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Red Hat CTO Responds To Allchin's Comments
A reader writes: "C|Net has a small interview with Red Hat's CTO Michael Tiemann rebutting the remarks Jim Allchin made about Open Source being bad for innovation. It's in Windows Media or Real media." It's a pop-up window on the right side - and this is continuation of the Allchin story.
Whoa, soldier!
Many points I would make here, hoping they fall on open ears. I think Tiemann would agree with you off the record that Allchin is a lunatic. He fairly called MS evil, but there are things I don't think you understand.
First the premise that MS is dead in the water (waitaminute, is this flamebait?? oh well...). It's hard to believe that a katrillion dollar company is dead in the water, but if they are dying, then let's make sure they don't take too many of us down with them. I don't know if you noticed, but they are starting to lobby legislators A Lot - check out today's Wired News . If they succeed in gaining credence with legislators who then make laws stifling Open Source (what kind of laws? Someone mentioned the licensing of programmers yesterday...), we may indeed suffer as 'we' become outlaws.
Linux and the open source replace MS? Not likely. Not until the Linux OS matures at least enough so it becomes a viable alternative to Windows. Before you consider this point flamebait, you must admit: our Moms would have a terrible time getting Linux to run, but they are comfortable with MS. I can't say much more, as I am only a reluctant Windows user (but some day...).
Your line, "The truth will out, as it has been shown throughout history" makes me wonder if you 'read' the piece. Tiemann actually addresses the arrogance of MS in believing that it can control the truth much in the same way that the Church sought to control the Truth a thousand years ago. This brought on the Dark Ages until people realized that the Truth exists independently of peoples wishes. We could actually experience a Dark Ages in computers, you know... what would it be like? I don't know, but it's got a crappy OS running the show and every click you make can be heard clear up to Redmond and D.C. I think it would involve loss of privacy And innovation as open source programmers become dispirited and disjoint. We would then live in a kind of 1984 where life is crappy as hell but we are told things are getting better every day. And I damn sure would not be allowed to type this stuff. Or maybe I could, but I would find out that my OS liked me less and less and I get the BSOD every three minutes instead of twice a day...
Is MS evil? Would they do anything to keep themselves on top, including lowering the entire world so they are relatively superior. I don't know, why don't we ask them?
This 'rebuttal' is absolutely essential so that the snide remarks of a very very powerful lunatic don't go by unchallenged. I salute Tiemann for stepping up to the plate and calling a spade a spade, standing before the Great Evil like David to Goliath...
...or maybe Galileo to Pope Urban VIII...
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
That is an incredibly blantant ripoff. SOME credit should be given to the origonators (AFAIK):
Modern Humorist
MP3 Poster
Yeesh.
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"A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street." - Doug Linder
But neither set of arguments matter. The current situation-- where some software is developed open sourced and some closed --works to produce diversity, as well as providing economic incentive to programmers.
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Kid, I've seen NeXT systems stay up for years.
Microsoft products only look reliable in comparison to other microsoft products.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Try this link to go right to it. (This is the 220Kbps realplayer stream)
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Why? Because the top programmers will no longer program, if they don't get paid.
riiiiiiight. just like how writers will stop writing books when people can read them at the library for free. just look at how cd sales have dropped since people can download mp3s. what a shame it was when the whole porn industry died with the creation of jpegs!
obviously, nobody ever does anything without being paid! creative impetus, p'shaw! all the great creative works in the history of the human race were done for a salary, right?
oh my people, what have i done unto thee?
a
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
A message from your friends at Microsoft
.sig: Now legally binding!
You know who you are. Maybe you use Lynx, maybe you haven't got a sound card or maybe real player crashes when you open it. Any way, here's what went on in the video for you:
The clip begins with a head shot of Michael Tiemann
Michael: Recently Jim Alchin made some comments about open source, microsoft and innovation. He said open source will suppress innovation. Well I'm here to tell you that the open source movement, which we at Red Hat are proud to be a part of, is constantly innovating. In fact, I'm so innovative, I'm not even wearing pants right now!
