Slashdot Mirror
When Open Source Strikes Back
The following was written by Slashdot Reader J. Paul Reed
Open source is nothing new.
Neither are corporations' announcements that they are embracing the historically unconventional software development method.
In the past year or so, we've watched as big names like IBM, Netscape, Apple, and Sun make their internal software development efforts open to public eyes.
Everything from the design of a particular product, to its implementation, to precious developer comments within the source code never meant to be read outside of the company, suddenly becomes naked to the world. Typically, this occurs in a downloading frenzy the first day the source is released, after hackers, eager to pick apart code that has never seen the light of day, read the infamous press release.
And corporations know the benefits of opening up their source; in fact, they seem to bank on them when making the decision to take the open source gamble.
For a relatively small investment, the returns in improvements to the product, and thus a furthering of the company's motives whatever those may be, can be great.
In addition to the standard notion that numerous outside developers will benefit from being able to view and modify the source and thus be inclined to join the effort, one must never underestimate the power the free publicity of going open source brings.
Often, that slashdot effect within the first few days is worth more than any amount of advertising in trade mags, and depending on how they work it, sometimes worth more than releasing the code itself.
Companies seem to think releasing their software open source is more about setting up the media event and sending out press releases than it is about the more mundane activities that actually allow the open source development to take place, like firing up a CVS server or putting tarballs on the web.
Case in point, Apple did it with OSX to get the development community all fired up, or at least interested in if only by curiosity, about their new operating system.
Those following the Apple's OS development strategy knew of the BSD-based, server- capable OS for some time; but by announcing parts of were going to be developed through open source efforts, suddenly we have an article up on all the tech websites, and hundreds of developers and gawkers alike interested in downloading the source, generating more interest and buzz within the "tech" community than conventional advertising could ever hope to touch.
This use of publicity for a company's own purposes is forgivable; I mean, we do get source code out of it. So a little bit of grandstanding is acceptable.
One thing corporations don't take into account, however, is the time after the honeymoon-press release period ends, the period where the real magic of open source development supposedly starts.
The unique thing about open source development is that developers aren't responsible to anyone but themselves and the user community they attempt to support with their initiative. And thus decisions based upon previous agreements with other companies, or decisions by management based on politics fundamentally don't work.
This fosters an environment where developers are more interested in and committed to doing the notorious "right thing (tm)," rather than "the easy thing," the "thing required by our legally binding contract," or even "the thing the boss told me to do."
We find this environment exemplified in the channels through which open source development takes place: out in the open, through multiparty communication mediums, where anyone who has an opinion or idea can voice it, and all can attempt to convince others that their design is the sacred "right thing (tm)" to do.
This is fundamentally incompatible with the way closed source development works, and often companies, in a rush to reap the benefits of the open source, forget that little nagging fact.
Open source is about openness. To most slashdotters, this is a no-brainer, but the concept is foreign to companies where the "official company line," which is commonly different from developers' opinions, is kept very separate, and the PR department has the power over R&D to keep these two points of view isolated from the media and the product's users.
Open source, due to the absence of such a department and structure, forces an element of full disclosure that is foreign to the closed source development process. Because of this, most of the companies who have "embraced" open source are wholly unprepared to deal with this new tidal wave of open communication.
Netscape wasn't when Jamie Zawinski started posting rants on the development methods on his website after the Mozilla development effort started. And more recently, RedHat, hasn't shown that it was in any capacity prepared to deal with the situations open source communication has caused concerning Rasterman's recent departure or the whole LinuxExpo fiasco.
They've been very hush-hush about both.
Both are instances where the open source development model provided an open communications forum which developers, internal and external alike used, and information and opinions that would've been kept quiet in a close source environment leaked.
The PR department just lost control of what the R&D department says.
Suddenly, we have a situation where just as corporations have "embraced" open source, the open source development model has "embraced" these corporations.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing.
This open communication model keeps companies on their toes.
It reveals more about the internal feeling on projects and designs than the PR department would ever know about, much less care to comment on, and it keeps the public in the know as much as possible about what the company's management is doing as far as the open source project involved.
In many ways, open source forces the truth out of companies who employ its methods, an ancillary benefit not only for those working on the project, but those wanting to use the software.
Not exactly what most open source radicals think of when they think of "freedom," but another benefit for us all, none the less.
