Difference between revisions of "Student Projects:Commercial Software Open Source"
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== '''Join the project''' == | == '''Join the project''' == | ||
Revision as of 21:35, 4 November 2004
How Should Commercial Software Companies React to Open Source
Contents
Project Members
James Welle
Rodrick Megraw
Magdalene Tatum
Song Xue
Bipin Karunakaran
Patrick Haluptzok
Project Goals
Commercial software should it go open source? We will be discussing
- Issues involved in going the open source route
- Benefits v/s non-benefits(consumers and companies)
- Examples of sucess v/s failures on Commercial software going open source
- Alternatives to Open source (code sharing)
- Legal issues with commercial employees contributing to or reading opensource
- Is there a middle ground can be achieved between Open Source Software vs Commercial Software?
Project Summary - Due Nov. 8th
--Remegraw 22:23, 3 Nov 2004 (PST) Here's a place to collect material for the summary that is due the 8th.
Section 1:
Title: open source Introduction(definiton, history,advantages,disadvantages) and alternatives
Author: Bipin Karunakaran
In this section we will discuss about the definition, advantages, disadvantages history and alternatives to open source.
Open source is defined as software to which there is access to source, in addition the software complies with being freely redistributable source code, derived works share the same characteristics of the original, without discrimination to any person or group or fields of endeavor, the distribution license also must not be specific to a product and must not restrict other software, licensing must be technology neutral. Open source has various advantages and disadvantages, advantages include improved reliability of software, cost reduction, no license tracking and in-house feature addition. Disadvantages include legal issues arising out of possible intellectual property violations in the course of the development of the product, cost of maintenance and support, unavailability of expert support if urgently needed. With this wide range of advantages and disadvantages the choice over open source and propriety software can be tricky and boils down to what the application does and how it is used. Open source concept and software is about 25 years old, Richard Stallman is credited with the open source movement, in the 80’s he spent a lot of time working on the OS ITS which was the first OSS. Though Stallman was a smart programmer he will be remembered for his vision on OSS which is laid out in the GNU manifesto. We will explore in detail about advantages, disadvantages and history in details in the paper.
Open source software in its pure form with its disadvantages is risky to implement in commercial setting, are there alternatives to pure open source? A mixture of proprietary and open source software, an excellent example would be Novell which bundles open source software with its proprietary software.
Section 2:
Title:
Author Patrick Haluptzok
Section 3:
Title:
Author: Rodrick Megraw Remegraw
In this section our objective is to examine the open source licensing quagmire from the perspective of a commercial software company. A commercial software company may have many possible motivations to release open source software. These motivations are discussed in detail in other sections of this paper. But once the decision to open source has been made, a firm must decide on the license under which it will release its software. In this section we seek to answer the following questions: What are the common classes of open source licenses? What are the features? What are the pitfalls? What do these mean to a commercial software company? What should a commercial software company consider in choosing an existing open source license? What should it consider in constructing its own license? What are some examples of open sources licenses issued by commercial software companies? In answering these questions we hope to provide a succinct navigational guide for firms seeking an open source licensing model. Sources for this section will include papers by Bob Gomulkiewicz, OSI (www.opensource.org), Chasing Moore's Law¸ and others.
Section 4:
Title:
Author: Song Xue
This section discusses commercial software vs. open source from a fiscal standpoint. Traditional commercial software companies assume all the cost of developing, marketing and supporting their software. In turn, software and the subsequent upgrades are sold or licensed for a fee. Profit is made from the difference of the two. This picture is drastically changed for open source software, which is usually free of charge or for a nominal fee. Since a big chunk of profit is taken out of the equation, how is open source a viable business model? It turns out that open source companies are forced to think outside the box and adopt non-traditional models. Furthermore, there is a flip side of the coin. If executed successfully, the cost of developing, marketing and supporting of open source software is reduced because the larger user community now bears a significant portion of it. This section will contrast the two business models, analyze their real world incarnations, and summarize their strengths and weaknesses, and subsequently their applicability to various software projects.
