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The Almighty Buck Software Linux

O-STEP In The Limelight 64

Posted by Hemos from the professionalizing-things dept.
Tony Stanco, whose new eGovOS conference is starting today, has also been pushing O-STEP (Open Source Threshold Escrow Program). It's an interesting looking program for escrowing code, pending money being raised towards it - you can get more details in PPT,OpenOffice, and HTML.
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O-STEP In The Limelight More

O-STEP In The Limelight

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  • Who decides when? (Score:3, Funny)

    by lewko ( 195646 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @10:34AM (#5528711) Homepage
    Step 1: Write software
    Step 2:
    Step 3: Err... Guys? Can I have the profit now? Umm... What do you mean the escrow program folded? You had WHO doing the book-keeping? Andersen? AARGH...

    (Little known Step 4): Major shooting spree...
  • It's interesting to think, something that is developed with the idea of keeping things free can generate and manage monetary and money related issues. How many times have we seen programs like Turbo Tax and Lotus which are used for business be passed up for something cheaper and better yet open source? I give this on my thumbs up.
  • A very interesting article, but one has to wonder about the keep to go through all of these gyrations... Why not just release under open source? It appears that it will take some time for folkes to figure out: How to ditribute open source while generating revenue.

  • Legitimizing Open Source (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Blaine Hilton ( 626259 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @10:37AM (#5528727) Homepage
    This may help to further mainstream open source efforts. Everyone wants to get paid for their work and this looks like the next logical step in the process. Hopefully the concept is well executed though unlike some other recent ventures.

    • Re:Legitimizing Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tcort ( 538018 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @10:51AM (#5528796) Homepage
      >Everyone wants to get paid for their work
      People are already getting paid for open source and free software. It is possible! Companies and non-profits are making money by
      • selling the software for a price
      • providing a support service
      • customizing the software for customers
      • selling manuals
      • providing training
      • selling promo material (t-shirts)
      • I am not writing software because I like providing technical support, selling manuals, training people in its use, or doing T-shirt fundraisers. I am not good at those things. I am good at writing software. Are you going to tell Sears that they can only charge you for the installation of a heat pump, not the cost of the unit? Let people be paid for what they do best. If you make them do their best for free and sell you some service they can only do in a more inferior manner, their business will hardly last
        • The two aren't mutually exclusive - I know some people who find people for whom an open source product is 95% of what they want, then get hired to make it 100%. That falls under the customisation aspect I'd guess, though "customisation" makes it sound like you'd spend all your time sticking company logos on the software, in reality that's not true.

          And if you think about it, getting paid for what people actually *need* as opposed to what you think they'll need is more efficient anyway.

      • I have refuted these arguments already. Find out why Open Source does not work here:

        The High Priests of the Bazaar

        This paper presents a case against the open source movement and explains why the open source model does not work economically for the vast majority of those involved in the production of commercial software. There are several arguments against the OS (open source) model.

        Open Source Doesn't Make Economic Sense For Most

        The open source organization has presented a few cases that supposedly expl
    • Everyone wants to get paid for their work and this looks like the next logical step in the process.

      Everyone? I think that is a little broad, not _everyone_ is interested in getting paid for work. There are plenty of volunteers out there. I would agree that many, or the majority of people want to get paid for thier work, but there is a significant number of developers that just like the warm fuzzy of putting out a good product that the public can make use of.

      • not _everyone_ is interested in getting paid for work.

        I think everyone does. It's just some people realize that green pieces of paper aren't the only form of acceptable pay.(Karma anyone?)

        • I think everyone does. It's just some people realize that green pieces of paper aren't the only form of acceptable pay.(Karma anyone?)

          Ok, I was just using 'payment' in the strict sence of the word. Most People do derive something out of thier work: cash, kudos, karma, warm-fuzzies, or whatever.

    • :-o

      It should acknowledge the free software movement as a part of our community, and acknowledge Microsoft as its adversary.


