Open Source Not That Open? 339
mstansberry writes "At the Open Source Business Conference last week, Microsoft's Shared Source mouthpiece Jason Matusow argued the point that open source isn't really open. He said you can't just go changing code on supported Linux offerings without paying extra to companies like Red Hat or Novell. So as Linux is commercialized, it becomes less open. While Matusow made good points during his presentation, many in the open source community are skeptical of the idea at best."
That's Might Only Be True... (Score:5, Insightful)
Worst, Microsoft, troll, ever... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can do whatever the hell I want with GPL'd open source, short of refusing to share my changes when distributing binaries to other users. Microsoft has all these licenses, but AFAIK they've released nothing of worth under any of them. I can't view or modify any significant Microsoft source without signing an NDA and paying millions of dollars, or risking serious prison time.
Supported? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want official support from any vendor, you modify away - and support it yourself.
It's open (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is you can do whatever you want with the code, but you can't force someone else to use it. I mean think about it. Imagine a code repository where every developer could write anything and it was fully open. It would never build. Code that is good enough usually gets accepted upstream, that darwinistic process helps open source, not the opposite.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
The end user remains free to change (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps. But even so, the end user remains free to make changes. Even if the license (oddly) prohibited redistribution, supplying the source code to software with the software itself will always be better that not. Closed source is a dead end. End users have no choice, they must rely on the vendor to issue security patches and fix software.
This is not to say that every user will be tempted to change his/her software. The majority of users will be content with what is, and may not even be aware that the source is available. The freedom still exists, however.
Guy is full of it (Score:4, Insightful)
And the Linux kernel is also open. Just don't expect your changes to necessarily go into effect on the 'official' kernel. Just like the MS's shared source code will have 1 official version and then whatever the customers changed out there which they can't even share with each other because they signed NDAs and whatnot up the wazoo just to see the code. Unlike Linux.
MS, stop attacking Linux and mind your own business. You have less and less credibility when you keep attacking Open Source in general with your FUD and your customers are catching on. It's better to salvage what dignity you have and shut up. If and when you stop spreading FUD, your credibility might go up and you can stop spending billions advertising yourself and attacking others. But then, that would totally go against the grain of what is a marketing company, not a software engineering company.
More MS FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a new meaning for the phrase "lock things down" that I hadn't heard before. I don't believe redhat locks anything down. The customer might be responsible for fixing problems with their own changes, but that wouldn't affect the support that redhat provides (i.e. so long as the problem was not caused by a customer change).
In effect, it's more FUD from M$. They really appear desperate now, grasping at any possible argument against Open Source. I didn't see the M$ spokesman telling the audience that Microsoft would support its own software which had been altered by customers.
So Mr Matusow, please explain again, how a license which allows customers to do more than your license allows is bad for those customers? That's like the RIAA claiming that 20-more years of copyright post death of author is good for the consumer.
And if your paying for support (Score:3, Insightful)
AFAIK, one can still get those distros without having to buy a support contract.
Not the point (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same reasoning... (Score:3, Insightful)
In the meanwhile, those who know and care will buy the best option available, while looking at historical data for reliability, TCO, and ownership experience... and then laugh at those who run the American software/vehicle upgrade treadmill.
The Point (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a distribution thing its a philosophical thing.
To make an allusion to a situation I have at work: we use a framework for development, and I have a tweaked copy I use for a pet project. But I don't dare ask for support on it, because I made modifications to the code beyond the specifications of the code. I can do that, because I am a developer and have rights to the codebase, etc. but then its no longer a standard. I can't expect it to support other applications built for the main framework and vice versa, etc...
But in truth he makes a point - the core of the OS in general doesn't need to be messed with, most tweaks and alterations do/should occur at the application level.
Just my 2 cents worth,
-everphilski-
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Developers, by Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
By reading those comments I get an odd sensation that Microsoft is trying to use "developers, developers, developers" like a bunch of highly exploitable hippie enthusiasts.
