I caught a blog debate between rival open source software (OSS) companies on what constitutes the true form of open source business. One writer states: "OSS development is not just about providing the source code for your application. It is much more about building a community around a shared project."

OK, we get the suggestion that OSS is a culture of sorts, that it doesn’t involve just sharing code. In fact, the author's blog is titled "Open Source is Not a Marketing Term." Its understandable if the author is criticizing misuse of an industry movement's name. However, the author goes on to imply a kind of good v bad hierarchy for business models within the OSS movement: “There are several OSS business models. I, of course, am biased towards ours, which is the software is always free (as in freedom) but you pay for services and support. In other words, it’s like being a carpenter. You can buy the same tools that a master craftsman uses, but it is doubtful that you can produce the same quality of work without investing a lot of time. We don’t sell software, we sell time.”

How exactly is “selling time” inherently better than selling software? I’m sure the author would be delighted if his competitor stops selling software and starts selling time out of a sense to undertake a truer form of OSS business. In fact, he may laugh all the way to the bank...

The author then criticizes “hybrid” OSS models by stating something, that perhaps, much of the OSS movement can be characterized by: "…the dual-license model, which is what MySQL uses. They publish all of their software under the GPL, but for a fee you can get access to the software under a different license. The main downside to this is that an outside contributor must turn over the copyright to MySQL or they won’t accept the code. I understand the reasons for it, but in my mind it negatively affects community contributions. Why should I want to work for MySQL if they are going to directly profit from selling that work?"

If I get this right, the author of the blog is asking “what incentive is there when you have to give up your exclusive IP rights by combining your code with OSS?” The author replies to himself that this may “negatively” affect community contribution to OSS projects. Acknowledging that viral licenses may deter combining source code, the author is basically stating what proprietary companies have known about GPLd and other open source licensed software for years: what’s the point of contributing proprietary code if others will simply profit from your work!

posted by Noel Le @ 12:55 PM | Free Culture Movement

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