Slashdot Mirror
Eric Raymond: Why Open Source will Rule
DNapalm writes "A very interesting two part interview with Raymond from ZDNet, talking about the success of open source and Linux on the desktop, among other things. Check out Part I and Part II (I liked part II)." Raymond also asserts that Microsoft could have killed Linux if only they'd started a little earlier.
A direct quote from the article:
"If OpenOffice still exists, and it's GPLed, and they're going to start charging for StarOffice, then they just shot StarOffice through the head."
Replace the word "StarOffice" with "Redhat Linux".. why does the same logic not apply?
I can't help thinking - would it be possible to do it again? But this time, instead of basing it on the solid, well known but old and unadventerous unix, use new ideas, incorporate the latest technologies and so on. Would the open source community be willing to move away from Linux to this new open OS, or is the momentum behind it too strong to abandon?
is why do the OSS and FSF people care so much for the "Windows world". During the last several months, I've seen an enormous amount of articles that deal with how evil Microsoft is when compared to Linux developers and vise-versa. I ask these writers: "Why ?" Why should I care ? I really don't think we're gaining anything by doing the same things MS has been doing all these years. It always goes on like this: "MS attacks, OSS movement responds, MS attacks, OSS movement responds, OSS movement attacks, MS responds". This is getting boring you know, why not make deeds instead of shouting ?
OK, sure, Windows is installed on the majority of the computers out there, but it doesn't make it world's most important thing. Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys are popular too, are they important to me ? Nope.
Raymond also asserts that Microsoft could have killed Linux if only they'd started a little earlier.
HA! With over 90% of the desktop market looks like MS is doing a damn spiffy job of killing it now!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
I hate your fucking guts, but I give you an A+ for effort anyhow.
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
That's why I choose Microsoft Windows for my computing work. The easy setup and configuration let me get right to work and the cross-platform standardizations let me easily port my work for colleagues. Furthermore, the highly-optimized nature of the Windows Operating System Kernel makes for blazingly fast simulation runs even on the low-end hardware that my University is willing to pay for.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux. The quirky command-line interface makes me nostalgic for my days as a student using fun but non-standard packages like LaTeX and gnuplot. But when I want enterprise-level support for my physic-al work, I always choose the software that I know won't let me down.
RedHat is selling a name more than anything else, just like Microsoft sells Microsoft Windows, and IBM sells IBM computers. They charge extra because people are willing to pay extra to have RedHat support and RedHat linux. StarOffice doesn't have the reputation of RedHat, therefore, they cannot sell the brand. It would be a different story if most corporations who ran Linux relied on StarOffice.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Unfortunately in every aspect *except* price, Linux looks more like a sustaining technology vis-a-vis Windows. Linux is the more secure, more high-end, more niche-like product. In the disruptive technology model, what happens is that *Windows* becomes reliable "enough" and hacker-pleasing "enough" and takes over from Linux.
Now Linux is free...that is true. But that is the only way it is like a disruptive technology. In fact that is not really like disruptive technologies either. They are usually cheaper. Free is strange.
Now Linux is indeed a disruptive technology compared to something else -- Sun. Linux on a PC, compared to Sun on a Sun box, has all the classic hallmarks of disruptive technology, and in fact is doing so.
I ranted more about this last year on another site. Here's a quote: "To take this to an extreme example, at some future date Windows CE might displace both Windows 2000 and Linux, and the Personal Web Server shipped with Windows might displace both Internet Information Server and Apache. This is highly unlikely, but it illustrates the direction in which disruption happens.".
And don't forget this profound comment where I ask the question ""Is the bazaar upmarket from the cathedral?" (read that again).
- adam
Excerpts from the 'fall of Redmond' radio conversations:
"Red Hat, this is Yellow Dog. Come in.'
"Red Hat here. We've gotten Balmer. I repeat, we have Balmer in custody."
"Mandrake says Gates isn't here today. Debian, can you clear out the marketing department please?"
"Roger that, General Raymond. Attacking marketing immediately."
"Suse reporting that legal has been secured."
...
"Who the hell is that?"
"Looks like the FSF showed up. For once them and OSI agree on something."
"Hi there, Stallman. Raymond here. What are you boys doing here?"
"We came to download the source code for all the MS software to look for GPL violations."
"Good thinking. I have Slackware in there now, and I'll let em know your coming."
...
and so on and so forth. Maybe I'll write a more detailed version one day.
"The normal channeling of aggressive instincts into acts of senseless violence."
I am officially gone from
Humm, I tried to use Word to write equations when I was in college studying Physics. Even though I had no exposure to Linux at the time, I found that most of the professors and grad students used LaTeX instead. It's much easier to use, and it's much easier to learn. I picked up most of it in an afternoon. It's also pretty much standard for Physics people to write papers full of equations in LaTeX and not word.
And as for the "blazingly fast simulations" - I'm sorry, we never ran simulations on Intel based computers (too slow except for really easy stuff). We'd use mainframes for that, which used Unix. And what kind of University that is considering doing real physics can't afford that? Are you sure it wasn't a community college? And if you're curious, the University doesn't buy the computers for the physicists - the physicists get grant money from the government for that kind of purchase.
You wouldn't happen to be paid by MS to make such a false statement? I have been seeing a lot of these nutcases making wild claims that are absolutely false and full of crap. (Do you REALLY love Linux? haha! I caught you!)
Jonathan
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
In that case StarOffice just died. They just shot StarOffice through the head. It doesn't matter whether I'm in favor of it or not.
I'd rather disagree with this one. What made staroffice more desireable were the few binary components that couldn't be put into openoffice, and these componenets are really only of use to certain businesses, and it's very likely that they will also want support for the product.
[2 days earlier]
Somehow ESR has been captured by zdnet? YIKES! Jon, i'm going in.
This is crazy, CowboyNeo. You are going to try to rescue ESR in a room full of zdnet journalists. That's suicide.
I know...somehow it's going to work. It must work because it's never been done before. (I hope they haven't injected liquid mercury into his neck yet) Jon, It's too dangerous. I'm going alone.
