Sun Says, "Compensate OSS Developers" 210
krelian writes "Talking at Netbeans Day, Rich Green, Sun executive vice president for software, expressed doubts about the current open source model in which developers create free intellectual property only to have others scoop it up and generate huge amounts of revenue. Green said, 'I think in the long term that this is a worrisome scenario [and] not sustainable. We are looking very closely at compensating people for the work that they do.'" Green didn't provide any details about how payments from Sun or others might work.
What is this, another FUD article?! (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the whole point of Open Source was doing good for mankind in general, not categorically for the investors...
tripple edged sword (Score:5, Insightful)
Offer prizes for some goals, make donations for larger and/or more important projects, or to people whose work is sympathetic to you, but when you start differentiating smaller groups of people based on blurry criteria I don't think you're working towards helping FOSS as a whole.
There is a need to work closely with those in the open-source community to share revenues, said Green. - share theirs or share yours ?
Re:all talk, no action (Score:5, Insightful)
"Sun" said no such thing (Score:3, Insightful)
If the Open Source Market Development Manager for Sun had said something like this, then we'd have something to talk about.
Instead, people make want to make out that companies are individuals with single opinions.
Sorta disingenious. (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's pretty strange to claim that something which seems to have worked just fine for the last 15 years is "not sustainable", without providing any argument whatsoever as to what, exactly, prevents the next 5 years for working for the same reason that the last 5 has.
Re:What is this, another FUD article?! (Score:1, Insightful)
Guess what's the most important activity of the 21st century?
Yeah, that's right, software development.
Re:all talk, no action (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is this, another FUD article?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What is this, another FUD article?! (Score:2, Insightful)
However, I genuinely think the "old-school" hacker ethos of "open source", that is "giving back to the community for the betterment of all" is really the issue here. The WWW, the Linux kernel, the GNU toolchain, the arpanet, SPAM ad nauseam, et al are products of mere enthusiasm and necessity, not bottom dollar.
The workings of the internet seems to rely mostly on necessity rather than money. The innovators didn't seem to be motivated by profit.
Re:What is this, another FUD article?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, but even so, you have to make it sustainable, and how to do so is still an open question.
There's no doubt in my mind that open source works, and works well. It has produced some great things, but I think we're still figuring out exactly how it works in terms of the economics. Proprietary software is certainly simpler:
1) Write product.
2) People buy it.
3) Profit!
4) Improve product, hire developers, etc..
Or:
2) No one buys it.
3) Go out of business, product goes away.
With open source, things are different... You could create something great, and there's no guarantee at all that you'll get anything back for it. In practice, people don't seem to get screwed that badly, but it's not as tight a feedback loop.
I wrote some more about this several months ago:
http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2007/02/03/in
Re:What is this, another FUD article?! (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think software development is the 'most important activity' of the 21st century. Software development is merely providing instruction sets to instruments. You could make a case about instrumentation, or micro-manufacturing, both of which utilize software development.
While enticing to compare Gates to the robber barons of the late 19th century, it's far from accurate. Nobody NEEDS to buy MicroSoft products in order to do business. They choose to because it's easier. (Like it or not - real or not.)
That's Why the GPL Works (Score:5, Insightful)
This means that companies who would never be able to maintain a whole OS by themselves, such as Red Hat and even companies like Novell and IBM now, can use a kernel and an operating system to do what they want on a level playing field which would have cost them billions to develop purely by themselves. Smaller contributors and those not contributing get a kernel and OS they can use for free, and do what they want with, and they make up something called the open source community.
This article should be re-titled "Sun Doesn't Understand the GPL or How Successful Open Source Projects Work". I find that a touch worrying from their perspective. It seems they've been drinking too much of the Intellectual Property anti-freeze.
Does that mean that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Does that mean that they are going to honour this request from the NeoOffice people? [neooffice.org]
Meanwhile...
The only way* for a company to make "huge amounts of revenue" from Open Source software is to add value so that people are prepared to pay you money for something that they could get elsewhere for free. That "value" might be providing top quality support, or it might be investigating in marketing or just having a number of employees who wear suits and use words like "leverage" that give corporate clients a warm fuzzy feeling. Either way, does anybody really have a problem with that?
Any company director who looses sleep about getting all this "money for nothing" simply needs to let their employees use some of their paid time to contribute to writing OSS code or coordinating OSS development.
*(excluding the "extort protection money on the back of questionable IP violation claims" method, of course).
Hire them to work on open source?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Long-term? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say that it has already proven its sustainability.
you nailed it (Score:4, Insightful)
Businesspeople use greed to motivate--it works, is easily understood, easily harnessed, and reproducible on demand. Offer money, and people will show up to work. But since that's the only tool they have, it's the only one they trust.
