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Gartner Group Debunking Open Source Myths
6j3net sent us a report from the Gartner Group that attempts to debunk Open Source Myths. It looks like they got things pretty much right. It looks as if this might be a great url to send the bossman when he asks questions.
Lets face it, there are lots of management types out there who don't read/understand/etc places like /. and so on. They fear OSS because of all these myths. Now someone "respected" by many has posted a report saying that OSS should be reassessed, etc.
:)
Hell, irrespective of whether Gartner are paid mouthpieces for big-name companies or not, this kind of report can only help. All that was said is dead-obvious to us, but it's not to people who haven't been a part of the scene. This gives OSS a bit more of a legit status.
The thing to now be aware of is that this kind of report may very well lead to lots more "newbies" coming into the OSS world, from both the IT user/support side and the development side ("Carl, go check out OSS and see how it can help us sell more of product X"
It is now the responsibility of those who have said "Isn't this report kinda old-news & obvious" to ensure that the newbies don't go down the wrong path. Ensure that they are guided to reputable companies & examples. Help them avoid the pitfalls of the OSS world.
Gartner are opening the gates. It's up to the rest of us to ensure that OSS doesn't get a bad name as the "clueless hoards" crash the party and start milling aimlessly about.
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
They write two pieces. One praising OSS and another bashing it. Then they wait to see how the winds change. A year ago, OSS was just a fad. Now, hey - we knew you'd make it all along. Let us be friends, eh?
I am a GartnerGroup analyst. In particular, I'm one of the GG analysts's who has covered OSS and Linux for quite some time. Consequently it should be a surprise that I am also an avid visitor to slashdot.
In lives before GG I was a technical architect and developer every bit down in the trenches as the typical slashdot reader and probably more than most.
I'm amazed at the notion that GG has been anti-Linux or OSS in anyway. In fact when you read the bulk of our research its quite bullish on OSS and Linux. Keep in mind that we've published LOTS of information of Linux and OSS; unless you're a GG client you probably haven't seen 99% of our research. Most of the comments I've read on slashdot are based entirely on ignorance or from a small snippet of published material.
I find it comical that advising our clients that Linux WON'T replace Win32 as the dominant desktop operating system in the next three years is somehow Linux bashing. I'd actually expect responses to be no sh** but more often it's the opposite.
Has Microsoft payed GartnerGroup to write Linux or OSS research? No. GartnerGroup does not write research specifically for ANY vendor. Furthermore, as any of our clients know GartnerGroup has consistently been one of Microsoft's strongest critics. Microsoft is a BIG company. Like most big companies they do some things very well and some things terribly bad. Gartner's value to our clients is an unbiased third party analysis and our Linux/OSS research IMO is an excellent example of balanced even handed view of an incredibly overhyped and radically evolving subject matter.
Are Linux and OSS overhyped? Of course they are. Every newly discovered technology trend goes through an inevitable cycle of hype and backlash as it enters mainstream IT environments.
Is there real substance under this hype? Of course there is. Gartner's charter is to help separate the wheat from the chafe. The notion that any negative position is bashing or selling out to a vendor is not only ridiculous but childish.
I thought long and hard before posting this response insofar as I'm sure it will bring inevitable flames but then again this will only prove my point. Bottom line, GartnerGroup is not the enemy, we will continue to track OSS trends, vendors, success stories (and failures) in an impartial and even handed manner. We will analyze and report on the good, bad and the ugly with regards to OSS. You'll probably like what we have to say in some cases and you'll hate it in others.
Do you have particular success stories of OSS projects in your IT organization? Do you have a specific OSS subject that you think we should be covering but aren't? I'd love to hear about them (gganalyst@hotmail.com). Do you have some asinime flame or insult to throw my way? Don't bother.
I agree with your points about OS superiority being a myth, and overall I agree with the spirit of your post. However:
In reference to your points about proprietary software having some incredible success stories, your examples are all right on the money, and I guess that's my point. Until OSS developed momentum as a business model, there wasn't much percevied value (i.e. profit, i.e. money) in either releasing your code or open sourcing it. It took OSS success stories to convince companies that had long histories in the closed source model (the only model they knew that worked) to open up.
