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Asynchrony: Paid Open Source Hacking? 81

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wouldn't-it-be-nice dept.
Blackheart2 writes "Asynchrony (one of /.'s sponsors) is a site which, like SourceForge, is hosting open source projects, but with a difference: team members hold shares in their projects according to the amount of effort they contribute, and 'whenever there is profit to be made, instead of taking the work done by members of the open source development team and starting a separate profitable company, Asynchrony is able to distribute some percentage of product revenues to the people who made the product possible, using the share ownership information.' See their Open Source White Paper for details, especially the end. " I'm really skeptical that something like this would work, but hell, it would be cool to get a few bucks when you send a diff off to a -dev mailing list ;) But its good food for thought.
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Asynchrony: Paid Open Source Hacking? More

Asynchrony: Paid Open Source Hacking?

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  • Re:This is how it cant work -- Exactly!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Of course! Just go register Linux and all the rest of the opensource software out there on Asynchrony as "your" projects. Can the GPL stop you? I think not. When they start distributing CD's with "your" software, you'll get x% of the profits! (Thankfully, moderation working the way it does, no one will ever read this and I can go do it first!!!!!!!) -ac
  • Only the team that is working on the project makes reviews of the others on the Team Asynchrony does nothing as far as rating a project or person.
  • Smartsheep.com was a secret url for private testers in St.Louis to use to get to the site. We looked at our selfs as sheep when we worked for General Electric as Developers. We thought of our selfs as smartsheep when we left Corp America to start our own gig.
  • Thanks,
    The Quake server was my idea :4)
  • Sorry, the GPL does allow the re-sale of the product licensed under it.

    --

  • A joke running around Ops after the tornadoes that ran through GA a couple of years ago went something like this:

    "Yeah, the damn twister came right through and took out every Vax in the place. All the NT boxes just blew up before the twister even touched them. But the DEC/Alphas just sat there and kept running. Why? Because the Oracle told them they could."

    Ok, I could never tell a joke even in a email.
  • Isn't SGI using Linux as a proxy to kill off Sun? Just joking, :->. IBM has no chance of catching enough of a clue to kill of Sun. The company that gave us Java does some boneheaded crap but I admit the hardware is solid and the OS (Solaris 8) is one of the very best Commercial distributions alive today.

    To be frank, the only company with a product good enough to beat of the Sun boys is so absolutely clueless that they will never beat them. Yes, Compaq is sitting on the best hardware ever to run Oracle. There is nothing in the universe more solid than a damn DEC/Alpha running Oracle. Those boxes don't go down for anything.

    Linux is great operating system for the small scale business that needs the stability of Unix or the Sysadmin sitting at home wanting the power of the command line. It is great for the network guy wanting to turn that 486 into a proxy server at home. It is wonderful for the programmer on the cheap who only has to download Code Crusader to get a great little IDE for nothing and his compiler for free. On a large scale, they make good little web servers, SMTP servers and can perform a half dozen or so roles in a large corporation data center.

    However, I still want the big Sun boxes for my big sites. Dec/Alphas were spawned from the hell of Digital for the sole purpose of running Oracle. It is hard for some people to admit but the commercial *nixes still have some advantages in terms of stability and performance on their native hardware platforms. Will one day Linux finally take them over the same way that Linux is seeping into the hallowed halls of SGI? Sure!

    Does this mean that Solaris sucks by default? No.
  • wheeee. why can't you people learn to enjoy jobs like gardening -- we need more gardeners, not agents.

    face it, you are fighting demediation and societal atomization. in one of the responses you said "fairly" (insert butt-head laughter here). now please define that considering these two trends. can't? do your investors know you are FOS?

    why don't you do everyone a favor and take the scads of money you've already "seriously" scammed from johnnie-come-lately dupes and invest in some training to be a programmer yourself. then at least you get some respect (from us hos, at least :-).

    ;;; --thi

  • I think the s stands for secure. all secure websites start out with https://blah...

  • because the Internet will undercut you with its effective $0 distribution cost.

    But I too can distribute the software over the internet, so I have a £0 distribution cost.
    The real problem is that with 1 person selling something, they get 100% of the profits; with 100 people selling it...

    As you say, it's hard to imagine a way of making money out of Open Source software without making most if not all of it on support, training, etc.

    Still, my original point does hold - you can sell OS software; just don't expect to get rich doing it :-)

    Cheers,

    Tim
  • (My apologies if this has already been covered in another thread, I did have a look, but couldn't see any discussion on the matter...)

    Everytime this sort of scheme/site is announced and commented on, there are always a few people who say something like "It'll never work, Open Source software is free by definition, so you can't charge people for it!"

    Now, I admit that I haven't read the whole of the GPL, but right near the start is this paragraph:

    When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

    (Emphasis added)

    Now, that seems pretty clear to me - you can charge for OS software if so you wish, you just have to make the source code available (hence Open Source). Now, whether or not the GPL allows you to prevent others from doing the same, I don't know (and as I'm at work, I don't have the time to read it in its entirity to try and find out :-) ).

    Whether you could make enough money for it to be a means of supporting yourself is another matter, but that aside, you quite clearly can sell it according to the terms of the GPL. Open Source does not mean "Free as in Beer" by definition, contrary to what certain people seem to think.

    Cheers,

    Tim
  • I've said enough. If you weren't listening back when it was important, well..

    Good luck.


    Bowie J. Poag
    Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda [unc.edu])
  • You may be correct, but it takes all types to make the world go round. Those suits might make it possible to bring open source development to a new level. A level where people who contribute can do it for more than a hobby.

    I like the open source model, but I have to feed myself. The current models work best for college students and people working in their free time. There is alot of good development, made mostly by the people who have a real stake. Now you can get a real stake, and if the product does well you will get credit.

