Has Open Source Jumped the Shark?

AlexGr writes to tell us that Jeff Gould has a somewhat jaded look at the commercial push of Open Source and what that may be doing to the overall Open Source movement. "I've been a Linux fan for years, but lately I wonder if the drum beating from the big IT vendors in favor of open source hasn't finally slipped over the edge from sincere enthusiasm to meaningless — or in some cases downright hypocritical — sloganeering. The example that brought this gloomy thought to mind was a recent IBM press release touting a 'new open client solution' as an 'alternative to vendor lock-in'. Wow. Imagine that. An alternative to vendor lock-in."

He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

IBM's talking about an "Open Client Solution" doesn't mean Open Source at all. It might mean Open Standards, it might just mean multi-platform. This one happens to use Linux, but it is clearly Linux hosting propreitary software.

Lots of companies use Open Source to make a buck in some way, and some of them either mis-represent what is Open, or they don't get it at all. I saw an Oracle representative give a talk on "Free Software from Oracle" in Belfast last year. It turned out that he thought Free Software was software they don't charge for. Fortunately, Richard Stallman was out getting a massage, he gave his own talk an hour later. The audience tore the Oracle guy to shreds and insisted that he say "cost-less" instead of "Free" for the rest of the talk. IMO it was a pretty low moment for Oracle.

But what does this have to do with the Open Source / Free Software community? Not too much. IBM and Oracle would say the same thing about "Data Mining" or "Self Healing" if that was the buzzword that would help them make a buck that day. It's just outsiders misrepresenting themselves. Yes, outsiders. Even if IBM participates in Open Source projects, selling Lotus is an outsider activity. The best thing you can do is point it out, but don't blame it on Open Source.

His sympathy for Red Hat being "exploited" is wildly absurd and shows his failure to understand who made the software in Open Source products. Red Hat did not, for the most part, make the system they are selling. People like me did, and Red Hat did not pay us for it. And if you want to use that software in Debian or CentOS, that's fine with us.

Overall, he doesn't show much of an understanding of how Open Source is paid for and where the innovation comes from.

Bruce

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

The audience tore the Oracle guy to shreds and insisted that he say "cost-less" instead of "Free" for the rest of the talk.

Stallman hasn't been made dictator yet, you know, not even in Cuba. We're still allowed to use "free" in its normal meaning.

Sure, but it seemed pretty clear that the conference in question was a Free software conference, and while you are allowed to use free in its normal sense there, you can expect to get heckled for it. If I go to a math conference promising a talk on "Group Theory" and then start talking about the behaviour of mobs of people, well, I can expect some flak for that. That doesn't mean mathematicians control the meaning of "group", but it does reflect the fact that you should really have a clue about your audience and what they mean by key words -- just as the Oracle guy should have done.

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

First, maybe that was obvious to you from the initial post but it wasn't to me.

Because most run of the mill software conferences you attend have audiences filled with people who are apparently religious about the distinction between Free and free? And they have Stallman in attendance as a speaker? Come now, it wasn't that hard to read between the lines and figure out the context. I think it was more a case of your own prejudices resulting in a kneejerk reaction without bothering to actually read and consider what was said.

Zero INITIAL cost

Old movies of the 60's and 70's used to portray a drug pusher giving someone a hypo of heroin with a 500-dollar bill wrapped around it. Shoot up and the money's yours, but the pusher will get it back soon enough, 'cause you'll be hooked.

I think of a lot of zero-initial-cost proprietary software that way. If you're not going to pay for it, you'll pay for the limited set of stuff that it's compatible with. It's interesting how many corporations are addicts, and how their management isn't faulted for that.

Thanks

Bruce

It all costs, even F/OSS

Bruce,
With all due respect, it seems to me that all software costs. Your distinction about initial costs would directly apply to F/OSS too.

I used to work for a company where vendors were excited to say "used by company XYZ" or they wanted us to assess whether the product was worthwhile for enterprise deployment. Even assessing the compatibility of those tools costs something - our time ain't free, even if the vendor asks for no money!

