The Joel on Software Discussion Group (CLOSED)

I have held this notion of a "fundamental flaw" in the Open Source movement for a long time, so I'm hoping someone here can shed some light on how this can end in a nice way.

1. Developers in their spare time work on pet projects that turn into real software.  We'll call this Product X.

2. Big Commercial Company Z sponsors the project with 0.1% of their revenue, begins incorporating Product X as the primary backend for its own products.

3. Company Z now has a horde of minions working for free and logically eliminates 20% of its internal workforce of developers who are no longer needed.

4. Open Source Project Q develops a (free) competitor to Company Z, converting the bottom 5% of the market.

5. Company Z reduces its workforce in attempts to remain profitable.  More developers are out of work.

... and the cycle goes on.

I see a "global thermonuclear war" scenario where all developers are eventually working unpaid for software companies that survive on Open Source technology.

Doesn't the GPL set the stage for an eventual no-win scenario for developers everywhere?  How many developers are diluting the very industries they get salaries from?

I have wrestled with the logic of this since the LAMP stack really took off, because I know developers who make their very good incomes creating products that don't run on LAMP, but contribute to the projects.  In my eyes, they're putting themselves out of business.

Please explain to me how, ten years from now, there is still a healthy ecosystem of paid developers.

-Matt

Your post, my friend, is spoken with a voice of reason.

Let’s say you made a living picking fruit for $10 an hour. Unknown to you, a flood gate of immigrants come into the country and are willing to do it for $2 an hour. What chance do you have to continue in that line of work? Companies are trying to reproduce this in the tech sector by outsourcing, h1b, the scenario you described etc. Fortunately for you technology is a little more complicated to do than picking fruit and each project is different so developers are not 100% interchangeable parts. I don’t think there will be a time when you won’t be able to do software development as a career, but the cheap alternatives will force you to constantly adapt as well as put pressure on the type of salary that you can command.

Good evening, Matt,

A couple strengths of open-source:
1) You can modify the source to suit your needs, and your business is not held back by the whim of the company. Those of us who have worked for software shops can often vent about the stupidity and short-sightedness of our companies willingness to add new features, despite market potential and demand.
2) It's free, which makes it easy to incorporate into a companies IT infrastructure and IT projects, which bottom-line - saves money. Money saved on basic software (and face it, its not leading-edge software that gets adopted by corporations, it's stuff thats been around a while) gets invested by the business into new ventures and expansion, creating new jobs. Or did you not count the cost savings of open-source into the economic equation?
3) etc etc

One of the strengths of open source is the support business model. Companies tend to like a support contract, so that even if the software is free, they want someone to support it. Business opportunity. What if a company needs a specific feature? Many companies charge a customer to add features to their own proprietary software, and open-source companies can charge corporate customers for implementing features.

Open source software is not the be-all-end-all of software development. But it is inevitable, much like a global code-sharing project. Open source is good for the overall industry because it helps promote sharing and standardization, rather than fragmented standards.

It is my belief that proprietary software holds back the industry as a whole, since so many people have to re-develop the wheel at the same time. That said, if everything is shared, where is the drive for innovation? imo, it's at the (b)leading edge, where companies willing to pay for an edge pay for the support and skills to be ahead of the game, while others can eventually follow. Like the generic drug industry, of sorts.

ebay paid over 2 billion dollars for skype. Was it worth it? Like so many times before, the industry is going through a paradigm shift. Nobody knows for sure what things will look like on the other side. Pandora's box is open, but it's not the end of the world. IBM thought so when the PC took off. But time has a way of absorbing progress :)

"an eventual no-win scenario for developers everywhere"

Yes, I think so.

Although I think you mean GPL-style-free-but-not-really-free-software and not open source.

The promoters say that the free software creates new opportunities for people to create new products without reinventing the wheel.

But you don't have to reinvent the wheel if you buy a few decent libraries, most of which are open source, but not free.

Or just code from scratch. It doesn't take that long for most things, you own the code, and you have the source.

>>
Please explain to me how, ten years from now, there is still a healthy ecosystem of paid developers.
>>

Domain specific expertise, exploring the new problem spaces which open source makes possible (LAMP leads to web applications which are within the reach of just about everybody, web applications are potentially big business and certainly employ lots of proprietary developers at the moment), writing software for people who aren't developers*, etc etc.

* Major successful open source products with people who can't open an IDE: Firefox.  And Firefox scarcely dominates its market and hasn't caused any other browser makers to lose a single penny of revenue *chuckle*.  If you expand to the Jolly Roger crowd they also use a few open source BitTorrent clients.  Games?  Productivity apps?  Web applications?  All of these are traditional software for most non-developers.

One thing is certain, I think - open source and free software will cause some, maybe many, developers to lose their jobs, the total amount of programmers (compared to the size of the industry) will be reduced. But I do not think that this is a bad thing - I am of the belief that open source means less reinvention of the wheel, and the loss of the wheel-reinventing-jobs is not something I care a lot about. The people that are no longer able to work as programmers are then able to work on other things - in total, a smaller amount of people will be able to get the same amount of work done. How can this be a bad thing, even if it costs jobs?

-----"Please explain to me how, ten years from now, there is still a healthy ecosystem of paid developers."-----

Nah, somebody moves their cheese and they all freeze and starve.

+1 Troels,

if we were worried about jobs, we should immediately stop ANY progress and development in ANY field, to preserve all existing jobs. But then we would still drive in horse-drawn carriages or worse.

How many jobs were lost by the closed source based MS monopoly?

RE: couple of strengths of open-source: by Anonymous

1) You can modify the source to suit your needs, and your business is not held back by the whim of the company. Those of us who have worked for software shops can often vent about the stupidity and short-sightedness of our companies willingness to add new features, despite market potential and demand.

...and then you can spend the rest of your life synchronizing your branched copy of the source with the changes coming in the main line...

2) It's free, which makes it easy to incorporate into a companies IT infrastructure and IT projects, which bottom-line - saves money. Money saved on basic software (and face it, its not leading-edge software that gets adopted by corporations, it's stuff thats been around a while) gets invested by the business into new ventures and expansion, creating new jobs. Or did you not count the cost savings of open-source into the economic equation?

...but as per point 1, I now have to keep around a bunch of folks on the payroll to keep the product up-to-date. Additionally, since everyone else is working in an open-source way, no-one wants to address the little annoying buglets that are only triggered by our companies' use of the code. So, I have to maintain my own branch to address those issues. I have tried to get the fixes back into the main branch, but can't get the open-source guys to take the time to review and fix it.

Here's the funny thing. I is actually in my best interest as a open-sourcer to keep bugs in the code since all the money (i.e. my livelihood) comes from fixes bugs and maintaining branches of code.

Equally funny, if I am a user of the code and complain about the bugs, I am told "You can always branch and fix them yourself." (see resoonse to point 2)

Yes, there are some good open-source projects, but there are a whack more badly run, badly done ones out there like ambulance chasing lawyers looking for unwary victims.

Yes, I use open source stuff, but I do it with my eyes open in that TINSTAAFL. What you originally paid in the product price, you now pay in (hidden) support costs.

