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| The Real Value of Open Source Going Forward - by Tim Daly |
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Monday, May 16 2005 @ 12:40 PM EDT
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Groklaw, as you know, is a group work. Many thousands of members work
to produce content, and behind the scenes there is daily input, as readers write to me with ideas and suggestions, all of which I take seriously and try to incorporate in planning. I decided to share one such email, with the sender's permission, because he hit on something that I never would have thought of myself. Groklaw's Tim Daly wrote to me to explain to me what he sees as additional value of Open Source looking at it from the standpoint of future benefits, and he has a suggestion for companies on how they can get the best value from Free and Open Source software. He's been a programmer for 35 years. This is why Groklaw is effective, by the way. No individual journalist could accomplish what Groklaw has. I certainly couldn't. It was putting all our brains and skills and memories and knowledge together, utilizing the Internet to do what it does best -- create a networked work space, so anyone in the world can contribute -- that makes it useful. It's a model that solves the "innovation happens elsewhere" problem.
Here is Tim's email: *****************************
PJ,
You've published several comments about why open source is
valuable. I think the points are valid but they are not forward-looking.
The real value of open source work is only now beginning to emerge.
I've been programming for 35 years. My current boss has been teaching
for about 50 years. His resume boasts 150 papers and 7 books. My
resume mentions work that I've done also. However my work was done
in companies and is proprietary. In almost every case after I left
the company the work was abandoned. Thus the company has wasted both
their money and my time as well as a potentially valuable resource.
If I had done the work as open source then the work would have
survived.
Beyond the survival value is the fact that at the time I leave the
company I'm the worlds expert in the work I'm doing. Even though
the company has lost interest in the work there is no reason for it
to die. There may be other companies who need the same kind of work.
If a company needs software and there is open source
software that does what is needed they can just reach out and grab it.
Usually the software is "not exactly" what is needed and someone in
the company has to modify and maintain it. This isn't optimal. The
better idea is to find someone who is an expert in the software you
need and hire them to customize it.
The best person to hire to customize open source software is the
lead developer.
Now that there is a large body of FOSS software smart companies should
be looking at these projects as "resumes" for the developers. The smart
company would find the best FOSS software that is closest to their needs
and contract with the developers to customize it. They can judge the
quality of the work by the quality of the source code and they can judge
the individual by the mailing list archives.
I predict that there will be an economic shift around open source
software. Developers will "job shop" with smart companies to rapidly
customize software. Companies will "lease" developers for short term
tasks. The result will be added to the open source pile.
So the real value of open source is that it will free software
development from the death trap of company interest. The next
generation of companies won't hire programmers for the long term.
And the next generation of programmers will have 150 programs and
7 books they can still use.
Tim Daly
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| Authored by: Griffin3 on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 12:49 PM EDT |
| Speeliong errors and such-like [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 12:53 PM EDT |
Please post links as <a
href="http://www.example.com/">clickable
HTML</a> and as always previewing your post is a good idea.
---
Rsteinmetz
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:04 PM EDT |
Works for me...
---
ComplexMind (No user account)
Yes indeedy.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: ak on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:11 PM EDT |
| Squeak is one example where this worked:
"Smalltalk-80 was developed at Xerox PARC in the 1970s. Apple obtained a license
in 1980. A team at Apple developed Squeak in 1996, and have made it available
free under license." (About
Squeak)
Members of the team then went to Disney where they continued
their work on Squeak and when they left Disney they still could continue working
with Squeak.
See also:
Alan Kay on the original intent of
the Squeak License
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Squeak - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 03:49 PM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:13 PM EDT |
I realize this site is more software specific, but as a sys-admin at a major
automobile/motorcycle/lawn mower/yadda company I see how much design work and
ideas die with the loss of single employees. The volume of orphaned projects is
staggering. This applies to both the technical and "bricks and mortar"
aspects.
Toyota, Honda, GM, etc... They all do "thier own thing" duplicating
each others work with very little forward progress.
Imagine if there was an open source automobile project. The best minds (and
indeed the average joe) in design, fuel effeciency, alternate fuels,
electronics, and safety all working together without company policy/disclosure
agreements. Is this pie in the sky?
