Slashdot Mirror
Open Source causes more Harm than Good?
Gryphon
sent us a link to a Linux Power article on
Open Source causing more
harm than good. Talks about OSI, ESR, the recent
proliferation of "Open Source" and more things that are
also being discussed fairly passionately in the
article on ESR wanting to retire that
we posted earlier. Update: 03/29 11:45 by S : In other reactions to the ESR
story, AbiSource's Eric Sink
argues replacing ESR is the wrong goal, and Bruce Perens
says we need
speakers not leaders. Thanks to LT
and rokhed.
... you forgot one key thing. The software that these companies produce may be buggy and whatever. BUT, in the case of Open Source Software, you could (or anyone else could) theoroetically take that code and fix it.
Currently, your problem only exists with closed-source software programs. In the case of Open Source, the source would be available for anyone to inspect as well.
If you go back to closed source, just forget this whole discussion, since it began as, "How do you make money with Open Source Software?"
Service does not necessarily mean technical support of end users. Service can mean things such as Consulting services for new installs of large user bases, networks, etc. It can also mean providing other services, i.e. Internet access, storage services, etc.
Thinking that Service only means technical support is thinking with blinders on. Look around at all the other services that are out there. Heck, look at IBM. They make money by the wheelbarrows doing service-oriented work (and in ain't tech support!)
..how business is supposed to make money with Open Source strategy, and how there is going to be any incentive (outside of the "look at me, I can write appz!" crowd) to create new technology if we somehow eliminate IP.
BTW, open source qualifies as intellectual property. Open source can't be used arbitrarily... it's use is restricted by a license, and the license is predicated on IP.
I agree with the artical in the fact that semi-free licences are a problem. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that open source in general is bad.
My idea of open source is that no one owns the source (kinda scary, that is like communism), so no one can steal it, or make money off it. Because no one owns the software you can't have suits about "He stole my code!", it wasn't yours to begin with, it was the communitys. Now, that isn't to say that you can't take credit for it, like having a comment that says "I wrote this part", but when you make your stuff open source that is the only thing you should get for it. If you want to sell your stuff, then do it, but don't call it open source or free software.
In a pure open source computer industry you would have companys like redhat (and others) that sell support and make software on the side to give away to the community, and hackers that enjoy coding in there spare time. No one would be selling software per-se, just support. And if a company makes bad software, then another company or group/individualy can make a patch for it, or just rewrite that program.
Right now, I see all the other licences just dying out. There will end up being so many slightly different licences that make you pay for some part or restricts you in some other way will just eventualy not get used. They will not make money, and close options for everyone and therefore die in our lovely system, like software that is written badly.
-Vividan
We fly people all over the place to do installs, but we can't charge what we ought to for it, because if we did, our competitor would trounce us.
There you go, perfect example of how the system works. You are charging exactly what you ought to be charging. Charging more would send you out of business because your competitor(s) would get more business. Charging less would lose you too much money, but you might get more customers. So, you have found the level at which you can charge. Not all companies may be able to turn a profit in this market of yours, but then again, not all of them have to. Thus, the market economy works perfectly fine in this case, causing the price/demand ratios to levitate to where they belong.
This is not how (i think) the hole thing started, and this is important for understanding the effects of the open source initiative.
IBM, Honeywell and other pioneers coporations did not "sell" the software to their clients. They gave it bundled with a dinosaur as a kind of "open software" and sold to their clients services for developing the software with support agreements.
When the machines started to appeare in other places than big computer rooms in major foundations, and a new market started to emerge, the IT corporations inveted a "new" way to increase their profits: write once, sell everywhere.
Given the unquestionable benefits of the net economy model, it started to spread rapidly. The propriatary code
became the most valuable asset of a company. It was also deadly weapon for competitors.The closed specifications of the propriatary systems enforced them selfs, particularly in the areas where the un-elastic needs demanded compatibility. I.e, the operating system area gave birth to the fastest growing company of the planet (??), Microsoft.But at the same time, the new opportunities cripled the freedom of the human/computer interaction. The tools that were supposed to change our lives didn't belong to those who used them. Most readers agree that this was a bad thing.
I believe that the moral lesson of all this is that profit is neutral. Profiting might prove to not. So long as the "Open Source" initiative does'nt address that dilema, "free software" stands for a better intelectual product of humanity.
---I'm an Anonymous Coward....
---obviously, the aliens have invaded
I think it's too early to say that this license or that license is better.
I also think that if your belief in a certain license
requires you to personally attack someone who believes in another
way of licensing, then maybe you shold reexamine
your system of beliefs.
If XFree86 were GPL, they could just absorb
the Mesa code via the LGPL-to-GPL feature
of the LGPL.
Also, I would feel safe contributing to XFree86.
The XFree86 project complains that people see
them as having closed development (they do) and
that people won't help. Duh. Use the GPL.
If we don't mind ourselves, we will end up having to deal with the exact same marginalizing effects as we did before. Licence Proliferation is a BIG problem in this respect because it causes confusion. For the same reasons you don't want to fork off free software projects, you don't want to fork off and splinter licences.
Definitive licences from trusted sources serve a very useful purpose. Just the notion of one or a very small group of standard licences is very useful even forgetting freeness.
They're like the distributions. They allow one to have a very useful shorthand for all of the things you might be trying to accomplish.
Also, some people draft rather poor licences. Troll did whereas Apple did not. Actually, their licence was quite good from that standpoint.
Basically, we need someone trustworthy to come up with one or a small set of useful commercial/free software hybrid licences. So, instead of the OSI merely being some marketing arm, it can actually give something concretely useful to those that seek council from it much like free software projects do wrt the L/GPL or fbsd licences.
That would be the LGPL. You can and should use
the LGPL for apps. You get:
1. Protection from the exploitation that BSD
licenses are vulnerable to.
2. More freedom than the GPL, with everyone
allowed to link stuff to your code.
The LGPL is just great. It works with everything.
Don't forget the LGPL option. It sits right
between the GPL and BERKELEY licenses.
It is a standard free software license.
It can be used by BERKELEY-like projects.
It can be converted to the GPL if needed.
It can be used on both apps and libs.
So we should shut up and stop advocating Free Software because MSFT shareholders might get upset - is that REALLY your argument?
I don't understand how you can make money that way. Say I make my nifty program available under the GPL, but people have to pay for it. Now, Bob from across the street buys my program. Why would anyone pay me even a small ammount of money for my program if they can get it from Bob for free, no strings attached? Now I know the whole world doesn't know about Bob, but people could put it up on their web sites and stuff couldn't they? And alot of people might go to their friend who has my program and say, "Where can I get that awesome thing?!" And then their friend says, "From me, let me compile the source. There you go." I won't be making money then. Sun's license on Java makes sense to me that way. As I understand it, they say you can look at the source all you want, but if you want to modify it and distribute it, then you have to pay. I want to make money... I have to stop being so repeditive.
Free Software is good for users, there is business model right there in that statement. We should not be selling the idea of Free Software to software producers, but to software consumers. Free Software in not necessarily good for developers, but it is always good for users (customers).
I think a lot of the hubbub over different licenses is due to differing ideas over what people want to do with the code...
/.
It's the nature of business. Let's face facts, people. If you were one of Apple's major shareholders, you would be the first at Jobs' door with a pitchfork if he GPL'd OS X.
I think what is happening here is not a disaster in the making. It's the future in the making.
Applause!!!
There's still hope for
This is one of the most balanced views I've seen on the whole business. And there are other great comments here on this topic... keep on!
See also: CheapBytes, 99% of any Linux distribution.
Maybe we should be promoting an "Open License" for software rather than specifically.. an open licence is one which conforms to the ideals of the GPL (etc.) and hence directly benefits the community.
If the Linux kernel were to be QPL'd we'd be up shit creek - no more tarballs!!!
The QPL sucks. Here's to Harmony!!!
Seriously, the real enemy is SOFTWARE PATENTS.
These must be eliminated - they make it very hard to develop truly Free versions of software within the US, if some berk can take your idea and patent it. First-to-Invent is just silly ( do you really believe most corporations would hesitate about falsifying such records)- Switch to First-to-File like the rest of the world at the very least...
(One of the reasons why there's a disproportionate contribution to truly Free GPL software from European countries - the other reason being the European contrast to the money-grabbing, materialistic, shallow culture and society of america...)
You ask "What do we do?", but you haven't presented a problem. Apparently, you would like to free the software, but you see that it has no value in being freed. In fact, other forces you do not control would use the option poorly.
So what is the problem? Keep doing what you're doing. It seems to work.
Maybe it's just me. I'm just a dumb little techie who's just toiling away in the world trying to make 1 + 1 = 3 (on a good day). I just can't understand why some people get so bent over how one person says "tom-ay-to" and the other says "tom-ah-to". It seems that if you're 'with RMS' you have to be 'against ER' and vice versa. WHY? What good does it do to go ranting and bellowing like a zealote? Whenever anyone wants to jump on an idea or point they should ask themselves, "How can my participation in this benifit the world, or at least the little peice of it that is impacted by this idea/point?"
As to the article/editorial... If the license isn't right then it will not live. This is the beginning stage of evolution. We have not yet
begun to crawl out of the water. These sorta-kinda licenses from commercial companies are just the first inklings of development of land dewelling beasts. Evolution tries many different varieations on a theam to see which one will be the one to survive. I believe that Open, in the sense of Open Mind, Source will be the eventual winner.
There's an old saying, "If you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door." This idea has been obscured by the
marketing tactics of some companies (to remain nameless). Well, Linux and Free/Net/OpenBSD and Sendmail and XFree86 and many, many others have already proven this axiom to be true. So
let us all stop ranting and start building!
Care to translate this?
The new proprietary version would effectively
replace the old free version. The free code
would not be taken away, but it would no longer
be the defining implementation. It would just
be leftover freebie junk.
He's saying "all software must be freely available, period." If I don't believe this, and he is trying to make this the ubiquitous and only path, then he IS trying to shove his beliefs down my throat.
If I don't believe that "all software should always be freely available" then I shouldn't have to listen to this guy, and people like him, saying I'm a worse person because of it.
Isn't that what Apple did, which has been so criticized lately?
" I believe that there would be a net *increase* in the amount of custom programming being done if the apps & OS were Free Software. For that matter, some of us on the "outside" might very well get work on some of those internal projects as they more an more often make use of free software. "
Ummm, people don't want more custom programs...
they want standards based programs that plug and play with their existing systems.
If you want custom code than why don't you go work at a bank or insurance company. Talk to their managers, see how thrilled they are about supporting all of their custom systems or paying through the nose for consultants to do it. Now watch as a shrink wrap company comes in and tells them that their techs CAN'T muck with the system, their users can't screw anything up, and the service costs are tiny, then you'll see the managers smile.
What you've said is not true.
Many big companies already have systems designed like you've talked about. Take a look at big banks, insurance companies, etc.. most of them have tonnes (literally) of olds mainframes with custom tailored software that's not in style anymore, but still crucial, and they have to pay through the nose to get it fixed. These people are jumping at the chance to get shrink wrapped code that they can't screw up and end up with a another maintenance nightmare.
GPL wants Everything GPL or nothing.
GPL is not compatible with many free licenses.
But, regardless, the GPL'd code IS used with code of other free licenses. Noone complains because the authors intent was to have the code be used only with free software.
no wonder that you like RMS better than ESR, you long-haired freak :)
btw what do you think of Darwin? will you code for it?
I love dissent. I don't want a single big scary faceless organization to think and talk for me.
And since >50% of the hackers aren't even located in the US you'll never be able to represent them all.
By this definition the APSL is also "truly free" since all future users and coders have access to the source of derivative products.
And I was pretty much scared away from Linux and OSS trough Slashdot. What's your point?
Mainstream corporate CEOs and CTOs will never buy ``free software'', manifestos and clenched fists and all. But if we take the very same tradition, the same people, and the same free-software licenses and change the label to ``open source'' - that, they'll buy.
This illustrates what I dislike most about ESR, and what he has done to our community. Since the beginning of ESR's "Open Source" crusade, he's been telling *us* that the corporations would join in producing free software if he could re-label our work as Open Source(tm). Who could have refused an offer like that?
Well, recent history has proven him wrong. Corporations and their armies of lawyers are (and never were) so naive as to be unable to see past the words to realise that our free software was a direct threat to their interests, rather than something to embrace. Not only will the proprietary software houses never produce it, but they will do what they can to fight its meme by creating a plethora of semi-free "open source" licenses, in the hope that these will fragment and confuse the hacker community, and stave off genuinely free software, at least for a while.
Having sold hackers on the idea of re-labelling free software as open source, it's disingenuous in the extreme for ESR to now embrace proprietary "open source" licenses like the APSL, and pretend they're in the same category as our free licenses (GPL, X, BSD). By doing so, he's cheapened the original meaning of Open Source to the point where it's an insult to apply the term to genuinely Free Software.
It used to be that the license debates which raged among hackers were over whether or not the GPL was free enough (GPL vs. BSD), rather than too free. Now the debate has shifted -- we're talking about accepting licenses which are designed to prevent code sharing, can be terminated at whim, etc., all with ESR's blessing. His influence has led a few of the more gullible among us to begin doing charity work for some of the worlds largest corporations on their proprietary, open source "products", while our free projects languish. It makes me laugh! (and cry...)
Unless we resist these trends, history will remember ESR as the man who successfully forked the hacker community, and destroyed much of its potential (unless our history is written by the corporations, which seems not too unlikely).
Expose Open Source(tm) for the sham that it is, and get back to writing Free Software!
Alex Berkman
imho, the problem here is that Open Source is trying to herd cats. Recognize that the task is impossible for any single person or organization, and have faith that open source is an irresistible force, like gravity. Conspiracy theory - I wonder if the growing angst around this issue is M$ generated...time to take a deep breath(drink) and keep on creating good code.
if it's proponents are self-righteous assholes who think they can be arrogant, ignorant, and belligerent about which software is better, then I don't want any. I mean -- it's bad enough to see people who get on their high-horse about how "open source software is the ONLY way" and that all closed software is "EVIL." But to see a sanctioned movement that supports and encourages this behavior is worse. I'm all for both free and un-free stuff... but please don't be jerks about it.
Out.
Fundamentally, you're using a monopoly on the source to force the brass (isn't that what the military calls their suits?) to do business with you rather than delegate work to their subordinates. If you're sure this is the Right Thing and that they wouldn't do it voluntarily, take comfort in foiling their stupidity using the only tactics that do that job - most of can't stop even our most useless suits. Good luck.
They don't have the right to be heard (you have the right to ignore them, even though you don't seem to realize that), but I will defend to the death (spot the reference) their right to speak. If you're uncomfortable with that, it's a shame but ultimately irrelevant.
Oh my god, everyone stop posting! You might say something this guy doesn't believe, and we sure can't have that!
And being materialistic didn't make us shallow. We've been exposed to television longer than anyone else.
You know what? I don't care if these companies release source code under some "non-totally-free" license. Why? Because it's their source code. I'm perfectly happy that they're releasing it at all. Not only that, but it annoys me to the extent that I've stopped making stuff I write GPL and instead release under licenses that are specifically NOT open-source.
The thing that pisses me off so much about uneducated blather like this guy's is that on the one hand, he is saying that "All source code must be free so that all users have the same rights to use and abuse it as any other" and then turning around and saying, "and anyone who doesn't believe exactly this is undeniably, inarguably WRONG." He doesn't seem to understand that by trying to force everyone to believe what he believes, he is contradicting his own statements that users should be able to do what they want.
Don't shove your beliefs down my throat.
However, it's not Netscape or Troll doing all the work... however, they do derive the lion's share of the benefit.
That's the way of things with API's especially. Everyone builds value on top of it, yet others still insist that it is the core library vendor that has done all of the real work and deserves the only controlling interest.
The whole point of Open Source is to get more contributors. Of course they're going to want something in return.
That's how this all started: one very pissed free developer.
I believe software should be divided like this:
1.) There is the "free software" (GPL/BSD/etc.) category. This includes Linux/gcc/Apache/etc.
2.) There is a "half-free software" category. This would include things like Mac OS X/Netscape/etc.
3.) Finally there is a "non-free software" category. This would include games and multimedia software like Quake, various dictionaries (whatever else could be considered more "art" than technical works).
"Free software" category is the current GPL/BSD/etc. licensed software. Like now it would allow you to modify, redistribute, and sell (with source provided of course).
What this "half-free" category does is allow software to be owned by a company, but we can fix bugs and see how it all works. We can not use source from "half-free" software in other software. "half-free" software does not masquerade itself as being free software (much like Open Source can/does). Its honestly not free, but close to it.
"Non-free" category is closed source. This category is comprised of software which has to remain closed for it to sell (This category could be in the "half-free".. like Quake could have their source code released yet the data files would remain non-free).
The reason for categories like this is to avoid confusing software with each other. Currently "Open Source" is easily confused with "free software" which is bad. If the software was labeled as being "free software" then you would instantly have a general idea of what the license allows you to do. If the software was labeled "half-free" you would instantly know that the software can be modified for personal use, but a company has the rights and "owns" the software. There may not be a need for a "non-free" category as most games and multimedia programs use data files to do anything useful (so source code could be released via internet/whatever while the data files you would have to purchase). There is no "Open Source" in this scheme as it is considered just "source code" again. There is no other way I see possible for companies to make money and let us be happy. I'm fine with being able to fix my programs and allowing companies to own their software. If you can find a better middle ground I'd like to hear it.
Tim
I don't see a problem with things like the APSL.
They assume large nunbers of free software programmers can't see beyond the end of a lawyers scrawl.
Unfortunately for them three things help us. Firstly law is like computer programming only its less reliable and has manuals that would shame IBM VM users. Secondly decent programmers tend not to be stupid about software issues, any more than a good car mechanic is dump about road law. Finally the licenses that hinder open co-operation are visibly spurned. People pick projects they can work on. People pick licenses and software under licenses they can freely reuse to make their programs easier to write [all programmers are lazy it seems].
This is biting XFree86 with its closed members only development team. All the time I see "I thought about working on X11 but that means paperwork and other shit and not sharing code" type messages. If it bites the relatively free XFree code - where you know it will become totally free in time, its going to chew the head off things like the APSL.