You also mention "the limited set of stuff that it's compatible with" My experience with F/OSS as a whole is that it tends to be compatible only with the one use case that represents the itch the author needed to scratch. Of course, it is possible to take the source and scratch my own itch - if I want to invest the labor to customize a hack to solve my problem, but many times it's less time and hassle to pay for the packaged work.

There was a time when I thought "who would pay for a TV show on iTunes?" I found myself in the middle of a "part one of two" episode, and didn't see part two on the program guide in the near future. I started to think about illegitimate P2P downloads, and then realized that for a mere $2 I could save myself the time and hassle of downloading for "free" (copyright violations aside.) My time and my integrity were well worth $2, and that's been my experience with software, too. Many times the "fit and finish" of commercial code is worth much more than the actual dollar cost to me.

All software costs. Sometimes F/OSS costs more, sometimes less. Sometimes commercial software is a better deal than F/OSS. There's room in the ecosystem for lots of business models.

Respectfully,
Anomaly

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

"It turned out that he thought Free Software was software they don't charge for."

That's what the rest of the world thinks when they hear "free". Just because the OS community has a different meaning for it, doesn't mean the word's definition has been permanently changed. "Buy one get one free" doesn't mean the second one is promised to be hand-crafted by the community.

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

"It turned out that he thought Free Software was software they don't charge for."

That's what the rest of the world thinks when they hear "free"

Yes, but he was speaking at a conference organized by FSF Europe and organized by people like Ciaran O'Reardon. He very clearly had not done his homework.

Bruce

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

Nonsense. People worldwide know about the meaning of "free" as "acting without compulsion". It's just that they tend not to expect people to be providing software that acts without compulsion, unconstrained by the desires of the user or anybody else. The problem with "free software" as a term is that, with the correct meaning of "free" and the standard compositional grammar, it means something like SkyNet, not something like Linux. It is supposed to be interpreted by analogy to "free speech", but that's an idiom, which was fixed by the phrase "freedom of speech" being well-known and actually making sense (people have "freedom of speech", which means the people, not the speech, are free, and are free in the sense that "freedom" goes exclusively with). If OSS users were commonly said to have "freedom of software", maybe "free software" would be interpretable, but as it is, there's only one grammatical reading that makes any sense, and that reading is not what's intended.

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

Lots of companies use Open Source to make a buck in some way, and some of them either mis-represent what is Open, or they don't get it at all. I saw an Oracle representative give a talk on "Free Software from Oracle" in Belfast last year. It turned out that he thought Free Software was software they don't charge for.

Um... in spite of Richard Stallman's rather pathetic attempt to redefine the English language, that is what the term "free software" actually means. You cannot legitimately criticize the Oracle representative for using the English language correctly.

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

Um... in spite of Richard Stallman's rather pathetic attempt to redefine the English language, that is what the term "free software" actually means. You cannot legitimately criticize the Oracle representative for using the English language correctly.

Given what Bruce was saying, I think it was implicit that this was a Free Software conference (Stallman was there, giving a speech, and the audience knew, and cared deeply, about the distinction between Free and free). Under those circumstances I think you can very legitmately criticise the Oracle guy. If I go to an Oracle conference and spend my time talking about Delphi (that's where the oracle [wikipedia.org] was after all) and Pythia, and the latest archaeological findings, I think I can reasonably expect to get criticised, despite the that I am using the English language meaning of oracle correctly. Have a little awareness of your audience, and the context in which you are speaking...

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

Um... in spite of Richard Stallman's rather pathetic attempt to redefine the English language, that is what the term "free software" actually means.

The meaning of the word "free" as Stallman likes to use it has existed long before Stallman was even born. He's using the language as it currently exists, not redefining it.

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

It turned out that he thought Free Software was software they don't charge for.

And he's right!

If he had said "open source software", then you'd have a point. But he just said free software, which only means software that is provided without charge. Sorry Bruce, I normally agree with everything you say, but not this time. The open source community has no right to redefine common English words.

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

he just said free software, which only means software that is provided without charge. Sorry Bruce, I normally agree with everything you say, but not this time. The open source community has no right to redefine common English words.

