Okay, so this is entirely new to me. Sparrow is was an email client for Mac OS X and iOS (and Windows), which brought a decent Gmail experience to these platforms – as opposed to Apple’s own not-so-good Gmail support and Google’s Gmail iOS application which, well, is just a webpage. Google has now acquired Sparrow, and basically all hell has broken loose, to the point of Rian van der Merwe writing that ‘we’ lost “faith in a philosophy that we thought was a sustainable way to ensure a healthy future for independent software development, where most innovation happens”.
The result of Google buying Sparrow (for $25 million) is that all major development on the email clients is to end – only security and bugfixes from now on. The Sparrow team will find its way to Googe’s Gmail team, and will, hopefully, work on future native Gmail applications (instead of glorified web pages). As a small, starting business, it makes perfect sense for Sparrow to accept this offer – their financial future has been secured, and they get to work at Google without the pressure and stress of working at a small startup.
And then the web weighed in, and many people are, apparently, angry. They feel betrayed, because a product they paid for will no longer see new major versions (only incremental updates). Sparrow supposedly “sold out”, because instead of sweating away as a small startup with an uncertain future, working on a developer-hostile platform (in this specific case, that is, because Sparrow cannot be set as a default email application on iOS), with limited funds, they decided to opt for the big bag of money, financial security, and the joys of working in a secure environment (Google).
Any one of us would have made that choice. Let’s not delude ourselves.
Rian van der Merwe took all this a step further, and argues that “the real issue is the sudden vulnerability we feel now that one of our theories about independent app development has failed”. I was curious right away – which theory? It’s explained on a Pinboard post titled ‘Don’t be a free user’:
What if a little site you love doesn’t have a business model? Yell at the developers! Explain that you are tired of good projects folding and are willing to pay cash American dollar to prevent that from happening. It doesn’t take prohibitive per-user revenue to put a project in the black. It just requires a number greater than zero. […]So stop getting caught off guard when your favorite project sells out! “They were getting so popular, why did they have to shut it down?” Because it’s hard to resist a big payday when you are rapidly heading into debt. And because it’s culturally acceptable to leave your user base high and dry if you get a good offer, citing self-inflicted financial hardship.
Uh, I don’t get this. You paid money. You got an email client. The email client works. It will still work tomorrow. It will be getting updates (unless you act like a spoiled child). In other words, you got the product you paid for, and it will perform the same functions tomorrow as it does today. Stop whining. Nobody is left ‘high and dry’.
Instapaper’s Marco Arment further clarifies this new (to me) theory. “If you want to keep the software and services around that you enjoy, do what you can to make their businesses successful enough that it’s more attractive to keep running them than to be hired by a big tech company,” he explains.
Van der Merwe continues this line of thought, and adds “But… That’s what I did. I paid full price for every version of the Sparrow app I could find. I told everyone who would listen to buy it. I couldn’t have given them more money even if I wanted to. So, as a customer, what more could I have done to keep them running independently?”
This is new to me. Up until a few years ago – and, on OSAlert, up until, uh, right this second – the only true way to ensure your preferred software will never die is to use open source software. If you use closed source software – be it for-pay or free – you are always at the whim of the developers. If they decide to abandon the project, for whatever reason, you won’t be getting new versions, and quite often, you won’t even get security and bug fixes.
The one, only, and true way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to use open source software. If the code is out there, the original developer’s changing whims is of no material concern. Had Sparrow been open source, we’d have several other people starting forks right away.
The idea that just because you pay for an application you’re ensuring its survival is so incredibly naive I can hardly believe this is actually a thing in the first place. I can only assume this is coming from people who didn’t experience The Focus Shift first-hand – you lose future versions of an email client, well, boo-frickin’-hoo, I lost my favourite operating system that I still consider to be the best ever made. The same would have applied to BeOS: had it been open source (or released as such before Be went under), we wouldn’t still be waiting on Haiku (and I’d have my unicorn damnit).
If there’s one thing Be’s infamous Focus Shift taught me, it’s that when you use closed source software, you always run the risk of what happened to Sparrow this week. No amount of money thrown around is going to change that. You can be reasonably sure software from large companies won’t be abandoned overnight, but even there you’re never sure. How the small amounts of money small application developers make should secure the future of your favourite closed source applications is beyond me.
An application’s survival does not depend on free vs. for-pay – it only depends on closed vs. open. I thought this was elementary, but alas.
This is a good post, Thom. I went and read the original story, and I honestly don’t see what he’s whining about. Like you said, he got everything he paid for, and then some, and this is for an app that costs US$15. The only thing I can conclude is that it’s killing him that Google seems to have won. The guy is an Apple fanboy, and Apple/Microsoft hates Google, and thus anything that is good for Google is bad for Apple, or something like that, causing his head to explode.
Your suggestion – that Apple users consider open source – is like asking a group of religious fanatics to convert to atheism.
All Mac users are using open source as open source apps come with OS X.
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
The important thing to remember is that the OS is using BSD-licensed stuff under the hood. That means it was open source, but isn’t any more.
The BSD is far too permissive, and doesn’t protect software. I’m surprised it’s considered an Open-as-in-Free license at all sometimes. “Please plagiarize my code and call it your own! I’m begging you!”
And Safari and other parts of the system use khtml, euh webkit. Which is LGPL (library GPL).
It is why Google Chrome even exists.
Plagiarism implies theft.
Under the BSD license, the code is freely available and the license requires the original BSD licensee to be properly given credit. The BSD license is, in fact, a free/open license; it is just more closed source friendly.
Err no. It means the original code is still open source but there might be changes done and used by Apple that isn’t open source.
Says you but fortunately that’s only your opinion and you don’t get to decide on this for anyone else. It’s none of your business how anyone else license their code.
I’m not surprised but maybe that’s because I don’t feel a need to force my choice of license on everyone else.
It’s not plagiarism. Do you even know what that is?
Edited 2012-07-25 20:59 UTC
Not exactly. I’d rather compare it to trying to convert hardcore money worshipers to altruists.
Edited 2012-07-22 02:45 UTC
uh-oh, it looks like they don’t accept lines of source code as a payment at the grocery store.
No, but IBM, HP, Google, et. al. will pay you nicely for them – and the grocery store accepts the resulting cash.
You haven’t thought this through, have you?
so every developer must open source their software hoping that some big “not-evil” company will pay for it and ultimately sell it to the customers. yeah, that will surely work for everyone.
Oh, good grief, are you a child?
Nobody is forcing anyone to open source their software. Nobody is forcing anyone to sell their software only via corporations.
You have a choice as to employer or independent developer, self-marketing or app store or “for hire”.
Just because you’re unable to chart your own path doesn’t mean nobody else can.
It’s funny ’cause the biggest money worshipers use to be the biggest altruists: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim and so on.
You’re confusing altruism with philanthropy.
I don’t know about the others, but the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation aint no charity, it’s a business model. A money making machine of it’s own.
It has to be, in order to self sustain. The money made here is only a means to an end.
I don’t know.
You’d think a charity would have ethics, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation does not have that.
Interesting, any specific examples of evil committed by the gates foundation? Is it just that they are a self sustaining non-profit or is there jucy news I’ve missed?
I have no dog in this fight, but it has been said that the Gates Foundation has investments in things which are ultimately counterproductive to its stated goals; like investments in chemical companies, energy production, agri-business that threatens sustainable development, etc. Whatever. I’m not dogmatic about these kinds of things. There has to be a balance between sustainable development and commerce. Without it, you have joblessness, calamity, and civil war.
I’ll admit that I do have a dog in this fight in terms of bias against Microsoft and it’s founders.
“but it has been said that the Gates Foundation”
If this is the best evidence available though, “it has been said that” baseless claims by forum posters, then as someone else already said; the original poster needs to grow up.
Read this… I didn’t make this stuff up… it’s been printed in major news publications…
http://www.aliveandwell.org/html/the_bigger_picture/Bill_Gates_Phil…
Thing is, we don’t have anything close to balance, it’s not about “balance between sustainable development and commerce” – when the things are overall balanced, then it is sustainable.
Meanwhile, the present state might very well lead to at least as bad things as you list, long-term.
I mean, look at this graph for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_welfare_and_ecological_foot… …that is just insane. And imagine what it might bring, when the free ride will be over (because it will be; we can’t forever just take “past hectares” stored in fossil fuels, and future ones by spoilage). We are already unfolding what will be one of the most rapid extinction events in geological record (would be “funny” if of such http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_hypothesis severity …perhaps that is largely the solution to Fermi paradox)
And God bless this “money making machine” because It gives dollars to people who need them.
The initial capital of the foundation came from an illegal monopoly and their ways for making money are still the same.
