Is The Open Source Movement Hurting?
The open source is hurting to some degree, it's the same problem the mobile phone industry is having. People got accustomed to getting a free phone when they signed up for service, and the phone itself at least in the perception of the consumer had no real value (It was free after all.) when in reality the phone wasn't free, the consumer paid for it on the back end, in the form of a monthly service plan and if they discontinued service, an early disconnect fee. The open source community is having the same perception problem. They perceive free, and therefore the product has no true value.
If a company like Google perceives free the same way as a consumer, then they're not going to pay decent salaries to programmers. The perception of free to these people means just that, free. If they have to pay a senior programmer 90,000 dollars a year, then that's not free to them or they're not getting any value out of the programmer in their eyes. Now out source that job overseas and hire an entire firm of programmers for 10,000 dollars a year, at the very least a company can expect at least a half dozen programmers working on a project for 10,000 dollars a year. Now the company starts to see some value in free, and 6 programmers for 10,000 dollars a year is a lot better value than one programmer at 90,000 dollars a year, let alone a team of programmers making salaries between 50-90,000 dollars a year in the United States.
The only thing that will help open source is the following:
A hardware manufacturer willing to make systems for any of the open source software distributions.
They would have to offer support, and that is one of the problems with free software, you can't expect a company to provide support for a product that is essentially free. I think open source is going to have to do a re-think on free and adopt the business model of making a profit on service and support, a person purchasing an open source product would receive support from the company providing the software, and support from the hardware manufacturer.
The reason a major hardware manufacturers haven't got on the open source band wagon is profitability, and the fear of the Free Software Foundations stance on free. I'm no big fan of the FSF for some of their stances nor am I a fan of Microsoft and some of their business practices, I question some of the agreements that certain companies are making with Microsoft. Look back at some of the agreements other companies have had with Microsoft, and it's always benefited Microsoft. It used to be when two companies signed a deal they'd have a big press conference to announce the deal, nowadays there is a brief press release and it's more like a back room deal in a smoked filled room, but being an electrical engineer and a computer programmer as well as a business man I see the need to provide software, hardware and support services and to be able to pay employees especially U.S. employees, and yes I realize we live in a global community but jobs sent overseas hurt the U.S. economy. Countries don't really make business agreements, they have agreements of convenience if India and Pakistan should decide to go to war again, where is that going to leave all those companies who have moved their IT jobs to those countries, it was just a few years ago that we had the 2001-2002 India-Pakistan standoff, both countries rattling sabers at each other, and both are nuclear capable countries.
There has also been unrest in China, although the government says they're taking a stronger stance against dissidents, China has a history with the people revolting against the party line. Yet we still think it's better to manufacture goods in countries that for the most part aren't always the best places to be. The Free Software Federation definitely doesn't help the cause of open source. This country wasn't built on a free meal and a free place to sleep.
It was built on good old fashion hard work, and at the end of the day a person expected to get paid a decent wage, you can't do this with open source software, without a profit you can't pay people, unlike China which pays it's people very little for a hard days work. Unless a company or companies start taking a stand and say they need to make a profit in order to support the open source movement. Companies like Google use open source software but don't really do anything to promote it's use or for that matter give back to the community. Ironically Google is interested in the upcoming FCC auction of the 700 MHz spectrum band with some conditions.
One of Google's proposals is to auction off the spectrum and then have the winners re-auction that spectrum in real time to others, which is not unlike their current business model of competitive bidding among advertisers that Google uses to underwrite their core internet business. The problem with this is that this would impose a single regulation based model on those who incur the risk of buying spectrum, and mandating how that spectrum is used, presumably without Google spending any capital to acquire spectrum or build or maintain a network again taking something for free and not giving anything back. I use Fedora, and I love it, but at the end of the day I still have a job, and get paid for the work I do.
There are no free meals, free rides or free places to sleep. Because there is no value in free, at least that is the perception of some people. Would dig a ditch for someone for free?