Let me tell you what I believe, CowboyNeo...If you are serious about getting ESR back, you will need my help. And because I am the ranking journalist on this division I believe you can go to /dev/null.
(Our best chance to get him back is to insert ourselves into the matrix as Microsoft employees and we must slashdot the zdnet article while CowboyNeo defeats Mr. Smith and rescues ESR.)
Did ESR seem a little on edge to anyone else? His comments seemed to get pretty violent.
"In that case StarOffice just died. They just shot StarOffice through the head.... if OpenOffice still exists, and it's GPLed, and they're going to start charging for StarOffice, then they just shot StarOffice through the head."
"rationally appropriate to cannibalize your own business"
"shareholders will kill you"
Maybe he's tired of people at Slashdot calling him an idiot.
sig
Of course there are 'better' ways of doing things.
Personally, I like 'everything is an object' more than I like 'everything is a file'.
YMMV
My Journal
ESR's fundamental argument to Linux taking over the desktop is solely cost. Because the cost of Windows will be a bigger chunk of the PC price as PC prices, OEM's will seek out cheaper options (e.g. Linux).
I believe this is wrong for at least two reasons:
1. Microsoft has a much freer pricing structure than most other component makers. Since they employ monopoly pricing they are able to price the product exactly at the point where it maximizes profit. Futher, since their marginal cost is essentially zero (as opposed to chips, disks, and other hardware components), they have a lot of downward headroom in their prices should this ever become an issue.
2. There is little evidence that cheaper wins out. A classic example is the IBM PC (and clones) which were substantially more expensive than home PC's (such as C64, Atari 400/800, Apple II, etc.) but won over the market big time. There are many factors other than cost which contribute to the success or failure of a computer product. Indeed, very cheap computers (e.g. $350 or so) computers are available today, but the sweetspot seems to be the $800-level machine which will get you something pretty good.
I think Linux will take over the desktop, and I think the reason it will doesn't have much to do with whether we clean up and polish our interfaces or not. Linux will take over the desktop because as the price of desktop machines drops, the Microsoft tax represents a larger and larger piece of OEM margin. There's going to come a point at which that's not sustainable, and at which OEMs have to bail out of the Microsoft camp in order to continue making any money at all. At that point, Linux wins even if the UI sucks.
And frankly, the UI doesn't suck. It's not perfect, it's got a few sharp edges and a few spikes on it, but so does Windows.
Oh dear god, this is the funniest thing I've read on slashdot in six months. So no matter how bad a computer interface is, all it has to do is cost less than Windows for everybody to adopt it? Well, hell, I'd better dust off my Apple II then!
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
:Peter
from the article :"This is necessary because software is growing ever more complex, and an increasing amount of work must be done simply to debug programs."
This is the real problem with todays new software: every programmer wants to put every functionality in every program he writes. This creates bloated and bug-ridden programs.
For example: if I want to buy a new bicycle, and I would like to look up information on the internet. I NEED a browser that supports pdf files, flash animations, at least 5 different graphic file formats, cascading style sheets, java scripting and so on, just because nobody cares about standards. Because of that all pages look really bad, because my fonts scale differently, or I have a different screen size.
Wiebe.
...but I can't escape feeling that esr is looking on the rosy side a bit.
He does make a few assumptions about the way companies are likely to turn in the current economic climate that I'm not sure I buy. This isn't an industry known for paying a lot of attention to consumer pressure, and I think it's only consumer pressure that would make a big difference to the fortune 500 companies.
Even if Wall Street are uncertain about the business model, from their point of view the alternative is worse, i.e. the killing off of a market. I don't think they're ready to jump at all.
The same point applies to Linux on the desktop: OEM's may well find it more difficult to pay the "Microsoft tax", but Mom & Dad don't want to build their own computer and don't want to leave their relatively safe GUI environment. So I don't see the OEM's jumping and I'm certain noone else in the industry wants them to, either.
What I don't see being addressed here is the squeeze that the telecommunications sector is putting on the internet-related side of the software industry (rapidly becoming most of it). I believe it is getting more and more expensive for the average consumer. If Microsoft cannot make the transition, who else can?
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
For those who have a 1-click-wonder mouse:e s/goodwi ll/desicrated/slashdot_org/index.html
http://www.geocities.com/netw0rkassh0liat
With all of these endless /. posts about how Linux will rule the world, I have yet to see a single post explaining how programmers will ever get paid. Don't any of you want to write code for a living? Open Source companies can make money, sure, charging for services. But services cannot pay for programmers. Let me repeat that so that everyone is sure to see it: services cannot pay for programmers.
/. come up with a way for Open Source to succeed and pay programmers at the same time?
Since Open Source code is, well, Open, absolutely any service provider or consultant has access to the same software. If company A pays programmers to write code which is contributed to the community and makes their money selling services related to that code, and company B has no programmers but offers the exact same services for the exact same code, the company B will always be able to make more profit than company A. Because company B is in the exact same business as company A, but doesn't have to pay programmers. They can cut their costs below company A, stealing their business, and still enjoy higher margins. Company A either fires the programmers or dies.
A company can only afford to pay programmers if they have name recognition high enough to charge higher prices for services, or don't give feedback to the community about upcoming releases until its actually out so that they have a big enough head start to give competitive advantage, or they use closed code. That means they either pimp themselves, act like weasels, or go proprietary. Nice way to make a living. The Open Source movement lives on successfully, but the coders end up eating a lot of ramen and working at Circuit City. The only model I've seen so far depends on coders working for free. Volunteerism is great, but you can't base a business on altruism. Besides, in some ways making money off of unpaid workers is worse than Nike using cheap foreign labor - at least the foreign labor gets *something* for their effort. With few exceptions, contributing to Open Source is like pissing yourself in dark slacks - you get a warm feeling, but nobody else notices.
Can some of the clever folks here at
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
A direct quote from the article:
"If OpenOffice still exists, and it's GPLed, and they're going to start charging for StarOffice, then they just shot StarOffice through the head."
Replace the word "StarOffice" with "Redhat Linux".. why does the same logic not apply?
