10 ms·

What Open Source Can’t Do

59 points by adamsmith 18y ago

dawie 18y ago
SugarCRM
- adamsmith 18y ago
  I'm not sure if you're aiming to agree or disagree, but...yes totally :) There are many other examples of the "open source business model," such as Dries Buytaert who runs Drupal and Acquia. The point is that contributors to open source projects are willing to write code for free but not willing to wear the beepers that go off when the servers go down.
  - wmf 18y ago
    The point is that contributors to open source projects are willing to write code for free but not willing to wear the beepers that go off when the servers go down. But could you get 100 people to wear beepers if you told them there was only a 1% chance it'd go off? (It's a rhetorical question. I've seen what ten part-time sysadmins can do; I don't want to imagine 100.)
- startingup 18y ago
  SugarCRM is open source? They offer an open source version as a kind of sampler/taster, but their main offering is not open source.
  - wheels 18y ago
    The OSS version is more or less the full version from what I can tell. That said, we're in the process of switching away from it.
    - SwellJoe 18y ago
      Switching to what?
      - wheels 18y ago
        From the workflow I really like PipelineDeals. Unfortunately it's a bit buggy (especially the API). I just started the trial with them last week and if the stuff gets resolved by their customer service I'm pretty sure that's what we'll end up using. I'm planning a blog post which I'll submit here about the various CRM systems that we've tried out (notably SugarCRM, HighRise, Salesforce and PipelineDeals).
        sanj 18y ago
        That'd be fantastic -- we're trying to figure out which ones to support when.
simanyay 18y ago
I don't personally need open source blogging or news aggregator software. And that is why I use blogger, google reader, etc. But I do need Django, I do need libraries like ipaddr.py from Google, I do need Linux kernel, I do need Webkit. One by one the majority of those libraries don't solve big problems. But combined they do. And as for developers, they can stop worrying that somebody will take their open source code and clone their major project and start releasing chunks of code that is actually interesting. Let's be clear, most of the code is pretty much the same everywhere and is not interesting.
harpastum 18y ago
Interesting idea, but saying open source has this inherent limitation is overreaching a bit. A much more reasonable claim would be that open source "can't do" service-based applications (Which I'm still not sure I agree with). "what open source software exists that solves a big problem in a large market?" Linux, Apache, mySQL, etc.
- jmtulloss 18y ago
  It is an inherent limitation. Time is a cost that can be donated because there is some non-material payoff to the person that's donating the time. There's very little non-material payoff for donating servers, bandwidth, etc. I actually like this. It's the most obvious way to capitalize on open source.
  - Herring 18y ago
    I can't help but wonder if it's worth it. The two main problems I see are 1) Something necessitating the AGPL & 2) Apps that don't need to be online (eg rescuetime) & the privacy concerns associated with them (eg bush & his telecoms).
bootload 18y ago
"... Ask yourself: what open source software exists that solves a big problem in a large market? ..." Linux kernel?
- wmf 18y ago
  EC2, Slicehost etc. already exist. Try again.
  - vulpes 18y ago
    Those don't use Linux kernel? Cmon.
    - michaelneale 18y ago
      EC2 uses XEN and a Red Hat flavour.
      - listic 18y ago
        Both use Linux kernel
        michaelneale 18y ago
        yes of course ! sorry I thought that was obvious.
  - wmf 18y ago
    I see at least two people didn't understand my comment. The point of the post was that you can make money by finding some useful open source software and making it into a service. But Linux is already available as a service; that's why I said try again.
- rms 18y ago
  Open Office, Firefox, The Gimp... Pretty much all of the software that is "like x, only free" (or in the case of firefox, better)
aneesh 18y ago
"... Ask yourself: what open source software exists that solves a big problem in a large market? ..." Statistical software (like R), perhaps? Not sure how much it's used by businesses though, especially with alternatives like SAS, or data mining built into Oracle & SQL Server. Still, hosted data analysis sounds cool (with potential complexities as well).
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  The guys behind SciPy are doing this sort of thing (not R, specifically, but scientific computing...they were doing fluid dynamics and geological data analysis). It's a pretty specialized market, but one where huge sums of money are spent. They had revenues in the millions when I left, and they only had two big customers (and a few customers who were putting out feelers for other options besides their current providers). Anyway, they weren't actually making any money at hosted scientific apps yet, but they were building their data center out and getting the contracts in place, so I expect it's a reasonable portion of their business today. But, if you or your co-founder isn't a PhD in the field you choose to tackle, you'll probably have a hard time getting a foothold.
m_eiman 18y ago
So what he's saying is that software doesn't run itself? Hardly news, is it? Running the software has nothing to do with it being open source or not. Sensationalist headline, but it seems that it's the only kind of headline that works on the web these days.
snprbob86 18y ago
I think a more interesting question is: can we work around this? I really don't know what the state of P2P or decentralized systems are, so tell me if this sounds crazy or not. Maybe someone could develop a secure, trusted, reliable system for distributed execution of sandboxed code which relies on the BitTorrent sort of sharing is caring strategy. That'd be pretty sweet :-)
- m_eiman 18y ago
  Building the system would be easier than solving the problem of knowing who to put in jail when it gets infested with the usual junk that tends to end up in anonymous systems. But it'd be useful, so please go ahead and solve it :)
  - snprbob86 18y ago
    Or, just maybe, a system such as this would prove once and for all that it just isn't worth trying to control, censor, and otherwise police the internet. A hacker can dream, can't he?
    - m_eiman 18y ago
      Well, -someone- is going to jail when The Authorities find illegal content (whatever that means, the concept seems to be expanding quickly) on your computer. Would you prefer it to be you, or the one responsible for it? Unless you can solve that problem, I'm pretty sure you're going to have trouble finding people to volunteer. As for policing the internet, I think that personal responsibility for your actions needs to apply even when you act using a computer. The consequences of your actions should to be reasonable though, and not like what we're seeing now with file sharing lawsuits.
      - eru 18y ago
        Plausible deniability at least as strong as freenet provides it, could help somewhat.
wheels 18y ago
The technical infrastructure of the major open source projects would make a small startup cry. It's certainly not out of the reach of Open Source. Just knowing the infrastructure required to keep the KDE project ticking, it's far beyond what Xobni would have to deal with. If we're thinking in terms of "Open Source applied to services", well, Wikipedia. That's a pretty big website thinger there. I'm not sure I'd want to stare down the sysadmins of WikiMedia an inform them, "No guys, no, see, you're not really hosting..."
defunkt 18y ago
LiveJournal has been open source for as long as I can remember.
rflrob 18y ago
"We’d probably all be using an IM client built around Jabber." Depending on your circle, some do. gChat is runs off the Jabber protocol. On the Mac, Adium is one of the best (I don't know about most popular) multi-system clients out there. I'm also partial to Pidgin Linux.
- jfarmer 18y ago
  Adium and Pidgin use the same underlying library (libpurple), and the lead developer for Pidgin is an engineer at Google.
musiciangames 18y ago
"There’s no doubt we’d have better software today if open source projects could get servers and operational resources for free" This is what heroku.com and seasidehosting.st offer. It does seem an opportunity for super low cost of entry apps. I don't know about how either scale if you get popular; presumably there comes a point where you have to rethink the infrastructure.
dejb 18y ago
Actually I think that GPL almost goes as far to encourage this hosting model. If you want to incorporate non open source code or libraries then you actually CAN'T release that code to the world. The only way to offer people that functionality is to host it.. and nobody else can offer a non-hosted solution. I can see a lot of startups following this model with GPL in particular.

