Sunday, November 09, 2003
Open Source Movement - Curry Edition
I was at this e-governance summit at Bangalore, the so called silicon valley of India, that I heard a guy called Atul Chitnis talk about the open source software and how it is ethical, cheap and easy to use. According to this guy, anyone using software that he/she is paying for, is stupid when practically every software that is required for a person's use is available free of licensing cost! Tremendous!
Then it occured to me that someone should be writing all this software and I wondered why would anyone write software and give away free that which could have a sell value. so I raised my hand and asked him. Very patronisingly he educated me that there are people in the open source community who do such things for the fun of it. Amazing!
Then I asked him how would such software developers feed themselves, for writing professional level software is serious business and a full time one at that. That would mean that the software developer must either have indulgent parents or have come by an inheritance or alimony. Now I can't imagine that there are a whole lot of people in this planet who have such good fortune and that this number is large enough to form the open source community.
My question made this Chitnis guy really happy. He beamed at me and said to the audience that he is really glad that someone asked this question. He repeated that about five times before answering rather dramatically that these software blokes actually have a day job and/or are paid by their employers to develop open source software during their free time. Goodness gracious! The corporates are really getting benevolent these days. One for the community and all that!
This set me thinking what a great thing this open source movment is - here are people willing to devote their time and expertise to develop software which could be used by other people and they willingly give it away free and that their employers actually pay them to do such things - this is truly very commune-istic !! This model could be used for say for eradicating ill-literacy from the world - all we need to do is to have a open source community for literacy spend some time and energy to educate some illiterate person somewhere and in no time we could have a completely literate world! Extending this, we could also eradicate hunger and poverty! Health and hygiene in the planet could be improved with this! Wow! This open source thingy is really something!
I then turned my attention to how could this open source software be used to bring benefits of information technology to rural India and in governance. A host of applications sprung to mind and then I began thinking how we could implement this. Then a doubt crept in - how would this application developed by the open source community, be maintained, serviced or upgraded? Who would be responsible for the bugs? Who would actually be accountable for ensuring that the software performs to the required functionality and that it is safe? Say there is some malicious piece of code within the complex financial accounting e-governance application which lops off a tiny fraction from every transaction and credits it to some account somewhere? This would probably be discovered by the audit team at some point of time but until then?
So I went ahead and asked this guy. I told him that this time perhaps my question would not make him happy. He said go ahead. so I said if this guy or a set of great guys who developed this application for free are all working somewhere in a day job for some employer, who would service or maintain my application at some dusty corner of rural India?
The man smiled at me and said - ah! of course those guys are not going to maintain it or service it! You don't expect Linus Torvalds to come and service or maintain something here in India do you?
And then he delivered the sucker punch. Thats what we are here for, he said truimphantly, we will do the maintainance and give the service at a cost, that's our business model !!
I thought to myself, man this is really terrific!! I have seen many types of con in business but this really takes the cake. Here is this guy spouting ethics and doing things for the community and not exploiting people etc but then in the end what is his angle? The nice, ethical and community minded people high on the rhetoric of open source would develop the software for free. Some other nice, ethical and community minded people have already developed lot of software which he would use. He would go about selling the concept of open source software being free, ethical and community minded. This would then set up the stage for him to come and provide the missing link namely the service backup, at a cost and he would be laughing his way to the bank! Now any piece of critical functionality missing he would have no responsibility, rather he could very well hold the poor organisation to ransom by demanding a princely sum for fixing it! This would of course be timed in such a way that the customer is at a stage where it would be fait accompli.
So much for all the open source stuff in enterprise. Thank you very much but I would rather pay and have someone accountable. I would rather know what my costs are upfront than be surprised later. I think open source software is a great idea and hats off to the guys who develop it. But it is the opportunists masquerading as idealists who put me off. I think it is exploiting the efforts of some nice, ethical and community minded people. Perhaps open source is best where it is really appreciated as in education and academics.