Funny, when I look up the meaning of the word "free," I see many definitions:

      1. Not imprisoned or enslaved; being at liberty.
      2. Not controlled by obligation or the will of another: felt free to go.
      3.
                  1. Having political independence: "America . . . is the freest and wealthiest nation in the world" (Rudolph W. Giuliani).
                  2. Governed by consent and possessing or granting civil liberties: a free citizenry.
                  3. Not subject to arbitrary interference by a government: a free press.
      4.
                  1. Not affected or restricted by a given condition or circumstance: a healthy animal, free of disease; free from need.
                  2. Not subject to a given condition; exempt: income that is free of all taxes.
      5. Not subject to external restraint: "Comment is free but facts are sacred" (Charles Prestwich Scott).
      6. Not literal or exact: a free translation.
      7.
                  1. Costing nothing; gratuitous: a free meal.
                  2. Publicly supported: free education.
      8.
                  1. Not occupied or used: a free locker.
                  2. Not taken up by scheduled activities: free time between classes.
      9. Unobstructed; clear: a free lane.
    10. Unguarded in expression or manner; open; frank.
    11. Taking undue liberties; forward or overfamiliar.
    12. Liberal or lavish: tourists who are free with their money.
    13. Given, made, or done of one's own accord; voluntary or spontaneous: a free act of the will; free choices.
    14. Chemistry & Physics.
                  1. Unconstrained; unconfined: free expansion.
                  2. Not fixed in position; capable of relatively unrestricted motion: a free electron.
                  3. Not chemically bound in a molecule: free oxygen.
                  4. Involving no collisions or interactions: a free path.
                  5. Empty: a free space.
                  6. Unoccupied: a free energy level.
    15. Nautical. Favorable: a free wind.
    16. Not bound, fastened, or attached: the free end of a chain.
    17. Linguistics.
                  1. Being a form, especially a morpheme, that can stand as an independent word, such as boat or bring.
                  2. Being a vowel in an open syllable, as the o in go.

So I guess context is important.

In Bruce's example, the context was a conference organized by FSF Europe and the talk was on ""Free Software from Oracle." Which definition of "fee" do you think attendees of such a conference might consider relevant?

Portability != Open Source

So IBM announces that Lotus Notes is portable across OS platforms and the author somehow equates this to Open Source, by some twist in logic I can't even begin to understand.

Commercialization

I don't think it's necessarily 'jumped the shark' for to do so, it would have had to do something inherently dangerous or stupid as a grasp for attention (like the writers for the Fonz). Rather, I would point the finger at Commercialization of Open Source [slashdot.org] instead. You can read everyone's views on that from the conversation from Saturday if that helps.

I think the vendors who (they're not fooling anybody here) are in the end loyal only to their shareholders. If their motives overlap with the community's then suddenly it's an open source project. Problem is, that project cannot fail for it would hurt the company's edge and prospective foothold. As a result, you see hilarious press releases like you cited.

Once again, the community is usually in good standing with good intentions until a member (usually a vendor or large company) mangles something. Blame the mangler, not the group working together. They're the attention whores and their motives are not to promote open source but are really shady/hilarious Machiavellian moves to deepen their pockets.

Re:Commercialization

I would point the finger at Commercialization of Open Source instead.

Openness has nothing whatsoever to do with commercial/non-commercial status. In fact, the term 'Open' was originally applied to commercial systems which were nonetheless based on open standards, or whose source code was available to purchasers of the system on much more restrictive terms than the GPL or BSD licenses.

Open Source was always commercial. If it wasn't done by a commercial company, then it involved the ability to interoperate with commercial software and/or standards. Now, if you want to talk about the commercialization of Free Software, well, that's a slightly more interesting topic (although, I think, done to death.)

I think the vendors who (they're not fooling anybody here) are in the end loyal only to their shareholders. If their motives overlap with the community's then suddenly it's an open source project.

Yes, that sounds quite logical to me. Where there is congruence of interest there can be confluence of effort.

How is this different from any other system, natural or not?

Or put in a totally different way, how does one company's misuse of the term "Open Source" ruin it for the rest of us?

oh noes!!! eleventyone!!!!

