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Graphics GNU is Not Unix Software

Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist? 284

Posted by Cliff from the SIGGRAPH-really-wants-to-know dept.
morrison asks: "In recent years, the Open-Source movement has increased dramatically. Harnessing the power of thousands of developers and testers has proven successful, to varying degrees, in developing operating systems, graphics applications, and web tools, including Linux, POV-Ray, Blender, Gimp, and Apache. In a SIGGRAPH 2005 discussion panel, the questions will be raised as to whether the open-source model is relevant and useful to the graphics community. Does the model of proprietary application research, development, and usage serve the industry better? Or will commercial facilities continue to primarily choose off-the-shelf solutions? Can all models work together? As a large portion of the Slashdot and Open Source community will be at SIGGRAPH, I'd really like to hear some moderated arguments beforehand before stepping up to the microphone."
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Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist? More

Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?

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  • The Vibrant OS Community (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous.yahoo@com> on Thursday July 28, 2005 @01:55PM (#13187867) Homepage Journal
    All in all, whether your goals are open source or closed source, you can benefit from the OS community's efforts. There are a lot of bright ideas out there, being developed at no cost to you. The great thing is that if a project can find one motivated developer, it doesn't need to pass muster in a committee or get management buy in. Stuff that would get dismissed in a corporate environment can get made in an OS environment. Things that might not look good on paper, but are actually really cool once realized, get realized.

    I'm not going to say that corporate environments stifle innovation, but the motivation to innovate in a corporate environment is necessarily dollar-driven. The motivation to innovate in an OS environment is desire driven. If enough people desire to see it done and turn that desire into action, it gets done.

    The OS community may not be regularly churning out Adobe killers or MS killers, but you get tweaks, utilities, apps, and sometimes that off the wall genius idea that ends up defining a new industry segment because no CYA suit saw the value in it until a passionate OS developer/group proved it.

    As for the GPL, remember that it is not an exclusive license. There are a variety of licenses out there and a number of projects offer different licenses depending on your intended use of their code and whether you'll pay for the license.

    - Greg

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:24PM (#13188219)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:The Vibrant OS Community (Score:4, Insightful)

        by qwijibo ( 101731 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:34PM (#13188326)
        It is if you have to aggregate desire and turn it into dollars before it can become action. Of course, enough people have to communicate the same set of requirements in a way that it's understood that a group of people are asking for particular functionality.

        This process is a little too esoteric and slow for some, so they just do it. This is one of the cases where one lone lunatic can make a difference. A lot of the really good ideas, like virtual memory came from people who could just sit down and solve a problem without having to convince anyone else first. Try coming up with a business case for virtual memory in a world where it doesn't exist. The value of most really innovative ideas isn't realized until long after they have been implemented.
      • Smaller groups of people with specialized needs tend to be ignored a lot by large ecommercial developers.

        That's one of the reasons that the open source and shareware development communities came into being in the first place -- too many needs weren't being addressed by the Big Guys.

        • Not all commercial developers are Big Guys (Score:5, Interesting)

          by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @03:16PM (#13188751) Homepage Journal
          Some smaller companies -- like mine -- have our own set of lunatics and there is no disconnect, or bridge to be built, between the idea of making something because you want to, and earning money, because you want money to be secure and live well. Nor is there any resistance to adding features that aren't broadly appealing, regardless of whose needs are (or are not) addressed.

          And, as it happens, we make graphics software. We're a small company with a product [blackbeltsystems.com] that has considerably more features, and more power, than either the Gimp or Photoshop, and we do very well with it. There is no problem (for us) having the Gimp, at no cost, and Photoshop, at relatively high cost, marketing to the same group of people. With a moderate price model, we can (and do) convince owners of other products to give ours a shot without any particular problem.

          The only trouble we've had is when we set our prices too low -- below $99.00, no one will take the product seriously. We've tried multiple times to set it lower, as we're well down the ROI curve, but it just won't sell below $99.95. We did find a workaround, though... we have an offer where we'll give it to you "at a discount" (for $49.95) if you say you have a Corel, JASC or Adobe product. We really don't care if you do or not; we don't even check. :-) But people will buy that even though they won't buy it if we actually price it at $49.95. The lesson? People are funny.

          Aside from the in-your-face issue of price, commercial development, large or small, by its very nature brings something else to the table that open source doesn't, and that is a constant drive to work on the product without distraction or interruption. It does this by virtue of funding the development. This ensures that the developers can be secure in the knowledge they can go home at night and get the cat fed, pay the XM bill, and so on. They don't have to work at night (though of course they can, and if the company is smart they'll reward such behavior.) They can have a rich social life. Still, they get to spend many hours a day pushing pixels, and as a graphics developer, I can tell that is a significant pleasure.