Open Source reduces the cost of a usable computer by several hundred dollars (OS + basic programs).

This means more people can buy computers.

This in turn means more people to market your new proprietary app to.

Why are all these developers going to want to work for free?

Let's forget the title "open source" and use a fictional example.  You write a bunch of scripts that may installing FogBugz real easy.  A friend buys Fogbugz so you offer him the scripts.  He takes them and changes the hard coded directories (his are different) into variables. 

So - you never used someone else's code, scripts, etc?  You write your own text editor? IDE? Notepad? What are you doing to the industry? 

Secure is correct.  This is the argument for stagnation.  Joel should not be a software vendor - he should be working at a company making Fogbuz "new" each time for each company he worked at. 

OSS is not going away - adapt or your future is very limited - and not because of OSS.

I sometimes wonder if at some poin the open source Music Men (the ones who make a living installing free software for a fee) will feel the pinch as well.

It may not take anything more than somebody cleaning up the morass that much open source is and dispelling most of its obfuscation - so that their former victim (er, customer) class can install it themselves.  Or perhaps somebody will teach illegal immigrants to do it for $2 an hour.

... thus putting the Music Men out in the street as well.


Maybe that's the retaliation tactic for the creative class?  Clean up open source software so that it has customer-friendly installers and runs on platforms that aren't so flimsy they need regular feather-smoothing.

To the OP: you're seriously mistaken about the motivation of these "minions who work for free".

First of all, they are not *your* minions, they will only work on something that interest them, and it is extremely rare that this matches your own needs, planning and strategic choices.

Apart if you're a Linux distribution, there are very small chances that you'll find enough volunteers with enough motivation to do all the things that interested you. That's also why even the Linux distributions *hire* developers to work on open-source: to make definitive progress in directions they're interested in, instead of waiting for "something magic" to happen.

Some other companies also *hire* these crazy open-source developers for the same reasons: they want something done, and don't want to wait for it to appear accidentally.

Now, why would companies do this ? Or even use open-source  software ? Maybe because:

- they save huge loads of money on tools and servers they don't need to pay quadrillions bucks to license

- they also have better control about the software, they know they won't be locked by a bad contract with a software provider that has all the keys to their core infrastructure.

- they want to lower the costs of their main products's complement

Open-source is here to stay, it will never replace proprietary software development, and both will continue to run along as they do currently.

and please, stop this "thermo-nuclear warfare" bullshit

I've felt for a while that the open source movement devalues programmers. I'm kind of curious how a developer can tell their boss with a straight face - "We should use an operating system that's free, a web server that's free, a database that's free, and a programming framework that's free. Of course *my* time is worth money!"

This mantra of "software must be free" applies to ALL CODING in the minds of management. Best case you're going to get paid, but it's tough to command higher hourly rates when everything else is free.

Remedy developers commanded high premiums because Remedy was so expensive and the certification program kept them in short supply.

Cisco CNE's command high rates because Cisco equipment costs a mint. (can you imagine trying to ask for $100/hr as a "linksys engineer"?)

JD Edwards consultants (note that they're not even "developers") name their price because the ERP system costs more than the GNP of several nations.

Finally:
"Open Source reduces the cost of a usable computer by several hundred dollars (OS + basic programs).

This means more people can buy computers."

Ah, of course, the old standby:
"How do you plan to make money working for free?"
"Volume!"

Note that I'm not trying to denigrate the work that's been done - there are some fine OSS applications and products out there. I just think that people who push the Open Source mantra to its limits are asking to be paid minimum wage. (mind you, if that's their goal, well, then, they're doing a very good job)

"they save huge loads of money on tools and servers they don't need to pay quadrillions bucks to license"

Yeah. That's the point. A lot of the counter-arguments here are similar to the above. The point is this (spelled out nice and easy): Those "quadrillions of bucks" are coming out of developers' salaries.

Personally, I don't think Open Source works in every environment/niche at the moment and probably never will.  Of course, two years ago when I was instructed to build a "themable bulletin board system for internal use only", I almost choked when I was told that Open Source couldn't be considered.

That being said, I think we're seeing a slow dissolution of some of the super-multinational organizations' stranglehold on various segments as a result of Open Source.

First, many organizations that scoffed at anything resembling "customer responsiveness" 5-10 years ago have to listen to customers now.  They realize that by listening to customers and making their products better (features, security, UI, etc), it's helping them all the way around.

Second, many organizations that would only consider working with other organizations with 100's of people are now starting to consider smaller firms.  In the last week, I've launched major site rebuilds for two of the largest US-based media companies...  using the three of us and a complement of Open Source software.  And no, our billing rates aren't minimum wage.  ;)

An interesting question. Let's look at this in more depth.
----
1. Developers in their spare time work on pet projects that turn into real software.  We'll call this Product X.
----
A lot of open source projects get started this way, but the actual number that mature to the point of being genuinely usable software is much smaller. Look at SourceForge--"where OSS goes to die."

----
2. Big Commercial Company Z sponsors the project with 0.1% of their revenue, begins incorporating Product X as the primary backend for its own products.
-----
Why would Big Commercial Company Z do this in the first place, unless it fits their strategic interests somehow?

-----
3. Company Z now has a horde of minions working for free and logically eliminates 20% of its internal workforce of developers who are no longer needed.
-----
Name me a single company that has done this. IBM still employs plenty of developers. Sun still employs plenty of developers. Red Hat still employs plenty of developers.

-----
4. Open Source Project Q develops a (free) competitor to Company Z, converting the bottom 5% of the market.
-----
It's hard enough to do this once, let alone twice. Care to cite an example?

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5. Company Z reduces its workforce in attempts to remain profitable.  More developers are out of work.
-----
Again, name me a single company that has actually done this. I'm not saying that none have, but I'd like to see a real example.

I'm seeing a lot of FUD here--let's see some real examples!

Matt,

Richard Stallman says that he does not get to feel honor if he does not do all he can do to help his neighbors.

Stallman's a software engineer, so he says that helping his neighbor includes doing all he can to help his neighbor have software that works perfectly for his neighbor.

Stallman points out that without free access to the source code of every program that might interest his neighbor, Stallman is unable to modify the code to better suit his neighbor.

Stallman's conclusion is that anyone who prevents him from having source code is throwing an obstacle in the path of Stallman's opportunity to be a moral and honorable person, one who uses his skills to help his neighbor.

Stallman says it would be best for everyone to use software for which source is available.  He also says it would be best for all programmers to make all their source code available for free to anyone who is interested.

His offer is based on his interpretation of morality and honor, not on pragmatism or profit for any particular developer.

Stallman says that for him, the feeling of being friendly is more valuable to money.  He says that many programmers he's talked with feel the same way.  If you're a programmer, he encourages you to feel the same way.

Stallman's argument is that no individual has a right to profit at the expense of the greater good of society; and closing source code reduces the greater good of society; therefore, making money by keeping source code closed is immoral.  He says you shouldn't do it, and you shouldn't support people who do it.

Of course, you get to choose whether or not his interpretation of morality is a lighthouse of inspiration to you, or a distraction.

