Open source has always been as much about free markets as it is free software, so it wasn't surprising to come across this quotation from Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States:
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
Franklin, no lover of patents, would likely have felt right at home in the open-source movement. But then, so might anyone who believes in decentralized control.
Indeed, while programmer Eric Raymond categorized proprietary software development as a "cathedral," it's really much more like a Soviet-style store, with centralized control of development and deployment.
Open source? It's free-market.
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I have some unfortunate news for those socialists and communists who still believe that open source is their movement. It's not. Open source is firmly capitalist. Always has been. Always will be.
Sarah Grey, writing in Monthly Review, talks up "open-source anticapitalism", but she's too late. Open source, from its inception, has been avowedly pro-business. That was, after all, the whole point behind changing the terminology from Richard Stallman's preferred "free software" to Eric Raymond and Co.'s "open-source software."
The former term scared off business. The latter term invited it.
Grey writes that "there are alternatives to capitalism." She's right. Unfortunately, open source is not one of them. Open source is the essence of free-market capitalism.
However much one may want to lay the blame of the current economic collapse at capitalism's door, one need only look to Soviet Russia or France's socialism (and the massive unemployment it brings) to be grateful that capitalist, free-market open source is currently reshaping the software industry. It's called open source, and it's a capitalist's game.
We have nothing to lose but our license fees.
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Slashdot asks a provocative question: "Is Open Source Software a Race To Zero?"
Over time we've seen our business model eroding as other open source projects produce free versions of the same extensions and utilities that are our bread and butter. Something that was worth $5K last year is suddenly worth $0 because the free version is just as good as the paid. This same cycle is obviously having an impact on pure-play commercial software vendors. Is open source ultimately a race to zero?
It's a good question, but the answer is the same as if asked about free-market economics: yes. Yes, open source is a race to $0.00, because that is what free-market capitalism is all about.
Indeed, the "free" in "free and open-source software" is really about free markets, more than anything else. This is why Tim O'Reilly has been urging the open-source world to stop fixating on bits, whose price point is dropping to $0.00, and focus instead on data and higher-value services around data.
Open source is a free-market, capitalist phenomenon. It's all about driving yesterday's value to $0.00, and forcing the market to innovate new ways to discover and price value.
The open-source dilemma
(Credit: Matt Asay)At the Utah Open Source Conference yesterday I presented a dilemma. Briefly, the idea is that as open-source buyers grow comfortable with open source they will stop spending money on open source. This leads to tragedy of the commons-type problems and a difficulty in encouraging the creation of more open source.
I therefore asked the question, "Who will pay for open source in the future?" I (and the audience) suggested that the problem may resolve itself over time as enterprises come to recognize that their failure to replenish open-source communities with either cash or code may come to harm the code commons from which they derive increasing amounts of value. I also suggested that Eclipse, Mozilla, and other non-profit foundations provide an answer.
Lastly, I suggested that governments might get involved to shore up funding for open-source software development. As I noted, governments derive massive benefit from open source (and from IT spending, generally). Why not fund more of it?
Europe loves open source. Why not fund it?
(Credit: Matt Asay)I did not, however, have a clear idea as to the right way for this to be done. France, as noted in InfoWorld recently, suggests a way, as does TechDirt, which suggests that military spending could create the next Silicon Valley (so why not an open-source Silicon Valley, given how much the US military is buying into open source?).
France, the second largest market for open source outside the United States, does a range of things to promote open source, but its focus on open source for the rising generation is perhaps most important:
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