Joel On The Economics of Open Source

Stephen writes "The ever-incisive Joel Spolsky discusses the economics of open source software in his latest Joel on Software column. Why do so many large companies want to develop open source software? It's not because they have suddenly converted to Stallmanism."

Comments

I had assumed...

[Dark Paladin]

People use/develop Open Source because we're all cheap ass bastards.

Like me. But at least I admit it.

Re:I had assumed...

[Jedi Alec]

Score:0(Troll)?

While I do agree that hte phrasing of this remark might need some work, he does have a point. For many companies the best reason to start using Open Source is because they won't have to pay for an expensive operating system.....

Joel the troll

[ObviousGuy]

Digs on VA Linux, RMS, Sun, and Linux zealots all in one big breath.

It doesn't get much better than that. Well, maybe if he mentioned something about BSD dying or Natalie Portman...

Re:Joel the troll

[Junks Jerzey]

Digs on VA Linux, RMS, Sun, and Linux zealots all in one big breath.

When the criticism is by someone level-headed, it's not trolling. Trolling is when silly people start arguments just so they can argue justify their own beliefs.

Re:Joel the troll

[joto]

Well, except for the fact that he wasn't trolling, but actually had something to say. If someone were to write a thesis on Nazis and their relationship towards homesexuality, would he be trolling then?

Re:Joel the troll

[Anonymous Coward]

However he is saying something that is blindingly obvious to anyone who is paying attention, even if they havn't taken a Micro Economics course (Like me). However, it isn't obvious to the l33t "ain't Free Software cool!" zealots whos generally shout the loudest. Those people won't have actually read the article anyway.

Re:Joel the troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Joel isn't trolling with 99% of his article. It is well written and for the most part, insightful. It doesn't explain anything new, just explains things that the tech illiterate are not aware of, and need to learn.

The 1% that was a troll was the dig on macroeconomics. And in response to that: low unemployment does cause inflation.

When unemployment is low, the workers can demand more money. The employers can't give the jobs to someone else since there is no one wanting that job. As workers have more money, they spend more money. When they spend more money, prices go up. When prices go up, the workers demand a "cost of living" increase. Again prices will go up. The cycle has begun, and will continue until the next corrective recession.

Re:Joel the troll

[dbrutus]

Low unemployment causes inflation is a distillation of a keynesian idea called the Phillips curve. In the graphed relationship between inflation and unemployment, the line drawn is always negatively (downward) sloped like a demand curve.

There's one problem, this nice theory doesn't conform to reality. Carter proved this by having rising unemployment and rising inflation at the same time. Reagen proved it by cutting both inflation and unemployment at the same time.

It is possible to have a positively sloped line so the article wasn't trolling on macroeconomics, it was just a little bit more conformant to observed reality.

Re:Joel the troll

[WGR]

That would be correct if wages were the main cost of goods. That was once the case, but it ceased to be the most important cost years ago.

The main cost for making goods is the cost of capital, the cost of marketing and the cost of development. These depend much more on the interest rate, the capital markets and demand for goods than in wages for workers.

That is why Carter had high unemployment and high inflation. Interest rates went through the roof and manufacturers could not open new factories despite large pools of labour. They just increased their prices to increase profits, since there was little incentive to increase competition. Similarily, Reagan was lucky in that the penned up demand of the Carter years exploded just as the advent of micro-computers created a new set of jobs and manufacturing efficiencies.

Re:Joel the troll

[Coolfish]

hum, seing how the nazis killed about 12,500 homosexuals i think their relationship was quite clear.

(this isn't a troll, just putting out a fact there that some people might not have known.)

Re:Joel the troll

[ahfoo]

Sleight of hand.
After the dig on macroeconomics he goes onto generalize and speak in broad and extremely vague terms for the rest of the piece. It's a rhetorical trick. I'm not impressed. Give me some solid details and less of this posturing.

Re:Joel the troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Er... You mean like when someone mentions Nazis and anything?

Re:Joel the troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats not exactly true. Regan also created deficit spending. In a BIG way. Which had the effect of snorking up very large chunks of cash. Which is what the real inflation was coming from. To much money chasing too few goods. He took that money and put it into goods/jobs. All be it very LARGE goods. For the defense companies needed to hire people to do this. But goods no the less. He also had 2 recesions during his term. Were they his fault. One was. The other was a market bubble like the last few years. Dont put the man on a pedistal. He was good and learned from his mistakes. But he also had quite a few of them.

To much money chasing too few goods means it takes more to get something. Now as a company if it takes more to get something then I probably am going to let people go. Higher unemployment. If you can reduce unemployment which is what everyone wanted at the time. You can create an inflationary thing, because you have more people spending money. However the goverment started gobbling up HUGE blobs of money in the form of bonds. This had the effect of reducing inflation also at the same time. One did beter on balance then the other. However both at the same time was very productive. Now I spoke of the recesion 1982 to be exact. It came about because of a change in tax code at the same time. People were still jittery about inflation and unemployment. So when the new tax code went into effect it created a change in the money supply. Inflation went up. People paniced. Thats when 'voodo economics' came into play and the words 'paying their fair share' started poping up. Our current tax code is a left over from then! The goverment started ratchiting up tax's in the past few years trying to reproduce what they saw in 1983 when taxs went back up, and as a way out of deficit spending. Greenspan saw a possible inflation in 1999 with too much money chasing too few stocks. So he started rinking on the interest rate to control that. It had an intersting effect of drying up venture capital.

They thought they were succeeding. However it was a sham. It was really a bunch of companies playing with numbers to make things look good. The pyramid scheme they cooked up is unrolling thats why we are currently in a recession. As for the goverment it was a feel good thing of 'paying your fair share of the deficit'. But when the goverment does things for itself it rairly does something usefull. But when it does something for the people it serves it can do wonderfull things.

Tax's are a way for the govement to control inflation. But currently we have fairly low inflation. So why do people want to raise them?

Thats trickle down theory in a nutshell. Trickle up theory is oposite but usually has a detremental effect on the people who recieve the breaks. Each one has its place in controlling inflation and the money supply.

Passing the buck / Sharing the blame

[L. VeGas]

If something goes wrong, you can always say that "It wasn't just me! Nobody caught it!"

Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[casio282]

I thought the article was well worth reading, but the statement that browsers were a good complement commodity to servers seemed strange to me. How so? Server and browser software is independent of each other, interacting only through a well-defined and public (okay stop sniggering) protocol. Besides, browsers are a mass-market item while servers are for a far smaller segment. So how does market penetration of browsers support server sales, except for via brand recognition/mindshare of potential buyers? Or perhaps dirty tricks (like browser company "portals" as default homepages) to push products?

Maybe I answered my own question. (And did anyone else read "Stallmanism" as "Stalinism" the first go-around?)

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[jshowlett]

Simple. With no web browsers out there, there wouldn't be much demand for web servers, would there? In this case the strategy is not to grab market share from the competition but, in the words of Dubya, to "make the pie higher!"

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the article was well worth reading, but the statement that browsers were a good complement commodity to servers seemed strange to me. How so?

Name-brand recognition.

The part you mention is actually the one flaw in an otherwise great article: he mentions that Netscape gave away the browser in hopes they'd be able to sell servers-- which, in the time immediately after the free MSIE hit the market, was true-- but then neglects to mention that this did not work. Which is a large part of why Netscape is no longer a company. For the exact reasons you mentioned-- interchangability and stuff-- Netscape's browser presence meant jack shit for their web server platforms and enterprise servers and such.

(This may be a good time to mention the theory that AOL bought Netscape not just to grow, and not just so that they had the browser to use as political leverage against MS, but also so that they had control of the netscape.com start page. AOL worked out that supplying the browser does give you control over the default start page, which many users will ever change-- which, to a media company like AOL, equates to an ungodly number of hits as your page pops up every time someone opens a new window. Somehow, though, AOL doesn't seem to have used this to the same advantage MSN has.)

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget that they're supposed to use common protocols and whatnot; imagine that in order to view stuff from a MS server, you need an MS browser, to view stuff from a Netscape server, you need a Netscape browser, etc.

Real life isn't quite that simple... for the basic stuff the browser doesn't matter, but for the more advanced stuff (browser-based administration, XML datasets being transferred around, applet support, etc...) you're going to get better results with the "native" browser.

A better example would be streaming media - you nead a RealPlayer browser to get data from a RealPlayer server - and (to tie it into the browser argument) if you control the web browser, you're in a much better position to control the media browser... or the instant messenger... or the mail client.... etc.

So if 99% of people use IE, and thus use Windows Media Player and MSN Messenger, it's going to be pretty appealing to use the Windows server package, rather than use a patchwork of other people's servers.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[00_NOP]

Server and browser software is independent of each other

Back in the day, the internet was very much the new new thing and so a commoditised browser was important - the point the article doesn't make is that Netscape wanted one, MS delivered it when they made theirs "free".

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

The web browser market is pretty saturated. How many people want a web browser but can't get one? It's diminishing returns trying to get that last 0.01%. We've long since passed the point where having a web browser is the limiting factor.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[potcrackpot]

Browsers are the complement of servers because the more people using browsers, the more people on the net, looking at websites. People want to make money from web sites - but they need a server to host them. Servers cost a lot of money - at least, big deplotments with lots of bandwidth do at any rate.

And then apache comes along and makes (probably) the best server - and it's free. Bummer. But it takes a lot more than Apache on a single box to make a solid, no downtime webserver.

The connection is there however.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[BrodieBruce]

If you like this, then you might also want to check other authors that like to ramble on with no real message such as; 1) Jon Katz 2) see #1

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[angel'o'sphere]

The Thin Client Syndrome.


I thought the article was well worth reading, but the statement that browsers were a good complement commodity to servers seemed strange to me. How so?


Netscape si now a consulting company which is mainly assisting in crafting intra net, browser controlled, business applications.

Instead if writing client apps or using X11 for "windowing" with a "server application" the browser is used.

Instead of having a true "thin client" a PC is used. Well, the customer has a PC for using MS Office.

He also has browser.

Nescape has the "networking computing" and server computing and "web app" know how. So making Browsers commodity makes thin clients obsolet and boosts "simple unix based" server sales because it makes BIG IRON client/server solutions less attractive.

Bottom line the customer wins: no big iron needed, reuse of the PC, no thin client needed. Basicly no software to distribute and install on teh client except of the browser.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple. With no web browsers out there, there wouldn't be much demand for web servers, would there? In this case the strategy is not to grab market share from the competition but, in the words of Dubya, to "make the pie higher!"

Simple. With no web browsers out there, there wouldn't be much demand for web servers, would there? In this case the strategy is not to grab market share from the competition but, in the words of Bubba, to "to not have sexual relations with that woman."

Sounds dumb? Ponder that for a while, and next time try not to slander the American president. Politics has nothing to do with this story.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[joto]

Well, it was an ok idea at the time. But we all know it didn't work now. By the time netscape should start earning money on their webservers, everyone was already happy with their open source equivalents...

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Server and browser software is independent of each other, interacting only through a well-defined and public (okay stop sniggering) protocol. Besides, browsers are a mass-market item while servers are for a far smaller segment. So how does market penetration of browsers support server sales, except for via brand recognition/mindshare of potential buyers? Or perhaps dirty tricks (like browser company "portals" as default homepages) to push products?

People are right to snicker about open protocols and things of that nature. Microsoft wasn't the only one (or even the first) putting a lot of proprietary 'standards' in their browsers and servers. Netscape used to be at the forefront of adding new features into their browser (and supporting those features on their server if needed), even to the point of releasing those features before standards bodies approved them as additions to the standards (which is why IE was so far behind Netscape for so long).

To get the most benefit from certain features of IIS, you need your site's viewers to be using IE (and moreso certain versions of IE). To get the most benefit from using Netscape's servers, especially early in Netscape's life, your site's viewers had to be using Netscape's browser. Because Netscape's servers didn't really create a lot of exclusive benefits to the Netscape server + browser equation the way MS' side does, it's not as obvious. However, that doesn't exclude the fact that MS' business plan with IE + IIS is very similar to the original business plan of Netscape, except that MS' built on their own particular strengths (namely integrating both products into Windows and flooding major distribution channels, some of which turns out to be illegal because they already have a large market share in the x86-based desktop operating systems market), where Netscape had to rely on their browser and alliances with other companies (Sun and Real for example). Netscape talked a lot of big talk (especially when they got Sun in their corner and started going on about thin clients and replacing the OS with their browser), but when even open-sourcing their browser couldn't bring 5.0 along quickly enough, things fell a bit flat.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[bsharitt]

The browsers complement servers by offering "features" that only the same branded server can offer. This has basically been the driving force behind IE. Microsoft based servers aren't growing in popularity because they are superior to Unix/Apache based servers, they just offer some non-standard protocols, and people wan't to take advantage of this since IE is in such wide use. Pre-Mozilla Netscape was also guilty of this somewhat as well. They wanted the browser to push their servers, because if everybody used Netscape's browsers, people would want the most Netscape compatible servers.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Besides, browsers are a mass-market item while
> servers are for a far smaller segment.

Back in the bad ol' days, when browsers were not yet on every desktop box in the world, this made sense. If you want to sell web servers, you need to create a market for them. You do this by making sure everybody in the world has a browser, thus forcing everybody from Proctor and Gamble to K-Tel to create a website.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[jshowlett]

You're right - If the post were regarding how NOT to cover up an affair with an intern, a Bubba quote probably would been quite appropriate.

But it wasn't. "Making the pie higher", is directly relevant to the point I was making - to get more pie (market), you either get a bigger piece of the pie or make the pie bigger.

And you might want to look up "slander" before using that word again. You got the usage wrong in at least two ways.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article you might have noticed he was referring to 1994.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[dbrutus]

There are lots of devices that don't have a web browser in them but could. While pioneers have actually made the refrigerators with browsers in them, I don't think that anybody's done that with ovens, dish washers, stereos (download mp3s to your stereo system!), car diagnostics panels, toilets (well maybe the japanese), or a host of other devices. browsers and servers are likely to become ubiquitous, light bulbs will report when they've burned out and their neighbors will burn brighter to make the up the difference, etc.

And how is all this innovative useage going to come into being? Certainly not from browsers that don't let you get at the guts of the code.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you might want to look up "slander" before using that word again. You got the usage wrong in at least two ways.

From http://work.ucsd.edu:5141/cgi-bin/http_webster?sla nder&method=exact

A false tale or report maliciously uttered, tending to injure the reputation of another; the malicious utterance of defamatory reports; the dissemination of malicious tales or suggestions to the injury of another.

Seems that you need to buy a dictionary yourself.

And the point remains. The fact that you have to resort to partisan attacks proves that you have no point. If you had simply left off the baseless attacks, then your post would have been a lot better off.

Weren't you people supposed to leave America if Bush got into office? I seem to recall the President of Hollywood Martin Sheen making that comment. More liberal lies, I suppose.

Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers?

[jshowlett]

A false tale or report

No tale or report, just a verbatim quote and a mildly derogatory nickname.

maliciously uttered,

I didn't utter anything, I typed it.

tending to injure the reputation of another;

If quoting Bush verbatim tends to injure his reputation, I can hardly claim credit!

the malicious utterance of defamatory reports; the dissemination of malicious tales or suggestions to the injury of another.

Again, no tale, report, or suggestion, just a quote.

The fact that you have to resort to partisan attacks proves that you have no point. If you had simply left off the baseless attacks, then your post would have been a lot better off.

Would you be so quick to call it an attack if I called Clinton "Bubba" and quoted something about the definition of "is"? I have a sneaky feeling that I'm not the real partisan here.

Weren't you people supposed to leave America if Bush got into office?

Who is "you people"? You seem to think you know a lot about me just because I dare indulge in a bit of humor at the expense of the current slimeball-in-office.

Huh?

[abat]

What? I thought all the companies just wanted to give me free stuff.

Misread

[flipflapflopflup]

"It's not because they have suddenly converted to Stallmanism."

Anyone else misread that as "Stalinism"?

Re:Misread

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... wouldn't "Stalinism" be more like "Kill anyone who submits bugs, and kill anyone that causes bugs"?

Re:Misread

[k98sven]

Anyone else misread that as "Stalinism"?

The word "Stalinism" is deprecated, the correct term is "GNU/Communism".

Re:Misread

[Anonymous Coward]

I forsee a GNUkita Khrushchev in the future!

Comrades, we must abolish the cult of the penguin decisively, once and for all; we must draw the proper conclusions concerning both ideological-theoretical and practical work.

It is necessary for this purpose:

First, in a Bolshevik manner to condemn and to eradicate the cult of the penguin as alien to Marxism-Leninism and not consonant with the principles of party leadership and the norms of party life, and to fight inexorably all attempts at bringing back this practice in one form or another.

Re:Misread

[joib]

"It's not because they have suddenly converted to Stallmanism."

Anyone else misread that as "Stalinism"?

So there's actually a difference? ;-)

Re:Misread

[1010011010]

There's some. For instance, Stallman, to date, hasn't used his military to invade other countries and kill millions of his own citizens. I know it's a nit, but I was here to pick it.

Re:Misread

[Saloth Sar]

Death to revisionism!

Like my father always said...

[MarvinMouse]

When I was young, I used to do a lot of programming that I never sold (usually gave away). I thought it was great though because I was producing these neat products that people would download and use. (or like my search engine which I will not list for fear of /.ing)

Then my father said to me one day "why don't you charge for it"

I responded "because it's free, it doesn't cost me anything to program it"

Father - "well, how much time do you put into it?"
Me -"a couple of hours a day" (back in HS)

Then he said, "so are you saying those two hours of your time is not worth any money?"

I then just stared and realized what he was trying to get across to me. I can work for free, I can do a lot of things for free, but the my time becomes worth $0 by those calculations. When in reality it should be worth far more.

Open Source software is free for some, but for all of the programmers and all of the companies behind the scenes it's very costly.

Something to think about (I still love Linux, though. :-)

Re:Like my father always said...

[FortKnox]

This is why most OS projects are done as a hobby, not as a job. You give back to the community on your own time, but still put food on the table.

Re:Like my father always said...

[pubjames]

When I was young,[..]

I am in awe at the depth of your father's insight. If only all children had such perceptive and intelligent parents.

Yes, this is sarcasm.

Re:Like my father always said...