A parallel example is open-source news. A lot of newspapers were slow to get online because they were closed-source (pay-for-core-content) and that was the business model they knew. Now look at them clamber to get online and give their information away free, and develop other revenue sources. The example is not an exact parallel, but I hope my points come through anyway:
But i think that's your point anyhow; that CS can produce good stuff too, right? But maybe now we'll see more of these CS companies open up their source as well? Or maybe not. That's a different question, and I won't extend this post with it right now.
Cold, highs in the low 20s. Expect lows in the single digits tonight, and up to 40 below with the wind chill factor. Snow tomorrow, four to eight inches.
Good words for OSS from Gartner? I don't believe it.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
You are fairly right that different OSes are good at different things. But then you turn the world upside down and concludes Linux is not nessesarily better than Windows. Here is my personal conclusion of some OSes of today: Linux (and other UNIXes or clones): Stability, networking, programming, multitasking. OS/2: Flexible GUI, multitasking, (programming?). MacOS: easy to use GUI, _easy_. BeOS: video, multitasking, programming. Windows: widely used, many applications. From this list we learns that in fact anything is better than windows for any particular application, as long as the specific user application does exist on the said platform.
And last, but not least, Open Source is better because an OSS program can not by any means trade code beauty (maintainability, functionality, robustness, generality) for UI beauty. Of course, the OSS movement still have to learn to code good UIs, too.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Actually, the TCO of ownership is a point *for* free software, in this context. If only 20% of the TCO is buying the software, it means that there still is the remaining 80% to extract from the customer, so giving away the software as a "loss leader" may make perfectly good sense.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I direct you to several stunning *proprietary* software achievements which the OSS community has yet to duplicate.
- Autocad. For that matter, any serious CAD program.
- A desktop my mom can use.
- web plugins (until recently, we had no flash!)
- Games. Quake and Loki's offerings may be cool, but they're a small subset of what the Windows world has. I'm still waiting for a Red Alert clone.
Just to name a few. On the hardware side - have you been watching the source checkins/checkouts for hardware drivers? Then you'll notice they follow a peculiar pattern - Initial Release (aka, it works, but it's slow). Revision 2 (it's buggy, but faster), and finally Revision 3 (finally get it right). The reason is that most people in the OSS community a) don't have access to debuggers to catch this stuff earlier and b) Often don't wait and properly engineer their drivers prior to implimentation. That is to say they're impatient. The result is hundreds of releases of software each day. Some people think this is because we "release early, release often" - I think it's because the programmers didn't know or didn't care enough to make it work correctly the first time and then need to go back and rewrite the code again. Now, if you listen quietly for a moment you can hear people already hammering at their keyboards crying foul. But I'm not done yet.Let's take another myth: that we're somehow superior to windows or macheads. Comeon people, this is dogmatic and fanatical in the extreme. We have an OS that does * some * things better than the others. But NO OS is superior on the basis of it's name alone.
I'd also like to point out that there are other "source" movements out there that make progress approximately on par with linux and it's related software despite the fact that it has a much, MUCH smaller developer pool to draw from: the BSDs. I'll now turn matters over to my fellow slashdotters for an explanation...
Yes.
This is just an index to lots of documents listed at the end. And these documents actually cost money to obtain (just gessing, but Gartner has to earn its living somehow).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
OSS developers do not work for nothing; an OSS project is a training and proving ground exposing young developers to large-scale collaborative development. Another reward is the accumulation of kudos -- this may be sought for its own sake or leveraged commercially, especially within organizations that follow an open-source business model (see Note 3).
This is a very perceptive, succinct write up by Gartner, and Rob got it right when he said this one would make a good executive summary.
My question is how sustainable this is. I worry just a little that OSS business model/business culture is a bubble that could burst (especially after enough IPOs and mergers etc etc). Look at Mozilla... what if Netscape programmers were suddenly reassigned to work on AOL 7 (seeing as AOL 6 is already out ;)? ATW doesn't strike me as anything less than a cold-hearted capitalist corporation bent on world domination. RH is a more encouraging example of an OSS business culture that I would expect to survive.
We can't deny that Linux has fueled a lot of the interest in OSS as a business model. If Linux ever stagnates or reaches a development plateau (gasp-shudder-perish-the-thought), and there isn't another project with it's momentum to "lead the charge", could OSS businesses fade? Or is it here to stay? (I personally feel that OSS business is more long-term profitable than closed-source, but IANAE).
If anyone has any links to research or projected growth models, I would appreciate it, particular ones with positive expectations for OSS business ;) Ethan