Open Source Licensing - Cuts Both Ways? 367
shortscruffydave writes "The Register is running a piece Open source databases - a sword that cuts both ways? which mentions one of the potential pitfalls of open source databases: "Open source is just another licensing model: the more accepted it becomes, the more it is adopted at a strategic level, the more it plays back into the hands of the traditional behemoths that dominate the industry". " I couldn't disagree more with the author of this piece, since I think the success of Postgres & MySQL are already contra-proof positive, but the piece is still an interesting read.
OpenSourcing a DB (Score:4, Insightful)
I call bull (Score:5, Insightful)
The key argument for open source vs closed source is: The source is available, you can support/develop it by your own or hire in support/development/warranty, now try that with closed source.
All disadvantages for open source are at least applicable for closed source, closed source has no real advantage on open source.
Personally I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes you can change the platform you are based on, but this typically costs more money than it is worth.
Yes you could modify the source, but this will cost more money than it is worth in R&D.
I.E., yes you are locked in, in the same way that the traditional behemoths that dominate the industry haved succesfully negotiated.
Misread TFA? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article seems to view the present hobbyist-driven projects as solutions procured in the same way that a company buys in commercial programming. The differences in modus operandi are so great that this cannot be the case. The trick is to find where the middle ground lies in order to profit.
Postgres? (Score:4, Insightful)
For MySQL you could be right, but Postgres? It's not backed by a commercial group as is MySQL, and while it can be seen in a LOT of commercial (enterprise) situations, it's still a tiney speck compared to it's commercial backed friend MySQL (even though it is much more of a "real" db).
software obsolescence (sp?) (Score:5, Insightful)
The benefit of open source is that if the original corporation writing the code stops supporting it there may be a community behind the software that will continue to support it as you transition. Also, another company may spring up with the same codebase.
--Keith
Where's the surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
WHAT?!?!? You mean the "behemoths" can use open source too? How could this happen??!?! NO NO NO NO!!!!!
[Sarcasm off]Well what do you expect. Don't forget that opensource software != free software. of course the big guys will start using opensource too, now that they've started to see that light. What did anyone expect? Did you want to FSF to have a monopoly on opensource forever? I think not. I think the result of "big behemoths" switching to open source will be more secure software being delivered to end users. That's the whole point of OSS!
I for one welcome our opensource behemoth overlords.
What a contentless article (Score:3, Insightful)
Know what you're buying. Know who you're buying it from. Consider the entire lifecycle of the software solutions you're building. Oh, and there was a throwaway blurb about open source.
Don't RTFA. It's a waste of time (Score:3, Insightful)
The central point seems to be that a company looking for an OSS product which is supported by a large company, will end up going with a large company's OSS product.
Oh, wow. Insightful +1
IT Investment (Score:5, Insightful)
With that said, given the choice between installing a poorly supported, poorly documented open source database, or something like Microsoft SQL Server, its obvious which solution will let you keep your cushy IT position. Furthermore, as good as I have to admit MySQL is, it still does not have support for such common things as triggers, views or even basic stored procedures never mind data warehousing.
For these open source products to be taken seriously, the same sort of fundamental support and functionality will need to prevail as the costs of not having these far outweigh the monetary costs of the common retail solution.
non-article (Score:1, Insightful)
Trust the vendor? (Score:4, Insightful)
No doubt that there are valid reasons for a commercial database vendor. But that guy makes about as much sense as the drooling drunk at 2am in front of the seedy night club in the bad part of town when it comes to "strategic decisions".
Strategic decisions by definition are dangerous. When you decided on PeopleSoft 10 years ago this looked strategically sound. Until the good burgers from Oracle came along and bought them out in order to squash a competitor. By no fault of your own you are fucking fucked when you're a PeopleSoft customer.
Au contraire I argue that especially in the db market having source access to your database software is about as strategically valuable as it comes.
Sorry mate, but I have seen to many examples of customers being fucked over by vendors of strategic software and you can go and tell the PR department of { Oracle | Microsoft | IBM } that they are just dead wrong and for an "analyst" it's bad form to just reprint their spew.
Not that I accuse you of doing that, but your "analysis" leaves a strong stench of not being quite independant.
Old FUD argument, easily discredited (Score:3, Insightful)
For those who didn't know redhat just posted record profits, and the share price just jumped about 12%.
There is certainly money being made in open-source. The difference is: open-source will not die without money.
Bloor's fundamental error (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, open-source projects don't need to make money. Secondly, if users are dependent on them, they don't go away.
The "problem" that Bloor describes is either a phantom or self-correcting, whichever way you choose to look at it.