Section 5:
Title: Case Study: Should Microsoft Open Source its Windows Operating System?
Author: James Welle JamesWelle
This section of the paper will be a case study that attempts to answer the question, "Should Microsoft open source its Windows operating system?" This section will start with a brief review of Microsoft's policy on open-source and how this policy has changed over time. We will then use much of the information in the preceding sections such as different licensing and business models as well as legal issue in order to attempt to come up with a viable open source model for the operating system. We will look at how issues such as operating system security, code quality, piracy, revenue, the ISV ecosystem, product support, and public perception would be affected by such a move. We will compare Microsoft's potential open source plan to those of Apple with OSX, Sun with Open Solaris, and Symbian. Finally, we will make a recommendation as to whether or not Microsoft should open source Windows.
Project Links
Seattle PI article from June 2004 on Microsoft and Open Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/179256_msftopen25.html
eWeek Article from October 2004 on Sun making Solaris Open Source: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1699436,00.asp
Steve Ballmer's Customer Email on Linux from October 2004: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/
Information Week's Response to Ballmer's Email: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=51201701&tid=5999
LICENSING RELATED
LEGAL ASPECTS OF OPEN SOURCE LICENSING http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/campa/teaching/oss/papers/jarvinen.pdf
DE-BUGGING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE LICENSING (Gomulkiewicz) http://www.law.washington.edu/Faculty/Gomulkiewicz/Publications/debugOpenSource.pdf
Open Source Software Licensing http://www.stromian.com/Open_Source_Licensing.htm
OSI Licensing
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
Introduction and Alternatives Related
Novell Open source
http://developer.novell.com/ndk/qstart/opensource.htm
Open source definition
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
Open source history
http://www.openknowledge.org/writing/open-source/scb/brief-open-source-history.html
Join the project
--Lin Huang: I got Professor Ed's mail tonight, askming me to decide whether I join the UCSD open soruce team or new MS open source team.
Let me know your thoughts, I prefer MS team. I read some article tonights, and would study the government and start up company who choose to use Open Source: understand the why, and come up the strategy and suggestion what we can improve our service.
I can be either team, but my focuse will basically alone this line. Let me know.
Thanks Lin
--James Welle: I would prefer to keep the group size to 5 or 6. There are two other open source projects, one of which has four members and another which has one member. Lin's topic already seems to be covered in our paper and Magdalene's is more about a specific legal case. Could you two contact the other open source teams and see if it would be a better fit for you to join them? If not, we can try to work something out for one of you, but I think we should keep 6 as a hard limit on our group size.
--Lin Huang:
Your existing project flow is very good! One thing I would like to point out though is that: your topic is based on whether VP or a commercial company should decide whether go to open source or not after reading the paper. My point as listed in previous thread, and based on analysis of the two and come up an alternative suggestion: so the topic emphasize on the alternative to the open source or commercial software. I am not sure whether this fit to your overal discussion and project goal. If not, let me know, I will join other team.
Since my general goal is on this, I have a chapter on a start up company, which model they will choose to go? and a case study on a company choose to use the open source and what lesson they have learned?
Let me know your thoughts. Thanks Lin
--Bipk 15:47, 30 Oct 2004 (PDT) Hello Magdalene and LinHuang I dont have a problem with you guys joining in, We are already 5 of us and the max we can have is 6.I think we can easily accomdate one more person. I am not sure of a 7th person, if Ed agrees to it, that probably could be done too. Right now all of 5 of us have agreed on their ownership areas and will get an introduction ready by start of class on thursday. I have posted a JPG on the ownership areas on this site. Magdalene: Your area looks a chapter towards the end of the paper, what do you guys think? LinHuang: YOur topic is already taken and there are two of us working on this but with different perspectives one with an economic perspective and one in a general perspective.You will have to find a different topic at the earliest if you need to join, probably a mail to ed would also help. James, song, rodrick,Patrick please chime in as needed to bring this to closure. Thanks
_____________________________________ Hi Bipin, James, Song, & Rodrick, October 29, 2004
My name is Magdalene Tatum (UCB) and I am very interested in "Open Source" especially the dual licensing component and all of the new legal positions. The most interesting element is what we learned in lecture last night about SCO and their lawsuit with IBM for the UNIX code. I am ready to dive in to whatever avenue we decide to go!!!!!
