“The revolution triggered by Linux may be slowly starting to fade. Many companies are becoming increasingly protective of their intellectual property rather than embracing open source during the economic slump. The ideological purity of the open-source software business is being diluted by a new era of pragmatism as start-ups adjust to the economic slump.” Reported at ZDNews.
Is Open Source Fading Away?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Open Source is not going anywhere. the established products like Linux, Mozilla, Apache, and Open Office are all still going to be around for a long time. Also, Companies know that using those products is not a danger to their IP, you have no reason to think that any information you keep on a GPL system is going to be lost to your company and foreve be in the GPL domain, that is not how it works and the companies know that. Companies will continue to deploy Opensource tools where they make the most fiscal sence.
Heh, what the fuck are those megaproxy links? Links do not work anymore and in the case of this ZDNews article, I don’t get any text anymore, just a picture and that megaproxy toolbar.
WTF???
Hmm, now it’s back to usual… Maybe I became a victim of IE6’s new anti-privacy features?? Hmmm, damn Microsoft…
Fixed. Sorry for the problem. I did not notice them, as they worked for me. 😮
> “The development model of open-source software is wonderful. But let’s not
> confuse a development model with a business model. Basic business principles
> were forgotten by some,” said Turbolinux Chief Executive Ly-Huong Pham.
Some of the quotes in this article are interesting. Those of you who know who I am of course know that I’m not a big Open Source guy. This quote prettymuch sums up my attitude about the whole thing. I like sharing ideas, I’m an academic at heart. However, I recognize that business is in the business of making money. That is what businesses do, yes even Open Source businesses. What exactly do you think stock is?
Stock is a way for a business to get your money. As an act of faith that they will produce some type of product or service which will in turn make them more valuable, you give them some portion of the wealth you own.
I just thought it was interesing to point out to some of those who believe blindly in the goodness of all Open Source organizations that businesses, open source or not, are in the business of making money. If they don’t make money, they will fail, people will lose their jobs, some will not be able to pay their rent. Even non-profit businesses are in the business of making money. All business has operating costs which must be covered. NPR makes money by holding pledge drives. They get money from the government, but it isn’t enough on it’s own. If it were, then they would be fully controlled by the government, and who would want that? Money in itself it not a bad thing. The fact that some people will take unethical (very subjective term) action to get money is not an inherent flaw of the commodity.
So… anyone out there who belives that Fortune 500 companies are bad because they make money, I’m afraid you’ll just have to sell all your mutual funds, index funds, stocks, and convert to bonds and T-Bills only (you wouldn’t want to keep it in a savings account because that gives banks money!) in order to keep from being a complete hypocrite.
“Your weapons are useless” “Your weapons cannot harm me”… something like that.
What’s the movie I’m thinking of? Where the hero keeps telling the villains that his equipment prevents them from being able to hurt him in any way? And they keep shooting anyway? Extremely boring movie (the hero wins, because his enemies, as he keeps telling them, cannot hurt him)
Anyway, you can’t hurt Free Software by putting companies out of business. all you can do is annoy the users or slow down development.
The press like running stories like this during consolidation. They ran stories saying that unmetered ISPs would all go out of business or charge per minute. In fact lots of companies went out of business, but the market remained and after consolidation it was left with fewer, large and more capable suppliers. Users still got unmetered Internet service and all was well in the world.
I’m glad that Red Hat mentioned Cygnus. Pretty much everyone who watched it happen seems to agree that the worst thing Cygnus did was going proprietary, yet many people now are pretending that Free Software companies didn’t exist until 1995, and that “going proprietary” will cure financial problems. Not knowing your history is the first step to repeating it.