I was into Open Source in the old days when they just played small gigs, before they sold out and went commercial. Seriously, TFA sounds like it's written by a whiny emo kid who's sulking because his favourite band aren't cool now that more than 3 people have heard of them.

It is possible to overuse the Cavuto

End times?

Umm?

I may be missing something, but what? If you don't want to work on a commercialized open-source project, ummmm I don't know... How about don't?

Take the source and make hippie-love-fest-2.0 thats the point of open-source no?

What a pointless rant

The IBM press release mentioned nothing about open source, other than to mention that open source envrionments (in this case, referring to Linux) worked with the announced offering. (The only other occurances of the word "Open Source" in the article refer to the VP's job title.) It did not claim that the offering was open source. The use of the term "open" (as used here) to refer to products that will run on multiple operating environments is not new, and substantially pre-dates the term "open source".

IBM is simply announcing a client offering that will run more-or-less identically on multiple OS platforms. No, this isn't very big news, but it isn't as bad as the article author made it out to be.

SirWired

Jumping the Shark

Jumping the shark has jumped the shark.

Re:Jumping the Shark

Jumping the shark has jumped the shark.

Correct, I much prefer the Tom Cruise inspired phrase "jumped the couch."

Takes One to Know One?

As others have already pointed out, this announcement really isn't about Open Source at all.

Nonetheless, for some of us who are old enough to have done business with IBM in the 1970s and 1980s, having them talk about avoiding "vendor lock-in" is a useful test to see if the old irony detector is still working.

Good intentions aside

I think that as long as the community is able to keep companies on their toes and incapable of creating too much trouble or confusion in the open source market place then I want them contributing. Even if there intentions are disengenous or self serviing as long as an open source project gets a leg up or another industry standard, piece of hardware or killer app gets implemented as open source we all benefit in the long run.

Keeping companies honest, to use Linus's phrase, is probably akin to herding cats but unless all OSS projects everywhere are ready to "just say no" to any and all help, financial or otherwise, from all corporations I don't see how the community at large, or even just one project, can afford to refuse help from big business.

As for IBM talking up the advantages of avoiding Vendor Lockin; yes it's ironic, but IBM does seem to genuinely want to make a busines case for OSS and in my mind isn't just paying lip service. They can't just go all open and altruistic tomorrow though, they do have shareholders after all. So far I'd say they've been pretty give and take about the whole thing though.

No, it's just the nostalgia that's gone

No longer is the common image one of a dirty geek coding away with some beer in their home after work. It's now a corporate sponsored coder in many cases. The populism has been defeated, which is a good thing. Populism usually fails to amount to anything because it expects the world to change for it, rather than for it to compromise with the world.

Re:No, it's just the nostalgia that's gone

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

-- George Bernard Shaw

Lotus is a common bundle.

The rant is lame & is muddling distinctions.

On another note... I know plenty of college students who end up with Lotus on their new laptops because it is a cheaper bundle than MS Office.

So Lotus can now be bundled with Linux machines. Nice.

Baby-steps to the elevator.

Regards.

Jumped the shark?

I confess I don't know what this expression means. Does it have anything to do with Henry Winkler and/or the Fonze?

Speaking of sloganeering:

What the heck does "Jumped the Shark" mean? This is the first time I have heard this phrase.

If we're going to have a sensible discussion we need to understand the terms - especially those used in the original question that kicked it off.

What's the problem here.

If Linux was to become more then a hobby OS it needed to get commercial interests involved. The unpaid OS developers can and have done a lot, but they can't do everything.

Naturally, the marketing departments play fast and loose with the meaning of words - they always have. If you are looking for accuracy in marketing then you'll be looking for a long time.

I personally would not be interested in Linux if it decided to stick its head in the sand and play the corporate game. I want something I can use both at home and at work.

XML, part duh

Open Source is a buzzword (buzz phrase?), like XML before it. For a time, it will be used to seem "inovative", in tune with trends, all that happy PR speak.

The result will be that people who would have never heard the term will recognize it, but still have no clue what it means. This is the fate of all buzzwords.

