7 ms·

"Some corporations are bad, some are good, some are in the middle." I don't think we need to bring morality to the discussion and complicate the issue. Corpor

"Some corporations are bad, some are good, some are in the middle." I don't think we need to bring morality to the discussion and complicate the issue. Corporations are organized around profit, open-source is not. With only that in mind you can predict what will happen in most of the cases. To put Mozilla, a not-profit, in this context, in the same set that Google and Apple is not fair, by the way.

jwildeboer 9y ago
So let's discuss your argument by taking Red Hat. For-profit, pure open source company. Founded 1993. Are we (I work at Red Hat) behaving badly?
- RobertoG 9y ago
  I explicitly tried to put out "god" and "bad" from the discussion but OK, let's do that. Red-Hat main worry is to be profitable. That's is above any other concern. You can be sure that, if their bottom line was threatened, they will be pushed, in order to survive, to change their business model and they will not be beyond behaving in a "bad" (but legal) way if they don't see other way around the problem. If fact, we can argue, that Red-Hat management, being it a public company, is forced by law to do that.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    I'm sure you're aware of the Solaris exodus that happened when Oracle decided to make OpenSolaris proprietary after acquiring it from Sun. The entire OpenSolaris engineering division quit in the span of a month. Do you think the same wouldn't happen if RedHat decided to start doing horrible things to their customers or the community? You're acting as though nobody who works at Red Hat cares about the community which they worked with before they had a job at Red Hat. I work at SUSE, and I work primarily as a member of a community. If SUSE started mistreating their customers or the wider community I would quit. I hope that if you found that your company was mistreating the wider community you would also quit. -- My point is not that "all companies are good". I'm saying that making a judgement that "all companies will harm free software at the end of the day" ignores the fact that companies still need humans to work for them that do said contributions. Personally I find that many people who work in free software have quite strong ethics when it comes to things like this, but that's just my anecdote.
    - RobertoG 9y ago
      I see this touch you personally, so I want to apologize if I bothered you. I have no idea how Red Hat or SUSE would act, maybe they would be an exception, and, maybe, very ethical workers could keep some companies in check. In the other hand, I don't think that the idea of companies, in order to survive, will try anything (legal), should be so polemic.
      - cyphar 9y ago
        My (somewhat strong, sorry about that) response was mainly a reaction to the larger trend I've seen in the free software community as of late -- that companies that work on free software are somehow a net negative. I don't know where this view comes from, it was Stallman's goal from day one that it should be possible to have companies built around free software. The fact that my first job out of high school was working at a free software company should be celebrated as a huge accomplishment by the wider community. But it's not seen that way. I find it quite disheartening, because I've always been an advocate for free software and my job title doesn't suddenly change that. I realise that you're not saying that (and so I'm sorry for the strong response), and of course we must question the motives of companies. But it's become a popular game these days to pretend as though everything that a free software developer does as part of a job must be part of a conspiracy to create a monopoly -- it's ludicrous and is quite grating.
    - throw2016 9y ago
      History has proven time and over it's generally a very bad idea to be dependent on others' good will that is by nature self interested and ephemeral. I think people are interested in their basics, income, job, family before any other priorities. Some people infact become so paranoid about this they may overlook even support unethical action as long as they are safe. Surveillance, profiling and dark patterns by leading SV companies including Google, Facebook, Palantir etc composed of tens of thousands of engineers who may at one time have loudly proclaimed contrary values is just one example of this.
    - s73ver 9y ago
      But how, in the end, did that affect Oracle? Did their stock price drop? Were they unable to sell things? Or did business kinda go on as usual? The comparison isn't as appropriate, as Oracle is a much bigger company, and is able to handle the loss of that many people in a better way. But the jist is similar.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    If fact, we can argue, that Red-Hat management, being it a public company, is forced by law to do that. You could argue that, but you would almost certainly be wrong. It is a myth that management at a company is always required to seek profit above everything else. Indeed, many companies explicitly do not do this, for example by having policies about operating in an environmentally friendly way for ethical reasons.
    - RobertoG 9y ago
      Companies have policies until they stop having them. I'm not saying that companies have to search profit above everything, I am saying that it's its main concern, otherwise they will not survive. Indeed, management will have space to be nice when things go well, but they, automatically, will receive pressures from investors to change their nice ways when things go bad. This is the way that it's intended to work and there is, I think, nothing surprising there.
      - iainmerrick 9y ago
