Open Source: upsizing is unpleasant for some! (IT-Director) [LWN.net]

OK, that's just strange...

Posted Sep 2, 2005 17:01 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

As they say, "Consider the source."

As is often the case with PR-Wire and/or biz-mag type articles,
IT-Director is going to be aimed at primarily... who else... IT Directors
and other pointy-haired-bosses that in their greatest imaginations cannot
fathom any greater goal than money and power, or any greater way to earn
an exercise it than as a CxO of some greedy corporation.

To that sort of audience, it /might/ /as/ /well/ not exist, if it can't
further that goal of somehow advancing their position within the
corporation, or their corporation into or up the Fortune 500, in either
case increasing their money and power.

Software that doesn't serve that goal, therefore, while it might or might
not continue to exist that doesn't matter, because to them it is very much
a "dead end."

Taken in that light, the quote (and I presume the entire article, which
I'm not bothering to read) makes perfect sense.

Of course, for those of us who aspire to other goals, who see other things
as the pinnacle of excellence, that seems a rather narrow viewpoint.
OTOH, I'm sure they'd consider ours the viewpoint of "small" people with
"small" dreams, as well, so the feeling's rather mutual.

Duncan

OK, that's just strange...

Posted Sep 2, 2005 17:13 UTC (Fri) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link]

But that's not what the article asserts. It asserts that the next Linux, Mozilla, or Apache will never come about (OK, not in those words), since Open Source is becoming corporatized. That's just nonsense. If the next Linux doesn't come about, it'll be because there's no need for it, not that it's impossible. Even if you don't read the article, the quote that was posted summarizes adequately: It's a blanket statement about FLOSS, not about what attracts corporate interest.

In the end, hackers will hack. It's that simple.

Open Source: upsizing is unpleasant for some! (IT-Director)

Posted Sep 2, 2005 17:09 UTC (Fri) by art_perry (guest, #32239) [Link]

Well we all knew this was going to happen.
Once we saw our beloved Linux operating system advertised on billboards
as a flagship for a new strategy in some totally irrelevant company or
product that is riding its coattails to make the next years sales quota
with a new strategic alignment, we knew things were going to change.

But it's not over. No way!
We won't stop doing what we love to do.

And for the little guy doing an open source project that does not have
blaring obvious immediate commercial value, don't let that stop you from
posting it anyways.
These large corporate elephants come in with loud percussions and
resonating "NEW NEW NEW!, BETTER BETTER MORE!, I DID IT FIRST!" will
easily shadow and even humble a smaller project that does not seem to
align with their strategy for those who are just tuning into headlines.
But one day this will all subside and we will have the dirtied grounds to
build on once again. .. Or maybe I'm just getting too dreamy here..

Anyways,
Open Source may never be the same, and some people's ideology is broken
forever in that special sanctum. But it is not dead, it simply changed.

As a note to the newcomers in this space:
Just whatever you do... Don't call it SHAREWARE! It's really not
the same thing. That was big during the *DOS years of the early 80's, and
this organization is completely different... "(Or is it?)"... MUAHAHAHA!

Free Software

Posted Sep 2, 2005 21:04 UTC (Fri) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]

I'd change even that to: "Ultimately, Free Software which does not meet users' needs, or at least find itself packaged and maintained by at least three people on at least two distinct land masses, is doomed to a dead end."

Free Software

Posted Sep 3, 2005 3:21 UTC (Sat) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link]

> They're probably right about Open Source software. Free Software, on the other hand, has a bright future.

Can you cite even one example of a license which is either a Free Software licence as defined by the FSF or is an Open Source license as defined by OSI but not both?

X% of the time, "Open Source Software" and "Free Software" are just two different names for the same thing. I would guess that X = 100.

Free Software

Posted Sep 3, 2005 10:31 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

The set of licenses is, apart from minor differences, the same. The ideas behind the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative are completely different. To this effect, you can read what Stallman has to say about "Open Source":

While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas.

and what OSI has to say about "Free Software":

If the "free software" label were ever to catch on in the corporate world, it all would be all too easy to imagine Microsoft claiming Internet Explorer is "free software" because its cost is zero dollars. Would we really want that?

What the original poster probably meant was that the phrase "Open Source" (and the ideas behind it) have an uncertain future outside corporations, while the phrase "Free Software" (and the ideas behind it) will continue to thrive where it matters.

Free Software

Posted Sep 3, 2005 20:22 UTC (Sat) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link]

> The ideas behind the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative are completely different.

Maybe, but that's irrelevant to the article. The vast majority of free software developers aren't associated with the FSF or the OSI in any way, except for using the FSF's licenses for their software.