Re:I call bull (Score:4, Insightful)
Author has points (Score:4, Insightful)
So, in a large sense, I agree with the author and will even say that in some cases, there is justifiable concern for an enterprize to avoid open software solutions.
Having said all that, I'm far from opposing open source software in the enterprize, quite to opposite in fact. Products like MySQL and Apache prove that there is a lot of room and potential in big business for OSS.
Anyone -- including big business needs to do a sort of risk evaluation before settling on anything that has the ability to affect the bottom line. For a public company it is more than business sense, it is the law. They need to know that the people they bring in on a project can do what they say they can do and just as importantly, that they will be around tomorrow to fix anything that is broken or needs changing.
For this reason, the enterprize level open source market will probably grow through pretty conventional methods. Either there will be in-house expertiese or they will hire consulting firms with the skill, knowlege, and expertise to deliver. Those firms will in many cases be old, established, familiar names that recognize the need and make the right moves to get in the market.
This isn't bad at all. It brings OSS legitamacy.
Re:I call bull (Score:2, Insightful)
No such thing.
Next.
Re:I call bull (Score:2, Insightful)
You should be paid for your -features-, not for someone else's work training people on it. We don't pay Ford on the driver's training fees, nor can we.
And I call bullshit anyways - Red hat developers get paid? Sure, but do the hundreds of developers involved with the source upstream from RH get ANY of that money? No...
Re:I call bull (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Postgres? (Score:2, Insightful)
The guy mentions couple of facts and states his opinion. Come on.
Re:Postgres? (Score:3, Insightful)
A database company exists to sell copies of a database. If they produce a perfect database, then they can sell a finite number of copies, and then go out of business (or, they can switch to a subscription pricing model). Their business model revolves around adding features and then trying to persuade customers that the features are worth money. If the database they have lacks a single feature that a potential customer needs, then they will go to someone else (and the DB company may implement that feature once they realise that the lack of it is costing them business). This is how off-the-shelf commercial software works. If a customer buys their RDBMS, and then later discovers that it is missing a feature that they need (perhaps one that they didn't need when they purchased the system), then they can either buy the latest version (assuming it adds this feature) or they can migrate to a competitor's product (often difficult and expensive).
A company that chooses to base its `stategic' systems around PostgreSQL (for example) doesn't pay anything initially. If they find that there is a feature missing, then they can employ someone to add that feature. If the database is particularly important to their survival then they can fund one of the lead developers for (say) one day a week to ensure that their feature requests and bug reports receive a high priority.
How enterprises will accept F/OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
1) all had made a "commitment" to open-source products;
2) almost none had done anything strategic up to that point (they all had a little Linux and a little Apache/MySQL floating around here and there, of course)
3) NONE were interested in the cost-reductions available with F/OSS
4) ALL were interested in the advanced technology which they felt was probably more available from F/OSS then from incumbent vendors
5) ALL were holding back waiting for better support options.
There was a lot of discussion about the latter point, including some really fascinating suggestions that belong in another discussion. But for here and now, the key thing is that you don't necessarily look for support for OSS DBMSs from the developers. Something like the Pervasive model is interesting, as long as they continue to maintain close ties with the developer communities. But OSS support is a service business, with linear cost-scaling characteristics, so we will need a lot of vendors to pitch in. I think it's a nascent large opportunity.
Re:I call bull (Score:2, Insightful)
Article was worthless business/management drivel (Score:3, Insightful)
Well that's no surprise, given that the article said nothing of any substance whatsoever.
In effect what we have here is a manager of some sort seeking justification for his role in applying "strategy management" to open source. I bet the managers around him think that he's really cool and clued up on all this.
In reality, he just doesn't understand that the value of FOSS doesn't come from the financial muscle and longevity of its corporate backers at all. His entire position is 100% ill-founded, and he has no clue whatsoever about the power that FOSS can give his company. "Just another licensing model" says it all, really.
More like just another PHB or management type, totally out of his depth but still eager for control.
Re:Say what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because they're not a Microsoft shill [reference.com], doesn't mean they're not a shill. Who would care about open source databases? Maybe Oracle, IBM (DB2), etc?
Author confused about open source (Score:2, Insightful)
Complete bullshit. The companies will disappear, but the product will live on in sourceforge (or where ever), exactly oppositite of what this inexperienced author says. Every customer of the product will have a copy of the source, which at least allows them the option of continuing development and support internally. This simply cannot be said for closed, commericial software.
Re:I call bull (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I call bull (Score:5, Insightful)
The last time I saw a developer that good...was...well, hell, I haven't seen one that good.
I actually believe that developers should always sit on the support lines for the products they write. Surprisingly enough, practical, well-built interfaces start to appear after the developer is forced to take the 900th call concerning a poorly implemented feature.
