Open Season On Open Source? 173
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at the possible future of open source. The article's conclusion is that it might be grim. From the piece: 'Software giant Oracle Corp. has acquired two small open-source companies and is in negotiations to buy at least one more. Many experts believe this is the beginning of a broader trend in which established tech companies scoop up promising open-source startups. While the validation is thrilling it's also unsettling. Many young idealists who set out to create an alternative to the tech Establishment now find themselves becoming part of it.'"
Why is this Unsettling (Score:5, Insightful)
nobody forcing them to sell (Score:4, Insightful)
If they realy care about idealism, they won't sell. I think if M$ offered RMS a billion dollars for the FSF, he would refuse. (Mostly because he is slightly insane, but in a good way
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:3, Insightful)
As I've said before, open source is good, but it doesn't perform miracles.
Then what's next? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unsettling to who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not So Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
"We are moving aggressively into open source," said Chief Executive Lawrence J. Ellison at a Feb. 8 investor conference. "We are not going to fight this trend."
Which is why the GPL is the key. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not like they can take the code and make it private. It just doesn't work that way. So where's the problem? By paying open source developers for their work these companies are simply reinforcing and feeding the power of open source.
King of getting off on a side track, but this is not that different from another hot issue in IT which is consumer privacy in the use of file trading. Ironically, the same rights holders who would like to squash privacy in order to prevent file trading are themselves totally dependent on privacy enhancing technologies to do their own business. You can't have it both ways. Essentially, the effort to destroy privacy results in destroying the whole basis of private capital. If a business insists everybody's data should be publicly available they're put in the position of advocating an extreme form of socialism.
It's similar with the GPL. By "buying it up" they're simply reinforcing its strength. There is no loss to the community.
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:5, Insightful)
However, given that it is almost impossible to kill a free software project, the long-term economic viability of such a strategy is dubious.
Also, it is worth pointing out that such activity might raise anti-competetitive issues.
Re:Making money from open source (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, just because BusinessWeek is worried that small FOSS companies being bought by large companies is worrisome does not imply that the FOSS community thinks so. This statement seems to be supported by postings to the article thus far.
Grim? More like great. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Write open-source software
2) Sell out to The Man
3) Profit!!
Of course, for most of them Step 2 ain't going to work out and Step 3 will be a mirage in the distance, but open source still benefits from Step 1.
Stereotype much? (Score:5, Insightful)
For decades, the only people who cared about open source were the geeks who stayed up for all hours swilling Jolt Cola and writing code.
I'm sure he means that in a good way. Suits can't stand open source. It makes no sense to them that innovation is driven by creativity and passion, not hierarchy and the bottom line.
Re:Not So Bad (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem is that companies like mysql etc provide a number of services that require capital investment -- regression QA, packaging, marketing, support etc. If you take away those things, you effectively limit the software to the hobbyist market, even assuming that you find the programmers to work on it.
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Xfree86 wasn't bought out, but the community decided a fork was needed, and I think this one went pretty well.
If a large or critical package was "bought up", it would likely take about 5 minutes for the developers who didn't get to cash in to create the fork. Probably 95% of the actual developers for the project would join because they weren't the ones to cash in.
If a company that makes a small insignificant program was bought out.....oh yea, that doesn't happen. Only the big programs get this kind of attention.
Disruption isn't really as big a deal as you might think. If Mysql, squirrelmail, php, perl, apache or any other significant program in the open source community was suddenly "bought out", the brief period of time that it was updated more slowly than usual would be meaningless.
They are already stable packages, which is why they are large, which is why other companies would want to buy the company out. There would be more than enough existing developers for "emergency fixes" in the 95% that were left out in the rain and have started the new fork. And yes, the community would rally behind the new effort, as has been shown time and time again.
Again, Xorg is the best example of what happens with a "disruption". ZERO pain to the end user (yum updated just fine), and generally, fresh ideas and a better product in the long run.
Make a name for yourself... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that, this is experience. It's a way to make a name for yourself, perfect your skills, and give back to the community. That doesn't mean these people are against closed source, but they feel that their product will get more exposure if it's open and freely available.
Most developers aren't in the "it has to be OSS" mentaility, but rather in the "this project could be bigger if more people contributed", and of course that project is their baby- their time, their effort.
Again not to say that this is all of the cases, but without direct benefits, there's always something- be it credit, fame, or experience.
Now some bigger projects doing it is what this article is speaking of, but the general statement on open source is bogus! Open source simply says "this could be of value to someone else, and admitedly, they could probably reproduce it anyway by starting from scratch".
-M
Businessweek never gets it (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't buy opensource. Once it is out there, it is out there. If it is true opensource the code doesn't even belong to a single entity that can be bought. If you contribute some code no matter how small to a opensource project even though you do it under the GPL it still belongs to you. In fact that is what the GPL is pretty much about. You just give everyone else the right to use it (within certain limits) as they wish.
Yes you can hire the developers away from a project in the hope of killing it but why would this be a worry to opensource alone? EVERY project, commercial, political, social can be killed by its enemies by luring the people involved away. It can be very upsetting, just ask Ballmer.
