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Thank you for that spectacular TL;DR. No rational investor wants to invest in something that will absolutely not give them a return. Most open source infrastru

Thank you for that spectacular TL;DR. No rational investor wants to invest in something that will absolutely not give them a return. Most open source infrastructure tools lack a business model to capture revenue from its users. So one of several things will have to happen in order for open source infrastructure to get funded: - Investors will part ways with their money, full knowing that they will not see a return. (Unlikely to happen.) - Investors will strong-arm infrastructure projects into restructuring into a for-profit model. (Unlikely to succeed.) - People other than investors will have to step up. (Plausible.) "People" here can refer to independently wealthy individuals, successful companies, the government, or a flash mob of donators (crowd-funding). (Note: Return means capital return, not "social good" return.) For the record, I contribute a little here and there to open source projects (usually in the form of vulnerability reporting) and started several FLOSS of my own (including several cryptography projects for PHP developers to use in their projects). To date, I've made $0 from any of it, and I don't see that changing in the near future for me.

adekok 11y ago
> Most open source infrastructure tools lack a business model to capture revenue from its users. Like youtube videographers? Who start off doing it for fun, and then later monetize it? That evidence shows you're wrong.
- sarciszewski 11y ago
  How do you monetize, say, OpenSSL?
  - wmf 11y ago
    Wasn't the purported reason why OpenSSL rotted that the developers were fully booked doing paid consulting and had no time to spend on maintenance? http://openssl.com/what.html http://openssl.com/what.html
    - sarciszewski 11y ago
      Sure, maybe. That doesn't really answer my question though.
  - adekok 11y ago
    Charge people for support? It works for ISC. Why wouldn't it work for OpenSSL? Heck, it works for me (FreeRADIUS). Why wouldn't it work for OpenSSL?
    - sarciszewski 11y ago
      That's not a bad idea.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Hardware accelerators or appliances that do it faster and painlessly is another option. Safenet makes a nice living on stuff like that. Plus, it's harder to "fork" hardware. These usually have support contracts, too.
cpitman 11y ago
You seem to be ignoring that there are profitable open source companies, the prime example being my employer, Red Hat.
- sarciszewski 11y ago
  You said: > You seem to be ignoring that there are profitable open source companies, the prime example being my employer, Red Hat. From my post: > Most open source infrastructure tools lack a business model to capture revenue from its users. Can we please not put words in other peoples' mouths? Kthx
vanattab 11y ago
Based on my experience as a government contractor I have to say I think the government taking taxpayers money and funding open source infrastructure would be a terrible idea. What the government should do however is release all software it develops or pays to have developed from scratch as FOSS excluding sensitive defense systems and the like of course.
- ci5er 11y ago
  Interesting. I believe that VistA's (VA Hospital EHR) was originally open sourced because of a FOI filing. And then they (more-or-less) got behind it seriously. Contrary to the title of this posting, in 2005-or-so, there was more than one company formed around commercializing VistA that pulled down venture funding. Draper-Fisher-Jurvetson funded one, and I forget the other... But this was strictly a "toss over the wall" kind of deal. No community edits or changes ever make it upstream. Is that the kind of thing you are talking about, or would you envision a structure where improvements were re-absorbed into the borg?
  - vanattab 11y ago
    While I think it would be nice if community changes make it upstream so the government can benifit from the changes this is not the motivating factor. The motivating factor in my mind is that taxpayers paid for the code they should have the rights to use it. Already if the code is written by a government employee it is in the public domain because the government can't copyright. But in the public domain is not the same thing as publicly available. There have been cases were government employees have written a code base then hired contractors to work on the code and sell the product back to the government at crazy prices. And then when the government wants the source code make a change they can't get because the code base is now proprietary. And the government is forced to pay the contractor outrageous sums to make a change to what originally was the government's code.
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adekok 11y ago

> Most open source infrastructure tools lack a business model to capture revenue from its users. Like youtube videographers? Who start off doing it for fun, and then later monetize it? That evidence shows you're wrong.

sarciszewski 11y ago
How do you monetize, say, OpenSSL?
- wmf 11y ago
  Wasn't the purported reason why OpenSSL rotted that the developers were fully booked doing paid consulting and had no time to spend on maintenance? http://openssl.com/what.html http://openssl.com/what.html
  - sarciszewski 11y ago
    Sure, maybe. That doesn't really answer my question though.
- adekok 11y ago
  Charge people for support? It works for ISC. Why wouldn't it work for OpenSSL? Heck, it works for me (FreeRADIUS). Why wouldn't it work for OpenSSL?
  - sarciszewski 11y ago
    That's not a bad idea.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Hardware accelerators or appliances that do it faster and painlessly is another option. Safenet makes a nice living on stuff like that. Plus, it's harder to "fork" hardware. These usually have support contracts, too.

cpitman 11y ago

You seem to be ignoring that there are profitable open source companies, the prime example being my employer, Red Hat.

sarciszewski 11y ago
You said: > You seem to be ignoring that there are profitable open source companies, the prime example being my employer, Red Hat. From my post: > Most open source infrastructure tools lack a business model to capture revenue from its users. Can we please not put words in other peoples' mouths? Kthx

vanattab 11y ago

Based on my experience as a government contractor I have to say I think the government taking taxpayers money and funding open source infrastructure would be a terrible idea. What the government should do however is release all software it develops or pays to have developed from scratch as FOSS excluding sensitive defense systems and the like of course.

ci5er 11y ago
Interesting. I believe that VistA's (VA Hospital EHR) was originally open sourced because of a FOI filing. And then they (more-or-less) got behind it seriously. Contrary to the title of this posting, in 2005-or-so, there was more than one company formed around commercializing VistA that pulled down venture funding. Draper-Fisher-Jurvetson funded one, and I forget the other... But this was strictly a "toss over the wall" kind of deal. No community edits or changes ever make it upstream. Is that the kind of thing you are talking about, or would you envision a structure where improvements were re-absorbed into the borg?
- vanattab 11y ago
  While I think it would be nice if community changes make it upstream so the government can benifit from the changes this is not the motivating factor. The motivating factor in my mind is that taxpayers paid for the code they should have the rights to use it. Already if the code is written by a government employee it is in the public domain because the government can't copyright. But in the public domain is not the same thing as publicly available. There have been cases were government employees have written a code base then hired contractors to work on the code and sell the product back to the government at crazy prices. And then when the government wants the source code make a change they can't get because the code base is now proprietary. And the government is forced to pay the contractor outrageous sums to make a change to what originally was the government's code.
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