[PeterClark]

Except that with Free/Open Source software, you are being paid: you are being paid with fantastic programs that would be impossible for any one individual or company to replicate. Releasing software Free is the appropriate expression of gratitude to the community.
The greatest lie of our market-based system is that time equals money, in all circumstances. (Please note the qualifier.) We should not become so obsessed with money that our activities are dictated by it.
:Peter

Re:Like my father always said...

[Clue4All]

Impossible for any one individual or company to replicate? I find that hard to believe. There isn't a single open source product out there that doesn't exist a better commercial version of. Most people today tend to throw together crap and when they run out of the interest in working on it, release it as open source and pat themselves on the back as doing things for the community. Time equals money, and you most definitely do get what you pay for.

Re:Like my father always said...

[WellHungYungWun]

Well, sometimes not everything is about money. Some people write an app to automate something and then post it so noone else will have to do a similiar mundane task. The reward, while not being monetary, is far greater. You have knowingly put something back in for the help file you looked at, or the webpage with someone else's view of how to go about getting the api calls correct. What if that person charged for that service? Just my $ .02

Re:Like my father always said...

[MeNeXT]

Why is value always in terms of $$$?

One payment you received: experiance

Another: Your contributions as well as many others have permitted FREE (beer) software to develop which costs you nothing to get.
And yet another: Friends -- the people who download your software may not be able to pay you but one day they may help you get a job by being a reference.

Linux got his job at transmeta because of what he did. Imagine if he charged for Linux from the start...

So yes there are payment methods other than $$$...

Re:Like my father always said...

[MarvinMouse]

This is very true, but I what I am trying to say is that even though you are volunteering time. That time can still be used for other means. Therefore you are giving away time and the product is no longer totally free.

I am not saying that my time is worth money, but I am saying that my time is worth more then nothing. If I claim that something I do is totally free, then I am claiming the time I spent on it is worth nothing.

Re:Like my father always said...

[Jobe_br]

I'd back away from sweeping generalities like that ... there are many Open Source products out there that do not have "better" commercial competition, simply because they *are* so good. I'm not going to name names and start a flame war, I'm merely saying that generalities like this are easy to disprove, so keep the comments succinct and to a particular point :)

Re:Like my father always said...

[kisrael]

"Getting stuff back", albeit stuff you would get even if you didn't contribute, is one strategy. (NPR kind of works on this idea). And maybe you contribute because the stuff you get back is better than if you didn't contribute.

Another possible reward: You play it like Grampa Simpson and say "I just want attention". Supposedly scifi geekdom has had the name "egoboo" (for ego boost) as the "currency" people get for making cool fandom stuff for free. You gain the respect of your peers, a little attention, a stronger place in the community, people listen to you more. I think Open Source banks on this to a certain extent as well...it also ties into the experience to put on your resume aspect.

Re:Like my father always said...

[mjh]

Open Source software is free for some, but for all of the programmers and all of the companies behind the scenes it's very costly.

Yes, but the cost is really widely distributed, so that compensation for any individual is complicated. Let me give you an example.

I run Linux. I also have an HP printer, so I use the hpoj software. I also like the CUPS print spool software. HPOJ and CUPS don't integrate very well. So I wrote, and distribute under GPL, a CUPS backend that allows it to integrate with HPOJ. I contributed about 2-3 hours of time to get this to work. But in return I got hundreds and hundreds of other people's work. I got a working printer and a very flexible print spooler running on a free operating system! And for that I made it so that other people can do that too. I contributed 2-3 hours of work that has value, because it saves time for whoever else uses it (2-3 hours multiplied by the number of users). Thus it contributes back to the economy of opensource/free software, making it all more valuable. I pay small amount of time, and I get back huge amounts of time. Moreover, my contribution makes it so that the next guy will get even more back for his/her contributions. Everyone that contributes a small amount of time, gets paid back much more than they contributed.

What makes opensource/free software different is that it allows large numbers of people to contribute their work to each other, and cumulatively save themselves tons of work. I gladly trade 2-3 hours of work for 2-3 hundred hours of work. It saves me time and money.

I like Joel's article, but it doesn't explain the tradeoff of how people get paid in opensource. It doesn't explain the small amount of effort input for huge amounts of gain returned that opensource/free software allows and encourages. And that's got to be part of the economic equation that explains opensource. It only tries to explain the economics of why IBM, HP, et al, are contributing to opensource. It ignores the fact that IBM, HP, et al, are also trading their small contributions of time for the huge amount of time and money that they save.

Re:Like my father always said...

[javilon]

I see it more like co-developing stuff with other people. Lets say I want something and can't find finished GPLd software. I search for projects in sourceforge and try to get the stuff working. That benefits all the developers of the project, and me.

Lets put it in a different way. I needed a java project manager for my company. I found one, but it didn't work very well. I helped to iron out the bugs. My company got a __free__ project manager, except that they __paid__ me for my time. I got a great deal, the other developers of the project got help.

Re:Like my father always said...

[JanneM]

Of course, how many users would you have had had you tried to charge for it? Or, in other words, your time may not be free according to your father, but if what you produced did not have a perceived value to your users equal to the value of your time, then you were working on the wrong thing. And that will mean you should be working on whatever gives you the highest income, not what you _like_ to work on - which pretty much destroys the hobby and enjoyment aspect of it, turning it into another job.

Of course, if you want to have it as an income source, you should reason like this. If you are doing it for the fun of it - and for the opportunity to learn stuff - then it just isn't a good value calculation. Trying to equal time and money in everything you do is a pretty destructive way to see your life. Why go to the movies, spend time with your friends or read a book, when you could spend that time much more productively with a second job and lots of overtime?

/Janne

Re:Like my father always said...

[kz45]

This is why most OS projects are done as a hobby, not as a job. You give back to the community on your own time, but still put food on the table

the editors of slashdot have a different opinion

Re:Like my father always said...

[stevey]

Of course if your stuff is any good then you're also paid in terms of fame, admiration, and recognition - which can be worth a lot when you're looking for a job...

Re:Like my father always said...

[hopeless case]

How much time did your father spend raising you?

Did anyone pay him for doing that?

Oh, wait, you mean he got something other than money out of the whole process?

Hmmm, imagine that. People valuing things other than money...

Something to think about.

Re:Like my father always said...

[smack.addict]

The greatest lie of our market-based system is that time equals money, in all circumstances.

Actually, it is the greatest truth of any economic system. And it is an understatement.

Money is nothing more than an attempt at an objective measure of value with the underlying assumption is that there is no objective measure of value. Time has value. A smile has value. Everything has value.

Each of us, however, values everything differently. This fact is something so very fundamental, yet it is something socialism and communism miss entirely. Though money helps us translate our valuations into a rough average, capitalism recognizes this is a rough average. For this reason, under capitalism, all transactions make everyone involved richer.

Let's look at a simple example. I have a piece of chocolate cake and you have a piece of vanilla cake. Unfortunately, I hate chocolate and you hate vanilla. How much do you think the chocolate cake is worth to me? How much the vanilla cake? If I saw the two side-by-side in a store, I would probably pay $2 for the vanilla and $0 for the chocolate. Assuming the chocolate cake was all I had in this world, we would say I hate no net worth. Furthermore, assuming the reverse was true for you, you would also have no net worth. In the economic universe consisting of the two of us, we have a total net worth of $0. The minute we trade cakes, however, our individual net worths jump to $2 and the entire net worth of our universe to $4 (until we eat the cakes!).

My point? My point is that every decision we make has value. That includes how we spend our time. Choosing to spend time doing X instead of Y has value. You cannot escape it. You wallow in self-pity instead of take the $7/hour job at McDonald's after getting laid off because wallowing in self-pity is worth more to you than $7/hour. And because money is the only thing close to a quantification of the value we place on our decisions--including on how we spend time--time is in fact money.

Re:Like my father always said...

[(trb001)]

The concept that cost = worth = money is lost on me, I'm afraid.

I ran a BBS for years, and as almost any other Sysop can attest to, we invested more time in our boards than the majority of people who develop OSS (obvious exceptions, yada yada yada). However, when I think about what this cost me and what my board was worth, it's really immeasureable. At the lowest level I got the enjoyment of running a system. A step up, I saw how much other people enjoyed the system as well. A couple more steps up and I got a free-as-in-beer tutorial on programming (hacking WWIV...that was my "Introduction to CS 101"), not to mention protocols, interfaces, games, etc. At a slightly higher and less valuable (?!) level, I got the ability to talk to people in my field who are considerably older than me and sound like I know something and have some experience. THAT really IS invaluable.

The whole worth = money thing still bugs me, and I try to explain that to people who aren't in the computer field. Most don't get it, hopefully some do.

--trb

Re:Like my father always said...

[AntiTuX]

That's great, but that won't put food in my 11-month old daughter's mouth, clothes on her back, nor a roof over her head, will it?

Of course, since I have such *WONDERFUL* Open-source programs, everything's gonna be peachy.

Not to sound like a troll, but time == money. I really don't have the luxury to volunteer my time to software projects anymore. Almost every project I've worked on and attempted to put volunteer time into ends up either really pissing me off, or ends up shooting itself in the foot (stampede anyone?).

Unless I get paid to work on something, so I can raise my family, then I don't want to hear a thing from you about it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally for people who can afford to give up their time to write open-source software. I work on Mozilla for christ's sake (I'm a netscape employee). I love working on the project, but I guarantee you, if I weren't getting paid to do it, I wouldn't. Now, this is an ideal situation, because I get to work with lots of cool people from the community. But, if it came between open source and feeding my family, I would choose to feed my family, thanks.

Re:Like my father always said...

[numbuscus]

There isn't a single open source product out there that doesn't exist a better commercial version of.

The word 'better' is a bit loaded and subjective. One could easily argue that M$ Windows is 'better' because it runs more games. The next person could argue that Linux or *BSD are 'better' because they crash less often. And, since you claim time always equals money, then non-OSS software must not always be 'better.' Take Oracle as an example. Oracle is a pain in the ass to get running, from what I hear. Not only that, it takes a lot of time to get correctly configured (once again - from what I hear - I have no direct experience with Oracle database software). Now, there are great OSS alternatives out there. My personal favorite being MySQL. It's free (as in cost) and it takes very little time to get up-and-running. I even did it and I'm not an admon nor an IT professional. Sounds like, by your definition that time is always money, there some OSS is 'better'.

Re:Like my father always said...

[joto]

There isn't a single open source product out there that doesn't exist a better commercial version of.

Oh yes, there are. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, XFree86, Emacs, gcc, Apache, Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk, (La)Tex, are just some examples. I am sure there are many more within the scientific communities for more specialized tasks.

Re:Like my father always said...

[Onionesque]

Actually, in most cultures, and at most times in human history, having and raising children was precisely a business matter. Children were, and still are, valued in terms of their economic potential. Hence, the dowery.

Your notion is very contemporary, and rather provincial.

When I have a child, I'm going to raise a bassist. :)

Re:Like my father always said...

[Anonymous Coward]

But then you have to remember that MySQL is less capable than Postgres which is less capable than MS SQL which is less capable than Oracle which is less capable than DB2 which is less capable than IDS. So time to get running isn't your only concern if you need more features than a particular package can provide.

Re:Like my father always said...

[Krusher55]

Lets not forget that although you didn't directly get $ for that time, you did, or at least could, get $ indirectly. That experience is something valuable that a future employer will pay you $ for. Not many people will claim that spending thousands of dollars on an university education is of no value. It's value is that it offers a better chance of future employment and hopefully a better salary in that employment. Working on these 'hobby projects' can be though of in the same way. Whether you choose to cash in on that extra value is up to you (you can still choose to work at McDonald's or Walmart if you wish).

Re:Like my father always said...

[wrt2]

For this reason, under capitalism, all transactions make everyone involved richer -- for sufficiently small values of everyone.

Quoting Bruce Reed's review of Kevin Phillips' Wealth and Democracy:

CEOs make 419 times as much as the average worker, and CEO pay is rising five times faster than profits. Payroll taxes mean working people don't take home much more than 20 years ago. Bill Gates's fortune is 1.4 million times larger than the median family income.

Some are getting violently richer than others, it seems. So remember: Time is time. Money is money. Try not to conflate the two.

Re:Like my father always said...

[Jason Earl]

Think of your time spent as an investment. The fact of the matter is that a teenager's time is not particularly valuable. If you really wanted to monetize the time you spent programming you probably would have had to spend it pulling weeds or bagging groceries. A commercial software company wouldn't have been even remotely interested in paying you for your time, and it would be very difficult to get contract work. That means that in order to sell your programs you would have to come up with a scheme to market, distribute, and collect payment for your work. Shareware is the obvious answer to your problem, but making money via shareware isn't precisely a straight-forward excercise, especially if you are planning on making money on a piece of software that you only work on part time. Once people start paying for software, they expect things like a support phone line, upgrades, fancy documentation, etc. all of which add up to much more than a couple of hours a day.

In other words the chances of actually getting paid for software written as a high school student (even if it is exceptional) are not particularly good. Especially if you aren't willing to treat your software as a business (meaning working business hours).

However, programming, even if you aren't getting paid for it, is a much more useful investment of your time than most of the things that high-school students do. You could have spent those hours playing video games, for example. Programming is one of the professions where many of the most important skills are essentially self-taught. Good programmers emerge after hours and hours of programming, and like many other skills the sooner you start learning the better off you will be when you are in a position to profit from your work. You learned valuable skills while programming the software you gave away. If you would have tried to charge for the software your userbase would almost certainly been much smaller, and you probably wouldn't have made any money anyhow (although you would have learned some useful information about the software industry).

I am not belittling the lesson that your father taught you, but Joel is right when he says that the reason that people are putting money into Free Software development is because they expect to make money from their investment. The fact of the matter is that your story illustrates the fact that software doesn't necessarily have to be ridiculously expensive to develop (high school students can do it in their spare time). Since Free Software also allows the development costs to be spread out widely it is no wonder that Free Software is advancing at a rapid pace.

Re:Like my father always said...

[the_womble]

I can do a lot of things for free, but the my time becomes worth $0 by those calculations. When in reality it should be worth far more.

So you would never do voluntary work for a charity? or help a friend get something done for free?

As far as people who are trying to make profits you are ignoring the core of Spolsky's argument "All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease". To put it another way IBM likes Linux because by cutting tthe cost of software they can get people to spend more on hardware.

They also gain by sharing development costs - e.g. IBM contributes something to Linux, but so do a lot of other people so it costs less for them to get Linux to do something than to get one of their proprietary OSes to do the same.

In the case of Linux anything that damages MS's grip on the OS market is good for all hardware manufacturers.

Re:Like my father always said...

[goon america]

The greatest lie of our market-based system is that time equals money

I'm sure someone else has covered this, but the point is not that

time == money

but that

time != free

, in that the time you spend working on an open source could be spent doing something else and can't ever be gotten back once it is used. Economists will then say the easiest way to quantify this "opportunity cost" [economics-speak] is in monetary units, since you could in their minds exchange money for anything. If you prefer, and some do, you could use a less provocative unit of measure such as "utility units".

Also, and this is secondary, a lot of people (who went to college and read Marx) seem to think that economics and capitalism were "invented" and then imposed on everyone (refering to capitalism's "lies"). Economics is only a science intended to describe how people behave in terms of costs and benefits (not necessarily in monetary terms, don't get excited), and capitalism is the natural system that occurs when nobody imposes any alternative system on you.

Re:Like my father always said...

[Jason Earl]

You may not like it, but it is still economics. Every decision that you make has an opportunity cost. Deciding to run a BBS meant that you had less time to bag groceries (or whatever). Along similar lines going to school means that you have less time to pursue a career. In your case running a BBS turned out to be a fairly wise investment of your time in that it helped you gain some valuable skills that you are probably now using to make a living. Likewise, the primary reason that people go to school is that they believe that the time spent gaining an education will increase the market value for their services enough so that the time spent was worth the exchange.

Of course, they usually phrase it as "I want to get a good job," but that is simply because very few people really get the hang of simple economics.

The fact that you actually enjoyed improving your skills by running a BBS is simply part of the reason why economics works.

Re:Like my father always said...

[smack.addict]

CEOs make 419 times as much as the average worker, and CEO pay is rising five times faster than profits. Payroll taxes mean working people don't take home much more than 20 years ago. Bill Gates's fortune is 1.4 million times larger than the median family income.

Uh, so?

I mean really. As long as you are getting wealthier, does it bother you that someone else is getting a lot (and I do not mean to minimize the disparity, so I will repeat A LOT) richer?

What bothers me about Bill Gates is how he is getting richer. Not the fact that he is getting richer or that he is getting richer at a significantly greater rate than I am.

Re:Like my father always said...

[Waffle Iron]

Time equals money, and you most definitely do get what you pay for.

So I assume your girlfriend charges you for her time. Does that make her a prudent resource scheduler, or just a whore?

Re:Like my father always said...

[dumb kid]

This is one of those cases where you need to dig a little deeper.

When you first started programming, you knew very little, and you produced programs whose main worth was in teaching you something. As you gained experience, your programs became good enough that they had value to other people. That value could be given to you as money. Or as recognition. Or in exchange for other software. You get the point.

One of the problems with discussions that focus on the 'worth' of Open Source Software is that people get wrapped up in the ideology of money. Money is just a portable tool to exchange 'value' between people. It doesn't transfer very well in the creation of software (sometimes) for a lot of the same reasons that music and movies are having problems with copyright rules. Once created, software can be easily and endlessly duplicated.

Any economics course will teach you about supply and demand. If the supply goes up, the price falls. If the supply goes down, the price rises.

This is where peole say, "Yes, but it is the creation of software that is valuable!" Yes it is, but imagine if you designed and hand built cars. Each one would be quite valuable if you were good at it. Now imageine that once you built it and gave it to a friend, he could duplicate that car endlessly at zero cost. What would that do to the value of the car? What would that do to your value, since if someone didn't want to go to the effort of designing and building their own, they could just get one for free?

That's how software works. We have broken some of the underlying principles of capitalism. Supply and demand doesn't work right.

What to do about this? Damned if I know. But Stallman and his preaching isn't the answer. He's just saying that it's good to give stuff to your friends 'cause they'll give you stuff if you do.

Re:Like my father always said...

[Anonymous Coward]

pubjames thinks he is being sarcastic, but it's just sour grapes because he doesn't know who his father is.

