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Can it be open source and not free? Why open source not free software?
i saw a book about this and i thought i check it out. Logo says "Open Source Business Intelligence". There are better known reporting frameworks like Jasper Reports aka "
The Most Widely Used Open Source Business Intelligence" .. is it just catch phrase?
http://www.pentaho.com/products/try_bi_suite.php
You can read the open source definition here. As you can see, there is nothing keeping them from charging money for it, they just have to provide sources to customers, and customers have to be allowed to redistribute modified versions.
The Open Source Initiative and Open Source movement have definitions of Open Source that are almost completely equivalent to the Free Software Foundation's definition of Free Software. However, "Open Source" is not a trademark or anything like that, and people are legally free to use the phrase as they like. Since the site refers to a 30-day free trial, I'd imagine that they aren't using "Open Source" in the same sense.
(Unfortunately, there's nothing anybody can do to stop the confusion. There was "open source" software for a long time before the OSI, which typically meant software you could get the source for. EDIT: The historical usage is dubious, but "Open Source" is simply too descriptive to be trademarked. You can trademark a made-up word ("Pentium") easily, or a word used in another context ("Vista"), but it's real difficult to trademark a descriptive term ("Open Source"). Without trademark protection or the equivalent, there's no legal way to stop anybody from supplying their own meaning for the phrase.)
Even if they were, they could still charge. If you look at the OSI's rules for Open Source licenses, you'll see that all OS licenses must permit commercial use of the software, including selling it for whatever the seller can get for it. Similarly, Free Software (as defined by the FSF) is not necessarily free of charge, but does give you certain freedoms with the code.
There another sense of "open source" that they might be using. In journalism there is an idea of open sources, i.e. sources that are not private to the writer. Maybe they mean something more like this, but it's probably just a marketing ploy.
Open source as the phrase indicates only means that the source code is open and free so that you can modify it as you please. The actual product can still cost you.
It's not freeware, it's open source. :)
From the FSF definition of "Free Software":
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer."
You can get the source and you can do what you like with it. That does not mean the author (or anyone else for that matter) cannot charge for distribution and support of products created using that source. Someone offers a service for a fee, and you are free to take it or leave it depending on the value you might place on such service, the alternative is that you support yourself, and often that's fine, but sometimes the cost-benefit weighs in at value-added services.
They could mean that some of the core business logic is open source, but some of their uses could be closed source. Or you might be able to download the source and build it.
Look at RedHat Linux. Its open source (in fact there is a o.s. spinoff) but you only get RedHat support if you pay, and people pay A LOT.
If you have a copy of the software and someone claims that you can't use it (or continue to use it) without paying them, then they are claiming that that software is not open source. If they have a legal right to force you to stop using it, then the software is not open source. Open source gives you a lot of protections: not only to keep using the software, but to inspect the source, to modify it, and redistribute both the original and your modifications.
But there are various things people do that cost money: they will charge you to give you a copy of the software in the first place (this will only work if there aren't very many customers; if they try to prohibit the customers from sharing what they've paid for, then the software stops being open source and in some cases is a GPL violation, and if there are a lot of customers who have the legal right to put the software up on a web site somewhere, sooner or later one will), or they will charge you for proprietary add-ons, or they will sell you services related to the software.
"Can it be open source and not free? Why open source not free software?"
Yes.
An organization can charge you a fee to provide, support and debug open source products.
See http://www.fsf.org/ for more information.
For other opinions, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html and http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
I always think that Open Source see itself as a pragmatic & an effective business model to do software for free
At the other side, Free Softwares are more 'bout "philosophical" and moral issue (aka Intellectual propriety, etc)
Open Source does not imply $0 cost.
$0 Cost does not imply Open Source.
Open Source means that as you get the software, you're entitled to see the source, and do stuff to it (within certain constraints specified by the licenses)
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There is a lot of open source engines and software with different licences conditions. Most of them are non-free for commercial use.
The question is what does "commercial use" exactly mean?
Example:
I have site where I propose paid service or software. I want to create blog or wiki section on it. I download appropriated open source projects and deploy on my web site. Is it "commersial use" as I will not earn money on these engines but on the services I propose?
"Commercial use" in cases like this is actually just a shorthand to indicate that the product is dual-licensed under both an open source and a traditional paid-for commercial license.
