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It'll Be an Open-Source World
sniggly writes "Quotes from Wired.com: "MS will become little more than a 'legacy vendor,' offering support for its antiquated products." - and "Oracle... will be forced to open its applications." - this according to a Forrester Research report (link requires a login) that Wired has an article about. Is it the inevitable future of software? Who will be affected, who will go south, who will surface and will companies like ID software, Adobe or Sonic Foundry be able to continue as they are?"
How many open source projects have you downloaded and installed only to find ugly/unusable interfaces? We need to start recruiting artist to design/redesign projects so that average people will want to use them. The code can be a clean and elegant as possible, but without a good interface, the project will never fly in the general public
We also need to recruit DBS's to look the database schemas for projects. Programmers don't necessarily know how to set up a database, and often going back and redesigning it requires a complete rewrite, so it just doesn't happen.
There should be a point in every open source project where someone sits down and designs a decent interface and the DBA take a look at the db. Maybe Sourceforge can take up cause, and hire a few for just that purpose. It would greatly speed up the acceptance of open source projects.
- daniel
- daniel
Turn off your computer and go outside
Well, they already have the antiquated products covered. I guess the article is implying they'll be adding "support" in the future. Wow, I can hardly wait.
Never meant half of the things I said to you. So you know, there's a half that might be true - G. Phillips
You raise interesting issues, but just how much of this is FUD?
If a problem is large enough it is not uncommong to get in contact with the developers at a commercial company to help solve it. At work we've had this experience with Oracle, Microsoft and many other smaller companies.
I don't know about the licensing thing, I've never heard or encountered any real problems. Companies have lawyers that work for them to keep this stuff in check, if it becomes a problem it will be dealt with.
But going back to the article, the licensing agreements especially for say Oracle are rather steep and I do agree that long term the prices are going to have to go down in order for them to keep marketshare.
"Better to have a handful of nickels than no dimes."
I certainly was not blaming myself, or any users.
I was simply pointing out in everything I had done I had yet to see Window 2000 crash, even though I have done some things purposefully to try to cause problems.
We have QC staff at work whose whole purpose in life is to try ot break software. I think I understand the difference.
As a developer, I want the tools that help me do my job the easiest and best way I know possible:
Emacs
Perl
ssh
Linux
MySQL
My company runs over 500 linux servers. When I need another 1 or 20, they buy me what I need.
They also need to support it after I move on. That's why we use Perl, Linux and MySQL. We have over 150 engineers that are fluent in these tools.
Our web site gets over 130,000,000 page views a month. Our Network Engineering team consists of less than 10 people.
You try to support over 500 servers in 2 far-flung cities that get > 130,000,000 page views a month with Windows NT with less than 10 Network Engineers.
And my company is saving millions of dollars by using open source when it makes sense (which turns out to be almost everywhere except on the sales/marketing folks desktops). Thats money that stays in our corporate pockets, goes to fund open source projects that we use, and goes to MY SALARY.
I'm not saying NT is not the right tool for some jobs. But it's definitely the WRONG tool for my job.
Photoshop and Diablo II are the only reasons I ever use Windows these days.
It's annoying to have to boot over to Linux to do REAL work. (ie ssh-ing into my box at work).
sure, there's ssh clients for Windows, but they, for the most part, suck.
So I probably don't play Diablo II as much as I would other wise.
Very nice. Too bad that this isn't good enough for most OSS fans - they don't just want free software, they want the source too. Calling Microsoft's success with IE a victory for open source thinking is, at the very best, a half-truth, since you are no closer to seeing the source for MSIE than you are Office or Frontpage.
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Slashdot: News For Zealots. Stuff That's Hypocritical.
Every empire falls eventually. It doesn't matter if it is a military or financial empire, it will one day fall. No matter how 'great' M$ product may presently be, no matter if the OSS community dies tommorrow. Someday, someone will exploit a weakness in M$ and the empire will come down. I hate to rain on your 'fantasy happy land', but financial empires are not built on 'quality products', but on exposure and branding. Coke, Kellogs, Kraft, Calvin Klein, Intel, all have and/or have had competitor's with better or equal products that have failed b/c of the almighty advertising dollar. Maybe the OSS community isn't presently the one to do it and maybe they never will be. But if you think M$ will always be king, then you're just as short sighted as those who thought that their empire would last forever, and were wrong.
So which is it? Is apache closed source or not competitive?
treke
Hmm, I think history has passed you by while you are still driving a horse and buggy. :)
DEC never had a lead... they were trying to garner some of IBM's marketshare.
As far as prices... Office is still much cheaper than the alternatives cost when they entered the market. i.e. a $500 suite replaced a set of 3-4 software packages that each cost $500 individually. Office has not gone up in price by any signifigant degree since it first came out.
Hardware prices. Do you know how much a 486DX50, 16M of RAM, 17" monitor, would have cost you back in '93? About $5,000.
Today one can buy a PIII-550, 128M RAM, 20 gig harddrive, 19" color monitor and all the bells and whistles with a Windows 2000 license for under $1,000.
Windows 2000 is most certainly not expensive when it comes to hardware.
Someone told me once that if you plot Moore's law with lines, instead of a curve, then we're at a junction of two of those lines. He was a huge M$ buff, so I didn't bother suggesting that Open Source is the advancement that will change our rate of advancement.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Apache. Go to Netcraft and I think you can agree that there is little standing in its way.
I dont run apache, but I use it every day, whenever I am surfing the web. I also use BIND, and I use sendmail and qmail quite a bit. You use these programs as well.
Aren't both FreeBSD and NetBSD open? Or have I been licking the hallucenogenic toads again?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
What kind of PROPAGANDA are you spreading?
Based your PROPAGANDA on your hatred toward a company (VA) is not good.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
This will change - it has to change. And yes, the European model for charging for online access will certainly be dead and buried within two years - the cracks in this strategy are already obvious.
....
..... well, we all should be aware of the power of FUD by now.
:-P)
I hope so. I didn't like the fact that I couldn't use the phone for 3 months because I couldn't pay the bill, which ran a bit higher than usual because I did some research on the web. Luckily we can finally use cable modems in our town. But it's just one monopoly replacing another, and even though it's a lot cheaper, due to the explosive growth of cable users and the slow actions taken by the cable provider to update their system, to keep from getting overwhelmed they are now resorting to a more and more restrictive approach : restricted download speeds & more restricted upload speeds and more and more limiting the download quantity. And a friend who lives 20Km from me still has to wait until the end of 2001 before he can get cable. Adsl is so expensive no average person can afford it.
That's not to say that it won't happen, and I do hope it will happen as fast as you think. But from what I've seen it doesn't seem very likely (in this timeframe, I mean).
Frankly, I find that people who cling to these archiac attitudes are the people who know the least about encryption technology
You are right, but if enough people believe it's not safe, Webplications won't be profitable enough. And about credit cards : even though it's secure there's still the chance that, just like in real life, someone at the receiving end will run off with your credit card data. Of course it wouldn't do him much good, but what if this happened with that fantastic breakthrough you were typing up that could make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. It maybe impossible that this would happen in an ideal world, but suppose your webplication wasn't open source (to get back on topic), and the company that made it overlooked some serious bugs or had some convenient backdoors
For what it's worth, I believe it WILL be safe enough (at least if you know what to use). All I've written is just hypothetical FUD. But when the day comes that webplications become reality, and if that day is spoiled by someone spreading real FUD
Of course, with OSS, people can check if their fears have a base in reality, and fix things if needed.
Summary : I DO believe in a rosey future, I just don't feel comfortable with putting a timeframe on it. And that's because those timeframes can never accurately represent the greed factor, both those of companies that want to create webplications and those that want to remain desktop oriented.
(I'm very tired at this moment, so please ignore the typos and grammatical errors - heck, I'm so tired that maybe you should ignore this post altogether. I won't lose any sleep over it, mainly because I can't afford to lose more sleep anyway
Nobody believes the official spokesman, but everybody trusts an unidentified source. -- Ron Nesen
Apache can remain open source. It isn't something that I would trust as a high end server though. Netcraft had some interesting info about top companies and what they use.
It isn't apache!
He was not speaking of OS's in particular, just open source projects, as was the article.
JeremyI TechSeek- http://www.tech-seek.com
Yes, I can see things like Office and widely distributed business apps becoming web enabled. However, the future of software is on the intranet, not the internet. I see Office 2010 as possibly being a server that sits in a company server room, but not at Microsoft headquarters.
CD-ROM software will not die as long as...
- People and businesses want to have ownership of what they buy. They want something they can hold in their hand and sell to someone else if they want. Also, most complex business apps are customized to meet individual business needs. Oracle would not be the major business player that they are if they sold the same apps package to everybody.
- Wide area network speeds do not justify running some apps from the internet as opposed to your local hard drive. Also, reliability is a huge issue. What happens if Microsoft's server goes down? Does the world go down with it?
- People who value security will not let this happen. Software vendors will have problems with people breaking in and stealing software, while users will be exposed to the dangers of having their applications and data open to anyone cunning enough to figure out how to get to it. The only true security is a broken connection.
However, I do agree that in the new software development model, the browser is more important than the OS. I think the open source movement has become misguided in that they've directed their energies toward competing against the monopoly OS, while the open source browser has yet to be fully realized.
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NO CARRIER
The only problem I see here is - where is my next month rent and bread/butter/cheese/beer coming from? I am very passionate about my work, but I am ever more passionate about sustaining my life through eating and having a roof over my head.
I hate to say it, but we're seeing why OSS isnt the future in recent months. The reason why this particular OSS life-cycle (1994-2001 or so) will inevitably will fail is because the corporations step in and milk the process for money. It sours everyone on the whole idea because it introduces foreign concepts like exclusivity and heirarchy to a group of people who have otherwise functioned quite well without it. So what's wrong with this? Its a subtle problem. OSS continues to grow and function on one basic premise. Whats mine is yours, and what's yours is mine, and we share openly and equally, period. When someone interrupts that system and says, "No. You cant have this until you give us X Y and Z", then the creative process will halt. No one will make a move out of fear of being screwed into the ground.
Here's a small example. Remember how the industry was back in the mid 70's and early 80's? It was pretty much the same deal -- People shared software openly, without much of a regard for where it came from. Good software survived because people used it. Bad software died because people didn't use it. People added to what they recieved, improved it in some small way, and passed in on. Then, software companies sprung up and decided to taint the process. People didn't call it "open source" back then. They just called it "trading". When the process is corrupted in even the smallest way, the overall picture will change. In my opinion, this change ultimately spells out failure for the whole OSS movement.
