Commercial support for open source

Posted Jul 9, 2024 14:18 UTC (Tue) by jjs (guest, #10315)
In reply to: Commercial support for open source by farnz
Parent article: Rosenthal: X Window System At 40

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