59 points by adamsmith 18y ago

dawie 18y ago

SugarCRM

adamsmith 18y ago
I'm not sure if you're aiming to agree or disagree, but...yes totally :) There are many other examples of the "open source business model," such as Dries Buytaert who runs Drupal and Acquia. The point is that contributors to open source projects are willing to write code for free but not willing to wear the beepers that go off when the servers go down.
- wmf 18y ago
  The point is that contributors to open source projects are willing to write code for free but not willing to wear the beepers that go off when the servers go down. But could you get 100 people to wear beepers if you told them there was only a 1% chance it'd go off? (It's a rhetorical question. I've seen what ten part-time sysadmins can do; I don't want to imagine 100.)
startingup 18y ago
SugarCRM is open source? They offer an open source version as a kind of sampler/taster, but their main offering is not open source.
- wheels 18y ago
  The OSS version is more or less the full version from what I can tell. That said, we're in the process of switching away from it.
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    Switching to what?
    - wheels 18y ago
      From the workflow I really like PipelineDeals. Unfortunately it's a bit buggy (especially the API). I just started the trial with them last week and if the stuff gets resolved by their customer service I'm pretty sure that's what we'll end up using. I'm planning a blog post which I'll submit here about the various CRM systems that we've tried out (notably SugarCRM, HighRise, Salesforce and PipelineDeals).
      - sanj 18y ago
        That'd be fantastic -- we're trying to figure out which ones to support when.

simanyay 18y ago

I don't personally need open source blogging or news aggregator software. And that is why I use blogger, google reader, etc. But I do need Django, I do need libraries like ipaddr.py from Google, I do need Linux kernel, I do need Webkit. One by one the majority of those libraries don't solve big problems. But combined they do. And as for developers, they can stop worrying that somebody will take their open source code and clone their major project and start releasing chunks of code that is actually interesting. Let's be clear, most of the code is pretty much the same everywhere and is not interesting.

harpastum 18y ago

Interesting idea, but saying open source has this inherent limitation is overreaching a bit. A much more reasonable claim would be that open source "can't do" service-based applications (Which I'm still not sure I agree with). "what open source software exists that solves a big problem in a large market?" Linux, Apache, mySQL, etc.

jmtulloss 18y ago
It is an inherent limitation. Time is a cost that can be donated because there is some non-material payoff to the person that's donating the time. There's very little non-material payoff for donating servers, bandwidth, etc. I actually like this. It's the most obvious way to capitalize on open source.
- Herring 18y ago
  I can't help but wonder if it's worth it. The two main problems I see are 1) Something necessitating the AGPL & 2) Apps that don't need to be online (eg rescuetime) & the privacy concerns associated with them (eg bush & his telecoms).

