According to a recent tweet, Oracle (the company which recently acquired Sun Microsystems) has started to charge a license fee for its popular open office compatibility plug-in for Microsoft Office.
Is this a signal for other open source and free software vendors to start charging for commercially valuable applications?
Given the functionality and usability of the OpenOffice, it’s the right time to start investing more time and effort on its competencies against Microsoft Office and most other online office applications such as Google Docs.
The OpenOffice suite follows the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard, and there is no other reason that it should be kept free when there are better free or low cost alternatives available which follow the same standard. For Oracle, it’s time to make money. Free users, don’t complain.
In most blogs that discussed about the new offer from Oracle, it was always noted that certain versions of the Microsoft Office software costs less than the Oracle converter.
Would this be fueling the open source through increased amount of investments from commercial entities?
This is a tricky question, as most companies who earn from Free and Open Source applications earn revenue by providing support. Most of them function and generate profit like they are having thousands of great programmers working free for them.
Yes, some programmers are enthusiastic about free coding and contributing to the open source projects, but it is the time they need to be paid and recognized for their commitments to projects accordingly.
Programmers : If you’re ever good at anything, don’t do it for free.
Starting charging for free software [for the Office plug-in (in this instance)] has created a large amount of negative impressions on Oracle’s commitment to Open Source. As most us know, developers and open source enthusiasts rallied upon and evangelized OpenOffice because it was the best free alternative available for desktop office operations as they had high hopes on OpenOffice to beat its commercial competitors by being completely free and standards compliant.
Any open source company who earns money by using code written by someone else, has an ethical responsibility to look after the community and their wishes. The licensing model of the code doesn’t matter. This is a purely an ethical concern.
Oracle is doing what it thinks that could make money in the short run. There is nothing wrong in Oracles approach apart from the above concerns. Revenues and the community should be kept in balance in order to make profits and foster innovation, if you keep aligned to one, your business is going to fail. Someday, somehow.
Finally for all the open source enthusiasts and hobbyists,
…As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
- Bill Gates [in his famous open letter to hobbyists on February 3rd, 1976]
Yes Bill, I agree with you.
Related :
- Techworld : Oracle charges for Microsoft Office to OpenOffice file converter
Reverses Sun position - Wikipedia : Bill Gates Open letter to hobbyists
“Programmers : If you’re ever good at anything, don’t do it for free.” – isn’t that a little closed minded? I certainly see where the direction of the post was going, and I do agree that people should be recognized for their work. However just because you are good at something does that mean you have to demand monetary compensation for doing it?
I am not a published part of the open source community, so I don’t want to speak out of place. But it was my belief that the idea of open source was something greater then ‘making money’ and worked around the embodiment of the free flow of knowledge.
As for the Bill Gates quote, it certainly drives home the presumed ‘devastation’ pirating has brought to the software industry; I don’t know how much it plays into charging for previously open source software since it was originally developed under the GPL ( or equivalent ).
As a closing note here (as I am half way to a blog entry my self ) I do agree that if Oracle (/sun) wants to charge for previously open source software/code then there should be some sort of ‘kick back’ to the developers who could have spend 1000′s of hours on it, as well as who knows how much time and perhaps money of their own to keep it under a public license.
@TD,
First of all, thanks for the descriptive comment and for the points brought up.
Asking programmers to do their job (or what they do best) for money is not close minded. If all other professionals are doing their job for money, programmers should not be an exception. The knowledge can be always shared at a price if it’s valuable and should be done so.
Yes, the open source is more than making money, but it all sums down to the bottom line if you’re living a life in a culture and a society entirely dependent on money, and specially when you’ve got plenty of skill that you can sell and make the life better for the people in your family or people around you [or at least donate to a charity if you don't have a family or a social life].
Bill Gates Quote : At that time Bill was talking the same, and hopefully he is having a better life, and has made lives better for many people around the globe by successfully monetizing and investing back in what other people did for free. It’s also a story of how programmers could become successful by not doing free work in what they do their best.
About the Oracle decision to sell previously free applications and to have a ‘kick back’ at the original developers is mostly about being ethical as they now own the code base and there is nothing much of a legal binding to provide support or look after the community which built, spread the word and supported it.
Cheers!!!
I don’t see any problem with this ODF plugin. Anyway, MS Office is a commercial product. It cost many bucks. So, I see ok to tag a feed for this plugin.
What worries me about Oracle, it’s Oracle’s pressure over their customers. Oracle’s feeds are costly since ever. And I fear Oracle will alienate many Sun’s customers in years to come.
If Oracle play nice, it can be a win-win. But I don’t trust Oracle too much. I had bad expirence with Oracle in the past.
(sorry for my English
Open Office Compatibility plug-in is just a plug-in, it never was free-software just freeware. You see like Eclipse Platform, there are a lot of plugins that are commercials and there is no problem with that. And that Open Office Compatibility plug-in is just for users that already pays for the Microsoft Office Suite, so I don’t see as a bad thing what Oracle is doing.
It appears is that what Oracle is doing is right from the Oracles perspective, as it is time for them to make money in the wake of online Office applications which are standards compatible along with threats from other companies offering better alternative solutions for less money or free. It is also noted that certain latest office versions of Microsoft are even cheaper than the Oracle plug-in itself.
It is bad because this decision of monetization makes it more expensive for the Microsoft Office users to be more standards compatible.
The above points are included in the post, if you go through it more slowly you might notice them.
I dont see it that bad for Microsoft Offices users. I mean, Open Offices comes with support of Microsoft Offices Documents. So it may be a strategy of Oracle that personal users[not employes] get the Open Office Suite and forget about the Microsoft Office. So they wont have to get the Open Office Compatibility plug-in. That would be better than cheaper, it would be free.
Not when there is a free web based version of Microsoft Office or Google Docs is available.
Sun tried to monetize free software and failed. But I don’t even know why someone would ask if it’s wrong. Of course it’s not as long as the license is abided by.
@Mark (The Anonymous)
I think you have got it wrong, It can be profitable for both the developers, community and the company if they are able to properly monetize free software. This point is included in the post.