As a technologist who makes his living writing, planning, managing source code and its artifacts, I continually ponder the long term impact of the seemingly on-going intrusion (not meant to be a pejorative term) of open source. Open Source brings lots of innovation and is represented by some 82,000 projects on Sourceforge alone. In my professional capacity, we are embracing and participating in more and more open source projects. In fact, I chair our "Open Source Steering Committee". The purpose and objective of this committee is to make sure that we don't inadvertently expose our proprietary and copyright protected intellectual property (IP) from becoming obligingly covered by an open source license and thereby free. We intend to ensure we participate to meet a reciprocal responsibility too. Particularly, for those open source projects we choose to use, we fully intend to encourage our teams to contribute back to the projects. Again, taking care not to blend our copyright protected content from being placed into these open source projects. So, this amounts to reviewing each target open source project for its strategic value to our overall solutions and services to ensure:
- The license does not create any concerns for use with a commercial package
- The project fits nicely with our architectural and business goals
- We can use and contribute to the project without inappropriately blending proprietary and open source
This week, I introduced a topic and a speaker at conference on the subject of open source. The conference was attended by customers using our software. Most of them are probably using open source internally in various ways. I basically led with the corporate and somewhat conservative lines. My part included references to the pervasiveness of open source in terms of its breadth of function, reliability, adoption, etc. But, I didn't go too deep or make it sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread. The next speaker actually leads an open source project. He went deeper and to some folks may have sounded as if the whole world could be managed on open source software (he didn't go quite that far really).
Nonetheless, the conversations this presentation kicked off amongst the managers and executives (that was the audience) was thought provoking and interesting to me. For example, one person mentioned the "tragedy of the commons". If open source is designed, built, and managed by programmers working for free as driven by their passion, what stops the entire process from imploding? If it is not the demands of the market that drives creativity, then how does the artisan make a living? I am sure I don't have all of the answers for these questions. Does anyone? This assumes, of course, that open source levies a large threat to commercial software enterprises. Or, that commercial enterprises can not both embrace a profitable and market driven business model while maintaining professional technologists that participate in open source projects as part of their job. What is the relative make up of the "typical" open source project in terms of the number of contributors that are contributing for free versus those contributing as part of their paid job?
As I peruse the multitudes of companies and individuals participating, using, and influencing open source software development, it seems to me that companies are experimenting with a variety of business models. From projects that began as traditional shrinkwrap software that open sourced the software and built their business plan around services, to large traditional players (like IBM and others) that clearly spend investment dollars and time on open source projects. I assume these traditional players are hoping to drive others sales (hardware, services, etc.) by increasing the attractiveness of particular and targeted open source packages. But, where is it going? What is the implication for large, conservative software vendors and IT departments in large corporations? Should they help maintain and increase the momentum behind software development processes that at times seems to imply that all software should be free (at other times this seems to be more of an objective not an implication)? So, I am going to be reading the following in my spare time to try to formulate an opinion of my own:
- Why Software Should Be Free by Richard Stalman
- The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond
- A Second Look at the Cathedral and the Bazaar by Nicholas Bezroukov
- "Sharing Nicely": On shareable goods and the emergence of sharing as a modality of economic production by Yochai Benkler
Is it ethical for a software vendor that earns its living by selling software to take advantage of open source to enhance the value its customers get while using the open source package alongside the commercially produce package? The lesser general public license and the BSD license would certainly lead one to think this is the case.
I wonder where this is all going for my industry (systems for financial services-insurance). If open source continues to provide viable elements for growing sectors of software stacks, does this begin to threaten the very nature of the labor force that builds and maintains software for a living? Or, does the mechanisms for how money is made from writing code simply change, and if so, how? Don't most programmers earn their pay today by meeting requirements defined, planned, and managed by non-programmers? I met a prolific participant in the open source community that said that one of the exciting parts of participating in open source as a programmer is to create a more technically pure and quality result then one can create at their paid job? At work, one must write code not only in response to requirements and quality standards, but on a specified time schedule. So, what happens when the "right" solution will take too long? Hum...create the best you can in the time you have....
More ramblings to come... (I will add them as Comments to this post - others may comment too)
7 comments:
Well, I read Why Software Should Be Free. It was helpful, but not much really. Richard's position is a bit too extreme to be helpful in the context in which I have interest. I am not planning to go to work as a waiter to support my programming habit. I did start as a programming hobbyist, added some formal education, got caught progamming during an internship, and became a professional. I intend to stay professional.
