.NET developer John Carroll wrote two articles on F/OSS claiming that the proprietary model is what drives the economy (article 1, article 2) while Rebecca Reid wrote her own piece “Open-source development models fall flat“. What these articles don’t discuss is the “fully open standards” model, which is a model Sun Microsystems is particularly fond of, and in a way it falls in between of “closed” and “open”. Here’s a reply from Sun engineer Glynn Foster to the second article.
Opinions on the Open Source Economy Model
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Proprietary based economics are based on scarcity. Common knowledge has no scarcity, thus isn’t marketable as a niche product anymore. Instead it becomes a service based economy. Microsoft enjoyed a time when there was a scarcity, now there is the first signs of real competition born out of growing pool of common knowledge. The only way they can hold on is to make their AP’s scarce, as in proprietary formats. Hopefully the call to make governments accept at least open standards will force the market open for open source and other proprietary software vendors to finally be able to compete with MS.
And I have to agree with: “Typical open-source project development strategies work well for free software but don’t flourish in commercial settings”
But then it also depends on licensing, OSS is great for companies that sell services but don’t want to write an OS from scratch.
The platform layer is open and protected under the GPL, but product offerings use a hybrid license. The platform has to remain open so that competition is supported at the product layer. The competition drives the economy, and Linux is sucessful.
If you want to offer a product line, than you need to build ontop of a software layer that is decoupled from the platform.
That is a good point, but the problem with the product layer being closed comes down to the current installer issues and packaging. It would be difficult to support a closed source product on all the Linux distros and have to build packages for all of them.
The current most successful method of distributing software for Linux is to GPL the code and let someone else build all the packages for you.
This is why I say that commercial software really won’t be popular on Linux until after the installation and compatibility problems are solved.
Autopackage provides the infrastructure. if there is demand for such a technology it will probably become more popular
currently there is no general purpose isv market
A closed or hybrid licensed product should not be distributed on all Linux distro’s because there would be no reason to choose one distro over another, it would eliminate competitive advantage. The job of the developer is to choose a distro and than specialize their product line for you domain, making your data flexible across a host of services.
If you wanted for example to write a game, and make it closed, this is not the same! A game is not a product line. In order to do this, there would have to be some vendor neutral (declared neutral) infrastructure, however, this is a completely different subject because it is not general, but instead is specific to game development.
Games are for the home desktop, not the corporate desktop. This kind of development requires a separate strategy, a different license than anything to do with product lines and the big vendors.
When it comes to open source, as I understand it, once you sell it to just one person, it then becomes free for everyone else if whoever you sold it to decides to give it away for free. This might work if you’re selling a service along with the software, but … I’m sorry, if you’re making $15 shareware games, you’re just not going to make a whole lot of money on service
On the other side of the coin though, I think some companies are going to have to start justifying why they’re charging hundreds of dollars a pop for each copy of a product that costs them little-to-nothing in order to duplicate.
In other words, I don’t think EVERYTHING should be open source, but these greedy companies need to realize that just because they’ve enjoyed fucking the end users for decades, that doesn’t mean that’s how it’s always gonna be.
There is a collection of software classified under FOSS. A vendor will distribute some of this software, especially infrastructure like the database and web server. In a way, these servers are like the Linux platform, they are core infrastructure or systems software.
The goal is to improve this FOSS core infrastructure and absorb all vendor infrastruture (Solaris platform, Windows platform, Oracle database, IIS database, etc). All Linux vendors can use Linux, MySQL, Apache, etc, as it absorbs commercial variants.
We do not want vendors to control core infrastruture! What vendors do control however is the product line.
In the end, what open source does is to raise the bar of what is expected from companies that develop proprietary software. You’re not going to find shrink wrapped email clients unless they do something extraordinary(which is doubtful). This is good for business and consumers.
Now with a non-viral license such as BSD/MIT/X11 you can have companies take source code, add something to it(or not add something) and sell it in binary form. That source code does not disappear though unless for some bizarro world reason said proprietary company has the only copy of it on their hard drive.
I think the most important thing to remember though is that open source actually drives innovation in the proprietary world and vice versa. I consider it a symbiotic relationship. There’s still room for both and it’s time for a lot of FOSS zealots and proprietary zealots to grow up and realize that.
At the end of the day, it’s the consumer(whether that’s a CTO or joe home user) that will make the choice of what software to use, not Bill Gates or Richard Stallman.
One thing, John Carrol, doesn’t get straight in his otherwise nice article is the distiction betweeen application and operating system layer — from an economical point of view.
