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One consistent argument from the FOSS Movement is that it represents something new and unprecedented, even revolutionary. However, as Siva Vaidhyanathan from NYU argues, one must be careful when asserting modern phenomena as any kind of “radical rupture in the flow of history.” FOSS development-technologies have been around for decades, subject to business, societal and technological dynamics. FOSS is nothing new, and changes little in terms of economics and industrial organization. Ironically, a major source of misunderstanding over FOSS also exemplifies how FOSS has long been established in the technology sector- IBM.
An excellent history of IBM that helps explain the firm’s current backing of FOSS was released by Martin Campbell-Kelly and Daniel Garcia-Swartz. Pragmatism Not Ideology: IBM's Love Affair with Open Source Software (2008). The scholars argue that IBM has long embraced practices similar to its current FOSS strategies. … IBM’s apparently contradictory position is nothing new. Software can be open or closed source; it can be free or for-profit; and it can be written collaboratively with users or not. IBM has been writing software for more that half a century, and during that time it has delivered software with practically every combination of these attributes. IBM has never had any ideological commitment to one form of software creation or another; its strategy has always been entirely pragmatic, and aimed at maximizing the business opportunity determined by the economic and technological environment of the day.
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…in the 1950s IBM followed what today would be called an open source model—its software source code was open, free of charge, and written collaboratively with its users. By the mid 1980s, all of these attributes had been reversed—IBM’s software was closed source, sold or leased independent of hardware sales, and written without the collaboration of its users. It was then operating much as any other independent software vendor. In the mid 1990s… the company embraced both open systems and the open source model. Since then IBM has been in a state of transition, achieving a balance between free, open source software and proprietary software... The technology sector continually witnesses shifting business models due to commoditization that cause firms to seek profit in other products-services where they can achieve comparative advantage and that are valued by their customers. These shifts, such as moving from proprietary software to services, are merely changes in corporate P&L models. The bottom line remains, for firms such as IBM- profit.
Increasingly, IBM’s revenues will come not directly from products but from computer services consisting of a bundle of hardware, software, and expertise. This is much as things were in the 1950s, and the preceding half-century when IBM was an accounting machine supplier. IBM has always preferred to offer a bundled service, with rather limited transparency of the true allocation of costs. IBM bolstered the FOSS movement through thick-wallet corporate backing. The inclusion of the FOSS community (and purportedly, FOSS values) into IBM’s business model leads some to decry peer-production as displacing of commercial entities. Yet, IBM not only retains its profit motif, but also maintains formal organizational capacities, while leveraging a few developers in the FOSS community. FOSS has neither displaced IBM's raison etre as a commercial entity, nor its internal organization. For all its advocacy of the OSS model, IBM remains very much a proprietary software developer at heart. In 2005 its total participation in the open source community numbered about 700 developers; by contrast, the Informix acquisition alone added 2000 developers to IBM’s tens of thousands of regular programming staff, and its dedicated software sales force numbered 10,000 individuals. Understanding IBM’s actions as business motivated reveals IBM’s support for FOSS as contingent on the firm deriving overall profit. Consequently, the extent of IBM backing for the FOSS community will vary on how much FOSS helps IBM reach its business goals. The proliferation of FOSS relied on traditional profit seeking firms such as IBM, and the movement's sustenance will continue to do so.
posted by Noel Le @ 12:17 PM | Academia, Free Culture Movement
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