Any "true" open source license will not discriminate against commercial use. (See clause 6 of the Open Source Definition.) However, open source licenses like the GPL contain clauses that are incompatible with most companies' approach to commercial software (since the GPL requires that you make your source code available if you incorporate GPL'ed code into your product).
Duel-licensing is a way to accommodate this and also provides a revenue stream for the company providing the software. For users that don't mind the restrictions of the GPL and don't need support, the product is available under an open source license. For users for whom the GPL's restrictions would be incompatible with their business model, and for users that do need support, a commercial license is available.
You gave the specific example of the Screwturn wiki, which is dual-licensed under the GPL and a commercial license. Under the terms of the GPL (i.e., without getting a "commercial" license), you can do the following:
Use it internally as much as you want (see here)
Run it on your internal servers for external users / clients / customers, or run it on your internal servers for paying clients if you're an ISP / hosting provider. (If Screwturn were licensed under the AGPL instead of the GPL, that might restrict this.)
Distribute it to others, either free of charge or for a payment that covers the shipping, as long as you're willing to also distribute the source code
Incorporate it into your product, as long as you're willing to also distribute the source code, and as long as either (a) it remains a separate program that you merely aggregate with your product or (b) you release the source code to your product under an open source license compatible with the GPL
In other words, there's a lot that you can do without getting a commercial license. This is especially true for web-based software, since people can use web-based software without it being distributed to them. Screwturn's web site even acknowledges this: they state that the commercial license is for "either integrating it in a commercial application, or using it in an enterprise environment where free software is not allowed," not for any use related to commerce.
All of the preceding is merely my understanding and is not intended to be legal advice. Consult your lawyer to be certain.
Fundamentally if you use it as part of a business then its commercial use - so its not a matter of whether the tools are directly generating income or not rather one of if they are being used in support of income generation directly or indirectly.
To take your specific example, if the purpose of the site is to sell or promote your paid services/product then its a commercial enterprise.
If the usage of something is part of the process of you making money, then it's generally considered a commercial use. If the purpose of the site is to, through some means or another, directly or indirectly, make you money, then it's probably commercial use.
If, on the other hand, something is merely incidental (not part of the process of production/working, but instead simply tacked on to the side), there are potential grounds for it not to be considered commercial use.
I suggest this discriminative question:
Is the open-source tool necessary in your process of making money?
a blog engine on your commercial web site is necessary: commercial use.
winamp for listening to music is not necessary: non-commercial use.
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I'm in the process of starting an open-source project aimed at digitising a whole bunch of forms provided by a government department. Basically at the moment if people need to fill out the forms they need to do so on paper, and I'd like to change that so that it can be done on the computer.
At present, the project has no official affiliation with the government and I'd like to set it up in such a way that the public can help contribute to digitising the forms as there are a large number of forms. At some point in the future, the forms may come to be of a standard where it would be feasible that they could be used officially by the government. If this were to be the case, it would be ideal if there was some kind of remuneration, rather than the forms being handed over to the government free of charge.
In such a case, how do you retain authority over where the money goes, given that the project could potentially have had many contributors? Obviously I would like to pass on remuneration to contributors that is based on how much they have each contributed, but is there any legal provisions or statements I would need to have in place to retain the authority to be the person that makes the decisions about who gets what? Is it a simple case of "person that starts the project gets to decide", or would this be in breach of any laws surrounding intellectual property or copyright, given that part of what is sold would be other peoples contributions?
A case (on a much larger scale) similar to mine that I can think of is with Sun buying MySQL - who got to decide where the money from the sale went to, and what did they have to do to retain the authority to make such a decision? As an asides, what did Sun actually get out of purchasing MySQL that they could not have had by simply downloading it, given that it was open source?
Sun, I'm sure, had lawyers. I really suggest you talk to one. They would be able to sort out how to retain some kind of rights over the money so that you (and your contributors) could get remuneration later.
Even open source projects have the concept of copyright.
The code of the project may be open-source but the copyright belongs to someone.
For example most GNU programs belong to the FSF. If you make non-trivial contributions (more than simple patches) they will ask you to give them the copyright of the code.
I suspect this also happens with other big open-source applications (e.g. Mozilla, Eclipse e.t.c).
The controller of the code (and where the money goes to) is the owner of the copyright.