Re:I call bull (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, nevermind...
Re:Personally I agree (Score:2, Insightful)
Errr... isn't the cost of changing the source EXACTLY the cost of R&D? The cost of software drops as it scales in use, that's why consumer level software is affordable. MS Office is not less complex than say Maya, or "easier" in some sense to make. It just sells more copies, so the cost of R&D (all software development (not including marketing, etc) is R&D) is spread over more customers. The worth of software, as with all things, is exactly what someone pays for it. If a company needs some piece of software, and it's not already available, then they need to pay for it. Otherwise they don't -- since obviously they're not the first ones to need it. In this case open source ensures that a company can't just sit on its ass and milk one product forever *cough*MS*cough*.
Re:OpenSourcing a DB (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a company that is in control of an open source project. If they change their project radically, in a way other users of the software don't like, these can branch at any time. This allows them to at least maintain the old version of the software.
However, there has to be open source code for that. If all you have is an API and an SDK, you can't maintain such an older version for your ever-changing environment, should those in control of the closed source move into a direction you don't like.
Re:Personally I agree (Score:3, Insightful)
So you can take open source and you don't need to do any R&D if you don't want to, and still end up with a modified product that does all the things you would have had to do R&D on just to be competitive. If you do just a little R&D, others can take your R&D and add just a little stuff of their own.
Basically, open source is like skinning on steroids.
Re:OpenSourcing a DB (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OpenSourcing a DB (Score:4, Insightful)
Granted, nothing I do requires incredible optimization to run efficently. I imagine their are some power users who need this. However, in my experience, there are more people who think they are cutting edge than there really are...
Whatever, Jeff (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, I don't see why you don't just do it. With a 2.38% share drop being less in cash than it costs to buy a piece of Bazooka Joe, it doesn't look like VA Software could really suffer too much more regardless of what you do.
Re:I call bull (Score:5, Insightful)
MySQL, RedHat, SuSE etc manage to get money just fine.
I suspect the more Open Source is used, the greater will be the creation of local jobs. Most existing general software problems will eventually get solved. But people will still need fixes to local problems and local solutions to local problems. Solving local problems means a local software developer makes more sense than someone in India.
Re:OpenSourcing a DB (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I call bull (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OS Auditing TNG (Score:2, Insightful)
Not insightful at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1: Replace the phrase "open source" with "closed source."
Step 2: Replace names of open source products with the names of their closed-source counterparts.
Check if the article's arguments and criticisms still apply. If so, the author hasn't written a critique of open source software, he's written a critique of software, and probably not a terribly insightful one at that.
Re:Personally I agree (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't really agree. Being locked in to any platform is bad, sure, but you are only as locked in as you choose to be, because by and large there are cross-platform choices out there. And although it will never be 100% trouble-free to transition to alternative software, it is usually only minimal effort/expenditure required. And initial costs are usually only marginally higher. For example use wxWidgets [wxwidgets.org] for application development instead of a platform-specific API like Win32 or Cocoa. Not only is it a good API, but available for many platforms. Choose OpenGL instead of Direct3D for 3D graphics, games etc. Not only is it just as capable, it's cross-platform and non-proprietary. For databases use cross-platform database-neutral access methods like ODBC. We've done this with our application, and with only a relatively tiny amount of additional effort, we now have the choice of several major databases, and an easy path to others. If MySQL goes bad, we can just use another database.
Many people become locked in because they choose to do so, most do not seem to realise the longer-term penalties incurred when they lock themselves in to the latest flashy proprietary goodies from the traditional behemoths. In some cases one might need some more advanced functionality available only from specific vendors, but in most cases the requirements are a lot simpler and if you know what you're doing, you can avoid locking yourself in so badly that you can never get out.
What you gonna do when they come for you... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're a developer of an OSS project, along with several others (geographically diverse). You get a call one day...
"Hi, This is Clueful Manager from MegaCorp. We'd like to use your software in our business."
You say "Sure, go ahead; it's open source. Of course it'd be nice if you'd donate to our project..."
CM says "Yes, that's why I'm calling. We'd like some extra functionality added, and we're willing to pay you to add it. What do you say?"
Maybe MegaCorp will hire you; but then you're their employee, subject to their restrictions.
Maybe they hire you as a contractor; but then what about the other devels? Are they out of luck just because it's your email that's in the README?
Maybe MegaCorp's expecting to treat you like a vendor. In which case you'd need to supply invoices, bills, tax info, and all the other things a 'real' business would supply.
WARNING TO OSS DEVELOPERS: Success is coming! You need to think about what you're going to leverage the success of your software. Do you want a profit? Or just enough to pay the bills? Do the other devels agree with you? Or, do you ignore all such requests, unless they interest you as interesting challenges?