          All in all, I see no reason for commercial graphics development to be concerned about open source. Certainly there is no reason for open source to be concerned about commercial graphics development, per se.

          Frankly the risk/danger (to everyone) is not other developers. The danger is software patents. The danger comes from the legislature. You can -- without ever intending to -- run afoul of someone's invention and be in a world of financial hurt as you try to defend yourself and protect the time and energy (and money, if you're commercial) you've put into your legitimate development, and the legal system can crash your progress as sure as if they were the on-coming train in the tunnel. In my opinion, that is the problem that needs addressing, and that is what will cause the most disruption(s) to any project, be it commercial or open source.

          • The only trouble we've had is when we set our prices too low -- below $99.00, no one will take the product seriously. We've tried multiple times to set it lower, as we're well down the ROI curve, but it just won't sell below $99.95.

            And Wendy's doesn't actually sell many triple-cheeseburgers. They took it off of the menu once and found that sails of double-cheeseburgers (a product with good profit margins) fell off dramatically. Lesson: the availability of a higher-priced product increases sales of some lower-priced products.

            If you desperate to sell your software at a lower cost (maybe selling more copies), then offer a "higher-priced" version and reduce the price on the regular version. It probably doesn't even need to be very different. Heck, print out the help pages and call it a manual you sell for $30 (and costs you $3 to print on demand).

            Just an idea.

    • I'm not going to say that corporate environments stifle innovation,

      OK, I'll go ahead and say it then. By the time I have finished filling out the CMT, CMD SCM, internal monitoring tool, the problem ticket logs and the updates to the functional and technical specs (in two places), then I am all done for. Any enthusiasm for the work at hand has been sucked out of you before you get a chance to write a single line of code.

      For anybody that thinks I am kidding - think again. These are actual documents tha

      • OK, I'll go ahead and say it then. By the time I have finished filling out the CMT, CMD SCM, internal monitoring tool, the problem ticket logs and the updates to the functional and technical specs (in two places), then I am all done for. Any enthusiasm for the work at hand has been sucked out of you before you get a chance to write a single line of code.

        Your problem is not a corporate environment. Your problem is that your corporation sucks.

        No one here has to jump through hoops the way you do. Instea

  • Coexistence (Score:5, Insightful)

    by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @01:55PM (#13187871) Journal
    As I am typing this post on a Windows machine running Firefox (not to mention Cygwin, Openoffice, and a few others), I think that answers the question right there.

    And as for graphics specifically, I'd love to run GIMP on Windows, if it weren't such a pain in the ass to install.

    • Re:Coexistence (Score:5, Informative)

      by radarsat1 ( 786772 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @01:58PM (#13187916) Homepage

      And as for graphics specifically, I'd love to run GIMP on Windows, if it weren't such a pain in the ass to install.

      You're kidding [sourceforge.net], right?

      Just run GTK installer and then Gimp installer. How could it be easier?

    • And as for graphics specifically, I'd love to run GIMP on Windows, if it weren't such a pain in the ass to install.

      I'd like to kick Photoshop to the curb as well, but that will have to wait untill it measures up to PS functionality and a less confusing GUI.

      • Really, the thing is though that I've had Photoshop burned into my brain over the past 15 years...it's stuck there now. It's like second nature to me to do stuff as it's a no-brainer.

        Also, I'm an old dog, and you know the saying about old dogs and new tricks...

  • They have to co-exist... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kjuib ( 584451 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @01:55PM (#13187873) Homepage Journal
    OOS is where the comerical stuff gets all its stable code... :ducks flying fruit:

  • Let Me Think About This One (Score:5, Funny)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) * on Thursday July 28, 2005 @01:55PM (#13187876) Homepage
    Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?

    Yes.

    Tune in next week, when Ask Slashdot tackles the following mind-boggling topic:

    Quick and Dirty Ways To Drum Up Banner Ad Revenue

  • Look Around (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ridgelift ( 228977 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @01:56PM (#13187884)
    Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?
    Can libraries and bookstores continue to coexist?

    • Re:Look Around (Score:3, Interesting)

      by davecb ( 6526 ) *
      Theay certainly have coexisted, very sucessfully.

      Consider just the Unix companies who sprang into existance in Silicon Valley. First they downloaded BSD 4.1c and developed an OS for their new hardware, then they donated the fixes back to Berkeley for 4.2. When their hardware shipped they went to Western Electric and ought a 32V license.

