Slashdot Mirror
The Coming "Open Monopoly"
Ramsed writes: "On cnet Petr Hrebejk and Tim Boudreau wrote an
article claiming that the current Microsoft Monopoly will be replaced by an 'Open Monopoly'; a monopoly of Open Source. They are explaining why big companies like IBM support this.
In their view, it's inevitable this 'Open Monopoly' will win in the end, and that apart from the current monopolist, everyone will be better of, because of lower barriers for participation, software better targeted at its users and lower development costs. Profit should be made with support and consultancy."
Update: 10/28 13:42 GMT by J : Little-known fact -- for important stories, slashdot sometimes runs
duplicates
to see who's still awake on a weekend. Nice work to those of you who caught it. See you next week. *sigh*
That's nice and all but you reported on this already last week.
:)
Oh, and first
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I kind of dislike the phrase "open-source monopoly", and I don't believe that the total infastructure for the internet (or any other platform) will be totally open source. ALthough the use of OSS will continue to expand, I hope it can co-exist with commercial closed source also. I can't believe all companies will adopt OSS or just fall by the wayside.
"UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus."
Goody's Headache Powder
"UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus."
i hope Jim Allchin's out looking for a new job.
Cause this article makes him sound like the worst sort of MS mouthpiece available. And a chump to boot.
The sad thing of it is, though, he likely makes a bazillion times more money than I do and has more job security than God. And he is where he is, because he is willing to make such statements on behalf of The Company. I have no doubt he probably believes those things he is quoted as saying, deep down in his heart. So the only conclusion is what? That he's saying something obviously braindead that CIO's out there will hear and believe? It may be. Or not.
go, Consumer!
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
The article is written at a very high level of abstraction. One huge unconsidered factor is the XBox, a sub-300$ computer whose effects on the market will be negligible (doubt it) or catastrophic. We'll see in a couple of years.
...educational... experience. 'T'sall good, I'll figure it out, but what a prolonged tooth extraction. C++ Builder under 'Doze this is not.
OTOH, between my RedHat 7.1 disks, the KDE 2/Qt Bible, and some downloads, I am still finding installing KDevelop an
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Looks like the same monopoly we read about just a couple of days ago on /.
Nice work to those of you who caught it.
... let us see and vote on the submission queue and we will catch it even earlier next time.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
In the open source fields that are almost no monopoly, witch is good. Think about it, there's two or more for everything :
OS : BSD, LINUX, HURD?
DESKTOP: Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment
Browser: mozila, konqueror, lynkx?
Text Editor: vi, emacs
Office suite: Star Office, Koffice, gnome-office
If everyone turned into open source tomorrow we wouldn't end up in a monopoly, people would have choices.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Look, I don't care how much you guys believe in capitalism, Adam Smith, and market forces. As long as big companies can buy laws to support their monopolies, they can legislate their way out of any situation where normal capitalist forces would stop them.
I'm just wondering how in hell the "Open Monopoly" intends to survive laws like the SSSCA (they WILL try again). I hardly think sitting around and patting yourselves on the back is a good way to bring Linux or whatever to market dominance. I'm all in favor of Linux winning out here, but we are not living in some perfect, pure capitalist economist's vision, where the best product wins out every time.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Profit should be made with support and consultancy.
Does this not imply that you should make your software as hard to use as possible, without seeming obviously too difficult?
I think a better idea would be to make the software free for non-commercial use. If you make money with it, it's only fair that you pay the author.
If you make free software, it's free for you to use. This way you would have freedom to write whatever "free as in beer" software that you want.
I for one like getting paid for writting code. How long do you think that will last if profits only come from support and consultancy? I thought the communist threat was vanquished but now I see we have another battle to be fought, at home. Remember 'free' is anti-american. If you think that our system of capitalism needs to be reworked just remember that although ignorant people complain, there's a mcdonalds and kfc in every country in the world (execpt afganistan) for a reason, captialism kicks social reform's ass.
And I thought this was going to be a "more on" thread. I think the Open Monopoly needs more time in the light of day anyhow.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
" Update: 10/28 13:42 GMT by J: Little-known fact -- for important stories, slashdot sometimes runs duplicates to see who's still awake on a weekend. Nice work to those of you who caught it. See you next week. *sigh* "
So what you are essentially saying is: it isn't a bug; it's a feature?
Strange.
I thought this was for the benefit of those people who only read Slash Dot on the weekends. You know, those people who have it banned at work (with a lot of other sites) during the week.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Two weekends in a row?
