Open Sauce Software
Tasty titbits from people using Linux and other open source software in business.
Monday 17 March 2008, 1:15 PM
Open Source is Gay?
I can imagine Steve Ballmer casting aspersions on Linux' manliness back in the days when Microsoft didn't like open source. But actually, my headline is a tease lead in to a more serious issue - what happens when Open Source is no longer a counter-culture?
Gay identity is a counter-culture - it grew up in response to massive prejudice, and flourished in bars and clubs. But since laws changed, it has wilted, political journalist Andrew Sullivan argued in 2005, in The End of Gay Culture. Gays are getting married, appearing in reality TV shows, and getting on with life - and meanwhile the gay bars are closing down.
The same thing could happen to open source culture, Dan Lyons at Forbes, said in February. Companies like Sun buying into open source, while IBM supporting it, and Microsoft telling us it is open source, all for business reasons, not for the idealism we expect from parts of the open source movement.
This could split the "free and open source" (FOSS) movement, says Matthew Aslett, at the 451 Group. The "open source" part is happy to do business, but the "free" wants to change the world.
It could also dilute the benefits of open source. Microsoft and others are talking about how open source-like their proprietary projects are, much like a heterosexual man discovering he quite likes the look of a moustache.
Aslett thinks the FOSS movement is more like the Green movement - a counter-culture which has always had a critical relationship with mainstream business culture, and which is now seeing parts of its message assimilated.
The Green movement has got everyone to consider the amount of energy they use - and this has launched a burst of "Greenwash" in which companies sell energy reduction as a way to save money, not the planet.
Similar partial adoption could split the Free Software movement from the Open Source Software movement, suggests Aslett: "The Free Software movement has always defined itself in way that excludes it from assimilation by the mainstream and will naturally resist any dilution of its principles. The Open Source Software movement, on the other hand, was formed specifically to encourage mainstream interest."
As open source goes mainstream, he sees "increased tension between a Free Software movement exhibiting a strengthened resolve to stand by its principles, and an Open Source Software movement in which individuals have to decide where they draw the line."
As an aside, he has a lovely suggestion for where a Green-style assimilation might lead: "Perhaps in years to come we will see big businesses boasting about lowering their proprietary licensing footprint through the more efficient use of computing resources, just as today they boast about the efficient use of natural resources. Maybe the laggards could pay someone else to adopt open source for them via proprietary offsetting schemes."
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