To solve your problem you just ask all contributors to sign papers that assign the copyright of the code to you.
If you later decide to do something else with result you are free to do as you wish since you will be the soler owner of everything.
InterBase is a database system that was branched to an open-source version. Today, it's closed-source again but other developers are continuing to develop the open-source version. The two products are becoming very different nowadays but they have been very similar in the past.
The problem is that the open-source license will stay with that specific source version forever and ever. You can continue to develop your product, adding new features and changing it back to a commercial product again but you would be competing with other developers who might continue to develop on your open-source version. And they hold the copyrights of the modifications they're adding to your project.
Your main problem with turning back your open-source project to a commercial version again are the contributions from other open-source developers. If they gave you feedback and added code to fix certain issues then those changes are copyrighted by them and you can't add them to your commercial version, unless your commercial version continues to be open-source.
Still, a product can be open-source and commercial! Several Linux vendors make big profits doing just this. The profit is from the support they give to users, who are willing to pay for this support. They're not really selling Linux, they're selling support and their services to create an easy-to-install Linux version.In your example, you can't turn the project back to closed-source since you're accepting contributions from others. Those would all fall under the open-source license. But you own the copyright and the (trademarked) name, thus you can determine if people can offer commercial support for your product or not. They might have to pay you to use your trademark! The value is not in the code but in the name...
To contribute to OpenJDK, you have to sign a paper that transfers ownership of your code to Sun.
Providing an infrastructure for signing such a form would be a nice start for your digital form management project ;-).
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Assuming you have been involved in an open source project (GPL'ed) that has been around for as long as 5-10 years, during this time it has been fairly successful - despite a good handful of commercial/proprietary alternatives.
Now, you've come to realize that the long term contributors would like to leverage the project commercially, possibly even in order to make a living or start a company based on it. So that they can exclusively work on it, without depending on other, unrelated, work.
So, what are some of the viable and recommended steps to turn an open source/GPL project into a commercial "success" (in the sense of self-sufficiency), so that long term contributors may preferably be paid to work on the project, without affecting the open source nature of the project itself?
In other words, what are generally some of the more common revenue-creating mechanisms for open source software, and how can these be successfully introduced/implemented - also, what prerequisites/conditions apply?
I saw a company a few years back that took a handful of OSS spam and virus filters, built a web interface to administer them all at once, put it on a 1U server, and sold it as a network security appliance.
It was a nice product for mid sized companies that wanted a single solution for all spam and virus filtering, that auto-updated itself and was easy to administer.
Technically they were just selling the server, and the web admin tool, all the OSS components were freely available, if you wanted to spend the time setting them all up individually.
You should think in terms of the "product halo," which refers to all of the related items and services surrounding a product that are not the product itself. For example, MySQL is open source and freely downloadable, but its product halo could include services like installation, customization, consulting, training, etc. Or Zend contributes heavily to PHP and offers Zend framework, but they also have a number of commercial products surrounding those offerings. Active State creates the Komodo IDE and has an open source version and then a commercial version that extends the open source version. Or take Linux...or any other number of examples. A book that you might find interesting on the topic is Wikinomics.
I think the main issue is the business model adopted by the project owners and the ones who want to turn it into revenue. It will depen on what kind of project is it, such as end-user product or as software API. In the case of end-user projects, Software as a Service seems a very good choice as a business model.
Look out for examples, and case studies on successful projects, such as apache, firefox, sugarCRM...
Focusing on specific niches is also a very important thing.
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This question has always been around my head.
Can someone create a new product based on an existing open source project?
Say you want to create an "Apaxe webserver" that is basically Apache with your some extra plugins ( say support for ASP or something similar )
Is this possible?
Would you be able to create a closed source product ( either free or licensed )
As for GPL seems clear it is not possible because the source should be open. But what about Apache license, BSD and others "corporate friendly"
Are the price ( free for most of the project ) , bug fixes and counting with the core development team the only thing that prevent from others to commercialize those OS products?
What about: Khrome a commercial product based on Chrome with ActiveX support ( who would dare to do such a thing :P )
EDIT
Thank you all you all for your answers.
So, again
What prevents from similar ( clone ) products from appearing in the market?
:)
NOTE: I know we are not lawyers, and we could read every OSS license here http://www.opensource.org/licenses.
