Community vs. Company
For a long time there have been disagreements of where the line is drawn between communities who produce software and companies who invest in those communities and their software. Based upon a shot suggestion from Félim Whiteley, Jono Bacon and Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge explore where the line could be drawn, the challenges in attitudes that we face and whether we could ever find inner peace between community and company.
Remember, you are the next step in the conversation and we are absolutely gagging to hear your thoughts! What do you think? Can a fair balance be drawn between community and company? Can companies do the right thing? Do communities give companies too much of a raw deal? Are all companies fundamentally evil? Should there even be a line? Share your thoughts in the show comments below…
51 Comments to “Community vs. Company”
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Overall I do think you are both right. I do believe that projects like Ubuntu needs funding. Cannonical doing it is fine, I will surely subscribe to the Ubuntu one Music shop (if Aq ever finishes his work ;^)) just to give soomething back to cannonical in a pleasant way for le. But the real problem for me is not Cannonical wanting to do some black, at least less red, figures, it is that Ubuntu deserves another source of funding equal in size with Cannonical.
Having past the teenage age, I would be ready to subscribe to an Ubuntu community scheme of some sort.
Thanks for your honest opinions.
I think the point was well made with the point of “The bits that are free software don’t make you money, and the bits that make you money aren’t free software.” As far as I’m concerned, I want Ubuntu development to continue. Mark Shuttleworth can’t be expected to fund the project out of his own pocket forever, he’s done more than enough. I can play MP3s with free software, so I’m happy to buy them if that’s all that’s available.
I wonder if the people who attacked the decision to sell MP3s through Ubuntu One would feel the same if Canonical set up a completely separate service that wasn’t linked to Ubuntu, and used it to fund Ubuntu development. Is it because it’s so well integrated that there’s an issue? If so, I think they need to sort out their priorities.
I disagree with the naming of the Ubuntu One Music Store (I filed bug #528910, but I would not mind if Canonical did what you suggested.
For me, it’s not a matter of making money, distributing closed-source software, or otherwise. It’s a matter of honesty. IMO, using the brand Ubuntu with its meanings of ‘humanity to others’, freedom, and openness for proprietary services is inconsistent at best.
If Canonical would disassociate the Ubuntu values and the Ubuntu community from Ubuntu One (which is a proprietary service) and the Ubuntu One Music Store, I would be satisfied. All they need to do is name things properly, like they did with Launchpad and Landscape.
To bring things back to the general topic, I don’t have a problem with companies making money by selling software, even closed-source software. I do have a problem with hypocrisy though. For example, I really resent fauxpen-source like Truecrypt (it calls itself open source but it doesn’t allow distribution of modified copies.)
I don’t think I can disagree with you more about Canonical being “dishonest”. They openly admit that 7Digital is the provider of the music. Aq has said multiple times that Canonical is NOT a music distributor, and that the music comes from 7Digital. They even categorically state that the reason they don’t provide Oggs is because it’s not up to them which formats they can provide, it’s up to the record companies (Fabian on Linux Outlaws gave the impression that they weren’t saying this, but I have to disagree with him, too). However, the Ubuntu One Music Store is a service over and above that which 7Digital provides.
If you go to the 7Digital website, you can buy and download an MP3 to your computer. With the Ubuntu One Music Store, you buy an MP3 which is transferred to your Ubuntu One account, which then syncs to all your computers. And it integrates with Rhythmbox.
If your ethics are that strong that you feel providing an Ubuntu-branded service distributing MP3s is wrong, then you should have stopped using Ubuntu as soon as they created the restricted drivers manager. That utility doesn’t force you to install anything proprietary, but it allows you to. Same with the music store.
They’re making it clear to geeks like us, who care enough to look it up. But if they’re really wanted to make it clear to everyone, they wouldn’t call it “Ubuntu”, same as they didn’t call the restricted drivers application “Ubuntu drivers”. I don’t think distributing MP3 songs for a fee is wrong, I just think it’s inconsistent with Ubuntu values.