Alan
The BSD license is truly free because I get to decide how to use the code. The GPL is a viral form of license that pushes a very sick agenda. It's totally useless for me.
GPL - funded by MIT
BSD - funded by UC Berkley
XConsortium - funded by the commercial members of the X consortium.
When I look at the above I am hard pressed to conclude that free software is anything other than a huge welfare project that refuses to show gratitude to the commercial interests that spawned it.
You seem to be very confused.
The GPL, etc. are licenses, not projects; like most documents, they require no funding whatsoever (other than the legal costs associated with drafting them initially).
All of these licenses are probably *more* widely used by developers outside their place of origin than within, and their projects are financed in a variety of ways -- usually not government.
Furthermore, you are mistaken regarding the origin of the GPL license, since this was developed initially by the Free Software Foundation (a charity) for use with the GNU project, and *not* by MIT. The only tenuous connection I can see between MIT and the GNU project is that Richard Stallman worked at MIT prior to founding the FSF. Should we consider all the work *you* have done after leaving university to be a "welfare project" paid for by that institution?
Furthermore, the UC Berkley is a university, not a "commercial interest". This perhaps explains why they released their work to the public under such a liberal license (since the public paid for it).
I hope this helps you to get a clue.
We know that the following languages are very popular (in rough order of popularity):
Cobol, Java, Visual Basic, Perl, Python, PowerBuilder, etc.
We also know that very little (proportionatelly) shrink-wrapped software is written in these languages. C++ dominates shrink-wrapped software development. What are the people who are programming in those other languages doing? They are usually writing software for a particular corporation (or maybe vertical market). I claim that this is the majority of programmers but I don't know for sure.
Whether or not it is the majority or not, there is certainly a hell of a lot of work in helping corporations with custom code. Even half-way sophisticated "shrink-wrapped" software needs to be customized into the ground.
It's called, "The Service Industry".
We've seen it happen with various types of hardware. Take Cell Phones for example. Initially, they sold the hardware. Now, they give away the hardware, and make all their money in service and support. Take PCs for example. Initially, they sold the hardware. Now, they (are beginning to) give away the hardware and make all their money in service and support.
Now, take software. Initially, they sold the software. Now, the (are beginning to) give away the software and make all their money in service and support.
Replace one product with another, and you get the same thing. Give away the opening in the door, and make money on 'em once they are inside asking questions. It's called the service industry, and that is what the computer industry will most likely turn into to make the most profits.
Example: when Brian Paul first started Mesa, did the LGPL really reflect his intent, or did it just seem like what everyone else was doing? Did it occur to him that this would prevent his OpenGL implementation from ever being integrated into XFree86, and elsewhere? Was that really what he wanted? Probably not.
I don't mean to put words in Brian's mouth, and I have no idea what his intentions were. But I'd be really fascinated to hear his views on the matter.
Brothers and Sisters, it is with great honor and privlige that I speak to you today. I come to you as a humble pilgrim, searching for that which we all seek, that which has eluded us for a thousand millenia, that whcih is furthest away when it seems the closest: Truly free software!
Last night, after attempting to eat a falafel that had had gone HORRIBLY AWRY, I found myself in a walking dream, one full of the greatest BEAUTY I had ever seen, as well as vile HORROR to chill mens souls!
I have SEEN the promised land! I have warmed my skin in the sunlight of PEACE, and bit deeply of the beautiful fruit of LOVE! I have juggled the thousand eyeballs of burning PASSION, and drank my fill of the wonderous waters of FREEDOM.
And as I enjoyed these wonderous MIRACLES, I found myself being PULLED, TORN from this HEAVEN, and cast down in to the deepest, darkest, most VILE pits of HELL!
AND I CRIED OUT! Yes, I did! I SHOUTED at the devil, at SATAN, at the MOST UNHOLY defiler of all that is GOOD, and I asked, NO! I DEMANDED to be returned to that GOOD PLACE, where all the workings of NATURE interacted with one another, brought together to produce a place of true WONDERMENT.
And the devil did speak to me, speak to me with a voice like TEN THOUSAND MILLION fingernails on a THOUSAND MILLION chalkboards, he spoke to me from the depths of his depravity, I shivered to my soul to hear him speak. And he did say, the devil, "You, fool, may return the good place, but only after you GPL your soul."
"What the hell?" I thought, "Sounds safe enough."
So I did, I signed my SOUL to the GPL.
And I was returned to the GOOD PLACE.
Only the GOOD PLACE was not returned to ME. When I went to raise a bright red rose to my NOSE to partake of its sweet scent, I found myself BLOCKED, unable to smell the ROSE. I Cried out once again to the DEVIL, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?".
And with the burning of BRIMSTONE and the FIRES of DAMNATION, ol' Jack Scratch appeared before me and said: "I have done nothing to YOU. You cannot smell the ROSE because it is NOT GPLed! Hahahahahahahahahahah!" and he dissappeared with some little hottie down a back alleyway.
And I could NOT feel the light of the SUN, I could not eat the APPLES of Peace! I could NOT, for the LIFE of ME, figure out what the THOUSAND EYEBALLS were SUPPOSED to REPRESENT, though I had a good idea when I started. MOST of ALL I could not drink from the TRUE waters of FREEDOM.
And when I looked around, I saw that I was not alone, seated in the HEART of HEAVEN, but unable to touch a THING. What I saw was SEVEN MILLION helpless BASTARDS, like me, who had done what they thought was RIGHT, but CLOSED all the DOORS open to them in the PROCESS.
They were BUILDING a house of CARDS, eyes glassy, their trembling hands almost knocking their structure OVER with each ADDITION. Somehow it stayed aloft, but the GENTLE winds of HEAVEN almost toppled it at every TURN. Then one of their number, a small lad, with one hand covered in black ANGER the other holding a card, a card that was marked with DEATH, ran from the middle of the pack and said "I SHALL PLACE THIS ON THE TOP." and as he thrust the card with all his might into the house of cards, and it did EXPLODE, caught on the breeze before any of the S.O.B's could do a thing about it.
The ROAR that came from their collective throats sounded like FORTY TWO SEVEN THIRTY SEVENS all lifting off from JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT all at ONCE.
And with that I awoke to find myself lying on my kitchen FLOOR, with dried hummus stuck to my EAR, and a chunk of Pita up my NOSE.
The laughter of the devil still reverberated in my ears, despite the hummus.
--As channeled by the Rocket Jesus
> Very few of the people that I've seen
> advocating alternate systems for making money
> by programming seem to appreciate how _many_
> programmers there are. If every company that
> used software needed constant software > firefighting,
It isn't firefighting. Business software is an encoding of a business model. A competitive company adjusts (hopefully advances) its business model *as often as possible*. Haven't you heard about the "software backlog"? I don't know how it is measured but at the companies where I work it is quite noticable. They develop software as quickly as they can afford to. The faster their competitors develop, the faster they must.
> The market for customization is much smaller
> than the market for software in general
> (and the latter is the market that you have to
> find an alternate means of paying for).
Not true. The market for customization is HUGE. I wish I had statistics but my guess is that more programmers are internal and external consultants than are shrink-wrapped software developers.
> Companies have a vested interest in not
> paying for _open_ customizations.
> As that would let their competitors use the same
> customizations for free.
Their competitors are trying to use a different business model. That's how the competitor differentiates themself. If all the competitor does is clone my business model six months after I make a change then that competitor will go out of business.
> Heck, that might also
> give their competitors insight into what they
> are doing.
In some cases. But there is a practical timeout date for those kinds of secrets.
> Very many and relatively few, respectively.
> Remember, it is applications development that
> rakes in most of the money for most software
> houses. By and large, this is done by writing
> an application, seeing it take off, and writing
> progressively better versions of it.
> Customization sometimes occurs but
> is rare,
Sorry that is just wrong. Think of the billions of dollars spent on Oracle databases. Now how many shrink-wrapped applications ship with Oracle? (essentially none) Most of the rest are custom apps. Even ERP software is MASSIVELY customizable and massively customized.
I think it is safe to say that most programmers already write software that is delivered to the user in source code format. They work for banks, insurance companies, airlines and even some mom and pop shops.
I would have to disagree. IMHO, "Free" is actually a good term for it. It's short, it's simple, it carries the point, and it has a language confusion problem similar to "hacker". :) "Liberated Software" isn't a very accurate term, since most of the GPL'd stuff's written from scratch, so it hasn't been "liberated", but was free from birth. "Open", too, has a problem, because it implies that that it is open to use, but not truly "free". Of course, it could be just a personal thing, as I'm partial to talking about "freedom".
Could be all those Terry Pratchett books...
Well, if I posted this before, I don't remember it. It's very likely that a similar comment was posted by someone else, though.
Unless the mere act of hearing a postion causes you to believe it, he is not shoving his beliefs down your throat. He is just stating his understanding of the relative merits of free code with no single party getting special preference versus free code with one or more parties getting special preference. He thinks the first case is better for the users of that code. Of course individuals and companies may do as they please with their code! No one is suggesting otherwise.
Personally, I think that we can afford to try both ways (GPL and BSD/NPL/APSL) with each programmer choosing their favorite (Mine's the GPL). In a few years, we ought to have a more complete understanding of the merits and faults of both directions based on the status of the different projects under the different licenses.
And thats why old Al (the first guy) found it finnancially viable to hire a Genuine, Certified Star Office Complient Mechanic so that customers like yourself would come to him and not to Billy-Bob. The standards would still exist, they will just be enforced by consumer economics rather than committees.
:)
At least, I think it will. With Linux/BSD servers powering half the web, I guess we'll find out soon enough
Which is cheaper? Hiring a local mechanic to customize your truck by adding a sun roof and fog lights or calling General Motors and setting up an appointment with the original engineers of your truck to redesign the body and electrical systems of your car to handle your specific requirements?
Clearly, there is a big difference between original design and implemenation of a program and ensuing maintenance of that code. What we are missing in the software industry today is the mechanic class of programming positions and this class is gained by having source open to arbitrary modification.
Assuming normal capatlisitc influences, there should be no reason why we don't start seeing a plauge of Al's Custom Apache Shops in the near future making a buisness of working on your personal code. Sure they might charge an arm and a leg but I'll bet you Bob's down the street will offering a deal on Apache modules next week.
I guess this goes along the lines of the methodology I mentioned of corporations footing the bill for software they wanted and the software then becoming free to everyone else except in this case, the changes becoming free to everyone else.
This model does seem to be logical... if you can get companies to invest in you that is, and not their own programmers.
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
You know, every time someone answers a question on how to make money with Open Source software, the answer seems to always be the same, technical support.
So, I should make my software blatently difficult to use and slightly buggy so that I get support contracts with companies?
Also, exactly how does an individual programmer (there are still a few of us left) make money with Open Source? It's not like we have the resources to write the program and do the commercial support by outselves. With the old shareware method this was easy, you provided documentation and sold the program...
I always liked the methodology of having a few major corporations who need the software finance it, and giving it away to everyone else. At least this model could be accomplished by an individual or a small group of people.
In a utopian society, Open Source * would be a perfect solution, unfortunately some of us need to live in capitalistic societies which exist today.
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to contribute to a a non-copyleft licensed project such as FreeBSD in a way that prevents proprietary software developers from using your code. Projects like FreeBSD and XFree86 made the choice that they wanted their work to be made available to proprietary developers, thus they lock out contributors who aren't willing to donate their work to that cause. (XFree86 is very explicit about this, I believe).
In the specific case of using GNU/Linux drivers on FreeBSD, have you considered asking the developer of the driver if he would permit that? He might be willing to license his driver under a second license that specifically permits linking with FreeBSD without bringing the whole thing under the GPL. I would certainly be willing to consider such a thing for my code.
Some people want access to the code so the programs that they like and use will work better. Licenses like the APSL are no problem in this case.
Some people want access to the code so they can learn coding techniques from "the big boys". Again, the APSL is perfectly serviceable.
Some people want access so they can use the code in their own projects. Of those, some want it to avoid duplication of work. Some want it to avoid doing work. In these cases, the APSL can be a real problem. But then again, so can the GPL, depending on what your goals are. It's all a matter of perspective.
This is slightly complicated by the fact that someone has tried to put a strict definition on the words 'open source'. And that term now has some cachet. So you're going to see companies trying to cash in on that by giving as little as they possibly can. Noone should be surprised at this. It's the nature of business. Let's face facts, people. If you were one of Apple's major shareholders, you would be the first at Jobs' door with a pitchfork if he GPL'd OS X.
I think what is happening here is not a disaster in the making. It's the future in the making. Mistakes will be made along the way. Maybe trying to define 'Open Source' was a mistake. We'll see. But none of this is going to happen overnight. It has to grow in fits and starts, just like everything else. It's just that in this case, we all get to see it happening and in whatever way, participate. You may think it's a disaster waiting to happen, and it may be from your perspective. Personally, I'm kind of enjoying watching it evolve.
Sure, it's their choice not to. They also are therefore not allowed to use the Mesa code, since the developers of Mesa made a clear decision that they did not want their code used in proprietary products - therefore it was placed under the GPL.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by Art Pepper:
This article seems to clearly define the problem with various licensing agreements of late. There does seem to be a problem with them, n'es pas?
Of course, I am hopelessly uniformed in these matters.
That is true. Unfortunately, neither you nor I can control the intended semantics when those terms are uttered by other people. Appealing to the original can only do so much to slow the rate of mutation. Such is life.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
That is true. Unfortunately, neither you nor I can control the intended semantics when those terms are uttered by other people. Appealing to the original can only do so much to stop the mutation. Such is life.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
From my perspective, that day was no less turbulent. Flamewars raged in usenet, and on mailing lists from the first day of the open source initiative. The only difference is that journalists were not eavesdropping.
It's when they try to impose [their points of view] on other people, such as Stallman's continued "correction" of people who don't use the term "GNU/Linux," that leads to wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Stallman is a preacher. His job is to propagate his memes. It's no different from what any of us are doing. If his missives are an imposition, then so are yours and mine. The truth is, though, that we're always free to tune each other out. From where I sit, the turbulence is caused by people worrying too much about the things other people express, rather than using their own voice to express good.
I take exception to your war metaphor. If turbulence is what you do not want, you could begin by refusing to think of the situation in military terms. Just a suggestion.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I don't think those days ever existed. People were debating the subtle semantic differences between those terms since day one. Even if I grant your view of the past, it's pointless to mourn semantic flux, for no two people on the planet have identical sets of semantic bindings. If you ever think you've found two such people, just have them get into a discussion about the fundamentals of their spirituality. You'll soon find that they're not speaking identical languages. This always has been, and ever shall be. It is the way of things.
...but what I think we should fret about more is the Linux community fragmenting into different little sects. The sad thing is that it's already happened, and I can't see any way to reverse it.
Thou shalt not fear diversity, neither shalt thou long for homogeneity. That is the path towards evil. Rather, grant each other status as individuals, and respect the effort required to bridge the linguistic distances, however small, for fragmentation need not imply non-interoperability. That's what protocols are for.
And who will protect our {free|open source} software interests from Big Business then?
No protection is needed, for the world will be a place where the lowest levels of the software infrastructure are free and open, and specifications for protocols are available to all. Proprietary software will live atop of this substrate symbiotically, powerless to upset the common planetary foundations. That which has been given cannot be ungiven. It is destiny.
Rejoice! 8^)
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
>However, I do not want my GPL work to be a free lunch for whoever wants to proprietarize it.
I ask this again and again, and no one ever answers it: why should it bother you so much that someone might make money off of modifications to code you wrote, but it doesn't bother you that someone makes money using that code?
Despite the frequently mis-stated claim, your code is *not* being taken away -- it's still just as free as it ever was. It's the work done by someone else based on it that's not free.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
>The old harmony project list archive included a few threads of the form "You know, I don't think we should hurt troll by continuing harmony, since they're being so cool in letting people use their code."
Maybe so, but Schaller claimed that it was that attitude which killed Harmony, which is a much stronger statment.
As a proprietary software developer, I don't encourage that attitude. If free software folks can do what I do, then I'm not earning my keep for my customers, and I should be doing something else. There's a lot of software that hackers just don't enjoy working on, and that's where us proprietary guys should make our money.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
>Reciprocity. I believe that if they can benefit from using my code, I should benefit from theirs. Seems only fair.
But the person using your code to run (say) a commercial website is also benefiting from your code, and you're not benefiting at all. Why is it only programmers who must share?
(from another message)
>The new proprietary version would effectively
replace the old free version.
If you knew about a free program and a trivially better proprietary version, which would you use? Not to mention the free version would probably be improved to match shortly thereafter if the proprietary one has any ideas worth taking.
Since the invention of the poking stick, everyone has built on someone else's work.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
>Take Cell Phones for example. Initially, they sold the hardware. Now, they give away the hardware, and make all their money in service and support.
Try to get the phone *without* the service and support. It isn't free in any meaningful way. You buy the package. The phone may not have a big pricetag on it, but you're paying for the phone with your payment for the service contract.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Just providing or publishing source code does not make an application Open Source.
Stephan
Most of the people coming into the community today don't care that much about the principles of free software -- they are the "water in the wine" of free software. The people who do hold strong beliefs about free software are becoming increasingly strident, and I suppose that they will eventually get mad and "renounce" Linux, or fork the development tree, or use Hurd, or start something new
I guess the rest of us are destined to become parasites. :-|
TedC
The interesting thing about this is that the GPL covers the code, not the algorithms that are implemented by the code. It wouldn't be that hard (for someone with a _lot_ of time) to study the source for Linux and reimplement the entire kernel without using a single line of GPLed code.
TedC
Free software works.
To use a bad analogy, the GPL freedom is like the first amendment and if you really believe in it you support it even if people are saying things you don't want to hear. Some of these other licenses then try to filter you. You can look at the code but you can't use it, or you have to pay for it if you don't use it in a free way. It's like trying to stop racists from speaking instead of fighting for their right to speak.
That's not to say I haven't enjoyed what ESR has done, he has gotten a lot of press and a lot of attention for the cause but it has also left the community in a split on a lot of issues. Getting an OSS branding has become more important that the freedom and regardless of what you think of RMS, the freedom is the greatest aspect of linux, it's how the community was built and how it all works at it's best.
This is sort of like Zen. If a tree falls in a forest, yet no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
:) Furthermore, I forsee a lot of open source activists working on custom, proprietary/closed software in order to feed themselves (and create free software in their spare time).
