Free software is dead. Long live open source
One of the most inspiring things I've witnessed in my 10-plus years in open source is its gradual embrace of pragmatism. By "pragmatism" I don't mean "capitulation," whereby open source comes to look more like the proprietary world it has sought to displace. Rather, I would suggest that the more open source has gone mainstream the more it has learned to make compromises, compromises that make it stronger, not weaker.
Let me explain.
While free-software advocates provided the early backbone of the larger open-source movement, the market has been made by open-source backers. Free software makes for great headlines ("Miguel de Icaza is basically a traitor to the Free Software community"), but it is far too demanding, and of largely the wrong things, to capture mainstream interest.
To go mainstream, free software needed to become open source.
Open source also makes for great headlines ("Open Source Code Worth US$ 387 Billion"), but its real value is not in generating controversy but rather in alleviating it, turning the focus from open-source personalities to open-source code, and the value that companies and individuals can derive from it.
Free software demands one way. Open source encourages many ways.
To get there, open source has softened its elbows and opened its arms. Jason Perlow recently wrote on ZDNet that he, like most of the world, has to work with both open-source and proprietary software, and can't afford to dogmatically cling to one or the other. (It's a message that even Steve Ballmer begrudgingly repeats, suggesting that Microsoft must support those that "for whatever crazy reasons don't want to be on Windows, might want to be on Linux.")
For that reason, Perlow further writes:
But some people, particularly our free software leaders, are so mired in their hatred of Microsoft and proprietary systems that they will use only free and open source software for the sake of ideological reasons alone....Stallman and the FSF [Free Software Foundation], like his Cretaceous ancestors 65 million years ago, isn't evolved enough to see that his reign is about to come to an end. The open world needs interoperability, not shut itself off from other standards just because they originate from proprietary sources.
Hard-hitting, but true. Open source embraces interoperability, whereas free software takes a hard line that even Microsoft, despite its preference that customers use its complete software portfolio exclusively, won't take.
It's certainly not a line that open-source advocates should take, as it cuts against the very idea of open source: choice. Sometimes, after all, an open-source project is absolutely the wrong choice for a customer (just as sometimes a proprietary product may not be a good fit). There is no one-size-fits-all for either software approach.
Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu and a staunch proponent of open source, with a penchant for free software, suggested as much in his LinuxCon keynote in which he argued that Linux 'desktop' developers need to be far better at meeting real customer requirements, not simply scratching their own, developer-focused "itches" (to use the Eric Raymond-inspired vernacular).
The path forward is open source, not free software. Sometimes that openness will mean embracing Microsoft in order to meet a customer's needs. After all, fierce partisanship and an unwillingness to compromise in software accomplishes is just as pointless, distasteful, and useless as it is in government.
Free software has lost. Open source has won. We're all the better for it.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
I have found that "creative software people" are the worst at writing documentation or providing support. That generally renders their software useless to anyone other than other software nerds who have endless hours to try to figure it out.
If that kind of undocumented, unsupported "free" software is dead, then good riddance.
If someone like that uses a proprietary piece of software and it doesn't do quite what they want, which happens all the time, they can't do anything about it except beg the company and wait, which mostly goes unanswered.
If, on the other hand, they use an open source application
1) They know they can tinker with it
2) if it's Free (GPL etc) licensed they know they won't ever have to pay someone else to use their own improved code, which would be galling.
If either 1 or 2 are not met, they will be much less likely to want to get involved with it.
And this is the big difference between merely open source (1) and truly Free (2)
Perhaps; and, just perhaps the (Shared Source Model where one has access to the software-codes; and, can make changes to it) may be the best solution answer to all of this.
And, OS/2 Warp is Dead.... Long Live eComStation (OS/2 Warp)!
Very Cool!
I got paid to develop open source code for a few years.
Sometimes what you get is a few companies coming together realizing they have a common need. Instead of spending money individually to develop code on their own, they work together. Having it open source is sometimes easier than all the extra paper work and lawyers necessary. And they each accomplish their goals.
Sometimes their goals are to get others involved. The more people you get involved, the less your own company has to put into it.
