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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."
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 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
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
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.
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
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.
You ARE right...but it's truely ironic.
MS is THE premiere player in trying to sell cheap/free until they get marketshare, then raise the price.
Here in Portland OR, MS convinced First Interstate Bank to install NT 3.11 instead of Netware in their new 3000+ employee loan center - and almost purely because it was cheaper than upgrading from Netware 3.X
The bank didn't have any serious tools (Sniffer etc) in the old environment, and the hardware was ancient. But the OS was going to save them like 20K+.
What most of the outside world didn't know, was that the network went down almost daily for months. The result was thousands of people sitting idle (a double drain - their getting paid, and NOT making money).
Finally, after coming hours from chucking the whole thing, the MS engineers finally called the ONE guy who wrote the TCP stack. After a short conversation, the MS programmer suggested an undocumented TCP stack option. All of a sudden, the SNA session timeouts just stopped.
The point? MS SOFTWARE was like 20K cheaper, but the whole experiement cost the bank like HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS (possibly even millions) of dollars. Even without the NT problems, the costs were VERY substantial to switch vs. staying on Netware.
MS has used the "IT'S FREE" or "IT'S LOTS CHEAPER" approach more than I can believe - Office bundled with the OS, (Office 4.3/95) IE/OE, NT (early on), MS Windows Plus, Windows 2.X-3.X (Bundled with Windows).
BP may not have dealt with the entire problem, but frankly, the PHB's aren't looking at TCO. If they were, we'd have run screaming from IE/OE a LONG time ago. We'd have set ourselves on fire when we see the rising cost of Office (Now it's MUCH more expensive than before - un upgrade used to cost like $200, now it's like $400), and the moving platform of MS's site licensing (I forget what MS called it - I think it used to be License+, now Select something? Doubled and Tripled in less than 5 years - loss of concurrent licensing)
PHB's only see the INITIAL costs. If they are concerned about TCO, they will look at the HUGE problems with viruses, crashing boxes (Re-Image anyone?!) and lots of features that really waste time and aggrevate users. (Clippie Anyone? How about how Word decides how you REALLY NEED that numbered list done etc!)
Sure, it's difficult to learn a totally new platform. But I do think that the Linux platform isn't any more difficult to administer. Ever tried to figure out Active Directory - it's got me confused! [Grin] How about when Exchange just stops sending mail in or out, but everything LOOKS fine - but a reboot fixes it? What about when IIS gets remote rooted and you get to rebuild your entire server?
I don't think you were defending the MS status quo, but even if you were, I think that defending MS will be a loosing battle in TCO. Bugs and security problems seriously compromise the TCO calculations on ANY MS software.
Finally, TCO numbers are SO perfect for manipulation. Everyone can make TCO numbers say anything they want. It's like the 10 year USA Gvmt budget. You can CLAIM you know where things are going to be, but frankly, you don't have a clue. TCO is usually just a massive marketing ploy.
Cheers!
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"?
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.
The supplier is prepared to accept a flat rate for his "widgets". His increase in revenue is linked soley to his ability to produce more in a given timeframe than he was able to before. He depends entirely on your ability as middleman(?) to make the market or sell on these increases, while you realise the extra profitability from his 'efficiency'
Your whole premise is based on increased profitability within a given timeframe (you quote an hour). You state one GPL application has effectively infinite supply. Completely overlooking that any program, propritary, commercial, OpenSource/Free Software or whatever has an infinite supply. The number of units produced within a given timeframe (upon which your profitability depends) should be no different for any piece of software. Experience has proven that some OpenSource products actually take longer to produce that their closed source competitors or equivalents (Mozilla - 2 years in which time Mickey has taken over themarket).
Finally, if efficiency is achieved by lowering the unit cost, then GPL projects may well be a false economy. If the number of 'man years' spent producing some of the larger products was measured using the same costings as, say, Mickeysoft would use, it could very well turn out that unit costs are much higher than non-free equivalents.
Have you considered being a technical writer or something? There are many ways that anyone can help.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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?
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)
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!