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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.
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?
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.
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.
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.