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Mundie Responds
HaiLHaiL writes: "Microsoft's Mundie has a commentary running on ZDNet responding to the responses to his speech. " No real surprises, but it's getting submitted a lot so I figured I'd post it for you. Lots of good points, but I'm sure you can guess the gist of it.
If you run the article through Babelfish, it turns out that IS what he said.
Boil it down, Mundie is making three points:
-If Microsoft software were GPL'd, Microsoft couldn't make money. Therefore, the GPL is bad.
-If free software writers use the GPL, then Microsoft can't steal their software to make money. Therefore, the GPL is bad.
-If users select GPL'd software, they can acquire it at no cost and therefore deny Microsoft the revenue from selling them competing software. Therefore, the GPL is bad.
The problem is, Microsoft really doesn't have a leg to stand on. Microsoft can certainly make a case that GPL'd software is bad for Microsoft. But they have provided no evidence whatsoever that GPL'd software is bad for users. And at a time when MS is changing their licencing terms and ramping up a revenue model based on software rentals, their efforts to discredit open source may serve more to show Microsoft's real intentions than to boost their market share.
The fact that Microsoft has managed to make a successful thriving business out of software products totally caught everyone off guard. Software in itself is fundamentally worthless, their competitors said. It was such a silly idea, that most big iron vendors didn't even try it. Businesses need custom solutions, not shrink-wrapped packages. So what about the masses with a PC at home? Realistically, that makes up a small percentage of Microsoft's revenue. Most of their killer apps were sold to businesses-- the very same businesses that IBM said wouldn't need them.
Software products are sold to a generic mass market, and as such, they cannot possibly do what every user wants it to do. A single software package will never do what you want, and you will always need to support it, and you will always need to change it to do what you precisely want.
Software products are proprietary by definition. They try to be black boxes. Buy it once and it solves the problem. The business model never takes into account support, for when the product fails, or further development, when the product almost does what you want, but isn't quite there. Your best bet is to hope that the next version, which will cost you to upgrade to, will do what you want, based on your feedback to the vendor.
Amazingly, Microsoft has made billions on a flawed software model. They went out and convinced everyone, (through no monopolistic means of course. Judge Jackson was clearly uninformed), that their bits on a disc are valuable and worth every penny. Since the only value of Microsoft software is the bits printed on a CD, obviously IP rights are extremely important to their livelihood.
The open source way, specifically GPL'd software, suggests a totally different business model. It means that someone can come in, choose from a wealth of open source software utilities, provide you with a custom solution, and you maintain all of the control you need. If anything, it means that a consultant you hire who builds you a point of sale system with open source components can't hide the source from you. You aren't stuck with the mercy of your original vendor. How could this be bad? Sure, maybe you can't resell your custom system, but realistcally, how many people can resell their closed source ones? If anything, you have a much higher chance of reselling a custom open source system.
When I think of system development with Linux, I think 2% custom code, and 98% software integration. When I imagine it with Windows, I imagine the exact opposite. Take a bunch of black boxes and try to glue them together with lots and lots of code. Oh, also, don't forget the software licensing costs!
There are always exceptions here, of course. Closed source works for a lot of business models. But really, people that care about retaining IP rights to their source code as a solutions provider are just looking to keep their clients at their mercy. Typically Microsoft.
And for those of you saying "Software service? Big deal. That's a totally insignificant market", here's a way to prove it to yourself. Look in the want ads for programming positions. I'd wager that 95% of the jobs being offered to programmers are to work on custom systems, rather than working at a company that provides a shrink-wrapped product. There's a reason that COBOL programmers are still in demand, despite almost no new commercial software being written in COBOL in the past 10 years.
Mundie says that Linux can never be used to make one company billions of monopoly dollars. You mean that we don't have to deal with another Microsoft if the world switches to open source? What's the fucking problem?
Software doesn't actually have any value in and of itself. The companies which mass produce software and charge for it are not driving the economy in any way, they are simply taxing it!
When you sell software within your own country, you are simply redistributing wealth, not generating any. Money flows from the software users into the pockets of the software tycoons (who probably spend and invest a great lot of it abroad). There is no net economic gain in the transaction. Whenever this software-copying industry (let's call it what it is) makes a new CD, they are effectively printing their own money.
What drives the economy is real production of goods: think food, clothing, energy, transportation etc. Software can make the management of production more efficient in many direct and indirect ways, so it contributes to the value production indirectly. Individuals and organizations can be more efficient in certain ways if they have the right software. But it's the surplus created by the real industry which allows the technological priesthood to engage in pleasant intellectual diversions, such as the production of software, and then pretend they are doing some sort of all-important economic activity.
