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The Linux distillery How on earth do you make a dime out of Linux and open source software?
The Linux distillery How on earth do you make a dime out of Linux and open source software? | How on earth do you make a dime out of Linux and open source software? |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Monday, 05 January 2009 | |
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Page 2 of 3 Arguments against open source from the Redmond software giant have often been along the lines that ultimately, programmers need to feed and clothe their families. Money has to come into at some point. While programmers might put a bit of hobby time into cutting free code, it’s not going to be sustainable for the long term.Featured Whitepaper
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This argument goes that some business expert has a need and puts their expertise along with the capabilities of a talented programmer into making a software solution. Let’s assume Microsoft PowerPoint is such a product and that some hotshot visionary presenter saw the need for a piece of software that would let other spruikers distil their messages into bite-sized slides. According to this argument, PowerPoint sells because it fulfilled a genuine need and someone saw that need and put in the resources to produce it. To their mind, there isn’t anybody in the open source world doing the same thing: instead, a bunch of misfits collude online and think, “Hey, let’s make our own version of that” and never instead come up with the big idea or the niche product on their own. These viewpoints have traction in some corners, but they are grossly flawed. It’s not even reasonable to say they are “out of date” – that would imply that they were once true. Yet, let’s go back to the days of Bill Gates’ Altair BASIC. Let’s give some credit: BASIC (or indeed, any programming language) was an essential item for the earliest personal computers. Without a vast library of shrinkwrapped software there was no other way to make your computer actually do something without putting fingers to keyboard and tapping out apps yourself. Back then there was no clear-cut concept of what we now know as “open source.” Instead, people released their works to the “public domain.” Clever coders made applications and games and utilities and distributed them via bulletin board, or published the program listing in books and magazines for others to type in. Back then, there was virtually nothing to copy. Consequently, these public domain programmers were producing genuinely original content. (Although, interestingly, the first “real” personal computer application was VisiCalc, or Visual Calculator, which was the world’s first spreadsheet application. This was a massive boon to Apple and was single-handedly responsible for huge amounts of sales of their computer. Later, Microsoft produced their own spreadsheet app called, of course, Excel – by fundamentally thinking, “Hey, let’s make our own version of that.”) Come to the present day and open source developers are still innovating. Top-ranking projects on SourceForge like Azereus and Audacity are leading their field; Apache is the world’s number one web server platform, and WordPress is arguably the top-rated blogging system. So, while it’s definitely not fair to say open source software can only aspire to be an imitation, we still haven’t answered the pressing question: how the heck can anyone make a living out of this? Isn’t it true to say the people who write these programs will have to give them up for paid "real jobs" in time? CONTINUED |
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