Open Source isn’t Open Source if it’s closed

Consider me a tomato.

Savio posted a MySQL needs to reconsider closed source article yesterday. I’m sure anyone who knows me knows that I’m one of the ones who is likely to be very vocally outraged if they do. I agree that the mythical “point #3″ is the hard part of the general Open Source business plan … although I’d put forward that #3 is always the hard part, Open Source or no. However, before I rant uncontrollably about that, I was struck by this:

Can you think of a better testament to the power of the open-source business model than saving Sun Microsystems?

Short answer:

Yes

First let’s quibble over words again. If I answer the question the way it’s intended to be answered (semi-rhetorically), it would be glossing over the gross error in assumption it contains. Somehow, after talking about closing MySQL source, we are asked if that wouldn’t be a testament to the power or the open-source business model. How, possibly, could that be considered the Open Source business model? It’s not. It’s the “we write proprietary software and give you a free-of-cost crippled version to get you hooked.” Let’s think about the people who employ this already:

• Adobe
• Oracle
• Microsoft

I swear I will vomit if anyone tries to tell me those companies are Open Source. I mean, for crap’s sake – can someone _please_ recompile the Flash Plugin for 64-bit? No? Oh, that’s right – it’s not Open Source!

Savio potentially gets the main point (sadly) right:

Sun’s open-source success, while great, will get lost against the breakdown of its high-end enterprise systems business.

Sun still sells a lot of hardware and makes a lot of money from it. The transition to a services based company isn’t going to be quick or without pain. The way to be successful isn’t to jump ship at the first sign of hardship. We all knew the hardship was coming. It’s inevitable anytime a company attempts a transformation. The answer also isn’t to ditch trying to be a services company and move to trying to be a software company. The proprietary software companies are even trying to get out of the proprietary software business. It’s got that sexy margin, but it’s a dead-end place to be.

Long answer:

Yes. If the Open Source business model can save Sun Microsystems, I will be very happy. As long as it’s actually the Open Source business model that Simon is talking about. However, I think something that businesses and the world in general could do with is someone showing that it is still possible to be successful while thinking about something other than the current quarter’s profits. Businesses used to have 5 year plans. Now if they can get through one quarter without wanting to throw their babies to the wolves to gain an extra $5, we’re all impressed.

And before you tell me about the “real world” and how “this is how business is done” I’d like to remind you that all of the currently failing banks were chasing exactly this kind of crack-like obsession with illogically growing a ludicrous rates every quarter. It’s not real – it does not last – and once it breaks, it breaks really, really hard.

Marten knows I’ll be the first to throw tomatoes, but I’ve continually been impressed with Marten, (and now with Simon and Jonathon) and I think he already knows that closing parts of MySQL would be a terrible business choice. He’s one of the smartest CEO’s I’ve met, in fact… there is very little chance he doesn’t.

Free Software Understanding Follow-up

I would like to add two follow up thoughts to yesterday’s post about Free Software.

First, I was speaking with giuseppe on IRC who said:

however, the economy of free software goes beyond passion. You can make money with services, as you have done, personally, for years!

Giuseppe is, as usual, right on. I hope I did not imply that I thought it was impossible to make money or to make a living around Free Software, or that to endeavor to do such a thing was folly. What I was trying to get at is that pursuing the writing of software with the goal of becoming rich was a bad idea. It might happen, but if it does it will likely be due to luck.

I am currently paid by Sun Microsystems to write Free Software. I am thrilled about that, and think Sun are wonderful for supporting me. I would also love to have some chunk of Free Software that I write make me rich – but neither my employment by Sun nor my desire to have countless large estates worldwide have much to do with my desire to write Free Software. The two are largely orthogonal, although they do intersect at the point where one is beneficial to the other.

Second, I received a blog comment from thpi:

Don’t you think that you need professionals for the sciences to evolve?
The bare definition of a professional is related to getting paid.
I wonder if movies would’ve became what they have, if there was no money behind actors (directors, producers, etc).
Do you make a living writing code? Would you be as good as you are if you had to live on something else?
Maybe there’s a healthy middle between everything for a penny and all for free.