Re:I call bull (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats exactly what you want. You get them to use free software, get them to expect a minimal cost of free. But then when something with the free software doesn't adapt to the situation well, you (the developer) comes around and says "Oh, so you need it to do THAT. I can adapt it to do that, but it will cost you..." If you helped make the OSS program in the first place, that means business for you. For talented developers, this is a far better lot it life (suckering managers in order to get them by their balls with the word "free") than competing for a job to make proprietary software with a guy in India that makes less in a year then you want to make in a month!
Authors, architects don't give away their IP for free, neither should you.
These groups also don't have to deal with major outsourcing (yet). Maybe if they do, they will use the old bait and switch as well- such as OSS software!
Re:Personally I agree (Score:2, Insightful)
The result of this pressure to prevent forking is that the 'authors' go to great lengths to prevent breaking backwards-compatibility and new features are discussed at length. If any of the existing user base complains about upcoming changes, then their concerns are usually given a great amount of weight.
If the 'authors' had a closed source project, then they would feel free to behave in an autocratic fashion as long as it wouldn't cost them "too many customers". And thanks to vendor lock-in, they could screw their existing customer base pretty hard before "losing too many customers".
Re:I call bull (Score:2, Insightful)
The answer is, of course, yes.
And the closer we get to coding that well, the further we would get from revenue. That's BAD. Real bad.
Re:OS Auditing TNG (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I call bull (Score:2, Insightful)
I've made my living for more than ten years using various software packages, development tools, databases, what have you. Certainly plenty of things that pass whatever line you want to set to mean "serious". I have never in my life called tech support for a software issue. If I need to pay someone to help me use your software, your software is not worth my time. The whole "you can make money from support" OSS argument is total bunk. If your software is good enough, you can't; and to whatever extent you can make money doing support, so can anyone else. Open source is great if you're not trying to make money from doing development directly, which is actually a lot of the time. But it sure isn't all the time.
Re:What you gonna do when they come for you... (Score:2, Insightful)
With material things one vendor cannot give away the thing and crush all the competitors, because there is marginal cost. But with software, there is no such thing as marginal cost. Take Netscape for instance - success was coming, but it was just soo easy to put them out of business, because Internet Explorer was free. What's your guarantee that as soon as success comes around, someone won't undermine you the same way? You can pretty much just make a living at this, because as soon as you get too successful, you'll be put out of business. Instantly. Patents won't help, because they don't matter, with patents what matters is who got the deeper pockets for lawyers to keep a trial going for a decade. In the end the free market drives the prices to the marginal cost, which is 0, unless there is continuous need for new capital investment. These days this continuous need to reinvent the same wheels in the language of the day is what keeps prices going, but frankly, what radically new stuff have you seen in software since say 1995 (Mac/Win95 GUI/Internet/RelationalDB)? Where is the new stuff? This software field is maturing now. All we see these days is the same old stuff with lower prices, and some big iron corporations running around like the chicken with the head cut off, erecting new legal schemes to lock in and control before prices do fall to 0. The only real advancing thing anymore is hardware, even if slower than it used to be, and software is just there to keep up with it. Your major reason to upgrade is simply because old software won't handle your gigabytes of space, or USB gadgets. There is a need for 'new' information, just like there is a need for new books, and new movies. But that needs radically new things, innovation, not just the same old thing with a new face slapped on it. You can only command a price if you innovate, when you provide customers something new, that they really want, and if you sit still, all your prices will fall to commodity prices. The other way to command a price is of course to become a monopoly where you patent mouseclicks and keyboards even with prior art present, then go beat everyone up in court over it.
It'd be so nice if people could freely share and build on each other's work, instead of everyone having to climb the same hill, redoing the same work. Remember what Newton said? He could see farther because he was standing on shoulders of giants. How did Newton make a living off of producing information? He wasn't selling or licensing the stuff. There was a free exchange, with credit given where credit is due, and as far as money goes, your reputation earned you a stipend, where some rich sul
Re:IT Investment (Score:3, Insightful)
You're being a little presumptive there, aren't you? You'll keep your cushy IT position right up until your CEO starts noticing that his competitors are doing just fine with OSS (where appropriate, of course), and with greater flexibility and no vendor lock-in. Maybe you'll have some splainin' to do?
Seriously, though... Maybe we need a discussion of what "support" really means, when it is necessary, and how much it's really worth. It's been years since I've been more than a Google search and a minute or two away from any answer I've needed on the OSS that I use. How much of the need for external support is actually created by vendors themselves, and the closed nature of their products?