> What the original poster probably meant was that the phrase "Open Source" (and the ideas behind it) have an uncertain future outside corporations, while the phrase "Free Software" (and the ideas behind it) will continue to thrive where it matters.

That's not what the original poster said. The original poster said "They're probably right about Open Source software", and "they" are not right about that.

Free Software

Posted Sep 3, 2005 23:00 UTC (Sat) by xtifr (subscriber, #143) [Link]

I think the original poster probably meant the label, "Open Source software", not the software itself, but he certainly wasn't as clear as he could have been.

Free Software

Posted Sep 5, 2005 7:34 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

Actually, I think he meant the mindset.

Free Software will survive. It is an ideology.

Open Source will in all likelihood be assimilated and dissolve. It's a business method which is past its sell-by date. I must admit, however, it's done its job and done it well. The business world has seen Open Source and liked it, and now it's getting to grips with Free Software. Open Source courted the business world. Business has moved on.

Free Software didn't, doesn't, and never will give a damn about the business world. It will carry on regardless.

Cheers,
Wol

Free Software

Posted Sep 5, 2005 20:42 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Free Software didn't, doesn't, and never will give a damn about the business world. It will carry on regardless.

Well, it may carry on regardless, but it isn't going to be very useful without the business world. Computers are made by companies (i.e. businesses). If those companies decide to make computers in such manner that they can't run free software (which is already happening to a degree), it isn't going to matter one bit that free software doesn't care (which isn't true anyway). To think otherwise would be naive.

Free software (movement) no only cares about the business world (after all, these people are users too), but it wouldn't be able to exist without that world.

Open Source: upsizing is unpleasant for some! (IT-Director)

Posted Sep 2, 2005 18:43 UTC (Fri) by beattie (subscriber, #22563) [Link]

I think the author missed a number of points:

First "... these pioneers felt that the so-called spirit of community development had been eroded. ... In some instances, they have borrowed little more than the name, which they preface with words such as "community" and "shared". These are terms – fashionable terms – which help position and market their software. "

One thing I find annoying, is when commercial outfits coopt our language and corrupt it. To have community and shared used as meaningless marketriod speak destroys them for their original use, like what happened to "hacker".

Second: "Inevitably, the pioneer spirit is eroded ... Ultimately, Open Source software which does not make commercial sense, or at least indirectly contribute towards the commercial strategies ... is doomed to a dead end. It is here that the pioneers of the Open Source movement may find solace, carving out a new niche: the not-for-profit Open Source movement?"

Actually the pioneers will continue on without pause and new people will join us, the new nice is actually the commercial one: for-profit Open Source? In fact this is silly, Open Source in one form or another predates commercial software and has always been around. In the 70's I worked in IBM mainfraims and we had a number of free utilities provided through the IBM users group. Computers started out research environments where the sharing of information is natural and people freely shared their card decks.

Open Source: upsizing is unpleasant for some! (IT-Director)

Posted Sep 4, 2005 15:38 UTC (Sun) by zabriska (guest, #29486) [Link]

I'm posting here as I won't enable cookies and Javascript just to post to the IT-Director site. Sorry, but I'm not a Javascript fan. If you want comments, run a straight CGI form; don't burden me to handle your input.

"Open Source software and its ethos are diluted."

You sound like this is expected and acceptable. Commercial vendors of open source and derivative software ignore the community at their peril. The vitality of open source depends on a wide sharing of the burdens and the wealth. Commercial vendors who are strictly "leeches" on open source software (assuming they are able to be so, legally or otherwise) lose the benefits of community vitality and have to assume the full burden of developing and promoting the software, plus they risk losing potential customers and being upstaged by one or more additional open source projects.

"Software that has an Open Source origin becomes integrated with software from proprietary sources and vendors release the software without giving up all their economic rights and the benefits derived from that integration."

Depends on what you mean by integration. A vendor can't integrate its software by combining its own source code with that of a GPLd program, as the derivative work would have to be GPLd. A vendor may be able to do this with a BSD- or MIT-licensed work, or the vendor could design its software so it operates on its own but uses the output of a GPLd program as its input, but risks being tagged as a leech without giving something back to the project.

"Ultimately, Open Source software which does not make commercial sense, or at least indirectly contribute towards the commercial strategies of the software vendors and their corporate markets, is doomed to a dead end. It is here that the pioneers of the Open Source movement may find solace, carving out a new niche: the not-for-profit Open Source movement?"

1. Excuse me, aren't many if not most Open Source projects not-for-profit? In fact, don't most Open Source projects start with someone scratching their own itch?

2. And if that "not-for-profit" movement is successful, by people using the software, and developers refining it, then how can the software be a dead end?