If that money was still in the economy instead that would have been a lot better I think.
So, your problem is that now having more money than god, they are using that money to help other’s around the world?
Don’t late your brand hatred blind you to good things an organization may do.
I think he means that it is “blood money”.
I think Lenny’s claims are based more in a need to be angry than any real world facts.
Philanthropy is a kind of altruism.
No, it’s probably quite apt comparison, actually… have you already forgot http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13416272 ? (“A team of neuroscientists scanned the brain of an Apple fan and it showed that the brand was stimulating the same parts of the brain as religious imagery does in people of faith”
Your complete ignorance of the Apple ecosystem is showing.
OSX and iOS are built on OSS.
Yes, but don’t tell the fanboi’s that, it’ll shatter their perception of the universe forever
It’s irrelevant what they build it on.
this.
Nobody cares whether MacOSX and iOS have a BSD user land underneath, it is irrelevant, because most people do not interact with it directly.
Certainly, but I’d say many do not know this, or are particularly blind to this, especially at the graphical application level.
The graphical stuff is done by Aqua or whatever they are calling it these days. It is not based on X or any open source component.
Whining about the makers of an email client being acquired by Google seems asinine.
Of course, open source… Sure, go ahead and use the fantastic open source alternatives instead. The exceptionally high quality of OSS (far exceeding that of any paid OS or application) has been demonstrated over and over again, so it’s amazing anyone pays for software nowadays, right? (OK, oddly the highest quality open source projects seem to be the ones that companies contribute time & resources to…)
Alternately, swallow the major $5 investment and be prepared to move on at some point. Nobody lines up to build you a car for free or drive you around town for free, so this Stallman expectation that people should give away their work for free because it’s software is just f*cking ludicrous.
Good point, funny thing is that OpenSource actually benefit big companies like IBM, RedHat, Google, even Apple and Microsoft. I’m not against or in favor of Open-source is basically the same thing and is up to the developer to decide. I think the article is overly sensationalistic. The “dangers” of closed source, no one is going to die or go bankruptcy just because Google bought an email client software company. At the end it just means that Google is trying to make some money out of Apple ecosystem. Funny thing is that even with all the Open-source advocates no one has develop an Open-source email client for the Appstore that matches a closed source one (Yes you can use Open-source for the Appstore)
Only a developer could care about Open or Closed Source because it can help them learn or develop, what consumers actually care about is the fact that they won’t pay a dime for someone else hard work. By the way I’m not trying to look like a saint I have used pirated software in the past and I feel ashamed for that.
Sure, it’s unlikely that anyone will die or go bankrupt over an email client…
But companies and individuals have suffered and gone bankrupt over other more critical software. I have seen all manner of companies that at some point thought it would be a good idea to buy into some proprietary application and base their entire workflow around it, only for that company to either discontinue the product or go totally bankrupt.
So now what?
Based on examples i’ve actually seen…
You cannot buy additional licenses, because noone is willing to sell you them, so you cant expand easily.
You might be able to continue running the licenses you have, but it requires an ancient OS which is also no longer sold, and ancient hardware which is unreliable (old hardware dies, capacitors leak, solder joints weaken, connectors corrode etc) and now getting difficult to source on ebay.
You cannot easily migrate to something else, because all the data is stored in proprietary formats and it would be extremely costly to hire programmers to reverse engineer the formats, and doing so may not even be legal.
The current copyright holder is not willing to sell you more copies, but could still prosecute you for pirating it.
You can’t just install more copies, because there is some form of license management… You’d have to crack it.
No security patches are being made, either for the software itself or the OS it runs on. You have all your important company data on a server thats a security nightmare.
All in all, it’s bad business sense to buy proprietary software. At the very least, you want a second source, access to source, an easy migration plan etc. You must plan for business continuity should the worst happen to your supplier.
If you’re talking about something Gimp vs Photoshop, then yes, I’d ride along with your sarcasm. No graphics/imaging professional would actually use Gimp.
But with regards to Sparrow (which I have used) on OSX, I don’t quite agree. It worked well enough on iOS (mainly because the users felt like second class citizens when comparing the iOS Gmail app to the Android version), but was a complete waste of money on OSX since there were numerous free (both cost and license) alternatives out there. Personally, I thought it wasn’t even good enough to lick Mutt’s paws.
Edited 2012-07-22 06:48 UTC
Excuse me? You might not like it and of course you’re free to not use it, but there are lots of professionals who do use and who do like The GIMP. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s bad.
I still miss the Color to Alpha feature from Gimp!
Well then they are fools, Adobe suite is far advanced. This is a well known fact.
There are a ton of things to consider before stating that as a fact. Tools are useful for those who use it. My art skills would still be crap if I used Photoshop. Claiming that a professional is a fool because he chooses to work with a different tool set is just being narrow minded.
We are talking about professional graphic artists and what not. Industry standard is Adobe CS.
Professional graphic artists should be agnostic when it comes to image editing software because they should at least learn the fundamental usage regardless their preferences from Gimp to Corel Paintshop via Krita.
Real innovators and artists don’t give a damn about your ‘industry standards’.
Is that anything like those fools who run Windows servers? I mean, it is a well-known fact that Linux and BSD are far advanced so anyone using Windows server can surely not be a professional.
We are talking about professional graphic artists, web designers etc, not me and you that might need to do some image manipulation. The industry standard is Adobe CS.
Linux and BSD servers more advanced than Windows … err maybe when it was Win2000 server, we are on Windows Server 2008 R2 now.
It is honestly debatable now whether *nix based servers are better than Windows. It depends what you are doing TBH.
So in other words, an industry you and I know nothing about yet you think you know what a professional in said industry should and should not use.
I am fully aware of that since I run many myself.
The same could be said for graphics apps; what you need depends on what you’re doing and what you are comfortable with.
I am a web developer, I work with designers and graphical artists all day. They all use Adobe CS, the vast majority of blogs, tutorials etc. etc. etc. use Adobe CS.
The fact that “photoshopped” has become a verb like “googled” is evidence enough.
Your statement is similar to me saying “because you are not a builder, how dare you say that they should use a hammer for nailing something down?”
I use GIMP on my PC at work, because sometimes I need to get a layer out of a PSD.
However I am not someone who makes their living with these tools, GIMP is simply not comparable to even Fireworks, which what the original assertion was.
This is another argument on OSAlert I simply can’t believe I am having.
Edited 2012-07-23 12:56 UTC
Product X being used by many has no relevance to if a particular user that is using a different tool is professional or not.
No, what you’re saying is they should use brand-X hammers instead of brand-Y and if they use brand-Y they’re clueless and can’t possible be professional carpenters.
Me neither.
Edited 2012-07-23 13:25 UTC
Yes it does, because most of the Jobs specify you need to know Adobe CS tools such as Photoshop. Knowing GIMP won’t get you the job if they use and require you to know Photoshop.
It is as simple as. In the same vain I wouldn’t expect to get a Ruby on Rails Job with my ASP.NET WebForms knowledge.
You can argue all you like, but that is how it is.
No I am not.
What I am saying is that Gimp is a nail-tak and Abobe CS is a hammer.
At least we agree on something.
Most != all.
Wow, really? I am truly enlightened now. Or not.
That’s not what I’m saying. You’re stating, like it’s some kind of universal truth, that no professional graphic artist would use anything but Photoshop and in particular not GIMP. This is quite obviously nonsense.
Using Photoshop does not make you a professional and use GIMP does not mean you’re not a professional.
No, that’s exactly what you do. Both are tools that produces graphics albeit with different features and completeness. That is not saying that GIMP is a replacement for Photoshop but saying you can’t use GIMP and be a professional is, well, nonsense.
Wow, that’s an amazingly incorrect and baffling comparison.
There are always exceptions to the rule.
It is universal in the sense it is the defacto standard.
Most employers demand it, therefore it is sensible (i.e. the opposite of foolish) to be proficient in using it.
No I am saying that anyone who works in the industry that uses a particular tool MOST OF THE TIME, should probably be using that or at least be very proficient in it.
If you don’t think that is sensible, I am flabbergasted.
No it isn’t.
So? Nobody ever said Open Source software could only be developed by amateurs. Open Source developed by paid developers working for large companies is a sustainable model that has been demonstrated to work over and over again. Why is that a problem?
I’d say it was a good post too…with one exception and that is this: Frankly FOSS doesn’t “guarantee” anything anymore than proprietary, it only gives the possibility, nothing more, that it may continue.
How many projects are lying dead right now on SourceForge? If one were to look at the top 100 FOSS programs from 2000, how many of them are still around?
Honestly i don’t know the answers but I bet many are gone because just using the software doesn’t magically make you a developer, nor does it give the fans enough capital to hire a full time dev team to support it.
