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Why Some Open-Source Companies Are Considering a More Closed Approach (geekwire.com)
There's no question that the concept of open-source software has revolutionized the enterprise software world, which spent billions of dollars fighting the mere idea for several years before accepting that a new future had arrived. But more than a few people are starting to wonder if the very nature of open-source software -- the idea that it can be used by pretty much anyone for pretty much anything -- is causing its developers big problems in the era of distributed cloud computing services. From a report: Two prominent open-source software companies have made the decision to alter the licenses under which some of their software is distributed, with the expressed intent of making it harder -- or impossible -- for cloud computing providers to offer a service based around that software.
Two companies do not a make a movement. But as the cloud world packs its bags for Las Vegas and Amazon Web Services' re:Invent 2018 conference next week, underscoring that company's ability to set the agenda for the upcoming year, the intersection between open-source projects and cloud computing services is on many people's minds. "The way that I would think of it, the role that open source plays in creating commercial opportunities has changed," said Abby Kearns, executive director of the open-source Cloud Foundry Foundation. "We're going to see a lot more of this conversation happening than less. I would put it in a very blunt way: for many years we were suckers, and let them take what we developed and make tons of money on this."
Redis Labs CEO Ofer Bengal doesn't mince words. His company, known for its open-source in-memory database (used by American Express, Home Depot, and Dreamworks among others), has been around for eight years, an eternity in the fast-changing world of modern enterprise software. [...] "Ninety-nine percent of the contributions to Redis were made by Redis Labs," Bengal said. There's a longstanding myth in the open-source world that projects are driven by a community of contributors, but in reality, paid developers contribute the bulk of the code in most modern open-source projects, as Puppet founder Luke Kanies explained in our story earlier this year.
Two companies do not a make a movement. But as the cloud world packs its bags for Las Vegas and Amazon Web Services' re:Invent 2018 conference next week, underscoring that company's ability to set the agenda for the upcoming year, the intersection between open-source projects and cloud computing services is on many people's minds. "The way that I would think of it, the role that open source plays in creating commercial opportunities has changed," said Abby Kearns, executive director of the open-source Cloud Foundry Foundation. "We're going to see a lot more of this conversation happening than less. I would put it in a very blunt way: for many years we were suckers, and let them take what we developed and make tons of money on this."
Redis Labs CEO Ofer Bengal doesn't mince words. His company, known for its open-source in-memory database (used by American Express, Home Depot, and Dreamworks among others), has been around for eight years, an eternity in the fast-changing world of modern enterprise software. [...] "Ninety-nine percent of the contributions to Redis were made by Redis Labs," Bengal said. There's a longstanding myth in the open-source world that projects are driven by a community of contributors, but in reality, paid developers contribute the bulk of the code in most modern open-source projects, as Puppet founder Luke Kanies explained in our story earlier this year.
They shouldn't forget that regardless of the % of paid vs non-paid developers on a project the reason why they have the market penetration they currently do is because their products are FOSS in the first place.
Too much of open source has been taken to the cloud and is used to spy on the people. The only thing keeping us safe is the APK Host File Engine.
I have been waiting for the next shoe to drop in the systemd scam.
Of course, IBM cannot close all Linux code. But can they keep enough closed to control enterprise Linux?
Sort of like the Microsoft controls "open source" OOXML?
TLDR: they broke their own business models.
Cause: They made their product open source but were charging money for a hosted service. Other people start selling their own hosted service and they got unhappy that they didn't have a monopoly so they switched part of their code to "Commons Clause" which disallows others from offer it as part of a paid service.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
You could summarize this as "open-source companies are realizing that they don't actually want to open-source their work."
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Redis Labs is the toxic enterprise solution.
Getting modded down for off-topic posts is not the same as censorship.
ZIP
I don't even read TFA...
There's a longstanding myth in the open-source world that projects are driven by a community of contributors, but in reality, paid developers contribute the bulk of the code in most modern open-source projects..
...never do it for free.
Broke the open source business model.
All these open source software developers relied on support and deployment revenue, rather than on selling their software licence as traditional companies did.
It worked because software, regardless of its source code availability, is complex and requires expertise to deploy and keep working. Free software wasn't free to deploy and keep working.