The value provided by software is related to *executing* the software. There is no intrinsic value in the actual ones and zeros which are replicated trivially and at low cost. Executing the software does not cause those ones and zeros to be consumed (unless they are specially contrived ones and zeros, comprising some kind of bullshit license, which can be circumvented, unlike the law of conservation of energy). On the contrary, those ones and zeros can be replicated with a cost that is not only small, but is invariant with the complexity of the software. All that is consumed when software is copied or executed is energy. The fallacious argument that Mundie is making rests on the premise that the ones and zeros in fact have the same kind of intrinsic value as grains of wheat or barrels of oil. The truth is that they only have a value to the ``intellectual property holder'', and they only have that value because some artificial law which entitles only them to make copies for others. Take away that law, and people will continue to write software---that much is clear! Only, according to Mundie, that software will no longer have value, even if its execution continues to provide the same value as ever. What he means is that it will no longer have taxation value to him.
Didn't Edison simply steal the lightbulb idea from someone else? He also used gruesome public electrocutions of animals to scare people from adopting alternating current. This guy had the sowing of fear, uncertainty and doubt down to an art! No wonder Mundie invokes his name in awe. :)
When you go to buy a Black & Decker drill, do you pay the $10 million that it cost to design the one drill? Or do you buy it for $50?
:(
Personally I prefer buying the drill for $50. The nice thing is, my neighbor and his buddy can also buy a drill for $50.
Nobody I know can afford $10 million to buy a drill. Well except for the government, and guess where they get their money?
It's amazing to me how incredibly naive software people are with regards to economics. I suppose it's becaus Econ 101 isn't a required course in ComSci.
Oh god no, I'm horrible at drawing ASCII graphics.
But Mundie already addresses your point very early in his response.
I quote:
"As the U.S. Department of Commerce stated in a report titled "International Science and Technology": "Innovation relies on a partnership between the public and private sectors in which the government invests in long-range science and technology and in mechanisms to promote private-sector risk-taking and investment."
The innovations you gave examples of are just that, government investments. The Internet was all part of DARPA, etc.
What Mundie is addressing is the R&D and innovation which is required to take technology A and make it into a marketable product.
I'm a fan of cars, as well as Venn diagrams. So let me use another example.
Honda is a huge proponent of Variable Valve Timing in engines. They call it VTEC. Honda didn't invent this technology, actually I believe it dates back at least 30 some years.
But what Honda has done is transcend it from an interesting idea that can be used to squeeze some power out of high priced racing cars, into a technology which can squeeze some power and fuel economy out of low priced consumer automobiles.
That is, their innovation was making it cheap and efficient to sell.
Honda most certainly has patents on the improvements they made that relate to VTEC which prevents others in the industry from doing the same thing.
But that hasn't stopped other auto manufacturers from also having forms of variable valve timing. Toyota calls theirs VVT, Nissan VVL(variable valve lift), etc.
But they aren't quite like Honda's solution, and that is what makes cars like the S2000 unique. By pulling 240 hp out of a normally aspirated 2.0 liter engine.
So I guess instead of attacking a strawman argument, why don't you contemplate Microsoft's true position.
Instead why don't you envision a world in which all government funded research projects are licensed with something akin to the GPL. Imagine this world and how it will impact our economy?
Would it be a good thing?
Where has all the great intellectual rhetoric of the past gone?
But actually, that isn't what the last 50 years have shown us. In exact opposition, the last 50 years have shown us that open systems are the one s that exhibit massive, uncontrolled growth and contribute the most surprising things to society. The "PC era" that Mundie invokes in this article was possible not because of IBM's lightning wit, but because Compaq and the rest pried IBMs intellectual property away to make PC clones. The Internet was the result of public sector research. HTTP, SMTP, DNS, POP, IMAP, SSL, ICP, HTML/SGML/XML, and every other enabling technology of the Internet was given away freely by its creator. The web was created, and given away. BIND, Sendmail, NCSA httpd, Apache, and free operating systems are examples of key technologies that enjoy wide, free distribution unconstrained by their licenses.
There is only one example of an underlying enabling technology that fell under strong intellectual property protection. RSA encryption was patented and required licensing until last year. This "protection" literally crippled encryption innovation for some time. People were forced to either invent their own encryption schemes that weren't covered by RSA's patents, license RSA's patents for large sums of money, or ignore their patents. If you have set up an Apache HTTPS server before this year, you know what a pain in the ass it was to do so legally in the United States. The intellectual property protection afforded to RSA was a huge blow that slowed the growth of encryption for years.
There are so many more examples of technology that was freely distributed to the benefit of society. The C and C++ languages upon which Windows is built are an example. Think of where Microsoft would be if they had to pay a recurring licensing fee for every C++ object they compiled. Consider also how damn hard it would be to debug a C++ program if the format of the object file were protected under intellectual property laws. Think of what Windows would be if the inventors of TCP/IP had refused to license the protocols to Microsoft. Windows would of course be worthless with TCP/IP networking. What would Windows 2000 be if LDAP and Kerberos had not been available to the developers? Microsoft is standing on the shoulders of a giant so big, that they don't even realize it.