I was just looking at the article and thinking the same thing. If StarOffice goes under, it won't be because of OpenOffice. Sun is a brand-name company, and that's what managers look for when picking out products. Why would they pick (as they might think) an unprofessional hobby program made a bunch of open-source ants, when they could have this finely-polished product from Sun? Another issue is support. Sun will most likely provide technical support for StarOffice. Will OpenOffice have the same?
It's just another day, another opinion-based article linked to by Slashdot. This guy may be a great programmer, but he has about the same ability to predict the future as Deon Warwick or Miss Cleo.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
He spells windows with a (TM) symbol he is obviously a Microsoft employee. Besides I think I seen this post yesterday in another story!
>I can't help thinking - would it be possible to do it again? I hope GNU/Hurd will be good.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
talking about the success of open source and Linux on the desktop
There's a short conversation.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'd like to point out that it was Eric who first brought Linux onto Microsoft's radar. At a time when we were not terribly ready to compete, he started shouting about Linux from the rooftops. Eric knew what he was doing, but he was in it for personal glory, not for free software (the standard term at the time) or Linux or the community. A few of us were scared that Microsoft would try to kill us then and there. As was, Microsoft started hunting us about two years early thanks to Eric. When they did, Eric went over to give a lecture at Microsoft for Microsoft employees about the relative strengths so they could start early. Microsoft bought him for the agreement that he'd get to meet some author.
I noticed the same thing. A guess: Perhaps what he meant was that since they did this, StarOffice is dead in the long run. Which would make sense. Eventually OpenOffice will outstrip StarOffice and there will no longer be any reason to pay for Star. Sun is just cannibalising it for a short term revenue stream, really.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
You must be a dumb physicist if you did not know that guy was joking or trolling.
I am into the copy and paste.
Eric Raymond said it? It must be true!
Open source will rule. Sure, and I can shoot flaming peanuts from my nostrils. Open source will never rule. I would much rather pay for a product than download a hodge-podge of interconnecting modules. The only people who care about open source are those who do or can be involved in its creations. It's art for the artists, not the laymen. This isn't to say its inherently bad, or inherently good. Just that it will never be for everyone. If you mod me down because you think I'm stupid, you've proved my point, I am stupid->can't use open source software; Most other people are stupid->most other people can't use open source software.
The Hurd and L 4 are some of the promising new technologies under development.
At the same time, don't go getting the idea Linux is going away any time soon. It can take over 20 years for a codebase to really mature, and a mature codebase may still be useful for many years after it is no longer cutting edge.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I've been wondering when the pro-microsoft hordes were going to start flooding slashdot with their flerbage. In the immortal words of Boromir, "they have a cave-troll."
redhat's buisness model isn't based on selling software, but rather selling services. sure they sell a boxed version but you dont have to purchase that to use redhat. in order to use staroffice (legally), i believe you would have to purchase it? i'm not sure here because i use latex for my word processing.
in summary:
i believe he is suggesting that trying to make money off of software sales is silly when a large portion of the software is opensource. redhat is different because they are selling the services and not the software.
-- john
"The Success of Linux on the Desktop" - the shortest book ever written!
Merrill Lynch and Etc are implementing Linux company-wide as we speak (type) so that (very large and influential) portion of Wall Street is aware of the advantages of OS software. By cutting a marginal cost (replacing MS and Sun with Linux) they hope to achieve a profit advantage over their competitors, even if only temporary this will boost their share price and shower their executives with monies in bonus checks.
He uses the example of there being no windows CE handhelds under 350$. That is not because of microsoft radically overcharging for CE or PocketPC(its around 20$). Palm charges 10$ for its license too. It is because windows CE machines have faster processor/larger memory etc etc then their palm buddies. My feelings on the desktop issue though have 2 parts. #1 I do not think PC prices will drop below 350$ on average, computers just have too many parts that are being speedbumped for that to happen. In addition, the average computer sold is probably a 900$ Dell. Even though dell has offerings at 500$. #2 I think that Microsoft can afford a massive price drop on their OS should computer prices drop that much.
The fact that it's not really a direct comparison (because a RH box contains the identical GPL'ed bits to the free downloadable version, and StarOffice is a closed-source version that presumably has some value-add above and beyond the free OpenOffice) only makes your question more intriguing: why do people pay for the RH box when you can get it for free?
Now, I've never bought a RedHat box, but I have bought a Mandrake box. Let's look at what I get by buying that Mandrake box:
- All the same free bits as the downloadable version, but on a nice high-quality CD
- Some additional commercial applications / demos
- A nicely printed and bound manual (invaluable for when you're installing on a clean machine - you can't exactly go online for help during the install!)
- A technical support number
- The satisfaction of putting your money where your mouth is, by directly supporting a worthy effort
Now, let's look at what I might get by buying the StarOffice box:
- Mostly the same bits as the freely downloadable version, but possibly with some changes that might have improved it, or might have added some bugs - I can't know for sure, since it's closed-source
- Possibly some more filters or fonts or something, but I can't tell for sure, since it's closed-source
- the ADABAS database, which may or may not be more or less functional than (say) MySQL, but I can't tell for sure, since it's closed-source
- A nicely printed and bound manual, which isn't quite as indispensable during the install as Mandrake's
- A technical support number (?)
- A vague sense of guilt that somehow Sun is freeloading off the efforts of the OpenOffice team to make a quick buck and advance its vendetta against MS.
I think you can see that Mandrake's (and by extension, Red Hat's) "value proposition" (i.e what they say you'll get if you buy the product) is much clearer than Sun's.
That being said, I still think that Sun charging is a boon for StarOffice. Why? Because, for better or worse, many (if not most) people consider something that you pay for is necessarily more valuable than something you get for free. I'm not exactly sure why that is, but it's not entirely unreasonable - there are a number of consumer laws (IANAL&PWNB) that automatically provide certain guarantees of quality for items that you purchase, regardless of any included slip of paper that claims "as is, no warranty, etc. etc."