Camera slowly zooms out to reveal that Mr. Tiemann is in fact nude from the waist down. He is also obviously excited.
And let me tell you something else Mr. Alchin, we know what innovation means. Open source has allowed thousands of volunteers around the world to collaborate on code for the passion of it. Michael grabs his crotch to emphasize the word passion then releases it.
Why don't you go check the SpecWeb99 benchmarks Mr. Alchin, you'll notice that our innovative new kernel support for http enables us to blast right past IIS 5.0 on equivalent hardware.
And look at our desktop code, we've got skinning support in every layer of our gui, hows that for innovation you dissapated fuck?
At this point Michael Tiemann abandons all pretense of reasonable discussion and begins howling obscenity at the camera and punctuating it with frequent pelvic thrusts. this continues for about 15 minutes.
Over all, I thought the rebuttal was somewhat unprofessional but nevertheless quite compelling. I could watch it again and again and again. Mr. Tiemann may lack self controll, but DAMN - he could run a 3-legged race all by himself.
--Kara
--Kara
Before you ask, I already have a boyfriend and he's more of a man than you'll ever be.
Microsoft has been pounding on the word "innovate" and the phrase "freedom to innovate" so hard in an attempt to beat it either into submission, or to bend it into meaning what they want it to mean. There is innovation going on at Microsoft, in their graphics research division, but damned little of it to do with Windows.
They seem to have adopted Musolini's theory of "The Big Lie" that if you shout something at people loud enough and long enough that eventually they will will believe it, no matter how perposterous.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
The big one is cloning. Every time a really good new program idea comes out and someone tries to sell it, a thousand hackers jump on it and clone it, guaranteeing that the originator won't make a dime. Sometimes, the clone is even inferior, but at $0 it's impossible to compete against.
Don't get me wrong, proprietary software companies do this too. In particular, MS has done this many times, so the entire software industry is terrified that if they try to sell a new product based on a new idea that it'll hardly be on the shelves before MS has their own version with a giant marketing budget and a hundred tied-sales.
The important question is, does Open Source innovation outweigh the Open Source threat of cloning?
I'm not convinced that it does right now. The conflict between open and closed source models is wasting a lot of effort and discouraging many people from creating. However, when the conflict is resolved, I'm sure the situation will be much better than an all-proprietary market.
Programmers need to be paid, somehow; there are some altruists, but in general people need a reward to expend their time and energy. While there are many indirect ways for Open Source software to be paid for, there is still no way to guarantee that just because you make a good piece of software that is widely-used by people who can afford to pay for it, that you will be paid for it. This is the heart of the conflict: Open Source is kicking out the old sources of income and hasn't fully established new ones.
I think the answer is the simplest possible one: just give money both to the people who make the best implementation, and the ones came up with the idea behind the software; by rewarding them, you encourage future innovation for your benefit. It's called Mass Market Busking.
If you hold on to your money unless someone finds a way to pry it from your hands, you can expect that people who want your money will try to pry the money from your hands. If you give money to anyone who benefits you, you can expect that people who want your money will just do work that benefits you. It's that simple.
Just as the people who bought Wolfenstein paid for Doom, and the people who bought Doom paid for Quake, Half-Life probably wouldn't have been made if nobody had paid for Quake. It isn't just the people you're paying who are being encouraged to do work for your benefit, but anyone who is capable of similar work.
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''I'm an American, I believe in the American Way,'' he said. ''I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough education of policy makers to understand the threat.'' People like Allachin sicken me. I plan to serve in either the Army or the Navy after college and willing to die in defense of this country if need be. Yet I almost completely abhor Microsoft-the-institution, Microsoft-the-products and above all else, Microsoft-the-business-model. I believe that our country's IP laws are treasonous to the values of the American revolution and that anyone that supports the DMCA and the like is equally a traitor to the spirit of the revolution and the United States Constitution. These companies know that in a free market they can't make a honest buck. Allachin and his fellow big government stooges at Microsoft are just pissed off because within a year or so, RedHat will cut a profit and so will perhaps other open source companies. That is what they fear the most, the vindication of the open source ideal that freedom of speech/ownership of software and profit are NOT mutually exclusive. So Allachin or however you spell it, I have one thing to say about your comments about the dangers of OSS... don't talk to me about patriotism. You don't know what real patriotism is. It isn't loyalty to a bloated corporate burearcracy, it is loyalty to an ideal that forms the basis of the best nation ever created by Homo Sapiens. The loyalty to the ideal that each man and woman is free to live a peaceful, productive life, without people like you micromanaging them. To me, OSS is the epitomy of that ideal and a government which doesn't at least start planning the implementation of OSS-based systems is not a government that has any claim to calling itself the government of a free people!!!