Mundie is flat wrong in his argument: almost all of the software technology that we take for granted today was the direct result of research and development performed in the open and given away.
This is true, and I think it's am important point. Microsoft (and any other software company for that matter) has the write to craft their licenses in any way they see fit, as long as the consumer has a choice to accept or reject that model Of course, monopolies run into other problems, since people are no longer free to make decisions in their own best interest... but that's another topic.
What bugs the heck out of me though is the continual insunation that Mundie and others are making now that the GPL is threatening to take away their IP out from under them! That's why they keep repeating this "choice" thing. The lie is: "If everyone starts using GPL software, then we will be forced to give up our own investments in IP." It makes no sense, as anyone who has ever bothered to read the GPL knows, but it falls into the old saying:
--
Your Servant, B. Baggins
I think this boils down to Mundie stating that you can't get rich selling GPL'ed Software. That might be true but the flip side is that you can save a lot of money using it. Isn't that what RH's Bob Young has been saying all along. He has staed that Redhat will reduce the OS market by 80% in dollar terms.
Help fight continental drift.
Legendary inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford (who held thousands of patents between them) succeeded precisely because they were able to use funding, management and market insight to deliver their innovations as unique, practical and useful products.
Actually wasn't Bell successful because he got to the patent office first, and beat some other guy to the punch?
Summarized and dissected:
1) Helping customers and partners to be successful through source access programs.
Their philosophy is exclusive, and therefore limited in how effective it can be. Students and other poor people are NOT allowed to participate in their philosophy.
2)Building the development community and offering the tools to produce great software.
A community is a spiderweb network arrangement of people, with free associations. Shared Source is a star topology network, with Microsoft strictly arbitrating all associations between clients. They don't fit my definition of "community" very well.
3) Improving feedback processes in order to create better products for Microsoft's customers and partners.
This is an unequal flow of information, which makes me wonder how Microsoft thinks of their partners. Imagine what would happen if our relationships with wives and girlfriends (ideally a partnership) worked like this. The Man (Microsoft) would do what he wanted. The woman would give everything she earned to the Man. The Man would provide everything that the Woman needed. Occaisionally, he would sit down and listen to the various ways he could improve the quality of what he provided to her, to make her happy. If he decided not to implement suggestions, that would be touch luck for the Woman. How long would it take for the Woman to tell the Man to screw himself and his "partnership"?
4) Maintaining the integrity of our customers' environments.
Integrity simply means that words and actions are aligned. Microsoft doesn't seem to understand what partnership and community actually mean, so how can we expect them to have integrity? Integrity is easy if you are the author of the dictionary.
5)Increasing educational access to get technology into the hands of universities worldwide, and to seed the future of a strong technology industry.
This is called indoctrination. It's not a philosophy, it's a strategy.
6)Protecting software intellectual property rights based on the firm belief that software offers value as the basis of a successful business.
Software is the basis of Microsoft's business, but other businesses base themselves on things like financial services, building houses, making industrial machinery, etc. Reminds me of a guy at American Express that I used to work with. He actually told me "if Amex were to adopt open source, how could we make money if we gave all our software away?" I had to remind him that Amex made money off charge cards (not software), and they weren't required to distribute source if they didn't distribute the binary.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I believe this is quite literally the best response that Microsoft has to the threat of the GPL: if you can't beat it on technical merits, strangle the money supply instead.
Microsoft knows what would happen if Red Hat and VA Linux Systems went under: whole segments of the open source community, including Slashdot and Sourceforge, would suddenly find themselves quite strapped for cash. Linux and OSS development would be permanently crippled, at least relative to today's heady pace. Eventually, Microsoft would once again beat Linux on technical merits.
The best solution to this problem is for companies like Red Hat and VA Linux to turn a profit, and soon. This is realistic for Red Hat; I'm really really hoping that it will also be realistic for VA soon.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
The funny part is that Ransom Love doesn't really support Mundie's position! The quote was:
This is taken entirely out of context. The GPL doesn't make much business sense to Caldera, since they can't figure out how to make money selling it. For the 99% of companies whose business doesn't involve trying to find a profitable way to distribute GPL'd code, GPL'd code makes perfect sense when used as part of their IT environment, development systems, Internet services, etc.
Mundie's trying to trick his customers into mistaking Microsoft's interests for their own. It's in the interest of IT purchasers worldwide that it be just barely profitable to distribute GPL'd software - that means that customers aren't getting reamed by monopoly profits and channel control. It's just not in the interest of the software industry (i.e. Microsoft).
He's mistaking a means for an end - heightened economic productivity and all the great things that the Internet has brought are a result of using software to make life better, not a result of some company in Redmond charging for it.