Was it just me or was this artical just filler? Anybody who has been following the changes in the open source community is familiar with almost all of the information in the article. The author makes no brilliant leaps of deduction. In fact he titles his article in such a way that one would believe he was going to attempt to answer the question of whether open source as a total reality is doomed. Obviously, this is a stupid question. He then goes on to ineptly almost explain why his own question was stupid, but pretty much misses his own point. I can’t see that he really said much of anything at all in the article except that he not enough grasp on the subject matter to be writing articles about it. Did he actually get paid for writing that useless waste of my time?
ugh
I think open source is “the way it should be” and the way of the future. But don’t hold your breath. People– and IT departments — are filled with more inertia than the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Sun’s StarOffice has been FREE for –what– two years now, and most IT departments STILL stick to the very, very expensive MS office. You can argue MS Office is “better” (Star Office would have to be totally abysmal for this to be true), or that MS Office is good because “people are used to it” ( there’s that inertia thing again), but the bottom line is that people are not acting according to rational economic principles here.
Comments?
One problem is that if a corperation wants Star office, they have to deal with all the issues of deploymnet on there own. while SUN does let it be out there for free, they do not offer a deployment consultation plan. not to mention a very important fact, Star office is more convoluted than MS office. when you go to launch a program they have 15 diffent things there. people are not use to, or like to think in the way od a task they have to comlete, the want to know the application they are using. they should just place the applications on the menu not the task….who the hell says ” I need to write a paper, lets find writer…….” then they can not find wod because instead, they have it listed as text proccessing……just call the damn thing writer!!
another issue is the lack of back room support…..yes this is not needed and MS just markets it up, but Microsoft shop PHBs think they need the server to have a realy nice environment. then there is the lack of groupware (the most important) and with its lack also comes the lack of any backend groupware.
star office is good for the home user, and the small office user, but not for the corprate user…..I use open office on my home PC and MS office at work….just send my files home in a formate that I know will be simple to view on open office….which BTW is almost every format I have attempted.
Open source is not (and was never intended) to be a business philosophy. In The Great Times Of Venture Capital Madness many companies were founded around open source projects. They were not successfull, you can’t make money with free products alone. Period.
However, Open Source is exactly what it’s supposed to be: a great development philosophy that produced software of great quality. And so does Closed Source along other premises.
For a _company_ Open Source makes sense if you want to
– share part of your technology (maybe even hoping to spread it that way)
– give away something for free in addition to your non-free products, as a bonus or to increase your user base
– share development efforts with other organizations and individuals
I’m sure we all know by now, what Open Source is NOT good for.
Just read this story <a href=http://www.scaredcity.com>here. Talk about m$bs. SHEESH!@#$%
So, whois Brendan Barnicle, “Vice Principle and Senior
Research Analyst”, with http://www.pacific-crest.com/>Pacific , really? & why is he allowed to provide so much http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brendan+Barnicle%22&btnG=… to the http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Console-Faceoff-Sales… ?<p>
“Last month, former Mylackey [defunct .com/scam] Chief Financial Officer Brendan Barnicle called the cops to report that $53,844 in computers had been stolen from the company.
<p>
It’s not clear, however, why Barnicle waited until March 16 to report the loss, which originally came to light last October when the company closed down. On that terrible day (October 27, 2000), a computer- leasing company showed up to take away the items, only to discover they were missing.
<p>
No word on the current whereabouts of the 21 stray computers. Barnicle, who has gone on to become a financial analyst for Pacific Crest, was unavailable for comment.” http://www.thestranger.com/2001-04-05/other_news.html>Nancy
<p>Good thing we’ve got guise LIEk Brendan to help us decide about “investments” in our future, know? More clues as to whoare the REAL .commIEs/FraUDs. http://www.fuckedcompany.com/extras/mylackey_letter.cfm>Moron , who, amusingly enough, is touted as a “former” lawyer (turned stock tout/shill?). Looks LIEk he fills the “lackey” position, perfectly. <p><a href=Security” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22933.html>Security Problems? Well, first, don’t tell anybody, then smear a glop of this m$ bs on IT, & call us, well, um…, don’t bother calling us.<p><a href=