Slashdot Mirror
Perens Discredits Mundie's Attack On GPL
SaxMan101 writes "CNET has an editorial from Bruce Perens that quite handily dismantles Mundies attack on the GPL and the Liberty Alliance. He takes the time to make YA strong argument for free software which he backs up with real numbers. Well said, worth the read."
Perens is dismantling Mundies FUD in a calm, businesslike way. Let's hope that the debate on MS FUD stays this calm and reasonable
It's obvious that Mundie sees the world through Windows-colored glasses. Software must be sold to get the money to make more software. How else could a software company work? If you can't license it, you can't gouge^H^H^H^H^Hcollect your due earnings. Oh, and the whole thing about people not working with Microsoft...if that's not a monopolist talking I don't know what is.
Anyway, rant off now. It's good to see someone who can rationally tear down his arguement, and it's even better to see it on a fairly commonplace site like CNet. I think more and more people are realizing the snowjob Microsoft keeps trying to pull, and in the end that will be the thing that ends the monopoly.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
GPL, Apache, BSD, all these licences .
Who is the GPL bad for ?
Only 2 kinds of people, thats it TWO and ONLY two
1.Those that make a copeting product with a GPL available substitute, (SQL, Linux, etc) and stand to lose money from cometition (i.e. MS)
2.Those that would like to steal code repackage it and sell it without giving either credit or code back to whence it came.
Thats it PERIOD.
All this viral liscence crap and Craig Dumbdie spewing trash means nothing, the big boys the ones that count know. IBM, Copmaq, the people from a high line backing know this is all MS horeshit.
I love the people that complain about hte license ONLY because the see $$$ signs and want to take it reroll it and sell it without contributing a damm thing back, those are the ones that make me laugh, go write the fucking code yourself.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
I'm not sure how the numbers balance out, but these concerns far outweigh the price of buying the software. If Mr. Perens is going to dip his toe in TCO waters, he'd be better be sure he can jump all the way in and not get himself drowned.
What's a sig?
I recently read an article in either Inc. or BusinessWeek about the effect Lou Gerstner had on IBM. Among other things, the article praised him for moving IBM agressively to becoming a service-based company.
I don't think Microsoft has anything to compare with this (yet), and fears those who are already in the arena.
The way Microsoft is fighting this war is to attempt to discredit open source as an approach, while (and I'm guessing on this) preparing its own service division.
It's classic. Throw out a load of FUD about the competition, while readying your own competing product. Depend on clueless PHBs to swallow your line, and watch the cash roll in.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
For all the discussions about Linux taking over the world, or Microsoft obliterating the competition, etc., it's fun to just sit back and watch how several breakout OSes and technologies (Linux, OSX, MP3s, etc.) slowly and naturally build in popularity and find a solid niche in our lives. I guess it all comes down to "natural selection". :-)
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
Is this an acronym I'm clueless about, or a typo? Honestly I just can't figure it out from the context, nor can I see it as a reasonable typo.
If you drill down a bit you find this letter from a programmer that complains about Open Source. While I found it both sad and funny, it does shed light on how Microsoft and other commercial software vendors view the movement.
To summarize: OSS is a bad thing because if free software is available no one will want to pay for software, which will drive programmers out of work. OSS is good in that it establishes competition for Microsoft, but that competition is better done through litigation or other commercial software.
Applying this point of view to Microsoft is humorous, of course, considering what they did with IE.
I actually don't think the developer has a point, though. Open source software has created far more jobs than it took. Linux, Apache, and other free platforms and development tools have meant, in my experience, that corporations are financially able to deploy systems that would otherwise have been prohibitive. The spread of such tools has also increased the number of people who are exposed to them - how many people would be running personal Unix systems if they had to have commercial systems? These people are able to get jobs in IT they would otherwise not be qualified for, or perhaps even know about.
In any case, Perens' response likening software development and protective measures against open source competition to buggy whips (actually ice, in his analogy) is only half the story.
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
--The Sphinx
Intelligent citizens, industry professionals and academics will read, understand, and probably agree with this article.
This is also the sort of writing that could really color the public debate if average Joe Citizen had any reason to value the opinion of Bruce Perens over Craig Mundie.
But why should they?
What does the average person know about Perens? What do they know about the Open Source Initiative? Correct me if I'm wrong, but probably very little. What does the average person know about MicroSoft? That they build the software that runs on every computer that they sit behind every day.
There's a bit of a credibility gap.
Craig Mundie could conceivably be any employee with the MicroSoft backing, and he would get press and general public recognition that Perens doesn't.
Pro-Open Source writers are often honest and, while not unbiased or impartial, are at least driven more by a cooperative and edifying spirit than a monopolistic one. If the general public had more reason to trust them, the articles they write would more effectively influence public opinion.
Think about how can this community help people like Perens while he's busy trying to help us.
Rob Carlson
You expect a debate on MS FUD to stay calm and reasonable? On Slashdot?
Best Slashdot Co
Open source software has created far more jobs than it took.
Prove it.
The cost of IT personel/sys. admins. is going to be the same whether they are administering open-source or MS software. A business is going to pay only as much as it is willing for IT people, regardless of the software it's running.
In terms of company tech support, considering that MS charges what, $135/hr, you probably end up saving money on support costs as well by switching to OSS, though you prolly could have the same kind of savings switching to a different set of proprietary software as well.
my pet machine
I find it sorta funny that Mundie would actually state something along the lines of, "There is this notion that people should have a choice."
How I find that funny is that in the past he has proclaimed how "Un-American" the GPL and OSS is. Of course, I believe that he never claims that MS is a for American standards of freedom, choice. A number of his statements are the sort of thing that one would expect from a dictatorship or the "American idea" of what the old Soviet Block was and may actually have been.
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I'm pleased to see such a good piece of anti-FUD work aimed at managers.
:
...
The articles explains clearly that the key point in GPL is
But this is not to say that the main benefit of Linux and other GPL software is lower-cost. Control is the main benefit--cost is secondary.
This quote is the most important : GPL gives you _control_ on the library you've choosen to link with your project. The library is not subject to stock prices or whatever non-IT reason. If you don't want the new features : don't upgrade, you don't like the new direction : fork the developement tree
Isn't open-source essentially a communist-notion? I'm not saying that would be a bad thing. But it seems that Microsoft is saying they should be able to make money selling operating systems, web services, etc: a capitalist argument. The open source argument is for everybody to put their resources in a single pot, and by polling resources a better product can be had for all: sounds like communism to me. That plan makes sense to me, but Americans do live in a capitalist society. If open-source is a communist notion, can the United States really stand against the capitalists? Communism doesn't seem to work for governments, largely because of corruption (- obviously open to argument). Does the abstract nature of software and it's ability to be copied indefinitely eliminate the flaws that made communism fail as a mode of government for countries? Is there any point where the usefulness of open-source software ends and the market for commercial software begins? Or would commercial software be obsolete in the presence of the "new world order"?
Insightful, to the point, and well written. Nice work.
