Who Works In Gated Communities? 70
interstar asks: "This report in Upside Today suggests that big software companies are attracted by the "gated community" model - unsurprisingly as it seems to be classic "help us debug our software and we'll keep the copyright, thanks". Upside (in my opinion, naively) presumes that because this idea is attractive to software companies, who will invest in it, it's obviously going to take off. But is this likely? Who works for gated community projects, and why? If it's just for the "bounty" isn't this just programmers working as contractors? Surely for there to be any special open source goodness, these projects must attract collaboration over and above that which is payed for. But are they? And why should I contribute to a gated community rather than a true open source one?" Such a model seems awfully one-sided to me. Sure the software companies like it, but what do the developers get out of it?
A (Bill) Gated comunity (Score:2)
B) Every home in the comunity has a "open through licence" printed on the front door limiting the terms of use of that house.
C) When walking down the street, comunity residence are encouraged to give hail hitler salute while clicking their heals together and saying "Hail Balmer".
D) When residence of the comunity look out the windows of their homes, internitently the windows will turn blue with the text "this window has performed an illegal operation. Further use of this window will make windows unstable.".
When residence complain, microsoft insists that these new "variable tint windows" is an inovation of household engineering and nobody, not even the DOJ, can prevent them from inovating in this competitve window market.
E) At the comunity block party, Steve Balmer insists on drinking to much, and embarassing himself by pissing on Mr. Gates lawn.
___
money (Score:2)
It's all about the Benjamins (Score:5)
But you'd better believe they all frequented Amazon.
It just comes right down to daily life concerns for these people. They want to make the most money they can, spend it in the manner they choose, and they're not really about supporting causes unless it's an easy cause to support. You know the kind of people I mean: they recycle their trash, but they don't carpool.
Software licensing is the same way. Sure, it's easy to say you support open source when you're downloading somebody else's work, but when it comes to your paycheck, that's a much harder concession to make. If I wanted to hunt around for an open source employer in this market, I'd be hunting for quite a while. Instead, we all contribute to each other's programs out of a community experience. We all learn from each other, we all profit from the other's knowledge, and better products come out of it.
Some times you just need to fix that damn bug (Score:4)
Better than completely closed models (Score:1)
I think gated communities are great! (Score:1)
they get paid (Score:3)
Sure the software companies like it, but what do the developers get out of it?
They get a paid. A large proportion of people are less concerned about causes than they are about funding their lifestyle. Perhaps if they are faced with an equal choice between gated and non-gated development, they may choose the former.
There is a lot of closed source out there, and for many commercial reasons it is probably not practical or worthwhile to go open-source. Also, given the state of some commercial software that I have seen, customers would probably start losing sleep if they saw the quality/state of the software that runs inside of their products.
Open source software is great, but there are many other causes, and many other interesting things and much more to life.
Better than nothing (Score:2)
Okay, it's not Open Source, but at least you access to the source code and can fix bugs when neccessary.
The number of time I've wished i could do that I can't count!
Infact, Borland has always done something like this with their VCL for Delphi. You can't redistibute the source, but they ship it, and it's great for seeing how they do thing, or fixing (fairly infrequent in Delphi) bugs.
Aw, and I thought this was about living on site! (Score:2)
Not as bad as it sounds (Score:2)
What the customers get from this is the ability to do bug-fixes themselves, if necissary, as well customizing the application for their individual needs.
Unlike a traditional open-source project, the company still retains the copyright, but customers can do what they please with their own copy of the code. This makes the application much more useful and powerful to many of our customers.
I'm not saying that an open-source model wouldn't be more valuable, but an open-source closed-license model can have its uses as well.
Re:It's all about the Benjamins (Score:1)
What's the issue here? (Score:1)
The only reason this MIGHT be a problem is that some of you might have a lot invested in OSS and are woried about competition, what are you? Learning a bit from Bill Gate$? Competition is GOOD! It will keep all the second-rate OSS from being it's final stage - "good enough, nothing better out there, I can stop working on it now for a year or so." If the OSS triunphs, Great! If the "gatted communities" and "big corp" SW comes out on top, than thoes who program the OSS haven't worked on it hard enough, and their stuff SHOULDN'T be prefered - we DO live in something of an open market, thoes of us in NA and EU anyways.
Re:It's all about the Benjamins (Score:1)
You know, I'm sure you're a really decent guy just communicating his larger-than-average social conciousness, but this comes off as so judgemental and ignorant of most peoples' reality, it's a great reflection of the whole "movement".
How terrible - people who are just trying to make a living and don't give a fig about RMS and the GPL. I guess you just have to feel sorry for 'em. Don't even carpool! OHMIGOD! The cretins!