      Did I read that correctly? That's almost as strange as naked Raelians! [go.com]

  • o-step Rebirth (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gurnb ( 80987 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @10:40AM (#5528741) Homepage
    O-STEP will re-invigorate the software industry and result in more competition by re-balancing the rights between users and producers in a way more appropriate with the incentives framework of the U.S. Constitution, The current intellectual property regime creates vendor lock-ins for critical infrastructure software.
  • IMHO, It's always a good thing when an intelligent interface between the Technology, Business, and Government sectors is attempted.

    For too long, legislation and regulaton have lagged behind the technological paradigm. This is a step in the right direction.

  • FYI: RMS (HTH) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jodrell ( 191685 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @10:42AM (#5528754) Homepage
    RMS was asked to speak at the conference but refused. Newsforge just published a statement from him explaining why. You can read it here [newsforge.com].

    • From the article:

      For eGovOS to win the full support of the free software and open source community, it must take a clear stand for our community. It should acknowledge the free software movement as a part of our community, and acknowledge Microsoft as its adversary.

      This is awfully reminiscent of President Bush's standpoint on terrorism. Is such rhetoric helpuful?

    • If you read RMS' statement, there's an excellent reply that states:

      ...you are unwilling to participate in these events unless these events acknowledge the existence of the Free Software Movement. Yet by refusing to speak about the Free Software Movement to them, you further marginalize yourself. You refuse to educate the public about something they may not be aware exists.

      I can understand why RMS doesn't want to act in a way that would seem to compromise his ideals. While that's great - and important -

      • While it might be an ego boost to only argue with people who agree with you, it does get in the way of actually convincing people to accept your point of view in the first place.

        Yes, but if you wnt to talk to someone it helps if they actually acknowledge your existence

        And I think RMS is looking for his ego boosts elsewhere (GNU/xyz anyone?).

  • Is this different from the ransom model [slashdot.org]?

    AFAICT, they use the random model and function as a neutral escrow authority. The ransom model is not mentioned in the article though. Poor choice of name? Like free software/open source, I guess.

    Laudable initiative, IMHO.

  • Are the sales release criteria made public? What if a company wants to change them? Who is going to enforce this? What if a company wants to remove it, or refuses to gives sales figures?

    Until these details are ironed out, this program is useless.

  • Software won't be as good under this scheme (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hellkitten ( 574820 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @10:56AM (#5528826)

    This way of doing things will lose one of the benefits of going GPL from day one. Since the code will be closed source for a period you can't build on top of already open software (unless lgpl), this means having to reinvent the wheel, which means higher cost.

    On the other hand if the software is open source from day one customers will be less inclined to pay, profit suffers and the software won't be made.

    Would you like some egg with your chicken?

    So suppose we make a more company friendly GPL? (FSF probably won't like it so a lot will have to be created from scratch, but less that for the proposed scheme), Requiering that source be disclosed after a profit threshold is reached won't work since a company could cheat by setting the threshold redicoulously high. What might work is some kind of time-delayed GPL e.g "If you modify this source and make binaries the source must be provided no later that three months later". That way the a free softwrae author can be sure that nothing based on his code will stay closed forever, and companies could benefit from already developed code. Still it would probably depend a lot on the free software community and their willingness to change their lisences, and you can bet you'll see different time limits depending on what the authour of a piece of code thinks is acceptable. But if something like this is implemented I believe both business and the community could benefit. (except for evil monopolies ;) )

    • "If you modify this source and make binaries the source must be provided no later that three months later".
      Hmm...sounds suspiciously like copyright . So maybe the answer is to fix copyright law so that useful things aren't hoarding WAY after the "incentive" to create them in the first place has gone away.

      • sounds suspiciously like copyright . So maybe the answer is to fix copyright law so that useful things aren't hoarding WAY after the "incentive" to create them in the first place has gone away

        That wouldn't work quite as you seem to believe. If something is not copyrighted (ie public domain) there is no way to force someone that makes a derivative work to release the source

        In fact the idea I outlined above uses copyright to achieve what we want. If I released some code under a lisence like this I own the

    • GPL does not prevent closed development as long as there's no distribution.

