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A quote on the open source software

« H E Yakov Fain :: email
posted Sunday, 22 March 2009

 I like quotes by great minds. Here's my favorite quote by Henry Ford:

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.

As of today, we've submitted drafts of 75% of the chapters of our upcoming O'Reilly book "Enterprise Development with Flex" . Some of these chapters had opening software-related quotes.  Our editor suggested that if decided to open chapters with quotes, it should be done in every chapter for consistency. This makes sense.

Chapter 6 is titled "Open Source Networking Solutions", which begs for a specific quote on  open source software, but I'm not aware of any pundit who said something short and catchy in this field.

No biggy, I decided that I might as well come up with a quote myself. In less than three minutes I gave birth to this one:

99% of the people who reject using the software until it gets open sourced, neither plan nor will look at its source code. 

Now it's your call. If I won't get feedback suggesting a better quote on open source software, I'll keep this one.

So why do these people want someone's software to be open sourced?

1. Some just hate these filthy rich software vendors and want them to have less control over their own software they created spending ton of money and other resources.

2. Some of them were raised as communists and don't like when other people work hard and make money selling products of their own work.  I used to work for a person who said "All people who drive Lexus are assholes". As simple as that.

3. Some of them just hate the word proprietary.

4. Most of them hope that the remaining 1% of smarter guys can potentially fix/improve it, if need be.

5. Some of them believe that if the software is open sourced, its bugs will be fixed sooner and requests for improvements will be noticed a lot sooner.

6. Some individuals and most corporate IT shops want to copy this software without worrying about getting the licenses. But guess what, even open source software has a variety of licensing options.

OK, but  why do people open source their own software?

To put it simple, they failed to sell their software, and this is THE main reason. But I can certainly give you some minor ones too: 

1.Because they failed to create a software that can be sold for $.99 to millions of people and work on iPhone.

2. Because they can't afford to hire salesmen who are members of the same golf clubs as CEO's of Fortune 500.

3. Because other people already did the same, and having proprietary software hurts your image.

4. Because they are sick and tired of giving away their own software for free while paying people for answering tech support questions. Open sourcing software and creating user forums might lower the number of help request a little bit.

5. They don't need this software anymore, but instead of dumping it, they can earn some good PR by open souring the sucker.

6. Here's the main reason: they hope to substantially increase the number of users of their software and turn a small number of these users into paying customer (tech support, training, customization).

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comments (7)


1. Valery left...
Monday, 23 March 2009 4:22 am

"So why do these people want someone's software to be open sourced?"

Item for open source development tools/libraries. 7. Because it simpler to understand how the software works or to find bugs within a software. I can't imaging how one can subclass Flex DataGrid without having sources at hands.

When talking about end-user software, I'm personally more concerned about open protocols and formats rather than the software code. No one can stop you from using e-mail, but once we were prevented to talk/chat via Skype for almost 2 days... And we have no better option that to sit down and wait for fix (or interntional-wide Windows Update completion, as we were told).

"OK, but why do people open source their own software?"

simply doesn't work. For contra-example, there is a plenty of commercial software for handhelds, and the creators have enough revenue with supporting only Windows Mobile and/or Symbian platforms.

is for sure the main reason. Who ever could predict in 2002 that small JBoss startup will be a pain in a$$ for IBM in 2005+? Interesting, it looks like social networks and open source software share the same main principle: both are gathering the POWER (the user base) via giving them something for free. In certain sense, successful open source project creates own social network, and even religion ;)


2. Yakov Fain left...
Monday, 23 March 2009 5:39 am :: http://yakovfain.javadevelopersjournal.c

The first of your statements are applicable to 1% of either software developers or vendors.


3. Murat left...
Monday, 23 March 2009 10:33 am :: http://www.flexjava.org

"99% of the people who reject using the software until it gets open sourced, neither plan nor will look at its source code. "

Well probably same amount of people who buy cars equipped with airbags also don'use the airbags (in 10 years and 3 different brands i didn't) but it can be very helpful if you are in need. If the project is open sourced you can dive into the code and at least make minor adjustments for your needs. Hibernate is a very mature and high quality tool but once we need a feature which hibernate did not have and we could manage to debug the original code and add the part we need. The other reason is, open sourcing usually shows there is (hopefully) a community which will drive the future of the platform instead of a vendor locking everything to their products and also i agree that people also believe the bugs and improvements will be faster as you mentioned. Actually this one can be both very true or not so true... I remember few stories which the community couldn't fix so fast and efficient but just like in Java6 for MacOs example, sometimes it can really work much faster.


4. Yakov Fain left...
Thursday, 26 March 2009 5:33 pm

Great! This is how I'll start Chapter 6 of the book:

“99% of the people who reject using the software until it gets open sourced will never even look at its source code when it’s done.”

“Most of the people are not planning to use airbags in cars, but they want them anyway.”

From the conversation between Yakov and Murat.


5. Muthu left...
Monday, 30 March 2009 12:06 am

Yakov,

I am expecting the Book "Enterprise Development with Flex" at Book Stores in India.I wish to learn Flex. I strongly believe RIA will be future for Internet.


6. Murat Yener left...
Monday, 30 March 2009 2:12 am :: http://www.flexjava.org

Oh, does this mean I ll receive one copy :) ok kidding but we are looking forward to see it in the shelfs


7. Nathan left...
Monday, 11 January 2010 5:42 pm :: http://www.nirvaha.com/products/quote-so

While I agree with more or less all of the comments thus far posted in this thread, I think there are a few more reasons why people might want to open source their software.

1) In this economy many software developers cannot find regular employment. For many of these, an appealing option is to develop some sort of open source software - basically a portfolio piece to help enhance their hirability. I personally know two such developers in exactly this situation... This may be a temporary phenomenon, due to the combination of the tech boom (leading a lot of youth to pursue tech as a career path) and the recent recession. Nonetheless, it is a factor.

2) If a company promotes an open source alternative to a major product, they will probably be noticed by the larger company eventually. At that point, if they've become a big enough thorn in the side of that company, they may be purchased. This is quite lucrative, if you know you're good enough to make a competing product.

Of course, these two factors are probably relevant only to a very small percentage of open source developers. In any case, I still think they're significant in explaining the open source phenomenon.