Open source software is usually software that appeals to a "community". Custom and niche applications typically don't serve a community, and don't need to be opened up for those purposes.
- You're not really promoting sharing, and if the end users don't "really" care about the code, you're not exactly contributing personal freedom. If you do open it, you're essentially giving into a customer demand. So, open source in a niche scenario becomes less a moral imperative and more an economic one.
- Since custom applications usually come with a HEFTY price tag, it's typically not economically viable to open it up, unless you're charging purely on a consulting basis.
- Furthermore, if you have extremely innovative work within the product, it (gasp! horrors!) might be in your best economic interest to protect that intellectual property.
The *ideal* is to open everything, but the economic reality (in certain circumstances, such as niche software) is such that you can't realistically do this an expect to do this and make the big bucks
There is room in the world for both models.
Sorry if I couldn't be more precice, but really, there is no "answer" to these things. It's all a matter of trade-offs, judgement calls and personal choice.
-Stu
- This guy is way too cynical and condescending. ESR deserves a little better than this flaming.
- His comments about Apple and Troll Tech are rather extreme. Apple's licence has problems - they can and probably will be fixed. Troll's licence does NOT have any "non-free" problems according to RMS. I don't see what the debate is over.
- I thought FUD was a Microsoft tactic. Now I'm hearing FUD about Apple, ESR, Troll Tech, OSI, etc. Isn't it lovely how human nature has turned a community based on sharing into a community based on cynicism and flaming?
- Let's try to be constructive! The world is not going to beat a path to our doorstep forever. We have to stand on our own merits, and cynicism like this is not going to help matters. We have to work *together* with companies if we want to see open source spread further. The name of the game is *increasing personal freedom*, not living in an insular community that fears outsiders.
Let's debate what's wrong with these new licenses, but let's not persecute these companies for dipping their toes in the ocean.
Furthermore, while it conflicts with the free software ideal, it's worthwhile to watch these companies experiment with direct-revenue model licenses that aren't "quite" open source. Sun's "pay if you play" licence is a good example of something that 'might' work. While it doesn't benefit *THIS* community, there might be a whole other community (I.e. commercial Java developers) who will benefit from increased access to Sun's source code. If THAT community wants to accept Sun's restrictions, so be it - it still increases their personal freedom, which is a step in the right direction.
-Stu
I believe there are FAR more programmers doing custom development than writing shrink-wrapped applications. Does anyone have any figures on this ? The software sector is not really that large an industry - any large company has it's own IT departments - mostly doing custom development and support for purely internal use.
I mostly agree with your other points though, I haven't seen convincing arguments that releasing OSS is generally good business for the companies doing so. Companies (like RedHat) can make money selling software that other people have written, but thats not the same as it being profitable to release your own code.
I really don't think we will see a fall in demand for programmers as a result of open source though. As custom tweaks to OSS become possible, companies will want more from their software to make their businesses more efficient and they will pay for custom tweaks - it'll save them money.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Make your code as modular as makes sense. Then release any general modules that might do things better than people have seen before. You don't have to release any code that's military specific that way, just some core components.
Obviously I don't know how your software is built, or what the components are, so I can't say if this really applies to your s/w. I hope it helps though.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
If it can be loaded onto one computer, it can be loaded onto every computer.
Yes, if we GPL'd everything we'd have some problems adjusting, but what choice do we have?
It's like trying to do security through obscurity, or trying to keep marijuana illegal. You can't stop it, so why not turn it's moemntum toyour advantage?
I mean, all of these attempts at government regulation/control are being done by the government of my own dear old US of A, people who brought you the US Patent Office.
What more do I have to say to show that it's a bad idea?
Documentation will always be shoddy when the target audience is the gum-chewing public and we're not. That's why O'Reilly exists.
Software written by someone who needs the tool (as opposed to someone who is just writing it for the money) will generally produce better code.
(I also prefer the former simply because I am a hopeless romantic, but what can you do? That's what hopeless means. ;)
Beyond this, the commercial sector is irrelevant. There was code before the companies thought it was cool (i.e. profitable) and there will be code after they get over it all.
The Internet is here. The GPL is here. The hackers are here. The code is here. What more do we need?
--
Erskin
geek.
Have you posted this before? I could swear I've seen this exact same comment on /.
Maybe it's just lack of sleep...
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
The BSD license certainly restricts future coders much less, and is in that sense "truly free." The GPL doesn't allow reproprietization (if that's a word) of the code and is in that sense is "truly free" since all future users and coders have access to the source of derivative products.
There are honorable and selfish reasons for using either license, I don't personally believe that a coder should be faulted for chosing one or the other.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Companies have a vested interest in not paying for _open_ customizations.
As that would let their competitors use the same customizations for free. Heck, that might also give their competitors insight into what they are doing. They would
be the sole entities paying for something that benefits many people; as companies are and always will be money-driven, it makes far more sense just to let
someone else take the plunge. The same applies to most users, who would rather leech than fund (say) game development. How much of your shareware did you
actually register? How much of your freeware did you send in donations for?
Under the GPL, the company contracting the custom work would have to get the source, but they would be under no obligation to release it unless they released binaries outside their company. Additionally, they could restrict the programmer from releasing the source and binaries if they agreed to that in the contract.
That being said, I don't think opens source is a good model for _all_ commercial programs, but it is certainly appropriate for programs with long product cycles, a large install base and role as a platform for other programs (which may or may not be open source). OS software, browsers, web servers and programming languages are good examples. It should be no suprise that there are viable open source projects with commerciale support in all of these areas.
Most whizz-bang games will never be open source since the product cycle is too short for the original programmers or the even consumers to get much benefit.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Who is going to pay for service for a computer game?
Ask the denizens of Ultima Online. They pay for play. Clearly this model works only with internet multiplayer games with proprietary servers.
I agree that most computer games will never be open source because the product cycle is too short so neither the developer nor the user has much incentive in open source. Game makers could open source old games but there isn't much incentive to do so.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
For now, corporatations with large investments in their source see themselves as having two options:
1. release the code with a restrictive license.
2. don't release the code.
Good point. Companies can do whatever they like. I don't like them coopting the "open source" term for licenses which are not in the spirit of GPL or BSD licenses. This is something that the OSI (or Perens) presumably has some say over, so I am more angry at ESR for occasionally blessing non-open source licenses, than at the companies that release the licenses.
Beyond that, if a company wants the benefits of the feedback that comes from open source, they will do well to please the developers they are getting the service from, or they will get less development. If there is a good reason to release the source, therefore there is a good reason to release it in as developer-acceptable form as possible.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
>> How many employed consultants are there in North America?
I've got no clue. Lots.
>> How many employed programmers are there in North America?
Again, I don't know. Also lots. Sh*t loads, even. However, most of them are in-house programmers. The kind of programming that will *never* be Free Software, because it never get distributed outside the company. Trade secret, as it were. I don't have numbers right now, nor time to look 'em up. This point needs to be made, tho.
The bottom line is that programs that are _distributed_widley_ are best as Free Software. I believe that there would be a net *increase* in the amount of custom programming being done if the apps & OS were Free Software. For that matter, some of us on the "outside" might very well get work on some of those internal projects as they more an more often make use of free software.
Companies are scared right now, because they are reacting emotionally rather than rationally considering the situation. Even if ACME Widget uses Linux and Gnome to build an internal process management system, they don't need to release their modifications to the code, no matter how pervasive, unless and until they distribute the system outside their company. On the other hand, bug fixes and improvments that are of a general nature will likely be released back to the original projects.
Everybody wins.
If they choose not to release the bug fixes back, we are't any worse off than before they chose to use the code. In fact, likely *better* off, since some of those internal programmers (who may or may not have used the Free Software before) are likely to "come into the fold", as it were, during their off hours.
--
"First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
For a moment, think about oxygen (yes, the air etc.) without which we wouldn't exist. And luckily no one has exploited us to cash on this dependency. I remember a (futuristic) movie, in which single person controls the oxygen supply in Mars (when humans have established themselves there ... etc.).
On the same lines, eventually the software would be like oxygen, and we should not have to be controlled by anyone for this dependency. But it is not a binary switch - that we can remove this dependency in one go. Nothing works like that. It is a big continuum, in which many different ideas arise, many people share their views, there will be many differences and so on. It is important to be aware of the final goals. But expecting a switch (especially by indirect mental force) is a wrong idea. Let the continuum be there, and let many different people contribute in different directions. Eventually it is individual decision. The leadership should provide only the material; not the decisions for the 'followers' (i.e. the programmers who would want to contribute to the movement.) It takes many years for one to become mature and understand full implications of the decisions.
My personal view is that ideals are of no use. Ideals only serve as boundaries, and reality doesn't exist at boundary. The fun of life is not in the end, but in the means to an end. How you chart out your path in rough weather is of most importance. ESR is doing precisely this.
The world is really big and wide, and supports everything. But it doesn't support the idea of supporting the same thing for everyone. It allows everyone to select whatever role they want to play and provides the raw materials for that.
-Vinod
Sun's Jini license is not Open Source. AT&T's DjVu license is not Open Source. IBM's Jikes license is not Open Source. I feel that we are being discriminating, and not accepting just any old source-available-with-some-restrictions license.
-russ
Come to my talk at the Trenton Computer Festival in Edison, NJ, on May 1, and I'll tell you how.
-russ
p.s. the trick is to keep something proprietary.
Any large and successful movement has a small group who hijack it for their own obsession. Much as I respect RMS, I feel it's time to let the amazing amount of lawyers the GPL has created go back to working on the Hurd. Leave Linux to the vast majority, who just want a good Unix-like operating system that does the job and allows us to play with the code. Seems the GPL comes with too much baggage and perhaps Linux should be QPL'd/NPL'd or just plain LPL'd.
That's an excellent, very pragmatic, point of view to take, and one which I don't think gets aired on slashdot often enough (or at least not so concisely).
Personally, I'm glad that there have been enough revolutionaries (like RMS) to get the ball rolling and give us the rich base of GPL/LGPL/BSD software that we have today, but we can't all be RMS.
If you're "forced" to work on non-free software in your day job, you shouldn't be ashamed of that. If you have the opportunity to work on free software and still put food on the table, then that's even better. Most of us will probably end up doing some combination of the two, and that's okay too.
Your emphasis on open standards for apps also seems to be mostly forgotten these days. Remember the height of the browser wars when IE and Netscape were dueling it out? While some webmasters at the bleeding edge were upset because one or the other didn't support their favorite cool feature, most people writing basic HTML were happy because the same code worked on both.
This is even more exciting when you realize that, before the Web took off, "intranets" were written with completely proprietary tools like Lotus Notes, that only worked with their proprietary client software. Public "sites" for mass consumption were limited to regional BBS's or online services like AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, or GEnie (those last two historically being almost completely text-based), and again any content more advanced than ASCII was viewable only through proprietary viewers.
HTML changed all of this. Perhaps it's only fitting that XML, a related language, holds so much promise for providing a standard document format for exchanging data among office suites and many other types of applications.
Even though IE and Opera and StarOffice and Applixware may not be open source, as long as the protocols remain open, I don't care so much. If a closed app does a better job for me, I can use it, safe in the knowledge that I can easily switch to an open app if it becomes the better choice, or if my vendor tries to screw me over.
This is freedom of choice, in my opinion a more fundamental freedom than whether or not I get the source code. If a program works well for you, you should have the right to choose it, and if not, you should have the right to choose something else. Commercial software like MS Office is evil only to the extent that it tries to prevent you from exercising your right to choose something else (through proprietary document formats).
Hmm, it's getting late, and I almost can't believe what I've just written. Does anyone agree with this heresy?
--
Jake
Sure, I could get a custom word processor from Billy-Bob's House o' Words. Unfortunately the really cool formatting can't be read by StarOffice--they haven't gotten around to that filter yet, and Billy-Bob isn't interested in filters for other apps.
Arbitrary modification may not be for the best.
>K
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
How dare Christian Schaller tell me what is right for me! If I want to use Netscape with what he considers to be a bad licence that's my business.
And I quote,
"I heard many people saying we should be grateful to these companies for allowing us to see the sourcecode and even fix their bugs. Many even said that it would be very unkind of us to try to make competing products to be released under true free software licenses, when these companies had been so gracious towards us."
How come I have never met anyone like this? I have not once heard anyone take such a pathetic groveling position. Why should I, who isn't as picky about my apps as my OS(no I don't use Mac OS), be grouped in with such a shortsighted person.
If the term "Open Source", comes to mean garbage then people won't use software that brandishes it. They will just ignore it.
Learn from Gorbechev's revolution, if he had said, "I am going to end communism in the USSR.", at the begining of his term he would have been dead by morning! This moderate approach is what ESR is good at. A little finesse, and moderation please.
In case you are wondering where I stand I insist on GPL and LGPL for libraries, for my kernel, shared libraries, common tools, and desktop. I do this to prevent companies from holding me hostage.
I can then in turn use common file types, network standards, and OS malibility to protect myself from unruly apps. I prefer more open licences for apps but if a closed app does a better job, so be it.
Don't try to group me in with a bunch of shortsighted morons who want to do someone else's work with no protection for their efforts, I don't believe in, or approve of your "My way or the high way" approach.
Let people know everyone has a choices. We have enough big brothers.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
I am not trying to make any choices for you, I am just pointing out some possible implications of those choices.
Netscape is a very difficult case, because supporting their development is important in order to make sure MS doesn't get control of the browser market, which in turn would make it easier to do what they outlined in the halloween documents, decomoditize standards. To their defense I can also mention their release of some source code under the GPL.
On the other side, I truly feel that they started the developement I critize in the article, and their own licenses are not without implications.
As for anyone taking the position I mentioned in the article, you should read the Slashdot backlog of earlier license discussions.
My hope for the article was to get people thinking about the implications of this development and make these implications part of their decision process when coding or using software.
Because of the reason I gave about keeping internet standards free I use Netscape myself, but
that is also the only piece of software I use that is covered by such a license.
As mentioned by another replier this view has been expressed on the Harmony list, but I have also seen it in license dicussions here on Slashdot. :-) :-)
(Please don't ask me to find you a link
And thanks for bothering to correct my name in your next posting
As for your suggestion that I back my claims with examples, I will do this if I do any more opinion pieces.
The lesson that seems to be emerging for big companies is that dealing with a figurehead such as ESR is not the same as dealing with the community.
I was talking more along the lines of the people who use the code. it is the masses that move things and their voice counts. It is the people that drive an application and it is their voice that matters. I know alot of hackers will say they produced an application for themselves but if the Linux kernel had not recived such widespread use would it have so many features?
I don't think it will make anyone stop coding. But if we are to get past this point there needs to be a realization that attacking people for their belifes will getus nowhere.
if in the end no one said thank you and only attacked you would you bother releasing your code? would you add features the people who attacked you wanted?
All I'm saying is that we need to stop this bickering it's making us look bad and hurting people. And fellings do exisit even if we try to ignore them.
"We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds
Now we come across the problem of the infamous Thinking about what your going to say next instead of listening paradigm. We all have opinions but why should we tear ourselves apart because they differ? why should we "Fight with ESR" if we don't agree? why should we destroy ourselves with our own arogance?
We are at a crossroad now. Many people proclain FUD as our worst enemy when what it quite simply comes down to it that we our our worst enemy. For great movements usually do not fall from outside pressure but from an internal inability to comprimise built out of arrogence and disrespect for each other.
If we do not stop seeing these ideas we hold as "the one true way" then we are no better then microsoft or any other closed freedomless system. We become the enemy and in so doing create in ourselves everything we stand against. for when there is only one true way then freedom and choice go out the window.
"We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds
The old harmony project list archive included a few threads of the form "You know, I don't think we should hurt troll by continuing harmony, since they're being so cool in letting people use their code." If the old archives are still out there, you can see for yourself.
The sentiment is out there, even if it's not on slashdot.
I disagree that production apps are a good place for proprietary software. When you're using something in production, that's exactly where you want the robustness that comes with open-source/free software, and where the ability to fix bugs yourself matters.
Even if a company doesn't want to fix bugs in-house, it would be a lot easier to hire bug-fixes if you could call any number of consultants to work on the source, than if you had to call the original vendor and wait for the next release.
I guess it boils down to the fundamental difference between RMS and ESR. RMS wants to be able to do whatever he wants with software. ESR wants the source to be visible so that people can see the source, learn from it, and fix bugs. But it doesn't seem that the ability to reuse code in other applications is as important to him.
The article makes a good point in describing a lot of the new open-source programs as very project-oriented. The recent licenses encourage fixes, reading the source, etc, but make certain that it's all directed towards a single project, the project the company is sponsoring. Patch-only releases are great, for instance, if you're working on (eg) a mail application. But you won't be able to use the mail handling code if you'd like to add a "Mail document to" to your word processor.
These licenses will satisfy ESR's pragmatic motivations (making software better), but won't help the common good as much as freer licenses. For example, if Linux and BSD were licensed in a patch-only form, for instance, I don't think there would be as much driver cross-pollination, and both systems would be less for it.
> No, there really needs to be something in
> between GPL and BSD. Something that says that
> the code can be used in proprietary projects
> only if the authors of the code agree to such.
The authors (copyright holders) of code that is released under the GPL are perfectly free to allow proprietary use if they want; it basically amounts to relicenseing the code. It just requires the unanimous agreement of the copyright holders of the affected code -- exactly as in this mythical license you describe.
Scenario:
I write a GPLed app.
Company X approaches me, asking if they could use such-and-so portion of the code (or even the whole thing) in a piece of proprietary software.
I say "yes", and negotiate some special licensing agreement with them that allows them to use the code. That's perfectly legal, because I hold the copyright to the code. With multiple copyright holders, you do need to reach a consensus first, oc.
The copyright holder(s) has/have complete control over the way their software is licensed, no matter what license(s) is/are involved.
DNA just wants to be free...
Fool, code sharing is the primary point of free software. It was why GNU was started. Code sharing takes wheel-reinvention of the programmer's agenda and lets them focus on the task at hand.
If a competitor selling their own tweaked build of your source is a threat to your company, you are doing the wrong thing. Free software and keeping your code out of your competitor's hands just don't mix. Halfway houses like the APSL are just a lazy way get your bugs fixed - the companies that use these are the true freeloaders.