And it's worth a whole lot more than source code.
havent we heard this a million times over in the past few months? does it really warrent YAOSE (Yet Another OpenSource Essay)? is slashdot starting to develop its own group of pundants? is John McLaughlin going to start moderating the articles?
Mozilla is a success? Last time I checked, it was a full year late, still pre-alpha, and buggy as hell. Nobody outside of developers is using it. If that's what you call a success, then MS must be a real failure...
apple's always had something of a "control freak" feel to them
That would be a Steve Jobs legacy, I expect...
The decision to dump the old Navigator codebase was absolutely right. It was an example of what the article said about developers "making the right decision instead of sticking to corporate requirements to ship products". Zawinski's had a few good points, but mostly he sounds like suit rather than coder with his demands that Mozilla should have 'shipped' something.
Zawinski is just bitter because he 'owned' part of that original code from his glory days at Netscape. The fact is that old code was a bug-ridden and had no future. The new Mozilla may not be ready for a while but it will be worth the wait.
He's talking about this
Things can get too complex to keep track of.
He said 'borrow' the taxi, not 'copy' the taxi.
I don't understand.
Why is it that you feel that you should be allowed to take someone elses source code, make a few enhancements and then resell it and make money without paying back the original author for the work that they did?
I think you need to reevaluate your stance.
> Why is it that you feel that you should be allowed to take someone elses source code, make a
> few enhancements and then resell it and make money without paying back the original author for
> the work that they did?
Because your statement only makes sense within that context. Sure, if there are only 2 programmers in the universe, and one writes a program and one doesn't, then it seems a little unfair for the one who didn't write anything to be able to add one line of code and then sell it without paying back the other guy.
But once you get into the real world, with thousands of programmers out there, it is no longer fair for one of them (the original author) to benefit at the expense of everybody else. Non-commerical use only licenses are grossly unfair because only _one_ party gets to make any money at all selling the source. (I can add as many features as I like to SSH but only they get to make money from it)
And licenses that require you to send "a portion" of the money you make to a single entity get into logistical problems rather quick when you are dealing with a large number of developers. What happens when the original author/company dies or goes out of business? Moreover, you can't _re-use_ parts of the source, because even if you take a single paragraph of their source for your use, you will have to pay them the fee for the entire package. No thanks.
non-commerical use only or "you get the source but payment required" licenses are an impediment to collaborative development. Seriously, the problems that these sorts of licenses create are not worth it.
Today, Mozilla is a 100% failure. There is not even a useable browser, and Netscape doesn't exist anymore. Total failure. Open Source does not solve everything.
In less than a year, the most cleanly coded,
standards-compliant web browser ever will be
available for all of us to use, and for the
free software community to cannibalise. More
of a revolution than a failure.
By the way, the next version of Jikes, due out by tomorrow, will also use the IBM Public License Version 1.0.
dave shields
shields@watson.ibm.com
http://ibm.com/research/jikes
PS: Thanks for the kind words re DX -- I just sent the URL of this article to the manager of the DX group.
When I was with IBM, a discouragingly large number of projects were finished (more or less) but never saw the marketplace because there was no funding for sales or service. (This is likely the current state of "Warp 5 client": done in the sense that the code is finished, but in marketing limbo.)
Research, in particular and by definition, had no such funding.
I remember seeing a neat collaborative X environment about 8 years ago. It looked almost ready to ship. But then the development group was laid off en masse, and all evidence of the project's existence - save a few white papers - vanished.
This article makes a good point about a true
Open Source methodology: it forces companies
to tell the truth about their development schedules & methodologies and the quality of
their code. The problem is, many companies
are used to lying through their teeth about
those things (I've been developing commercial
UNIX software for 10 years and I've seen it
firsthand). The culture shock may be too great
for some.
> The simple fact that it may be easier to reproduce a piece of software than a taxi does not make it any less a piece of property, the product of someone's rational thought, that one thing which must precede any act of man's creative/productive processes.
One of the other differences between a taxi and a piece of software, however, is that a taxi still has value in five years, while a five-year old piece of software is practically worthless.
Also, an employer has to worry that if the job they're hiring for doesn't 'dazzle' or have the glamour of some odd Open-Source project in progress elsewhere, that they'll be paying an employee whose mind is on someone else's project. That's a particularly compelling reason NOT to hire the open source oriented guy.