Chaning the code in Windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ofcourse RedHat cant support somebody elses code, the programmer changing the code might as well be a monkey and there is no way RedHat can magically fix things if an idiot sits down and hits the keyboard with a pillow. What you can do is send those fixes upstream and if the fixes are good it will get incorporated into the next release.
Re:That's Might Only Be True... (Score:5, Insightful)
Regards,
Steve
you mean Redhat wont support my modified code!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Redhat wont go the extra mile to support some code that they have supplied and I have modified.
Wow that's preposterous.
What next? Ford wont honour my new vehicle warranty if I modify the engine?
Re:It all depends... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Point (Score:5, Insightful)
No of course you can't. That's like me saying "I created a program on my computer, can someone offer me support without seeing the code or knowing much about it?" However if you distribute your software, and it gains a wide customer base, then people will be able to offer support on it, and nothing stops you from offering your customers support for your derivative.
Try doing that with Windows and see how far you get.
the core of the OS in general doesn't need to be messed with, most tweaks and alterations do/should occur at the application level.
And open source IS open, because if someone were to make changes to the OS, if the changes were good enough and the people distributing it professional enough, it would gain widespread use, and the other Linux distro's would be welcome to come along, grab his changes, and implement it within their own distributions.
To me, the MS PR person seems to have created a straw-man more then anything. But then again, why is this a surprise? Microsoft appears to hate the GPL and Linux, because it see's them as a valid threat to their own virtual monopoly. Whenever a MS person speaks, be very careful. He might be speaking the truth, but the likelihood of a spin is great. You should also be careful whenever there's a Microsoft article on Slashdot, because while the summary might be saying the truth, the likelihood of a spin is great. In this case, the summary gave the impression the article was primarily about Open Source not being open, when in reality, it's about Microsoft's shared source license.
Arrogance... (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean they do have the singularity OS....
Re:I'm sold (Score:2, Insightful)
Point He Misses (Score:3, Insightful)
If you go with MicroSoft or other closed source products, when you are up shit creek, you are relying on them to give you a patch. Maybe you don't really matter to them (or whatever vendor sold you the stuff) -- in which case, you can go jump in a lake.
Sometimes the problem isn't that there's a bug in the closed source stuff, but that your stuff is interacting with it in a way that makes it misbehave. Perhaps the system is documented, in which case you need to read a thousand pages in the reference manual, hoping to find the requirement that you've failed to meet -- thereby causing the failure.
Or you call the vendor:
You: "it's broke."
Vendor: "Why? What are you doing? Nobody else has this problem"
You:"Well, I don't really know."
Vendor: "Thanks for calling. Please get back to us when you have more info."
On the other hand, if it is open source, you can fire up the debugger, find the problem, and work aroudn it or fix it -- all of that is perhaps faster than going through the support process. If you do a big project, the odds of you encountering a roadblock like this approach 100% percent. If you are pessimistic about the vendor and believe you can fix things, you pick open source.
Re:Guy is full of it (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, this round of FUD isn't aimed at "end-users". It is aimed at PHBs that are considering switching large operations. It makes absolutely no sense to purchase a support contract and then attempt to negate that contract by doing self-modifications. As I stated in my post above, why did you purchase the support if you aren't going to use it?
B.
Re:Guy is full of it (Score:3, Insightful)
MS, stop attacking Linux and mind your own business
Umm... It didn't really seem to me like an attack on Linux, per se, but more of a defense of shared source. Microsoft fears Linux (and rightly so) as it's up-and-coming competitor - but there haven't exactly been horse's heads in beds, have there? And besides, if Linux is now Microsoft's greatest competitor, how the heck is it not Microsoft's business? (Here, "business" can be taken more or less literally.)
For the record, the article did make a good point. Large businesses that need support can't tinker with the source as freely as other users, as doing so makes tech support more costly. Hence, for this market, open source is less open. Sure, it's common sense - but for large, tech-support-needy corporations, open source becomes little different from shared source. And hence, Mr. Matusow's point.