I agree with Flimm here. The Ubuntu brand signifies open source. However Ubuntu One could easily cause confusion in the brand. Canonical is the “commercial sponsor” for Ubuntu, not the owner (at least in their own words).
Look at it this way. If company A owned Ubuntu and then company B started a service called Ubuntu One. Would company A sue for trademark infringement? Yes. This is because it would confuse the user.
I wish Canonical didn’t do this and I think they could be profitable even without closed source services(I have nothing against them make money mind you). However, if they choose to go down this route I don’t see point in confusing the Ubuntu brand.
Right!
I fear I must defend my position regards Miguel… The problem I have with him is he seems to disregard the slight issue (one of many) regards date stuff, referring to binary blobs ie. “Word 97 Date Format”. I don’t think you can claim OOXML is a great format when there is loads of examples of this.
It’s kind of the way he dismissed the whole patent issue regards Mono before MS went with their whole “Community Promise”. He is clearly coming to things from the purely Engineering side of things when you just can not do that these days.
I get the feeling his seeming naïvety is more the fact he does in fact have a lot of friends in MS who he works with regularly.
Ideally I would like no software on my desktop to be tied into any proprietary service by default. By proprietary service I mean any service which I can not easily swap out for another one. So having an RSS reader or an email client or an iCalendar client or even an Identica app is fine because they use open standards, but having a Facebook or Twitter app would not.
I find the Last.fm plugin in Rythmbox to be extremely useful for example, but I don’t think it should be installed by default. The same applies for the Magnatune and Jamendo features. The automatic configurations of Pidgin and Evolution for Google Talk and GMail are very useful, but they should be optional plugins which are easily discoverable.
Users might find it useful to have their desktop be integrated with Ubuntu One, or Google Mail, or Twitter or Facebook or any commercial service – but those features should be plugins which are not installed by default but can optionally be added later. This way, I start off with a completely clean and open system and then any commercial tie-in is as a result of a concious decision on my part where I actively chose to use a commercial service and/or share data with a third party.
As for open source business models – I still think this is a massive challenge and I’m always interested to hear of new models. As a consumer, if I’m parting with my money I want to get something of value in return. Getting a copy of a piece of software (which is effectively free to duplicate) isn’t directly of much value to me, but getting a piece of hardware or a hosted service which uses that software is of value (I realise I’m paying for hardware and bandwidth usage). Equally, getting services which take up someone’s time like training or bespoke development is of value to me.
But making an OS without those things already in place raises the barrier to entry for everyone who doesn’t know or care about having to install plugins and so on.
gmb: I completely understand your point about raising barriers to entry and it’s a very difficult balance to get right. I’d argue that the balance can be reached by making it trivially easy to both discover and enable these features upon request.
I think apps which tie into commercial services are very useful and should definitely be available, but having certain ones installed by default feels like the distribution making arbitrary suggestions about relationships I should have with third party commercial entities.
For example, I use a Firefox plugin which allows me to bookmark web pages on delicious.com so that I can share them with friends, but if that plugin was there by default it would raise some questions. Is Delicious affiliated with Ubunutu somehow? Does Ubuntu recommend Delicous? Are they benefiting from marketing Delicious? If I trust Ubuntu should I also trust Delicious? Why should I use Delicious rather than any other bookmarking service?
If the delicious plugin is installed by default then should there also be bookmark plugins for AIM Share, Bebo, Blogger, Blogmarks, Buzz, eKudos, Evernote, Facebook, Favoritus, Folkd, FriendFeed, Digg, Gabbr, GMail, Identi.ca, Kudos, Link Ninja, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, MySpace, Plaxo, Plurk, Reddit, Slashdot, Technorati, Tumblr, Twitter, TypePad, WordPress, and Y! Bookmarks too?
If not, then who decides which one is turned on by default?
I don’t understand your argument. Why is there a problem with open source software on your machine communicating with closed source servers on the internet? You don’t have to use those plugins. They are simply there for your convenience. If you never set up your gmail/facebook/twitter accounts you have zero risk of communicating with those servers.
