One of the key elements of being open source is to give the source code along with the product. Unlike many think, free of charge or free as in beer is not a necessity for a product to be open source. Steve Wozniak states in a cleaner way in one of his interviews:
A lot of people think that Open Source means “free.” It was never intended to mean free and it shouldn’t mean free. People should be able to develop software and market it and have control over what they build. But when you sell a product that has a lot of software in it, being Open Source means you publish your source. And if somebody else wants to take your product and make a specialized version of it that does their few special things for their application; or does something a little different; or leaves pieces of it out; they can do that and they don’t owe you a license fee. It just means they were able to improve either your mistakes, or the things that you left out that they want.
Benefit of having the source code with you is that you have the freedom to modify it to suit your needs. However, I do not think this is really appealing for the common users. I wonder if the average Joe would be excited with the thought of having to write code to make something work. Does this mean open source is not useful? It is, and the value is not in the source code, it is because of the openness.
One of the biggest benefits of open source code is that it is available to thousands of others, as it is to you. Some of them might contribute to improve the code, some not. However, this benefit is now available to everyone in the community, even to the average Joe who does not worry about the source code. What this does is that it frees you from depending on just one entity, like the vendor. Freedom from vendor lock-in!
An additional benefit, that has been seen regularly in open source model, is that the user community has been able to provide a better feedback with the source code open. This has not only sped up improving the product, but also created innovative solutions, sometimes by reusing code from other open source products.
I think this has been specified many times by many people, but I have also been asked by many what can they do with the open source code. The value is not in the open code itself, it is in its applications to problems, improvements and freedom because of it.
July 7th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Open Source doesn’t mean “you publish your source”. It must be under a license that permits using it for any purpose, copying it, modifying it and publishing those modifications. So nothing prevents a good natured soul to offer your product for free. In other words, if a piece of software is free as in freedom, it will eventually be free as in free beer. Open source is great, but you DO have to deal with your product becoming cost-free in the short term.
July 7th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
@Alejandro – open source is a business model and your product being cost-free is a benefit, not a problem to “deal with”. Somehow Firefox and WordPress still get a lot of money
July 8th, 2007 at 3:57 am
I’m interested in this open source model for running a profitable consulting firm.
How does Firefox and WordPress get money? What is their source of revenue? I just started putting up a personal blog using WordPress and it is fantastic. I would put it up against Microsoft’s SharePoint any day as the superior product. But I don’t understand how WordPress makes money.
July 8th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Firefox’s numbers seem to be all over the place, 50~72 million in revenue last year? The source is obviously the same as for any other browser – Google toolbar. But because Firefox is open sourced, it was developed into the leading browser today.
WordPress offers premium hosting options. $300/month in fact. And you _know_ it’s good because so many people use their free blogging software.
July 9th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Alejandro, open source model do tend towards free of charge, but more for the benefit of developing a community. There are many businesses which provide additional value and charge for that. Products like Compiere and SLED have been following that.
August 5th, 2007 at 9:29 am
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