The same works the other way around. Its cheaper to use someone else's open source software than it is to re-invent it yourself or buy it.
What really needs to be paid for is the work the developers put into it (plus managers, if any). Not the bits and bytes that got replicated onto multiple CDs used for distributing software. Paying for development plus bytes copied onto a CD is silly.
What some people are realizing is they can move their money around and spend it on open source instead and save some overall.
Oh, and yes, there might be a few people who spend their personal time on open source, but I don't know any who get nearly as much done as a paid person.
At least for the types of open source software I work with.
I'm a lone programmer, and the free open source software that I wrote and have been maintaining for the past 2 years has gotten WAY better in those 2 years of existence than it could ever have gotten as a proprietary software.
Each new feature a client asks me to add to the software gets included into the mainline software, so I can deploy a better product for that and all my other clients.
This high quality helps ME sell consultancy and customization services for more and more clients.
Granted, there are many people and many companies that can sell those as well, but then, all improvements made to the software are added to mainline and I can offer that extra functionality to MY clients as well (note that I didn't even touch the code to get that new improved feature).
Developing free open source software is a MUCH SANER way of making, improving and maintaining good software, and doing it for a living.
- it's a hobby and they like doing it
- they use the software themselves and like to help make it better
- they're interested in developing extra experience they're not getting in the workplace / school
- they have a vision of something that's bigger than they can do on their own, but have no funding to build a team to do it. there happen to be quite a few people in the same position. together they can deliver more than they could do on their own.
As someone who has contributed to many open source projects, and who has founded and led one for 8 years, I can say this outlook is very common. We're not altruistic, we're doing it because we want to, and because it helps us personally. It just so happens that collaborating openly helps us all more than working alone on proprietary software in our own little silos would ever do.
Open Source companies and non-profit groups usually ask for donations or have corporate sponsors like IBM, Sun, HP, etc donate money for projects like Firefox, etc.
They also sell t-shirts and plush toys (Like the Tux dolls) to raise money.
Sometimes the open source company sells tech support and documentation like Red Hat and Novell does, or offers an Enterprise edition that costs money to buy.
There's nothing wrong with going open source, and calling the people that do Dinosaurs is just plain stupid.
Microsoft is just shaking in their boots because they realize Linux is pretty good now, and there are other free open source versions of software that can replace most of what MS makes these days without the huge license fees and ripoff purchase prices.
That's right guys, if you can't beat them call them dinosaurs. That'll show 'em right? The most likely thing that is coming to an end here isn't free software, it's paying large fees for software that's full of bugs and security holes.
Now you can get free operating systems, free office software, on-line software (admittedly ad based) and free just-about-everything-else. This is what it's changing TO not FROM. who's the dinosaur here?
"That's right guys, if you can't beat them call them dinosaurs. " wasn't MS called a dinosaur by free software folks? Almost all the money for open source projects come from companies that are closed source, Google and IBM would be classic examples, none of the core products of Google or IBM is open source by they "claim" to be the biggest proponents of OSS.
And, the IBM 's OS/2 Warp Operating System "cannot" be Open Sourced.
Long Live OS/2 Warp (eComStation)!
No, what I was saying is that a balanced, pragmatic approach is what has made open source (not free software) a global phenomenon. If it were an extreme movement it would never get anywhere with the mainstream crowd, and Linux and all that great open-source software absolutely depends upon being popular with the mainstream audience. Take IBM's $1 billion commitment to Linux away, for example, and Linux is still just a hobby so far as most of the world is concerned.
Anyway, the title probably said more than the post was intended to convey.
I think of it this way, open source software is free, and free software is good for my budget. Anyone who politicizes the issue, is either a leftist corporate trash-talker, or a corporation holding onto IP rights. Open source software has many rolls. It can be best in class applications like Apache, or used as a mechanism to drive alternative future sales like Red Hat, Novell, MySQL, Asterix (the list is long). It's really not that complicated.
It's not an either/or proposition and never was. Stallman toes are hard line, but many people just believe that Free software ought to be available and an option alongside of open source and commercial offerings. It's a free world.