REALITYCHECK
Yeah, the trip to work is 45 minutes, I'll definitely want to add another 30 min to that by stopping by and picking up the gang. To support somebody's cause. No problem. Especially knowing that Joe often has to leave early to pick up his daughter, and Bill stays late to do his manager thing, and Hector and Alex eat lunch at 11:30 while I can't really eat until 1pm at least. And if Robert prefers to spend his lunch hour browsing at the bookstore, well that's too bad.
And I have a two-seater.
/REALITYCHECK
One viewpoint from a "Gated Community" (Score:3)
I work for an organization that has a software product that comes with source for customers, so I guess we count as a "gated community project". However, I would say that at least for us, we do not view this as some variation of an open source project. We view it as a way to deliver extra value to our customers.
As a bit more background, there are plenty of open source projects in our area, but none have the power of the commercial offerings. The other major commercial offerings do not offer source. And we pretty much have to keep this software "gated"; the revenue it brings in is probably mostly for support, but we'd loose a fair amount from people who only buy it and don't continue support. (There's also the minor detail that the current code base is awful, and is being rewritten from scratch.)
Who works for gated community projects, and why?
Currently, outside our organization, only two of our customers, although one or two more use it to help track down bugs. I'm pretty sure this has a lot more to do with the poor code base than the business model....
If it's just for the "bounty" isn't this just programmers working as contractors?
In this case, it's because the benefits directly help their organizations. One customer has shared their work with us --- improving the port on a less popular platform --- which has helped all who use that platform. The other is fixing up esoteric features that were broken in the most recent release (before my time); if we weren't abandoning the current code base we'd use his changes as well.
Surely for there to be any special open source goodness, these projects must attract collaboration over and above that which is payed for. But are they?
Absolutely to the former --- for one thing, we only pay in gratitude and recognition.... For the latter, not much now, we'll see after we produce a code base that doesn't require a master to safely do even minor changes.
And why should I contribute to a gated community rather than a true open source one?
A good question. In this case, because there is no open source project that can do the job. All the open source projects are done by part-timers, are generally at alpha level (although many are quite reliable), and all but one are fatally flawed in one way or another. The only one that isn't fatally flawed has a long way to go, and has a nice extension system but doesn't incorporate scripting.
(This is a domain where some of the code should be in Perl or the like for flexibility, and some needs to be in C/C++ or the like for efficiency. No one is really doing both, and our closed source competitors have fortunately (for us) made a grave architectural mistake, as some of our former customers have discovered to their dismay.)
We offer support (which is critical to some --- you wouldn't believe the number of calls we get in August, when the only sysadmin who knows our software is on vacation), and have two people working nearly full time on development (webmaster, sysadmin, and escalated support duties take a little time away from development), and have a simple pricing model. And the cost of our software is pretty small in the scheme of things for most of our customers. All in all we occupy a nice niche for a subset of the market.
Comment removed (Score:4)
PT Barnum explained (Score:4)
int main () {
struct sucker {
int dummy;
} *s;
while (1) {
s = malloc (sizeof sucker);
we leave it to fend for itself.
*/
sleep (60);
}
return 0;
}
Re:PT Barnum explained (Score:3)
Check it out - right here [hp.com]
An alternative is to run the program on the computer owned by PT Barnum himself. It has infinite memory and he will let you see it for a nickel.
I don't like this... (Score:4)
First, I really don't like the misconception here that all Open-Source software has to be free-beer as well as free-speech. That's a really big problem for this community, namely that we're seen that way. I suppose it's understandable, since pretty much all Open-Source software to date has been free-beer, but that doesn't make it right.
What's my point here? With true Open-Source development, the developer does get compensated. Not necessarily in terms of money, to be sure, but there is the fame aspect, or even just the right to use one's own code as one wishes. And other rewards stem from this too, of course, but I can't list them all here. Consider, for example, Linus Torvalds. I seriously doubt he even needs a resume anymore; all he has to do is say "I wrote Linux" and he could likely just walk into any computer job he wished (well, maybe not at Microsoft, and there are formalities that need to be taken care of, but he could certainly at least get an offer anywhere else).
Perhaps I misread the article, but it seems that a "gated community" developer gets nothing at all. No money. No right to use the software (since it looks like you have to have already purchased it before you can develop, so that right is not a benefit of coding). And the company takes all the credit. Who would want to work in a model like that? It takes the OSS and proprietary models and it mixes the worst of both.