While “Proprietary applications == ‘bad'” isn’t necessarily true, “Proprietary operating systems == ‘bad'” is (from an economical PoV, IMHO).
The other thing, he gets wrong is the distance between Open Source users and developers. He’s arguing that a proprietary vendor is “closer” to the consumers of software but he seems to have been looking at Linux Open Source applications, only.
On the other side, if one looks closer at Windows-based Open Source projects such as eMule (leading download numbers at sourceforge for month), for example, one gets the impression that Open Source can be so close to the users, no proprietary vendor will ever get — due to their management overhead. No matter, what a users wants, at least one “mod” of eMule provides it.
I admit, however, that — on average — proprietary application vendors have a higher incentive to deliver better prodducts.
In short, dominance is not a byproduct of corporate attempts to find a solution to the limits of the “upgrade treadmill.” Rather, it is a symptom of markets that lack natural levels of compatibility.
That is totally false. There is no “natural” lack of compatibility. Compatiblity could be very easy if standards were open. The sole reason to keep standards closed is to lock people into your product. This behaviour is anti-competitive and unnatural in a free market.
As someone already pointed out, the situation is different for game development because in addition to an engine (which could very well be open source) there is also a lot of content, which can either be original or licensed.
In other words, the software can be open source, but the game data (models, animations, sounds, characters) cannot because it is in fact not source code at all.
Comparing games to other types of software is comparing apples to oranges.
Meanwhile, I can tell you for a fact that a lot of open source (and even GPL) tools are routinely used in game development – not really because it brings down production costs (it does, but in a marginal way – most expenditures for video game production go towards salaries) but rather because it offers a high level of customization.
I’m not saying that open source code is used in the engine or game code, mind your, but rather that open-source programs are used to help produce engines and game code in addition to the production process itself.
Also, “everyone” tends to mean people who are technically proficient with computers, so creative individuals who aren’t programming experts can’t contribute to free and open-source software undertakings.
There is a need for documentation and art in the open source world. Many who have contributed cannot code but are creative in other ways.
Not only does the platform (Linux) need to be FOSS, but also other major infrastructure, other systems software (servers).
If you want to make money and also be able to create game content for Linux, than FOSS needs to create the infrastructure to facilitate game development. That infrastructure must be open and accessible, the games themselves do not have to be.
FOSS systems must be decentralized, by being open and accessible. They must be stable in the sense that the system is categorically exposed for what it is and what it does. The functions are made transparent to the community.
FOSS creations (the next level of FOSS) are the atom of new systems.
inevitable? Only if you make it.
Commercial software drives the economy and it drives innovation. I have not seen any major thing innovative come out of open source software except copying off of UNIX or Microsoft in trying to make something cheaper and more open.
OSNews.com should be… “Open Source News”.. the hat always tips in that direction.. no offense anyone 😉
he’s totally right. Open Source should be adopted in many companies. That’s why I always suggest to sun to open up the core solaris OS like how apple did it to MacOS X with Darwin. Why not do the similiar.. ohwell.. its being looked into anyway.. there are other examples that wouldn’t include the GPL… and theres ways to create a non-forking but open source license. im sure red hat agrees. red hat would be so happy if they could close linux–it may just be good thing that they can’t.
Software has not accomplished anything yet for the individual. I don’t want any so called innovations, please no more of these!
I want control. And I want that to be the innovation.
In other words, the software can be open source, but the game data (models, animations, sounds, characters) cannot because it is in fact not source code at all.
By ‘software’ you mean the game engine, I don’t really think that $15 shareware games really have an engine
And for the high-dollar games that do, I would imagine that some companies spend thousands of dollars developing the engine, and I highly doubt they’d open source it. And anyway, why should they? That is something of a trade secret, or at least an asset they can sell to other companies.
Innovation means the introduction of something new. Why do we have to go in circles like my Akita who sometimes chases his own tail. What is the purpose of something new if it doesn’t give me more control, in fact, it gives me less control, it makes me worse off than before! Why would I want this.
If the bases of the innovation is not the creation of infrastructure which has some altruistic case and scientific bases, than we are not dealing with the computer industry, instead this is the entertainment industry.
Most of us have never known what it is like to have control and be able to apply our knowledge and create something that serves our own purpose. We don’t want to have private property. We only desire to be entertained and that is all we have experienced, and those people should stay with Microsoft Windows and the World Wrestling Fedoration (WWF).
you want control you want to be the innovation? why don’t you write the software then. too many people pressure owners of software IP to open it because they want to take advantage of it. its really selfish
You’re going into one of your psychotic rants as usual. Time for your pills.
