Open Source v. Open Services

I’ve reproduced the conversation here, anonymized and snipped for relevance, for discussion purposes:

1:02:54 PM HelpfulGuy: is there a public repo?

1:03:13 PM Steve: [repo url]

1:03:31 PM Steve: don’t spread it around, though

[snip]

1:04:07 PM HelpfulGuy: is it not open source?

1:04:23 PM Steve: it’s unlicensed atm :-)

1:04:35 PM HelpfulGuy: i see

[snip]

1:07:53 PM Steve: is that a problem?

1:08:21 PM HelpfulGuy: not really

1:08:26 PM HelpfulGuy: just let me know if you start charging for it

1:08:34 PM HelpfulGuy: because i charge $100/hr for consulting

[snip]

1:09:24 PM HelpfulGuy: i’m just not that into spending time on things that arent open source

1:09:26 PM HelpfulGuy: not really my bag

1:09:53 PM Steve: well, don’t spend actual time on this until i decide what to do with it then.

1:10:03 PM Steve: i mean, i’m happy if you’re ok answering questions

1:10:13 PM Steve: but i don’t want to confuse things

1:10:16 PM HelpfulGuy: i’m not okay

1:10:19 PM HelpfulGuy: if this wont be open source

1:10:19 PM HelpfulGuy: sorry

1:10:34 PM HelpfulGuy: i spend a lot of time on open source and believe pretty strongly in it…

[snip]

1:15:12 PM Steve: OR, am i ok with someone else downloading it, and starting tubmlr2

1:15:24 PM Steve: and charging for accounts?

1:15:37 PM HelpfulGuy: why wouldnt you be?

1:16:02 PM Steve: i dunno. just hadn’t worked it out yet.

Now, in my mind, I’d vaguely envisioned this application as something for myself and some friends - not a publicly available application and certainly not a commercial service. I don’t really see myself competing with Tumblr.com, for example. But his question made me think, and I haven’t finished thinking yet. I wasn’t really intending to make money from this app, though the idea of releasing the source code publicly doesn’t feel useful to me either.

HelpfulGuy has his position and I can respect that (especially if I know up front). By clearly charging for what he sees as commercial work, he sets a baseline for how much his contributions to open source software are worth (thanks to Dustin for helping me talk that idea out). Most developers hanging out on IRC and other forums are commercial developers getting programming and platform help; how do non-commercial or free software developers feel about that? It’s never seemed unfair to me, but I’m not a free software purist. (Mac purist, maybe… :-) )

So if you’re a free software developer, how do you feel? Do you have a personal disclaimer? “I prefer only to answer questions or help out if your app is [preferred license here]”?

Open Source v. Open Service

As I was thinking about this stuff, the topic of open source v. open services came up. The value of open source comes from a couple of places - 1) free-as-in-speech source cannot be locked up behind a license wall to die, and 2) developers with the skill and interest can modify the application to meet their needs or to contribute functionality to the project. This allows other users to benefit when those changes are rolled into the main distribution.

What about open services? There are a lot of services popping up (Flickr, Technorati, and Twitter come to mind) that are not themselves open source, but which provide a multitude of web APIs for accessing data stored in the system, both your own and that of other users. Generally “your data is your own” and developers can use those same APIs to move their data from one service to another. However, there don’t seem to be a lot of popular clones of these services appearing, as people tend to be happy with them.

Dave Winer asked if an open-source twitter made sense. dare obasanjo responded saying:

Specifically, the value of Twitter to its users is less about its functionality and more about the fact that their friends use it.

If the service is open enough, what’s the value of the source?

echoloquation.com

So, ultimately the question for me is still, what to do with my lifestream app? As you can see from this section title, it has a home, http://echoloquation.com. In it’s current incarnation it’s only serving my lifestream, . There is a version coming soon that has rudimentary multi-user support, but to be honest, it’s a very simple app. Anyone with a few months of Ruby on Rails experience could build this and more quite easily. :-)

So I don’t see the value of releasing the source for the app itself, other than as an example of ham-handed coding. However, I do want to give back to the community of developers that has been so generous with their time and knowledge. There are a few pieces of this app that I am excited about and that are at least somewhat unique. As I roll these features in I’m going to release them in some form, probably as Ruby libraries. I don’t think that’s “open” by HelpfulGuy’s standard, but I think it makes sense for me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the whole thing.

—Steve

I’ve also archived this article here.

UPDATE: I don’t want this post to sound like a confrontation with HelpfulGuy. He’s been great, and I actually had a short chat with him about the post and he cleared one thing up:

i think there is a bit of miscommunication, however
i’d actually love to help you on your rails startup, for free
but not all day every day on aim
for that, i charge

P.S. it’s not a startup, though just with “rails startup” in the post I’m likely to get VC calls in the current climate. :-)