Of course, I could have been misreading the article about the compensation bit. But the fact remains, I see a lot of people here who say this is better than not being paid for OSS. Who says you can't get paid for OSS? You can make some serious money off of software, and in the end the business model you use won't make that much difference. I wonder which piece of software will prove that once and for all. Perhaps Mozilla/Netscape, once it's released, can make its way to obtaining this. Or maybe it will be Darwin; granted it's currently only the core of OSX that is Open-Source, but if the core succeeds there's no reason to believe that more of the OS couldn't possibly follow. Or maybe it will be something else. I don't know. All I know it's only a matter of time before someone hits it. And once that happens, maybe people will finally really see the advantages of the model, unhampered by the myth that you can't make money with it.
The advantages are.. and the rewards are... (Score:1)
Now in return, the software company should either condisder the OSDeveloper as an employee, payting for the hours spent on it, or my favorite, the company should give them a lifeime subscription to use of the software and derivities (sp?) that the company or other OSD develops
Applying the Model (Score:2)
The point here is not that some licensing model is better than another, it is that a particular development model is better than another. The open source developement model is radical because it flattens heirarchies and is an anathema to bureaucracy. People will do well to adopt it as their development process, even if the software produced is a closed product. The lesson learned is that open communication channels and peer equality produces better software.
Gated open source (lower-case, not branded) software will allow the development model to enter a corporate world in desperate need of some hierarchy flattening. Even small, traditional companies can't get over the failed "you can't do that you're a peon" mentality. How often have you seen technology decisions made behind closed doors by people who are hire on the food chain but don't have a clue about the technology? This is something the open source development model is designed to prevent. If you can do it, prove it. Discuss all ideas openly and select the best one.
After this develpment model is adopted, it will natural lead to more openness. People have to understand what having a voice means before they can understand that everybody should have one.
The license issue is a distribution model and should be discussed seperately from the development model. Closed source software developed using the open source development model will eventually suffer if the wrong distribution model is being used, but we shouldn't discourage the spirit of this model from being adopted just because we are a few years ahead of our peers.
Anonymous idiot (Score:1)
What amazes you? Reality? That there are people who work 30-60 miles from home? That there may be people who don't like their co-workers? That some people smoke in their cars? (You'll love my cigars. Really.) The limited amount of time in any given day? People with kids and disparate schedules? What aspect of all that are you having a problem with?
There are a lot of ways to save energy "for the future". Solar doesn't work where I am; windmills could help. But when I have to drive to see a client, I'm not taking a freaking party with me.
It doesn't matter which OS (Score:1)
If you use a piece of software hard enough you will find a bug of some kind. Reporting that to some authority to get it fixed doesn't change for the true end user (who has nothing to contribute to the source.) Applying 'Open source' to a project does not make it magically bug-free. The user still has to debug whatever they run. (If you write it, the ignorant user will come break it!)
I mean the user tells whoever the author was that, "I wasn't there. The computer just suddenly gave this message. I wasn't near the keyboard and I wasn't doing anything. Now Fix It! I have to get some work done and this/you are holding me up!" And this same user can't even tell you what is clearly appearing in a message box on the screen.
These things happen whether you use Linux, UNIX, Windows, Apples whatever.
The only thing the user cares about is that it doesn't happen again. They don't care about Open vs. Proprietary. They still have to call some one and be all embarrassed about 'breaking' the computer. They just don't want it to keep happening. (Even if they do lie about being there when it happened.)
So it all boils down to who can read the user the best and respond most quickly to their wishes and desires. Because the true end user is really, really stupid and unable to communicate effectively about their computer.
Never underestimate the power of stupidity.
Java is such a gated community (Score:2)
Think about that for a bit.
I don't care about the copyright restrictions as long as someone isn't doing something outrageous, unfortunately companies seem to feel obliged to do something outrageouse so I pretty much have to care about them. (And yes, I do contribute bug fixes back when something bothers me. I even contributed one back to slashdot.) Therefore I will avoid gated communities on principle. Even if said company is actually fairly reasonable about it, it isn't worth my time to find that out...
Cheers,
Ben
Re:It's all about the Benjamins (Score:2)
A lot of corporations will tout how 'socially responsible' they are, but in fact are only willing to 'do good' as long as it has zero effect on their profitability. Very few are willing to make actual sacrifices in the interests of what they believe is right or good. And most people are the same way. Which doesn't stop them from complaining about, say, the traffic and the pollution.
I flirt with Godwin's law when I point out that most people are able to accomodate anything, and most people living in the Third Reich were more concerned about holding their jobs and making more money and having their taxes lowered than about any moral or ethical issues.
The Education Benefit (Score:2)
Subtle ideas to optimize the speed.
Simple ways to clarify the interface.
Slick methods to increase the functionality.
I'm not a student in school anymore and I don't have Professors and TA's looking at my work to tell me that something is sufficient or providing ideas and methods for me to learn how to improve my work.
Community source code projects allow me to watch the development of a project that I'm interested in. A project driven by commercial intersts has the added benefit that there is a paid QA staff and a paying clientele that provides much swifter and uncomprimising evaluation of the worth of the patches and "improvements".
