Arm Chair Discussion: Is Open Source like Communism?

So we were sitting in our arm chairs, watching some show on Discovery (probably Dirty Jobs, which is hysterically funny and makes me grateful for the fairly safe job I have. Although sometime later I will tell you about the time I tried to electrocute and crush myself in my Adventures of Server Girl).

He speaks up during a commercial, "you know, I think that Open Source is like Communism."

I am shaken from my TV haze..."Huh?"

"Yeah, there is no real way that Open Source will be able to sustain itself long-term, look at what happened in Russia."

And so the conversation starts...

Let's first look at the definition of communism:

classless political system: the political theory or system in which all property and wealth is owned in a classless society by all the members of that society (MSN Encarta)

Hmm interesting...now let's look at the definition of Open Source:

Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's sources. (WikiPedia).

In technology, WikiPedia goes on to describe open source as "...software whose source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees. Open source code evolves through community cooperation."

OK so communism and open source, by loose definition, sound similar. So there are several questions that I would like to explore with discussion that are interesting. Can there be true innovation using Open Source from a technology perspective? Can Open source be truly sustainable or will it fall apart like communism has?

Let's look at the innovation question first. Yes, I think that you can be truly innovative using Open Source, it is after all, open for everyone to see and contribute to. Sounds like a developer's utopia. A couple thoughts here: If it is open for all to see and contribute to (like the community farm), no one gets paid for the innovation they put into it. All that innovation goes into the collective. Sure, it feeds your creative beast, but it doesn't feed your family. Eventually, one takes priority over the other (hopefully the family!), and innovation begins to decline.

Why? In my opinion, it is because there are a lot of hidden costs to supporting an open source platform. If it is free, the deal looks great on paper. Do more with less! But supporting something like this is problematic, and very expensive. Large organizations have grown their business around supporting open source platforms (think IBM). Or you have that group of people within your org that are solely dedicated to supporting all of the updates, bugs, etc. of the platform, and then get all of those changes back out to the collective, because your org doesn't truly own the code.

So where is the time to innovate? It shrinks, because you have a business to run.

Is it sustainable? Will large enterprise companies truly bet their mission critical systems on open source? In my opinion, probably not. What's in it for your org? Let's face it, your CxO isn't out to contribute to the collective, they are out to keep their business running and making a profit, remaining competitive (which means, my edge isn't free for all to see and copy).

I think that open source will continue to exist, but in niche spaces, like small business solutions. Developers and technologists will continue to contribute to open source as enthusiasts, but will have a day job to keep the food on the table and a roof over their heads. Large businesses will not use it for mission critical enterprise class apps because it hinders their competitive edge and profitability.

So what do you think?

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2006
  Open Source is viable because it exists on top of capitalism.
  
  So it is a communist type system relying on capitalism for survival.
  
  So it is a modern hybrid form of communism - not the one we all know.
  
  
  

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2006
  Not only do I propose that open source is communistic in nature, but it is also exploitive of illegal labor and can only exist through unethical labor practices.  The only winners are IBM and their ilk and the losers are ultimately the coders who won't get paid.

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 14, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 27, 2006
  It's actually quite hard for me to understand how you could view Open Source like communism when the key influentials and primary developers are on the payroll of large technology companies, either directly (like that Novell guy doing Mono and all the SuSe folks) or indirectly (Linus).  
  
  Do you really think Open Source would be what it is today without $$ paying developers?  
  
  Of course, open source started with an acadmeic and hobbyist tradition -- and that's a great thing!  It's cool that people like to build stuff and share it.  I like hobbies.  I think having a hobby helps people maintain their mental stability.  But certainly in the ridiculously vast majority of cases, the hobbyists are not building software products with the maturity that businesses want to run.  The open source products that IBM and others are pushing are extremely commercial products.  If nothing else, they sell consulting services!

• Anonymous
  September 28, 2006
  Let us think for a moment, not what the formal definition of Communism is, but what it actually is - a society where those at the top are privileged, those that do their bidding get perks, some privileges, but are sometimes trod upon, and then there is everyone else.
  
  That said, just to play devil’s advocate; THAT sounds like Microsoft, their partners & large customers, and everyone else. >:-|
  

• Anonymous
  October 20, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 20, 2006
  There are more key differences between open source and communism. Communism was extremely centrally controlled; that's where a lot of inefficiencies where. On the other hand, most open source projects have more decentralized structure (since there are multiple companies and many many contributors - both full and part-time)... Another major difference is that there is a lot more communication between peers in open source. In communism, communication tends to be one way; from higher authority to low level grunt.

• Anonymous
  October 20, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 20, 2006
  http://redsolo.blogspot.com/2006/10/open-source-is-not-your-enemy.html

• Anonymous
  October 20, 2006
  I think a clarification needs to be made here, open source does not mean that you can not sell your product to people. It simply means that you need to release the source code. As such, I think there is quite a bit of difference between the open source movement and communism. Last time I checked, Red Hat, Novell, Mandrake, and many other open source companies all had capitalistic models based on the selling of open source code and the selling of support for that open source code. How is that communistic?

• Anonymous
  October 21, 2006
  First thing I'd realize is the fact, that software is basicly an idea or information, not a physical object. An information can be easily duplicated at zero (or negligible) cost, while physical objects can't. Any physical product has to be produced using resources and labor. You can't create a "master" and then just make millions of copies at no cost. But information can be created, processed, altered and copied without restraint. Idea of communism refers to physical objects (means of production) in common ownership, not to ideas or information. World of information is different. Some information is copyrighted or patented and people make profit from it. Yes. But thats just a small piece of the puzzle. Even in capitalism, most of the information is freely exchanged, shared (=is in common ownership?). You talk with other people, exchange thoughts and ideas. You don't copyright everything you say, do you? Free information exchange is a necessity. It's also the main source of technological advancement, the very heart of science. You don't pay for using "Pythagoras' theorem". If you had to, we'd be at stone age again. Or maybe take a look at blogging. You created an information (this article) and shared that with us at no cost. Are you a communist because of that? It did cost you your time and intellectual effort, the same that OSS coder used to create OSS. Now, I used your idea, processed it and created this post. I might gave you a couple of new thougts that didn't occur to you. Maybe they even didn't occur to me, until I read your article. So, we both got a benefit. And this is what free information exchange is about. And that is the main idea behind OSS. Instead of blog posts, we exchange source code, we process it, copy it and use it.