To open source or not to open source?

I guess this is a big struggle for most egalitarian coders, especially freelancers and small businesses. We love open source. We love to have grub on the table. We can’t have both. Or can we?

This is something with which I personally struggle. Unitil recently, I’d never considered releasing Renaissance as an open source piece of software (although I’ve always wanted to release some projects as open source in future). Renaissance has had more than 1,500 man hours poured into it so far, with many more to go. I don’t feel that I can afford top make it open source. And, much more importantly, (and I’m not pleased with this attitude), it’s my baby. I don’t want people pouring over it’s innards.

Don’t get me wrong. Open source is great,

• It’s the way software should be (and was originally)
• It runs the Internet…
• … and a whole bunch of other things (including Renaissance)
• It leads to more robust software
• It gives software users greater security (knowing that if a developer stops maintaining a project, they or someone else can always pick it up)
• I could go on, but… ?

Some thoughts on open source

One thing I think a lot of independent coders (less experienced ones, anyway) don’t realise, is that a lot (most?) of the people who develop open source software get paid to do so. Mozilla have an eight figure per year deal with Google. MySQL have a rather good commercialisation model. A lot of open source development happens within companies such as Sun and IBM. A lot of academics develop open source software as part of their work.

For sure, there are still plenty of unpaid open source developers out there. This is the problem. It’s great that they (we) want to contribute, get stuck in and get together with all the other people out there volunteering their sweat and spare time. If all those other developers contribute a good deal of time to open source and still put bread on the table, so can I, right? Well, yes, apart from the fact that they’re mostly not volunteers.

This isn’t a problem in its own right. If you want to volunteer then cool, great, go for it. Who cares if everyone else is getting paid for it? That’s actually an attitude I really love, and the reason why I’ve been involved in so many unpaid projects over the years (some great successes, some less so, but all good experiences).

It becomes a problem when such a large number of great open source projects get left by the wayside, undeveloped and incomplete. Interest starts to wane in almost any project. It becomes a chore, you find that you don’t have the time any more. You realise that lots of developers aren’t jumping in to work on your brilliant new project. You blame yourself (or you just forget about it), not realising that the playing field isn’t that level after all.

Would I have wanted (or even been able?) to keep developing Renaissance for five years if I had not intended to make money from it? I’m not really sure, but the answer is probably ‘no’. Whilst I love working on the project, what’s kept me going is the fact that it has been making me money pretty much since day one. I’ve never actually sold a copy, but I’ve been using it to develop web sites for clients and projects since the earliest versions.

That brings me on to talk about another weird, illogical feeling I’ve always had about open source, and that’s that if you’re making money on a project, is it really still open source? I’m not talking technicalities - I guess I’m referring to the spirit of the thing.

Of course, rationally I know that’s rubbish. The important thing about open source is that it’s open - that people can have the source code, free of charge, to do with what they will. Who cares if you find some way to get paid for it too, as long as it stays open? I still have that weird feeling though.

On the other hand… commercial advantages of open source

Having said all that, I think that if you do want to make money from a software project, open source might actually be the way to go (assuming you don’t have a huge marketing budget).

That probably sounds odd, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Giving stuff away is a great way to gain traction and trust with marketing, and open source has the added advantage of being a part of a movement with a strong agenda and great tools for communication and sharing resources. Instant tribe. Even if 95% of your software’s users never pay you a penny, the 5% that’s left might well account for more money than if you’d decided not to go down the open source route (assuming you have a decent commercialisation model).

Final thoughts

At this point, I’m thinking that I probably will release Renaissance as open source (assuming I decide to release a public version at all). I want to be a part of that movement, and contribute something that I think is worthwhile. But I must admit, the prospect of being able to make more money through this route is also a real clincher.

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1. Open source–going commercial with it I recently wrote a post (well, more of a ramble...

Tagged as: community, open source, rambling