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Feature: Free Software
The true cost of software ownership
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CommentsThere is no ownership involved in proprietary commercial software, because all users are mere licensees. Users are at best tenants, and the most correct and appropriate term should be "total cost of usage" (TCU), since commercial proprietary software is now often sold on leases.
When we talk about commercial free or open source software and try to determine the cost associated with its use or whether there is a TCO, we find that we have something fundamentally different from proprietary software. Free software often comes with a license, like the GNU General Public License, or others, that grants rights that feel a lot more like ownership. This is not to say that "ownership" as such actually exists in software, whether free or proprietary; this is not supported in fact or in law due to the intangible nature of software. But setting aside the question of whether software has owners in the conventional property sense, users of commercial free and open source software do receive an owner-like interest in the software that they are free to exercise, and so the term "total cost of ownership" (TCO) may potentially be applied.
To understand why software cannot be owned, except through artificial agreements and contracts that restrict software to make it conform to unnatural constraints, one need only consider the nature of intangible goods. Intangible property is non-rivalrous. While I can look out the window and see that I have that '67 Chevy on cinder blocks rusting on my front lawn, I can be sure that nobody else does. If somebody else did choose to take it overnight while I was asleep, bless their soul, it would be gone, and I would be denied the ability to use it.
In the case of software or ideas, the fact that a program or idea exists in my home does not prevent the very same program or idea from existing or being used simultaneously elsewhere. Even if the software or idea is borrowed, it does not mean that it vanishes from my machine or mind, never to be used by me again.
In place of property ownership we have the concept of copyright for these intangible works, which puts some temporary artificial constraints and offers specific privileges to an "original author" when expressed in a specific form. Copyrights are designed to promote the long-term public good of having more original works created and published by offering temporary monopolies in their use as an incentive to publish.
Richard Stallman likes to say "software has no owners" for a number of reasons. However, what free software licenses like the GNU General Public License do is permit many of the privileges of copyright to be shared with everyone. This is somewhat like the idea of sharing ownership, and is certainly far more natural, given the nature of software, than some of the artificial constraints found through copyright law today. Hence, this shared privilege of copyright we can substitute as comparable to ownership and hence have basis to say TCO may indeed exist for Free Software.
How do we compare the TCO of Free Software with the TCU of proprietary software? Well, we can look at costs, such as license fees and training and support costs. Proprietary software vendors often claim that license costs represent only 20% of the total cost of usage when considering these other factors. However, as we will shortly see, TCU for proprietary software is very different from TCO in free software.
The first problem one finds with TCU is that it is a continually re-occurring cost. Microsoft loves to claim that studies show that the TCU of its proprietary software, often over a period of three years, is not much different than the TCO of free software over the same period. However, there is a reason they often choose a three-year period for their studies; they license the use of their software under enterprise agreements for three-year periods, and in the fourth year, users have to pay for additional time. With Free Software, there is no re-occurring cost to license or use the software.
However, the TCU for Microsoft products are even worse than this over the long term. Microsoft's enterprise agreements require and force licensees to purchase and use the latest release of its software, and restrict the ability for licensees to acquire old releases -- a policy known as "forced upgrades." This means that every few years, their customers' users and support staff have to be retrained to use new and different products at the vendor's whim. This means that customers not only have to perpetually purchase new software licenses, but also all of the training and support, over and over again.
Customers may also find that with new software, existing custom and in-house software may no longer function or perform as well as before, since old APIs are being emulated, hence this in-house software may also need to be rewritten or at least updated, adding additional cost. Hence, the annual TCU of proprietary software under renewable enterprise agreements never significantly diminishes over time.
By contrast, with Free Software, nobody forces someone to change the software they have deployed. One can choose to upgrade free software, in part or in whole, at any time they desire, or choose never to do so. When working systems are left in place, the cost of supporting them goes down over time, hence the annual TCO of Free Software actually decreases over time.
When I was involved in federal contracting, we often computed TCO for contracts over a period, not of three years as in many of Microsoft's published case studies, but rather over 10 years, which was a more realistic perspective for true enterprise costs over time. Over a 10-year period, what we often found was that the TCO of Free Software, even computed through standard means, was about 1/2 to 1/3rd the TCU of comparable proprietary software. That was before we looked at all the additional liabilities that proprietary software burdens the enterprise customer with, such as losing the right to resale, the possible unexpected costs of license audits, and many other risks too numerous to enumerate here.