While all the points he makes are true, and the economic beneifits of free software are obvious, that is not the primary moral justification for software being free. Repeat after me, "When software is free, the world is a better place."
Now, it stands to reason, that part of the world being a better place is certainly the economic benefit that free software provides to reduce operating costs. In fact, one could argue that if there were no such effect, free software wouldn't be too great a thing -- who'd want it if it had no value (rather like some excuses for programs I've seen)? And they'd be right. These are open source arguments, though, and miss the fact that freeing software not only results in lowered operating costs for businesses that use it, but it changes the every environment in which they operate.
There are two primary schools of economic thought: planned economies and free markets. Politically, you have the statists on one side and the libertarians and anarchists on the other. Proponents from both sides argue that "their" way serves to distribute scarce resources in the most effective way, and that's what we want, no? -- effective distribution of scarce resources.
Well, yeah, but that doesn't make the scarcity go away, does it? Oh sure, the technological advancements that lead to efficiency improvements do eventually trickle down to everyone so that certain scarcities are less visible, but that's just a kludge. Think water. Most cities have methods for distributing drinking water to the point that, although the amount of water available may remain the same, it hardly seems locally scarce, even though it may have come from far away.
Free software serves to reduce the scarcity of good code out there. It provides value without relying on scarcity as the source of that value. It is a threat only to those who seek to leverage their possession of a scarce resource for maximum value. Now, if that resource is naturally scarce, fine: once sold, it is gone. But if the resource is artificially scarce, you can manufacture more of it for no cost, and charge whatever the market will bear, for pure profit (until you saturate the market, that is, but time-limited use licenses take care of that "problem" -- Microsoft's latest licensing strategy). It gives the owner incredible power over society as a whole (until society revolts).
But it costs money to produce code! People can't afford to give it away!! Well, if they depend on making it scarce for their livelyhood, no, but that is a bootstrapping problem: you make something artificially scarce in order to deal with real scarcities in your life. You'd have to do this less if there were less scarcities to worry about (imagine if we had solar-powered food-generation machines). And indeed, some have managed to give code away. RMS has done this exclusively, though by living a rather austere lifestyle. His choice. Others give code away when they can afford to. Each such contribution changes our environment for the better. For hackers who breathe code, this is, of course, a godsend (RMS, an atheist, might not like that choice of wording -- "GPLsend" then). Perhaps that's why we like the GPL so much, even those of use that produce restrictively-licensed code for a living.
So, you don't need economic arguments to defend the GPL. It is as good and wonderful for the world as are the lack of patents on fire, wheels, and language. The only people who will criticize it are those that profit from the misery that scarcity brings.
You could've hired me.
Perens calls open source "a crown jewel of capitalism." That may be true, but open source is a crown jewel of freedom. And freedom is the bottom line here. Make no mistake about that.
I can't see the point in Mundies 'attack' or Perens response. Perens irratates me almost as much as Mundie/Gates/Ballmer do.
For the record, unlike most people here, I don't think the GPL is the holy grail anymore than I think Binary only software distribution is the only way to do things. This whole discussion is a nonsense. Mundie is wasting his time in empty posturing and Parens is silly to respond.
If you are a software engineer working on a product
that is very broad interest and software only, you
will feel the fear, when people will get to it.
I on the other hand work on niche products that are
not pure software, but work only with specialized
products. Well this is the perfect niche to be in,
with free software prolifing around.
So the conclusion is that Software in say 25 years
will become a normal engineering job, where
everybody makes software using freely available
software modules. It seems like a nice idea, then
software will truly be an engineering descipline.
I see I've been moderated down to flamebait. Well, it's a free country, thank God, so fine. However, read and understand.
He (mundie) said: "Rather than form a federation with Microsoft and work with what we had already created, there was this notion that the world should be offered an alternative."
Words of monopolistic wisdom, from the horses mouth.
Ra7
-
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" - RWE
While he does make some good points, I do have the impression he's being too optimistic.
But, of course, that money isn't lost to the economy. What happens to the money that companies save by using GPL software?
This (and the argument that follows it) seems to imply that most, if not all, of the money saved on software ends up paying for GPl sofware. But it doesn't. Even if 50% ends up financing GPL in some indirect way, that means your 'software budget' has been cut in half.
How, then, will it fund R&D when software sales aren't its primary money-maker? They will treat software as enabling technology and will continue to fund it because their service business won't work without technology.
Even if Microsoft manages to make as much money on services as they do now on selling software, they'll have to increase their workforce to provide the services as well as create the SW that runs it. Which means it'll be a lot less profitable. For Microsoft, this may not be a problem, but lots of smaller software houses will be up shit creek.
Somebody paid for all of that free software: Individual developers paid with their free time, ...
For now, that will work because the amount of open-source SW is limited. But soon, we'll run out of programmers who are willing to donate free time. So I don't see the ... larger development staff than any one company could support... happening in general. Only for the few Good Causes (in programmer community opinion) will an ample (free) workforce be available.
All in all, while GPL may be the wave of the future, I'm not sure it's the Promised Land. It might actually end up decreasing the amount of SW available.
The GPL covers only the code within an application. There are quite clearly more cases of why you wouldn't want to use the GPL than those who wish to compete or steal code.
The key example would be those who wish to promote a business method of network protocol. Suppose you invent a new networking protocol for a specific service and wish to have this protocol widely adapted. You may wish to produce an application to act as a reference client for this protocol, but the goal of this would be to encouage the adoption of the protocol rather than the inherent worth of your code. Licencing this under a Free BSD style licence would allow as many people as possible to use the code, adopting the protocol, without feeling they have to promote their improvements back to the community and their competitors. The protocol is standardised by the relevent RFC, but the client can then be incorperated by all for commercial or open source ends.
This has been the route taken by many early TCP on Intel solutions, and hasn't done the cause of TCP/IP too much harm. The GPL has been a major force for good in software licencing, but true freedom has to mean freedom of choice in the work we produce,including its licencing. After all FreeBSD is still going strong, despite all the horror stories we hear about how Microsoft could take it over at any time.
I used the words "compare" and "(yet)", not "not competing".
I didn't know that Microsoft has hired someone from IBM GS, but this would seem to add support to my theory.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Commerce has thrived in a "commons" since the first public squares were constructed, and the GPL's share-and-share-alike system creates a commons for software.
GPL software would not be classified as a "commons" good, but rather as a "pure public" good. The term commons refers to goods that are non-excludable, but are rivalrous in consumption. GPL software is not only non-excludable, but also non-rivalrous in consumption. My use of a particular piece of GPL software does not diminish your ability to use it, or raise its price (it may even lower it!). Commons are, to economists, one of the WORST ways to allocate goods. Refer to Garrett Hardin's classic paper "The Tragedy of the Commons" (1968). Hurray for pure public goods!
Down to Flamebait, up to Insightful, back down to Flamebait, make up your tiny minds.
