There Is No Open Source Community
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4
When faced with these two options, a developer who chooses route 1 with a traditional software development approach will actually find himself eclipsed by a developer who chooses option 2, even if the ambitions of the latter project are lower. Granted, only a small percentage of the user base will ever contribute anything, but this thriving ecosystem of users and contributors is what will make a software project viable over time. Thus, in a system where software prices approach zero, open source becomes a necessity in a competitive market. (I plan to discuss the debate on leveraging this model for profit in a follow-up article.)
Without prices that approach zero, there is simply no room for viable open source options. To test this, think of most vertical software markets. These are the homes of specialized software tools of which only a few users are intimately familiar. Without a broad base of users and a deep collective knowledge base, there is considerably less downward price pressure. Consequently, there is simply no incentive to release open source software in those markets.
When taking stock of vertical software markets, I notice a decided lack of open source alternatives to commercial software. One could test assertions made in previous paragraphs by looking at vertical markets that have recently broadened in scope following an increase in the sheer number of inhabitants in that market. If the above assertions are true, there should be an emerging open source ecosystem in that market, albeit less mature and feature-complete than competing commercial products.
Conclusion
I have shown how the internet has driven software prices into the dirt, created an environment conducive to open source collaboration, and provided the infrastructure for that collaboration to actually take place. I have also shown how cheap commodity software markets are necessary for open source development and how open source is not viable in less mature software markets without the necessary economy of scale. When viewing open source development from this perspective, some things become clear that perhaps were not before.
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The continuing expansion of the internet is necessary for continued open source proliferation.
In order for more projects to grow in a vibrant open source ecosystem, there needs to be a fresh supply of new users and developers. The economies of scale that spawned open source development need to keep expanding, or else there is a risk of stagnation.
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Given current trends, open source will continue to expand in scope, prevailing in more markets.
All signs point to an expanding internet for the foreseeable future. This means that the trends that result in cheap software commodities should maintain their steady pace. As such, the open source footprint should continue to expand.
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There is no open source community.
Looking at open source from an economic perspective, it becomes clear that Linux or its equivalent was bound to happen eventually, regardless of whether Linus decided to release a kernel in 1991. The same applies for Apache and any other project. Both of these are the natural result of massive price drops in their respective markets. The view that there is a core group of altruistic companies and true believers driving open source forward is simply false. The view that open source participants are idealistic Davids fighting against software Goliaths is also false. In fact, surveys of open source participants tend to bear this out.
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Open source is neither good nor bad.
Open source is not a religion. It is not an ideology. It can be used for both good and bad. It does not inhabit the higher moral ground, nor is it a more ethical way to conduct business. It just is, and it will continue to grow and expand.
Coming Up
In the next article in this series, I will show the other side of the equation: the customer pull on open source. I'll also demonstrate how and when a software vendor can leverage open source economies of scale in its favor, why TCO is irrelevant, and why there is little to fear from legal battles.
John Mark Walker has burrowed deep inside the bat cave, working feverishly to make sure that LinuxWorld learns how to party like it's 1999.
Return to ONLamp.com.
Here's where you yell and scream if you haven't read the article--or where you debate subtle points if you have. Your choice.
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Showing messages 1 through 41 of 41.
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Not paying Taxes...
2006-01-31 09:54:06 GoodCoder [Reply | View]
With open sources, u r not paid what u work for and you are not paying Taxes. Coding, buying/selling if you are not paying Taxes, I argue, how u will have a healthy economy and job creation... That means, u r breaking the entire cycle here. So, it really a Materialist vs Idealist thought going on... -
Not paying Taxes...
2007-01-09 14:35:21 rcsteiner [Reply | View]
How do you explain the Mozilla Foundation, which is apparently making quite a bit of money?
How do you explain the open source tools that I work on as part of my job? They aren't the main focus of my efforts, but I depend on them, as do others, and my support for them is often performed during work hours. The company benefits from them not breaking.
I think you have an overly simplistic view of the open source universe. The world isn't Black and White, but rather shades of grey...
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Good article, but bad economics
2006-01-25 16:56:47 bgiffo [Reply | View]
I really did enjoy your article, and thanks for broaching this topic. But, I have a few disagreements on your economic analysis of the software industry.