I do, however, think that Richard's coverage of some of the harm by restricting access to software portrays some interesting challenges. I, too, would like to see computer scientists spend less time solving already solved problems. I also want those scientists to be motivated to achieve a reasonable standard of living. Thus, the market still has a role to play in my opinion.
Richard does list some potential starting points for a business model (services for an open source project, etc.), but does not go into much detail (wasn't his purpose, I'm sure).
So, while I don't totally disagree with Richard, I think he represents something close to one extreme. And, at that extreme, I will have a hard time convincing any of the corporate folks I represent that they should throw their licenses and contracts out the window and free the software. Nor would their programmers want them to.
I believe one of the purposes associated with work is to reasonably allocate resources to individuals based on their contribution. This permits one to work for one's supper. If I work many hours solving difficult problems, I am not the least ashamed to eat an extra fine meal.
So, my search for reasonable business models that serve several purposes remains. Those purposes are:
* Permit programmers to earn a living commensurate with their contribution
* Share innovations between software projects to make innovations faster and broader
* Formulate a reasonable position for a corporation as it pertains to using and contributing to open source
Interesting start, Bob. Let's see what happens.
I listened to a podcast from Philip Greenspun's interview from ITConversations where he talked about customers not wanting to be orphans (have software, can't find or don't have someone to fix/change it). During this discussion, he offers an interesting opinion that perhaps open source is better for new or poorly solved problems. He continues to demonstrate that if Fortune 500 customers (read as customers with large IT shops) can make changes a day faster and a dollar cheaper, then your business model based on open source may be in jeopardy. He briefly discusses a situation from a company he help start eventually collapsed.Part of that demise was based on a business model around open source.
This tidbit was a small part of a larger interview and he didn't go into great detail. But, it is interesting to note his thoughts about what can happen to an open source project as costs climb. It becomes cheaper for users to do their own changes which can threaten the very livelihood of a business based on supporting the project.
Omar Tazi, Orbeon, has placed an interesting post on his blog, The Metamorphosis of the Software Industry that is relevant to this discussion.
Bob,
Your concerns about the future of commercial software are valid. If open source is gaining momentum and continues to win, one can wonder whne pushing it to the extreme and everything becomes free and open, how are the Oarcle and the SAPs of the world going to pay their programmers. Those same programmers who help open source projects by offering their time on week ends and evenings... I think that the downturn we've been through after the dotcom debacle helped open source projects. So many engineers were looking for jobs and ended up contributing million of lines of code to open source to fill the gaps in their resume. Many successful projects emerged like JBoss and Firefox. Now most of the engineers who developed Firefox work for commercial comapnies (in this case Google).
I remember people saying (because of Linux and now Opensolaris) the operating system is a commodity, let's move up the ladder and create value on top of the OS. Companies like BEA did just that. Now with JBoss we need to move up again and apps become the sexy space (like Salesforce.com, etc.) Soon enough companies like SugarCRM and Compiere are going to seriously challenges commercial apps like Salesforce and SAP. Then I am asking the question: Where do we go from there to make money in the commercial software biz? The only thing left might be services! Giants in the services business like CSC and IBM will be even more successful and will implement apps by cimply combining all these existing OSS projects...I could go on and on.
I will post more on this topic one of these days on my blog :)
I listened to a good Podcast on this subject from ITConversations.com The Podcast was a speach by Jonathan Schwartz, titled The Participation Age. Jonathan built the case that much like common guage railroad tracks which enables more commerce, open source enables more commerce. His discussion includes his opinion on barriers the GPL may actually introduce to adoption and enablement. Apache's recent posting on the compatibility of the latest Apache license and the GPL are quite interesting as well. I need more time to digest the statement. However, I do agree with their assertion (copied from the aforementiond page):
...we hope that the FSF will find a way to express their license terms such that they are understandable by recipients of the license, rather than requiring interpretation of the people who wrote it. But, I find the GPL and LGPL both contain enough ambiguity, that it is difficult for a enterprise to determine the risks associated with using or incorporating some open source projects alongside other works.
I finished reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I found Eric's writing style enjoyable reading. He does a great job of highlighting some of the reasons programmers find satisfaction working on Bazaar style projects. In itself, the article does seem to help me definitively nail down how to bring the Bazaar style of software development, open source, and a compelling business model(s) together. But, it definitely helped fill in some of that picture, the reflection of which has yet to emerge in my mind (but, I feel confident that it will).
The Cathedral and the Bazaar will be an influential read in my arsenal. Thanks Eric.
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