I prefer to have a different interpretation than Stallman of the nature of morality, and of the balance between an individual and society.  As my philosophy does not oppose keeping source code closed, and it does not oppose the use of nondisclosure agreements, I believe Stallman would claim I act dishonorably.  In saying this, I believe he'd be wrong.

>Finally:
>"Open Source reduces the cost of a usable computer by >several hundred dollars (OS + basic programs).
>
>This means more people can buy computers."
>
>Ah, of course, the old standby:
>"How do you plan to make money working for free?"
>"Volume!"

Notice the next part of my post which you quoted:

"This in turn means more people to market your new proprietary app to."

paying close attention to the word "proprietary". Just because the OS and basic stuff is free, other programs can't be paid for.

I don't understand this idea that code has to be about money. It seems to me to devalue the work we do as developers if it is only about the money.  It is like a musician complaining that all these people singing in the shower or around campfires, is devaluing the work he does.

One only has to look to India (or China, if you live in India) to see where the real devaluation happens.  It seems to me that most of the development jobs around are not making  general applications like web-servers, OSes, or browsers, but are instead about either customizing those applications to fit a business need, or to fulfil a business need that doesn't exist in the open source world.

If you don't agree with the open source movement... fine.  But the idea that open source is stealing our jobs seems a red herring when companies continue to outsource to India and China, getting their software so cheap it might as well be free, and getting their business itches scratched as well.

Regarding Flow's post about Richard Stallman:

1. Just out of curiosity, not trying to make the grand point (yet): How exactly does Stallman put food on the table?  How does he make money?

Now for an attempt at making a point:

2. "No individual has the right to profit at the expense of the greater good of society."  There is moral wisdom here, I think, but I'm not convinced that capitalism really destroys the greater good of society. 

Good transportation is definitely for the greater good of society, one could argue that cars are bad, so let's use bicycles.  Should bicycles be free because it is in society's best interest's for everyone to have one?  Is it morally wrong for a bicycle manufacturer to charge money for a bicycle?

..."But bicycles have a per-unit cost, whereas software doesn't," Stallman would say.  OK, so is it morally wrong to charge anything more than the cost of materials for the bicycle?  i.e. is it morally wrong to make a profit on something that is good for society?

3. Are computers and software really a huge benefit to society anyway?  Human beings existed for thousands (maybe millions) of years without them, and only in the last 50 years have they become relevant.  Are people without computers and software really being denied their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

"I've felt for a while that the open source movement devalues programmers."

Exactly. Only dupes and programmers seriously lacking in self-respect support Open Source qua movement: that is, support it as the ideal.

The real ideal is: if someone gets a value from something you built, then you should get paid for it. It is obscene that, say, Linus Torvalds (and everyone else who put significant efforts into Linux) should get paid nothing from it, while businessmen get rich reselling and using their works.

If "society" benefits from something you build, then you should benefit, and not have to hope you get charity handouts like many of these Open-Sourcers expect (which again only demonstrates: they have no self-respect).

Isn't science done in a "free software" way?  The times in which there have been the greatest advances in sciences seem to often be the times when there is the most open access to research.

Why should it be that the work of someone who studies stars, or genetic code, or the brain, be made available to the public while software should not be?  And yes, there is a large amount of privatization of science these days.  I tend to see that as a step backwards.

I look at societies that have open access to research and thought and think that they tend to do better than societies that encourage hoarding of research.

This subject has angered me for some time, so after writing the above I decided to publish this to my blog:

http://thoughts-on-software.blogspot.com/2006/09/open-source-is-cannibalism.html

Rob: You don't understand how science works. What you understand is the crap the Open Source movement has fed you all these years. For example, many companies pay microbiologists to do science and keep things proprietary. Our own government has kept certain crucial scientific discoveries under wraps for defense purposes, including some pure math.

Sure, many scientists publish. But only when that is the best value they can get from their work. You can be sure that if a scientist discovered something that would make him rich, then if he really was smart he'd first collect the money and then let everyone know about it.

manager: this opensource movement is going to help everyone moving away from Microsoft/commerical software. No we don't want to use Visual Studio or .Net because it cost money. Opensource is free. we can make more money!

me: if you need to fix Opensource software bugs or some weird software glitch that no one from OSS care to help you with and you get this type of reply from the "coummunities". "STFU, Noob go read the manual."

Wow, thanks for all the replies, and at least a tenable nod that I'm not off my rocker.

To respond to some of you who asked for examples (which I intentionally avoided in the first post)...

- PHP, which has received contributions from *many* ASP/JSP/Perl commercial developers I know, is diluting the value of their careers.  MANY big corporations with web front-ends have switched to PHP because of the myriad *free* apps and libraries available.

... which leads to the free apps built on PHP.  Someone pointed out the free bulletin boards, but now there's the free CMSes, free blogging tools, and so on.  Joomla! (nee mambo) *will* put companies out of business.  And the Joomla contributors list contains more than a few people working on commercial CMSes!  Ironically, one of the leads is a programming instructor, and the argument can be made that he, too, is putting himself out of a job.

- MySQL, which is the king-kong example of a disruptive OSS project.  Now with "corporate contributors", "sponsors", and "cross-licensing", that has surely put many developers out of work seemingly by their own doing.  I had MySQL in mind when talking to the elimination of jobs.  All of the big DB providers now offer free versions to combat MySQL.  The best example is SAP, who had a bunch of custom extensions to MySQL and, in a cross-licensing deal, merged those back into the /free/ MySQL.  This eliminated the SAP-Oracle partnership (putting those developers out of work) and hurt the SAP-DB2 developers.

Now, on to the other questions/proofs:

* Installers, add-ons, etc. -- as another astute poster pointed out, the GPL doesn't allow such a thing to be proprietary.  Anything that touch or is built upon the "free" codebase must also be free.  And as more libraries or app platforms become "free", about all that we'll be left with (through this mentality) is a million little $20 add-ons, and that just can't be good for anyone.

>> First of all, they are not *your* minions, they will only work on something that interest them, and it is extremely rare that this matches your own needs, planning and strategic choices. <<

A lot of people are interested in working on and improving MySQL.  I don't really care what their motivation is, but SAP is 100% profiting from their labor.  Same goes for Linux on IBM mainframes.  SAP wasn't viable on MySQL without atomic transactions.  "We need atomic transactions" became a mantra there, and, lo and behold, they got atomic transactions.  Eventually they'll get all of the features the commercial RDBMSes have because the app constituency's requirements don't change.

... and MySQL remains a funny horse here, because there is a team of people making money, but it's certainly not everyone working on the codebase.  That is practically exploitation.

I hate to call the ideals of Richard Stallman "communism", but it's pretty hard not to.  Regardless of the goodwill of the people, I know no one's going to pay for my vacation out of the kindness of their hearts.

-Matt

PS- If you do want to pay for my vacation out of the kindness of your heart, please send a PM.  PayPal accepted. :)

... and to spurn another thought, because I love the "global thermonuclear war" analogy, won't this eventually lead to ridiculous monopolies?

I mean, if MySQL keeps growing the way it has, it *will*  eventually reach the maturity of Oracle, MSSQL, and DB2.  Similarly PHP.  At that point, how can anyone start a new, similar free project to dethrone them?  What would be the point?  More freer than free?

