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I would argue this combination is not sustainable. Eventually a project will be gobbled up by a commercial entity (FoundationDB) or become stagnant once the or

I would argue this combination is not sustainable. Eventually a project will be gobbled up by a commercial entity (FoundationDB) or become stagnant once the original developers leave. I am not trying to poo poo open source development model, or decry evils of commercialism. I think we can all benefit from finding an alternative.

Kalium 12y ago
We're all listening if you want to propose one. Just... I at least have the caveat in mind that insisting that an alternative could be better is not the same as proposing an alternative. Or even proof that an alternative exists. Micropayments have really only seen success for things with very broad userbases (like musicians on Patreon). Right now what we've got is essentially patronage.
freehunter 12y ago
Red Hat has been going strong for 22 years and they had an IPO in 1999, then managed to survive the dot com crash. Their stock is doing pretty well. Canonical is doing okay with Ubuntu, despite the product being given away. Sourcefire is doing well, even though Snort is free and open source. Mozilla is still trucking along last I heard. So you can argue that it's unsustainable, in the way that you can argue that the moon is made of cheese. It's just not true. Besides, FoundationDB wasn't open source, was it? It was just free of charge, which isn't a business model at all.
- java-man 12y ago
  RedHat people did not write Linux. They did contribute to it, provided support, but they did not write most of the code. The people who _did_ write the code were not directly compensated for it. Indirectly - perhaps. This is my point. It is not [currently, in its present form] sustaintable, due to the fact that people and corporations who use open source software do not [generally] pay for it.
  - xorcist 12y ago
    Red Hat is not the only free software company, only the most widely known. Most core Linux developers are paid these days, check out the workplace statistics LWN publishes with almost every kernel release.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    people and corporations who use open source software do not [generally] pay for it. Except, of course, for all of the companies that do, which is every company that uses Red Hat and many that use Ubuntu, Snort, and numerous other, smaller projects. Red Hat and Canonical may not have created Linux, but what we have today would not have been possible without their (highly paid) contributions. If Linus and the other original developers were gone tomorrow, Red Hat could easily keep Linux going for the foreseeable future. The point you're trying to make is that people don't pay for open source. And you're right. But companies do pay for support for open source, and they do pay for valuable cloud features that tie into open source software for a small fee.
    - java-man 12y ago
      You are right. _Some_ companies do pay, that's why I included qualifier [generally]. We don't really know the percentage of the companies who do pay, but judging by the recent openSSL debacle, it's not great. I know this is probably not the right forum, but I was hoping to engage collective wisdom to come up with a third option, which would guarantee payment of some kind for an open source development.

Kalium 12y ago

We're all listening if you want to propose one. Just... I at least have the caveat in mind that insisting that an alternative could be better is not the same as proposing an alternative. Or even proof that an alternative exists. Micropayments have really only seen success for things with very broad userbases (like musicians on Patreon). Right now what we've got is essentially patronage.

freehunter 12y ago

Red Hat has been going strong for 22 years and they had an IPO in 1999, then managed to survive the dot com crash. Their stock is doing pretty well. Canonical is doing okay with Ubuntu, despite the product being given away. Sourcefire is doing well, even though Snort is free and open source. Mozilla is still trucking along last I heard. So you can argue that it's unsustainable, in the way that you can argue that the moon is made of cheese. It's just not true. Besides, FoundationDB wasn't open source, was it? It was just free of charge, which isn't a business model at all.

java-man 12y ago
RedHat people did not write Linux. They did contribute to it, provided support, but they did not write most of the code. The people who _did_ write the code were not directly compensated for it. Indirectly - perhaps. This is my point. It is not [currently, in its present form] sustaintable, due to the fact that people and corporations who use open source software do not [generally] pay for it.
- xorcist 12y ago
  Red Hat is not the only free software company, only the most widely known. Most core Linux developers are paid these days, check out the workplace statistics LWN publishes with almost every kernel release.
- freehunter 12y ago
  people and corporations who use open source software do not [generally] pay for it. Except, of course, for all of the companies that do, which is every company that uses Red Hat and many that use Ubuntu, Snort, and numerous other, smaller projects. Red Hat and Canonical may not have created Linux, but what we have today would not have been possible without their (highly paid) contributions. If Linus and the other original developers were gone tomorrow, Red Hat could easily keep Linux going for the foreseeable future. The point you're trying to make is that people don't pay for open source. And you're right. But companies do pay for support for open source, and they do pay for valuable cloud features that tie into open source software for a small fee.
  - java-man 12y ago
    You are right. _Some_ companies do pay, that's why I included qualifier [generally]. We don't really know the percentage of the companies who do pay, but judging by the recent openSSL debacle, it's not great. I know this is probably not the right forum, but I was hoping to engage collective wisdom to come up with a third option, which would guarantee payment of some kind for an open source development.