Non-commercial open source is good as well if it's driven and controlled by people whose opinions I respect, but altruism is a less compelling quality motivator than greed.
My main interests in projects is foremost my education, but if I am interested in the project and as a user I find bugs or limitations I will contribute whatever I can (be it code or a bug report or whatever).
I'm probably not the ideal contributor to any community source project (whether gated or open), but my interest is in improving my code and my continuing education. Not profit. Not intellectual property.
That's my (limited) perspective anyway.
Re:I don't like this... (Score:1)
Re:A (Bill) Gated comunity (Score:1)
Close the Gate Once a Year (Score:1)
I think this approach would work for closed-source community: close your source once a year to assert your rights--shut down your website on New Year's Eve--and leave it open the rest of the time.
Gated Community (Score:1)
--
ack, the Nazi's again? (Score:1)
Electric utilities are one of the biggest users of carbon fuels and polluters - you gonna turn your computers off?
I didn't think so. In fact, all the traditional toys of "geeks", all the electronics and plastics those evil corporate bastards make for us are about the worst thing we as humans could be producing in terms of their environmental impact. Gonna throw away your MP3 player, stereo, cell phone? And if you did, guess what - no matter how much recycling you do, they're not exactly biodegradable.
What pushed my button was the constant moralizing of technology and rampant stereotyping of anyone not living for Linux.
Who Works In Gated Communities and Why... (Score:2)
Right to the top of my head people that work for gated community projects are a.) the Blackdown folk who are porting Java to Linux, b.) the people who contribute to Mozilla which will have proprietary extensions added to it as AOL's default browser and c.) anyone who has ever released code under the BSD license (which can be seen as gated community development since the code can be closed by third parties). Your questions seems to smack of someone who equates open source with the GPL. Remember ESR's Cathedra l and the Bazaar [tuxedo.org], many developers write open source code to scratch an itch and note necessarily to further the ideal of Free Software [gnu.org]. After all this is why the Blackdown developers work on Java, they like the language and want a port for it on Linux, and whoever copyrights the software is not a concern as long as they get a quality port of Java to Linux. Frankly, I would place myself as someone who'd work on a gated community program, simply because I'd contribute patches to proprietary code and not care if the became GPL afterwards or not. E.g. I use Visual Studio (as well as Emacs) to develop code, sometimes Intellisense (the drop down box and tooltips that show function arguments, comments and class members while editing code) sometimes freezes up on me and goes away. If I somehow get at the code and patch this I would, and frankly I wouldn't feel that a requirement for my patch to be accepted be that MSFT GPL a few million lines of code that took them years to develop. Also if I did this my itch would be scratched.
The original poster also asked: If it's just for the "bounty" isn't this just programmers working as contractors? Surely for there to be any special open source goodness, these projects must attract collaboration over and above that which is payed for. But are they? And why should I contribute to a gated community rather than a true open source one?
Hmmmm, exactly what does special Open Source goodness mean? I doubt that everyone who has ever contributed a patch or reported a bug has done this out of an altruistic pursuit of goodness. Frankly, software is simply a tool to get a job done and for most software developers that's as far as it goes. So if one had a choice between improving an established product that one uses so as to make it better and getting paid to do it or creating a competing product in one's free time while working at a reqular job...which would the average software developer choose?
Re:ack, the Nazi's again? (Score:2)
In fact, I am a Grown Up in my thirties who knows LOTS of people who juggle careers and family (and non-profit commitments and hobbies and more.) I even know single-parent families with incomes of less than $25000 a year who do the same - and show more conscientiousness about their effects on the world than either you or I. (Since my family is from Latin America, I probably have points of references that you can't even imagine, if you really want to play the You Don't Know So You Can't Say game.) I'm not that judgemental of those who don't do all they can: I just note that they aren't doing all they can. There's a differencing between moralizing and observing, and when the latter is demonized as the former, God help us all.
And as I understand it, the issue isn't "Linux," but specific models for software development, some of which are based on a model of closed development that we at least nominally consider sub-optimal.
Re:It's all about the Benjamins (Score:2)
There's nothing wrong with choosing convenience over a cause, but it's important to remember this part of human nature when looking at things like the open source movement. Of course a lot of people think that software should be open source, but does that mean they're going to drop their highly profitable closed-source programming jobs and start giving away code?
Re:Anonymous idiot (Score:1)
DON'T DOWNLOAD SUN'S JAVA SOURCE CODE (Score:3)
Java is a pretty good language, and Sun's implementation of it is reasonably nice. I think it's good if people use Java more, even on open source projects. Truly free implementations of it are becoming available.