Here's another reason OSS will likely fail. By VA Linux Systems' own admission, the majority of active OSS projects in the world, right now, are being housed on SourceForge. SourceForge is owned by a company that has yet to turn a profit, and is currently teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The company is backlogged, and incurring a huge amount of debt in an attempt to spread out resources. The lush green pastures provided by companies like VA tend to evaporate overnight, once all the money that can be made has been made. Its just a matter of time before the process is fully milked and depleated. Nothing separates VA from any other company out there -- Statistically, they stand a 93% chance of failing within the next 5 years.
And, a third reason:
Ultimately, no one will work for free, if they know the guy next to them is doing the same work for pay. In the last few years, theres been a shift from intellectual competition to financial competition..The whole idea of competition is counterintuitive to the development process. OSS projects are developed in stress-free circumstances. No deadlines, no sales figures, no pressure to gather mindshare for your product. Changing the rules of the game by introducing financial competition is outright suicide. That alone will ruin the OSS movement.
My $0.02,
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
I agree, but Microsoft certainly isn't sitting idle. I've been working with Windows 2000 since february at home and I have yet to cause it to fail in any way.
Daily reboots have never been an issue with NT to begin with. Microsoft is pushing in the direction of NT/2000, not win 9x, so your statement is doomed given time.
I think it's very dangerous to continue thinking things such as "the core OS has great stability that MS products lack"...
It was this same thinking "Of course linux is faster than NT" that led to the disappointment from the mindcraft benchmarking.
We don't hear that "faster" statement much anymore, and it's hard to test for stability. But, I still wouldn't be to smug about it.
Anyhow, there is no reason to beleive that OSS is going to surpass closed source anyday now. OSS is domaniate on the internet today. Has been for some time. This isn't new. Yet, OSS has essentially a near 0% marketshare of the desktop. Gnome and KDE are wholefully inadequet for home needs. Very little multimedia support, ugly fonts, horrible printing support (both in accuracy and printers available), an interface that makes Windows look easy, et. al. Progress is slow in UI on Linux and innovation is pretty much absent. Copy copy copy. Copy WIndows, Copy Office, Copy WinAMP, pick your app. It's pathetic.
An OS written by programmers for other programmers will NEVER be used by my mother.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Perhaps, but I feel (yes, that's 'feel', not 'think') that a 'movement' gets going not because of sound rational reasoning, but rather is a phenomenon that manifests seemingly out of the background, until it becomes the new background. It is always easy to make up plausible reasons and explanations afterwards, but all these depend on points of view. So what I'm saying is, when the common automatically aquired belief system comes to include 'software is free', 'educated' people will sit around in bars having rational discussions about how 'free is the proper way', and making up all sorts of reasons for this to be so. They won't have a clue why it's really happened, or whether it really is 'better', but once this movement is going, people will just unconsciously accept it.
Impressionist art is today considered popular, and liked by a lot of people. But originally it did not "fit" what people thought art should be, and they would 'rightly' criticise it. They could find reasons for damming it. But today, people find reasons for admiring it. The movement succeeded, and became the new norm.
As my point is "touchy feely misty", it says nothing concretely useful, like 'exactly when will 51% of desktops will be linux...' I'm just saying that Linux may come to dominate regardless of all the rational and sane reasoning.
The problem is that you're making the assumption that because it happened to one big company it will happen to another. Microsoft of the 90s and IBM of the 80s are two very different companies. IBM is/was a hardware company whose forays into software were minor, merely suited to doing something specific for a machine. Microsoft, on the other hand, is a software company, not tied to the hardware market. Part of what weakened IBM and strengthened Microsoft is the fact that the IBM PC platform was open and clone-able. Thus, you didn't have to buy a computer from IBM, but you still had to buy the software from Microsoft.
But, of course, the real reason Microsoft got so strong is that IBM chose them to produce the OS. If IBM had developed this in-house, I don't think we'd have a Microsoft today. IBM would probably still be a juggernaut (if it survived anti-trust lawsuits). Translate this to Microsoft. Microsoft rarely shops out work. When they do, they usually end up either taking the idea and putting the company out of business or, more usually, buying the company and bringing them into the fold. Microsoft makes sure that others can not replicate its core software. There's only one Windows, not Windows clones, and Microsoft produces everything from the OS to the applications to the games to the drivers for mice and keyboard. Microsoft does not rely on anyone like IBM did and Microsoft does its damnedest to make sure that no one can do (not do better or do differently, but do) what they do.
So you're comparing apples to oranges. Take a look at the mistakes that IBM made and take a look at the mistakes that Microsoft hasn't made. About the only huge blunder on Microsoft's part was not recognizing the impact of the Internet, and we all saw how quickly they turned that around.
Uhh....I must not be a genius then.
True enough.
Last I remembered, Apple has a 80% market share on PCs about 15 years ago
They did?
they died 10 years ago
They did?
Hmmm... amazing what gets modded up these days.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
What the Top 25 most popular websites (at home) run
Webserver: 8 Chose Apache, 6 Chose Netscape, and 6 Chose IIS (2 didnt have much of a choice). 3 did their own thing and 2 I dont know about.
OS: 9 chose Solaris, 6 chose windows, 4 chose BSD, 3 chose linux, 2 chose Tru64 UNIX, and some fool chose IRIX.
Ummm...what big companies were you talking about?
This weeks nielson netratings (at home) with server info
Property Unique Audience (000) Time Per Person (hrs:min:sec)
1. AOL Websites 28,628 0:13:31 running NaviServer/2.0 AOLserver/2.3.3 on Solaris
2. Yahoo! 25,720 0:30:15 running unknown on FreeBSD
3. MSN 19,847 0:21:12 running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
4. Microsoft 16,686 0:05:42 running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
5. Lycos Network 9,550 0:09:24 running Microsoft-IIS/5.0
6. Excite@Home 8,934 0:14:52 running Apache/1.2.6 Red Hat on Linux
7. GO Network 7,649 0:14:12 running unknown on Solaris
8. eUniverse Network 5,264 0:08:36 running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
9. Time Warner 5,114 0:09:16 running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP3 on Solaris
10. eBay 5,071 0:52:51 running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
11. About.com 5,032 0:06:48 running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) on FreeBSD
12. AltaVista 5,023 0:09:17 running AV/1.0.1 on Compaq Tru64 UNIX
13. NBC Internet 4,602 0:07:41 running Netscape-Communications/1.12 on Solaris
14. Amazon 3,971 0:08:43 running Stronghold/2.4.2 Apache/1.3.6 C2NetEU/2412 (Unix) on Compaq Tru64 UNIX
15. iWon.com Inc. 3,842 0:26:29 running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP3 on Solaris
16. LookSmart 3,738 0:05:44 running Apache/1.3.4 (Unix) on Solaris
17. EarthLink 3,254 0:08:27 running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 on Solaris
18. Ask Jeeves 3,157 0:06:39 running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
19. CNET Networks 2,920 0:06:12 running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on Solaris
20. SmartBot.NET Inc. 2,827 0:03:53 running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) on BSD/OS
21. The Go2Net Network 2,739 0:05:51 running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.0 g2am/1.39 adutil/1.8 g2ad/1.66 PHP/3.0.16 mod_perl/1.16_03-dev on Linux
22. Real Networks 2,693 0:04:06 running Thisisarealoperatingsystemfromthefreeworld1.2alpha 12 on Linux
23. Gator.com 2,598 0:06:17 running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) PHP/3.0.7 on FreeBSD
24. American Greetings 2,553 0:08:56 running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP2 on IRIX
25. iVillage 2,472 0:08:45 running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP1 on Solaris
I think the data speaks for itself
Sure, bashing Microsoft is an easy way to boost your karma. But what exactly is your complaint about their support?
Personally, I've had two experiences with MS support. The first was when my MS mouse stopped working. MS sent me a new mouse, no questions asked, without even asking me to send the broken one back. The second was due to an obscure bug in Win2K that happened to affect a game that I was playing a lot. That one took a bit longer to solve, but eventually the support guy actually contacted the relevant programmer and had him send me a fixed DLL, hot off the compiler.
If only all software companies had that kind of support, the world would be a much better place.
MSK
i seem to see the netcraft results a little differently. It appears that the top ranking companies DO NOT use apache software.
Besides, from what I have been able to surmise. Apache's use is mainly on low-end low-traffic servers. And the results of netcraft do not show what is virtualy hosted. in others words netcraft has a serious flaw in there information gathering. With virtual hosting there may be hundreds of hits for apache when it should only count as one. one hit, one server. that would definatly level the playing field.
The one reason that I see open source as never taking a lead is because there is a minimal amount of funding. This causes those with great ideas to be sucked in to the larger companies with large capital and can pay them respectively. Hey, if I come up with a great idea, I sure as hell ain't gonna let it get out for free. No way!
I still think they are in trouble. If I had any of their stock, I'd be selling it...
Gee, I wouldn't. I bought 100 shares for my mom at $74. Let's see... there are two possible outcomes...
1. Microsoft wins the appeal, stock returns to normal $100+ area and beyond.
2. Microsoft loses appeal at Supreme Court, they split the company up, and we get shares in each of the remaining Baby Bills.
I really feel my mom's chances of making out on this investment are pretty damn good.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
Off the top of my head the following major free tools are superior perl, sed , bash, grep
Microsoft(tm) - a particular virulent virus that has infected most Pc's.
MS has made plenty of mistakes, but one in particular was when MS made its first big step.... Gates tried to sell IBM the rights to DOS to IBM more than a couple times. Fortunately, for Gates, IBM refused. If IBM hadn't, the odds are that MS would be nothing but a memory.
Given the article from Friday maybe someone should send a copy of Wired to the DVD-CCA. At the moment they clearly think that it will be a criminal copyright violation world...
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
Also you say that software should be based on quality, but you immediately follow that with a fallacious argument that you NEED the POS NT.
Give us some support for your arguments.
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NO CARRIER
But, of course, the real reason Microsoft got so strong is that IBM chose them to produce the OS. If IBM had developed this in-house, I don't think we'd have a Microsoft today. IBM would probably still be a juggernaut (if it survived anti-trust lawsuits)
That last bit -- there was a big reason why IBM didn't force MS to sign an exclusive contract. The big multi-decade Justice Department anti-trust suit against IBM.
This is why, despite my libertarian-conservative beliefs, I didn't oppose the MS antitrust suit. MS wouldn't have had an OS market outside of IBM if it weren't for the DoJ.