Guess I am not familiar with the area should go. Sorry for the late post here. I have signed up for this project as well a week ago. Just went browsing around, and located this page.
I would like to write a sub topic about: what's the middle ground?
Specifically, would analyse the pros and cons of open source vs commecial software , and see whether there is a better middle ground can be achieved. 1.Specifically toward the two cons I see from the open source: Two styles of the license: one can make into incompatible platform or applications; another has the limitation on the insentive for the innovation. 2. I would like to see "viewable source", that's different than the license of open source definition. this might very well overlap James, Song's license sub-topic.
Lin
P.S.
Who will write the one page for the project? Maybe each of us should write a note about the sub-topic he/she is interested in to be more clear?
Choosing our Project
--Remegraw 18:41, 3 Nov 2004 (PST) Hey guys, I am also able to meet a half hour before class. I'll plan to have my paragraph up by tonight. Without date stamps it is hard to follow the threads here. Are you guys currently thinking that our overall project and sub-project goals as stated are still too broad? Perhaps we can see what everyone has for a paragraph tomorrow night and see how it looks. Hopefull only small tweeks are needed to make it coherent.
--Bipk 15:34, 30 Oct 2004 (PDT) The introduction is due with each person writing a paragraph about his own topic and we will integrate on the night before class on 11/04/2004. It will be helpful to get this on the 4th so that we can do some edits and fine tune it if it doesnt fit that well over the weekend before the 8th. I dont think it is a lot of work to get apargraph about your topic before thursday:)
Song:
Sounds good. I vote half an hour before class.
James Welle: I still think we need to choose a very precise topic and subtopics if the pieces of our paper are going to fit together well. The goals we have listed now seem too general. What do you guys think of getting together before or after class to nail it down?
bip: I kinda tried to highlight our project goals including what you already said if you think it is not appropriate or we are not there yet we can go further into discussion on what we need to write on subtopics. I think i highlited 4 subtopics which could be important from the project perspective. Feel free to update post if i missed something. Song:
The topic is fine with me. A survey on the current landscape of commercial companies vs. open source is great. Open source Windows would be a great example of illustration, though we probably concentrate on issues in general. Regarding the viability of commercial software in the future, can 4 of us agree on an answer?:)
Anyway, the following are a few other bullet points I can think of. Some are probably worthy of a subtopic. Others are relatively minor by worth pointing out.
- Trustworthy computing. This has been one of the main arguments of open source community. Commercial company needs to respond to this in a convincing fashion (both to enterprise & to consumer) to order to compete effectively with open source.
- “Share source” as an answer to “Open source”? A comparison of various licenses. How can commercial companies compete by amending the licensing agreement targeted at different audience, corporate, developer and consumer.
Total cost of ownership. Hidden cost, upfront fee vs. service contract.
The quality and responsiveness of product support. Customer community.
bipk:
Paste the discussion we had on the email and continue with that discussion and go further
Original Message-----
From: James Welle Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2004 6:29 PM To: 'Rodrick Megraw'; Song Xue; Bipin Karunakaran Subject: RE: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
I created the main page for our project:
http://cubist.cs.washington.edu/CSEP590TU-wiki/index.php/Project_Teams
Can you guys enter your user information under the heading for our project?
jw
Original Message-----
From: James Welle Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2004 6:29 PM To: 'Rodrick Megraw'; Song Xue; Bipin Karunakaran Subject: RE: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
OK, I like Rod's idea of generalizing it to not just focus on Microsoft. Here are some possible subtopics. What are some other subtopics that fall under that major topic that you guys would like to explore?