See here: http://digitalbusinessstrategy.com/?p=19
Cheers...
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Materialist vs. Idealist Worldview
2006-01-21 15:42:00 linus.walleij [Reply | View]
First: I dig your article. The pin-down of a few points of economic trends is superb.
I didn't get the title at first: then I realized: OK he means there is not *one* open source community, there may be *many*. Allrite. (I read this out from one of your comments.)
However I really see nothing else than the old argument of materialists versus idealist in this following "debate". Whereas the former see history at large as driven by economic motives and will claim that wars and other societal transformations are ultimately caused by limited resources and their distribution, the latter will line up a large line of "great men" who shaped the world by their pure ideas such as the Nietzschean entrepreneurs that were so vividly portrayed by the economist Joseph Schumpeter. (As if some platonic higher reality was projected onto our world through their excellent minds.)
I understand if you are surrounded on all sides by people who tell such stories of "great men" and their endavours: I believe it's typical United Statesean. To us in Europe it's quite uncommon really. (I cannot speak for the rest of the world.) I think the tendency among historians in our time is to make a synthesis and not paint things in black-and-white either-or chessboard squares.
As for that old technology-push versus demand-pull debate: it is equally polarized.
David vs. Goliat etc themes: postmodernists call these "large narratives", i.e. stories that are so permeating that they control the way we can think about the world. Large narratives drive simplistic thinking, but does anyone really fall into that old trap anymore? I like to think positively about my contemporaries.
Eric S. Raymond has talked about the commoditization of the PC and I know he claimed at one point - though I can't remember which one - that when the cost of the operating system and applications of a commonplace mass market PC reach a certain percentage, it must tip over so that "PC packeters" start pre-installing free operating systems and application software to cut costs. Your article does not address this and the problematic issue as to why this has not happened to any great extent even though the operating system is today a substantial percentage of the cost for a new off-the-shelf PC.
More thougts than comments really.
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Maybe it is open standards that are important
2006-01-20 14:57:50 richfish [Reply | View]
Interesting article. I am wondering though whether there isn't a bit of chicken-and-egg problem here. Your basic assertion seems to be that without the internet, there would be no OSS. Maybe the reverse is also true...without OSS, there would be no internet. It seems that many of earliest OSS projects were clients and servers built to implement the open standards of the internet: smtp, ftp, dns, nntp, and so on. Without those open standards, what sort of computer networks would have arisen, if any, and would they have supported the kind of free-flow of information that made large-scale collaboration possible?
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More layers of debunking
2006-01-19 11:59:11 jpmcc [Reply | View]
Interesting article, debunking many commonly-held myths. However, there are some factors which I don't think you haven't brought out in your article.
The origins of free software / open-source
The first recorded open-source project was over fifty years ago in a commercial environment - see http://jpmcc.blogdns.org/index.php/2005/12/11/its-the-big-5-0-for-open-source. Open-source was born in the commercial world.
The opening-up of programming to non-professionals</string>
Hobby computing was triggered by cheap computers with basic compilers in the early 1980s, many years before internet access became commonplace.
It's getting easier to produce software
I would argue that if anything it takes more effort to code a game than it did ten years ago. Why? we expect so much more from 'a game'. The same is true in commercial computing. Ten years ago a payroll system would have been COBOL and green screens talking to DB/2 - now it's a multi-layered architecture with an HTML, Java, application servers, stored procedures in databases ...
Economic forces dictate open-source
There are economic forces at work here, but I think Nicholas Carr was closer to the true cause and effect in his notorious Does IT Matter article. Once software becomes a commodity, then price becomes the dominant factor. Does your word processor give your organisation competitive advantage? NO - ditch MS-Word, use OpenOffice.org Writer.
Finally, it is worth remembering that the biggest supplier of the biggest commodity software - the desktop operating system - is still very healthy financially, thank you...
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Open Source is just a Strategy
2006-01-16 13:53:59 DieSonne99 [Reply | View]
I agree with the author about the obvious statementst such as many companies have to give their software away for free just to gain market share... I think it has alot more to do with Microsoft's dominance than with the Internet. It is true that open source couldn't exist without the Internet but that is NOT the reason why people open up their code; they do it to compete with proprietary companies... It is a marketing strategy more than anything else...
