Whats An (Open Source) Community Worth?
Pligg is for sale on sedo.com of all places. I didnt even know you can actually “sell” an open source project/community. What if Linus decides one day to “sell” Linux? Can he even do that? This selling of an open source project is NOT a good trend to start but I do understand that someone (who?) deserves to make some money from the value generated from Pligg. Maybe there should be otherways to get to the same objective?
Before I jump in, a little background on pligg. Pligg is a popular open source software project that allows anyone to create a clone to Digg. John Battelle’s SearchMob is an good example of what Pligg is capable of. Its highly popular and I would estimate that over 5K websites run a version of Pligg.
Sedo seems like such a wierd place to sale a website/company/project too but, if I think about it; the main asset for sale is really just the domain & its associated website more than anything else. According to the listing, the following assets are for sell
- Domain name, Pligg.com
- Website sofware on Pligg.com (not the source code)
- Users on Pligg.com (around 10K)
- Admin Account to Pligg’s Sourceforge project area
Whats not for sale
- The source code
- The “trademark” Pligg
Which begs the following questions
- Who is actually selling these “Pligg related assets” ?
- Whose pocket is this going to?
- Does the contributors to the open source project deserve to get some of that cash?
- How about the contributors to the forum?
- Can “Pligg” the non-profit org sue the “owner” of Pligg.com for trademark infringement in the future?
- Does the new “owner” get to keep the donations coming to the site? (see the donate link on Pligg.com)
- Will the contributing community sit idlely while this new “owner” mucks with Pligg.com and try to make an extra buck? (more ads? consulting services? commercial version?)
- Will there be a showdown between those that made off with the dough and those who did not?
- Is this even “legally” possible? (ie sure those assets are “sellable” but can it be debundled? )
- How is this different than some user from Digg selling his or her account?
- Can the community block the sell? Esp with regard to the source forge account? (just like Digg can block a sell of an username)
In the end, the bigger question is. . . what is an open source community really worth? Who (which individual) has the right to sell an opensource community? If this becomes popular, one day, will Linus sell his “position” as the ultimate arbiter of Linux releases to Novell? Why wouldn’t someone like MSFT go out and just “buy up” an open source community to either control it or to kill it through random muddling thus forcing the code and community to splinter and fork?
I don’t have the answers, but I don’t see this ending up well if this trend moves beyond Pligg (which in the grand theme of things, is not that important of a open source project).
P.S. Lets not forget Source Forge is run by a for profit company while lots of “open source” projects are really controlled by private enterprises. So maybe this is not that out of the norm?
Lots of questions, but no answers . . .
Certainly seems a strange offering, to me. So they are selling their product’s website? But not the product?
Confusing even to me. But will be interesting to see where this one goes - many thanks for the fantastic write up, subscribed!
Comment by Matt Harwood — August 13, 2007 @ 10:21 am
I guess Pligg chooses NOT to answer those questions either by diverting or by being rude or by just avoiding ! May be you can ask better ! http://forums.pligg.com/pligg-news/8177-official-statement-regarding-pligg-com-negotiations-3.html#post38575
Comment by Herecomer — August 27, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
UNABLE TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS and being very angray at the idea to donate some money to meneame or php.net they have closed the thread !!
Comment by Herecomer — August 30, 2007 @ 2:57 am
Herecomer,
I surprised at their tone. . . I’m an outsider to the community so I try not to get involved. . . but I do think they have an moral obligation to the people that helped the project become successful. Their ownership is no more or less than the rest of the community just because they happen to have the password to the domain registrar and the sourceforge account!
Comment by will — August 31, 2007 @ 2:32 pm
They have actually locked 3 or more threads to silence any voice ! They use maze of words and reasons to bypass real questions. Very shocking indeed when actually eveything belongs to http://meneame.com/
Comment by sandra — September 1, 2007 @ 8:23 pm