3 ms·

Good read. What is your opinion, or how do you perceive open source software which comes at a price? ie office suite or game where the source is open but the p

Good read. What is your opinion, or how do you perceive open source software which comes at a price? ie office suite or game where the source is open but the producer requires monetary fee for it or support services for it?

jiggy2011 15y ago
Again this depends entirely on the model which depends on the end user of the product and their incentive for buying it. If you take redhat as an example they will contribute freely to the Linux kernel and other projects but will charge a support fee for their enterprise software. This support fee is justified because configuring Linux systems in an enterprise is a technically complex task and failures can come with a hefty price so having the support of an expert from redhat will be good value for money for a FTSE 100 company. Another example to consider would be 37 Signals , who sponsor allot of development on rails but do not release the source for their profit making services such as basecamp etc. There is an economic advantage to them for making rails open because 1) publicity , 2) It's in their interest to have a good framework to use , so by releasing the source others can improve it. Let's imagine for a moment that 37 Signals released the source code to basecamp under a GPL or LGPL license, what would stop a competitor from simply taking the source and uploading it somewhere else and then charge 50% of what 37s charge (because they don't have to employ developers)? What would be the incentive to use 37s service rather than the competitor? Now we come to games, most games don't (and shouldn't) really require technical support services. So trying to finance development of a game from having a $1 a minute technical support helpline is unlikely to be a good model unless you deliberately make the game buggy (if it's open source the bugs can just be fixed and re-released anyway). If you have an MMO with a monthly subscription you get the same problem as 37S that I illustrated above. The only people who seem to do OSS well in games and still make money is id software who release the GPLed source for their older games so that people are free to release derivative free games (you have to create your own art assets) but this is only after a period of time (usually 3 years or more). If you want to make a commercial game with an older engine you still have to pay them , albeit at a reduced rate. Another example might be Valve who release the source to some parts of their game logic but not their core engine, this allows people to create their own "mods" that override some parts of the game behavior but these mods will not work for someone who does not have a copy of the proprietary commercial binary. I think an office suite would have largely the same problem as games unless you can think of some support service that would be worth the payment. Obviously this is not 100% true because open office exists, however the original work for this was done by Sun Microsystems (as Star Office) who (I guess) mainly built it so that they could sell expensive Sun workstations with a working office suite that was at least partly compatible with MS office. Joel Spolsky wrote about the same basic theory. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

jiggy2011 15y ago

Again this depends entirely on the model which depends on the end user of the product and their incentive for buying it. If you take redhat as an example they will contribute freely to the Linux kernel and other projects but will charge a support fee for their enterprise software. This support fee is justified because configuring Linux systems in an enterprise is a technically complex task and failures can come with a hefty price so having the support of an expert from redhat will be good value for money for a FTSE 100 company. Another example to consider would be 37 Signals , who sponsor allot of development on rails but do not release the source for their profit making services such as basecamp etc. There is an economic advantage to them for making rails open because 1) publicity , 2) It's in their interest to have a good framework to use , so by releasing the source others can improve it. Let's imagine for a moment that 37 Signals released the source code to basecamp under a GPL or LGPL license, what would stop a competitor from simply taking the source and uploading it somewhere else and then charge 50% of what 37s charge (because they don't have to employ developers)? What would be the incentive to use 37s service rather than the competitor? Now we come to games, most games don't (and shouldn't) really require technical support services. So trying to finance development of a game from having a $1 a minute technical support helpline is unlikely to be a good model unless you deliberately make the game buggy (if it's open source the bugs can just be fixed and re-released anyway). If you have an MMO with a monthly subscription you get the same problem as 37S that I illustrated above. The only people who seem to do OSS well in games and still make money is id software who release the GPLed source for their older games so that people are free to release derivative free games (you have to create your own art assets) but this is only after a period of time (usually 3 years or more). If you want to make a commercial game with an older engine you still have to pay them , albeit at a reduced rate. Another example might be Valve who release the source to some parts of their game logic but not their core engine, this allows people to create their own "mods" that override some parts of the game behavior but these mods will not work for someone who does not have a copy of the proprietary commercial binary. I think an office suite would have largely the same problem as games unless you can think of some support service that would be worth the payment. Obviously this is not 100% true because open office exists, however the original work for this was done by Sun Microsystems (as Star Office) who (I guess) mainly built it so that they could sell expensive Sun workstations with a working office suite that was at least partly compatible with MS office. Joel Spolsky wrote about the same basic theory. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html