Furthermore, open source's appeals most in areas that are broadly uses like OS, databases, programming tools (everybody has a computer who needs these tools, hence broad appeal)...
But what about Banking Software (financing sectors), POS, Health Care, Insurance, Manufacturing... etc..... there are software packages in the Real Estate Market being Sold for $2000.... THOSE just don't have that broad User appeal... those i doubt you would ever see open sourced
Open Source at the end will only give ever software developer a good framework, but proprietary software companies will continue to exist and more specialized
We will never see a cryptographic ATM key transfer system for Bank Transactions.... called GNUBank
Open source is nice... but it ain't the whole story.
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as all "economic" analysis...
2006-01-16 13:47:58 G_Lacava [Reply | View]
... yours is, as usual, a posteriori; that is, given a phenomenon, you try to explain us "the obvious economic causes". As usual, people didn't see it coming first, but after the fact they are all "well, it's always been obvious, isn't it? It HAD to happen sooner or later".
Your argument that "there's no open-source community" is like saying that there were no labour communities at the beginning of the 20th century, because after all, trade-unionism "had to happen" for economic reasons. Of course it had, but Trade Unions were a community anyway; the two things are hardly mutually exclusive... unless for you a "community" doesn't exist as such. Please define community for us poor souls.
All in all, I believe this "editorial" is just a way of stirring the pot and produce some viewers for O'Reilly.
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Simplistic argument
2006-01-16 09:26:32 loca [Reply | View]
In trying to argue that there is no 'open source movement' we are given naturalistic arguments that are a form of technological or economic determinism. This is an extremely weak and simplistic causal model being constructed that disregards the agency and creativity of users and developers involved in open source production.
Surely if open source activists, developers and users claim a community, then a single journalist is in no position to tell them that they are wrong? It is like economists telling consumers that they are wrong when they act in certain ways because their models predict something that consumers then fail to do.
I would suggest that relying on a unverified web surveys (which are themselves extremely methodologically suspect) is not the best way to write a serious article on open source and its 'imagined' community.
A good attempt at making a headline that attracts attention, but unfortunately an argument not substantiated in the body of the text.
DM
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Not so fast :@)
2006-01-16 11:41:12 john.mark [Reply | View]
I think this is something about which reasonable minds can disagree. You are not the only person to argue that I'm forgetting the creativity of users and developers involved in open source production. Far from it. The individuals involved certainly did some incredible work, but that work does not exist in a vacuum, and the internet allows that work to morph in ways that the original author could never have foreseen or intended. I view this in much the same way that I view neo-libertarians who have a love affair with the self-made man (or woman). Just as I don't believe in the self-made man, I also don't believe in the supremacy of the individual open source author. Without internet proliferation, open source is not nearly as successful as today, and I see nothing in your talkback to argue otherwise.
There are many technology communities, some of which gather around open source, some of which don't. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard developers and business people talk in revered tones about this massive, homogenous "open source community". When I ask them who it is, they can't begin to tell me. I would argue that the communities form around certain technologies, and the fact that it's open source just means that it's easier for people to join up. It democratizes the process, just like the internet democratizes the access to said software and communities.
You can disregard web surveys all you want, but the fact is that an overwhelming majority of individuals have responded to these surveys stating that their involvement stems from their interest in the technology instead of some ideological motivation. To the extent that participants enjoy being a part of something so disruptive as open source is difficult to say.
And again, I'm not including the free software movement in this, because that's all about ideology. The technology is just a happy by-product.
In any case, I can see why others think that I'm disregarding the individual contributor far too much, and as I said, this is something about which reasonable minds can disagree.
-JM -
Not so fast :@)
2006-01-17 04:30:17 loca [Reply | View]
Well, I certainly agree with the point that the Internet has intensified the success of open source. But to avoid the either/or kind of argument, I think a more nuanced position advocating the co-construction of open source technologies might be better (i.e. both structure *and* agency were important - technology and users/developers).