      And this is just one example,and not even a particularly recent one...

      --dave

    • Adobe's PDF tools.

  • They MUST Co-Exist (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday July 28, 2005 @01:56PM (#13187885) Homepage Journal
    Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?

    Yes. If they allow each other to. There are a lot of areas where Open Source fails to deliver, particularly in the areas of comprehensive solutions. Using an on-topic example, PhotoShop still has several killer features that GIMP doesn't. InDesign provides a far easier to use typesetting environment than Tex. Many users still wish they could have MS Office on Linux despite the amount of functionality in OpenOffice and KOffice. Game Creators expect to be compensated for the blood, sweat, tears, and massive overtime they put into their games.

    The truth is that the two MUST co-exist if we want to get anywhere. The problem today is that they are not allowed to co-exist. Most distros today use a packaging system that pulls from a central repository. While this has many advantages for the usability of OSS, it sucks for commercial software. There's no *good* way of delivering commercial software to a Linux system. (I know, I've tried.)

    These OSes are closed systems where no new software can be introduced without the blessing of the distro maintainers. That's not only not good, it goes against the very ideals of an open computer! A computer is a device that allows you to provide instructions on how to complete a task. While the door is open for "approved" OSS software and personal C++ development, where's the door for commercial software?

    I've heard a lot of arguments that packaging systems can be fixed to allow for commercial repositories. Unfortunately, no one has actually explained how this would work. And as I've pointed out [blogspot.com], the math says it's can't work. Having 2^P (where P is the number of packages available) as the possible number of software combinations (any of which can interfere with each other) is not a good situation to be in!

    Linux (the community) NEEDS commercial software. But if it wants to attract it, it needs to be in a position to spark another Shareware revolution like the one seen after Windows 95. Make it easy for users to use their system. Make it so they can visit VersionTracker or Tucows and try everything under the sun! Give the users back control of their computers! Viva la Software!

    • Re:They MUST Co-Exist (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) *
      There's no *good* way of delivering commercial software to a Linux system. (I know, I've tried.)

      Just use rpm and force people to use version 7.1 of Redhat. That seems to be the ploy that some vendors (*cough* Cadence and Synopsis *cough*) are using. When I asked one support guy what happens if I want to use a machine that isn't four years old to run their software his response was, "Do you have a solaris box?". I felt like saying, "no, we can't afford one because we spent all our money buying your softwar

    • Re:Reality Check (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by mpapet ( 761907 )
      Reality Check:
      These OSes are closed systems where no new software can be introduced without the blessing of the distro maintainers.

      Uhhh, not true. In apt, I add another source to /etc/sources.list. I've done it quite successfully and I'm no genius. I can report that I benefitted from this endeavor many times over. Now, getting your project into a distro's official repository probably takes much longer than you have been willing to commit.

      These OSes are closed systems where no new software can be introdu
      • Unless there's a GUI walkthrough for new sources for APT (with a good explination of why that needs to be done) or for make install, then it's still a bad system. If it isn't brainless and transparent to the user, then it's worthless to most of them. That's why I can't figure out why the OSS community hasn't adopted the package system for their applications like OS X uses. It doesn't get any simpler to install than a drag and drop, and if Microsoft Office can be drag and drop, surely just about any other pr

        • Re:Reality Check (Score:2, Insightful)

          by wlan0 ( 871397 )
          Synaptic or Kynaptic provide one.
        • Shouldn't even be that. GUI walkthrough requires thinking. Just a file (similar to a torrent file) that a user can download and execute that will automatically add a temporary source, grab & install the given packages, and throw out the source. Associate the tool with the type, and let the browser do it's business. Can put in lots of warnings and stuff too to scare off the n00bs from just being install-happy.

          Now, that makes fetching packages through the web easy. Next, figure out how to make that e
      • Reality Check:

        In apt, I add another source to etc/sources.list.

        1. What end user can add a repository without special training?

        2. Why would a commercial vendor want to setup an entire repository just to distribute his 5 megs of software?

        3. What end user is going to want to add a repository for every piece of software he wants to install?

        4. How does the vendor know that primary repository changes won't break his software without even a new OS release coming out?

        I'm afraid that the market has looked at this op
        • I don't want to come off soundling like a Mac freak, but I think that the way for Linux shareware to work is for Linux systems to adopt something akin to the Mac's .app packaging.

          I'm a big fan of apt for servers but it just doesn't work well for this particular model. .app packaging does.
        • I'll byte...