Re:Worst, Microsoft, troll, ever... (Score:3, Insightful)
The internet is a good support tool. If that's not enough, there are people and companies other than Red Hat who can be hired in an emergency. There aren't many things that you can't fix anyways. If you can't get an answer from support, the source is always available. If your job is on the line, you'll dig in and find the answer, though it may take a while. And if the problem is serious enough, costly enough, just pay RH what it takes to get support.
Even with Windows, there are a lot of problems that I can't fix and they won't fix, but there are almost always somewhat obvious workarounds, harder and less desirable as they may be. I've never called Microsoft's tech support, and I generally have little faith in tech support. I feel like I'd spend more time trying to explain my problem and trying all the "standard solutions" that they make everyone try than I would troubleshooting the problem myself. The people and businesses who are likely to benefit the most from paid tech support are also the least likely to modify the source code.
Re:Guy is full of it (Score:3, Insightful)
yes, that is the point he was making but it is still a null & void one. If you have the "in-house" ability to modify source to the point of breaking support then you don't need support for that code. Modifying code on one program doesn't make support for other "standard" progams go away. It only makes support for your mods dry up. But then again, if you can't support your own modifications what business do you have modifying it instead of using that damned support contract you paid for...
B.
Re:I was at the conference and was in the audience (Score:3, Insightful)
I do alter source code pretty often infact. It has been invaluable to me at work since i can find an error, fix it and continue as nothing happened. I have had problems in commercial software that hasnt been fixed for years and could do nothing.
Yes because as we all know... (Score:3, Insightful)
[sigh]
Microsoft knows full well of BSD [opensource.org] licenced software. They just prefer not to mention it since it would make their bullshit clearly that.
I guess while Microsoft slogs it out with "Linux", Sun and Apple, this will make BSD the "meek"?
No Additional Value... (Score:4, Insightful)
An IT manager may look at this argument and conclude there is no advantage to open source solutions, in that there is no point having solutions that are not supported. The manager may conclude closed source is a better choice; while no self-modifications can be made, at least the system is supported in its entirety.
At the end of the day, your average IT manager needs to desperately separate him or herself from the technology. Otherwise, they get completely snowed under doing technical work that should have been delegated. When there is an option to pay for support, most will take it. The argument is powerful in that it contends as there is no option for support of changes, so there is no ability to make changes. So why buy open source as opposed to a fully supported Microsoft product?
Very smart implication, I think anyway.
Re:I was at the conference and was in the audience (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a fish, and it's red. (Score:5, Insightful)
Few if any competent companies would expect that they can modify the source willy nilly and then expect direct support on what _they_ have done from the distribution vendor. I mean, if you have an understanding of the process of software development and have spent 5 minutes reading about the Open Source movement, then you'll understand that it is a completely impractical, if not irrational, way of working.
When has this approach ever been promoted by the Open Source community? This sounds like only something a PHB could arrive at, following a methodology of gleaning an understanding of OS while walking by the cubicle farm and overhearing casual conversations.
Seriously, to me it seems like Microsoft sat around a table brainstorming for potential negative aspects of OS that they could market to suitably gullible people. I guess they feel sufficiently threatened to roll with even the weak results of that session. I hope the audience laughed at the guy, and told him to go back to counting the cash piles back at Redmond.
Strawman (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guy is full of it (Score:3, Insightful)
I think spreading FUD or misinformation about something is always an attack on that front.
It's like the attack ads on TVs by politicians (or by lobbyists) attacking the other guy. It's getting so bad in New Jersey campaigns, I don't even know who's running against who, all I'm being told is who NOT to vote for.
Perhaps it's utopian, but I hate negative advertising in most cases because it attempts to circumvent the audience's ability to choose and go straight to spoonfeeding you the "right" choice instead of having a platform to stand on (Here, this is what I'm about, if you this a good direction to go in, please choose me) and letting people decide to choose based on the candidate's own merits instead of manipulating base emotions.