If I'm flamebait, please flame me. Give me rational arguments of less than a half-hour lecture on why I'm wrong. You don't because you can't.
Well said. I'll add it to my conversations with people who don't understand GPL software. (Even when they unknowningly use it.)
But, I do think we do have solar-powered food-generation machines. They're just called farms. They take quite a bit of work to maintain...
OK, I think that goes right along with:
"Hey did you know they have a thing to see through walls with?"
"Really what is it called?"
"A window. Do you know how to walk through walls?"
What Mundie doesn't understand (or chooses to ignore) is how wealth is created. Simply passing wealth back and forth between companies doesn't create wealth. Paying taxes doesn't create wealth. Government spending doesn't create wealth.
:-)
Wealth is created by increasing efficiency. If I pay you $10/hour to build widgets worth $3 a piece, and you can build 4 widgets per hour, then I make $2/hour profit. If you figure out how to increase you efficiency and make 6 widgets per hour instead of 4, my profit has now increased to $8/hour. This can then be reflected in increased wages for you, fewer work hours, or a cheaper product. Regardless, net wealth of the economy has been increased, since more output is produced from the same input.
Where does the GPL work into this? Because one GPL application has effectively infinite supply, it drastically reduces input costs of production and therefore leads to a very high net increase in the entire economy's wealth. Commercial software necessarily leads to less wealth increase, because it has an artificial cost added to increase the producer's personal wealth at the cost of the whole economy's net wealth.
Mundie's argument is that the artificial cost is necessary for software to get produced, because there will otherwise be no incentive for the producers to produce software. The thing he ignores, though, is that obviously the software does get produced. If OS software gets produced, then it is out there. It has increased the net wealth of the economy. That increase will never go away (unlike the commercial company, which could go out of business). If OS is not enough incentive for the software to get produced, or OS doesn't lead to a solution that is sufficient, then the demand for a commercial version will be high enough that commercial development will be supportable. There is room for both.
Microsoft, of course, is just beginning to realize that the software they make is quite compatible with OS development, and there is no way they can compete with the efficiency of an OS product. Therefore, Mundie is arguing that we will all be better off if the economy's net wealth is held down in favor of MS's personal wealth gain. I just don't buy it
On the other hand, he's absolutely right that there may not be as high a demand for software developers in the future. So what. So, a few programmers may have to change careers. They're smart people (and yes, I am one), and shouldn't have too much of a problem finding work. Yes, it sucks for a few, but where would we be today if we always held back progress in favor of old, established industries. Not to be cliche, but I'm sure the development of the automobile sucked for the buggy whip manufacturers, too. Personally, I'll risk my long term personal stability for the chance of great wealth increases for both myself and the economy as a whole.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
> Somebody has to pay for the time and effort.
> RMS is a fraud -- we all know it. He left MIT
> to do GNU but was fortunate that the director
> of the AI lab allowed him to comtinue to use
> its facilities (publicly-funded - so you and I
> paid for it).
Umm, the AI lab already had their computers. We might have paid for them to set up, but we probably didn't pay much extra for RMS to work there. Same with most people. If you already have a computer, you don't need to pay for it.
> He needed money: so sold GNU
> EMACS at $150 a pop and funded himself from "a
> software distribution business" (his words).
> Sounds like Bill et al to me.
EXCEPT that under the GNU anyone can do that. This is the old 'free software' confusion. Free software doesn't have to be given away. If I wanted to sell copies of GNU Emacs, I could do, as long as the people I sold it to had permission to sell it on themselves.
The normal cry here is: "but! You can't really make money selling free software, because since you can't stop others distributing it, those other people can give it away for nothing and you'll lose the money you made." Yep, that's right. But then, even if you were making commercial software they'd still be no guarantee you'd make money doing it. And a competitor might well try and push you out by giving an equivalent product away (Internet Explorer anyone?).
There can still be commercialisation and competition in free software. Witness the Linux boxed distros. The only difference is that the scarce resource involved isn't the software.
> And why is is all Microsoft versus Linux? What
> about the rest of us trying to earn an honest
> living out of selling our software?
You have every right to do that. Only a few people believe that *ALL* software should be OS, and even then, it's "should be" (ie, it would be nice if the authors chose it to be), not "should be forced to be".
It's only forced to be if you base it on other free software - and that's only because, were there no free software, you would have probably had to pay a big-ass licensing fee to get at the source code you based it on, if you were even allowed to see the source in the first place.
> Why should I expose all my genius to have every
> half-wit so the he/she can copy it, corrupt it,
> and persuade his boss to give him a raise for
> it?
Well, you said your software was for Linux, so calling the people who might have written the kernel 'half-wits' is a shade hypocritical..
> DOn't I deserve more than a mindless "credit"
> in the source code -- (and half of you take
> those out as well, in my experience).
Of course you do. Go persuade your boss to give you a raise based on your product, just like the other guy did. If he could do so and you can't, then, well, he's obviously improved the product and deserves his raise.
> No, no, no and no again. You're wrong-headed,
> misguided, foolish and economically illiterate.
The capitalist economy is fully operational on free software. It's just that you have to find something other than the software to be scarce. Think you're such a hot programmer? Sell the service of making custom alterations to it. Grab distributions, test them for hours to ensure industrial standard and then sell them with proven certifications. Sell support. Write about the software then sell the book. It's all there.
If you were intelligent, perhaps you wouldn't have this problem.
Pitiful, isn't it?
I can't believe Mundie's complaint about the GPL is that it will pull money out of the public sector. He should be arguing the other way around: In the long run, the GPL puts money into the public sector, and that's why it's bad.
Peren's argument distracts us from the real problem by pointing out how much money business saves in the short-run.
What is the real problem? There are at least two: First, by discouraging entry into the software market, the GPL reduces the number of competitors. This means less consumer choice, not more. That's because most consumers have the ability and the resources to evaluate and choose programs, but most don't have the ability and resources to evaluate and choose programmers. Free Software is devestating to the diverse "middle ground" of software that sells in the $20-$100 range. When GPL software dominates a market, we are left with low-quality free packages on one end and expensive "industry standard" or "specialized" software on the other.
The other problem is that when GPL projects fail to keep pace with technology, there is the danger that people will make arguments that the government needs to step in and take over the project. This is the secret hearts desire of the Free Software movement, which is just socialism with a hi-tech veneer. Already, there are too many government workers writing software who should instead be using a diverse array of packages from different vendors, linked together by open standards (open standards are law, but executables are *not*. That's a critical distinction that Lessig fails to make, but we aren't here to talk about Lessig).
Perens is right in the short-run: Socialism always does well in the beginning because it lives off the fat of the land that has been stored up. In the long-run though, it drags the economy down.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Well, you said your software was for Linux, so calling the people who might have written the kernel 'half-wits' is a shade hypocritical..
And exactly what percentage of Linux users have 'written' the kernel? Some Windows users wrote the kernel for that, can we not call them half-wits either?
Umm, the AI lab already had their computers. We might have paid for them to set up, but we probably didn't pay much extra for RMS to work there. Same with most people. If you already have a computer, you don't need to pay for it.