Sure, innovation is necessary in the software world, but open source innovation comes from the customers who use it, not from the business that's pushing it. When you look at it from the customer perspective, how many of Microsoft's innovations are just tricks to extend their business model, rather than really responding to customer needs? By definition, open source innovation is for the users, by the users - you get exactly as much innovation as you need, and you get what you pay for. There's no profit skimmed off by Microsoft, and no paying for features you don't want. This leaves the customer with more money to spend on the core parts of their business, which in the end is better for the economy, not worse.
OK, maybe it's worse for Microsoft. It sounds to me like Mr. Mundie's found himself in a commodity market all of the sudden, and it seems he doesn't like it too much :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
No real surprises, but its getting submitted a lot so I figured I'd post it for you. Lots of good points, but I'm sure you can guess the gist of it
This is not the first time the editors of slashdot have admitted to posting stories with no redeeming value beyond the fact that they've been submitted repeatedly and they can no longer be bothered to send off rejections.
In short, it has been announced to astroturfers everywhere that, in order to get your stories published, no matter how inane (as this one certainly is), all you have to do is make a concerted series of submissions to the story queue, until CmdrTaco or someone else gets sufficiently tired of it and do exactly what said astroturfers desire: publish their story and lend an air of legitemacy to their view.
And we wonder why the quality of slashdot's content, in both story and commentary, is so rapidly declining..
Adults are obsolete children. - Dr. Seuss
On May 17, 2001 7:34 AM PST, Craig Mundie wrote:
... Microsoft's shared-source philosophy, a carefully crafted approach
> COMMENTARY--On May 3 I spoke at the New York University Stern School of
> Business about Microsoft's position regarding source-code licensing. I wanted
> to articulate some of the benefits and drawbacks of the various ways
> commercial software companies could share their source code. I described
> Microsoft's shared-source philosophy, a balanced approach that enables
> commercial companies to share source code with their customers and partners
> while preserving the intellectual property rights that support a strong
> software business. I also articulated some ways in which shared source
> differs from open source.
Read:
that enables commercial companies to recieve free software development labor
from their customers and partners while preventing those customers and partners
from gaining any reciprocal benefit.
You can now give Microsoft bugfixes for their products, and in return for that
hard work, Microsoft will give you... absolutely nothing!
> The reactions to my statements have been many and varied. I wanted an active
> debate about intellectual property and the software industry, and I certainly
> got one.
(My opinion: This is a rather arrogant statement. As if Mundie was the first
person to think of this subject, and subsequently started a debate. More like
he wanted to save face for Microsoft after the Shared Source announcement, so
he decided to join in the (already long-running) debate.)
> But this is more than just an academic debate. The commercial software
> industry is a significant driver of our global economy. It employs 1.35
> million people and produces $175 billion in worldwide revenues annually
> (sources: BSA, IDC).
Indeed. The Free Software industry is an even more significant driver of our
global economy. I have no statistics to quote, but that is because the scale of
this benefit is so exceedingly astronomical as to be entirely inestimable. To
begin to imagine what I am talking about, think of where the world economy
would be today without the World Wide Web.
Or email.
Or the entire Internet.
But this is more than just an economic debate. The point that Mundie ignores
completely in his commentary is that the Free Software development model is
simply more techinically efficient than closed development. It produces better
software, faster.
The benefit to consumers is ultimately the most important factor, and that is
where the closed development model cannot hope to compete.
> The business model for commercial software has a proven track record and is a
> key engine of economic growth for many countries. It has boosted productivity
> and efficiency in almost every sector of the economy, as businesses and
> individuals have enjoyed the wealth of tools, information and other
> activities made possible in the PC era.
A proven track record? The commercial software industry is only 20 years old,
and is already beginning to fail. Compare its age and sustainability to other,
truly proven industries, such as Agriculture, Oil, Medicine. In this young
upstart field of software, who knows whether a business will really be around
for the long haul?
But don't worry! With the GPL, you as the consumer (a point of view
consistently ignored by Mundie) don't have to worry about whether your
commercial supplier goes out of business.
So much for the importance of a proven business model.
The development model for Free Software has a proven track record -- it is more
well established than that of closed source software. Also it is a key engine
of technological growth for many countries -- many more than is commercial
software. It has boosted productivity and efficiency in almost every sector of
the economy, as businesses and individuals have enjoyed the wealth of tools,
information and other activities made possible in the Internet era. (Gee, that
last sentence didn't even change much, but somehow fits Free Software better
than closed source. Go figure.)
> Companies have the choice of protecting or relinquishing the intellectual
> property resulting from their research and development consistent with their
> particular customer and business needs. As the U.S. Department of Commerce
> stated in a report titled "International Science and Technology": "Innovation
> relies on a partnership between the public and private sectors in which the
> government invests in long-range science and technology and in mechanisms to
> promote private-sector risk-taking and investment."
Of course, this partnership is only necessary for fields of endeavor where
significant monetary or hardware resources are a prerequisite for development.
As this is not true for software -- the only resource required is a brain and a
computer -- the Commerce Department quote is irrelevant.
> We believe that one of these mechanisms is intellectual property rights.