      Therefore you can take all the GPL code you want, build on it for any period (a month, a decade, whatever), and as long as when you release/distribute it, you release it GPL, then you have still fully complied with the GPL.

      All you do, is sell the release of the improvement to a cartel of expectant users.

      Naturally, it may be more economic if you engage this cartel in the process of arriving at a fair price. Hence, why The Digita [digitalartauction.com]

    • From my personal experience in looking at various open source code, is that most of it is not reusable. Download bash source code, for instance, and see if you can cut-n-paste some of it into your own shell. Unless you use identical development style, this is nearly impossible. All that code is very tightly bound together, it is all in C, and most of it is rather ugly. If you are bright enough to design some new program, you are bright enough to rewrite the code to make it better. This is not reinventing th
    • Requiering that source be disclosed after a profit threshold is reached won't work since a company could cheat by setting the threshold redicoulously high.

      They could -- but the potential customers would know that the threshold had been set ridiculously high, and would be far less likely to buy in. This proposal is effectively a promise, which they could not break due to the escrow, that if enough copies are sold, they will make the source available; this encourages companies and governments to buy it as

      • They could -- but the potential customers would know that the threshold had been set ridiculously high, and would be far less likely to buy in.

        Really? How many people know that the threshold for TransGaming releasing their Direct3D work is (or was) 20,000 subscribers? How many people know roughly how many subscribers they actually have?

        Seems the escrow idea was already tried, and at least in the Wine project it led to a high-tension fork of the code, not really the intended effect.

  • Abandonware argument (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dareth ( 47614 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @11:05AM (#5528860)
    This sounds so much like the argument that once a software company has made enough money on a version of software that they should/could give it away or open source it so that people who would have never bought it can benefit from it.

    The part that gets me is that there has to be a "trusted entity" that ensures that the release occurs once this mysterious threshold is reached.

    I think there is a great parallel here in the pharmaceutical industry. After all, we all know that drug companies don't fight for extended patent rights to drugs that improve peoples lives. They are always real nice about making their "threshold" amount then releasing their drug(s) to generic and whole-saler manufacturers so that the majority of the people can benefit.

    It is not ALWAYS about money.
    • You're kidding, right? The pharmeceutical companies are bastards. They hoard and fight over every last patent and chemical formula.

      They even patent the same drug multiple times if it does multiple things to your body (usually as side effects)... for example, birth control pills can help reduce acne (this is a side-effect). So a drug company can patent a birth-control pill TWICE, once as the actual invention (birth control) and once as an acne medication (accidental consequence). The birth-control examp
    • I think there is a great parallel here in the pharmaceutical industry. After all, we all know that drug companies don't fight for extended patent rights to drugs that improve peoples lives. They are always real nice about making their "threshold" amount then releasing their drug(s) to generic and whole-saler manufacturers so that the majority of the people can benefit.

      Nice sarcasm, btw. But the parallel is not that good, since for software there is an ability to choose that you don't have with drugs. Th

    • This sounds so much like the argument that once a software company has made enough money on a version of software that they should/could give it away or open source it so that people who would have never bought it can benefit from it.

      The software company also needs to have the integrity to disband or adapt when their software reaches maturity. Once a piece of software implements well everything it is required to do, there is no incentive for people to buy new versions. Once this happens, the company has
  • This is a similar idea, but at least allows the market to help arrive at an agreeable valuation: The Digital Art Auction [digitalartauction.com]

  • A good idea, with some problems (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mr. Shiny And New ( 525071 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @11:08AM (#5528881) Homepage Journal
    I've thought of this idea before; it seems somewhat reasonable but there are some problems. For example, what if the escrow value is set too high? What if only a few people buy it? What happens to bug-fixes and updates?

