

If You’re Going To Kill It, Open Source It - ptorrone
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/04/if-youre-going-to-kill-it-open-source-it.html

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ghaff
One reason that "just open source it" isn't as easy as it sounds is that there
tend to be a lot of IP restrictions, patenting and licensing encumbrances,
NDAs, etc. that would take effort to identify much less resolve. When
companies, like Sun, open sources various software, it took considerable
effort to nail down all the problems and remove the parts that weren't there's
to open source--which in the case of a device like a camera might well make
the whole thing useless.

~~~
bluespace
Besides the legal side of things, the code might be being built with an
company internal tool-chain, and comercial compilers, so it would be a bunch
of work to even get it ready for a public release. All of this reinventing of
the wheel probably limits nice fixes for common bugs over the years.

~~~
zcid
Compiler issues shouldn't hold you back. Release it anyway. If someone is
interested enough, they will more than likely be willing to work with what
they can get. Let the burden of correcting the code fall on them.

~~~
bluespace
While that sounds good in theory, when customers are involved, you want to
make sure that you have your best foot forward. So filling up forums with
complaints is never a good thing.

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larsberg
The AIBO used a proprietary commercial operating system and required a
separate set of commercial compilers to produce valid code.

When I was working on it through a special arrangement with Sony Research, I
made a bunch of perl scripts that could munge the assembly generated from gcc
so that the assembler could generate code that worked properly on the robots,
but there were still a large number of very expensive commercial licenses
between it and being OS compatible.

I unfortunately can't go into much more detail than that, because I believe
I'm still covered by an NDA I signed back in ~1997 :-)

~~~
adriand
That's interesting, and your Perl scripts sound like the sort of thing I would
utterly fail at were I to attempt to create them. What about the hardware of
the robots though? Would all of the various interesting parts be covered by
patents, etc., and thus be unsuitable for opening up? (Sorry if my questions
tread on NDA territory - that's one long-lived NDA.)

~~~
larsberg
Not at all! It wasn't that bad -- the object files just needed to have
sections that had particular size restrictions, names, etc. Nothing too
tricky.

I don't recall the hardware being too separately encumbered. Sony Research
provided all of the early adopters with significant technical specifications
about the hardware itself, though admittedly much of it was documented in
Japanese and this is ~10 years before google translate. I remember one other
independent research group rewrote all of Sony's dynamic stability code and
was able to increase walking speed significantly, and there was a lot of that
level of information available.

------
83457
A couple months ago I was looking for database schema comparison and syncing
tools. I found a product that looked promising so I clicked over to the
product pricing page and was really confused as all of the products were
listed as $0. Turned out that it was, from what I understand, essentially a
one man software company that wasn't very profitable so after a period of time
the owner/developer, Matt Whitfield, decided to just start giving away his
products for free and open source them.

<http://www.atlantis-interactive.co.uk/blog/default.aspx>

The schema compare tool ended up doing exactly what I needed and Matt even
provided support. What was so impressive though was that the database tool
suite was becoming competitive with products from Red Gate and now they are
all free and OSS.

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blantonl
There are three reasons why organizations and people don't open source their
failed projects.

* Intellectual property issues * Pride * Pride

Don't underestimate the power of emotion, especially when it involves failure.

~~~
kwis
There's another reason: support.

There are a lot of people who believe they're entitled to support for any code
you release. Even if explicitly noted in a 72 point font that it's totally
unsupported.

~~~
trustfundbaby
I'm sure its not too hard to just have everything from that email address
forward to the trash if you're so inclined.

~~~
msbarnett
The difficulty isn't in ignoring support complaints yourself, it's in
protecting your personal or corporate brand from the corrosive effects of all
those complaints.

If someone googles your name and turns up a bunch of complaints in forums and
blogs, that's a hard first impression to overcome no matter how you try to
explain that you never promised those people anything.

------
ericb
There is a danger to open sourcing code that you won't be maintaining. Many
employers now ask for your github account. If your coding habits change over
the years, employers will look at your older, non-maintained work, and draw
conclusions. Further, if you show a large number of abandoned projects, they
may decide you "don't finish things."