-Matt

I don't know what to thing after reading all of the opinions here.  Even after reading all messages, I still don't think Open Source is such a bad thing.  To me, it is just a way for several companies and individuals to pile together a bunch of resources for a common goal.  Many open source developers don't work for free, they get paid by companies like IBM (See Eclipse) or Sun.  It just happens that the product they are building has no common owner.  I think Joel posted something a while back about economic complements.  It makes sense sometimes to give stuff away to drive the sales of the complement.  Anyways, it is not as if OSS is killing the business.  It is a lot easier to create something new leveraging the tools that are already there, creating new business oportunities.

Anyways, for third world countries there is no better news than open source software.  Thanks to that, I can have my linux computer with netbeans running java, writing applications using MySQL, checking into subversion and writing my documentation using OpenOffice.org and Mediawiki.  And gain independence (economically speaking) from the First World Companies.  I know that might affect some people driving Porsches in redmond (and many other places in USA), but I  believe it is stiring innovation globally.  It is just another aspect of globalization... and it won't go away.

Also, not everything is so bleak.  I think OSS and commercial applications will live together, simply because all the quality systems in huge companies demand someone to blame if the stuff breaks.  So, many companies simply will never go OS all the way.  There is market for everyone, and OS is expanding, not contracting, the market.

"This in turn means more people to market your new proprietary app to."

Correct - as long as YOU are the one selling proprietary apps and OTHERS are working hard to provide you with free software, then YOU profit. And they... do not.

"Are computers and software really a huge benefit to society anyway?"

I would point out the fact that they use tremendous amounts of electricity and produce vast amounts of toxic waste in their manufacture while their pasty-faced owners grow obese and die of heart attacks from lethargy.

Shayne,

"The real ideal is: if someone gets a value from something you built, then you should get paid for it."

Why can I reach your blog entry without first having to pay you?

Some questions to all you anti-OS-advocates that came to my mind: If you would have the power, how would you try to STOP open source? How would you restrict your measures to avoid that, in the end, it affects your own right for free speech?

If there is no real way to stop it, wouldn't it be a better idea, from an evolution's point of view, to adapt to it, instead of trying to fight something you can't fight without losing your own rights?

Whether or not there's a fundamental flaw in OSS depends on your perspective. If all you want is to be a programmer for the rest of your career, then yes, OSS *may* be a problem because it will eventually result in fewer developers being needed, and you might be one of them. Note that erosion usually happens at the bottom: if you're concerned about being out of a job because of Open Source, it's probably a sign that your skills may not be all that valuable to your industry.

Now if you look at software as a business, as a means to getting income, then OSS can be fabulous. I'm writing this on a free browser (Firefox) on a free OS (Linux) and I'm a developer who has a side business that's based on free OSS tools. As my business expands, I'm going to incorporate free software wherever it makes sense to do so.
My wife's business is growing to the point where she will probably want some form of CRM software soon. When that happens, you can bet the first place I will look to is OSS.

"If there is no real way to stop it, wouldn't it be a better idea, from an evolution's point of view, to adapt to it, instead of trying to fight something you can't fight without losing your own rights?"

I.E. work for free

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/16/0731216

there!

"Rob: You don't understand how science works. What you understand is the crap the Open Source movement has fed you all these years. For example, many companies pay microbiologists to do science and keep things proprietary. Our own government has kept certain crucial scientific discoveries under wraps for defense purposes, including some pure math."

And many scientist think this is not ethical. And they thought that way long before OSS movement came into being.

"Sure, many scientists publish. But only when that is the best value they can get from their work. You can be sure that if a scientist discovered something that would make him rich, then if he really was smart he'd first collect the money and then let everyone know about it."

You'd be surprised how wrong you are. Many scientist who discovered very important things published them instantly.
For them the reward was to be *the first* to publish the discovery and to be recognized as the father of some important branch of human knowledge. You obviously have no idea how powerful an incentive this is.

" "This in turn means more people to market your new proprietary app to."

Correct - as long as YOU are the one selling proprietary apps and OTHERS are working hard to provide you with free software, then YOU profit. And they... do not."

They do - otherwise they would not be doing what they are doing but would choose other activities to pursue. They're not slaves.

They and I can simply occupy different niches: OSS hasn't yet produced a single commercial-quality game. Some kinds of useful software will be deemed to be too "boring" to attract developers with enough free time to pursue an OSS hobby. Other will demand too much skill to be found without paying for it. Or will demand to be done ON TIME - punctuality is a major flaw of most OSS projects.

Don't worry, OSS could be 10 times as big and there will still be a lot of market for commercial software, and rightly so.

Mario writes: "To me, [Open Source] is just a way for several companies and individuals to pile together a bunch of resources for a common goal."

A Big Lie promulgated by Open Source zealots. Companies share resources all the time for a common goal. That doesn't imply that they must therefore give up their creative rights like Open Source demands. But Open Source has so polluted and corrupted the marketplace that it's hard to envision the myiad alternatives that could exist otherwise.

"Anonymous Coward" writes: "Why can I reach your blog entry without first having to pay you?"

I suppose your anonymity gives you little motive to not say such stupid things. Because if you thought a split second about it, you'd realize that what I write is copyrighted by me; I can take it down and charge for it whenever I want. This flies in the face of Open Source.

"Because if you thought a split second about it, you'd realize that what I write is copyrighted by me; I can take it down and charge for it whenever I want. This flies in the face of Open Source."

And in exactly what way does Open Source threaten your ability to do this?

Thanks for the examples:

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- PHP, which has received contributions from *many* ASP/JSP/Perl commercial developers I know, is diluting the value of their careers.  MANY big corporations with web front-ends have switched to PHP because of the myriad *free* apps and libraries available.
-------

So PHP shoudn't exist, then? Only proprietary languages? (ASP, etc.). Perl, for what it's worth, is an open-source language that's of similar vintage to PHP.


-----
... which leads to the free apps built on PHP.  Someone pointed out the free bulletin boards, but now there's the free CMSes, free blogging tools, and so on.  Joomla! (nee mambo) *will* put companies out of business.  And the Joomla contributors list contains more than a few people working on commercial CMSes!  Ironically, one of the leads is a programming instructor, and the argument can be made that he, too, is putting himself out of a job.
-----
Yeah, these kinds of apps are likely responsible for killing CityDesk's market, as well. No one wants to pay big bucks for a proprietary CMS.

But FogCreek adapted, didn't they? FogBugz seems to be doing pretty well. BugZilla certainly hasn't put it out of business.

On another note, aren't there a lot of freelance web devs who work with PHP? How does the existence of free libraries and a free language put *them* out of business?

----
- MySQL, which is the king-kong example of a disruptive OSS project.  Now with "corporate contributors", "sponsors", and "cross-licensing", that has surely put many developers out of work seemingly by their own doing.  I had MySQL in mind when talking to the elimination of jobs.  All of the big DB providers now offer free versions to combat MySQL.  The best example is SAP, who had a bunch of custom extensions to MySQL and, in a cross-licensing deal, merged those back into the /free/ MySQL.  This eliminated the SAP-Oracle partnership (putting those developers out of work) and hurt the SAP-DB2 developers.
-----

MySQL is a commercial company that grossed about $40 million last year--selling licenses for MySQL to be used in proprietary apps. They employ lots of people. Did you realize this? But I don't see SAP or Oracle going out of business.