If you watch Linus, he almost never resorts to 'negative' advertising. He lets his work and ideas speak for themselves, and so he attracted a following which helped him make what we know today as Linux. The people who boo out MS, aren't paid by him (though sometimes some individuals go overboard and become idiotic in their blind fanaticism, and yes I'm guilty of acting idiotic towards MS too sometimes).
However, many, but not all, of the people praising MS and booing Linux are being paid by MS. They wouldn't even care otherwise. So it is up to MS to control much of it.
I feel MS uses this negative advertising to such a laughable extreme (TCO studies, etc) that nearly no informed person in the Technical sector believes them outright anymore - and that will hurt them as a business when some of those people graduate from the purely Technical side to the management side. Or even beforehand.
This is why they shouldn't engage in FUD. Not to be nice. If they want to 'win', spend that money and make a better product.
Re:It all depends... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you have access to the code, and can change whatever you like, DOES NOT MEAN that you will be allowed to contribute to the official project code yourself. Firefox is a closed development house. They keep strict control over what code goes in, who's allowed to touch it, what features go on the UI and how they're organized. If they want to keep it that way, they're perfectly within their rights -- and given the quality of the product, it seems to be a good idea. If everyone were allowed to drop in code, or tack things on to the UI, the project would soon be a total mess.
But just because they keep a tight reign on the project code doesn't mean they aren't following the ideals of open source. You still have access to the code. You can go in and change whatever you like, fork the project, release your own competing version based on the original codebase, etc. That's where the true value of OSS comes from. If the Mozilla foundation ever went away, the community could pick up the code from the last release and run with it. If your company wants to release a custom version with support for some weird proprietary graphics format that Mozilla would never in a million years devote time to, you can. That's what open source is about.
Allowing everybody with even a vague interest to contribute to THEIR fork of the code, however... was never any open source license. At some point, once you get past the warm fuzzies of releasing something Open, you still have to sit down and actually code the project. And keeping an invitation only group makes a lot of sense, from that perspective.
Re:It all depends... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Microsoft presentation says something very different.
"Matusow said opening up software can add value, "but you need to understand why you want to open certain software. We are building intellectual property into software and trying to sell it. We throw code over the wall for the community to build on it.""
They throw code over the wall?
It's very patronizing. Instead of regarding the people out there as brainpower with a positive contribution, they regard their internal direction as higher than external voices. I guess this is why ultimately Microsoft is dropping the ball. They just don't listen. You NEED to listen. The world has changed since Win95, or even WinXP. We need more, we need it faster, and we need it to work with the Mac laptop and Linux server.
Basically, the surge in open source is driven by the fact that it's answering so many of the productivity, communication and search questions of the marketplace. Even Apple realize that, and this is why their baby (MacOS X) is largely available as Darwin (open OS code).
Just my two cents.
Shane Coughlan
Project Leader
Mobility http://mobility.shaneland.co.uk/ [shaneland.co.uk]
Re:It all depends... (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally understand that there are advantages of the open source model, primarilly in that if the company you had support from goes out of business or stops supporting that software you can still go out and find someone else to support it or even manage the thing internally, while with closed source software once the software vendor stops support you are forced to upgrade or switch to a completely different package. But Microsoft probably doesn't see that as a significant advantage, or at the very least doesn't want other people to consider that as an advantage.
Re:Supported? (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly - the Microsoft guy's statements are ( clever ) FUD. It's talks about OSS but it's really about support contracts not OSS. If you want to use OSS and modify it you can but if you want it - or anything - supported then mucking around with it is not usually in the terms of the support contract. In general support contracts are not open - but then they're not supposed to be.
It's like the warranty stickers on certain hardware. Break that sticker (i.e. make your own mods) and you're no longer covered by the warranty if it goes wrong. So it is with software support contracts.
IME Support contracts are generally the same regardless of the software licence.
Re:It's a fish, and it's red. (Score:3, Insightful)
One can download the source to whatever needs to be customized and run make&friends in the relevant directory on pretty much every OS distro on earth - hence the name! Perfectly, legally, even to pass it on, but all of this without any legitimate concerns to be raised just because someone else (be it a Red Hat or a Green Gecko, or anything else) who didn't make these changes cannot know what the one making them may have broken. To suggest otherwise is preposterous indeed, even more so if such "concerns" are uttered by someone who won't let you have his sources to try the same things.