    I can imagine a few things going wrong in this system where the buyer of the software is harmed. The example in the article about Corel escrowing Word Perfect is a good one: What happens if they set the escrow value at $50M but only sell $40M of software? Then the early adopters lose out, since now they are stuck with a product as proprietary as MS Word, but not as popularly supported. I think that for this reason, many products will not be purchased until they have some serious momentum. This is a catch-22.

    Another issue, as another poster mentioned, is that software that begins its life as proprietary can not build upon the free software foundations. The other main problem is that some software can't be open-sourced because it includes other proprietary components that are licensed, not bought. So, for the free-software community there is still an advantage (more free code, even if it's missing bits, is still good), but for the people who bought the software in escrow there is less advantage, since they can't actually use the opened source for their production work.
    • If the escrow is not met and you no longer wish to develop the program, release the source code to the people who purchased the program under a totally proprietary license allowing internal modification, but not redistribution of source or binaries. This way, if you paid for it, you'll have the source to hack for yourself, but nobody else benefits; after all, they didn't pay for it.
      • That is one approach, but that approach is already available without a mandated system. My company always puts its products into escrow for our customers; they demand it. If we stop maintaining the product (to a certain level of maintenance) then they get access to the source (I'm not sure of all the details, but that's the gist). The OSTEP program needs to do more than this to have real value. I think it will be a huge challenge.

    • What happens if they set the escrow value at $50M but only sell $40M of software? Then the early adopters lose out, since now they are stuck with a product as proprietary as MS Word, but not as popularly supported.

      In other words, just the same as if they bought proprietary software that was not escrowed. It certainly doesn't make the software a worse proposition.
      • It makes the software a worse proposition if one of the reasons you bought the software was because you expected it to be released as open-source.

        If open source is important to me, and I have the choice between the following:

        1. A proprietary program
        2. A proprietary program that will be escrowed
        3. An open source program that isn't as good as #1 or #2 but would be sufficient

        I will choose #2 if I get the source eventually. However, if the source is never released, then I would have been better off with
    • I've thought of this idea before; it seems somewhat reasonable but there are some problems. For example, what if the escrow value is set too high?

      One possibility would be to have the escrow money reduce the duration for which exclusive copyright is claimed. For every X thousand dollars given, a year is taken off of the 95 year limit (with no grandfathering for further copyright extensions.) Thus you always get some progress for your money.

  • Great approach... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bhsx ( 458600 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @11:10AM (#5528897)
    I've been shaking my head trying to figure-out how to accomplish something like this. O-STEP is a taking a well thought-out approach that just MIGHT work. The real problem is getting lobbying money from vendors like IBM to start pushing programs like this. We need an Open Source Lobbying Group (OSLG?). A group dedicated to raising money and pushing legitimate legislation toward balancing the playing field for companies providing Open Source products. In my eyes some of the possible legislation would include tax-exempt status for companies or portions of companies, or some of the non-profit's umbrella of protection. Grant programs are another necessary step, in my opinion. Governments needs to start paying some development costs for software its people or even companies need, and stop lining the pockets of a particular abusive monopoly power in the industry.
    So, in short O-STEP is a GOOD-STEP; but more needs to be done in this arena.

    On a side note: Did anyone else hear that Disney World is enjoying farmer's tax-exempt status because they have a few cows on the property?

  • Blender (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is basically what blender did and it worked great. The money was raised much faster than anyone expected the code was released and the first GPL version of blender3d just came out.

    I think it would be great if more closed source software was made available in this way.
  • Granted, they're not down-and-out just yet, but they are going toe-to-toe with Microsoft Office on the for-profit front, and OpenOffice, too (mindshare / OSS). If they decide to get out of the business altogether, maybe they'd consider a program like this?

  • won't work, and it's unnecessary (Score:5, Interesting)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @11:26AM (#5528997)
    People don't release code open source as some kind of embarrassing step-daughter of commercial business models. They release open source either because they need market share for some related idea/product/service, or they simply want community contributions. And why do other people start using and contributing to open source projects? Because of its longevity: it doesn't matter what Linus or Stallman or whoever does, I can be certain that the Linux kernel and the GNU C compiler will be around, and if there are enough people in the same boat as me, I can be pretty certain that they will be maintained. That's the real advantage of open source.