Chuck Flynn is correct: Jim Allchin is a first class lunatic.
I wish I'd saved the article: this is a guy who claimed, back in November 1997, that Windows NT would become the full equal of a mainframe in three years. Well, November 2000 came and went, and mainframes are still light years ahead of anything Microsoft can do.
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Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Huh? Most of the major open source programs
I can think of are imitative rather than
innovative. Linux is an OS implementation
of Unix, Gnome and KDE are attempts to clone
MS Windows on Linux, etc.
The innovative OS programs I can think of
t(httpd, Mosaic, BSD) tend to come out from
universities and are more properly the side
benefits of research rather than the direct
result of the open source movement.
Innovation is usually the result of the
work of a few people rather than the
output of the million monkeys of the
Internet.
Besides, it isn't the job of the government to resolve this situation. In a free market, the person who provides the best value is supposed to win the competition, not the person who has the best pull of the government. If this means a few programmers end up switching to a different industry, hey, I have sympathy with them -- but then, as when the automobile put buggy-makers out of business, sympathy only goes so far. Should the government have stepped in to protect the buggy-makers? Or should the buggy-makers instead have switched to making automobile? Most of the buggy makers decided to get government protection. Only one buggy maker decided to switch industries, and that buggy maker (Studebaker) was the only one that survived.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Everyone knows that Microsoft is dead in the water in three years, and everyone knows that Linux and the open-source movement will replace them. These things are beyond refutation...
Exactly -- just as irrefutable as these truths we all know:
- Email has totally removed our need for physical mail
- The web has totally supplanted the old-fashioned print industry
Look, just because something newr, better, cheaper comes along doesn't mean that the old way of doing things is dead. Open source may put MS in trouble -- in SOME areas. But saying they'll be "dead" in 3 years is crazy.
There will always, always be a need for commercial software. First of all, some software is DULL, and no one will want to code it for fun. Secondly, there will always be companies with deep pockets who can fund a very competent closed-source project. And what about apps like air traffic control? You want to fly into an airport running GNU-ATC v0.9B? Assuming it even got written, no one would use it because for some applications you need a company backing the product -- uptime, reliability, support. And I doubt that open-source support firms like VA Linux can fill in ALL those gaps.
Open source is great. Just don't make it a religious crusade.
/me wonders for a moment at why he codes for free.
/me remembers that coding is fun.
/me remembers the e-mails he has received praising his work.
/me goes back to coding. For Free.
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Open source does best when it's fueled by individual enthusiasm, not corporate/government mandates.
Howdy. I work for MontaVista Software, and support open source software professionally, as do my coworkers. Our business model works great -- our customers are happy (as the software they use gets the features and bugfixes they need), our fellow non-corporate developers are happy (as they also get the fruits of our labor) and we're happy (as we're getting paid to work on open source).
If we hired lousy developers, maybe our results would suck. We don't, and our quality of output is excellent. (It may be an interesting data point that the average age of our engineering force is waaay above average in this industry... related to our choosy hiring practices? You decide!).
Also, I object to your objection that good coders write useless code. If dumb coders write bad code and good coders write useless code, who writes all the actually usable, interesting stuff you use? Mediocre coders? I doubt it. The folks who write the useless code are the impractical coders, not necessarily the smart or dumb ones -- and it doesn't really matter who they're working for.