Steven E. Ehrbar
I completely disagree with that. Let's look at Windows. Windows 95 was a big step forward since Windows 3.1. But that was the last evolutionary step Windows has made. Ever since then, the changes were cosmetic. Windows 98 is just a repackaged Win95 with IE "integrated". Same with Win98SE and WinME. There have been absolutely NO major changes to the OS, despite the fact that MS is still a big company with thousands of employees.
;-).
Now let's look at Office. Is there any difference between Office 2000 and Office 97? (ok, the clippy and incompatible file formats don't count). Is there any difference between Office 97 and Office 95? For that matter, is there any difference between Office 95 and Office 4.2? I've used all of them and, again, the changes are cosmetic. One major improvement Office 95 has is long file names (it was released after Windows 95). But other than that, there are NO major changes between the releases.
Now let's take a look at IE. I haven't seen IE 1.0 but I did see IE 2.0. It was a complete joke. I can only assume IE 1.0 was even worse. IE 3.0 was much much better. IE 4.0 was better still (but more bloated). And IE 5.0 is the best browser currently available (I'm not counting Mozilla as it's not out yet). But they gave away IE for free. Why did it become so much better? Because MS actually had to *compete* against Netscape (well, they also "cut their air supply", but that's a different story altogether
The point I'm trying to make is that the software companies will improve their software only if they are forced to by the competition. If there is no competition, they'll produce such amazing "innovations" as MS Bob.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
so we'll all be crooks?
Given that, why is this post Insightful?
That companies (like wired) and reasearchers (like forrester) get paid to post articles on the obvious. I'm not saying that what they state is wrong, or that the corporate people couldn't use a little more affirmation that YES, free(both senses) software which works better and costs nothing makes more sense for their buisness.
But I've been reading articles like this for ages. Maybe the people at wired could get a copy of the Cathedral and the Bazar?
There was a time when Wired (magazine at least) reported on technologies that wouldn't hit slashdot for ages. They've even done a small blurb and then a rather large article about slashdot. But posting tripe like this gets to me...
Tommorow on Wired: Cellphones are bad for you, so are CRT monitors.
I'm posting this as anonymous, because I'm afraid it'll just fall in with the rest of the trolling on slashdot....
Am I the only one uncomfortable about the open source / gun thing? While the issue of gun control isn't as divisive as the abortion debate, it just seems prudent to stay away from orthogonal political topics. The Wired article is a classic example: how does a reference to Mr. Raymond's after school activities help the cause?
1. As a developer, software licencing issues do not normally effect my day to day work.
2. I am already used to going through a 'code review' process by outside personel, so that while additional eyes may view my code, it really won't change my overall developement style.
3. I suppose that it will make things 'legal' when I take my generic, private libraries and classes that I've written from one employer to the next, but who really concerns themselves about this anyway?
Someone, please, tell me how this will affect me, the average joe software developer guy?
-jerdenn
Actually, I'd like to take issue with you on one of your points. That point
is that MS isn't tied down to hardware. While not a hardware manufacturer
per se, they are tied to the 80x86 platform pretty heavily; thusly, their
commercial success is bound not only to the marketeering of their products,
but also to the i80x86 hardware. This symbiotic relationship has maintained
their half-assed backward-compatibility for years now.
Now, say Intel designed a chip that was 120x faster than the current 1GHz
chip, but could not possibly make it run the 80x86 instruction set. They
could:
1. sit on it for a while and giving the instruction set to MS, who would be
starting all over again in terms of code, but allow MS to have the advantage
of a "head start" at a risk of taking a loss, or
2. launch a prototype, drop a listing of instructions, and proceed to take
whatever the best offer is
I'd bank on #2 being the dominant choice, as they could potentially stand
to lose money otherwise.
I wonder how did they calculate the figure 4? I mean 4 years, 3 months and 17 days should sound more realistic.
On the serious side, I'm certain that this will happen, but 4 years won't be enough. Let's look at the market right now: Linux is the only major open-source OS effort. Other efforts, for instance, *BSD are sadly underdeveloped. They profit only from their semblance to Linux.
UN*X and Linux have always had the lion's share of the server market. It requires courage to use Windows NT^H^H 2000 Server to do anything important. Linux is cheaper and versatile, while other UNICES (SunOS, AIX, *BSD) are more stable and efficient.
Home consumer market is entirely different. It is very conservative. It is also very computer-ignorant. Unfortunately, as of today, Linux's windowing is mainly about opening xterm and escaping back into CLI. Consumers won't buy it. While I'm 100% certain that CLI is the most efficient way of managing stuff, I am also 100% certain that consumers don't want to know what a pipe is.
In the meanwhile, neither GNOME nor KDE managed to deliver anything that answers this demand. GNOME's advanced features are at alpha stage or non-existant. While KDE has delivered a product, it is just an improvement of the CLI experience. Setting a date is fine; however where is the program that will ruin Windows?
It is my opinion that applications... the things that are the bread and butter of companies like Micro$oft will no longer be profitable as soon as the open source alternative have reached the level of quality, name recognition, and ease of use that people have come to expect of commercial applications. On the other hand, when you buy a game... very little of what you bought is 'application'... really what you are buying is music, artwork, and animated video. Most games are unique from one another and offer limitless posibilities. Perhaps games will start to be based on open-source game engines... none-the-less the entire work itself will likely not come under the open-source umbrella.
Blender And Linux Fan
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
1. Anything that requires some sort of rare, specialized knowledge. High-end scientific software, high-end accounting software, etc. The pool of developers that would be able to contribute to something in this category is just too small to make a purely open-source model workable.
...
I guess ERP-software would fill in here as well. But even in the field of monsters like SAP R/3 I could see them get some pressure. Not from your usuall hobbiests, but perhaps from big consulting agencies like Anderson, McKinsey
They all want (have) to expand their markets, that means there could come some time where some of the bigs in Enterprise Consulting may try to break into the markets of SAP via some joint open source ERP-software effort, eventually based on previous-closed-source software which they could acquire (Baan?). This could for instance be triggered by SAP coming in their way in the field of "classical" consulting too much.
The same fiction could be applied for many fields, because there is often some tension between companies having just the knowledge and others additionally having the programmers to implement it (and getting the big bucks).
Come on people, let's be critical for once here when something goes our way.. does this realyl sound like sound research? They go on about "beware geeks with guns", etc? That sounds like they just want press, like most of these researchers do. The fact they mention Dell makes no sense whatsoever and just shows what a lousy "study" this probably was.
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Interestingly, on reviewing the Wired article, I ran across a suggested link there that discussed a recent FrontPage Extensions security problem I wasn't aware of. Still haven't researched whether it affects the UNIX FP extensions, yet, but, I doubt it. Has to do with including standard DOS reserved commands in the URL to shtml.
What struck me as relevant was the tactic Micro$oft took when alerted by Sozni of Xato Network Security, in asking for a delay in disclosing the flaw until a patch was available. While that position on dealing with the reporting vendor isn't so noteworthy, what is curious is that the patch was available a over a week ago, and, I had never heard of it. It was quietly bundled into a service pack for the Server extensions and not well publicized.
I follow this stuff closely, and, am sure I would have been aware of it, had it been better disclosed by Micro$oft once the patch was available.
In an open product, disclosure is inevitable. Seems people might be considering this model to make better business sense.
Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
The standard reaction to this objection is: There is no accountability with proprietary software, so why are you requiring it of free software? The reason that it is the standard reaction is because it is so true. The saying "no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft" (which, of course, used to have "IBM" where the "Microsoft" is) just illustrates the point that most companies aren't even going to hold their own employees responsible for bad decisions as long as they're the right bad decisions. If that's the case, why should those businesses hold their vendors responsible for those same bad decisions?
Furthermore, what are the consequences for those vendors? No large software vendor cares what a single customer thinks about their product because, no matter how big the customer is, it represents only a tiny amount of revenue. Whine about W2K all you want, but if you're a Microsoft shop, you'll buy it in the end because it's what Microsoft has to sell you.
symbolic also wrote:
I haven't checked, but I'd wager that there's at least one person who has written a comment to this article that goes something like "software is just a tool, people should use what makes sense instead of insisting on free software". The problem with that statement is that it implies that everyone using free software is using it despite the fact that it offers less value. Free software users are, from this perspective, cutting of their noses to spite their faces. You repeat that slander here.
However, my view is that software is just a tool and that everyone needs to choose what makes sense for them and I choose to use Linux as my operating system. This choice is not made because free software is some sort of cause celebre, but because it works well in the applications that I have and you can't beat the price, even if you factor in the cost of self-support. I simply don't have the resources to support two operating systems.
In fact, and to more directly address your point, in Support is Not the Issue that the shift to free software is the result of fundamental economic forces similar to those that brought the ISV's to their predominant place in computing. Even if Microsoft goes away completely, free software needs no antagonist to continue to be the best solution for a wide variety of circumstances.
#include It's a question of economics. If one makes their livelihood from developing an application, they should not be under any obligation to release their code. If they do then that's all well and good. But the question remains: how much would people pay for their hard work and effort. Unfortunately, there seem to be many people that hop on the Open-source bandwagon, not for the principles of the idea, but rather the fact that they can get something for nothing. Consider also: Larger corporations releasing the source of their product does not cost them anything. Their developers still get paid and their PR department gets to say "we are cool, we're open source". However, what about the bloke working in his garage or the small group of friends starting out trying to keep their heads above water in an extremely competitive market. The fact is, the only organisations that can afford to open-source are those that can afford to bear the cost of losing that revenue stream. In the context of the bigger picture: Closed source will still be around despite what is projected by the research. Why? Because some people feel they should be paid for their effort. No doubt, this will bring out the zealots, but I see people that I have worked with slave-away to produce their products and all they get in return is an email account full of "this should be free, open source it man". I have no problems with going out to a store and buying another persons product. Why? Because it's my way of saying I appreciate their work and effort in bringing me something that I wish to use. If anything, I believe that ID software's model of opening source code once they have made their profits from the product is the best idea. They still get to make some money and continue to build new stuff, while people can poke around and improve older stuff (JDoom etc). Daniel
90% of programmers work on software in-house or for a contract firm that produces specific, custom solutions, not for companies that make retail sales. They will not be affected, and demand for programmers is such that the people who wind up unemployed at small vendors will be able to get jobs doing in-house work.
Steven E. Ehrbar
I agree, but I also think that no matter what happens with UCITA, Open Source software will be better off.
Two bars, opposite sides of the street. One charges you for good tasting beer after you go inside. The other gives you bad tasting beer lock in some new-fangled contraption outside on the street, and then asks you to come inside for $5 to teach you how to drink the beer.
