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TCL Creator Writes Article on Open Source

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

Zagadka writes "John Ousterhout, creator of TCL, has written an article called Free Software Needs Profit for Dr. Dobb's. It discusses the relationship open source software and commercial software can have with each other. "

2 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Two (plus) types of open-source companies by Jeff+Licquia · · Score: 4

    As I see it, there are (at least) two types of open-source companies.

    The first would include companies like Red Hat and LinuxCare. These are companies whose business model does not depend on proprietary software at all; their entire product is open.

    The second includes companies like Scriptics and Sendmail. These companies base their business on proprietary extensions to free products - "better" versions of the free stuff.

    Of course, no one can object to the first kind of company (unless you believe making money is itself evil). The second kind is a little harder to deal with, because it involves taking the hard work of the community and making money off of it without giving anything back - not in a money sense, but in the sense of giving back their improvements for the community to use.

    The real gray area, in this case, involves companies like ActiveState and Cygnus. They sell proprietary software, but as separate add-ons to the free tools, not strictly as enhancements. In addition, like Red Hat, they donate much time and effort into free improvements to the free tools, keeping the proprietary parts of their effort as separate as they can.

    As an example, ActiveState distributes and does lots of work on Perl for Win32, and distributes it under Perl's original licenses - free for any use, full source included. They also distribute some add-ons as "free beer" which help integrate Perl better into the Windows environment. Finally, they sell proprietary extensions to Perl: a GUI debugger for Windows and a "mod_perl"-like extension for IIS.

    I think I feel better about this method of extending free software for money than the Scriptics/Sendmail way. It isn't as "exploitative"; you're really making your money off your own code, not other people's code.

    Is it a coincidence that Scriptics-style companies tend to grow out of projects under a BSD/X license, while ActiveState/Cygnus companies (as well as, obviously, Red Hat-style companies) tend to grow out of GPL projects? Is this more evidence of the superiority of the GPL?

    (Also: did you notice which prominent open-source project he didn't mention that doesn't have a company egging on its success? Hint: it's even more successful than all the rest, and it's the software that's feeding you these pages. :-)

  2. Commercial != proprietary by David+Jao · · Score: 4
    Ousterhout fails to make a clear distinction between commercial and proprietary software in his article. Judging by his interchangable use of the two terms, he seems to consider the two equivalent, which is not at all the case.

    The debate in my mind is not whether free software benefits from commercial backing. I think everyone here agrees that commercial support for free software is an inevitable development, and that it's good when businesses write free software.

    The actual point of contention is whether we need to have proprietary software companies using free software to further their business. When talking about this point, the argument that "programmers need to eat" doesn't apply: as Red Hat Software shows, a software company can feed programmers without writing any proprietary software at all. The jury is still very much out on the role of proprietary software in the free software world.

    By failing to distinguish clearly between commercial and proprietary software, Ousterhout pretty much misses the boat with his article.