The umbrella term "intellectual property rights" does not refer to a single
mechanism. It is impossible to have intelligent discourse when such vague and
meaningless terminology is used. Nevertheless...
> Without intellectual property protection, neither innovation nor a healthy
> commercial software industry is sustainable.
Half of this assertion is questionable, while the other half is simply false.
It remains to be seen whether profitability can be sustained making Free
Software, but it is obvious that innovation certainly can be! And at a much
greater rate than is seen from closed source development. After all, who
invented the Internet? Certainly not Microsoft. Or any other commercial entity,
for that matter.
> The last 50 years of public- and private-sector collaboration has
> demonstrated that when intellectual property rights are protected, innovators
> are rewarded for their efforts. Furthermore, technology is advanced
> guaranteeing economic growth and a cycle of future collaboration, investment
> and innovation.
Actually, the last 50 years has seen continued innovation *despite* so-called
"intellectual property rights", rather than because of them.
A company's desire to protect its copyrights and patents prevents it from
freely sharing development work with other individuals and copmanies. Its
desire to retain revenue causes it to develop software that is not
interoperable with the rest of the world (creating vendor lock-in and ensuring
future revenue).
The mere presence of such software slows the general progress of technology by
distracting customers from the superior software which has been freely
developed. Free Software is more interoperable because the developers have no
incentive to create lock-in, and more robust and efficient as a result of
shared development and peer review.
> In my speech, I did not question the right of the open-source software model
> to compete in the marketplace. The issue at hand is choice; companies and
> individuals should be able to choose either model, and we support this right.
Likewise, no one has questioned Microsoft's legal right (under generally
accepted interpretation of current copyright and patent legislation in the US)
to compete in the marketplace with a closed source model. We simply question
whether this is a wise thing for Microsoft to do in the long term.
The issue at hand is not choice. No one has said that individuals and companies
should not be able to choose. The real issue is that we believe a real problem
exists with the new licensing model that Microsoft employs: Shared Source.
Essentially, it provides obvious benefit to Microsoft, while providing no real
benefit to any other individual or company. Microsoft now offers "Shared
Source". My question is: Why should we care?
> I did call out what I believe is a real problem in the licensing model that
> many open-source software products employ: the General Public License.
>
> The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their
> heads. Some of the tension I see between the GPL and strong business models
> is by design, and some of it is caused simply because there remains a high
> level of legal uncertainty around the GPL--uncertainty that translates into
> business risk.
There is also a high level of legal uncertainty around Microsoft's shrink-wrap
and click-wrap licenses. This is less true now that the DMCA has passed, but
still the enforcability of many clauses in those licenses has yet to be tested
in court. But Microsoft seems to consider that an acceptable risk.
> In my opinion, the GPL is intended to build a strong software community at
> the expense of a strong commercial software business model. That's why Linus
> Torvalds said last week that "Linux is never really going to be a rich sell."
Corollary: commercial licenses are intended to build a strong commercial
software business model at the expense of a strong software community.
A strong software community is necessary for significant innovation. It is
necessary to build truly great software.
The GPL is intended to build a strong software community. Period. If this must
happen at the expense of a strong business model, then so be it, but that is
not part of the design. While the development model for Free Software is well
established, the business model is very new, and nobody's really sure how to
make it work yet. If it does work, then great. If not, then there are plenty of
other ways to make a successful business.
> This isn't to say that some companies won't find a business plan that can
> make money releasing products under the GPL. We have yet to see such
> companies emerge, but perhaps some will.
What a kind concession on the part of Mr. Mundie.
> Recent history tells us, however, that finding a business model that works is
> difficult. According to ZDNet News, "Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera
> Systems...said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL
> doesn't make much business sense."
That may or may not be true. Time will tell.
> What is at issue with the GPL? In a nutshell, it debases the currency of the
> ideas and labor that transform great ideas into great products.
"...the currency of the ideas and labor..." I must admit that after several
rereadings, I still have no idea what that is supposed to mean. It certainly
sounds very grave, but really is quite ambiguous. Does this noun phrase refer
to actual monetary currency related to ideas and labor? Perhaps it treats ideas
and labor metaphorically as currency which is then mixed with another metaphor
of transformation? Who knows?
What is certain, is that the GPL requires freer exchange of those exceptionally
important and wonderful transformative ideas and labor. That is the core of the
GPL, and it accomplishes this goal better than any other license.
> Alfred North Whitehead, the renowned British philosopher, logician and
> mathematician, observed: "It is a great mistake to think that the bare
> scientific idea is the required invention, so that it has only to be picked
> up and used. An intense period of imaginative design lies between. One
> element in the new method is just the discovery of how to set about bridging
> the gap between the scientific ideas and the ultimate product. It is a
> process of disciplined attack upon one difficulty after another."