Is there any product that would not benefit from "open source"
development?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:18 PM EDT |
I'd like to focus on one narrow point
The article considers the following scenarios:
1. A company develops proprietary source software, and if the company loses
interest, the software dies
2. A company develops open source software, and if the company loses interest,
the software can survive (outside the company).
In the article, scenario #2 is touted as better than #1, because of this
"survival value"
In terms of worldwide knowledge, skills, better utilization of economic
resources etc., scenario #2 may indeed be better.
But in terms of the company's point of view, it's not clear either scenario is
better - they've lost interest either way - and don't benefit themselves
whether the software survives outside the company or not. Thus we get the
situation where "survival value" is potential a benefit to the world,
but it's not a benefit to the decision-makers, and gaining the benefit for the
world, requires uncharacteristic altruism by profit-driven decision-makers.
If you switch away from source code, to other products, you don't often see
company's release product designs, blueprints, schematics, etc., for machinery
and gadgets which they lost interest in or no longer market themselves (or which
they gave up on in pre-production development).... even though there might also
be an altruistic benefit to the world, a "survival value", if the
knowledge locked up in these were released.
Quatermass
IANAL IMHO etc[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Survival value and altruism - Authored by: PrecisionBlogger on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:27 PM EDT
- You said it better than I would - Authored by: tfield98 on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:32 PM EDT
- Survival value and self-interest - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:36 PM EDT
- But the company *does* get something! - Authored by: cybervegan on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:39 PM EDT
- Macro vs. Individual Benefit - Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:42 PM EDT
- Survival value and altruism - Authored by: artp on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:45 PM EDT
- Survival value and altruism - Authored by: tknarr on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 02:26 PM EDT
- Ah, but WHY did the company lose interest? - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 02:49 PM EDT
- I think you misunderstood or I did. - Authored by: Mecha on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 03:08 PM EDT
- Altruism is a survival trait... - Authored by: Latesigner on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 03:12 PM EDT
- There IS a benefit to the Company - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 05:01 PM EDT
- Management Seldom even understands what it is losing. - Authored by: Hargoth on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 06:07 PM EDT
- Survival value and altruism - Authored by: urzumph on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 08:31 PM EDT
- What if Company has NOT lost interest but HAS lost developer? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 12:40 AM EDT
- Survival value and altruism - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 10:57 AM EDT
- Survival value and altruism - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 18 2005 @ 08:45 AM EDT
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| Authored by: dluebke on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:19 PM EDT |
... and you will realize that many software is simply lost because you do not
have the source code available. I myself own a couple of old (DOS) games, like
X-Wing and alike and some of them do not start under Windows XP. Because no
source code is available, these games are essently lost and all the work
invested in them, too. And that is because the game producers have already
profited and furter investment would not earn any money (especially with
games).
However, the games which are opensourced, like Descent 1 & 2, are still
alive and I can play them (even under Linux!) and I still have much fun with
them.
And that is true for many other, old applications as well, which are unsupported
and thus only run under DOS or older (16-bit) Windows versions - they are
essentially lost although a quick recomplile from the sources (and possible some
minor(!) tweaks) would bring them back to life.
Daniel[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jhereg69 on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:28 PM EDT |
| Paul Graham has a tangentially
similar view. I got this link from Slashdot, but it looks at the future of
hiring not in open source terms per se, but rather in terms of hiring by project
(or more specifically, by startup). Of course, open source startups would be the
subset that matches both rules. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: tiger99 on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:28 PM EDT |
| Yes, very true, a great deal of development effort is simply wasted. I am mainly
a hardware developer, although I do a little bit of software when I can, but I
have known for many years that the situation in hardware is exactly the same.
