Open Source Is Good And All, But Proprietary Is Still Winning

A post the other day caught my eye. It raised the question as to whether the rise of open source software spells the end of traditional software vendors. Now the easiest thing in the world would be to answer that question with one word, no, but that wouldn't make much of a blog post so lets dive into this a little bit deeper.

Open source is undeniable one of the themes de jour. Ever since Linus Torvalds posted that famous message back in 1991, "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones", open source has been both a development methodology but more importantly a cultural phenomenon. Linux showed the world at large that a new way of working where co-creation, volunteerism, meritocracy and other such non-traditional approaches can produce something powerful. The term, and the concept, has been extended in every direction, as Matt Asay wrote:

But open source is more than software.

Now we have "open source" car and bike sharing in Minnesota, an open source village cellular network in Mexico, open source data centers and more. While not truly open source—many of these projects don't adhere to the Open Source Definition and don't even try to do so—each indicates just how pervasive open source's impact has been.

So undoubtedly open source is big, and important, and transformational. But it sure as hell isn't killing traditional software vendors. Let's face it, we live in a capitalistic society that is driven by profit. As such, every commercial organization needs to make money and needs to differentiate itself from what others do. Some differentiate through a service offering, others take some open source software and package it up with some proprietary pieces to create a mix which is essentially proprietary. Vendors like Cloudera might use a meaningless term like "Open Core" but the reality is that they're using open source as a way to speed up development, and not as a core way of going to market (beyond the feel good factor of saying "open source" at every opportunity).

There are masses of examples of this. Oracle , perhaps the most proprietary software vendor today, recently purchased the open source cloud vendor Nimbula. It created what some commentators have called a "FrankenStack" by mixing this open source platform with a bunch of other technologies to create its very own cloud platform (which in itself is interesting, Larry Ellison being, after all, one of the biggest names previously deriding the entire concept of cloud). But if we look at the way Oracle has done this, it is very much a case of utilizing the development aspects of open source, without giving back. Oracle hasn't contributed any code back to the OpenStack community (and while perhaps they have a moral obligation to, this is socialism after all and it's pretty much up to them, right?). So Oracle has taken advantage of essentially a free product development model, acquired some other bits and pieces, kvethched it all up with some of its own IP and created a proprietary product which, much to the consternation of purists, will probably do OK to those customers who like the feeling of security that an Oracle logo on a licensing agreement brings.

Does this mean that Oracle are the devil incarnate going against the true open source ethos? No, it simply means that Oracle is going about its business in the most efficient way that it sees fit, the use of open source is part of this.

Oracle, of course, aren't alone in all of this. Other proprietary technology vendors make use of open source when it suits them. EMC has its big data product (because everyone needs a big data offering, right?) built around the open source Hadoop. IBM was, of course, one of the early backers of Linux and, while it needs to be said that they've contributed extensively to Linux and other open source projects, they've monetized the involvement handsomely. The list goes on - Hewlett Packard is betting its cloudy future on OpenStack. Yes it's contributing code back to the project but HP, a traditional software vendor, is commercializing an open source project.

Heck, take Marten Mickos, the well respected open source veteran. Mickos was CEO of MySQL when Sun Microsystems bought it and is now CEO of another open source company Eucalyptus. This is one person above all who should be bullish about the ability of open source to turn the tide on traditional software vendors. But in an email with ReadWrite's Matt Asay, Mickos said that:

We said [open source would eliminate proprietary vendors] 10 years ago, too, and then VMware came from nowhere and became 4-5 times Red Hat's size. AWS is built on open source, but it isn't open itself. DynamoDB and EMR compete against open source without supporting open source.

I don't want to sound negative on open source. I just don't think it's necessarily possible that it will win everything in infrastructure.

Open source is an amazing movement. It's enabled people across the globe to contribute in meaningful ways. It has created amazing tools (case in point, open source Ushahidi is an awesome open source tool for information gathering and dissemination in natural and man made disaster zones). But open source doesn't threaten traditional software vendors. Yes they will morph what they do to take advantage of the opportunities that open source brings, but while other changes in society and industry brings challenges for the incumbents, open source isn't something they're losing too much sleep over.

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. Read more about Ben here.

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