But the only people who might want to download source code to Sun's Java implementation are people who work on implementation-related issues, and those are just the kind of people who we need to fix bugs in Kaffe or the other open source VMs. If they become "contaminated", that's bad. Besides, there isn't much point looking at Sun's Java source code--Sun is very unlikely to incorporate any bugfix you come up with, even if it fixes a long-standing bug. They are simply too busy.
Look at Apple (Score:2)
Their situation: they want OS X to run on x86, but don't want to make the investment to support it. The solution: open source the low and middle level bits of the OS. The NeXT community gets a free x86 version of NextStep and works on it because it gives them control of the OS they really want. Meanwhile, Apple gets x86 porting done for them making it relatively easy to drop Carbon/Cocoa/Quartz on top should they ever decide to do so.
The key here is that Apple is willing to relinquish control of what they're not interested in doing themselves, while also realizing what they need to hold onto.
Re:Some times you just need to fix that damn bug (Score:1)
You can do it now. There are plenty of open source projects for you to choose.
Or did you mean, in ideal world everybody would be forced to work and use open source sofware ?
Some benefit, but not as much as open source. (Score:2)
Still, for an essential piece of software, if there are no alternatives, this is better than nothing. People will contribute bug fixes for problems that absolutely need to get fixed now. If the license is reasonable (no "contamination"), it will speed up the development of compatible libraries. And if programmers get paid for work on such a project, it also seems preferable to working on a project that is completely closed source.
Re:they get paid (Score:1)
Where is open source DB that can rival Oracle or even MS SQL ?
Wake up. Open source is about reimplementing (never ending chase syndrome) solutions that were created by commercial developers. Not much more.
Re:Not as bad as it sounds (Score:1)
In real world ( which is BTW the only one out there) this is much better solution than that GPL nonsense.
Better software is the reason (Score:2)
Yes, you can say "Microsoft puts out crap," and maybe that's true, but CorelDraw and Photoshop and Delphi and Allegro Common Lisp and QNX are all excellent products. So you can't slam all "for pay" software developers. Hooking up with such a group makes sense, because it results in better software for everyone. A group of renegade college students trying to clone Excel or Word is more doomed to fail, and not the best use of one's time.
Re:It's all about the Benjamins (Score:2)
Who sayd that jobs involving Linux and open source pay less than closed-source jobs? Two month ago, I left a very Micro$oft centric outfit and switched over to a company with a more open attitude towards Linux. I gained 20% in pay. However, to tie in with the environmental thread, my new situation is harder on the environment: as it is located out of town, I go there by car, whereas I used to take public transportation to get to my previous place of work. Oh, btw: hi Benjamin, are the radiators still there, or does MS give you a chill in the back?
Re:ack, the Nazi's again? (Score:1)
While I don't yet claim that unwillingness to carpool is morally equivalent to tacit cooperation with the Third Reich (I hadn't mentioned the Holocaust) I do claim that the fact that most people base their daily choices on local concerns rather than broader ones is responsible for both facts.
Not Yet? Oh good, because I get so annoyed after reading messages from the self-appointed guardians of all-that's-good-and-noble that I just have to go out for a long drive. I'd take the small car, but the big one is in front of the garage and it's an inconvenience to open it.
I am a Grown Up in my thirties who knows LOTS of people who juggle careers and family
Well, good. Then you know how stupid it is to expect them all to car pool. Personally I don't have kids (and in fact, work at home) but I really can't see my former co-workers all car pooling. In fact, in New Jersey they closed the HOV lanes because it actually caused MORE pollution by tying up traffic even worse.
There's a differencing between moralizing and observing, and when the latter is demonized as the former, God help us all.
The "moralizing" was obviously in reference to the original post, which is exactly what he was doing.
that we at least nominally consider sub-optimal
Well, actually not everyone believes that, but around here that dogma is generally accepted, yes. Just as is the attitude of the original poster that developers and businesses who don't accept the open-source "way" are all clueless. I'm saying that attitude is myopic and judgemental, and keeps a lot of valuable ideas and people out of the little boys club that the "open source community" seems to be. (I'm talking perceptions here folks, and that is at least one of the mainstream perceptions of open source AND SlashDot.)
And I'm sorry, but I don't know how you can mention the Third Riech without conjuring up the Holocaust. And I still don't know why you would, general pessima or not. Again, it shows an alarming lack of perspective.
Commercial takeup is irrelevant to success (Score:2)
ESR was right to say that the commercial world would do well to adopt open-source practice, but that doesn't mean that there is a reciprocal dependency. In many respects, commercial interest just creates inertia which limits the natural growth potential of free software, in part for no other reason than that it tends to create big products which are then not easily built upon by the rest of the community. It's the pure RMSian meaning of "success" that gives the community its massive potential, a continuous cycle of enhance-or-reuse and redistribute without limit, and the commercial world is simply not a part of it unless they drop the strings that they would otherwise attach to everything they release.