In the end i say just use what works and if they go away tomorrow? Well if the software was in any way popular I’m sure someone will come along happy to take those users, if not? Well then you’ll just have to find another program.
That is the point. Duh.
Moreover, given how popular Sparrow was, I think it would have had no problem going on.
The point is that it can’t. That. Is. The. Point.
We have to remember that a lot of programs simply have not use nowadays. In other cases, a lot of users have found better free/libre alternative programs, etc.
We have to be aware that Sourceforge is a not a good representative for long-life free/libre software, a lot of programs are developed and stopped there. Unless it’s a specific case, people have better results going with selected software and combined efforts, I can talk about my case and I use
– The Linux kernel.
– VLC.
– Firefox.
– Selected programs from http://www.kde.org/applications/internet/ http://www.kde.org/applications/graphics/ http://www.kde.org/applications/multimedia/ http://www.kde.org/applications/utilities/ http://www.kde.org/applications/system/
– Etc.
since many years ago. It has been a safe bet in my case, but anyone can also benefit from equivalent software selections, make things to improve software, etc.
Edited 2012-07-22 11:19 UTC
You have to remember, while escaping into this argument, that the scenario is pretty much the same with closed software…
That’s another problem . A lot of proprietary software sellers are not interested in the free market and… will put severe obstacles to you and me to stop us finding another program
Some of them have been sent to trial and convicted, for example:
http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000/PX…
Emails about the “problem” of “Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers” and employees being given the order “make sure that Office very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities“.
More FUD.
In some cases this maybe true, but this is usually in terms of bespoke software not commercial.
It’s in the egotists interests of a lot of people to make difficult for the others to choose alternatives. So this way they have a vendor “lock-in”, earning money through monopolies, leaving people without choice.
> More FUD.
This is not FUD, I even gave a reference to a trial.
Speculation.
I have said before and will say again, it is in the interests of companies that create bespoke software to lock people in, not necessarily consumer software.
yes because one trial represents the all the customers that provide closed source software. Logic Fail.
So it isn’t FUD
Considering you last argument Logic Fail is a bit rich. However, I link an article from The European Committee for Interoperable Systems http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf “Microsoft
A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm”
I think it covers what Nth Man is saying and you may find it interesting – I don’t think logic fail is an appropriate response.
Please try to be less offensive no doubt the users of GIMP have good reasons to use the this well considered software, reasons that you may not understand.
Absolutely true and there is an awful lot of scumware too and this doesn’t seem to affect Opensource s much as some proprietary operating systems.
Edited 2012-07-22 20:52 UTC
Quite clearly because it isn’t an opaque black box, any perceived embedded scum in the software would typically be excised down the line.
Yes it is
One ruling does not cover the whole industry.
No, I have worked for one of the largest gambling companies in the UK, the 5th largest charity in the UK, and a two bit web shop. Everyone used Adobe tools … end of story. It is silly not to use them, compared to GIMP that has a 1.5 man team.
The feature disparity between photoshop and gimp is unreal.
You might want to see some of the stuff that CS 5.5 does (not even the newest version), it makes GIMP look like Paint.NET.
It doesn’t affect open-source operating systems because they have less than 1% usage on desktops. Android has a lot of crap and that is open source … th reason being it is popular.
Clearly you have no grasp of logic.
The European Committee for Interoperable Systems
A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm. Please note the word in bold. Obviously this applies to Microsoft (one dominant player) not the industry as a whole, some companies behave more ethically.
I’m pleased for you – however, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that some users may not need all the features of Photoshop and may prefer to use the GIMP.
Now this is speculation
Whatever.
The subject was about an Email application on the bloody iPhone FFS. The topic was changed to Microsoft because you like the beat the drum about it constantly.
We were quite clearly talking about professionals, not someone that has to do a bit a little bit image manipulation and might require something better than paint.net
The desktop *nix user base that isn’t OSX has been about 1-2% for the last 10 years. There were more downloads of Windows 7 Beta than the whole ubuntu install base (the Distro which is always ranked within the top 10).
I am sure you will continue to deny it, but if you don’t want to face reality that is your problem not mine.
You really do struggle with logic – Your argument above proposes a cause and effect relationship. That relationship is speculative
So what relevance is?
No I was supporting Nth Mans argument about vendor lock to which you responded with something incoherent, Microsofts embrace extend extinguish strategy is well documented and relevant.
Reductio ad absurdum – clearly you have a problem with logic.
Edited 2012-07-23 13:23 UTC
Which has nothing to do with a email client on OSX. Nth man and you like beating the “I hate Microsoft”.
The fact of the matter is I seen people’s data locked into solutions that are open source, due to the software being shit.
The same reason why other browsers are forced to now implement -webkit extension methods.
But hey, open source magically solves everything</sarcasm>
You can be locked into a particular piece of software whether it is open source or not.
Our entire code-base relies on 3 open source components that development has been dead on. There is no documentation any-more, and there are 3rd party dlls it is built with that the source code has disappeared from the NET and our source code repos a long time ago.
The codebase is far to big for me to reimplement in a sensible time frame.
What I hate is that “oh it opensource it must magically be good” lie that is spread.
Luckily I think I maybe able to decompile, but I will have obfuscated code to deal with … well at least I can change it.
Tbh if I had any sort of documentation or support (MSDN btw goes back to early 1990s) I would be a happy bunny.
Fuck off with the Latin.
It is dicks like you that ruin the internet.
When a Job specified you need to know Photoshop, knowing GIMP won’t help you.
Apparently that is illogical line of thinking according to you … whatever.
I don’t think people here are arguing that open source is completely without faults. And yes you can get locked-in, in many cases escaping should be easier.
Just because the source was available, it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to take responsibility for managing the dependencies of your project. You’re complaining that all you have left are the dlls. You could at some point have kept the source code for the libraries that you needed.
Possibly you could try tracking down developers from the project and ask them for the code?
Is this really necessary? That is a gross overstatement if I ever heard any….
As I seem to have upset you, it was your argument that went Paint is less good than Photoshop, GIMP is less good than Photoshop therefore GIMP is like Paint – which is non-sense. You will also not that earlier I posted
For the record I don’t hate Microsoft, infact I would argue that they are partially responsible for bringing the PC to the masses, including me, which is a good thing. They also produce some good software MS Office is better than Libre Office, even if I’m unconvinced with the ribbon, In Libre Office Word is better than Writer, Excel is better than Calc and Libre Office doesn’t have an alternative to Access. That doesn’t mean Libre Office is crap, generally for me it is good enough – but I also have MS Office and Crossover.
It was you who started being offensive and calling people illogical etc, for my part I apologize, I suggest we all get a little less aggressive and chill.
You know I’ve been in the Computer industry for close to 20 years, most all in Dev houses and no not Mom and Pop operations. You use the best tool to fit your needs, most of the most brilliant developers I’ve seen use some pretty basic text editors to do their job.
I’ve been reading your comments you call anyone that doesn’t use you tools fools. So a good analogy would be that you would call someone working at Taco Bell “assembling” pre prepared food a Chef and one who cooks from scratch a fool that doesn’t know what they’re doing? …. lol …..
Bottom line is one uses the best tools that “work” for them.
Think your missing the point, he’s “whining” about the loss of innocence and completely misunderstanding the world he lives in. Hell, if I thought that somehow having an ‘ethical’ position of actually paying small developers for apps was the answer, for all the ills that permeate development and use of software, only to realise it wasn’t, I’d be a little miffed.
It’s a conundrum to be sure and I don’t know the answer. As a user, think we’re f’d either way and the future looks bleak.
Right… so this guy is disappointed in a small company getting bought out and killed, and you took that and blamed him for being a frothing fan boy. And just for good measure, you brought up religion in your comment. Might as well really polarize this conversation even more!
More disappointing then your comment is that this community thought what you said was worth up voting. You’d think someone taking the extremes like this would get down voted to oblivion. You’d think people would see you are trying to get reactions from people (like I just did). I think I’m done here… go ahead and down vote this, whatever.
Actually, there’s some research suggesting that Apple devotion might be quite similar to ridiculousness of old-style mythologies…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13416272 “A team of neuroscientists scanned the brain of an Apple fan and it showed that the brand was stimulating the same parts of the brain as religious imagery does in people of faith”
I read an article dated March 14th about Sparrow on The Verge. According to Dominique Leca, one of the people behind it, “The problem with Sparrow is that I’m happy with what we’ve done.” The article goes on to say that the next step for Sparrow is optimization and seeing what aspects of the app people actually use ^aEUR” seeing where people click and how the UI can be even further optimized.