Re:Like my father always said...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! Idiotboy! That was a story submission, nothing in there was written by the Slashdot editors. Given how long you've been spouting your lying bullshit around here, you'd figure even a cretin like you'd be able to tell the difference. It's real simple: if it's in italics, it was the story submitter who wrote it, not the editor.

Fucking mental incompetent.

Re:Like my father always said...

[kirkjobsluder]

I think this is missing the wide variety of conditions under which software is produced. For example, the project I'm working on was a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation. They wanted a few dozen research papers they could show Congress to justify their funding. In the process, we produced quite a bit of software for running an education professional development website with a few other universities interested in buying the software.

In this case, the development is already paid for. We don't have a large ammount of debt or investors looking for a RoI. Therefore we are under no obligation to charge for our software.

In contrast, a lot of proprietary software development is done on spec. The company goes into debt to fund the developers in the hope that in the end, there is a product that will make money.

Re:Like my father always said...

[CrimsonAvenger]

Why go to the movies, spend time with your friends or read a book, when you could spend that time much more productively with a second job and lots of overtime?

Time is money does not equal Maximize money. A better translation might be: maximize available time by paying someone else to do the stuff you don't want to do, in order to free the time to do the stuff you do want to do. In other words, don't spend an hour of your life changing the oil in your car, when you could pay someone else to do it and use that hour to have sex. Or program. Whatever you enjoy.

But if you enjoy changing the oil in your car, have fun!

Re:Like my father always said...

[chris_mahan]

I think it's not volunteering, rather than paying back in kind.

I use jEdit, for example. I have saved countless hours of productivity using this Free As In Beer software. I feel that I need to repay the "community" because I didn't have to shell out the $295 of $400 or whatever that this program is probably worth. Instead, I do something I can: I evangelize. I install linux, OpenOffice, etc. I tell people to use Apache, Python, etc.

I can't code C worth a shit, so I'm not going to try to submit a patch, but when someone asks me what software solution to look for I say: Open Standards, Open source if possible. Linux if possible.

And you know what? I work at a corporation, and we spend oodles of cash on MS licenses, and people here are asking more pertinent questions, like: Hos much would we save on this... Can we deploy PostgreSQL on Linux rather than spend 20 grand on MS SQL2000 and Win2K Advanced server?

The fact that they're asking the question is already a good sign.

Re:Like my father always said...

[iabervon]

If you go to a movie, your time is worth $-4/hr. Playing arcade games, your time is worth even less. Your time is worth even less if you go to classical music concerts, operas, plays, etc. Writing softare for free is entertainment for you which is much cheaper than most other things people do for fun.

So why don't you charge for it? Do you have fun charging people? I don't think I've ever met someone who actually enjoys the things you have to do to get money from people. Selling software is work, while writing software is fun. Additionally, selling software required infrastructure, and if you set up the infrastructure and then don't sell and software, you lose money.

Writing software is more fun that playing Solitaire. Giving software away has less financial risk than selling it. Distributing software brings more fame and social approval than keeping it for yourself.

People often make the mistake of ignoring the cost of entertainment. If you've ever looked at a budget for entertainment, you'll soon find that OSS programming is a great deal, especially if you needed the computer anyway.

Re:Like my father always said...

[BadmanX]

That's great, but that won't put food in my 11-month old daughter's mouth, clothes on her back, nor a roof over her head, will it?

I've noticed this...most Free Software fanatics don't have any responsibilities beyond themselves. I have no doubt that once they do, they'll change their tune double-quick: "Hmm...Richard says programming commercial software for money is evil, but jobs to write Free Software are very rare. Programming is the best skill I have. I can make $50,000 a year doing it. My wife wants a house. My daughter needs clothes for school. I need medical insurance. I need a reliable vehicle. It's funny, but I don't see commercial software as evil any more (or, if I do, it's a necessary evil at worst)."

How this problem gets solved is something no Free Software fanatic has ever or will ever address, because there is no solution. Their dodge is "It's not my problem...you figure it out." There's nothing to figure out. I program proprietary commercial software to feed my family. I do it because I'm good at it and I like to do it. It's my best skill, that will make me the most money. Free Software won't let me provide for my family, therefore it is useless to me.

Re:Like my father always said...

[kz45]

Hey! Idiotboy! That was a story submission, nothing in there was written by the Slashdot editors. Given how long you've been spouting your lying bullshit around here, you'd figure even a cretin like you'd be able to tell the difference. It's real simple: if it's in italics, it was the story submitter who wrote it, not the editor.

Fucking mental incompetent

are you that same dumshit AC that keeps following my posts, and following up with asshole remarks?

why don't get a real account, fucknuts!

Re:Like my father always said...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother? What makes you think that stupidity like yours deserves a real reply?

Oh, and guess what, cretin: AC or not, I'm still right. Deal with it, little boy.

Re:Like my father always said...

[kz45]

Why bother? What makes you think that stupidity like yours deserves a real reply?

Oh, and guess what, cretin: AC or not, I'm still right. Deal with it, little boy

you have a lot to learn....

nope

[mike77]

"It's not because they have suddenly converted to Stallmanism."

Nope, it's cuz they have converted to Nazi-ism. Take for instance M$, RIAA, SONY... ;)

Rules for Economics of Open Source

[taya0001]

step 1: make a inovative open source product that will benefit all involved and distribute it freely.

step 2: ???

step 3: Profit

Re:Rules for Economics of Open Source

[haa...jesus christ]

so are you trying to say that OSS and underpants are one and the same?

I have this disturbing image of the GNU folks open sourcing theirs...

Re:Rules for Economics of Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you mean "reinvent the wheel yet again as an open source project..."

Re:Rules for Economics of Open Source

[ScrewTivo]

Step 2: Write a book, sell for $79.95

Re:Rules for Economics of Open Source

[muffen]

Hehe... maybe the underpant gnomes can help out with step 2 :)

Interesting article, even though he's dead wrong on one point...
But I've pulled hard drives out of IBM computers and slammed them into Dell computers and, boom, the system comes up perfectly and runs as if it were still in the old computer.

IBM Hardrives don't work in *ANY* computer...

Re:Rules for Economics of Open Source

[iabervon]

He's clearly pulled Maxtor hard drives out of IBM computers and put them into Dells. Remember that thing about IBM building with commodity parts? It's a really good idea if your custom parts sucks...

Re:Rules for Economics of Open Source

[NetMasta10bt]

step 2: Collect underpants!

Re:Rules for Economics of Open Source

[jmischel]

Actually, it's:

2) Write a book that agent sells to publisher for 10% royalty. Publisher sells book to stores for $35.00, of which you receive 10%, or $3.50. Your agent takes 10% off of that, leaving you with $3.15 per book sold.

You need to sell lots of copies to get rich writing a book.

Re:Rules for Economics of Open Source

[iabervon]

step 2: charge for something that uses the product (weather charts, inventory management, etc) or for something you need to use the software (high-end machines).

Re:Rules for Economics of Open Source

[chris_mahan]

Step 2: Sell something which benefits from the wide availability of the item in step 1

(Could be preprinted checks, like Quicken, could be PERL CGI development expertise, could be backup tapes, whatever)

Joel Is Psychic

[Mr_Perl]

Let me repeat that because you might have dozed off, and it's important.

Now that's funny. How did he know I'd be snoozing at exactly that point in the article!

Re:Joel Is Psychic

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me repeat that because you might have dozed off, and it's important.

Now that's funny. How did he know I'd be snoozing at exactly that point in the article!

Funnier still, so far as I'm concerned, is that I never saw the quoted sentence, having dozed off and stopped reading the article.

Re:Joel Is Psychic

[Anonymous Coward]

hey matt, your perl obfu skills sucks. my little sister would do better.

proof that those brainbench crap ain't worth shit.

Another basic economics principle..

[mumblestheclown]

The article tries to build from basic economic principles, but conveniently misses one, the problem of free riders.

Let's look as his examples:

Netscape is trying to commoditize the browser market .. in order to dominate the server market. This would have been plausible in, say, 1997. I find it amazing that he tries to push this by anybody--the browser was commoditized.. and servers turned out to be irrelevant! Where is netscape now?

IBM is investing in open source software to bolster its consulting services ... -- wait a minute. IBM's fortune was made in the early 50s by being the king or proprietary--you couldn't even buy their computers--you had to lease them! The US government eventually stopped this, but IBM's greatest period of success in the computer age was when it had a complete monopoly on sales and service of its own, very closed product lines. With the IBM 360 series, IBM saw some erosion of this due to "plug compatible" peripherals produced elsewhere. With the IBM PC (btw.. the author's description of IBM's "success" in commoditizing the PC makes NO sense whatsoever), IBM did poorer still--we all know how badly they did.

But let's look at the specifics--IBM is a BIG company. Let's say (hypothetically) it could put its full weight behind OSS and therefore contribute a whopping 3% to the total corpus of reasonable OSS stuff. Suddenly, it has what--spent a lot of money for the benefit of all while increasing what it can personally consult on by a whopping 3%. Even if there are network, learning, or syndicate effects, this situation screams "free rider problem."

Ditto for Transmeta..

It's almost ironic that the author pics such dead or dying companies like Netscape, Transmeta, IBM, etc for his examples.. Look, I like these companies as much as anybody for their past, but let's face it..

I could go on, but this article is a big swing and miss.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape is trying to commoditize the browser market .. in order to dominate the server market. This would have been plausible in, say, 1997.

1997 is when Netscape was trying to do this (actually starting earlier). Mozilla was the last gasp of this strategy.

I find it amazing that he tries to push this by anybody--the browser was commoditized..

I've heard Jim Clark (founder of Netscape) say the exact same thing.

and servers turned out to be irrelevant! Where is netscape now?

Good question. Quite apart from whatever (illegal) browser competition was going on, Netscape's server line did not sell worth beans. And that is the real reason the company failed -- NOT because MS ate their free browser lunch.

Some quick reasons why Netscape's server lineup failed:
+ (big one) Apache completely destroyed the market for $$ web servers.
+ Netscape pushed 'groupware' up against IBM/Lotus (established) and Microsoft (big up and comers) -- and failed big time. IBM decided not to be their friend because of this.
+ Strong early application servers never survived the big rush to J2EE.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Hmm, IBM is still the largest computer company, Netscape is a part of AOL/Time Watrner, Transmeta is still making CPUs and signing deals for portable devices...

Just what is your definition of "dead or dying"? What makes a compnay successful?

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[RAMMS EIN]

``IBM's fortune was made in the early 50s by being the king or proprietary''
While that may be true, being overly closed accounts for some of IBM's (as well as others') greatest failures. Recall PS/2, a brilliant bus architecture that even had Plug-n-Pray-like features. IBM kept specs to itself and would only license stuff for $$$, and PS/2 soon got pushed out of the PC-market by the slightly inferior but open EISA-standard. Another issue was backward-compatibility (EISA is compatible with ISA, PS/2 isn't), and, to be honest, I'm not sure which one was the major factor.

A similar case was VESA with its VBE/AF standard for accelerated video. They charged $$$ for it, and I know exactly _one_ program that uses it (actually, the Allegro library ), and I think they started using it only after the standard became open. It is sad that the project that provides Open VBE/AF drivers seems to be less than alive.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[sql*kitten]

Netscape is trying to commoditize the browser market .. in order to dominate the server market. This would have been plausible in, say, 1997. I find it amazing that he tries to push this by anybody--the browser was commoditized.. and servers turned out to be irrelevant! Where is netscape now?

No, Joel is right. Back in '95 or '96, Jim Clark said Netscape sell printing presses, but first we have to teach people to read.

My own take on Netscape's collapse in the server market is that they stretched themselves too thin. Netscape Enterprise Server 2 was an excellent product, fast, stable and flexible. Version 3 of most of their products - and there were a lot of them by now - almost universally sucked, they had been rushed out of the door, and it showed.

IBM is investing in open source software to bolster its consulting services

I think Joel's right here - IBM Global Services is what makes the money for IBM, consulting and outsourcing. If IBM can compete on data centre implementation and operations, something they have always excelled at, they can get software for free and hire people cheaply, because sysadmin and programming skills will be commoditized.

Suddenly, it has what--spent a lot of money for the benefit of all while increasing what it can personally consult on by a whopping 3%.

Really, contributing to open source is just their approach to learning about how to make open source software work in a managed facility, so they can adapt and maintain it - they could care less about "the community". It's a better way to train their people, letting them cut their teeth in the real world rather than in a classroom.

Remember, IBM created the PC industry, then lost control of it. They created the relational database industry, and lost control of it. They know a great deal about how to survive and make money in a commoditized environment, and that's on "value add" - i.e. services.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[Oliver Defacszio]

Are you serious? Allow me to make this clear enough so that even you can understand:

1) Netscape: Dead. Been dead awhile. If you want to debate this, you are in need of more help than I can provide.

2) IBM: Perhaps the largest, but certainly no thanks to Linux or OSS. In fact, if they are still indeed the largest, it is purely because of a philosophy that is exactly opposite to what is throttled around this commune.

3) Transmeta: Perhaps not dead, but certainly inconsequential at the present time. Remember when the Cruesoe was supposed to shake the entire world? Remember what actually happened? Me neither.

Nobody expects you to be objective around Slashdot, but it would be wise to at least consider what you are saying before doing so.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[Marx_Mrvelous]

I think I'll just throw this right back in your face:
Nobody expects you to be objective around Slashdot, but it would be wise to at least consider what you are saying before doing so.

Your opinions smack of a high school student who has a bone to pick with corporate america. Your opinions are unfounded and easily disproven; I've alreadydone this. No amonut of handwaving and strawman arguments can make your wrong opinion right; no one in their right mind would say that IBM is dying, nor that any AOL/Time Warner company is "dead and dying." And just to explain so that you can understand, a company is an idea, not some living creature, they evolve and change over time, like Netscape has.

So, in conclusion, I'd say you need to spend some time in some business classes (I'm sure you can take some when you get to college), and then maybe you'll understand my point.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[Oliver Defacszio]

Boy, have I been told. Look, junior, if you really, genuinely assert that a) Netscape is still alive in anything but a purely technical sense, or that b) OSS has anything to do with IBM's continued success, then there is absolutely no value in me bothering to even laugh at such embarassing misconceptions.

Some of us in this world live with our eyes open -- you should really try it some day. Until then, enjoy those pie-eyed ideals, big guy.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[shut_up_man]

In a lot of ways, I think a lot of what is mentioned in that article is about trying to create a strong alternative to the Wintel platform. Netscape, IBM, Sun... all these companies are being driven steadily backwards towards oblivion in the Microsoft world. Building their own OSes was a dismal failure (OS/2), so they're putting cash into OSS in the hope that the cycle will be broken, and they can start making money again.

To me, these strategies sound like frantic last gasps, not ultra-subtle "complentary commoditization" ploys.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[iabervon]

IBM did really well on the PC. They sold more of them than anyone at the time believed the whole market to be. It was only several machines later that their secret knowledge in putting together the commodity hardware to make the standard interface got reverse-engineered to the point where the PC because commodity. Unfortunately for them, in the business world, "step 3: profit!" isn't the last step; you have to do it again every few years, and it's been a long time since their original success.

As far as IBM's involvement with OSS, sure, they won't contribute that much to the total corpus of OSS. But IBM can fill in the gaps they care about. Software is always in the state of being just a little bit wrong for what you want (e.g., "I'd love to use it, but I can't stand it if Alt-d doesn't get you to the Location bar..."). IBM wants software which works exactly right in the situations they care about.

All of the reviews I've seen of linux installations by new people have gone: "It worked amazingly smoothly, up until the part where I tried to get {something} working, at which point I got stuck and frustrated. If I just skipped that step, everything was perfect, but I couldn't use my {something}." If IBM can fix this one thing, the OSS solution their consultants sell will work instead of not working. The customer won't pay 99% for a 99% solution, they'll find someone else who can promise a 100% solution. If IBM contributes the last 1% (in the configurations IBM wants to use), they get the customer instead of not getting the customer.

Of course, the benefit of using OSS is that IBM can actually work on the 1% that doesn't work, rather than trying to get their direct competitors to fix it.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Hmm, let me simplify further, so maybe you'll have a chance to understand...

AOL bought Netscape

Netscape is being developed by AOL

Mozilla/Netscape are two very alive products in the market today.

Further, IBM is making a very large OSS push to help their business. Considering that busines cycles are measured in years, not months, no one (not even you, despite how smart you think you are) can make any judgement about the importance or success for OSS in IBM.

Your arguments are, as they probaly always are, misunderstood, unfounded and ignorant.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[dbrutus]

IBM is certainly making Wintel less attractive compared to its hardware line by selling their accounts on the idea that all IBM hardware will be able to run one OS and you can rip and replace hardware to scale up to new needs without changing the software. With Wintel, there's a fairly low ceiling for how high they can scale up in one box (though they are trying to raise that). Certainly, the idea of no longer having to rewrite your apps for a different OS because you've topped out a particular IBM hardware line has got to be attractive in the real world.

Re:Another basic economics principle..

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's almost ironic that the author pics such dead or dying companies like Netscape, Transmeta, IBM, etc for his examples.. Look, I like these companies as much as anybody for their past, but let's face it..

Total loss of credibility by lumping IBM in with those other two. Weakens the whole argument.

Great Read!

[peterdaly]

That's got to be the best Joel on software I have ever read. Not only is it a great discussion of Open Source economics, but it is an interesting read to boot!

The "make your compliment a commodity" idea is great. Not a new idea, but I have never heard it put that way before, the examples (Flights to Miami vs. Hotel rooms in Miami, etc) make it even better.

I am not a Joel on software fan. Even if you arn't either, read the article. It will give you great examples of economics to pull out next time someone questions how Open Source can make money and survive.

-Pete

Re:Great Read!

[eddeye]

>The "make your compliment a commodity" idea is great.

I thought compliments were already a commodity. People say things like "You look great" and "Nice pants" quite often without even charging for it.

interesting take

[tps12]

This provides welcome refreshment after being spiritually parched by the "Open Source uber Alles" mantra of RMS et al.

I like the idea of OSS and proprietary software coexisting in mutual peace and prosperity. The OSS game industry has latched on to this idea, with commercial game scenarios that depend on open engines to run. Very cool, and moderately successful.