Nothing prevents clone products appearing on the market. Look at all the various linux distributions, for example. The X.org project was forked from XFree86. And so on.
It happens relatively infrequently, though, for a couple of reasons:
The original project has the first-to-market advantage
The original is usually being given away free
So unless your version is significantly better than the original, you're not going to get much uptake or make much money out of it. If your version is significantly better, then go ahead!
From the original developer's point of view, the power of the GPL is that it forces such clones to share any improvements with the rest of the world, so they can be incorporated back into the original.
Generally, my read of the licenses is:
You can make a derivative work of any project based on one of the popular licenses (i.e. GPL, LGPL, Apache, MIT, BSD).
You may charge money for at least the distribution & packaging of your derivative work.
Depending on the license, you may also have to distribute your modifications in source form and/or include notices in your distribution.
So to your question about Apaxe: yes, you can do this as far as I know. I believe that the Oracle HTTPD server is actually derived from Apache, and it's definitely not free!
Here's my 10,000 foot view of open source licenses:
"Real" open source licenses (eg: MIT, BSD, Apache I think, etc.):
You can do whatever you want with licensing derived works. It can be closed, open, etc. The license places no restrictions on your licensing of derived works.
"Restricted" open source licenses (eg: GPL, LGPL):
Derived works must include specific license restrictions; for example, the GPL requires derived works to be GPL-ed. Essentially your rights are restricted for derived works.
Charging for products is separate from either of these; neither type restricts charging for products, although some licenses place restrictions on the rights you can retain and/or must convey to receivers of your software (ie: the "Restricted" licenses).
Hope this helps.
Edit: Changed by original "DRM" term for GPL type licenses to "Restricted", cause some people attach negative connotations to DRM, and/or cannot grasp how the GPL restricts your rights for derived works in an almost identical way to any other type of DRM (ie: controlling what you can do with it). Seriously, you can be a FSF supporter and still grok the concept that the GPL is more restrictive than "real" open source licenses. The question is not about which type is right or wrong, it's about what the difference is.
Red Hat (and most of the other Linux vendors) charge for support, not for their software - which is primarily how companies can make money off of code that is GPL licensed.
It really depends on the license the open source project uses.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer; you should always read the license for full details.
If a project is under the GPL, then anything you derive from it must also be released under the GPL (or a compatible license, and if it is released at all). You're still allowed to charge money for it, but anyone who buys it has to be provided with the full source, and you can't prevent them also selling it, or giving it away for free.
If a project is under the BSD license, you can do pretty much anything with it including incorporate it into a proprietary closed source product. There is BSD code inside Windows!
Other licenses fall somewhere in between.
look at MyEclipse, its really just eclipse+free plugins+myeclipse's plugins and it cost some money.
What prevents from similar ( clone ) products from appearing in the market?
Nothing. The real question is: How can a similar cloned product get more popular than the original product?
Some cases where somebody might clone/fork a project:
Picking up a dead open source project and continuing its development. If the new derived product is maintained regularly and it gets more updates than the original version, then people will start using the new version. This is one of the big benefits of open source - good software does not need to die, just because the original developers stop developing it, but someone else can continue from where they were left. One example of such a project (which I've used) is that the development of Turck MMCache had died out in 2003, so eAccelerator forked it and continued its development in 2004. I'm sure there are lots of other examples.
There is a disagreement in the developer community of an open source project, and the project splits into two. That's why it's best to strive for a common understanding in open source projects, so that the community would not be split needlessly. If a project is split, the projects may continue living if they managed to attract enough developers and users, but otherwise they may slowly die. In general, splitting should be avoided, because it makes the community more fragmented and weaker. IIRC, in the video presentations of Producing Open Source Software (good stuff!) they mentioned a case where the original developer of some project wanted to take a completely new direction in the development, but the community of other developers wanted to keep the old direction. The result was that the original developer was kicked out of the project, so he created a fork of the project, while the rest of the community continued the development of the original project.
A commercial closed source derivative of an open source project which was released under a permissive license (for example BSD). The derived product would need to be considerably better in features or in support than the original product. Otherwise people will prefer using the original open and free product.
Isn't that essentially what red hat does? Even though they have fedora, they are charging money for their linux distribution. Granted, they've written a lot of code for it, it's still based on open source-stuff.