So Sparrow probably wasn’t going to get many more features anyway. I can see why people may be upset if they had been paying for a beta because they believed in a project and wanted to support the developers but in this case they have paid for a finished product that will continue to receive bug fixes and security patches for at least the near future.
I wonder if the reaction would have been the same if Apple had bought Sparrow. This seems more of an issue with Google than anything else.
I think people are upset they never received push notifications in the iOS version which most people probably purchased in support and anticipation of that feature. In addition, who wants to use a piece of software for your day to day business that you know has no future? Email clients aren’t a hobby OS or something you really play with for nostalgic reasons. In addition they say there will be bug fixes and what not, but hey, they said they were working hard on getting push notifications numerous times and look at how that has turned out. Personally, I think the developers saw a big pay day and new offices on the horizon and packed up shop and that is OK. It’s their right, but that doesn’t mean doing so didn’t piss a few folks off.
Typo correction.
Edited 2012-07-22 01:00 UTC
And I disagree with this:
Wrong. How many open-source projects get abandonned and no one retrieves them to further develop them or apply security patches? Many, for instance v-webmail. If you aren’t a developer (my case), you’re left in the dark.
Then nobody is interested enough in the application to continue developing (or hiring someone to do it). So it gets abandoned. If on the other hand there is sufficient community interest, the development will continue.
With proprietary software nobody else can continue development, regardless of his skills and motivation.
A lot of the frustration with Sparrow being sold is how it was handled. Two weeks ago they have a big sale and media blitz and sold a tonne of copies (shot way up on the app store charts). This is when a lot of us first heard of Sparrow and also purchased it. 5 bucks. yippee… a fancy coffee. No big deal…
Except, they had to know about the sale two weeks ago, so why didn’t they just shut their big traps, stop promoting their app, and forget about a fire sale? Instead they went for one big last minute money grab assuming no one would care about “5 bucks”.
Thankfully Apple is sending out refunds, you only need to ask.
Who don’t you stop whining like a spoiled child?
You got what you paid for.
If I were Sparrow’s developper, I’d consider pushing and triggering a death switch in my app just to give you idiots a real reason to whine.
Wow, get bent.
I was not complaining like a spoiled child. I, in fact, got more then I paid for. 5 bucks is nothing (could be a lot to you, I guess…). The app was great, worth more then 5 silly dollars. If you bothered to take 2 seconds to consider what I was saying, it was the optics of the whole thing.
I did read what you said, about “why didn’t they just shut their big traps”, “last minute money grab” and “refunds”.
You’re using the term dangerous as if people will really be physically harmed by this, which by the way I find laughable. Software acquisitions happen all the time and the world hasn’t come to an end. It is in no way uncommon for big software giants to buy up and kill off the competition. AutoDesk bought out and killed every AutoCAD clone they could find. That hasn’t stopped anyone from continuing to write such clones, heck, even open source clones and work-alikes. And what’s wrong when a talented programmer decides to sell out to one of the big software houses and live happily ever after? I say nothing. This guy got paid well for his work and he’s happy with the deal. We shoud be happy for him instead of starting a software-socialism rant.
You want it Opensource. Which license? GPL is incompatible – unless you want everyone to jailbreak. Apache or MIT? Then someone can clone the code (like the Pakastani app factories) and there will be 100 $0.99 apps that do gmail, each called something slightly different, but alphabetized, or marginally localized or something so they get the revenue, not the original author.
GPL enforces sharing, so a project could form around a GMail client, but iOS prohibits it.
So there is nothing between GPL which cannot be done on iOS and fully proprietary.
Calling it a “walled garden” doesn’t make it not a prison-farm. You are locked up and down, and there are armed guard towers and razor wire. You can’t leave except by dying. And now one bit got paroled. Don’t worry, someone soon will be incarcerated to replace the lass.
Then write your own license. Take the GPL and add an exception for App Store distribution – done.
The GPL does not prevent this from happening.
I wonder how many people remember when Apple bought Logic and dropped the PC version.
But thats different because its apple!
Thom, I liked this post.
It may even sound strange but I can not believe that there are not laws that regulate the software business.
Since the source code is secret, software companies can boycott competition.
– Software developers may include intentionally instructions that make the software of their competitors to run slower.
– Developers can include secret backdoors inside software to gain access to you system or personal information.
– Since the source code is keep as a secret, it is hard to find out that the software you are using is taking your personal information without your permission.
Hi-Jack Customers. Customers may be hi-jacked by the software authors.
– Software authors may force the customers to pay for software updates by removing the support of older versions of the software
– There is no way to keep the same software and select a different author to support it, since the software authors has the exclusivity of the Source Code.
– Authors may force the customer to buy newer of different kind of hardware devices to support newer versions of the software.
Abandonware is not consider legal.
– When the software is discontinued by its author, or the company that produces the software goes out of business, the customer is left ^aEURoeHigh and Dry^aEUR
– The customer does not know if it legal of not to keep using and installing new licenses of this kind of software on their business.
– The software does not has any more possibilities to be improved. This harms the customer that relies on this software for performing their business activities.
The worst thing is that we think this is normal. (Business as usual)
Solution??
Use Open Source Software.
But I dream with the day that governments will force Software manufacturers to:
1) All software binaries offered for free or a price should have the source code available for inspection for their customers. (The source code can be under any license the author wants)
2) When the Software reaches the end of life marked by its author, or has been X years since it was released, the binary and source code will turn public domain or open source software.
3) Use, modification, distribution and reverse engineering of software binaries will be legal for products that reached the end of life, that had been discontinued, or when the software company went out of business.
I believe that was the point of copyright (at least in the USA per our constitution) – you receive exclusive distribution control of your work for “limited times”, then everybody can reuse your work for free.
Only it was corrupted with software, as the feds granted copyright on code but still allowed that code to be kept as a trade secret – and even outlawed reverse engineering that code from what was being distributed under copyright protection!
Of course, they also defined “limited times” as a couple of human lifetimes – but don’t get me started on that!
It was corrupted even earlier.
I mean, for text, the work itself is essentially its source code …but it’s already not really so with music or films, too. With those, that would be the multi-track version, before final output; and the highest-quality video, pre-mix audio, also models & textures and so on for 3D animations.
Sometimes I do think the condition for copyright should be placing the “code” of the work in some escrow system, to be made publicly available when the copyright lapses (or even when copyright holders show disinterest? Like with abandonware, or even music and films that aren’t kept available for some long enough time).
As it stands, all different kinds of media are forced into a system designed for writers – even when (if?) they’ll get into PD, they can’t be mixed nearly so easily as text.
Oh more open source zealot bollox.
Seriously all the evils things that you are highlighted regarding privacy etc. are pretty easy to discover with a copy of fiddler/wireshark and a decompiler/hex editor.
The rest, how dare someone make a living by working to support a newer set of features, which take time and money to create.
This sort of rubbish continues because fundamentally a lot of open source proponents don’t actually understand how software works … they think they know how it works and think FOSS is the be all and end all.
Come back to me when you have actually been through a few death marches.
Edited 2012-07-22 17:14 UTC
Keep sucking on that FUDgesicle. There’s nothing that says you can’t charge for support on FOSS. Red Hat, Inc. made a BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS doing that last year.
That is because their product is significantly complicated to warrant it.
Something like that mail app isn’t, and any programmer worth his salt could fork and/or clone it.
Yeah, Red Hat did. Meanwhile, Mandriva or SUSE are mostly gone.
(plus, the support model has some issues – it kinda promotes software which needs that support, and/or which is used in the relatively few fields which fit with and can justify ongoing support costs)
You dream of having the government forcing open source because economic realities don’t fund enough of it.
That’s price fixing and would wreak havoc on the software market. Company A would look at the source of Company B and then decide not to buy because they now (cough) have decided to go with their own internal solution. Or Company B now has SimilarProductForLess and they SWEAR it was just a coincidence that it came out after looking at Company’s A source for security reasons. You’re going to f–k up working business models because Stallmanology obviously has economic limits.
The problem is your religion. This is no different than the government forcing creationism in schools because there is zero natural drive within the sciences to teach it. Gee whiz maybe the old men (in your case man) didn’t have all the answers? Or (GASP) might have been wrong about a few things?
Stallman expected “hackers” (unpaid developers) to write everything and bury the proprietary software world. That didn’t happen but loonologists like yourself dream of forced-open source and creationists dream of burying evolution through force because your religion puts you at odds with reality. Proprietary software is no more evil than dinosaurs.
Edited 2012-07-22 22:15 UTC
But, what to do when you are left “high and dry” with all the investment you made into an specific platform that the author refuses to continue developing it?
OS/2 user here
I see a good way to FUD OSS here, too bad we are used with this kind of techniques in the past. We all understand Stallman’s dogmatic approach, but that approach is not related to the OSS movement at all.