Free Software TCO is a lot more like true ownership, where once you purchase something, you do not have to purchase it again and again, and once it is payed off, it too can serve you very well for many years -- until it is ready for the cinder blocks.
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on The true cost of software ownershipNote: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
This does lead to the possibility that there is no such thing as a Free(dom) enterprise platform, but that should do as much to encourage the formation of projects to address the problem rather than declare the theoretical TCO/U's invalid.
just my thoughts
<A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_3.html?country=United+States&" TITLE="redhat.com">http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_3.html?cou<nobr>n<wbr></nobr> try=United+States&</a redhat.com>
From the paragraph it sounds like the biggest concern is with trademarks. Red Hat does not want anyone to redistribute the AS product as a Red Hat distro. Sounds fair enough as someone could be confused as to what it is they are actually acquiring and may assume that Red Hat service comes with the product when it actually does not if its not acquired through Red Hat.
Now the tricky part is that redistribution and resale will be dependant upon the individual copyrights of each software package in the distribution. The license is not clear on this which can be expected. Most of the software in AS is GPLed and Red Hat cannot change that fact. But it would take some research to see what type of license is placed on Red Hat copyrighted software that is included in the distribution.
So reading the license it sounds like resale and redistribution is possible, you are only prohibited from using Red Hat's trademark and you would need make sure there are no Red Hat copyrighted packages included that do not have a GPL type license.
The item that concerned me in the license was the audit provision. I understand why this is placed in a license for proprietary licensed software, but why is it needed for a company whose revenue stream is based off service? If I were interested in resale and redistribution of RHL AS the audit provision would have me very concerned and I would take a very close look at the licensing of the Red Hat copyrighted software in the AS distro.
But here is some assurrance that Red Hat is not the MS wannabe trying to hijack linux. You can acquire the RHL AS source ISOs directly from Red Hat for free. Sounds like free enterprise software to me.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;)
<A HREF="ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/2.1AS/en/os/" TITLE="redhat.com">
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/<nobr>2<wbr></nobr> .1AS/en/os/</a redhat.com>
burnin
Re:Resale / redistribution possible, sort of
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on January 19, 2004 10:10 AMAnd as big business as it sounds, Red Hat has to protect itself against resource draining holes such as this. So I don't blame them there.
Where I use to work in an accounting office, we had provisions of software audits, and if our contractor came to see if we were compliant, it wasn't that big of deal. Of course there were only 300 or so machines, we weren't that large.
But if you're ligit, and you plan for it, it's not that bad. And how many brownie points do you score with a company if they come in all the sudden, audit you without you having a chance to hide anything, and they walk away having found you in full compliance? They would be obligated in the future, and happily so, to swing deals and prestige contracts your way.
Maybe I'm just being the devils advocate, but I'm not all that suprised or offended by it at all. JMO...
To understand why software cannot be owned, except through artificial agreements and contracts that restrict software to make it conform to unnatural constraints, one need only consider the nature of intangible goods. Intangible property is non-rivalrous. While I can look out the window and see that I have that '67 Chevy on cinder blocks rusting on my front lawn, I can be sure that nobody else does. If somebody else did choose to take it overnight while I was asleep, bless their soul, it would be gone, and I would be denied the ability to use it.
Bad example.
Live in my city? Code 55 abandoned vehicle. You don't have the right to own that car because of 1. the condition it is in (abandoned)
2. not registered
3. location
Not located in my city? Virtually all states, cities, towns, municipalities have regulations on the books that will fine you until you get rid of the car, will take the car from you, and may charge you criminally (misdemeanors from what I've seen) depending on how the regulation is written.
So you actually have the right of ownership on that car for a limited time. Until the local enforcement agency catches up with you or a neighbor complains. Limited time. Sound familiar?
1) Are on public property, i.e., parked on the side of the road, or on someone else's property, such as a mall parking lot. [Leave *your* stuff on someone else's property, they have the right to remove it.]
2) Aren't used. Either truly abandoned or are not registered. [And you can simply get the registration for it or put it in long term storage to get out of this.]
3) In bad condition. [Leave an obvious junker sitting out, and people will assume you don't want it, but they won't take it from your property unless it is a nuisance in some way.]