Yes, I would prefer no source to that!
you hit it on the nail. Open source is a great idea for certain apps but the idea of making a movement out of it is crazy. Apache already won the web server space - it didn't need ESR or RMS or any of these guys
---
I think it is too early to tell if all these licenses are bad. I can imagine a situation with too many conflicting licenses, but I can also imagine a situation where all but a few wither away and you have a small set of standard licenses that people use.
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
You wouldn't have Linux, or the "code to play with" if it weren't for the GPL... The GPL only causes "problems" in the face of other more restrictive licenses. That does not mean that the GPL is flawed. A million different "open source" licenses - all of which have special clauses to protect various specific interests - present a very real chance that the whole thing which has been built will be diluted, fractured, and rendered meaningless. What "baggage" does the GPL come with? Compare that to the baggage of the QPL, NPL, APSL, acronym-dujour-PL licenses that are springing forth... I'll take the GPL any day.
Why should they dump their perfectly acceptable license just to use yours? So much for "freedom".
This usually has the effect of causing prices to be low (because the first customer who actually paid $$$ for it might share it for free, which is allowed under the GPL), but I can see a scenario where it doesn't for a limited distribution product (e.g. specialty CAD or simulation software).
Or the development environment for the Playstation 2, for instance. Who cares if the you could can find the compiler and debugger for free (beer-wise), when you have to lay out several grand for the hardware anyway? Even better, bundle the hardware and software, and refuse to sell them seperate. Yeah, you can download our code, but you're going to have to pay for it if you want it to be useful.
... for US. By saying US I mean those of us who are still on the outside watching and learning from what is going on, and who are about to become the people with the oppertunity to fix the mistakes of those who have come before us. I think we can learn what not to do, and what should be done with the whole Open Source/Free Software issue. I don't believe it is rational for us to expect this idea to just work without a growing stage. Things will get better, if WE make them better. If the community really wants this to work, we can make it work... but we may have to be patient.
This is a somewhat valid point. These new licenses can bring freely provided source into a corporate code base and then log the users out. There is however a simple solution: don't use it. If companies want to get money from software you've made better by your bug fixes or new features demand royalties.
My theory works something like this: There is such a thing as IP. Some people like to share, so they copyleft their software. Fine, if you copyleft, I'll copyleft as well, fair is fair (Note, the copy left does acknowledge IP...it is designed to protect the author's IP and how he has choosen to use it, in this case as free software).
If a company wants a one time fee (such as Sun or Troll Tech) then we should expect the same from them. If I fix or add to QT and Troll Tech folds it into their code, I should get a one time fee.
Finally, more limiting licenses should be ignored. If I can use my contributions to your system by the same rules for the overall system I won't play.
To be honest, I think the long term future of Open Source is more long the lines of one time fee to use, but a one time royalty to fold in my changes. It's not quite RMS's dream, but a lot closer than current practice. It allows for ESR's dream of better software, it allows for mainly free source (if I pay my one time fee, I believe my source can be GPLed, correct me if I'm wrong). It allows us to make a living. To be honest, I see it as an evolution of the LGPL.
Well, thats my two cents.
Herb
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythi
>However, I do not want my GPL work to be a free lunch for whoever wants to proprietarize it.
I ask this again and again, and no one ever answers it: why should it bother you so much that someone might make money off of modifications to code you wrote, but it doesn't bother you that someone makes money using that code?
Despite the frequently mis-stated claim, your code is *not* being taken away -- it's still just as free as it ever was. It's the work done by someone else based on it that's not free.
Reciprocity. I believe that if they can benefit from using my code, I should benefit from theirs. Seems only fair.
I miss Meept.
"Schalling" should be "Schaller"
My apologies to the author.
these companies for allowing us to see the sourcecode
and even fix their bugs. Many even said that it would be
very unkind of us to try to make competing products to be
released under true free software licenses, when these
companies had been so gracious towards us. One of the
casualties of this opinion was of course the Harmony
project, which aimed to make a LGPL'ed Qt clone.
Well, now that we have this Open Source OS from Apple I
guess these people feel that we should bury the Linux
project. I mean to follow your logic it is only fair that
Apple is allowed to make money on their system, and
Linux and FreeBSD are a direct threat to that.
I have yet to encounter the above attitude among the posters here on slashdot (arguably the largest single clearinghouse for linux/gnu/free-software/open-source opinion)!
It seems more like Schalling needed a bigger barn to target. Don't just claim that "you've heard" something. Such a claim is best left on alt.folklore.urban. Back it up with examples! Further, don't fabricate such a stupid argument (if indeed, this is fabricated) just to have an easy time countering it, go after the real opposition.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
Therein lies the problem. Or lay the problem,
as it is too late now to do what should
have been done.
The whole ``Open Source'' crusade seems to have
been based upon the premise that ``free software''
would be unpalatable to the business community;
the term ``free software'' was ambiguous, and the
licenses were anti-commercial.
In the case of the term ``free software'', a great
favor would have been done for all by explaining,
``When I say `free software', I mean [...]''; in
other words---educating people.
Nothing good is accomplished through puerile
presumptions like ``The `suits' won't grok `free
software'; we'll call it `Open Source', but
(wink, wink) we know what that means...''.
The discord we see today is, in part, due to this
sort of intellectual dishonesty.
In the case of licenses, a forward thinking
person could easily have seen that this should
have been the aim of the ``Open Source''
movement: a single license.
This fictional über-license would have been
crafted through cooperation between the legal
departments of various concerned and interested
companies, this cooperation is what ``Open
Source'' advocates ought to have facilitated.
Perhaps it is not too late. As you are the
applicant for the mark ``Open Source'', please
correct this oversight. Retain a lawyer to
carefully examine the existing source licenses
for similarities and draft a license that
satifies the free software community and the
business community.
It will probably need several revisions. That
is fine. Debate is good.
If consensus cannot be reached, then we can
come to the conclusion that some already have:
there is free software, and there is proprietary
software...and ne'er the twain shall meet.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
I would urge you to retell this story in full, or at least as much as possible while keeping the parties anonymous. It would be a helpful example.
Although it may be true that no one outside the USAF would want to improve the code, it is almost certain that someone would learn from it; ``one man's trash is another man's treasure'' and such.
If your company's revenue is dependent upon a single application which you maintain, rather than developing new ones, I see where your company would have a problem. Again, more information on your company's situation would be helpful.
The equivalent of ``Intellectual Property'' in the military would of course be ``National Security''.
I would see that as being the only reason why your code could not be freed.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
but I do not think its a problem with free software. Its just a case where free software might make idiotic management worse
It is in the customers best interest for the software industry to change. Yes, the days of billionaire software company executives would be over, but ultimately this is why Free Software is bound to become the standard.
There is noone in the world today who will pay an architect to design a building and would accept not receiving the plans to the building. This is exactly what software is.
There will still be a need for programmers and those that understand the software, just as there is a need for facilities people who understand the buildings systems. There will even still be large software companies. They just won't be Microsoft or Oracle large.
Perhaps the software industry will become more like the law or accounting. Like it or not, software is more akin to these industries than to automobiles or steel. Money will be made by selling service and support, but not in the way that we currently think of it in the software industry, but more like in the law and accounting.
That said, I'd like to formally nominate our very own CT for the job. Think about it, folks. He's been evangelizing (via slashdot) for several years now, and I think it's obvious that he's been VERY successful at building the community. I, for one, was pretty much introduced to Linux and OSS through Slashdot. Anyone else agree here?
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
I've seen the software that support-oriented companies tend to produce... It's horrible, often full of bugs, and not intuitive to use. It's left this way for an obvious reason, to sell more support.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Not everybody is capable of fixing their own bugs, and you will probably end up paying more hiring your own program, because you will have to pay him to come up to speed on the code.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
No, there really needs to be something in between GPL and BSD. Something that says that the code can be used in proprietary projects only if the authors of the code agree to such. This way companies could not leach the way they can with a BSD license, because they will probably be required to give programmers something, and it would be up to the programmers to decide what this would be (not necessarily money).
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
That's fine for a big company like IBM, but my own company is having to do more "service" than we have the resources to do. We fly people all over the place to do installs, but we can't charge what we ought to for it, because if we did, our competitor would trounce us.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Wrong, you misread what I said.
We are losing money on these service calls. We are trying to improve our product so that they will not be necessary. The only reason we get away with it now is because we are a well-funded startup
Open-sourcing our product will not help our company either.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
When I go over the fsf or gnu websites, I see arguments against "Information ownership", and little propaganda bits like "control over your own ideas is really control over other people's lives." which leads me to the impression that the FSF believes that the author has no more rights than any other user of the code, and by extension, cannot re-license the code.
Of course it's possible that the GPL isn't as extreme as the other writings on the GNU sites.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Company X approaches me, asking if they could use such-and-so portion of the code (or even the
whole thing) in a piece of proprietary software.
I say "yes", and negotiate some special licensing agreement with them that allows them to use the code. That's perfectly legal, because I hold the copyright to the code. With multiple copyright holders, you do need to reach a consensus first, oc.
Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind. When I go the the fsf web-site, I see arguments against copyright, and IP, so I assume that the GPL gives the authors no more rights than others
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
"Free software" is a bad term because in English (The FSF's primary language) it usually means "no monetary cost"
Free Software advocates have spent an enormouse amount of time and energy explaining that when they say "free" they mean freedom, not "free of charge".
There are other words in the English language that have the same approximate meaning as free that could have been used, like "liberated software", that I wonder sometimes if the FSF is intentionally trying to cause confusion.
It's interesting, that when I see RMS interviewed by foreign journalists (specifically a certain Japanese interviewer) who speak langauges that have different terms for "no charge" and "freedom", they still make the mistake of translating "free" into "no charge".
I've always thought that "Open source" was a better term because of this.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
The real question is, what do we want? Do we want to have a popular platform that becomes as mainstream as Windows and Mac? Or do we want to forever be marginalized?
I know that there are some in the free software community that would be happy if the Oracles and IBMs of the world would pack up and leave us alone, but there are others who welcome things that commercial companies bring us.
The issue raised in this article is "The licenses that Troll, Apple et al bring us aren't free enough." We should be proud of the fact that we got companies to even start thinking in terms of Open Source.
At the end he says that ESR is leading us down a path of destruction. I don't see it as a path of destruction. I'd rather go down that path than end up in a world where I have to boot into Windows to get any work done.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Economically speaking, it is inevitable that free software will lure users who care about nothing but its price. That's the way supply and demand work: the lower the price of a thing (particularly in relation to other things of the same sort), the greater the demand for it. These people will care not a fig for RMS' principles. They will care about the fact that open source software is cheap and of very high quality even in comparison to its commercial counterparts. Because they won't understand the GPL (even if they've read it), piracy will probably run rampant -- as in cases where GPL'ed software gets taken proprietary without so much as a thank you to the authors. I'd be stunned, frankly, if this hasn't already happened.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
there are three reasons why i don't agree with this article:
...) just would not do it.
1. i don't think that the release of mozilla and a lot of other products are related to the renamer to 'open source'. nor do i believe that the respective licences would not have come into existence would it still be called free software by most people. i believe ESR would rather have them release it under the GPL but those companies (Netscape, Troll,
2. don't fight ESR. oppose what he says. stand up for the term 'free software'. argue. but don't fight. and especially don't fight ESR. don't mistake me: i'm not on ESR's side in the open source - free software dispute. i'm on RMS's. but it's not like this dispute would end if ESR would shut up.
3. i believe that most new projects will still choose the GPL or a BSD licence. the only projects with new licences are 'converted' proprietary products.
bye
schani
i don't think that 'we' are our worst enemies. at least not if you define 'we' as the hacker community. by this i mean not the community of people TALKING about writing code but the community of people WRITING code which i consider myself an (insignificant but what the hell) member.
... just to name a few? i don't. not in a million years.
i for myself don't care about people having nothing better to do than to rant on slashdot about who is right or who is wrong. no matter what they say, it won't make me stop coding. do you think it will stop RMS, ESR, Linus, Alan,
bye
schani
hmmm. how come you think i'm long haired? did a little research, ha? (i am indeed :-))
as for darwin: i will not code for it, for three reasons:
1. it is not free software (or open source software, whatever you happen to call it and whatever ESR happens to say).
2. most of has already been free software for a long time (MACH, BSD).
3. it is technically inferior. believe me. i worked with NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP for quite a while. the design of the kernel is basically this (i'm not making this up):
microkernels (like MACH) have the advantage that they can be used in very modular ways. this is demonstrated by the HURD, for example. the downside is that they are slow. monolithic kernels (like Linux and BSD) have the advantage that they are fast but the disadvantage that they are not as flexible as microkernels.
now what would be better than to combine the two principles? this is what NeXT did and what Apple has bought and is now advancing. what they got is basically this: a slow microkernel (MACH) on the bottom and an inflexible monolithic kernel (BSD) on the top. the result is a system that is slow as hell (compared to linux) and not any bit more flexible than a standard monolithic UNIX. sorry, NeXT Inc., you fucked this one up badly.
bye
schani
what i wanted to say is that hackers basically don't care what free software licence a product is using, as long as it's free software. if they like the product, see a problem with it and feel like it, they contribute. if i were into e.g. Perl, i would not mind contributing, even though i don't like Perl's licence (Artistic) as much as the GPL. i know, i know, it's also GPL'ed. it was all but an example.
:-)
as for your question: i can tell you for sure that i would not have a problem adding a feature someone wanted who dislikes me and even attacks me (verbally), as long as there is a reason for the feature and as long as it is technically sound. this is all i care about. sympathy doesn't play a role. of course, if i had two technically equivalent feature proposals, i would probably tend towards the person not hating me. after all, we're all humans.
as for the bickering: i believe that disputes are not bad but indeed good things as long as they are based on reason and constructivity. comments like '{ESR,RMS} is an asshole' could of course be deleted without harming the free software community in the least.
bye
schani
The parallel with cell phones is Microsoft's future strategy: pay nothing for the product, pay a yearly fee for use, and extra for premium features. You REALLY want software to follow the pricing models of telecommunications companies?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Oh, God forbid that we can't just "cut'n paste all interesting source code from Netscape into our own software projects". God forbid that we don't make Netscape do all the work so we can create our own competitor to reward them for their hard work by putting them out of business. God forbid Sun or Troll Tech collect a one-time royalty if you sell work that builds off of theirs.
Would you rather go back to no source at all? Commercial software houses are neither hobbyists nor humanitarians.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
The reason that free software has gotten so far
is because of the GPL, LGPL, BSD, XConsortium
licenses. Huge projects that work are built
around them. There should be no need for new
licenses. These other licenses just seem to be
capturing the hype of free software and then
warping them to the companies benefit not to the communities.
The last year to eighteen months have seen a huge amount of energy spent on debating software licensing. This debate seems analagous in many ways to the pundits on the Sunday morning talk shows discussing what should be done about the President's indescretions, it smacks of proselytizing.
The license for a piece of software is decided by its author and noone else. If you don't like the license associated with a piece of software, you can either use a competing piece of software that has a more attractive license to you or you can write a competing piece of software and decide what license you want apply to it. Short of that, the rest of it is just so much hot air.
Frank W. Miller
Two reasons:
Thus I don't believe that many, if any, corporations will be adopting the GPL very soon. It might not even be a good thing if they did--in fact, I doubt very much that such a move would be anything but suicide for most software companies in today's corporate environment.
Customers do not want to buy a static peice of software which performs some job, they want to have software which does exactly what they need for their business or hobby or whatever. If you change your business model so that your revenue is made on the customization of the software environment to the user's needs, you no longer need the artificial restriction on use of the software which proprietary licenses are about. In fact, free software is beneficial to your work because you can get into it's guts easily, and you can mix and match peices of code and customize it with ease.
In my experience you will find customers balking at the 5k dollar license fee, but not even thinking twice about the 10k dollar custom development and installation costs. They want a solution which does exactly what they need, no more, no less. Shrink wrap proprietary software simply cannot provide this in a maintanable and cost-effective way.
I agree that presently and in the near future there will be a mix of proprietary and free software, any transition takes time. I also agree that there will always be markets which will have some proprietary elements, usually ones tied to other patented or otherwise secretive business process or technology. But do not under-estimate the force with which proprietary software will be pushed out of popular markets, in particular markets for commodity software services.
craig
So? So does un-free software.
No one's claiming that it doesn't work. Only that there might be problems with it, just like everything else.
- Slarty
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
Unfortunately, not everything NEEDS service.
What about the utilities of the world? There are plenty of nice, simple programs that do something valuable but are fairly intuitive. In many cases, it took a LOT of work to be able to GET them that way, but if they succeed, not much support will be needed... and the programmers will starve.
I agree that support is the way things are going, but it can't work for everything. I strongly believe that if someone puts a lot of time and work into their software, and it serves a useful purpose, then they deserve payment for it. In many cases, that payment may HAVE to come upfront, or not at all.
In a perfect world, everything WOULD be free... but commercialism isn't going anywhere. If Linux becomes the world-dominating success people many people hope it will be, then y'all are just going to have to accept the fact that lots of the better software will eventually be shrink-wrapped, and maybe not OSS at all. Things will change, but not enough to prevent that.
- Slarty
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
No, not tech support. Service. This means more along the lines of implementation -- fitting a product in with other products/needs in a business setting.
Really, how many programmers are coding shrink-wrapped/commercial software? And how many more are working on custom implementations? Would this really change the software market that much? The software will still be needed. Someone will still find ways to make money off of it. It'll just be better software because it's open source.
pooptruck
This is a good point -- this is brought up in The Cathedral and the Bazaarm, point number 14:
pooptruck
There is a glut of ISPs already. The only software-related service industry that I know of that makes real money is consulting, and it's easy enough to demonstrate that this won't keep most of the former programmers off the street:
How many employed consultants are there in North America?
How many employed programmers are there in North America?
Whatever scheme is put in place, you have to end up paying the same number of programmers the same amount of money. Either the programmers themselves have to change jobs (and I'd like to *keep* getting paid to program), or else the service-oriented companies have to make enough money to pay the programmers to keep upgrading the product. I have yet to see a realistic scenerio presented that would do this.
The best scenario that I've seen yet was a suggestion that users wanting applications form user groups and hire programmers to write them. However, I am a bit too cynical to think that this kind of coordination is likely among the masses of users out there. There are a host of auxiliary problems, also, but I've already posted at length on this subject in other articles.