The short answer to the article then is, it doesn't really matter as far as the success of free/open-source software is concerned. The only really relevant aspect to it is that greater awareness of these issues results in more money being available for community-aware developers in general, which for the most part is probably good.
Re:Anonymous idiot (Score:1)
Public transportation and car pooling are NOT an option where I live. It just doesn't work for most people. That doesn't make them bad people, or any less concerned with the environment.
Re:One viewpoint from a "Gated Community" (Score:2)
One advantage in the true gated community (not what the article was apparently referring to) is that for ecological niches that aren't big enough to support a company on support contracts, this model allows a user to get support in working with the code, without costing a spare time developer precious time, or requiring the economic friction of setting up a consulting contract.
(From posting #27 by Millennium, referring to the Upside Today article): Perhaps I misread the article, but it seems that a "gated community" developer gets nothing at all. No money. No right to use the software (since it looks like you have to have already purchased it before you can develop, so that right is not a benefit of coding). And the company takes all the credit. Who would want to work in a model like that? It takes the OSS and proprietary models and it mixes the worst of both.
That I would have to agree with; I didn't take too long in trying to figure out the business model of the company described in Upside Today, but it sure didn't look attractive.
By comparison, we go to significant efforts to give recognition to contributors, not just in the usual places like sources, but in release announcements to the community list. And we personally thank them by email and often phone (since we're usually helping them work with the code). Plus we have an unofficial and unadvertised policy that any major contributors to the community (not just coders) get a year or so of support if financial circumstances force them to drop their support contract.
(From posting #34 by wmoss): Community source code projects allow me to watch the development of a project that I'm interested in. A project driven by commercial intersts has the added benefit that there is a paid QA staff and a paying clientele that provides much swifter and uncomprimising evaluation of the worth of the patches and "improvements".
Now this is a great point. People who pay for mission critical software have expectations, and generally aren't shy about expressing them! And we do our best to maintain a true community; e.g. the design and features of the previously mentioned rewrite of our product have been hashed out on a mailing list set up for this purpose. It's been very useful to us in helping to design the new version (contributors have supplied designs to hard problems, organizing principles, vocabulary, as well as feedback), and it helps to make sure it will do what our customers want. There are many flavors of "openness"....
(From posting #50 by jetson123): The "gated community model" fails to address one of the major concerns that drives people to open source in the first place: what do I do when the vendor goes away? Under a "gated" model, the end user or the community still has no rights to take over development of the system themselves.
A good point (in fact, I'm going to check to see what our contract says about this). But as a practical matter, if the company fails and the code base is abandoned, you're in a much better position than with any other proprietary business model (even code escrow can get sticky in bankruptcy). Whoever ends up with the rights to it will have no motivation to sue if they decide to abandon the code, and I imagine that like real property, some day statutory and/or case law on adverse possession (aka "squatters rights") for intellectual property will develop.
Re:mv gated_community_model /dev/null (Score:1)
Like Darwin Streaming Server [apple.com] perchance?
Who is going to contribute?
Obviously nobody! That's why not a single line of code has been touched! It still runs only on Mac OS X Server like release 1.0 did! All those people are delusional that think they're running the FreeBSD 3.4 port! [apple.com] Or the Red Hat Linux 6.2 port! [apple.com] Or the Solaris 7 port! [apple.com] Or the Windows NT/2K port!! [apple.com] Or a number of others that are in progress, but I trust the point is made sufficiently.
What's the incentive?
Well, that's such a stupid question it should be marked "Troll" at best, isn't it? Obviously contributors want to benefit from the improvements made. In the above case, the revenue model of providing a streaming broadcast service on the hw of their choice is obvious to the point of triviality, as we can see from the number of companies springing up based on precisely that.
My guess is there will be little return on investment on these projects, and will therefore be unattractive to the software companies.
That's a pretty embarrasingly silly guess, given that companies are basing their business model on the use of exactly that, as just mentioned...
I believe that the "gated community" model is destined for
Well, anything's possible, I suppose. But your belief is directly contradicted by the factual evidence to date, so I'd consider it pretty unlikely.
Misundertanding gated communities (Score:1)
The original post confuses two concepts: sponsored communitie and gated communities. Some open source projects now have corporate sponsors, but they are truly open source. The Upside article mentioned HP and Sun.
These are sponsored communities. The "gated communities" are not for average open source contributors to visit at all. They are for corporations to use to develop their own software with their own employees and their corporate partners. The cool thing is that they are using open source development methods within the gates. That means that more people are learning about open source and will be ready to contribute to the public projects.