Abandoned car statutes normally (there are probably exceptions, but I'm not going to bother getting on Westlaw to look up all the city statutes) not applied to cars sitting in someone's private property.
However, there may be eyesore laws or attractive nuisance laws that might affect a junked car on someone's property. But that's a little different and in those cases, the owner can still keep the car provided it is either out of sight or housed in a garage. But these statutes aren't about how old something is, but about the way it affects others. A brand new Cadillac could be an eyesore if you uglied it up even more.
If the statutes were the way you describe:
So you actually have the right of ownership on that car for a limited time.
There would be no market for antique cars, like the Model T parades you sometimes see in the summer.
Knock yourself out looking at Westlaw, Findlaw, Groklaw, but it won't change what exists.
In my location, and in other locations, if you have an unregistered car on your front lawn sitting on cement blocks, that car is abandoned as defined by the law, no matter how much the author is in love with the car. Exactly as the author describes. And it doesn't have to be a front lawn. It can be a rear yard or side yard as long as it is visible from the street or from a neighbor's house.
If the unregistered car is sitting on a public street, and not moved for 24 hours, that's illegal "storage", not abandonment. And I've heard of situations in quite a few localities on this as well.
Your second example states either register the car sitting on blocks, or put it in storage. No, and depends. Registering a car also requires a safety inspection in all 50 states. And an emissions inspection in some of the states or localities. If it is sitting on blocks, it is unlikely to be running, therefore will fail emissions. And it will fail anyway if you don't get the car to the inspection station. And safety? Forget it. As for storage, guess what? Try that in California. Don't know if it still applies to the entire state like it used to, but in certain localties it still applies. You can't have an unregistered car, no exceptions. You may succeed in towing it into the state without getting caught, but if someone sees it and reports it, you have a choice of paying a fine and registering it, or removing it from the state.
iirc, they passed the law originally to make sure that every car in the state passed emission requirements, and that no one imported (and kept) a polluting car in the state for any reason. There was quite a bit of discussion at the time that this was targeted directly at weekend non-professional racers that brought their cars to the racetrack and legally raced (among others). It was an all-out assault on polluting cars during the dark days.
Antiques are dealt with differently in certain situations, and must still be registered and road worthy in others.
Condition doesn't matter when it comes to deciding if it is abandoned. In most cases, if it is on the road with plates removed by owner/no registration, it is by law defined as abandoned. If it is stolen and the plates are removed, and there is no owner or insurance claim, it is abandoned. If the owner removed the plates and left it on the street, it is not just abandoned, but becomes the property of the locality.
If the car is stored on a front lawn that is not normally considered a parking spot, that violates a different law. Building department.
If the car is stored in a driveway instead of a garage, the car is in violation of fire codes because it is blocking access to the building by the fire department in case of a fire.
If that Model T is sitting on blocks on a front lawn in many localities, regardless of how valuable or collectible it is, if it isn't registered, the property owner will be hit with fines. It needs to be garaged or put in storage, and in some localities will be exempted (nearly always still requiring storage when not in "use") from abandonment, including California.
I don't believe I qualified the age of the car relative to abandonment, but was talking specifically about the situation of the author's 67 Chevy. The same laws would apply to a brand new Ferrari sitting out on cement blocks on someone's front lawn.
The reason why copying cars is not a problem is that the process of copying is so difficult/expensive. But that may be different in a few centuries, when you have 3D plotters or other techniques that allow you to create physical things.
The unsolved problem is how to finance the *design*. Propertary software is a solution, but unfortunately imposes a lot of restrictions on the use of the software. Free software does not have a good model for many software categories yet. The problem is that those who profit from the software should pay for it. That works fine in some cases, like porting a compiler to a new CPU architecture. The CPU manufacturer pays for it, because they profit from the port. But what about a word processor? If a software product will be used by millions of people, how can you get them to pay for the development without the restrictions of proprietary software? This is the problem that needs to be solved.
copy the car, except for the "Chevy"
badges, and the badges for the model
of the car. (In other words, he
wouldn't be able to make "Chevy
Impalas", because of Trademarks.)
Hm, he actually might be able to use
the original names, too, as long as
he was giving the cars away, and not
doing it for profit.
Patents are not for forever. (Unlike
copyrights.)
Sometimes, it helps reading your laws and not just following the 'advice' from Newsforge or Slashdot...
