drewdevault.com

2024-07-16-So-you-want-to-compete-with-FOSS.md (10643B)

---
title: So you want to compete with or replace open source
date: 2024-07-16
---
We are living through an interesting moment in source-available software.[^sa]
The open source movement has always had, and continues to have, a solid
grounding in grassroots programmers building tools for themselves and forming
communities around them. Some looming giants brought on large sums of money --
Linux, Mozilla, Apache, and so on -- and other giants made do without, like GNU,
but for the most part if anyone thought about open source 15 years ago they were
mostly thinking about grassroots communities who built software together for
fun. With the rise of GitHub and in particular the explosion of web development
as an open platform, commercial stakeholders in software caught on to the
compelling economics of open source. The open source boom that followed caused
open source software to have an enormous impact on everyone working in the
software industry, and, in one way or another, on everyone living on planet
Earth.
[^sa]: Source-available is a general purpose term which describes any software
    for which the source code is available to view in some respect. It applies
    to all free and open source software, as well as to some kinds of software
    which don't meet either definition.
Over the past decade or so, a lot of businesses, particularly startups, saw
these economics unfolding in front of them and wanted to get in on this boom. A
lot of talented developers started working on open source software with an
explicit aim towards capitalizing on it, founding businesses and securing
capital investments to build their product -- an open source product. A few
years following the onset of these startups, the catch started to become
apparent. While open source was proven to be incredibly profitable and
profoundly useful for the software industry *as a whole*, the economics of
making open source work for *one business* are much different.
It comes down to the fact that the free and open source software movements are
built on collaboration, and all of our success is attributable to this
foundation. The economics that drew commercial interest into the movement work
specifically because of this collaboration -- because the FOSS model allows
businesses to share R&D costs and bring together talent across corporate borders
into a great melting pot of innovation. And, yes, there is no small amount of
exploitation going on as well; businesses are pleased to take advantage of the
work of Jane Doe in Ohio's FOSS project to make themselves money without sharing
any of it back. Nevertheless, the revolutionary economics of FOSS are *based on*
collaboration, and are *incompatible with* competition.
The simple truth of open source is that if you design your business model with
an eye towards competition, in which you are the only entity who can exclusively
monetize the software product, you must eschew the collaborative aspects of open
source -- and thus its greatest strength. Collaboration in open source works
because the collaborators, all representatives of different institutions, are
incentivized to work together for mutual profit. No one is incentivized to work
for you, for free, for your own exclusive profit.
More than a few of these open source startups were understandably put out when
this reality started to set in. It turns out the market capitalization of a
business that has an open source product was often smaller than the investments
they had brought in. Under these conditions it's difficult to give the investors
the one and only thing they demand -- a return on investment. The unbounded
growth demanded by the tech boom is even less likely to be attainable in open
source. There are, to be entirely clear, many business models which are
compatible with open source. But there are also many which are not. There are
many open source projects which can support a thriving business or even a
thriving sub-industry, but there are some ideas which, when placed in an open
source framing, simply cannot be capitalized on as effectively, or often at all.
Open source ate a lot of lunches. There are some kinds of software which you
just can't make in a classic silicon valley startup fashion anymore. Say you
want to write a database server -- a sector which has suffered a number of
rug-pulls from startups previously committed to open source. If you make it
closed source, you can't easily sell it like you could 10 or 20 years ago, ala
MSSQL. This probably won't work. If you make it open source, no one will pay you
for it and you'll end up moaning about how the major cloud providers are
"stealing" your work. The best way to fund the development of something like
that is with a coalition of commercial stakeholders co-sponsoring or
co-maintaining the project in their respective self-interests, which is how
projects like [PostgreSQL][0], [Mesa][1], or the Linux kernel attract
substantial paid development resources. But it doesn't really work as a startup
anymore.