In any case, I think in trying to find a kind of empirical 'community' is barking up the wrong tree. The open-source community could function more as an 'imagined community' (rather like the way that Benedict Andersen famously argued) so that it is the belief it exists that creates the feeling of belonging to a community (which may or may not be empirically verified). This could then feed into an eventual 'real' community as people start to map it, draw up technology support systems (like fora and wikis) and start to develop a set of common values. This raises the interesting question as to what extent the open-source community is building itself ;-)
I think you should also be careful about asserting the 'ideology' of free software without a critical attention to the underlying ideology of the open-source advocates (even being apolitical is a political position, afterall). I would suggest looking at
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/berry1.pdf
Which is an attempt to map these divisions and try to understand how the technical can also contain values (and by definition politics).
However, I do think you have made some important arguments, and raising them for debate is always to be applauded.
Best
DM -
Forgot to add...
2006-01-16 12:27:59 john.mark [Reply | View]
...that cost makes the whole ecosystem viable. Yes, the free software community/ecosystem would exist regardless, but it would not be running nearly as much of the world's IT infrastructure, as is the case now.
The exact relationship between cost and the internet is yet to be worked out. I hope some brilliant economist does some research into what effects zero-cost distribution and copying have had on the software industry. My entire argument rests on the assumption that this drives cost downward, and this downward price pressure makes the open source ecosystem viable. This is usually the point at which I begin to argue with staunch open source proponents, who insist that a core community drives open source. My opinion is that they are trying to assert that the tail wags the dog.
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Python, PHP Effect
2006-01-14 12:38:23 turkix [Reply | View]
I totally agree with the author. However, i think, there's something else also; the PHP, Python effect
> Languages like PHP, Python made programming a child toy; resulting that everyone became capable of writing programs (without the hassle of mallocs, pointers).. As a result, more and more programs are produced, and they are distributed for free; because they don't have an economic value.. -
Python, PHP Effect
2006-01-16 17:36:29 PYSS [Reply | View]
if it is that easy Can you please debug my childs play :) -
HTML Effect
2006-01-14 12:53:16 turkix [Reply | View]
And there is also the HTML effect. Web designing attracted many people into this domain; many young people have chosen this as a profession. And many others had to learn HTML for making a presence on the web. They've started with HTML and become programmer; "view source" character of HTML codes influenced many people.. etc etc...
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The Free Egg and Open Chicken Argument
2006-01-14 09:31:25 knowprose [Reply | View]
Since I don't use trackbacks anymore, here's the link to the Free Egg and Open Chicken Argument:
http://www.knowprose.com/node/10304
Basically, the community is integrated with people who are interested in Better Chicken and Better Eggs. Some prefer one over the other at different points of time, some are extremist, but in the end there is a community which is quite dynamic - and which 'leaders' don't necessarily represent.
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What about good design?
2006-01-13 21:56:03 jtidwell [Reply | View]
...software developers have two choices when trying to win over users: (1) add features not available elsewhere, and (2) release the source code. There is no other currency of value that developers can extend to users.
No other? What about a good user experience?
In some market niches, people will pay extra for a product which is more fun, easy, and rewarding to use. And user experience is not just about adding a bunch of features; it's about knowing your users, and designing the right kind of product and interface for them. That's often resource-intensive, but it doesn't have to be. Skill and knowledge can give a developer an edge.
When users treat good design as a differentiator, the software-as-commodity model can break down. It doesn't always, but enough that you might want to take it into account.
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What about good design?
2006-01-14 07:23:25 rancor [Reply | View]
You're making an assumption that there are no decent "designers" (what-ever that might be) that are not willing or able to utilize the Internet in the same way that FLOSS developers have.
I believe that there is evidence to the contrary. Consider the Appeal project for KDE (http://appeal.kde.org/wiki/Appeal), an Internet-enabled effort to make KDE 4.0 beautiful and, well, appealing.
I presume that it was this kind of "design" that you are speaking of because there is plenty of examples of good software design (as well as bad software design) in FLOSS projects.
But, in the end the "design" you are speaking of is a "matter of taste" issue. For instance: I find the Mac OS X stuff to be visually very nice (but I tire very much with the "brushed steel" look) but at the same time I find them to all have frustrating and annoying quirks and limitations. -
What about good design?
2006-01-15 16:12:47 jtidwell [Reply | View]
But, in the end the "design" you are speaking of is a "matter of taste" issue.