bootload 18y ago

"... Ask yourself: what open source software exists that solves a big problem in a large market? ..." Linux kernel?

wmf 18y ago
EC2, Slicehost etc. already exist. Try again.
- vulpes 18y ago
  Those don't use Linux kernel? Cmon.
  - michaelneale 18y ago
    EC2 uses XEN and a Red Hat flavour.
    - listic 18y ago
      Both use Linux kernel
      - michaelneale 18y ago
        yes of course ! sorry I thought that was obvious.
- wmf 18y ago
  I see at least two people didn't understand my comment. The point of the post was that you can make money by finding some useful open source software and making it into a service. But Linux is already available as a service; that's why I said try again.
rms 18y ago
Open Office, Firefox, The Gimp... Pretty much all of the software that is "like x, only free" (or in the case of firefox, better)

aneesh 18y ago

"... Ask yourself: what open source software exists that solves a big problem in a large market? ..." Statistical software (like R), perhaps? Not sure how much it's used by businesses though, especially with alternatives like SAS, or data mining built into Oracle & SQL Server. Still, hosted data analysis sounds cool (with potential complexities as well).

SwellJoe 18y ago
The guys behind SciPy are doing this sort of thing (not R, specifically, but scientific computing...they were doing fluid dynamics and geological data analysis). It's a pretty specialized market, but one where huge sums of money are spent. They had revenues in the millions when I left, and they only had two big customers (and a few customers who were putting out feelers for other options besides their current providers). Anyway, they weren't actually making any money at hosted scientific apps yet, but they were building their data center out and getting the contracts in place, so I expect it's a reasonable portion of their business today. But, if you or your co-founder isn't a PhD in the field you choose to tackle, you'll probably have a hard time getting a foothold.

m_eiman 18y ago

So what he's saying is that software doesn't run itself? Hardly news, is it? Running the software has nothing to do with it being open source or not. Sensationalist headline, but it seems that it's the only kind of headline that works on the web these days.

snprbob86 18y ago

I think a more interesting question is: can we work around this? I really don't know what the state of P2P or decentralized systems are, so tell me if this sounds crazy or not. Maybe someone could develop a secure, trusted, reliable system for distributed execution of sandboxed code which relies on the BitTorrent sort of sharing is caring strategy. That'd be pretty sweet :-)

m_eiman 18y ago
Building the system would be easier than solving the problem of knowing who to put in jail when it gets infested with the usual junk that tends to end up in anonymous systems. But it'd be useful, so please go ahead and solve it :)
- snprbob86 18y ago
  Or, just maybe, a system such as this would prove once and for all that it just isn't worth trying to control, censor, and otherwise police the internet. A hacker can dream, can't he?
  - m_eiman 18y ago
    Well, -someone- is going to jail when The Authorities find illegal content (whatever that means, the concept seems to be expanding quickly) on your computer. Would you prefer it to be you, or the one responsible for it? Unless you can solve that problem, I'm pretty sure you're going to have trouble finding people to volunteer. As for policing the internet, I think that personal responsibility for your actions needs to apply even when you act using a computer. The consequences of your actions should to be reasonable though, and not like what we're seeing now with file sharing lawsuits.
    - eru 18y ago
      Plausible deniability at least as strong as freenet provides it, could help somewhat.

wheels 18y ago

The technical infrastructure of the major open source projects would make a small startup cry. It's certainly not out of the reach of Open Source. Just knowing the infrastructure required to keep the KDE project ticking, it's far beyond what Xobni would have to deal with. If we're thinking in terms of "Open Source applied to services", well, Wikipedia. That's a pretty big website thinger there. I'm not sure I'd want to stare down the sysadmins of WikiMedia an inform them, "No guys, no, see, you're not really hosting..."

defunkt 18y ago

LiveJournal has been open source for as long as I can remember.

rflrob 18y ago

"We’d probably all be using an IM client built around Jabber." Depending on your circle, some do. gChat is runs off the Jabber protocol. On the Mac, Adium is one of the best (I don't know about most popular) multi-system clients out there. I'm also partial to Pidgin Linux.

jfarmer 18y ago
Adium and Pidgin use the same underlying library (libpurple), and the lead developer for Pidgin is an engineer at Google.

musiciangames 18y ago

"There’s no doubt we’d have better software today if open source projects could get servers and operational resources for free" This is what heroku.com and seasidehosting.st offer. It does seem an opportunity for super low cost of entry apps. I don't know about how either scale if you get popular; presumably there comes a point where you have to rethink the infrastructure.

dejb 18y ago

Actually I think that GPL almost goes as far to encourage this hosting model. If you want to incorporate non open source code or libraries then you actually CAN'T release that code to the world. The only way to offer people that functionality is to host it.. and nobody else can offer a non-hosted solution. I can see a lot of startups following this model with GPL in particular.