          1. What end user can add a repository without special training?

          One that can read and understand about 5 Very simple sentences. It's a one line addition to a text file fer cripes sake.

          2. Why would a commercial vendor want to setup an entire repository just to distribute his 5 megs of software?

          Because setting up a repository is incredibly easy, and it makes his software MUCH easier for end users to install / update.

          3. What end user is going to want to add a repository for every piece of software h
          • One that can read and understand about 5 Very simple sentences. It's a one line addition to a text file fer cripes sake.

            Ok, here we go:

            1. Open a terminal window.

            2. Type "sudo vi /etc/sources"

            3. Move the cursor to the end, and hit 'o'.

            4. Type 'http://myrepository.com/repository'

            5. Hit 'ESC', type ':wq', then 'exit'.

            User's reponse: "What's a terminal?"

            People have to stop thinking that users can do this crap. They have NO IDEA how to use a command line, nor do they want to know. The command line is a POWER USE
      • It certainly DOESN'T bother the people who write viri, worms and other nasty persiflage.

        "These OSes are closed systems where no new software can be introduced without the blessing of the distro maintainers."

        Then why is there a billion dollar industry trying to prevent it.

        Get real
    • I've noticed that a lot of commercial software for Linux tends to require a particular distribution, usually a Red Hat one. This, I guess, is because in order to provide a "guarantee" that it'll work on a particular system, which is a requirement in the commercial world, it's far easier to work within a "known" environment. It's really just a way of getting around having to test on multiple distributions, but that's okay I guess. I can live with it. They tend to use RPM distributions because it's less o
    • We have done this. There were two ways we went about doing this for everyone (windows and linux):

      1. Use static libraries (bigger executable)
      2. Put all shared libraries in with the package in the same directory as the executable and only reference those libraries. (Larger distribution but smaller program.)

      Those are the only two ways I know to distribute an application that is of a commercial nature. :-/

  • Uh... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @01:58PM (#13187915) Journal
    They have coexisted for fifteen years or more, so I don't see why they can't continue to do so into the future.

  • Help Me! (Score:2, Funny)

    by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 )

    So many questions! I can't handle them all!!!!!

    Oh, OK....the answer is it depends. Thank you. That will be $1,000 please. Deposit it to my pay pal account.

  • Answer: Yes. (Score:2, Informative)

    by ArielMT ( 757715 )
    The company I work for uses a proprietary billing system with an open-source back-end interface to our customer database. The proprietary system was sold to us from a commercial vendor and has as its major requirement a Red Hat-based OS, which is of course open source.
    • " The company I work for uses a proprietary billing system with an open-source back-end interface to our customer database. "

      When I used to work in a corporate environment, I worked in a mixed proprietary and OSS environment. I almost never had a problem justifying the $100,000.00 investment in proprietary sofware that would have a user base of 10,000 users and improve productivity of those users by 5%. When I wanted a $500.00 application to improve the productivity of a single developer by 20%, I almost

  • Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @01:59PM (#13187938)
    Let's eliminate commercial, and find out.

  • In some cases yes, in others no (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:03PM (#13187979)
    It's not always a matter of if, but rather should they?

    As much as some people like Windows, I'd rather see everyone using an open source OS. Rather than having everything try to be fancy, a minimalist OS that was build for security and ease of use would be so much better for the computer world in general. The open standards would allow anyone to develop for it, find flaws in the system, or add on to the existing code.

    Open source applications like Open Office are certainly a good thing, but I see the realm of applications as being much more commercial. I don't see too many people going out of their way to create open source games. Game engines possibly, but some applications will almost always be more commercial in nature. In cases where monopolies don't exist, commercial software also has the benifit of needing to be good, or people won't buy it. The necessity to provide good and innovative software will drive people to create better sotfware. It would be nice to have a choice of four or more different word processors, especially if they all shared a common file format in addition to any propriatary one that made communication a lot easier.

    There are advantages to both, and it's quite clear that they can exist together given that they do in fact today.

  • No! (Score:2)

    by jfengel ( 409917 )
    Next question.

  • One argument I've heard (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:06PM (#13188010) Homepage Journal
    I frequently debate a good friend of mine who owns a small software company. I tell him that Open Source software does not mean the end of proprietary commercial software. In fact, I think it ultimately might make more specialized and sophisticated commercial software practical because purchasers who use Open Source have to pay less for the basic underpinnings of their computing environment and therefore have more money to spend on narrow but highly customized applications.