Unless I am mistaken all the software on the default Ubuntu install is completely open. Even the plugins.
Please see my response above. I don’t have a problem with open source software communicating with commercial services – I think having a variety of options is a positive result of the openness and extensibilty of open source software. What I don’t like is arbitrary decisions being taken on my part and I don’t really want my computer littered with hundreds of integrations with proprietary services I never use.
If I want that functionality, I’ll choose it. In the mean time, I don’t want it taking up my mind share or screen estate.
tola: OK, I think I understand your complaint. I also think it is valid. Canonical and the Ubuntu developers do make a lot of assumptions about what their users want installed by default.
So far, the defaults have worked pretty well for me, though. For example, I like the inclusion of the GoogleTalk plugin in Empathy/Telepathy, and I would probably grumble if I had to do a “sudo apt-get install telepathy-googletalk-plugin” to get it. Different strokes for different folks.
Have you ever thought of modifying the default Ubuntu install, that is, modifying the ubuntu-desktop package, and publishing your modification? It should be pretty easy to just edit the control file in the deb to add/remove recommends.
As long as Ubuntu remains open, and the funding sources are legitimate, I don’t really care what Canonical does to fund the project, or includes as “value added features” in Ubuntu.
I think, perhaps rather cynically, that a lot of the people that shout loudest now about companies creating non-free software to help them make money to continue to build free software are evil (Canonical with the UMS being the most current example of this) will probably never stop shouting.
The trouble is that companies have to make money from the stuff that they build. When you give your major product away as Canonical does it’s even more important that your other offerings make you money. But once a a business has a good idea for a product it can’t just sit there and not produce anything just because no-one can work out how to make money out of the product as free software, because if they do that then someone else will build it and make money from it.
“a large proportion of the kickback….”
To quote Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. “
ITYM backlash
And, while we’re at it, what happened to ‘no compromise, no, none whatsoever’?
Good shot – agreed with most of what you said
Oh, he sold out a long time ago. We even sent him the honorory sell-out jumper.
FWIW, Launchpad is fully open source. We rely on a proprietary openid server, but that’s changing (no schedule, sorry).
That intrigues me… I thought that OpenID was open source.
OpenID is an open standard (like ogg or odt). Some of the software that will provide OpenID is open source, some if closed. In this case the software is closed, which is a shame, but if canonical do manage to change that, it’ll be a good thing.
Wow this is a nice one … where do I start:
First I completely agree with you guys that we have to be pragmatic about this: there’s stuff that works as open source and there’s stuff that doesn’t.
I also understand this feeling that anything open source is fundamentally better than anything closed. And I agree for the most part with that statement especially when it comes to big companies. It’s really hard to make anything good in a big company just because of all the corporate crap standing in the way. But that doesn’t make everything closed source bad and everything open source good.
Now the people that bitch about Canonical having closed source projects clearly have too much time on their hands. I think they’re a minority albeit a rather loud one. I understand wanting to have ubuntu one open (that doesn’t necessarily mean open source) because I’m putting my data in there but Launchpad ? Why would I care about launchpad being closed source ?
In the case of making money against doing the right thing… well it depends what kind of software you’re making. Red Hat can have everything open source because everything they do is enterprise (meaning for other companies). There’s a ton of vendors doing that sort of thing especially in the Java community. But when you’re making software for home users you’re in a dilemma because home users don’t want to pay for what they get. So you have to find other ways to make money. Contracts with hardware vendors will probably be the long term solution if linux becomes widely used but that’s not the case right now (for PCs at least).
Last but not least I think the perfect example of balance in open versus closed source is Linus Torvalds. That guy has always been an inspiration for me when it comes to walking the thin line between spreading the word and keeping all the nonsensical politics out of a project. I really think that without him we wouldn’t be where we are today.
I think for ‘the majority’ there is no real beef about Canonical making money or providing commercial services around Ubuntu.