But even more to the point (and still on-topic!), as ESR and RMS actually agree, the main "value proposition" in Open Source isn't free (gratis) versus $$, it's open versus closed, or as RMS would say, free vs. non-free. To use one of OSS's more common examples, if I had the choice between two otherwise identical vehicles, but one had the hood welded shut, I wouldn't buy the "closed-engine" version unless it were significantly cheaper. That holds even though I'm completely mechanically disinclined, and don't have even the remotest interest in tinkering with a vehicle! Why? Because I have a brother-in-law who's very good with cars, and I know I can ask for his help if I need it.
Let me make the analogy more clear: as far as vehicles go, "closed-source" is actually a negative value for me, even if I have no real interest in ever looking at the "source"; just having that option is enough.
All that said, I'm probably going to "buy" StarOffice after all -- I'm going to join the Mandrake Silver Club, even though I just downloaded and burned the 8.2 ISO's, and currently, the only tangible difference between the Standard membership and the Silver membership is the ability to download SO6. I haven't done it yet, since I'm out of work and broke at the moment (shameless self-promotion), but I will in the next month or so. Why? Primarily because of that last item in the checklist above; I want to put my money where my mouth is and support worthy software development. How about you?
There are lots of things called "Linux" that do a lot of major changes to major parts. Real time for embedded, virtualization, etc. There is MkLinux, and BSD is more the same than different (architecturally) - even Apple, superinnovator, couldn't think of anything better than Mach + BSD + IOKit (devfs like). But the innovation occurs within the framework.
Apple's Darwin is probably not exciting due to Apple - The Apple license doesn't let you take it and run with it. But there are "new ideas".
The open/read/write/ioctl/fork/exec model is nearly universal. You find these back in DOS and nearly every other OS in some form.
The only "new" simple machine in thousands of years was the rollamite (see http://www.ids.bc.ca/scroller/scroller-main.htm for links).
Even some research into content lookup directories (Slashdot had it a few weeks ago but I don't remember the exact term) ends up as modifications to Linux - probably something in the fs directory. Other things end up in the driver, network, or kernel as a patch. And the multiple journaling filesystems. Or devfs?
Unix may be old and unadventerous, but you forgot the adjectives solid and proven. What new ideas are you thinking of - those that aren't idiosyncratic? Or those that won't slip in to the existing tree? What capability would be in the new OS that couldn't be grafted onto Linux?
I've been what happens "after" the wheel. As a device, it's clearly on a roll, and is headin gfor even greater things, but it's still a design that predates written history.
I assume you're talking about the problem field known as "freeloader syndrome" given to us by libertarians. The solution to the problem is to have the best qualities of the "open source" put forward, and to make the GPL license not chock-full of "optional" rights, but mandatory ones.
Here's how: if somebody adopts a codebase, they adopt it by contributing something towards it. This is the easy win for programmers; they get code for trade. The coding group becomes centred around the code, and the user is the programmer. All seems happy. For the non-programmer, it's a bit stickier: they have to provide a service, or contribute what has classically been called "intangibles" (that are as worthwhile as code: graphics, documentation, utility regression tests). That part of the 'trade' gets a bit murky and there could be commensurability problems: is it worth the same to both the contributor as to the group? But this non-programmer group also provides the most visible aspects, the parts most touched on by everybody, including the programmer what contributes.
I admit the mandatory aspect of it might seem unenforceable--people download all the time, and without knowledge of who drops using the codebase and who keeps using it "in secret"--the problem of enforcement becomes one of shareware proportions, and we might end up with exactly what we have now--a bunch of end-users.
But trying out such an experiment would give a few communities a better profile and chance to grow--with more people involved--even a little--the code should accumulate better than all of the aborted attempts I've seen at sourceforge over the last year or two.
I think it is because the Microsoft propaganda machine keeps saying how great they are, and we know better. Basically they overpaid for their preinstalled ("free?") OS and have to convince themselves they haven't been taken.
Since Microsoft is a monopoly, they violate the Cheaper, Better, Faster - pick two rule. Any other choice will have all three attributes. (Even Apple's OS X is less than a new XP install).
Since Microsoft can't innovate (without undermining their monopoly), they market with FUD.
And use the legal system or other things - per cpu licenses, "naked pc" horror stories, etc. Why should Microsoft care? Because they are trying to sell bottled tap water claiming a trademark on water. We are just responding.
Moderators who MOD UP PEOPLE THAT HAVE BEEN TROLLED are complete fucking idiots. Did your mom buy you a 'puter for Christmas?
Man the battle stations..
Enemy acquired!
But seriously everyone comes up with a comment of for or agsint...when Eric speaks..
Now for the ultimate challenge name one Eric Statemnt that over time has proven false!
I dare you!
As of 2002 the statements Erci made in 1998-1999 al have proven true..
How many Gates tatements can you hold up to that type of review?
Come one people when reading engage the brain..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Hey Raymond, just turn your eyes around a bit and see how much closed-source software exists. Similarly, reading too much slashdot doesn't mean that OSS/FS crashes closed-source.
By the way, do you still fill proud for the Halloween documents Microsoft let to leak? You sounded very proud when you were commenting them.
And probably you fill very comfortable after that million dollars you got from VA? Not bad for a living ah? I just want to see how many other OSS/FS developers that work for commercial vendors (like most of Linux hackers) will get that much money...
I'm not a religious person, so you know how I'll probably use you OSS gosper...
If Microsoft doesn't want to kill Linux, why is it running ads attacking UNIX, spreading FUD about the GPL, etc.?
First, MS does want to kill for-profit UNIX servers, and UNIX-derived MacOS X. These companies represent competition in the for-profit market, and have carved out niches difficult for MS to penetrate even given their desktop monopoly.
In this modern era, however, it is important to maintain a duopoly, to avoid the appearance of monopoly. Traditionally this has been a weaker commercial competitor that is dominated but protected from destruction: think Apple, AMD, or Pepsi. One danger of this approach, as all three of the aforementioned companies have illustrated, is that it is hard to keep this balance: companies tend to consistently lose (Apple) or gain (AMD, Pepsi) market share in ways hard for a competitor to regulate.