    His argument against Open Source isn't about the capabilities of Open Source software itself. Rather, he believes that Open Source software leads corporations and consumers to undervalue the value of software. If Open Source software is being given away freely, he argues, people will feel that software is a commodity rather than a specialized product that requires a lot of hard work and brainpower to properly develop. If the software becomes devalued, he feels, the industry as a whole will continue to slide rapidly toward commodity status.

    I disagree with him on this point, primarily because I feel that computer programming is no longer the technological high ground that it once was. While it shouldn't be devalued, it is no longer reasonable to assume that software companies can command the immense profits that made Microsoft a monopoly. If anything, it seems to me that competition from Open Source will help push commercial software to innovate.

    • Re:One argument I've heard (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pomo monster ( 873962 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:23PM (#13188203)
      My take is that open source software is great at implementing things that are already commodities. Web servers became a commodity while Apache was being written. HTML rendering was becoming commonplace when Netscape decided to open Gecko. Same thing with MP3 coding and LAME and a hundred other examples I can't think of right now.

      Proprietary stuff, on the other hand, tends to be newer and more cutting-edge than open source stuff. Photoshop vs. GIMP, Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice. Nero vs. x264 coding. The Mac's UI vs. Gnome/KDE. Where commercial software leads the way, open source follows (and usually does so exceedingly well).

      Commercial software, then, is where innovation happens. Open source software excels at development and commoditization. They not only exist, but complement each other.
      • Proprietary stuff, on the other hand, tends to be newer and more cutting-edge than open source stuff. Photoshop vs. GIMP, Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.

        Yeah, because we all know the MS office is cutting-edge software.. LOL
      • Web servers is a particularly bad example. Apache was based on the NCSA server (as a bunch of patches, hence "A Patchy Web Server") which was already open source. There were some performance innovations after that (Zeus), but nothing really revolutionary was invented in web serving in a commercial environment.

      • Re:One argument I've heard (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:48PM (#13188494) Homepage Journal
        Commercial software, then, is where innovation happens. Open source software excels at development and commoditization. They not only exist, but complement each other.

        You put it much better than I did.

        I'd add that innovation is rewarded for companies that pursue products, while development and commoditization is rewarded for companies that pursue services. It is no suprise that IBM (primarily a services company, in spite of the hardware arm) jumped on Open Source, while Microsoft (primarily a products company) has not.

    • I often muse on the thought that todays commercial software industry was created to serve people who do not understand computers - and often anything to do with "hard" sciences.

      Thus many got used to the idea that even trivial things are well paid for as they can radically change the productivity of a computer-challenged person.

      In a way this is like selling shiny objects to a forest tribe - they think they are magic and are willing to trade gold for it.

      In this situation doing real science cannot produce

    • If Open Source software is being given away freely, he argues, people will feel that software is a commodity rather than a specialized product that requires a lot of hard work and brainpower to properly develop.

      OK, a little history lesson is in order here. In the beginning there were mainframes, and computers were expensive. Along comes the PC which does everything faster and at a tiny fraction of the cost. The PC takes over the computer universe, including applications for which mainframes were previ
    • Open Source software leads corporations and consumers to undervalue the value of software. If Open Source software is being given away freely, he argues, people will feel that software is a commodity rather than a specialized product that requires a lot of hard work and brainpower to properly develop.

      MS-Windows leads corporations and consumers to undervalue the value of software. Because Ms-Windows is hidden in the cost of any new PC purchase, people will feel that software is a commodity rather than a spec
    • Rather, he believes that Open Source software leads corporations and consumers to undervalue the value of software.

      He's wrong. If people are unwilling to pay for a particular class of software, then that means it has no monetary value (even though it may still have a tremendous utility value). The laws of economics say that an item is worth what people will pay for it. It's not really possible to undervalue software, although it's certainly common enough to overestimate its worth.

      If Open Source soft

    • The Open Source movement is just another source of competition for software developers. Just because this software is "given away" doesn't mean it turns commercial software into a commodity item. For the lower value items such as a basic text editor, I can see how a commercial developer may freak out because an Open Source text editor alternative may be viewed as a viable replacement to the commercial version. When you get to the higher priced items though, you (generally) get what you pay for. For example,

  • Hope They've Rented a REALLY Big Hall (Score:3, Funny)

    by MonkeyGone2Heaven ( 720397 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:07PM (#13188022)
    As a large portion of the Slashdot and Open Source community will be at SIGGRAPH...

    Last I checked, just the Slashdot crowd (based on ID #'s) was 800K+.
  • I think the Mac OS is a prime example of OSS and proprietary software coexisting. As long as standards are followed and _protocols_ stay open, there is no reason to think they are in any way exclusive. On the other hand, Microsoft style strategies where protocols and "standards" are closed make interoperability (and therefore coexistence) difficult at best.
  • The question should be "Can Open Source and Proprietary Software co-exist?"