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What are the pros and cons of adopting Open Source software for an organisation? Is there anybody out there who has done this and how well has it been working out with some examples of the softwares they adopted and how it has been in use?
Usually contributions come because people do it as a hobby, then how can we make sure that there will be continued support for it? IMHO, in case of proprietary software there is an incentive for the organisation (money), and they will keep hiring people to keep it under development as long as the software is profitable. Correct me if I am wrong. What are the arguments I might expect from a Manager who might oppose the suggestion to use Open Source softwares?
The term "Open Source" only describes a licensing model. Strictly speaking, the only pro that you are guaranteed to have are the freedoms given by the license, and there are no cons that you are guaranteed to have.
There are many Open Source products that are also commercial, created, maintained, and supported by a company for a profit. There are also many Open Source products that are maintained by volunteers but also supported commercially. For example, if you buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux, then Red Hat will support you on all of the products that come with it, even the ones that are maintained by volunteers.
As for how to be sure that there will be continued support, you can't. Not with Open Source, not with proprietary software, not with anything. With Open Source, if the community is large enough, you can be reasonably confident that the community will continue to maintain it (maybe under a new name) even if the current maintainers abandon it, and you have the option of maintaining it yourself or hiring someone else to do it. Maintaining it yourself may not be an attractive option, but it can be a life saver in a pinch.
With proprietary software, if the author decides to stop maintaining it, you are just plain out of luck. Consider, for example, the thousands of users of Visual Basic 6.
The main pro of Open Source software is illustrated by your comment:
[In the] case of proprietary software, there is an incentive for the organisation (money), and they will keep hiring people to keep it under development as long as the software is profitable.
The trouble is that if it ceases to be profitable (for example, because the code is so stable that people buy it and continue using it without needing upgrades), then the users of that software can be stranded with their nice stable product running on increasingly ancient machines until, one day, the machines crash, or must be upgraded to a new version of the operating system so that they can run some other system, but because the proprietary software is no longer maintained, you have to give up on the application. Indeed, it is not unheard of for companies that sell proprietary software to go out of business. And, if you did not ensure that there was a code escrow account for the software to protect you against the possibility of the vendor going out of business, then you are stuck.
If the code was Open Source and you were sensible (you obtained the source when you obtained the product), then you can take the old product and port it to the new system. How hard that will be depends on the nature and quality of the code - but it is possible. If the software was proprietary, you may never have the option.
The question is: what do you mean with "adopting open-source software". if you are planning to radically exchange every piece of closed-source software (CSS) with Open-Source Software (OSS), you will fail horribly.
I can guarantee you that your organisation is already using OSS in key parts of it's IT-infrastructure.
In my point of view, you only need to formalize how OSS may enter the company and if (and in which form) the company contributes back to OSS. Most companies require a support contract for mission-critical software and mandate that OSS needs to be bought through vendors which provide support.
In many cases, contributing back to OSS-projects is explicitly forbidden and only allowed after the CTO/CIO signs of on a specific contribution.
Simply make sure that your policies are flexible enough to allow what the IT-department currently runs.
It doesn't matter what Manager opposing Open Source is saying.
You have to know well Open Source product you are about to use.
You have to be sure that it right solution for company.
You have to be confident that you can find people on market who know or can learn to use that product.
You have to know TCO for that product.
Then you can argue with manager and give him good reasons how company can benefit from Open Source.
Keep in mind that cheapest solution is not best solution. Companies need to earn money not to save money.
Depends on the situation, but usually, for a, internal, non-critical, no need to secure system, like most of what is done in enterprise, open source is like Halloween and you don't really need to care as long as you follow enterprise policy.
For the other big, important, need to be secured projects, its really simple. You need to have a part in the projects you use and have an internal repository hosting the project (so you have an internal branch that is kept in sync with the external branch). The thing is that those apps are the ones that take a shit long time to make and are supported for thousands of years. The teams tends to change a lot and there's a lot of people involved. Somebody needs and can be assigned to repository/build management.
Now if its only about the manager, then its just about communication and argumentation. Usually they are scared about support because its the long term cost. They tend to like to hear about best practices, well tell them that's what the big companies do (and examples) and that they also tend to participate in the projects and other times they even or its possible to find support for it.
Also, any contractor will be glad to give support of an OSS. Who would say no to money and the ability to develop an OSS.