It's that, and more. A nice brushed-steel look doesn't mean that a piece of software is easy to use. (As it happens, a lot of OS X software is easy to use, but that's because Apple spent a lot of time on all aspects of their design.) Something can test very well in an objective usability test -- it can be learnable, memorable, efficient, etc. -- but still look like crud.
... no decent "designers" (what-ever that might be) ...
"Designer" = "someone who specializes in design." It's a fairly large set of skills that might include:
- product design -- what is it, what does it do, and who is it for?
- information architecture -- the organization of data, feature groups, and vocabulary
- interaction design -- the design of user workflow and progression through tasks, navigation, widget-level interactions
- visual design -- look-and-feel, icons, imagery, typography, colors, etc.; includes cognitive aspects as well as "taste"
Also, let's not be too quick to denigrate "appealing" or "a matter of taste." The Stanford Web Credibility Project (google it) found that users' perception of trustworthiness depended heavily on the professionalism of sites' visual design, for instance. Just FYI.
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There is also something else that bothers me...
2006-01-13 21:30:05 rancor [Reply | View]
About the asymptotic to zero assertion (I'm not disagreeing with the assertion, simply expanding it's applicability, or not): why only confined to software (free or not)?
I've believed for a long time, and the data is certainly bearing this out, that ANYTHING on the Internet eventually follows the asymptotic to zero value assertion. Certainly this is true for music downloads (although there appears to be a hiccup in this curve right now, but it will pass).
One must work VERY hard to fight this trend, but in the end a certain kind of 'entropy' wins out. In this case 'entropy' is the increase of value of 'stuff' (shared knowledge in the case of OSS) in a closed system (the Internet) that cannot be monetized by the 'originator' of said 'stuff'.
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Agree and Disagree
2006-01-13 19:49:05 GeekyGirl [Reply | View]
This article makes some really good points about the relationship between open source and global collaboration along with making a case for reduced vendor lock-in as a driver for open source.
However, the relationship between cost/pricing and open source seems a little weak. The article says that "without prices that approach zero, there is simply no room for viable open source options." This seems to imply a causality that may or may not exist.
I have posted a few more details on my blog at http://opensourceculture.blogspot.com/
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Agree and Disagree
2006-01-16 12:33:47 john.mark [Reply | View]
I agree that more research needs to be done on the relationship between cost and open source viability. I certainly understand that, at this point, saying cost drives open source participation is just a logical argument with little in the way of real data points. I hope someone follows up with more research. Not being an economist by trade, I don't think I'm the person to do it.
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Pound wise, penny foolish?
2006-01-13 16:07:05 sfink [Reply | View]
I have shown how the internet has driven software prices into the dirt,...
For some types of software. As you also mention, vertical software markets are doing fine. Software is a means to an end, not a finite natural resource to be discovered or fought over between proprietary companies and open source, so I would assert that there are many ways in which to use software to increase the value of something, in a way that allows charging a higher price for it.
...created an environment conducive to open source collaboration,...
Hard to argue with that.
...and provided the infrastructure for that collaboration to actually take place.
Although you haven't proven that open source was necessary for that. It is certainly hard to imagine a flourishing community built upon proprietary email, IM, and forums.
I have also shown how cheap commodity software markets are necessary for open source development and how open source is not viable in less mature software markets without the necessary economy of scale.
Shown, yes, but not proven, and I doubt you can prove this given that open source development -- and even free software development, which is harder to initiate but self-sustaining -- predates commodity software markets.
When viewing open source development from this perspective, some things become clear that perhaps were not before.
The continuing expansion of the internet is necessary for continued open source proliferation.
Huh? The continuing existence of the Internet, certainly, but why is expansion required? The fresh supply of developers and users is inevitable unless all kids born after 2006 refuse to have anything to do with computers.
It does make one wonder, though: if you killed the Internet, could you kill open source?
...open source will continue to expand in scope, prevailing in more markets.
Agreed, and I think this is the only one you have proven with your economic argument.
There is no open source community.
I'm sure you can pick some strawman definition that you can refute, but there is indeed an open source community. A nontrivial segment of it is driven by idealism. A fairly large percentage of it even recognizes its membership in a community.