    There exist companies like MySQL AB and Trolltech who are commercial, but are "Open Source."

  • Commercial != Proprietary (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 4im ( 181450 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:07PM (#13188028)

    C'mon guys, with everybody here raving about Free Software, you should know that the opposite of Free Software is not commercial software, but proprietary software!

    There's commercial free software around, and there's free (as in beer) and open (as in source available) proprietary software around.

  • Sure they can (Score:3, Interesting)

    by codepunk ( 167897 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:15PM (#13188105)
    Sure they can co-exist until we "replace" them. I don't work for a software house we use software not produce it. Nearly all proprietary software is a royal pain in my butt and the faster it is obsoleted with OSS software the better.

    Take for instance the other day we upgrade a piece of software then immediately run into trouble since the vendor decided to make more money so he put some sort of per page processing keys in it and changed the licensing requirements. Two days of production down time while sorting that out. I am now in the process of finding a oss alternative to his product or I will write an new oss alternative....I don't feel bad not one bit for software shops going out of business because of OSS products.

  • Of course (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jvagner ( 104817 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:16PM (#13188113)
    There are some technologies that reach a level of maturity and at that point should probably be OSS. Infrastructure pieces like email and web servers can really address most of the market as OSS offerings.

    Features over and above what most of the market needs leaves a niche that can be addressed by commercial software. Commercial software will always be beholden to marketing forces that don't necessarily dictate elegance or proper form. That's why MS gets such a bad rap -- they keep trying to satisfy competing forces and usually end up screwing the end user.

    "Flavor of the month" software is usually commercial -- there's an inherent pressure to produce a specific kind of solution that doesn't make it into the "infrastructure" that can be accelerated by commercial traffic. Delicious Library comes to mind -- will they really be around forever? Probably not. But $40 gets it for you right now.. and it's not a big deal when something bigger and better comes along (if it does).

    The other nice thing about OSS is that it usually enforces "the right way" over time. Command line options etc. It's not really surprising that MS finally saw the light on this, though I doubt their implementation will really satisfy the unix-y small tools mentality.

  • ISANITY! (Score:3, Funny)

    by rakanishu ( 670638 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:16PM (#13188122)
    Are you insane? That's like mixing matter and anti-matter, or pouring Pepsi into a Coke glass! The universe will no longer exist as we know it!

  • Depends, (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:18PM (#13188144) Homepage
    Open source at times forces commercial software to improve. Just look at blender, after you get past the hissy fit that lightwave users have about the interface it has surpassed lightwave in capabilities and speed. We switched all our 3d artists over to it here 1 year ago and after the massive whine-fest over the interface and controls the guys will never go back, and so far has saved us several thousand dollars annually by not having to buy 4 licenses each upgrade cycle. one of the artists has become quite a guru with perl scritping for blender and is doing some amazing things that are almost pixar quality in a free "toy" that the supposed professionals poo-poo as worthless.

    they also enjoy using gimp and find it easier to make tileable textures in gimp than in CS... and the biggest thing the guys like is being able to take copies of their software home and use it there. something that is 100% impossible with lightwave and photoshop CS.

    They still have the older versions on their machines of the legacy lightwave and CS, but they use them both less and less.

    I cant wait to see how the apps continue to shape out over the next 5-10 years... open source never has to add worthless features to entice users to buy the software yet again as is the requirement with commercial software... and that is how it can get better in the long run.
  • As long as Open Source/Free software continues to provide functionality that proprietary software manufacturers are not willing or able to produce, or will only produce at a very exorbitant price, there will be a place for FOSS in any market segment.

    From a format perspective people who depend on their livelyhoods should demand open standard formats. This way they future proof their work - and can not be held hostage by proprietary vendors who decide to force users to upgrade or lose functionality (a recent
    • there will be a place for FOSS in any market segment.

      There may be a place for it, but nobody's rushing to fill it. I've been searching for (but have largely given up) finding a FOSS point-of-sale system that comes close in functionality to the closed, proprietary ones out there. I've been looking for 3 years on and off, but quite honestly, there's nothing that's even in the ballpark. Why should I assume that somebody would want to do this just so I can save some money? Hell, I could develop my own, bu

  • They're better together. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PsiPsiStar ( 95676 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:20PM (#13188162)
    I think this whole "one or the other" type of argument is a red herring.