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
... there's been some rather interesting work being done on analysing markets based on assymetric and incomplete information (in fact I beleive this years Nobel prize in economics was on precise that ... selling used cars as lemons). The problem with software (especially closed) is that there is zero information about the quality of a *new* piece of software. Until you get to use it (and discover + avoid things which BSOD it), it basically has zero utility.
... ie through the school of hard knocks, it has demonstrated that it is the "best" at a particular niche (given economic constraints) and which case it is better non competiting against it. Look at stuff such as Aladin ghostscript, or the publishing templates DocBook.
... (cough*intel*cough with claims that its high-speed chips were essential for the internet ignoring the minor issue of bandwidth/latency). Unfotunately marketing is a sunk cost ... once you've spent your advertising budget, you can't recover it. Hence for firms who suddenly find they've overspent, the only way they can make back their money is to either eliminate competitors or else or cut back on the quality/support. And guess what, if you're the only solution, then you automagically create a self-fufilling prophency that your product is the "best" in its category and therefore all the technology followers (ie conservative foggies who don't trust anything less that v3.0) are forced to purchase it irregardless of the absolute quality (stability, security, mtbf, etc).
...
So how do software companies actually generate cash-flow? They have to "prove" their fitness in other ways (ie signal to the potential buyers that their code solves your future needs). Whether it is giving out a first freebie (QUAKE) or carpet bombing the user base (AOL), somehow the vendor needs to demonstrate that they provide something worth the "value" others place on it.
Now, the curious thing is should open source be such a signal? It might not be the "monopoly" in the traditional sense, but more a meritopoly
To actually get bigger than a sustainable niche, you basically have to bullshit like crazy
However, with open source this approach doesn't work as you cannot eliminate a competitor that cannot be bought off. As such, a rational player would instantly quit the market segment as soon as they can tell the open-source version exceeds their market share. Hence by definition, OpenSource becomes the new monopoly
LL
You know, every time I type a little too quickly I hit a lameness filter... Every time I have a lot to say, lameness filter. Every time slashdot gets a little slow and I click submit more than once, lameness filter.
;-), and would give some slashdotters a chance to create mirrors of slow sites as well.
All the annoyance the users must go through to prevent spam, crap flooding, trolls, and duplicate submissions, and there's nothing for the Admins.
What do you say we have the VERY well trusted users (those past the karma cap, etc) moderate the front page stories before they are posted. This would end dups, dead links, speelling problems
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Given that the people most likely to participate in an open-source project are also users of the application being worked on, what would happen if the customers for a software product actually participated in its design and creation?
Umm, I for one would not want to pay a large corp. for the privilege of using software I helped to create, and watch the money go to them. Exactly what would I be paying for?
Perhaps I misunderstand, as this would work in a corporate environment, where staff helped out, but surely not for a commercial product?
I think open-source is great and all, but if your programmers are all coding away, and the code is released freely, revenue and profit is generated by service contracts and support, then a) how are your coders paid? Surely not the salaries and recognition of the present day. Will coding be reduced to a more mundane role? Lots of CS grads these days. Hell I don't even have to be a CS grad to throw something up on the net b) what about your competition? They will be able to put out a duplicate or improved product lickety-split.
-- By the way , these questions are not intended to address the morality of OSS ( I don't want to get into that), but the financial aspects, which are what will take down MS, as only a viable business solution ala IBM will be able to provide the infrastructure to maintain that sort of venture.--
mod away
Microsoft enjoys what economists call a "natural monopoly."
Natural hmm?
Article Warning: Delusional understatement imminent.
Profit should be made with support and consultancy
As a developper I suck at support and consultancy. How am I supposed to get money then?
Lame. You could at least run a story that Apple fixed it's security problem in OS X last week. You like to report problems but it appears you don't like to report the problem has been fixed. There are all kind of stories out there that deserve Slashdot coverage. I find this practice sophomoric.
You're supposed to turn back the clock ... not turn back the articles....
Lemme get this straight:
If Microsoft has a monopoly, its evil.
If anyone else has a monopoly, its good for Open Source.
Make up your minds. A monopoly by definition is harmful. There are no "good" monopolies.