So far, it looks like it could be either. And either way, it'll be messy.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Alchin claimed two things:
This is demonstrably arrant nonsense. The whole Internet is built on Open Source software and was innovated through Open Source software. The claim that software developed as part of research projects somehow doesn't count is nonsense. If the source is open, it's open source.
However, one of the most important innovations in recent computing, the World Wide Web, isn't the result of a research program. It was created at a research centre, yes, but one whose research was into sub-atomic physics. The World Wide Web was developed to solve an administrative problem. It is open source in the classic sense of scratching the developer's itch.
I can't refute this and neither would I try to. Businesses based on information hiding and artificial scarcity are going to get caned.
They're going to get caned anyway. Basic economic theory demonstrates that price varies directly with scarcity. There is no natural scarcity in goods which can be copied at marginal cost. Businesses built on artificial scarcity will fail and should fail. It just isn't a stable economic platform.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
The problem is that he is a lunatic with millions of dollars of lobbying and marketing behind him. Government support for opensource could be a huge boon to what we are doing, and MS could easily kill it. Rebuttals will be necessary, because MS and other threatened companies will start parroting this line to their congressmen and to others, and pretty soon it'll become conventional wisdom- just like "Freedom to Innovate." Sure, we all knew it was BS- but we don't matter. People who do matter (congressmen, an unfortunately deluded majority of the populace) believed it. If MS makes this a major theme, we'll need to deal with it, and deal with it often. In other words, ignoring MS because they are lunatics doesn't make their power go away.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
Having read Allchin's statements, and listened to the interview with Red Hat's CTO, I get the impression that MS is growing afraid of not just Linux, but any open source OS or software. Allchin's statement ''I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat'' raises my eyebrow a bit: here's a company under government scrutiny (not to mention the potential breakup) suddenly running towards that same government for protection??? Anyone else see just a teensy bit of hypocrisy here? Personally, I think MS is slowly killing itself, with new OS versions that appear to be little more than upgrades / bug fixes / new bugs, demands for fast performance on only the latest-and greatest hardware, and insanely high prices for OSes and software. We don't need the DoJ to stop MS, they're stopping themselves just fine, and trying to blame the Open Source community for their failings.
"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." Bill Gates Yeah Right!
Then how do you explain the programmers paid by VA Linux, Red Hat, SuSE, IBM, etc.?
Open Source allows innovation to occur at a rapid pace, since even people who may normally be competitors can team up with a common goal - better software.
Probably the most important innovation of the open source community is the open source community. Linux was developed via the internet, taking advantage of this new communications medium. I'm suggesting that the innovation is social, not technical.
Progress can mean a lot of things besides a new widget. Sometimes it means finding a better way to do something. I'd say that the open source movement is among the most efficient software-producing strategies anyone has ever seen. I didn't say fastest, I said most efficient -- think (total output) / (total input).
Linus' model for kernel development wasn't obvious, to him or anyone else. Nobody even had a chance to try such a large distributed and uncoordinated undertaking before the Internet was made available to the world public. Linus helped the idea evolve, and made it work.
The GNU project has done something very similar with their development model though they were more academically focussed and based, if I understand correctly -- which eventually evolved alongside the Linux kernel. The model is still evolving, witness sourceforge and services like cosource.
These are very real innvoations. I expect that you have a very specialized definition of innovation which allows you to say "Innovation is usually the result of the work of a few people." In particular, I think your special definition is probably something like "Innovation is the result of the work of a few people." You mind seems closed.
-Paul Komarek
Very often, that is true, though I would say you underestimate the output of the "million monkeys". Go to freshmeat and just browse. Sure, much of it isn't earth shattering, or "pure research", but there are lots and lots of programs that are valuable in their own right. Other programs for Windows or UNIX may have similar functionality, but each one was designed to perform in a particular way as well as possible. In the words of ESR, they all started to scratch an itch.
.NET and "subscription software", where you can install off the net and get billed a subscription, but it isn't worth the cost of giving up control over your computer to get.