    The software industry naturally tends towards 'killer aps' which is a nice way of saying that it tends towards monopoly, even more so than traditional industry does. Being able to design a program once, and then produce millions of copies for profit is just too big an incentive to consolidate. It also makes for an incredible economy of scale, so that small companies have a hard time competing.

    Look at Adobe's recent purchase of Macromedia to see which way the industry is going.

    It's hard for a startup to compete with a readily established killer ap. Take Photoshop, for instance. If someone said "I'm going to start up a company that tries to do what photoshop does" I wouldn't want to invest my money there, unless it pandered to a special niche market - maybe designing 3D skins.

    Competition is vital to keep the cost of proprietary systems reasonable. Also, monopolies have a bad history of abusing their customers.

    Because OSS software is the most reliable model for giving sustained competition to programs which would otherwise come to monopolize their industry, open source is a vital suppliment to closed source software. It can't be bought out in the same way a private company can, and its low cost puts some downward pressure on the price of closed source systems.

  • Thoughts... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bass_ackwards ( 804625 )
    It seems to me that companies will continue to use what works best. Sometimes OSS will fit the bill, while other times commercial software will best serve the need.

    Off the shelf solutions offer many advantages that OSS will find difficult to duplicate. An example of this is technical support. I am well aware that the vast majority of OSS projects have a large and acitve community that is capable of helping with many issues that may arise. However, this is not something that a project manager can look at
  • Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?

    Isn't that what they are currently doing?

    Apple?
    Sun?
    Debian?
    various *BSDs?

    (I could be sardonic and note that I can place a Debian CD on top of a Windows cd and they'd dissapear in a puff of smoke)
  • ...for SIGGRAPH, could you please summarize the moderated arguments into two presentations, one using MS Powerpoint, and the other using an Open Source presentation app? Thanks.
  • They can co-exist if most users can resist the opposing forces of the two sectors: Microsoft-style "open is bad" vendors, and their polar opposites, everything-but-free-as-in-speech is bad zealots *cough*RMS*cough...

    And commercial doesn't necessarily mean closed anyway.

  • I think so (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lifewish ( 724999 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:24PM (#13188223) Homepage Journal
    FOSS and commercial software bring completely different attributes to the table. FOSS tends to be better quality from a code perspective, so more stable. It improves as it matures - more bugtracking and less feature creep is the order of the day.

    The closed source community, by contrast, is great at blazing trails. The Cathedral model means that an innovative project doesn't have to worry so much about gaining "critical mass". In fast-moving fields such as games, closed source should have no trouble staying ahead of FOSS. It's only when closed source tries to rest on its laurels that it gets scalped by FOSS.

    Open source needs closed source to show it where it risks losing market share. And closed source needs open source to keep it motivated. Neither side of this equation can be expected to be very happy about it, but the resulting balance is great for the consumer.
    • Just wanted to say you probably articulated the relationship between the two better than anyone else I've read on this site. The game example is a perfect illustration.

  • Horrible question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sheepdot ( 211478 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @02:25PM (#13188233) Journal
    Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?

    What a horrible question. Reminds me of another one:

    Is Duke Nukem Forever going to come out?

    Everyone's got an opinion on it, and yet you expect reasonable responses are going to be the ones modded up? No, instead, you'll get about four "+5, Funny" comments and maybe one "+5, Informative" with some scattered "+5, Interesting"'s that are really about different topics, like how cool BSD's license is and some classroom examples where no one knew what open source software was anyway.

    If you want legitimate discussion, ask the question in a context. Like this: "Can Commercial Software roadblocks still allow Open Source developers to provide sufficient products in the near and long term?"

    Another good one: "Is Open Source development keying in on certain specific applications (Apache, PHP, MySQL), causing stagnation in development of other equally-important and every-growing more challenging OS softwares (Samba, Wine, PERL)?"

  • Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?

    According to RMS, no [gnu.org].

    -Adam

    • Re:Answer: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 4im ( 181450 )

      Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?

      According to RMS, no.

      Sorry, but wrong! RMS argues against proprietary software, but he can perfectly well live with commercial (free as in speech) software. That's also why he says:

      This is why we say that free software is a matter of freedom, not price.

      I agree with RMS that sometimes, it's necessary to use exact wording. This is one of those times.

  • Just a thought...

    Is Open Source software the equivalent of physical commodities?

    Commodities are noted by being hardly unique to their source, and are [relatively] easily duplicated & understood. There are various kinds of corn, and many people produce it, with a few taking the effort to enhance breeds which are then [usually] easily duplicated. Comparably, OSS is [relatively] easily copied, understood, and distributed.