    These guys may not have the answer, but they are heading down the right path. And in the business market right now, a little hype goes a long way towards making things a reality.


    /*---------------------------*/
    Man? What is man?
    But a collection of chemicals with delusions of granduer.
  • People can still get the version from the original people for free. Why would they pay for the commercial version?

    I will sell Apache for $5000 in a cardboard box. Any takers?

  • As far as I can tell, this is a good thing.

    A percentage of these enhancements will make it back into the open source world and Apache will improve.

    The $5000 cardboard box that I am offering contains no enhancements. :)
  • I agree - I figured it was a bunch of hot air when I started getting to the bottom of it. They want to hold a repository and attempt to evaluate people's work and give them shares? Bah! How can you compare work done by people to one another? In one way, it seems easy, I'm sure, but OTOH, it seems like you're trying to compare apples to oranges. And then I've got to think that they don't really know what they're doing, with this whole "shares" thing and "oh, we'll let them work on further projects if needed" and something about "resumes for future jobs." bah!
  • Asynchrony, no doubt filled to the brim with B-School grads, can concieve of no other system. Obviously, they think, these people work with money as their target.

    I think that's unfair. They'd have to be completely blind not to realise that a lot of people don't do it for money.

    I'm an example - an open source code who does it for fun and to make useful software. But I'd sure like to make money off open source so I don't have to code nasty proprietary stuff quite so much. Given the choice between a good web collaboration environment, and an equally good web collaboration environment with a chance of getting paid (not necessarily a big chance, but a chance nevertheless), I'd choose the latter. I think the risk of flamewars is worth chancing.

  • All licensees are free to obtain the source, distribute it, create derivitive works, etc. However only the copyright holder can sell a derivitive work. Why is that so hard to understand?

    Nope. Go read the GPL. RMS specifically distinguishes between free as in "free beer", and free as in "freedom of speech". The GPL enforces the latter but not the former.

  • Nope. The GPL gives you the right to sell code.

  • That's right, you can sell it, but you can't prevent others from doing so, as long as they abide by terms of the GPL. So in practice, you can only "sustainably" make money (and I'm not talking about environmentally sustainability!) from value add like proprietary add ons, or tech support, or training, because the Internet will undercut you with its effective $0 distribution cost.

  • I think I agree with you on many of your points. I can't see how you can usefully combine Open Source with making money (you know what I mean, I'm not talking about support etc, although that argument has yet to be proven).
    What I still have a problem with is this: "Money is the root of all evil".
    It isn't, really.
    I'm not saying it's the root, but pure jealousy is closer to it than money is. The amount of loot another individual has, or the number of wives he can attract, or whatever, mean nothing unless someone is jealous of that status.
    Respect is another thing that causes jealousy. You see this all the time in the academic community. Respected professors regularly fall back to childhood name calling when their face is at stake. The same happens with programmers, and this is going to get brutal in the coming years. See if it doesn't.
  • I was thinking about this sort of thing the other day. It seems to me that the OSM has done nothing except change currency from 'cash' to 'respect'. Now that has its good and bad aspects. One is that programmers get very sad without respect, and another is that programmers have an incredibly hard time giving respect to other programmers. It's a lot easier with cash, because it's a whole lot more tangible than respect. If I have a pound, then I will still have a pound tomorrow (modulo taxes etc). If I have some respect, that's cool but I could get dissed just as quickly. I guess you could stretch the analogy and say that the inflation/depreciation rate for respect is extremely high. Which is not good for your economy, whatever your unit of currency.
    I rambled a bit there, but to bring it back to what you were saying, "money and/or fame", I guess my point is: Any sort of interaction where money is involved has a parallel with fame/respect.
    But many programmers I have known, and I think a large percentage of OS programmers, value respect a lot more than money. So it's gonna get ugly out there...
  • I'm currently crafting, with friends of cource,
    two companies working like that.

    The key is copyright.

    The license in the "open source" grant you
    only the right to use it for non commercial purpose.

    If you want to use the source commercially, you
    have to purchase a commercial license.

    The copyright holder than, can redistribute
    revenues among the contributors.

    Well, my realy commercial company is called
    VisualSphere, but we are currently not on the web.

    For Open Projects I'm looking forward to form
    a community called OpenContribution.

    By the way: The idea is old. I posted an article
    about that nearly a year ago on the open source
    mailing list.

    angel'o'sphere

    P.S: I hate typos, too :-)
  • Yes, you are "right".

    But the quotes in "open source"
    should imply that I do not mean
    Open Source.

    We whant to provide "source
    available software".

    The copyright remains by the
    contributors.

    They grant the right for
    commercial redistribution to
    OpenContribution.

    The copyright holder and
    OpenContribution are both
    allowed to commercialize the
    software in any way.

    However OpenContribution
    participates the contributors in
    its revenues.

    Well, the whole thing is in forming.
    I think we have found solutions for
    most of the questions raised here.

    Lets see .....

    angel'o'sphere
  • Now, by "commercial", do you mean proprietary or for any "commercial" purpose?

    For any commercial purpose. At least this is current the stage.

    i.e., in your licensing scheme, is a special dispensation purchased by those who want to include it in proprietary software? (Like the way Troll Tech's QPL works)

    Well, more like the traditional selling of source code. You can get the source and do what you want with it.

    Exception is redistributing modified source. Our schema aimes towards our custumers re-contributing modified code. As they would then participate by the revenue stream.

    Or, do you mean for all "commercial" purposes, such as reselling, or packaging and selling your own distributions? (In which case, I'd be extremely reluctant to call that licensing scheme "open source".)