What would you do?
I would take the bad beer home with out going inside for $5 only becuase it's free. I'll break the damn thing open with hammer.
The only reason 99% of open source software is gaining popularity is because it is free. That's it.
Given a choice, would you pay $50 for Windows or $50 for *nix.
More importantly who reads Wired nowadays? The artsies took over about four years ago, overhyping mumbo-jumbo stuff such as Idealab and the Santa Fe institute. The internet savvy gave up on wired a long time ago. They now read nerve, suck, salon, redherring and of course /. All of them on-line.
1. If the current high demand for IT professionals falls, it could result in reduced interest in CS on college campuses. What percentage of Open Source is written by grad students?
2. A cultural or demographic shift could reduce the number of twinky-gobbling caffeine-a-holic dudes who are willing to stay up until 3am working on code. Actually, the twinkies may just kill all the hackers.
#2 will be especially hard on GPL'd projects if BSD or other non copy-lefted alternatives are available. The latter can be revived by the traditional business model. The former can't; not legally anyway. (Some have referred to the "GPL virus", but because it prevents smooth shifts in the equilibrium between Open and Proprietary software, I prefer to call it the "GPL ratchet".)
3. The commoditization of software could cause a shift towards proprietary hardware. I don't mean to harp on this, but it's a point a lot of people seem to miss. We have commodity PCs now, in large part, because they all have to run MS software. Start letting HW vendors write their own custom OS's, then we are back to the early 80s with Apple, Atari, Commodore, etc... and very little software compatability. Sure, they'll all run elf binaries now, but once the hardware market is fragmented, HW vendors will try to come up with killer apps to lock you into their system, much as Apple did with graphics early in the game.
So... just because OSS looks like it is going to take over the world now, doesn't mean it will. In fact, there may be a "cycle" that takes place between Open Hardware and Open Software. 1980--not much standard hardware on the market. 1990--not much Open Software on the market. 2000--a move towards internet appliances and game consoles, all with different hardware.
4. If the current OSS domination does collapse in a highly noticeable way, this might prevent a new cycle of OSS domination from occuring for quite some time, until a new group of young, undiscouraged hackers emerges.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
s/bear/beer/g;
Preliminary comments: "Science" will never catch on. These open-source fact finders ("scientists") making important discoveries and then *sharing* them? For, what? ...status? for fun? Get real! These folks have to get paid. Sharing knowledge gained thru hard work will never lead anywhere.
That off my chest, I make this prediction: in five years, whatever happens, we will all think that, in retrospect, it was obvious. And we will all claim that we knew it all along.
We are the first generation of Morlocks. Eat the rich!
Then why on earth should anybody cooperate with you? Nice trolling, but if there's an atom of sincerity in your claims, it's rather sad, as you're crippling yourself by refusing to have your ideas (whatever they are, if any) exist in a social context with the ideas of others.
This translates roughly to 'I am smarter than everybody else in the world regarding the field in which I work'. You won't ever communicate your ideas- they are for franchising only, not for discussion. There are few people who have any business whatsoever taking such an attitude- among them, possibly, John Carmack- who opensources his old engines, pitches in on opensource projects, and posts to Slashdot like any member of the community.
It looks like the people who _really_ have ideas and aren't just wanking about it tend to be the people who are discussing them with others and placing more importance on their superior ability to reach a synthesis with the ideas of the community, rather than those who say 'if' I come up with a great idea I will defend it with my life and never tell anybody.
This might be a little counterintuitive- but it's so well established that it bears closer examination. Essentially, the people most capable of continuing to turn out competitive work are the ones most likely to want to cross-pollenate with other developers in the community, secure in the belief that they can execute on the ideas better than their competition. And on the other hand, the people (and companies) least capable of coming up with new ideas or executing on their existing ideas are the ones who most want to chain up the ideas themselves, the ones saying 'I wouldn't let an idea go out there for free, are you crazy?'.
It looks to me like this is a convenient little litmus test, to distinguish between classes of developer and their relative capacities. In a way, to act from a presumption of idea scarcity almost _proves_ you don't have many... if you can't consistently come up with new ideas for new situations so easily that you can afford to give them away, what business do you have aspiring to be a professional programmer?
The use of open/free/whatever software is not popular just because of the politics. Remember - it's just easier to get your hands on it, get familiar with it, and have warm cuddly feelings 'bout it. Users understand that.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
I'm not doubting that CDROMs will still be burned, but the network will be the de facto way to distribute software. How many linux users wait to get a CDROM version of an RPMs they want? Virtually none.
- Wide area network speeds do not justify running some apps from the internet as opposed to your local hard drive.
What hard drive? Seriously - a little flash memory is all you will need. Getting rid of hard dirves is required for devices to be rugged enough for real mobile use. Your palm pilot or cell phone is the model that will be followed - flash memory is going to get huge, fast. Intel knows this.
- People who value security will not let this happen.
If you value your credit card number to the network, what else is there? I think people do trust security products and secure network protocols.
Well, considering ID has a history of releasing the code to their no longer profitable engines (wolf3d, doom, and most recently, Quake I), I'd say they're not your traditional proprietary software company.
They have also released the source code to a large portion of Quake 3, minus the 3d engine plus a few other things. They're keeping the 3d engine proprietary for now (which is understandable given its profitability), but they're encouraging users to modify the rest of the game through mods and such. Again, "not your traditional proprietary software company."
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I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
sirch wrote to us with the latest research from Forrester Reports. The report alleges that this year's massive hyping of Linux will fade in 2000, as well as stating that it's not probable that CIOs will be switching over in massive numbers to Linux.
And eight months later Forrester says Microsoft is doomed? I didn't take them seriously in the slightest then and I don't now.
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What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
--
while (!world->perfect) {
whine ();
}
Shouldn't that be while (!world->perfect())? Better encapsulation, you know.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Yes, but that 10% is a very important 10%. Many of these in-housers are doing the same, dull, boring crap, like yanking payroll information out of a database in various customized ways.
The other 10% are guys like Larry at PolyBytes. Here's a guy who most likely enjoys what he is doing, charging a decent price for his software (which I use and like so much that I registered another copy for work) and probably making some profit (though I have no idea what his sales figures are). As for support, my $20 registration has gotten me very prompt and courteous support. I'm sick and tired of the Free Software argument that says guys like Larry are oppressing me because I can't see their source. Quite the opposite, PolyView has set me free from the drudgery of converting and manipulating various image formats.
In years past, there were lots of Larrys providing a wide range of choices in various software categories. If the OSS juggernaut rolls on, and there are only 1 or 2 current programs to perform tasks in a particular category, how will this enhance the freedom of the user?
The other thing I don't like about this 90/10 argument is that I have never seen hard statistics from reputable sources to back it up. Also, this argument has a tendency to reinforce itself. People say, "oh it doesn't matter that we hurt these people, because they can always get a job doing this". I haven't asked larry, but I bet he has no desire to take a job at some bland corporation that involves pulling things out of a database all day. He's probably more free and happy doing what he's doing. And I feel free using his software. A world where all software is "Free Speach" may not be so Free after all.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Partially true - they had the largest percentage gain, although it was not the "larget" IPO ever in terms of generating the most cash - I think that distinction belongs to ATT wireless (not sure thought).
More on LNUX finance's can be seen here.
Hey, that's cool. I'm not trying to say that Linux has no place. I'm just trying to stop people from saying the same about NT.
>I agree, but Microsoft certainly isn't sitting idle. I've been working with Windows 2000 since february at home and I have yet to cause it to fail in any way.
Don't blame yourself when computers fail. Blame the computer. I hate this attitude that "users cause computer failure."
"users cause email viruses." ".doc viruses" "users open too many applications at once overloading the system" "users buy hardware with faulty drivers." "users deserve to be hacked if they don't change the default password."
No no no. In each of these cases it's a software problem and the software company needs to be cursed at.
Last week Linux froze on me. I didn't say, "I must be a poor computer user for this to happen." I said, "Crap. I think this is my stupid !@#$@$# alsa driver. Or perhaps it was xmms running as root (for real time) that froze my system."
It's time for users to start putting the blame where it belongs.
I can either take the original function and code, or waste a morning each and every time I need to use it by re-writing it. Either way, we'll end up with the same result. It's just a matter of how much time I waste doing it.
And the argument that I can't re-write the function won't hold water, either - as long as it contains no proprietary business logic. One can hardly claim that common string manipulation functions are proprietary, now, can we?
-jerdenn
Apparently you didn't read the post before replying. He was talking about the impact on consumers, not OSS fans. If consumers see that free(beer) software is good, then quite naturally free(speech) software can be just as good. It might not happen overnight, especially if MS keeps playing down IE security holes, but if the current trend continues, consumers might actually have some sort of realization about the impact of free software. Not that it's likely, but we can hope.
I don't thinks it's that obvious at all...in fact, think conjecture is a more appropriate term. There are some dynamics that are far too ingrained into the corporate culture that will make the "takeover" of open source a long ways off, if it happens at all. For starters, there's one key element missing from the open source movement...since no one owns the software, no one is accountable. I doubt seriously that the mainstream corporate world is going to embrace something for which there is no accountability. I will, however, offer this exception...if software companies start getting so greedy and so restrictive (oops...one already has...and we all know who that is), they'll force the issue, making the open source alternative more palatable.
Here's something else to ponder...open source is the way it is now because of the way things are now. Microsoft is the big bad enemy, and Linux is the underdog. Who is to say that the dynamics of open source won't change dramatically if this balance shifts? Right now, open source is a cause. If it hits the mainstream, I posit that it will join the endless clatter of every other mundane process, and since the open source "cause" is no longer an issue, another will have to be identified to take its place.
Sounds more like I would never work for you in the first place...
This has worked very well against other business, because MS has not been held accountable to the laws of the USA for what they do. It has _not_ been effective in a larger sense- to a large extent it is just this behavior that has produced Linux and the open source movement in general. Honestly, if you could start a business making computer software and build a small company that took some reasonable market share, where is the need for open source? If Microsoft did not hold their customers and the rest of the industry (not to mention the judiciary...) in contempt, where would the emotional drive to rebel through open source be? Yet, at this time you can't reasonably expect to run a small business selling many types of software, because Microsoft owns the market and dictates what will survive and what will be destroyed- and venture capitalists will in fact check with Microsoft about whether to invest in your business, on that bases. And Microsoft does indeed hold most of the rest of the world in contempt- so in a very real sense they are forcing the growth of open source, by taking great pains to make everything else's future seem even more nasty, brutish and short.