Maybe Microsoft is even on to something with its almost-not-quite-barely-open-source attempts? We'll see. In any case, companies would be unwise to write off open source and Linux yet...we're still fighting!

look at VA linux

[Anonymous Pancake]

VA linux is proof of how successful an open-source company can be!

IBMs vision

[dnoyeb]

This is what IBM thought when they let M$ sell them software so many years ago. Why would anyone wan't to pay for software on a long term basis? The hardware is where it's at.

Well just maybe Big Blue gets the last laugh?

good point, goes too far

[OpenMind(tm)]

The C programming language is best described as a hardware-independent assembler language.

Ugh. Sorry, but this one is a bit hard to swallow. Bytecode was not a new concept when java hit the schene, but that is no reason confuse portable source from portable binaries. Or to start making high- (or mid-) level languages equivalent to assembly code.

I think Joel starts out with a fairly good idea, which applies well to companies like IBM and HP, and tries to over-apply it. Why be compelled to include the Netscape example, when even he admits it doesn't work? Despite this, I think his observations are fairly insightful.

Re:good point, goes too far

[TWR]

Ugh. Sorry, but this one is a bit hard to swallow.

Ugh. Sorry, but you must be a youngin'. C has called "high-level assembly language" for years. As it says in the Jargon File:

"C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying according to the speaker, as 'a language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language'. "

-jon

Re:good point, goes too far

[angel'o'sphere]

The C programming language is best described as a hardware-independent assembler language.

Ugh. Sorry, but this one is a bit hard to swallow. Bytecode was not a new concept when java hit the schene, but that is no reason confuse portable source from portable binaries. Or to start making high- (or mid-) level languages equivalent to assembly code.

The last talk of James O. Coplien I attended here in our town: "C is portable assembly language(it was designed to be that), wheras C++ is a expressive hybrid language which supports OO(it was desigend liek that) and not an oo language, per se."

The argument that C is a portable assembly language is perfectly right, it was designed to be so.

angel'o'sphere

P.S. yes I think Joe is overapplying the idea especially if he thinks SUN is "complementing" it self away. Hint: the netweork is the computer. Hint-2: pervarsive computing. Hint-3: migrating code.

Re:good point, goes too far

[OpenMind(tm)]

I'm familiar of this use of jargon, although not of the intent. To my mind, this has always seemed fairly silly. C defines quite a few high-level constructs which you don't generally see in assembly code. Loops, simple subroutines, pretty much all control structures really. Add to that a typing system that goes well beyond that of the hardware, support for user-defined complex data types, and a robust user library. Yes, these are easily implementable in various assembly languages, but to say they are part of the language is rarely, if ever, true.

My interpretation of the C as assembly code jargon has always been that it combines the low-level power of assembly code with the features of a high-level language.

Re:good point, goes too far

[Eccles]

P.S. yes I think Joe is overapplying the idea especially if he thinks SUN is "complementing" it self away.

Exactly, I thought that was the weakest part of the article. Sun is in the hardware market, sure, but not in the end-user commodity desktop hardware market. Java makes it easier to create thin clients that work with the web, or to have the net still work on "specialty" hardware like Unix workstations.

Not the PC, the INTERFACE

[Smallest]

he author's description of IBM's "success" in commoditizing the PC makes NO sense whatsoever

no, it makes perfect sense, if you read it. he's describing how IBM published the specs to the interfaces so that 3rd party vendors could create plug-in cards. with cards, PCs can do more, making them more valuable in more situations, causing demand for them to increase.

-c

Re:Not the PC, the INTERFACE

[mumblestheclown]

Yes, exactly my point. IBM published the specs so that 3rd party vendors could create plug-in cards. Those specs also allowed people at Compaq and elsewhere to relatively trivially reverse engineer everything else about the PC, and from then on IBM went from a position of extreme strength in the PC field to being the company that brought us the Ambra, OS2 Warp, and the butterfly keyboard.

IBM may have caused demand to increase, but you're confusing AGGREGATE demand from PCs from monetizable demand by IBM. IBM is essentially out of the PC business now. It's hard to play "what if" in this situation and I am fully cognizant of the limitations of the following statement, but look at it this way: at this point, Apple is arguably doing better in PCs than IBM is.

It's also not clear that IBM had much choice in doing what they did. But to call their actions as successful FOR THEMSELVES in the PC sphere is quite a stretch.

Re:Not the PC, the INTERFACE

[Smallest]

remember, IBM didn't think that Compaq's reverse engineering of the BIOS was legal, and even took Compaq to court to prove it. of course IBM, lost, but that perobably wasn't in their business plan, either.

-c

Re:Not the PC, the INTERFACE

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM also collected a small RAND patent royalty for every clone shipped (and maybe still does), so it wasn't a complete disaster.

Re:Not the PC, the INTERFACE

[SuiteSisterMary]

Yes, exactly my point. IBM published the specs so that 3rd party vendors could create plug-in cards. Those specs also allowed people at Compaq and elsewhere to relatively trivially reverse engineer everything else about the PC, and from then on IBM went from a position of extreme strength in the PC field to being the company that brought us the Ambra, OS2 Warp, and the butterfly keyboard.

After which they tried to reassert their 'it's our shit, but you'll use it' mentality, with things like MCA. And they went down faster than a cheap hooker.

Re:Not the PC, the INTERFACE

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

But to call their actions as successful FOR THEMSELVES in the PC sphere is quite a stretch.

Of course, the original author never claimed the strategy was a success. He was asking "Why did they do that?" not "Did it work?" His explanation of why they did it makes a lot of sense. They didn't think that making a clone PC would be held to be legal, so their strategy obviously didn't include clones.

So the unspoken lesson here is, you might have a solid economic reason for doing what you do, and still get spanked in the marketplace.

Re:Not the PC, the INTERFACE

[nojayuk]

IBM owned the PC-compatible marketplace for ten years, when a PC cost three thousand bucks, and made big profits during that time. Nowadays a desktop PC costs five hundred. They can't compete (except with laptops), and they don't even try any more. They leave Gateway, Dell, HPQ and the other dwarves to scrabble for a 3% manufacturing margin and continue to make gigabucks with Z-Server and their big iron and software divisions.

Remember IBM is still a bigger company than MicroSoft.

Re:Not the PC, the INTERFACE

[Jason Earl]

The point is that if IBM didn't commoditize PC hardware then it would probably have been Apple that created the standard. In which case IBM would have seen their mainframe market dominated, and they would have completely missed the PC revolution. Besides which it can very easily be argued that IBM's PC lines failed when they tried to close the PC architecture with their proprietary MCA bus.

By this time PC buyers were very interested in maintaining a commodity PC market, and so IBM sales plummeted while Compaq, Dell, Gateway and other non-proprietary PC makers flourished. The fact that the PC market was IBM's to lose is evidenced by the fact that many people still bought the proprietary IBM machines, only to find that none of the inexpensive hardware add-ons would actually work in their machine.

come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard some pretty whacked out things said about RMS, but nobody has ever claimed that his communist leanings go as far as Stalinism. That's just going a bit too far.

GIve it up, MS

[eyepeepackets]

Good article and it helps explain some Microsoft behavior as concerns Linux. MS knows it will eventually have to give away Windows for free, hence the push into Xbox and the online services, etc. They're wondering how they're gonna pay the bills five years from now.

The interesting question is this: Would you use MS product even if it's free vs. Free/OS developed software? Now we're talking about quality vs. cost. Draw your own conclusions.

May you live in interesting times.

Re:GIve it up, MS

[mce]

Would I use MS product if it's free? Why not? I even use some that isn't (or rather wasn't, since they EOL-ed it long since).

But that's not to say "MicroSoft rejoice, for he will convert once it's free". I personally don't care about free or not (well, as long as I can find the money to bay the payware that I need, but that's an issue at an other level) (Besides: If I can't find it, its not my problem, but that of the producer who is missing out on a user.). But I do care about getting tools that let me do what I want to do the way that I want to do it, that do not fall over every other minute, and that can be fixed if they fall over. Taking all those aspects into account, all current MS software is out of the question whenever I have a say about what stuff I use.

Re:GIve it up, MS

[Oliver Defacszio]

MS knows it will eventually have to give away Windows for free

Say what? You know, I come to Slashdot to read the ridiculous comments, but sometimes even I am surprised at the idiocy. I am impressed, however, at your mind-reading abilities.

Quite good, but...

[00_NOP]

A lot of good points, but the Cathedral/Bazaar point is still a good one.

The argument here seems to be people make free-as-in-beer software because its cheap. But they may also do it because it produces better software (therefore reducing the TOC for the other products).

These two things are not necessarily in conflict.

Frankly, I also think that a number of arguments used are pure Aunt Sallys. Has anyone ever really said IBM have converted to communism? If so, which mental institution were they speaking from at the time?

it's not just simple micro-economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Though I'm sure there will be great knee-jerk responses to this from the Slashdotten faithful, the economics behind most of Joel's arguments are dead on. Though there is a twist he seems to miss. Investing your efforts in Open Source is taking out an insurance policy -- which is not generally a simple micro-economic idea.

Here's an example: I worked for a company between '99 and '01 porting their product to Linux. Why linux? It was matter of economics. 1) access to the kernel source means you can't get fatally screwed by not being able to do something when you want to write a driver, 2) the $$ was in the application not the OS, 3) the big $$$ was in selling proprietary hardware. So in Joel's model we used a commodity OS to maximize the value of the complementary hardware and the complementary application. What his simple micro-economic model misses is why we chose Linux as our commodity OS ... it wasn't for the $ cost, it was for the risk avoidance ... a more macro-economic idea: long term investment.

support

[Jacer]

In all seriousness, what you save in open source software you usually lose in support costs. This scenario for example, you employ a network administrator. This administrator needs to solve a problem. The time spent troubleshooting the problem on a closed source isn't that much. There are plenty of MCSE's qualified enough (and even more that aren't) to handle most of the issues that come up. Now when you start using open source software, you just don't have the same level of training, so your support now relys soley on what s/he taught himself or herself (not to mention the size of his or her *nix beard, well, well, if it's a her I hope she doesn't have a beard...)

Re:support

[David Kennedy]

I disagree. I've been using Unix since I started University, in 1991. When I have a problem with non-programming tasks it's typically a MS problem and not a Unix one (well, for HP, Sun boxen anyway).

The openness of the systems (even for non-Open systems like Solaris) makes them easy to maintain. All Unices behaves mostly alike, usually trivial to bring them to single user, fsck and reboot for example.

There are plenty of capable Unix admins, and plenty of resources for said admins - usually lab shelves are coming down with O'Reilly books, the web has plenty and if Usenet archives on Google can't solve your problem, well...

I'd argue, based PURELY on my current job experience, that the TCO of PCs is higher. We were a Unix based design lab, now we're PC based with Unix server farms. I've more calls on Support now than ever as I can't fix anything myself.

Re:support

[IamTheRealMike]

In all seriousness, what you save in open source software you usually lose in support costs.

This might be true -now-, if you deploy say a Linux desktop with no "get used to your new system" training, or you screw it up or whatevr, but basically the whole "OSS software support costs more than MS support" is just a short term argument. Right now MS is dominant, so MCSEs are 10 a penny (and lets face it, 12 year olds can get that qualification - experience virtually doesn't factor into it).

Now imagine that 60% of desktops run Linux, and Linux runs 80% of business machines. Now which is cheaper - MS support personnell or UNIX support? Linux of course, because it's wider spread and has higher number of people who are experienced with it. This isn't a general argument against open source.

Re:support

[pmz]

In all seriousness, what you save in open source software you usually lose in support costs.

This is only true if your staff's only experience is with M$ Windows.

Moving between UNIX and Linux really isn't difficult, because you tend to think in terms of DNS, NFS, Sendmail, etc., not UNIX vs. Linux. The relatively small differences between UNIX and Linux are generally quickly resolved with the `man` command. Taking notes along the way helps, too.

And why does having an MCSE make a person qualified to solve networking problems? A properly designed network includes no Microsoft products (allowing only for the occasional Windows desktop).

Run your stuff on a commodity

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft did and made billions. When it came to PC VS Mac the OSes were both proprietary but Windows won by sitting on top of a commodity. Same thing with Linux. Linux will move your total cost to deploy down and you will be able to sell more units being better positioned on the supply curve. We will never know but I am sure some people would buy a PC if only it were a $100 less. The problem with Linux investor mania was that people did not understand were the money was in Linux; when in doubt on a commodity the money goes to the buyer. If you want to make money with Liux find the company that can exploit a free resource the best.

Reason for Java

[Colossus202]

Joel says Sun made a mistake in releasing Java, which makes hardware a commodity.

I say the reason Sun released Java was to allow all the Windows app programmers to make apps that work on SPARC chips and Solaris as well as Windows.

It was a strategy of weakness, a "Me too" strategy. Not aimed at promoting their hardware, but demoting the more numerous boxen of their competitor.

*And* demoting their competitor's OS, which also had far more apps.

And Microsoft was very afraid of this possibility.

Still is (C#, anyone?).

Re:Reason for Java

[nuggz]

I agree, Sun wants to break inertia with MS Windows and Intel/AMD. If people are stuck on buying MS solutions there is no way Sun is even in the picture, they have to fix that before any sales.

Once Sun is a contender they can begin to compete and leverage their reputation and product advantages. Computer hardware is a commodity, in about the same way cars are.

Re:Reason for Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed -- It says something about the state of commercial UNIX as a platform when not even Sun is willing to write native software for it.

If it wasn't for all the goings-on in Linux space, UNIX would be pretty much a legacy platform as far as new development is concerned. $100s of millions of dollars in Solaris/SVR4 development, and it becomes basically a Oracle and Java bootstrapper --- sad.

Microsoft, both with J++ and NET is very careful about keeping it 'native enough' that they can build upon their existing software infrastructure. Sun couldn't or wouldn't do that.

Re:Reason for Java

[namespan]

Java mostly looks like a solution looking for a problem. It originally was a language for delivering services over an interactive television like product. They realized the web was getting close. So they released it.

I don't think the WORA aspect of the product fit into a larger strategy for a while. Then they came up with "the network is the computer".... the network delivers code that can run on any computer, and services that run on high powered hardware. Who sells the hardware that delivers code and services?

Sun.

I think the commodotize your complement analysis is brilliant, and I appreciate being exposed to it, but like all principles and theories, its application is the trick. How many times in physics did you misapply a correct physical principle? In Econ, it's even easier.

And we also operate in a world where no one principle is the end of the story.

Sun's strategy is half-baked, but not as much as Joel thinks it is.

Re:Reason for Java

[pgh_raver_dave]

Of course you could also claim that Java applets greatly strengthen the position of the server as opposed to the PC in the marketplace.

Re:Reason for Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is not afraid of client side Java. If they were they would never have released the MS JVM, the only JVM that makes Java fast enough to be practicle as an application language. God knows all the other Windows JVMs suck complete ass. C# is not a fearful reaction to Java, its a practicle language to all MS to promote software for all of THEIR platforms. They wanted Java to be that, but Sun wouldn't let them improve the language (and god knows the GUI classes needed some fucking improvement) so they created a better language for their task. Sure it won't allow you to easily port code to Linux but I am sure MS could give a damn about that.

Re:Reason for Java

[ClosedSource]

"Joel says Sun made a mistake in releasing Java, which makes hardware a commodity."

I think Sun's intent was to try to get a majority of companies hooked on Java and then sell some specialized hardware that would accelerate it. They couldn't quite accomplish the first goal so they never could cash in on the second.

"I say the reason Sun released Java was to allow all the Windows app programmers to make apps that work on SPARC chips and Solaris as well as Windows."

I doubt that many Windows developers had a lot of interest in developing Solaris applications. If they did, they would be more interested in a ported version of the Win32 API than they would in learning how to do things the Java way. That's why the courts missed the point with J++. Java tweaked for Windows is exactly the correct approach for most Windows developers. The courts found that approach illegal, thus C#.

Who is he quoting?

[catfood]

Joel "read me I'm the next Jon Katz" Spolsky wrote, inter alia:

Headline: IBM Spends Millions to Develop Open Source Software.

Myth: They're doing this because Lou Gerstner read the GNU Manifesto and decided he doesn't actually like capitalism.

Headline: Sun and HP Pay Ximian To Hack on Gnome.

Myth: Sun and HP are supporting free software because they like Bazaars, not Cathedrals.

Where does Spolsky get these myths? Does anybody seriously believe that Gerstner has gone all hippy-love on his shareholders? Has anybody published the idea that Sun and HP are ideological converts to Free Software? Does this even past the "huh?" test?

The "myths" are straw men, uncited, unsupported. Without them, what is Spolsky saying? That businesses use Open Source for... business reasons? That wouldn't be much of a story, would it?

Move along, nothing to see here. Proving you're smarter than people who don't exist by making up their positions and knocking them down isn't much of an exercise.

Re:Who is he quoting?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Where does Spolsky get these myths? "

Probably by reading slashdot posts written by people who actually think that IBM is getting all hippy-trippy due to IBM's marketing campaign.

Re:Who is he quoting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the other responder said, those are pretty likely quotes right off of Slashdot posted on a daily basis.

No, it doesn't even pass the "huh?" test but nobody ever accused the populace at large of being capable of going "huh?".

Re:Who is he quoting?

[Junks Jerzey]

Where does Spolsky get these myths? Does anybody seriously believe that Gerstner has gone all hippy-love on his shareholders? Has anybody published the idea that Sun and HP are ideological converts to Free Software? Does this even past the "huh?" test?

They're mild parodies of what seem to be mainstream views on Slashdot. You'll find lots and lots of people arguing, for example, that record companies are evil and all music should be given away free. People *love* to hear that IBM is doing work to support Linux, but that the same time don't remind them that IBM is a business. They don't want to hear that. They like to think that IBM is doing this out of the goodness of its heart.

In general, Slashdot represents the ideal of college students without much disposable income.

Re:Who is he quoting?

[Omnifarious]

I think it's still quite useful to know exactly how Open Source provides business benefits for IBM. Both so the model can be replicated, and so IBM's involvement can be better understood. If you know why your business partner wants to do something, it will help you make better descisions as to how to make their involvement work well for you too.

Re:Who is he quoting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you kidding? College students have LOTS of disposable income!!! They also know how to spend wisely: If they can get their pr0n, warez, and music for free, that leaves WAY more money for beer and strippers.

Re:Who is he quoting?