A market stall-holder would be a pretty mean bastard if he complained about someone taking a grape before paying for it wouldn't he? But what if everyone did it? What if the labs are full of people using the computers, so no-one more entitled can use them?
I have noticed that a lot of the moderators who use their mod points to punish views they don't like but know people are likely to think fair will use 'overated' to mod people down. That way they reduce the risk that they will be metamoderated as 'unfair' which they know would be likely if they used 'troll' or 'flamebait'.
I think that this is basically a pretty pointless and largely ideological argument. In the one camp we have the Microsofties who don't like the idea of competing with 'free'. In the other we have the Open Sauce zealots who hate the idea of paying for anything.
As usual with idealogues, both sides are wrong. However they find plenty of followers because lots of people are lazy and would like others to do their thinking for them. Plus they have the idea that they can gain credibility and prominence by advocating the most extreeme position out there.
What I find most significant in the Perens article is that all the quotes he gives can be found in the original reports of the Mundie speech. He gives no more context than the original reports. This strikes me as a staggering coincidence, he found the exact same quotes from a 40 minute speech significant as the previous report! Was Perens present at the speech? Did he even listen to a tape of the speech? given the state of US journalism I strongly suspect that he did not and that he is not reporting on the speech, he is reporting on the reports of the speech.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
When Mundie pointed out that Passport is based on Kerberos, he kind of made a point. There is a lot of software out there (especially web browsers, web servers, and LDAP) that include code from open source or free software projects. The argument that Microsoft makes, that free software is some how corrosive to the economy, is totally unfounded and false.
Most Unix utilities and projects are commonly available, community code. Had these projects not been, the cost of systems would have been higher. Also developers learn from these projects. In some cases these projects started as government funded reasearch, because the private sector didn't care. Now that some of these projects have shown commercial importance, the private sector is creating similar software. In fact, one could argue, if it weren't for free software and government/university funded research - our economy would be worse off.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
They never talk about the cost of constantly upgrading your Windows administration skills to stay in touch with the industry or the cost of running the latest hardware for the latest versions of Windows. What is the cost of a full MCSE against getting certification for running something like Redhat or Mandrake in the work place?
something tells me, that a MCSE would be some what more expensive.
It will take a lot of patient, logical arguement from people like Mr Perens and Mr Stallman, who can put across the arguement for not believing all the FUD coming out of Redmond.
However, Microsoft have probably got a team of script writers there who can pump out arguments that are structured to tug the heart strings of upper management who are more interested in the bottom line rather than the more technical people who are more interested in having a working product that is reliable.
But, one of the good things that is coming out of the constant stream of FUD from Microsoft is that every now and then, they trip over their own tongues while rabbiting on about how good their product is.
Education and knowledge will slowly break down the walls that Microsoft has thrown up... but it will take time.
*** I had a
...can anyone point to some *real* TCO numbers? As in, biased neither toward Linux or Windows?
Lendrick
While you're correct in saying that software has to be paid for, you're being too narrow in looking for the money.
Examples, in house development. Companies have their own stables of programmers building the tools they need/want for competitive advantage. What if they devoted 60-70% of those resources to working on Open Source projects that get them closer to their goal? Remember, if you don't distribute an OS project then you don't have to distribute the improved code. So, if three different companies working for different things all contributed towards the development of the base utilities then they all get a return far in proportion to the initial investment.
Second, schools. These institutions get money from grants, endowments, and tuition. They have a bunch of students and professors working there. Why not utilize Open Source to keep costs down and contribute back to that community? Again, return versus investment.
Finally, the Open Source people aren't trying to keep you from making a living selling software. The main complaint most of us have (or well to be honest at least I have) with MS is that they use their position to fight illegally. If it were just a matter of "may the best code win" then I think everyone would be perfectly willing to just roll up their sleeves and duke it out.
Remember, software isn't the beginning and ending of economics. For most people and companies software is just a means to an end. (Point of Sale systems in stores, Web Servers for e-businesses, accounting systems, etc.) For the average production company software is only an overhead cost driving up the overall cost of their products. And if you look at the Fortune 500, Microsoft is pretty far down the list.
The lessons of history have shown the following: companies are always trying to decrease their costs, monopolies tend to get broken up, and everyone hates bullies.
(Btw - the difference between software, and IP, versus physical things is that sharing the one doesn't decrease the value to the current owner. Two people can use the same software at the same time and both derive the same benefit, thus doubling the return. It's tough for two people to share the same airplane and fly in different directions.)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
You're absolutely right. I was struggling to figure out why a completely innocent post of mine was modded as Overrated, where there were no other moderations on it whatsoever. I mean, how can something be overrated if it has never been rated? But you make a good point about moderation, now I understand why.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
I have been gently pressing the organizers of the 'world conference' about getting the original copy of Mundie's speech, but so far I have been unable to get it. They claimed, at first, to be transcribing the speech, and that it would be available at the media part of the site, but so far it hasn't appeared.
I really want to see the original source, as I believe that it's quite likely that Mundie's reported words are not particularly accurate, and they are surely quoted out of contest. I'm most interested, of course, because I think that the original text is, if anything, more strident and open for redicule.
I've got an email log of my conversations with the World Conference orgranzers that I'd be willing to share with anybody, on request, just send an email. Perhaps with a few more people asking we can get the transcript.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Bruce Perens claims that:
"Mundie uses a textbook tactic of manipulation: start with some reasonable talk, and lead the audience to an unreasonable conclusion."
Then he goes on to make the following claim:
"A partial count of the software available in just one noncommercial Linux system released two years ago shows that it would have cost about $1.9 billion to develop the same software the way Microsoft does it... If open source was economically unviable, development would have ceased long before there was $1.9 billion worth of it."
Pot, meet Kettle. It might have cost $1.9 Billion the way Microsoft does it, but open source development is not built the way Microsoft does it. Open source development often relies on time and effort provided essentially by donation. As such, the $1.9 Billion he's using to imply economic viability never existed. Nobody paid $1.9 Billion to develop open source software, so that particular test never occured.
His statements are a perfect example of false logic. Strip down his arguments in the article, and you see that he IS another soapbox idiot. I trust him about as much as I do the people he is lambasting.
it may not come to America. Using GPLed software saves money for businesses, and the money saved by and German companies would help paying German taxes, funding German researches, etc. This is (I reckon) what Mundie wanted to stress but couldn't spell out.
With all due respect, I do not feel this was the best piece of argument ever put forward.