Maybe the economical principles behind Open Source software companies will fail. Maybe IBM, Sun, … wil stop open sourcing.
That would not stop F/OSS developments.
Unlike proprietary SW, F/OSS doesn’t need to be economically viable to exist, it is an huge avantage.
F/OSS are more resilient.
There is a great deal of ignorance in the perceived rate of innovation in the SW industries.
If you list recent trends in SW, you will see that commercial firms re-cycle very old ideas ( for example VM, memory management, … ) or research technologies ( HTML ) and make them fancy.
Some companies build very specific SW for niche applications with carefully designed algoriths, signal processing, etc, but the major players : MS, Sun, IBM doens’t really innovate in SW by developping genunine ideas.
…
It doesn’t mean that it is not a tough task to transform a research paper into a industrial level tool, but that task can as well be done by FOSS developpers.
First of all it better be really clear that there is no equal sign what so ever between open source and GPL. GPL is just one of many OSS licenses and hardly an advisable one.
The funny thing about this whole rant is that Sun is the key (as they so often are). Open standards is indeed the key, since then everyone can compete on equal grounds and win on equal terms.
Let’s compare to football games…
Proprietary would be
No people seeing the game, nobody able to see tactics, not even the competitors, like scoring in complete darkness and the only thing people would know is the result of the scoreboard.
GPL (UFOSS – UnFree OSS) would be
One team spending loads on players and the other team would be able to clone them without investing any money and the teams would be just the same and the team actually investing would soon have no money left.
Open Standards no matter license would be
Two teams knowing the rulebook and what applies to the game. Both able to compete on the same turf with different angles to it. One being able to invest more in terms of players for sure but still playing with equal rules….
I say the last one, which is the SUN way, is the way to go… ignore the licensing stuff for a second and just figure that this is truly what things is all about. This is also the very reason why MSOffice is tricky since it’s closed standards, same with Windows API and many many other things.
This is the true problem…
Darius — Quake 1 & Quake 2 core game engines are Open Source, Quake 3 will be Open Source in a few years. John Cormack does this as the Next Generation Engines comes out.
Why do people think GPL is unfree when it makes one point certian that the code will always be available, unlike the BSD, CPL,or properity Liceneses. Apple doesn’t have to return Darwin and many of the developers are complaining because they believe Apple isn’t returning everything unlike the GPL where they would be forced to.
Software is nothing but a tool, MicroSoft is partially right most people don’t touch the source code who use Open Source, That isn’t the point. The point is if I need a feature that MS decides to change say CIFS password Authentication I can either change to match or revert backwards.
One Person will not be the controller of my fate. Bill Gates controls each person who uses only MS products. You will only change at his whim, His desires. We fought a Revolution over this, Taxation without representation. Now it still is Taxation without representation, try buying a brand-name PC without an OS. Bill Gates controls you denying it is futile you are already lost.
Oh for gods sake – the ‘Free’ in ‘Free Software’ means freedom, as in libre – not free beer.
why software patents are bad, as they more often cover the way it works rahter then specific code as you cant patnet maths. its like volvo patenting the cars control system or similar.
file types, network protocols, anything like that should be forced to be open and public domain so that you would be damn sure that the free market economy would work.
other then that i support the first commenter on this “news”. what software companys do is to introduce virtual rareity to push the prices up. this will only work as long as the act of copying at home is difficult to do and so on. its the same problem that the entertainment industry have right now and therefor they are pushing stuff like broadcast flags to try and say what can and cant be recorded/copyed…
be sure to let me know.
SW companies keep prices high, spend more on communication than on development, keep rareity, …
Conlusion :
It is a luxury business : Place a Microsoft label on a bottle of perfume and you’ll sell it 50 times the price of flowers…
Why do people think GPL is unfree when it makes one point certian that the code will always be available, unlike the BSD, CPL,or properity Liceneses.
If you modify a program licensed under the CPL you have to make the changes available. See http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-cplfaq.html
Maybe it’s time for something in the middle ?
http://www.collaborativesource.org
And for the high-dollar games that do, I would imagine that some companies spend thousands of dollars developing the engine, and I highly doubt they’d open source it. And anyway, why should they?