That is as ridiculous as saying that once a copy of Autocad is out on an FTP site, that Autodesk can't sue the distributors and prosecute anybody using the illegal copies to conduct business.
Wouldn't everyone be upset if you had to pay money just to be able to do "ps auxw | grep httpd" ? That would annoy me too believe me. You'd be paying for "ps" and for "grep".
We used to pay for it. Someone wrote it, and a company sold it. Later someone else wrote it again and gave it away.
We created something that aids our lives, computers. It's the same as a toaster, but not everyone sees it that way.
Huh? I have to pay for my toaster. I also have to pay my doctor, and I have to pay for water. Some things in life aren't free, and I'm not going to begrudge any particular creators if they don't want to give something of theirs away for free. There's plenty of room for both free and commercial, and everyone gets to decide which to use.
The only problem with this scenario is the real-world constraints involved.
If I were looking for a job, I would interview at least a dozen companies or so. If all of them had open-source projects, can they realistically expect me to have contributed to all of those products? And in my spare time as well? Keep in mind that I am currently employed and need to devote my full attention to my current project.
Just b/c a developer hasn't worked on an open source project doesn't rule out that they may be the better programmer.
In fact, a person familiar with the current code may be undesirable as they do not bring a new set of eyes & outlook to the code/product. Again, this depends on the situation.
> Open source but if you modify it and make money Sun is entitled to some of it.
i e.html
> what is wrong with a company that says "you can work with our code and if you make money we can have some"?
> why is it wrong for the original software author to ask a bit in return?
There is a serious problem with all these sorts of licenses, whether "free for non-commercial use only" or "original author receives money". The problem is that such a license gives an extreme advantage to one party (the originator), and puts everyone else at a disadvantage. I work with free software on a daily basis, fixing bugs and making improvements, but if at all possible I refuse to do any work with any code under one of the aforementioned licenses.
Consider code under a "non-commercial use only" license. If I put in time and effort to improve it, the only people who get to benefit from it are non-commercial types. Moreover, the only people who get any money out of it will be the original authors! Basically, any work I do with that source code is unpaid labor for the original author/company.
A license that requires "some" of the money you make to go toward a particular group is also problematic. For one thing, it is difficult to distribute these kinds of programs. Companies that sell Linux distributions on CD will not want to include them because they will have to pay a fee for each CD sold. Likewise, even public FTP archives may find the restrictions unsuitable and will not make the code available.
In short, although these sorts of licenses may be appealing to companies or those that would get rich by the labor of others, they should be avoided because in the end, they can not achieve the _quality_ that open source has shown in the past. These licenses simply turn programmers off, and as a result programs under these licenses will not get as much polish and code review as true "open source" projects.
Both XAnim and SSH are under these sorts of annoying licenses. I am going to try to spend some time this year working on free replacements for both programs. A free replacement for SSH is in the works over at:
http://www.net.lut.ac.uk/psst/
There is also a free QuickTime player for Linux under the GPL:
http://www.freeyellow.com/members4/heroine/xmov
The author of XMovie (Adam Williams) has written a _lot_ of free audio/video software for Unix, including a complete non-linear video editing system. Truly a great guy.
Note the subject says "Examples today."
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You can read a long rant about it here. Segfault is supposed to be a humor/parody site, but somehow this crap ended up there. I have no idea why.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There is not yet a publicly available CVS tree, and the mailing lists are explosively overactive (I have no idea how the guys working on this project for IBM get anything else done), but they have been extraordinarily helpful and receptive to suggestions. Lesstif is being closely examined and apparently improved as a side effect (since most Linux users do not purchase Motif, duh). Distributed DX and an RPM are in the works thanks to the efforts of the IBM crew, and I am trying to SWIG parts of DX so it can be scripted from the web with minimal effort. And for whatever it's worth, I have started working on DX2Octave again now that I have access to DX on my machines.
As far as the code goes, it's a little crufty, but anyone who tells me that (for example) the original Mozilla codebase was any cleaner is insane. And OpenDX worked out-of-the-box, the day it was released, on many platforms. Plus, IBM is licensing some of its own patents to outside developers by releasing DX in its working entirety. They went the extra mile than Netscape did not, which is why I bring up Mozilla vs. DX.
I am very pleased with IBM Research's involvement in their open-sourced projects, and IMHO they are a great example for other companies to follow.