Enter Linux, a revolutionary new duopoly opportunity! Now Microsoft's "competitor" is a non-profit volunteer organization: very hard to kill, and yet very unlikely (at least in the estimation of Microsoft) to gain dominance. Better yet, this is an organization supported by major corporate players such as IBM that give the appearance of being competitors without actually attempting to directly compete.
Granting this analysis, Microsoft's best course in dealing with Linux is clear: sufficient repression to prevent dominance, but not sufficient to marginalize the "competitor". Indeed, all of Microsoft's actions to this point have been in line with this behavior.
All that is left now is to see how this new strategy will play out...
Seriously.
It's unfortunate that this drunken, gun-toting, beligerant fool has taken it upon himself to represent the whole Open Source(TM) community. It's not making us look particularly level-headed to the rest of the world. Of course, that's why the reporters always contact him. He's sure to say something stupid that will make for a sensational article. Always in attack mode.
What we need instead are more people like Mad Dog. People who help share the positive benefits of Linux with the world, and who seek to unite the community itself.
So, your question is really: "How can the programmers make money if they're willing to give their stuff away for free?" Three possibilities:
- Stop giving it away for free, or just provide the source under a different license than the GPL; for example, make the software available for free, but you only get the source if you *buy* the product. Of course, then you'll lose the advantage of "many eyeballs", <troll>but hey, who audits all that code anyway?</troll>
- Ask for donations. By all accounts, Mandrake and TransGaming are doing reasonably well with this approach. (See my other post below.)
- Do the coding, not to get paid directly, but in order to increase your chances of getting a better-paying job. There was a very interesting study linked a few months ago on
/., analyzing the countries and backgrounds of contributors to GNOME. The observation was that a disproportionate percentage of open source contributors are from countries that have developing IT industries, not established ones, so his conclusion was that the coders were contributing in order to develop their skills and establish their reputations.
The last one is the option that can motivate me personally. I'm out of work at the moment (hire me!), so I'm planning on contributing to the Wine and/or Mono projects to boost my marketability. Is that so bad?That's National Programmers Association. It will be a union--the geeks counterpart of the NEA.
This is of course, if the nightmare scenario plays out. RMS et al. are the same kind of people who insist that public schools have to be preserved even when they are plainly failing.
They want to do to programming what they did to education. It may take decades, but Liberals are nothing if not persistant. Where Free Software dominates a market, we already see some characteristics of the educational situation emerging: Wealthy people get to choose, poor people are left with the inferior "public" version.
There is already a lot of "stealth" government funding of free software. However, I'm not a total pessimist. At this stage, I doubt the Free Software movement can develop enough political clout to squash IP rights for software developers. The market should remain free enough so that consumers will still be able to choose shareware or shrink-wrapped packages if their needs are met better that way. However, ESR is right to the extent that the days of "easy money" are over.
Developers who want to make money will have to target much smaller markets, and serve them in particular ways. Going back to the school example, the private companies have an advantage in that they can supply religious instruction whereas the public schools can't. So, most private schools are religious. The software industry will have to find something that only *they* can supply, but Free Software can't. That something might be "brand loyalty" or "author reputation". Perhaps successful commercial software will take the form of "The latest release from Geekney Spears, girl geek extraordinaire, featuring here latest GUI mail client!".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It didn't fooken work.
Hrmm are you trying to get laid, or are you trying to get people help you to harass the girl you are impersonating?
Damn Billy Idol generation and all that I guess... frankly I prefer bitch.shutdown.net myself though.
it's not about Linux as a technology or Windows as a technology. It's rather about the processes involved with creating OSS.
Think about that famous example with disk drives: 3.5 inch drives more or less use the same technology as 5.25 inch drives, but were a lot smaller and could therefore be produced a lot cheaper than their larger counterparts. This also impacts on the cost structure in the production process (well, long term), which will inevitably become cheaper as with the larger drives. The technology wasn't revolutionary new, but in the long term gave the customer more value through being cheaper, faster, and virtually bigger (memory).
Disruptive technologies therefore doesn't necessarily apply to the technology deployed in the product, but can also apply to the technology used to create that product.
In this case we are talking about the process which creates the product. In the words of ESR: The Bazaar Model (based on the GPL and the other OSS licenses.
Whether this model is as disruptive as many people expect it will be still remains to be seen. This might take some time, especially if the companies using the old, sustaining model have other means (read: money, power, legal influence) to dilute the process and/or play dirty tricks in the market.
I feel so sig.
Psychiatrists make a distinction between the milder paranoid personality disorder described above and the more debilitating delusional (paranoid) disorder. The hallmark of this disorder is the presence of a persistent, nonbizarre delusion without symptoms of any other mental disorder.
Delusions are firmly held beliefs that are untrue, not shared by others in the culture, and not easily modifiable. Five delusional themes are frequently seen in delusional disorder. In some individuals, more than one of them is present.
Example: Ruth is a clerk typist who is efficient and helpful. Her employers and co-workers value her contribution to the office. But Ruth spends her evenings writing letters to State and Federal officials. She feels that God has opened her mind and given her the cure for cancer. She wants some leading treatment center to use her cure on all its patients so that the world can see she is right. Many of her letters go unanswered, or she receives noncommittal replies that only make her feel that no one understands that she can save all cancer patients if only given the chance. When one of her letters is answered by an employee of the official to whom she wrote, she is sure that the official is being deliberately kept unaware of her knowledge and power. Sometimes she despairs that the world will ever know how wonderful she is, but she doesn't give up. She just keeps writing. Ruth suffers from one of the delusional disorders, grandiose delusion.
The most common delusion in delusional disorder is that of persecution. While persons with paranoid personality might suspect their colleagues of joking at their expense, persons with delusional disorder may suspect others of participating in elaborate master plots to persecute them. They believe that they are being poisoned, drugged, spied upon, or are the targets of conspiracies to ruin their reputations or even to kill them. They sometimes engage in litigation in an attempt to redress imagined injustices.