I think that free and/or open software is _good_, but I also think that the proprietary software industry is here to stay. At best, free and open software can keep them honest (still a worthy goal).
Ok, I'm starting to get confused here, which means that I'm probably not interpreting your points correctly.
So that I may better see where you are coming from, please clarify:
I've been reading this to mean tweaking OS or application code to make products better serve a specific company. Due to the closed nature of most software presently in use, this doesn't happen much.
I count sysadmins as sysadmins, unless they do a fair bit of coding for pay. I use "programmer" to mean someone who has a full-time job writing code (or at least primarily writing code).
My impression of the industry is that most programmers (using the definition above) spend their time doing software development for companies that are releasing commercial products, be they the next version of an operating system (large or small), the next version of an application (ditto), drivers, proprietary utilities, or what-have-you.
I could be wrong about this, but I'm having trouble understanding what you are saying about how you view the breakdown of labour in the software industry.
There are very significant problems with this:
Very few of the people that I've seen advocating alternate systems for making money by programming seem to appreciate how _many_ programmers there are. If every company that used software needed constant software firefighting, then I could see there being enough demand, but hopefully our software is better than this. The market for customization is much smaller than the market for software in general (and the latter is the market that you have to find an alternate means of paying for).
As that would let their competitors use the same customizations for free. Heck, that might also give their competitors insight into what they are doing. They would be the sole entities paying for something that benefits many people; as companies are and always will be money-driven, it makes far more sense just to let someone else take the plunge. The same applies to most users, who would rather leech than fund (say) game development. How much of your shareware did you actually register? How much of your freeware did you send in donations for?
I'm not trying to be hostile here; I'm just trying to make sure that all arguments are firmly grounded in reality. There may well be ways to make this fly, but I haven't seen any presented yet.
Really, how many programmers are coding shrink-wrapped/commercial software? And how many more are working on custom implementations?
Very many and relatively few, respectively. Remember, it is applications development that rakes in most of the money for most software houses. By and large, this is done by writing an application, seeing it take off, and writing progressively better versions of it. Customization sometimes occurs but is rare, as there has to be enough of a market to justify putting in the effort to customize as opposed to improving the main product.
I say again - I would be overjoyed if someone could demonstrate an open and/or free software system that employs the same number of programmers for the same wages; it would be a win/win situation for me (I could code and look at other nifty code, and I'd still get paid). However, I have yet to see a system presented that could be implemented in practice (good ideas notwithstanding).
Again, I don't know. Also lots. Sh*t loads, even. However, most of them are in-house programmers. The kind of programming that will *never* be Free Software, because it never get distributed outside the company. Trade secret, as it were.
Close, but not quite.
The vast majority of programmers are working on closed software for products that are intended to be sold. These are applications that their employer hopes to sell, or and operating system that their employer hopes to sell, or drivers that their employer has been contracted to write.
The _source_ for these projects isn't distributed outside of the companies, but the binaries sure are. That's how the companies make money, and why they hired the programmers in the first place. Programmers are _hired_ so that whoever hires them can make money.
So, whatever alternate scheme is proposed must still put money in the pockets of whoever is paying the programmers. At least enough to pay the programmers, and preferably enough to give the parent organization an incentive to start the project in the first place.
Now, not all of these projects are incompatible with open source and free software ideals. Most notably, driver design lends itself to the open paradigm, and relatively mature software products can eventually cross over.
Drivers lend themselves to being open because the person contracting for them is a hardware manufacturer. They don't make money from the sale of the drivers themselves; in fact, they often make them freely available on the web, in the graphics industry at least. If more people have the driver binaries, then more people buy their hardware. They would almost certainly be overjoyed to have the open source and free software communities write drivers for their cards, because it means that the exposure would be even greater and they'd have a larger debugging pool. Dropping a driver request into the free software community might not produce results quickly, but neither does ultimately releasing the source have any drawback. A probable scenario here is that harware developers would contract for the first version of the driver to be written, and then release the source so that they wouldn't have to pay for maintainence. They get a self-sustaining driver and increased hardware sales, and the free software community gets a neat toy to play with.
There are two reasons why this isn't done now. The first is inertia, which is a powerful force in industry. The second is paranoia. Most graphics hardware companies, at least, feel that their competitors Must Not See the register and programming specifications for their cards, as that would give them detailed knowledge of how their cards work and allow their competitors to one-up them. In practice, this isn't true (I speak as a graphics driver developer), but that is the prevailing mode of thought. I hear that Matrox has opened up a bit on this, though.
Releasing mature software products as open source doesn't benefit a company, but neither does it particularly hurt it, and it does provide potential side-benefits.
A "mature" software product in this purpose is one whose core is fundamentally complete, that is only undergoing costmetic changes or feature tweaks. I would argue that word processors and basic image manipulation programs fall into this category, though there are extensions to each that are still vivacious. Browsers probably fall into this category also, though the patchwork additon of new types of content on the 'net prevents this from completely stagnating (java, javascript, active X, and what-have-you are nontrivial to implement but must be supported regardless of their respective usefulness). When a type of product matures, there is a certain common feature set that is expected by users, there are multiple product offerings from many vendors, and the pace of development on all of these offerings has slowed or moved into the creeping featurism stage.
A "mature" class of product will tend to move into the open source / free software circle inevitably, because somebody will write an open / free version of it. The expected feature set is well-defined, and the implementation, while possibly complex, is not intrinsically difficult. A company that is developing such a product could benefit from releasing it to the open / free communities in three ways. Firstly, it gains brownie points by doing a Good Deed and supporting Open Source etc. etc. Secondly, if the product is halfway sane, the company's protocols/formats or a close variant thereof become the de facto standard for any other programs or utilities that manipulate similar data. This gives the company a head start on being able to import/export to these formats from its proprietary applications. Thirdly, this frees up resources within the company to work on more dynamic projects while their competitors are stuck supporting dead-end products.
Now, projects that the parent companies do *not* tend to benefit from releasing are the living, non-mature products that are still in the process of evolving into their final forms. If a company is selling such a product, then it believes that its product is presently the best on the market - it implements some essential function that its competitors don't, yet. Further, the company believes that it can continue to develop and extend its product in useful directions, and reap substantial benefits from doing so. If the company made the software free / open at this point, it would lose any advantage that it had over its competitors and most likely lose out on the (very substantial) direct revenue made from selling the product. It could try to make up the difference through consulting or tech support, but the returns from that would pale in comparison to those from development and sale of the product. Further, any development that it did from that point on would benefit not only it, but its competitors as well. There would be no advantage to working on it.
So, companies tend to keep major works-in-progress to themselves, and I doubt that this will change even if they do embrace open and/or free ideals. The silver lining is tha
Again, I don't know. Also lots. Sh*t loads, even. However, most of them are in-house programmers. The kind of programming that will *never* be Free Software, because it never get distributed outside the company. Trade secret, as it were.
Close, but not quite.
The vast majority of programmers are working on closed software for products that are intended to be sold. These are applications that their employer hopes to sell, or and operating system that their employer hopes to sell, or drivers that their employer has been contracted to write.
The _source_ for these projects isn't distributed outside of the companies, but the binaries sure are. That's how the companies make money, and why they hired the programmers in the first place. Programmers are _hired_ so that whoever hires them can make money.
So, whatever alternate scheme is proposed must still put money in the pockets of whoever is paying the programmers. At least enough to pay the programmers, and preferably enough to give the parent organization an incentive to start the project in the first place.
Now, not all of these projects are incompatible with open source and free software ideals. Most notably, driver design lends itself to the open paradigm, and relatively mature software products can eventually cross over.
Drivers lend themselves to being open because the person contracting for them is a hardware manufacturer. They don't make money from the sale of the drivers themselves; in fact, they often make them freely available on the web, in the graphics industry at least. If more people have the driver binaries, then more people buy their hardware. They would almost certainly be overjoyed to have the open source and free software communities write drivers for their cards, because it means that the exposure would be even greater and they'd have a larger debugging pool. Dropping a driver request into the free software community might not produce results quickly, but neither does ultimately releasing the source have any drawback. A probable scenario here is that harware developers would contract for the first version of the driver to be written, and then release the source so that they wouldn't have to pay for maintainence. They get a self-sustaining driver and increased hardware sales, and the free software community gets a neat toy to play with.
There are two reasons why this isn't done now. The first is inertia, which is a powerful force in industry. The second is paranoia. Most graphics hardware companies, at least, feel that their competitors Must Not See the register and programming specifications for their cards, as that would give them detailed knowledge of how their cards work and allow their competitors to one-up them. In practice, this isn't true (I speak as a graphics driver developer), but that is the prevailing mode of thought. I hear that Matrox has opened up a bit on this, though.
Releasing mature software products as open source doesn't benefit a company, but neither does it particularly hurt it, and it does provide potential side-benefits.
A "mature" software product in this purpose is one whose core is fundamentally complete, that is only undergoing costmetic changes or feature tweaks. I would argue that word processors and basic image manipulation programs fall into this category, though there are extensions to each that are still vivacious. Browsers probably fall into this category also, though the patchwork additon of new types of content on the 'net prevents this from completely stagnating (java, javascript, active X, and what-have-you are nontrivial to implement but must be supported regardless of their respective usefulness). When a type of product matures, there is a certain common feature set that is expected by users, there are multiple product offerings from many vendors, and the pace of development on all of these offerings has slowed or moved into the creeping featurism stage.
A "mature" class of product will tend to move into the open source / free software circle inevitably, because somebody will write an open / free version of it. The expected feature set is well-defined, and the implementation, while possibly complex, is not intrinsically difficult. A company that is developing such a product could benefit from releasing it to the open / free communities in three ways. Firstly, it gains brownie points by doing a Good Deed and supporting Open Source etc. etc. Secondly, if the product is halfway sane, the company's protocols/formats or a close variant thereof become the de facto standard for any other programs or utilities that manipulate similar data. This gives the company a head start on being able to import/export to these formats from its proprietary applications. Thirdly, this frees up resources within the company to work on more dynamic projects while their competitors are stuck supporting dead-end products.
The disadvantage is that the company must have new, living projects already in progress. If it doesn't, then either it releases the source and dies quickly, or holds on to it and sinks sedately into the mire. Either way it's out of luck.
Now, projects that the parent companies do *not* tend to benefit from releasing are the living, non-mature products that are still in the process of evolving into their final forms. If a company is selling such a product, then it believes that its product is presently the best on the market - it implements some essential function that its competitors don't, yet. Further, the company believes that it can continue to develop and extend its product in useful directions, and reap substantial benefits from doing so. If the company made the software free / open at this point, it would lose any advantage that it had over its competitors and most likely lose out on the (very substantial) direct revenue made from selling the product. It could try to make up the difference through consulting or tech support, but the returns from that would pale in comparison to those from development and sale of the product. Further, any development that it did from that point on would benefit not only it, but its competitors as well. There would be no advantage to working on it.
So, companies tend to keep major works-in-progress to themselves, and I doubt that this will change even if they do embrace open and/or free ideals. The silver lining is that if they do embrace the ideals to the extent that they can, we may have nifty source to play with when the products finally mature.
If it takes too long, we develop our own versions in the meantime.
(/essay)
How about "Speaker for the Source" (ala Card's Speakers for the Dead)?
--
The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
And what's cheaper still is to have general motors produce a production line version of cars with sunroofs.
This argument has more to do with the difference of business models between (say) Sun and Microsoft than it does with Linux
Sun will charge you $50 for a GUI PPP program or $10,000 for their application server.
Microsoft makes a crappier PPP program and application server, but their both free with the OS licence.
The Linux "market" (I don't mean students and hackers!)involves waiting around until someone writes a GUI PPP program or application server, because if you really, really needed it you'd probably buy it off the shelf before you'd write it yourself.
If Linux takes hold, the consulting possibilties are huge to fill in these missing pieces. And it will probably be mostly commercial. (Take a look at the price of a NT disk quota package. It's pretty high, but it hasn't stopped many from installing NT. Again, if a company needs it, they'll pay for it. Human Nature will take care of the rest.)
But all of this Linux consulting is all essentially lost consulting buisness for the NT/Novell/Unix shops. At one time, a good chunk of EDS (which is #1 system consulting/outsourcing, I think) was Certified Novell. Now they are all Certified Microsoft. You don't think they would quickly get Certified RedHat, if the market started to shift?
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Right. Companies don't like paying for "service and support". For every $500 NT licence that a company buys, it spends thousands of dollars supporting that NT box.
Linux advocates may scoff at the "supportablity" of NT, but one of the reasons that NT has taken over the workgroup server market its that it is supposedly much cheaper to support than Novell or Unix.
Linux has solved the $500 software licence problem, but I'm not sure they've solved the $50,000 "service and support" issue. People want "easier" and "cheaper", in most cases much more than they want "better".
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I fully agree with you that NT is probably not less expensive to own than Novell or Unix. (Hence "supposedly"), and as someone whose a production unix/novell/microsoft admin, I'm aware of the pluses/minues of each platform, aside from the marketing issues.
However, you can go get numerous studies telling you that NT is cheaper to support than either Novell or Unix, by a significant amount.
Can anyone point to a study that indicates supporting Linux is cheaper than supporting NT? Maybe for a web server or a DNS server, but how about for a complex environment (file and print, mail, database) across multiple sites? Again, I'm not sure - I'd like to see some data?
Do you really think a Unix administrator is the same price as an NT administrator with similar skills? Call your local temp agency and find out. I have -- Unix admins are 2x the rate of NT admins.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
some will say that licensing agreements are tricky.. they are not. Some say that O.S. undermines the technical advancements that companies can make.. They lie. and then others will say that only hackers and sociopaths want open source.. This is true! Us sociopaths, the ones that learned how a toaster worked by taking one apart, learned how to repair ourt cars by digging in, and learn about everything by looking at items that are already built are sociopaths.. we refuse to become the mindless drones the rich men of this world want us to be.. why?? someone with an idea or an opinion is dangerous... someone with knowlege is even more dangerous and must be controlled! Open source is the best thing to EVER happen to computers in the past 40 years, and anyone that would disagree with that statement can have their opinion... but I'll be jumping up and down in a few years pointing my finger saying "I TOLD YOU SO!!!!"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I too thought that Open Source would be a wonderful thing. I had even hoped to use the "Open Source" title as part of a business automation project I'm working on(to appeal to the PHBs that might have read about Open Source in the mags). But now I'm no longer certain that being associated with "Open Source" is a good thing.
It seems that the recent release of numerous "Open Source" licenses is thining out the number of programmers available to create actual free code. These companies get free labor and debugging of their code while they continue to pay full time people to improve their code base. They get all the benifits of free source development as well as the rapid development provided by paid full time programmers. It seems that over time they'll have a product that can eclipse any truly free, volunteer product. And since these licenses contain "we own it" and "you must stop using it when we say so" clauses, they can then release a new version with the new features as closed source while making no new open source versions available. They could then legaly force users to upgrade to the new version or discontinue use of the free version. All the free development, new innovations, and debuging provided by the our community would not only be lost but could be patened by the company as well (it's their code now), preventing the same programmers that provided the original code from reimplimenting it in a free version. Their greatly enhanced (via free labor) programs coupled with a marketing department and ad budget could capture mindshare from corporate buyers thus hurting the chances of a new free projects from taking hold.
I'd like to think I'm being paranoid, but I've seen too many cases of corporate greed screwing people over for the almighty dollar.
I think that the basic problem is that the Open Source community does not recognise that there are several different classes of software. The Open Source paradigm works very well on types of application that, when I where a lad, were called 'Horizontal Market' applications, i.e. application s that are applicable to a wide range of users but are general purpose and not targetted at a particular group of users. Examples of this kind of software are Operating Systems, Spreadsheets, WP, networking tools, web servers etc.
The other kind of software that the Open Source paradigm does not serve well are 'Vertical Market' applications, such as Fishery Management applications, Online Trading systems and aircraft flight control systems.
The hoardes of unemployed programmers pushed out of their jobs by Open Source software will simply be absorbed into IT departments and software houses developing custom Vertical Applications for clients, who want to keep their competative edge by having applications that only THEY use, and will be able to pay for it because they no longer have the cost of paying for and propping up and expensive and unreliable IT infrastructure based on proprietary operating systems.
You see, there are whole classes of software for which there will be no point in open sourcing.
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
Service is bad for the computer industry.
Imagine this situation...
Why bother making things easy to use/understand if the only way you make money is from the clueless people??
If Linux wasn't so damned hard to install, Red Hat wouldn't have much of a business. Oh sure companies would still have service contracts and stuff, but isn't the goal of this entire industry to make computing so easy that we no longer even think about it? Isn't that where all this is heading? Why bother making new window managers for X. Why not just shut down Be, Inc. Eliminate the MacOS. If service is how money is going to be made, then ease of use will simply be ignored. Oh sure, we could all just be assholes and say "Hey, you don't know how to recompile your kernel? Move back into your cave". That's not how it should be. The entire WORLD does NOT need to be geeks/nerds.
It's very simple, really. If it's all about service, than you can forget about ease of use. You can forget about "general" OSes. You can forget about the general population. I'm sure that's what some of you would LIKE to see. But then you can forget about the entire computer industry since the folks that spend the money are the folks that don't have a clue. And if things get too hard, support gets too expensive, and the people in charge get too powerful (and inflated egos), they will just stop using it. As unlikly as that may sound, the world did work before computers and there's no reason it won't again.
Get real.
Service-only is NOT going to work for anything but Linux. And the only reason it works for Linux is because it's still too damned hard for the non-computer/geek person. Once some of the window managers, etc. get farther along, and someone spends the time to make a solid, small, super-easy distribution, service isn't going to matter as much.
And, just in case someone thinks I'm a troll or something, here's my play toys:
At home:
2 Linux boxes
1 Linux/Windows 98/BeOS box
1 Windows 95 box
At Work:
1 Windows 95 box
1 Linux box
(and Sun servers)
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
The goal of free software is to give everyone as much freedom as possible. By opening the source, you're not promoting freedom in this case but rather hindering it. It's a crappy situation, from the sound of it, but the way that you described it the best thing that you can do is to keep the source closed and serve the people as much as possible. You might want to make it clear to those who are using it that if anyone has the skill, you'll help them debug/improve the software, etc. This way the freedom's there but you're not screwing anyone over. Of course, I don't know how well unoficial stuff goes over with the military. Anyhow, do what's in the best interests of everyone involved. If you really are in a weird situation of keeping the source closed being best for your customers, then do it. After all, the idea of all this is to make the world a better place, not to lose sight of our goals and screw people over for a "cause".
