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Over at ACM.org Yegor Bugayenko reviews how companies benefit from open source:
'Tis the season to be jolly, and many people around the world are getting those warm, fuzzy holiday feels. One of the things that makes us programmers feel warm and fuzzy is open source software. With open source, you can easily see the code and documentation, and better yet, you can use it too. A lot of companies support open source as well, providing funding, labor power, and code for free.
Why give something away for free? A lot of individuals contribute open source code out of a genuine sense of altruism. Yet when it comes to companies, it's often a strategic choice, and one they expect to benefit from.
[...] Why go through all the trouble? Let's take a look at the tangible benefits of supporting open source, especially from the perspective of tech giants like Google. Let's start by looking at how companies support open source.
The author goes on to list benefits for companies that support open source, citing Google, Microsoft, IBM and Adobe as examples. He also mentions how Red Hat benefited from its acquisition by IBM. He concludes:
So what's the take away for all of this? Open source is a great resource for the community, sure, but it's also a valuable resource for companies. Open source provides sales, influence, branding, retaining and training opportunities, among others, for companies. And for individual programmers, open source projects offer a way to build skills, increase knowledge, and make connections.
Previously:
CentOS Linux 8 Will End in 2021
Open Source's Eric Raymond: Windows 10 Will Soon be Just an Emulation Layer on Linux Kernel
Microsoft Releases Open-Source Process Monitor for Linux
Google Takes Down Repositories that Circumvent its Widevine DRM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday December 18 2020, @09:16AM (7 children)
IBM buys Red Hat, Red Hat CEO becomes IBM CEO [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday December 18 2020, @12:18PM (1 child)
It's one way to by a CEO...
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday December 18 2020, @12:18PM
*buy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @03:17PM (4 children)
Who made WHOM.
You're welcome.
--Grammar Nazi
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @03:39PM (1 child)
Nice, Not to putdown; just correct. Much Love for you GN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @03:56PM
Years ago we had a woman that grammer and spell checked our scientific papers/presentations. We called her "Hyphen Lady". We also had a graphics department. All of those are now gone as am I.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday December 18 2020, @11:57PM
Enjoy [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Saturday December 19 2020, @09:57PM
while you clearly have never heard of the extremely popular band ac/dc, you're not just a faggot, you're ac/dc.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @10:35AM (1 child)
And time to ban the person who used the spam mod from moderating,
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=41095&page=1&cid=1087044#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
This is NOT spam and should be fixed.
(Score: 3, Touché) by fakefuck39 on Saturday December 19 2020, @10:01PM
time for some real reporting. is there a single person on this site who does not read at -1, disables the showing of moderation, and hence has the content they see selected by random internet strangers?
I don't think there are many of these people. there is however at least one person who pays attention to moderation and commenting, so the moderation is doing its job: keeping you busy and keeping you thinking you are actually doing something with these internet points. because let's face it: if it wasn't for the internet points, which are to you important, you literally would have nothing else. because you're an enourmous, physically ugly, socially awkward, loser. and you're fat.
(Score: 4, Informative) by rob_on_earth on Friday December 18 2020, @02:01PM (3 children)
early 2000s
I told my partner that a game I had written had been downloaded over 40,000 in a few months. The first thing they asked was how much money did I make.
Of course I gave it away for free. They could not understand that I would not charge money for it.
I explained that if I had charged money for it they number of people willing to pay for it would have be miniscule and my goal was to spread they joy I had had in creating it. My goal was also to offer the community a fully playable game with with comments for every single line of assembler.
Information wants to be free, software is information...
if you are interested, it was Space Invaders on the Dreamcast VMU [jumpstation.co.uk]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @03:22PM (2 children)
Clearly you understand that *everything* cannot be given away for free though. Right? That results in poverty for the "givers" but not for the "takers." It also results in bad allocation of resources as the "value" of a resource is never established.
Some charity is OK and definitely welcome, but you can't base a society on this. Every communist society ever implemented has been a bloody failure.