The only way this posting would have sounded more retarded could be only if Cmr Taco or Jon Katz had written it.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
You know, that's right! In this case, however, the entertianment folks and M$ look like tin horn prawns next to some big boys who are tired of paying through the nose for IT services provided by desktop PCs. Think GE, Westinghouse, Coke, Archer Daniel, and other giants are going to let M$ tell them what backdoored buggy junk they have to run on their thousands of desktops? Not a snowballs chance in hell. Oh yeah, they will suck up all of M$'s punny one billion dollar advert campaign, then stuff them. The owners of CBS and ABC will figure out where their break even point is. As soon as they figure out that free software can not be held over their heads and that it will save them money, security and trouble, M$ will vanish.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I can see it now...
:-)
Geek1: "You've landed on Redhat ave, with 3 houses, that'll be $280"
Geek2: "Howabout I give you BSD street and $25?"
Of course the purple ones nobody wants will be named after places in Redmond
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
The "open", standards-based web exists largely because Microsoft allows it to exist. With over 90% of desktops under their control, and over 90% of the browser market under its control, Microsoft could at any time move off to a "extended" web (an online service using proprietary protocols), and in fact, we see that already happening.
Recently Microsoft has begun shipping XP, IE6, a new Windows Media Player, and the client libs for .Net.
They have also begun to shun non-IE clients at their web sites.
Why they are doing this should be obvious - soon, MSN sites will start to accesss client code available only on MS platforms. This will truly allow MS to extend what they have embraced.
Of course, can you blame them? HTTP and HTML are useful protocols that have become outdated. The stateless, text-oriented model was extremely useful to get early adoption, but at this point there is no doubt that users of every type of platform are ready to move on to more advanced protocols that offer greater functionality. This is why many websites use SSL now as a way of creating a session of any kind. Unfortunately the HTTP-NG protocol has been shelved - it would have provided a great deal of new functionality that could have moved the web in to the next generation.
So Microsoft is going to get there on their own. You will soon see them exploiting the client libs shipped to 90% of the desktop users out there to radically enhance the browsing experience.
The standards-based web will soon be relegated to a second-class experience, and its our collective fault for not moving more rapidly to create open standards that provide for a better user experience, and get the tools out there to support them.
As long as Linux still requires knowledge of console commands (and not just any command-prompt commands, but Unix commands), it is going to be very hard for 90% of computer users out there to use Linux.
I don't think the mainstream is very interested in editing their operating system.
Does this *really* have something to do with Mandrake that I'm not catching? Why does is it under the Mandrake topic??
The growth of Linux and Apache mainly has to do with the fact that it can be employed more cost effectively in these limited low-end applications than even NT. By cost, I don't mean just the licensing costs, I mean the total setup and upkeep cost: installation, support, actually arranging the licensing, acquiring the necessary hardware, and so on. Linux and Apache get the job done sufficiently well at a minimal of cost.
This argument misses the point and fails to address the real question. Does it make financial sense to invest in the development of Open Source Software? In other words, do the benefits of Open Source software really exceed the costs? Merely "adding" to your own welfare is insufficient, if it costs you more. The answer is quite simply no when it comes to most software development.
Let's take the case of the Word processor. Why would a very major companany like, say, General Motors want to spend ALL (or even PART) of the total 30 million dollars and 3 years of development time that it takes to develop a full featured Word processor? It is extremely unlikely that they would increase their workers productivity enough to justify this on a cost vs benefit basis [Especially in light of more real world elements of finance and economics. e.g., Opportunity Cost.]. Proprietary software companies on the other hand, that enjoy intellectual property protections, get LEVERAGE when they make similar efforts. That is to say, that they enjoy not only their own savings but a slice of everyone else's savings (which is where the real money is). Furthermore, companies that are setup purely for the development of software are in many ways in a superior position to develop software more economically.
To put it bluntly, this kind of Open Source development depends on charitable actions (in a corporate sense, the only real justification for this is that it promotes the company's image) and/or on the rare project where the benefits accrued IN HOUSE are greater than the development cost. None of the above is enough to make the Open Source a major development ENGINE of wide varieties of software. This is especially true for the relatively less-visible but still highly costly applications. e.g., MRP systems, powerful photo editors like photoshop, etc.
What's more, Open Source software is going to, and does presently, fall victim to the 80/20 rule. That is to say, Open Source can get 80% of the results with 20% of the effort. Even the better regarded Open Source projects are perpetually in this state. It's the remaining 80% of the effort that it the hard hill to climb. Many would argue that not a single Open Source project has yet demonstrated itself capable of the last 80%: seemless installation, tight integration, good UIs, etc.