People in companies worldwide are re-inventing the wheel, sometimes hexagonal so
they only have to machine straight sides..... But seriously, although
component technology moves on, the fundamental concepts do not, at least not in
the average engineer's working life. I can make things smaller, more reliable
and cheaper than they would have been in 1973 when I started work, but they are
not really different. I find that when I go from one company to another, bits of
what I have done somewhere before are always needed. As I don't illegally keep
copies of my work, it is only the memory of how to do it that is transferred,
not for example exact component types and values. Now that saves a bit of time,
but still all the calculations, tolerance analysis and so on, have to be re-done
each time. A more enlightened view on intellectual property, copyright and
patents, would allow me to legally keep exact copies of my work, and repeat the
bits of it that are relevant anywhere, saving time and money for everyone. It
tends to be only when you put lots of functional blocks together into a product
that something of real commercial value emerges, and I am only suggesting that
blocks of circuits, not complete items, should be freely copied. The equivalent
is that programmers would keep, and indeed circulate and publish, useful,
well-debugged subroutines that they had created, but only the manufacturer of an
entire product would own and control the complete thing. Now that could work
with the BSD licence, except that in some cases it would be all take and no
give, which is where that licence fails. It is not possible with the GPL, which
is in many ways a good licence. However, I see that a new licence might be
possible which would explicitly allow pooling of resources, and using bits in
commercial products, but I think that it would need to be in the form of a
signed contract, to prevent abuse. IANAL, but I am sure that some of the lawyers
here would have some ideas as to how that might be achieved. But it would meet
fanatical opposition on two fronts, one who insist that everything is free, and
the others who insist that nothing is free..... Can you imagine M$ offering
thousands of fully debugged, documented .dlls to absolutely anyone, to use as
they wish? Yet when we put something mechanical together, it is like that,
because patents have long since lapsed on all major mechanical building blocks.
For example, you are free to build an engine that uses a crankshaft, although it
was not so at one time, not in the UK at least. The entire issue of so-called
intellectual property needs to be reconsidered, as it is already stifling
growth. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:47 PM EDT |
I can only agree with Mr Daly's point, at least from the point of view of the
developer.
I've been a professional software developer for almost 17
years now, and feel like I have had almost zero long term impact because
everything I have worked on professionally has been proprietary. Some of my code
has been shipped, but most of what I have written has either been in projects
which have been killed or orphaned (that is they have gone through one release
and then not been developed further as underlying technologies have
changed).
In other words, apart from the web dev stuff I do on my own
time, I have an entirely anecdotal CV.
I am optimistic that I will be
able to move into work on OSS projects with my current employer since they are
well known for their support of such, but I'm at the point where I don't want to
work in software any more if my code is going to keep on being discarded. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: blacklight on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:48 PM EDT |
| Altruism works when it is in everyone's enlightened self-interest. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jwoolley on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 01:58 PM EDT |
There's another argument in favor of open source software that I rarely see
made.
Let's look at embedded systems. In this particular case, I'm talking about say
the software that runs your [insert your favorite consumer gadget here]. I'll
use my handheld GPS receiver and car stereo as perfect examples. In both cases,
I bought the hardware because I liked its general feature set. I didn't buy the
bottom of the line, either; I shelled out a few hundred bucks for each. But in
each case, I was disappointed to find out that the embedded software in these
devices seems to have been somewhat of an afterthought. The user interfaces are
ATROCIOUS. This is something that could easily be fixed by minor tweaks to the
software. But the companies that produced these gadgets obviously have no
incentive to go back and make these tweaks -- they are more interested in
discontinuing that model and moving on to a new, more featureful model. But
let's say I'm perfectly happy with the feature set of the device I currently
have, and I have little incentive to buy the next latest model because it's
reasonably likely that it shares many of the same UI flaws as its predecessor.
I could fix these problems on my own if I had access to the software embedded in
the device. But I don't. So the question then is this: is there any reason a
vendor would WANT to open source all or even part of the firmware of their
consumer electronics device? I claim that the answer is yes: if the vendor were
smart in how they did it, they could design the firmware in such a way that
future products they sell would use the same basic operating system, for lack of
a better term, and yet incorporate improvements into future products made both
by their own engineers AND the community. Most consumers will have no interest
in looking at the underlying software of the widget they just bought. Nor will
they likely have the interest or skill to upgrade the software if somebody out
there improved the software on their old model. They'll still buy new models
because it's easier. True enthusiasts might still buy new high-end models as
well, rather than just improving their old models on their own, assuming the new
models have new, enticing hardware features and not just software improvements
(usually a valid assumption). Where's the argument against this that I'm
missing?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: seanlynch on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 02:04 PM EDT |
This is not a strange idea, and even people who work only with proprietary
software should be very familiar with this benefit of open source.