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Friday December 18 2020, @03:38PM
... transactions tends to make the healthiest and most robust society IMHO.
I made a video on this in 2011:
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY [youtube.com]
Hoping that someday that idea gets picked up by the mainstream as common sense...
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 19 2020, @01:21AM
China doesn't look to be failing to me, and Cuba is doing damn well for sitting in the shadow of the colossus that hates it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @02:30PM (9 children)
> you can easily see the [...] documentation
In most cases, you can easily see that there's isn't any documentation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @04:37PM (8 children)
The code *is* the documentation!
Many lazy shits actually say this and may believe it. Very convenient in that it results in less work for them.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday December 18 2020, @06:08PM (7 children)
You got it for free and it's an open project, perhaps the documentation is waiting for you to write it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @06:30PM (6 children)
In the same way that I've just eaten a meal, and now the dirty dishes are waiting for you to wash them.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday December 18 2020, @07:05PM (5 children)
They cooked the meal. Rather than helping serve it, you just sat at the table clacking your silverware. Then you crammed the meal down your pie-hole burping and farting the whole time, wiped your mouth on the tablecloth, complained about their choice of wine and that the tablecloth you wiped your mouth on wasn't silk, then left the mess for them. Next week you may wonder why you didn't get invited to dinner.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @09:17PM (4 children)
Too many free software advocates are disingenuous with how they promote their software. Just admit it's half-assed and will remain so forever. If free software were what its promoters claimed, everybody in the world would by now be running Linux, Open Office, and Gimp. Still hasn't happened.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday December 19 2020, @01:41AM
The various OS vendors said that about Linux.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 19 2020, @02:10AM
All software is half-assed. You just don't usually get to see the proof of that from perspectives other than the UI.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 20 2020, @06:59PM (1 child)
no one but dumb Windows users speak of Open Office. It's Libreoffice you dirty-legged retard.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday December 20 2020, @10:15PM
LibreOffice and OpenOffice are largely compatible. They just have different bugs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @03:52PM (4 children)
"Open source" was the term coined by corporations for one portion of what was being done in the free (libre) software movement for well over a decade at the time the term "open source" was coined. Open source is a weak promise that says you can view the source, but there might be restrictions on your right, as a user, to use it. "Open source" took the process and jettisoned the ideology of free software.
Free software gives the user the right to modify the source as its foremost concern. It is a much stronger guarantee.
As GNU states, free software is worth pursuing even if a project is at a stage where it is objectively inferior to a proprietary competitor-- simply because it respects the users' freedom. Where "open source" is all about the development process. Many eyes, etc. But, most free and "open source" projects do not reach the number of contributors to achieve the benefits "open source" proponents claim:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/when-free-software-isnt-practically-superior.html [gnu.org]
There was a user on this site who was badmouthing the Pine phone for not being competitive, for Joe user, with proprietary alternatives. That user's argument completely missed the point. The Pine phone is amazing and fantastic simply for existing and offering an alternative to proprietary competitors. The pace of improvement in the software (by the community) is truly amazing! Does the Pine phone user experience match an iPhone? No. That isn't the point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @04:40PM (2 children)
So as you said, ideological purity is the criterion for choosing software/hardware.
Not how it functions as a tool. Bizarre religion you've got there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @05:55PM
Same AC as GP.
The point is that things do not instantly materialize fully formed. It takes time.
I used Slackware Linux immediately upon Patrick's first release in '93. The GNU project had been working on the user space bits since the mid-80s, so they were pretty good. But, it was not the same experience of just works as on my Sun workstation. A couple years later, I moved to GNU/Linux as my sole platform, and today, GNU/Linux runs nearly every server on the Internet and nearly every super computer, most telecom infrastructure, and most consumer electronics. And, the Linux kernel (sans GNU) runs the vast majority of phones (including android and contemporary feature phones). It is not religion, it is recognizing the reality that things do not simply materialize, it takes time and effort. And, it is worth putting in that time and effort, even in those early stages, because software freedom as all freedoms from below, is an intrinsic good.