As far as the taxes issue, something that taxes do, in many cases, is aggregate a small incremental cost in a lot of areas into something that can be very meaningful. This is something that Perens wholly ignores. There are lots of places taxes will be lost:
a) Taxes on all the individual workers at companies that manufacture commercial software and in corporations world wide who install/maintain that software
b) Sales taxes on purchased software
c) Taxes on infrastructure for selling software all together
As a result money IS lost to the economy. Tax money recovered to the individual will either find its way back into our pockets (unlikely), or we will be taxed at an incrementally higher rate to make up for it. Many recessions are caused by the reduction in consumer spending, to which erasing all money spent on software would be an economic equivalent. Let's face it, the service economy around software will never be as robust as license sales, for the simple fact that end users will be unable to hire service people (it will be too difficult for companies to support the mass amount of end users for open source software). Tax money recovered by corporations WILL have extra money, but they'd rather pay for software that off the shelf worked than dedicate manpower to it (which is a lot more costly in the long run)... and the second that you have an advantage provided to someone who offers a better off the shelf package than another, you're right back to forcing people to develop proprietary software. Why would I open source the one thing that gives my distro an advantage over yours?
As for the $1.9 B number... If you're going to give that number credit, then you probably also believe that number for world wide piracy. Both suffer from the same fallacy. If people were ACTUALLY willing to pay $1.9 Billion for the development, then they would have done so. They didn't. QED. The fact that it exists is because, in the exact same way that taxes have the ability to aggregate amounts of money so small that they would not amount to anything on their own, open source aggregates developer time. Its economic viability does not factor into it at all.
I almost don't want to get into the Liberty argument, since that's a mess unto itself. Some central authority needs to sign all these certificates. MS has stepped forward, though it easily could have been anyone else. I actually thought that Verisign would be the one to step forward, since they have such a large infrastructure for signatures and all. I'm all for multiple offerings, but it looks like the Liberty Alliance is going after the wrong thing all together. Perens is wrong here, MS is claiming they're providing the infrastructure, that's all.
All in all, it's not a very good representation of Open Source argument when Perens engages in the exact same strawman attacking that he claims Mundie is guilty of.
I don't have any issue with adding to an open source library and keeping those modifications free and clear and in the public eye. Its in the case where using open source software requires that my application in its entirety become open source when I have issues. As such the only license that I generally deal with is LGPL. It allows me to add stuff to libraries that I use and donate that work to the public but allows me to close parts of my application if I want to put them on the shelf. I've LGPL'd a bunch of code myself - if someone wants it - cool, just make sure that any changes you make are available to myself and anyone else... but if you want to include it in your application... that's fine, I don't need the source to the rest of your application... to me that's almost silly.
Have you considered being a technical writer or something? There are many ways that anyone can help.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
It is most definitely a valid point that the TCP/IP stack was BSD and as a result it is more than ubiquitous. IPX, offerings from DEC, and other attempts all pretty much pale beside IP. However, there was not a GPL-ed TCP/IP implementation to compete with, so saying the BSD *won* is not entirely fair. You are implying a comparison that did not exist.
I would never wish to live in a society where the wishes of people who take my code are more important than mine.
Well, two issues. Companies already release code under the GPL, even existing companies like IBM and Sun, let alone Red Hat and VA. Saying that an owner of work would not release under the GPL because it "would not allow them to incorporate improvements" is not accurate. There is *nothing* stopping them from doing so.
The misinformation that companies can't use GPL'ed code when they have been doing so for years needs to stop.
FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Marketing tactic. If your product is not competing strongly, or even not existent, you let on how something awful is about to befall your competitor.
PHB: Pointy-Haired Boss. It's a reference to the cartoon Dilbert.
TCO: Total Cost of Ownership. Corporate-speak. Said of IT components. Recognition that an upfront price tag is not the whole story. There are other costs in the long run: hardware and software, maintenance, support, staff, licensing, etc.
In the future, you might try the Jargon File.
Steven Levy's book Hackers shows that the attitudes Bill Gates and his friends were set a long, long time ago. They never likes the idea of "giving" away any software, none at all. Their mantra was "if you use it, you should pay ME for it." All that time has done is increase their size as a business (most likely by insisting on "don't applaud, throw money instead") and being the driving force behind organizations like the Business Software Alliance (BSA).
As is their right in our society.
You, of course, have the right of choice -- choice that lets you choose to use software vended by someone other than Microsoft.
The anti-trust trial was about Microsoft trying to eliminate sources of software other than itself, in the areas which Microsoft chose to "compete," and the US Department of Justice taking exception to that elimination of competition and choice. We had a charge, an answer, discovery, a trial, a verdict, and an appeal...and at the end of the day we have a company that has been declared guilty (in a Court of Equity) of anti-competitive actions.
Bill continues to show that his grade of "F" in sandbox remains a fair and valid one by refusing to understand why his actions are in violation of statute, and why his actions are harming society.
And who here would be the wiser if you were in his place?
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Communism and capitalism are different economic systems, but what they have in common is that they are meant to be applied to systems of physical goods. Physical goods are limited in quantity; e.g. if you sell me a car, you no longer have the car yourself.
Software, like any information, is different. I can sell you a copy of a program I wrote while still having my own copy. To my knowledge, neither the communist nor the capitalist model address goods that can be replicated at zero (or near-zero) cost.
Capitalism uses money to reward production and allow consumption. Communism asks people to produce what they can and consume what they need. Free/Open Source Software allows people to produce however much they want and consume whatever they like. (Pity it only works with bits.)
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
I see few parallels between OSS and Socialism and always wondered why people (other than those with an agenda) draw connections between OSS and Socialism/Communism.
In socialism both buyer/seller are forced to participate, whereas with OSS there is complete freedom to choose and freedom to contribute.
Socialism deals with the allocation of consumptive resources such as food shelter, medical care whereas OSS deals with Ideas and thoughts that are non-consumptive and that by sharing the product there is no loss to the producers.
Socialism fails because it often robs people of motivation to contribute while OSS is powered by innate motivations to create, to actualize, and belong to a like a minded community and other higher level impulses.
Umm, the AI lab already had their computers. We might have paid for them to set up, but we probably didn't pay much extra for RMS to work there. Same with most people. If you already have a computer, you don't need to pay for it
No, but you have to pay the rent, for the space, electricity, water, sewage, garbage, cleaners, etc etc etc. And that office/space could have been put to better use. As could the computer time. We'll just never know.
So just face it - it cost money to do this.
EXCEPT that under the GNU anyone can do that. This is the old 'free software' confusion. Free software doesn't have to be given away. If I wanted to sell copies of GNU Emacs, I could do, as long as the people I sold it to had permission to sell it on themselves.
The normal cry here is: "but! You can't really make money selling free software, because since you can't stop others distributing it, those other people can give it away for nothing and you'll lose the money you made." Yep, that's right. But then, even if you were making commercial software they'd still be no guarantee you'd make money doing it. And a competitor might well try and push you out by giving an equivalent product away (Internet Explorer anyone?).
There can still be commercialisation and competition in free software. Witness the Linux boxed distros. The only difference is that the scarce resource involved isn't the software.
