Is opensource Developement sustainable

NutJob

Withought the funding provided by software sales is opensourse eveloution sustainable?

We all know Microsofts opinion whats yours?

(Please can we keep this as software under GPL )

democrates

Withought the funding provided by software sales is opensourse eveloution sustainable?

It is.

If companies write code then reap profits from licence fees, the argument is that this makes that company attractive for investors, companies prosper creating profits for owners, jobs for employees, and have a motivation to innovate software to gain new licence fees thereby providing choice to the market. That mechanism operates, no argument there. But it shouldn't be the only show in town.

Now add the FOSS movement to the market. A company based on this needs a different business model. Instead of relying on revenues from licences, they make money from services - customising code for customers, installing, upgrading, training and supporting. Furthermore, because software is freely available to competitors, companies cannot sit back with a mediocre product, they must accelerate their innovation and be competitive in the code they customise and/or the service levels they supply to customers.

It's obvious to my eyes that if we had to choose, the GPL model is better for software users, and society as a whole. The stranglehold MS had on the desktop for years has retarded the pace of development of software. It is the FOSS community who have come to the rescue, and given people choice, it has been observed how the rise of the internet is matched by the rise of the Apache webserver. (Aside - Had the internet itself not been based on open standards we'd still be using minitel - a Telco version of internetworking with high tarrifs for cut-down versions of each service, innovated at a snails pace using hardware tied to the Telco network)

The greatest single example I know of a benefit of FOSS, is where the work of the Perl Community inspired by Larry Wall, helped to save the human genome project. If it wasn't for the FOSS community, the human genome would now be patented by private interests, and who can calculate how much the licence fees they would have charged would have added to the cost of medical research, the development of new treatments and cures, amounting to a cost in lives and health over time. Clearly the granting of a private monopoly suits investors, but it most certainly does not give the best possible benefit to society as a whole.

Let alone is the FOSS model sustainable, it is a superior species to the proprietary model, and that is why it is accellerating in all directions bringing myriad benefits to society in synergy with the open standards of the internet, from Blogs to VOIP, from OpenOffice to WebPortals. That doesn't mean the end of proprietary software, the two can co-exist and create a richer software ecosystem.

Sadly, those who have a vested interest in the proprietary model are trying to stop the FOSS community using their vast wealth to lobby puppet politicians to implement draconian laws such as software patents which block you or your children from independantly writing code which has been monopolised, and treacherous computing where your personal computer will be permitted to do only what certain corporations allow.

My vote goes to protect freedom and justice through FOSS and open Internet standards.

Edster

It is.

Go to any of the big open source collections like sourceforge.org and you will see lots of projects that have been running for years

nadir

why wouldnt it be?

Johnny Jukebox

Edster wrote:

It is.

Go to any of the big open source collections like sourceforge.org and you will see lots of projects that have been running for years

You'll also see many many more projects that have never got out of the blocks and have died a death.

FOSS only works when the community is big enough for it to attain critical mass (eg. apache, JBoss, tomcat et al) or when its driven by zealots (GNU etc).

I've worked on several FOSS projects where the lead company has gone out of business as a direct result of their FOSS strategy and others have prospered by picking up the software and running a services model, with the code itself effectively in maintenance mode.

I've also never met a VC (and I've met lots) that will knowingly fund a product pitch which is under any kind of FOSS licence. They just don't buy it because their exit strategies are all about selling the IPR. You don't get exit multiples of 4,8 or 10 with services companies.

democrates

Johnny Jukebox wrote:

You'll also see many many more projects that have never got out of the blocks and have died a death.

Most startups fail, period.

Johnny Jukebox wrote:

FOSS only works when the community is big enough for it to attain critical mass (eg. apache, JBoss, tomcat et al) or when its driven by zealots (GNU etc).

You agree it works. FOSS projects live or die on merit. It is survival of the fittest. If a project has produced useful software, it tends to attract support. Crap dies.

Johnny Jukebox wrote:

I've worked on several FOSS projects where the lead company has gone out of business as a direct result of their FOSS strategy and others have prospered by picking up the software and running a services model, with the code itself effectively in maintenance mode.

My granny used to refer to some of the tough times her brother had with his business, "money going out and none coming in". It staggers me how business people can ignore the accounts and fill their minds with hopes and dreams. The lead company went out of business when others were able to be successful with the software! Sounds like the problem wasn't the potential to make money with foss, but the competence in managing to do it.

Johnny Jukebox wrote:

I've also never met a VC (and I've met lots) that will knowingly fund a product pitch which is under any kind of FOSS licence. They just don't buy it because their exit strategies are all about selling the IPR. You don't get exit multiples of 4,8 or 10 with services companies.

I'm fighting back the tears here. The poor VC's, let's outlaw FOSS, how dare people share with their fellow man, how heartless of them to rob VC's of the opportunity to make a few bob for their old age.

Seriously though, people are free to go the IPR/VC/IPO route if they wish, FOSS isn't mandatory, and never should be because people should have the freedom of choice. The sad truth is that it is the IPR giants who are trying to effectively neutralise FOSS and small startups in one go through software patents, how could your child or grandchild afford a legal battle with Microsoft over a program they wrote, regardless of whether they're going FOSS or IPR/VC/IPO? What VC will cosy up to that risk?

Capt'n Midnight

Venture Capital - most of their startups go bust 90%+
Would VC be sustainable if it wern't for the protection of bankruptcy laws ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

Open source advocates point out that as of the early 2000s, at least 90 percent of computer programmers were employed not to produce software for direct sale, but rather to design and customize software for other purposes, such as in-house applications. According to advocates, this statistic implies that the value of software lies primarily in its usefulness to the developer or developing organization, rather than in its potential sale value

Then there is the whole concept of middleware (IBM et al) , value added stuff where you get in consultants to solve your problem when an off the shelf package won't work. See also SAP - ok this stuff is not open source BUT it might as well be because the solutions are client specific.

Also many companies have offered free software to kill the competition Microsoft being a prime example, Sun being another. This shows that the "value" of software can be less than 0 because companies are paying money to get it used as much as possible.

Speaking of Sun - http://www.sunsource.net/why.html - they aren't a small fly by night company
http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-06/sunflash.20050602.1.html - Sun buying StorageTek for $4.1 Billion

Or look at it another way how far would windows/office get if people couldn't look up examples on the internet and in books - Macros and batch files and VB and templates - imagine a world where you could not reuse anyone else's published code. I contend that most of the programming/customisation of Microsoft Products takes place at customers sites / by users rather than by microsoft programmers if you take into account all the actions needed to get the software to do what the customer wanted it to do.