        Even if it were as simple as that, it wouldn't be as simple as that! There's a difference between short-term and long-term profitability. Being 'nice' might limit profits in the short term but might be crucial for long-term survival. And, nobody knows for sure what the correct long-term strategy is. Not every step that yields an immediate profit is a step in the right direction.
- liveoneggs 9y ago
  did you support and push systemd?
maxerickson 9y ago
Corporations are just legal structures. For instance, you call Mozilla a non-profit. But it is a non-profit corporation, a legal entity that has organized itself in a certain way and applied for special tax treatment.
- RobertoG 9y ago
  For profit or non-profit, makes a huge difference, in my opinion. The goals and the incentives are very different.
  - Neliquat 9y ago
    In the usa, most 'non-profit' are specifically orged for making huge profits. AAA would be a prime example. The church of towing cars some call it for using the loopholes.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    Isn't Mozilla organized as a for-profit that owns a non-profit? Actually, if you look at US tax law there are reasons that some non-profits have for-profit parts. I know Mayo was organized that way. I think it had to do with some salary requirements, but its been twenty years, so I'm a bit fuzzy.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      The Mozilla non profit is the owner of a for profit company that carries out much of their activity. Which you probably meant, but you've typed it the other way around.
      - protomyth 9y ago
        Yeah, I meant in the same way as Mayo (NP -> FP). Not enough coffee, thanks.
    - steveklabnik 9y ago
      There is a non-profit (The Mozilla Foundation, affectionately referred to as "mofo") which owns a for-profit (The Mozilla Corporation, known as "moco") as a wholly-owned subsidiary. The corporation is governed by the same rules as the foundation, compare https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/ > Our work is guided by the Mozilla Manifesto. to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ > The Mozilla Corporation is guided by the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto. (I'm an employee of moco, I've always felt like I'm working at a values-based rather than a profit-based organization, personally.)
philh 9y ago
> With only that in mind you can predict what will happen in most of the cases. With just this information and no other, I think I'd predict corporations to make better software than open source. I take it that's not what you had in mind. (This is for similar reasons that I expect for-profit companies to provide better service than government-run ones. I don't particularly want to get into a debate right now about whether that actually happens, just trying to explain my intuitions.)
- RobertoG 9y ago
  I have no idea who makes better software. What I mean is this: If you mix open-source with a for-profit entity, don't be surprise when that entity try to extract profits even in orthogonal ways to the original intention of the project. Of course, in practice, and by the nature of open-source, this is a very difficult to do and, normally, can be prevented, but the trend is there and should be take into account.
- jinglebells 9y ago
  I'd agree with this. We can all agree Windows is infinitely better than Linux because people pay for it. Also Internet Explorer is infinitely better than Chrome and Firefox.
  - freshhawk 9y ago
    It's so frustrating that the data derived from this reality never agrees with these simple economic theories I derived from first principles and my econ 101 class that are so obviously correct. I blame the so-called "experts" and their propaganda about "complexity" and "human behaviour" for distorting the efficient market. In the cases of historical data it seems they have even retroactively distorted the markets.
  - philh 9y ago
    I didn't say corporations make better software than open source. I said that if I had only a single piece of information that's the prediction I'd make. I have opinions about to what extent my counterfactual prediction is correct; and to what extent it's not; and why it fails, in the cases that it fails. I left them out because they weren't relevant. If you wanted to talk about them, that's a thing I might be willing to do. But I'm not interested in being snarkily accused of mistakes I didn't make.
DannyBee 9y ago
"Corporations are organized around profit, open-source is not. With only that in mind you can predict what will happen in most of the cases. " All three of these statements seem like nonsense. First, "Corporations are organized around profit". No, they are legal entities, organized around articles of incorporation. These have a purpose statement. Often, those purpose statements are directed toward lawful business goals. But you do not have to be. Non-profit vs profit corporations can, quite literally, have the same set of purposes. The only difference between the two is what you can do with profits. "open-source is not". I'm not even sure what you are trying to say here. Very large amounts of popular open source, is, in fact, produced by for-profit companies, and has been since the beginning of open-source. The term was even created by a group of people at a for-profit company. So .... "With only that in mind you can predict what will happen in most of the cases." No, you can let whatever biases you seem to have stoke your imagination and prognosticate. You can't actually predict what will happen. There are plenty of happy, well functioning for-profit companies in open source that have been helping open source for many many many years. There are also plenty of non-profits that have harmed open source greatly. It takes a lot of blindness to see this stuff as simply black and white.

jwildeboer 9y ago

So let's discuss your argument by taking Red Hat. For-profit, pure open source company. Founded 1993. Are we (I work at Red Hat) behaving badly?

