So you seriously believe software will be written for free in the future? Writing software is so immature, most of it today looks like a novel written by someone who would not bother to learn at least the basics of the language he wrote the novel in. With the public being (yet) illiterate, this remains unnoticed. Open source will probably be the way to go once we have the mechanisms - mostly legal - to ensure years of work do not get stolen on a few clicks. Until then, enjoy the current free software at will. If someone wants to get around it he will have to do something better than the free stuff, which is by no means difficult for a real developer. The rest will be cut&pasting what someone has decided to make public. Many of the cut&paste workers even believe they are programming (out of ignorance what it actually means or of sheer stupidity).
You're confusing "free as in beer" with "free as in speech". Companies pay us to write software that they in turn have the freedom to give to *their* customers, who then have the freedom to do what
*they* want with it, including coming back to us for further enhancements. In no way is this software zero-cost - we get paid just as much as developers of proprietary software. The difference is that the customer is getting more for their money - no license fees, unlimited redistribution rights, ability to go anywhere for support, etc. Just the "insurance" value of having sources is worth a lot to some companies. Think of how hard it is to get source escrows for proprietary products - it's automatic with free software.
Most people bring their car to a garage for simple repairs, even though they could "do it for free" at home. Why? Because it makes sense, from both a time and a "done right" perspective, to have a professional do it. Same with software. It's not the bits that you pay money for, it's the programmer's time that it takes to do what YOU want, on YOUR schedule.
Part of our job is writing new software that just didn't exist before, because a customer needs it to exist now. Part of our job is supporting existing software, in case new bugs are found. Part of our job is packaging up software in such a way that the customer has a high assurance that it's going to work correctly and easily. These "services" are worth a lot of money to software users.
Even in a company where free software development is a side-job of some tech somewhere, the benefit is that if others are using the code as well, anything they add can be shared by all who are using it. The ability to collaborate is significantly higher with free software than with proprietary - each company shares in the development costs, yet they each get the full benefit of the work. If two companies collaborate, they each get twice the bang for the buck. Now if a thousand companies collaborate...
So your agreement is "I will write the software that you want, but will distribute specified portions to other people." The key here must be a clear understanding as to who can do what with the developed software.
I see where this could work for software that is ancillary to the company profit source, say a utility, compiler, or even accounting software. Companies are more protective of the ingredients of their money-making product or service.
I have done something similar on contract work in the past where I specified that the client would not receive an exclusive license to general-purpose utilities/functions that I write in the course of my work. The benefit to them was the increasing previously-written bag of tools I carried with me.
Companies paying for embedded firmware development as part of a product being sold generally want exclusive use of the software to help prevent low-cost competition. My experience is that large companies tend to see IP as valuable stuff, to be kept, sold, or licensed, but not given away.
I've seen propriety source code for operating systems. Some of it is attrocious, and makes you wonder why you paid all that money for it. Basically you're just paying for someone else's development and/or integration time, and if you do get something that's quality then it's an added but unnecessary bonus. Big companies do not necessarily create better quality code than the low bid contractor.
This is also true for the vast majority of programmers. Even with propriety software, most programmers do not sell their software they sell their services or are hired for their services. They write software, or modify software, and their boss pays them. Consultants or contractors or independents work in a similar way, but their clients pay them instead of a boss. The difference between open source and proprietary software here in terms of getting paid is mostly irrelevant.
Well, in the seventies hams were not allowed to do phone patching via VHF repeaters if that elided paying long distance calls. AT&T had law (and FCC) on its side.
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Cesar Rabak
GNU/Linux User 52247.
Get counted: http://counter.li.org/
If we take from History lessons, the probability is high the answer to your first question is _yes_.
Replace "maps¹" for Software and rewind time to the XV century. They were considered secrets and disclosure of them (or contents) could lead to death penalty.
Nowadays we have Google maps for free and any diary has maps for the whole world in some appendix.
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Cesar Rabak
GNU/Linux User 52247.
Get counted: http://counter.li.org/
[1] more correctly 'nautical charts'
Often with "at some point in the future" too. The customer gets a short monopoly on the code, but not forever. Many customers *want* the code shared, because it's good marketing for them.
Well, yes.
And the less they have to worry about the "infrastructure" software, the more they can concentrate on their core products. Consider how many companies use a LAMP stack because it just works and there are no deployment or licensing issues.
OTOH some companies use "open source" to encourage user participation in their product. Quake was fantastically popular because id allowed (even encouraged) users to develop new levels for it. Nokia encouraged users to add to their N770/N800 series of web pads. Toshiba and Microchip give away their toolchains to make their chips more popular.
I can supply you several commercial RTOS where the source is available but it is not Open Source.
A lot of the silicon companies supply source on their web site but it is not Open Source.
There are also free programs available where the source is not.
Not all source that available is Open Source the GPL is just one restrictive license among many forms of licesne
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GO and read the original post. The complaint was that many companies take Open source use it modify it etc and do not release the source.
The other point was that some parts of the world take Open Source but put absolutely nothing into it. They use it is closed commercial applications without releasing the source.
It was suggested that effectively the Open Source programers in Europe and the US are supplying free of charge all the software to the far east for their products thereby undermining the majority of programmers in the US and Europe.
What the majority of the Open Source programmers do not realise is 95% of the commercial world that uses Open Source does not ply by their rules.
The argument was that it will put European and US software people out of work and greatly devalues software. I have found this is true. Those who argue for Open Source are generally they managers and accountants.
I was at an Industry Event 18 months ago for the electronics consumer industry where it was stated that they like Open Source because where as before they had teams of 15 people developing for a year they could now have a team of 5 developing for 9 months. It was VERY Cost effective as they could reduce the head count by 60%
As for releasing the source? That question was side stepped . When I asked later not in a forum the answer was "non one" releases the source unless some one realises they have used it and really pushes. Then they argue etc until the product is end of life and they release it.
He estimated that 80-90% of commercial users of Open Source in the consumer area do not release their Open Source. The consumers don't know or care as the goods are inexpensive (cheap)
They are inexpensive because 2/3rds of their programmers have been fired and the development time is shorter. If this model is replicated across the whole of the consumer electronics market 60% of the programmers will be jobless. However that was before the Rescission...
I can seem more people using Open Source but not playing the game (and that was obvious from the start ) and fewer programmers being employed.
Basically Open Source is Turkeys Voting for a Utopian Christmas which will never happen.
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No, I am simply ignoring the tiny minority of proprietary software that is open source. Even where the OS is open source (e.g. ThreadX) practically none of the actual customer-facing applications implemented on it are open source.
You are not writing Open Source Software... YOU are being paid to write software... It is your customer who is treating it as Open Source.
Is their main business selling Hardware?
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I think a lot of paid for development Open Source is paid fro from the marketing budget. The majority of paid Open source writers seem to work for hardware companies who see it as a marketing tool
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So technically much Open Source is actually owned by the employer... It IS possible that a large chunk of Open Source software is in fact theoretically owned by commercial companies. Now that would be one hell of a mess to sort out and no one would get rich bar the lawyers.
What in software engineering terms is a "leftist weenie" or is religion and bigotry creeping in again
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