Synogenes.com

For those in the commercial software business, open source is seen as potentially undermining the market for new software. Why, after all, would anyone spend several hundred pounds buying Microsoft software when there are packages around for free which provide all of what you need, and none of the bloat? Need a browser, try Firefox. Need a mail client, try Thunderbird. Need word processing, try OpenOffice.org. Not only that, but there is a veritable army of developers world-wide just itching to fix any bug reported. New versions are available for download in double-quick time from a huge number of sites, and there is a community of helpful people able to provide online support anytime, anywhere. All for nothing.

And yet, millions of people still use the Microsoft software. They choose to spend the money, buy the commercial product, and rely on the Microsoft machine for providing hotfixes, patches, support, and new versions according to Microsoft’s own unique interpretation of the calendar.

Some of the reason is of course, the monopoly power of Microsoft and the fear that because of the carefully crafted compatibility features of Windows, not all open source software will run smoothly. Indeed there have been court battles over compatibility and the amount of information Microsoft makes available to others to enable them to develop competitor products for the platform. In that climate, consumers don’t want to take the risk – even if it’s free – because once having installed the open source product, maybe Windows won’t work properly anymore.

And what about intellectual property in software? Having developed a unique piece of software, this is now intellectual property which can be exploited to make money. If the open source movement develops similar technology and gives it away for nothing, that undermines the business. But can you realistically have intellectual property in programming? Once the algorithm is in the public domain, for example because it is now taught on university courses, surely anyone can implement it without infringing copyright. Any time frame for preserving such rights will be outstripped by the pace of technical change - the old copyright model is just left in the starting blocks.

In core areas of software development, such as browsers, operating systems, mail clients, document production and management, and databases, open source software is exploiting very well-known technical principles, so well-known in fact, that it’s hard to claim intellectual property rights. The more software which moves into this category, the better it is for consumers because they will have free reliable software - but it poses a serious challenge to the business case for software companies.

Intellectual property rights actually restricts the availability of software and impedes developments in functionality as one commercial block fights another in the courts. Open source, on the other hand, openly welcomes innovation and provides an excellent mechanism for delivering quality. But it comes at a price - constant change and update. Software users need to be able to take responsibility for keeping up to date and must be willing to accept that software will require maintenance. In a real sense, software is never finished.

As the pace of knowledge growth increases, the demands on software development will outstrip the ability of large commercial companies to respond. Open source will provide a massive, responsive, collaborating team, drawn from around the globe, for any interesting programming project. Commercial companies will have to adapt or lose the business.

Microsoft recently invited the Firefox developers to work in its compatibility labs to enable the browser to work better on Vista. There’s some cynicism due to Microsoft’s previous actions but this might be a recognition that as the software industry becomes of age, the scale of demand for innovation and quality means that companies like Microsoft need to rethink their traditional ways of delivering products. Already Gartner are suggesting that Vista may be the last Windows OS. Perhaps we are already moving towards an open source windows environment.

Commercial software becomes less and less viable as the means of producing it become more widely available around the world. As people become more skilled at generating software and collaborating via the internet, there is less of a market for commercial software, despite the massive monopoly of Microsoft. It is almost as though the mass availability of the programming environment and programming skills, takes ownership of the technology out of the hands of the corporations. To protect their markets, they will either need to commercialise the open source environment, or give up the intellectual property right claims over software. Already Google, Ebay, and others, are exploring commerical links with open source. There are interesting times ahead as corporations try to keep control of the software sand slipping through their fingers.