[smallpaul]

They're mild parodies of what seem to be mainstream views on Slashdot. You'll find lots and lots of people arguing, for example, that record companies are evil and all music should be given away free.

What does that have to do with anything? Record companies, free music, IBM. How are these things related?

People *love* to hear that IBM is doing work to support Linux, but that the same time don't remind them that IBM is a business. They don't want to hear that.

Who are you talking about? Please cite someone complaining about the fact that IBM is a business.

They like to think that IBM is doing this out of the goodness of its heart.

Who are you talking about? You're as bad as Joel. I've never heard anyone on Slashdot say anything remotely like this.

Re:Who is he quoting?

[timeOday]

You've just propped up the strawman again with nothing other than hot air, Just like Joel.

I bet you can't find even a handful of slashdot comments to the effect that IBM is backing Linux from the goodness of their hearts - let alone enough to justify your assertion of this being a "mainstream" view on Slashdot. Feel free to prove me wrong (and I don't mean simply re-asserting your strawman argument.)

What's *really* mainstream on Slashdot are self-aggrandizing efforts to "burst somebody's bubble" with the cold, hard facts that only you are man enough to face objectively. (Cue soundbyte: "bandwidth isn't free" and "business exist to increase shareholder value.")

Re:Who is he quoting?

[sien]

That is harsh. Have a look around his site. His views are based on having a lot of experience (he's a former MS developer) and he knows what he is talking about.

Thinking about why people are supporting Open Source and what use for companies Open Source is is something that has to be done. Also, I don't think his myths are meant to be taken too literally. And let's face it, IBM's marketing team is trying to push the idea that IBM has some how become a nice gentle company. You don't come up with Peace, Love and Linux as a slogan if you're not trying to push that message at least to some degree. Sun and HP are also into marketing to developers along these lines.

Re:Who is he quoting?

[Arandir]

Myth: They're doing this because Lou Gerstner read the GNU Manifesto and decided he doesn't actually like capitalism.

It's hyperbole of course. Duh!

The myth as stated is "IBM gets it". The myth translated into SlashdotSpeak is "IBM understands the philosophy of Richard Stallman and have decided to jump on board the freedom train." This is nonsense. IBM exists for one purpose and one purpose only: to make money for their shareholders.

Joel

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh g*d, not this idiot again.

Isn't there some other news you can post, like maybe an article on DOOM 3 or something? Something with some real MEAT in it for a change?

economics of fun ?

[bug1]

In his economic rant he fails to consider the fact that money isnt everything to all people.

Many Free software writes consider their primary motive to be enjoyment, another primary motive to free software is "scratch an itch" (people are just compeled to do it)

Unless an economic value can put on doing something for non ecenomic reason (and is it even theoretically possbile to doso) then any economic analysis of Free/Open source movement is going to be obscured by noise.

Re:economics of fun ?

[Skidge]

But the article was about why businesses are becoming pro-open source. For businesses, money is pretty much everything. So an economic analysis of the reasons behind large corporations supporting open source does make sense.

Re:economics of fun ?

[bug1]

True, but then they are only looking at part of the picture.

They are considering the effect of Free software, and ignoring the cause.

A superficial analysis

Re:economics of fun ?

[Anonymous Coward]

" In his economic rant he fails to consider the fact that money isnt everything to all people."

Yes, but he goes farther and says that an economic model does not only use money to measure the cost.

The concept of cost of oportunity is a very important one. You can use this concept even to explain personal, every-day desicions.

This is what the article is aimed at. Doing anything, has a cost. You could be doing anything else that might be better for you, but you are choosing not to. And since all the basic necesities have a cost, you need to somehow pay for them. To eat you could plant/grow whatever you are eating, or do something to the one thats planting/growing, like build their house....

The thing about Open source is that is has great advantages that are dificult to meassure. they don't directly translate into food.

So Joel's Saying What?

[BrodieBruce]

I read this article thinking that it would give me a different perspective on why so many are eager to jump on the open source bandwagon.

I was wrong.

Instead I found myself reading paragraph after paragraph thinking "duh." I could not help but notice that nearly everything he said is a commonly known fact to every /. reader I know. Or at least every /. reader who's got any common sense.

Joel goes on and on about how companies are switching to open source in order to commoditize operating systems. That's great. I kinda already had a feeling that people didn't want to let M$ continue to rape them.

Too bad he didn't give some educated speculation on where we'll be 5 or 10 years from now due to increased industry support for open source software.

Re:So Joel's Saying What?

[fizban]

every /. reader who's got any common sense != every /. reader

So, thank you to the person that brought this article to the attention of /. because it helps educate those in our community who are just open source cheerleaders (dumb and blonde, most likely).

Fog Creek Software versus Joel # +1; informative #

[Anonymous Coward]

Joel spews on "Open Sores"; however, his software
company is proprietary.

Obviously, his company doesnt believe his article.

Thanks in advance.

Woot,
Help to Rid Slashdot of JonKatz

Joel has analyzed this correctly

[igiveup]

I have long been dismayed by the excitement the Open Source/Linux commnunity has had reagarding companies such as IBM, Oracle, and HP contributing to Open Source projects. It seems to me all the Open Source developers are being willing pawns in these companies "Beat Microsoft" tactics.

A few years ago the Open Source/Linux community seemed to be much more hobbyist in nature. There were comments like "Beat Microsoft" and such, but they seemed more tongue-in-cheek that serious. However, recently the whole "Beat Microsoft" idea seems to have consumed the community, much to its own loss. And I think a lot of this has been inspired by the contributions of these other large companies. The net result seems to be a focus on simply beating Microsoft products instead of doing what you like or want to do, which leads to what I see as a lack of innovation. Is it just me, or do most recent Open Source developments/projects seem to free versions of existing proprietary products? Why haven't any truly original new ideas come out of the Open Source community? And I don't mean yet another language either. (For the record, I'm certainly haven't seen much innovation out of Microsoft either).

I would love to see the Open Source/Linux community go back to writing software for the love of writing software, not to fulfill IBM or RMS' goal of "Beating Microsoft". I think much better and innovative software would result.

Wrong on Sun and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

begin.

Java was not some knee jerk response to 'Fear and Loathing of M$'.

Java was Sun's attempt to bring a braintrust of developers into a 'Sun == the future' mindset. What they did was for a short time, and persisting still, create a marketplace of Sun intelligensia champions. The side effect of crushing thier platform, because they underestimated the viability of Linux, was just that, an underestimation.

end.

His Father is a Dinasaur

[FreeUser]

The greatest lie of our market-based system is that time equals money, in all circumstances.

Exactly!

If you and your girlfriend are having sex (for free), do you regret it because you spent six hours making passionate love and didn't charge her for it? Does she regret it because she didn't charge you? After all, time is money and hookers typically charge a couple hundred bucks an hour.

(I won't bother with the "did you buy her dinner, then you paid for it" argument, since it misses a number of nuances ... like going out to dinner because you enjoy eating out, and enjoy a woman's company, etc.).

Contrary to popular myth greed ins't good, and most of the time time isn't money. Greed may be a reality we have to live with (especially living in a society that deiefies and nurturs it the way ours does), but it comes at a very high cost. I could charge someone for the time I spend boring holes in the sky in my little Beech Sundowner, but since I'm doing it for pleasure, and taking a friend along for a ride doesn't cost me anymore than flying by myself does, the only thing greed would bring me in that context is a little money at the expense of taking a hobby I love and turning it into Yet Another Mundane Job. No thanks.

The same applies to free software. Those who write free software (myself included) do so because we love to do it, not because we are trying to get rich doing so. If you're writing free software because you hope to get rich by doing so, then you're in the wrong field.

The amount of great software I've received for free, not to mention the amount of freedom I've gained in both my business and home life by using free software, more than compensates me for the time I put into it, whether it is writing stuff as a hobby, or testing it (and reporting bugs) for my job. The payoff is in the collaboration, a collaboration to a degree which wouldn't exist between people blinded by their myopic, Ayn Randian Greed.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor matey. You can't see the difference between sex and coding. Tell me something, do you ever get any sex?

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[killmenow]

Does she regret it because she didn't charge you?

You mean your girlfriend doesn't charge?

Where do I find one of those?

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[sketerpot]

This all depends on what you think that the purpose of life is. If you are one of the strange people who think that life is about gathering as much money as possible then time is money, work hard, la la la. If you think (I'm in this category) that you should strive to be happy, make others happy (or at least don't make them unhappy unless they deserve it), and try to make the world even slightly better, then writing software and giving it away is well worth the time you put into it. You enjoy your hobby, get cool software, and other people get software too! You also get software from people with a similar philosophy. And yes, some free stuff is as good as or better than any commercial counterpart. Some examples that are hard to dispute are Hello World and ls. Some debatable ones are Python (a great language, much better than Visual Basic IMO) and Apache (which runs on almost all of the web servers with top uptime, according to netcraft.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[jackjumper]

Yeah, but Joel's article isn't about why *you're* writing free software, it's why IBM is paying people to write it. They're two completely different things.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[tshak]

If you and your girlfriend are having sex (for free), do you regret it because you spent six hours making passionate love and didn't charge her for it?

No, but most people don't use this as a business plan either (I've heard some Internet statistics that challenge this but you get the point). The point is, I may love programming software, and I may get great OSS based programs in return (give/take relationship), but it doesn't feed my family or pay the bills.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[Anonymous Coward]

If you and your girlfriend are having sex (for free), do you regret it because you spent six hours making passionate love and didn't charge her for it? Does she regret it because she didn't charge you? After all, time is money and hookers typically charge a couple hundred bucks an hour.


There're a couple of ways of looking at it, whether it's having sex or just spending time with her in general:

1) her time is as valuable to her as your time is to you, therefore if she were to charge you and you were to charge her, it should come out to 0 anyway.

2) the reward for spending time with her is usually much greater than anything else you could have earned during that time (and, for some of us, sex is that reward, which is obviously worth a great deal because you could have to pay a great deal of money for it if you wanted to spend a couple hours with a hooker instead; for the rest of us, the time itself can be rewarding).

If I could get paid monetarily for every waking hour of my life, I probably would (and I'd minimize sleep time as much as possible). However, if it meant giving up the free things in life that ultimately have a tendency to be more satisfying than those things I currently get paid for, it wouldn't matter how much was offered for my hours.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[RocketJeff]

Poor matey. You can't see the difference between sex and coding. Tell me something, do you ever get any sex?

Well, he gets a lot of code...

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[humphreybogus]

As I understand it, unless you hold a commercial pilot's license, it would be a violation of FAA regulations for you to charge your passengers any more than the pro-rata cost of the trip--fuel, airplane depreciation, etc.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[MarvinMouse]

If I may have the opportunity to rephrase something in my original message. I will do so here.

I didn't mean for it to come across as my time is worth money. My message meant to be that my is worth more then nothing. Therefore, even if I donate it to a project such as Linux, it is still worth something.

The main essence of my original post, and my fathers comments is that as long as we are mortal (not living forever) our time is worth something. Just like as long as people believe paper with pictures of Laurier (in Canada) or Washington (in the US) or someone else is worth something, then they are. Even though they are just pieces of paper in reality.

Now, I am not saying that I wouldn't decide to donate my time to worthy causes. As I do spend a lot of time programming and retouching my search engine, as well as other projects. And if I ever felt that I could help with Linux I definitely would be willing to. I am just saying that even though it doesn't cost me anything in dollars and cents, it does cost me time. Time which I do not have an endless supply of.

As well, if I decide to have sex with my g/f or do anything else recreational. It isn't time that is worth nothing. It is time that I have decided to spend on romance, and entertainment.

I think the gist of my father's message is a good one for people, and perhaps a happier one then originally came across.

You only have so much time on this planet, spend it wisely, as your time is worth something to you. Not in dollars and cents, but in experiences, freedom and your life. If you decide to donate your time, remember that you are doing just that donating your time to what you believe is a worthy cause.

I think that's a good morale for people today, and it definitely isn't just greed.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeUser wrote: Those who write free software (myself included) do so because we love to do it, not because we are trying to get rich doing so. If you're writing free software because you hope to get rich by doing so, then you're in the wrong field.

I disagree. I believe that it is perfectly valid to try to "get rich" writing free software. Good examples are Zope and the JBoss group. If giving software away for free helps to market consulting services, then one can indeed "get rich". Now, we're obviously not talking Bill Gates rich, but we are talking doctor rich (which is rich enough for me).

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[guanxi]

Time isn't money, but all time does have value. (At least, I value my limited time on this planet and I hope everyone else does.)

Money is merely a system for abstracting value so it can be easily traded and transferred, to your children; between millions of consumers, factory workers and shareholders; and instantly across oceans. It's flawed, as you point out, but it's workable and nobody has significantly improved on it (that I've heard of, though I'm no economist).

I think Joel's point is that some open source advocates claim that, because you pay $0 for OSS, it costs nothing. But it does cost time, which does have value. If the time belongs to a for-profit company, then that time has monetary value -- the company pays for those hours, which could be used for something more profitable.

And even if the OSS contributors don't work for for-profit companies, their time does cost them just as much, even if it's hard to attach a number to.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[Eccles]

You mean your girlfriend doesn't charge?

Not unless you count the cost of an occasional vinyl repair kit...

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[enjo13]

Your missing the point. Everything you do has VALUE..

Your sex example. I place a high VALUE on sex.. so no, I don't regret doing for 10 minutes because I place a high value on it.

In economics money is used to provide an expression for value. It creates a stable base on which all types of economic comparisons are made. And as such, time has a certain value to it (and an associated opportunity cost). In other words if I spend an hour programming something for free... that brings me a feeling of satisfaction (lets say $80 worth of satisfcation). I could have spent that hour cooking, but that only brings me $20 in satisfaction... see?

Business place value on time. If someone spends 4 hours learning how to use Mozilla they have brought very little value to the company (After all, what does Mozilla have that IE doesn't.. and they already have sunk the cost of learning IE)...If they spend those 4 hours writing documentation, they have created value for the company.

Your example even demonstrates this. You place a certain value on your hobby... you also likely value the no-hassle pleasure you get form bringing a friend. To turn this into a business would decrease its value. An economist would put a dollar amount on this value.. and then could use it to explain your behavior.

In this sense.. everything has a value including time. Time is valuable, and how you use that time has an associated cost.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[5KVGhost]

The same applies to free software. Those who write free software (myself included) do so because we love to do it, not because we are trying to get rich doing so. If you're writing free software because you hope to get rich by doing so, then you're in the wrong field.

The amount of great software I've received for free, not to mention the amount of freedom I've gained in both my business and home life by using free software, more than compensates me for the time I put into it, whether it is writing stuff as a hobby, or testing it (and reporting bugs) for my job. The payoff is in the collaboration, a collaboration to a degree which wouldn't exist between people blinded by their myopic, Ayn Randian Greed.

Your scope is too narrow and your argument is therefore flawed. No one seriously claims that every human transaction is driven by some simplistic concept of monetary greed. Folks tend to act, ultimately, out of enlightened self-interest. That's much more basic than money. You code for the reasons you note above and you are satisfied that you benefit from doing so. Likewise, I work in my garden because I enjoy the work and enjoy eating the fresh vegetables that result. I give away fresh vegetables to my neighbors because I like them and because I like to do my part in maintaining a friendly social atmosphere in my neighborhood. Making money's not really a factor.

Free software isn't free, it's simply subsidized. Unless you're independently wealthy or living off someone else's paycheck you'd better be making money doing something or you're going to have difficulties paying for your hobbies. The amount of time people can spend working on free software or flying airplanes, like any other project not done for money, is limited by how much time they're willing to spare from doing other more necessary things in life.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[FreeUser]

As I understand it, unless you hold a commercial pilot's license, it would be a violation of FAA regulations for you to charge your passengers any more than the pro-rata cost of the trip--fuel, airplane depreciation, etc.

First, that is incorrect. Without a commercial license you CANNOT charge a passenger for their portion of the plane's depreciation (planes generally appreciate in value anyway, but that's another story). You can only charge their pro-rata cost of fuel (and oil, if any), landing/parking fees, etc. Even estimated per hour costs of maintenance are off limits.

Second, all of this bears absolutely no relevance to the point I was making. If I didn't have a commercial pilots license I could easilly go out and get one (besides, doing lazy eights and chandellas is fun), which would in no way change the fact that if I were to start charging friends for flights I would turn a fun hobby into a mundane job.

It would also be illegal to do flights for hire in a Part 91 aircraft ... I would have to maintain it according to the stricter standards for commercial for-hire aircraft (including 100 hour inspections, etc.). Once again though that is completely irrelevant to the point I was making.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[FreeUser]

If giving software away for free helps to market consulting services, then one can indeed "get rich".

Free Software does not mean 'gratis', it means software freedom. There is a difference, as RMS and others have been at pains to point out for years now.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[Freedom Bug]

Sex has a huge dollar value, at least for me.

Example: I've played hookey from work for sex. My company was at the time billing me out at US$100 per hour. I was risking losing my job. It was worth it.

The reason you don't pay for sex is because the transaction, the act of paying for it, has a real cost Sex that you pay for is worth less than sex that you get for free.

All of my time has value. I prefer to think of it the other way around, though: All money is time. Money can be limitless. Time marches on.

Bryan

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[FreeUser]

I think the gist of my father's message is a good one for people, and perhaps a happier one then originally came across.

That is indeed a happier and fundamentally more healthy approach than your original post described, and a stance I think most of us (myself included) would agree on.

Of course, this gets back to the question of why your father would suggest you turn a hobby you enjoy doing into a mundane job that would almost certainly rob you of a significant portion of that enjoyment. I somehow don't see parents doing the same for other acts (e.g. the sexual example I brought up earlier) ... and that generation's fascination with greed (I've seen it in my own family) has had some rather unpleasant consiquences for our culture, and our world.

Time may have intrinsic value, but if so that value is (for the most part) intangible, just as the intrinsic value of 'love' or any other of a dozen generally positive emotions is intangible. This value certainly doesn't equal money, indeed it is more often than not completely orthogonal to monetary value, circular Randian arguments (as seen in other posts in this thread) notwithstanding.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[Anonymous Coward]

There are people who can do what they love and get paid for it and not have it turn into "a mundane job."

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[CharlesEGrant]

For your first example you have chosen one of the few human activities that almost automatically produces a mutual benefit. Even in this case things often aren't always so simple. Surely you've heard complaints about selfish lovers who got their rocks off and then rolled over and went to sleep, or lovers that went all sulky when their partner wouldn't indulge them in a night of passion just because they had a continuum mechanics final at 7AM the next morning.