    As I wrote in a different posting: the quotes around "open source" imply that I do not mean Open Source.

    BTW: I consider the terms free software and Open Source as "term grabbing", just like "domain grabbing".

    Strange that one can come up with a schema and gives it so missleading names :-)

    We want to provide "source available software".

    The copyright remains by the contributors.

    They grant the right for commercial redistribution to OpenContribution/VisualSphere.

    The copyright holder and OpenContribution are both allowed to commercialize the software in any way.

    However OpenContribution participates the contributors in its revenues.

    Well, the whole thing is in forming. I think we have found solutions for most of the questions raised here.

    Lets see .....

    angel'o'sphere

  • Nope. Go read the GPL. RMS specifically distinguishes between free as in "free beer", and free as in "freedom of speech". The GPL enforces the latter but not the former.

    Nope to what? I have most certainly read the GPL. Have you? Where does the license grant you the right to sell a derivative work? It does not. It does grant that you can charge a fee for the costs of distribution - that does not give you the right to sell the program or a derivative work, just the media that it's distributed on (see cheapbytes [cheapbytes.com].)

    1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

    You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

    ...

    3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above...

    4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.

    ...

    5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.

  • Yes, technically when I buy a copy of Red Hat, I'm only paying them for the cost of distribution.

    And for the support contract/warranty, which is where RedHat makes their money. Last I checked they won't send you a CD without you buying at least the one-month installation only support contract. Since they make it available via free FTP that's still fine by the GPL.

  • It's also Free Software. All licensees are free to obtain the source, distribute it, create derivitive works, etc. However only the copyright holder can sell a derivitive work. Why is that so hard to understand?

    Do I smell a BSD zealot? If so you need to go back to advocacy 101. You don't win any converts by asserting that the GPL is "not real Open Source" anymore than GPL zealots do anything but annoy people when they put down BSD in the same brainless way.

  • It means they are using an encrypted http protocol, basically. Like commercial sites use to protect credit card numbers and so forth. See whatis https [whatis.com] for more info, although it's out of date (the protocol is no longer netscape only, and hasn't been for a long time, and 40 bit keys are definately not considered sufficient anymore) but it captures the essence of it.

  • There is a big number of companies willing to pay the $5000 for a tweaked Apache installation/modules to work with thier existing system structure. No system is quite the same therefore a lot of $$$ potential for customization.
  • Before I'd heard about Asynchrony and SourceXchange, I started thinking how nice it would be for programmers - or anyone with a job which doesn't require their physical presence at an office - to be able to make a living out of bidding for work from this sort of service. Your only requirements would be somewhere to plug a computer in and someone to pay you for the work. Meanwhile, you could be yachting round the world, or sunning yourself on a Caribbean beach. Depending on your life-style, needs and beliefs, (and share option portfolio) you will be able to split your time between well-paid commercial work and voluntary open source hacking.

    I think sites like Asynchrony will become much more common. A lot of people seem to get upset because they see Open Source as some kind of religion, which must be untainted by commercial beliefs. Making money out of OSS, or mixing open- and closed-source software, is seen as evil. As far as I'm concerned, it is the end result which counts: if Asynchrony encourages OSS development, great. If it gives existing OSS developers an opportunity to make a bit of unexpected cash, great. As long as it doesn't cause projects to be held up by debates over how shares should be allocated, I can't see any problems at all.

    -- Andrem

  • Team review? Well sure... except that we can't really expect everyone on the team to be objective and fair about the whole thing, especially with potentially large sums of money at stake.

    Additionally, in a large project, team members may not know each other, and may never have met each other face to face. It's unrealistic to expect them to be able to evaluate each other satisfactorily.

    The "share" concept proposed in the article sounds good, but then who decides exactly how many "shares" any given task merits? How can we really evaluate the relative difficulty of doing anything? Everyone has different abilities and skills. What might be considered worthy of many "shares" for one person might be a trivial task for someone else. Do we want to penalize those who do their work brilliantly but relatively effortlessly?

    It seems to me that this is a very thorny -- and perhaps insurmountable -- problem, that may prove to be the death of this idea.

  • There is nothing in the universe more solid than a damn DEC/Alpha running Oracle. Those boxes don't go down for anything.

    Except when you plug a VT terminal into the console port using some "mystery wire" that fit into both connectors. Ooops.
    I didnt do it.
    Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)

  • What if I had to have this product delivered in a timely manner?

  • This is a problem that needs some brainstorming. Like it or not, when money entered the OSS world, changed it forever, and there is no way of getting back. How do you assign value to contributions in a very loose cooperative? I'd like to hear some ideas. Automatic moderation in /. seems to work fairly well IMHO, so I'm thinking it can be a start. Excuse my English!!!
  • I agree people shouldn't shoot down the idea so quicky. I dont see anything wrong with it, that may be because I already thought of it a while ago myself. I am interested in knowing more about your ideas about this subject, what is your email address. Griffis
  • DOH!

    The "trojan" was actually my beta of Netscape 6. Norton Internet Security was reporting a trojan whenever I tried to go to Asynchronies site, so I assumed it was on their site. (The *.jsp made me suspicious.) But it was a file in Netscape which was offending Mr. Norton.

    Sorry about the misleading information.

    I'm still wondering about the 's' in "https:". Does anybody know why the change?

    Louis Wu

    Louis Wu

    Thinking is one of hardest types of work.

  • OK, I see that you're splitting hairs here. Yes, technically when I buy a copy of Red Hat, I'm only paying them for the cost of distribution. But I'm paying them, and that's the common-sense notion of selling.

