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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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
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.
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See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
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"?
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?
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...
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.
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
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
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.
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).
*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.
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.
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
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)
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.
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
When you are considering someone's argument, it's really quite important to not simply buy into their default assumptions- if you do, you might even feel that Twinge of alarm, the disconcerting feeling that something's broken somewhere in your worldview. What if he is right? O_O
When you _do_ look at their default assumptions, it gives a much better foundation for understanding the validity of their argument. In Bowie's case, these default assumptions appear to include things like this:
- Nobody does something for nothing
- Everybody only acts in their own self-interest, always
- If someone isn't, it must be because they have been TRICKED!
:o
- Once the people who are doing this 'free' stuff realise that other people are paid MONEY to do it, they will all stop, as...
- what other motivation is there?
*hee, hee, hee...*Now really, can you take this line of reasoning seriously? If so, aren't you a rather cold, unpopular person without friends, scheming and plotting to further your personal wealth? :D
Honestly- there _are_ other values. Go look at a sunset for five minutes without attempting to figure out how to sell it. Get a pet that is not an investment. Get laid without paying for it, if you can! Do something that sidesteps the neat little dead-end of power and wealth your head's stuck in. You might just like it! ;)
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?
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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
.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.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
People will learn to pay for it.
It is in their own best interests.
---
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.
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.