    Escrow models break this: I have no guarantee that the source will be released, and I personally won't be able to pay to get it in its entirety. From my point of view as a user and potential contributor, escrowed code is as uncertain as commercial code.

    There are enough people who have an incentive to release code open source to keep us all happy. And against open source competition, even escrowed code doesn't stand much of a chance.

  • O-Step creates concentric time-rings of government protection for established corporate products that warrant no innovation, creativity, invention or discovery rights under current Patent Law.

    I can't believe this stuff makes it onto the /. discussion board. Pretty soon /. too will have lost its Open meaning... and the corporations will have succeeded in co-opting the Open movement.
  • is nextel's wireless plan. i don't know how they do it from the the wi-fi side, just found it yesterday. they have a pc card type 2 wi-modem that runs for 400 bucks or so and 55 bucks a month for unlimited 56k data connection.

    i can't decide if its worth the extra expense, since i have dsl at home and can live without the net if i gotta, when i gotta. however, does anyone think that that kind of cost could for that service would be enough for a dsl/phone replacement????

  • They say that after open-sourcing an application, a company may go on to build another version. The new version need not be open or escrowed. This doesn't solve the problem of proprietary software. No one is going to actively develop the open source branch if a company is actively developing a closed one. They also don't mention what open source license is to be used.

  • leggovos my eggovos! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Billy Donahue ( 29642 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @01:17PM (#5529777)
    What the hell kind of name is that? It's got to be one of the worst acronyms ever. Some sort of tortured compound acronym, I guess. Maybe it's a sort of pig-latin derivative that Tony and his siblings developed, and we just aren't in on the inside joke. "Leggovos my eGOvos!"

    I can't figure out what it's supposed to accomplish. If it's a FS/OS advocacy platform and showcase, then why is Microsoft there at all? Tony Stanco and Bruce Perens both seem to be of the opinion that Microsoft will somehow embarrass themselves by showing up and speaking amid all of the real free software companies and developers. This is NOT going to happen. Microsoft is going to do their typical Hollywood pyrotechnics and when everyone's hypnotized they'll start talking about how great .NET works on FreeBSD, or how great Services for Unix(tm) is, or some other embrace-and-extend nonsense. "Pragmatists" who don't know any better are goind to fall for it like they always do, and jobs doing free software integration will be lost thanks to Microsoft's presence at the conference.

    O-STEP is another winning acronym for a program of source code escrow? Sounds like one of the most artificial and forced cases of free software backpedalling. Who would actually use this program? Why bother? Either you release it or you don't. When you put a "time-bomb" on open-sourcing software, you're treating open code as something to be avoided. Open code seems most useful in the early stages of product. "Release Early, Release Often", right? right? How useful was Netscape's release? Not as useful as it would have been if project was open from the beginning. Dealing with WordPerfect source code at this point will be similarly bewildering. It's just a stupid idea.
  • This proposal is an interesting implementation of a very old theory put forth by Noble Prize-winner Ronald Coase. He wrote an article addressing this very problem called 'The Marginal Cost Controversy' back in 1946. It's an interesting read and highly recommended.
  • This idea was stolen from bruce schneider's
    "street performer protocol"

    The 1st person to implement this in the real world was stephan king,
    unfortunately for the open source world this initial experiment failed
    miserably. The never ended up releasing the final chapters to the book,
    many people who had put in their $1 or $2 never got it back because the
    escrow said it would cost more than the money they were getting back to
    get the money back to them. Which makes you wonder how on earth was it
    possible for people
  • This is just another half assed way to try to do what you CAN'T - make money from your software and provide the source openly.

    I think what many people don't realise is that software provides a SERVICE, and people pay for that service. When you pay $400 (or whatever) to Microsoft for ms office, you're not paying for the cd it is on, or for the source code, or for the license, you're paying for something that does spell checking, double spaces and prints (and a whole lot of other crap you prolly don't nee

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