This is a very real error, though they are not likely to be able to turn on a dime and fix it- their ability to whirl about and kill unexpected commercial competitors simply makes the case for open source and 'amateur' development stronger. The less opportunity there is for pro-level developers to practice their craft commercially, the more of them there are to practice it as 'amateurs', and the more likely they are to do that. It's much like a present-day rock band choosing to release mp3s instead of seeking a record deal, _knowing_ that the present-day record deals are so horrid that they might as well 'stay in the garage' because their future is a wasteland should they try the traditional, major label way. It's similar in some ways for programmers- the only people with _any_ credibility for making a competitive office suite, browser etc are those willing to do it for free, because Microsoft will obviously destroy anything resembling a commercial venture, and this certainty is enough to freeze up financial support from potential investors.
Only Microsoft could possibly force open source, developed-for-free software to take over- and they are rapidly causing just that to happen, by the utter thoroughness of their destruction of the commercial sphere. Every time they destroy an entire market segment they produce the conditions for open source projects covering that market segment, produced by people who desire a choice and won't get that choice in any other way.
Poetic justice... and hubris, ate
But that doesn't have to mean that people who don't want to pay for their software won't benefit from it.
....
This reminds me of the vaguely similar work ethic of a non OSS company named Hash. They make a 3D modeling package. They sell you a one-year subscription of their software, which means that you get all the updates they release in that year. And they release a lot over a year. They follow their own agenda, so if there's a feature you really want, you can either wait until they think that it would be a good idea to have that feature, or you can pay them to program it. But they will make sure that every user of their program gets to use that feature, not just the person who paid for it
Now, I don't see them crossing over to OSS any day soon (you can read about it if you seach amongst the latest Martin's Minutes you have to go up to number 297. BTW the last article is about their dealings with M$) BUT if you look at the OSS projects that have corporate backing, you'll see that it's actually the same model.
Right now, these large companies are backing Linux so that Linux can become a more viable desktop option (for their own reasons). But we all benefit from it. And I think that in a not too distant future smaller companies will pay OSS programmers for 'just that one extra feature in MySQL that will make our company more efficient'. They'll pay for it, because they really need it, but in the end we all can use that extra feature, and OSS software will become even more robust & packed with features, and more people will see OSS software as a viable option
Maybe I'm a bit too optimistic. So sue me. heh - In the following weeks we intend to prove to the court that the defendant has shown traits of optimism on a public forum
Nobody believes the official spokesman, but everybody trusts an unidentified source. -- Ron Nesen
Performance (even realworld performance, let's not get into benchmark fun) isn't the only criterion. One must look at the conditions under which you are allowed to use the product. This, in the age of UCITA, is where Microsoft will hurt themselves the worst. Given a weapon, they attack. This time they are busily attacking their own customers and setting more and more restrictive rules on their customers, as well as more and more harsh penalties for rulebreakers. At some point you end up going 'hell with this, let me find something lame but harmless'.
OSS is great in many ways, the philosiphy is good, etc.
That has already been established. There is one thing however, that will keep commercial software alive for a long, long time.
People who don't want to wait for it, will pay for it.
"Apparently, for the last couple of years, a band of open-source developers have gotten together for target practice at many of the major Linux conferences and events. To quote Eric (Raymond),'Hackers love anything where you get to tinker with complex hardware that makes loud exploding noises.' It sounds like fun, but we suspect some competitors would be a bit wary."
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What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Lest you forget, their software controls nearly eighty percent of the desktops outthere. It doesn't take a genius to leverage that out for at least twenty more years.
Uhh....I must not be a genius then.
Can you kindly show this dumb-ass how to "leverage" 80% productshare in a volatile marketspace to 20 years?
Last I remembered, Apple has a 80% market share on PCs about 15 years ago, and they died 10 years ago.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
This is nonsense. For all practical purposes, Oracle is the only choice for serious database applications. The long-term existence of Sybase and Informix are in doubt. DB/2 is credible but doesn't have the critical mass of developers and DBAs that Oracle does. ASPs are going with Oracle. MS SQL Server is not a real threat. And that's just the proprietary world.
In the open-source world, it looks like the only serious contender is Postgres. (Yes, I know MySQL has transactions now. Go away.) Even if it could compete technically, (maybe it can, I don't know), it has the same problem as DB/2.
Oracle has nothing to worry about. In fact, it is probably on its way to becoming a monopoly. And that's just for the DBMS itself. Are there any open-source equivalents for Oracle's suite of applications?
Look, Forrester isn't going to get headlines for itself by saying, "Guess what, open source Postgres and MySQL isn't going to beat Oracle." It would be interesting to see a report card on how Forrester and these other pimple-squeezers have done for accuracy over the years.
Given that companies like VA Linux are becoming quite profitable, goes to prove that selling solutions is the mentality of open source as opposed to selling software.
There's also an article in the National Post.
I work for the Post's parent company, and can tell you that it's normally very right of center. "So?", you ask? Well, that means that all the PHBs are really starting to take Open Source seriously. All the talk of "strategy" and the fact that Linux and Apache are being used in a great number of IT shops means that the Open Source movement is building critical mass - a snowball effect is starting. That happened with Windows - M$ came up with 2 good Windoze apps - Word and Excel, and seeded these apps in new Windoze installs. These apps attracted new customers to the OS, which attracted more developers, who created more apps for the OS,which attracted more customers, (etc. ect., ad nauseum, ad infinitum). If it happens to Linux, well now we've got a horse race.
If Micro$oft is good for any one thing, it's showing the way to World Domination - "Build good applications, and they will come". What we've got right now is Linux, Apache, Samba - as well as Standards Compliant network services. If the Open Source movement were to leverage these, we need not concern ourselves about Microsoft or AOL or anyone else's big ugly giant. The market wind will blow in our direction.
"MEOWRRR". Oops, let the cat outta the bag. Where'd I file that source tree?
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Bowie says things that make
And he's kind of bitchy. But he's not a Real Programmer, so it doesn't matter what he says.
Twinge.
Bero@RHAT will get his (5, Insightful) shortly, and all will be well.
Twinge.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
Then again, they didn't think the Internet would be that big a deal (witness first version of Windows 95 and the hoops you had to go through to get it onto the Internet. The then-non-Internet MSN was the way to go...). Microsoft certainly moved quick enough to embrace, extend, and capture much of THAT world...
.NET and the ASP thing so hard? If eventually all apps are free(without support) then someone will make money renting them out and taking care of support issues.
There lies the answer to your question. MSFT has more cash (not assets or market value but cold hard cash) than any other company in the world. With their assets they have bought their way into almost every possible field of computing: Operating Systems, PC Hardware, Game Consoles, Online Web Content, Internet Service Provider, Database software, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Desktop Publishing, Games, Interactive TV, Online Banking, Diagramming Software etc. If one aspect of computing stops being profitable they can drop it and buy their way into a profitable market ad infitum.
Also unlike IBM of old they can turn around on a dime if need be. Remember that Bill Gates once called the Internet a fad and said MSFT would ignore it. But guess what, now their browser is the number 1 browser on the internet, they are the second largest ISP (a distant second to AOL), and their software serves up a sizeable amount of web content (at least 25 per cent). All this from a company that got into the Internet game late.
If I had money I'd buy some shares, the stock only has pne way to go (up) once the split is done.
PS: Why do you think they are pushing
(-1 Troll)
Desktop OSs and computing platforms are fading into the network - within five years it really won't matter that much what platform you are using as long as it has a good browser and is fairly secure and stable.
Most of the applications you look at today that you can't possibly think of as networked, will be. Oracle will seel database storage as a service. You will use Excel through your browser, and AutoCAD and Seibel and anything else - believe it. This stuff is going to get smart - smart enough to play nice with your desktop, cellphone, and wristwatch.
Its all going to talk to each other and mesh around userids, not platforms - companies that build webs of apps around common userids are going to be in control - think AOL and Yahoo, and not IBM and MS
The companies that get networking and devices are going to reap the profits. CDROM-based software is DEAD!
Something else to realize is that open source projects tend to slow down as they get bigger. Witness the growing time between Linux kernel updates. Gnome and KDE are improving, but the improvements are slow to come, and meanwhile Microsoft isn't standing still.
The one real problem with the me-too cloning nature of much open source development is that it could be completely wiped out by something really snazzy and unexpected from a company that is doing any kind of R&D (which Microsoft does a lot of). For example, if a future Windows GUI were rewritten to use high-end video cards for *everything* rather than supporting the old GDI, then it would just plow through anything available for Linux. And Microsoft has been talking about this for some time now. Meanwhile, Linux desktops are still trundling toward just being stable and usable (no offense intended; I simply accept the truth).
one other word. BIND
treke
"Hey, if I come up with a great idea, I sure as hell ain't gonna let it get out for free. No way!" Then why on earth should anybody cooperate with you? Nice trolling, but if there's an atom of sincerity in your claims, it's rather sad, as you're crippling yourself by refusing to have your ideas (whatever they are, if any) exist in a social context with the ideas of others.
I'm talking about good ideas, big ones, not the little day to day things.
This translates roughly to 'I am smarter than everybody else in the world regarding the field in which I work'. You won't ever communicate your ideas- they are for franchising only, not for discussion. There are few people who have any business whatsoever taking such an attitude- among them, possibly, John Carmack- who opensources his old engines, pitches in on opensource projects, and posts to Slashdot like any member of the community.
Don't put words in my mouth that I didn't say. I never said I wouldn't communicate my ideas. I communicate my ideas with my friends quite frequently actually. None, of these are exactly earth shattering though. What I meant, is that in the situation that I happen across something that could quite potentially be big, I would make sure that I have an initial advantage over a competitor. Meaning, patent, copyrights, trademarks, or anything that is going to make it more difficult for others to compete with me in the market.
It looks like the people who _really_ have ideas and aren't just wanking about it tend to be the people who are discussing them with others and placing more importance on their superior ability to reach a synthesis with the ideas of the community, rather than those who say 'if' I come up with a great idea I will defend it with my life and never tell anybody.
Again, I discuss my ideas. In the event of said idea, I would be very discrete about who I go blabbing to. Only trusted individuals would get in on it.
This might be a little counterintuitive- but it's so well established that it bears closer examination. Essentially, the people most capable of continuing to turn out competitive work are the ones most likely to want to cross-pollenate with other developers in the community, secure in the belief that they can execute on the ideas better than their competition. And on the other hand, the people (and companies) least capable of coming up with new ideas or executing on their existing ideas are the ones who most want to chain up the ideas themselves, the ones saying 'I wouldn't let an idea go out there for free, are you crazy?'.