In fact, I want them to do and offer more so their partners can make more money too!
There is something like 98% of the world’s businesses out there for us to go and “sell” free software too. And believe me it needs selling.
I don’t like Mono, OOXML and find Miguel’s stance completely unfathomable; but that’s my opinion as an individual. With FOSS at least I can, and do, make a choice on these things.
This is a new age we are entering with RedHat, Alfresco, Canonical, Sun, and many others finding a totally untrodden path from where RMS began all this. I don’t think it is unattainable, it is just going to take time and lots of discussion,
This is a fine example. Good shot guys!
I agree. I certainly don’t have a problem with commercial services, I have a problem with closed source one.
If I wasn’t a student and had more money I would definitely get myself an Ubuntu One account. It’s a good service that I would be willing to pay for because it is something tangible that costs the company time and money as I use it. However, there would be one condition, that it be open source. I think Canonical cuts itself out of the market of people like me. Some of us want that access to the code, we want the freedom. I don’t see how it could harm Canonicals business model by opening it up. After all, they are selling a service not the software.
I would like to think I’m pragmatic about this. If the choice is available I generally go with the open source option. I use identi.ca and not twitter. While on the other hand I use an evil video driver because I like it when my desktop rotates like a cube (ok, I need it for work too, but whatever). And I can’t hack a video driver even if it was open source.
But, I’m not so sure that things will become more open when people have this attitude. It feels hypocritical and I think we try to hide this and maybe justify it.
Mr. Jonno & Mr. Aq cite that the majority of open source software development is conducted by [profit-seeking?] companies… But I would remind you that Linux & GNU software did not originally come from this system. I’m sure that if it had, I would need to pay an arm and a leg just for the license to run it.
I guess my point is that I’m a bit skeptical of both sides, but especially of those who are making money off of this.
I realize that this is all a bit loose and vague but I’m sick of typing.
Oh yeah, where the hell do you guys get the clipart for each of your episodes?
Well, it’s not that by definition OOXML can’t be good. It’s just a widely spread view that it is an ill-defined, unimplementable spec, and that Miguel was pimping yet another dubiously patented standard when even the pre-packed ISO boards had large issues with it. It’s the pattern of behaviour.
Lots of things are widely spread though, doesn’t mean they are true.
Why would I be pissed if I went into a bar to listen to a great band for free and buy a shot of jack if I wanted one while I listened to the music?
Im a little bit biased here too because I love Ubuntu and any company that advances it I love so by proxy I love Canonical. (Logic for the win) Contributions to free software is awesome either from a company or the community. Both are needed and both are mutually beneficial. I dont mind Canonical making money because they kick a lot of it back to Ubuntu to make free software awesome. So as long as the company help I dont care what exactly the company does itself as long as it doesnt affect me
If you dont like the MP3 format you can download them and use soundconvert in the repo to convert it to FLAC or OGG very simple.
Ive said it time and again about the FSF having a great idea but they are a little bit to aggressive with their attacks of companies supporting free software.
So I agree with you guys and I think that Canonical like Google will release a lot of free software but will keep certain stuff to keep the market advantage and thats the right of any company.
Why would UMS sell ogg when no main stream portable (iPod type) players support it? That’s a no-brainer.
How would you respond to people who insist that offering mp3-format music, regardless of whether it’s the industry standard, somehow betrays the Ubuntu ethos?
Bluntly, “Get Over It!”
There are far, far bigger threats to our “freedom” that should be at the center of our attention.
Regards what the UUCP folks were talking about a few weeks ago with users getting P0wN3D searching for Facebook in google and trying to log into some music site, and MP3 being still hard to find support for (see my blog post! http://felimwhiteley.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/freedom-isnt-free-it-costs-on-average-20-30-more/). I think it would be entirly foolish to not do MP3. People may think Linux broke their iPod or some such nonsense. I do like John’s idea with the “I’d liek other formats” button so you could have some data to back up a push for other formats at a later date though.