I’m not saying that this is common practice in the industry, however for most game this wouldn’t have too much of an impact. Most games fall in-between “no engine to speak of” (i.e. Bejeweled) and “state-of-the-art engin” (i.e. UT2004). For 95% of the games, the engine (while important) is not the selling point. Rather, it is the gameplay elements (game design, level design) and the artistic elements (story, modeling, animation, textures) that sell the game. Using a GPLed engine wouldn’t change that, nor would it make the game sell less.
I think that the open source development model DOES work.
Who is ANYONE to say it doesn’t?
I’m not a “political” open source guy, but GNU/Linux is a valid alternative to other OS’s for users who don’t feel that…ummm…OTHER COMPANIES’ business practices are acceptable or who are interested in learning a Unix-like system or who want to run a server (web- or otherwise) or who want an open system, period, or who don’t have enough money to run the programs they need for other OS’s and don’t want to pirate or who…
Is it right for everyone? No, but it’s right for me, and disregarding any argument about “what’s better,” the quality of the current GNU/Linux offerings belie the idea that the OSS dev model doesn’t work.
Corporate profits across all industries have been eroding for over thirty years. Margins are thinner in every industry over which data has been collected for a quarter century.
Software will be no different. Every industry is grinding itself to razor thin margins just to stay afloat.
Putting things in context, software is simply catching up with industrial trends after holding out for an amazingly long time.
Well said and dead on the money. Bravo!
One Person will not be the controller of my fate. Bill Gates controls each person who uses only MS products. You will only change at his whim, His desires. We fought a Revolution over this, Taxation without representation. Now it still is Taxation without representation, try buying a brand-name PC without an OS. Bill Gates controls you denying it is futile you are already lost.
You are a fine example of what happens when someone takes this shit to an extreme.
Gates dosen’t control anyone. MS is at the mercy of their customers. Anyone who dosen’t believe that dosen’t know a damn thing about business. The customer writes the check.
I can buy servers from Dell right now that ship with no OS. On a consumer model there are none that I know of but all that says is that there is not enough of a demand for OSless desktops for Dell to take it seriously. MS lost the ability to demand that OEMs ship Windows in the antitrust case.
The customer writes the check. Repeat after me.
The customer writes the check. Repeat after me.
Yes, but…The point is that MS lost the antitrust case in the U.S. and virtually no action was taken against it. MS was slapped on the wrist by the EU. The customer DOES write the check, but when a comapny seeks to eliminate (not just defeat) their rivals, they are crossing a line and I think few would deny that MS does this. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Bill Gates is controlling Win users, but there are definite issues about the business practices he engages in.
…and this effects WHICH CHECK the user is signing. Free trade is fair trade, else it ain’t free.
Otherwise, I agree with you and Lumburgh, though: at worst OSS will keep the big boys honest.
Unless OSS is wiped off the face of the Earth by software patents.
I
I suppose when I referred to “the point,” I was referring to “my point.”
Wooops!
Today that might possibly be the case, then again MS does have other way to punish hardware makers.
If MS was truely at the mercy of their customers then why does it cost their customers time and energy patching obvious security flaws.(I am not talking strictly email attachments but other worms)
MS once said of it’s Doctor Watson security report for windows XP that 50% of all windows probelms are by third party apps, That means that you can fix at least 35% of all probelms by fixing their own software.(nothing can be 100% i will give everyone a chance)
Sure you can buy Servers without an OS because of the antitrust trial but it shouldn’t cost them any more to ship a laptop without software. Dell should be able to ship a consumer level PC without OS without any additional cost.
Considering since Dell custom builds each machine then not installing the OS should save signifact amounts of time to deleivery, yet that is not the case. Demand isn’t the issue as it should cost them less to produce.
I know many businesses that reformat the drive and install win 2k or even win 98se on the machines. Now they just purchased a product that they can’t use. The machies could come with Windows preinstalled, but with an option for without OS. Dell doesn’t because they say demand isn’t there, yet I know of thousands of people for whom that very demand exsists. The probelm is MS.
I will be happy when the software industy balances out to actual competion. You know somewhere around 50% MS consumer desktops, 10-15% Apple, 30-40% Linux, the Rest some yet to be found unknown. All using Open Standards to communicate without Extended enhancments that lead to viruses(ActiveX)
<deleted extended rant>
Open standards seems to be something Sun and Microsoft have peddled in response to open source software.
OK, I’ll bite. We’ve had open standards in software since the dawn of time, and they’ve failed. Why? Because there is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that any proprietary software vendor will implement standards, implement them properly or stick proprietary extensions on. Kerberos in Windows 2000 anyone? IPSec?
