Last week we referenced the argument that open source may only be optimal for modular systems, and not for wholistic, systemic, integral innovation (where the parts are too dependent on the whole).

Here’s an older argument, expressed by Andrew Morton in 2004, that broadly speaking, open source only works for legacy systems, which would be an argument that it is not very innovative.

Reactions would be very welcome.

Andrew Morton:

“It’s interesting to note that the most important and successful open source products implement what one could describe as “legacy infrastructure”.

Let’s look at those two words:

Legacy:

– These products are implementing something which has been done many times before: operating system kernels, runtime software libraries, window managers, http servers and their variously-tiered tools, mail servers, various forms of file server, image manipulation programs, programming language compilers and interpreters, word processors, spreadsheets, database management, etc.

Many of the above are thirty or more year-old technology. Legacy stuff which everyone knows how to implement. All the intellectual property value has been wrung out of these technologies years ago and anyone who ships such products commercially is, to a large extent, providing to their customers a low-margin maintenance and support function.

Why did I describe it as “infrastructure”?

– Many of these successful open source products are implementing functions which other, higher-level software builds upon. The operating system, the libraries, the low-level network servers, the database tools, etc.

All of these provide basic infrastructure which will sit underneath non-open-source software products which are developed and marketed in the conventional commercial manner. ISV’s are concentrating their investment and their innovation on higher-level customer-facing products while open source provides the legacy backend of the software stack.

– So the term “legacy infrastructure” places successful open source software into its commercial, historical and IT engineering context.

The rule is not universally true, of course. There are some open source products which are indeed state-of-the-art with research in their fields and which are competitive with commercial products. Examples of this would include projects such as valgrind (a form of software debugging tool) and the Ogg Vorbis project, which continues to deliver world-class media streaming codecs.

But such projects are the exception in the open-source world: frankly, if an open-source team is working well together, developing and delivering leading-edge software which others find valuable then that team should go and form a company and take a shot at getting rich with it — this is not the space where open source licensing makes sense.”

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