I think you are correct that it's likely true that most software license agreements are agreements of adhesion, as they are specifically created under contract law because copyright includes fair use, and because other commercial law such as the right of resale, would normally protect the consumer from such things. Hence, explicitly to override these real rights, a contract is used as condition of sale where these rights are explicitly disclaimed as a condition of sale, and this is how most proprietary software licensing works today. However, with things like the DMCA, it may be possible to find other means within these new laws to deny consumers basic rights without need to resort to (judicially re-interpretable and localized) contract law.
If this is something an Internet-centric personality as Stallman "likes to say", don't you think it would end up indexed?
Did you just made that up? Why?
<A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html" TITLE="gnu.org">Why Software Should Not Have Owners</a gnu.org>.
Wonderfull grammer btw
Stallman is an expert manipulator of public opinion. This is not necessarily a bad thing; most successful politicians and corporate CEOs are the same. But people have to learn to think for themselves and not accept his arguments as gospel, because many of them are as fallacious as the ones he criticizes. Even the name "free software" is highly misleading, because companies that incorporate so-called free software in their own products are advised to have it vetted thoroughly by intellectual property attorneys (whose time doesn't come cheap, and even then their answer is usually ambiguous), lest they risk lawsuits from Stallman's nonprofit organization. Shouldn't "free software" refer to software that has been released into the public domain with no restrictions?
The second question is how do we pay for software development, who gets paid, and how much do they get paid. I personally think all of this argument boils down to this. For intellectual goods like software that's the only thing that matters. That's why the idea of "normal" ownership is far more streatched for these types of goods than for tangible assets that can't be shared.
I personally think that the whole ownership model for intellecutal goods is poor -- it's counter to value -- but I don't have a better alternative exactly... unless the Open Source process succeeds of course.
Rob
Good stuff, but an important correction:
proprietary software is software which is copyrighted work of the author(s). This includes both free and non-free software. Only public domain software isn't legally owned by the authors.
commercial software is software which is sold for profit. This also includes both free and non-free software.
Please don't use the above terms in such an sloppy way. I know what you mean, but
please be clear, because some people don't know
what you mean.
Whether or not software qualifies free depends on these four freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Este texto foi traduzido para o pt_BR em <A HREF="http://www.propus.com.br/news/15" TITLE="propus.com.br">Propus</a propus.com.br>
Audits not exclusive to proprietary
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on January 18, 2004 12:06 AMI haven't looked at the license for RHat Advanced Server lately, but since RHat AS bundles support with it and since it is a rather restrictive license, I would carefully read it to make sure there is a "right to resale". Also, as we are talking about enterprise software, be aware that unexpected audit costs also exist in RHat AS. That license is similar to the proprietary licenses in the kick in the door style audits. It wouldn't suprise me to see SUSE/Novell/IBM adopt the same terms in their licensing. The same doesn't currently exist for Fedora, but I doubt that RHat would be recommending Fedora for the clients. They either already have or will have an enterprise client solution they will be pushing to AS customers. Whether they make it mandatory or not for AS customers (or can make it) I can't tell you.
For those businesses using RHat AS for their servers, and Fedora or some other Gnu/Linux distro that comes with a more traditional free license, the audit costs will be easier and cheaper to deal with because they only need to audit their servers as long as the client systems remain locked down, and they aren't using other proprietary applications running on the OS that aren't also subject to the same style audits.
Number of years before paying for licensing again is crucial to tco/tcu studies, as this is how the proprietary world and "analysts" cook the numbers. Throwing in hardware upgrade costs as is often required in proprietary solutions and less often required in free software solutions would again more accurately move the numbers in favor of free software. But then how to cook the numbers? What "analyst" or "consultant" would dare show a true tco/tcu study that took these factors into account, risking upsetting the clients that pay for their studies and surveys? While they may say that such things don't happen, or that they are insulated from who <A HREF="http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=15800394" TITLE="informationweek.com">owns their firm</a informationweek.com>, it is very easy for their customers to decide to purchase one or two less reports or surveys this year, and throw a bit more business to a competitor for a while. Considering the number of reports and surveys they pay for yearly, it won't show up due to variations over a long period of time, but in the end they still will have sold fewer reports or surveys. And they are already aware that reports and surveys favorable to their customers sell far better than those their customers would rather not see.
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