Open source as a model for business is elusive – NYTimes, Nov 2009
In many ways, MySQL embodies the ideals of open source, in which a program’s creator releases it to the world free of charge, and legions of volunteers contribute improvements that are also freely shared. But like most open-source companies, MySQL’s sales, tied to support deals, never matched the astronomical number of downloads for its product, about 60,000 a day. In January 2008, the founders decided to sell the company for $1 billion to Sun Microsystems. And this year, Sun agreed to sell itself to Oracle for $7.4 billion.
In the last decade, [these] open-source wares have put tremendous pricing pressure on their proprietary rivals. Governments and corporations have welcomed this competition. Whether open-source firms are practical as long-term businesses, however, is a much murkier question.
In some cases, dominant technology companies have used open-source projects as pawns. Google, for example, has needled Microsoft by providing financial support to the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, which oversees of the development of Firefox. IBM has been a major backer of Linux, helping to raise it as a competitor to Microsoft’s Windows and other proprietary operating systems. Many of the top open-source developers are anything but volunteers tinkering in their spare time. Companies like I.B.M., Google, Oracle and Intel pay these developers top salaries to work on open-source projects and further the companies’ strategic objectives…
Open Gov is a dialogue, not a monologue – John Geraci, O’Reilly Radar, Jul 2009
“There were some interesting apps in there, but overall they didn’t meet with the mayor’s agenda for the city.” A city that opens up its data but expects that people building on that data should follow the mayor’s agenda is going to fail miserably in its attempt at creating an open system.
Open gov is a dialogue between governments and constituents, not a monologue. Everyone gets to decide what gets talked about and what gets built, not just the people with the data.
Open Source is not the same as freeware – Dave Snowden, May 2008
The arguments for open source (generally) and open source software (specifically) are in the main a mixture of the pragmatic and the ideological. The one thing that is clear is that all successful open source movements make money somewhere in the system, and until the fall of capitalism and/or the availability of unrestrained resource (neither of which are likely) this will remain the case. On the side of pragmatism the concept of large numbers of people testing and working on something is advanced as improving quality, and the same is an argument for increased likelihood of innovation. At the same time, such an approach also means that many views are taken into account, which can also lead to bland conformity with the orthodoxies of the present, or of the interest group who engage; become an active editor in the Wikipedia if you want examples of this.
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