Re: Funding GPL projects or funding the GPL?

[Gilad Ben-Yossef <gilad@benyossef.com>]

On Mon, 2002-07-29 at 22:47, Eric W. Biederman wrote:

> But the assertion made by Al Viro that software maintenance is where
> the bulk of the work is, is interesting.  Long term this is trivially
> true because the all of the code has been written, and there is no new
> development to do.  Services like distributions and device driver
> writers, and kernel maintainers appear to be in the area where
> maintenance is important.  Maintenance can be handled by
> maintenance/support contracts, making the economic model with closed
> source and open source the same, except with open source it is easier
> for multiple maintainers to cooperate.  And in the areas where the
> work is primarily maintenance is where open source has been observed
> to be well funded so this appears to work in practice.
> 
> Given that software maintenance is the primary problem, it is only
> the creators of innovative open source programs whose costs are
> external to the economic model, that making business plans harder to
> deal with.  So the question becomes how in the open source community
> do we encourage true innovation, while not encouraging it so much we
> fail to weed out the dumb ideas.  Innovation always has a large share
> of external benefit so the problem of how to encourage and compensate
> innovators is not new, but the open source landscape is.

OK. How about this?

Let us observe that the fundemtal 'problem' here is that closed source
software companies get funding by levraging it's control on the
inelectual property it generates to get money - 'pay us or live with out
it'.

The challange is therefore to find a way, a 'business plan' if you will,
to get money *without* execersizing control on generated intellectual
property. To do this, let's note that there are already equivelent
fields of business with some very close charateristics to software (that
is they involve brain work, not digging coal) where for various reasons,
control of intelectual property is not how you get paid. 

Let's take a specific example: lawyers cannot control the intelectual
property they generate because it's part of the law system that once a
lawyer thought up a new idea anyone can use it. In fact, AFAIK
precedence is one of the basic ideas of the modern law systems.

Are lawyers out of a job? Are there less and less lawyers around because
they can't make money? Are they perhaps not innovative? I don't think
so. As a matter of fact some would even argue that they maybe too much
lawyers around but let's not go there...

Ok. So how do they do this? simple, the way they organise their business
is suitable for the job: AFAIK, a typical law firm has a couple of
senior lawyers who are the 'partners'. The rest of the staff, including
the less senior lawyers, are hired help. 

A couple of interesting to note:

1. The top brass are lawyers, a lot of the time practicing lawyers, not
'managment'.
2. No sales, marketing etc. etc..

Where these are not true is usually in the really big (and therefore we
assume succfull) companies. That is it begins to maybe become slightly
different only AFTER you succeed.

To paraphrase Robert Heinlin, in a typical law firm senior managment
'everyone drops'.

And that's it. (I think :-) the problem with current Open Source
operations which don't do so well is that they are trying to build a
company structured around how closed source software companies are built
- senior manamenbt that don't program. CEOs from that other (closed
source!) company that worked. Peopole who do PR. Sales people. People
who do not 'drop'. Can you say 'Overhead'?

In short and plain words, what I think the lawyers know and we need to
learn is that to make a business built on something else then 
intelectual property control, you need low overhead. You need a firm
where (almost) everyone drops. Building bloated companies only works if
you grab someone in the balls (the customer) and make him maintain the
overhead. When you can't grab someone in the balls you've got to be mean
and lean. When you're big enough then you can efford some of the bloat
and by then maybe you even need it. Maybe.

Imagine for a second a software company built according to 'law firm
principles' - we have the 'Senior Hackers'. They all write code in
addition to taking care of the other sides of business. Sure, they might
hire an accountant and other employees to take some of the work etc. but
there is no bloated 'managment' that can't hack. Intresting concept if
nothing else...

I'm sure by know you are all smiling and thinking "OK, I want to have
some of what he's been smoking...". Fine, but the lawyers are doing
something like this for a long time. It works somehow. Maybe we can
learn.

Just my 2EUROs,
Gilad.

-- 
Gilad Ben-Yossef <gilad@benyossef.com>

"You got an EMP device in the server room? That is so cool."
      -- from a hackers-il thread on paranoia