But by eventually having mature open source software that 'just works', you can install fresh new instances of it, free from any problems and following a copy-exactly recipe, replicated umpteen times in a virtualized environment. The expertise only needs to be at the time of creating the recipes, and that can be done by a few automation experts inside your company from time to time, not a full company earning money from it.
Amazon, Azure et al have their relatively small automation groups, doing deployment and customization recipes that are then repeated ad infinitum across their infrastructure, making good revenue for them. While the developers of the software saw not a single penny from it.
Open source tends to rely on a large group of occasional contributors and a a few somewhat-more frequent committers that review the contributions and perhaps contribute stuff themselves also. Few of those contribute as a full-time job. If you're unhealthily obsessed with the project and issue a commit for every comma and semicolon (like certain "top wikipedia editors" do), it's easy to have as many commits to your name as the next ten combined.
Now you have a company and a bunch of full-time contributors to your core product. Of course ninety-nine percent is going to be contributed by the people you pay to do exactly that full-time.
If that metric alone is your reason to go closed-source, you have great potential to excel in pointy-haired management. And it actually makes me glad I'm not using your product; if I were it would be reason enough to start looking for something else. Something with sane management.
From the outset what looked like a huge misguided free buffet at the expense of sweat equity (ideological slavery), I have witnessed the value of free, as in free beer, resource incentive to mine its treasury.
This moment, nexus, will pivot and change. And the value it takes forward can be golden, mixed regulated or outside the box equity. It really amounts to whether the BIG's recognize, value and instantiate vestments for the beer they've drank.
A lot of features that are free in Solr, but nowhere near as easy to use, are premium in ElasticSearch. Amazon cannot just take X-Pack and say "so long, suckers" to Elastic, and replicating X-Pack would be non-trivial in terms of costs. You can get Amazon-managed ElasticSearch, but it's going to be pretty basic compared to paying for either licenses or cloud functionality from Elastic. It's basically good only for people who don't even want to run basic security inside of ElasticSearch.
And you know what? I'm totally fine with that. There's no such thing as a free lunch. The open core has provided clients of mine plenty of value, and it's subsidized by keeping all of those features held back for paying customers.
I expect the Cloudera-HortonWorks merger will do the same for the Hadoop ecosystem. Ambari will be dropped in favor of Cloudera Manager, which is not free. So all of the companies that won't pay for licenses will have to either roll their own management system or pay up. That might actually mean that the combined company will be able to turn a profit and keep paying for a lot of open source contributions.
Did they think people would work on them for free when they're already paying people? I would never donate my time to a project I know is some companies product that they making money from. The only reason they opened their repositories was because they think it makes them look good, but in fact it's just dumb and will of course go nowhere.
Projects that benefit from an open source model are ones developers like working on for free.
Traditional Open Source software could be profitable from the following methods:
1. Distributions. We take the Open Source software, configure it and put it on a nice piece of physical media, and sell it. This worked well until around the turn of the Century. Where broadband has allowed most people to download the content much faster then it is to wait for the media to be shipped to you, and at no cost.
2. Consulting/Support. Early Open Source software was often difficult to use (and some of it still is) Having experts at you beck and call for a modest fee to help you setup and use such products was quite valuable. However this requires the software to be sufficiently complex to use, if the software was too easy to use or configured with good defaults, then the average Joe will know enough to get it working.
3. Coding add ins. There is a fix you need, the community is not jumping on it, so you can pay for a developer to put in that code so you have it available. This is assuming you cannot find a replacement product or such missing feature is so necessary to not wait for.
The move to cloud services of Open Source software is really finding a new way to keep it profitable. By making the application and configurations a service vs an application. So you are paying for the infrastructure more then the software.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Umm... so?
I've never heard of this "longstanding myth". It seems you just don't understand open source.
Open source isn't about free labor; if that's why you chose to open source your code then you deserve the rude awakening. Read https://opensource.org/faq and let us know what made you think that all open source projects are driven by a "community of [unpaid] contributors."
"There's a longstanding myth in the open-source world that projects are driven by a community of contributors, but in reality, paid developers contribute the bulk of the code in most modern open-source projects..."