    So my real point was that software is not Open Source unless I can put it on a CD and sell the CD. I don't have anything against the GPL, since it allows that.
  • If the code is really Open Source, then anyone can sell it. If only Asynchrony has the rights to sell the code, then it just ain't Open Source.
  • Let's say for the sake of argument that I contribute to a project. Maybe it's a bug diff or an extra feature; it doesn't matter. According to this system, that means I will get a certain number of "shares" in this project. When this project makes money, I make money.

    What I would like to know is, where does the money come from? If this project is Open Source, then it is, by definition, free. Who is going to pay me money for a piece of software they can get free?

    I'm not quite sure I understand this system, and how it is supposed to benefit developers and users.
  • Yes, you DO "get it." The above post explains it very well.
  • Well, if the project is open sourced, what would there be to stop a third party from starting a profitable company and commercially selling it? I seriously doubt that Asynchrony would do early as good a job selling a product as a company founded for that purpose.
  • I think the advantage of "Open-source" vs "Closed-source" is larger market-share or more users (paying or not). That's why investors love dot-comms that don't make any money (slashdot included).

    The next step is turning those users into customers and sharing the profits with the developers. Personally I'm not too sure these guys have the right model but so-far only market-share matters. (IMHO)

    --Sasha.

  • I don't get it... why is the above post offtopic? I think it's a valid point. Open source development obviously isn't centered by one single entity keeping track of hours logged on a project (as other development options can be). When deciding to divide up the "money" later on, how it is determined how is most valuable. The one who contributed the most lines of code, or the one who solved the HUGE problem that saved the project... Or is it possibly the one that contributed most often. As always when money becomes involved small details like that become a LOT more important. Money has been known to break (not just make)projects.

  • I don't know what everyone's problem is here. . . Most of the replies I've read are negative "This just can't work out for the best" type posts. I've gotta say, lighten up! A lot of open source programmers don't even get paid for many of their programs, and often see the source and/or concepts get stolen and plugged into closed source, COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS! I happen to know one of the guys who is in on Asynchrony, and he's got me quite convinced this CAN work. And trust me, I aksed a lot of the questions you cats have. . . The dude had a perfectly valid answers to each of my questions. . . And for those of you who are saying this has been done before: Sure there's other attempts, but this is built on a completely original business model and all the others attempts I have seen are close, but not the same. My Asynchrony Servlet programmer and I kept an eye on any projects that we heard about or found during the pre-beta stage. . . Go ahead and moderate this down, but keep an eye on asynchrony. . . Oh, and one more thing. . . Quit yer btichin' because this is one of those companies that WILL make Linux a viable alternative to M$ OS's. Remember that when you decide to complain about this. . . *sniff* TeamZERO
  • Because they don't have the copyright. The idea is the original owners either retain the copyright or assign it to asychrony. They also *LISCENSE* the product with the GPL thus anyone may use the product freely but may not, because of this liscence, sell the product commercially.

    Whoever in fact holds the copyright is not bound by this restriction and hence can sell it for a profit thereby if a company wants to repackage it and sell it they then must pay royalties to the copyright holders

  • Re:Value of contributions (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Value of contributions

    Team review, like in real life. Say ten people have been working at some kind of project, probably not having started at the same time. After six or twelve months of contributions just ask the others what their opinion is and valuable contributions were made give them all the same.

    It does not make much sense to search for a precise metrics as ten lines of code could be more important than 10.000. As a software developer, and this time I feel free to say a damned good one, I can say it is always we and our project. After all it is always us going for some beers as soon as something is out of the door again %*)

  • I figure, it might be a good way to motivate myself to keep in practice with some skills I don't use very often.

    When I'm coding for myself, I tend to gravitate to a small number of tools I really like, and tend to not use other tools that I know.
    As an example, last year I was using SmallTalk [cincom.com] all the time, as I was involved in projects that used it. I haven't touched it since.
    (Java, c++, and rxml/pike are what I've used the most recently.)

    I intend to list myself in their database under skills I have experience in, but need motivation to keep in practice with.
    If I get picked, I'll be forced to stay in practice!
  • How exactly are we threatening? Did we repeal the GPL? I wish people woul think through this stuff before they post it, the only danger to the GPL is people not understanding how it works.

    If VA, RH, Caldera and the rest disappear tomorrow, Linux won't stop existing. I happen to belong to the school of thought that more companies who pay to have people code full time, the better.

    That said, I don't like the Asynchrony approach to this, but I welcome thier trying out a newish approach.

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems
    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    Pres, SVLUG

  • ...someday.

    Somebody will get it right. I don't know if it will be Cosource, SourceForge, Asynchro-whatever or some other worthy project.

    The tough part is, of course, setting the share value. But I suspect that's not as hard as you might expect. Some kind of reverse auction set-up might do the trick. And even a kind of arbitrary project-manager-god would result in better code than counting bytes or lines of code.

    Ultimately, there are two political hurdles which may prove the real stumbling block: history and open-source leadership.

    History will work against it because the whole thing works much like a multi-level marketing scheme. While not all of these things are crooked, crooks like 'em well enough to leave a bad taste in many mouths. And most Ponzi schemes and chain letters use some similar methodologies.

    And you can expect most of the leadership of the open-source movement to oppose this. I'm not sure exactly why, but they seem to have a kind of knee-jerk reaction about this kind of thing. I once proposed something vaguely like this ("vague" both in the sense that it wasn't exactly the same and in the sense that I had not really thought it through and was not proposing anything this concrete) to Eric Raymond. He didn't even let me finish my sentence before he said something like, "I think I know where you're going, and I don't like it...."

    He had some of the same practical objections which have been discussed in this discussion, but I got the impression he had a more visceral reaction against it which he didn't really put into words.
  • OK, so you've lost some money. We're all heart broken for you. Now SHUT UP and go piss in some other pool. You've been saying the same stupid shit over and over (and over and over) for long enough.

