Jaron Lanier’s Long Live Closed-Source Software! is well worth a read if for no other reason than it challenges a number of assumptions about the value of open source software. For the same reason, it should be read in conjunction with the numerous critiques that have followed.

Lanier’s argument is that the open source movement has largely failed to produce anything innovative, but has instead just produced newer and less expensive versions of existing software.

“Open wisdom-of-crowds software movements have become influential, but they haven’t promoted the kind of radical creativity I love most in computer science. If anything, they’ve been hindrances. Some of the youngest, brightest minds have been trapped in a 1970s intellectual framework because they are hypnotized into accepting old software designs as if they were facts of nature. Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique, shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it,” he writes.

Glyn Moody responds with a list of open source innovations “The basic TCP/IP protocols? All open. The Web’s HTTP and HTML? All open. BIND? Open source. Sendmail? Open source. Apache? Open source. Firefox, initiated in part because Microsoft had not done anything innovative with Internet Explorer 6 for half a decade? Open source.”

Meanwhile, LXer takes issue with Lanier’s choice of the iPhone as the example of the sort of innovation he is looking for. “First, there’s the question: ‘Why did the Linux community didn’t come up with the iPhone?’ That one is simple to answer: The Linux-community doesn’t make hardware. We also have to note, the iPhone isn’t that innovative at all, only its marketing is. Apple is good at trendwatching and marketing, not at research or radical innovation.”

The main issue I have with Lanier’s article is that it assumes that open source is the exclusive preserve of a community of individuals. “The open-source software community is simply too turbulent to focus its tests and maintain its criteria over an extended duration, and that is a prerequisite to evolving highly original things. There is only one iPhone, but there are hundreds of Linux releases,” he writes.

This ignores the fact that a significant proportion of open source software development is in fact done by corporations, or employees of corporations, through structured processes designed to fulfill a desired communal goal. While a lot of open source development has been focused in the past on providing alternatives for existing software, I would argue that corporations will increasingly turn to open source as a development model specifically because it enables innovation.

As Savio Rodrigues writes: “When a vendor has a truly innovative product, they do whatever they can to increase their return on investment. In most cases, this means that the source code isn’t released. The conclusion is not that OSS projects don’t innovate. Rather, that projects that are truly innovative are developed by vendors whose benefactors (VCs or Wall St.) want the biggest bang for their investment.”

Reducing development costs is a way of improving return on investment, and open source has distinct advantages lowering commodity development costs, while enabling developers to focus on innovative development (this is the innovation opportunity I have mentioned before).

By collaborating on open source development of commodity components, corporations are able to reduce their costs while focusing their attention on innovative value-added services (sticking with the mobile phone market as an example, witness the Open Handset Alliance, or the LiMo Foundation).

It could be argued that the above example reinforces Lanier’s point that true innovation happens behind closed doors. I would respond that the role of open source as - at the very least - an enabler for innovation, should not be overlooked. I would also comment that the commercial use of open source development methods is still very much in its infancy.

As Bruce Byfield points out: “Probably the most important innovation in free software is the concept itself — the idea that you benefit from giving knowledge away, rather than hoarding it… The implications are so far-ranging that, after a decade of free software-based business, we’re still working them out — and that, more than anything else, shows just how innovative free software is by definition.”