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Bob Young Blasts Recent Anti-Open Source Article
buzzcutbuddha writes "Bob Young from Red Hat issued his rebuttal to John Taschek's Anti-Open Source Article on ZDNet. Well written and articulate, and to the point ... He shoots, he scores!" Check out the original article blasting the open-source idea. Good rebuttal, Bob.
Though I would strongly suggest against using Windows if that source code was ever released. The problems with MS are bad enough ... just imagine the exploits that would come if the source was released.
I think commercial vendors are afraid of being embarassed more-so than having their software copied illegally.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
There is a pole on the page. Unfortunately, the lUs3Rz at ZDNet didn't give a Cowboy Neal option. I propose we Slashdot the poll. At the very least it shows that most of the readers of ZDNet.com feel that Open source is "John Taschek's worst nightmare."
A side effect is that it gives them a little more ad revenue, but that's not that big of a deal. Right? They're still losing money anyway, aren't they?
This is the kind of response I like to see in the Open Source world. It is calm, well thought out, and backed by fact. I think that the Open Source community, and Linux in particular, often gets a bad rap for being a movement of fanatics and funcamentalists. Articles like Bob's posted on a very public forum (and one frequented by Wintel users) provide some substance to the movement.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Maybe these journalists are concentrating a bit too much on applications for the 'normal end user'; OpenSource apps aren't really big in this domain (yet). All the examples mentioned by Bob (sendmail, Apache) are more or less 'background' applications, outside the realm of lusers.
How to make a sig
without having an idea
Companies need to realize that the dominant business model for the future will be geared towards the need and wants of the consumer. We see this already in small things such as increased availability of *designer* styles for home products. Even the most basic of items can be had in any style, shape, or color based on an individual's preference. The individual can make the choice of what they want.
In the same way the Internet and the Web does this for information. Almost anything you could possibly want to know is available and free.
Open-source does the same. It allows us to choose what functionality we want, how we want it, what it looks like, and so on. It lets us do what we want, which ultimately is where the appeal lies. As soon as mainstream media, and companies realize and begin to capitalize on it, the computing world will become a better place for all.
Seems that every time we have some major piece of anti-free software FUD, we almost immediately have somebody who is "famous" within the community weigh in on the issue with some form of rebuttal to let everyone know what their stance on it is.
:)
It seems to me that sometimes, it's probably just better to let the FUD bury itself, and not even give it the honor of being discussed. Now, there are some times when this is NOT the case, but other times, you have to just let the FUD go, because there's already tons of it out there, and there's going to be more.
remember the "Linux Myths" thingy that MS put up? I can't remember if it was mandrake or somebody else who wrote some multipage rebuttal to MS' "Linux Myths". Guess what? You're preaching to the choir. The only case in which a rebuttal like that would be effective is if it was posted next to the linux myths column on microsoft.com, and if you think that's going to happen, think again.
Well, Bob young's article on ZDNet is a little bit better, since it stands to be seen by people other than those who already know that the article was full of untruths to begin with, but at the same time, I don't understand the motivation to write rebuttals like this. Sure, the original column that he's talking about was bullshit, but everybody knew that.
I'm trying not to be cynical, but all I can come up with in terms of the motivations for writing these rebuttals would be to demonstrate to the community that you are "pure of heart", or just to promote the popularity of linux.
IMHO, linux doesn't need either.
Course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
We demand the ability to open the hood of our cars because it gives us, the consumer, control over the product... But if he overcharges us, won't fix the problem we are having or refuses to install that musical horn we always wanted -- well, there are 10,000 other car-repair companies that would be happy to have our business.
This is a great analogy...
I can see it now, soon there will be thousands upon thousands of software "mechanic" shops, where software owners who do not know much about what they own can take their stuff to have bugs fixed.
I just hope that such establishments do not treat their clients in a similar manner of many auto shops, with the attitude "they don't know anything about this, so let's take them to the cleaners."
-ShelbyCobra
Living life in the right side of the s-plane
Or a vote -
Rob, kids, I'd like to propose that nothing presented on ZDNET or C|Net ever get posted to slashdot again. (C|Net for very different reasons from ZD, of course)
ZD is trolling us, and we're feeding them. As any longtime usenet dork will tell you -
Don't feed the troll!
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
The original article was intended as flamebait, simply for site traffic. This is simply an official response to that flamebait. I'm not sure it even justified a response. However, I guess if it didn't get one, the clueless masses would think that the article had some validity.
Anyhow....
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
The problem that I see here is that they are both arguing different points. What I got out of this is:
John says: "Open source sucks because it's not making any money."
Bob says: "Open source is successful because it has produced so many highly useful and popular applications."
They really aren't talking about the same thing at all. Both are mostly correct. There are not very many financially successful "open source only" companies. Maybe ten to twenty at most. Compare that to thousands of successful traditional closed source companies. On the other hand there are countless successful(not in money but in user share or useability or function) open source projects and applications. Bob's list is just the tip of the iceberg. It is just a matter of time before a large open source company becomes truly profitable. Open source really is changing the world, but slowly. It is just a matter of time before we see many more successful open source companies. In the mean time this sort of "not the same point" argument tends to needlessly fan the flames.