DX homepage, with downloads and license info
OpenDX.org
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
To me, it seems to be counter-productive. We hashed over the Raster vs. The Evil Manager thing for a few days...and it seemed like at least half of us though that he was wrong to go on a tirade against his manager in public.
I guess I don't think that open source code has anything to do (nor should it IMHO) with opening the internal problems 2 or 3 people might have with each other. Problems between employees and managers are between them and none of our business, no matter how open their source code is.
Maybe you don't all agree with me...but that's the way I see it.
Werd.
I never thought of Open Source as freeing the R&D department from the marketing department, but that seems to be quite true. It also explains why Microsoft seems so afraid of truly embracing Open Source.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The way I read his comment, it seemd that he was looking at the issue from the other side. It seems to me that his problem is that licenses such as those basically make him an unpaid employee for the original author. In such a situation, the original author gets paid for a product comtaining at least some code from others, but the others get no compensation. I, at least, prefer working on projects that are more fair, like GPLed stuff. With a GPLed program, others are still able to make money off my work, but anyone (including me) is free to do so.
I guess it's all about how you define freedom.
--Phil (And yes, I have contributed to free software, albiet usually in one- or two-line bug fixes.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
you have a point...
perhaps apple is on the road to something like what mozilla has now, and are simply choosing a better way to begin. i would like to believe that. but as it stands i can't see apple being able to truly make enough of a comittment to open source methods. it seems far more likely that they'll continue along with this half-assed approach and never get to the point where they could truly enjoy the benefits of open source.
apple's always had something of a "control freak" feel to them, and i don't see them getting over it. but then again maybe i'll be proved wrong... wouldn't be the first time...
-garrett
mozilla does seem to be the best current example... as a counterexample we have the way apple is doing there open source project (darwin). the source has been released, but its not all there, and anything that's put in by outside developers has no guaruntee that it will even be useful in the future, because all of apple's development is still internal. eventually they will sync up the darwin code with their internal stuff, but who knows when that will happen.
unless the primary development is being done out in the open in full view of the opensource developers who want to help, what reason do they have to contribute?
here is where mozilla has it right, and i hope they are successful, if only to show companies like apple how it should be done.
(note: my opinions on apple's opensource projects are a result of lurking on the darwin-development mailing list, i am not actually involved in developing darwin. i don't have the skills necessary, but if i did i'd seriously have to consider if it was worth the trouble at this point)
-garrett
In one sense, Apple has it right: release code for a finished, working product; something that the Mozilla project did wrong initially. Where Apple's move breaks down is Darwin/OS X Server vs OS X, though they're doing what they can to say where the internal dev road map they're following leads. And, since they are planning to release a commercial product to make money, they do have some self-interest in keeping internal development efforts from becoming derailed by external interaction. Consider the state of Mozilla from a commercial point of view: initial estimates for times were way off, and the simultaneous development of Communicator 4.5 and Mozilla 5.0 hampered development of Mozilla. While Mozilla is tracking well now, their initial stumbles were a good example of how NOT to start off.
--
The Future: Some assembly required; batteries not included.
The effect of Open Source is just one aspect of the effect of the 'net as a whole on closed corporations.
The Third Wave is coming, either surf it or wipe out.
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
I don't think it matters, necessarily, why the companies give away their source. They are giving it away after all. Isn't this what the whole push for open source is about? Everyone has different motives for doing something whether they be monetary, egotistical, respect, or just a good 'ole "warm fuzzy feeling". Whatever. What I think could be more detrimental is when companies "give" away their source with stipulations, regulations, rules, etc. or they don't give away the whole thing (like Apple with Darwin). It then seems they are merely using the open source bandwagon for their own ends without really giving anything in return. It merely appears they are. Kind of a "smoke and mirrors" sort of thing.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
My only concern is that companies release their source code for the right reasons, which are a) improvement of the code or b) giving programmers an idea of how to write compliant code. There are other reasons of course, but those spring to mind.
The WRONG reason for releaseing code is for publicity. That is nasty behaviour. I'm sure we will see a lot of companies doing this as the buzz around open source continues to grow.
Beware of nefarious corporations. Releasing a README.txt file is NOT opensourcing code.