Major Topic:
How should a commercial software company react to the open source phenomenon?
Subtopics:
1. How have commercial software companies utilized open source? What has been successful and unsuccessful? I think this would be a survey of existing software companies and how they are using or not using the open source model.
2. Should Microsoft open source Windows?
3. An analysis of current business trends and predictions for the future. We could try to predict whether or not a commercial company will be able to survive in the future without using open source.
jw
Original Message-----
From: Rodrick Megraw [1] Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2004 4:48 PM To: Song Xue Cc: Bipin Karunakaran; James Welle Subject: RE: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
I'm not personally interested in doing something specifically about Windows, but I can understand if you guys are. I'd be more in favor of answering "How should a proprietary software company react to the open source phenomanon?" or similar.
Rod
_____________________________________ Explore, enjoy and protect the planet http://sierraclub.org
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, Song Xue wrote:
Sorry I didn't chime in earlier. Our team had a ZBB push. I would list "open source" as my first choice and "outsourcing" my second. I agree we should write at a more granular level than the topic itself. Regarding business vs. technology, I think all topics contain, at some levels, both ingredients and it is very difficult to use it to qualify the scope of topics. I like the Windows open source topic that James listed earlier. We can even expand it a bit. Say "What should be the Microsoft strategy on open source" with additional subtopics like: Open source Windows? Public attitude towards open source What to do about Linux? How to adjust business/pricing model in view of open source? Developing linux software? ... The topics are reasonably independent. At the same time, there is a central theme that runs through all of them. I like this format because it maintains the overall coherency yet allow people to work on different sections.
Original Message-----
From: Rodrick Megraw [2] Sent: Fri 10/22/2004 4:15 PM To: Bipin Karunakaran Cc: James Welle; Song Xue Subject: RE: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
I think the more cohesion the better, but this shouldn't come at the expense of everyone ending up with topics that they are happy with.
At the top level, open source issues seem to fall into one of two areas: business or technical. Business being stuff like licensing, workforce issues, strategy, etc. Technical being quality, innovation, security, etc. Does anyone else agree that we should break the topic down into at least one of these halves for our papers?
I'm not sure this is a perfect idea, since there can be a lot of interesting crossover between the two. Just a stab at getting closer to a topic that will have the level focus we'd like.
Rod
_____________________________________ Explore, enjoy and protect the planet http://sierraclub.org
On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Bipin Karunakaran wrote:
Sorry, I missed that, I thought the idea was to pick a broad topic discuss pros and cons and kinda follow it on. Like open source and Microsoft could be a last part of open source discussion. I agree that there could be some disconnects between each topic, I am not sure if it is acceptable or not, will let Rod and song also chime in. Bipin
Original Message-----
From: James Welle Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 3:39 PM To: Bipin Karunakaran; Rodrick Megraw; Song Xue Subject: RE: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
I don't think we should even choose a topic as broad as "open source" as our subject. We need to start with something much smaller and go from there. If we choose such a broad topic, our paper is going to be very disjointed.
If you look at the open source page on the Wiki, the instructors listed some possible topics on the subject.
What Motivates OS Workers (Interviews).
How Good is Apache? (Source Code Review)
Domesticating Open Source (MS Shared Source Code Initiative).
where do we draw the line(How much should be open and how much
closed e.g security code open or closed?)
Can open source create good user interfaces?
I think each one of these is the type of granularity to choose for our entire paper. Once we have chosen a topic like that, we can break it down even further and assign work.
What do you guys think, Song and Rodrick?
jw
Original Message-----
From: Bipin Karunakaran Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 3:32 PM To: James Welle; Rodrick Megraw; Song Xue Subject: RE: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
What I was meaning to say is, lets settle on a topic and delve deeper into it so that each guy picks up his part and does research on it and gets back on what subtopic is more interesting to him. By not making that choice we will each be thinking about different topics and wont converge into one main topic(like whether outsourcing or weblogs o open source). But you bring an important discussion about Microsoft, which possibly is a good subtopic of discussion under the main open source umbrella. So if everyone agrees we need to choose the wide topic of open source, each person can investigate some subtopic(s) and bring it back to the thread so that everything fits and reads like chapters of a book that was intention in making that comment.