---
Now, on to the other questions/proofs:

* Installers, add-ons, etc. -- as another astute poster pointed out, the GPL doesn't allow such a thing to be proprietary.  Anything that touch or is built upon the "free" codebase must also be free.  And as more libraries or app platforms become "free", about all that we'll be left with (through this mentality) is a million little $20 add-ons, and that just can't be good for anyone.
---

The GPL isn't the only open-source license out there. I use tons of BSD-licensed stuff in my proprietary apps. I even use LGPL stuff in my apps, in accordance with the license.

---

You need therapy, fast, before you're consumed by your own hatred.  What is it that makes you react so violently to the concept of people wanting to give stuff away for free?  It's their right to do what they like with their own intellectual property, and if that makes it harder for you to sell your own stuff, that's your problem.

Like scribes in Gutenberg's day, and blacksmiths in Ford's day, maybe it's just time for programmers to realise that they aren't going to get big bucks any more for doing something that nearly anyone can learn to do, and not all that many people _need_ to do.  Stop whining about how unfair life is and deal with it.

Er, naturally that was to Shayne.

"The best example is SAP, who had a bunch of custom extensions to MySQL and, in a cross-licensing deal, merged those back into the /free/ MySQL.  This eliminated the SAP-Oracle partnership (putting those developers out of work) and hurt the SAP-DB2 developers."

You mean it hurt the SAP-DB2 developers, because there now was a freely available implementation that required less manpower to use than previously? Perhaps a few SAP-DB2 developers might lose their jobs, but so what? The problem they solved is now solved more efficiently, so I don't see them as losing their jobs, instead, I look on the situation as freeing up a bunch of developers to work on other stuff, stuff that there is not yet a freely available and efficient solution to. Or, they can leave software development entirely and work in other industries on making society better - no matter what, I can't possibly see how it can be *harmful* to society, that a bunch of workers are now longer necessary, because their area of work has been automated, improved or "finished".

"I hate to call the ideals of Richard Stallman "communism", but it's pretty hard not to.  Regardless of the goodwill of the people, I know no one's going to pay for my vacation out of the kindness of their hearts."

Don't you think that it's more like absolute anarchy, or libetarianism, where no governmental rules is forcing you to do anything? With communism, you'd be forced to develop free software. No-one is forcing you here (except for the very reasonable demand, that if you modify GPL software, you must release your modifications under the GPL. As you are not even *allowed* to modify most proprietary software, I don't see how this can possibly be seen as forcing developers to release free code. Unless you want to simultaneously see proprietary software as fascism, of course).

"Because if you thought a split second about it, you'd realize that what I write is copyrighted by me; I can take it down and charge for it whenever I want. This flies in the face of Open Source."

Actually, no. You do not give away your rights when you release a piece of software under, say, the GPL - you are fully permitted to, at a later time, stop releasing your software under the GPL, and choose some standard EULA and proprietary license instead. You can not, of course, retroactively change the license of your already released code, but I'm not completely sure you'd be able to do that with a proprietary license, short of a signed contract, anyway.

"Please explain to me how, ten years from now, there is still a healthy ecosystem of paid developers."

The same way there has been a healthy ecosystem of paid developers the last ten years. Interestingly, it's been about ten years since I first installed Linux, and I was hardly the first to do so.

I really fail to understand why so many small minded people predict the doom of the software industry because of open source software. When your "thermo-nuclear war" scenario comes about, who will be writing all the code? Do you really think that plumbers, in their spare time, will create the office suites and web browsers of the future? And if writing software is so easy that anyone without education or formal training can do it, do we even deserve to get paid?

Woah, lets take nuclear war as an example even! Do you really think that in the future there will be an open source missile guidance system? Who do you reckon will be leading that software project? Eric S. Raymond, perhaps?

I think these sorts of threads are just the pevish rantings of people who have seen the market for their crappy shareware notepad and todo list applications dwindle to nothing. If you write something clever or interesting, like Andy Brice's table planning software, then you probably have nothing to fear from open source.

Roman: "And in exactly what way does Open Source threaten your ability to do this?"

It's as obvious as it is tedious to point out: If I don't hold the copyright, then anyone can publish my stuff. They can build on my work. They can sell a book compilation of my blog.

"Anonymous Coward" writes: "What is it that makes you react so violently to the concept of people wanting to give stuff away for free?"

Why is it that people who can't think straight are so often on the side of Open Source? Obviously the essential issue here isn't about whether something is made available for free or not. Open Source does not stand for "free"; it stands for "author yeilds his creative rights to the community". Wake up please.

Sigh... Troels writes:

"Actually, no. You do not give away your rights when you release a piece of software under, say, the GPL - you are fully permitted to, at a later time, stop releasing your software under the GPL, and choose some standard EULA and proprietary license instead."

Actually, yes, you do, you give up all your rights to your creation to the community, who can then do with your stuff what it pleases, building on it and re-releasing it and competing with you.

You know, the Open Source advocates are a good ad hominem argument against Open Source. Just judging just by their inability to even grasp the nature of the points here, that gives you a clue about the calibre of the people behind Open Source.

@Shayne:

---
"Actually, no. You do not give away your rights when you release a piece of software under, say, the GPL - you are fully permitted to, at a later time, stop releasing your software under the GPL, and choose some standard EULA and proprietary license instead."

Actually, yes, you do, you give up all your rights to your creation to the community, who can then do with your stuff what it pleases, building on it and re-releasing it and competing with you.
---

Um, no, you don't. I did exactly this with one of my programs. It was previously open-source (GPL). I closed the source, added some enhancements, and am now selling the program as shareware.

It's true that the previous verison remains open. If someone chooses to fork it and maintain it, I can't stop them. But people didn't stop using my program when I closed the source and starting charging for it; and they didn't opt to fork/maintain the GPL version. They are paying me for my program. From a business standpoint, closing the source was the right decision.

I don't see the older version of my program as competition. It won't be able to keep up with features that I add to the closed version. Eventually the codebase of the closed version will drift more and more away from the earlier open version.

"Roman: "And in exactly what way does Open Source threaten your ability to do this?"

It's as obvious as it is tedious to point out: If I don't hold the copyright, then anyone can publish my stuff. They can build on my work. They can sell a book compilation of my blog."

But you do hold the copyright. Nobody's forcing you to give it up. It is THEM who give away their work for free, not you. Stop thinking that someone is going to rob you of your work. It's not gonna happen unless the US becomes an anarchy.

Interestingly, you think that Open Source is based on destruction of copyright. That's absurd: the whole idea of GPL and other OSS licenses requires the enforcement copyright. No GPL program was ever released as "public domain", since then the GPL license would not cover it. That's why it called a LICENSE. The copyright belongs to the author, not to the user.

Announce publicly that you are going to create a derivative work of gcc compiler and sell it as a commercial product and FSS lawyers will remind you about their copyright soon enough.