Something similar bit me recently. I didn't have any of my TDD code samples
available to send on short notice, so I sent an older project that, while it
showed I could code, was not TDD, and not nearly up to my current abilities--I
think it cost me the job. If that was what was in my github account, I may not
even been asked for a recent sample. My recent work belongs to my employers,
so that's a non-starter.

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vrsmn
It would be amazing if Palm Inc. released the BeOS source code, after a few
years without using it.

I think it could have changed the history of personal computers OS.
Fortunately we still have Haiku OS, but it will take some time until get
stable.

~~~
jdub
Sadly, BeOS was stuck on the "Palm Source" side, which was hoovered up by
ACCESS, most likely never to be seen again. They were even jerky enough to
poke and prod at Haiku over IP issues.

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jrwoodruff
Just because the product was 'killed' certainly doesn't mean the technology or
knowledge associated with the technology disappear. I'm sure IBM has put the
software used for Deep Blue to use as a service in decision making software or
other products, and that Sony has probably assimilated code from AIBO and QRIO
into other products as well.

------
eekfuh
I did that late last year with one of my WebOS apps. I don't have the time to
keep it updated and the rev went from ~$700 a month to ~$200 so I MIT'd it on
GitHub then announced it on twitter. So far a few forks, but no one has really
taken and ran with it.

------
jasongullickson
I did this when Apple rejected my iPad application "DashApp"
<https://github.com/jjg/DashApp> and I plan to do the same with any other
commercial product that I produce once they can no longer contribute in a
commercial way.

I can see how this is harder for big and complicated companies but I think
this can be overcome through planning and cultural change. I think the net
effect for both builders and consumers (and society in general) would be
positive.

Perhaps it could be made part of patent/copyright law itself, therefore
providing a level playing field and reducing the fear of losing competitive
advantage.

------
parenthesis
The company discontinuing a software product may want people to buy another if
its products instead, which they might not buy if they could get a community
supported version of the killed product for free instead. E.g. Adobe ended up
owning both GoLive and Dreamweaver, and killed the former. If Adobe had open
sourced GoLive, that might have reduced subsequent Dreamweaver sales.

------
bugsy
So... rather than make not enough to pay the bills, now you make nothing yet
have a giant support burden.

~~~
daleharvey
because you release something as open source does not mean you are any way
responsible for maintaining it

~~~
rick888
That won't stop people from expecting it and emailing you about it.

~~~
nitrogen
So create a filter that deletes and/or autoresponds to all inquiries to the
project's support e-mail address.

~~~
bruce511
Unfortunately "brands" don't work like that.

As Flip is owned by HP, negative Flip experiences impact on other HP
divisions. People will inevitable translate "bad Flip support" to "bad HP
support".

~~~
drdaeman
"Bad support" is when you promise some (explicitly or implicitly), but fail to
provide.

It's not "bad support", it's "no support". The same state it is now already.

Nobody would complain about lack of support if you specifically state that
there won't be any. After all, it's the dump of source code and blueprints,
not some end-user products you see in a store.

------
orblivion
But then they'll read all my embarrassing comments!

~~~
becomevocal
Ah, but we all know a bunch of those projects probably have no comments at
all. Spaghetti!

------
napierzaza
Why not?

On its surface it appears as if the company can at least get some good will
out of its loss. Assuming Open-Sourcing it will not affect their ability to
write-off the loss, you would assume it would be a simple no-brainer.

1\. Because releasing your code might expose you to lawsuits if you have used
other companies IP.

2\. Because you might have your own patents and IP in that product that you
don't want to release.

3\. Because 1 & 2 means you have to pay the money to have a lot of legal
analysis.

4\. Open sourcing n$ worth of work can make is more difficult to pick it up
later if the situation changes.

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netflask
some of my code is so bad that I would be embarrassed to release it to the
world

~~~
trustfundbaby
I went through this too ... don't let this worry you ... put it out there,
people don't care about the code as long as it works, and you might actually
get some badass come in and clean up your code for you ... for free :)

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neuroelectronic
The upside from a corporate standpoint is that this will be more technical
debt that the OSS community has to deal with, which can help you compete with
them.

~~~
jjs
That assumes that people would adopt a code dump that's net-negative in value.
More likely, they'd salvage just the good parts.

------
vipivip
Don't kill it, if open sourced there are hackers who will fix/improve where
you failed.

