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I came across an article written by Herb Caudill, CTO at DevResults. The title “The Revolution Will Not Be Open Source” got my immediate attention. I briefly met Herb during the IATI TAG 2015, held in Ottawa.

I have been involved in developing open-source software over two decades and more specifically for the last 5 years, developing open-source software in the development aid sector trying to serve transparency and accountability by making use of the international IATI XML standard.

That effort has been transposed to the data engine OIPA that normalises and serves IATI data to build interfaces — UI as Herb calls it — for international organisations around the globe. Yes, OIPA is open-source and licensed accordingly by means of an AGPL license. Some may feel it’s not really open-open source, I can meet you halfway: it sometimes feels like a dog *on* a leash.

As Managing Director at Zimmerman & Zimmerman, I have never contemplated to build anything proprietary, seeing how that simply does not fit my DNA and secondly I would feel some shame offering closed and proprietary systems that are mainly produced with public money.

Should that reasoning alone be sufficient to make software open-source? Probably not. Should that reasoning alone be sufficient to make it proprietary? Definitely not.

Besides the reasoning that any work produced with the help of public money should actually shun becoming proprietary, there are other reasons to license software open-source: security, quality, peer-review, freedom, Interoperability and costs too name a few. I could go on, but I guess you get the point.

So, back to Herb’s article, the first reason I started writing this post/response in the first place. The article make strange assumptions on day to day software being used by your dentist that are solely proprietary, which is nonsense. Herb is trying to make a case for DevResults actually being proprietary, because “it’s kinda expensive”. Yeah right, how could that be an elementary argument for making it proprietary, it would seem the businessmodel around DevResults can only operate on the presumption clients and partners need to pay for its license. Which is fine, I guess. But making the case for proprietary software by trashing open source software is ridiculous. Sorry Herb, there is no way around it. The argument does not stick.

Now sit back, close your eyes, relax and think about the following:

“Imagine a world where all open-source software would cease to operate right now.”

You get the point: your screen would go blank, internet would shut down, airplanes would fall from the sky, basically the end of the world. The proprietary gang would get in and start bullying everyone with their licensing models. Prices would skyrocket.

Well, its just a non fiction scenario and obviously won’t happen. But as long as we find ourselves confronted with ‘demeaning’ posts with pretentious titles filled with bad assumptions and future forecasts “The ICT4D revolution will not be open source” should therefore not be taken lightly: they are a forebode of massaging that “proprietary software is good, cause its expensive” message, something this world must do without. There are simply too many good people building wonderful open-source tools to even contemplate the opposite.

As for DevResults businessmodel: I have no idea how it works. I would however be interested to learn more about it and why its so hung up being proprietary as oppossed to open source.

Perhaps its clientele started wondering why they are being charged with licensing fees, rather than an operational services fees.

@Herb: we should really catch up and I hope to persuade you otherwise and join the open-source “revolution”. Trust me, its better for everyone.