"I don't see the older version of my program as competition. It won't be able to keep up with features that I add to the closed version. Eventually the codebase of the closed version will drift more and more away from the earlier open version."

Out of curiosity: is someone developing the fork?

@Shayne:

I looked at your blog...you are an enthusiastic user of Ubuntu Linux!? While railing against the license (GPL) and development ecosystem that makes Ubuntu Linux possible?

http://thoughts-on-software.blogspot.com/2005/12/ubuntu-linux.html#links

"I don't see the older version of my program as competition. It won't be able to keep up with features that I add to the closed version."

First off, this is evidence against Open Source, not for it. Second, since you don't say what this successful project is, I'm not taking your word for it. I regard your scenario as non-evidence, as fiction. For all I know, it was GPL for an insignificant period with insignificant results, and *that's* why you aren't competing with yourself. Or maybe you just made the story up. Third:

"Um, no, you don't. I did exactly this with one of my programs. It was previously open-source (GPL). I closed the source, added some enhancements, and am now selling the program as shareware."

The collective lack of intelligence of the open-sourcers is tedious as it is telling. He lost the rights to what he released to the community and yet claims he didn't lose the rights to what he released. He's a moron.

@Shayne:

http://dpgui.sourceforge.net

Shayne,

"I suppose your anonymity gives you little motive to not say such stupid things."

How do I know that you are really the one you are claiming to be? This forum is without registration; you are exactly the same "Anonymous Coward" than me.

"I can take it down and charge for it whenever I want."

And exactly how do you want to delete the copy on my harddisk? You can't revoke information released out into the wild. Yes yes, I know, just another argument against OS...

"You know, the Open Source advocates are a good ad hominem argument against Open Source."
Formerly etc. wrote:
"I looked at your blog...you are an enthusiastic user of Ubuntu Linux!?"

Shayne obviously needs professional help for his mental problems. I strongly recommend that we stop feeding the troll, NOW.

Formerly Known.  It's indisputeable that you've given up rights to that you once had to your older version.  You've said as much yourself, more than once.  The fact that you've not given up rights to your later work, and you're not particularly bothered about what you gave away, doesn't mean that you didn't give something up.


Anyway, changing subject.

Both sides of the argument, as put in this thread, are stupid.  They're assuming economics just don't work.

For example, those who are complaining about programmers working against their own interest, are talking about economic interests, but are also assuming economic interests have no effect on behaviour.

@Shayne:

The particular program in question is called Port Authority. It's a GUI for the MacPorts  (formerly DarwinPorts) package management system on Mac OS X.

It had more than 52,000 downloads since April 2005.

Here's the page with the statistics to back that claim up:

http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/?group_id=136606&ugn=dpgui&type=&mode=alltime

For most of its history, I licensed Port Authority under a BSD-style license, because MacPorts uses a similar license; GPL isn't very popular there. I licensed the most recent free version of Port Authority under the GPL because I didn't want someone else forking it into a proprietary version.

After deciding that I wanted to earn some income from Port Authority, I decided to close the source and sell it under a standard shareware license. Since I am the sole copyright holder and do not have outside contributions encumbered by the GPL, I can do this. (The single patch I received from a user in the past 18 months was contributed under the BSD-style license, which allows propietary use.)

So far no one has started work on a fork. MacPorts had languished for years without a GUI--no one was interested in working on it--and I don't expect that to change. My development language, Tcl/Tk, is somewhat unpopular; there aren't tons of hackers doing free stuff in that language. So that may explain why no one has yet started a free fork.

Yes I enthusiastically support Ubuntu as the best Linux distro I've seen so far, because it is. It is what it is. I also use Open Source, and even in some of my software. I use emacs as my main editor. I think Windows sucks for software development--I develop on Linux and port to Windows, spending the minimal time possible there--the best way to develop for Windows is make your code cross-platform.

But this is a Big Lie:

"[I use Ubuntu while] railing against the license (GPL) and development ecosystem that makes Ubuntu Linux possible?"

Ever hear of the post hoc fallacy? No, I guess you haven't. Look it up. Maybe you'll figure it out.

Anyways, it's tragic that good developers lend their credibility to something so corrupt and counter-productive. There are other ways to achieve their ends, better ways than making yourself a slave. But also, these developers are really not so hot. All they have done is copy what somebody who was working for profit made. Linux is a UNIX clone; the GNU compiler is a clone of C; Open Office is a clone of Microsoft Word. Commercial entities do the truly difficult creative work, and then geeks with little creativity copy them. They rarely if ever make anything truly new and creative and an advancement; like the builders of the pyramids before them, they're just good slave labor. Of course they can accomplish a lot en masse. So what?

If you're typical you now want to call my "hypocrite" for using Open Source software. Go ahead, I also pay my income taxes even though I think that only a voluntary tax system is moral and practical; I still use the post office even though I think the government has no business monopolizing or even participating in sending mail. That doesn't make me a hypocrite, it just means I'm not a martyr.

"they also have better control about the software, they know they won't be locked by a bad contract with a software provider that has all the keys to their core infrastructure."

I love this argument.  If all the lead developers for Postgres went tits up on an airplane crash tommorow, how am I any less screwed then if Microsoft stopped selling MSSQL?  You really think having the source code will help me?

Now, now, folks... I'm not Moses down from the mountain with the revelation that OSS is Evil.  I don't think it's evil /at all/.

I am/was simply trying to reconcile the fact that the OSS "business model" is putting developers out of business, and many of them are doing so by their own hand.

Yes, I know MySQL is a $40M company -- that's my point.  That $40M is being doled out to a very limited number of *employees* and by no means the breadth of its contributors (i.e., development staff) or investors.  I almost wonder if at some point, as happened with AOL's "volunteer moderators", some government will step in and say "no free labor".

Communism is only forced equitable labor when used as a government model -- it also applies to Stallman's utopian developer "goodwill" system.  If no one's paid for their efforts, how do they eat?  Everyone *else* is getting paid!

Finally, and more to the point, either OSS is:
1) Sending all the money to consultants/installers/support who do not directly develop the software, or
2) Leading to a path of OSS developers whose pay comes from the proprietary extensions they build on their OSS foundations.

1 is bleak for the career programmer and for the future.  Fewer real developer jobs means fewer coming into the field, which means less innovation, which means stagnation.

2, I think, also leads to a world of "have" and "have nots", where those fortunate enough to be on the Right project and in the Right job at the Right time go on to be career programmers, while the rest are "stuck" being consultants.  See RedHat's initial launch as a public company as an example.

Again, thanks for the opinions, and keep the "your model sucks" posts to a minimum.

-Matt

PS - still no takers on the vacation?

"2, I think, also leads to a world of 'have' and 'have nots', where those fortunate enough to be on the Right project and in the Right job at the Right time go on to be career programmers, while the rest are "stuck" being consultants.  See RedHat's initial launch as a public company as an example."

Could you go into more detail on this?  I haven't the faintest notion how this would happen.  Surely companies developing new proprietary software would still advertise for programmers?  Surely some people would still become programmers, and the best ones would still be in higher demand than the rest, etc?  How would building new tools on OSS break supply and demand, especially demands OSS is not remotely prepared to fulfill?

