6 Myths About Open Source
07/04/2008, 2 months ago
With all the discussion of Twitter clones, the idea that Open Source software is some sort of magic bullet that will achieve scalability and free users from some concept of tyranny that results in application outages. There's obviously a huge misunderstanding about what Open Source really means, so here are six myths about Open Source:
1. Open Source means free.
Just because there's no charge for the code itself, that doesn't mean that an Open Source application comes without hidden charges. You obviously incur server charges, but you also probably need to pay someone to maintain the software and the system that it's running on. That may require paying someone to learn about the software or paying for a service contract from the application's developers. Everyone has to be paid eventually.
2. Open Source succeeds because it has a dedicated community.
One of the surest things about any Open Source project is that the developers on a project won't remain consistent. Any time you have anything resembling a democracy, you are going to have differences of opinion. Sometimes those differences drive developers away from a project. Sometimes people take the project and fork the code so they can add the features that they want and create their own version. And sometimes people just get busy and lose interest in maintaining code they aren't getting paid to write. There may be new developers who take over, but the project may also go stagnant with no one left to develop it.
3. Open Source can break a market wide-open.
This might be partially true, but only if people are looking for something in a mature market that is dominated by established companies with an expensive product. When Open Source goes up against a venture-funded company that's running an ad-supported or low cost service? There isn't a huge motivator to go to the application that's slower to update and add features.
4. Open Source means I can do whatever I want with the code.
Open Source licensing is one of the messiest and hardest-to-understand parts of Open Source. Developers choose licensing by the project. Some Open Source developers have been working on code for years and still don't understand any of the legal ramifications of the licensing agreements. And then there are the numerous types of licensing. You have GPL, LGPL, AGPL, various forms of the MPL (Mozilla) license, various forms of the Apache license, the BSD license… anyone following this? Each license has anywhere from minor to major deviations from one to the next. Lawyer up!
5. Open Source means anyone can add features.
Sure, go right on ahead and add features. But how do you keep those features consistent across multiple platforms if you are building a distributed Open Source system, everything needs to be compatible, which means it has to be distributed from a central source. If those responsible for maintaining that central source don't care about your desired features, good luck getting them added. Fork it? Go right ahead, and return to Myth #2.
The other thing is that adding features isn't a simple "let's jump in and fix it." You have to come into someone else's code and become familiar with it. That's a significant investment of time and energy to code a feature that may not get accepted in the end.
6. Open Source builds better software and fixes bugs faster.
I'd estimate 90% of all Open Source projects are run and built by volunteers. That means that builds and bug fixes are done in people's spare time. Speedy doesn't come into play. Have a production outage, or need an emergency fix when the app goes down? Good luck getting it fixed if your developers are away on vacation or at the day job blocked behind a Net Nanny.
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90% of all Open Source projects are run and built by volunteers.
Care to cite some sources? Or is that something you made up?
Jimmy, you’re right… that’s probably low. There’s only a small percentage of high-profile open source projects that any company pays for. I’d say a majority have only one or two developers and the active life expectancy for the majority is probably under a year.
funny and mostly wrong
silpol, why do you think it’s wrong?
@cindy because what I do as my daily job since Nov’04 is open source product series - and I see gap between reality and your post.
I thought it was mostly right.
My instinct tells me that most highly successful open source projects have solid funding and programmers on some company’s payroll. But I don’t have any data to back that up. In the case of OCI (where I work), we successfully used an open source license to penetrate the CORBA market where the main competitor was closed source and expensive. As far as open source producing “better software”, I definitely think that is a myth…perhaps more so for GUI applications where usability is involved. Community input may work best for server-side apps, algorithms, implementing standard protocols, etc. But not for producing a simple consistent user experience. An finally, to wrap up this rambling comment, I offer the bug I submitted to HSQLDB a few years ago. It has not been fixed, however they do offer consulting services. So if I could pony up and pay for the bug fix, they’d fix it in short order.
Silpol, if you are working on an OS project for your job, then you aren’t part of what I’m talking about. I clearly delineated those companies who OS their software.
the only true problem is legal one - US is worst legal territory in world, it is merely shark pool with no real value… I would personally sign order to carpet-bomb whole place if I knew how to get all lawyers in one place (no, this is NO joke), just to clean up and show rest of world what shall be done with all US legal system.
Wow, silpol, tell us how you really feel.
@cyndy no, it is not just project - it is long standing program on exploring into open-source as way of thinking in whole company, and we do often go VERY close to what is open source “there, outdoors”… like running particular small projects intentionally as non-company one’s… or running it with low costs incurred still outdoors… and going through juggling with licensing nightmare… I can make it longer to make you clear how close we are to true FOSS.
yikes silpol bin ladin
silpol, we do have a mess, but we aren’t the only country like that. Tech moves way too fast for laws to keep up in any country.
@noah no BL business here - I used to serve as officer in USSR Air Force, exactly that part which had US coverage down to Mexico… the joke was that worst part of job is rubbering off America from map
@cindy I’m sorry but whole notion of precendent law and IPR comes from US
@silpol: precedent law comes from the UK, and, somehow, from Roman laws (which were ‘discovered’ by judges, not ‘designed’ by lawmakers). it has its drawbacks, sure %) but it also have certain merits. OTOH, IPR has only drawbacks.
profy.com runs, THX to Apache, GPL, CC & other Open Source Licenses
@9000 in UK they have at least a decent excuse - they have no Constitution as we know it
The real opportunity for open source is to apply the model to commercial software and build companies around it. By releasing the software and building a revenue model around services, support and training (often 2x to 3x the software cost for proprietary products) you can drive a significant improvement in the quality of the product and most importantly its applicability to the target market. Oh yeah - and most companies require fixed SLAs for their IT infrastructure so they will nearly always pay for support.
A real statistic is that in the latest release of the Linux kernel, over 70% of the enhancements were performed by coders working on behalf of their employer. The volunteers have gone corporate.