"Is open source still a grassroots social movement made up of idealistic underdogs trying to revolutionize an amoral industry? Or has it become a cloak used by IT vendors large and small to disguise ruthless and self-serving behavior? Some observers argue it's the latter. Despite occasional protests from old-timers - the heated backlash against the Microsoft-Novell détente, for example - open source has become so co-opted by mainstream IT, so transformed by 'accidental open sourcers' simply looking for a better business model, that it's lost its cherished moral edge."
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Member since:2005-10-02
Since proprietary software makers also make their primary income for selling support your claim is invalid.
One can claim that since money isn't the goal with FLOSS in general, the quality of software is much higher than "commercial" software that needs to be bad in order to receive paid bugfixes and upgrades.
So far most poor software I've met have been proprietary.
Small time developers cannot make money at all. You cannot make money on an application it took you 4 hours to code. And no shareware application has ever been better than that.
Member since:2006-04-20
"Since proprietary software makers also make their primary income for selling support your claim is invalid."
No, it isn't. Very few proprietary software vendors provide any support other than the user documentation, and they most certainly do not make their primary income from support. If that were the case, they would have no reason to go to such extreme lengths to develop copy protection mechanisms for their software. The vast majority of apps written by individuals or small teams have no capacity whatsoever to provide commercial (paid) support - it simply requires too many man-hours and resources. Most software vendors will have an email address or something for people to lodge complaints or submit bugs, but they are not going to get any kind of support worth paying for.
I have used many very high quality shareware programs that easily exceeded the quality of many more expensive commercial apps and equivalent open source apps (in the area I am mainly interested in, computer-based music production, there are simply no open source applications worth using at a professional level - the only good ones are proprietary unfortunately, but the proprietary ones are well written and documented, and do not require much if any end user support. Interestingly, the only OSS audio recording app that even approaches professional quality (Ardour)is ridiculously complex to use, very poorly designed from a usability perspective and definitely does require commercial support. Compared to a brilliant app like Tracktion (which started out as shareware BTW), it is just horible). My point here is not that proprietary is better than OSS or vice versa, rather that good programs that are well written will sell like hot cakes and need no support, badly written programs will sell very few copies and will need extensive support.
Small time developers can make enough money to supplement their income or make a reasonable living - I know a few who do just that.
The only software companies that make much money from support are the ones that service big business clients - any software that is primarily used by home users and niche industries will only have a minuscule market for support, and there will be no reason for smaller companies writing software for home users to invest in the infrastructure required to provide support. Making money from support is very, very hard, very competitive, and very risky. Making money by selling a well designed tool(whether it be a software app or a physical device) that an idiot can use without needing a manual is money in the bank, provided you can get some kind of exclusivity over the sale of the product.
Member since:
2006-04-20
Good, well written software, unless it is an extremely complex application, does not require end user support beyond a well written help file and a few tutorials. Selling support might work well for commercial databases and webserver apps, but it is fairly unprofitable for people using the moderately simple software that the majority of PC users use.
And the business model of giving the software away for free and charging for support gives the developer an intrinsic incentive to deliberately create lousy, poorly documented software that is hard to use, just so they can get more people to buy a support contract (I'm not saying this is what developers actually do, just that it is an ever-present incentive).
I have personally bought and used a number of very useful but inexpensive apps and vst plugins etc which were largely developed by very small teams (1-3 developers). Now there is no way you could charge for support on these apps, since their use is so simple and elementary, and generally well documented that buying support would be a waste of money. If these apps were open source, then the author would have to somehow compete with free versions of the software they were charging for.
So for small time developers, it would be highly irrational to open source their software if they plan on making money from it, unless it is so horribly complicated or poorly designed that end users need to have support to get anything done.
Then there are the costs of actually providing support - it costs a lot of money to employ staff, set up call centres etc in order to provide quality support, and many businesses that try the road of providing for support go bankrupt within 6 months because they simply don't get enough income to cover the expenses of providing support.
Quite frankly, if you need to buy support to be able to use software, then there is quite possibly something wrong with the software, and you should consider something better designed.
BTW, I have nothing against Open Source Software per se - I use and enjoy quite a few well written open source software packages (including the browser I am using to type this post), I just don't think it is appropriate for every situation, especially for small developers trying to put food on the table.
Edited 2007-02-20 00:19