False dichotomy. The Linux kernel has the bulk of its code contributed by paid developers from multiple companies that all have their own vested interest and for which efforts to appease many of them have to be made. Hence, there's efforts to make the development focused on the community's goals, not merely one person's or company's goals. Yes, some projects have nearly all their code contributed from one company, and that usually implies that (1) few other than the company are interested in development of that project, (2) people trust that company to further development so few people choose to contribute much, or (3) the company abject refuses most contributions from outside sources (possibly with some excuse about code conformity) which inherently makes their project "pure" to their own devices. It's one reason why if you want long-term open source, you need bitter enemies working on the same project because it makes it a lot harder to fork, rewrite, and relicense the code. Option B is to hand over the code to some group that vehemently supports free software (like the FSF), but long term granting them copyright on the code will probably eventually backfire.
Why would I pay for my own software developers if the software is already available for free? If I need to integrate it into something useful, I can just outsource the work or invite H1B workers to do it. Or better yet, I can adapt my business requirements to fit the closed-source offerings of popular open source software by AWS or Azure.
In the end, you're all gonna gonna revert to being a bunch of hobbyists as the pendulum swings back towards closed-source software. At least the software is free, just need to pay for the IAAS costs.
is the word(s) you're looking for.
Waaaaah, I am a retarded whiner. APK
The owners can change the licence as they almost all require the "contributions" to be given to the project...
The GPL keeps the code open for use. None of the others do.
"Two companies do not a make a movement." .. him English speak good.
If they are closing off the source code then they are sending a message to the Universe that they are living in scarcity and the Universe will look upon them, smile, and say "So bit it!". Don't even ask what what Richard Stallman would say!
There's a longstanding myth in the open-source world that projects are driven by a community of contributors, but in reality, paid developers contribute the bulk of the code in most modern open-source projects
The same sort of argument was made many years ago when Nessus went closed source. The fact is, open source is not necessarily the right tool for every problem. This isn't some new phenomenon as far as I can tell.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
From TFS:
"We're going to see a lot more of this conversation happening than less. I would put it in a very blunt way: for many years we were suckers, and let them take what we developed and make tons of money on this."
Um... And you didn't see that coming?
What happened to "Software just wants to be FREEEEEE"?!?
Fucking RMS-licking, beard-stroking, unwashed Hypocrites.
Maybe if copyright worked as it was intended things could be different.
If software copyright lasted for 7 years - OK, maybe we could make it shorter because software - you could make your money and then the world at large would still get full access to your software at some point.
Granted, no idea how that would work with frequent software updates ... this is a /. comment, not anything that someone actually thought through carefully ;)
The gist of all this is that these companies were intending to monetize the services and / or hosting. Instead, AWS is monetizing the services and hosting. So, in effect, AWS is eating these companies lunches. I see how this is bad news for the companies developing these products, but it's the natural order of things. The open source Pandora's box has been opened, there's no stuffing the lid back on it now. First hardware got commoditized, then software got commoditized, and now services are getting commoditized. They need to find a way to move up the value chain (eg. consulting / education / customizations), or their air supply will eventually run out.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
What these companies are realizing is that it doesn't matter at all if you have a big slice or a small slice if the pie itself is worth ZERO. Anything multiplied by zero is zero. For years, these companies were willing to donate lots of code to the 'community' so that the pie would get nice and large. Then they would add all kinds of value to an 'enterprise' version and convince a small piece of the pie (e.g. 10%) to buy their very expensive solution. They gave away the milk as long as they could scrape the cream off the top and sell it.
Now they are discovering that with cloud services, other companies can come in and scrape away all that cream and leave them with nothing. Those other companies have contributed little or nothing to the actual development of the code so they have no costs to recoup. The open source companies are realizing that the open source model contributes to this whole freeloading situation and want to put a stop to it. I like free software as much as the next guy, but somebody has to pay the bills.
A tiny piece of software I released into the world once is almost BSD-licensed. Almost, because a separate clause prevents its usage by anyone possessing any item of clothing with a Che Guevara likeness on it.
To my surprise, someone once reached out to me — years ago — asking, if I can remove the requirement, because it makes it more difficult for them to include my software in their distro...
