Sun: Open source is about self-interest

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Not that simple...

You're forgetting something very big: if it wasn't for companies like Microsoft, Sun, Novell, and (insert any commercial software company here), there would not be OSS because there would not be people "rebelling against the commercial software conglomerates who threaten to make people pay for the very act of turning on their computers".

It's the same as people who make their own diesel fuel or try to find the next big "energy-saving device". What drives it? It's the need to compete. It's the need for power.

Open Source is primarily about rebellion. Read the story behind how the GPL got started: the founder wrote a LISP interpreter and gave the source code to a company as public domain, who then made modifications and profited from those modifications. The GPL and FSF is the result of someone who got mad that someone else improved an idea he had and made money from it. That's all.

It goes against something that I learned in business school and from my father: don't give away something for free if there's a commercial interest in it. In other words, if the founder of the FSF hadn't given away as public domain his LISP intepreter, would the GPL have the same drive it does today? Would it even exist?

Open source as a concept is a good idea, and there are very good examples of it in practice -- i.e. Apache and Sun Microsystems (they do give out a lot of source code). And I'm sure that Sun and Apache are both making a good deal of money from their open products too.

The idea behind copyright is to give a creator an opportunity to profit from what they make, profit from their efforts and ideas, which is the foundation of capitalism. What has a lot of people on edge is the fact that there are capitalists who happen to be very good at making money (like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs), and that is where open source is rooted, in the hatred of big business.

The biggest argument for open source is the assumption that changes can be made quickly, problems repaired quickly, which is bull, which is why a lot of open source projects don't survive. Why has Apache survived? Why has Sun survived? Because of effective project management, something a lot of open source projects do not have.

If it wasn't for Sun, OpenOffice would not exist, plain and simple. The most successful projects have successful managers behind them. This is why the "quick changes" are a fantasy with the successful projects. Open Source is not necessarily faster than closed source at releasing patches. There is still a process.

And there isn't a "world of resources" available either, because not everyone can be a programmer, and the project manager must discriminate to maintain the quality of the project. Not all ideas can go into the mix.

The "zero viruses and worms" bit is also rubbish. The first virus appeared back when IT was still in its infancy. It's about power, it's about dominance, it always will be. Viruses and worms are about taking control, taking over, taking control away from someone else and placing it in the palm of your hand. With a virus, you can simply cause a message to appear, or you can hold critical data for a 7+ digit ransom. Open Source will not, in any means, eliminate security threats such as this.

And proprietary software started with special needs, the market just got bigger. At one point, IBM actually said that the market for the PC was under 10....

No wars or terrorism? Are you joking? Read a history book, we've been fighting for eons, and why? Power.

And I can also guarantee that if there was a company making millions of dollars with the assistance of a product I wrote, I wouldn't just sit around and say "go ahead, keep making that money, I'll keep giving you my software for free." Heck no. I'd want a piece of the pie, which is why companies like SuSE (now part of Novell) and Red Hat took Linux commercial.

Posted by: kb1493   Posted on: 06/28/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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