In every situation, we should evaluate what does the most good for everyone (as individuals whenever possible). It just happens that in most cases this is done by Free Software/Open Source. The world is a quirky place, and we have to deal with the situations that we have. We have to shape the world to our ideals, not to our means.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Because when someone makes money off of my code, it's still my project. When someone reuses my code, it's no longer my project. Now, I don't mind that if it's a free project, they're working for the same goals that I am, and I can get anything good that they did.
I object to someone working with goals opposite those of mine getting a free lunch by exploiting my code. I don't want to work against myself. Besides, if someone can make money off of my free code, they've earned it. They've done something of real value to the people that have purchased it, and no harm, because they had to leave the freedom to the person that they made money off of.
On the other hand, if someone takes my products, adds some feature to it, and doesn't release source, they've given something of value, but they've also taken something of value. And frankly, I'm not that interested in helping people willing to trade freedom for other gain.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against proprietary software in the imediate practical sense. I'd like it to go away, but life is life. Just don't expect me to help people make proprietary software.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
I don't think that the Linux community is fragmenting, not really. I think that what you're seeing is slashdot showing factionalism. When you get down to it, KDE and Gnome are working on being interoperable. Portions of Linux are being incorporated into HURD. People still contribute to egcs. I still can email the Linux heretic developer and try to get the thing to work on Linux/Alpha, and he emails me back and we try it. The Linux community is working together. In so far as we enter into it (i.e. code, write documentation, make pretty pictures, write themes, etc.), we aren't really fragmented. It's mostly the backseat drivers who are fragmented, which is natural. Everyone thinks that things should be done their own way, it's the people who actually do things that matter. And ESR and RMS do have very similar goals, at least compatable ones. They want the same thing, though they differ a bit on how to get it. Linus is still working on Linux, Raster is still working on imlib, Migael +250 are still working on Gnome, work on KDE continues, and even the harmony project has been restarted.
The world isn't falling to peices.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
That's EXACTLY what they want, and it's a business model most cable TV companies have followed for years. You get the cable box for next to nothing, but you paypaypay every month for channels, and even more for movie channels. DIVX is the same model; give away the disc, and charge for viewing.
The desire as more homes/businesses become wired for instant internet access is more than likely a pay-per-use model; get the HW for next to nothing, and charge for each usage of whatever it is you're using. It's a compelling business model because it allows for lots of consumer choice and low entry costs.
You want to edit a photo, but a photo-editing program costs several hundred dollars. You're not in the photo-editing business and you're not planning on editing more than a couple of photos. Therefore, you have a huge incentive to pirate that software -- why should you pay hundreds of dollars for something you might use a couple of times? Now the photo editing company has not only lost a sale, but you've also stolen a copy of that program.
If that program was available as a pay-per-use program, I think the average person might be inclined to spend $10 to buy 48 hours of use without even flinching. Does PhotoEdit, Inc make more money selling 2 copies at $299, or 100 uses at $10 per? It might even make sense for large companies -- instead of buying N user licenses, they buy bulk subscriptions -- everyone in the company can use it.
Something like this might even alleviate needless feature creep -- companies would be less inclined to create version upon version, since you're not trying to get someone to BUY it, just USE it. And since it's entirely painless to switch between versions or vendors use-to-use, you'd end up with a situation where vendors would work to attract users (ie, fix bugs, add useful features).
Any time you have an economic situation where the cost to the consumer to enter and exit the market without making a major financial commitment, the consumer usually wins. Of course, the danger is that we'd get nickled-and-dimed to death. Checking your email would cost $3.95, and surfing the web for an hour would be $5.95 (off-peak).
> The reason is simple. People are paid to do it,
> and impelment evry feature (not just about
> 70%-90% of them), even if they don't feel like
> it. They are also paid to provide
> adequate documentation about it. Therefore, it
> more usable to the "naive" user. They can't just
> go to they're bosses and say "I don't feel like
> it".
Sorry dude, but in my experience most of the
documentation I've gotten in my commerical
software packages has been pretty crummy.
Oh, when you pay an independent consulting
firm to develop custom made software, *then*
you have some control over how the company
handles things like Testing Strategies and
Documentation.
But for the shrinkwrapped stuff on the
shelves of CompUSA, the documentation is
dumbed-down and next to useless for anything
real.
In general, I've found better, more up-to-date
and thorough documentation with Free Software
Projects than with Commercial Distributions.
arvind rulez
You miss the point. I'm not longing for the fact of them meaning the same thing or not. I'm longing for the day in which they did...because that was a day that was a bit less, shall we say, turbulent than this one.
Thou shalt not fear diversity, neither shalt thou long for homogeneity.
I don't want either diversity or homogeneity for its own sake. I'm certainly not against people having their own diverse points of view in various Linux matters. It's when they try to impose them on other people, such as Stallman's continued "correction" of people who don't use the term "GNU/Linux," that leads to wailing and gnashing of teeth.
It's a long-known tactical axiom that you can't fight a war on two fronts for very long if you want to win either one. All this infighting among people who continue to act like little more than spoiled children to each other is certainly not helping Linux's case...and it is more than likely hurting it.
No protection is needed, for the world will be a place [...]
I wish I shared your optimism, as that is a world I would very much like to live in. But if there's one thing history has taught me, it's never underestimate the power of greed.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
A year ago, I was thoroughly amazed at what was happening. With Netscape going open source, I thought, we had some really great things to look forward to.
Funny, but that's about how that fellow began his article--and it's honestly the way I felt, too. It felt almost like the dawn of a new era. Sadly, I'm not so optimistic now, but the reason is diametrically opposed to the article's diatribe.
Whatever happened to the days when "Free" and "Open Source" were used interchangeably to mean the same thing? Whatever happened to the days when, if a piece of software was to be open source, it went without saying that it would be either BSDL or GPL, not something somebody took out of a "Software License Mad-Libs" book and filled in some blanks their own way? Everybody has his own license...are they compatible? And which is compatible with which?
Aiiigh. People have been worried about Linux fragmenting into myriad distributions...but what I think we should fret about more is the Linux community fragmenting into different little sects. The sad thing is that it's already happened, and I can't see any way to reverse it. The spotlight has been shown on people who, heretofore, behaved like perfectly rational (if eccentric) human beings, and all their prejudices, beliefs, failings have all been amplified and heightened as they've begun to play to that spotlight. Stallman, Perens, Raymond...who can honestly accuse Raymond of playing more to the media than they? Stallman with his loud and boisterous "GNU/Linux" assertions (correcting every reporter at a press conference, for crying out loud!), Perens with his split from OSI and his Open Letters sent this way and that... While I think all three (and the others who've been doing similar things) honestly believe they're doing what's best for the community, they're pulling their respective fragments of the community in different directions, and we'll end up, by the time it's over, with several much-smaller communities, who can't even agree on something as basic as what the operating system they advocate should be called!
And who will protect our {free|open source} software interests from Big Business then? If we can't present a unified front, they'll roll right over us like a steamroller with the Microsoft logo emblazoned on the side.
Sadly, achieving unity is not so easy as simply calling for it. I fear it may already be too late. When it's all over, I'll mourn the loss of a once-great movement to many little not-so-great movements, and continue on with my life.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I have seen a lot of suggestions lately that Free/Open/(whatever) source developers can get their fundings from writing books or by giving support or similar variations on the theme of an individual taking control of his own destiny.
This is all very fine but maybe this is not what will actually happen to the open/free community
[taking a first look at the tarot deck
Mmm
This very scenario will soon, if not already, be discussed at various corporations strategic meetings, and the final outcome will be: Relying on a single supplier of vital software is (to say the least) taking a huge risk.
The solution: Open up a new path by funding the open/free source movement. This can be in the form of inhouse developement, perhaps in collaboration with other corporations, or it could be by picking out individual hackers and encourage them to continue their work (but don't get overly optimistic 'till you see the check). The goal will be to build a common interface to computing, much in the same way as we have public roads and libraries
Why do I believe this?
Because the networking (and the OS) has become the very most important part of modern infrastructure. We can survive buried in snow and with roads flushed away by heavy rainstorms, but when the network goes down: The cashflow stops!
This is what the PHBs of the world fear the most and they will do their best to avoid ending up in an unfortunate position.
So, talk to your workmates, spread some lightweight fud, enlighten a handful of influential people and the money will come
[taking a second look at the tarot deck]
Mmm
send + more == money?
The reason that free software has gotten so far is because of the GPL, LGPL, BSD, XConsortium licenses
... they sponge off their rich parents and don't face the same obstacles and pressures that your average company does.
GPL - funded by MIT
BSD - funded by UC Berkley
XConsortium - funded by the commercial members of the X consortium.
When I look at the above I am hard pressed to conclude that free software is anything other than a huge welfare project that refuses to show gratitude to the commercial interests that spawned it. Talk about the biting the hand that feeds you. Free software has gotten so far for the same reason that rich, spoiled kids like Bill Gates get so far
Maybe we should call it MIT/GNU emacs?
Who is going to pay for service for a computer game? Who is going to pay for service for a stupid little utility like WinAmp? Look at how few people register for shareware. I'd imagine even fewer would get "service contracts" for those apps. Or what about "finished" apps? Something like, say, cp? And what would the transaction cost of a service contract compared to the service contract itself be like?
When people start talking about using service to pay salaries I can't help but wonder why they never actually do anything but wave it around like a banner.
But then everyone else in your field has the same systems. So long competitive advantage. Sure, you can find other areas to get a competitive advantage but why would you throw away one complete area? And if you can't get a competitive advantage from software then why should I, as a CEO, bother to spend anything other than the bare minimum at maintaining it?
It may be easier to hire bug-fixes but then you just threw away all of that economy of scale that shrink wrapped used to have. And you have to give your competitors (who didn't pay for it) that same bug-fix.
Either it should be GPL, BERKLEY, or keep it proprietary. Too many licenses will cause confusion, headache, and unecessary litigation. If you can't afford to release under one of the two above mentioned Licenses, then keep it to yourself. Anyhow, that's my 2cents worth.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
I'm tempted to blame this on the degenerate state of society, the schools, the media, etc., but I'm not sure if past generations were any better. Maybe it's just human nature to reduce ideologies to personalities. That's what you get for being a social animal.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
umm, no. Not really. We should just accept that not all software is going to be licensed by something like the GPL. It would be nice, but unrealistic.
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
For now, corporatations with large investments in their source see themselves as having two options:
1. release the code with a restrictive license.
2. don't release the code.
The primary point of these corporations is to make money and truly free, unencumbered software hasn't been around long enough to conclude that it can be part of a viable, profit-maximising business model. Imagine if Microsoft GPL's Windows and a magazine started distributing it for free with every issue. I think it's safe to say that many shareholders would be very upset.
I like the idea of free software. From the user's standpoint it's a great thing, period. Maybe not, though, to the developer who wants to increase revenue next quarter.
Open source is the next best thing. It's much better than having the source code locked up and unavailable. Why would one want open source? To look at and evaluate the program, to check for bugs, and to customize the software. Open source software fulfills these needs which is great for the vast majority of users.
I'd love to see Mathematica or Quake III(which will be eventually, so I hear) go GPL, but it's just not going to happen, for potentially good reasons. We (most of us) live in a capitalist society and companies are just not going to put their crown jewls in the public domain, in both perception and reality. Open Source is much better then no source at all.
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
Right. Companies don't like paying for "service and support".
You sure could fool me on that one. I've seen companies pay through the nose for support for software they didn't even need support for. Companies are paranoid to the point they will pay whatever cost just to try to cover their @$$es. They will pay through the nose for support that is nearly worthless, just to have an 800 number they can shift any blame to.
For every $500 NT licence that a company buys, it spends thousands of dollars supporting that NT box.
Then there are all the client licenses they need to buy, and all the add-on software they need. The NT license is cheaper than the add-on software. The client licenses quickly add up to more than the initial NT license.
Linux advocates may scoff at the "supportablity" of NT, but one of the reasons that NT has taken over the workgroup server market its that it is supposedly much cheaper to support than Novell or Unix.
Supposedly is the key word here. Its a huge marketing lie. NT is more expensive to support than Novell or *NIX. NT has taken over its share of the workgroup server market because of marketing, marketing, marketing.
Linux has solved the $500 software licence problem, but I'm not sure they've solved the $50,000 "service and support" issue.
From my experience NT is more expensive to support because it just plain breaks down more often. Not to mention that you seem to need three to five times the number of NT servers to replace Novell for file/print services or *NIX for any purpose. It also takes more administrators for a given number of NT servers than Novell or *NIX because contrary to popular belief forcing a GUI for every sysadmin change slows the process down, and for the most part remote administration of NT is still not quite there. Microsoft's marketing tells people that they don't need professional administrators for NT, which isn't true. And when people figure out that they do need full time administrators, then they are told they can hire any bozo off the street and send him to a little training and pay them $25,000 a year. The truth is that you can't get by with that, and skilled NT administrators (the ones who can make it run even close to reliably) are just as expensive as *NIX administrators.
People want "easier" and "cheaper", in most cases much more than they want "better".
Too many people are penny wise and pound foolish. They don't look at the big picture when determining what is "cheaper". Too often people confuse "cheaper" with "less expensive" - there is a big difference. Even people who should know better are often fooled by things that seem easier at the cosmetic level while they are more complex (in the case of NT, unnecessarily so) underneath.
However, you can go get numerous studies telling you that NT is cheaper to support than either Novell or Unix, by a significant amount.
I haven't seen one yet that I couldn't easily find outright bias and/or gross inaccuracies in. Some of them looked like they were directly paid for by Microsoft.
Can anyone point to a study that indicates supporting Linux is cheaper than supporting NT? Maybe for a web server or a DNS server, but how about for a complex environment (file and print, mail, database) across multiple sites? Again, I'm not sure - I'd like to see some data?
You might read the Kirch paper and the links from it. Because the big consulting companies have only recently noticed Linux's existance, they haven't done much serious research. What I have seen them do is often biased or otherwise flawed due to their lack of knowledge and/or understanding of Linux and *nix in general. My experience is that Linux in general has similar support issues to most commercial *nixes, and that they generally require considerably less support per box and less boxes for the same work than NT. For file and print I know from experience that *nix with Samba works better and is more reliable than NT. For email, its no comparison, especially for large installations. I know people who support 3000 POP/IMAP mail clients on a single processor Sparc 10 Model 50 with 128M of RAM and a few quad 18G drive packs attached. NT with Exchange server struggles to handle 300 to 500 Outlook users on a Quad Xeon box with 256M of RAM (I've seen it bog down to the point where delivery of email is delayed by hours). Furthermore Exhange server isn't at all reliable. It crashes and loses data occasionally, and requires almost weekly reboots. About the only good thing you can say about it is that it is a significant improvement over its predecessor MS-Mail.
I'd like to see some reasonable and unbiased studies done, but given the monetary motivations and conflicts of interest with most of the big consulting companies, I am not holding my breath.
Do you really think a Unix administrator is the same price as an NT administrator with similar skills? Call your local temp agency and find out. I have -- Unix admins are 2x the rate of NT admins.
I don't know about temp agencies being a good source. I know for permanent employment, similarly skilled and experienced *nix and NT administrators are similarly priced, at least around here. I'd be afraid that with temp agencies you might not be getting what you are paying for with NT administrators. There are a lot of pretenders and wannabes in the NT world. It seems like any kid with 2 weeks of training class under their belt is being flogged off by headhunters as an NT administrator. It is much harder to fake *nix experience.
The problem with these new OSS licenses is that they aren't truly free...an indisputable point except to the raging-hormone-infested teeny boppers among us. These companies have only bitten on half of the OSS/FSF argument: software should be free because it is more reliable that way. The ugly part (and the part RMS gets chewed on for) is that software should be free because it is good for users.
The problem is that we have presented no alternative economic model for companies who truly want the advantages of the bazaar--but still have bills to pay. Unfortunately, I see no panacea for the problem, although there are certainly options.
Selling expertise is the most viable. Yes, it is far more costly than simply selling software, because expertise comes from people (us). On the other hand, we are fairly rare in the grand scheme of things, so we become more valuable to companies, and to the software industry as a whole in this scenario--a Very Good Thing IMO, and certainly worth relinquishing this antiquated and dubious concept of "intellectual rights" on software.
This model is generally how the business software industry works right now. Yes, there are license fees and maintenance costs at the moment, but the vast majority of revenue is in consulting services to clients. Source code often comes with the licensing fee (sometimes without additional cost) to allow the client to make modifications on site. In other cases, source code is placed on site to increase responsiveness to problems, as the software company can make quick fixes right on site. This is almost a necessity for production systems and the argument holds completely true for the operating systems these production environments run on. I can't even count the number of times that an OS bug brought down a production server and the answer was a "workaround". How much cleaner (and better for the customer) if the fix could be applied directly and the workaround avoided.
The end result? Companies selling software as their main business model would make a lot less money and possibly go under (the Symantec's of the world). Others would change their business model and move toward the consulting model--possibly making a lot less money, but surviving (the Microsoft's of the world). Some would concentrate on the hardware business and forego the software side completely (ala Sun). In any event, those employees who become extraneous at the software companies would most likely find employment at a business using his former software product where his expertise would be invaluable to daily operations. In the big picture, more of the software money would be going to us rather than to the MBA grads running these software companies. Also a Very Good Thing, IMO.
ESR saw that companies weren't going to bite off both ends, and thus tried the approach of selling the quality side without pointing out the ugly corollary--perhaps hoping it would sneak in on the coattails. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked, and we have companies trying to use the bazaar to pay for the cathedral. It isn't going to work that way. In fact, it's going to fail horribly with all the naysayers pointing their fingers and laughing at us.
We have to sell both points, gentlemen, and we have to provide alternative economic models. Until we do, we won't get what we really want (Free software), and users won't get what they need (reliable software).