    "Open Source" and linux have been around longer than VA, RedHat, et al. Maybe there's money to be made here, maybe not; those companies and many others are in the process of finding out. Personally I have some doubts but I'm willing to give them some time before i declare that their business model has failed.

    If no company ever makes money from free software, that will not affect the quality of the software, which is why I use it in the first place. People will keep developing fun stuff and releasing it money or no; they have up to now.

    VA Linux != "open source", or even slashdot.
  • Cosource.com has tried linking buyers and programmers. It's an excellent idea, but from what I've seen of the completed projects, the prices paid really don't even come close to the hours that it would take an average programmer to do the job. It doesn't compare to my day job. I think open source programming is a viable business model, but I don't think we're quite at the point where we can implement it as a big open market on a website.

    First it needs more recognition from big corporations that realize they can actually get their products for cheaper if they allow open source components to be used by then releasing it as open source again.

  • A million dollar software project can be broken into a series of different projects, each just large enough that it can be spec'd out with a reasonable set of milestones (almost always less than 15-20). Software development schedules always change based on inherent risk, so you probably shouldn't spec out a 500 milestone project. And the Sponsor always has to be someone who can check the Developer's work - so this isn't exactly "put $15K in, get good solid code out overnight" kind of thing.

    I would think that if you were the project manager for a 15 person software development project, you could probably parallelize 10-15 sub-projects in sourceXchange (or less if you have multiple developers per project), all working on different things. Of course it's not always nice and parallelizable, sometimes there's only work for a few at a time - but the beauty of this model is that you don't have to pay for 15 full time developers during those periods.

    There's another thing a developer can do - be a Sponsor on a project where the person actually paying is upstream, and only knows their need, not how to define a solution. In other words, let's say you (average Slashdot reader) know of someone who has a need for some sort of development (say a Linux driver for the CCD camera in the Sony Vaio Picturebook) and is willing to pay to have it developed, yet doesn't know enough about Linux kernel internals to write a spec or approve milestones. You would do it, if fact you know how you'd do it, but you don't have nearly enough time. This model lets you be the "sponsor", acting as a subcontractor to this other someone who needs the driver written, who specifies (generally) what to build and how, and then outsources that actual development through sourceXchange, passing along the cost (plus an amount for your own time and effort) to the original customer.

    There's lots of flexibility in the system. [sourcexchange.com]

    Thanks.

    Brian [collab.net]

  • I don't get it... why is the above post offtopic? I think it's a valid point.

    More that that - it is probably the thing that'll make or break the idea. Being fair and being seen to be fair is absolutely crucial - once a little acorn of mistrust is placed then the potential for acrimony is astonishing. Particularly so in the rather heated environment of open source: even without money there has been plenty of ego clashes. With recent IPOs things have become even more stressed. Now here is a new method of spreading bad feeling.

    Because of the impossibility of deciding a system that everyone will agree is fair (open source can't even agree on the name for Linux, or is that GNU/Linux) then I think that this will cause more problems in the long run for the open source movement than it will solve. I'd be surprised if, within a few years of this taking off, someone isn't sueing someone else.

    Don't take this a critisism of the open source movement or the people involved - this is just an observation of how any people tend to interact when money and/or fame is involved.

    As for the moderator who moded down the first post - I assume that it was a reflex action of first is bad: you should post to this story and remove your moderation because "offtopic" is completely unjustified and you will get such a beating in the metamoderation that it will make grown men flinch.

  • If the Open Source Community is relying on people's good feeling and giving back, they're screwed. I'm sorry, but there are a lot of people who don't give a crap and will screw you to the wall, GPL or no GPL.
    ---
  • This is always been my fundamental question about open source. I guess I just don't GET IT. I've read all the stuff, but I don't see what the $ advantage would be to me open sourcing a program I wrote.
    ---
  • There is much wisdom in the saying that "Money is the root of all evil"

    Dunno about "wisdom", but there is some humor in the use of this misquotation of a Biblical verse to justify a position not supported at all by the verse itself:

    1Ti 6:10: For the love of money is the root of all evil:...

    (Emphasis added.)

    After all, doesn't it seem unlikely that any credible "wisdom" would claim as the root of all evil something that was invented only a few thousand years ago? But the love of what it represents...well....

  • Managing a software project can be a very time consuming position. If the project is large enough, one could spend hours and hours just hooking people up, analyzing designs, determining what features get in, prioritizing bugs, etc. All these things are crucial to a successful software project, but they don't produce anything concrete. How is the amount of effort these people put into a project going to be measured?
    --
  • I really like Source Exchange, but I bet the first time I post a major product that would require massive number of developers say oh.. 15 Full Time developers It would be a horrible thing to manage. Just my opinon but if im paying for something maybe call it a million dollar year long project.. Do you guys really think something like Source Exchange has that much talent reading it and or the people who read that are going to oraganize themselves effeciently? No.. then you cany play in big business.. Thanks have a nice day back to corporate america....

    JA

  • Click here to read about the tragedy of the commons [free-eco.org]
    someone gets screwed, we all do.
  • No, but if I write a piece of software I may release it under the GPL *AND* also sell the code under a commercial liscence.

    Why? Because the GPL is a liscense. It is what gives the right to use and modify to those who do not hold the copyright. If I have written the code I own the copyright and hence am not bound by any provision in the GPL (other then the fact I cannot go after legitimate users for copyright infringement). Therefore I am fully within my rights to sell this code seperately.

    However if I am a third party company (i.e. one who obtained the code through a GPL'ed source) I have no rights to the code other than what the GPL gives me. As such this third party company cannot resell the code as the original poster claimed.