Ah, but those people who are out there 'cross pollinating' there ideas with others, have most likely taken appropriate measures to ensure competitors don't take advantage of them and their ideas, or products. It's these measures which I'm am referring to.
It looks to me like this is a convenient little litmus test, to distinguish between classes of developer and their relative capacities. In a way, to act from a presumption of idea scarcity almost _proves_ you don't have many... if you can't consistently come up with new ideas for new situations so easily that you can afford to give them away, what business do you have aspiring to be a professional programmer?
AGAIN, I'm not talking about the little day to days ideas. THE BIG ONES. And what makes you think I'm aspiring to be a proffesional programmer?
I'm really quite surprised at how someone can come to such conclusions based on a few sentances.
Sigh. How many times does it need to be said that 99.999% of users don't know or care that the tool they use is "open"?
Talk about missing the point. Nobody is claiming that open-source will become popular because people think "wow, it's open, so it must be good!". The idea behind open-source software is that being open brings certain benefits, and those benefits attract users.
As of now, most "open" tools suck big time compared to "closed" from the user's perspective, and this doesn't seem to change too fast.
What? This only makes sense if you include every single crappy little program that's released under an open license. Anyone can release open software. You could just as easily say that most sportsmen are incredibly unfit, because it makes sense if you count everybody who has booted a football about once in their life.
How about you just count the maintained, useful projects instead? Things like Apache, BIND, KDE, etc.
Now, users might care if "open" = "free" as opposed to hundreds of dollars for M$, but according to some evangelists it's not the case either, and as "open" market matures I expect more companies hide behind this principle to charge money to make profit.
Not sure what you are getting at here. Are you claiming that because RMS says that Free software isn't about price, and that it's OK to charge for Free software, that companies can use this as a leverage to charge hundreds of dollars for things, and that the end-users will still get shafted? You do realise that the person who buys it is free to sell copies at half-price?
Speaking more generally, why would any real professional who spent years mastering their art want to give it away is beyond me.
Just because you can't understand it, it doesn't mean it isn't happening. Or are you claiming that anybody involved in OSS isn't a "real professional"?
I don't see lawyers or doctors offering their often much needed help for free
Freedom is less useful in these professions. Can somebody take a prescription, and rewrite it so that you get better more quickly? Of course not. By the way, have you checked out openlaw.org yet?
True to the core.
A lot of open source project were closed at one point in time. They were only opened up because they were outdated and useless. Something better had come along and the company dumped it. Or it is some last ditch effect of a company to try recover a failing product that can't compete.
I've yet to see anything yet from Mozilla that competes with IE. Netscape 4.x is a pathetic joke. Star Office is so full of holes an bugs it's also pathetic. It crashes at least twice a day for me when I used to use Linux primarily.
IMO, Linux has a LONG ways to go before it is comparable to MS or MAC. By that time MS and MAC will have moved on to better things. Leaving Open source in it's dust.
*g*, thinks of Austin Powers...
"who...does....number....two....work...for....?"
"That's right, buddy, you tell that turd who's boss."
Free music from Jack Merlot.
What big ones? Please, one example. I realise I sound like a crazed anti-intellectual-property commie when I say that, but as so often happens when I make such arguments, I don't care :) kindly define the sort of 'big idea' that must be restricted and kept under wraps and never ever shared with others, whether YOU can implement it ideally or are just 'banking it' so nobody ELSE can implement it. I could easily argue that no idea so important should be owned any more than mathematical algorithms can be owned- that you should be limited to withholding your _implementation_ of said Big Idea, which presumably must be better than that of your competition. What gives you the right to own Big Ideas? Stick to laying claim to methods and implementations- Big Ideas are the property of society, and you should make your money off being the quickest off the mark with the Big Idea, first to market, and the one with the best implementation. If this implementation is sufficiently original, you can even patent it- but that process was never meant to lay claim to Big Ideas, only to make others have to work on their own versions of the Big Idea.
Look, dude.
:-)
I'm not gonna get into a pissing match with you, but we push A LOT of data besides just pageviews.
a lot.
And without all those pesky re-boots.
Microsoft, in fact many major software companies, are in the process of making that major mistake.
Backing UCITA...
If UCITA becomes law (in more thatn just a couple of states) the only way out of the mess that will be created will be free software. Software companies will be able to charge exorbatant prices, increase support costs at will, and not be liable for anything when there software doesn't work.
They will have look no different from Open Source software, except you will have to pay for them. Eventually people will figure out that paying for software that works the same as free software is stupid.
This will take a while, but if UCITA passes its possible that software companies will get sucked into the same cycle of complacency that killed IBM. So I wouldn't completely rule Microsofts demise out.
I'd add one more to your list: Things that are a lot more complicated than they seem.
This is an area where Adobe, Macromedia, Avid, etc. probably have things locked up for the next, oh, ten years (wild guess). Photoshop/GIMP is the best (tired) comparison. There are dozens of little, unsexy features of Photoshop that GIMP users/developers don't seem even to be aware of the existence of, let alone the difficulty/boringness of cloning. In fact, most Photoshop users don't even know about them, so they don't notice the absence of them in GIMP, but bitchy "professional" types can't/won't do without them. And it'll be quite awhile before someone gets around to coding them, because the "itch" isn't developers' (who have what they want already--nice web graphics, cool scripting), it's graphics "power users'" (too busy to learn how to code it themselves).
OSes with non-"office" niche focuses (eg: Mac, Be, Irix) might take awhile to fake convincingly, too. (Same reason, pretty much.)
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
IBM is and was much more than a 'hardware' company. IBM is a multi-tentacled monster with dozens of hardware and software platforms.
The reason why IBM screwed up dominating the PC market is a lack of focus. What is a better way of making money, a $5,000 pc or a $5,000,000 mainframe (plus lucrative consulting and service contracts)
When Compaq came out with the first 386, IBM lost it's dominating role in the PC marketplace. Once the dominance was lost, Microsoft could push its licensing agreements to all of the clonemakers.
Microsoft is insulated from it's mistakes by the massive number of Microsoft Windows and MS Office installations. Users are not eager to learn about a new operating enviroment and IT folks do not have the time to migrate.
The whole compatibility issue helps MS immensely. In 1991, why would I want to switch is OS/2 to run MS Windows 3.1 Applications? Why buy another OS to do things that you already do!?!
Today we are seeing the first true threat to Microsoft in several years. The ease of pirating MS Windows and Office in this age of cable modems hurts MS on the home front. The rising popularity of licensing fee free Linux hurts MS on the business side. Even Microsoft salespeople will have trouble selling MS Datacenter Server with 10,000 licenses as Linux and other unixes move into the enterprise market.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
"You are one stupid mofo if you think that the open source crowd will ever make ANY game that isn't a joke compared to real game dev houses, let alone threaten them across the board!"
Nah.
If you can get a common opensource engine going, then opensource games can adapt and evolve just by swapping a new version of a dynamic library. That gives them more staying power, and the "all-time classics" will have a tremendous advantage over whatever crap the commercial game industry cranks out, since the latter can't compete solely on the basis of having the latest and greatest engine.
So, you're gonna see proprietary commercial gaming go down the toilet (except consoles might survive a bit longer), and only the most outstanding, inventive games will have a chance.
The state of Open Source gaming right now is hampered by a lack of good, free software implementations of things like 3D modelers/animation programs, and mature common engines (although a few show promise). The fact that they've got anything out at the moment even remotely resembling "the hottest commercial game at the time" shows the sheer dedication and perseverance of these coders, and as the infrastructure matures, the number of programmers, designers, artists, etc., willing to tackle the problems of writing complex, modern video games will drastically increase. So the proprietary vendors damn well should be scared.
I do predict, however, that "in four years from now" you will no longer be a faux-cynical 12 year old, and your perspective may change, even if you need to be hit over the head with incontrovertible proof.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
}
Suuure... maybe we'd all use better encapsulation in a perfect() world....
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
}
Well, I certainly do hope that my predictions come true ASAP, if only to starve your ass!
Frankly, the thought of having to compete with free beer alone is making you run up a cold sweat!
Add to that the horror of the competition all working together just to kill your precious business model... well, I'm sure you've already shat yourself in terror as the stark reality of your utter insignificance to the world at large finally hit home.
Picture it this way:
Dinosaur: Haw haw.... look at all those pathetic, puny little mammals... they're so tiny and weak compared to us! In 10 million years they'll still be puny and weak, and in 20 million years they'll still be getting squished underfoot as we nonchalantly step on them without even noticing...
Puny Little Mammal: Hey, see that giant, fiery rock hurtling down from the sky? Maybe you guys won't last so long after all!
Big, Bloated, Walnut-Size-Brained Dinosaur: (stares desperately at the ground) I don't see anything like that at all! Nothing will ever threaten our dominance of the earth! We're perfectly safe and you guys will never amount to anything. (Buries head in sand, in a futile, pathetic attempt to hide from the inevitable)
So, you see, the moral of this story is that I'm cute and fuzzy and the wave of the future, and you're scaly, corpulent, hideous, stupid, obsolescent, and doomed.
Any questions?
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
}
About the only huge blunder on Microsoft's part was not recognizing the impact of the Internet, and we all saw how quickly they turned that around.
Yes, and just exactly how did they do that? Well, by giving away free software of course.
Like it or not, this may be the one thing that plants the seed in general consumer's minds that 'good software can be free'. Tell them they should pay for a browser now, and they may laugh. How long before they start expecting their whole OS, or their office suite, to be free as well? At least hardware manufacturers still have something manufactured to sell.
MS may get undone by their own favorite tactics. Assimilation of competition's features, and giving stuff away to set 'standards'.
...get viewers. What does media want more than anything else? (It's not to tell the truth, although they do try to do that most of the time) Media wants viewers.
Just as provocative blanket statements like "KDE SUCKS!!!!" or "GNOME SUCKS!!!" starts flamewars and piles up the comments, provocative stories about how MS is going to completely disappear draws readers like flies to a pile of shit.
But that doesn't mean that it has anything to do with reality. I'm no Microsoft fan, but they do have one of the best PR and sales forces in the universe, and I really doubt that they're going to fade into oblivion. Maybe, just MAYBE in a few years linux could grab the majority of the market, but to say that MS is going to become a legacy vendor is well...
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
This post is obviously a troll.