Open Source is superior than any other close source software. Not necessary technically, it is superior cause it reduce you the risk to have only one provider. It kills the single vendor dependance for any business.
I just go and visit my COBOL CICS, RPG, PL/I, fox, VisualBasic, Smalltalk, Kylix customers and see how they are screwed right now. What would happen if all that technology would be opened up at its time?
Edited 2012-07-24 03:03 UTC
There are some OS which got open-sourced like that… Symbian, GEM, CP/M. Didn’t seem to help them a lot, with how they were already fading or dying (like OS/2 before it was largely dropped – but you still have support with eComStation).
With such, it’s probably better to move as fast as you can on some more lively platform.
With some more crucial software, code escrow is commonly practised, anyway (and quickly checking CICS, RPG, PL/I that you mentioned …they don’t really seem abandoned? Also, Smalltalk implementations are around)
The Open Source project can die.
Developers lose interest. Users lose interest. Platforms change.
The code base is incomplete, corrupted or too complex to be usable.
The money isn’t there. The staffing isn’t there.
The project depends on assets the programmer is ill-equipped to supply.
Black Mesa, for example, has a perfectly serviceable engine — what it doesn’t have is a game.
The article is about software which is fully functional and has user interest. In such case, with open source, even if the original developers lose interest, or there is a platform change, others will carry on development.
I don’t think people have issues with open source projects dying if they never reached usable state and/or have no user interest; such project will die open source or otherwise, and that’s just the way of life.
Is Black Mesa developed in an open source model? I couldn’t find the source repository/download anywhere.
This is bullshit.
Open source projects never die, they *can* fade away due to lack of interest (or incomplete, bad design, etc). *However* as long as a distribution network exists and users can find a 15-year old zip file with the sources to the application they need, projects can live on.
Experience: I’ve unearthed quite a few dead GPLv2 open source projects, modernized them, and placed them on life support at places like github.
Edited 2012-07-23 02:46 UTC
Except we use quite a few old open source projects for Windows where the source cannot be found, the authors cannot be contacted or have moved on and we are SOL, it taking a lot of money to move our intranets.
So it not really true.
And you can put Egyptian mummies (or Lenin) on display …doesn’t make them particularly non-dead (though, in a way, much less dead than some scattered bone fragments, sure)
At least open source would ensure the continuation of the App in some or the other form.
It is obvious that these whiners who are putting forth these kind weird arguments have an inherent dislike for Google and are likely to be Apple fans (if not in open, secretly).
Sure there are lots of benefits in using open source applications, even I use lots of open source applications.
Having said this, as someone that works for leaving doing software I wouldn’t sell my applications open source.
Open source only works in products where the developers can get the money by selling services on top of it, or hardware that makes use of the said software.
At the end of the day the developers need to bring money home, and there is none to be had when your software is 100% available for the others to take, and you cannot sell services on top of it.
This is the reason why most open source desktop applications suck, as they are developed by developers on their free time until they loose interest. Most earn money doing something else.
Like Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, VLC, Mplayer, K3b, Libre Office
and Windows shareware is noted for its excellence?
Most of the Firefox, Thunderbird developers work for Mozilla.
GIMP, VLC, Mplayer are developers get their money from other sources and lets be honest they are way off what professionals expect.
Nero runs circles around K3b.
Libre Office only got so far thanks to Sun’s money.
As for shareware it depends where you look.
So Nero stopped sucking again? Last time I used it, it was an overly complex resource hog.
I’m also not sure what you imagine “professionals” expect from video playing applications. MPlayer and VLC are popular for what they are, not for how well they work in some imaginary professional video watching market. Microsoft’s and Apple’s offerings aren’t nearly as good.
True.
Way to fail an reading comprehension.
He was talking about the amount of money those developers were getting.
Oh well.
Was he? I suppose you didn0t catch the plural. Here it is:
Plural. It is much more likely that he was refering to “those applications”. Specially if you consider that it was a reply to a comment quoting his (moondevil’s) own opinion that “most open source desktop applications suck”.
So, I’d check my reading comprehension skills if I were you.
I am no video professional, yet I needn’t be one to see how VLC cannot get something as elementary as DVD playback right. While the movie is usually OK, the menu handling is abysmal.
About the article: I agree with the people who say open source is not the solution. It is a possibility, and nothing more. For an easy glimpse of how an OSS email client (just to stay on topic) can mess up, have a look at Kmail 2.
Also performance and seeking ( http://kyon.pl/img/9115.html ) tend to be somewhat inconsistent. Mplayer behaviour seems much nicer overall, but it’s the VLC that got so much more traction – and probably for being, for a long time, an all-in-one installer for… Windows.
What is it that professionals expect from a video player? Frankly VLC plays far more files, and is far more tolerant than something like QT. I know lots of professionals that use VLC. Show me a better proprietary video player that supports all the options from VLC.
Recently Nero has been turning into horrible trash (especially the interface). Plus I don’t know of anybody that uses the more advanced features from nero. K3B is far better if you just want a simple interface that just works.
I’m not entirely disputing your previous point, but the examples I just mentioned really don’t count.
Edited 2012-07-22 10:50 UTC
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?527708
You make a reasonable point, Lunduke has being saying similar things on the Linux action show. I agree Open-source development is likely to be faster / better if funding is more obvious and available.
Then you blow it out of the water by saying Open-source software is crap (sorry you specify desktop) as presumably you realize that your argument would immediately fail if we considered server software. Now VLC / Mplayer being crap, I believe not, I can think of many proprietary media players that are far worse Winamp, Realplayer or even Windows media player. GIMP is good it may not be as good as Photoshop but is better than most proprietary graphics editors. Last time I used Nero it sucked, maybe it has improved but for the burning I do I don’t need or want bloatware or the rest of the crap that comes with Nero.
Finally you make a reasonable point about how Libre office has made good progress due to funding from Sun – raising the point that funding is important.
Good luck with the finding of quality Windows shareware sorting through the maleware and porn, personally I pleased it’s something I don’t do anymore.
And through crippleware (after a while, people find that the software is severely limited), closed formats, inability to audit or improve the software and a lot of factors that originated the word “shameware”.
Me, too
Actually a lot of the best open source software is for Windows or can be run on Windows quite easily.
There is a lot of good software for Windows that can be bought that doesn’t include malware or any other bollox.
It frequently overlooked and everything that seems to be a Linux advocate thinks it is still the late 90s.
f–king please.
Stop telling lies for Linux.
Edited 2012-07-22 17:07 UTC
A lot of people think that they “bought” software but it wasn’t true . Later they could talk with their accounting department, if they had one, and see that it wasn’t a buy, the software was not theirs.
If what you meant is that there is a lot of good free software for Windows that doesn’t include malware(*)… yes, that’s true. Nobody said the contrary. You’ll probably have installed software of this kind.
A different case is, well, you probably know a lot of cases of people that were installing programs and left their computer/data affected because of treacheries. So “Gone fishing” wished good luck to them.
(*) Or is crippleware (after a while, people find that the software is severely limited), uses closed formats to make you dependant on them, causes the inability to audit or improve the software, installs porn toolbars or similar, changes the home page of the internet browser, installs in a way that is difficult to remove it, etc.
Edited 2012-07-22 17:49 UTC
Bored already.
You might as well just link me the page on FSF.org.
It is utter bollox you can’t get trapped into particular file formats, whether they are open source programs to open them or not.
Just look at web browsers with the recent -webkit scenario, other browsers are going to be forced to recognise the -webkit extension.
Everthing was open specifications, however all the web hipsters decided only to target webkit based browsers.
Crippleware is a term made up by Stallman an co to discredit proprietary software makers, because he doesn’t like them, It is no more than FSF propaganda.
Edited 2012-07-22 19:41 UTC
Winamp is far superior with music …and just a front-end to external playback mechanisms with video (which can be worse or better than the internal playback mechanism of VLC… http://kyon.pl/img/9115.html http://kyon.pl/img/17235.html ).
Also, I wouldn’t call MPlayer (which I prefer for video BTW) a desktop application, it sucks at that – it’s more a library used by front-ends, analogous to Winamp & external.
While VLC has it’s problems I’ve never seen it screw up that badly.
Eh, I don’t really see a noticeable difference except maybe on the subtitles.
I prefer SMPlayer to VLC and it is pretty sweet on both Linux and Windows.
