Free Versus Open Source in the Cloud

Why does Forbes keep indulging SaaS/cloud vendors looking to pick straw-man fights? (see also “The End of ERP” — and my comments there).

Bryan from Acquia makes the point well that open source and SaaS/cloud are mutually complementary, so I won’t try to add anything to that.

Mr. Cohen quotes a passage from Richard Stallman that I actually agree with — the distinction between open source as a product development model and a social cause. Since my company developed our entire ERP software system from scratch (xTuple) — and then decided to make it open source in order to grow a community of users who would help us continue to develop it, I naturally favor the prior view.

Mr. Cohen seems to be suggesting that open source vendors like xTuple came into an existing marketplace, somehow ripped off the incumbents, and then burned the forest behind themselves so that no one could ever grow a decent proprietary software company there again.

I submit that it’s more a question of natural evolution — as software systems become more commoditized, this happens anyway. Competition increases, prices come down, and the best business model wins in the end. Open source is a competitive weapon for my company against the bloated incumbents who are overstaffed, overfed, and build all that bloat into their pricing structure.

We innovate in *how we do business* — not how we record debits and credits in the general ledger. Consumers win. Tell me again how that’s bad?

Here's the full article. You decide

Free Versus Open: Does Open Source Software Matter In The Cloud Era?

By Reuven Cohen

There is an increasingly common refrain I keep hearing from startups. These young companies, with their generally un-original software products, claim that its solution is just like <insert the market leader> except open source. Don’t get me wrong. I like open source as much as the next guy but, from a value proposition standpoint, just being “open source” doesn’t sound all that compelling to me.  This has become especially true in the emerging cloud computing landscape where APIs and Big Data have become some of the most valuable currencies.

I’m sure many of you will point to the number of successful companies who have built a large portion of their infrastructure on open source technologies. This is true and I agree that you really can’t build an Internet centric company today without using free software. But, what I’m really asking is whether the market for open source clones is really all that important or are we really talking about free software where access to the source code is secondary to the freedom it enables? Moreover, is this freedom just an illusion?

Many companies marketing software today position themselves as open source. It has become our generation’s version of a loss leader. A maneuver used to market something else, whether professional services or web services, that is more of a marketing tactic than a core business model. A recent article by Richard Stallman, a leading figure in the free software and open source movement addresses some of the rationale behind open source versus free software in post titled, ’Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software.” In it he says that free software is “a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.” (Disclosure: as a technology writer, I enjoy both free speech and free beer, sometimes together.)

Stallman believes open source and free software describe almost same thing, but, as he puts it, “they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users’ freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that non-free software is an inferior solution to the practical problem at hand. For the free software movement, however, non-free software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software.”

Although I’m not sure I’d take such a strong stance on non-free software being a ‘social problem’, I would say creating cloned open source versions of software for the sake of creating a less expensive iteration of another company’s more successful proprietary software as a business model, is flawed. It’s like saying you’re going to take $1 billion and make it $1 million. I do agree with Stallman that the value in open source or free software is predominantly found within the community of users and, in turn, in its broad adoption and the opportunities that are created and enabled. Or, as Stallman puts it, in sharing and cooperation.

Others don’t agree with this point of view, back in 2008, Nick Carr shared his opinion in a post saying,

“Don’t assume that “open” systems are attractive to mainstream buyers simply because of their openness. In fact, proprietary systems often better fulfill buyer requirements, particularly in the early stages of a market’s development. As IT analyst James Governor writes in a comment on Macleod’s post, “customers always vote with their feet, and they tend vote for something somewhat proprietary — see Salesforce APEX and iPhone apps for example. Experience always comes before open. Even supposed open standards dorks these days are rushing headlong into the walled garden of gorgeousness we like to call Apple Computers.”

Ultimately, the source code that powers many of today’s most successful platforms is becoming less important than efficient access to these systems. APIs have become the roadmap to a network of complex and globally disperse cloud computing environments. What and how you interact with these platforms is quickly taking centre stage.