A few notable examples:
licq -- implements similar functionality to windows ICQ, but IMO has the best UI of any instant messanger I have seen. Also, recently added support for SSL encrypted communications, and has a wide array of plugins (nmap, finger, etc) that windows ICQ and other ICQ programs lack.
lame: conforms to the MPEG audio encoder standard. Similar to several other encoders around, but has (arguably) the best sound quality of any available encoder.
Mame: free arcade emulator that runs on an incredibly number of platforms, including laser light show controllers and digital camers. These two are good examples of features that have no commercial value, and thus would never be implemented by a commercial developer, yet are way cool, and some people might use.
Apache: originally based on the NCSA httpd, Apache is now the most flexible web server in existence.
apt-get: IMNSHO, debian has nearly perfected the process of software distribution, installation, and version management. "apt-get install mozilla" makes inserting a cd and clicking OK from the autorun dialog look horribly complicated. And no commercial software company will ever match it, because they can't keep track of licensing then. Maybe MS will come up with something 10% as good with
Linux Kernel: The linux kernel isn't just another POSIX implementation. It has an unheard of combination of features for desktop, workstation, server, and embedded system all in one package. It runs more or less the same on many, many platforms, and has features like loopback block devices that are useful, but rare on commercial systems.
Finally, the availability of free software systems encourages and enables many, many "traditional" research projects at universities and government labs that may have profound impact. Clustering (beowulf's channel bonding, and the KLAT2 flat network neighborhood archetecture), load distribution/fault tolerance, distributed filesystem research, like coda. The NSA's secure linux project. Linuxbios -- 32 bit boot code that can boot up a PC in seconds flat. All these things would have been harder or impossible without free software that was easily tweakable to perform some new task.
Innovation isn't always about "revolutionizing the world" with a previously unheard of technology, which MS has never done. It can be about taking an existing idea and running with it, to produce the most stable/useful/powerful/efficient/ whatever implementation possible.
To give credit where credit is due, MS has done some of this. They took the GUI from Apple and others, and reimplemented it. It sucked, but they kept working at it long after most people would have given up. In the end, like it or not, the brought the GUI to the masses. And while windows 98 is not the most stable, efficient, or reliable, it is a GUI that most people can be taught to use for simple tasks, with a relatively small amount of pain.
Linux is getting there. Installation is still a little rougher than Windows installation (at least when windows installation actually works), but I think I could teach a computer illterate person to use linux for web, email, and word processing.
It is easy to say "free software is a threat to innovation" because to a traditional software industry point of view it sounds like it has to be true. But it is 100% contrary to fact -- free software encourages more innovation than proprietary software every could. And of course, there is the #1 innovation of free software that all others are lesser than, it puts the user back in control of his computer.
Allchin is a lunatic. It doesn't take any intelligence or balls to rebut a lunatic. It takes no originalty to take something that no one agrees with, hold it up to scrutiny, and announce that you yourself also disagree with it. It's like ridiculing the mentally handicapped. It lacks all tact and propriety.
Stop giving Allchin his soapbox. Let Allchin's ludicrous statements fall on deaf ears. Everyone knows that Microsoft is dead in the water in three years, and everyone knows that Linux and the open-source movement will replace them. These things are beyond refutation, so stop pretending you're so innovative for pointing them out.
When a company like Microsoft makes such ridiculous comments, just ignore them. Let the press decide to report on them however they want; don't sully your own reputation by stooping to Allchin's level. The truth will out, as it has been shown throughout history. Passive resistance is a far more powerful tool than vocal outrage. Just ask Gandhi.
In short, this "rebuttal" was unnecessary. I hope it's the last of its kind we'll be subjected to.
Read the rest of this comment...
I found today's User Friendly on the subject to be particularly appropriate :).
Alex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Ah well this image is so good, I'll mirror it for anyone who wants it. Of course I have to mirror it on the weakest piece of machinery I can find, for fun, so here it is on my sparcstation ipc, 25mhz, with 24 megs of ram running debian and apache. If I can find batteries for my palm I can setup a web server there too but that might take some time.
Here it is.
-Stype
-Stype
Bus error -- driver executed.