RobertoG 9y ago
I explicitly tried to put out "god" and "bad" from the discussion but OK, let's do that. Red-Hat main worry is to be profitable. That's is above any other concern. You can be sure that, if their bottom line was threatened, they will be pushed, in order to survive, to change their business model and they will not be beyond behaving in a "bad" (but legal) way if they don't see other way around the problem. If fact, we can argue, that Red-Hat management, being it a public company, is forced by law to do that.
- cyphar 9y ago
  I'm sure you're aware of the Solaris exodus that happened when Oracle decided to make OpenSolaris proprietary after acquiring it from Sun. The entire OpenSolaris engineering division quit in the span of a month. Do you think the same wouldn't happen if RedHat decided to start doing horrible things to their customers or the community? You're acting as though nobody who works at Red Hat cares about the community which they worked with before they had a job at Red Hat. I work at SUSE, and I work primarily as a member of a community. If SUSE started mistreating their customers or the wider community I would quit. I hope that if you found that your company was mistreating the wider community you would also quit. -- My point is not that "all companies are good". I'm saying that making a judgement that "all companies will harm free software at the end of the day" ignores the fact that companies still need humans to work for them that do said contributions. Personally I find that many people who work in free software have quite strong ethics when it comes to things like this, but that's just my anecdote.
  - RobertoG 9y ago
    I see this touch you personally, so I want to apologize if I bothered you. I have no idea how Red Hat or SUSE would act, maybe they would be an exception, and, maybe, very ethical workers could keep some companies in check. In the other hand, I don't think that the idea of companies, in order to survive, will try anything (legal), should be so polemic.
    - cyphar 9y ago
      My (somewhat strong, sorry about that) response was mainly a reaction to the larger trend I've seen in the free software community as of late -- that companies that work on free software are somehow a net negative. I don't know where this view comes from, it was Stallman's goal from day one that it should be possible to have companies built around free software. The fact that my first job out of high school was working at a free software company should be celebrated as a huge accomplishment by the wider community. But it's not seen that way. I find it quite disheartening, because I've always been an advocate for free software and my job title doesn't suddenly change that. I realise that you're not saying that (and so I'm sorry for the strong response), and of course we must question the motives of companies. But it's become a popular game these days to pretend as though everything that a free software developer does as part of a job must be part of a conspiracy to create a monopoly -- it's ludicrous and is quite grating.
  - throw2016 9y ago
    History has proven time and over it's generally a very bad idea to be dependent on others' good will that is by nature self interested and ephemeral. I think people are interested in their basics, income, job, family before any other priorities. Some people infact become so paranoid about this they may overlook even support unethical action as long as they are safe. Surveillance, profiling and dark patterns by leading SV companies including Google, Facebook, Palantir etc composed of tens of thousands of engineers who may at one time have loudly proclaimed contrary values is just one example of this.
  - s73ver 9y ago
    But how, in the end, did that affect Oracle? Did their stock price drop? Were they unable to sell things? Or did business kinda go on as usual? The comparison isn't as appropriate, as Oracle is a much bigger company, and is able to handle the loss of that many people in a better way. But the jist is similar.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  If fact, we can argue, that Red-Hat management, being it a public company, is forced by law to do that. You could argue that, but you would almost certainly be wrong. It is a myth that management at a company is always required to seek profit above everything else. Indeed, many companies explicitly do not do this, for example by having policies about operating in an environmentally friendly way for ethical reasons.
  - RobertoG 9y ago
    Companies have policies until they stop having them. I'm not saying that companies have to search profit above everything, I am saying that it's its main concern, otherwise they will not survive. Indeed, management will have space to be nice when things go well, but they, automatically, will receive pressures from investors to change their nice ways when things go bad. This is the way that it's intended to work and there is, I think, nothing surprising there.
    - iainmerrick 9y ago
      Even if it were as simple as that, it wouldn't be as simple as that! There's a difference between short-term and long-term profitability. Being 'nice' might limit profits in the short term but might be crucial for long-term survival. And, nobody knows for sure what the correct long-term strategy is. Not every step that yields an immediate profit is a step in the right direction.
liveoneggs 9y ago
did you support and push systemd?

maxerickson 9y ago

Corporations are just legal structures. For instance, you call Mozilla a non-profit. But it is a non-profit corporation, a legal entity that has organized itself in a certain way and applied for special tax treatment.