Money is just an abstraction for measuring the allocation of resources and the fairness of exchanges. Certainly, most of us can navigate our personal relationships without getting bogged down in this level of abstraction. However, since there are 6 billion people in the world today, most of our interactions are going to be with strangers, and when dealing with strangers it is pretty darned convenient to have a shared, abstract, impersonal system of valuing goods and time. Certainly by the time your start swapping metric tons of leucine and megaliters of heating oil among hundreds of producers an abstraction like money is essential.

Like any technology money has bugs and downsides. It may even be a technology that needs to be replaced. However, you can't just wave away the underlying issues. How do we measure the allocation of resources? How do we fairly exchange goods and services of widely disparate natures and from widely disparate origins?

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[God! Awful]

The amount of great software I've received for free, not to mention the amount of freedom I've gained in both my business and home life by using free software, more than compensates me for the time I put into it, whether it is writing stuff as a hobby, or testing it (and reporting bugs) for my job.

What you lack, my friend, is an elementary knowledge of game theory. I have never contributed a single line of code to a free software project, and yet I still have access to all the great free software that you do. My gain, in any tangible sense, is exactly the same as your gain. If you perform a good deed and then you find a $100 bill lying on the street, you are not being rewarded for your good deed, although if you believe in karma you might interpret it as such.

I too embark on the occasional programming project just for fun. Mostly they are for my own interest. I have released a few of the binaries for free, but I don't open source them. Anyway, they are just toys. You justify your contributions by the warm and tingly feeling you get when you think that some random person is using your app for free. I get my warm and tingly feeling from the knowledge that I am not thoughtlessly putting other programmers out of work.

The point is, neither of us is gaining any tangible benefit from releasing or not releasing the software that we were going to write anyway, but our decision about what to do with it reflects our value systems.

-a
Free software: programmers helping programmers to stay unemployed.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[bnenning]

I get my warm and tingly feeling from the knowledge that I am not thoughtlessly putting other programmers out of work.

If you really believe this, please consult a decent economics book immediately, preferably one which discusses the broken window fallacy.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[God! Awful]

I know about the broken window fallacy. It is not a perfect analogy because the programmers in this case are not doing useless work. They are merely doing useful work that others are willing to do for free.

Let's say you are a factory worker who is being laid off because the factory is being moved to Mexico, where the workers will be paid 8 cents an hour. I doubt you would use the broken window argument here. This is a protectionism vs. globalization argument, pure and simple.

-a

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[bnenning]

I know about the broken window fallacy. It is not a perfect analogy because the programmers in this case are not doing useless work. They are merely doing useful work that others are willing to do for free.

And the window repairman isn't doing useless work either, but after breaking a window and having him repair it, there is no net increase in wealth. The economy would be better off if the window's owner could spend his money on something other than window repairs. Likewise, paying many programmers to write nearly-identical code is a much less efficient use of resources than using free software and directing those resources toward other activities (which may involve developing new software, rather than reinventing the wheel).

This is a protectionism vs. globalization argument

Sort of, except a lot of the anti-globalization arguments don't apply to free software, such as alleged mistreatment of workers and environmental damage. Without those considerations, protectionism is simply a subsidy to a favored group at the expense of the general public, and I consider that a bad thing even if I am in the group that would supposedly benefit.

If free software puts me out of work, that's too bad for me but a net gain for the economy. I can help myself and produce a larger economic gain by writing better software, or by figuring out how to add value to free software solutions.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[God! Awful]

the window repairman isn't doing useless work either, but after breaking a window and having him repair it, there is no net increase in wealth. The economy would be better off if the window's owner could spend his money on something other than window repairs. Likewise, paying many programmers to write nearly-identical code is a much less efficient use of resources than using free software and directing those resources toward other activities (which may involve developing new software, rather than reinventing the wheel).

Having multiple people develop the same software creates diversity. Different programmers employ various architectures and programming languages, and this creates an atmosphere where the consumer has a choice. This even happens with open source projects. Look at how many distributions of Linux there are, not to mention all the BSDs. As a C++ programmer and advocate, I wouldn't be a kernel hacker, even if I was an open source zealot. I would rather be working on an OS that was written in C++.

If free software puts me out of work, that's too bad for me but a net gain for the economy. I can help myself and produce a larger economic gain by writing better software, or by figuring out how to add value to free software solutions.

I, like a lot of people, feel that free software will have a stifling effect on the economy because of viral licensing. That's why I'm not viscerally opposed to the BSD license or the LGPL. I think the jury's still out on whether they will have a net good effect, but I'm very confident that the GPL will have a bad effect.

-a

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[bnenning]

That's why I'm not viscerally opposed to the BSD license or the LGPL. I think the jury's still out on whether they will have a net good effect, but I'm very confident that the GPL will have a bad effect.

Interesting, we agree in relative terms. I'm very confident the BSD and LGPL licenses are a net positive, and I'm unsure about the GPL.

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[evilquaker]

If someone spends 4 hours learning how to use Mozilla they have brought very little value to the company (After all, what does Mozilla have that IE doesn't.. and they already have sunk the cost of learning IE)

Let's see:

1. Tabbed browsing
2. Pop-up blocking
3. Mouse gestures
4. Security

None of those will take you an hour to learn, but they will boost your productivity (at least, they will if you do any serious websurfing at work (and yes, there are some jobs (such as mine) where serious browsing is important)).

Re:His Father is a Dinasaur

[God! Awful]

Interesting, we agree in relative terms. I'm very confident the BSD and LGPL licenses are a net positive, and I'm unsure about the GPL.

Well, this will probably be the first time a slashdot thread ends in relative agreement.

-a

"Economics for Dummies"

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in college I took two intro economics courses: macroeconomics and microeconomics.

and now I am an expert, or at least, I play one on the internet. Just like everyone from slashdot who will reply to this story... Except I am getting paid to talk about something I obviously know nothing about, while y'all are not. ha, ha.

-Joel

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Total miss at the end

[toriver]

Nice article, until he comes to Java and Sun at the end, then he misses.

1) Java wasn't made from a hatred of Microsoft. Heck, they event contracted Microsoft to handle the Windows implementation of the spec (before Microsoft decided to violate the contract).

2) Sun make implementations for Windows (for the market share) and Solaris (their stuff), because Java is software and Sun is a hardware company that coincidentally also makes software.

The Solaris platform already was semi-crossplatform in that it's another Unix: If you write software that will run on Solaris it can be modified to run on most other Unixen.

So why didn't Sun go the Apple route and make a totally proprietary and closed architecture and operating system? The same reason Apple left their "route" and embraced BSD, PCI and whatnot:

Because proprietary sucks.

If you're the only one going your way, you end up taking all the chances, doing all the work and become your own "weakest link".

If you go with published specs, open standards and shared source, you will get competition, yes, but you will also get better quality though that competition, and you will be able to benefit from the work of others, because you can more easily understand what they do, and be able to match their features.

You win.

Re:Total miss at the end

[mattblanchard]

Only recently (post Java1.1) has Sun viewed itself as MS's competition. When Java was created, Sun was a hardware shop. They created Java to commoditize the OS - if the OS is a commodity, they sell more hardware to run it on. They hired MS to help them with marketing: "Write Once, Run Anywhere" just doesn't ring true if it won't run on windos.

The thing is, Microsoft was two or three steps ahead of them. MS knew that Java would be a hit and that one day Sun would become a real competitor on the software front. So they "embrace and extend" Java and helped make the "best" JVM out there. Once things started picking up for Sun, Billy G threw a curve.

Sun was enjoying the economic boom and doing quite well selling their hardware and improving Java. But Java was not their cash-cow. It was a way to sell hardware. "Develop your Java apps on your cheap windows boxen, then depoy them on our latest mega-machine!" They still didn't see the money in Java itself. But MS did...

And MS decided to "extend" the Java 1.1 spec by leaving out RMI. Oh man, how I loathed them for that. What a dirty trick. But it worked, and Sun sued them and MS didnt care, and now Scott McNeally hates MS more than he likes Sun.

And that is why Sun is falling apart. They have now become the MS competitors that Bill Gates knew they would be 10 years ago. A very comfortable and well-understood position that MS can handle. The hardware sales languish, and their their original business model collects dust in the corner while their CEO rants about MS. It sucked anyways (IBM already did it), but they have yet to rewrite it.

However, the reason that Joel brought up Sun wasn't to show how blind rage at Microsoft can cause Java. It was to show how a company can ignore basic economic principles and commoditize the very thing they are trying to sell. Not a very smart business plan, IMVHO.

Re:Total miss at the end

[markmoss]

Java didn't and wasn't intended to commoditize _all_ the hardware, or to make _all_ software run on any hardware. Sun sells high cost high performance hardware. Why would people pay Sun's prices for fast boxen, then cripple them running an interpreted language?

Because they buy Sun boxen to run a particular, very resource-intensive, program which has been compiled specifically for the Sun. But they also need to run various other programs not requiring much in the way of resources. If they had to buy a Wintel box to do that, they might discover that it wasn't totally impossible to stretch the Wintel architecture to also cover the stuff they bought the Sun for. But if the commodity software becomes hardware independent, then Sun might be able to keep it's customers entirely on Sun boxen.

Sun did understand what they were doing. They didn't understand how M$ was going to embrace & extend...

Re:Total miss at the end

[toriver]

And MS decided to "extend" the Java 1.1 spec by leaving out RMI.

No, the extensions were alterations they did to java.* classes like new constants in java.util.Locale that would break on non-MS VMs. Leaving out RMI and dragging their feet with implementing JNI were violations of a different part of the contract/license where a licensee is mandated to implement new features within six months.

It was to show how a company can ignore basic economic principles and commoditize the very thing they are trying to sell.

As far as I can see, Sun makes money from licensing out their implementation, the trademark and logo, education, certification and a host of other Java-related services: Just the same thing Joel seems to praise IBM for doing (in relation to Linux)...

Why am I a troll I am just like everyone else...

[rocket97]

Can you install Linux on this?

Niggers are more racist than whites

[Anonymous Coward]

NEW YORK (AP) --A heavily armed black man allegedly shot three people and tried to set fire to patrons at a trendy Manhattan wine bar before he was overpowered by two women and arrested -- capping a bizarre outburst of violence that police said was racially motivated.

Steven Johnson, 34, was wounded by officers before being charged with attempted murder following what marked the latest in a series of violent crimes in downtown Manhattan.

He was carrying three loaded guns, 153 rounds of ammunition and a samurai sword when he approached four white people walking in the East Village on Sunday at about 2 a.m. and told them: "I have a problem with you," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

Johnson shot one of the men, Jonah Brander, in the upper body, followed him as he ran to the door of the bar and shot him again, police said. Johnson then entered the bar and ordered up to 40 patrons to the kitchen, police said.

Shoji Iso, a 54-year-old Asian man who owns a store next to the bar, heard the shots and peeked in, and Johnson shot him in the wrist, police said.

Johnson then allegedly forced a woman to start putting plastic handcuffs on the hostages while he sprayed the crowd with kerosene and fired occasional shots at police cars outside.

Witnesses told police that Johnson was "ranting about white people and vowed revenge for thousands of years of suffering." Johnson said that he was having "fun" and that "a real man chooses when he dies," Kelly said.

After Johnson pulled out a fireplace lighter, Annie Hubbard and Ann Margaret Gidley, both of Manhattan, tackled Johnson, and he shot Hubbard in the leg, police said.

Gidley, 23, told the Daily News that she knew she had to act.

"It was do something or die," she said. "I didn't think it was time to go yet."

Officers heard the shots and stormed the bar, grazing Johnson in the head with a bullet and taking him into custody 45 minutes after the ordeal began.

"Those two women did the right thing, a very important thing ... they were very brave," Kelly said.

The violence came just days after a burglar broke into two apartments in the Lower East Side on Wednesday and shot three people to death, including an 86-year-old man and his 88-year-old wife. In April, a man was shot in the face during a robbery attempt in Greenwich Village.

Police said Johnson, who has AIDS, apparently wanted to be shot by police or to die in a fire, and left a suicide note for his 10-year-old son at his apartment.

Johnson was charged with attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon. He had not retained a lawyer; he was in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital Sunday evening and was unavailable for comment. There was no telephone listing for him at the address provided by police.

The three victims were also taken to Bellevue. Brander, 28, of Fort Lee, New Jersey, was in serious condition Sunday; Hubbard, 34, and Iso were stable.

Johnson had been despondent since his wife died in March, neighbors told investigators. He has an arrest record dating to 1985 that includes weapons violations, larceny and drug possession.

Police who searched his Brooklyn apartment said they found a note taped to a wall that said, "Tell the boys in blue I won't be easy."

That's why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because non-academic OSS/FS will eventually allow
primarily hardware vendors to crash primarily
software vendors. IBM and Sun are not harming
only Microsoft (if that can hold though), but
every other software-only company. Those creep
OSS vendors (e.g. Redhat) cannot be considered as serious software vendors though.

Recursion factor...

[3seas]

What happens when Market A wants to commoditize their products' complements which is Market B and Market B wants to commoditize their products' complements which is Market A.

Ok so that's a simple version, but in a bigger mix where you have markets a-z...

Seems to me that the bottom line is the physical based stuff, the hardware or whatever the physical products is.

You either have a product or a service, or some combination.

Anyway, in the one market wants to commoditize their products' complements market, doesn't the equasion sum up to a potential contridiction? Where everthing becomes free and the only way to track ones worth in trade is to come up with some sort of pure abstract digital value exchange system to account for how much "free" that have generated?

Maybe I'm missing something here.

Re:Recursion factor...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was actually thinking of this just yesterday, though not in such termimology as Joel uses.

I think it would cause some sort of cycle as in sine wave pattern, as is so commonly found in general physics of things, like economy. Where the reference value, say 0 is the mid point of the swing. + being a productive profit side and - being a loss side.

At such a point where full recursion of what Joel and the poster above seems to be refereing to, wouldn't there then be a human solution effort that would simply cause the reference level to lowered, effectively raising the sine wave whole, higher and higher. Or from another view, though fiction, as the economy is represented in the star trek series. Where the overall value of the living environment or earth gets raised to remove the possibility of poverty.

Hmmm, perhaps this might be a task for OS earth

Re:Recursion factor...

[NibbleAbit]

A comodity doesn't mean its free. Frozen concentrated orange juice is a comodity, but it is not free. It just means it is very competitive and prices are dictated by supply and demand (weather and thirst).

When you operate in a commodity market, you either accept commity prices (low margins, focus on cost of production, relatively stable sales) or you attempt to differentiate your product to increase your margin (pulp free, added sugar, reduced acid). Marketing can also help build brand loyalty by building a perceived difference (Heintz is not the only seller of thick katchup).

We already have commodity prices in the low end of hardware (Walmart?), and are quickly getting into commoditized OS (Linux, BSD...). The software that runs on these is not yet commoditized (not all software is platform independent and interchangeable) but much of that is happening as well.

Hardware companies will survive by either acecpting commodity prices (beige box computers) or by differentiating themselves (higher quality components) or brand loyalty (Dell, Compaq ...)

OS organizations will have the same forces to deal with. Since the incemental cost is low (CD's and install books or bandwidth), the prices will be low. Some will try brand loyalaty (Microsoft, RedHat) others differentiation (Delivered with other software, quality perceptions).

Re:Recursion factor...

[3seas]

Hmmm, what's Free Software Foundation about again?

Not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost ironic that the author pics such dead or dying companies like Netscape, Transmeta, IBM, etc for his examples

His point wasn't that it was a necessarily *successful* strategy (although arguably Microsoft makes up for all the other failures) - he was just providing the motivation for companies to adopt open-source, presenting the argument that they're not doing it for moral reasons.

If you think he's wrong about their motivation, go ahead a present a different one. But saying that he's wrong because some of his examples haven't been successful completely misses the point of his article - it wasn't "Why companies should adopt open-source", it was "Why companies *are* adopting open-source".

Anyway...

Netscape is trying to commoditize the browser market .. in order to dominate the server market. This would have been plausible in, say, 1997.

Which is the era which he was talking about...

IBM is investing in open source software to bolster its consulting services

IBM spends a *small* amount of money relative to the amount it brings in from consulting... by adopting Linux and Apache, it can bring in huge consulting dollars without spending the money to develop a whole OS or web server. The money is in the skill used to put together the consulting package (ie. web applications with WebSphere, etc.), not in the commodities (the OS and web server, as well as the hardware, in this case).

Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[FreeUser]

Anyone else misread that as "Stalinism"

Of course not. That was the entire point of coining the term "Stallmanism." It is the use of language to subliminally implant and drive home a particular political stance, in this case a strongly anti-RMS, anti-FSF, anti-freedom (or at least, apathy-toward-freedom) stance.

In short, the usage of such a term is a cheap form of propoganda on the part of the Slashdot poster (the term is not used by Joel Spolsky in the article itself). Which isn't really surprising, since most slashdot article posts have a strong bias in their summaries ... this is just a little more extreme than most (and quite a bit less appropriate than most, for a site the prides itself on being a supporter of free software).

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[joshsnow]

Oh grow up and get a life! Why be so oversensitive about GNU/Free/Stallman Sheesh.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Anonymous Coward]

its called villainizing the enemy.
bit by bit until it is perceived as common knowledge.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Omnifarious]

Oh grow up and get a life! Why be so oversensitive about GNU/Free/Stallman Sheesh.

Because freedom is important.

The current fashion in thinking (perhaps the only common fashion in thinking through the ages) is in the intellectual laziness of deciding that political choices are too hard, or unimportant. That, somehow, despite our choices, things will continue on, and our freedoms will not be taken away. Even small things are worth getting your knickers in a twist about if that have wide ramifications. If beige suddenly became the color of the Christian Right party, I would try to get my townhome association to paint our houses purple or something, and would search for non-beige computer hardware. Suddenly, a nitpicky little choice like what color something is would have wide and important ramifications.

Similarily, arguing over the subtleties of language when referring to the founder of the Free Software movement is a nitpicky little detail with similarily wide ramifications. Something can be said for humor and satire, but the choice of the word 'Stallmanism' is neither.