I take it that the scarce resource involved is... erm... the boxes? The store shelf space? Shrink wrap? CD Burners? Schmucks who will pay for something they can download for free? IQ points?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
and this is what I see
I think you need to have a talk with the people supplying you ads.
the devil
This is an interesting point. On a parallel, I used to work for a large hospital system where the CIO decided that we should replace all of our aging Novel servers with NT boxes. We ended up with something like four times as many servers to accomplish only about 1.5 times the work. But the really interesting expenses were in automation. Because of the lack of robust scripting ability in NT (at the time) and lack of knowledge among most of the staff, the company chose to purchase an unbelievably expensive automation package and then spent even more money on training people to use the automation package. The funny thing about it was that the automation package was more complex, less capable, more error-prone and more difficult to debug than scripting. One of the more technically aware members of our staff elected to be a renegade and purchased a reasonably inexpensive third party add-on for the servers that provided the same capabilities as Unix shell scripting. (Similar to CYGWIN) He had all of his processes fully automated and running before the rest of the staff had completed training. And his automation solutions could be maintained by the same people responsible for our Unix systems, so nobody could complain about creating something unsupportable. He was a really bright guy -- a clear thinker.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Pointless political bantering rebutting pointless political bantering. Of course neither of which is true.
What is the "^H^H^H^H^H" thing? Is that supposed to represent coughing? I should know this but I don't.Thanks
Killed/Injured Israel 286/1024 Palestine 1125/20,000+ [electronicintifada.net]
You know, I've been holding myself back from commenting on your signature for a long time, but I'm in a weird mood today, so what the hell.
The attitude displayed in your signature is the reason there's still a war in the middle-east. The violence will only stop when it reads:
Killed/Injured Israel Too Many/Too Many, Palestine Too Many/Too Many
Of course I don't mean you personally. When people in the middle-east start thinking this way, then maybe we'll have a chance.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
IBM knows damn well what ms did in the operating system and eventually office application game and would very much like to eliminate that competition in the upcoming services battle. Open source software is like playing poker with everyone having the same hand you can only lose if you call bluff or get rowdy enough to be thrown out.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Free markets are about bottom-up decentralized control of production. The distinction has little to do with making money.
Microsoft is all about top down control of software research and production.
Free Software is all about localized, bottom-up control software research and production.
When a commune goes bad, you can leave - unless it is one of those really nasty cults. Microsoft is so big, that you can't get away from them. They is why they can get away with ever more oppressive licensing terms.
There are advantages to centralized production. It is nice when Microsoft drives standardization of PC hardware. But participation needs to be voluntary. Microsoft is becoming like a cult - it becomes harder and harder for its members to leave.
yout tried being sarcastic , but you ended up looking like a dipshit
The only signature to the code is the code itself, and perhaps the comments. For the courts, how do you distinguish between GPLed software that has been sold by authors and violatios of the GPL?
El mensaje primero!
I suggest that you look at my paper Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!. It has that kind of information, grouped into categories such as market share, total cost of ownership (TCO), reliability, and so on.
For example, Microsoft absolutely owns the desktop client market, that's true. But it certainly doesn't own other markets - Apache is still the most common web browser, for example, and sendmail is the most popular mail transfer agent (MTA). See my paper for the details.
Total cost of ownership (TCO) is so dependent on the assumptions that you really have to do your own. However, it's clear that many people do find that GNU/Linux systems have a lower TCO than Microsoft's systems in their environment.
Please note that Perens himself claims that the $1.9 billion estimate was only if the software had been developed the same way as Microsoft's. Perens does not claim that $1.9 billion was spent. Check the linked-to paper, I think it spells things out clearly. One caveat: I wrote the analysis tool used in the paper. However, the tool simply implements a well-known and widely respected estimation model that has been openly documented; it's certainly not biased to give open source software bigger results.
I think Perens' article was well-written.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Actually, the whole reason for IP is that sharing IP does decrease its economic value, but only for the owner of the IP. Obviously, if everyone already has a copy of package X which I wrote, then I'm not going to be able to sell it. However, if I can control the distribution of package X, then I have a chance to make money on it.
It would also be valid to counter-argue that the uncontrolled distribution of package X would increase its *overall* economic value. Perhaps that value would be so great, that my objections to its distribution would be petty. But think about that a second: IP laws don't guarantee the larger good first. The guarantee the individual rights first, *THEN* the larger good.
Your argument about the airplanes is obviously true in the physical sense. But when it comes to the bottom line, it doesn't hold up. Supply and demand are real phenomenon in a market economy and IP law simply gives people an economic reason to develop new IP.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
This is a major uphill battle. Microsoft is in bed with the entertainment industry to push through copy protection legislation that could kill open source operating systems like Linux and they continue to use FUD to poison the open source well.
;-)
Let's make no mistake about the seriousness of our situation. Microsoft alone has enough funding to cause major problems but add to that the entertainment industry's intellectual property pirating concerns and the unfortunate fact that our politicians can be bought makes the situation very grim.
We need to fight back NOW. An article here and there is not going to be enough. We have got to organize and get the word out to the common people in an intelligent and thoughtful manner. One of the worst mistakes that we can make is to come off looking like a group of fanatics. We must make them see that this issue is their issue and not just the concerns of a group of geeks and nerds. Personally, I'm proud to bee a geek but that's beside the point.
It would be a big boost to the effort if we could get our position aired on television. One story on CNN is worth hundreds on a tech related web page. But this may not be easy to do since CNN is owned by some of the very people who want to shove copy protection into every piece of hardware and software. They have a vested interest in seeing that we can't get our message out.
I am open to any reasonable suggestions about what course of action we should take. Any suggestions out there?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Considering all of those IBM ads, and the participation of every major computer manufacturer, the GNU-Linux system has indeed become a crown jewel of capitalism.
Huh? Free software is inherently communist/socialist. There is no capitalism in developing something for free, not charging for it and allowing everyone else to use it. I think it's a page in Karl Marx's book as a matter of fact.
When IBM releases their server design in CAD, and their chipset logic, under GPL, then I'll start listening to you guys.
This is how much linux costs: the value of what I'm writing. It is not free as in beer. It is not free as in speech. It is one or the other. If I want an OS that *is* free as in beer, then its not free as in speech: because to pay nothing for it, I must assign rights to the community. I must give the community *my* code.
Alternatively, if I pay a measly $100 for windows as a platform, then I do not have to give anyone my code.
Consequently, if I think that my code is worth more than $100 per copy, I would use windows. I think it is. Easily. I know, because I'm looking at my salary spreadsheet. Nobody else is doing what we're doing. And I'm not giving that away. Not until farmers start giving food away, and doctors, and car mechanics...
So sure... the equation works - most of the way. However, if Micro$oft gets the money, it does not go back into the economy. It goes into Micso$oft.
/
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/printer/4526
I know it's not quite that black & white. I'm just making a point.
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
Remember this: open source is complementary to commercial software. A very few people like RMS believe all software should be Free with a capital letter (that bugs the hell out of me), but they are in the minority. The rest of us write open source code because we want to contribute to the community.