    Non-commodities are harder to make, are constrained by IP ownership, and are traded in
  • I think that a solution to many problems, including, but not limited to:
    • low usage of open source
    • buggy software
    • Software pirating
    • and innovation (or lack thereof)

    could all be fixed if everyone migrated to a free-program,-paid-support model. I believe this is how companies like RedHat make their money; the operating system or program itself is free, but the support for said product will cost a yearly subscription (which may or may not use per person liscenses.)

    Doing this, a company has thousands of testers tha

    • Nice idea. In practice, it obviously doesn't work. Red Hat is one of the few companies doing this, and they're just *barely* making a profit. Many, many, many other companies have folded attempting to do this.

      Besides, I won't use a program that's so bad/complicated/buggy that I have to contact the company for support. Software is getting to the point where many non-enterprise apps do and should run without any need for support.
  • i'm not an OSS purist. i do use lots of oss technology, especially LAMP and jedit. however, the real problem is not over open source, but open formats. for instance, dreamweaver is the de facto web authoring tool, yet it generates html which is an open format. photoshop files are documented as are .pdf files. so you can read/write both, it's just a matter of the application. how much success would MSOffice really have if .doc was documented?
  • Wether a software is commercial or not has nothing to do with wether a software is open source or not. The question is pointless.
    The question could be:
    Will and can open source software become so powerfull that the paradise of hermetric workstation software the 3D Application Vendors have is penetraded and they have to rethink their business model a bit?
    The answer is a clear "Yes". Blender - and this is what this discussion is all about - is forcing 3D app vendors to adjust their prices to sane numbers. This

  • And a proof is that oracle is going bankrupcy!

    C'mon. What a question! Try to ask pope next time.

  • The question doesn't make sense.

    OSS is the basis of many commercial projects -- both private and public. Commercial interests drive and support many OSS projects.

    Can has nothing to do with it.

  • Everybody who's presenting at SIGGRAPH is releasing their work to the community as a way to advance the state of the art, to get fame, and to seek feedback.
    The OSS community is not all that different, except that it is dealing in implementations rather than techniques. Looking at things this way, it should be obvious to people in the industry how OSS is useful and can coexist with proprietary software.

  • Answer: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Java Pimp ( 98454 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @04:07PM (#13189306) Homepage
    Not if the Open Source community has anything to say about it...

    Don't get me wrong. I like open source software and I try to promote it as much as I can. But there are things the open source community does that I feel is basically shooting themselves in the foot.

    I think my biggest pet pieve with open source software is not the concept itself, but how OS zealots treat proprietary software. Getting to my point, take for example Linux. (I think this is where my karma goes to hell...) In particular, how Linux treats loadable kernel modules. If you load a kernel module that does not explicity state that it is GPLed you start to see messages in the log like "AHH! Proprietary software! The kernel is TAINTED! I'm melting!!!!"

    Everyone complains that hardware vendor X doesn't support Linux. But then if they finally build support, and don't open their IP up to the world, they get bitch slapped for it. "Ah! you're tainting my kernel!" You know, I haven't seen whiners like that since elementary school.

    Yeah, running in kernel context grants 3rd party software access that can potentially change how the kernel functions. However, most of the time the LKMs simply add the necessary support for the hardware and leave everything else untouched. The only noticable difference is that the hardware _actually_ works. (which is also sometimes debatable...)

    I know, technically, according to the verbage of the GPL, all LKMs should be GPLed. I really feel that is too restricting if you want the support from 3rd party vendors. Which is why I'm guessing, that non-GPLed LKMs are still able to be loaded. But if you want the support, quit whining about it!

    My question is, how long is it going to be until necessary kernel symbols are no longer exported to proprietary LKMs? When is the final bullet going to be fired into your foot where no commercial company is going to be able (or rather willing) to support Linux at all?

    I build drivers for both Linux and Windows. I have YET to see Windows complain about whether or not my source code was GPLed or proprietary!

    If you want open source and commercial software to coexist, we really need to get with the program here!

    Ok, rant mode off... goodbye sweet karma! it was nice knowing you...
    • If you want commercial drivers in your kernel, you should be running an OS that doesn't apply the GPL to the kernel. If you want to write drivers for an open-source kernel, and you don't want to GPL the drivers, then you should write them for an OS that doesn't apply the GPL to the kernel.

      What the world needs is an open source emulator that lets you run non-Linux drivers (BSD, Solaris, even Windows) in the Linux kernel. Since the interface you're emulating is not GPLed, your drivers won't need to be GPLed,

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