Correction on the end of my statement:  How would OSS software break supply and demand in fields where OSS will likely not supply what's demanded?

>>  How would OSS software break supply and demand in fields where OSS will likely not supply what's demanded?  <<

Look at SourceForge.  As long as there are developers willing to *work* for free, niches will be filled.  Throw enough darts and you will hit a bullseye.

My example of RedHat was not without merit.  Before RedHat broke away, there were a half-dozen _solid_ distros with near-equal market share and solid community membership, and entirely different projects like BeOS that maintained some aspect of respectability.  RedHat was first to the capitalism trough and everyone who worked there (or had been fortunate enough to get a job there in the early ramp-up) got a _real_ job doing what they wanted/loved.  SuSE, Caldera, Debian, Mandrake, etc., all did OK until the marketing folks determined that "RedHat = Linux"; now they're in the "others" category of marketshare reports.

Those working on any other distro eventually gave up or continue to work for free.

-Matt

Same deal with PostgreSQL.

> 3. Company Z now has a horde of minions working for free and logically eliminates 20% of its internal workforce of developers who are no longer needed.

No; more probably:

* Either, they were never hired in the first place: or do you think that companies which use gcc have just logically eliminated the 20% of its internal workforce which used to develop their compilers?

* Or, their employees are available for something else: if I don't need to write a compiler for my employer then he can assign me some other task instead.

> 5. Company Z reduces its workforce in attempts to remain profitable.

Or, they hire more developers to write more features (in order to stay competitive), or they begin to develop a new product.

You seem to be assuming that there's some finite quantity of software to be written, so that the existence of any free software reduces the overall demand for paid-for software!

>> You seem to be assuming that there's some finite quantity of software to be written, so that the existence of any free software reduces the overall demand for paid-for software! <<

No, I'm well-aware of that, but OSS projects will continue to grow and expand, too.  It's not like they're going to stop exploring new technologies or application domains, either.  Joomla! (nee mambo) being a /fantastic/ example of an up-and-coming disruptive project.

As someone else pointed out:
Joomla! = "good luck, CityDesk".

FogCreek can't keep up with Joomla, who has as many leads as FC has developers, and as many developers as, well, god knows... a lot.  And more everytime it gets incrementally better and more exposure.

-Matt

"MySQL is a commercial company that grossed about $40 million last year--selling licenses for MySQL to be used in proprietary apps. They employ lots of people. Did you realize this? But I don't see SAP or Oracle going out of business. "

Mysql may bring in 40 million a year, but it's not with open source.  Mysql is duel-licensed, which means they have a version that is proprietary and is sold for money with no source-code.

"Mysql may bring in 40 million a year, but it's not with open source.  Mysql is duel-licensed, which means they have a version that is proprietary and is sold for money with no source-code."

The point is not that they grosed $40M with open source -- the point is that they grossed that much *even though* there is a direct open source competitor, provided by no-one else but themselves. IOW, they compete with themselves with an open source software, and still have such an income.

Shayne:

"Linux is a UNIX clone; the GNU compiler is a clone of C;"

Linux is a clone of *which* UNIX? GCC is a clone of *which* C?

Shayne, just because something is an implementation of the standard already implemented, it does not have to be a clone of anything.

To sum up my position in the discussion: it's all about free market. People who are free can do what they like. As long as they do it, it means that it brings them some profit, either financial or other. Free market will sort out who survives, to the benefit of the consumer. Stop whining about it, Shayne. You sound like a French farmer complaining about "those damn African peasants who agree to plow their field for next to nothing!".

An analogy: 30 years ago, instant communication meant sending a telegram, for a price. Now, we send e-mail - for free. Surely, this meant that telegraph operators lost their jobs. Are you going to care about it much, Shayne?

"If I don't hold the copyright, then anyone can publish my stuff."

LOL! I finally read all of this thread, and I just couldn't believe what that Shayne guy wrote. The above sentence shows an utter ignorance of the way how copyright works, and the following sentence shows the ingorance of how modern society works:

"I also pay my income taxes even though I think that only a voluntary tax system is moral and practical"

I wonder if Shayne would like that the police also work on a voluntary basis: "Oh, I don't like that Shayne guy, let him be mugged."

>> The point is not that they grosed $40M with open source -- the point is that they grossed that much *even though* there is a direct open source competitor, provided by no-one else but themselves. IOW, they compete with themselves with an open source software, and still have such an income. <<

MySQL most certainly does NOT compete with itself!  That's the entire point of their dual license model.  You do NOT have an option of which license to use, and the software is not improved in any way when it's commercial (in fact, it is more restrictive).

-----------------------------
Unless you GPL or use only GPL software on MySQL, you must pay for a license.
-----------------------------

They have an exception for PHP to keep their platform prescient, and adopt a FOSS exception for anything that is some-form-of-open and uses the client libraries.

MySQL exploits Free Software, yet everyone thinks they're a shining example of an OSS "business".

-Matt

"Unless you GPL or use only GPL software on MySQL, you must pay for a license."

Nonsense. This is true only if you distribute MySQL as a part of your application. If your application just uses MySQL, like most PHP applications do, you don't pay anything.

http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/opensource-license.html and particularly this: "Free use for those who never copy, modify or distribute. As long as you never distribute the MySQL Software in any way, you are free to use it for powering your application, irrespective of whether your application is under GPL license or not."

>> never distribute the MySQL Software in any way <<

... which includes the client libraries, so if you access MySQL through your software, you must either GPL or license.

-Matt

OK, that's true. But client libraries are readily available from their own site, so there is no need to distribute them.

>Roman: "Now, we send e-mail - for free."

Laptop: $1800
Wireless router: $200
ADSL Modem:  $100
Monthly ADSL connection: $59

Sending email: "free"... er no wait, I mean "Priceless." :-)

I put it to you that sending email is NOT free. No more than driving your car to the corner store is free.

Aaron: sending e-mail is as free as OSS is free. To run Linux, I also have to buy a computer.

BTW: what connection speed do you get for $59/month?

>> OK, that's true. But client libraries are readily available from their own site, so there is no need to distribute them. <<

So you can't make a friendly installer and can't use MySQL as your program's native datastore because otherwise you have to either GPL or license as an ISV.

MySQL AB's standpoint is that if the database is being used for non-GPL business purposes, at all, it should be licensed.

For more on the corporate ("internal") positioning of MySQL AB, give this a read:
http://blog.megacity.org/archives/001657.php

Again, MySQL AB is making money from the efforts of hundreds on unpaid contributors, while simultaneously charging them if they want to earn a living for their efforts.

-Matt

Roman: "Linux is a clone of *which* UNIX? GCC is a clone of *which* C?"

So I take it then that you can't even fathom the difference between the original creation and minor tweaks? That kind of inability on your part is gonna make communication difficult.

"To sum up my position in the discussion: it's all about free market. People who are free can do what they like. ... You sound like a French farmer complaining about "those damn African peasants who agree to plow their field for next to nothing!".

