Accessibility in Wayland

Posted Jul 9, 2024 0:04 UTC (Tue) by jjs (guest, #10315)
In reply to: Accessibility in Wayland by atnot
Parent article: Rosenthal: X Window System At 40

Interestingly, the majority of organizations (businesses, non-profits, governmental bodies, etc.) are NOT in the software business. Which means software is a cost for them, NOT a profit. It also means that their software, since it's from somewhere else, is NOT a "secret sauce" - it's the same as their competitors are using.

However, if it's proprietary, it also means they are at the mercy of their vendor. Vendor can handle 1000 problems at a time and you're number 1010? Too bad. Vendor decides to jack up the price? Especially if there's no drop-in replacement, you're out of luck.

However, by using open source software, they can eliminate these issues. Hire an open source developer/development company to maintain the open source product X you use. Pay for bug fixes. If your vendor ups the price, you can go elsewhere. Want a feature added? Pony up the money and they'll add it (money talks).

And the odds are good you can probably set up contracts for less than the yearly licensing fees on that proprietary software. And by paying, you encourage the growth of the open source development community.

Of course, if you're cheap, you don't pay anything. And when the people maintaining that software you depend on either quit maintaining it (because they need to eat, for example), or take it in a different direction, well, you can always fork it. If you (a non-software entity) have coders. And budgeted for them.

Mind you, I'm not saying organizations are this smart. Most, I think, are on the order of the last paragraph.

Commercial support for open source

Posted Jul 9, 2024 10:37 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (4 responses)

The difficulty is persuading people that it's worth their while sharing improvements (from trivial bug fixes through major features). Proprietary vendors can enforce sharing improvements by reserving the ability to improve the software at all, and thus being able to say "everyone gets the improvements we make, as long as they pay us".

But once you get into sharing your improvements, you face two sets of pushback:

Why should we share this fix/improvement? We paid for it, and if we share it, that takes away a tiny advantage over our competitors who don't have the same change available to them.
Why should we pay for this change, when we can wait for someone to do it for free? After all, if everyone shares their changes, we'll get it for free eventually.

Between the two, you end up with proprietary software having an advantage because organisations know that they won't get the change they want for free, but have to pay the vendor to make it happen.

Commercial support for open source

Posted Jul 9, 2024 12:28 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> Proprietary vendors can enforce sharing improvements by reserving the ability to improve the software at all, and thus being able to say "everyone gets the improvements we make, as long as they pay us".

Or by effectively making every customer independently pay for the same improvements. [1]

[1] Which include "fixing glaring syntax errors that show the software was never even _compile tested_ before shipping it"

Commercial support for open source

Posted Jul 9, 2024 14:18 UTC (Tue) by jjs (guest, #10315) [Link] (2 responses)

Oh, I agree. See my last line. However, their thinking is ultimately against them. Having seen many companies, my experience is that the majority of their "secret sauce" - their advantage - has to do with a) their data, b) their processes, c) their policies. Many outside of the software (things like putting customers first, how they interact with customers, their process for developing their products/services, etc.). For your two items:
1. While they may think it gives them a small advantage, so does everyone else. Reality is the changes most likely are neutral in terms of competitiveness, but make life easier for their employees.
2. Yes, you'll get it free. But you run the risk of the support chain going away, because EVERYONE thinks like that.

Both of which lead back to proprietary software - which is much worse. Unless you are a huge buyer of the software, or there's a very large common thing, why should proprietary software companies do maintenance? Maintenance is a cost in software, not a profit center. The big money is on licensing - the right to use the software.

Well, I'll somewhat take that back. For most software I've seen, maintenance is a cost (they don't charge for maintenance fixes). However, I have seen companies charge for maintenance. Normally lots of money. Plus licensing fees. And you still don't get the ability to go elsewhere to get fixes if they don't respond, and you can't easily change vendor (now you need new software).

Prisoner's dilemma in paying for open source

Posted Jul 9, 2024 14:55 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

You end up in a prisoner's dilemma situation; for any individual user of a piece of software, the best thing to do is to not pay for maintenance at all and just freeload on everyone else. But the best thing for everyone who uses that software is for all users to contribute a "fair" amount to maintenance, such that everyone pays for maintenance, and everyone gets maintenance.

With proprietary software, the software vendor gets to force everyone to contribute a "fair" amount to maintenance, but takes a further fee as their profit margin. Everyone therefore pays more than they would in the open source everyone co-operates world, but the maintenance happens.

With open source, there's no forcing function; if you choose to defect and not pay, the cost is that the software is worse for everyone, and the gain is that you're not paying for maintenance while still getting software that's as good as anyone else gets.

And you've got a proper prisoner's dilemma here, since, with "cooperate" meaning "contribute to maintenance", and "defect" meaning "freeload on other people's maintenance", I get the highest payoff if I defect and you cooperate (since you provide me with "free" maintenance), my next best is us both cooperating (software is better for both of us), then both defecting (software is awful, but at least it's free), and the worst is if I cooperate and you defect (I pay for maintenance, you get it for free).

Prisoner's dilemma in paying for open source

Posted Jul 9, 2024 15:58 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And while it may not go down well, the best solution is if a couple of companies support their own in-house improvements, hear about each other, and say "hey, why don't we form a trade association, we have a shared git server that only we have access to, and we each dedicate one full-time software guy to improving the software the way his employer wants, but all the software guys have access to - and can collaborate with - all the other software guys".

Then hopefully they'll have the sense to do an occasional "over the wall" code drop along with the message "if you depend on this software, why don't you join us?".

Cheers,
Wol