True story...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
A square is a rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares. Likewise, GPL is open source, but not all open source guarantees the freedoms of GPL.
This is an example where Richard Stallman is right. Your use of a piece of software is dictated by the terms of some random company. Too bad if you rely upon it. They can change the terms at any time or go out of business and leave you in the cold. Open Source != Freedom.
If people are seriously concerned about the cloud, then AGPL is the way to go, Affero General Public License was designed explicitly to plug the webapp/cloud app licensing hole, and it does so admirably. About the only thing I can see that would be more useful is a ALGPLv2/3 providing the benefit of source sharing for the library while also plugging the distribution hole for proprietary web apps.
Combined these two changes could return the contributions being produced. However that doesn't help on projects where either nobody is developing bugfixes or new features for them, or like redis, where it is a database and a lot of people may be wary of working on it themselves instead of letting 'the professionals' do it, since data loss or corruption is such an overriding concern.
There's a longstanding myth in the open-source world that projects are driven by a community of contributors, but in reality, paid developers contribute the bulk of the code in most modern open-source projects
No, the idea was not that a legion of people would do work without getting paid and magically give you product that you can make money with.
The idea was that people have a right to own, completely, the software that they use and in order to have that freedom they must be given the source code of that software.
This isn't about your free ride on the backs of a community.
This is about freedom.
The fact that mutual cooperation arises out of freedom and that mutual cooperation happens to be beneficial to everyone in the long run is incidental.
Then are no longer truly opensource and should be avoided like a plague ( or the GPL )
This is (part of) why GPL v3 was created. If it's online, you have to post the license and source. A lot of companies would prefer to pay a modest license fee to avoid the indignity of having pages like that on their site.
Many businesses consider GPL to be business unfriendly and use APL instead. I guess this just shows that GPL v3 would have protected their interests better and they wouldn't have to opt for dubious combo licenses. Point FSF.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
APK
GO the fuck AWAY!
No one wants you to stay
GO the fuck AWAY!
We can't wait another day
GO the fuck AWAY!
I'd be willing to pay
If you'd GO the FUCK AWAY!
For fucks sake, just FUCK OFF and quit clogging up this site with your goddawful useless utterances that provide zero insight or value to the articles you attach them to. No-one gives a shit
APK, you're always looking to rebrand yourself. And you FAIL at it.
Awkward language and useless repetition doesn't make you right. I've proven you wrong in so many ways. You're wrong on C++, as I've shown. You're wrong on code signing. You're wrong on my last name. You're wrong on my post history. I have never impersonated you, nor would I want to.
All WE get from you is harassment, lies, and ad hominem. You're the one who has to prove YOUR work. I've already proven mine! Now show us what you've done that isn't a toy Delphi app that manages a large text file (hosts)!
ZIP
P.S. => Keep burning any respect you think you might have. /. hates you and your kind
Yeah, seriously. I've lurked on this site for 20 years, and this is seriously becoming more annoying than GNAA. I started out genuinely wondering what this shit was about, and thinking that if someone's treated him unjustly or something, that it's pretty dickish, but it's become so annoying that I don't fucking care anymore.
GNAA was at least entertaining somewhat, because they used some crude but still funny wordplay and was, most importantly, tiny. This is just walls of shit that you have to smell to even comment.
You meant AGPLv3 (earlier known as Affero GPL). That's the one with the online clause.
Good point. I was remembering the first draft before they decided to keep the Affero license separate.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
It's an ongoing, professionally run crapflooding attack. Free speech has many enemies.
"I'm a much better programmer than APK" - by Anonymous Coward ZIP on Monday October 08, 2018 @11:27PM (#57449082)
BIG TALK - ZIP has no programs to show as proof.
I do https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
(From registered /.ers liking/using/praising my work + 100k users worldwide)
ZIP tried to take credit for what I solved before him https://tech.slashdot.org/comm...
He codes? He can't EVEN READ!
I show 2 ways to do it YOURSELF https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... - he can't.
Delphi/FreePascal/ObjectPascal HAS no null-term'd string bufferoverflows https://developers.slashdot.or... - C does, C++ can UNLESS you do what I said 1st.
