devices to ensure package security and that the signing key never winds up as a pastebin or torrent. RedHat also took active steps to mitigate when someone compromised a HSM to sign bogus SSH packages.
2: FIPS and Common Criteria compliance. This may not mean much to most people, but in some environments, it is make or break.
3: Keeping versions steady and backporting fixes. This ensures that an application that is certified to run on RHEL 7.0 will run on RHEL 7.x, similar to how AIX has binary compatibility guarantees.
4: STIGs for compliance assurance at install-time. May not be important for people, but critical to businesses.
5: Erroring on the conservative side. Not many companies do this, especially in DevOps where everyone is locked getting features out there, and not caring about anything else. This by itself warrants the price premium.
6: Open source with everything.
All the above not just take time; they take money, especially the auditing and certification process.
$34 billion just got handed to investors
Seems a bit shady though that you put your stuff out for free that someone else can pick it up, package it and sell it on.
I am not a huge GPL supporter, but there are a couple things I'd like to point out.
- The stuff that's been packaged and sold by "someone else" can also, in turn, be repackaged and sold... or given away. The free CentOS distribution exists entirely because Red Hat Exists.
- Red Hat isn't just a middleman selling other people's work. Red Hat's employees work on - and contribute to - hundreds of different software packages. Red Hat is consistently one of the largest (and often THE largest) contributors of code to the Linux kernel, year after year.
#DeleteChrome
There is another aspect people are ignoring. Linux has been corporate controlled and developed for years. A lot of work has been subsidized, and therefore directed, by various corporations. Linux is long past the point where it is primarily a "hobbyist" and "volunteer" effort.
The Linux foundation reports that 75% of kernel development is done by corporate sponsored developers. Who tops the list of these corporate sponsors? Red Hat.
https://www.computerweekly.com...
Remember: not only RH pay salary for FLOSS engineers and supporters...
No, but Red Hat tops the list and IBM is #4:
..."
"The top 10 organizations sponsoring Linux kernel development since the last report (or Linux kernel 2.6.36) are:
1. Red Hat,
2. Intel,
3. Novell,
4. IBM,
5. Texas Instruments,
6. Broadcom,
7. Nokia,
8. Samsung,
9. Oracle
10. and Google."
"... more than 7,800 developers from almost 800 different companies have contributed to the Linux kernel since tracking began in 2005. Of particular interest perhaps is the finding that — seventy-five percent of all kernel development is done by developers who are being paid for their work
https://www.computerweekly.com...
And there's another obvious point. If Linux were not free, it would not exist - let alone have any value. IBM has its own, perfectly good, proprietary unix platform. But they want to sell Linux - because people want to use Linux. And people want to use Linux because its free, which made other people want to use it. If the open source contributors to Linux had intended to eventually be compensated for their code, Linux would not exist. So you can't come along once Red Hat has become a viable business and say "I wrote some of the software - where's my payout?".
Red Hat's payout is for having become one of the main go-to companies for Linux support - and consistency as a platform over time. And now that many Linux users are migrating to Amazon's cloud, Red Hat's business is likely to shrink. But IBM's cloud business has nowhere to go but up - unless it fails. But it's a $36 billion bet they feel they have to make.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...