  • Paid OSS hacking? Egads! (Score:3)

    by drix ( 4602 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @02:26PM (#1142963) Homepage
    You'd think it'd never happened [cosource.com] before!

    --

  • I still don't understand... (Score:3)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @01:09PM (#1142964)
    If a project becomes popular, what prevents a third party from starting a company, selling the product, and getting the money? I guess my question is... now that you've figured out how to divide the money, where do you get it?

    I'm not trying to troll -- I really want to know where they expect to get money? If it's investors, how do they expect to make money for the investors?

    --

  • Re:Open Source is a SUN KILLER (Score:3)

    by Mr. Piccolo ( 18045 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @03:38PM (#1142965) Homepage
    I'll bite on this troll:

    I find it highly unlikely that Sun will be out of business in a year. The reason is that Sun still exists primarily to sell hardware, as much as they would like you to believe otherwise.

    Linux however, may just end up killing Solaris off, especially Solaris for x86. Sun's failure to release a beta of StarOffice 5.2 for Solaris/x86 may in fact indicate that they are already getting ready to EOL it.

    It's a lot less likely that Solaris for SPARC will disappear, since you get it with every Sun box you buy. Also, Solaris is optimized for huge systems, something Linux has not yet proven itself in AFAIK (please correct me if I'm wrong -- but make sure you have a nice valid link!)

    Anyway, I find it more likely that SGI or IBM will kill Sun off then Linux will.

    I wouldn't bet on Microsoft going anywhere either. Unless the regular folks can be convinced in one year's time that nothing Microsoft makes is worth buying, Microsoft will still have a dependable stream of revenue in things like Windows Consumer, Office, and the Age of Empires series ;-)

    Even if that does happen, Microsoft _will_ do what it takes to survive.

    Unless you count a breakup as "going out of business"... Even then, it's not likely the breakup will be completed within a year either.

  • More PHSuits (Score:3)

    by DarkFyre ( 23233 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @01:40PM (#1142966)
    The first two lines of the white paper have the phrase 'paradigm shift' and the word 'digerati'. If we were playing buzzword bingo, the first paragraph would end the game.

    I havn't seen this much I'm-trying-to-be-hip-everyone-look-at-me since Wired was launched.

    Maybe there are honest-to-goodness people inside those Armanis, but I think they need to spend a few weeks reading -dev lists themselves before anything else. Developers, especially Open Source developers, tend to be a pragmatic lot. While 'paradigm shifts' may be arousing for the marketing deparment and Ted in Sales, I don't think they'll have the intended response with the Open Source community.

  • Is this really open source? (Score:3)

    by CokeJunky ( 51666 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @04:29PM (#1142967)
    I read through their membership agreement yesterday when the add came up on me for the first time. You sign on and agree to an NDA, and the "worth" of jobs are assigned by the people in charge of specific programs. so I think that that should reasonable cap the fairness issue. But it isn't really open source -- you are working on software for a company to sell. It has an interesting idea -- lets higher 1000's of programmers and give them a piece of code to write and integrate, and if we can sell the thing afterwords, then we will trickle the shares down. They are hoping to capitalise on our community. The flip is that it creates a whole new development model that may give rise to a cyberpunkish environment where programmers are freelancers that take little pieces of projects. Will they survive? Interesting to see. I considered signing on, but I think hoping and praying for a project to sell and putting lots of time into it like that just isn't for me. If I am going to put my free time into a project, I am going to make sure it's something I like to do, not slaving for a corparation for no money unless the product sells, that's just backwards to me.

  • Re:I still don't understand... (Score:3)

    by Cuthalion ( 65550 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @02:06PM (#1142968) Homepage
    I dunno if writing your own code to get money is going to work very well in any model - it's really hard to make something that is commercially viable closed or open. If you're writing a programme to have a programme (to solve a problem), THAT'S the strength of open source. I believe that Eric Raymond's point is that this holds true whether you are an individual or a company (you write a CGI script or device driver to do something, not so that it can be a product unto itself). If you want a thing to be done well, open source is great. If you want to make money from the code to do that thing beyond the initial contract to do said thing, well your guess is as good as mine.

  • Re:neat idea... (point of clarification, please) (Score:3)

    by hypergeek ( 125182 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @01:38PM (#1142969)
    The license in the "open source" grant you only the right to use it for non commercial purpose.

    If you want to use the source commercially, you have to purchase a commercial license.

    Now, by "commercial", do you mean proprietary or for any "commercial" purpose?

    i.e., in your licensing scheme, is a special dispensation purchased by those who want to include it in proprietary software? (Like the way Troll Tech's QPL works)

    Or, do you mean for all "commercial" purposes, such as reselling, or packaging and selling your own distributions? (In which case, I'd be extremely reluctant to call that licensing scheme "open source".)

  • Fairness (Score:3)

    by CarbonCopy ( 157188 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @01:07PM (#1142970)
    But how do they keep things fair? by # of submissions? or by content? no 1st
  • It must be really hard to go under the Slashdot lights with your product, but this response did set my bogometer [tuxedo.org] off big time.

    It's hard to swallow the idea in the opening comment that Slashdoot was a high hoop for Asynchrony. The tone of the letter is advertising AND THERE IS EVEN USE OF CAPS. And the token "we love open source" sounded... token.

    As I said it must be difficult to juggle the personal tone and represent the company as well. Maybe some training [cluetrain.com] would be helpful.

  • This is an especially thorny issue in programs requiring external (non-CS knowledge). Take an encryption utility. Maybe it contains 50,000 lines of UI code and 200 lines actually doing cryptographic work. Yet those 200 lines....which may be very dense and difficult for those who are uninitiated to code...constitute the core of the program.