I was at this e-governance summit at Bangalore, the so called silicon valley of India, that I heard a guy called Atul Chitnis talk about the open source software and how it is ethical, cheap and easy to use. According to this guy, anyone using software that he/she is paying for, is stupid when practically every software that is required for a person's use is available free of licensing cost! Tremendous!
Then it occured to me that someone should be writing all this software and I wondered why would anyone write software and give away free that which could have a sell value. so I raised my hand and asked him. Very patronisingly he educated me that there are people in the open source community who do such things for the fun of it. Amazing!
Then I asked him how would such software developers feed themselves, for writing professional level software is serious business and a full time one at that. That would mean that the software developer must either have indulgent parents or have come by an inheritance or alimony. Now I can't imagine that there are a whole lot of people in this planet who have such good fortune and that this number is large enough to form the open source community.
My question made this Chitnis guy really happy. He beamed at me and said to the audience that he is really glad that someone asked this question. He repeated that about five times before answering rather dramatically that these software blokes actually have a day job and/or are paid by their employers to develop open source software during their free time. Goodness gracious! The corporates are really getting benevolent these days. One for the community and all that!
This set me thinking what a great thing this open source movment is - here are people willing to devote their time and expertise to develop software which could be used by other people and they willingly give it away free and that their employers actually pay them to do such things - this is truly very commune-istic !! This model could be used for say for eradicating ill-literacy from the world - all we need to do is to have a open source community for literacy spend some time and energy to educate some illiterate person somewhere and in no time we could have a completely literate world! Extending this, we could also eradicate hunger and poverty! Health and hygiene in the planet could be improved with this! Wow! This open source thingy is really something!
I then turned my attention to how could this open source software be used to bring benefits of information technology to rural India and in governance. A host of applications sprung to mind and then I began thinking how we could implement this. Then a doubt crept in - how would this application developed by the open source community, be maintained, serviced or upgraded? Who would be responsible for the bugs? Who would actually be accountable for ensuring that the software performs to the required functionality and that it is safe? Say there is some malicious piece of code within the complex financial accounting e-governance application which lops off a tiny fraction from every transaction and credits it to some account somewhere? This would probably be discovered by the audit team at some point of time but until then?
So I went ahead and asked this guy. I told him that this time perhaps my question would not make him happy. He said go ahead. so I said if this guy or a set of great guys who developed this application for free are all working somewhere in a day job for some employer, who would service or maintain my application at some dusty corner of rural India?
The man smiled at me and said - ah! of course those guys are not going to maintain it or service it! You don't expect Linus Torvalds to come and service or maintain something here in India do you?
And then he delivered the sucker punch. Thats what we are here for, he said truimphantly, we will do the maintainance and give the service at a cost, that's our business model !!
I thought to myself, man this is really terrific!! I have seen many types of con in business but this really takes the cake. Here is this guy spouting ethics and doing things for the community and not exploiting people etc but then in the end what is his angle? The nice, ethical and community minded people high on the rhetoric of open source would develop the software for free. Some other nice, ethical and community minded people have already developed lot of software which he would use. He would go about selling the concept of open source software being free, ethical and community minded. This would then set up the stage for him to come and provide the missing link namely the service backup, at a cost and he would be laughing his way to the bank! Now any piece of critical functionality missing he would have no responsibility, rather he could very well hold the poor organisation to ransom by demanding a princely sum for fixing it! This would of course be timed in such a way that the customer is at a stage where it would be fait accompli.
So much for all the open source stuff in enterprise. Thank you very much but I would rather pay and have someone accountable. I would rather know what my costs are upfront than be surprised later. I think open source software is a great idea and hats off to the guys who develop it. But it is the opportunists masquerading as idealists who put me off. I think it is exploiting the efforts of some nice, ethical and community minded people. Perhaps open source is best where it is really appreciated as in education and academics.
