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“Open source” is broken

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Re: “Open source” is broken

#311

Post by ksec »

mbrodersen wrote: post #250
jchw wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except by creating such an obligation, you are essentially throwing out the core concept of something being open source or free software. That's not solving the problem, that's more like giving up on it.

Not at all. I don't think you understand OSS. OSS is about Open Software. Not about free (as in $0) software. The only way to make OSS sustainable is to make companies pay for it .

I dont disagree with you but I think that is a very old school of thoughts on OSS. And may be no longer accepted as such.

In the past ~5 years, most ( at least those who have been most vocal ) voices have suggested Open Source is not just about your source code being open / available, but it also means the community around it. And how everyone helps and contribute.

And these kind of thoughts has some sort of correlation with certain political ideology.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#312

Post by miraculixx »

mbrodersen wrote: post #217
jchw wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people, at least certainly myself, do not disagree that open source infrastructure projects are often underappreciated and underfunded. However, there's a dramatic difference between the way that ESR's LBIP initiative frames the problem vs this article (not to single anyone out - this article expresses a commonly held belief among plenty of influential and intelligent people, and no doubt the person who…

There is a simple solution: make companies pay for it. Don’t give your work away for $0. It isn’t rocket science.

The problem runs deeper. To get companies to pay you, in particular enterprises, you have to participate in their high-touch/low value purchasing behavior. And that means you need large pockets which in turn means high prices. High prices means high expectations. Much of those $$$ go into marketing and sales, not product. Which is one reason most enterprise software sucks.

That's the opposite of what OSS devs want to do: solve problems and provide efficient solutions. Its also the opposite of what users of OSS want: easy to acquire solutions to their problems (nobody except purchase officers and lawyers actually want high-touch/low-value procurement. Everybody knows its a waste of time & money.)

Unfortunately most companies are not interested in buying solutions, but risk reduction (which they never actually get because all software comes with limited-to-the-max liability & warranty, just like OSS).

Therefore we have to change not the OSS model, but its reputation.

Licenses should say something like "free to use unless it generates commercial value. When it does you need to pay $ or risk your reputation". Sort of what the GPL does but without the virality.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#313

Post by mbrodersen »

kelnos wrote: post #308
mbrodersen wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The companies are paying exactly what the price tag says it is worth: $0. What is so surprising about that? If you want companies to not “freeload” then change the price tag for companies.

I regret my use of the word "freeload" because of all the baggage it drags with it. I think companies are perfectly legally and ethically fine paying $0 for something that explicitly comes at no cost. But it's also rare that I see a company think about how critical a piece of open source is to their business, and realize that paying in some way (if possible) can be a good way to mitigate business risk. I think most c…

I completely agree with you. Having worked for a few very large companies, I can tell you that any thinking beyond the crisis of the hour is very rare indeed.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#314

Post by mbrodersen »

Juliate wrote: post #293
mbrodersen wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get upset and expect things to be fixed for $0 because that is the value that the OSS maintainer put on his own work . So why is that surprising? It's how a market place works .

The maintainer never put a $0 _value_ on their work, but a $0 _public price_ of it "as is, without warranty of any kind, ...". It's some (corporate) users and markets that understand this (wrongly) as a $0 value. It's their own evaluation that's failing in the long term. Mentioned that in an other comment, but this is akin to mining companies that extract value from natural resources at $0 price (because the resource…

... which is why countries are putting fishing quotas and carbon markets in place to make sure that doesn't happen. In other words, countries put a market value on things that otherwise wouldn't have it. OSS maintainers needs to do the same. That's my point.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#315

Post by mbrodersen »

jchw wrote: post #270
mbrodersen wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and creating a secondary unwritten set of rules about obligations that are extralegal is just a more advanced way of circumventing them I am not sure I follow your argument here. Who is it that is creating a secondary unwritten set of rules?

