OSS and getting money for it (was: [tlug] Re: Why Vista Sucks)

[Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>]

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:27:07 +0900
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com> wrote:

> Attila Kinali writes:

> I explained what you asked, you say you already know it, and you still
> don't get it?

Well, i might have an understanding of the topic, but i definitly
didn't understand your arguments in a broader sense.

Beside, i always like to ask people to explain things again,
just in case there is a point i didn't completely understand :-)
 
> The point is that this deadlock gets broken all the time, in fields
> where there are property rights in what's being sold.  Free software
> is giving away the store, without replacing it with anything a sane
> 3rd party would want to invest in.

Hmm.. I don't know whether giving away the major asset (ie IP)
is that much of a problem. Yes, it makes the usual way of generating
money in a IP-world impossible, but i don't think that there isn't
anything else we can sell. No, i will not bring here the argument
that support can be sold, it has been proven that this works only
under certain, quite strict circumstances.

>  > Yes, i know i will sound like a OSS zealot, but if it doesn't
>  > get implemented in OSS, then the interest in this particular
>  > feature isn't big enough. If the interest would be big enough
>  > someone would actualy do it, either because he needs it or
>  > because someone pays him for it)
> 
> That's a reasonable point of view for the developer, but it's just
> plain wrong if you've got a million people willing to pay $1 for a 1
> man-year project, but no way to collect from more than 10,000 of them.

That's a logistic problem at most. But if there are really
one million people who want to have a certain feature, then
this demand "field" in the population will get someone to
work on this. Believe me, i've seen this more than once
with MPlayer and FFmpeg (which are btw quite good examples,
because they are very complex OSS projects for which a developer
needs some quite profound knowledge).
 
> If you want to fund projects on one transaction per project, go into
> real estate.  In software you have to sell lots of units at small
> margin over media costs just to cover development costs.  If you need
> to sell lots of units, it's an insane business plan to set things up
> so that you have a million competitors giving it away, driving both
> your margins and your unit sales down.

True.

>  > >  > Of course, under the condition that the bussines model works.
>  > > 
>  > > Which is an extremely strong condition.  Again, at BALUG Mark S said,
>  > > "we don't know how to design working business models for open source
>  > > yet."
>  > 
>  > Yes, but it's a strong condition no matter for what kind of
>  > thing you try to make a working business model.
> 
> Sure.  But compared to developing and selling proprietary software,
> developing and selling open source is the equivalent of tying one hand
> behind your back and then using the gun in your free hand to shoot a
> hole in each kneecap.

Not true. Developing OSS and selling OSS are two orthogonal and
barely related things. Unlike in the comercial world, OSS does not
depend on sales to be able to develop. Thus, you should at least
reformulate your argument in a way that it doesnt contain development
anymore. Otherwise i agree, if you give your "product" away
for free, you cannot sell it anymore.


> There are known business models based on open source.  There just
> aren't any yet known in which lots of people get paid for developing
> it.  Eg, you'd think that if anybody deserved to get paid for his
> development work it would be Uli Drepper.  But when he gave a talk in
> Tokyo a few years back, he claimed that all he got from Red Hat to
> support his glibc maintainership was free coffee; he still had to show
> up at work in the morning to do his paid job.

Yes, true. Only a small part of the people who work on OSS 
are paid for it.
On the other hand, i know quite a few who are paid for OSS
developement. You'd be surprised how many companies need
customized kernels for their application (enough to pay
quite a big part of the whole development). But even if you
do not generate money by selling your software, you stil can
earn a lot of money. E.g. when MPlayer/FFmpeg needed money
for a new server, we had to close the call for donnations after
two and a half weeks because we already got more than twice what
we needed.

I guess that to some extent so few people are paid for OSS development,
because they just want to keep it as a hobby (at least i am one of
those).

			Attila Kinali

-- 
Praised are the Fountains of Shelieth, the silver harp of the waters,
But blest in my name forever this stream that stanched my thirst!
                         -- Deed of Morred