Re:ack, the Nazi's again? (Score:2)
That is not *yet* the case, although the health consequences of the massive pollution in Mexico City have yet to be quantified. What is the case is that no one *intends* to cause this damage, they are just taking care of families and trying to get by.
Your huffy self-justification is just like that of every individual who would be responsible for such destruction, just like the Good German who only voted for the Nazi's because they improved the economy and reduced crime, and turned a blind eye to the consequences. You are actually worse than Joe Everyman, because you would pursue the behaviour out of defensive spite.
Re:Look at Apple (Score:1)
Sure they do. They get a NeXT-based OS that allows them to keep using their existing code and expertise. That's why they're working on it.
Why not just use any of the other free UNIXes where the drivers already work for all your hardware? What advantages does Darwin offer?
The Slashdot readership seems completely unable to get this -- of course it makes no sense to throw out Linux or *BSD in favor of Darwin! That's not who it's for. It's for users and developers with an existing investment in NeXT. The fact that the average "Hey, I installed Red Hat!" Slashdot reader has no use for Darwin and has never heard of anyone who might is irrelevant.
REALLY Working out of a Gated Community (Score:1)
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Re:ack, the Nazi's again? (Score:1)
As it happens, I work at home, do you? Do you take a bike everyday to work? Make your own shoes out of dead animal skins? You can't possibly be an ecological activist if you use computers, the making of which requires vast amounts of nasty chemicals.
Come on, where do you draw the line? At what point of primitism do you get before you're not responsible for world destruction? How do you justify existence in a developed country at all?
You want to be a condescending hypocrite, fine. Like I said originally, we don't need any more judgemental assholes. Have a nice day.
Re:I think gated communities are great! (Score:1)
I don't like GateD's license. It is absolutely on the verge of being totally unusable. It is well known that the GateD consortium is pretty liberal on its definition of "research" work, so it would not actually be unusable in my case.
The kind of Open Source license that I see as being acceptable is the Netscape Public License. It retains ownership, without limiting what I do with the stuff for my own devious uses, and in that sense has no strings attached.
I feel it is important that companies have a safe license to use to release stuff without relinquishing control. I'll pick the software with the least restrictive license when I have a choice, but in some cases the best software isn't as free. I'm overjoyed I can get the quality in exchange for relinquishing some of the options (like being able to publish a derivative work), if that's what it take them to release the software at all. A lot of company executives have cold feet and would like to retain control. That's fine by me as long as my ass is covered.
GateD is evil, because if you ever get in a conflict with them, it'll be hard to assert your research use in court.
Re:ack, the Nazi's again? (Score:2)
I'm not interested in a 'purity test' or contest for sainthood. No one wins those. I just would rather good things happened than bad. You've inherited some sort of perverse damnation-theory, whereby any sort of criticism of a behaviour is tantamount to being damned to being not-a-good-person. Sorry about that, but there's a real world with shades of grey, in which harm is caused inadvertently. My point about the good old Third Reich is that the Germans who supported the system were not essentially different that the rest of us. They weren't even Nazi's - they were just minding their own business.
Happened to me... (Score:2)
Anyway, I use software from a number of companies where I or my company actually paid for the source code. One of them sent me a letter one day: they were horrified that I actually paid for my personal license when I sent in usable bug fixes at a regular basis.
I don't care that I'm helping a company for free. I just want the bug fixed, and having the source allows me to do that much quicker than to depend on their engineers to fix them. But it's mighty nice to get a reaction like this!
Attitude to bug fixing. (Score:1)
This is so true... It's going to be very interesting to see where Open Source ends up from the end user perspective.
There is a lot to be said for the Red Hat model: have users pay a small sum for the software, offer limited support, and make the software available for free to the relatively small amount of people who can provide fixes on their own.
I'm personally sick and tired of folks using Open Software because it's cheap, and offloading support to the mailing lists without bothering to read up on the FAQ's. But to me it's a small price to pay for direct access to the developers, who I can address in their own language (C :-)
Anyway, while I agree with all your points, I'd like to add one: the alternative to Open Source and its attitude to support. Ever reported a bug in Office to Microsoft?
When end-users report a bug to Microsoft, it gets ignored. When a small company (500 licenses) reports a bug, it gets ignored. When the CEO of a company the size of the Ford Motor Company reports his feelings to Microsoft, they listen. Unfortunately, the number one wish (fix the more egrecious bugs) tend to get a lower priority than the new feature requests.
Oh well, this is not to bash Microsoft. Most software companies work this way. It's just that Microsoft is a really bad and really visible example. Microsoft does have the moral equivalent of "STABLE" releases of Office. They just don't tell anyone. I work for a big corporation, we get all the good stuff from Microsoft, but finding out what's a bugfix release on the gigabytes of stuff on CD's and what it fixes is like pulling teeth.
