3 ms·

Open source, hackers giving charity to rich companies

patio11 17y ago
I have never really liked the charity model for OSS. My OSS isn't charity any more than the free trial of my software is charity: it is a marketing strategy that I can employ in parallel with and in support of my other business activities. Incidentally, I think you may underestimate the percentage of OSS which is done by hackers on the payrolls of big companies. My day job has "donated" the equivalent of millions in OSS development, and all the surveys I've seen of OSS participation list "I am doing this on the explicit instructions of my bosses" and "I am doing this at work without the explicit instructions of my bosses" as very prominent numerically.
- marshallp 17y ago
  How many financial software companies open source their software, if you've got something that can make a business money, they won't care about paying. Many developers trap themselves in meager areas where the only way is down (open source or ad supported) because they refuse to learn new things and compete in domains with huge opportunity (accountng/erp, finance, electrical/civil/mechanical engineering, computer graphucs animation, medical/legal expert systems).
wallflower 17y ago
Or, in the case of IBM (Eclipse project), giving them employment
- marshallp 17y ago
  How much employment. Oracle employs 100,000+ people, How many open source developers at IBM?
  - wallflower 17y ago
    I would venture in the mid-hundreds. To get a real answer, I'd have to correlate the active contributor database for Apache with LinkedIn.
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    Your argument is all over the place to the point of trolling. Oracle (and MSFT to a much lesser degree) open source software they've written as well as contribute to existing projects. http://oss.oracle.com/ http://oss.oracle.com/ Could you be more clear about what your point actually is?
tsally 17y ago
On the other end of the spectrum, you could be awarded $20 million dollars in stock options by Red Hat and VA Linux. And of course, there's everything in between, including getting hired and paid by the company that likes your open source project. Companies also contribute back to open source [1], lobby the Supreme Court of the United States to fix software patents [2], and provide open source project hosting to thousands for free [3]. [1] http://www.redhat.com/truthhappens/leadership/osdevelopment/ http://www.redhat.com/truthhappens/leadership/osdevelopment/ [2] http://press.redhat.com/2009/10/01/asking-the-supreme-court-to-address-the-problem-of-software-patents/ http://press.redhat.com/2009/10/01/asking-the-supreme-court-... [3] http://www.ubuntu.com/news/canonical-open-sources-launchpad http://www.ubuntu.com/news/canonical-open-sources-launchpad
- marshallp 17y ago
  What's the market cap of red hat compared to microsoft, or oracle
  - tsally 17y ago
    I'm not sure what argument you are trying to make with this fragment of a sentence. If you're trying to imply that Microsoft is a larger company than Red Hat because Microsoft takes advantage of open source developers and Red Hat does not, you're wrong. Microsoft had its IPO 5 years before the Linux kernel was written. If anything, Microsoft has benefited more from ripping off developers of proprietary systems [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso...
    - marshallp 17y ago
      I'm just pointing out that microsoft and other companies have much larger equity than red hat, and have made a lot more developers rich than red hat. In general I believe that open source transfers wealth from developers to the rest of society, and the same applies to web companies that choose a ad-supprted model. In certain segments, such as search, this makes sense. But in others, people like richard stallman and jimmy wales, have single handedly destroyed potential industries that could have formed and employed many people.

I have never really liked the charity model for OSS. My OSS isn't charity any more than the free trial of my software is charity: it is a marketing strategy that I can employ in parallel with and in support of my other business activities. Incidentally, I think you may underestimate the percentage of OSS which is done by hackers on the payrolls of big companies. My day job has "donated" the equivalent of millions in OSS development, and all the surveys I've seen of OSS participation list "I am doing this on the explicit instructions of my bosses" and "I am doing this at work without the explicit instructions of my bosses" as very prominent numerically.

marshallp 17y ago
How many financial software companies open source their software, if you've got something that can make a business money, they won't care about paying. Many developers trap themselves in meager areas where the only way is down (open source or ad supported) because they refuse to learn new things and compete in domains with huge opportunity (accountng/erp, finance, electrical/civil/mechanical engineering, computer graphucs animation, medical/legal expert systems).

wallflower 17y ago

Or, in the case of IBM (Eclipse project), giving them employment

marshallp 17y ago
How much employment. Oracle employs 100,000+ people, How many open source developers at IBM?
- wallflower 17y ago
  I would venture in the mid-hundreds. To get a real answer, I'd have to correlate the active contributor database for Apache with LinkedIn.
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  Your argument is all over the place to the point of trolling. Oracle (and MSFT to a much lesser degree) open source software they've written as well as contribute to existing projects. http://oss.oracle.com/ http://oss.oracle.com/ Could you be more clear about what your point actually is?

tsally 17y ago

On the other end of the spectrum, you could be awarded $20 million dollars in stock options by Red Hat and VA Linux. And of course, there's everything in between, including getting hired and paid by the company that likes your open source project. Companies also contribute back to open source [1], lobby the Supreme Court of the United States to fix software patents [2], and provide open source project hosting to thousands for free [3]. [1] http://www.redhat.com/truthhappens/leadership/osdevelopment/ http://www.redhat.com/truthhappens/leadership/osdevelopment/ [2] http://press.redhat.com/2009/10/01/asking-the-supreme-court-to-address-the-problem-of-software-patents/ http://press.redhat.com/2009/10/01/asking-the-supreme-court-... [3] http://www.ubuntu.com/news/canonical-open-sources-launchpad http://www.ubuntu.com/news/canonical-open-sources-launchpad

marshallp 17y ago
What's the market cap of red hat compared to microsoft, or oracle
- tsally 17y ago
  I'm not sure what argument you are trying to make with this fragment of a sentence. If you're trying to imply that Microsoft is a larger company than Red Hat because Microsoft takes advantage of open source developers and Red Hat does not, you're wrong. Microsoft had its IPO 5 years before the Linux kernel was written. If anything, Microsoft has benefited more from ripping off developers of proprietary systems [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso...
  - marshallp 17y ago
    I'm just pointing out that microsoft and other companies have much larger equity than red hat, and have made a lot more developers rich than red hat. In general I believe that open source transfers wealth from developers to the rest of society, and the same applies to web companies that choose a ad-supprted model. In certain segments, such as search, this makes sense. But in others, people like richard stallman and jimmy wales, have single handedly destroyed potential industries that could have formed and employed many people.