In a series of articles (part I, part II) during the month of July, OfB's Timothy R. Butler explained why he felt that KDE needed to move beyond the Qt toolkit it uses as a foundation. In that series, he asserted that the licensing of Qt is becoming a stumbling block to the desktop's adoption. Eric Laffoon, the project lead for KDE's Kdewebdev module, takes exception to Butler's arguments and makes the case for his view on the issue of Qt at OfB.biz.
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Member since:"Of course, all this discourse depends on the evolution of the GPL itself. Who knows what 3.0/4.0 will be like.
To date, I do not believe the GPL has addressed the livelihood of the people whose IP is the code/product vs. services. The GPL may evolve to provide a better economic balance than it does today. If the GPL does not evolve, we will see a bifurcation of the software world -- lots of low quality software that requires a lot of service/support vs. quality products that require less service/support. It is already what we see today with Windows/Mac vs. Linux and this pattern, driven by the economics of the GPL, would likely continue. "
Web services presently slot inbetween the two. Of course 3.0 could close that loophole.
Member since:Thanks for the thoughtful post.
The big issue with the GPL is that it destroys the software business model where your code is your IP. It allows any customer to take your code and do what they want with it, including reselling it for money and putting you out of business.
Let's be very clear here that noone is forcing anyone to license their original code under GPL or any other open license. So I'd roll back the "destroys the business model" rhetoric. If you want to keep your core business value in your code, then don't open the code. There's a little company in Seattle you might want to check out that follows this model and they seem to be doing very well for themselves. That model is going to be valid for quite a long time to come, if not indefinitely.
I question your basic premise. I think what we're seeeing with free and open licenses is the very slow, very gradual movement of a great deal of software to commodity status. (Server Linux is a good example, big-budget video games are a bad example.) And I think the overall effect on programmers will be... just about nil. Most coders don't make their living producing over-the-counter software anyway, they produce custom code for internal use. If all OTC software disappeared tomorrow (and it won't), the far majority of programmers would still have their jobs. Outsourcing is probably a much bigger issue in their lives. And even if that weren't true, commoditization isn't exactly something you can control. It happens to segments of all mature markets, and ultimately benefits companies and consumers.
So who will participate in the GPL economy? Mostly large companies that depend on low quality software that requires a lot of support/services.
The best, most successful, most mature example we have of a "GPL economy" so far is the Linux server space. And I think most sysadmins will disagree that Linux server solutions are necessarily any lower in quality or require more support and services than other, closed solutions. In particular situations, in particular match-ups, sure - Linux has advantages and disadvantages like anything else. (I'm not trying to start a Unix vs. Linux war here.) But the proprietary alternatives have similar advantages and disadvantages, and Linux does very well in that space.
In the "consumer app" space, probably the most successful single app is Firefox (GPL/MPL). Again, I'd question your premise that open = lower quality and requires more support. I don't think it's supported by the products we've seen so far.
Member since:
2005-07-06
This is a good point. Business has never been easy for the small ISV. Did anyone really make money off of Windows 95 shareware? It's tough because it is likely in the current climate that someone will come along and marginalize your company's IP by releasing a similar product under a GPL-compatible license. Is it a better bet to release under GPL and attempt to leverage market share to monetize something (service or otherwise)? Is it better to develop in Java/Mono/Gtk+ and hope that KDE users will be a targetable audience for your commercial software? Or is it best in the long run to pay the Qt license and hope that the revenue stream eventually pays off?
The popular Windows shareware does pull in reasonable money. Look at something like WinZip for instance. Or before WinZip, PKZip for DOS/Windows. There are today many small companies (and individuals) making a living off of the various forms of shareware.
WinZip was recently sold to another company (for 3-4 million USD is what I hear) who will attempt to make the company profitable / more profitable. Here's what an analyst had to say:
“There aren’t that many free businesses out there that have converted to a paid model,” said Peter Coleman, senior application software analyst at ThinkEquity Partners, a research and investment banking firm. “Conceptually, it can work if you add value to the product and package it well for customers.”
There are no popular GPL shareware programs that I am aware of. Usually GPL programs are "free software" or "please donate ware".