Edited 2012-07-26 16:29 UTC
Hm? It screws up very often like that, while seeking. Yes, that is resolved when the next “full” frame is encountered …still, some other players don’t have that issue at all (and seemingly without performance impact, and with seeking being much more responsive and precise – MPlayer is like that, and I use SMplayer too)
And sure, the differences with 2nd link aren’t that great (check out the last comment there… and do you compare on cheap TN screen? ;p ), but still (it’s more about this common VLC propaganda of sorts, like it’s the greatest video-playing achievement ever – it has many faults too, and it’s momentum probably comes mostly just from being since the ~beginning an all-in-one installer for Windows)
Edited 2012-07-26 16:53 UTC
Ah, its while seeking, i thought it was while playing. I guess I have seen that then.
I dunno. What’s a “cheap TN screen”? This is on a ViewSonic vx1937wma.
Well, generally all the “I never thought such big LCDs could be so cheap” displays most commonly bought by people, and/or those advertising silly response times, or what’s included by default in typical inexpensive laptops. All those tend to have relatively poor colour reproduction.
And then, add to that often a bit crazy contrast and saturation settings.
With the difference that Nero Linux will not been developed anymore.
And with the difference that K3b already does what I (and most of people) need: burning CDs and DVDs. And in a way that is free (as in “free speech” and as in “free beer”).
This is a good point, as it is likely that Sparrow would never have existed as an open source app, because you’re not going to make money like that by selling support services, or coffee mugs. And hey, not everybody wants to work for free.
And anyway, I recently read that an open source email app (Thunderbird) has had its development stopped recently, except for bug fixes and security updates. Will anybody fork it and continue working on it? Who knows. But really, how many open source projects have died on the vine because the developer got bored with it, or didn’t have the time to work on it anymore.
The point is that whether you’re using open or closed source apps, there’s really no guarantees one way or the other, unless you personally plan to work on an open source app if it gets abandoned. Personally, I’d rather use an app where the developer gets paid for it, because then you know his livelihood depends on the continued development of the app, vs ‘I just had a kid so I don’t have time to work on this in the evenings anymore.’ Sure, he may get bought out and the app killed, but like I said, there are really no guarantees one way or the other.
Don’t feel bad. Even hardcore open source haters use open source now. It’s unavoidable.
Most large successful and high-quality open source products work because they receive corporate backing.
Android Linux is probably the best example, with IBM and Red Hat providing steady revenue for the kernel, Sun for the VM (at least pre-Oracle), and Google for the userland. Google also largely funded Firefox, which kicked proprietary monopoly IE’s tail from Scranton to LA, and then Chromium, which made the browser market a three horse plus change race.
Small indie developers sometimes make good and change the world, of course (BitTorrent, anyone?), but the big names in large open source projects are funded by corporations that profit from them – for better or worse.
Why should I feel bad?
My employer is able to charge the same consulting prices as with proprietary tools, but get the source code and the project tools for free, without giving anything back, thus increasing profits.
Edited 2012-07-23 07:16 UTC
Now, if only some OSS-devotees – who likewise absolutely can’t avoid depending on closed software behind large part of our modern world (perhaps even to a more fundamental degree) – would stop hatin’…
Edited 2012-07-29 00:08 UTC
The difference between open and closed source, is that when you get a closed source piece of software, you are getting a product or a service and that can end. Open-source is more like a research project, if the original researchers (developers) drop the project, if the project is worth continuing (going somewhere interesting etc) it will be taken up by new researchers. This is a more natural development process than closed source. My problem with Richard Stallman is he is too interested in promoting his slightly misconceived notion of Freedom, what the FSF should be doing is trying to find innovative ways of Funding software research.
No one’s mentioned Thunderbird yet?
http://www.osnews.com/story/26159/Mozilla_to_cease_development_on_T…
Isn’t Thunderbird in the same boat? Mozilla has decided to stop developing it further and so it is only going to get big fixes! OS didn’t help there.
It’s hardly the case, development of T-bird hasn’t ceased completely, and (this is the really crucial bit) should one individual or company need an enhanced version of T-bird they can do it themselves at any given time since the source is public.
For the moment there is no need for “OS” help.
But for a user who can’t program, both look the same.
Most likely, Sparrow will be back in a short time under the Google brand and with new features, while Thunderbird currently has no one developing it.
Valid point
Actually, I think it’s the other way around. Thunderbird is still in wide use and will likely find maintainers and contributors, while the Sparrow guys are hired to be working on other Google products and not on Sparrow.
Postbox is an enhanced version of thunderbird.
Right, and it’s closed source!
http://postbox-inc.com/?/blog/entry/an_awesome_alternative_for_thun…
And that disqualifies it why?
The news about Thunderbird death are greatly exaggerated.
See, for example, http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/thunderbird-15-beta-1-lands-with…
There are many free & Open Source email clients like Thunderbird. But for some reason Sparrow became popular.
It shouldn’t be that hard to skin and modify Thunderbird to look and behave like Sparrow, but it didn’t happen there, instead a much smaller team built a client that so many users are so passionate about.
And I’m pretty sure that this app will reappear under a new name pretty soon. It’s not dead, just a small gap and a new brand name.
It doesn’t matter if an application is Open Source or not. The success of the software depends on the people creating it. Very few projects succeed once the original people leave.
Most of the Sparrow’s users are probably non-programmers. I assume most of the Open Source devs are using Android. As such Sparrow’s user base aren’t equipped to continue development even if they had the source code.
You know, people that can’t do plumbing at their home… contract plumbers. If a user can’t program, he can contract programmers.
If people has the source code, it leaves an open door.
Examples of this happening in the past. It takes a lot of effort, although something like kickstarter may be useful.
In the past I’ve seen stats from open source projects which mentioned that less than 1% of users donate to the project. That’s not a lot.
There are a lot of stats, a lot of projects and a lot of percentages. For example, we could talk about Humble Indie Bundle ‘V’, getting more than 5.000.000$ from people who liked it. A better product is more likely to get money than another. But this discussion that I started was not about it.
The key is that if someone (*1) has the possibility of doing themselves the improvements (*2) or contracting someone (*3), it’s better than not having this possibility. That’s the key of that discussion that I started.
(*1) A user, a community of users, a company, a country, etc.
(*2) It can be a minor one, a medium one, a big one, etc. The bigger the improvement, the bigger will be the benefit for people.
(*3) It can be the original authors or some developer/s to negotiate the work with.
Sparrow was developed by a small team in a year.
If you have the budget, you can just hire a team of developers to recreate it with the features you need. Takes a little more effort, but just because there is one closed source app, it does not prevent you from creating another closed or open source app.
The Humble Bundle is eight Indie games which have had broad exposure and good reviews on the Windows platform and sells for 5 to 10 percent of retail list.
The return is typically $8 from the Windows gamer.
3/4 of the total.
$12 from the Linux gamer.
1/8-1/4 of the total.
Purchases are framed as “donations” — with the return split between charities, developers, and the Humble Bundle itself. I don’t believe HB has ever published a chart of the breakdown.
The Humble Bundle is a promotion. It builds awareness of Indie gaming.
But the direct cash return to the developer is small.
At what cost per billable hour?
Mozilla’s only significant source of revenue is the add-click.
The mother lode.
But not enough to keep Thunderbird from being retired to maintenance mode.
Google abandons projects at a dizzying pace and it has money to burn.
It is one thing to call in a plumber for a routine installation or repair.
If you have an ambitious custom job mind, say construction of a garden pool and waterfall, you’ll need a contractor, maybe an architect or engineer, who specializes in these things and can see the problem as a whole.
Which means that the bill is likely to skyrocket.
> > people that can’t do plumbing at their home… contract
> > plumbers. If a user can’t program, he can contract
> > programmers.
> At what cost per billable hour?
This would have to be negotiated. As you have the source code and can improve it, you (a company, a user, a group of users, etc.) have available a lot of developers to negotiate it with, and see if the improvement is worth the money. Anyway if there are better alternatives, people are not going to pay a lot…
> But not enough to keep Thunderbird from being retired to
> maintenance mode.
> Which means that the bill is likely to skyrocket.
You have more developers available than Mozilla. Other people may develop or contract someone to improve Thunderbird, though… I’m not going to pay Mozilla or another developer to improve Thunderbird because I don’t use Thunderbird but another program. So I understand if they simply start using another program or keep using Thunderbird if it fits their needs.
For not repeating myself, I wrote about this in http://www.osnews.com/thread?527710
It is either open, or it’s vulnerable to such situations. Business will always be a business.
Personally I don’t trust people who do what they do not from their own passion, but the passion for money. It can never end in a good way.
That’s why I use open sourced/free software exclusively. I do support it in many ways and boy … I got a boatload of great stuff in return.
I never used Sparrow. I suppose it was good. I used Thunderbird, but – as they’re are “closing the business” – I switched to Claws-Mail. Now, that’s an e-mail client! It may not look compelling, but it is truly a work of passion.
Passionate people have to eat too!