The problem with these new OSS licenses is that they aren't truly free...an indisputable point except to the raging-hormone-infested teeny boppers among us. These companies have only bitten on half of the OSS/FSF argument: software should be free because it is more reliable that way. The ugly part (and the part RMS gets chewed on for) is that software should be free because it is good for users.
The problem is that we have presented no alternative economic model for companies who truly want the advantages of the bazaar--but still have bills to pay. Unfortunately, I see no panacea for the problem, although there are certainly options.
Selling expertise is the most viable. Yes, it is far more costly than simply selling software, because expertise comes from people (us). On the other hand, we are fairly rare in the grand scheme of things, so we become more valuable to companies, and to the software industry as a whole in this scenario--a Very Good Thing IMO, and certainly worth relinquishing this antiquated and dubious concept of "intellectual rights" on software.
This model is generally how the business software industry works right now. Yes, there are license fees and maintenance costs at the moment, but the vast majority of revenue is in consulting services to clients. Source code often comes with the licensing fee (sometimes without additional cost) to allow the client to make modifications on site. In other cases, source code is placed on site to increase responsiveness to problems, as the software company can make quick fixes right on site. This is almost a necessity for production systems and the argument holds completely true for the operating systems these production environments run on. I can't even count the number of times that an OS bug brought down a production server and the answer was a "workaround". How much cleaner (and better for the customer) if the fix could be applied directly and the workaround avoided.
The end result? Companies selling software as their main business model would make a lot less money and possibly go under (the Symantec's of the world). Others would change their business model and move toward the consulting model--possibly making a lot less money, but surviving (the Microsoft's of the world). Some would concentrate on the hardware business and forego the software side completely (ala Sun). In any event, those employees who become extraneous at the software companies would most likely find employment at a business using his former software product where his expertise would be invaluable to daily operations. In the big picture, more of the software money would be going to us rather than to the MBA grads running these software companies. Also a Very Good Thing, IMO.
ESR saw that companies weren't going to bite off both ends, and thus tried the approach of selling the quality side without pointing out the ugly corollary--perhaps hoping it would sneak in on the coattails. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked, and we have companies trying to use the bazaar to pay for the cathedral. It isn't going to work that way. In fact, it's going to fail horribly with all the naysayers pointing their fingers and laughing at us.
We have to sell both points, gentlemen, and we have to provide alternative economic models. Until we do, we won't get what we really want (Free software), and users won't get what they need (reliable software).
First off, let's call a spade a spade; the opening paragraphs really seem to just be a lead-in to attacking the APSL. Unfortunately, several of the points that the author then goes on to make aren't really valid.
But the best of them all is the latest; Apple taking a bunch of software released under the BSD-license, re-releasing it under an all power to Apple license, and expecting us to thank them for it.
Here's where he first gets to his point. "Look!" he cries, "Apple slapped their own license on code that wasn't even theirs!" Alas, my friend, this is just not true. Yes, there is some code in there from BSD; even Apple won't deny it. But there is much more than just that; Apple has added significantly to this code base, and the source code they released is for a much-modified (and improved, IMNSHO) OS.
Many even said that it would be very unkind of us to try to make competing products to be released under true free software licenses, when these companies had been so gracious towards us.
Who said that? We shouldn't make free software, just because some companies are charging for it? Then what about Linux distributions? Should we stop giving away any free distributions just because Red Hat is charging money for their version? I'm afraid this argument doesn't hold water.
Some might claim that the release of all this software will lead to something good, that all the best ideas and best code will end up being melded into one great piece of software.
Again, I ask, who? I don't think that anyone thinks that MacOS X, Linux, and *BSD are going to merge into one UberOS. But the open source code means that we can learn from it, and we can fix it where needed, and we can improve it if we have ideas that they haven't had at Apple. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have 2 good OSes that grew from a larger unified community than 2 lesser OSes that grew out of a fragmented developer community.
Software needs to be free, not just open.
I'm afraid I have to laugh at this sentiment. Software does not need to be free; you want it to be free. I believe (as do many) that a person should be rewarded for good work, if he will accept a reward. You're welcome to give away your own code for free, but I will continue to happily pay for the MacOS, because it is an excellent product, and my payment rewards those who made it. (Yes, I actually pay for my OS, and I'm happy about it, because it's worth the money!)
-Snibor Eoj
To believe that we will unite the world's philosophical, social and various non-technical differences under the sun is a bit grand. When I first started using Linux, it was simply because there was a free version of Unix available for my dad's 486/80. Relearning skills I had gained growing up on a Tandy Model 16's MS-XENIX, allowed me to get a job at developing websites at a cash-poor webhosting provider (they ran totally on Linux and BSD) rather than flip burgers. After they (like many small, early web businesses, circa 95) went out of business I used those skills to administrate Solaris and IRIX servers and watched M$ takeover the world. I thought for a while I might be doomed to M$ for the rest of my career.
Today Linux (and every other piece of free software I've learned along the way) competes with M$ and the commercial Un*ices on technical merit. What free software doesn't have, they will get, as long as they wind in it's sails does not die.
This wind comes from all the users and developers who have contributed over the years, more so for necessity and technical reasons than political, philosophical (except FSF) or financial. The momentum of Free software (open source, whatever) has come to this point because of those reasons. It will conquer the world because of those reasons. ESR's essays made sense before the 'critical mass' was reached, it just looked as if for a brief second we were united users and developers, under ESR,RMS and Open Source. In truth, the honeymoon is over, were starting to notice differences and the bumps and warts of our new friends (allies?) and it's time to get back to work. We all have our own raison d'être. We should not let philosophical differences tear apart the public goodness that has arisen from our collective work. The whole point of free software is that it will be free for any use.
The beauty of free software and the community that builds it, is that, like the Internet, when it comes across damage, it routes around it. If Apple screws up OSS, if Mozilla is a burden, we will build something that routes around it. Linux for PPC will get a better Mac interface (speaking on hearsay here, example, put away flame-thrower), there will be a better, GPL'd browser built from GTK or something. If M$ tries to subvert our commodity protocols, we will build better implementations of their broken products (Storage+, whatever... SAMBA runs faster).
We will only do this if we remain united under the flag of better technology, the best hack and not fractionalize under the flags of Perens, Raymond and Stallman. OSI was an attempt to make sure M$ and everyone else didn't subvert our ideals (names, ideas, words???). I personally don't care if OSI brands something or doesn't, I will continue to use the best software for the job, be it commercial, open source, GPL'd, BSD'd or APSL'd, I don't care. If Eric was correct in his essays, then Open Source and Free Software are the paths that lead to the best software. That is what brought me here and that is what will make me stay. A nice side effect may be a political or social agenda that I support being pushed, but that is a secondary side effect. Remember we must stay focused on our common cause......
(please excuse any errors, rambling, or lost focus within this writing, I wanted to get it down before the fire was gone from this thread)........
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
First thing I'd like to say. I like programming, and, some day I hope to make a living off it.
Don't get me wrong, I use free software, and I like to peek at the code from time to time, and I like to recompile some to better fit my computer and stuff.
But, some of it HAS to be comercial. Also, I beleive that it is perfectly normal that comercial software shouldn't come with sources.
First of all, think of all the expenses paying a whole team of hackers costs. We don't work for 5$ an hour, you know... If they release they're code, use code and algorythmes expressed in the code for free. And, many people out there don't give a rat's ass about licenses. How many of you don't know at least one person who has an illegal version of office (or windows)???
Also, even if I like free software, and have a few projects in mind to release some (when I have a less hectic schedule), in many cases, comercial software is far supperior.
The reason is simple. People are paid to do it, and impelment evry feature (not just about 70%-90% of them), even if they don't feel like it. They are also paid to provide adequate documentation about it. Therefore, it more usable to the "naive" user. They can't just go to they're bosses and say "I don't feel like it".
Also, I feel that Linux cannot grow much more if there aren't more companies that port comercial versions of they're software to it. For some reason, when something costs a lot, poeple think it is better. For an example, I hate doing web pages. But, some times, I have to. When I started to charge more (a lot) for them (higher prices = less customers), for some reason, I kept getting more contracts, and I suck st html "programming".
Papi
- Chernobyl used windows
I guess this must be true for most crap you can get for win-95 and friends.
But have you checked out the documentation that comes with a comercial version of UNIX ? The man pages are far more readable and contain clearer and better written documentation (at least in solaris).
The utilities for administration are much better than ours. Installation is a breaze, and it comes with books and books of documentations.
Of course, you cannot pick it up on some "shelves of CompUSA".
papi
- Chernobyl used windows
Right on!
--
Michael Dillon - E-mail: michael@memra.com
Michael Dillon - E-mail: michael@memra.com
Check the website for my Internet
I think the author makes a very good point. Open source should be free. I understand that companies dont want to lose there bread and butter by releasing all of their source code as free. But what it seems these companies want is for the open source community to fix all the problems with there software and not give us anything back! I do applaud the companies for taking that first step and releasing part if not all of their source code. But come on can the open source community be expected to fix all their problems and then have them yank the license out from under us(Hypothetically of course!)? I just hope that companies will learn that open source and gpl is the best option out there and begin to use it.
The last few months have been wonderfull. I get to watch a new paradigm grow in real time. A lot of people seem to be distressed that it is not perfect, I am happy that it is heading in the direction we seem to be going. I will not fret about the fact we still have a ways to go.
********************************************
Remember, it's bad luck to be superstitious!!
It's bad luck to be superstitious
Bruce Perens suggests that ESR should be replaced by (or become one of) 10 spokesmen who would share the load of spreading the word, and perform their duties in a less demagoguic manner.
This is a fundamentally logical thing to do. However we must avoid the danger of plural agendas. Things are bad enough already with the OSI going off half-cocked and the FSF and SPI sitting at home ranting and wringing their hands. If there were ten separate spokesmen (however they were appointed), each pursuing their own individual policy then the business community would see no advantage in talking to any of them and we'd no longer have any control over the evolution of the open source concept.
On another subject, many people in the hacker community were dissatisfied with the appointment of Eric Raymond and the other board members of the OSI. Members of the hacker community want the right to choose their own representatives.
If free and open source movement is to seize the day then we must gather our forces under the same flag. And this must be a flag of democratic consensus.
It is now time for the formation of a new broader church, a body with an executive comprising representatives from both the FSF/SPI and the OSI and other prominent figures in the hacker community. Membership however must be available to a much wider range of people.
The members of this body would elect Perens' ten spokesmen (speakers not leaders!), and its constitution would require that these representatives jointly formulate and promote the group's official policy as assisted by open vote or whatever democratic mechanisms are in place. If these representatives find themselves in disagreement with policy they can either swallow it, resign or attempt to force a debate within the group's membership only.
Everyone who supports the above idea should petition Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman to get this done for us. We will only have one crack at this and if the pre-launch publicity machine Windows 2000 is to signal the end of our hold on the public's attention then we have less than a year left to set our house in order.
Now fire up your email client and do your duty. Democracy and Unity for the Revolution!
An excellent idea. I think you are right. Many programmers will in effect be odd-job men, trawling the net from site to site looking for a little bit of work here and there.
It seems almost Gibsonian doesn't it?
Hello? Anybody still here?
Coward, you and the other fellow who answered me both missed the point. I am demanding the birth of a democratic organisation based on consensus and compromise. There shall be no leaders! Only an elected body of representatives who shall answer to the membership, and whose responsibility it is to promote a single policy synthesized from the collective vision of the membership.
The Internet makes such a thing possible without leaders, had you not noticed? Electronic democracy makes us all equal, all members of parliament. Just look here on slashdot. When all parties' views are set out against each other in writing and all can reflect iteratively on each side of the argument, the signal stands out from the background noise. Consensus emerges from the text if you are prepared to look for it.
Only stubborn iconoclasts will be dissatisfied, but then, no-one can ever help the willingly ignorant. The rest will find their goals and concerns reflected in the organisation's.
Since we're talking 'licencing' and thus legalities, everyone here seems to be missing one vital point that every purchase manager and CEO always considers when buying/getting software (or any other commodity for that matter) - protection against harm. Companies (who by far spend the most money on software) want quality products to do a specific job or task to help their business succeed. And They want that software to work. That being said they will NEVER use "free" (as in beer) software. /. - looking for a technical challenge).
Why?
Basic contract law - if I pay you for a good or a service that is supposed to do something and it doesn't do what it is supposed to, you are in violation of our 'contract' and I can sue you (for cost recovery, damages, etc). If, however, I get it from you for free (as in beer), no 'contract' exists (no consideration has been given) and I am stuck.
So companies will always pay some amount of money for software.
And since they want it to work when they get it, they are more likely to buy their OSS version of PhotoShop (or GIMP or what have you) from Adobe rather than from Bob across the street. That's because they trust Adobe. They are there for one reason only - to make and sell software. Bob, well we really don't know why he is there. The company can trust, for the most part, that the version they get from Adobe will NOT be a security-risk trojan horse version that can damage their system. Whether it's true or not, they simply won't feel the same way about a version from Bob and won't take the risk, even if he sells it and can be sued. It won't do much good to sue Bob after his trojan has wiped the hard drive, the damage is done. They will then still have to pay enormous amounts to recover from the damage. The risk is just too high to buy from Bob.
So that means, in an OSS model, making money from software will mean less the selling of the product (if it is freely available in the form of source code) and more about selling quality and peace of mind. The chances of the Adobe version being harmful and misrepresented, in the eyes of the company, are very slim compared with getting a free version from Bob (or anywhere else), even if he compiles it in front of you.
Although this is a lot less likely when we talk about indiviuals getting software, the same still applies. My mother will want a word processor to work and she will want to be reasonalby sure that it will not fry her hard drive. Using the same logic as above, she is likely to be just as influenced by WHO made the software and WHERE she obtained it as she is about the price (free). This is the situation we have now with pirated software - I might be able to get some version of Illistrator for free or as low as $10 but chances are that I (and most people) would feel more comfortable paying $300 for the peace of mind that this copy of Illistrator is the real thing and propbably won't eat my drive. Some people will accept that risk but, just like now, a lot won't.
So how does OSS fit in?
Development. As we all know, the OSS model means that bugs and security holes are more likely to be found and fixed a lot sooner than with proprietary software, since there will be a lot more eyes on it. That drives up the quality. OSS also provides it's own sort of internal competition (for all those Ayn Rand loving rabid libertarians reading this)by having source code available. Most people won't pay $450 for a single copy of a proprietary software title with one licence - they will copy it illegally from a friend (akin to getting the source code). These same people, however, would buy an open source version if the cost was, say between $10 and $25 and they could maybe get some tech support (which they don't get if they "copy" the program - proprietary or otherwise). This makes them feel better (they are not "stealing") and give them peace of mind (they are buying from the source). Thus the OSS model will drive the price down to make software available to a greater number of people (make money through VOLUME). And these same people will pay $10 again to get the upgrade, even if it is free, for the same reasons (you continue making money). People will pay a small price over and over again for convienience and peace of mind (Admittedly, I'm talking psychology not economics here for the most part but it can be hard to separate the two sometimes).
As for source code availability, well lets face it, I may want to see the source code and you may want to get at the source code for most programs but 95% of the rest of the world could care less. End of story. I would ventrure to guess that most individual users and a good chunk of corporate (especially small busineses) don't even WANT the source code - it takes up space on their hard drive and they can't understand it anyway. They certainly won't invest the time and money in learning how to compile themseleves (or getting someone else to do it) if it is just easier and more convienient to pay a small amount of money to have it done for them (not everyone is like the people of
So OSS provides the best of both worlds - if you want the code you can get it, look at, copy it, whatever. If you sell it, you get better quality, more reliable, easier to customize and maintain software and more customers - and you can still make money. The consumer gets great software a good prices and buys from the source more than they do now (heck this could be bad for pirating).
And lets not overlook the Consluting jobs that may arise...
I may be way off but I think this can work.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
That's not the way that I read the "revenue through support" suggestion. To me it means that you are paid for your labor. You build software that people use. But, people ALWAYS want the software to do something slightly different. They want it ported to a new platform, they want new features, they want it optimized for different datasets.
Some of the people using your software have the ability and willingness to make those changes themselves. Some don't and they're the people who'll pay you for support, even if your software performs precisely to specification.
...and is the reason why my company puts clauses in our contracts that give us the rights to the source code for the software in our manufacturing equipment. It's not truly open-source, because we often will sign a non-disclosure agreement to satisfy the vendor's requirements, but we reserve the right to bring in outside consultants.
Of course, true open-source would be better for everyone in the long run, because companies that have equipment with similar functions or data handling requirements could leverage off of each other. I think it will take a while for that way of thinking to take hold in companies, though.
The goal of such software is not to make a profit on it, however (at least not directly). When people talk about "Open Source" or "Free Software" they are usually thinking about commercial applications. I agree with a previous poster that the way to make money in that arena is support. But even software released under the GPL can be sold for a price. The only restriction is the source code must be made available without additional cost. This usually has the effect of causing prices to be low (because the first customer who actually paid $$$ for it might share it for free, which is allowed under the GPL), but I can see a scenario where it doesn't for a limited distribution product (e.g. specialty CAD or simulation software).
Other licenses have other terms.
I agree that within the open-source model you can't make money from selling software if it is a product that would have a wide audience, e.g. word processors. But for a limited distribution product, like a high-end specialty CAD program, it would be unlikely that company X that paid $15K for it would be willing to share it with company Y for free. Of course, once someone did share it, the door would be wide open because the recipient company would feel free to share it with someone else, and so on. For applications like that true open-source may not be the way to go (gasp! Did I really say that?!)
In my opinion (which may or may not be on track), a shift to open source would require a major shift in thinking that doesn't view software as a way to make money directly, but as an enabler to sell hardware and support. Companies wouldn't write most software if they were interested in making money off of it; they would either write software to make their hardware product more attractive or make their hardware specs/APIs publicly available so other people would be able to write software for it. When products have a lot of freely available software for them, they tend to be popular. Look at the effect of the freeware/shareware software movements on the Apple II and other 8-bit computers, or the modern-day effect of open-source on Linux, and the *BSD Unices.
As for custom software (such as control software for manufacturing tooling), there are relatively few exceptional software designers/coders. Whether or not open-source is adopted, skilled programmers would still be in demand.
The internet has allowed us to share software, ideas, music, and too many other things to count, at a minimal and often flat cost.