It's nether good or bad, it just mean I get to continue to torture sales reps when they vomit up sales speak like, "our Open Source, standards compliant system works only with our exclusive, patented technology. Oh, yeah, you have to use Internet Explorer."

Who got the idea

Who got the idea that closed-source IT companies would prop up open source projects just to promptly kill their own business models? The author is clearly an idiot or a naive idealist.

These companies prop up Linux and FOSS because they want an open platform, that is, a standard platform that's not controlled by any one vendor, so that they can have complete control over their product. If you have a Windows-only app and Microsoft decides to screw with you, you're SOL. Similarly, Oracle wants Linux to free itself from other, competing UNIX vendors (Oracle runs on AIX, but what happens the days that IBM goes all willy-nilly on DB2?). IBM wants Windows gone to increase the market for Linux-based servers (and by extension AIX and others)), etc., but they will NOT kill their own products.

Folks, an Oracle license costs $40000 per processor per year. I'd say "unwise" is an understatement to the idea that they'd suddenly turn around and start contriburing patches to MySQL for nothing.

Even so, this is still for good, because if all this means that open platforms proliferate, it only gives competing FOSS software running top a chance, meaning, everybody wins: Businesses that want to pay through the nose for proprietary product support will continue to do so, and the rest will use FOSS product with or without commercial support. Call me an optimist, but I think that on the long run the FOSS alternatives will end up winning. I don't really care so long as I get to run a high quality Free software stack that has an option for commercial support.

One burned out blogger doesn't mean a trend

Open source is just barely starting to mature. That commercial influences are in the mix is a happy thing. Coders will continue to do what they love, and for all of the reasons that have made OSS and collaborative development a good thing.

Any coder-- any human for that matter-- can get burned out. Self-rejuvenation is a good thing and isn't limited to programming, development, and engineering. All of his diatribe points to frustration and stress. The basics haven't changed, but they have matured. Along the way, we get to shape this. He's seemingly feeling powerless against the Big Boys. That's natural, and the basics of doing code because you love it and want to contribute haven't changed. ANYBODY gets to use the code, subject to licensing-- little guys like me, and big guns like IBM and so on.

Just Slumbering through Commoditization

Open Source Progress will be right back. We're just napping while GNOME and KDE finish providing suitable commodity desktop environments to emulate and replace Windows. Once there is a base, we should be able to site some higher mountains to start climbing again. Sorry we've been so rediculously lame and havent spurned any major revolutions in the past 5 years, we're getting right on it, love open source.

sigh

This article is the kind of mindless drivel that makes me not want to ready slashdot.

OSS + MPAA = argh

I just bought a Pioneer plasma TV this weekend. Some things of note in relation to this story:
- the TV picture is kick-ass. Great!
- the TV runs Linux. Great, though it is not hackable.
- the manual has a long section reprinting the various GPL and other OSS licenses from their embedded OS. Great!
- the TV has a Home Media Gallery which can connect to a media server and stream audio and video. Great!
- The TV's tuner has audio and video MONITOR OUT jacks. Great!
- However, the audio and video MONITOR OUT jacks are disabled when the TV plays networked audio or video, or when the HDMI input is used for video.

Why? Well, you might be streaming copyrighted material from your media server, and they don't want you to be able to create an analog recording. Never mind that you own the media (as I almost always do), or even own a DRM license (which in other cases I do), or that you yourself may be the copyright holder, or that you can create an analog copy straight off a regular player. No, instead Pioneer is in bed with Sony and Microsoft to lock up my system and prevent me from doing legitimate activities.

So, whether or not any sharks have been jumped, OSS-licensed works are now completely separable from the ethos and community that generated them, and large companies can create Frankenstein-ian combinations of technologies that enforce restrictions that are the antithesis of what OSS licenses are (supposedly) all about---freedom.

Is this new? No. And there is no license violation that I see. But it is mighty irritating.

New converts vs Old Preachers

Well for the preachers of the virtues of open source, yes. It has jumped the shark in a sense but also no it has not because every now aand then a new group of apps come along that make even us jump up and pay attention again.

And keep in mind (and I know I'm about to get flaming causes I can feel the heat), we are still a minority when it comes to people outside of IT. Those people still have never even heard of open source, have no idea what it is or what ir means and don't even know that they are already using it and what the benefits are.