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
Including source as a "protection" against companies going under--or just for people who are capable of hacking on their own--is probably a good policy. I think people tend to forget, though, that "source licenses" predate open source by two or three decades. If I make a shareware program and send you the source when you register it, I could grant you the rights to modify it for your personal use only and the rights to freely distribute patches against my baseline source, but not the rights to redistribute the complete source or binaries in any form or to use my source in other projects. This is clearly not open source, yet it doesn't prevent the user community from finding and fixing bugs or enhancing my product, sharing those bug fixes or enhancements with one another, or even continuing to develop the product if I stop development (although in the latter case it would prevent the user community from growing).
For-profit corporations exist to make money. ("Duh," you say.) No, the point isn't to make you go duh, but to re-iterate that all other considerations are secondary. The difference between an ethical corporation and an unethical one is the difference in how they achieve their profits. No matter how ethical the corporation is, though, the "right thing" is that which leads, directly or indirectly, to higher returns.
People in the "open source community" need to keep this in mind when evaluating what companies are doing with their source code. The fact of the matter is that very few companies will be releasing source with GPL-style licenses for the purpose of examples, unless it's source that's specific to that one example. (If Be wants to get people to write more graphic card drivers for BeOS, they'll release the source code to a graphic card driver, not the source code to the BeOS application server.)
I've argued before that companies that expect to make the bulk of their profit from software can't afford to release that software open-source (it has to be something that people will be willing to shell out continuing money for to get support, like Cygnus's multi-thousand-dollar cross-compilation products). From a profit standpoint, the best reasons to go open source are publicity--likely for products which remain closed--and the possibility that you will get your development work done for free.
Some might say that's a cynical way of saying "improvement of the code," and granted, it is. But sometimes cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth. If Apple folds your hacks to Darwin into a future release of MacOS X, will you get compensated for it? How about Red Hat? I'm not accusing them of evil motivations, mind you; it's simply that the part of the "open source equation" most appealing to investors and accountants is the possibility of selling an $80 operating system with ongoing support contracts that you spent perhaps 2-3% as much developing as an "evil closed source" company like Be.
This is not an argument against open source (or an argument against closed source, for that matter), but a note of harsh realism. As open source becomes a buzzword, to most companies--even "good citizens"--the bottom line will become that it's not free as in speech or beer, but as in labor.
The open source movement has changed how I want to develop my carear and is hopefully going to improve my employment chances.
I know it will help me when I eventually find myself hiring staff.
I mean whats cooler than being able to show or be shown work before you hire. Work on stuff that has been tested to boot.
Its also a whole different style of development, I am basing my Final Year Project at university on the Open Source method by designing an app that will be easy for developers to share and with replacable components.
Any budding developer with time on their hands can contribute to or test or release their own work and get experience before having worked for a company which means an end to the vicious circle of 'no experience, no job, no experience..'
A.
Intranet/Internet Developer & Linux Advocate
What was that LinuxExpo fiasco that author mintioned in the article?
- Back off man. I am a scientist
There's a really key point here. It *does* really cost money to give someone a copy of software. You take time developing a piece of software. That's bloody expensive. Why should you *have* to just give it all away for somebody else to make money off should they want to? I think that's stuffed. Open Source is good, but some of you guys talk about it as a religion. Which is sort of stupid, because I think religion can be stuffed, and fundamentalism is stuffed. So get ti together you loonies!
>:)
Believe with me, my saplings.
The distinction here may lie in the difference between an idea and the practical application of that idea.
Does the person who came up with the idea of the internal combustion engine (or the estate of that person, by now) get a royalty each time someone builds something based on that idea?
By saying "software is more intangible", I mean that we are primarily dealing with ideas as opposed to physical property. How does one steal an idea? What if two people have the same idea at the same time? We can certainly recognize that a car exists and provides a more easily quantified value to its owner. When we talk about the monetary losses of software companies due to piracy and the like, we can only talk about estimates and opportunity costs.
I suspect the answer has more to do with philosophy than pragmatics, while patent law seems to have more to do with pragmatics than philosophy.
On the other hand, you bring up a good point, namely that value is linked to the time and effort necessary to create something. That's a point that I've not often heard in these discussions.
As to the question of the value of software, that's up to the creator. Seeing that the creator decides the licensing, the question of ownership seems to have been settled. If I create a program to make my job easier and to learn Perl (not so unlikely), I can put whatever monetary value and licensing restrictions on it that I choose. That's freedom. I also have a global means of distribution via the Internet, without being subject to supply chains and costs of production and the like.