I would like to agree with this, then answer a question. I would like to end by agruing with the semantics of a word choice and rejecting a premise. (All in reverse order)

First of all. I agree. There is certainly a healthy middle between everything for a penny and all for free. As above, I think making money from writing software is fine, and I’m glad that I do. I’m more on about motivation – but we’ve covered that. Also, we have the ever-present problem in English of the overloading of the word Free. It’s been beaten to death, but here I’m talking about Liberty, not the eradication of Capitalism.

Secondly, yes, I do make a living writing code. Although it is quite difficult to prove in any sensible way, I don’t think that I would necessarily be worse at it if I did not make a living doing it. The more operative thought here might be that if I had a non-computer related day job, then I might not be programming as much. However, I currently only rarely design lighting for a show, perhaps only once or twice a year. I still get paid to do it when I do, although I do not light shows so that I will get paid. And I’m at least “skilled” to fit the other implied definition of the word professional above.

Which brings me to professional vs. amateur. Now, I know I have as much chance in reverting changes to English on this as I do on convincing the pop-culture folks that the word “hacker” does not mean someone who breaks into computers. But bear with me. To me, the word professional means someone who does something because they are paid to, and the word amateur means someone who does something by choice. Modern connotations there are that professionals are skilled and amateurs are unskilled. So there are two different possible meanings implied by the sentence “Don’t you think that you need professionals for the sciences to evolve?” Of course, I think that skilled individuals are necessary for the sciences to evolve. As I think I’ve already made it clear, I do not think that paid individuals are necessary. So I think that the words professional and amateur are unclear and potentially clouding in this discussion, and I reject the premise of attempting to entangle skill and employment status merely because we use the same word in English to describe both things. It’s the same problem we have with the entanglement of Freedom and Without Charge.

Of the 49 definitions of the word “free” that are listed in the Random House Dictionary, only 5 of them have anything to do with money or cost. I’d cite the OED, but their services are not without charge.

I won’t deny that monetary injections can remove obstacles and make things easier. All I’m really getting after is that I have gotten together with a group of fellow artists and put on a production of a three-act Sam Shepard play in a borrowed warehouse for no pay where we charged nothing at the door. We rehearsed 6 hours a day in an un-air conditioned warehouse in West Texas in May. It was dirty. It was hot. I was a lot of work. Why did we do it? Because we wanted to.

Will Free Software go away once the economy collapses? No. We may have to find friends who will let us borrow their warehouse for a little while. We may have to get day jobs farming or fishing or fending off looters – but we will keep doing it and our products will continue to be better than those produced the other way, because it’s what we want to do.

But please, by all means, make a living!

Free Software still isn’t Understood

I’d say I normally don’t respond to idiots… but I think we all know that’s a lie. Our fine friends at Slashdot pointed out an “interesting” article which opines that the downturning Economy to Give Open-Source a Good Thumping. There’s a bit in the middle that points out that people still don’t get it.

The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren’t going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some “back end” revenue. “Free” doesn’t fill anyone’s belly; it doesn’t warm anyone up.

The disconnect seems to continue to be an idea that we’re doing the Free Software in hopes that it might turn a profit one day. The people who share this disconnect seem to think Free Software is a “gimmick” of some sort.

I’ve got news for them… we do it for many reasons, none of them are “we think we’re going to get rich.” Of course, there isn’t actually a “we” that I can speak for, but I can speak for me.

I write Free Software because I believe that Software should be Free.

I write Free Software because I enjoy writing software.

I write Free Software because someone needs to, and although there aren’t that many things I can do that will actually make the world a better place, this is one of them.

It so happens that I grew up and went to school in another field that shares a similar characteristic of individual drive – Theatre.

If you are going to study theatre with the intention of pursuing it as a career, the first thing to learn is that it is likely you will never actually make a living at it. Here are some stats (1):

• There are more than 100k professional actors in the US. Fewer than half of them make an income higher than the national poverty level for a single person in any given year.
• On average, only 5 or 6% of them make a normal middle class income in a given year.
• In a country of more than a million lawyers, 4.5 million mechanics and nearly 8 million machine operators, there are only about 2000 to 3000 people who make a living as an actor for at least ten years in a row.
• Add to that, there are nearly 200 graduate actor-training programs and over a thousand university theatre programs churning out new actors every year.