Your argument on this is bizarre: economic forces imply the creation of open source, therefore the open source community does not exist? Umm... perhaps the political environment within the United States implied the rise to power of someone resembling Ronald Reagan, but I'm pretty sure he still existed. Or, a more direct analogy: if you paid someone $10 if they would bring you back a flower, and as they were walking down the street to the flower store someone handed them a rose for free, then I think they would take the rose and thank the person, even though it may have appeared that the economic forces in the situation seemed to be implying that the flower store would sell one extra flower that day. So although economic forces may have made open source inevitable, that doesn't mean that the way in which it occurred wasn't controlled or at least heavily influenced by a small number of personalities and ideas.
Open source is neither good nor bad.
To me, advancement of human progress and improvement of the general welfare of the world is "good", and given that, I have to say that open source is a good thing. That does not imply that proprietary software is bad (and I'm not saying that it is or it isn't). It's a tossup. Proprietary software is available to benefit only a limited number of people, which is bad. The research and thinking that propagates from proprietary software to free software is indirectly good, as is the support for open source authors, etc.
Software patents, by this argument, are clearly bad. Their good stems from causing ideas to be generated and implemented that would otherwise languish. But their prevention of the utilization of advances for the good of humanity is bad, and unless you're a complete idiot you can see that the bad far, far overwhelms the good in the realm of software.
(Copyright is similar, but less bad and more good, so I can only speculate as to the final tally.)
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Pound wise, penny foolish?
2006-01-13 16:48:38 john.mark [Reply | View]
Thanks. Some good points here. Some responses:
- I say that the internet needs to expand, because I feel the only way to keep the acceleration going it to add more and more users. To be honest, I didn't think this through to its logical conclusion. I suppose it's entirely possible that if the number of people on the internet remains constant, there will still be a rising tide of knowledge and knowledgeable people creating software.
- there is no one single monolithic open source community. And yet, I've seen many articles portraying it as such. Not only that, but they portray it as an ideology-driven, David vs. Goliath thing. That view is so tired. There are many technology communities, many of which form around individual open source projects, with lots of overlap among them. Open source makes it easy for these communities to form and grow, but the communities form around technology that people like to use, not necessarily an ideology. That's not true for free software, but that's a different beast entirely. That community is all about ideology and while it is an important subset of open source users, the vast majority of those who use open source do so with no ideological notions whatsoever.
- I have to say that in my old age (haha), it's become clear to me that plenty of bad is possible with open source. I view open source as another ramification of globalization - you can't stop it, you know it's going to continue, but there is plenty of good and bad that comes about as a result. In the case of open source, it would be the exploitation of workers. After all, if people around the world can do your QA for you, why hire a team of people to do that? Yes, I understand the naivete of that argument, but I believe that open source can be exploitative in the wrong hands and that leveraging open source software does not make a company "good" or give them the moral high ground. -
Pound wise, penny foolish?
2006-01-13 20:56:54 rancor [Reply | View]
Some of your clarification is useful, but it does not excuse some of the broad-stroke misrepresentations made in the original article.
there is no one single monolithic open source community. And yet, I've seen many articles portraying it as such.... [I am addressing the entire point not just this statement]
Yes, FLOSS "communities" would probably be a better way to describe "what's out there". Clearly, there are other such, essentially meaningless terms we hear like "The African-American community", or "The Asian Community". I think it is safe to assume that most readers of your article are immune to these meaningless cliches. The universe of participants in the development, use, support and evangelism of FLOSS is extremely diverse. This said, it is hard to deny the persistent existence of discussion boards, mailing lists, irc channels, events, etc. There is something out there that is very community like, sure they may not be having bake sales every week, but there is something there. Your "tiredness" with this issue is insufficient to make it go away.
plenty of bad is possible with open source
This is where the division between the FL and OSS becomes the most pronounced. Because in the OSS part of this where the code 'sharing' relationship is not symmetric then 'exploitation' for financial gain without 'paying back' the contributors to the OSS contributors that made your financial success possible. In this sense OSS (without FL) does NOT have a higher 'moral' ground.
This situation does not occur with the FL (Free/Libre) software base. After all with FL software anyone can have it for $FREE right? FL software is money symmetric since if there is a way to make money with the FL software then anyone can also make money the same way. In this way FL software does have a higher 'moral' ground with the 'built-in' possibility for exploitation.
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What axe are you trying to grind?