I think a way of sharing that people would another format is a great idea. Maybe a Facebook group? Seems the cool thing to do these days.
“Can this pickle get more fans than MP3″.
Personally, I’d love to see a set of tick button which say “Offer me a FLAC file if it’s available”, “Offer me a OGG file if it’s available” “Offer me an MP3 if it’s available” and even “Offer me WAV” or “Offer me AAC”. These should be options the first time you go to the store, and can be changed at will. Each would have a short description of why you could pick them (for example; “FLAC usually produces a large file but is a format which many people consider to be close to perfect audio quality”). The UMS people could then use these actual statistics as a bargaining chip when reviewing the service with 7digital. If tracks start to be made available in Ogg/Flac then those preferences can be used to promote free formats where the players that are connected support them (for example, if you plug in your iphone, then the music player could adjust the weight that MP3 or AAC files are offered first in the list, whereas if you plug in a G1, then it’ll show that this device supports OGG and MP3. Alternatively, when you plug in one of these devices it could say “Did you know we can also offer you X format in the UMS?”, almost like a reverse version of the restricted drivers box. I understand it’s a lot more work, and almost definitely wouldn’t make the cut before Lucid, but it would give the statistics to back up the statements like “most people’s players can’t play OGG”.
I listen to about 50% of my music on my desktop computer, which can play Ogg. The other 50% I listen to on my portable player, which I chose to buy BECAUSE it can play Ogg. It’s made by Cowon, they’re readily available to buy. Many models of Archos support Ogg. Just because Apple don’t support is doesn’t mean that all “mainstream” manufacturers don’t.
I like JonTheNiceGuy’s idea. Show that people are willing to pay for a product, and it’s a no-brainier for companies to provide it. The reason that they don’t is probably due to myths like sweet william has expressed above.
+1 for Aq’s idea.
Since time long forgotten man has traded goods and services for remuneration and I can’t see why the software industry has to be any different.
The idealists will ask us to accept inferior solutions or no solution at all because the correct solution violates the commandments some bearded old hacker once handed down on stone emacs tablets from the mount. Free software zealots are like a whacky cult that trudge down the road flailing themselves on the back while chanting the GCC man page, purifying themselves with the pain.
I understand that it is always the fringe of any group that make the noise when the rest are too apathetic to do so but this tendency needs to locked in a box with a sign saying “Break glass in event of MS patent case” while rest of us get on with it.
It’s just software.
@bozo
“this tendency needs to locked in a box with a sign saying ‘Break glass in event of MS patent case’ while rest of us get on with it.”
Well said!!!
Hi, as a Red Hat employee I have just one correction … the part of Red Hat Network which makes sense to be used by others WAS released as http://www.redhat.com/spacewalk/ (and although I am a big fan of free software, I was quite nervous when we released it).
Second, @tola Magnatune releases all their music under CC license, which is the closest we have to the free software in music, I think. http://magnatune.com/info/whynotevil
Cool. I looked at spacewalk/RHN and was impressed that Spacewalk is completely open-source; I couldn’t find what there is in RHN that isn’t in Spacewalk, and got a bit confused by the “Satellite” terminology, but it’s one of the things that explicitly led me to call out RH as doing good work on this question in the shot.
Originally spacewalk is based on our Satellite project, which is kind of local RHN for large customers. It is not the code which runs on rhn.redhat.com, but I think that one is so custom tailored to the specific needs of its size (with a lot of specific patches), that it doesn’t really make sense to release it.
Also watch http://truthhappens.redhat.com/2008/01/14/alan-cox-speaks/ it says a lot about how being pure open source makes a lot of business sense to us
This argument happens in DIY punk circles all the time as well. If you charge too much for merch (t-shirts, CDs, etc…) or sign to too big a label, you’re branded a “sell-out.” In Capitalism, it costs money to support yourself, and making art (or programming free software) doesn’t make you money.
If Cannonical wants to start a music store to help fund their free software project, I’m all for it. I might even buy some MP3s.