And in what way is the Free software movement dead? Free software doesn't make money - duhhh - that's not what it's about. So it's patent that you can't measure it's success in any way in sales and marketing terms. You are basically saying "Free software is dead because it's proven that it can't make money." Uh, perhaps Mr. Asay failed to notice the word 'free' buried there in the word 'free.'
As for Shuttleworth's comments, this is really nothing new and he's certainly not abandoning in any way his Free ethos. Ubuntu has always been a very pragmatic project that acknowledges the predominance of proprietary platforms at this point in time while still being a pointedly Free project. There have always been non-free options for drivers and applications made available for Ubuntu users, and it owes much of it's success to that fact.
The reality is that 'marketable' and profit oriented open source software is pretty much impossible without a very healthy Free community. Take away all the GPL software out there and the developers who work on it because it's Free, and your precious little open source movement would collapse and positively get steamrolled by the proprietary world.
As long as commercial open source companies understand this, they will do fine. Companies like Red Hat and Ubuntu understand this. When they start whizzing on the heads of devotees of Free on whose shoulders they stand with attitudes like this, they will collapse.
1. RMS != free software. Just because RMS says something doesn't make it a part of the free software movement. A number of sentences in the article erroneously flow from this confusion.
2. Free software versus open source is mostly a naming debate. Free software is open source, and open source is free software.
3. Scratching their own itch is neither a convention of free software or open source. Focusing on real customer needs is a matter of the leadership and management of a project, not its software license.
When you realize that free software vs open source as a disagreement analogous to Linux vs GNU/Linux, you see that the thesis of this article is bogus.
Asay probably should capitalize Free software or use the acronym FOSS (Free Open Source Software) to eliminate the confusion.
If you are still confused, just Google Richard M Stallman and go to the Free Software Foundation website to get the full idea of what is meant by Free or FOSS.
SO: All Free software is open source, but NOT all open source software is Free. Depends on the license. So their is a big difference.
What I meant is that find me a piece of OSI-approved open source software, and I'll bet you it is free software. Shareware or freeware would not meet the OSI license because it must include the source code. Here is the OSI page for more info: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
I understand that there are some philosophical differences between the major players, that has nothing to do with my point.
Sure that leaves us the other 40% to do business with, but don't forget to give credit to that 60%. Without them and the free delivery mechanism offered by Internet downloads and word of mouth marketing, as Open Source projects we would be back where you are at Alfresco, calculating how much to pay the marketing department and who gets a company car.
By all means go back to the commercial ways yourself if you wish to, but please have the grace to acknowledge that the "geeky" ways of of the OS prophets are not dead, they ring loud in the cloud.
Open Source is just a renaming of Free Software. I don't like renaming. I'm a scientist and so I'm used to the academic tradition and good spirit that someone wo has invented, discovered or defined something for the first time has the right to give it a name and than we (the academic society) stick to it. That's why I continue to talk about Free Software.
But this is nothing different than "Open Source". It is just talking about something with a different term. It is also not bound to a special argument (e.g. freedom). I use the argument which is most suitable for a special person or situation. I can emphasize the licenses, the deveopment modell, freedom, social aspects, econimic benefits, etc. All in the name of Free Software. But at the end it is Free Software.
I have one question left. You wrote:
"Sometimes, after all, an open-source project is absolutely the wrong choice for a customer (just as sometimes a proprietary product may not be a good fit)."
I thing this outlines quite well your misconception about Open Source and Free Software. I can't imagine any situation where a proprietary product may be a better fit than a free product just because it is propritary. Of course one software can be technically better than another software. But that's completely independent from the license model. The fact beeing proprietary can never makes a software better. Remember proprietary or free is a matter of licensing, nothing else.
Can you give me one example where a customer would say: "Hm, I have product A which give me the freedonm to use, study, share and improve and I have product B which deny my freedom. So product B is better because I can't do less with my copy". I doubt you can.
1. There's no evidence that the free software movement is over. Zero.
2. Certain companies and individuals wish it were because they can't scam people by scaring them into paying money for support that's really not needed. And please don't sugarcoat Microsoft's movement into open source. That's like the fox getting into the henhouse security business.