Many people less fanatical boosters of Open Source have taken the few words of apparent fear from Microsoft's management as proof that the whole of Microsoft is, and should be, afraid of Open Source. This is just grasping for straws. The fact of the matter is that Open Source can put a significant dent on MS' profitability, and thus provoke such words, without being a threat to the whole of Microsoft, never mind having the potential to go the next step and exceed MS. Open Source software hurts MS by marginalizing some of their highly profitable enterprises, namely: Linux vs NT, Apache vs IIS, etc. Besides the fact that this is almost exclusively confined to servers, the areas where Open Source is taking a bite out of MS is mostly on the lower-end stuff. The kind of stuff that IT will install in a pinch. You need web server to serve some internal documents? Simple, run Apache and Linux. You don't need anything more and you can do it with less of hassle than NT. Although the likes of Apache and Linux will likely continue to succeed in a similar vein, this is hardly proof of Open Source's self-proclaimed greatness.
Let's say you have a deadline, you need the money, but you just couldn't find any new and interesting (or at least original) material. What DO you do? It's quite simple - you make up a title that doesn't make any sense and therefore sounds original. n 1: (economics) a market in which there are many buyers but only one seller; "a monopoly on silver"; "when you have a monopoly you can ask any price you like" 2: exclusive control or possession of something; "They have no monopoly on intelligence" OS, as we all know here, dictates precisely the opposite - it creates more sellers, and it does away with exclusive control. They could have just as well called it "Closed Open Source" or "Many One Seller" or "Non-exclusive exclusive control". Of course, they didn't go to college for nothing, they know to pick a name that doesn't make them sound like imbeciles to people who don't know what they're talking about - it only makes them sound like imbeciles to people who *do* know what the article is about. Oh, and I won't do the traditional "WHY is it posted here?". I know why it's posted here.
Let's see now:
- IQ .html
r io rart/prior_art1.doc
r io rart/0714pato.doc
r io rart/comments_book.doc
o rart/comments.doc
r io rart/comments2.doc
r io rart/comments3.doc
It's written by two Sun MicroSystem Employees and IBM is supportive of what? Open Source directions?
Because of why?
http://www.research.ibm.com/autonomic/
This Autonomic Computing direction sounds extreamly familiar.
The core of which contains nine functions or action constants identified here.
http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/KNMVIC.html
(USPTO published as one [#4] of the written responces to given RFC ***)
This project in the Python Programming Language
http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/python/python
Timothy Rue
***
Issues Related to the Identification of Prior Art During the Examination of a Patent Application
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/p
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/p
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/p
#4-> http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/pri
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/p
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/p
SGI was financial deep sneakers and in worse shape now. Open Source was just a jump on the band wagon move they hoped to saves thier ass. Same with Borland and most of the other large corporation "supporting" open source. Many are just offering lip service and waiting to see if supporting open source will generate sales of other products. IBM is the same thing, but they have very deep pockets and using them to look like they care. But if supporting open source doesn't sell hardware it will go the way of OS/2.
Bottom line big companies aren't going to use products they can't get support contracts for. When things go wrong, they have to have someone feet to hold to the fire. Also open source doesn't have the facilities for research and testing on enterprise level systems. No, open source is going to be good for international users and companies where costs are prohibitive. It will help smaller companies with tight budgets, but that will be limited when they realize open source cost more over the long run than commericial software. A software support contract is cheaper than the salary for developers and QA staff to support open source. Open source has a place, but not the big place you think.
"Natural" monoplies are those which arise because there cannot be anything else. For example, it's not credible to expect more than one hydro cable to your house, or more than one telephone company: there isn't enough room on the poles for more than one each. Heck, the cable folks often have to sue to get permission to use the other guy's poles... These are existing natural monopolies, along with water, sewers and the like.
They propose that Bill has a natural monopoly, and that it will be broken and replaced with one where we are the monopolists. Well, natural monopolies are not trivial to overturn, so by arguing the we will overturn Bill, they're (accidentally!) arguing that he doesn't have a natural monopoly.
They have argued that some of the prerequisites exist, but they've jumped from there to the conclusion that it does exist, without offering proof.