It's my philosophy that software should be free -- and that the largest benefit is not to create a piece of code which may or may not be good and worthwhile and useful, but to give me more tools to solve problems. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way.
If it sounds like I'm wavering between the two positions that 'code has owners' and 'code has no owners', I am. I'm also probably dead wrong about a couple of things here.
--
QDMerge -- generate documents automatically.
how to invest, a novice's guide
For the sake of discussion, what is wrong with a company that says "you can work with our code and if you make money we can have some"? I would equate that to someone borrowing a taxi and generating all sorts of revenue. The borrower never paid for the taxi yet he reaps benefits. Is it wrong for the taxi company to ask for some money?
Please don't get me wrong. I am all for open source and GPL. The only thing I am wondering is does all software have to be under the same liscence and why is it wrong for the original software author to ask a bit in return?
On one hand, a taxi is a physical commodity while a piece of software is rather more intangible. As many people are likely to point out, it costs nearly nothing to make a copy of software, while making a copy of a taxi requires a more sophisticated process.
On the other hand, we have licenses such as the GPL and the Artistic license which do require some things from those who use the software, whether it is making changes freely available under the same license or distributing the original source, complete, with the differences clearly marked.
Pragmatically speaking, it's pretty hard to enforce free software licenses -- maybe even more difficult than enforcing unfree licenses. How many free software folks have the resources to go after big offenders? How many free software folks can even find big offenders?
I'm toying with a license which makes my software free for non-commercial use, but requires commercial users to make a contribution to free software, whether in code or in cash. Maybe that's a better solution. Maybe not.
It's an interesting question either way.
(Oh, and the Subject is just a joke. I doubt anyone is going to Make Money Fast! by propagating Free-Until-You-Make-Money-From-It software through a downline.)
--
QDMerge -- generate documents automatically.
how to invest, a novice's guide
As long as employers don't discriminate unfairly against those without experience, this could be good. It's the same as getting volunteer experience before you apply for a job somewhere else. Contributing to Open Source projects shows that you know how to program and you're not afraid to have peers review your software.
:) Imagine hiring people whose code you could already see, and see that it's neat on top of that.
How many of you have worked in a business where people's code was so bad that you'd never release it publically.
æeee!
IBM is into the Open Source game now, but their code still has a propriety feel to it. If you grab any of the things of the IBM Alphaworks site, you'll find that a lot of them have available source, but the source you get is pretty cryptic.
As well it seems like a lot of the IBM stuff is only developed in-house--community patches don't get reintegrated back into the main source tree.
It's a great start, but a lot of these companies have a fair ways to go before they understand the power of the true Open Source model. Mozilla is probably the best example of how to do it right, IMHO.
æeee!
There are people everyday who quit their jobs in some kind of acrimonious situation and post a bitch letter to a mailing list or a newsgroup or a website. It's just another type of flaming. Also remember, it wasn't Raster who posted the flame to Slashdot, it was somebody else on the mailing list. And it grabbed Slashdot's attention because Raster is a popular guy. Remember the free-for-all when Steve Jobs left Apple? Anyway, the point is, that particular event cannot be laid at the door of the open source / free software movement.
One of the things we as a society are going to have to learn to deal with, is that on the 'net, everything is "open". Not just source code.
-matt
Any software, whatsoever in my opinion, should be free. I can see how a corporation wouldn't want their source out due to loss in revenue (probably in most cases) but the effect of having it exposed to the world and having several people improving, updating, modifying, changing or manipulating it provides much more power than a single static non-changing group who will eventually focus in one place and never stray.
What we're talking about is the software we use in order to run our computers, networks, in order to communicate, delegate, compute, learn, broadcast, etc. You can't put a price on the power it could all have if it was all free. Big companies should not sell their software, they should give it away. The support they provide to it, the technical know-how, that you could sell. But the utility itself not so in my opinion, not unless it was created for commercial uses.
Wouldn't everyone be upset if you had to pay money just to be able to do "ps auxw | grep httpd" ? That would annoy me too believe me. You'd be paying for "ps" and for "grep". We created something that aids our lives, computers. It's the same as a toaster, but not everyone sees it that way. Anyhow, I've gone on a bit of a rant. Open Source the world, and leave the people in the closet to their deeds.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
How to reconcile OpenSource, intellectual property and profitability?