The two most successful programming languages are probably C and COBOL. There
may not be a lot of people in the open source world that have ever seen COBOL,
but it is probably the number one language in use in terms of total volume of
code extant in the world today.
C is probably the only challenger to COBOL's throne. No one would argue that
either C or COBOL is the 'best' programming language, but you cannot argue their
sheer success. Why didn't we choose some 'better' language to write all of this
code in? Why didn't we use a language that protects systems from the faults that
a language such as C allows, or one that is more powerful and sophisticated than
COBOL?
One reason that contributed to these languages success was the fact that there
is a large amount of code in existence in these languages. If you want to solve
a problem, it has already been solved in C or COBOL. (A solution possibly exists
so close to what you need that it will require very little work to make it
fit.)
How is this different than Tim Daly's example? Well, the C and the COBOL
available to solve your problem may or may not be free or open source. It may be
proprietary but available to you while working at a given task. C programmers
are more likely to find the building blocks they need already existing in C
libraries. They just look through the header files. COBOL programmers rarely
write a program from scratch, they copy and paste from existing systems that
they know work well.
Any perl programmer knows to search CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) to
see if a solution or near solution already exists. Perl is certainly not the
best designed language, but it may be the best language to get any given job
done, because the solution already exists on CPAN, you just have to find it.
Ask any ruby or python programmer what's wrong with java and you better grab a
seat. They will have a huge laundry list of issues, and they will be absolutely
correct in each of their opinions. Yet java is gaining ground every day, their
library of solutions and near solutions is one of the reasons why. It doesn't
matter if ruby or python is 'better' than java. Perl, C, COBOL are all hugely
successful despite their many faults.
An economist will tell you that most of the cars Henry Ford's Model T competed
with were 'better' than the Model T. The Stanley brothers produced a finely
handcrafted steam powered car that was capable of going faster than 100 mph, ran
on a variety of fuels (important before there were gas stations on every street
corner), it took three decades for a combustion engine car to break a Stanley
steamer's record for getting to the top of Mount Washington in Vermont. But
Ford's car was produced on an assembly line. He could rapidly produce cars that
cost a quarter what the steamer cost.
Free software secures the library of solutions available for coders to base
future works on, just as free speech secures the ideas that form the solutions
to problems facing any democracy. Free software accelerates the process that
made COBOL and C a success and forces the rapid development of a pool of
solutions for programmers to base future works on.
Free software also helps to guarantee that alternative solutions can enter the
marketplace, resulting in competition and commoditization of software. This
results in the drastic lowering of costs for the users of solutions. The same
way Ford lowered the costs through new production techniques.
The combination of Free Speech idealism and Free Market economics that have come
together in the world of Free software should make every economist and
capitalist extremely happy, just as it angers those who oppose or fear freedom
in any form.
Eventually Ford's cars, and other assembly line produced cars improved and
surpassed the early hand built craftsmen's cars. Free and Open source solutions
have surpassed most proprietary solutions. The pace is greater for FOSS because
every idea is open for re-use, and the savings for free software’s ‘consumers’
is immediate and ongoing.
Tim Daly has truly hit the nail on the head.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: brian on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 02:14 PM EDT |
"So the real value of open source is that it will free software development
from the death trap of company interest. The next generation of companies won't
hire programmers for the long term."
The problem that Tim isn't taking into account is the shifting from an
industrial age to an information age that is currently the issue of large
debate. On the one hand you have the FOSS community saying, "code wants to
be free" and on the other you have CSS saying, "Make as much money off
the code as possible". The extentions of copyright into infinity and the
nuclear minefield of software / business patents are just the tip of the iceberg
that is the software industry of today. I expect to see a tightening of
"IP" laws and extentions given to patents when the current ones get
ready to expire.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is going to get MUCH uglier before it
gets better and if the FOSS community just stands by and watches, it then
deserves what it gets. Remember, spectator citizenship leads to a screwed up
society.
B.
---
#ifndef IANAL
#define IANAL
#endif[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 02:16 PM EDT |
I don't think this will work as Mr. Daly believes. Although hiring the original
developers to produce custom versions in fact benefits OSS by providing
financial support to the original developers, most companies will likely want to
keep their modified versions proprietary. Because the original developers hold
the copyright, they are fully within their rights in producing closed modified
versions.
