Open Source and Selling Out
By Dale Dougherty
After last month's column, I expected to hear from some hackers who felt that the selling of Open Source meant the selling out of Open Source. Here's what Ryan Mansager had to say:
I just finished rereading your [September issue] column in Web Techniques, "The Selling of Open Source," to find that it stings just as hard as it did the first time through. This pain is due simply to how contradictory it was to the whole mentality of Open Source.
The problem with Red Hat and VA Linux Systems going commercial is that Linux has its living roots deep in the hacker's philosophy. It thrives because its makers aren't looking for money. They're not looking to have their piece of software dominate over others, and spread to the outer reaches of the software community. That's an absolutely ridiculous way of thinking in the mindset of the hacker. We have a deep love of programming and want to help contribute to this beautiful community.
What is beautiful about the community? It arises from the simple motivation to please our peers and the users of our software. We evolve together rather than against each other. You can have a dozen different pieces of the same type of software, and nearly each will have its own following. For those that don't, they're either improved until they do, or they fade away. It's how our software evolves.
If we add marketing to the picture, then our hacker's utopia will become contaminated. With commercialization, one starts dealing with money and then greed and envy, along with competition.