... errr ... venture capitalists betting as much on the quality of the people in the management team as on the actual technology.
Part of the misunderstanding is defining exactly what is software. Some people view it as a finished tangible product, much like a car whereas other view it as an on-going conversation with multiple sub-languages and cultural variants. With this in mind, this gives rise to some fundamental differences with traditional economics which relies on artificial scarcity (e.g. a monopolist has the ability to exclude competitors and thus limit the avaiability). However, the rather striking effect is that the existance of any "free" software eventually eliminates any for-fee substitute (e.g. MS Explorer vs Netscape).
Given the rather constraits of everyone having equal access to the source, it is still possible to create sustainable business models. Ghostscript is an example where the author creates commercial versions, then turns them into GPL versions after a few years. The other mechanism is to turn the strengths of OpenSource into marketing points (trust, near zero-defect, rapid development cycle, knowledgeable pool of custom programmers for-hire) and become the low-cost and efficient supplier of a market segment. Modern intellectual property is a bit of an illusion as given that all software technology is based on previous tools, it is very hard to come up with a unique solution that 10 million other software developers won't encounter within another 2-3 years. Unlike hardware products, all the minor coding variations can be easily parameterised and investigated reducing the scope for differentiation (how many ways are there really of expressing a spreadsheet?)
Capitalism is a rather complex beast but the essential point is that it is the efficient allocation of surplus time (traditionally stored/measured in dollars) to create future economic goods. The $1 that a farmer saves by not buying a lotto ticket can be invested in funding a startup which (hopefully) can return $2 (or more) to buy future consumer products. With the limiting factor in software development being talent, the OpenSource model is one solution to give any programmer a go at improving software that they are interested in. In this sense, with open peer review, it is closer to a meritocracy than any other social system. If someone comes up with a brillant new hack to double the speed of Quake, I'm sure ID software would hire them in a flash. You can already see a similar situation with vulture
The nature of the internet does change the traditional recruitment rules in that it opens up new sources of talent worldwide (note that Mexico has installed Linux in its education system which might lead to some interesting long-term effects). As usual, some companies will adapt and prosper, others will wither and get absorbed.
I look forward to an interesting new decade.
LL
From reading this article, one would think that open sourcing a project also refers to open firing on that product. As long as we in the opensource community insist on being "the huns at the gate", companies will treat us as such, and horde their gold from us.
Is anyone out there saying Raster is right??? Regardless of the situation with his manager, that should have been kept private. I won't argue against his skill, I think his work is great, but if I was looking to hire him, I would certaintly think about his poor behaviour and decide against. He is reminiscient of a salesman that gets fired, and then calls all of the clients to tell them something bad about the company. But he didn't get fired, he quit, and then he took his grief out in public, and further damaged the reputation of a company that was limping already.
But the author of this article seems to be of the mind that this is the price that we have to pay to reap the gleaming jewel of opensource. If this is true, I say forget it. How much money can be lost due to bad press? Tons. Enough to fill our building with quality programmers who will take direction and will keep their problems out of the public eye.
So, if open source has the unfortunate drawback of airing you dirty laundry to the world, I, and I think most companies, can pass. Or better yet, we can donate some lame piece of garbage like the PFAT filesystem. Look, I've opensourced CPM! Now if I could just find that old MSAI....
Your allegation that Apple is a counterexample to the points raised in the article is simply wrong. They are currently in the process of being "embraced" by the open source development model. This is a Good Thing(tm).
If you're on the Darwin development list you can witness the crumbling and fall of Apple's official communication channels. Did you know that a single support incident costs $195 when going through Apple's official Developer Technical Support system? At the same time people can ask very deep technical questions on darwin-development, and either some Apple employee may answer them directly or your mail is forwarded to the very core developers working on the problem. Free of charge.
This is all part of a community building process that has just begun. I think the ball is now in our own court, we need to support the individuals at Apple who fought for the release of Darwin as a free, open source OS. Of course there's still _lots_ of room for improvement, but this is not the right time to pick nits. First we have to show Apple that the open source approach actually works. Then we can think about fixing the bugs in the development process.
With many large corporations providing an open source path for some of their closely held products, imagine during an interview being asked if you've every contributed to their open source product. If you haven't, how would that look to the interviewer?? If two potential candidates for that same position were of equal skills, with one working on the open source product for 6 months, and the other not touching it at all, who would you choose?? In the future, will open source change the way companies hire??