OK. So let’s say I want to participate in open source. I release an open source project on the internet. The way I see it, here are my options: 1. I can release it freely, on a project forge like GitHub, and thus nobody has any obligation to pay for it. I can use dual licensing schemes and/or offer commercial support, or solicit donations, but by and large everyone from your average Joe to the fortune 100 are treated…

Great comment! My message is to the group of OSS maintainers that pick option 3 and then throws a tantrum when it doesn't work. My message is: Option 3 does not work and will never work. Accept it and pick another option.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#316

Post by mbrodersen »

em-bee wrote: post #268
mbrodersen wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. However in reality if you give away your work for $0 then people value your work at $0 which means that they expect you to fix problems for $0. The problem is the maintainers giving away their work for $0. OSS is not about free (as in $0) it is about Open Source.

if this were true then FOSS would never have reached the popularity that it does now. FOSS users give a lot of valuable feedback that makes software better, and they don't generally expect their problems fixed for free. that mainly comes from greedy corporations that exploit free resources for their own gain. i give away my software for free to give back to the community that gives me tons of other free software and…

Honest question: How do you know that FOSS is popular because it is great and not because it cost $0? If FOSS cost the same as the equivalent commercial software would people pick it? I personally don't think so. There is a lot of really buggy crappy FOSS (and commercial) code out there. I don't think one is inherently better than another. It depends on the quality of the team building it.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#317

Post by mbrodersen »

esarbe wrote: post #276
mbrodersen wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you provide work/code for $0 then you yourself signal that your work is worth $0. So why should companies spend more than $0 on your work? If you truly think your work is worth more than $0 then put that in your licence for companies. It isn’t rocket science.

Human society has for thousands of years relied on unpaid voluntary labor. Be it taking care of the elderly, taking care of the sick and the poor, managing public spaces, organizing festivals, on and on and on. Human society is built on voluntary participation much more than on monetary incentives. It's part of the capitalistic delusion that only what a price label has attached has worth; you are conflating "worthles…

Not at all. A lot of things have intrinsic value. Like the things you mention (taking care of the sick etc.) That is different from its market value (what people want to pay for it). The problem is that some OSS maintainers think they are the same, expecting the intrinsic value of their work to automatically convert into market value (them getting paid). That is not how it works.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#319

Post by 0xdeadb00f »

wyldfire wrote: post #26

> I simply do not want to be in a situation where my software that I develop as a passion project on the side is holding people's companies together. People love to hate on Richard Stallman but he was really clear about the motivation for Free Software (which is not the same as Open Source but shares some tenets). What companies do with the source is their thing. They get all of the benefits and all of the responsibi…

> What companies do with the source is their thing.

I think RMS and the GPL would disagree with that statement.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#320

Post by em-bee »

mbrodersen wrote: post #316
em-bee wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if this were true then FOSS would never have reached the popularity that it does now. FOSS users give a lot of valuable feedback that makes software better, and they don't generally expect their problems fixed for free. that mainly comes from greedy corporations that exploit free resources for their own gain. i give away my software for free to give back to the community that gives me tons of other free software and…

Honest question: How do you know that FOSS is popular because it is great and not because it cost $0? If FOSS cost the same as the equivalent commercial software would people pick it? I personally don't think so. There is a lot of really buggy crappy FOSS ( and commercial) code out there. I don't think one is inherently better than another. It depends on the quality of the team building it.

the key advantage of FOSS is not code quality or price but access to the source and the right to resell it.

code quality on average should be on par with closed source software, if not a little bit better because developers know that their code will be public.

if FOSS would cost the same, source access would still be a factor, whereas code quality would not really matter because it can't be inspected for closed source anyways.

the downside would be a smaller pool of FOSS developers since less people would be able to afford to pay. but actually not that much. if a linux distribution cost the equivalent of a windows license, most people would still be able to afford it. the challenge is rather all the additional applications.

for a more realistic comparison look at freeware. it costs the same as FOSS but the only really popular freeware out there was the netscape browser and what, winrar? (there are probably others, but i am not a windows user so i am not familiar with the ecosystem). but if cost was the factor, then freeware should be just as popular.

FOSS is popular because it endures. i personally use several FOSS applications where the principal developers had left the project and others took over. any equivalent commercial of freeware application would be dead by now and i'd have to switch to something else.

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