In Defense Of Open Source

Last night I synced my iPod (fifth gen, for those who care to know) to my iTunes library, disconnected, crashed on the nearest couch I could find, and found a new episode of MacBreak Weekly awaiting a listen on the device. The two hours that followed (it was 104 minutes in length precisely, but a few pauses pushed the session to somewhere around 120) were quite interesting indeed.

The topic around which the most discussion encircled was open source, and boy were there divergent views among the week’s ensemble. MBW regulars Scott Bourne and Andy Ihnatko took allegiance to cutthroat capitalism, while host Leo Laporte and the reigning jokester Merlin Mann took too trumpeting openness everywhere and hippie love for all.

Alright, maybe things didn’t go exactly that way, but the synopsis presented above is close enough. What I wish to do here now is not to talk particulars or revisit every line spoken in the "cage match". I’d like instead to come to the defense of the freethinking duo, and in doing so I’d like to bring up a point that strangely received little attention in Wednesday’s episode.

That point, dear reader, is the meaning of open source. The inherent principal of it, that stretches across the tech world.

Naysayers position open source as a sort of geeky pleasure that’s best reserved only for unwedded twenty- and thirty-something males residing in basements owned by parental figures. That the Linux platform is the product of a wide network of hobbyists. That the solutions which subsist within the Linux system are not worth equal attention to big-name products from firms like Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, and others.

It’s true that Linux – whether it be the Ubuntu flavor or those of Red Hat or Novell – isn’t as user-friendly to troubleshoot as Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X. It’s true that a lot of open source software is not as good as what is generally described as the commercial software.

I’m not here to argue what’s better or what’s worse. Rather, I wish to argue against the assumption by individuals – on both sides of the aisle, I should stress – that open source and commercial are (or should remain) separate.

That open source means free. And that commercial is not free.

Well, yes, it’s true that most of the things commercial are not free. But a commercial success does not necessarily imply that the source code at the core of it is closed. It can very well be open.

Mac OS X is a pretty significant example of this. A wonderful operating system that’s been built as a profit-seeking enterprise, OS X is, at the base layer, Unix. Anyone that knows anything about Unix, knows its held under an open source clause.

An operating system that’s inherently open source and not free of charge? Insanity.

It’s important to emphasize cases such as the one above because all too often people in the technology world pass off the idea of open source as wishful thinking, that in the “real world”, proprietary, closed systems are what stick around, and that everyone would be better off developing with such a mindset.

I would argue oppositely. Perhaps the only way developers big and small can ensure Web 2.0 creations (Web apps, etc.) exist for any extended periods of time – even indefinitely, in some cases – is that they stick to the open source rulebook, because as use of desktop-based solutions diminishes and Web-based offerings flourish, consumers will grow more and more privy to the ideal of OS and demand it from an increasing number of industry players as times goes on. They’ll see the benefits to open source systems, and will pay for them much as they do for closed solutions today.

Open source software and services, like those proprietary, can provide commercial benefit. One can even argue the monetary incentive to be greater. I don’t know if any instance in which a piece of work, when made compatible with greater and greater numbers of systems, brought fewer financial rewards.

Clearly, open source is the future. It’s just unfortunately that it’s taken this long for the industry take notice.