That’s one of the most rediculous thing we hear when someone says “Open Source”, “Free Software”, etc. It comes from misunderstanding.
*Open Source / Free Software does not imply lack of money / support / earnings*
In other words: you can live from Open Source / Free Software. License permits it and we have quite of the ecosystems built just for that purpose.
Having more from sharing less is a myth which was already debunked.
BESIDES: you never earn so little that you can’t feed yourself, or your family. Let’s put a scale on that, because it sounds stupid. You may not afford newest model of car, greates house on the earth, but you will not starve on Open Source / Free Software
Other than browsers which make money when a user searches, how many successful consumer software products do you know that are open source?
Virtually all web services run on, use or are built with open source software. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and a gazilion others – all consumer products. Then there’s browsers (as you mentioned), Android (massive success story if there ever was one), Linux (powers god knows how many consumer products) – and this is just what I can think of without trying.
All these successful open source products are used by developers like you and me. And these developers are capable of contributing back.
But the web services that the consumers use that you mentioned like Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. are all closed source.
Closed source server side code, which is paid by the data they get from you to sell to 3rd parties.
Android development costs are covered by hardware sales.
All those examples are not desktop/native applications like Sparrow.
I hope you did a research on your side.
Have you ever seen CMS, Blog, Web Portal, etc software of any sort? it usually shares open source model. It gives you “community” version, and paid one [commercial]. Feel free to contact the authors of this software. They won’t tell you how much they earn, but I can assure you that these are successfull businessess.
Examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems
We also have Red Hat, IBM, HP using and promoting open source worldwide.
That’s supplementary to what Thom have said.
As I mentioned above, all these are tools that are used by developers who are capable of contributing back.
I beg to differ. CMS, WordPress, etc are not limited to developers. In fact, most of these products are designed to be dead easy to use by regular users. You are not required to modify any source code of WordPress in order to use it. In fact, most users are not capable of it.
WordPress IMHO is the only one that is easily setup by someone that is non-technical, and it usually offered free with most web hosting.
Go ahead and search the web. There are gazillions of other projects with the same/different functionality, etc.
Personally I use one of them, which is FlatPress. Great piece of software, no fees, awesome community. But that’s just an example. There are many, maaaany others.
I think WordPress is by far and away the best by miles, I would put it above most other offers (even .NET, though I hate PHP).
But lets face it most open source software is for development of some sort.
I know there are big projects like Firefox etc etc that aren’t geared towards that, but tbh … even Firefox is now more of a “developers browser” in my mind now. I use Chrome at home.
I was recently speaking to one of our Oracle DBAs and he admits there is a different mindset between *nix and Windows people.
It is a difference in culture and putting it into ideals just isn’t helpful IMHO, one should refrain from this.
Edited 2012-07-23 21:09 UTC
You know, it’s not really about the fact that open source is thought about as the developer’s tool. It’s just one of possible mindsets. Others use it everyday as a final product, not just a minefield for testing new stuff before releasing it into the public as a close-sourced, binary product with branding.
Other thing is that there are really fundamental differences between open and free software. I was actually talking more about free, not open source software [or that’s what I’ve been thinking of], while some of you may only think of it as an open source software. That brings a great deal of misunderstanding. Free software is usually being treated as the final product by the creators, open source may be just a minefield to others.
I think it underlines the problem pretty well.
Splitting hairs comes to mind for me.
Complaints about a loss of faith in a “philosophy” that amounted to expecting that buying a product meant you had an ethical claim on the vendor is nonsense.
All talk of “supporting” a product, in the closed and open worlds, is silly and naive.
Open source does not guarantee any product will survive. The arena is littered with products that died when their devlopers lost interest. Sure, other developers can pick them up or fork them, but they lose interest, as well.
Besides, a closed product like Sparrow can be emulated, rather than forked. Sparrow showed there is a market for a simple, cheap email client for OS X. Maybe someone else will try to exploit that.
In any case, users are at the mercy of developers, open and closed. If they don’t want to code it, there’s nothing we can do about it.
Is not clear to me what Google wants do do with Sparrow.
The original developers aren’t around, everyone makes the assumption because it is open source, it is easily supported.
Without a full set of documentation and a team willing to take over the project. Doesn’t necessarily mean that the project will be taken over.
The million man developer army is a myth.
Except nobody is saying that support is guaranteed. What is said is that the possibility of support is there. The chance that there is support depends on developer interest and user interest. I daresay that in this particular case, Sparrow would have no problem finding new contributors.
Right, and so, even if the source code is not available, how is that preventing you or anyone else from recreating the app? It will just take a little longer.
Sparrow was built by a small team in a relatively short time. If the market really exists, then someone else can do it again. They don’t even have to be very creative, they can just copy what Sparrow did. And Google’s not going to sue them, especially if it is an Open Source clone of Sparrow.
True, there is nothing preventing anybody from creating a clone. Having the source however, would reduce the barriers to entry and reduce any losses in the community whilst the clone is being created. By the time the clone has reached the level of the clonee then it is probably too late…
Too late for what?
It’s not like Sparrow’s going to stop working while you work on the clone.
A lot of debatable, which is the exactly the point.
Edited 2012-07-22 19:01 UTC
http://www.osnews.com/story/25306/The_Elder_Scrolls_V_Skyrim_Releas…
Find a crappy open source clone of a 90’s platformer or YetAnotherQuake3BasedGenericShooter so you can protect yourself from the dangers of closed source.
Loonology is the worst religion, no good games and no women to meet at weekend events.
And thou can maketh thine own games with sticks and rocks instead of playing the devilish proprietary offerings. That way you keepth the freedoms that I created for you to follow.
Stallman 4:12
Funny.
I can’t recall me saying – in this article or any of the ten billion that came before it – that you shouldn’t use closed source software. Heck, I use closed source software all the time, and write about it, too.
I think you’re the one being the zealot here, with kneejerk responses, without actually thinking before you post.
Oh right you’re completely innocent, you just chose a headline that denigrates closed source by chance.
I’m gonna go write a story on AIDs entitled:
Man with AIDs shows dangers of being gay.
I’m just reporting the facts. I have a follow up story on how living in a black neighborhood increases the risk of getting mugged. I’ve never said I’m against living in a black neighborhood. Just reporting the dangers of living in a black neighborhood, that’s all. I’m fair and balanced.
Edited 2012-07-23 02:22 UTC
Er, It should be perfectly acceptable to report on the dangers of living in a BAD neighborhood, and one shouldn’t expect people to come looking for false equivalencies.
It it quite obvious to anyone except for the zealots that this was
“look in this one case, closed source software is bad … even though there is still security updates”.
I have worked with some really evil software, some of it was closed, some of it was open … there was an equal amount of both.
Ask some of the BSD guys about the number of Linuxism in code, ask about how the GNU compiler has been specifically designed so you can separate the parser form the rest of the compiler (delibrate so that people can’t use it for their own projects).
How many years have the BSD community been trying to rid themselves of GCC compiler (look at the PCC and LLVM projects), because GCC has been gradually getting worse with each release?
The point is there is lock-in with open source products and projects … why because design decisions are more important than the code itself.
Design decisions change the way you code. A bad API can make you code a mess (ask me I just finished integrating some Olympic results feeds into the CMS, the API was interesting to say the least).
What annoys me is the fact that open source is made out like this wonderful silver bullet that will instantly solve everything, if everyone followed the “true path”.
And some of us react strongly against that. Because we simple do not think it is true.
There is no false equivalency.
It’s pandering to sourceologists.
OSAlert, Slashdot and Ars all pander to this crowd with these types of headlines.
You’ll never see a headline about the dangers of open source just as you won’t see Fox News run a headline about the dangers of Romney.
While I don’t mind people making a buck off the religious I do get annoyed when what I do for a living becomes demonized, especially when the open source crowd is unable to compete in my area due to economic limitations.
Well, some of us feel the same way when closed-sourceologists who can’t compete demonizes what we do.
The fact that Sparrow got purchased by Google does not invalidate this theory/philosophy on paying for apps.
Sure, paying for the apps might help but unless your app is insanely succcessful, like Angry Birds or something, having a handful of users pay $5 isn’t going to put food on the table.
But does this mean you should stop paying? Certainly not. Every little bit helps and the people paying probably helped Sparrow going longer than it would have otherwise.
On a related note, making your software OSS does not ensure it won’t die. It just makes it easier for the community to continue the project if the original developers stop. Of course, this only works if there are developers in the community willing to do so.
Or the source code repository doesn’t drop off the face of the earth.
I really wish people would wake up and start paying attention to the world we live in.
I’m wondering what would have been the reaction of the Apple crowd if Apple instead of Google had bought Sparrow.
