Sims: If I can change tracks just a moment here, we've been talking
about the motivation of open source, and how the methodology works, and part of
the methodology of that -- even Microsoft identified this a couple years back in
its "Halloween Documents" --
was the fact that they weren't just, coders weren't just in it for the profit.
They were in it for a couple things. Some of them wanted to make the software
better. Some of them wanted the recognition, and what that actually might lead
to down the road. But I wonder, especially in light of the aftermath of V.A.
Linux's IPO, I wonder how wealthy coders, wealthy open source coders, can change
that equation. I mean does that change the equation in anybody's view of how
open source methodology works or does it have no impact? Does it actually free
people up to explore new technical challenges?
"I don't think all this money coming in is going to make a major difference to the development model or the dynamics of the community." -- Eric Raymond
Raymond: Well, your listeners deserve to know that I'm on the board of
directors of V.A. Linux, and in theory I made a lot of money from that IPO, so
they should listen to what I say knowing that and taking it into account however
they like. My personal view is that I don't think all this money coming in is
going to make a major difference to the development model or the dynamics of the
community. And the reason I'm confident about that is because demand for
programmers has been intense for a very long time, for over a decade. I think
that all the people who could be seriously distracted by money are already
gone.
O'Reilly: I have to disagree a little bit, Eric. One of the things
that I certainly see is that it's certainly true on the individual programmer
level, but if you look at projects as competing for mind share, there's
definitely an issue whereas these big companies need to maintain their market
cap and maintain their momentum, I think there's going to be a little bit more
dog-eat-dog in the open source corporate space than we've seen. And that's going
to lead to some bad blood.
Raymond: Well, you might be right but I'm not sure that that's
relevant to the question he asked which is "Do we expect this money to change
the behavior of developers?"
O'Reilly: Well I think it does if, for example, you're working for a
large open source company and that company says, "We're going to do this project
because we're basically trying to out-do the other large open source company or
out-do this startup that might be threatening our future revenue stream, so
we're going to basically rip them off." You know, you've got companies that are
effectively redirecting the efforts of those people who still think of
themselves as open source programmers but are really now actually working on
strategic corporate directives which may not be motivated by the same kinds of
open source behavior.
Raymond: Well, you may be right. On the other hand, when I look at
open source projects that have been sponsored by these newly successfully large
companies, it looks to me like the developers are more wedded to their projects
than they are to their employers. There are a couple of cases in which, when key
developers have moved to another company, they've actually taken their projects
with them.
O'Reilly: Yeah, I agree in the sort of part where the projects
themselves are open source, but when you look at how various Linux companies are
hoping to make their revenue, they are definitely looking to steal the wind out
of the sails of other open source companies, and there's definitely some
behavior that I'm starting to see that I think is going to give the open source
community a bad name. I'm not going to mention any names, but ...
Sims: Companies aggressively seeking open source development, people
seeking open source technologies ...
O'Reilly: No, just where they're basically, they see somebody
developing something interesting and they say, "Oh, we need to do that because
if that's going to be a good revenue stream, we better have that before the
other guy does," and you know it's becoming more competitive and more dog-eat-dog underneath the rhetoric of "We're all idealistic and sharing."
Raymond: Well, Tim, when I see evidence of that happening, I'll
probably issue some kind of broadside about it, but I haven't seen it yet.