Is This The Right Room For An Argument About Open Source?Is This The Right Room For An Argument About Open Source?

Any discussion about open source that doesn't bristle at least some hairs isn't worth having. That doesn't make the other guy right -- but it does mean nobody's going to learn anything as long as we just pat each other on the shoulder. Some conflict is vital.

I came to this conclusion after reading two pieces about open source, each with totally different tones, outlooks and conclusions. The first is from Glyn Moody, "Of Purists and Pragmatists", in which he talks about the ongoing debate between the live-or-die-by-open-source camp and the open-source-is-just-a-way-to-get-things-done camp:

Drop the word "free" from the above quote and it's even more accurate. Software development as such should not have to slavishly follow, etc., because that limits the scope of its vision. Open source as cancer is just as unproductive a view as open source as inevitability; there's happy ground between those two poles. And sometimes the only way you find that medium is by having the two collide a bit.

Item the second, from a blogger by the name of "Piestar", is more openly jaundiced and negative -- but even so there's a kernel of truth here and there in his discussion. He felt the whole concept of "free as in beer" was dead wrong -- nobody gives you beer for free, for one -- and set out to attack it.

The argument's flawed, to be sure. He doesn't talk about "open core", for instance, where basic functionality is given away and you charge something for expanded functionality that's well within the realm of what professional users need and can afford. But he makes one point worth remembering: there is no way to completely bury the cost of software; it always costs someone something.

My point is that neither of these arguments -- nor the orthodoxies they discuss or are aimed at -- are conclusions. They're parts of a larger discussion, where what seems like grousing on an ordinary day may turn out to be wisdom -- and vice versa. If open source doesn't encourage this sort of thing from within, then it'll be easier to discourage open source from without.

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