Re:Anonymous idiot (Score:1)
Opensource communities.. (Score:2)
REALLY Working out of a Gated Community (Score:1)
Reasons to justify the gate... (Score:1)
So which is it? Would you rather support a model that tells you that you're dumb and that you should be spoon-fed your software, or the one that actually shows you how the spoon works, so you can use it yourself?
Re:ack, the Nazi's again? (Score:1)
I didn't interpet the reference in the original to be "moralizing". (Maybe it is because I neither carpool or recycle.) I viewed it as an observation that people use a different criteria when the look at issues that effect them directly then when they are looking at abstract issues. Maybe a better way to phrase it is that they fully understand their position.
However, they can't or don't try to understand the opposing position.
The example I always used to illustrate the point is an incidient that occured with a former co-worker. She and I would get in long arguements that got nowhere over zoning laws. She was for them, I was against them. She came to work very agitated one day. She was upset that the housing authority (or whatever their correct name is) in the development she lived objected to the color of the new door she put on her house.
I had to laugh after five minutes. She ws basically repeating all the arguements I used against zoning laws to complain about the housing authority. Even when I pointed it out to her, she mainted it was somehow different.
Re:ack, the Nazi's again? (Score:1)
Yes, there is a real world with shades of grey, in which harm is caused inadvertently, and you're perfectly willing to accuse the 97% of the populace that doesn't car pool of being as bad as the Nazis, no matter what ELSE they may do to help the environment. That's exactly the kind of rhetoric that hurts the ecology movement in this country. Did you consider that in the "inadvertent harm" you mentioned?
Re:ack, the Nazi's again? (Score:2)
I did not make not-carpooling equivalent with "the Nazis." No where. I will tell you what I did say, you semi-illiterate boob:
I said there is a similarity in kind between normal people causing harm in two different situations, one of which happens to be one of the worst episodes blah blah.
Look, no one does everything they could, but you seem to take it as some kind of personal affront to anyone refusing to canonizing your contentious ass.
I'm not even a dye-in-the-wool environmentalist, it was just an issue to prove a point (as was the original poster's) about the everyday compromises that people make. And that is the point: especially as we get older, we make compromises. Which is OK and normal as our lives grow more complex, but we should still be made aware that they are compromises, and they have consequences.
By the way, I can keep this going as long as you can, until you slip into complete irrationality.
How about paying your contributors? (Score:2)
So, how would this fit in with the concepts of Gated Communities? I don't actually see much problem with letting people have the source: keeping it locked up does nothing to prevent piracy. Most companies I know are fairly careful about licensing the software they use, and organisations exist to police this.
The big problem with working on non-OSS software, such as Sun stuff, is that someone else gets to keep all the profits. This sucks. But if you get either an up-front payment or a share in the profits from the software you are working on, then would that make more sense? How would it be if, say, Sun started paying $10 per accepted bugfix (where "accepted" means "integrated into their codebase"), and unless you sell your patch or whatever to the company you get to keep the rights to it? Would people here find that kind of model acceptable? Would you be attracted to projects run this way? I'm interested in opinions.
Paul.
Re:Anonymous idiot (Score:1)
Missing the point (Score:1)
Re:they get paid (Score:1)
Are you seriously suggesting that Oracle, Sybase or MS SQL are so badly written that the only reason public at large is not allowed to look at the source code is because "customers would probably start losing sleep if they saw the quality/state of the software that runs inside of their products."
Did I say anything about Oracle, Sybase or MS SQL ? Or did you just construct a strawman to argue against ?
There is a lot of good commercial software out there, but at the same time, there is a lot of bad commercial software. I have seen more of the latter than the former in my experiences. Other experiences may differ. Those large companies have resources to make a good product, not all commercial ventures are as lucky.
Where is open source DB that can rival Oracle or even MS SQL ? Wake up. Open source is about reimplementing (never ending chase syndrome) solutions that were created by commercial developers. Not much more.
Did I say anything about open source rivalling closed source ? The question was about choosing to work in a gated community or a non-gated community. I pointed out reasons why people don't care, and reasons why existing closed source may not be turned into open source -- i.e. slowing the time it takes for there to be a lot of open source projects to work on.
I agree that open source will 'reimplement' many closed source solutions, but its not going to happen over night, and in many cases it will not happen at all because there are still other commercial issues.
Loki's Civilization Call to Power hack contest (Score:2)
It was reported earlier [slashdot.org].
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Re:ack, the Nazi's again? (Score:1)
Open Source Developers Get Other Stuff (Score:1)
But, I guess that it's just my opinion, but then again, that's what