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 As someone who spent many years struggling to make a living as a freelance writer, I find it difficult to raise much enthusiasm for the open source movement. Writing technical articles is hard work and I fail to see why authors should not be rewarded in the same way as other skilled professionals. I am grateful for the laws of copyright which prevent others from exploiting my efforts without my permission. On the odd occasion when I have found myself writing code, I have been struck by the similarity between the two activities. Nevertheless the open source model is becoming more common, so perhaps I am missing something.
I do of course recognise that the authors of many great works of literature were not paid by the hour, and I welcome anything that encourages people to express themselves through the written word for the shear pleasure of doing so. However we do live in a society where most of us need to work in order to earn a living and I think we would all be poorer if writing, whether code or literature, could only be a hobby for those who can afford the time when not busy with their primary, money-earning activities.
Before the Web, gaining any appreciable audience for your creative efforts was a costly and risky business. Today your words can be made available to an audience of millions at virtually no cost to yourself. Nevertheless, surveys indicate that sales of printed books are as strong as they’ve ever been. In the software world, the open source movement can supply you with pretty well everything you need to carry out most office and creative tasks. However sales of Microsoft Office 2007 or Adobe Creative Suite 3 do not appear to be suffering as a result. So what is happening?
In my view, the open source movement is not a viable business model on its own. However it is important as a check and a balance to the commercial world. Most of us, particularly if we’re in business, would prefer to pay for software. This is because, regardless of what those licences may say, we expect the seller to take a reasonable degree of responsibility and to allow us reasonably unrestricted use. If they don’t then they risk customers looking more favourably at the open source option. For the industry the open source model can be useful in that it allows companies to ‘reconnect’ with software developers. This is why companies like Adobe (page 7) and CodeGear (page 28) are working with the open source community and - in Adobe’s case - releasing some product under an open source licence.
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