2006-01-13 11:16:52 rancor [Reply | View]
I take issue with some of your substantive points:
* Modern scientific thinking required the existence of something like the "Royal Society" of England several hundred years ago, just like the various FLOSS "communities" that have cropped up in support of FLOSS activities. I think that denying this is self-deception to the point of needing professional help.
* It seems absurd to me that you would recast the history of such large FLOSS projects such as Linux and Apache in an economic mold: these projects were started by folks who never imagined that they would ever make a dime off of this work. Or if they did it was a whimsical fantasy. Eventually, luck favored these folks, I am happy to say, and we can NOW start to show the "rest" of the world that "there is a 'better' way".
* I cannot see how you can make a sincere argument as to why FLOSS does not inhabit a higher 'moral' or 'ethical' ground. I think anything that enables one to be decoupled from the potentially insidious plans of another party as a 'good' thing, the contrary being 'bad'. So I'm not about to start a Free vs. OSS flame war but I think that you would have to agree with at least this.
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Open source is not just a community. It is business strategy
2006-01-13 11:06:11 MalcolmS [Reply | View]
The article is correct. We support open source as matter of a prudent business offering. We can offer our clients the benefits of an open code base (tailoring and self maintenance), low cost deployment, rapid evolution, rapid hardening by widespread test and fix etc.
Nobody gets misty eyed in our office about open source. For engineers open-source products are like huge code bases we can assemble quickly for clients in a very cost effective manner. We can also easily instrument and improve the solution performance in an end to end manner.
I wrote a similar article to this about a year ago in FreeSoftware Magazine.
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/issue_03/market_force/
For us open source is good business. We use it with JBoss, CORBA (ACE/TAO/JacORB), Boost, MPC, Ovation, Hibernate and now QuickFIX. We know the products intimately and they fit well in our markets. We are no different than an MS or Oracle VAR or systems integrator. Except we save clients money and time. Both in short supply these days.
regards Malcolm Spence
Object Computing St Louis -
Open source is not just a community. It is business strategy
2006-01-13 16:50:36 john.mark [Reply | View]
It's funny how the reaction among users tends to break along entrepreneur / non-entrepreneur lines. There's also a libertarian / non-libertarian break as well.
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Open source is not just a community. It is business strategy
2006-01-13 21:08:53 rancor [Reply | View]
As I've mentioned in one of my other responses the FLOSS "community" is a complex, multi-headed beast. It certainly is not monolithic in any way.
In a similar vein I would say that the groups "entrepreneur" and "non-entrepreneur" are equally diverse.
It appears that you are using "entrepreneur" to be the "exploitative" group that are interested in siphoning off non-free (libre) but OSS into non-free AND non OSS products. As opposed to the "non-entrepreneur" who, I guess, doesn't do what the "entrepreneur" does and therefore doesn't, um, make money?
I think there are "entrepreneurs" that do more than lick their chops at all that good non-free OSS out there. I think that there are "entrepreneurs" that kick out OSS and even free/libre software that can make money.
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The How, Not the Why
2006-01-13 10:33:26 glynmoody [Reply | View]
A nicely provocative article, but I think you are describing the how, not the why.
The Internet certainly led to a flowering of open source, for exactly the reasons you describe in considering Linux. It is also driving many of the most interesting developments in technology today, including open genomics (bioinformatics) and open content (blogs, Wikipedia etc.) - see http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/.
But as I found when interviewing all the top hackers for my book Rebel Code, the key free software programs were created because there was an exceptional individual (RMS, Don Knuth, Larry Wall, Eric Allman, Linus, etc. etc.) who had a driving compulsion to do so. Economics didn't enter into it.
Your article does, however, sum up well the dynamics that are likely to ensure that open source will eventually prevail in the long run. -
The How, Not the Why
2006-01-13 16:58:22 john.mark [Reply | View]
Many comments on the article focus on this point - that I'm discounting the contributions of individuals. It's not that I think individual contributors aren't highly talented, or that they did nothing of significance - they certainly did. It's just that there had to be an environment already in place for them to succeed as well as they have.
Put it another way - the rising tide of distributed knowledge ensures that more and more talented individuals will have the power to create things of use to the world. Sort of like the old analogy - you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Well, leading the horse to water is the same as the growing internet, and actually taking the drink will be those talented ambitious individuals that make things happen.