A cople of references, findable via google: A Glossary of Political Economy Terms, and from http://www1.oecd.org/daf/clp/non-member_activities /dnme10.htm,
Natural monopoly arises in sectors characterised by declining costs of production so that there is room for only one firm to exploit available economies of scale. Typically, natural monopolies occur in industries characterised by large distribution networks with substantial fixed costs, such as gas, electricity, water and railways. In practice, however, it is as rare to find examples of industry-wide natural monopoly as it is examples of perfect competition. Even if some parts of an industry have natural monopoly characteristics others may be potentially competitive. For example electricity supply consists of natural monopoly in transmission but potential competition in generation and the supply of user equipment. Telecommunications was for a long time considered to be a natural monopoly at least for the basic telephone service, whereas value added services and the equipment market are competitive. The creation of new networks for voice transmission has even eroded the monopoly of the basic service.
davecb@spamcop.net
You have *got* to be kidding!
More like, who's asleep at /.
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
HTML template patents:
2 32 &mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/17/005
This poses a big contridiction about IBMs autonomic computing direction.
IBMs two faces? Open source and patented software?
For things that are useful to a broad spectrum of people, open source just makes sense. For some things it doesn't.
I posted a more detailed response to some of the issues brought up in the earlier conversation on Slashdot and this one here if anyone's interested.
(wow, slashdotted twice...I feel special :-)
-Tim Boudreau
> 1.) dot net is still vaporware and has no installed base,...
no. They claim 160 million users. Izzat more than Linux? Maybe that's Passport. Trojan horsed by the fact that if you want to install XP, want a Hotmail account, want an MSN account, etc, you need your Passport.
I dunno, I don't think I'd enter my real name if I was in that situation, but that's john Q public.
>2.) People are satisfied with your so called "second class
>standards based Internet" and frankly most don't have the...
Most people will go where Internet Explorer will take them. Now that MSN isn't accepting Netscape, soon IE won't be able to surf to Slashdot. Etc.
Yes. Get alarmed.
> 3.) There is plenty time to build our own superior open
>architecture for any 'enhanced web' that...
Won't happen. Guess what, Sun is trying this. But do you hear about it on SlashDot? No. Do you hear calls to support Sun's authentication system? No. That's because Unix people are too divisive.
Linux people say BSD sucks. BSD people say Linux sux. Both say Java sux.
Solaris and Linux are so "cozy" with each other that when I multiboot between Solaris and Linux, I have to move files to an MS DOS partition to exchange data between them - for this reason alone, Microsoft will never go out of business: it's the only way to get Linux and Solaris to talk.
Linux CAN mount Solaris UFS partitions - read only. At least they recognize that Solaris UFS is different from BSD UFS. Both Solaris and BSD considers the other one to be broken. Hey, instead of building a "superior enhanced web" how about a "superior file system" that isn't fucking broken all the time? Start with the basics.
I haven't managed to get FreeBSD on this system - just getting Linux and Solaris to coexist is like walking on eggshells.
And bill gates laughs all the way to the bank.
Marketing-driven companies end up over-marketing their products. Engineering-driven companies end up over-engineering
Actually, msn now comes up just fine under mozilla .9.5 on my win box at work. It seems that my browser has magically learned the art of displying that page "correctly"...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Don't underestimate the purple and light blues. Statistically, those are the squares people hit the most. They occur A) before "Go to Jail", B) before many card spaces where you can be skipped over them and C) right after "Go", where players are often skipped to. I'm no Monopoly champion, so this is just my $2*10^-2.
I've won games of Monopoly by snapping up those properties and throwing houses and hotels on them ASAP. Everytime someone passes go, they have to negotiate a minefield that could cost them a hell of a lot more than nine bucks. This income subsidizes buying at least one property from the other color groups so they can't turn around and do it to me. Come to think of it, parallels would be easy to draw between this behaivor and Microsofts.....
Oh, goodie. Software McDonald's-- franchising support with staffing supplied by min-wage comp-sci grads with B- grade averages. I guess the people who actually produce the code that's being supporting are to survive on handouts from (pick one)-- maw and paw, the university, the government , the MacArthur Foundation.
This is the "open source" attitude that is equivalent to the one that says that developing countries should embrase tourism as their economic salvation. Both always seems to be advocated by those with the most to gain by that arrangement.
Profit should be made with support and consultancy.
It's not for you or anyone else to say how or how not profit should be made. The market will decide for itself, as ever. Even now, Microsoft et al are making money... how are Red Hat doing?
The little icon says the topic is "Linux Mandrake", but the story is about the Open Source movement.
I don't think Linux Mandrake has a monopoly on Open Source.
Putting the sig back into +1, Insightful since 1995!
Too large a proprtion of the webservers on the planet are something other than IIS to make it easy for Microsoft to fundamentally change the protocols. What they would find easier is to embrace and extend HTML. Oh, they already did that.