
Open Source Software Made Developers Cool. Now It Can Make Them Rich - naish
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_opensource
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gruseom
I had an idea as I was reading this. Open source seems counterintuitive
because it gives away code, which people assume is valuable. As the article
says, "How can you build a business by giving away the store?" But what if
code isn't that valuable?

More precisely, what if code isn't worth very much _when separated from the
programmers who wrote it_? This notion explains a lot. It explains why source
code theft is almost unheard of (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36551>)
- except, of course, programmers taking copies of their own code with them
when they leave a company (I'm sure I've never done that). It explains why
codebases decay so quickly when they're handed off for maintenance, and why
rewrites almost always fail when they're not done by the original team. It
explains why people don't really buy or sell source code as such.

It also matches the experience of working programmers, which is: most code
sucks; other people's code really sucks ("it's all shit", an oldtimer once
told me); and it's often easier to write code than to read it.

The best description I've found of this idea is Peter Naur's
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121291>). Naur puzzled over cases where,
even when code was well written _and_ well documented, other programmers (not
members of the original team) screwed it up. His explanation for this is that
the program is not the code. Rather, the program is a set of mental constructs
(Naur uses the word "theory") that live in the minds of the programmers
writing it. Code is merely the canonical written expression of the program,
and it's a lossy one: given only the code, you can't reconstruct the theory.
Since the theory exists in the minds of the team, if you lose the team, you
lose the theory, and with it most of the value.

Viewed this way, the economics of open source vis-à-vis closed source are not
nearly so counterintuitive. If code isn't that valuable, then open source
isn't "giving away the store" at all. And if what _is_ valuable is the theory
of the program in Naur's sense, then open source adds value by extending the
theory to a larger base of programmers, something that closed source has tried
and failed to do for years.

If open source is value-creating, it's not an economic paradox. It only looks
that way because people (especially non-programmers) have a mistaken model of
software value. It's not surprising that it would take time for business
models and infrastructure to catch up.

~~~
jmtulloss
While I don't necessarily disagree with you, I personally love working with
other people's code. Better or worse than what I would have written, at least
its a starting point. Plus it puts a new perspective on a problem that I
wouldn't have gotten without tinkering with the open source solutions first.

~~~
gruseom
Actually, I have to say something else about this. You mention working with
other people's code in an _open source_ context. That relates to my original
point - there seems to be something about open source that changes the dynamic
I was describing and that relates to the value of software. After I noticed
this detail in your comment I asked myself, does it feel different to work
with other people's code when that code is open source, and (for me at least)
the answer is definitely yes, it feels better. It would be fascinating to know
why.

~~~
jmtulloss
I would say that it's because open source coders

1\. Have the time to do it right (there are no deadline)

2\. Could potentially be judged by anybody who uses the project