Perhaps some companies will agree to have the modified versions they are paying
for GPL'd, but probably only if the developers charge them less than they would
for a closed, proprietary version.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 04:14 PM EDT |
I contribute on a large open source project. The model works very well when
there is a large community to support the project.
However, take a look at the projects at Sourceforge. Many have no code. Of
those that do, many are supported by one or fewer people. These kinds of
projects have difficulty attracting followers.
By their nature, many pieces of software developed in the proprietary software
model are done that way for a reason. Simply open sourcing them will not
automatically create a community to support them. And frankly, much of it isn't
interesting outside of the business segment where it came from.
Where open source does very well is in frameworks that can be used across
business segments and problem spaces where a sizeable community is interested in
the technology.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 04:32 PM EDT |
| A company does not have to release the source code unless they release (free
or sell) the program.
A company would not invest in code unless it gives
them a competitive advantage: Why would a company release modified code when
doing so would allow their competitors a look 'under -the-hood'?
Hands-up
from those who think Wal-Mart will release all their modified OSS?
None... I
didn't think so. -- [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: dmarker on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 05:02 PM EDT |
I think that IBM agrees with My Daly's point.
For decades IBM has started projects that cost millions & even billions only
to pull the plug because of some market twist or political decision.
IBM has now recognised that it is a far smarter business model to let
communities such as FOSS develop commonly used elements such as the OS etc:.
In time I believe most types of pure software development can be made open while
integration & applying business rules for specific business requirements and
processes can be done in-house (or contracted) and if need be for business
strategic reasons kept private. This basically means separate development into
commodity and the way the software is deployed to be business specific.
So this principle says "Let commodity development become open, keep your
deployement (business process specific) in the business"
Doug Marker [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: mheyman@symas.co on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 05:12 PM EDT |
One of the many values of open source and a good one. All I wanted to add was
that we at Symas (www.symas.com) have been hired by large enterprises to do
extensions to open source that they wanted faster than the roadmap indicated.
They've contributed the extensions and the community is already taking advantage
of the improvements. The client pays once and rides the testing, evolution, and
support curves with everyone else. It seems to work out well for everyone.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: sjgibbs on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 05:58 PM EDT |
In the commentary we seem to have forgotten something very important in
understanding Tim Daly's points, at least, something that I felt was key to
forming my own interpretation.
I've been in the industry less than one tenth of the time of Mr Daly has, and I
have as well encountered this phenomenon of code being discarded. The difference
for me is that I have been a "leased" programmer my entire working
life. In the UK we call these people contractors, they are very common.
Many of the commentators today are talking about hypothetical licencing
scenarios around the sale and distribution of software. Thats natural, we're all
open sourcerers and in our cult software gets distributed. Our protagonists, the
closed sorcerers, also distribute software and naturally attack the mass market
often shifting boxes in retail channels. Its hard to focus on the idea that the
majority of programmers, regardless of whether their projects have long lifespan
or a short one, work on code that is never distributed and is never intended to
be distributed. This is the third category of software - bespoke sotware - that
is fully owned and controlled by precisely one user.
Now enter open source. You have a project, you need to solve a frequently solved
issue one more time, to lay out a web page or process an invoice. Do you start
from scratch and cut a few thousand lines of code? do you download Plone or
Compierre and make some changes to take into account your unique business
processes? It's a pretty simple calculation.
As a developer, and certainly as a contractor, if you know some popular products
inside-out then there will be a job for you at any organisation that uses the
product. This is well known to be true of closed source software packages. SAP
for example is seen as a holy grail for contractors able to handle deployment or
customisation projects. That this will somehow not be true of popular
open-source products just because they cost less already seems implausible.
Now, with this in mind consider the difference made by open source licencing.
You get all the legal rights you need with an OSD compliant licences and some
extra mutual protection out of the GPL. You don't need to negotiate copyright
licence terms or pay twice for the code written by the vendor (and that does
happen) you get everything you need to take a non-bespoke system and make it
bespoke - and its gratis. This radically alters the buy-build conundrum in
favour of the customer and reduces the necessity to build from scratch. In
return developers get the opportunity to acquire useful skills and build a
resume.
Whether the developers get into the project by starting it, joining it, or
working from the clientside is less important than the ways in which the open
source paradigm is congruent with the needs of the client and developer and
supportive of both.