The sad part is that posting this article (with that headline, and without a word of caution right on top of it) on /. in the first place will only help this "non-story" being picked up by the mainstream press, at least parts of which are likely to make it sound as if genuine issues really had been found with the OSS model.
Re:Finally... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It all depends... (Score:2, Insightful)
"We will post your changes / suggestions to the developer community and if they are introduced into the codebase we will support it."
The issue is really *how* you interface with your distribution. Most larger companies have not gotten thier minds around doing internal development work on the OS's that they run. (And for good reason - it is not what they do.) So they interface with "Linux" problems like they do any other software product; through the support contract that they paid dearly for (in the case of Red Hat and SuSE).
When they call these organizations they get little or no ownership of the problem that is seen in "traditional" offerings.
That is really the point of the Red Hat and SuSE license / contract (in my opinion) to map the traditional model (call vendor for support) to the open source model (read the code solve it yourself / post online / etc...). It is a difficult task, and each does lousy job of dealing with bugs. They may be helpful during installation and integration, but once you find a problem in the code they tend to be next to worthless in getting a fix to you.
How I know:
I have worked in the industry for years so have had some experience working with (other) tech support. In my last position I was responsible for evaluating and making recommendations for the support my enterprise customer was purchasing from Red Hat and SuSE.
So, the code is free, but support costs money (Score:3, Insightful)
Why didn't we think of that?
Oh, wait...
Re:It all depends... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, to stick with the car analogies, you expect your car dealer to fix your car if it breaks within guarantee, although you've modified the motor, and exchanged the breaks. All at no cost extra.
Sorry, but this is plain stupid. It does not work like that in non-FL/OSS industry, and noone claims that it works like that with FL/OSS. You just can't buy a service contract, do whatever the heck you like to the software, and then expect them to support your own code without giving them extra money for the time they need to analyse the changes you made to their software.
So please stop making such braindead comments.
Re:No Additional Value... (Score:3, Insightful)
If support is a concern for you, and providing your own fixes is not (and this is true for many, many, many shops, in no small part due to the culture that grows up around proprietary software - you implement workaround, rather than fixing the product directly), then obviously the "open" part of Open Source is of little value to you. That doesn't mean you should neccesarily go to Microsoft over Red Hat, simply that you should evaluate the offerings on different technical grounds.
In my experience, for example, MS support even at very expensive levels sucks. RedHat support is excellent, with a faster turnaround, and you're far more likely to actually get a *fix*.
Illogical. (Score:3, Insightful)
With Open Source you can.
A. Modify nothing had have full support
B. Modify somethings and have support on what you have not modified.
C. Can fix problems or ad features yourself and get them added to the distro.
D. Support yourself if you have the staff since you have the source.
E. Find an other vendor that will give you the support you want since Linux is "multi sourced".
With Windows.
A. You can not modify or enhance Windows and you get the support that Microsoft will give you at the cost they want to charge but only as long as they are willing to provide it.
It was traditional that "Big" companies would avoid single source products like the plague. That is why back in the day Intel would let other companies manufacture Intel chips. That is how AMD got in to the X86 business. The fact that Linux is not single source has got to be a big deal. If Red Hat does you wrong you can go to Novel. If Novel isn't your cup of tea then jump to what ever Mandrake is called this week. Choice is good.
Re:No Additional Value... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What? No. Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a shame Science has "evolved" so far these days from it's purely Philosophical origins, when you just asked "why?" (in the innocent pursuit and unbiased interest of understanding), instead of "why should I?" as is common in most fields today.
Thanks for the refreshing and intellectually honest opinion here at
thx.
p.s. Ah! I've just seen you've been modded a troll. lmao. Now you know what Petrarch or Gutenberg of the Renaissance felt like while helping their peers migrate from the Dark Ages...