Anyone who has seen this site (or one of my business cards) might have seen the words “Semi-Open Source” and thought: WTF?  Well it’s time to explain – but since I will be open sourcing Morphfolia this is more of an explanation of how I came to that decision (and the reasoning behind it).

Brief aside: one of the fun things about going into business (even if it’s a part-time affair) is all the thinking, scheming, plotting, war-gaming and strategizing that gets the brain stimulated.  Its fun – it’s arguably the most immersive game out there; but in the fun lies challenge and the issue of open sourcing Morphfolia has so far been one of the most challenging.

I know some of you will think it’s a no-brainer, but like most things, what looks straight forward on the surface is more complex the closer you get.

On the one hand I want to make my system available and accessible – but only for non-commercial use.  I’ve spent a lot of time and energy on Morphfolia, and I’ve come up with some cool ideas and features – so if someone’s going to make money off that then why shouldn’t I too?

This is where I had bit of an internal struggle: trying to balance the goodness of being open without killing any chance I might have of making any money off it.  There are open-source business models out there, but they would require me to invest time I just don’t have available; providing paid support and consultancy could work but would require me to give up my day job – which isn’t a preferred option for me at the moment (I’m enjoying my day job too much), and in addition, one of the reasons I enjoy working on Morphfolia is that I know my life doesn’t depend on its success.

What is Open Source?

This might seem like another no-brainer (to the informed) but there are different interpretations of what open source is, and the first thing I can tell you about going open source is that you are well advised to identify which interpretation your going to subscribe to (and for me that’s been one of the core issues in my personal journey).

David Wheeler provides us with a typical definition of open source software:

“programs whose licenses give users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study and modify the program, and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified program (without having to pay royalties to previous developers).”

This identifies two core aspects of freedom associated with the wider open source and free software movements:

• “Free” as in liberty (you can do what you want)
• “Free” as in beer (there is no direct financial cost to obtain the software)

I’m happy with that in a broad sense, but therein lies the problem: whilst I want to make my programs available, for no cost, to people such as myself I’m not in favour of giving it away to commercial organisations – if you’re going to make money from my work then I think it’s only fair I get some as well.

On a related note, I was listening to Stephen Fry last night – podcast from the iTunes Live Festival.  He spoke about the advent of copy write and its relevance to music piracy and so on.  Stephen is of course a great writer and presenter – so it’s fun to listen too, although one could possibly question how he rationalises his pro-open source and liberal position regarding music downloading with his use of Apples iTunes (which is, of course, the same Apple that is having the odd difficultly with the US government regarding “arbitrary and possibly anti-competitive restrictions”).  But Stephens not on trial here and I’d like to think we’re all grown-up enough to see past that.

But we are at risk of getting side-tracked.

Further proof of the complexities is offer by gnu.org (the GNU operating system): 

“However, not all of the users and developers of free software agreed with the goals of the free software movement. In 1998, a part of the free software community splintered off and began campaigning in the name of “open source.” The term was originally proposed to avoid a possible misunderstanding of the term “free software,” but it soon became associated with philosophical views quite different from those of the free software movement.”

So hopefully you’ll be starting to see that in going open source you have two axes of freedom to consider, as well as a “charged” social context, and then you’ve got to figure out where you stand.

Motivation

Why go open source in the first place?  The core reasons for me:

• It’s easier for others to use, modify, integrate and debug if they have the source code (so that’s one if favour of free as in freedom).
• People are more likely to “give it a go” if it’s free (as in financial cost).

The idea of balancing openness (to support the first point) and closed (to support commercial interests) led me to look into mechanisms that allowed me to make parts of Morphfolia open and other parts closed, combined with a way of locking the system with a registration key so that all ‘production’ use could be seen and the appropriate fee imposed on commercial use. 

This is an article in itself, and I promise to go into that another time as it is an interesting topic.

If I’m honest, one of the biggest reasons why I’m dropping the lock is fear.
Imposing any sort of lock on the system that impacted on legitimate ‘free’ users (in any way) would be about as popular as Barry Manilow at a teenage party (or possibly any party, or a mall, or anywhere).  I see my core market (if you want to use that sort of language) as being people like myself, so: treat others how you would have them treat you.

I didn’t want to cripple a free version with any sort of time limits.  Content management systems and frameworks aren’t the sort of thing you can do justice to in 30 days, and according to Murphy’s Law any time restriction I put on it would be wrong; also I just don’t like the idea of doing that.

The other obvious approach would be to divide the functionality of the system into a free / “lite” version and a paid for “serious” version, but that increases the complexity all-round (everything from design and maintenance to management and would probably just be an additional barrier to adoption).

Fears

So why did I almost not go open source (apart from the above)?  If we accept that my main market is people like me, then my main fears are probably shared by my market – to a point.

Will people trash me?  Will they hate my code?  I don’t really want to provide another theatre for flame wars (styles of indenting, etc, etc, etc).  Time: I don’t think I have the time to support a fully-fledged community (I’m not online every night), does this mean people will get fed up and take my project with them?

If I look at my vision for Morphfolia there isn’t anything that is a blindingly obvious driver to go open source; about the closet you get is ‘personal development’ (in technical and business spheres).

So will going open source be something that soaks up a lot of time whilst not being strategically aligned, or, have I missed a core strategic goal?

For me the answer is the process, which is agile; let’s just jump – not a completely blind jump into the un-known, though.  I’ve had a look at things, I’ve adjusted my path as I’ve gone, I’ve war-gamed in my head, I’m as ready as I’ll every be – so let’s jump.