As an example, point me to good examples of companies that have gone under because an open source product stole their market. Now realise this: the open source movement would be nowhere near as big as it is today if it weren't for the fact that Microsoft has total control of the market. Can anybody see Linux really growing at such a rate if say Windows, BeOs and Mac OS X shared the market equally in thirds, and apps could be ported between each in a matter of hours? Nope, didn't think so. Open source exists because the market has been distorted for so long that something new had to happen, and it did.
Finally, know this: open source software competes with a TINY TINY part of the whole software market. Where's the open source competitor to Oracle, Sage, the software that runs our electricity grids, our gas pipes, manages corporations payroll databases. Hmm, I don't see them. Wonder why?
It's because open source competes in markets where there is total control of the market. The desktop is really the only area of computing I can think of (at the moment) where this applies. Don't worry - ten years from now we'll all still be programmers, in fact the profession will probably have expanded enormously, because programmers will be spending their time writing new code, instead of working their way around Microsofts bugs, or writing hacky little utilities to make up for the lack of a feature we were promised five years ago.
We'll all be earning money, and hopefully contributing at the same time. Relax! It's gonna be fun! :)
But there are german open source developers as well.
Even RMS agrees that a BSD license is the best one for some purposes (for example, Ogg Vorbis). The choice of license is a strategic one. When trying to promote open protocols, use BSD or LGPL. When producing applications and the like, use the GPL.
Oh, and if there were no Linux, all those horror stories about FreeBSD having to compete with modified versions of itself would come true in a big hurry. I like {Free,Net,Open}BSD, but these systems owe quite a lot to the GPL in general and Linux in particular.
Why does it have to be money. Mundie said that open source is not viable because people will not be willing to make investments into it, so there wont be any innovation etc etc. That 1.9 billion figure proves that people are making investments into open source, no matter if they are investments of money or effort. Since software is a very labor intensive industry investments of labor are as usefull as ones of money. So where is the false logic? If you are going to call someone an idiot make sure you have thought your argument trough.
3. Those who would like to use code, are entirely willing to give credit where credit is due, but haven't decided yet if they want to (or, legally, are allowed to) release their own code.
That's a good thing. If you're distributing an application and you're not sure you want to release the source, then keep your grubby paws off my code. The GPL gives me, the free software developer, exactly what I want.
4. Anyone who wants to see open standards. It was only the existance of free-for-any-use code which lead to the global use of TCP/IP -- back when every company had their own proprietary network protocols, the only reason they added TCP/IP support in was because they could do so (almost) for free.
Even RMS agrees with this. Don't use the GPL when your first priority is widespread adoption of a technology; a BSD-style license is better for this purpose. That does not make the GPL bad.
5. Anyone who wants commercial software companies to release their source code. Companies which operate by selling software are never going to GPL their code; they might, on the other hand, release it under a less restrictive license which would allow them to incorporate improvements back into their own codebase.
Wrong. Many commercial software companies have released their source code in order to come into compliance with the GPL. Consider Mosix. Furthermore, some companies -- such as TrollTech of Qt fame -- use the GPL so that other companies can't release proprietary products without paying them.
He has definitely earned his visage on the
Mount Rushmore of Linux.
RMS
Linus
ERS (say what you will , Cathedral & Bazar rocked)
Perens
others ?
Windows admins don't script, for the most part. They push the same buttons on each system.
No. Windows Admins DO script. A lot. You know why? Because it's easy and helps reduce the repetitive buttonclicking. ABN Amro Bank for example build a complete system just with a set of scripts to maintain the complete WAN of windows2000 servers (8000 of them) and workstations (tens of thousands). Central maintainance of all the systems on the wan, software push/installations/configurations, done central by admins using simple scripts.
The days that a group of admins walked around to perform a lot of tasks on every windows desktop box are over. A few years already. Windows2000 server lets you control via VBscript everything on the system and domain. Because of COM and the system objects build in, usable from VBScript. Every Windows2000 admin not using scripts is not worth being called an 'admin' and should be fired.
I hope next time you get your facts straight so your articles about the subject of this thread are more near the truth. Ah well...
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
As a customer, I find all the software available, Unix, Microsoft, or Apple, is basically crap. It's not reliable, it's not secure, and it's horrifically over complicated to network.
At least the Open Source software ADMITS it's not the cats ass.
The truth is, get Open Source and spend your money on a kick ass System Administrator.
You can't beat that.
VNC can be very easily tunneled over SSH. I do this with several servers and I get desktops on my home machine from work this way. What you do is configure the machine with VNC not to accept connections from VNC's normal port range and (if using it on Windows) configure VNC to allow Loopback connections. By default, a VNC machine won't "connect to itself" but you need it to for this to work. And yes, the server in question will have to be running sshd as well the VNC server.
If your using the Cygwin port of ssh to windows then run the following on the client machine:
ssh -L 590x:localhost:5900 -l username @servermachine
Then start up your vnc client and connect to localhost:1. Easy peasy.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Mr. Mundie has a rather nsaty job at the moment, his employeer is a convicted criminal currently arguing about how long they're going down for. PLUS they're being sued for mucho bucks by Sun, BeOs, plus any body with a long standing grouse against M$ for 'not playing nice'. PLUS M$ hopes for the server market have disappeared as potential customers realise that they can have cheap, reliabe server products that DON'T them to offer M$ their first-born child to use. Mr. Real-World says that M$ is about to suffer a swift kick up the arse as regards they're business practices. They have a major problem, regardless of the Linux crazies out there IBM, AOL(!), show that OSS is the way to go. The basic problem is that M$ can't compete with FREE software, so what, realistically can they do ? Answers on a postcard ....
The argument applies today to any media that can take on digital form. Once you amortize the design cost, you can make copies for free. The question is: can you come up with a scheme to amortize the design cost without a per-unit revenue capture? It happens to be true for many kinds of software, because software enables other sorts of sales. Maybe this doesn't work for music or movies, I don't know. Regarding patents, that's a whole different argument - I think most patents are not justly awarded.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Slashdot posters tend not to swim in the shallow end of gene-pool. This story requires no additional posts
Boy, am I glad he cleared that up. I was worried that goons from the Boy Scouts of America were going to show up and, I dunno, tie knots in my computer or something.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
He (mundie) said: "Rather than form a federation with Microsoft and work with what we had already created, there was this notion that the world should be offered an alternative."
Isn't the concept of "having an alternative" somewhat reminiscent, in political terms, of the concept of "democracy"?
Basycally mundie says: "why the heck these guys insist in THINKING by themselves while we are so good at thinking for them? No clue"
Please Mund, let us know where do we have to go today. What? Already built in XP? Great...
(1) How much money does Microsoft pay in taxes every year?
(2) How much money does the government (at all levels: federal, state, local) spend on Microsoft licenses every year?
Does *anyone* believe that (1) is greater than (2)? If open source software replaced Microsoft's offerings, wouldn't the government have a lot more money to spend on social services?
Oh good! I'm happy to have the chance to argue with a real economist.
Bruce: In contrast, once you have amortized the cost of creating a piece of software, there is essentially no marginal cost associated with creating another copy.
