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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?"
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
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.
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
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.
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?
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...
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
"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.
...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.
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...