Not a bad comparison if you're talking about African slaves ruining the market. But your talk is just cheap ad hominem. Since you lost the argument (over and over), now you wish to try cheating, by painting me as only being motivated by short-sighted personal desires rather than principle. In spite of the fact that it's been principle I've been pointing to all along. Instead of facing up to the principle, you just invent another way of evading the issue.

I'll answer you point anyway. Yes of course OSS is based on free choice. And obviously, I'm not arguing to make it illegal--I support letting someone beat their head against a wall if they want to. Telling them it's a bad idea and they should try another way doesn't mean I've got some personal agenda.

Does it "hurt" the market if someone makes something and decides to give it away for free? Perhaps. But I don't object to that per se. Indeed I'll probably use that tactic with some of my software someday. As I said before, OSS is not about "free". It's about the author yielding his creative rights to the community, for the so-called "good" of the community. It's about self-sacrifice. I think this is bad in principle with countless bad consequences.

Just to pick one, I think Linux would be far better off if Torvalds had kept creative control and had tried to turn it into a profit-making venture for him. Certainly he can do a much better job at far lower overall cost (in terms of labor) than the hundreds of fragmented companies we have today can. Indeed, to a large extent he *has* run the show. He has the leadership skills. He just lacked the vision. OSS morons will undoubtedly retort: "But he couldn't have gotten that labor pool otherwise!" Bull. All he had to do was make a flexible license, the source could have been "open" and free without being OSS, and it could have given contributors a way to ultimately profit once Linux was successful (e.g., if their contribution is accepted, then he gives them a certain number of shares).

Shayne --

I do think some sort of "trickle-down" profit model would eliminate the skew, but it ain't gonna happen.  First, subjectively assigning shares to every contributor would be a daunting task unto itself, and, second, why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?

Individuals sharing ideas and concepts freely *are* good for the market.  That's where Perl, PHP, Python, etc., have served the market and made the right people money.  Notice, of course, that each of those uses a modified GPL that allows them to fork and provide proprietary improvements for money, while keeping the contributed version free (as in both beer and speech).

But, once you're beyond a single package, things get dicey.  Using the LAMP stack for your new startup's software will require a license somewhere along the way, and a legal team to review code to ensure that you aren't violating one of the 7 licenses involved.

-Matt

Matt: I think most of your points are valid. But I don't think it's good for the market to fail to reward the primary creators of it! I think it is obscene that Torvalds is not a millionaire several times over for what he's done for the market.

Yes, there are complexities in actually creating a viable system. But the root of the problem isn't the complexity, it's that programmers are being led by the Pied Piper Stallman to slave away while other businesses get rich off of their labors. (I have to say I'm glad that Torvalds had enough sense to reject at least part of Stallman's communist agenda--things would be far worse if Linux were licensed the way Stallman wants).

You ask "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free"? Because it's right and better in the long run to trade value for value. It's better if the best creators financially rewarded, because they know best how to reinvest. This is part of why capitalism is so powerful, and why we've risen so far from the Dark Ages.

Your right that it would be tricky to assign speculative value, particularly when you get more and more packages integrated. But it's not that tricky. Businesses do this all the time already. It's no different in principle, and I think that if developers spent their creative energies figuring out the best reward system here rather than spending them spreading OSS religion, someone would come up with something clever and fair.

Shayne:

"Roman: "Linux is a clone of *which* UNIX? GCC is a clone of *which* C?"

So I take it then that you can't even fathom the difference between the original creation and minor tweaks? That kind of inability on your part is gonna make communication difficult."

Your arguments about Linux and GCC are simply ridiculous. Linux is not a clone of any Unix but an implementation of a certain standard. Couldn't Linus Torvalds invent his own standard? Certainly, But what for?? Unix standard is a fine one. And if Linux is a "clone of Unix", then it's not the first one.

Ditto GCC. if you write a compiler of a certain language, it has to adhere to the language standard, which is the same for all ANSI C compilers. Your argument about GCC being a clone (you forgot to indicate a clone of what) would be as valid if you applied to Microsoft's or Borland's C compiler. Read about how GCC works and prove to me that its authors simply copied the structure of some other compiler. As if there was any other compiler which works on so many different architectures.

""To sum up my position in the discussion: it's all about free market. People who are free can do what they like. ... You sound like a French farmer complaining about "those damn African peasants who agree to plow their field for next to nothing!".

Not a bad comparison if you're talking about African slaves ruining the market."

That's an empty phrase.

"The point is not that they grosed $40M with open source -- the point is that they grossed that much *even though* there is a direct open source competitor, provided by no-one else but themselves. IOW, they compete with themselves with an open source software, and still have such an income"

It has more to do with the fact that the people paying big bucks for mysql (IE: support) will only go to a larger company they trust (big businesses).

This does not apply to other apps (such as ones that are aimed at the tech crowd or end user).

$40 million isn't that much money for a company.  They are still considered small.  If it wasn't licensed under the GNU license, they probably would be worth at least a billion.

How many companies purely based on open source are even as big as mysql?  probably less that 100.  If you look at the vast amount of companies based on proprietary/closed software at the same level, it doesn't even compare.

Open source basically turns your company from software to support, which is 10X as hard to grow (mostly because as your clients increase, so does your manpower, which is not necessarily the case with selling software directly) and it will suck the life out of you (I have done lots of software support in my life).

J. Thurman: I was trying to accurately represent Stallman's point of view - not to say I agree with all he says.  If not for his outspoken presentation of his point of view, we wouldn't have nearly as much open source software, nor nearly as much debate about how much software should be free.

"I'm not convinced that capitalism really destroys the greater good of society."  Neither am I.  This is how you and I differ from Stallman.  My impression is that his income comes from consulting, and some from his Free Software Foundation.  But my impression might be wrong.

Shane: provocative post.  I suspect Stallman would agree with "Altruistic source" and disagree with "Canabalistic source."

Meghraj: Care to start a new thread about the environmental evils of computing?

Secure: "how would you try to STOP open source?"  By purchasing commercial software when it's better, rather than settling for free software that's not good enough today.

Realist: "What is it that makes you react so violently to the concept of people wanting to give stuff away for free?"  I'm not violent towards anyone wishing to give away their own stuff for free.  I'm calmly reflective and thoughtfully say no to people who say their morality gives them the right to insist I must give away all of MY stuff for free.

"The real ideal is: if someone gets a value from something you built, then you should get paid for it. It is obscene that, say, Linus Torvalds (and everyone else who put significant efforts into Linux) should get paid nothing from it, while businessmen get rich reselling and using their works.

If "society" benefits from something you build, then you should benefit, and not have to hope you get charity handouts like many of these Open-Sourcers expect (which again only demonstrates: they have no self-respect)."

Not all benefits are monetary. If I need to achieve task a and I write software to satisfy maybe 80% of that need. If I open source it (and it is usable), then I may end up with a better piece of software with relatively little effort. The benefit is shared amongst all users of the software.

Of course, the real problem with open source software is the big problem it does not address, on a systemic basis -- allocation of scarce resources. Developers build software that they personally want to build, not software that has is the most beneficial. This is, by definition, inefficient; however, some of this inefficiency is offset by not reinventing the wheel as often as one would with nonfree software.