1nterMod
and someone who's been around.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
If even a handful of developers and 100 or more users get their hands on source the thing cannot be taken back. Once it's started it's out of John Q. Protectionists hands.
So go ahead write the license for the sake of the statement bnut you really have little to worry about. Once you start an internet party, it will always route around blockades.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
> The fact of the matter is that very few companies will be releasing
> source with GPL-style licenses for the purpose of examples, [...]
> I've argued before that companies that expect to make the bulk of their
> profit from software can't afford to release that software open-source
You are right. The best candidats for Open-Source products are companies, where the software in itself is not the main product, but a necessary evil. They can avoid a lot of trouble with an GPL-style license. If, however, the main product is a finished piece of software, the model won't work that well any more.
But even those companies should hand to their customer the full source code and a license to do with mutations it whatever they are allowed to do with the original product. (If I am allowed to run the software on a maschine, I should be allowed to run any mutation compiled from their source, if I may resell products using their product (ie libraries) the same should be true for my versions of it.)
This way I have at least the chance of going on using the product I bought when the company goes out of business or stops supporting the product and I have trouble with it.
Servus,
johi
Here's one problem: how much $$ do they get? Will it depend on how much of their code is copy/pasted into your final product? (how do they know?) What if you went through and changed all the variable names? What if you did minor modifications to the program structure? What about major modifications? What if you just got some good IDEAS from their code? In many of these cases, it's tough to see how they're going to prove that you used their code if you say you didn't.
Now suppose you're going to be generous (and honest) and let everyone know that your product is derived in part from their code. Now they want money from you. I can see how this could work to the benefit of both you and the code-providers, but I can also see how it could provide ammunition to legal departments! Read the licensing agreements *very* *very* *carefully*.
--Mizerai
That we can have such arguments is what makes this entire Linux "community" so worthwhile. Humanerror, Chromatic, and the guy who talked about the free movie players... wow.
I was raised in DOS, and didn't start on any kind of Unix or other OS until about 2 years ago when I installed Red Hat. I had complained about how I disliked Microsoft and how much I needed stability so I got my feet wet. It wasn't until after I had run Linux for some months that I really got to appreciate the Open Source movement. However, just as I could appreciate it, I am also confused by it.
ESR is making a huge stink about Linux being called GNU/Linux because without GNU tools, there would not have been Linux. Then there are those who despise Red Hat because it makes installation easy. Then there are those who despise non-open software.
After reading some comments, I can appreciate what the issue really entails. We are divided on this issue: Whether code is like a Taxi--Effort of an individual who is entitled to compensation. But then code could be much unlike a taxi--You can't touch it and it is not physical property. Some say the latter is the reason it should be open and is wrong to be closed-source. Others say it still is work, and the product is more than the sum of its whole.
I tend to agree with the analogy that compares it to wind--you can't dent it but it is there. Free software is great, but a programmer should (this is not an issue now) have a choice of whether they want their code free. With that I mean it is property of the coder, although undentable.
The only reason I am making my feelings known on this is because this is a BIG issue in Linux. This is also a big issue with MP3s and encoding engines. Should we be able to disallow duplication/modification of our work? Is it even work? Though Mp3 encoding is an algorhythm[sp??] didn't one have to write it? Keep the issue alive because no matter what we feel the worst thing we can do is not care.
-Clump
I liked the article overall. It didn't seem to say anything earth shattering or particularly new. What I liked was that it addressed something that I find rarely, if ever, that companies may not be ready for the open attitudes like JWZ and Rasterman.
This reminds me a bit about the Slashdot response to Sun Microsystems opening of their source on some products. What surprised me is that there was a negative tide in the public response. Many were unhappy becasue of their liscence. From Sun's reasoning, it seemed logical. Open source but if you modify it and make money Sun is entitled to some of it. I am not open source expert but that does not seem unreasonable.
For the sake of discussion, what is wrong with a company that says "you can work with our code and if you make money we can have some"? I would equate that to someone borrowing a taxi and generating all sorts of revenue. The borrower never paid for the taxi yet he reaps benefits. Is it wrong for the taxi company to ask for some money?
Please don't get me wrong. I am all for open source and GPL. The only thing I am wondering is does all software have to be under the same liscence and why is it wrong for the original software author to ask a bit in return?
-Clump