He likes CODE SIGNING (it's been STOLEN & ABUSED) https://www.helpnetsecurity.co...
MY METHOD CAN'T BE (upmodded +2 INTERESTING in CODING FOR DEFCON) https://it.slashdot.org/commen...
ZIP says he has no /. acct "I don't have an account so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
Yet ZIP says he downmods me (IMPOSSIBLE w/ no /. acct.): "I down-modded a few of your post" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058)
APK
P.S.=> ZIP the PAPER Tiger (effete) vs. ME the Cyberian Tiger https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... LOL! Classic... you played yourself ZIP.
Above EXPOSES your BLOWHARD incompetence... apk
I do Linux / OpenSource since I finished school in 1998-ish. Developed ROCK Linux, later forked it into the #t2sde build systems from source Linux, developed GSMP (sound editor), ExactImage, and contribute fixes all over the place, form the Linux kernel, GCC, even Chrome you name it. Guess how many people / companies paid me for something. Even getting into Embedded Systems with our #t2sde Linux was super hard and next to impossible – for a small company like I funded. So we ended up doing some closed source end-user Apps, including https://exactscan.com/ and https://ocrkit.com/ . To get back to do more open source again (because Apple's ecosystem and hardware get's too much on my nerves) I now started a YouTube channel, to hopefully fun cool & daily open source hacking: https://www.youtube.com/user/r...
gweihir KNOWS u IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... c6gunner proves it https://linux.slashdot.org/com... forgetting to SUBMIT BY AC & f'd up using his registered 'lusrname' instead (just because he tried to mock me both BEFORE & after I FAIRLY challenged him to show he's done better work - he had ZERO).
& NO WAY I'd "cry" like you to "ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.
YOU HELPED ME https://science.slashdot.org/c... (& you quit trying to make me look bad trying to "tell lies" on hosts as "ME" IN YOUR IMPERSONATIONS of me e.g. https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... & regarding Intel speculative execution attack? Hosts DO PREVENT THEM)
APK
P.S.=> I KNOW that 2nd to last link above's KILLING YOU that YOU ACTUALLY HELPED ME getting me to see if hosts stop more than portsmash (& Meltdown + Spectre too) & "lo & behold" - hosts WORK on 'em - U LOSE (& U STOPPED TRYING IT in your impersonations of me) .... apk
"Don't worry Sidney - I've HUSTLED a HELL of a LOT BETTER players than YOU before" - Woody Harrelson to Wes Snipes "White Men Can't Jump" & ZIP = Paper Tiger vs. myself the Cyberian Tiger who MAULED you https://tech.slashdot.org/comm...
(As I said there? I'll let OTHERS read & decide for themselves - which judging by users liking & using my work, they have vs. YOUR BS https://news.slashdot.org/comm... & YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SHOW FOR YOURSELF in programs EITHER - BLOWHARD TALKER! )
* Greater detail of your FUCKUPS vs. me = https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
APK
P.S.=> You're DELUSIONAL if you even TRY to DENY you failed vs. me FOOL, lol... apk
Wasn't me you replied to: It's an impersonator. I only post on hosts IF they stop threats OR speed you up. I don't off topic.
HOWEVER: I won't "lay down" to losers that don't do a DAMN THING OF VALUE attacking me 1st. I defend myself w/ facts they can't beat.
I've got a "psycho fanclub" IMPERSONATING me & spamming + lying about MY work STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts like whackos!
GOOFS like c6gunner CAUGHT IMPERSONATING ME https://linux.slashdot.org/com...
(His name's on the post as SUBMITTER signing "APK" as I do while he ALTERED users words of praise of my work (since he tried INSULTING me & I issued a FAIR CHALLENGE to him that HE SHOW HE CAN DO BETTER - he hasn't to date)).
gweihir PROVED you IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... too!
ZIP = a BLOWHARD LIAR vs. https://linux.slashdot.org/com...
APK
P.S.=> I'm not here to win a popularity contest OR to lose (it's for LOSERS like ZIP &/or c6gunner - not I): I'm here to WIN & so do hosts users
How's life in the hypocrite lane?