>
> In other words, a critical flow of information and experimental data follows
> every major scientific discovery and results in the verification, refutation
> or refinement of the new idea or theory. To facilitate this process, neither
> copyright nor patent protections are available for abstract ideas or
> theories. This is as it should be.
This is perfectly agreeable as far as it goes. However it is important to be
perfectly clear when determining exactly what constitutes an abstract idea or
theory. Algorithms fall squarely into this domain. Software patents are granted
for specific implementations of algorithms, but have been interpreted to cover
any implementation of the same algorithm. So while patents themselves are not
available, patent *protections* effectively are! This is a serious problem.
> Legendary inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry
> Ford (who held thousands of patents between them) succeeded precisely because
> they were able to use funding, management and market insight to deliver their
> innovations as unique, practical and useful products. Arguably, the
> creativity and inventiveness needed to deliver their products was comparable
> to that needed for the underlying theory or discovery that made their
> business possible in the first place.
Of course, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford actually
invented things. Computer Science (along with the important parts of the
software industry) is really just a subdomain of mathematics. The important
discoveries (they are not inventions) in software cannot be owned by anyone. It
is one of the greatest swindles of this century that Microsoft has somehow
managed to fool all of its customers into paying money for a piece of math.
> When comparing the commercial software model to the open-source software
> model, look carefully at the business plans and licensing structures that
> form their foundations. This comparison leads to the conclusion that the
> commercial software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real economic
> growth.
More importantly, a careful comparison leads to the conclusion that the Free
Software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real technological growth.
A closed source model actively inhibits innovation and general progress by
preventing the free exchange of ideas and development work among the worlds
developers.
> Intellectual capital has always been, and will remain, the core asset of the
> software industry, and of almost every other industry. Preserving that
> capital--and investing in its constant renewal--benefits everyone.
Of course. And the best way to preserve and invest in that capital is to ensure
that it recieves the widest possible dissemination.
> Craig Mundie is a senior vice president at Microsoft Corporation.
Keith Rarick writes code.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? [Who guards the Guardians?]
> And also cost software companies $175 billion annually so the total gain for businesses is 0, some gain some lose, it would also put 1.35 million people out of work and with $175 billion less being spent anually you have economic slowdown. Money saved is no good to the economy, but money spending is what makes for a vibrant and thriving economy.
The unavoidable conclusion is that we should allow people to stand at streetcorners and charge you a fee before they let you pass. By failing to do so, we have put millions of people out of work and kept trillions of dollars out of the economy. Surely we owe it to ourselves to implement such a system immediately?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Software development is a valuable skill, and it's so ironic seeing reams of misled software developers leading the rampage for devaluing what we do.
It's the simple march of progress. Fifty years ago there were probably only a handful of programmers in the whole world, and only a handful of machines to run their programs on. Now there are millions, maybe tens of millions of programmers, and a similar proliferation of machines to run their programs on. "Demand, meet Supply; Supply, meet Demand."
Where do you think that trend will put is in another 20 years?
Yes, there was a window in history where you could become a zillionaire by starting a software company. That window is rapidly being closed by the same technicological trends that made it possible to begin with. This is hardly the first business or trade that was once lucrative and now isn't (or at least is quickly headed that way).
What Mundie and most others don't understand is that open source is going to win no matter what anyone says or does, because its ultimate basis is neither a fad nor a social movement, but the simple march of progress. Microsoft might be able to buy enough legislators to postpone the inevitable, but inevitable it is. Where are the monopolies from the Age of Merchantilism, and what good are their Patents Royal doing them now?
Unless someone is powerful to completely shut down technological progress all over the world, they might as well think of progress as a law of nature and start getting used to the idea of its side effects. What Microsoft needs, whether they realize it or not, is a business plan that doesn't rely on a vault full of source code as its crown jewels.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I like how Mundie casts it solely as a money issue, and how he cites a few notable, successful, capitalist inventors (Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford) to make it seem like all innovation is about wealth.
He left out a lot of inventors who weren't in it for the money, or who got cheated by big capital: Tesla died penniless, as did Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun, Jan Matzeliger, Mandee Daguerre, Walter Shaw, Samuel Morse, William Friese-Greene, Lee de Forest, Johann Gutenberg, Henry Trengrouse, and on and on....
Then there are all the inventors/researchers who did what they did not for money, but for the love of it. Let's look at computer scientists. Does anyone think that Nicholas Wirth, Edsger Dijkstra, Grace Hopper, Steve Wozniak, Don Knuth, John von Neumann, Alan Turing, Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie, Kenneth Thompson, Linus, etc, etc, were doing it all for the money?
There's doing it for money, which is the world Mundie understands, and then there's doing it for love, which he finds very threatening.
bukra fil mish mish
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Monitor the Web, or Track your site!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
I know it's a troll, but I just have to correct this misconception...
You can't generalize from a sample size of one. You can't claim that anything is the way it is now because of MS because we don't have a comparable yet seperated industry to compare it to.