When booking part of a tour for my old anarcho-punk band, I asked one promoter for a $100 guarantee. He said, “No.” when I pointed out $100 is only 20 people paying $5 at the door, he readily agreed. It’s funny how explaining the numbers involved suddenly cleared it up.
One reason I haven’t criticised UMS, or the Yahoo search, or Linspire CNR or anybody else is simply this. I can’t think of a better way.
Seriously, gripe away. But a suggestion of a better funding model is ten times more useful than pot shots at what we have to work with.
A sage point…something I have tried to encourage in my own work is that people are welcome to have complaints…it is part of being human…but at least try to bring solutions.
I think you’re not really addressing the problem correctly here. For one thing, the straightforward answer to complaints about no OGG files on the Ubuntu Music Store (UMS) is that there really is no UMS. It’s just a front end to the 7Digital Music Store. You do happen to mention that, but it tends to be the last response that you bring up rather than the first and foremost one. At this point I suppose everyone at Canonical is probably deliriously happy that Ubuntu is successful enough that any music store is willing to talk to you at all.
As for Ubuntu One File storage, I don’t see how anyone can seriously complain about that either. Believing in “Free Software” doesn’t include believing that you need to give people a free computer (or server space) to go with it. After all, I didn’t get a free laptop when I downloaded Ubuntu either.
If I have a complaint about Canonical, it’s that they aren’t making enough money. I get a nagging concern about Ubuntu closing down if it can’t be self sustaining. I think the consumer services model is good one however, and I wish you luck with it. Your real challenge is going to be selling those services while avoiding annoying users with a hard sell approach to promoting those services. One of the really horrible things about MS Windows is how every company who gets their software on your computer wants to take over your whole computer as a marketing tool. So far Ubuntu One has stayed fairly low key and unobtrusive, which I think is the right approach.
If there is a “community vs. company” problem anywhere, I think it is that even though SOJ might be your personal blog, you can’t get away from the fact that you do work for Canonical. Whenever Greg Kroah-Hartmann complains about Canonical “not contributing enough to the kernel” it comes across as a Novell employee bashing a competitor in a very petty manner. On the other hand when the two of you tip toe around anything that Novell does, it comes across as you being easy on them because Novell is a competitor (and you want to appear as not being petty). Honestly though, I don’t see how you could stick the boot into de Icaza (for example) no matter how much he might happen to deserve it without being perceived by some as just bashing a competitor. It’s a limitation that you have to accept when working in the sort of position that you are.
I know people might think that Canonical are “going against their values” but Canonical is a company and companies NEED money.
Do you want to see what Ubuntu would be like unfunded? As I really, really don’t…
I have no problem with the naming of anything as long as they make clear to people that this service will cost money. That should be enough…
I hear two distinct questions being asked here. 1. Is it ok to charge for top notch development? I think the answer is yes.
I also dont believe that everyone thinks that just because something is produced by a company using patent law that it is inferior software. The problem is that it is using a broken system to force profits rather than letting innovation be the defining factor.
A great example to use is the restaurant. A restaurant gains “market share” by producing a superior product and thus gains reputation.The cycle is self perpetuating. They are using the same ingredients that are available to everyone. But not everyone is able to create the same end result. The best results will be produced by those with the best staff, with the most talent. If that restaurant starts trying to hide everything, and tries to use the law to prevent anyone else from making dishes that are similar, they will lose the respect of other restaurant, and in the end, the people.
Canonical should be profitable. But I dont think it has to fall back onto the problem to do so. In fact, I think Canonicals main market lies in doing just the opposite.
Longtime lugradio listener, first time SoJ commenter. Some rambling thoughts:
I agree with flimm (comment #3). One very big boot in the spuds for Canonical’s use of Ubuntu branding to sell a non-free service. How about a rename?
I think community vs company was an ill-chosen overly broad title. Isn’t the issue really free software vs corporate interests (namely, but not exclusively, profit)?