It is nothing new. In fact several opensource people even started working for the beast. The gentoo guy for one. Except he left again pretty quickly.
And that I think is the reason opensource in fact has less to worry about then commercial projects about being bled of its developers. It is a huge difference to work on your own time for a volunteer project and to have to work for your salery on markettings whims.
Most of the bigger opensource projects are done for free by people who wouldn't have any trouble at all doing the same thing for money. In fact most do. There is one thing business week doesn't get about developers. They love it!
A developer will happily work all week coding to support himself to code in weekend as well. People like that can be tempted with money but not for long. When someone is willing to work for free they obviously think that a salery is only there to pay the bills.
But of course, it makes a nice headline because a handfull of companies with opensource projects are being attempted to be bought up (mysql refused didn't it?). Opensource is about as death as socialism. Just check you paycheck how much of your salery goes to social security.
The problem with software... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet that's just what commerical software is all about. Bottling speech and selling it in crates. And there isn't anything wrong with that. That's what commerce is all about. Yet, things eventually become commodities and you lose that limited monopoly after a while. Just as light-bulbs are made by many companies now and some people would pause before buying a lamp that required a special light bulb.
Interestingly people buy lamps that require special bulbs... some times even bulbs that are patented and only made by one company. Some of these lamps provide brighter full-spectrum light, some provide a more pleasant shade of light. And other people find having a violet tinge in their light simply not worthy of the extra expense... and they buy lamps that take standard light bulbs.
I firmly believe that this will happen with software. And if you read the article you can garner the same points. Oracle buying OSS startups or Microsoft hiring off Distribution maintainers only causes a delay in the development of the inevitable. That delay is not without its profit margin. And the act of slowing the adoption of the OSS mind-set in the general public may be a necessary evil to allow humanity to adjust to this new powerful force on the face of the planet.
OpenSource empowers outsourcing in India and China as much as it empowers rural US and small European Universities. In time the natural market forces will shift finding a new balance in the world. Wages in India and China will equalize with those in the US. However, the rate of this shift can be controlled... I'm not sure if it is better to slow down or speed up this shift... but I know that those who are successful in today's world have an incentive to keep the world the same. Oracle and Microsoft for example did well in a world of bottled genies and they want that key to their success to stay the same. It is only natural.
OpenSource on the Internet means that someone who couldn't afford to do a thing before can now do that thing (see Nagios from the article) and leverage the talent of all the other people in the world who could not climb over that initial barrier to entry. OpenSource on the Internet means that the Software playing field is flatter. If you can get an OSS person to help you and you can afford their salary... you can do nearly the same thing as the really big companies. If the rest of your business runs well, technology need not be the biggest of your concerns.
Companies like Microsoft and Oracle have built their very lives on technology being a big concern. And all that cash they have means that they can sway the direction of technology onto paths that benefit themselves. Eventually, however, just as relationships with the light bulb maker doesn't drive the central concerns of most businesses today, neither will software in a hundred years.
In one hundred years what will matter is that this was a time of innovation that generated technology that changed the course of history. Just as pop. culture is confused about how much Edison really did to invent the light bulb and electrical grid they will also very likely decide that Bill Gates was the inventor of the Personal Computer and the Internet. With a little luck they will find it silly that we used to buy software in boxes. With even more luck they will find it a silly idea to pay for software at all and instead will have established a concept of "commissioning software" to be created by those talented in the "craft" an
Re:My experience with Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The problem with software... (Score:2, Insightful)
Often, there are ideas out there, which for various reasons just don't work. For instance, Martin Luther's ideas for the reformation were probably explored by people before. But, with the invention of the printing press, and being able to communicate to the masses, it could come to fruition.
Richard Stallman has been talking about free software for how long? So why did it take so long? Because, until there was mass-market high-speed internet, communicating information about, and ultimately being able to download 600+MB of data was a serious undertaking.
Two things are not going back - open source and web-based applications. Neither are fads, and are going to grow more, because the things required to make them work are growing, as are people's needs in terms of communication changing.
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:3, Insightful)
I understand how you might not like that, but to me, that is exactly how you make money by giving something away. ie: if a developer wants to release his software for free, no problem. If he wants to close his source then he SHOULD pay, which funds the free mysql for everyone.
Is there risks for the developer? Sure, like with all licenses that are not truly free. At least if you PAY for a mysql license, you can modify the source how you want. Or even if you DONT pay for it, under the GPL. Try that with MS/Oracle/anyoneelse.
Free as in speech, not as in beer. For Free software to continue to thrive, someone has to make money, and it seems to me that Mysql AB has developed a pretty interesting way to do this. I get to use mysql for free for my blog and for my business. AND, as long as i dont distribute my applications, I don't have to release any code or even AGREE to any license, per the GPL.
ONLY when I wanted to sell (distribute) my apps, and keep my code secret would I ever have to agree to a license and pay for anything. What a bargain!
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:1, Insightful)
That's Why... (Score:3, Insightful)