Open Source Increasingly Replaced By Open APIs 224
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the playing-with-somebody-else's-toys dept.
from the playing-with-somebody-else's-toys dept.
SharkLaser writes "Open APIs might be the way to get rich in 2012. At the same time, it can also be what ultimately hinders open source development. A wide range of companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter, are building open APIs for other developers to use and build upon. Open APIs can be used by companies to grow their user base and introduce new, interesting features on top of their platform. Independent developers can utilize established services and their users to grow their own business. A perfect example of open APIs is Facebook Apps, which lets individuals and companies develop applications and games on top of the Facebook platform. Developers gain access to Facebook's established user base and Facebook gains new features and fun stuff to do on their site. Instead of open sourcing their platforms, companies like Google and Facebook are providing Open APIs and data access to outside developers. The actual source code for the services sits safely inside the company's network and never needs to be disclosed to outside parties, thus hindering open source development."
No way (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Open API? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a lot of point. Few online services can handle the level of activity Facebook handles every minute. It's not just about tossing more hardware at it either; it's not easy to make such a scalable system.
Open sourcing Facebook gives developers access to the custom code that allows them to handle all this, making it easier for small startups to jump into large service hosting solutions.
Also, not sure what the summary means with the last statement. It is my understanding that Facebook HAS open sourced their server code (very likely as a jab at Google who, despite being "Open" would never dare give any competitor access to their scaling server code.)
Re:I see no problem here. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that web app APIs can change at a moment's notice, without any announcement, and all the developers who depended on the API will be left out in the cold.
While that's true, if they do it too often and to too great an extent they'll lose developers to some other platform; if the apps start breaking without replacement, users will start to leave for other sites. Facebook (as big as it is) is nothing without its userbase.
Re:No way (Score:2, Interesting)
A Serious Question (Score:4, Interesting)
As a software developer this is a serious question for me and one that I've never gotten a satisfactory answer to.
How can I feed my family or control my own destiny if the software is all I have? Am I not dependent on the benevolence of a corporation or university to fund my project or work as a clerk or something during the day and code at night? I know Open Source companies can make money on services or hardware but I'm not an Open Source company, I'm just one guy trying to make a living. I don't have the capital to produce hardware and my software is designed for end-users who don't require much in the way of services.
If I were working on some glue code that might be useful to other developers and where I would benefit from their contributions I certainly would open source it (and I do contribute patches to some of the open source projects I use). I also get the idea of an open source OS or other large projects because so many companies depend on it there are enough "payers" in the pool to fund a lot of full-time devs - more than enough to cover the people who make millions off it (eg: Linux) yet contribute nothing back... plus with millions of users you have enough part-time tinkerers that you also get significant contributions from them.
But I just don't see why I would open source my apps. No company in the world can pay my salary based on them, yet there are thousands of users willing to pay $0.99 for them, enough that I can keep my hardware up to date and have a little bit left over to go out to eat every month (certainly not enough to quit my job). But there aren't enough users that there would be a lot of programmers willing to contribute.
If I open-sourced them, I'd be in the same position as Google with Android - funding the majority of it but having Chinese search companies replacing all my services with their own and selling it while simultaneously cutting off part of the revenue stream I use to fund further development.
I like open source, I use it, I contribute to it, but I have absolutely no desire to follow the Stallman "everything must be open source!" philosophy. I'm interested to hear other dev's thoughts on this stuff...