Support staff have even more to gain, but thats another rant.
SJG[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 06:25 PM EDT |
The constitutional concept behind copyright was that the documents would
eventually become public domain. All of them. The copyright was granted for a
period of time, and in return the documents were to be made public afterwards.
Under the original term for copyright all of this proprietary software would
have been made public in 14 years. That actually would be reasonable even for
today's technology pace.
But the rules have changed. The copyright lifespan is many decades. The usable
source is not filed with the copyright office to be made public upon expiration.
So the social contribution half of the old deal has been lost.
Open source is one approach to resolving this. Revision to the copyright law to
restore a reasonable term and public filing and disclosure upon expiration would
be another reasonable approach.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: thorpie on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 07:39 PM EDT |
Cars the past decade have all had computers, which include some diagnostic
functionality.
I have seen it discussed recently that by highly pricing
the software to interface with the car computer, car manufacturers are
restricting servicing of new vehicles to their "authorized"
repairers.
One of the prime questiions nowadays when buying a new car
should be "can I have my copy of the interface software please". A USB cable
into your laptop and you can identify what the problems are.
And the
source code should be available, both that in the car's computer ROM and that
for the interface. It is an integral part of the car. Can you imagine Ford
coming up and saying "we have new braking system, its in that black box, we
ain't telling anyone how it functions and you aren't allowed to open it to find
out yourself". This is effectively what they are doing with their closed source
software.
What will happen in 10 years time when the car company goes
broke? You have lots of workshop manuals around that cost $20 each but no
diagnostic software because a single copy of the software cost
$10,000?
---
The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of
a man in his prime - Floyd, Pink [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 08:00 PM EDT |
> In almost every case after I left the company the work was abandoned
I can attest to that. I'd estimate 80% of the code I've ever been paid to write
has never been put into production or seen the light of day. What a waste.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 11:52 PM EDT |
All companies should give away their
products, for free.
But, I don't
think that's going
to happen, either. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 11:52 PM EDT |
In answer to the frequently raised question of why a company would allow
improvements it paid for back into the common pool, I posted in
1999,
...why do people spend time and money improving software
for others, free? The question has two remarkably simple answers.
Suppose
you are using some Free Software in your business. You find a bug or discover
you need a new feature, so you take care of it (or hire it done) yourself. Then
you have what you need, and you don't really have to do anything
else.
However, a new version of the program will soon be released. You must
decide whether you want to use the new version, and if so you must integrate
your changes into it. This happens each time a new version comes out. If you
were to send in your changes and get them integrated into the mainline code,
each new version would already have your changes.
As long as you keep your
changes private, nobody else is using them. Once your changes get integrated
into the mainline code, other people start using them, and improving them. As a
result, each new release of the program not only has your changes integrated, it
may have improvements on your changes.
Thus, publishing your changes (1)
cuts your own workload and (2) attracts free assistance from others with similar
needs.
The process doesn't depend on altruism or a sense of community,
although many people are also motivated that way. It doesn't depend on people
working to establish a reputation, although many are. It doesn't depend on
proprietary alternatives being intolerably restricted, expensive, or buggy,
although they often are.
These simple and easily-felt benefits to people who
work on Free Software ensure that many will continue to participate, and that
Free Software will continue to respond to real people's real
needs.
There you have it.
Nathan
Myers
http://cantrip.org/
p.s. "Going forward" is a meaningless
expression. (Opposed to what, going backward?) PJ, can't we just nip it off
the title of this article?
p.p.s. I don't know from "open source". Is
"Free Software" a dirty word around here? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 12:35 AM EDT |
This was presented at a SFO conf in April & is IBM's position in a
nutshell. The link will take you to the full keynote but I have extracted the
initial remarks posted below ...
Irving
Wladawsky-Berger: Opportunities and challenges in
IT
*******************************
LEAD-IN:
Content Director,
LinuxWorld Conference and Expo
26 Apr 2005
IBM Vice President Irving
Wladawsky-Berger continues to push his vision for the future of computing, and
more and more of his predictions come true on a daily basis. Open source, he
says, is a great example of collaborative innovation with programmers worldwide.
It's a revolution with tremendous opportunities -- and tremendous challenges.
