TechLabs

Anyone who has seen the documentary Revolution OS knows this battle that has been going on for possibly decades. Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU rants and raves about how all software must be free. The other side of the battle lines say that software can be free or it can be commercial - but it should be open.

So I ask this question in a new light (or at least a new light for me). Let me paint a picture for you - If a commercial entity, say X Corp, announces the development of a piece of software that they are developing themselves and calling it “open source” - is it truly Open Source?

To me - a company who built a software product and then releases it as “Open Source” is just releasing it for free and simply creating “free” software that will be much more effective if the customer buys into X Corp’s support and customization services.

I feel the best approach for open source software is to start a software revision repository (CVS, SVN, Git, etc) that can be accessible to the public (read-only with defined committers is the general practice) and commit the very first line of code to it. Let someone download a 1 line of code application if they so want to - but make the very 1st line of code open to the community at large. It seems that developers tend to resist doing this since that 1st line of code will be buggy and the community may react and say, “well this is crap!” But a “release often, release early” model will help the community understand your level of commitment to the project and help understand the future progress. The community may also submit code, bug fixes, or just ideas early on. While this can be a project managment nightmare - it can lead to strong community buy-in.

Surely (and don’t call me Shirley), there is an effective business model for Open Source software. But does building the software first and then releasing it to the community at large truley encouraging open collaboration - or are they just ploying people by the “free” licensing charge?