Re: Making money on open source, if not by selling _support_, then how?

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Sun, 16 Apr 2006 14:55:32 GMT, Justin Gombos wrote:

> On 2006-04-16, Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:
>>
>> If you open the fridge each morning and find beer there, should this
>> observation lead you the conclusion, that fridges brew beer?
> 
> Good example - faulty conclusion.  You can conclude from that
> observation that you have cold beer, and therefore don't need to make
> any changes to the fridge to ensure that it cools the beer, or changes
> to your procurement process for getting the beer.  Likewise, open
> source continues to grow substantially, so you can conclude that
> additional rewards are unnecessary for the growth to continue.

I can't conclude that without knowing the process. If I will not pay my
electricity bills, the fridge might stop cooling.

>>> From this observation alone, you know that there is a mechanism of
>>> rewards to promote such development.
>>
>> I don't know how it works. What if my brother, who loads the fridge
>> with beer would turn to abstinence?
> 
> Remedial action would then become necessary.  So if the open source
> community loses all its developers, only then will lack of rewards
> become a problem (and even then it's a matter of perception).  As of
> now, death of open source would be entirely hypothetical, and we're
> not living in a hypothetical world.

Death of open source is not my concern. Mine is sustainable growth, which
is the basis of our [western] civilisation. We observe what happens if it
just stops for a relatively short period of time. Europe's two major
countries Germany and France provide an excellent case. A projection of the
current state of software development in the future implies everybody to
become a programmer. It is a far more serious problem than terrorism.

>>> The openness of the code *is* one of many components of quality.
>>> Besides the quality built into the process of open source
>>> development, you also have the benefit of potentially millions of
>>> eyes looking at the product and discovering defects in the code.
>>
>> This is a model of wasting human resources in first place. 
> 
> Wasteful in what sense?

It is extensive, low productive, unsafe way. Million eyes is millions of
man hours spent. What is worse a community of dishwashers might spent
trillion years in building Perpetuum mobile, while one qualified physicist
could tell you in 1s, that it is rubbish. 

>> Secondly it effectively puts a limit to the complexity and quality
>> of the software.  
> 
> Quite the opposit.  It's the closed source model that limits
> complexity as well as quality.  You can be limited to the mental
> capacity of those hired, or you can be limited to the mental capacity
> of a subset of the world population, which can well exceed the size of
> any one company.  

It is a flawed argument. It is known as "brain amplifier", a concept of
gaining knowledge, recently bubbled again as genetic algorithms. Each cubic
meter of air contains encoded Britain encyclopedia as well as the Great
Theory of All. The problem with it, is that there is no way to select the
signal from noise. Averaging world population gives you Britney Spears, if
you are very lucky, it does not give you Albert Einstein.
 
>> Millions of incompetent eyes cannot replace an educated one. 
> 
> Who's to say "the educated one" is not an open source developer?

Because education is not for free. It is a huge investment on the side of
the society sponsoring it and on the side of people spending their time in
learning. It is a hard work, if you don't pay for it, you will get nothing.

>> I meant division of labor. Customer is somebody who is specialized to
>> produces something else. 
> 
> Even that definition is unrealistic.  Consumers are not necessarily so
> specialized that they're incapable of tailoring tools that are
> initially generic to help them do their job better.

It is so in software developing. The reason for that is an extremely low
technological level of. It is a transitional stage. Either it becomes a
normal engineering with clear division of labor and a very moderate number
of people involved in, or our civilization will collapse. What you propose
is similar to building pyramids by ancient Egyptians.

> But even if they
> were, open source consumers still have the option of hiring
> contractors to tailor their tools.  Closed source consumers are stuck
> with a black box, and must either modify the way they work to adapt to
> the tool, or try to motivate the vendor to modify it for them at a
> reasonable price, or hire someone to build the tool from the ground
> up.  So open source consumers have all the same options that closed
> source consumer have, and then some.

As I said above, the difference is marginal in my eyes. Remember the time
when each TV set, each audio system was shipped with printed electronic
circuit? How about the quality of those compared with the quality of modern
systems shipped with two page leaflet printed in 20 languages, explaining
where is the button "on/off" on the remote control? That's a technological
difference.

>> When I say that neither of existing systems works, I mean that this
>> selection does not happen. Firstly, there is no efficient mechanism
>> of selection.  
> 
> Right, so you cannot be completely dependant on selection of talent
> for quality products.

I must.
 
>> Secondly, there is no motivation for people to become
>> selected. Qualified programmers don't grow on trees. 
> 
> Who's to prevent a qualified programmer from producing open source?

A lack of a system that rewards qualification.

>> If the reward is to work 42 hours washing dishes and 30 contributing
>> at night to a GNU project, then I don't see why students should
>> spend 10+ years studying CS. They could become managers, advocates
>> instead.
> 
> The unusual dishwasher case you bring up is not likely to be the
> lifestyle of someone with an extensive formal education.  

What else have the community to offer? If you cannot sustain yourself by
programming, you will do something else. You might continue to program in
your spare time. But the next generation will drop the very idea of
becoming a programmer.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de