3. The writer of this article won't simply come out and say that he part of (2) above.
Now, if, on the other hand, you are talking about killing off a way of thinking (Free Software) in favor of another way of thinking (Open Source), and declaring that we are better off for it (killing an idea), then I have to seriously question your motives. Who benefits by killing off ideas, and who is threatened by them?
Finishing off with "Free software has lost. Open source has won. We're all the better for it." is very catchy but what are you basing this on? Or is it just like the title - sensationalism to get those extra few hits?
Regards
Youve becoming nothing more than a predictable troll pushing your views as some finite perfect answer for the rest of us.
Lost. Won.
EFF U.
Who cares?
Its not a race. We 'free software developers' arent going anywhere because youve declared us dead.
Get it through your think head, we develop free software because we WANT to.
Your approval means less than the dog's litter in the greater scheme of things and will certainly not affect our work.
I, along with the members of the 3 projects I work on, work on GPLed (and related)
projects. We dont work on BSD, or Apache or any other of the seeming hundreds of licenses that encompass Open Sauce.
>It's certainly not a line that open-source advocates should take, as it cuts against the >very idea of open source: choice.
Seriously, do you channel Eric Raymond or just recycle the vomit he spews usually on either the FSF or the GPL.
I have no idea what your idea of open sauce is, not do I care. I like choice too. I love Baskin Robbins and the 37 flavours.
Free Software is about freedom. Not the developers but the users.
Its a simple concept really. Maybe you should read up on it.
BUT STOP TRYING to make separate things fit into one neat category that your company can market better. Were not here for you or your company.
Freedom. Users. Everything else you can debate on its own merits but of course, you are too intellectually barren that you dont even do that and talk about choice.
I dont know ANY of my colleagues who joined free software projects beacuse of choice.
Whose choice?
Developers?
Users?
Companies?
You like the choices of multiple licenses and hate what you consider are limitations
of the GPL?
Fine. But the GPL has withstood much bigger challenges than some ******* who thinks that it somehow stifles industry.
Not our problem or our goal.
The GPL is your problem, not ours.
Open Source means nothing now.
Its become a generic term which everyone uses how they see fit.
Free Software on the other hand hasnt.
Follow the simple rules of the GPL (etc) and youre pretty much set and know what to expect..
You dont want to use the GPL.
Fine others will.
Enjoy the non-copyleft licenses but understand that those have nothing to do with us.
So Free Software Wins. Open Sauce loses.
Since I said it, it must be true, right?
Glyn Moody who is infinitely better at writing does a great job with this troll piece:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/without-free-software-open-source-would-lose-its-meaning
So enjoy your group tug with Perlow, salivate over RMS's words (I will see your panicky Perlow and raise you a Pamela Jones, Carla Schroeder who will say the exact oppositive of both you and Perlow) and try to make people believe that your way has anything to do with users.
It doesnt.
It has to do wtih what is best for your company.
You can go to hell for all I care but dont you dare take the rest of us for a ride.
Were not lemmings.
I posted a longer comment at:
http://blog.blackducksoftware.com/
Peter
- by drosotomate October 7, 2009 2:25 AM PDT
- This article "misses the point". There is no justification in always comparing a movement that promotes freedom in computer uses, and a movement that tries to make profit from computer uses, and gather as many users as possible. The first one is ideological, the second one is pragmatic, and they are not to be taken as opponents, even if their representatives don't share the same points of view and objectives. The Free Software movement is necessary to draw the way to an aim: to make computer uses free, not 50% free, but 100% free. It does not, by definition, tolerate any compromise. This aim has not to be the one of every computer user. The Open Source movement, given its objectives, has to make compromises all the time. And what?
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (39 Comments)Richard Stallman has a message to the Open Source guys: "Open Source does not care about the freedom of computer users, Open Source and Free Software movements are different". Since he is almost the only really visible representative of the Free Software movement, he sometimes has to provoke to have his message heard. But is the Free Software movement an opponent to the Open Source movement? No. They just don't share the same objectives. And it would be good that the Open Source movement acknowledges it.