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When proprietary companies go open source

I've been burning the midnight oil yet again, working like a beaver on speed as I build my software castle on a server in Los Angeles (not that beavers build castles). It's going well, and we are on the verge of starting trials in the UK.
Written by John Carroll, Contributor

I've been burning the midnight oil yet again, working like a beaver on speed as I build my software castle on a server in Los Angeles (not that beavers build castles). It's going well, and we are on the verge of starting trials in the UK. If any of you live in the UK, or have friends with mobiles in the UK with whom you'd like to communicate via IM and Email (it's a unified messaging solution), feel free to send me an email at zdcommentary@yahoo.com. I'll see if I can get you on the list.

I do still find time, though, to keep up to date on what's going on in the world of technology news, even if my obsessively-focused mind can't find time to actually write about it.

Larry Dignan recently posted a blog discussing Yahoo's new efforts to attract interest in its flagging search properties by opening its platform to third party users to make custom search "mash-ups." The BOSS initiative is certainly an interesting notion, even if it comes in response to external pressures. Dignan, however, compares this to other late-term conversions to open principles, and considers it a mark of desperation by companies failing in the marketplace. He points out that Netscape, Real Networks and Sun Microsystems only embraced open source develpoment principles after getting mauled by market bears (don't tell Stephen Colbert).

Ed Burnette rejected that argument, noting (rightly) that BOSS isn't really open source. You aren't getting the source code for the entire Yahoo search platform. Rather, you access a service, the fee for which is paid by agreeing to host Yahoo search ads in your own mash-up product. It's a bit like the model AOL is using with AIM, allowing third parties to access the AIM network with third-party IM clients so long as they are willing to host AIM-related ads in your UI.

In other words, though Yahoo's new approach to search might be more open than what preceded it, but lets not pretend its open source.

Burnette then goes on to disagree with Dignan's characterization of late-term conversions to open source as a sign of weakness:

I feel compelled to point out that despite its rough start, Mozilla is now a poster child for successful open source projects. Mozilla Firefox has forced Microsoft to compete once again in the browser market by capturing a share of nearly 20%. MySQL was open source from the beginning, and would never have captured the imagination of the LAMP generation (Linux-Apache-MySQL-Perl) if it had been yet another proprietary database like Oracle or DB2. Solaris’ main competition is Linux, which is open source itself. And let’s not forget Eclipse, which started life as a proprietary IDE, but its release as open source spawned a billion-dollar ecosystem surrounding it.

All well and good, and I do agree. Open source certainly turned Mozilla into a force that helped to reshape the web browser landscape, and Eclipse's success has been driven by its ability to be customized by anyone and everyone.

The operative term, however, is "release." How did releasing the source code for the former Netscape browser help Netscape?

Not much, if at all, I would argue. Open source, and in particular, projects licensed under the GPL, is a great way to harness the productive energies of communities of developers motivated to improve shared code. It isn't, however, a great way to make any one company a whole heap of money (which is why I can't figure out why Sun would want to "own" MySQL).

That, of course, it the point. Stallman is famous for his dislike of profit-taking by software developers, even encouraging them to lower their income-generation expectations. He doesn't want software to be expensive. His license, the GPL, encourages it, and all but guarantees that someone, somewhere, will make an open source version of a GPLed product that is free as in cost. That keeps costs down, and lowers the profit opportunities to software companies.

It also deprives any one company of an advantage in the distribution of software. That, too, is the point, which is why Netscape generated practically no benefit from its decision to "release" the source code for the Netscape browser. Once you release code to the community, you completely lose control over it. That is by design, as Stallman's goal in designing the GPL was to ensure that shared code would always remain shared code.

I agree with Ed that BOSS isn't open source. I also agree that open source can be quite successful. 

Let's not pretend, though, that it's a move proprietary companies make when they are successful...which explains the trend. Be open, most assuredly, or even use a hybrid approach to software license (open source parts with a proprietary core, which sounds more like a description of peanut M&Ms or Chicken McNuggets). That is the crux of many of the arguments I have made in this blog over the past few years. Just don't pretend that community-owned property is as much of a profit source as private property (try asking Google to give you the source code for their search engine).

I don't think Stallman would disagree with that.

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