Another theme seen frequently is that of delusional jealousy. Any sign--even a meaningless spot on clothing, or a short delay in arriving home--is summoned up as evidence that a spouse is being unfaithful.
Erotic delusions are based on the belief that one is romantically loved by another, usually someone of higher status or a well-known public figure. Individuals with erotic delusions often harass famous persons through numerous letters, telephone calls, visits, and stealthy surveillance.
Persons with grandiose delusions often feel that they have been endowed with special powers and that, if allowed to exercise these powers, they could cure diseases, banish poverty, ensure world peace,or perform other extraordinary feats.
Individuals with somatic delusions are convinced that there is something very wrong with their bodies--that they emit foul odors, have bugs crawling in or on their bodies, or are misshapen and ugly. Because of these delusions, they tend to avoid the society of other people and spend much time consulting physicians for their imagined condition.
Whether or not persons with delusional disorder are dangerous to others has not been systematically investigated, but clinical experience suggests that such persons are rarely homicidal. Delusional patients are commonly angry people, and thus they are perceived as threatening. In the rare instances when individuals with delusional disorder do become violent, their victims are usually people who unwittingly fit into their delusional scheme. The person in most danger from an individual with delusional disorder is a spouse or lover.
Eric on Open Sores. Ha ha. Of course he thinks
Open Sores will infect the world.
Eric on Open Sores infecting the world. Of
course he thinks that. What else do you expect?
There's an ecological argument here - that complex systems are best stabilized according to ecological principles rather than command and control, which just can't encompass more than a certain degree of complexity. A close kin to that argument is Adam Smith's view of capitalism - that it's wiser on the whole because less centrally controlled.
But in some settings central control still might win. Would you bet on a centrally controlled army, or on a bunch of ESRs with their guns? Depends on the terrain and the degree of motivation on each side (for extra credit compare Nam and Afghanistan). And, would you prefer our current balance of terror, or a future one where ESRs carried their own pocket nukes? Talk about bunny eggs!
____
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
There is nothing that is offered in current Unix-like systems that would entice me to switch from Windows, based solely on the GUI. Sure, Gnome and KDE are nice but to me, they are cheap Windows clones and are lame.
Of cource, there are other window managers out there but their dependence on X is a problem, IMHO. I think that X is too old and clunky. I can't stand the way they look. But no one seems to want to write a replacement, preferring instead to keep patching ol' X.
Operating systems like MacOS X and NeXTStep prove that a GUI over a Unixlike system can be eliquent. But you will notice that they don't use X-Window either.
It's not about Company A and Company B. It's about Programmer A and Programmer B.
Last year at OSCON there was an Open Source Business Summit. On one of the days they had a panel talking about business models. They had some CEO's and financial analysts talking shop (see the conference notes if you want more info). Basically, they all agreed that there was no viable Open Source Business Model.
They were wrong, because they asked the wrong question. The question they were implicitly asking was "Is there a SCALABLE Open Source Business Model?", where scalable ~= per-seat licensing. The answer to that question is no, with the exception of companies with established VAR networks and great marketing (ala Red Hat and IBM).
One of the audience members mentioned that his company's (~300 employees) core business was supporting open-source software, and they made profits and were a viable business. He was not given much attention by the people at the front of the room because that kind of business (which scales per person) is not a fundable, IPO-able, easy exit-strategy business which financial people are interested in.
Proprietary software benefits the company that produces it. Open Source software benefits the programmer. Example:
Name some famous programmers. How many of them code proprietary software?
Name some people you know from Microsoft. How many of them are programmers?
So what does that mean for the software industry?
Let me illustrate by analogy. Who creates Law and who profits from Law? Take a law firm as an example. A law firm is a partnership, where the members of the firm must be certified by a state board. The firm recruits new members based on the perceived expertise of the potential member. The business is built on trust, repeatable business, customer satisfaction, and expertise.
Is there any part of the Law which lawyers cannot access because of restrictive policy? Is there any part of the Law which lawyers cannot attempt to modify or argue in a court of law? Once a change has been commited, it becomes a part of the greater body of law until some better law has been determined.
No one company controls the law. No courtroom technique can be patented. No licensing fees are required for legal precedents.
Next question: do lawyers make money?
Back to the software industry. In the future, Software Engineers will be compensated in a manner which directly reflects their level of expertise. There will probably be certification required at the state level, like any other legitimate engineering discipline. Groups of skilled programmers and administrators will form partnerships, and distribution of earnings within the partnership will take place in a fair and transparent manner.
The successful partnerships will be successful (and make much money) because high levels of customer satisfaction will lead to repeat business. Customers will be satisfied because their IT will just work, and when it doesn't, or they need a new feature added, they will contact the IT firm and have the work done on a time and materials basis (with little transaction cost).
Now, that leaves one issue: What about the companies that invest huge amounts of time, money, and resources to develop a software product? Well, those companies will become very rare, as most software will be developed on the basis of incremental improvement (aka standing of the shoulders of giants). The Linux kernel is the best example of this, but we can see this form of development spreading to all ends of the software industry. As software becomes more modularized, interfaces open and standardized, and development tools improve, more and more software can be built by making modifications to existing software or using readily available libraries.
That's my $0.03
The only FUD is the BULL spouted on /.
Where the hell do you get off basically saying everyone who doesn't see Linux as the second coming of Christ is too simple to know better? What kind of arrogant moron are you? The fact is that Microsoft got where they are through the same business tactics as everyone else.
Are you really stupid enough to believe that big business is a clean and law-abiding thing? Get real! *ALL* business skirts with the law; that's the nature of business the whole world over regardless of the industry it's involved in.
The fact that Microsoft has managed to succeed as they have while others have foundered is because, quite simply, they outmaneuvered everyone and they made products that people like.
Don't confuse your wannabe neo-hippie, teeny-bopper feelings of rebellion for original, open-minded creative thinking. You're a minion who has bought, hook, line and sinker the idea that everything should be free and free is better. You're basing your hopes on 40 year old technology and closing your mind to ideas which makes you a liability not a contributor to the world of high-tech.