It is an attempt to associate the entire movement with a corrupt and evil government headed by a paranoid and bloodthirsty dictator who murdered 20 million people. Somehow, to me, that seems worth paying attention to.

I think you need to grow up and stop taking the easy way out. Or, you need to reveal your true colors, and tell it like you think it is. If you are in the latter category, admonishing the opposition for talking about things that you also think are important (even if you think differently about them) is hypocrisy of the worst sort.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call the GPL restrictions freedom, far from it.

LONG LIVE PUBLIC DOMAIN!

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Broccolist]

I'm sure this wasn't intentional, but lambasting the use of the word "Stallmanism" seems to me like mild hypocrisy from an FSF supporter. The FSF bases its stance on a strange and counterintuitive redefinition of the word "freedom". It's usually used to signify important ideals like free speech and freedom from political expression, but the FSF somehow extends its meaning to include the modification and distribution of computer software (!?).

Now, I am not in complete disagreement with RMS's stance. But IMHO, this trivializes the word "freedom" and misrepresents what the FSF stands for, by making it seem much more grandiose than it really is. Lightheartedly calling the free-software people "Stallmanists" is a far less extreme statement than the term "free software" itself.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[WGR]

The GPL restrictions are essential to a company like IBM when they develop freely open software. Without them, they would not get to access improvements by others working on their developments.

So instead of a new Linux device driver being developed by HP also available as a basis for one developed by IBM, a BSD-style (open source) license would lose the availability of new developments to be re-incorporated into the IBM code base.

This is the essential part of the value to a large corporation like IBM in supporting open source under the GPL. Yes, what they develop becomes available for all, but what others develop after, becomes available to them. They can take advantage of all bug fixes, code tweaks, design improvements that others create. Without the GPL, there would be no value in opening your source, because others could use it without you having access to the improvements they make.

Look at the poverty of the BSD community versus the wealth of the Linux community. The GPL encourages openness because it guarantees that there is no dead end to code development, worth far more to companies trying to make OS a commodity than owning their own developments.

That is also why Microsoft fears the GPL far more than they do Linux, Apache, FreeBSD etc. This "viral" nature of the GPL encourages innovation in code development by profit seeking companies, rather than just hobbiests. It is much more likely to make OS a commodity than harder to maintain models like BSD licenses.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[FooBarWidget]

The "restriction" to distribute binaries without source is not a restriction. You never had that right in the first place. If you follow the standard copyright law, you can't copy *anything*.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[EABird]

Actually the number of people killed by Stalin is most likely in the range of 31 to 35 million people. The 20 million number is normally associated with an pre-glasnosts western estimate of the death toll from WWII.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Omnifarious]

Ahh, so the fact that the constitution forbids slavery is also a restriction on freedom? Or, perhaps property law in general, that seems to restrict freedom.

IMHO, the GPL is a framework the preserves freedom. Yes, it means that you can't guarantee that you are the exclusive source for the software you produce. But, it also means that software can never be taken away from you. I think the BSD liscense (not much more than public domain) does more to harm freedom than preserve it for this very reason.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[FreeUser]

Now, I am not in complete disagreement with RMS's stance. But IMHO, this trivializes the word "freedom" and misrepresents what the FSF stands for, by making it seem much more grandiose than it really is. Lightheartedly calling the free-software people "Stallmanists" is a far less extreme statement than the term "free software" itself.

I must take rather strong exception to this assertion.

We live in a society that (in terms of copyright law) basically says:

You as the original author, by default, shall automatically deprive everyone else on the planet from any basic freedom they might otherwise have to use, copy, modify, or disseminate what you happened to create (freedoms which the species happened to enjoy some 3 million odd years previously, btw). What is more, because of the peculiarities in how digital systems function, you can impose whatever onerous restrictions above and beyond the removal of those freedoms you wish to, as a price for granting anyone the privelege of using what you created, and in fact you are encouraged to do so.

In this context the free software foundation has said simply "If you include our work in your own work, you must agree not to go around restricting other peoples freedoms in this manner, and you may not impose additional onerous restrictions on other people."

Lacking the "freedom" to imprison other people in your cellar hardly makes you less free, indeed quite the contrary as such a restriction protects you from being incarcerated in turn by another third party.

This entire argument that the GPL's built in protections of the software freedom it grants, and its innoculation against abuse by unscrupulous third parties (cf. "tragedy of the commons") is IMHO quite nonsensical, as the above metaphor should help to illuminate.

Even were that not so, using a more specific (or even incorrect) definition for the word freedom (as the U.S. government frequently does, for example) is a far cry from villianizing someone not through logical argument, but through the coining of clever phrases that equates a foundation's founder with a bloodthirsty dictator who murdered millions. To imply the two are equal is absurd. To imply the deliberate and systematic villianization of a man is less extreme than the alleged misuse of the word freedom (which, as I already pointed out, isn't being misused at all), is IMHO nonsense of the lowest form.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[WGR]

I can't copy it, but I can read it, understand it and improve it. That is not blocked by copyright. But not so easily if all I have is binaries.

The GPL says that if I improve on code, I must open my code to others if I want to distribute the improved code. The GPL encourages reciprocal improvements where both original developers and later users help each other. That is worth quite a lot of value, even if it is not measured in dollars.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[FooBarWidget]

That was not my point...

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Arandir]

You as the original author, by default, shall automatically deprive everyone else on the planet from any basic freedom they might otherwise have to use, copy, modify, or disseminate what you happened to create

This asserts the existance of unalienable rights to copy, modify and disseminate the information created by others. I just don't see a natural right to disseminate your private diary, even if you have given it to me. That's the premise that GNU is founded on, but I have not seen to date any justification for it.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[extrasolar]

"This asserts the existance of unalienable rights to copy, modify and disseminate the information created by others. I just don't see a natural right to disseminate your private diary, even if you have given it to me. That's the premise that GNU is founded on, but I have not seen to date any justification for it."

Its not a natural (aka human right) but its one of them things we should have the right to do if we have all of our basic natural rights. This is akin to property rights or the right to vote.

In fact, the courts have already agreed that copyright grants the creator of a work a limited monopoly over his creation. The limitation is important since after a certain period of time, the information becomes free to copy, modify, and distribute. Thats why you can get the works of Shakespeare over the net these days.

The problem with copyright with software is not only does it prohibit quite a bit of fair use (I can't use a snippet of the source code in my own works) but that once the artificial monopoly ends, the software isn't likely to work on anyone's machine. So the monopoly becomes unlimited, which is against the wording of the American Constitution.

Using the word "freedom" isn't bogus at all. "freedom" has several subtle different meanings, the one the FSF uses is as in "free of restrictions".

Not that any of this will prevent you from trolling this same topic again, mind you...

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[FreeUser]

This asserts the existance of unalienable rights to copy, modify and disseminate the information created by others.

No, it points out that this freedom existed for most of the 3 million years humans have been around, and was only abridged in the last few centuries. Obviously the right is "alienable," as we have had it denied us all our lives.

What is absurd is the notion that the creator of some information has the right to limit is spread through ceorcive legislation, fining or imprisoning others who make use of it or pass it along.

The whole private diary argument is nonsensical, and has nothing to do with copyright anyway. It is more akin to corporate secrets, which are protected by law against espionage, but not against that corporation willingly disseminating said information. If you are foolish enough to give someone your diary you have essentially divulged your secrets to that person, and shouldn't be all that surprised if that person passes them along (unless they are a closely trusted friend who has sworn an oath not to pass them along, but, once again, even that has absolutely nothing to do with copyright, and even less to do with GNU).

This in no way justifies the mass limitation of freedom to use and disseminate information that is copyright ... indeed copyright has nothing to do with the protection of secrets, even if it was originally created by the British Crown for the sole purpose of censorship.

That's the premise that GNU is founded on, but I have not seen to date any justification for it.

Nonsense. The premise GNU is founded upon is that copyright is inappropriate when applied to software (and that application certainly is not what the founding fathers had in mind when they passed copyright legislation in the United States), and that a society that doesn't impose such restrictions would be measurably better off.

And, interestingly enough, the success of the GNU project, and of free software in general, more than vindicates that premise.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[kirkjobsluder]

You as the original author, by default, shall automatically deprive everyone else on the planet from any basic freedom they might otherwise have to use, copy, modify, or disseminate what you happened to create (freedoms which the species happened to enjoy some 3 million odd years previously, btw). What is more, because of the peculiarities in how digital systems function, you can impose whatever onerous restrictions above and beyond the removal of those freedoms you wish to, as a price for granting anyone the privelege of using what you created, and in fact you are encouraged to do so.

Arguing from primoridal history is a pretty obvious fallacy. The obvious counter-argument is that for most of human history, most human beings did not have the freedom to own the products they create, the freedom to travel, the freedom to speak politically, and in fact for most of history a large chunk of the world population lived in some form of slavery.

A fundamental problem with asserting this as a basic freedom is that it conflicts with another basic freedom to create and sell the fruit of my labor on my own terms.

An obvious test on how "free" the GPL really is comes in regards to the ability to distribute software under more liberal licenses. Not only can you not include GPL code into proprietary products, but you can't include GPL code under a license that offers fewer restrictions than the GPL. One potential legal problem with this comes with government products which by statute are released into the public domain. You have a situation where the GPL is "free" but only as long as you are not a government employee obligated to publish in the public domain.

In this context the free software foundation has said simply "If you include our work in your own work, you must agree not to go around restricting other peoples freedoms in this manner, and you may not impose additional onerous restrictions on other people."

The problem is that any license which includes the words, "you must" cannot be free by definition. It either is free (in which case, I can use it for whatever purpose I want) or it is not free (in which case, you restrict my ability to use the software in some way, or place conditions on my use of the software.) As far as I know, the only free license is public domain. The FSF only redefines the term "freedom" in such a way that it can impose the same powers used by Microsoft for its own agenda.

Lacking the "freedom" to imprison other people in your cellar hardly makes you less free, indeed quite the contrary as such a restriction protects you from being incarcerated in turn by another third party.

There is a big problem with your analogy here in that releasing software under my own terms (freedom of speech) certainly does not cause harm to another person. No one is forcing you to use my software absent source code. You are free to make your own economic decisions on whether you want to use a product with source code or without source code.

Furthermore, the obsession regarding source code reveals a bias for a feature that can only be used by an elite few. By an analogy, I am not harmed because AMD creates a sealed microchip that can't be substantially modified by users. No one argues that my free speech rights are violated because of my inability to physically change the microchip. (Although the advancing use of microchip and SMCs seriously has reduced the long-standing hobby of hardware hacking.) By not providing you with source code I have not infringed on any of your rights in the same way that I have not infringed on any of your rights by releasing negatives or rough drafts. If you don't like it, make an alternative. If you don't like it, don't use it.

This entire argument that the GPL's built in protections of the software freedom it grants, and its innoculation against abuse by unscrupulous third parties (cf. "tragedy of the commons") is IMHO quite nonsensical, as the above metaphor should help to illuminate.

Well, this is where you pseudo-freedom advocates run into an inconsistency of your own logic. The argument is that IP should be treated on a different basis from physical property because there are no limits to ideas or copies of machine-readable artefacts. However, simultaneously you argue that restrictions on redistribution of derivative works are necessary to avoid a "tragedy of the commons" which applies to limited goods.

So the question is, which is it? Is IP a limited resource that needs protection by invoking a non-free license that places considerable demands on people wishing to distribute dirivative works? Or is IP an unlimited resource in which case, the "tragedy of the commons" does not apply?

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[kirkjobsluder]

No, it points out that this freedom existed for most of the 3 million years humans have been around, and was only abridged in the last few centuries. Obviously the right is "alienable," as we have had it denied us all our lives.

Again, geeks without an understanding of history.

The entire concept of an inalienable freedom only became popular in the last 500 years. Prior to the American revolution such freedoms did not exist. With the exception of a few radicals it was taken for granted that the Church and the State had the Divine right to restrict publication and distribution of works, and to punish those who expressed dangerous or heretical ideas.

A central right behind the American revolution was the right to choose what to produce, how to produce it, and how to take it to market. Free speech was not envisioned to be in opposition to basic property rights, the right to profit from the fruit of your labor. In approving copyright the constitution recognizes this right.

What is absurd is the notion that the creator of some information has the right to limit is spread through ceorcive legislation, fining or imprisoning others who make use of it or pass it along.

How is this any more absurd than the notion that a creator is obligated to distribute no only the information, but any source material used to create that information?

This in no way justifies the mass limitation of freedom to use and disseminate information that is copyright.

In which case, I would like to point out that the freedom to disseminate information is granted by "fair use." What you don't have with copyright law is the freedom to plagarize or to copy verbatum.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[FreeUser]

Again, geeks without an understanding of history.

Again, trolls without any understanding of history.

The entire concept of an inalienable right dates back at least as far as the Greeks, and quite probably much farther than that, as a lot of tribal cultures have certain rights as well as responsiblities encoded into their tribal customs that appear to go back many tens of thousands of years at least.

The notion that the state, or the church, could limit information is a relatively new idea, going back perhaps as far as the Egyptions, if that. In comparison to 3 million years of human existence those kinds of restrictions are almost as new as the copyright laws designed to propogate them into the age of the printing press.

Your confusion of basic property rights with the artificial, and largely arbitrary, concept of "intellectual property" such as patents and, in the context of this duscussion copyright, and your confusion of basic property rights with basic human rights, underscores your ayndroidian myopia in viewing everything in economic terms, when clearly economic issues are only one small part of the overall human experience. I do not expect to be able to heal you of your myopia in one post, but perhaps my rebuttal will protect another from being taken in by such fallacious arguments (and yes, I have read Ayn Rand's works, so I do know what I'm talking about WRT her myopia, which is echoed by the Libertarians and indeed constitutes one of their most fatal philosophical as well as practical flaws).

The constitution recognizes copyright in no small part because a concentrated interest, in the form of several publishers, pushed the concept through. Just as the constitution's recongnition of slavery involved a compromise with a corrupt element of the founding colonies, so too copyright represents an equally corrupt, if certainly much less horrific, compromise between publishers who excersized undue influence on the writing of the constitution, and the rest of the founding fathers who, at the time, had much bigger fish to fry.

How is this any more absurd than the notion that a creator is obligated to distribute no only the information, but any source material used to create that information?

Said creator is only obligated to do so if he or she uses a GPLed work within his or her own work, in which case the creator has chosen to accept such a requirement consciously and knowingly. This is in contrast to the incredibly onerous restrictions copyright places on our freedom to use and disseminate information, which is forced down our throats with absolutely no input, or choice, on our part. Indeed, it is a direct result of that very coercion under copyright law that the GNU project felt it necessary to impose any defensive and protective requirements in the GPL at all.

Finally, plagorism has nothing to do with copyright and is yet another strawman you have created with no particular relevance to the discussion at hand. Taking another person's work and claiming credit for it is entirely orthogonal to restrictions in copying that work and disseminating it as is (or even with annotated modifications), and is addressed by numerous academic and legal standards that have nothing whatsoever to do with copyright.

As for your claim that fair use allows one to disseminate information, you clearly know that to be untrue, as evidenced by your very next sentance in which you correctly point out that we do not have the freedom to copy information verbatim, which is in fact the definition of what it means to disseminate information.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[extrasolar]

"The entire concept of an inalienable freedom only became popular in the last 500 years. Prior to the American revolution such freedoms did not exist."

America has been around 500 years? And you're talking about understanding history... :)

"Free speech was not envisioned to be in opposition to basic property rights, the right to profit from the fruit of your labor. In approving copyright the constitution recognizes this right."

How is copyright a basic property right? When you make an intellectual work, you don't *own* that work but merely have the exclusive right to copy it for a limited amount of time for uses not considered fair use.

And there certainly isn't a "right to profit from the fruit of your labor". Businesses filled with hard working people fail all the time and at least where I work, the more money you make the less work you do. This is a silly excuse for the existance of software copyright.

"What you don't have with copyright law is the freedom to plagarize or to copy verbatum."

Sure. Plagarizing written works. But how do you plagarize software? Because I thought we were talking about copyright with respect to software.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[firewood]

The "restriction" to distribute binaries without source is not a restriction. You never had that right in the first place. If you follow the standard copyright law, you can't copy *anything*.

The BSD license and putting software in the public domain are legal under copyright law (AFAIK IANAL) and do allow you to copy. By comparison GPL is a restriction; GPL's freedom is relative. It's a pretty closed and restrictive license by comparison to many other popular open source licenses (MPL, LGPL, BSD, etc.) But this form of license does have value, just like many closed-source licenses.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[firewood]

Said creator is only obligated to do so if he or she uses a GPLed work within his or her own work, in which case the creator has chosen to accept such a requirement consciously and knowingly.

Has either this, or shrink-wrap licenses, been tested in the courts yet? Does offering software for free (as in $$$), and then holding only certain parties to restrictions on their business model without their signatures seem enforceable (especially internationally, where copyright law varies)? Some types of contracts require an exchange ($1). Does software that one can get for free count as an exchange? Perhaps the a false advertising law might apply (why did you call it "free", as the word is typically interpreted by the software buying public?).

IANAL. YMMV.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[kirkjobsluder]

The entire concept of an inalienable right dates back at least as far as the Greeks, and quite probably much farther than that, as a lot of tribal cultures have certain rights as well as responsiblities encoded into their tribal customs that appear to go back many tens of thousands of years at least.

Certainly, however such an inalienable right was rarely properly applied in civic life. From the Roman Empire forward the majority of the population lived in some form of servitude with restrictions on travel.

The notion that the state, or the church, could limit information is a relatively new idea, going back perhaps as far as the Egyptions, if that. In comparison to 3 million years of human existence those kinds of restrictions are almost as new as the copyright laws designed to propogate them into the age of the printing press.

Quite a non-sequetor here. After all, the Egyptians were among the first people to create a full record of civic life so therefore, speculation in regards to rights before the Egyptians is simply speculation. We can't say what rights pre-literary cultures granted in regards to IP simply because they left no written record.

However, it is worth noting that pre-literary cultures have very different tradtions on who owns ideas and stories. For example, there is the Lakota declaration of war on "plastic medicine men" which denounces the appropriation of traditional symbols, traditions and philosophies outside of their culture.