'Since then Red Hat has become a global company, with a very strong balance sheet and $42 million of revenue, and continues to grow rapidly.' However, from their financial statements :
'For the nine months ended 11/30/99, revenues rose 77% to $12.6 million. Net loss applicable to Common totaled $8.9 million vs. an income of $184 thousand. Results reflect an increase in training revenue, offset by increased advertising costs.' Also :
'Recent Earnings Announcement For the 3months ended 02/29/2000, revenues were 13,108; after tax earnings were -24,609. (Preliminary; reported in thousands of dollars.)'
I should also point out that the $184,000 in training income is nothing compared to Bob Youngs 228K Salary.
I would also point out that the only sucessful OS products he mentioned were apache, and sendmail. How long ago were they written?
I think one point missed by all this is that Mozilla is the most widely known project. Regardless of whether Open Source was sucessful in this case, I think one thing should be considered.
Would the Mozilla case study encourage companies to open their otherwise closed source?
I realize there are a number of sucessful projects, but from the point of Mozilla, I'm just playing Devils Advocate
I really enjoyed a recent interview of Andy Grove I saw on The Charlie Rose Show, largely because Charlie kept trying to get Andy to say something really powerful, and Andy was seemed very careful. Andy Grove is known as a survivor of prostate cancer, and did a lot of research into the latest treatments and medical knowledge on the disease. So Charlie asked him what Mayor Giuliani should do (because Giuliani recently announced that his doctors detected he has early stages of prostate cancer). Andy said something like, "I can't say what he should do. I will only say what I have experienced. He may find that my experiences are pertinent to his situation..." This is just an example, but throughout the interview Andy consistently spoke equivocally, or qualified his opinions. I think this is really refreshing, since we all know that on the subjects he was talking about he could certainly be considered an authority. I think it's an academic influence that leads people to speak carefully like that.
So I guess I'm really rambling off topic here, but I just wanted to share this because I agree that too many people (especially ACs) speak in absolutes and make claims that they can't support because they don't have the knowledge to defend their opinions.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
Anyway, they've never been anything but prolific Microsoft whores. I'm assuming that their recent Slashdot trolling is nothing more than a series of experiments geared toward boosting ad revenue in the event that MS should be broken up and become a little less free with the purse strings.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So what happens if (for some bizarre reason) Adobe decides to get out of the video editing business and drops all support for Premiere? This time you're stuck with proprietary file formats and not even the option of hiring somebody to continue to support the package, because it's closed source.
(And while Adobe might be an extreme example, I'm sure there are plenty of proprietary software vendors who have gone toes-up and left their customers in the lurch.)
-- Alastair
Reality check: the majority of contibutors to open source projects are not rellying on these efforts to provide their means of livelihood. Whether the GIMP or GNUCash ever make one-tenth of one percent of the profit generated by sales of similar products from Adobe or Intuit will have no effect on whether they continue to be developed, refined and improved. At some point a cuasual user will be faced with the option: pay a high fee for a proprietary application or get the same functionality for little or no cost...
For the business user/IT manager the cost factor becomes more complex... the basic economics of an expensive site-license versus a cheap, reproducible Distro is a strong argument in favour of open source apps, but IT managers will calculate a Total Cost of Ownership based on support, upgrade fees, training costs and support fees. This is where the commercial Open Source Distrubutors hope to make money...
This business model is not competitve with the tradional models, but to say this means it will fail may be like predicting that mammals would not make it out of the Jurassic because they just couldn't compete with dinosaurs as carnivores or herbivores... The changes underway may be larger than you are imagining.
Take your example of an open source video editor that had all the features of Adobe Premiere... You make many false assumptions that betray a lack of understanding of the real value of the open source model:
First you misconstrue the opensource paradigm as "..even if the original developer ceases to work on it, one can just bring in a programmer of their own to continue developement." -- A video editor like Premiere is NOT the work of an individual. In a firm like Adobe, it has a the number of programmers that are assigned to it by management (this is ususally large--check out the credits in Premiere some time!). In an open source project, the pool of programmers is limited to the number of people on the internet with the appropriate skills and the inclination and time to contribute -- almost always a larger number.
Second, you state that the media assets would be tied up in it's file formats... but the open source movement is characterized by a reliance on and the promotion of standard formats... The file format problem is far more likely to occur in proprietary products (do you remember Persuasion? How supported is the user with an archive of media assets in that format?).
Finally, you suggest that the hypothetical open source video user is left with the option of paying a single programmer's salary or abandoning the application and their assets. This goes back to the erroneous assumption that such a project is the work of an individual. You can be sure that such a package would be the result of the collaboration of many programmers in many countries. The editor you are describing would be a hot project, and if one or more of the original developers dropped out, you can be sure that the project would be maintained.
Your argument about the value of competition is belied by the real history of proprietary software development. Good packages with large narkets are frequently dropped because managers see greater profitability in other efforts. Despite the large number of Mac users, many proprietary packages are available only to Wintel users because the software developers see a larger Return On Investment in that market... These are not concerns for open source hackers.Within the framework of your argument, you are right... but the framework is wrong.