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open source

 
Ranch Hand
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The people who are involved with creating open source software are very smart no doubt, but what is the point of spending so much time and effort on something and then giving it away for free? Assuming a company or entity with a profit motive, modifies or extends these existing software for clients , the original creators don't get any share of the revenue? So who is this supposed to help?
 
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Um, for fun?
 
Rancher
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Your reputation amongst your peers, your resume, everybody who uses it, and possibly your bottom line when next time you get hired because of it.
 
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A fairly large number of folks get paid to offer "support" for products, even when the software is free. Companies, espcecially large ones, typically will only use software with support services.

Open Source does not mean that everyone has to everything as charity, but that if you don't need support, you don't have anyone making you pay.

IBM uses a huge amount of open source software, and you can be sure that their customers are paying for IBM's professional services.
 
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Just to reinforce Pat's argument, have a look at
- http://www.hibernate.org/148.html
- http://www.springsource.com/node/872

But still what they offer for free is just great.
It's great feeling when tons of people use what you have developed or you have participated actively for that. It's an achievement that your code has been accepted by some community. Just feel it buddy.

I always use to think that if they consider me a novice and don't except my code in actual release. I am in dilemma.
 
Arvind Mahendra
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well the examples cited are that of tools that enable development of a product. And I think those are great and I can see how there is a thriving eco system encompassing support and maintenance.
What I am referring to however are actual software solutions and the question of whether it is fair for a company to download a CRM solution, from the many thousands of free open one's out there, have it tweaked by a team of developer's and sell it in the open market as their own without any revenue sharing with the original contributors? Any support related revenue that entails in this sort of a setup will in all likely hood only benefit the same company that supplied the solution.


And this probably has a sub issue, which I just thought of, and that of the further push to offshoring I.T work. With open source tools abound, and inexpensive labour, the cost to setup shop wouldn't require much investment. In addition to the above, a company now does not even have to invest in a ground-up development program. It can capitalize on the fruits on someone else's labour or to put it differently use talent that it never payed for. Is there something I have missed about this whole open source business or am not seeing the 'larger picture'(whatever that is)?
 
Joe Ess
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Arvind Mahendra wrote:What I am referring to however are actual software solutions and the question of whether it is fair for a company to download a CRM solution, from the many thousands of free open one's out there, have it tweaked by a team of developer's and sell it in the open market as their own without any revenue sharing with the original contributors?



Is it fair to use software in accordance with the terms it is licensed by the creators? Certainly. If someone thought they would be exploited, they should not have released their software/code with such liberal licensing terms.
What has happened in practice is companies that use open source (IBM, Novel, Linksys and Sun to name a few larger ones) end up contributing back code because they encounter bugs or make additions and extensions in order to get their own work done. Either by the terms of the license (i.e. GPL requires if you change the code, you make the source available), to be good "citizens" of the community, or to stick a thumb in Microsoft's eye (like Sun did with OpenOffice).
Without people testing and using software, we can't tell if it works. By using open source software, these "exploiters" are actually helping a developer by testing, giving feedback and suggesting changes. Some companies pay big money for QA, these freeloading open source developers get it for nothing!
 
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