RobertoG 9y ago
For profit or non-profit, makes a huge difference, in my opinion. The goals and the incentives are very different.
- Neliquat 9y ago
  In the usa, most 'non-profit' are specifically orged for making huge profits. AAA would be a prime example. The church of towing cars some call it for using the loopholes.
- protomyth 9y ago
  Isn't Mozilla organized as a for-profit that owns a non-profit? Actually, if you look at US tax law there are reasons that some non-profits have for-profit parts. I know Mayo was organized that way. I think it had to do with some salary requirements, but its been twenty years, so I'm a bit fuzzy.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    The Mozilla non profit is the owner of a for profit company that carries out much of their activity. Which you probably meant, but you've typed it the other way around.
    - protomyth 9y ago
      Yeah, I meant in the same way as Mayo (NP -> FP). Not enough coffee, thanks.
  - steveklabnik 9y ago
    There is a non-profit (The Mozilla Foundation, affectionately referred to as "mofo") which owns a for-profit (The Mozilla Corporation, known as "moco") as a wholly-owned subsidiary. The corporation is governed by the same rules as the foundation, compare https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/ > Our work is guided by the Mozilla Manifesto. to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ > The Mozilla Corporation is guided by the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto. (I'm an employee of moco, I've always felt like I'm working at a values-based rather than a profit-based organization, personally.)

philh 9y ago

> With only that in mind you can predict what will happen in most of the cases. With just this information and no other, I think I'd predict corporations to make better software than open source. I take it that's not what you had in mind. (This is for similar reasons that I expect for-profit companies to provide better service than government-run ones. I don't particularly want to get into a debate right now about whether that actually happens, just trying to explain my intuitions.)

RobertoG 9y ago
I have no idea who makes better software. What I mean is this: If you mix open-source with a for-profit entity, don't be surprise when that entity try to extract profits even in orthogonal ways to the original intention of the project. Of course, in practice, and by the nature of open-source, this is a very difficult to do and, normally, can be prevented, but the trend is there and should be take into account.
jinglebells 9y ago
I'd agree with this. We can all agree Windows is infinitely better than Linux because people pay for it. Also Internet Explorer is infinitely better than Chrome and Firefox.
- freshhawk 9y ago
  It's so frustrating that the data derived from this reality never agrees with these simple economic theories I derived from first principles and my econ 101 class that are so obviously correct. I blame the so-called "experts" and their propaganda about "complexity" and "human behaviour" for distorting the efficient market. In the cases of historical data it seems they have even retroactively distorted the markets.
- philh 9y ago
  I didn't say corporations make better software than open source. I said that if I had only a single piece of information that's the prediction I'd make. I have opinions about to what extent my counterfactual prediction is correct; and to what extent it's not; and why it fails, in the cases that it fails. I left them out because they weren't relevant. If you wanted to talk about them, that's a thing I might be willing to do. But I'm not interested in being snarkily accused of mistakes I didn't make.

DannyBee 9y ago

"Corporations are organized around profit, open-source is not. With only that in mind you can predict what will happen in most of the cases. " All three of these statements seem like nonsense. First, "Corporations are organized around profit". No, they are legal entities, organized around articles of incorporation. These have a purpose statement. Often, those purpose statements are directed toward lawful business goals. But you do not have to be. Non-profit vs profit corporations can, quite literally, have the same set of purposes. The only difference between the two is what you can do with profits. "open-source is not". I'm not even sure what you are trying to say here. Very large amounts of popular open source, is, in fact, produced by for-profit companies, and has been since the beginning of open-source. The term was even created by a group of people at a for-profit company. So .... "With only that in mind you can predict what will happen in most of the cases." No, you can let whatever biases you seem to have stoke your imagination and prognosticate. You can't actually predict what will happen. There are plenty of happy, well functioning for-profit companies in open source that have been helping open source for many many many years. There are also plenty of non-profits that have harmed open source greatly. It takes a lot of blindness to see this stuff as simply black and white.