Some of the so-called community is just there for the free beer. They will always complain about anything non-free. Nobody likes a price increase, especially when the reference point is free.
re “Do communities give companies too much of a raw deal?” This goes way beyond free software. This is a free speech issue. People are going to say whatever they feel like saying irrespective of the soundness of their argument.
re “Are companies fundamentally evil”. No. The purpose of for-profit companies is to allocate scarce resources for the gain of their owners. With respect to free software, there’s a tension between using those resources in a way that harnesses the community (under which free software benefits) or using resources to develop proprietary IP. Companies who don’t appropriately delineate their community and proprietary products risk losing the goodwill of their community.
Great shot guys, a subject close to my heart. I’m about to give you my opinion and I apologise in advance if this gets a little long but I have a lot opinion.
First I want to address the UOMS issue. I don’t find this offensive compared with the Ubuntu One File sharing which I will come back to. I think it is a sore point for many users that Ubuntu doesn’t yet have a music store but Windows and OSX do in the form of iTunes. I know that my sisters will find it very useful and I commend Canonical for taking the initiative on this one. I don’t have a problem with the format of the music being MP3 because I understand that there will be more Canonical can do once they are bringing in revenue for 7digital. I also acknowledge that this is a problem that cannot be tackled by Canonical (yet). I have Free Software that can play MP3 so no big deal for me as I don’t live in a patent encumbered country. I do wonder how Ubuntu is going to deal with not shipping with MP3 codecs by default however. Any ideas here Aq or Jono?
I would like to start my argument by say that I have nothing again companies making money from Free Software. The more a company makes money off of Free Software the better the software will become and eventually we will be able to overcome our proprietary rivals.
I find it funny how we talk of balance between community and company when really the company should be helping the community achieve it’s goals. That is what a company does, help the customer. If a company gets to a point where they are wrestling with the customer for the customer’s money then they are a bad company and are attempting to hold the customer down. This is not capitalism, capitalism is about choice and free market. If the community is crying out for something, maybe this is a hint to the company
What this boils down to is: “Make the customer stay because they like your service/product not because of lock-in”. If Canonical were to open up the source code to the Ubuntu One servers, not only would this be more in keeping with the Ubuntu brand, but also it would encourage competition, which is good for the customer. Now, Canonical may not like the idea of competition, no company does, but that is what capitalism is built on. If Canonical maintain their active development on Ubuntu One and keep the service good I can assure you people will use that service. There you go, Canonical is being paid for doing good work.
On top of this, Canonical has the upper hand with it’s control of the Ubuntu trademark. By affiliating an open Ubuntu One with the excellent Ubuntu product they are bringing more customers to the service. People will pay for this service, I am sure, as very few people want to maintain their own Ubuntu One instance, take a look at status.net.
Aq mentioned that he thought it was very hard for companies to follow this path and make money from services on top of Free Software. He mentioned some companies already but I don’t think they are the exception, this is subjective however, as I don’t have any hard facts to back this up (but then neither did Aq) only experience . One thing I can say for certain is that nobody has become one of the companies to make money from Free Software by saying “Oh, that looks hard, maybe I will just stick with my hybrid business model.” If you don’t try it you may never know!
I would like to point OpenNMS out as a project that seems to get this “balance” right. I’m not involved with the project but judging from the kind of things Tarus Balog, the lead developer, said about it in his interview with TLLTS, I would say it is an excellent example. I strongly suggest checking out http://www.opennms.com and the TLLTS interview at: episode 343 tllts.org
Excellent discussion folks, a few people need to steer clear of the flame-throwers though.
(oh it did turn out long, sorry)
The people who complain about Linux companies making money are the same people who wouldn’t mind if no-one made money from Linux, as long as they could still use it on their servers in their garden shed. Free Software isn’t going to “win” just because it’s Free.
Personally, I think Canonical treads the line between avoiding locking users into proprietary services and actually generating revenue streams very carefully. They don’t always get it right, but usually listen when people let them know that they haven’t!