Daytrip: This is not exactly true. True enough that each physical product associated with software has a marginal cost of zero, however more goes into any specific software product than just the cd's and the packaging. There also significant marketing costs, research costs, and support costs associated with each purchased item.
OK. Let's examine the three factors you pointed out: marketing, support, and research.
We do marketing communications differently. We rely on the software being on hand for the user to try. It's either on their system or downloadable via the internet, so that the customer can see if it solves their problem. This doesn't have a significant cost for us.
I don't think you have addressed strategic marketing rather than marketing communications. We do that differently as well.
Support can take place via the usual pay-for-service model (although there are alternatives). Support is not coupled to the product purchase in our model.
That leaves us with research. But that's a cost that can be amortized in the cost of creating the product. Yes, for a business it's an ongoing cost, but that's not how we pay for it.
Bruce: Can we amortise the creation cost of software without a direct revenue capture per unit sold? The answer seems to be yes for a lot of people.
Daytrip: While I certainly agree with this point, most firms (the ones without an idealogical agenda, but simply those in the business of making money) maximize profit.
But you are only considering businesses that sell software. What about most businesses, which use software as a means to carry out some other activity? Many do employ their own programmers, because off-the-shelf often won't do. Consider Apache in this light. It was created by people who had to serve web pages for some business that most often wasn't software development.
Daytrip: Moreover, the viral nature of the GPL further prevents any corportation from truly maximizing profits once they use GPL'ed software, even though these corporations (with the taxes they pay) actually supported the development of those products.
Again, you are only considering this from the perspective of a business that sells software. For other sorts of businesses, software would otherwise be make-or-buy, and there may well be savings due to collaboration with other businesses, ease of customization, etc.
Bruce: if you want to consider me as selling out the software development profession, I'm doing it for the customer.
Daytrip: I object to this argument in particular. Naiively, the best model for consumers is for everyone to produce software for free, and provide support for free and give everything away for free. While this, in the short run, would be quite advantageous for consumers, after a while, all corporate profits (and earnings) would run dry, killing the industry.
Again, you aren't considering the role of the customer in developing their own Open Source. You are only considering this from the perspective of a business that produces software for its income. But there are many customers who produce their own software for their own use. These are the people who carry out Open Source development.
The result of my argument if taken farther than it will perhaps ever go would be that proprietary software development might dry up. But it could be possible that nobody would miss it. Business as a whole would not dry up, and efficiency could improve.
Daytrip: Moreover, if all industries were to do this, and consumers were only to pay for the natural resources involved in making a product, this would essentially de-value labor and make fixed resources the only tenable currency
You are postulating that the Open Source model applies to the entire economy, then disproving that. This is of course taking my argument to the point of absurdity. But my argument doesn't apply to the entire economy, as I've made clear. It is a very specialized exception for commodities that: 1) can have their design cost amortized some way other than by per-unit-sale revenue capture and 2) have essentially no marginal cost to duplicate. There are science-fictional scenarios where this might someday be more than just software, but I don't think they will be true for a long time.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Several years ago when I was an intern in a state govt agency, I was given administrator duties on their Windows NT domain. I immediately sought out command-line tools for all my administrative needs (the NT reskit) and proceeded to create batch file scripts for everything from scanning machine configs to pushing out updates, turning services on and off, etc. It greatly simplified standardizing everyone's configs. I was even able to use it to automate the creation of a machine config database, including hardware! Sure, it took a few weeks to really get to power-user level with batch files, but it was well worth it, and amazing what could be accomplished without buying fancy third-party admin tools.
Uhm... Apache is the most common web server.
I know that's what you meant. My illness forces me to compulsively correct things like this, though.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
People who claim that free software is somehow anti-capitalist don't understand the most basic principles of free enterprise. The first principle is that producers try to maximize profit (over the long term, if they are wise), and the second principle is that consumers try to minimize cost. The second principle is just as important as the first, whether Microsoft likes it or not.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
Linux admins script a fix and don't touch it again, they just re-run the script. Windows admins don't script, for the most part. They push the same buttons on each system.
All this serves to show is that there are a fair number of so called "Windows admins" who don't really know what they are doing.
> No, but you have to pay the rent,for the space,
> electricity, water, sewage, garbage, cleaners,
> etc etc etc. And that office/space could have
> been put to better use. As could the computer
> time. We'll just never know.
> So just face it - it cost money to do this.
Yes, it does. But the assumption "it could have been used better" is not necessarily the case.
Suppose that you write free software on your home computer. Now, you would have paid the rent, electricity, water, etc.. ANYWAY, and you probably would have had the computer anyway, so writing free software doesn't cost you anything in terms of these (because if you decide not to write free software, you still pay pretty much the same). Since free software development tools are themselves free, it doesn't cost you any of those either.
But what about the time? Could you have been more productive? Well, I suppose you *could* ignore a huge commons of existing work and generally helpful developers and try on your own to hack out a project to sell. Only to, likely as not, have it crushed by big competitors who can defeat you on every front simply by having more money. (That does have to be borne in mind, by the way. I'd be a lot happier writing free software for Windows than I would be for PalmOS, for instance.)
If you want to do that, you have the choice. Nobody is forcing you to write free software. It's really up to you what you want to try for - a relatively small amount of extra money, or no money but a whole lot of happy feelings. Given that a lot of free programmers enjoy programming for its own sake anyway, they are fine to do it for the happy feelings. It is not economically unviable, because it doesn't cost them any more of their day job earnings than NOT writing free software would.
> I take it that the scarce resource involved
> is... erm... the boxes? The store shelf space?
> Shrink wrap? CD Burners? Schmucks who will pay
> for something they can download for free? IQ
> points?
In those cases, it's the SERVICE of getting them into the shops and making it easy to obtain. It's also the support provided by the companies. Of course, using support or manuals as the scarce resource creates perverse incentives with regard to user-friendliness, but that doesn't mean other items couldn't be found to be scarce, especially when much software depends on network services.
Since I had this trademark name since before the K6 I am actually considering suing AMD for royalties on their CPU sales :-)
It's the same here at FedEx, Bruce.
One of the projects for which I do Unix administration has both Solaris and NT servers (Linux is coming, shhhhh, don't tell anybody).
When we want to shut it all down for a software load, first we call the NT administrators and they take between 1 and 1.5 hours shutting down the software on the NT servers. Several people are involved in this.
Then one of us spends 10 minutes shutting down all the software on the Solaris servers.
Then they go physically load software on each Windows NT box by hand, while I push a patch out automatically to all the Unix boxen.
Then I start the software on the Unix servers back up for about 10 minutes.
Then they reboot all the NT servers and log back into them (because crucial pieces require it be logged in) for half an hour to an hour.
The cost for all that extra time and manpower absolutely, positively gets paid by you every time you ship a package.
If those NT servers were converted to Unix or Linux, my team could support them with our existing manpower, and all those other guys could go work for UPS or something.