Any student of computer history (or anyone with a book with a chapter on computer history such as this one)can tell you that the IBM PC was released in 1981 and by the end of that year was outselling Apple machines. 15 years ago [1985] IBM compatible PCs were already the dominant player in the desktop market. Thus the above post is either a troll(very likely from it's insulting manner) or was written by some prepubescent teen who thinks that just because he and his friends had Apple ]['s in 1985, they were somehow the dominant desktop platform.
(-1 Troll)
PIII-550: $100, 128M ram: $130, 20 gig hard drive: $200, 19" color monitor: $450, Windows 2000 Professional without install CD: $289
These components sum to $1169
When you add a Motherboard: $80, Case: $20, Mouse: $10, Keyboard: $10, Video Card: $60, Sound Card: $40, Speakers: $20, Floppy Drive: $20, CDROM Drive: $40, it starts to add up to more like $1469. Almost $1500. Not "under $1000".
Without the Windows 2000 licence, it would only be $1180, which is a lot closer to "under $1000", even if it still isn't. If you make it a 17 inch monitor, and a 13 gig hard drive, then it's "under $1000".
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Once you get past the annoyance of a daily reboot (which most users have been conditioned to accept), Linux doesn't offer much competition for MS on the desktop - and no, trying to turn the clock back to 1996 by building Office rip-offs isn't going to change that. Anyone who needs an office suite already has one - MS Office.
Linux is getting there - the core OS has great stability that MS products lack, but GNOME/KDE, multimedia support, browser technology, etc still has a long way to go until it even gets to Win95 levels.
Hell, I won't let people even bring in stuff they've coded at home prior to working for the company. It's just not worth the risk. In fact I had one developer once who did bring in stuff he coded at home and wrote in comments that it was OK for us to use it - I didn't find out until I saw the comments in his source code. Later we fired him for some pretty shocking insubordination to the CEO, and he turns around and says "Well I withdraw permission for you to use that code I brought in".
It all amounts to risk and headaches we can do without. What's more, the people who do this usually screw up the project by introducing redundant code which has functional equivalents already present. Then the next person comes along and complains it's too hard to figure out which version of "List" he's supposed to use.
Incidentally, if you are an employee, the company *does* own anything you do either on their time or as part of your assigned work (even if that's on your own time), absent a contract stating otherwise.
Now this event seems to came true. It was a really interesting and foreseeing article!
ms
The only real differences for the programmers are that they can get help from outside (didn't you always want that un-tracable bug fixed by someone else? Happens a couple of times here...) and that they can legally link to GPLed and QPLed code - two things that make life a lot easier.
Aside from them, I don't think there will be many changes for developers.
Anyone stating they'll instantly get fired is spreading FUD. Companies will always need developers to make sure their programs develop in the "right" direction, and using those that have been on the project forever is plainly logical; anyone from outside would need quite some time to get familiar with the code.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Shameless self-promotion:
My pithy closing quote on this subject:
In five years, OSS will have changed the commercial SW and IT industries beyond all recognition.
In five years, the commercial SW and IT industries will have changed OSS beyond all recognition.
InfoWorld Electric Forums, September 4, 1998.
After this summer's LWE, I'd say the second half of that comment is largely true.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
I'm seeing some persons get really nervous :)
Exactly!
No :)
Microsoft established control of the PC software market fairly early, and I don't think there was ever a real solid challenge from IBM in this respect.
I would have given your argument more credit if you discussed IBM's dominance in computing before the PC - post PC, IBM's control eroded rapidly.
There still have been very few notable exceptions to the "open source is better suited to systems software" rule. The Gimp is nice, but--no offense intended--is pretty laughable if you put it side by side with Photoshop or the CorelDraw suite. Star Office is so-so, not to mention buggy.
Part of what weakened IBM and strengthened Microsoft is the fact that the IBM PC platform was open and clone-able. Thus, you didn't have to buy a computer from IBM, but you still had to buy the software from Microsoft.
Personally, I believe that the PS/2 was the beginning of the end for IBM dominance. The ISA bus was reaching it's limits quickly (I remember well the IRQ/ioport HELL of trying to actually fill all the slots).
While IBM came out with the VERY closed Microchannel archetecture, the rest of the industry went with EISA, VESA, and finally, PCI. In spite of the multiple competing standards and limited cross compatability, IBM's market share steadily shrank while the PC industry boomed.
If you chose IBM, you would pay more (in part due to lower volume) and keep paying more (Those MCA cards were expen$ive). If you decided to change vendors for an upgrade, all your MCA cards had to be replaced. Unless you were a big customer, the hardware 'support' from IBM wasn't actually there.
On the other hand, if you went with ANY other PC vendor, you got a lower cost, the parts were plentiful and interchangable, and the hardware 'support' varied depending on the vendor (but, often, it still wasn't actually there). If you didn't like the support, you could believably threaten to change vendors.
These days, the standards war has shifted to software with MS and co at the proprietary extreme and Linux and other Free software at the open extreme. I can get my OS from MS and be locked in, or from one of MANY Linux distros and mix and match the software to suit my needs. It's much cheaper (or free). With MS, I can get their software and freely interact w/ the rest of the MS world, or choose something else and be off in a corner by myself.
If anything, the contrast in MS vs. the world is MUCH sharper than for IBM vs. the world in the '80s. IBM never had to compete against FREE PCs and a modem in a PS/2 could talk to other modems. Also, PS/2's were good machines, just overpriced.
Right now, we are in the same place as the mid '80s where non IBM PCs were being taken seriously by large business for the first time, and you actually COULD get fired for buying IBM. MS is just coming out of the denial stage and cranking the FUD up to full volume.
Keep in mind that IBM didn't loose out to MS alone, it lost out to all of the PC vendors.
No. What many OS/FS advocates don't seem to realize is that they don't look the same. The reason why Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office are such good programs is because Microsoft is a big company which is paying thousands of people to create good software. If UCITA passes, and prices go up, then they can pay more people to create software, and they'll far surpass Free Software equivalents. I don't like it either, but it's true.
P.S. I submitted this two weeks ago:
2000-08-16 00:45:24 Open Source World Domination Scheduled for 2004 (articles,gnu) (rejected)
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Wall Street analysts would argue with that assessment. And even if Sourceforge went away tomorrow, I greatly doubt (m)any of the projects on it would be cancelled. Most of them had some form of that infrastructure before, and they can have it again.
Id Software does not make proprietary software, in my opinion. I believe they will Free everything, as they did with the original Quake. John Carmack is always doing something new, "on the cutting edge", if you will. He releases the code after milking the commercial quality from it. This is the smartest approach, in my opinion. It is a happy medium that allows the knowledge to be distributed Freely, but only after the researchers get their fair share.
Well, considering ID has a history of releasing the code to their no longer profitable engines (wolf3d, doom, and most recently, Quake I), I'd say they're not your traditional proprietary software company.
The wired article (I guess citing the Forrester stuff), said that Dell is going to become a major open source player. Is that going to be Dell's open source web browser? Or perhaps their open source office suite? It seems to me that if Dell is going to become a major player in the open source market (apart from shipping a pitifully slim array of machines available with RedHat), they should, I don't know, maybe be in the software business first. Dell isn't even a closed source software company. They don't write much of anything, other than their own web sites. Perhaps if the writer of the article opened his/her source, we would see that it was a phony to start with. Sheesh.
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
Guess so bro :)
Try this login if you don't want to be registered:
:)
:)
username: slashdot
password: slashdot
It's registered to a certain Anonymous Coward
(karma whoring? nah
Sigh. How many times does it need to be said that 99.999% of users don't know or care that the tool they use is "open"? As of now, most "open" tools suck big time compared to "closed" from the user's perspective, and this doesn't seem to change too fast. Now, users might care if "open" = "free" as opposed to hundreds of dollars for M$, but according to some evangelists it's not the case either, and as "open" market matures I expect more companies hide behind this principle to charge money to make profit.
Speaking more generally, why would any real professional who spent years mastering their art want to give it away is beyond me. I don't see lawyers or doctors offering their often much needed help for free(yeah, I know, they sell "service", the classic example of OS advocates). I don't see established artists giving away their paintings(PR stunts a-la "feed the hungry", "save the children" don't count).
No, one, I mean NO ONE would predict that they would just be a bit-player in the PC world 10 years later. OS/2? When released in 1987, everyone predicted it would replace DOS and Windows within a few short years. It couldn't fail, IBM was behind it. When PS/2s came out, everyone jumped and tried to catch up.
Microsoft blew that out of the water, as we all know now. Brought down the biggest computer company in the world and made IBM listen to THEM.
So I've been telling people not to expect Microsoft to be nothing more than yet another software vendor 10 years from now, and everyone thinks I am nuts.
I'm sure this subject will erupt in another OS flame war, but I still see it happening.
Will it be a good thing? I don't really know. At least when IBM was "in control" standards existed and they could change them. Almost over-night, 3.5" floppies replaced 5.25" floppies. To this day, we're stuck with the same 3.5" drives and a plethora of competing removable disk standards that don't have the backing of any major hardware vendor, so none of them become standard.
Will the software market fragment too? Will nothing go forward because no dominant player makes the standard?
Then again, the fact that Word .doc files are the defacto standard in document sharing now is a horrible travesty. XML as a standard at data representation is very exciting.
I just think Microsoft now is just too big and stuborn to adapt quick enough. Then again, they didn't think the Internet would be that big a deal (witness first version of Windows 95 and the hoops you had to go through to get it onto the Internet. The then-non-Internet MSN was the way to go...). Microsoft certainly moved quick enough to embrace, extend, and capture much of THAT world...
I still think they are in trouble. If I had any of their stock, I'd be selling it...
But there will be two classes of software that will always support a healthy percentage of proprietary software, at least as long as capitalism is around:
1. Anything that requires some sort of rare, specialized knowledge. High-end scientific software, high-end accounting software, etc. The pool of developers that would be able to contribute to something in this category is just too small to make a purely open-source model workable.
2. Games. Users demand the latest and greatest and have repeatedly shown that they are willing to pay for it. As long as this is true, and game companies can keep up with those demands without going open-source, they're not going to do it. What's more, the usual open-source-related revenue streams just don't make sense for game companies (who's going to pay for service and support on Starcraft? :-). I wouldn't be surprised to see some companies releasing games commercially for a while, then once sales slow down, open the source. (Especially to gaming engines, since the company has as much or more to gain from advances there than anyone else.)
No they won't!