    In addition what additional compensation do managers recieve i.e. people like Linus or Miguel or so forth who may do far more work directing others then in the code they contribute themselves.

    Team review seems like an exceptionally bad idea on a large project. What if I wrote the driver for a certain type of disk drive? Most people in working on the kernel may not even remember what I did not to mention have any idea how difficult it was.

    Besides should we compensate those who write more often used code? If my driver is for a disk drive only I and three others use should I be as compensated as the man who wrote the seagate driver?

    All in all it seems like the prospect of money may ruin the development of many projects. Some developers may work to keep others out because they will dilute their potential profits...or write bloated windows type code to increase their profits. It seems this kind of rivalry might tear the development team apart

  • Re:I still don't understand... (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09, 2000 @01:31PM (#1142973)
    It's strange. I've thought about this a bunch - I just GPLed my first piece of software. The best explanation I have is very communist - the gift-culture thing that is often referenced.

    I recently switched to linux, and am therefore riding on the backs of probably hundreds of thousands of hours of coding from hoards of people. Though linux hasn't been great for me (Bit of trouble getting sound working, Xwindows is as unstable as windows on my system, etc.), the ultimate point is this: It is free. I no longer have any pirated software on my system, and I no longer have any paid-for software. Because everyone else donated their time and their source..

    So now I feel obligated to give back, because thee /is/ a $ advantage to open source, it's just backwards from what a market-economy is used to. you get paid for others' work, in essence.

  • Pay by the K? Hope so. (Score:4)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @02:19PM (#1142974) Homepage

    Even after reading the buzzword-laden write up for this, its still not abundantly clear how they can insure that individual coders will get a significantly large enough slice of the pie to warrant them even embarking on the task in the first place.

    As a coder or project manager, you're probably just as well off securing hosting space on a third-party server with no vested interest in what you're developing.

    Besides, this sort of ant-farm implementation seems a little flawed straight out of the gate -- By sheer math, the larger the project, the more people you've got contributing to work, and the smaller the divisions of profit become. The process becomes entirely self-defeating as the size of a project increases. Lay ontop of that the inherent risk of developing openly, and the odds are already stacked even more heavilly against you. No thanks, i'll pass.

    Popeyeronic adj. [pop-AYE-rah-nik] -- The tendency of small Linux companies to become destructive and threatening once they get their hands on the green stuff. See: Andover.net, VA Linux Systems, Red Hat.

    Bowie J. Poag
    Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda [unc.edu])

  • Re:neat idea... (Score:4)

    by bbehlen ( 25721 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @05:15PM (#1142975)
    The license in the "open source" grant you only the right to use it for non commercial purpose.


    Sorry, that would not be an Open Source [opensource.org] license. The point of having software be Open Source is that it provides all the necessary components to being able to outlive its original authors. Such a license would prevent that.

    Brian

  • Set tasks (Score:4)

    by alannon ( 54117 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @01:44PM (#1142976)
    Having to choose from a set of tasks (or make everyone agree that a task is needed) seems like an uncommon way of doing Open Source development. Usually, there is one (or maybe two) main contributers who write the bulk of the first part of the project, with several other contributers that feel that they need modifications for their own personal needs. Usually, the team does not have a set list of tasks that developers choose from, or organize beforehand.
    Well, this may be different depending on the particular project, but it seems to me that this might suffer from several problems:
    1) Feature bloat. With more features to add to a project, each developer has the oppertunity to increase their share in the project. Developers might create work for themselves.
    2) Infighting. Who ends up being the overall judge of this? What happens if two developers want to do the same task?
    I can see this causing a project to quickly break down.

  • Value of contributions (Score:4)

    by Spire ( 101081 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @01:11PM (#1142977)

    This sounds like a good idea on paper, but in practice, wouldn't it be difficult to quantify the value of an individual's contribution to a project?

    You could always try to use a simplistic yardstick such as lines of code written. But even ignoring the difficulty in keeping track of that in a large shared project, can (and should) we honestly value code by its mere size? I think not -- in fact, often, quite the opposite would make more sense.

    Reminds me of an old story about the development of OS/2. The IBM programmers were evaluated by their superiors according to the number of lines of code they wrote in a day. When the code began to be passed back and forth between IBM and Microsoft, the IBM people began to get very upset, because the Microsoft coders were actually reducing the lines of code in the source! Negative productivity! Auuuughhh!

  • SourceXChange (Score:4)

    by -ryan ( 115102 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @02:05PM (#1142978)
    SourceXChange [sourcexchange.com] does something similar to this. Companies bring a spec or idea to sourcexchange offering to pay $x for certain milestones. If you register at sourcexchange and contribute to the milestones, you get cold hard cash (well, actually I bet it's direct deposited, or a cold hard check). The source remains open. I'm sure their site can explain it better than I.

    -ryan

    -ryan

    "Any way you look at it, all the information that a person accumulates in a lifetime is just a drop in the bucket."

  • Dead in the water: It's not about the money! (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09, 2000 @03:15PM (#1142979)

    How many times have I seen "Open Source" bandied about by know-nothing corporations as a quick and easy way of lining their pockets?

    How many times have I seen an "Open Source" company take a nose dive after money became an issue?

    How many times have I seen self-serving crap on Slashdot? Are we going to devote special articles to all the advertisers now? Somebody get the gun: Madison Avenue is here, big time. (Despite previously complaining about DoubleClick [slashdot.org], Andover.net continues to use them [slashdot.org]. Explain the ethics of that situation)

    I find it hard to believe that most Free Software Projects are founded with the intent of earning money; certainly one of the earliest, the GNU Project, wasn't created to make RMS rich. Sure, maybe some famous developers make some big bucks, but that's mostly because they manage to finangle their way into the companies that are already exploiting the programmer's labor. Most projects remain a labor of love: worked on not for money, but for the prospect of having a complete program, which both the creator and others can use.

