08 May 2007 - 04:22"Sun: Pay open-source developers"
An article reporting a speech caught our eye.The title encapsulates much of the challenge for us. And we thought Open Source Software developers were getting paid. Some, not all. Even Sun is paying "open-source developers"!?
We, at Symas, hope he was misunderstood or misquoted. It is better to be charitable. Still, well, ... read on.
First the key quote from the article:
Rich Green, Sun executive vice president for software, expressed doubts about the current model in which open-source developers create free intellectual property and have others scoop it up to generate huge amounts of revenue.
This is quite an ironic statement from a senior executive from Sun Microsystems. Sun took the University of California at Berkeley's Berkeley System Distribution (BSD) source code and used it as the base for it's original Sun OS. Here we have a case of "others scoop[ing] it up to generate huge amounts of revenue". We are sure Sun hired a number of BSD developers besides Bill Joy. We are equally sure there were others whose contributions were appropriated and for which Sun never considered compensating them.
Whatever hew and cry there may have been has long been lost in history. Sun's original Sun OS came from Berkeley in '82 and the AT&T (Bell Labs -> Unix System Lab -> SCO -> Novell -> SCO2) work to replace that code started late in the '80s. For some very lucrative growth years for Sun Microsystems, they benefited from the contributions of Open Source Software developers. This is a fact that one would expect would make their senior management a little more careful. Misreading that history could cast Sun's founders as villains. That wouldn't make any sense to us given the subsequent history.
This business of casting the Open Source Software developer as victim is very unhealthy. There are several factors at work here: enterprises invest in Open Source Software to get required features implemented, community collaboration lowers total cost of maintenance, and a geographically diverse and highly competitive software support marketplace is a natural outcome of Open Source Software adoption.
Many businesses have decided that developing software, at enterprise expense, and contributing it to the Open Source Software projects is a very cost-effective way to get high-quality software. In the case of OpenLDAP, Symas itself and Hewlett Packard (HP) are two of the the biggest corporate contributors. Each chose to invest in significant enhancements to OpenLDAP. Symas needed significant internal restructuring and performance enhancements to facilitate some proprietary development. HP needed important commercial features to enable them to convert from their proprietary commercial directory services software to OpenLDAP. All of these contributions were paid for out of corporate funds and all of the software developed is now in the OpenLDAP source repository, freely available to all takers. This is very much to the benefit of the community. And the industry.
Once adopted into the main stream of an Open Source Software project, the cost of maintaining the code falls to the community. Whether or not the enterprise pays for ongoing contributions (programmers participating in the project), their contributions will be maintained and, generally, kept current. This is a huge savings over proprietary, one-off approaches. Having invested in the development (usually one-fifth to one-third the total cost of any bit of software), the investing enterprises need not be saddled with ongoing maintenance costs. This makes it attractive to invest in an innovation or enhancement even for a small-payback feature because the maintenance bills in the future won't be tied to the cost of the development (as they are when you either maintain it yourself or ask someone to maintain it on your behalf). Support costs are consistent with the going rate of support for the enterprise's level of usage. These are, generally, very substantial improvements in the cost efficiency of software development and maintenance.
Finally, the Open Source Software is available for any quailified practitioner. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can become an expert in use, integration, or even support of an Open Source Software package. That means that if a package is popular and in use locally, there is motivation for people wishing to better their professional lot in life to enhance their expertise and sell their skills locally or on the global market. This is quite different from proprietary software where the source code is not available and one can only aspire to learn how to use and integrate packages to the extent that pubic APIs and documentation allow. With proprietary packages, all software maintenance (source code fixes) and further enhancements can only come from the commercial code owner and no support market can reasonably develop. Open Source frees programmers to make money developing and maintaining software. That's quite the opposite of Green's message.
Turning to more "amusing" thoughts, it is interesting to hear a Corporate development executive worrying about compensating Open Source Developers without telling us how they compensate corporate developers for the code they develop. One would think that if you were this worried about compensating Open Source Software project contributors, you would have a revenue sharing program internally of which you were so proud that you described it in a talk like this. I suspect no such thing is, in fact, in place.
It is hard to imagine how one would revenue share with the community. Do you single out the already famous "great men" who lead the projects? How can you even imagine flowing cash back down to the hundreds or thousands who contribute?
If you want to compensate the Open Source Software development community, contribute to the projects. Pay people (your own people or others qualified) to innovate, enhance, or merely maintain the projects. Help keep them alive. Support them in your sales and marketing programs. Support the people who offer technical support and services that you do not support. Don't use Open Source Software as a way to outsource the cost of the software your firm depends on to sell its hardware ... carry your fair share of the load. You'll save plenty but your ongoing contributions keep it interesting and valuable.
Just my five kopeks ... Marty
Jordan has not yet commented on this post. He is thinking about lunch, actually.
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