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Bob Metcalfe On NPR
linux slacker writes "Bob Metcalfe, Inventor of ethernet, writer of a
weekly columnn on Infoworld, was on Boston U's NPR show
The Connection this morning. Among other topics, he predicted the eventual downfall Open Source and Linux, citing as one reason the old argument that "Open Source leads to security breaches". Now, this guy did support the Microsoft anti-trust case and opposes monopolies, but he just doesn't like the Open Source idea. " To be fair, he did talk about a lot of other stuff - it was a pretty good show.
Certainly much older than the hat he promised to eat if the Internet didn't collapse (or was it some other non-comestible?) He "invented" Ethernet while at Xerox, though it's being debated how much "inventing" it really took, since--as has been stated elsewhere--much of the technology was based on established principles. Since then he seems to pretty much have rested on his laurels, as befits one after so much hard work. I'm not aware of much further ground-breaking work he did after that.
Anyway, he wields his thusly-won fame to create the impression of much wider-reaching expertise and authority. He loves sitting on all sorts of panels and boards (watch those splinters now!) and taking his mouth for a spin. I've read his column at InfoWorld for years, and on average he has less to say than most of our development team members on a good day. He certainly is very fond of name dropping and all sorts of allusions to the lofty company he circulates in.
My favorite was his vitriolic article a couple of years ago or so to "impeach Clinton." He pretty much exposed himself as a troll and a person of little emotional consequence. He is in bed with Big Business, loves everything Big Business--as any good Republican should--and from that perspective he certainly has no love lost on Open Source. As far as the Internet is concerned, he'd probably much rather have it converted to one LARGE Ethernet network and do away with this pesky network-agnostic protocol called TCP/IP.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
The trouble with this argument is that it hasn't shown itself to be true over the last 20 years of computing and it is in fact making great strides in the OPPOSITE direction.
I'm beginning to empathize with RMS (that scares me...really). I understand his frustration. People just don't pay attention. HP is contributing significant resources to the SAMBA project which is, in my opinion, one of the most significant pieces of open source software available. IBM has devoted manpower and hardware resources to various linux porting efforts (specifically RS/6000). Apache, though not predominantly on Linux, still runs most of the web. Sendmail routes enomous amounts of mail. BIND works...what else can I say? XFree86 is in heavy use among commercial entities. SGI, SUN, IBM, HP are all involved in OSS. Are there bigger names in computing? Anyone?
Open Source basically isn't catching on in the Wintel world. I'm sorry, I missed the part where Microsoft won. Last time I checked, the battle was raging and OSS is still on the assault.
No, open source software is in use every day by companies the world over. They may not know it, but they use it, they fund it, and they LIKE it.
-fp
I also think it's true about security too. If there is something open in Unix, it is easy to fix, or get answers on how to fix it. On NT, you either have to work around it or wait until a service pack comes out to fix it.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Open source has its place. The hobby community will accomplish things that commercial development will never pay for using Open Source.
That said, it's never going to be the predominant model for software development, nor will Open Source programs ever be the prevailing supply of software for businesses. Why? Businesses like dealing with other businesses. When things fuck up (and they do), it's nice to have someone to blame, someone who has a responsibility to back up their product.
No IT staffer will want their server support to come solely from the community. And the Linux IPO's are all hype - they're not a serious alternative.
In short, it's not MS's OS that everyone's buying - it's the support. Granted, Win2000 is an excellent OS, but that's not why it gets bought.
I haven't read the whole article yet, but I was thinking anyway...
Since he is the creator of ethernet, then obviously he has been in the industry for awhile (back to the beginning even). And way back when, most developing (like ethernet) was done in a pretty much open-source enviornment.
I was just wondering if his objections to open-source is only in relation to how it is going now (linux users fighting with *BSD users etc.) or if he doubts all of the open-source ideals (including the time when he used to work under them). And if the latter is true, if he thinks this because he has been at 3COM too long...
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
Igor Stravinsky once said that there are only two types of music - good music and bad music. Perhaps its time that such a philosophy was applied to software. Software that is robustly designed and tested will always be preferable to software that isn't (obviously); but being 'open' or 'closed' doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. There are examples of 'good' closed software (ie on the space shuttle) and 'bad' closed software (You Know What).
