Quote: Original post by markr
Remember that, just because it's open source, does not automatically imply that a company cannot make money selling it.

Selling software's not the only way to make money, but probably the best way.

Quote: Original post by Barn Door
Hi there, thanks very much for your reply.

Quote: Sanctity in what regard?

In that open source code is such a special thing that people will crusade for the cause of all or even just alot of software being open source.

What's so special about open source code?

I appreciate the benifits that you presented but for me they don't justify the fervour and passion displayed by OS purists.

No, it usually doesn't. Most of the most vocal are zealots, who preach their faith with the fervour of the most devout priest. Most of the rest are far more moderate.

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Is there any other industry in the world where some people feel that the product or the main artifact should basically be given away and then have one try and make some money on the side?

Razors, Nintendos, Cable companies, TV stations, Radio stations, websites, modern newspapers, most enterprise level software companies...

Good examples. However I'm not sure that they are quite equivalent to giving away one's source code.

Perhaps not, but they fit the original question.

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Take radio. Clearly one can tune in for no real cost except to have to listen to the adverts. But if I want to keep listening to a particular station then I'm going to have to keep listening to those adverts.

But for a radio station to do the equivalent of giving away their source code they'd have to give away their studio and all of their CDs when you tune in.

Or you'd just tape the songs off the radio. The main product of radio stations is not radiation, but the information transmitted.

Let's take another angle. Why are there not tons of competing private universities? If I learn from a university, why can't I teach that same knowledge in competition with the university?

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So you see, with your examples, the recipient of the freebee is ultimately getting locked into earning the company more money. But with OSS, you can take the freebee and instantly become a competitor.

Only if you're just as skilled. Do you think I could provide Apache consulting as well or as thoroughly as those who wrote it? Do you think people would suddenly start trusting my version of Apache over the time tested one?

[commercial/big name] OSS does the same lock-in.

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Unless the adoption of the software will provide you far more money down the road. Or unless your consultantcy to setup/bugfix/help out makes more money than you could selling it. Or unless your fame gained from the neat little app lands you a bigger job than you would without.

Yes these would be good. But then none of them might happen. And so if the OSS purists have convinced me to give away my source code then I'm in not such a good a position.

Quote: Though the only thing wrong with communism is people.

I agree, and as I think you imply, its because communism is at odds with human nature. So which are you going to choose? Communism or humans? Personally I'll take the humans.

And there are sides of human nature other than greed and jealousy of which communism also represses such as the urge to be free to go and do something cool and dynamic indepedently of anyone else.

I wouldn't consider that an intrinsic part of communism. Remember, it is just a economic structure, not social or governmental.

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Quote: Software though is not a limited resource.

In other words software is an infinte resource? So where on the internet can I download Doom 4, 5, 6... to infinite? I suppose I could make infinite copies of Doom 3 and keep playing it but it would definitely get boring eventually.

Sure, and then people make more software. That's what makes OSS work. Programming is not an infinite resource. It will be in demand.

Software, once made is an infinite resource. If you have the code to Doom3, you can copy it forever and ever.

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Quote: Everyone in the world can have a copy of software, and nobody is the lesser because of it.

You're suggesting that if I lock myself away for 2 years and work 80 hour weeks in order to complete a piece of software, that if I then hand it out to every human being on the planet to enjoy for free then I'm not the lesser for it?

No, you're not. You still have the software. If you have a loaf of bread, and share with a neighbor, you have less bread. If you have Doom3, and you share with a neighbor, you can still play Doom3. Better yet, you can now play multiplayer Doom3!

The ideology behind OSS is that you writing that software is valuable, not the software itself.

That's very interesting. This stuff makes me think of Robert Persig's theories from his book Lila.

He basically says that reality can be split up into four levels - physical, biological, social and intellectual. Each layer has grown out of the layer below and takes on a life of its own but is ultimately dependent on the layer below.

In addition, each layer is in conflict with the layer above and below it.

(Hehe, this stuff must sound so wacky but its actually bizarely convincing.)

Quote: Let's take another angle. Why are there not tons of competing private universities? If I learn from a university, why can't I teach that same knowledge in competition with the university?

You're siding software with intellectual ideas which makes softare a part of the set of intellectual patterns of reality. (So OSS has nothing to do with communism which is a social pattern according to Pirsig.)

When I challenge a business practice which promotes OSS I am reasoning from a social point of view and I think I'd be right in saying that such a practice is of low quality. But the social patterns here are attempting to devour the intellectual patterns.

When an OSS purists challenges the practice of being secret about one's software and ideas and trying to make as much money as possible out of it then this is the intellectual level of reality trying to be free from the social level of reality.

This is the more moral stance to take because patterns of intellect are at a higher level of reality than social patterns. Hence the zealots. However, ulitmately, the intellectual patterns are dependent on the social patterns. For example, if I don't run a successfuly business then I don't earn any money so I can't buy food so I starve and end up down at the physical level as a pile of dust.

I think that the reason that this conflict is so alive in the software industry is because, as you point out, a copy of the product can be made virtually for free - just like an idea can be passed from one person to another at no loss to the person doing the teaching.

I wonder why the music industry is so different? Music can be copied just as easliy as software and yet even just playing a song on the radio involves a small royalty payment to the artist.

[Edited by - Barn Door on November 5, 2005 4:17:01 PM]

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You're suggesting that if I lock myself away for 2 years and work 80 hour weeks in order to complete a piece of software, that if I then hand it out to every human being on the planet to enjoy for free then I'm not the lesser for it?

No, you're not. You still have the software. If you have a loaf of bread, and share with a neighbor, you have less bread. If you have Doom3, and you share with a neighbor, you can still play Doom3. Better yet, you can now play multiplayer Doom3!

The ideology behind OSS is that you writing that software is valuable, not the software itself.

But if you made Doom3 and then gave it to everyone just so you and they can play it, you'd then just look at the person who made quake 4 and the pile of money he was sitting on because he sold it.
Seriously, what would you have to gain from that experience? Not OSS software forces you to be better then the competition, as do all other types of business in a capitalist society. However if open source software was the only type of software there would be no reason to be better then the competition.
At first this may be a good idea because everyone could work on the same product instead of against but that model couldn't hold up while the rest of the world remains the way it does.

That assumes that people would pay boatloads for Quake4 when they could get Doom3 for free. It also assumes you're completely unable to parlay the popularity of the game, and the fame that comes from being able to put 'made game played by millions' on your resume into cash.

Quote: Original post by smr
Selling software's not the only way to make money, but probably the best way.

Not at all. As I said before, people don't ***WANT*** software. They want a way to solve their business problems. This usually involves software, but that's only part of the picture.

Someone has to specify, evaluate, customise, deploy, host and support it.

And they can get paid for that, even if every single software product they deploy is 100% open source (unlikely but possible).

Sure, you can argue that because it's OSS, the company can simply stop paying for any of these services, but in practice, that's not going to go down well with their management if/when it stops working and they don't have the in-house skill to support it.

Or if their server crashes and they realise they don't have backups.

Mark

Why do people on these forums make computer games, write articles, write tutorials, give advice etc. for free? Why does everything have to involve money to make sense to some people?

Open source really makes a lot of sense when you consider what happens to software when it is abandoned by the original programmer. For example, if somebody here made a computer application (e.g. a word processor) but didn't finish it properly, it would never be finished and the source code is wasted. Likewise, if there was lots of bugs in it, they could never be fixed. When people are making things for the fun of it, it is just in the community spirit to release the source code for free as it lets others learn from it, use it, maintain it, expand on it etc.