Our man on the scene reports on Wladawsky-Berger's keynote address at the 2005
Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.
INTRO:
The Open Source
Business Conference (OSBC), held April 5-6, 2005, in San Francisco, brings
together technology leaders, venture capitalists, and legal professionals to
discuss the trials, tribulations, and impacts of technology in today's
marketplace.
I was fortunate enough to catch Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM
vice president of Technology Strategy and Innovation, for his keynote
"Opportunities and Challenges in IT." Wladawsky-Berger is responsible for IBM's
next-generation Internet and e-business strategies, IBM Systems & Technology
Group's advanced architectures and technologies, and the strategy and
development of IBM's Linux® initiative.
A major part of his responsibilities
is to lead IBM's participation in the growing trend toward open standards for
interoperability in e-business. In conjunction with this, he is working to
make Linux and the open source movement a natural extension of IBM's commitment
to e-business and the next generation of the Internet. In addition, he leads
the Systems & Technology Group's advanced technologies and architectures
efforts, which include IBM's (autonomic computing) and grid computing
initiatives.
Wladawsky-Berger began his presentation with a discussion of
the opportunities and challenges in IT and the role of open source, which has
emerged as a "catalyst for innovation." In his speech, he described "a new kind
of innovation cycle" in relation to open source adoption. "A big part of your
power is to have your people work with the communities and donate some of your
intellectual property to those communities so they can get better."
Open
source is changing the culture of every business, and businesses that fail to
embrace open source and open standards likely won't be around five years from
now, according to Wladawsky-Berger. He also pointed out the importance of
community collaboration, finding a balance between open source and proprietary
software.
Is the bubble back?
Posing the question "Is the bubble back as
innovation or is it deeper?" Wladawsky-Berger outlined three areas in which
innovation is taking place and changing the way we live with technology:
* The digital revolution, led by continuing advances in IT
* Business
process evolution, in which business models are changing with the evolution of
technology
* And societal changes, including open standards, the
Internet, globalization, and the digital economy, have mainstreamed into popular
culture
According to Wladawsky-Berger, in the end, this "innovation
convergence" is what drives innovation. For instance, computing has merged into
every part of life. IT merges with the physical world within the concept of
pervasive computing. Take for example the laptop -- practically a legacy,
according to Wladawsky-Berger, as everything becomes IT-enabled: refrigerators,
medical equipment, RFID-enabled devices, and tires, to name a few.
(click
link at top for the actual keynote, if interested)
Cheers
Doug Marker [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 05:41 AM EDT |
If you plan to do this to pay your mortgage, then be sure to write open source,
e.g. BSD style licensed applications. Companies are far more likely to want to
use your work than a GPL equivelant.
Discuss.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Makes no odds. - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 08:45 AM EDT
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| Authored by: The Cornishman on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 05:46 AM EDT |
Splendid point - and a cogent answer to the Wallace complaint that FSF and the
GPL have damaged his ability to make a living from being a programmer?
---
(c) assigned to PJ[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: DaveJakeman on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 07:20 AM EDT |
...of what Tim Daly has described?
The death of an
OS
[One of the marketing messages of Digital Equipment Corporation
(who created Tru64 UNIX) was "Protecting your investment"]
This is the
finest piece of malcontent directed at a commercial company I have seen for some
time.
So it isn't just significant software developments that need
protecting against sabotage by commercial interests; the software's established
user base needs protecting too.
Dave Jakeman
--
If
you get your arse perfectly clean, it doesn't matter which bit of towel you use
to dry your face.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: haegarth on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 12:41 PM EDT |
He's absolutely right, of course.
I have had the same experiences with my programming tasks for my company, which
involved man years in development, just to be tossed away when some commercial
software product took over.
Still I wonder whether IT managers will share that insight. Around where I work
they tend to rather buy solutions instead of creating them, thus not having to
rely on a single creator. Imagine how much money gets burned that way all over
the globe, it's stunning.
---
MS holds the patent on FUD, and SCO is its licensee....[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 06:43 PM EDT |
I wish it was but your future career is not an objective of a company. Making
you much more employable by a competitor is a major problem.
We must fully understand this before we make our sales pitch to management.