You're spouting facts with no thought behind them, a turgid 'fact' regurgitator seeking popularity in the arms of a bunch of long-haired hippie freaks trying to hang on to the '60's. Grow up, use your brain, think for yourself.
Friends don't let friends use Linux because a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Linux is unknown to most of the general computer
users. Ask a casual computer user and most likely
they have heard of Linux but have never booted it
up. Actually I've talked to an aspiring computer
science major, plus a Java programmer both knew
of Linux. But had no experience. The point is if
Linux is not on the desktops of the common person
it definitely will lose the war to Microsoft. Microsoft
has always won because it has always had the common
person in mind. Unlike Apple, unlike Linux.
Kind of ironic Linux developed by contributors
all of the world for free, and can be gotten for
free but is so complicated to get started most
people don't want to mess with it. And if u don't
know u'r stuff then it is too complicated to
maintain. So ultimately it's free to who? A
small percentage of higher level computer users.
If that be the case Linux will never win. And
by the time the Linux becomes easy enough, and
exposed enough, Microsoft will have had time
to develope their products to the point that
they will again remain the leader. Isn't that
what happened to Apple. No matter how great
Apple started off to be, who really gives a hoot
now. No matter how great Linux is now, it could
end up the best kept secret if it doesn't fall
into the hands of more of the common person! (This applies mainly to the
places in the world where cash is in abundance,
the markets that microsoft cares about at the moment.Those places that don't have cash can't use Microsof so they are the lucky one who have no choice bu tto download Linux on their imported firstworld throw away systems. (i heard of a
russin guy exporting old systems..same guy whgo delivered pizza in a BMW..where - snoop dogs home town) But once they become more affluent will they end up buying Windows?. Win the kids, then the world will be ours!
The ESR Rap
(Chorus:)
I am EEE ESS ORR, elite hack-ORR, hear me ROAR!
1.
I am of the hacker elite, can't you see?
fetchmail, blindfolds in nethack, er... (hum-hum diddle dee)
Bow down on your knees, don't you diss me!
(chorus)
2.
I am an author, I "wrote" New Hacker's Dictionary
Well, shit, so what if I done stole it from MIT?
I didn't get in there, so I figured they owed me!
(chorus)
3.
I am founder and leader of OSI
Now my Open Source show is really on the road!
Free Software? Hah! Show me dat code!
(chorus)
.4
I am ESR Skywalker, elite Jedi Knight
I'm packing mah gun and I'm ready to fight
You diss me and I'll send you to eternal night!
(chorus)
5.
I am wealthy board member, VA Something-or-other
Got plenty dollar bills, at least on paper
What's that? Dot.com crash? Oh fuck! See you later!
(repeat chorus to fade)
Many open-source projects get to the point where they sort of work, but aren't pushed through to the point that they work solidly. Probably because the grunt work to achieve that is boring.
A very few high-profile projects, like the Linux kernel, attract enough developers to push through this barrier. Most projects don't.
There's another possibility. If you get the architecture wrong, the open-source process won't fix it. That may be Mozilla's problem.
- the ADABAS database, which may or may not be more or less functional than (say) MySQL, but I can't tell for sure, since it's closed-source
StarOffice 6 is supposed to allow connections to other data sources. (otherwise, sales of SO6 would suffer more)
Here is the Sun page containing that information
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
I think we're more sober now than we used to be. There was a period during the dot-com boom in '99 when I think a lot of people were in some danger of getting distracted by the prospect of lots of easy money.
:-)
Heh, yes, well remembered
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Is this the same Eric Raymond?
It might help to point out that Sun isn't really stealing hte work of Open Source guys that much. they own the software, unless i'm mistaken, and released it to openoffice. They also put their name, and some polish, on OO and label it SO. People pay for a name and the peace of mind brought by being able to say, "It's not my fault, I paid Sun for it!"
Though everone here on slashdot knows that OO and SO aren't that much different, Average Bob Business Owner doesn't. He hears about this SO thing, it works well and is a lot cheaper than microsoft...why not try it out? That is what Sun's betting on. I think it will work. I sure hope it does...
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
"I do not agree with a word you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Voltaire
He never said that. Check urbanlegends.com (or google for it).
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
Maybe he's trying to get rid of the dope-smoking peace-loving flower waiving hippie look that some people think exemplifies UNIX hackers. Maybe he just likes guns and likes to talk about them. He's not perfect, but you aren't getting reviewed on ZDnet...so cut him some slack maybe?
i swear, all these people on slashdot complaing about how speakers don't write code, or how RMS is weird, but all the whiners do is whine...
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
i cream
you cream
we all scream for penis cream.
I am a Physicist...
You are a physicist??? Good God we're all doomed now - our destiny parallels that of the dinosaurs.
That was part of my point; if people want to pay for something so they feel better about it, fine with me, and I do hope SO does well. And yes, Sun owns StarOffice - they bought SO from Star Division, but as I said, I have the impression (correct or not) that they did it primarily so ScottM could thumb his nose at BillG. As far as I can tell, Sun really still doesn't "get" Open Source.
So, some people might buy SO now that it's in a pretty box from Sun, but I'm not particularly interested. Maybe Sun knows their market, or maybe it's just a gimmick.
So the bundling of ADABAS is even less of a selling point for the non-free StarOffice. So, what's left as a reason for a good little slashdotter to buy it? As I said, certainly not its sort-of-openness. From Java to Solaris to OpenOffice, it seems that Sun, like MS, sees Open Source as just another marketing gimmick. Oh well, stranger gimmicks have worked well in the past - just look at sales for the Sims :-S
We hope to make a program that allows the user sophisticated text - changing capabilities, one day we might even be able to, like, let them find specific items of text in it.. in later versions, perhaps we could even make the text stand out a bit more, possibly even slanty or with a stupid line underneath it, for titles and the like, maybe one day we might even be able to insert graphics into it, but i cant see why that would be useful. Later on we'll probably steal someone elses word processor and force everyone to use it, maybe even improve it a little. Though it seems a good idea that we package all 3 of these with our product.
Who am I?