Moore's law has held constant since he conceived of it, that means computers have gotten more complex over time. At some point they became powerful enough to be easy to use, enabling millions of users to get on the net, etc.
Your hypothesis is that MS made computers easy to use. The more reasonable hypothesis is that companies like MS and Apple made computers as easy to use as was possible with the hardware of the day. Companies like Intel made computers more powerful, enabling MS and Apple (etc) to build powerful GUI OSes.
Computers are right where they would be without MS. Apple made the first consumer GUI, AOL sent out free trial disks for all popular OSes... The only difference without MS would be that BeOS and Amiga might still be fringe players and Apple would be larger.
Companies have the choice of protecting or relinquishing the intellectual property resulting from their research and development consistent with their particular customer and business needs.
We know what choice Microsoft has made. As much as we want to flame Microsoft for making buggy, expensive software, it's their business model, and it's obvious that Mundie is advocating something more than shared-source here. He's rubbing it in the face of the Linux industry when he says it: companies have the choice whether to hang on to their source or not, and the success of the company is often indicative of the choices they make.
Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, you just can't point to any other company and say they've had the same results. It's easy for Mundie to say that shared-source (rather than open source) has played some role in that growth, because there's no way any of us can refute it. But at the same time, he could just as well have been saying that the success of Microsoft is due to Gates having a bad haircut, and that every CEO/founder/President should have a bad haircut.
In their defense, though, Mundie is saying that it's a choice, and it's a choice Microsoft has made. It's not like they aren't aware of the choice: they're making it to satisfy their business needs, like stockholders, and I sincerely doubt the stockholders would jump for joy if Microsoft gave up the source code tomorrow.
What's your damage, Heather?
Do not be confused by the feints against Linux, the GPL and Open Source, the real agenda is the extension of Perpetual Copyright and Worldwide Patents, the restrictions on reverse engineering and other forms of innovating and creative thought.
This is the article to read: http://www.consultingtimes.com/ms_infowar.html
His argument is that hoarding ("protecting") IP is the only way to economic success. And he may be correct. There's no doubt that keeping your code proprietary and out of the eyes of others will make you more money when your product is the code itself. But who cares? Who is arguing against this? This is not an argument. This is a truism.
The discussion is at a more fundamental level - should people be allowed to monopolize ideas indefinately? He casually skirts this larger undercurrent by preemptively Fearing us with some blather about IP resulting in economic growth, IP making us rich and happy. *You* don't want to be the one to ruin the economy, *do you* hippy free code slacker? What's good for Microsoft is good for America.
Seeing as he was talking to a business school, it does make sense that he was saying that Open Source is not the way to make money (so, and helping old ladies accross the street all day isn't either). His arguments seem to stem from the assumption that making money is the ultimate test of human endeavor. Whereas the Free Software community has different values.
yes this is rantish, i don't care
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
At least now he can distinguish between Open Source and the GPL, although I believe the title of the article is mis-leading.
There is nothing in an open source model that can keep someone from competeting against it. If you can build a significantly better mousetrap, then people will buy it anyway. DEC VAX/VMS was a completely open source operating system that was a SIGNIFICANT player in the late 80's and early 90's. Their OS source code was available for a nominal fee (to pay for the Microfiche it came on).
What Mr. Mundie and Microsoft in general still seems to be wresting with is competing against the GPL. The GPL is a software house that produces code that's free, is of good quality, and can't be bought, incorporated, dismantled, or undersold. All their tried and true techniques of competition don't work.
The only way to compete with the GPL is to be more customer focused, have better quality, and respond to changes quickly. MS's customer base is too big and too divserse to do that, and they lack real cross-platform development abilities.
Perhaps Microsoft is starting to feel a similar pain to what Netscape felt when Microsoft released IE and IIS for free? Netscape couldn't buy it, they couldn't dismantled it, and they couldn't undersell it, and it was good quality (Esp. for Windows platforms), and their last resort was to open-source the browser.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
"The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their heads." I love that M$ actually considers this an arguement. I think that the real reason that Microsoft doesn't like GPL is clear. In the past, if a technology challenged Microsoft, they always had a back up for getting rid of it: Buy the technology (remember when they tired to buy Palm). But GPL takes way this option. once a technology is GPL'd, they can no longer just throw money at a technology and make it "go away". One good point in all of this, GPL must reaaly be making M$ feel threatened for them to be spending all of this time trashing it. -lowLark
The GPL relies on copyright to work. Unlike licenses from companies which remove rights of the consumer, the GPL only grants you rights. Should the GPL be tested and fail in court, the more resrictive laws on copyrights should apply. While many point out that the GPL has not yet been tried in court, one might also point out that multi-billion dollar companies have had their lawyers go over it with a fine tooth comb. There's a reason it hasn't been tried in court yet. Stallman also has a legal team and I'm sure they've also gone over the wording of the license.