However, due to the fact that even politicians in several states now are calling for open voting machines, open document formats and other open processes and formats, it seems that they are beginning to get it and for them, it hasn't even begun to jump the shark. In their world, Fonzy just got his first leather jacket.

Stupid headline

You might as well ask "Has the automobile jumped the shark?" The answer to that question would be just as informative. Just as the article points out things like Open Source should become the "well duh" part of certain software strategies.

From a marketing perspective the marketing concept of "Open Source" may have jumped the proverbial shark... but from a marketing stand point the Automobile as a new and innovative buzzword concept jumped the shark about the time Speed Racer [wikipedia.org] came out.

Nobody runs around any more and sticks the word "mobile" at the end of things to make them cool any more. When was the last time you heard something like "Banana-Mobile", "Twinkie-Mobile", or "Penguin-Mobile" and thought ... Jinkies! I gotta get a look at that! ... seriously?

Folks, the Open Source - Mobile has left the building.

Nicely worded, absolutely pointless

The blog seems to be even less informative than the press release.
A vendor offers their commercial products for an open source platform! Outrageous!

What do you expect IBM to bundle with their open client? An Outlook Express?

I am not sure about the blogger, but I actually used (and still do time to time) the Open Client. It's not a perfect product, but it is definitely a big step towards an adoption of Linux as an OS platform in a corporate environment. Unfortunately in a corporate world it takes a bit more than a latest Ubuntu release to switch to a different platform.

Open Client does include a "native" Lotus Notes client, so if this is an environment of choice at your company, it might be a huge reason to look at the alternative to a Windows desktop.

With certain exceptions, Open Client does provide a working environment, in which I can do most of my job functions (and I am a developer). Yes, it's not as slick as Feisty Fawn, but good luck trying to make your corporate e-mail, IM and VPN work on your own!

Open != Open Source

Boy, I better think twice before asking people to open the door. Somebody might think I'm asking them to break it into pieces and distribute it to the neighbors.

Has Open Sourced Snuffed the Proverbial Cabbage?

This is a completely meaningless article. It's jaded with itself first of all.

It doesn't really matter what you think of 'open source'. Whether you snigger with hatred, howl in defense or yawn at the recurring fads that surround it: it's perhaps the most singularly influential concept, terror, saviour and slayer facing the conventions of so-called information technology - and even human culture - today.

Pass it on.

Mod TFA down...

Can we mod TFA and this /. article both (-5 Stupid)??? Nothing that guy
says makes a damn bit of sense; and the idea that "open source has
jumped the shark" is about as meaningful as "Shelby serves lucid potatoes before Congress."

This is actually proof of Open Source vitality

When thousands of marketers are being supported indirectly by Open Source software, you know Open Source is here to stay. The marketers are simply a manifestation of the larger trend. First they laugh at you, then they attack you, then they join you. The fact that large corporations are spending so much money marketing their Open Source bona fides, using "open" lingo, and trying to outdo each other as Open Source companies is good for the Open Source movement.

Perhaps Jeff underestimates buyers' ability to see past the marketing hoopla. He also seems to underestimate the power of Open Source licenses themselves. Say what you will in your marketing, but in the end you're still beholden to the licenses you're using. Holding companies' feet to the fire is a lot easier when you have a legally-enforceable mechanism.

Open source can't jump the shark

It's just a model for software development, a base to step on.

There are more than enough commercial companies willing to "take responsibility" and provide support. Yes: just grabbing some source code from teh internet isn't a replacement for the services a full-blown software corporation may offer to you as a customer.

But who the hell claimed otherwise (except some geeks, that noone listens to).

Has democracy jumped the shark

With more people voting for their favorite singer in the tv-program Idols then in local elections has democracy and the idea of one-man-one-vote finally jumped the shark?

What a load of nonsense this article is. First off he doesn't get the difference between opensource software/code and open standards and then he mistakes an idea for a product.

Hell, it would even be silly to say tv has jumped the shark. Does he even know what the term means?

Jumping the Shark

I wa