As a developer, I want the toold that let me do my job the easiest and best way I know possible. That's Windows NT and Visual Studio.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the company I work for buys me what I need, regardless of whether or not a passingly similar open source alternative is available. You know why? Because they know that I need the tools I'm most familiar with, and they need to be able to support it after I move on. That means Windows, because it's what they're most familiar with.
Furthermore, while all you penguin-whores whine on about how much WinNT sucks, I know that it works. I can make it work. If you guys aren't competent enough to run NT without BSOD'ing it, then going to an OS you modify yourself isn't going to fix the basic problem - it's between the keyboard and the chair.
Let's face it people, there's really no way for shareware developers trying to support their families and make a decent living will be able to survive under a GPL-dominated world. What worries me is that OSS will take one of two anti-prosperity routes: populism-gone-awry (come on, as if many of the OSS advocates are little more than software demagogues....) or corporate domination.
The closed source model allows small time vendors like Opera to kick big-time vendors like Microsoft and Netscape in the face and get away with it. Under an OSS world, Opera's developers wouldn't make any money off their product because who needs tech support, etc for a web browser? Sure they might occassionally get a few dollars from helping a guy fix a registry setting that is messing up Opera, but the point is that their main revenue stream would be destroyed.
Open source the foundation, ie the OS and development tools so all companies and people have a level playing field. However anything beyond that will only make it unprofitable for people to write software because there is no way you can provide tech support for most software.
Actually, I find proprietary Linux applications generally seem to have worse interfaces than either commerical or non comemrical open source projects. GIMP, Red Hat PPP, GQView, and Helix GNOME all have extremely elegant interfaces. Basically, I know when I download a KDE or GNOME app that's past a 1.0, its going to have a nice interface. Adobe's Framaker, with its bizarre motif bright blue interface, strikes me as the most overwhelming example. But CDE, XV, Windows drag-and-drop, and many others also spring to mind. Basically, if its got anything to do with motif, it's fucked. KDE and GNOME already have artists teams - Mosfet and Tigert [I think?] head the teams. KDE also has their own equivalent of Apples Hunam Interface Guidelines. It's likely the Eazel folks are going the same for GNOME. Perhaps, rather than open-closed source, you're talking about market share. But who says markey leading apps have the best interface? Why the hell do I have to convert my text into every font on my system before I find the one I want when using MS Word? A lot of the innovation in this sector comes from Competition - ie, in Corel Office you get a preview of your text while your mouse moves in the font list box [it's called show-as-you-go]. Its amazing how simple things like this haven't occured earlier. This wasn't always the case. I remember Red Hat once shipping with FVWM95, which used icons to represent applications. Despitte the fact that FVWM95 was supposed to be stable, they seemed to forget that the purpose of icons was a graphical representation of the content or function - ie, using the Red Hat shadowman for every app defeats the purpose of the excerise.
Now I'm all for open source. I like it. I've used some open source programs and have even written a few things that I guess I could considered to be open source. But there has been one thing that beefs me about this whole 'open source movement.' It's that they think it is going to take over the world. I don't think so!
Open source this. Open source that. I personally have yet to see anything that is in anyway competitive with closed source software. There isn't anything. I'm willing to debate it to!!!
Here are some reasons I would not use open source software.
1.) the availability of source code makes it an easy target for those with motives that don't exactly see eye to eye with the origonal programmer. I've got a story about this, if anyone cares.
2.) In a similar fashion to #1, the availability of the code means that you may not always get what you need or wanted. updates, features, or fixes may not always end up being included in every version of every copy that is out there.
3.) The interaction between differing software isn't alway pretty. I've got another story.
4.) hey, I don't want joe schmoe recompling my kernel. Period!
Like I said though, I'm not against open source. It's just that it has its own time and place. Taking over the world isn't going to happen. We are not going to live in an open source world. Sorry Guys.
Considering the total cultural chasm between traditional Unix hackers and traditional MacOS hackers, this is a huge development. Plus it includes some of the greatest titles ever to break sales records on the Mac (most notably, the game Marathon).
I agree that MacOS is moving on to better things. It appears to be moving on to Open Source. :)
Truth: VA is consistantly beating analysts' predictions about profitability. Their revenues are growing quickly, as well.
and is currently teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Truth: VA has millions in the bank. It made this money on the most succesful IPO _ever_
The company is backlogged,
Truth: being backlogged means you have more orders than you thought possible, and you can't fill them all right away. Being backlogged is either a sign of poor management, or stratospheric growth. What do you think is going on here?
and incurring a huge amount of debt in an attempt to spread out resources.
I'm not sure, but I beleive they are still spending inventor's money rather than resorting to bonds or loans (ie debt).
The lush green pastures provided by companies like VA tend to evaporate overnight, once all the money that can be made has been made. Its just a matter of time before the process is fully milked and depleated.
Sure, this is an opinion, but now you've lost the evidence that backs it up.
Nothing separates VA from any other company out there -- Statistically, they stand a 93% chance of failing within the next 5 years.
I disagree - there are things that separate them from other companies. They have first-mover advantage in open-source hardware/software solutions. Most firms which fail don't have first-mover advantage. VA's newness allows them to do things other players can't - they have no channel to piss off, so they can sell direct with more freedom than Sun or IBM. They have R+D and services division, so they can offer solutions that Dell can't. Most firms which fail can't differentiate themselves enough from established players. VA has enough customers for them to be profitable (they choose not to now because they want to grow) - most firms which fail don't. They have the backing of big venture capitalists. Most frims which fail don't. Their revenues are growing quickly - most firms which fail don't have this
.Look at all that goes into a professional game. It takes a year of thirty people's lives. That means money. Lots of it.
It's not just programmers, either. It's artists (texture and model), designers, a story writer, level designers, a production staff, and a support structure for those people.
There's no Open Source on 3D Models.
Now, what about the Mod community, you say? What about Counter-Strike?
I say, what about Counter-Strike? They're doing a great job. Beta 7 rocks my world. But they're creating an addon to a game that's been out for a year, on a well-documented engine that's been around since I was in high school. And it's still taken them a substantial amount of time to get to where they are. Imagine if they were developing Quake III Arena!
In short, there's simply no way to create a professional-quality game without some sort of financial backing. And I thank the guys that do have the balls to step up and make entertaining me their job. Ya know how I thank them? I walk down to my local software store and lay down my hard-earned money for their unabashedly closed-source products.
note: generic, private libraries
IOW, the stuff that defines his coding style. The stuff he can either rewrite over and over again, debug over and over again, or just do once and gradually refine it, making him a better, more productive prgrammer.
There's nothing I hate more than that "Gimme, gimme, gimme! Mine, mine, mine! I hired you for this job, so I own everything you produce in the course of doing it!" attitude.
It's bullshit. Do you claim to own the skills he learned while working for you? He developed them on working time, just the same. I say a programmer's private toolbox is part of his skill set. He has a right to improve the parts of it that are used in the line of his current job, on paid time.
This code itself is nothing but a convenience, to the person who wrote it. He can recreate it easily, but it wastes his time. Insisting on the IP ownership of the company that he was working for at the time he wrote it helps no one, and is a purely hostile act.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with your statement entirely. Microsoft has the manpower, and they'll use it on anything they haven't monopolized yet. That's not an evil empire, it's good business. It's unfortunately also why OSS is destined not to rule the world (at least, not yet). As soon as it starts becoming a threat, MS will increase R&D and put out something better, commercial, bug-ridden, and free. Once they've cornered the market again, they'll go back into hiding. It isn't such a bad thing, at least it gets MS to put out better browsers and operating systems, and hopefully with Mozilla and Linux both getting better, MS will either die or be forced to improve. As much as some people hate that company, both are Good Thing(tm)s.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
They're like any other IPO... they fucking bleed cash.
"No Georgie! Please no! I don't want to make over a hundred thousand dollars a year doing something ELSE! "
"I don't see anything like that at all! Nothing will ever threaten our dominance of the earth! We're perfectly safe and you guys will never amount to anything."
"Haw haw.... look at all those pathetic, puny little mammals... they're so tiny and weak compared to us! In 10 million years they'll still be puny and weak, and in 20 million years they'll still be getting squished underfoot as we nonchalantly step on them without even noticing..."
"(Buries head in sand, in a futile, pathetic attempt to hide from the inevitable)"
Come on, you're making this waaaay too easy for me... must be that scaly walnut-sized brain of yours, ya overweight lizard!
Incidentally, I'd bet you'd be hard-pressed to name a single title you've produced that a) is/was commercially successful, and b) is still remembered fondly by gamers. Big-shot commercial developer, indeed!
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People will learn to pay for it.
It is in their own best interests.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
And this will be the fundamental shift. Instead of selling the software, you sell the services that companies need to run the software. And you still have to have someone developing the software. Open Source or not, there's still value to putting bodies behind desks working on the code. At least, RedHat certainly thinks so, and I tend to agree.
Bear in mind that I make these comments from behind a product that is still closed source and has no plans to be any other way. Despite that fact, we're already making the changes that will keep us strong when the source code is no longer a product. After all, like most eBusiness vendors, all our metadata (the real meat of the product) is in the database, and is therefore "open source" already. So how will it change life? For me, not much. My employer will remain in business because quite simply there is no open source product that can compete with us, and it's not likely that there ever will be, until the day that we finally succumb to pressure and open our own source. The reason is simply labor: We have roughly 700 developers, and they've been working on this product for more than 10 years. It's an incredibly intricate system, and unless development tools take a quantum leap (something I can't rule out), it will be hard bordering on impossible to ever put together enough concerted manpower to produce a software product like this "in the bazaar".
I only wish it were possible, so my employer would feel that pressure to open the source today - would make life a lot easier for me.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
So, once powerful interests realize that free and open code benefits everyone, software companies will become contractors, and work on the stuff that nobody wants to do for fun....
Of course, game companies may not fare as well when more of the game-creation tools (Game SDKs, miscellaneous libs, 3d modelling and animation tools, etc.) mature, and make it possible for more professional-quality games to be cranked out by amateur [game] coders.
That said, there'll probably never be a shortage of GPL'ed, overhead, tilebased, half-finished adventure/RPGs, but there may be room for proprietary vendors to succeed in selling truly groundbreaking titles, or separating the code for game engines from the artwork/music/storylines.
Either way, commercially-produced games will have to get much more creative and innovative to survive.
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The article said that they might have to move to an open source model...
Or they will have to lower their licensing costs.
It's far more likely that they'll simply lower the cost of their product, than start giving it away for free.
Besides I don't see any competition for either Oracle or Microsoft on the database side of things from Open Source. Well unless a miracle happens and IBM GPL's DB/2, but that's unlikely.