The idea of software licensing came about to enforce regular copyright laws on something that can be easily duplicated and handed out (floppy disks, and nowadays CD-ROMs). It limited the use of software so companies could still make money by traditional shrinkwrapped means.
(The MP3 movement is another example of what happens when technology goes beyond traditional distribution. In this case the RIAA is attempting to destroy the movement, and is facing a backlash. Because if everyone goes to MP3s (unlikely) the record industry as we know it, will be smashed forever.)
RMS et al. have created a means where software is allowed, and encouraged to flow freely. It actually restricts freedom of usage to ensure the most possible freedom for the end user. If it were pursued to it's ultimate end the software industry would also be severly damaged.
What is needed is a compromise which allows code to be free and allows companies to make money. Troll may have gotten it right in that the QPL is free for 'free' applications, while imposing a flat fee on commercial usage. Other viable fields include consulting and support.
The ultimate question is : what is the ideal way of handling intellectual property rights in an age where the actual duplication is of nominal cost, but it's creation is not?
I really hate to see this happen.
ESR was a great help to the cause. No, he was not perfect, but then, show me a perfect human being. He put free/open/whatever software *on the map*. He has done more to make sure open source gets attention and actually *continues to exist* then most people I know of. Yes, there are bad apples (read that as a pun if you want), but they are not ESR's fault. Linux and other free/open software being taken more seriously, and ESR *did* contribute to that.
Personally, I am rather sick of RMS whining about "GNU/Linux". Apple takes a bunch of BSD-licensed code, changes a little, and slaps their name on it. That is bad, I agree. But somehow, it is okay for RMS to take credit for something which is not his, either? I am really starting to believe RMS is another Henry Ford. "You should run free software, as long as it comes from GNU." There is *not one word* in the GPL about giving credit where credit is due - in fact, I believe GNU left such restrictions out on purpose. So how come RMS gets to do it, but Apple does not?
Important Note #1: Do not misunderstand me. I think RMS has contributed a fantastic amount to the cause as well. He did "invent" it, he formalized it and codified it, and most of all, contributed to it. He helps. But so does ESR.
Important Note #2: The GPL is a great concept. Software that is not only free, but legally required to remain free. I am as wary of these "semi-open" licenses as the next guy. However, ESR seems to be being blamed for them, and I really cannot abide that. If you want to blame someone, blame Bill Gates.
In short: United We Stand, Divided We Fall.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Submitted for your approval...
I work for a software company. We develop custom software for the US Air Force. Very niche market stuff. We have been doing this for almost ten years. Normally, I would say free software (as in free speech, not free beer) would be ideally suited for such a custom application. But.
The people in the field use and like our software. In fact, they generally cannot get by without it. However, they do not have the time and/or the technical expertise to improve it. Nor do they control the funding to pay others (us) to improve it for them. The people who do control the funding are not end-users. They are what we in corporate America call "suits".
If these suits were given the source code to the software, they would no longer fund us to improve it. Instead, they would give the task to over-worked, under-paid, inexperienced USAF people who have too much to do as it is. The over-all quality of the software would decrease. The field -- the end users -- would suffer. We know this from first-hand experience. This is fact, not conjecture.
The product is useful only to the USAF. Thus, there is no one outside the USAF who would improve the software just to scratch their "personal itch".
"Get rid of the suits" is one idea that comes to mind. Unfortunately, and for entirely separate reasons, changing the power structure of the military is neither viable, nor a good idea in general.
So what *do* we do?
This is not troll-bait. This is a serious question, one that I struggle with frequently. I am looking for ideas, comments, and maybe even suggestions. My thanks, in advance. And clear skies to all.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Alright, just to offer my own $.02
Netscapes release of their source code for the mozilla project was under the complete understanding that it would eventually have to be modified, and released as a closed source executable for the final release as Communicator 5.0 This is due mainly to the fact that the RSA encryption that needs to be included for secure transmittion, is neither owned by Netscape, nor does Netscape have the right to release its source. But the accual mozilla engine, primarly the NGLayout/Gecko will be completly open for many people to use and incorperate into their own projects. This will create a whole new world of interactivity, offering top quality browsers to any device.
This article goes on to imply that any open source project created with the intent to eventually makea profit from its final code, is destroying the community.
While I must admit That many such projects and licenses may have thier problems *cough**fruit**cough* I don't believe that the entire idea is one that should be discarded. The community just needs to be allowed to progress and change. Hopefully developing a license that works for all parties involved. One that gives credit where credit is due, and not only encourages inovation, but rewards it.
While I know I will get flamed for this, but a socialist view of software, like reallife, can only exist on a limited scale. Now that we are becoming a global market. One can't expect to compete, when there is no initiative for competition. Yes I will admit the ideas and thoughts behind the linux movement are a great motivation. But what happens a generation or two down, when people are raised to expect their software for free. And told to let those techies fix it for them. Eventually resentment among the ranks occurs, and all hell breaks loose.
While I don't admit to having the answer, I envision of model in which each individual can profit from their works if they wish, but yet allowing the community as a whole to use their ideas in developing thier own solutions. Much like the web itself is today. You can easily view a pages source. But yet while still allowing that page to profit off its own existence. We expand our own understanding, and can use such ideas to help the Greater Good.
I mostly agree with you, except that I think there an answer. In fact, the answer is from the same arguments/value promote by the GPL and the BSD licence: Freedom.
;)]
A company are free to use an Open Source model or not. The bazaar model is not necessarely the right one, especially for a company like Apple. When Netscape "freed" Mozilla, it has some good reasons to do so. The more important one is the only sure gain from OSD. A freed browser CAN'T die. It's important because if Communicator die, IE will be the dominant browser and all competitors to MS in the domain of Web servers will have to react to any change made by MS in its IE. This a real handicap.
I think Apple can benefits highly for a truely free MacOS X base. I should suggest them a licence
like BSD or something similar. This make them benefits from the bazaar method and let build over this the good proprietary interfaces Apple are used to give us. Even if they don't want to be truely OSD compliant, I'm sure they're will be a lot of fans who find it enough free to contribute a lot of codes!
About the alternative economics models, they're also a good market for people coding on demand.
Software aren't eternals. They need to be improve and demand a lot of works to be put on. Also, the effectiveness of a company often depends on them. That's how MS makes money. "Improvements" on the tools are necessary for any companies who want to be competitive. That's why they still buy the newest version of MSOffice or Windows, whatever the price charge.
If I look back on my young carrier, I can already see a good package of softwares I wrote. Some of them for the government, some for a 911 company, some for Switcher Testsets. All of them are special purpose softwares that can't be easily transfert to another platform or another purpose. I sell my coding time and the company keep the code. Sometime they will sell the software but most of the time not. And when this happen, the client will buy it for the service, the entire system or both. Copying of the software is irrelevant. The software will be perimated within a year or two. So why not free them after all? [answer: secret recipe, like the witch in Snow White
So, the economics model I purpose is one that already exist: it's the turn-on-key solution. You have a good idea? Find someone to pay you for implementing it. Someone have a problem? Offer him to find a solution for him in a good delay in exchange of some money. That's the service industry, that's the consulting industry. And it pays!
Fabien Ninoles -- Debian GNU/Linux Developer
Most people aren't computer-literate enough to be able to search through the 10000000 lines of code in Photoshop, or whatever, to make it not crash when doing an obscure mask operation.
Maybe if the source were freely included with the purchase of the product, and a license to use it under the same conditions as the purchased software, then both the programming guru and the corporate exec would be happy. Also, if the user could upload patches to the vendor for $$, people would be even happier.
-S
Fabulous comment. It had puzzled me for a while that an extreme license (like GPL) is very incompatible with businesses that try to profit off of software development. It is basically the problem of the commons/prisoner's dilemma that is often mentioned in introductory philosophy or microeconoms courses. If software company A and rival software company B both release their code, both will benefit in the long run through offering tech support and custom solutions. But in the short run, if company B uses a standard open-source license and company A doesn't, company A can benefit at company B's expense. Although I do think (and hope) that if the new open-source licenses (like apple's or sun's) restrict software development for a large enough niche, a hobbyist open-source project will provide a replacement. (By hobbyist I'm not being pejorative. I mean that as programmers who contribute unpaid time to the open-source community.) (e.g. It's difficult and cost-prohibitive to develop plugins for Photoshop -> Gimp, a MUCH better and more customizable program imho.)
Not only that, but does anyone else think that it really, really rocks that Apple has based a marketable, commercial OS on *nix/*bsd?
I was just thinking about that this morning...
Let M$ suck on that one...
=>
--
Wonko the Sane
> The problem is that we have presented no
...
> alternative economic model for companies
> who truly want the advantages of the bazaar
> --but still have bills to pay.
It's imporant to note that several types of
occupations, from airline pilot to modern
dancer, have become harder to justify doing
in purely economic terms, because there are
enough people who want to do them who aren't
primarily concerned about total monetary
reward amortized over the career. As a result,
people for who the "bills to pay" issue is
significant simply do something else for a
living. Maybe a part of what we're seeing here
is certain types of computer programming entering
this territory
Of course, the one glaring couter-example to this is all of the fine work that GNU and Linux have done. But, where would all of the GNU developers get a living wage in order to write free software, if it weren't for for-profit business?
I see, in the future, OSS and proprietary software working hand-in-hand. The basic platforms and protocols will be open (as if they aren't already), but there will always be a place for proprietary software: production apps, multimedia apps, games, etc. This will be a Good Thing, and profits made from proprietary software will then be turned around to fund OSS projects that will benefit everyone.
That's my Utopia, right there.
No sig.
I read the two followup articles. I'm convinced that this is why Open Source will succeed -- rational discussion by intelligent people. No flaming, no personal attacks, just a clear expression of ideas and opinions.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I have to agree here. If someone can show me how to make money with Open Source/Free Software, then please tell me how. I can't figure it out.
I agree that most computer games will never be Open Source (tm), but the user of a computer game *would* benefit from having source code available. Not in the ego-based rewards of contributing to Free(tm) Software, but the more mundane rewards of getting the game to work better. Better game -> happier user.
I'm a big fan of turn-based strategy games. Unfortunately, the releases are often marred by substandard AI and frequent bugs. A bug-fix or two is released, getting the product up to passable play, and the game is left to languish forever. Bug fixes don't bring in revenue, after all. And thousands of dedicated users are left to whine on Usenet about the flaws in the game. Wouldn't it be great to have the code? Wouldn't it be great to fix those bugs and improve the AI? I don't care about credit, company exploitation, or the code's inherent right to be free. I want *better* games, and widespread source availability would be a huge plus.
I would be ecstatic if games routinely shipped with code and the following "Greedy Corporation
License" (GCL)
"1) All code is solely the property of Greedy Corp. You use our code in your product, we'll take your shirt.
2) If you change one character of code, all implied warranties (not that we ever gave you any) are automatically void.
3) All changes made by any user must be e-mailed to exploit@greedy.com. We own your changes, we will give you no credit, and if we use them for a generally distributed patch we reserve the right to charge people whatever we want to get it.
4) If you port this code to another platform, we get the code, and we can sell the port to users of the other platform. You get nada.
5) If you develop and sell a separate product that interfaces with our product, we get licensing fees. And see #1 again."
This GCL isn't exactly the APSL, but it's better than the situation we have now. It's not as good as it could be, but it opens up vast new possibilities -- bug fixes for old games, enhanced AIs, ports to unapproved platforms.
So it isn't Free. I'm not opposed to greedy corporations milking ideas for every last dollar. That's why they exist. I exist to have joy, so I always want the code. Under any conditions.
Dale Stephenson
Well, the FSF has a lot of arguments against copyright and IP, and in a lot of cases they make a good point.
That does not change the fact that the GPL in itself is based upon copyright law, and the author, for as long as he or she retains copyright, can license it anyway they want to anyone.
Cygnus does this with their Cygwin32 environment, for example. You write GPL code, fine, you can user it. You want proprietary code, you buy the the rights from Cygnus. Another example is Be, who bought out some GPL drivers from the copyright holders.
Actually, I think most developers *do* realize what they do when they place their code under GPL. I most certainly do.
:). Seriously tho, I think you could probably co-distribute them under an LGPL license with XFree86 retaining it's licensing, but the Mesa extensions, loaded through an object interface, would remain LGPL. Of course, that would mean that any commercial implementation would have to be LGPL/XFree licensed or they'd have to do their own implementation for GL.
I think most free software developers are not anti-commercial. However, I do not want my GPL work to be a free lunch for whoever wants to proprietarize it. I write GPL code to be free at release and remain free in the future. Not to be 'embraced and extended'. The GPL is a guarantee for the codes perpetuated freedom.
The GPL also prevents something else we've witnessed several times in the UNIX world. The old not-so-enjoyable proprietary competetive forking, closely related to embrace-and-extend. With X and BSD we ended up with multiple proprietary versions supporting their own features with the end result that only the bare minimum was possible to use with any crossplatform certainty.
I have nothing against the BSD people. I just believe that perpetuated 'code freedom' is more important than 'developer freedom' for code I donate. If they changed the BSD license to prevent proprietarization of free code I'd be pleased to have them use my code... but of course, that wont happen. So the one-wayness remains.
Of course, with your example about Mesa, it's easy to solve. Simply integrate XFree86 into Mesa rather than the other way around
But GPL does exactly what you describe. the authors of the code can always release it under other licences as well, including proprietary ones. So the ocde can be "used in proprietary projects only if the authors of the code agree to such", just as you wish.
Of course, if your code builds on the work of existing GPLd code then permission must come from the authors of the original work as well as the later development, but that's inhernet in a requirement to have the authors' permission to include the code.
Read the GPL, shouldn't be too hard to get hold of :)
Seriously, the GPL does not prevent the author from issuing the same code under non-GPL licences. In a large project though, or one built on GPL roots, often there will be too many authors for gaining agreement to be practical. i don't think that's a problem that can be overcome without compromising te whole authors-must-agree principle.
The FSF might prefer you not to issue multiple licences that way but the GPL doesn't stop you.
"Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind. When I go the the fsf web-site, I see arguments against copyright, and IP, so I assume that the GPL gives the authors no more rights than others"
Just for clarity, the GPL does not give the authors this right, but they already have it and the GPL does not take it away.
I don't know about human nature in general, it seems to be your nature to reduce idologies to personalities. At least, if I understood your point you seemed to be saying that inability to name multiple people who speak for feminism means that having multiple people speak for something doesn't work.
The important question about the effectiveness of the public voices of either feminism or open source should surely be whether their message is heard and remembered, not whether the names of the people delivering the message are.
The problem with this is that it demonstrates
the technical bias of the OpenSource community.
It's easy to charge for service related to software that is
useful to business, which has the money and
incentive to hire consultants. Compilers, developer
tools, web servers, perl scripting, etc.
Marketable skills all.
But this only covers a small portion of the
software market. A lot of software is designed
for users who simply are not going to
pay you $200/hour for services.
Take, for example, educational software. Do
you expect parents will pay $200/hour for
services related to a first-grade reading
program?
Of Course They Won't!
They already complain about paying for tech support!
The ambitions are: wake up, breathe, keep breathing.
A lot of companies spend massive amounts
of money writing software from the ground up.
This is because a lot of software simply
isn't available commercially. And if it
is available, you might not want to use it,
because writing your own may provide a
competitive advantage.
This is especially true in financial services.
Financial software isn't all simple beancounting,
which is why investment banks tend to be very
early adopters of high tech. Everything from
old Lisp machines to SGI visualization tools.
It's not all 3870 terminals and mainframes.
Next time you're in a Borders or Barnes & Noble,
look for a magazine called 'Wall Street & Technology'.
I would guess that the bank I work for has
significantly more non-mainframe programmers
than most shrinkwrap software companies.
These financial companies do buy shrinkwrap,
where it makes sense. In that case, it's
rarely modified. They also buy development
tools (components, objects, libraries) which
can aid their custom development projects.
The ambitions are: wake up, breathe, keep breathing.
There are reasons to want source code. The standard argument in the press for
source code is so that an emergency fix for a 'y2k' bug be put together if the
original developer is bust or just recalcitrant. Cliched this argument may be, but I
have had similar experiences.
Our company used Quark to format our paper. However, Quark would crash if
our paper became too large. Fortunately our core applications were custom
designed, so we had the source code, and so we could make a work-around.
Scaling down our business so the paper could fit really wasn't an option. Custom
software may be more expensive, but some times it is needed. If we were just
going for the 'cheap' system we would use pen and paper.
I am not involved in the finance industry, but it seems that they would need the
security of source code even more. Having a problem that could they couldn't
immediately fix would seem even worse do to there larger turnover.
You noted that custom build in-house software can be problematic (don't I know
;) . Although some of your arguments are confused (i.e. custom software will be
standards based if you design it to be that way, proprietary software may or may
not be standards based), I agree that custom software can be expensive to
maintain.
With open source, there is no need to modify the source if you don't want to. You
can use the shrink wrapped version, and still have the confidence that you can
customize the software if the need arises. You may even be able to convince the
developers to include your modifications into the next shrink-wrap release. This
is one things that makes me interested in open source, we need custom software,
but I am not ignorant of the advantages of shrink-wrap ware. Open source can
be both.
You seemed to suggest that you could not trust your technicians to decide
whether it was worthwhile to customize a package, or even to follow your
orders. IMHO you need technicians who fix problems rather than 'muck' around
with your mission critical systems without good reason.
If I couldn't even trust a techie with my source code, I certainly wouldn't trust
them with my money.
A techie is there to make sure the system keeps working, not to muck with your
system. If you have techies who cause more problems than they fix, the only
permanent solution is to fire 'em. It is not as though you need the source code to
mess up important data.
Some problems require the source to fix. Sometimes the solution is worse than
the problem - this is nothing new - to constrain a techie to the extent that they
cannot cause problems also means that they cannot fix them. A employable
techie should be able to choose what response is most suitable. A quasi
employable one would at least follow orders. The more options that are available
the better chance they have of coming up with a good solution.
As for users screws the system up, all I can say is that you should never give
your average user admin rights. There are much more common ways for
unskilled users to mess a sysem up without source code. Deleting the 'wrong
directory' is a common one.
-- What will the think of you when they find that there is no way to make the
software meet there companies changing requirements, because they do not
have the source code? Just because they are showing teeth does not mean they
are smiling.
We use GNU/SunOS.