    This is where the commercial aspect breaks down: the capitalistic reward system is inherently based on the (obviously flawed) notion that all workers expect to be compensated in capital for their work. Asynchrony, no doubt filled to the brim with B-School grads, can concieve of no other system. Obviously, they think, these people work with money as their target.

    As undoubtedly most people here are aware, this is far from the truth. While money is nice and useful, it is not the end-all reward. Hacking Free Software is not about money. It is about community, helpfullness, and other aims which are contrary to the capitalist system (despite what the heavily indoctrinated will tell you; any Ayn Rand book will make this clear).

    In conclusion, the attempts of this "company" to turn the Free Software Commnunity into greedy, squabling, unethical money-grubbers is neither needed nor wanted. There is much wisdom in the saying that "Money is the root of all evil": it is easier to inspire jealousy, perhaps the must destructive instinct, with money than any other reward which hacking might bring. Money brings coporations, corporations bring legions of bean counters focused on the bottom line, ethics and community be damned.

    It's enough of a problem already, more fuel on the fire isn't needed.

  • Re:Is this really open source? (Score:5)

    by Damon C. Richardson ( 913 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @06:15PM (#1142980) Homepage
    Ah no. The Idea mainly applys to closed source software. Will everyone make money that joins? That would rock. but I don't think it will happen. Will some members make money? Maybe... There is a good chance.

    Will Open source projects make money? Most likly not. But if it's on Asynchrony and we do a book. or someone wants to pay the team for mods then We will be able to know who did what and contact the
    persons that did it. As for "trickle the shares down." Well there are two ways a closed source project can go. They can let us support it as a Asynchrony.com application for 75% of the total (not gross) or they can put it up as shareware and collect 90%. If the App sells thats alittle more then a Trickle and alot more then Consultant firms or Corp America will give you.

    Asynchrony is not trying to pimp it self as open source. That open-source white paper is burried in the site docs to anwser why we have open-source as a option for projects.

    The idea is that if you just learned something to learn it or for that special project, and now you have no where to use that information. Now lets say you really liked doing it and want to do it more. Then maybe you would go to a site like asynchrony and find a project that needs your skills. Or what if you got a killer idea doing a carl sagan in the shower. But you don't know how to do it all. Then you could bring your idea to asynchrony and find others interested in taking that chance.

    Let me paraphrase. Asynchrony is letting open source projects pay the same fee for using the web site as for profit projects. It's FREE.

    Damon C. Richardson
    Chief (or is it Chef?) something.
    damon.richardson@asynchrony.com

  • One problem (Score:5)

    by JamesKPolk ( 13313 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @02:12PM (#1142981) Homepage
    You're assuming that the stock exchange valuations are valid.

    You must keep in mind that the system of publicly held corporations is not a free market. People own a company, and share in the profit, WITHOUT being liable for its actions, and its debts.

    Combine that with laws basically forcing companies to focus on the short term profit (and worse, just focusing on the share price), and you get a fatally skewed model.

    If you're judging open source business models based on Wall Street, you'll not get very far by me.
  • First of all, I am so pumped to be writing this. I've been waiting for this moment since we started Asynchrony.com in May of last year. (We made Slashdot! Yeah!)

    I'm the Chief Technology Officer at Asynchrony, and I wanted to briefly respond to a few of the comments that have been made so far.

    We are a software project repository, both for proprietary and open source products. Our idea is that people who create products together over the Internet, (whether they are open source applications, proprietary software programs, or technical manuals) can be compensated fairly for those products and be supported by a marketing department and brand-name that they would not otherwise be able to obtain working on their own.

    We don't compensate by lines of code. Our method is this: for each task that is accomplished on the project, "shares" are received. Each "share" represents some percentage of the project. When the project is complete and the resulting product is sold, up to 90% of the net sales of the product is returned to the project team, and that amount is divided based upon the way the shares were allocated during the project. If you received 20% of the shares, you get 20% of the team's portion of the money.

    Also, we are not just a bunch of kids. We are a company serious about making money for our members and ourselves. We don't have a big software or hardware company backing us up, which means we have no loyalties except to our members. However, we do have investors who believe in the idea and what it could possibly accomplish. We're also a bunch of geeks at heart, and my chief system engineer (Slashdot name: mercybeat - he's responsible for making me a Slashdot addict) and I are totally pumped about quitting our old corporate jobs and starting an Internet company for developers.

    Finally, we think open source can make money. If the core members of an open source project are working on our site, then that essentially makes us the logical place to go to get the latest versions and the best possible support (who better to support an application than the team that created it?). It puts a corporate face and a voice on the phone to large companies who are afraid of the "out of nowhere" aspect of open source, and we think that gives us a competitive advantage over another company who might "steal" the software. Our purpose for hosting open source is not to make money. However, as the white paper points out, the important thing is that IF THERE IS MONEY TO BE MADE, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING THE PRODUCT. We think this opens up worlds of advantages for everyone.

    I invite all of you to look at the documentation available on our site, and see what you think. We love open source...we're running the whole site on massive Linux x86 boxes, and have extensively used open source tools to create the code and provide the supporting utilities (sendmail, CVS, etc.).

    Here are some links that explain a bit more about how things work:



    You can also write us at support@NOSPAM.asynchrony.com [mailto] if you have other questions you want answered.

    Nate McKie
    nate.mckie@NOSPAM.asynchrony.com [mailto]
    CTO, asynchrony.com

    P.S. Asynchrony.com was created without the use of Microsoft software... :)

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