It can be argued that open source increases the chances of a program being robust, but is not a panacea; at the end of the day it boils down to whether correct software engineering and testing principles have been applied. In many ways the open source movement is a backlash against appalling software quality in over-the-counter commercial applications - maybe it mightn't have been so popular if there had been more 'engineering' in software development from the outset?
-- briggers
-- briggers Remove blinkers to email me.
Metcalf on Open Source:
"The idea is that the modern, high tech modern capitolist corporation, is an out-moded model for the development of software and that there's this new model, this sort of co-operative comunity and that will work better, and I don't think it will. I think that ummm co-operatiave..ummm.. uh you have a day job and go home to your programing..has it's limits.
uhhh I have yet a third paradym which I call the ethernet pardaym where the standards are open but the implemtations are owned, so that a corporation has property ..and economics can work.
In the internet world, there is an open standard .. like the ethernet and internet world both have open standards but fierce comitition between companies, corporations who own the implementations of the standards and I think that's a superior model to open source movement which suspect will sorta fritter away.
(Interviewer interupts) If a hacker can improve a product and introduce to the rest of the world, umm why shouldn't the world be like that...in other words, why does ford have to make every car the same . . we understand that well, because I, tinkering with my V8 engine can improve yours . .but in software you can't.
Well, you could tinker with my engine too . .there are chips, I mean . people don't do this!, I mean. . btw Ford is not the only car manufactuer there are many others you could choose from. You're allowed to let your neibor tinker with your car, but no one does , or very few people do because it's dangrous.
There are very few people qualified to muck with the inards of an operating system like Linux, so the notion that there will be thousands of them, or hundreds of thousands of them ...
(Interviewer interupts)
It only takes one to improve it.
yea, but it's very hard to tell what's an improvement..the software development process is very very complicated and it's all about the control of complexity and uhh testing and uhh btw, who's to say one of these hackers isn't putting software in the system that say a security breach that they may want to exploit later, I mean there are many issues . umm
(Interviewer interupts)
It leaves a lot of the choice in the world to Bill Gates=, tho, doesn't it ?
Bill Gates isn't the only software developer. There's also such likeable fellows as Larry Ellison, I mean . anyone can develop software, start a company and try to vy for it uhhh look at Linus Torvalds, the champion of all this, a really great guy, but he works at a company called Transmeta. There products are not open source for a very good reason they need to have a product, they need to control it's content, they need to make money by selling it. "
When the Metcalf article came on slashdot, I looked up some of his older articles. He actually said that the entire Internet would die. His reason was well, weird.
He had written this during the time of the CDA, when people were really frightened about censorship on the Internet, naturally people were using the internet to discuss this. It was Metcalf's hypothesis that since people were using so much bandwidth discussing pornography, and censorship actual porn would be drowned out. Without porn, he figured, the Internet was pointless.
Yup, if there's thing wrong with the internet today, its not enough porn.
He also predicted (incorrectly, he admitted) that the internet stock bubble would collapse in 1997, and that Yahoo stock would be worthless. While stock went down a bit in 1999/2000, and new IPOs didn't go so crazy, he was way of with that to.
The Internet, pornography, E-commerce, dot-coms, and Linux. Clearly Metcalf knows a loser when he sees one....
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I think the whole Open Source thing has a few more good decades in it. It's just now gotten back on it's feet. The 60's and early 70's had some great free software. Then we had the Unix wars, late 70's and 80's were somewhat mediocre. But the mid to late 90's saw a huge surge in open source popularity.
And now there are a whole generation of students who have always had free OS's, dev tools, and all sorts of software. When they get out of school and in to the business world they will bring some of that with them. Much like students past brought Unix from the campus to the work place.
And it's more likely to happen now because there are so many young execs (usally coder turned suit) that aren't afraid to use open source porducts at the enterprise level (Yahoo! is a great example)
I think we are just getting started.
Just remember that he was the one who predicted the fall of the internet, citing that its popularity was just a fad.
Being a good engineer doesn't make you good at seeing what uses people will put products created by engineers to. An engineer only understands the motivational structure of other engineers, unless he or she is uncommonly perceptive. It is possible that Metcalfe could be so perceptive. Of course his idea that the internet was doomed buries that idea six feet under.
I expect to see him on the Psychic Friends Network sitting beside Dionne Warwick any day now.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.