Original Message-----
From: James Welle Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 3:25 PM To: Bipin Karunakaran; Rodrick Megraw; Song Xue Subject: RE: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
Bipin, if we do open source, what specific top on open source would you like to cover? I think that just choosing open source is way too broad. Also, how do you feel open source could affect outsourcing?
What do you guys think of the Microsoft open source idea? To me, it is not clear what all the advantages and disadvantages of Microsoft open sourcing Windows are. Would it really increase piracy? I would say no since the vast majority of personal users get Windows from an OEM and the OEM is not going to pirate Windows. Businesses would most likely not pirate Windows as well. Also, open source doesn't necessarily have to be free, does it? Are there currently any licenses where the source code is open, but in order to compile it or run the software you are required to pay? Could Microsoft create such a license? (I guess they must be able to, because some governments and universities have the source code and I'm sure they aren't getting Windows for free.) I know people talk about free as in freedom and free as in beer with respect to open source, but I don't know if open source software HAS to be free as in beer.
jw
Original Message-----
From: Bipin Karunakaran Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 3:10 PM To: James Welle; Rodrick Megraw; Song Xue Subject: RE: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
To add a spin to open source Would open source encourage outsourcing or not(now that everyone knows how the good guys think) And to outsourcing Does outsourcing help US employees You want someone offshore to work on a program using .NET yeah he needs to buy Visual studio .net adding to the network and pushing improvements and research which possibly is done here in the US.
Now what is the consensus on the topic of interest I am open to any one. I would prefer Open source that makes it 1 vote for open source. Whichever one wins is the topic and I think at least we should agree on that today or by tomorrow. What do you guys say?
Original Message-----
From: James Welle Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 2:45 PM To: Bipin Karunakaran; Rodrick Megraw; Song Xue Subject: RE: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
I agree with Bipin that we should first decide what question we are going to try to answer or what problem we are going to try to solve. Here some ideas I have come up with so far:
*************************************** Open Source ***************************************
Should Microsoft open source Windows? How would this affect piracy, security, and the perception of the company?
Would an open source e-voting system be a viable replacement for the current proprietary systems?
*************************************** Outsourcing ***************************************
How is IT outsourcing similar to or different from the movement of auto industry jobs overseas?
Is it possible and is it a good idea for the US government to try to stop or slow outsourcing?
Can individuals in the IT industry do anything about outsourcing? How do unions relate to this?
What can we expect the overall effect of outsourcing to be on the industry in 5, 10, 20 years?
**************************************** Weblogs ****************************************
Can and/or will weblogs have an effect on the way political candidates run campaigns?
Could a candidate use a weblog as an effective communication device?
Will weblogs change the way media covers politics?
Are weblogs a viable replacement for more traditional news sources on political subjects?
jw
Original Message-----
From: Bipin Karunakaran Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 2:29 PM To: Rodrick Megraw; Song Xue Cc: James Welle Subject: RE: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
First all let me go to the core of the topic does everyone agree that our project is a paper on open source?
Original Message-----
From: Rodrick Megraw [3] Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 1:33 PM To: Song Xue Cc: James Welle; Bipin Karunakaran Subject: Re: [CSE P 590TU] Project topics
Some potential sub-topics:
-Comparison of various licensing models -Innovation in open source software -Comparison of various collaberation models -Motivations for developers
Rod
_____________________________________ Explore, enjoy and protect the planet http://sierraclub.org
On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, Song Xue wrote:
Hi all,
My name is Song Xue. I work for Microsoft. It great to have the opportunity to work with you. Let's start the thread to discuss the potential topics for our project.
_____________________________________