I think it's a chicken or egg argument. Which came first, the talented open source programmer or the distributed knowledge base? One feeds the other. But in this scenario, the only way you get all those talented people contributing or even using a project is if they have the means to do so. The internet gives them that means.
It's true that economics does not often enter into the decision-making process of individuals. However, the fact that the price of much software is asymptotic to zero accounts for a healthy open source ecosystem, from which many talented individuals decide to contribute something to the world.
By the way, I loved your book. Thank you for sharing your comments!
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It's about sustainable code bases and cat herding
2006-01-13 10:29:18 mbligh [Reply | View]
You miss the point. Writing software is, indeed, pretty easy. But ..
Writing a sustainable codebase that's reliable, debuggable and extentable is hard.
Herding the cats that are open source developers is hard.
It's partly a technical problem, but it's mostly a social and administrative problem. That's where the leaders of the open source projects are heros, not for grinding out code (though they do that well too).
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The value of an integrated stack (or 1 + 1 = 3)
2006-01-13 09:36:18 Daniel026 [Reply | View]
"With prices approaching zero, software developers have two choices when trying to win over users: (1) add features not available elsewhere, and (2) release the source code. There is no other currency of value that developers can extend to users"
This is only true if you consider each piece of software as a point solution. A vendor that provides an integrated set of products that work better with each other than by themselves has something that is less easy to eclipse by commoditizing a single piece. Microsoft being a case in point, but this applies to other major software vendors too.
You may argue that such beneficial interdependence is just a "feature" but that ignores the fact that you can't beat it simply by improving the capabilities of a single piece of it. You have to improve the capabilities of the whole solution. Hence an Open Source office automation product may approach the individual capabilities of a commercial software equivalent, but if that commercial software equivalent can leverage capabilities of a wider solution not available to the open source product then the open source equivalent will never really match the commercial product in terms of business value.
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The value of an integrated stack (or 1 + 1 = 3)
2006-01-13 17:04:40 john.mark [Reply | View]
Ah, but IT as a whole is gravitating towards point solutions. It's about lower bar to entry, and rebelling against vendor lockin. I'll go more in depth on that in the follow-up article. I have data points from CA and also some Gartner report that I can't locate at the moment.
Most of the stuff in this article is really rather boring nuts and bolts stuff. The fun stuff is in the next piece. I may even do some Microsoft bashing ;) -
The value of an integrated stack (or 1 + 1 = 3)
2006-01-14 00:50:07 Daniel026 [Reply | View]
Thanks. It will be interesting to see how you prove that point (IT as a while gravitating towards point solutions). I would argue that most people - ie the end users who outnumber us IT folk millions to one - simply don't care about these arguments. They just want something that solves their problem, and if a solution comes along that does that in a better/cheaper/faster/whatever way then they're most likely to choose that solution. And a well-integrated solution more likely to do that than a point solution in many cases.
I realise this is an oversimplification - factors like intertia (stick with what you're used to), follow-the leader (use what everyone else uses), etc come into play as well.
For what it's worth I would encourage you not to go down the Microsoft bashing route only because it turns a reasoned argument into something religious and emotional, and I think people generally lose perspective. If you're really looking for "the truth", whatever that is, you need to avoid the old religious stuff like the plague.
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Hm
2006-01-13 08:00:10 smitty_one_each [Reply | View]
Conventional wisdom says that powerful individuals drive open source by working against the grain to institute a methodology of sharing that would balance the power between software vendors and users.<br/>
While this makes for an entertaining narrative, there is quantitative evidence to the contrary.
I think you could as well argue that the last 250 years of world history have been about technology and economic factors, not about the people.<br/>
Yet, events are quite tightly coupled to names like Washington, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin, Churchill, etc. Your historical path might have been radically different without any one of them, as you enter the realm of the counterfactual.<br/>
Similarly, the inidividuals mentioned in your article have all exerted more or less force on the course of history. I don't disagree with the economic points you raise so much as I think you underrate the importance of individuals, timing, and location in the course of events.<br/>
Beyond the individuals in question, you have http://www.debian.org/social_contract which seems to fly in the face of your article title, at least.<br/>
Possibly you'd argue that these are micro-trends, and of little macro-importance.