[0]: https://www.postgresql.org/about/contributing/
[1]: https://mesa.freedesktop.org/developers/
Faced with these facts, there have been some challenges to the free and open
source model coming up in the past few years, some of which are getting
organized and starting to make serious moves. Bruce Perens, one of the founding
figures of the Open Source Initiative, is working on the "post-open" project;
"Fair Source" is another up-and-coming-effort, and there have been and will be
others besides.
What these efforts generally have in common is a desire to change the commercial
dynamic of source-available software. In other words, the movers and shakers in
these movements want to get paid more, or more charitably, want to start a
movement in which programmers that work on source-available software as a
broader class get paid more. The other trait they have in common is a view that
the open source definition and the four freedoms of free software do not
sufficiently provide for this goal.
For my part, I don't think that this will work. I think that the aim of sole or
limited rights to monetization and the desire to foster a collaborative
environment are irreconcilable. These movements want to have both, and I simply
don't think that's possible.
This logic is rooted in a deeper notion of ownership over the software, which is
both subtle and very important. This is a kind of [auteur] theory of software.
The notion is that the software they build *belongs* to them. They possess a
sense of ownership over the software, which comes with a set of moral and
perhaps legal rights to the software, which, importantly, are withheld from any
entity other than themselves. The "developers" enjoy this special relationship
with the project -- the "developers" being the special class of person entitled
to this sense of ownership and the class to whom the up-and-coming
source-available movements make an appeal, in the sense of "pay the developers"
-- and third-party entities who work on the source code are merely
"contributors", though they apply the same skills and labor to the project as
the "developers" do. The very distinction between "first-party" and
"third-party" developers is contingent on this "auteur" worldview.
[auteur]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur
This is quite different from how most open source projects have found their
wins. If Linux can be said to belong to anyone, it belongs to everyone. It is
for this reason that it is in everyone's interests to collaborate on the
project. If it belonged to someone or some entity alone, especially if that
sense of ownership is rooted in justifying that entity's sole right to
effectively capitalize on the software, the dynamic breaks down and the
incentive for the "third-party" class to participate is gone. It doesn't work.
That said, clearly the proponents of these new source-available movements feel
otherwise. And, to be clear, I wish them well. I respect the right for authors
of software to distribute it under whatever terms they wish.[^authors] And, for
my part, I do believe that source-available is a clear improvement over
proprietary software, even though these models fall short of what I perceive as
the advantages of open source. However, for these movements to have a shot at
success, they need to deeply understand these dynamics and the philosophical and
practical underpinnings of the free and open source movements.
[^authors]: Though I do not indulge in the fantasy that "third-party" developers
    exist and are any less entitled to the rights of authorship as anyone else.
However, it is very important to me that we do not muddy the landscape of open
source by trying to reform, redefine, or expand our understanding of open source
to include movements which contradict this philosophy. My well-wishes are
contingent on any movements which aim to compete with open source stopping short
of *calling themselves* open source. This is something I appreciate about the
fair source and post-open movements -- both movements explicitly disavow the
label of open source. If you want to build something new, be clear that it is
something new -- this is the ground rule.
So you want to compete with open source, or even replace it with something new.
Again, I wish you good luck. But this question will be at the heart of your
challenge: will you be able to assume the mantle of the auteur and capitalize on
this software while still retaining the advantages that made open source
successful? Will you be able to appeal to the public in the same way open source
does while holding onto these commercial advantages for yourself? Finding a way
to answer this question with a "yes" is the task laid before you. It will be
difficult; in the end, you will have to give something to the public to get
something in return. Simply saying that the software itself is a gift equal to
the labor you ask of the public is probably not going to work, especially when
this "gift" comes with monetary strings attached.
As for me, I still believe in open source, and even in the commercial potential
of open source. It requires creativity and a clever business acumen to identify
and exploit market opportunities within this collaborative framework. To win in
open source you must embrace this collaboration and embrace the fact that you
will share the commercial market for the software with other entities. If you're
up to that challenge, then let's keep beating the open source drum together. If
not, these new movements may be a home for you -- but know that a lot of hard
work still lies ahead of you in that path.