As to the applicability of the GPL versus the BSD license, I don't think it's a lot to ask that if you use code that I wrote, you return something to the community. It's not like I'm demanding money from you. And if you don't like my license, you can certainly offer to give me some and I might consider licensing it to you under different terms. Did Microsoft pay any of the BSD teams or the University of California for use of the various BSD pieces that you see copyright statements for when you boot Windows? The Microsoft agenda is pretty transparent.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
But the problem that no one really mentioned is that GPL is protecting my intelectual property. Its protecting it in the exact way I want it to be protected and its protecting it so well, that Microsoft cannot steal it! And thats why they cry out loud. They see all the revenues lost, they could gain if they would be able to steal my intelectual property. And thats makes them mad.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
this line was funny and painful at the same time:
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The issue at hand is choice; companies and individuals should be able to choose either model, and we support this right.
yet from the beginning it seem MS has wanted to make this choice for us
_f
Anyone else notice a trend in his economic growth examples? The trend sites individuals who experienced economic growth through their intellectual property rights. Sure, there were others who profitted off of these inventions, but in order for them to make a profit, someone had to pay for their invention.
Economic growth does not just come from the masses paying a few. Economic growth comes when productivity increases. When inexpensive software allows many to increase their productivity, there is more economic growth. Further, this growth fuels a desire to contribute to the mechanisms behind increased productivity (here: open source software). This further increase productivity and results in greater economic growth.
Obviously you don't understand. Business is the only thing that matters; users are unimportant. What's good for GM^H^HMicrosoft is good for the United States, and vice versa. After all, a bunch of hobbyists could never produce a sophisticated, stable, robust operating system that anyone would actually want to use. Only businesses can do that, so anyone who wants such an operating system will just have to grab their ankles and enjoy some good old fashioned Microsoft loving.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
a) Dos was a CP/M clone
b)Windows itself started out as a Mac clone.
c) Excel and Word clones Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect.
The market for M$ software exists today due to Compaq managing to clone the IBM bios.
And the list goes on.
Wonder where in this list Microsoft came to feel that intelectual property was a good idea.
Whether this is a bad thing or not is open to debate.
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TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
The implicit argument, though, is that the software industry creates jobs and keeps people employed. But look at it the other way: when you or your company don't have to pay for software, it frees up money that can be used for other things. Will this money just disappear? No, it will probably be spent on something else that will create jobs and keep people employed, incrementally across many industries, making for a better balanced, healthier economy than one that has to constantly pay a software "tax".
Among those incremental things are many which of course involve software. So, much of the money will go towards developing new and better things and solving new problems, rather than paying over and over again for commodity software which has already been invented.
In terms of the variety of software applications that exist, Microsoft's offerings are but a tiny speck. There are many, many other software applications that are quite brilliant and just as necessary, but for which the market is specialized and small.
Why do I get the impression that this gem wasn't at all written by Mr. Mundie himself at all, but by some highly skillfull PR flack ?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I notice that this lets one of Mundie's original statements quietly die: something like "We can make better software" [than Linux and other freeware]. To which every geek I know responded "So why don't you?" It's a plausible claim, considering that M$ has more than enough money to hire all the good OS programmers -- if they are willing to work there. But somehow they don't write reliable software. It isn't because the field is so new -- computer OS's are 40 or 50 years old!
Their most bogus claim: that freeware will suck out the money that's needed to develop high-quality commercial software. After all, most corporations are still buying Windows and MS Office because of an illusion (IMO) that it is better quality. Lousy software definitely costs more in support costs than it would take to buy good software if good software was mass-marketed.
You should also check out this response and this course tutorial to which it refers.
(Yes, I am an engineer, and qualified to comment on this professionally.)
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Having 50 karma is an itchy feeling; I know I'll get
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Arguments about the size and significance of the software industry are also misleading. Oil spills can also contribute significantly to our GNP. That doesn't make them desirable. Or we could start charging for the air we breathe and add a lot of activity to our economy. Microsoft is trying to insert themselves into every possible way in which we communicate, and that should be almost as repulsive an idea as charging for the air we breath.
What is particularly irksome about Mundie's statements is his claims about how the GPL "debases the currency of ideas and labor". The primary "debasing" I have seen in this industry is Microsoft's claim to have invented and innovated in lots of areas where they have mainly copied from competitors and open source software. Ironically, a lot of the ideas that Windows is based on were, in fact, developed by people deeply involved in open source efforts.
What it comes down to is that all this whining by Microsoft about "intellectual property" and "innovation" is merely an expression of their fear: Microsoft has been reaping enormous profits with a faulty product, developed based on the inventions of others. In part, those were disequillibrium wages--artificially high, temporary profits. In part, they have been able to maintain them through questionable business practices. Microsoft is afraid of competing in the real world, where margins are razor thin. Just like IBM, Ford, and other formerly grand companies, Microsoft needs to come back to reality sooner or later. If it weren't open source that brought them back to reality, it would be something else.