0xC3
Well, there you have it. You listed both of them.
The Jargon File, however, isn't something Eric created, nor is it something that has benefitted from his custodianship. He uses it as a propaganda organ, and the defintions are slowly slipping into meaning what HE wants them to mean, not what they may have historically meant.
So. He's thrown together a script collection called FetchMail. That gives him script kiddie status. Woo hoo.
Thank you moderators. You prove once again you can remain in your herd.
Payment will be as it has always been - the coders will get paid by their days jobs and then code in their spare time.
Sun is trying to offer boxed software in the warehouse sales channel (CompUSA, Fry's, BestBuy...). In order to do that they have to have an MSRP that offers a healthy margin, otherwise the product is less desirable to these corporate buyers.
If anything, the potential is there that Joe Sixpack is educated when he's browsing the software ailes by coming across Star Office. Who knows, he might be psyched by seeing a non-MS Office Suite that will work on his windows machine. This is potentially a very large market, and good exposure for Open Source. Sun grows the top of the the market and we get to convert them to the free tools once they're regular users and they catch wind of Open Office.
We should be applauding this move by sun.
bnf
this space intentionally left blank (oops)
I think it is because the Microsoft propaganda machine keeps saying how great they are, and we know better. Basically they overpaid for their preinstalled ("free?") OS and have to convince themselves they haven't been taken.
and what is the alternative? using linux? yeah..right. For starters, the hardwars support is less than desirable. If I want a network card that works without having to recompile the kernel, It has to be a 3com. With windows, every card on the market works. I have had similar experiences with sound, video, and other devices, trying just about every distro I could get my hands on.
Right now, there is not good alternative to windows (as a desktop machine). As a server, linux crushes windows hands down...but in my opinion, not as well as BSD.
Since Microsoft can't innovate (without undermining their monopoly), they market with FUD.
And use the legal system or other things - per cpu licenses, "naked pc" horror stories, etc. Why should Microsoft care? Because they are trying to sell bottled tap water claiming a trademark on water. We are just responding.
I will admit, Microsoft has violated laws to get their OS in a long-standing position, but saying linux is a better OS doesn't make it true (no matter how many times). It must be shown with actions. (a better supported and working product), rather than a bitch fest about what microsoft has done.
ESR is just a fool... why do people even care about what he says?
Is it just me, or is his rhetoric especially violent? And gun lovers try to argue that their love of guns have nothing to do with violence, and yet this is the way that this gun lover apparently thinks about conflict -- in ways such as wrapping a tyre iron around somebody's head or shooting them in the head.
Anybody else nervous that this guy is something of a spokesperson for many of us, whether we chose him or not?
I don't know if it's me but everytime I see an article on OSS by ESR or RS, it seems as if a horde of pro MS droids suddenly pop out of the woodwork and start laying propaganda en masse against OSS in the typical market speak of the MS marketing department as is evidenced by the poster further down and his Microsoft Windows(TM). On an OSX forum I discovered someone last night who was trolling in almost exactly the same manner.
I assume marketing types who work for MS are taught right at the beginning to always be respectful to Mr.Gates , the company and the products in public and this shows in their postings.
Why MS goes to this effort to discredit OSS as much as it does is strange, IMO, because I imagine that it must cost them an awful lot of money in the long run for dubious benefit as I don't see many people falling for it and it almost always seems to backfire on them and yet they don't seem to be capable of learning. I magine if they spent their money instead on making good software instead.
I don't always or often agree with ESR or RS and I don't think Linux is going to be taking over the desktop in the near future, but I think that perhaps the poster further down who posted on how programmers can make money with OSS should perhaps look at the other side of the coin and that is that a closed company, has to spend an innordinate amount of money on marketing, as shown by the many MS anti-OSS campaigns and dead letter writers etc that OSS doesn'thave to as OSS marketing is done by word of mouth. On top of that a completely closed shop has to permanently fear the competition and I can't imagine that being fearful is in anyway productive or effective.
Strange, because I'm posting this in Mozilla 0.99 on Mac OSX after IE crapped out yet once again.
A lot of them, who had no idea about OSS or Unix, are actually using Fink, Apache, PHP, MySQL etc. And I haven't seen any of them compain about it yet.
You'll notice that Eric revises his old articles to meet modern facts. When he wrote Cathedral and Bazaar, he spent a good chunk of the document smearing RMS and the FSF. Once he had successfully marginalized them, he removed the sections, and now appears blameless.
He's made plenty of bad predictions. There was a whole bunch related to Netscape. It's just hard to find them, because I don't have a mirror of what his statements said at the time when he said them.
In fact, I'd challenge you to find an accurate prediction he's made beyond "open source will become more popular and will be embraced by more people" (which has been obvious for a while now).
Read the Cathedral and the Bazzar.
I think we all love and respect ESR here(*wink*), but I think I'm about ready to start up a petition to have him neutered. Who's game?
I'm determined to reclaim my karma. Now, if I can only find a groundbreaking article and something witty to say....
This is sad -- ESR works for /. and yes, it's the only reason this story was posted. Looking at the long-term future of computing, ESR has nothing to say (and nothing interesting to say either).
Almost as bad as the motherfuckers who are spamming trolltalk and making it fucking useless for fucks like us who have fucking shit we need to get done. (Not quite as bad since I use NS4.7.)
sulli
RTFJ.
I think one trend we're already seeing and which we'll see more of is the hybrid open source/commercial product. Some examples:
1). Mozilla/Netscape 6
2). NetBeans/Forte
3). Eclipse/WebSphere Application Developer
4). Open Office/Star Office
The second column has more credibility with management types and the first wins points from the technical side. Its definitely a win for everyone involved. I think Eclipse definitely will do well with this strategy. WSAD adds needed servlet testing, EJB, etc. functionality that makes it a good product for the office, and students and open source/free software types get a first class IDE to use and improve on for free. I think that Sun has a reasonable chance to succeed with this strategy.
Disruptive technologies are not cheaper. They may be cheaper per unit, but they always produce less bang for the buck than sustaining technologies.