The big issue with the GPL is that it destroys the software business model where your code is your IP. It allows any customer to take your code and do what they want with it, including reselling it for money and putting you out of business.
In return for destroying this common software business model, the GPL enables service software service business models. The revenue stream is not attached to the code anymore, but to ancillary services that presumably you have some core competence to deliver.
Two things come to mind on the GPL.
First is that for software that was formerly cheap, having a GPL-only option will eliminate the broad and thin code-based revenue pool. In its place will be add-on/support services. So more and more software will be designed to require more support/services as this is where the money is. If we look at many of the underdocumented and hard(er) to use Linux applications, we can see economic reinforcement is driving app development and the typical quality of Linux apps is a few big steps less than that of apps on Mac and Windows. Without the economic incentive to build quality apps, there may never been enough quality apps to ensure the success of a particular GPL-based platform.
Second is that for expensive applications, the GPL functions merely as an "early availability" code escrow. The cost of supporting the code for expensive apps will be factored into the cost of the apps driving the cost to the customer even higher.
So what comes of this WRT Qt?
To begin, as Qt is not economically viable for small ISVs, we will not see any large widget or component library for it as these libraries are usually built by small ISVs. As it is the small ISVs who would also be many of the customers for widget libraries (along with corporations), the lack of this layer in the food chain will lead to starvation at a number of layers in the ecosystem, ultimately inhibiting the sales of Qt to larger corporations. We will see small ISVs turn to other software ecosystems where the GPL is not required.
The large corporations that use Qt will simply absorb the high costs of the licenses. It is only for them that the relative cost of Qt is low. So nothing much will change here as large corporations already pay a lot of money for software.
Qt continue on as a part of the GPL ecosystem, but will not make any substantial inroads to anywhere else except for mobile phones.
And for GPL-based economies?
The GPL makes it more difficult for the small GPL developer to make money. As "time=money" and time is finite, these small developers will not participate in GPL markets as they cannot afford it economically. There is no pay-off as they are developing nothing of value which they ultimately own.
So who will participate in the GPL economy? Mostly large companies that depend on low quality software that requires a lot of support/services. So we find IBM a major backer of Linux. And Sun. And HP. And Oracle. And other companies who make a lot of money on services.
Thus one possible future of GPL economies is a split between large mega corporations and gentleman coders who can develop software for free as their livelihood does not depend on it. By the participants involved, we can see that in this future, GPL economies will belong only to the wealthy.
It is hard for me to imagine how the goals of mega corporations and gentleman coders are going to support desirable and admirable communities as time goes by.
It is even more difficult to imagine how there would ever be any system created here that serves the consumer. The gentleman coders cannot relate to the consumer and the large mega corporations that are funding the GPL programs just want to bleed the consumer for as much as possible.
We must not be so naive as to think the GPL does away with greed.
Of course, all this discourse depends on the evolution of the GPL itself. Who knows what 3.0/4.0 will be like.
To date, I do not believe the GPL has addressed the livelihood of the people whose IP is the code/product vs. services. The GPL may evolve to provide a better economic balance than it does today. If the GPL does not evolve, we will see a bifurcation of the software world -- lots of low quality software that requires a lot of service/support vs. quality products that require less service/support. It is already what we see today with Windows/Mac vs. Linux and this pattern, driven by the economics of the GPL, would likely continue.
There will be occasional dual-license companies such as MySQL. However, these companies are artificially propped up by massive VC investment hoping for an acquisition. Given a bit of time, only the software that is required for the service businesses of large enterprises will survive (and what the gentlemen coders provide pro bono).
I have little idea what this world will look like. I know today it is damn hard to get any work done with open source software unless you have already mastered a rough learning curve. With the additional time it takes to use open source tools, one would expect businesses where time is important to shy away from GPL programs and those businesses where time does not matter to invest in GPL programs. So maybe the important businesses of the future, wineries and distilleries, will all run GPL ;-)
Hmmmm. I think I will write this up in better form and offer it to OfB. See if they will publish it. There is a vast middle ground of opinion between Eric and Tim that would be interesting to talk about.