Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Why freedom matters (and how to define it)

March 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Why freedom matters (and how to define it)

TAGS: Open Source

Over on AC/OS, I attempt to define the essence of an open source company, following on the heels of the debate on this topic.

Here's my attempt:

An open source company is one that, as its core revenue-generating business, actively produces, distributes, and sells (or sells services around) software under an OSI-approved license.

I derived it from a favorite Bible verse, so the non-biblically inclined should assume I got it from a oujia board. I like it. I think it fits. I think it's useful. I could be wrong.

What it doesn't answer, however, is the potentially larger question that Stephen O'Grady and others are asking. Namely: "Who cares? Why does this matter?" I'm actually a little disappointed that otherwise highly astute people would presume that this is an immaterial question. Freedom in IT matters, and how you define freedom (or, in this case, open source) matters, as Michael Tiemann reminds us, or else you'll never actually reach your destination.

I suppose it's easy to forget all that open source is designed to rectify in enterprise IT: lock-in, misalignment of vendor/customer interests, inflated costs, buggy software, payment for real value and not merely licenses, etc. All these things go away the minute you close the code or, at least, become more difficult to achieve. Period.

So yes, it really does matter whether a company (or, rather, its products) is open source or not. Customers do care. They're not stupid. They derive real, tangible benefits from open source. Else they wouldn't be pumping cash into open source companies and into internal development of open source expertise and code. Open source matters in fundamental, enterprise-changing ways.

Don't believe me? You can ask the IT executives themselves. Come to this year's Open Source Business Conference to hear the CIO of H&R Block (an active user of a range of open source projects, from Alfresco to Zimbra to Linux to...), the CTO of E*Trade, the VP of Product Development at Washingtonpost.com/Newsweek Interactive, and other IT executives talk about tangible benefits they receive from open source that they cannot get from proprietary software. You'll hear Wal-Mart, Activision, Sony, AIG, Bank of America, and others talk about why they are deliberately seeking out open source and open source companies to deliver it. These are not religiously-minded businesses. They're business. They're buying open source because it matters.

And so it matters that a company purporting to be open source actually is, whatever the merits of their technology, so that customers can trust the source of their code. They need to have a shorthand way to know what they're getting from their code: perpetual lock-in or perpetual value with walk-away rights. It's a highly material question.

Posted by Matt Asay on March 3, 2007 01:15 AM

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