Why Software Should be Open Source

Looking into open source licenses, I ran into the Halloween Documents - which is a very interesting historical read in and of itself. Microsoft has long been aware that Open Source software presents them with a long term threat across the board. The documents outline the threat assessment, make recommendations for dealing with the threat, and provide a keen insight to the mindset of top level corporate management not just at Microsoft, but to the industry in general.

If you read between the lines (and sometimes just understanding the text verbatim), the strengths of open source development are shown to be such that they cannot be matched by a corporate development effort. This is not to say that commercial closed source software does not have it's place. It most certainly does. To think that all of the innovation that has happened over the last 20 years could have happened without corporate investment and management is ludicrous. On the other hand, the world would be a much darker place without open source software as well.

As a developer, webmaster, and an entrepreneur open source development has a few intrinsic advantages. No matter how innovative, ingenious, or revolutionary a concept that somebody like me could develop there is little chance of achieving critical mass without open source, or at the very least producing a free product. Looking around at the industry giants and successful commercial software vendors out there it is plain to see that mass acceptance of a particular software principal is at least 85% marketing strategy and less than 15% ingenuity.

When looking at the marketing opportunities available today - and there are a plethora - the cost factors involved are astronomical. Even pay-per-click marketing campaigns get prohibitively expensive when trying to communicate with the mass market. The most realistic strategy for the little guy is to build something innovative, develop a community around it, and intelligently manage a grass roots campaign that leverages the social network (both online and offline) of the community.

The open source / free software model allows others to come in and evaluate and / or contribute to the innovation with very little risk. Shareware was a strong option years ago, but I personally don't believe that the shareware marketspace holds a candle to the power of open source or freeware. Monetization of a large community is much easier once it is established. There are a lot of options from ad programs to affiliate marketing, producing high end versions at a cost, charging for support, and the list goes on. It's much easier to make a quarter off of 2 million people than it is to make one hundred dollars off of 5000 people. Further, the larger number of people can generate consistent repeat revenue whereas the smaller community is limited with the amount of monetization they will put up with. I know that the discussion of monetization would disgust a great many people within the OSS community, but I would argue that a great deal of innovation would happen in short order if the promise of monetization were both real and predictable for innovators.

But it's not all about money is it? The open source model also provides benefits for end users. Popular enhancement requests are generally addressed faster in the open source world, and in cases where such enhancement is not feasible the community has other ways of dealing with it - whether it be forking, sub-projects, or simply making workarounds common knowledge within the community. OSS projects generally have thin requirements for installation and making the software work on a variety of platforms is a priority in many cases - giving people the option of moving away from a given operating system without losing the ability to run their software.

On the subject of security - OSS software in general has a better history than closed source software, although this common assumption cannot always be the case. The more complex the project, the more difficult it is to track down and fix security related problems - whether it is commercial closed source or open source. I have found from my own personal experience on both sides of the street that OSS developers are much more familiar with their dependencies than closed source developers. In the cases where they are not - they do know where to turn for a better understanding. That understanding has a direct effect on the ability to deal with security issues.

Anyhow - just a few thoughts on the subject. Feel free to add your own.