More on the subject, I don’t see why people are complaining. They paid for an app and as far as I know, they can still use the app and Sparrow even said they’ll provide maintenance fixes.
I’m all for open source, but what Sparrow highlights is the dangers of not going closed source for some desktop apps.
Consider for a minute what the Sparrow team achieved in about one year: they became the number 1 mail app for OS X, earned $10 from each of their thousands of users, and then they got 25 million USD for their company.
Now please explain how could they have done that by going open source. Remember this is an email client. No services, no support, no nothing to bring money home from that code. How on Earth would Sparrow devs and investors become financially healthy by giving away their code? Why would Google have to shell out those millions instead of just offering the (starving) guys some jobs?
If anything, this news shows very clearly that if anyone is thinking of doing some desktop apps they should go closed source, be very creative and expect some big guy to make the rest of their life a walk in the park, or just make a nice living by licensing their software to happy users, like Sparrow’s were.
As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of just hiring people to develop a new e-mail client for Gmail (desktop and/and or webapp), since open source advocates are stubbornly settled on folders instead of labels and there’s not even an IMAP server that does labels properly (and as far as I can tell, from diggin the mailing lists of the likes of Dovecot or Courier, that simply won’t happen).
Open source applications can only be made by students being fed by their parents or teams sponsored by big corporations, like Mozila being sponsored by Google, or The Document Foundation being sponsored by a consortium of pretty big companies. Small teams of grown up individuals who live on their own must be crazy to go open source for their desktop apps development. The Sparrow experience encourages every adult developer not willing to work for huge corporations to go closed source, not the opposite.
If earning money [not writing the actual code. Joy of coding, anybody?] is your only motivation for creating and developing software, then you should probobly not do it. Otherwise you will make more harm and damages, than good. You will produce code of low quality, you will release it earlier, you will not test it, and all of this will be the result of one pursue: money. More money, less time to waste, worse code, less time to focus on a code of good quality. Your clients [otherwise called in open source community: users, friends] will suffer data loss, security failures and other unpleasant situations. All because of your greed and ongoing pursue for getting more and more money. You will end up being completely disconnected from the community of the users of your application, your ass will be sued continuously by dissapointed users, and there will be not much joy left.
I don’t like that. If you like it – go ahead and create this filthy karma for yourself.
What an epic fail.
It like saying that every person that has a shop to make money only cares about making money and not their customers. If you have dissatisfied customers, you won’t have repeat business.
Daisy Hosting I knew recently lost ^Alb500,000 contract with one of the largest charities in the UK
Some of us believe in providing quality code whatever the license is. Just because someone produces code for money doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy it … what utter rubbish.
Bespoke proprietary software by agencies that don’t care tend to be crap.
But we had a Web based Video library for the website, created by one guy and he did all the support and updates … was one of the best products I have ever used. Very reliable and we only had the old codec problem.
I recently bought a bike from a bloke, and he was excellent … cheap shipping (from the UK to Spain), beat the big guys on prices and was really friendly to boot and put in a few extra fun things.
Just because someone is making money doing something doesn’t mean they are just in it to make money.
I am sorry you think that every business just wants to screw you over but that just isn’t true.
Edited 2012-07-23 19:55 UTC
That is NOT what I meant. First: I was not talking about any and every business. Second: I was talking in favor of open source. I was pointing out positive sides of Open Source by giving examples of close source failures. I realize it was some kind of generalization. I’m sure there are some good developers who write excellent code under closed source agreements. However: we don’t know how many of them do it, because there is no access to their source code.
Thank you and have a nice day.
So you were talking in favour while saying everything about open source was a load of rubbish.
You know what that is … propaganda, FUD or lies.
Have a nice day.
Why do you insist on being so aggressive your response has almost nothing to do with marcp’s post – epic fail is just rude. Your response is a proprietary software fanboy rant and that is getting very boring.
Edited 2012-07-23 20:34 UTC
He just generalized every developer that doesn’t release their the source code as money grabbing scum.
Sorry, I think that is incredibly rude and not representative of that work producing products and doing our best to write quality software against red tape, deadlines and mismanagement.
So I think it is an epic fail, because he simply believes we are not dedicated. I have myself walked out of a room in front of management because I believe in doing things right, I almost lost my job on that occasion.
I have seen developers work all nighters to get a product that works well, and they write bloody good code.
So don’t f–king tell me I am doing some drumbeat about proprietary software.
Quite frankly it is f–king insulting, how you guys speak about developers like myself.
As for me being a fanboy, I actually buy OpenBSD releases, used to be a Linux Admin and now a web developer (first PHP and now ASP.NET) and currently learning Ruby on Rails …
Edited 2012-07-23 21:28 UTC
Hello again,
As I already said I do realize I generalized the problem. However, the real issue remains unsolved: we have NO access to proprietary code. Nobody can see if it’s really good, or if it’s just a badly written code.
How would you measure code quality if you don’t have an access to the source? DO you want to judge upon such factors as “stability”? Well, this can be accomplished by using dirty hacks, tricks inside the code. Everything runs just fine, but the code is NOT good, which is something you should already know as an OpenBSD user [I am an OpenBSD user and OpenBSD [3rd party] software developer myself, so I thought we should share the same point here].
As of the other things you mentioned: I do not say that every proprietary code developer writes “crap”. I just say we have no ways to see what’s the real value of proprietary code.
Bye and sorry it it makes you angry. That was not the point. It was and is all about access, knowledge and quality.
I don’t have to measure code quality, I am the user not the development team.
I might be a user but I do not believe in an extreme philosophy that all code my be open and one cannot judge quality unless we can see the complete source code.
You said it was crap code and they will be sued and a lot of other nonsense.
You are taking things to an extreme, it doesn’t help anyone. Sorry what you have is a belief.
I will keep on saying it, open source isn’t magical bullet. It works for some projects and companies … others it would kill their business model.
Who said it is *only* for the money?
Sure, if your only motivation is money but that is often not the case. There are of course those who’s only motivation is money but far from all closed-source developers are motivated only by money.
Unless the thousands of users are more than 10k they didn’t exactly rake in the profits.
How do you know they where financially healthy? Actually, you said they where starving.
Neither the GPL nor the BSD/MIT license prohibits you from selling your product at a profit.
Good for you. Sounds like an interesting project.
Wow, what a bunch of nonsense. There’s plenty of proof to the contrary.
Stop talking before you make an ever bigger fool of yourself.
Well, that’s their choice then. They should do what they feel suits them the best, be it open source or closed.
Whatever they made selling their software is much more than ZERO, which is exactly what they would have got by giving their software away. Being a prominent app in the OS X market place gives you plenty beyond 10K users, but even that is not the point.
Maybe you should read my comment again, slowly. They WOULD BE starving if they had gone open source. I know they were financially healthy because they attracted investors (who are financially healthy by definition). You can bet those investors wouldn’t be interested in an e-mail application that anyone can download for free. If you believe otherwise, please show examples and make reasonable assumptions that show you’re right.
That’s hardly the point. They don’t prohibit that, but the effect is exactly the same: once I must publish the code, anyone can compile it and has no need to pay for my work. That’s so obvious not even those explaining how to make money from open source consider the option of selling the software itself.
You haven’t answered the question.
I’m eager to know about a single ONE proof. Just name one small company making a simple desktop app -akin to an e-mail client, which is what we’re talking about here- that is making money out of selling it. Just one.
Until I see that proof, I stand by my point: open source desktop applications are made either by students (who are being fed by their parents) or by corporations (who make the money by using the software as a means to sell other products or services).
Edited 2012-07-24 22:44 UTC
Has anyone suggested them to opensource sparrow?
It’s Google’s code now so the original developers don’t have a word on this.
It’s just a guess, but Google is not interested in the desktop app (as a matter of fact they are interested in people NOT using desktop apps to use Gmail) but the iOS port. Of course they are hiring the Sparrow team to improve the mobile Gmail experience, and eventally the web app too. There’s no benefit for Google in releasing the code. But again, that’s just my guess.
What exactly is wrong with a (proper) mobile web page? I hate it when companies start developing apps for absolutely no good reason, other than just to have an app. HTML5 is cross-platform compatible and usually provides a consistent experience across various platforms.
Because it significantly drives up the costs of development.
Truely responsive web pages are hard to build, you do need to do device detection (should I server this flash, should I serve this images etc), you have to consider they more limited bandwidth these devices have.
It not just having a responsive layout.
Edited 2012-07-25 10:14 UTC
Well.. I just installed the ad supported version of Sparrow to see what all the fuss is about, and it’s very nice. I can’t really say I’m missing much, the adds are small and unobtrusive and I think I’m going to use it as my default for a few weeks to see how I get on with it.