We’ve been over this over the course of many, many years. That’s why we’re all talking about open source software in the first place. Open Standards is just the problems of proprietary software rebranded.
I’m thinking of writing a large response piece to John Carroll’s articles because he just doesn’t understand how open source software can be used. Like most people, he seems to think that open source software is a one-size-fits-all thing, in the same way that Microsoft produces all the software that matters on Windows, and then he compares it as suh. It doesn’t work like that.
“Now with a non-viral license such as BSD/MIT/X11 you can have companies take source code, add something to it(or not add something) and sell it in binary form.”
You forgot to add GPL.
You describe exactly what companies like RedHat do 8)
I might be satisfied with a software dictatorship and a tyrant like Microsoft, if they actually offered something that I wanted to have. This has never happened though.
so? if you know how to code then you can either work for a software company or some other company that uses that software and have a change they want done. its only the pure software companys (the ones that have a way of makeing money that is in many ways similar to how a record company or movie studio) that stand the risk of falling down. the people working there can hire them selfs out to do custom mods on open source software anyways…
the linux distro corps survive not on being the ones sitting on some code and getting pr seat or similar licence payments but by selling a prepackaged linux solution in a box with some tools to help in configuring and some manuals. and then if some corp calls them and says hey i need some help here then they charge for the time spent helping, just like some it consultant dragged in to help get a windows system back into shape.
corporations are not people, if one die then the people working there can move on to some other corp that need those skills unless your the manager type that dont know anything but pushing papers around that is. personaly i think corps like microsoft missuse the copyright laws more then most people claim the GPL does.
the GPL moves the power from the seller to the buyer. instead of microsoft comeing up with a new version of windows and then trying to sell (or maybe some will say force?) it to anyone around the buyer asks if a person or team can create a tool for them and then pay them for the time. that just like paying someone to build you a house rahter then buying one prebuildt from ms and then haveing them show up on your door every 2-5 years trying to sell you a new and bigger one that you dont want, cant afford or similar but you need if you plan on blying that new sofa setup you have been looking on as its only compatible with the new ms house. anyone see the strangeness in that?
If MS was truely at the mercy of their customers then why does it cost their customers time and energy patching obvious security flaws.
Why are companies deploying linux ? Obviously some of them are doing it in response to dealing with security issues on windows. Thats how the market works.
Sure you can buy Servers without an OS because of the antitrust trial but it shouldn’t cost them any more to ship a laptop without software. Dell should be able to ship a consumer level PC without OS without any additional cost.
Yes it does cost Dell money to ship a laptop without an OS. They have to know it works with something out there or all they will get is returns. What if they ship a laptop with hardware that no OS has drivers for, or one which has hardware that only windows supports ?
I know many businesses that reformat the drive and install win 2k or even win 98se on the machines. Now they just purchased a product that they can’t use. The machies could come with Windows preinstalled, but with an option for without OS. Dell doesn’t because they say demand isn’t there, yet I know of thousands of people for whom that very demand exsists. The probelm is MS.
Dell does ship systems without operating systems but they do so for their customers who already have large windows licenses. They don’t cater to the Linux market and that is their choice.
its a free country man. If you believe there is a market for workstations without an OS then start up a business and hit it while its hot. You know thousands you claim so you should have no problem getting moving.
I suggest anyone interested in this read the list of submissions to the UK Patent Office website on patentability of computer related inventions.
One of which acknowledges that there are multiple approaches to software development active in Europe, including open source, standard closed source, patent oriented, etc – and at the current point in time, there is no specific evidence to favour one over the other: they can happily co-exist.
I might be satisfied with a software dictatorship and a tyrant like Microsoft, if they actually offered something that I wanted to have. This has never happened though
then I guess you don’t use Linux neither since what happens there is basically massive cloning of all MS stuff.
Or perhaps you prefer the low budget crappy versions of what’s available on Windoze
then I guess you don’t use Linux neither since what happens there is basically massive cloning of all MS stuff.
..but a clone that is secure and stable.
“then I guess you don’t use Linux neither since what happens there is basically massive cloning of all MS stuff. ”
And MS clones Apple, and Apple clones…so on and so forth. What’s your point?
Some of you honestly think that MS is really innovative. Demonstrate some concrete examples of things they came up with that didn’t already exist or weren’t based on previous research. Admit it, Windows gets prettier and prettier with each version, and that seems to be their main focus.