GCC is another good example. In the early 90's, you had to include C++ template code in the header files. ATT's C++ compiler was much better back then (it was the reference implementation). GCC now is ubiquitous while ATT's compiler is not. GCC got better. In fact it got so good with such incredibly wide platform support that no proprietary compiler is even comparable. But, initially the reason to use (and contribute to) gcc over ATT was that software freedom is an intrinsic good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 20 2020, @07:03PM
Ahh the old "best tool for the job" matra of the Suited Whore. Your pitiful rationalization is not even based on the truth and every Linux user knows it. You just look like another clueless, shameless slave.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @10:12PM
Your point is valid and well taken, but somehow skirts around the biggest benefit both have over closed/proprietary software: Trust.
If you are a company, you are at core a trader. All traders, trade on trust - if they are not trusted, they cannot trade. This is why old CEO's find themselves unemployable at a certain point: They've burned up all trust everyone has in them, by their hard-hearted actions. They are now waste, because being a bully and 'winning' by the simple expedient of brute force, eventually catches up with you. Once everyone knows them, they will be unable to find the ready supply of ignorant marks they need to maintain their status quo. (maybe they'd better just run for US president?).
Open source, even if much weaker then true 'free as in freedom' software, is still easier to trust - because at least the company is 'working in the open', and leaving a indelible trail through shared repositories of what they're currently doing, such that anything nefarious would be impossible to redact, and easily traceable to whoever contributed it, no matter how obfuscated it was.
What irritates me more, is the supposition that computers are somehow much different from other things intended to store information (apart from their obvious enhancement in also being able to *process* information and *do* things, note).
With textbooks full of maths, sciences and engineering we have accrued shared knowledge in 'book' form in exactly the same way that 'free software' does: So free software is and has always been consistent with the very foundations of our current civilisation. (The copyright and/or cost on any particular book being akin to the costs of getting onto the internet - note you don't have to pay an ongoing license fee to be able to add or multiply numbers!).
Secrecy, on the other hand, has always been the first priority of bad actors: Intending to exploit the ignorance of others, that they might collect more currency than is their rightful due. On some level they must realise that they can only take such advantage so long as there exists a gradient of knowledge. It being hard to generate practically useful new know-how, it's far easier to contain what you have, so you might surf further on its wave.
Interesting that of all the 'benefits' listed in the article, they somehow missed 'because it is the way trustworthy persons behave'. But I guess if they did, they would have to acknowledge that no, actually this describes 'free software', not merely the 'knock off' brand.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @05:37PM (1 child)
Yes I get benefits and find value in open source software.
But joy?
No, it is quirky, difficult to configure, easy to break, frustrating and I curse it daily
I can only tame the beast by confinement in a Docker container
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday December 19 2020, @12:40AM
You didn't consume enough FOSS it seems.
If you were to be at that stage, your comment would have been along the line of "the joy of configuring a quirky, frustrating, easy to break software and having a legit excuse to curse daily".
I mean, look, as an analogy: when was the last time you could openly curse your hated manager every day and be paid top money for it?
Oh,yea,almost forgot
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by corey on Friday December 18 2020, @11:05PM
Not really on topic but warm and cozy here in Oz at this time of year is at the beach.
And I’m not sure who has time to code at this time of year, first it’s a Christmas rush, work and then getting ready to go somewhere, then it’s Xmas day, then a couple of days to recover from the food and drink, plus the Boxing Day family fun like cricket in the backyard. Then there’s New Years and we’re back to work a couple of days later.
But I have kids so no time to code ever anyway.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday December 20 2020, @10:23PM
Jitsi seems to be doing OK with their free software.
Of course hardware isn't free. They make money because many people who want to use Jitsi do not have enough internet bandwidth to run their own servers. And they don't want to establish enough bandwidth 24/7 for the much rarer times they actually need it.
The free service they provide is, I think, a kind of loss leader.
And having the software be free provides a modicum of trust.
-- hendrik