What does management get out of Open Source?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: penglust on Wednesday, May 18 2005 @ 05:14 AM EDT |
I will add another me too to this list.
I started in with Unisys in
1987 doing work on BSD4.2 and SVR2 systems in their support group. At the time
Unisys was trying to market a full range of systems from small to large by
second markinging systems from NCR, Arete, Convergent Technologies, Sequent and
a few others. We had to do much work to make installs and system adminitration
look at least a bit the same on all the systems. Even then individual commands
were ofted different because of the vendors "value add".
Latter I
worked for Software AG writing drivers to make ADABAS run well on various
different UNIX versions. What a pain. The very worst systems I ever worked on
has to be a tie between AIX and HPUX.
I've said it before. One of the
promises of UNIX was its portability. This failed due to the silliness of
vendors and their blatent ignoring of standards. If anything the success of the
PC should show that standards are good for everybody involved. In my carreer I
estimate between 40% and 45% has actually made it to a customer. I like to
think that much of it was very good and pieces could have been used for other
projects. Indeed I have reused much of the code myself.
The GNU -
Linux combination really does resolve most of these issues. Because it is
controlled at the core (by many different groups but controlled never the less)
users can compare vendors functionality with a base if need be and let them know
what they did is just silly changes for the sake of change.
This also
brings up a subject I have very mixed feelings about. Who actually owns the
knowledge gained in all this development. Does the company I did the work for
own it? After all much of it is still stuck in my head. Do I own it? Should
much of the techniques be considered part of the common knowledge in the
industry? If so how should this knowledge be passed along. Open Source is one
way and the best I can see.
Now the part where I am conflicted. Where
does this knowledge come from. It was paid for by companies but created by long
hours of work from engineers. Who should benifit from it. Companies of course
but also the engineers that created it and their legacy / society.
Did
China or India (etc., etc.) create the large background of knowledge? Very
little of what lead up to it today can be traced back for many centuries. No
most is due to the risk taking of American and European citizens, governments
and companies. Yet most have consented to alow companies to be completely in
control of the situation. Companies are by definition short sighted in the
public interest. People are sheep looking for free grass and governments (the
US at least) most want to line their own pockets by sucking up to the companies.
The sheep are feed what they want to hear to get them there.
Not long
ago scientific and engineering information could be protected for a short amount
of time and was at sometime always transfered to the public interest. People
could take it, study it and use it to again to contribute new information back
to common knowledge. Without the process we would still be in the dark ages.
This was mostly done by monied people with the help of truly gifted people to
help. This sounds very much like the Open Source process as it is being
practiced today. I know of very few Open Source developers that are not
employed to work on the code, trying to produce an Open Source project hoping to
be the "expert" and be paid for it or a student working for the knowledge and
recognition to make him successful.
Now to try to bring the two
together (and this is more than a little mixed up in my head). In my career I
believe about 5% of the engineers I have worked with could walk with the water
up to their ankles, 15% could swim with grace, 15% could swim without drowning
and a full 50% were in various stages of drowning or already blue. This tended
to be true reguardless of race or national origin. In general people of
American or European origin I find to be more gifted in the leaps of enginuity
and this has been true for a couple of hundred years. I attribute this the
society they have been raised in and this is changing rapidly. The legacy of
this information should best benifit the legacy the workers produced for AS LONG
AS THEY CONTINUE TO EARN IT.
This does not seem to be true in America
today. I see kids that excell but many more just seem to swim along.
Governement is reducing funding of education just as it becomes more and more
necessary. Even Bill Gates is telling congress this is a problem. Many US
Univerities make more money teaching foriegn students than the americans. Add
this to the fact that american engineering enrollment is shrinking and we have
the core reason engineering will fail for exactly the people the original
developers hoped to benifit.
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| Authored by: iraskygazer on Thursday, May 19 2005 @ 08:19 AM EDT |
So much has been said that can be distilled into some very basic ideas.
Open source re-enables the principle of pure software development. With the open
sharing of source code each contributor can build onto and hopefully improve
previous work. And, we can hope that the entire wealth of knowledge will remain
open far into the future.
The history of open source software can be observed by all :-) We can see the
birth, growth and possible future(s). And, all geo-political views can be heard.
Sounds like a new fronteer with more opportunities to come :-)[ Reply to This | # ]
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