It's also why so many businesspeople are instinctively against OSS. FreeBSD or whatever may be more stable and secure in the server room, but they aren't going to rely on something that is maintained by hippy visionary volunteers, even if what they're offering is more relaible than the product sold by the guy from MS or whoever. I really think that a considerable part of the resistance to OSS, whether it be GNU/Linux or OpenOffice or whatever, is on principle, not merit. Businesspeople don't understand or trust a product whose existence isn't dependent on someone's search for money.
The License mkes the difference (Score:5, Insightful)
The GPL is what is fundamentally different.
- In case of art/media, paying the MAFIAA toll is the only legal way to get it legally. If you try to get it with another way. The MAFIAA will come after you and sue to death the whole building where you live (including all less than 2yo toddler or recently deceased elderly neighbours on the list of sued people).
- In case of OSS, there's a license called GPL whose purpose is to enforce that no matter what the company try (and the version 3 is about pluging the hole that the company may have tried), YOU will ALWAYS be granted to do whatever pleases you (get the software, analyse the code, modify the code) as long as you transmit further that freedoms along the chain.
If any company ever tries to refrain you to get the code and do whatever pleases you, and tries to force to go only through their paid route, that company is in violation of the GPL and loses the right to use the GPLed code in their applications.
Some company may try to make you pay for the OSS software, but that will never prevent you to get the stuff from the original programmer who developed it for FREE and, while browsing his site to download the code, stumble upon a "donate" button and decide to give him some money or hardware.
The motivation of that programmer is also different.
Companies' main motivation is to make money no matter what they deliver (even if it's crap like in Microsoft's case)
OSS programmer's motivation is to develop the software in the first place, because they're scratching an itch (ie.: the motivation is that they actually need the software. Building a working app that solves their initial problem is what they hope to obtain).... Yeah, that, and pure boredom as featured recently on
Re:What is this, another FUD article?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the whole point of Open Source was doing good for mankind in general, not categorically for the investors...
That's a misconception. People write OSS for all kinds of different reasons, including for profit, and that is great. Sun itself is probably the biggest contributor to open source in existence (with Solaris, Open Office and Java), but they obviously do it because they believe it's good business practice.
Re:What is this, another FUD article?! (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe that a vast majority of software is written not to be sold off the shelf, but custom made for internal use in some company, either by in house developers or by external parties, but still on custom specs.
If you have it developed by an external party, on your specs but with them retaining copyright, the business case for getting an open source license is very clear: no vendor lock-in. It should be no-brainer, except when the externals offer a major price discount for a closed license.
When developing in house, usually no licensing at all is involved, proprietary or OS. But it can still make sense to release internal tools as OSS: for goodwill, and because others may improve your tools for you, and release their changes as well. Since software isn't your main business, there is no harm in sharing some code with other companies (possibly in completely unrelated businesses), but you may well reap some rewards.
So in my opinion, the economic case for OSS is at least as clear as for proprietary software - except in the relatively uncommon case of a company developing software to sell off the shelf.
I am paid for my own FOSS project (Score:3, Insightful)
I have been write free/open source software for profit. I'm not talking big projects with many developers here - just a small project with me as the sole developer. This is satisfying because I Believe in free software (that's a capital B). But idealism doesn't make this project my priority. The willingness of organizations to pay for deveolpment does.
I already knew that open source projects effetively governed the participation of many people. I have learned that even with one developer, open source is a powerful way of organizating and coordinationg people and organizations.
For a start, I am not alienated from my work. When I do proprietary develpoment I must walk away at the end of the project. My client or employer doesn't want me taking the work with me, and I can't afford to get attached to it. With open source, I can afford to care - and I do, in part because...
The code is the best advertising I can have. Even when a contract is complete, even if bits of the copyright belong to others, the code is still mine - my name is on it, and I have responsibility for it (for if I don't take responsibility, no-one will). I am the worldwide expert on this thing; if anyone wants something done, it makes sense to come to me. That makes me a single point of failure in a sense, but FOSS is not unique this way - proprietary developers are not interchangeable either, though employers may sometimes foolishly treat them that way.
From a larger perspective, there is an underlying logic of cooperation. The first client for this project sponsored its creation, and they were wise and generous enough to allow me to retain copyright and insist on a GPL license (but then that's part of what attracted me in the first place). Now it is in my interest to improve the code, benefiting all users. It is also in the interest of past clients that I get future clients - because then they benefit from any improvements. The code serves as a means to coordinate multiple participants. It's a bit like a market, only coordinated by sharing rather than competition. (This is where the competitive assumptions built into copyright law and existing institutional policies can create real headaches.)