If you want to make it as an actor, you might spend your entire life working your ass off to try, and you have to be in the 98th percentile to make an average middle class existence. Oh – and if you make it to the big time on Broadway, you get to work 8 shows a week.

Doesn’t sound like a smart way to make a gazillion dollars does it? You’re right – it’s not. It boils down to the fact that even if you are trying to make money from theatre, you are essentially just stupid. Even though Julia Roberts and Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino and Johnny Depp all make millions, you won’t. Statistically.

Guess what? Just because Jeff Bezos and Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Monty Widenus are now quite rich, doesn’t mean I am. I’m not. And you won’t be either. Not by programming. Not ever. Statistically.

Now, do you see any of the actors stopping? I’ve worked on several shows while here in Seattle. A couple of them have been at respectable professional theatres. A couple have been with fringe groups. I have myself produced and directed a couple of shows funded solely with the ever popular “sweat equity.” Do I do it for money? No. I had a day job – and the “stipend” that I get paid even at the pro theatres when amortized over time spent would be far less than minimum wage. Do I do it because I was hoping that a travelling reviewer from New York would happen in on my production, review me and put my name in front of a big-time producer? No, that would be assinine.

I do it because it’s what I do.

I won’t stop if the economy takes a downturn. In fact, if I’m out of work, that means I’ll have more time to spend doing what I do. If EVERYONE is out of work, we’ll ALL have more time to work on things.

I truly feel sorry Andrew Keen and his ilk. If the economy truly bottoms, I’ll still have something to do, because what I do isn’t driven by the chase of wealth. I will still know who I am when I wake up in the morning.

I will still do Theatre.

I will still write Free Software.

I hope Mr. Keen has a hobby.

————–
(1) From Acting Professionally by Robert Cohen

Using a Mac is “selling out”

I was just reading The Big Mac Dilemma, who asks:

is using a Mac “selling out” from your OSS ideals?

and I’d like to be very unfriendly and answer unequivocally… YES.

Just like anything else non-free, it tempts you with shiny baubles and the promise of making all of your wishes come true. And just like anything else non-free, it shackles you into a sub-standard environment all the while telling you that your computer is now obviously superior. (Mail.app? Really? Oooh.. bouncing icons…)

I’ve been working on Drizzle recently, and in the not-so-terribly-long time we’ve been working together, we’re already having to deal with people from the OSX camp complaining about library dependencies. I can’t ingore them, because like Eric was saying, just about all the developers these days are running either OSX or Ubuntu. However, it seems that amongst the wonders and joys of running corporate evil from Apple, the powers that be at Apple haven’t seen fit to bless you with the gift of a set of magical tools for, oh, I don’t know Installing Packages and dealing with dependencies. Nevermind that Debian has had this for years and years and years now. Nevermind that even the slow-on-the-uptake folks at RedHat have finally started playing the game with YUM. (following CentOS’ lead… but props for learning from your community RH!) What do you get from Apple – kings of “empowering” the user and providing a wonderful user experience? You get zilch.

Nada.

Nothing.

Why? Because Steve Jobs doesn’t want you to have it. Because having an easily incrementally upgradable and extendable system does not help sell OS licenses. Because Apple does not care about you.

Because you have chosen to run a non-free OS.

And now there is nothing you can do about it

Yes, yes. I know. Fink. Darwin Ports, etc. I don’t run OSX so I can’t say empiracally, but each of these seem to have some deficiency that makes it unsuitable for a normal developer/user of OSX to use it to install libraries. I’d also like to point out that we’re not talking about odd libraries here… we’re talking about glib. Pretty stinking standard.

So go ahead, sell out. Buy a Mac. But when I want to use standard libraries to develop something and it’s hard for you to install them… I have no sympathy. You are the one who placed control of your machine in the hands of someone else.