Your confusion of basic property rights with the artificial, and largely arbitrary, concept of "intellectual property" such as patents and, in the context of this duscussion copyright, and your confusion of basic property rights with basic human rights, underscores your ayndroidian myopia in viewing everything in economic terms, when clearly economic issues are only one small part of the overall human experience. I do not expect to be able to heal you of your myopia in one post, but perhaps my rebuttal will protect another from being taken in by such fallacious arguments (and yes, I have read Ayn Rand's works, so I do know what I'm talking about WRT her myopia, which is echoed by the Libertarians and indeed constitutes one of their most fatal philosophical as well as practical flaws).

In fact, the "no IP" camp gleefully ignores the fact that in many cases, we don't want information to be free and even though we may have the technical ability to create a million copies of an bit of information, perhaps we shouldn't do so out of respect for the traditions that created that information. So in contrast to arguing on "purely economic terms." I suggest that there is a moral obligation to respect the creators of works, and to respect their wishes in regards to how their works should be used. This is true no matter how valuable the created work is. The moral obligations to creators of work are above and beyond simply the economic arguments.

Said creator is only obligated to do so if he or she uses a GPLed work within his or her own work, in which case the creator has chosen to accept such a requirement consciously and knowingly. This is in contrast to the incredibly onerous restrictions copyright places on our freedom to use and disseminate information, which is forced down our throats with absolutely no input, or choice, on our part. Indeed, it is a direct result of that very coercion under copyright law that the GNU project felt it necessary to impose any defensive and protective requirements in the GPL at all.

However, there is no contrast. The restrictions of copyright only apply if the creator of a work consciously or knowingly appropriates portions of another work. In fact, practially speaking, I find the restrictions of copyright to be less problematic than the GPL. Most of the time getting permission to use material covered by copyright requires a simple phone call. "Can I use your comic strip on my web page?" "Sure, whatever."

In fact, my students are quite suprised to find that there is usually no reason to use copyright protected material. Where is the coersion? No one is forcing you to include The Fellowship of the Ring or Microsoft code in your product.

But the basic problem is as soon as you say, "You must..." the work you distribute is no longer free. Either the work is free, or it is not free. There is no middle ground. If a work is free, it is distributed with no restrictions. The instant you put restriction on a work, no matter if you rationalize it as "defensive" the work is no longer free.

As for your claim that fair use allows one to disseminate information, you clearly know that to be untrue, as evidenced by your very next sentance in which you correctly point out that we do not have the freedom to copy information verbatim, which is in fact the definition of what it means to disseminate information.

Actually, there is a big difference between disseminating information, and copying information verbatum (although assuming as such reveals a lack of creativity.) Fair use does permit me to copy text verbatum as long as it is a small portion of the entire work. In addition, I can paraphrase, describe, and re-write to my heart's content as long as I add substantial original content. For example, I can write an entire plot synopsis of The Fellowship of the Ring without running afoul of copyright. I can even write multiple parodies.

What I can't do is publish it verbatum with my own printing press.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Arandir]

How is copyright a basic property right?

When you create a work, you physically own the media on which it resides, and the only instance of that particular information. This is a very real and material property right. The only way someone can redistribute that information is by materially breaking into your home and materially reproducing the media upon which the sole copy of the information resides.

Now take it one step further by introducing the right of association and by extension, contracts. Your neighbor wishes to see that information but you don't wish it to be widely disseminated beyond your neighbor. So you create an informal contract affirmed by a handshake that he will not disseminate it further. In essense, and NDA.

Now one final step. Sell this work to the general public but require every purchaser (and third party distributor) to voluntarily enter into a similar agreement not to disseminate the work except according to your wishes. In essence, a EULA.

You basically just reinvented copyright law through the logical extension of property rights and contracts. Granted, there are some loopholes you could drive Mack truck through, but the concept is the same.

Copyright is not a basic property right. But it is similar to one, in that at one point you were the sole possessor of the material media upon which the sole copy resided.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[kirkjobsluder]

"The entire concept of an inalienable freedom only became popular in the last 500 years. Prior to the American revolution such freedoms did not exist."

America has been around 500 years? And you're talking about understanding history... :)

Note two sentences there. The concept of an inalienable freedom only became popular in the last 500 years. These arguments for inalienable freedom set the philosophical basis for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution which defined those freedoms.

But it is interesting that the argument for access to source code as a right fails not only on the basis of property rights, but also on free speech rights. I may not want to include source code (or an offer to provide source code) with something I produce for a variety of reasons. I may feel that distributing the software as a black box is part of the entire artistic experience. My intended audience may be completely uninterested in the source code for the same reason that most consumers of music are uninterested in musical scores. I may not want to put unnecessary burdens on my audience if they choose to redistribute the code.

If indeed there is a free-speech right to modify the code of software, then isn't there a free-speech right to modify the license as well? And yet, with copyleft while the code is mutable the license is not. Not only can you not adopt a more restrictive license, but you can't adopt a more liberal license either.

The bottom line is the GPL is not "free" in the libre definition. It simply replaces a set of ideologicaly-founded restrictions with a different set. You can certainly argue that the restrictions imposed by the GPL are preferable to the restrictions imposed by Microsoft (and I would agree). You can even argue that the restrictions are necessary to create a viable software commons (I'm not convinced). But arguing that GPL is "free" because it is less restrictive than commercial licenses misses the point of freedom.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Arandir]

Some types of contracts require an exchange ($1)

This is known as consideration. I'm not the biggest GPL fan, but it is a legitimate license because there is consideration. In fact, there is more consideration in the GPL then with the 99% of the commercial EULAs out there.

The author gives you permission to modify and redistribute the software. You give the author the promise that your modifications and redistributions will have identical permissions. Consideration for both sides. No problem.

Constrast that to the typical EULA. You receive the right to use the software upon purchasing a copy of it. The author is giving you nothing in exchange for your acceptance of the restrictions in the EULA. There is no consideration. It is not a valid contract.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[FreeUser]

I don't have time to rebut this point by point, but this completely inaccurate characterization must be dealt with, to whit:

Well, this is where you pseudo-freedom advocates run into an inconsistency of your own logic. The argument is that IP should be treated on a different basis from physical property because there are no limits to ideas or copies of machine-readable artefacts. However, simultaneously you argue that restrictions on redistribution of derivative works are necessary to avoid a "tragedy of the commons" which applies to limited goods.

Ad homonim innuendos aside, this is not at all a contradiction. The argument is that we should not have copyright, that software (and information) should be completely free. However, the reality is that it is not. Indeed, the reality is that, by default, information is locked down so tightly that every individual must effectively reinvent the wheel each time one wishes to write a new novel/program/script/whatever. Because of this severe, artificial scarcity that has been created as a direct result of copyright law, a license such as the GPL is regrettably necessary to protect the freedom of material that would otherwise be effectively taken away and potentially made (once again artifically) scarce.

As an example, say I write program A. In a world without copyright it is in the public domain, and anyone can use it, copy it, or whatever. I'm not obligated to provide source in this scenerio, but there is little reason for me not to as a free software programmer who wants to collaborate with others, so I will likely choose to do so. Someone might take that work and release a different version with some new features, and horde the source, but there is little incentive for them to do so since anyone can copy the program at no cost anyway, and there is nothing preventing me from disassembling it and releasing the reverse-engineered source myself.

Now enter a world which has made the tragic error of inventing copyright. Suddenly my program, which I've had to consciously, and publicly, release into the public domain, can be taken by another firm, which adds to it, and can now put onerous restrictions on the derivative work.

Now, I cannot reverse engineer what they've done, so I decide to write my own version that has the same nifty new feature. Unfortunately, now I am vulnerable to legal attack and thuggary, and now I must prove my innocence, that I did in fact write that feature myself and did not violate the copyright of the person or corporation that wrote a similiar, perhaps superficially identical, addon. And if there happens to be only one way one can reasonably impliment something, I'm going to be hard pressed to convince anyone I did the work myself and didn't violate the copyright in question.

Even if they have no case, the threat of a lawsuit alone will have a chilling effect, essentially locking me out of improving my own program along the same lines as the copyright holder who made the improvement first. In other words, my own work has become less free as a result.

The only real protection against this is the GPL, so, like it or not, in the context of a world with such draconian copyright laws as this one, the GPL is actually necessary to protect my freedom, in exactly the same way a law preventing anyone from arbitrarilly locking me in a cellar does more to enhance my freedom than reduce it (despite the fact that it means I can't lock someone in my cellar).

IP is not inherently a limited resource that needs protection at all. But copyright has made it an artificially limited resource, so until and unless copyright is repealed (a long shot at best) the GPL is necessary as a defense against that law's depredations. I do not understand how you can claim there is an inconsistency in this stance with a straight face.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[FooBarWidget]

Yes, if you compare it to other open source licenses. But when you compare it to copyright, GPL only *adds* freedom and doesn't take anything away.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Omnifarious]

20 million, 35 million, it's a nitpicky little detail. *big grin*

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the 20 million is how many Ukranians he deliberately starved to death BEFORE WWII. Stalin sent his soldiers into Ukraine, had them take all the food, and then had the soldiers close the borders. Stalin made Hitler look like a wannabe.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[extrasolar]

"Your neighbor wishes to see that information but you don't wish it to be widely disseminated beyond your neighbor."

With copyright, you don't "wish" it to be so, you demand it to be so. Not just with neighborly oath, but with the backing of the law. This is the fundamental moral problem. You are telling your neighbor that he can't share the information that you shared with him. Not very neighborly, I say.

To you, keeping information secret is the basis of your new property right. But the GNU way is the opposite, to publish broadly the information you have and hope people will make as much use of it as they can.

Note: I'm only speaking about software.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Arandir]

With copyright, you don't "wish" it to be so, you demand it to be so.

In my example I was using contract law. In a way, contract law is the foundation of civilization and a key component of property. I sure hope you're not arguing that contracts are immoral beasts.

To you, keeping information secret is the basis of your new property right.

Keeping control of the information is the basis, not keeping it secret. The reason I want to control it is so that I can profit from it. If I can profit from it morally through the use of moral contracts and moral voluntary economic transactions, then why should anyone have a problem with it?

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[extrasolar]

"In my example I was using contract law. In a way, contract law is the foundation of civilization and a key component of property. I sure hope you're not arguing that contracts are immoral beasts."

They can be--it depends on the contract. But with software, its controlled by copyright and licensing. I don't know anything about contract law really, but I can't see any contract being legal that would forbid fair use.

But even if contract law can be used as you described, its still unethical. Not the law, but the person making the demand. If I write software that employs a new algorithm, I might lend it to you and ask you not to give it to anyone else. This is okay since it is by the bond of friendship. But is it okay to ask the same of a stranger? And what if he disobeys you? Will you fine him? Put him in jail? Are you his master because of the information you gave him?

There is plenty more to this that I left out, but I think you get the jist.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[Arandir]

But with software, its controlled by copyright and licensing.

A license is a contract. Or at least most licenses are. Consider the GPL as a prime example. The only way I get the right to distribute the a GPLed work is by agreeing to the contract. And that contract regulates how I may or may not distribute the GPLed work.

And what if he disobeys you? Will you fine him? Put him in jail?

One could ask the same thing of the GPL. What if I distribute your work without disclosing the source? Will you fine me? Will you put me in jail?

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[extrasolar]

"One could ask the same thing of the GPL. What if I distribute your work without disclosing the source? Will you fine me? Will you put me in jail?"

Aye. That was the other half of the argument I didn't have time to write down. And its important.

The difference is that the GPL is a community license. Everyone who gets GPLed software gets the same rights to it. But with proprietary software, only the proprieter gets the right to copy, modify, and redistribute the software.

It could be said that one way in that free software means freedom is in fairness. How everyone gets the same rights to the software. No one is master of anyone else.

Re:Just Some More Anti-RMS Propoganda Is All

[AME]

Hmmmm. Moderate or reply...

I'll reply. If I moderate that, I would just get my karma kicked in meta-moderation.

If indeed there is a free-speech right to modify the code of software, then isn't there a free-speech right to modify the license as well? And yet, with copyleft while the code is mutable the license is not. Not only can you not adopt a more restrictive license, but you can't adopt a more liberal license either.

That is the most insightful comment about GPL doublethink that I've heard in a very long time! You're going on my Friends list.

Customizing Mozilla Key Bindings

[sys49152]

Despite the fact that Mozilla has all the features I want and I'd love to use it if only to avoid the whack-a-mole pop-up-ad game, I'm too used to hitting Alt+D to go to the address bar. So sue me. One tiny difference and you lose your commodity status.

Perhaps Joel should read the Mozilla page on how to modify the default key bindings.

Re:Customizing Mozilla Key Bindings

[Anonymous Coward]

Like most /.'ers, you seem to miss his point -- making him do that increases his effective cost (in time and effort) beyond the value he would receive.

Therefore, it would be stupid.

Re:Customizing Mozilla Key Bindings

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Making someone do this kind of work to accomplish a basic task misses the point. It's not even a GUI config option. In effect, for someone to remain compatible with their old habits you're making them perform these useless steps:

1. realize this is a setting you can change
2. determine what needs to be done to change the config
3. determine the name of the config file
4. find it
5. figure out how to open it and with what app
6. figure out what the option name is. pray it's already in the config file and you can just change the line
7. figure out what the config file representation for Alt-D is
8. hope everything went well

As you can obviously see, it's hardly a trivial thing. Each of these steps is a potential stumbling block for the user; just tell your average office worker to edit a config file to change your key-bindings. Huh?!

Like the old UI saying goes, if it's the default, 98% of your users won't bother changing it. As a corollary, if it's NOT the default, 98% of your users won't use it.

Re: OPEN SOURCE WOULD PREFORM BETTER WITH BABES

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot editors... Slashdot editors...

(-1, Troll)???

That is *very* valuable information. I have been involved with the FreeBSD project for years, and never knew about Ceren Ercen!

Anyway, I did a search, and she participated in the mailing lists a few times.

Damn...

Up there with one of the hottest UNIX chicks on planet *earth* and you give the bringer of that news (-1, Troll)!?

Did you see the demon suit!? Did you see the tail?
Seriously, I demand an explanation guys, did you actually click on those links?

Quantify this!

[Interrobang]

If I put a dollar value (imaginary money?) on everything I did, *I'd* be Bill Gates. Come on, folks, not everything comes down to money, and it's kind of a flaw in our culture, IMNSHO, that nothing is seen as important unless you can dollar-figure quantify it, package it, and sell it.

This argument from above so are you saying those two hours of your time is not worth any money is similar to the MPAA's "lost sales" argument especially in cases where in reality no sales would have actually taken place -- you can't make income off a job you don't have. More simply, if no one is willing to pay you for doing whatever it is you're doing, you can't make money doing it. In that case, you have two options: you can do it for free because you like to (in my case, the concrete example would be "publish for copies"), or you can go off in the corner and sulk.

Incidentally and additionally, the previous poster's argument only makes sense at the individual level, and not at the organizational/business level. Businesses have to do things that will make them money; that's what they're for. However, further deposition into the logical consequenses of that statement leads into politics and ideology, though, and is irrelevant to this comment.

Re:Quantify this!

[smack.addict]

If I put a dollar value (imaginary money?) on everything I did, *I'd* be Bill Gates. Come on, folks, not everything comes down to money, and it's kind of a flaw in our culture, IMNSHO, that nothing is seen as important unless you can dollar-figure quantify it, package it, and sell it.

You are so totally wrong. EVERYTHING you do has value. Money is nothing more than an attempt to quantify that value. Your choice to take a bath instead of shower has some value to you. We do not tend to quantify that value with money since it has no value to anyone but you. However, the choice you make to shower or bathe versus going au naturale does have value. And the easiest way to quantify that is through terms like, "I would buy him some soap if only he would shower!" In other words, the cost of soap is clearly what your bathing is worth to me. In other words, money is a unit of value measurement just as sure as meters are units of distance measurement. and everything has value.

Re:Quantify this!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not all comes down to money BUT if you do something great that others will benefit from why not charge for it?

Re:Quantify this!

[God! Awful]

If I put a dollar value (imaginary money?) on everything I did, *I'd* be Bill Gates. Come on, folks, not everything comes down to money, and it's kind of a flaw in our culture, IMNSHO, that nothing is seen as important unless you can dollar-figure quantify it, package it, and sell it.

Your opinion may not be humble, but that doesn't prevent it from being wrong. As it turns out, everything does come down to money. If you write a program that you maybe could have sold, but you didn't, that's an opportunity cost. The rent on my apartment costs me $N an month. If I moved to a larger apartment, it would cost me more. An extra $100 in my retirement fund every month may allow me to retire 2 years earlier. Again it comes down to money vs. time. Of course, I could also spend that $100 on Cocoa Puffs, but all that means is that the aphorism "time is money" has no less validity than "Cocoa Puffs are money" or "time is Cocoa Puffs". Everything that has value is interchangeable.

People spend all of their time either spending money or earning money. In general, you can't decide how much you earn, but you can decide how much you spend. If you decide that your time is worth $2000 dollars an hour then you probably ought to quit your job if you are getting paid less than that, but you might find yourself reevaluating your priorities when you're living on the street. As a gainfully employed member of society, I have the opportunity to determine how much my time is worth to me. I can choose to not take my allotted 3 weeks vacation and take the money instead. I always take the vacation because I am paid enough that I have the luxury of valuing my time highly. Meanwhile, my sister only makes minimum wage, but she chooses to work two jobs because she needs the money. The things she can buy with the money (an education) are worth more than the free time now.

BTW, IMHO anyone who prefaces an argument with IMNSHO ought to be shot.

-a

Summary & some of the more interesting quotes

[mactari]

The basic idea of the article is that if you can make the total cost of entry for some product lower by reducing the cost of one of the product's components, you can charge more for the components that are left. If you're smart, you get the price down for these compliments that you don't control so you can up the price of the services you do.

So if PC hardware is cheap, more people can afford the price of entry and you can charge more for the OS (eg, Windows). If enterprise OSs and software are cheap, you can charge more for your consulting services (eg, IBM).

Why is Mozilla "cheap"?
[Given that IE is free, what is the incentive for Netscape to make the browser "even cheaper"? It's a preemptive move. They need to prevent Microsoft getting a complete monopoly in web browsers, even free web browsers, because that would theoretically give Microsoft an opportunity to increase the cost of web browsing in other ways -- say, by increasing the price of Windows.]

Java does exactly what Sun *didn't* want:
[If you can run your software anywhere, that makes hardware more of a commodity. As hardware prices go down, the market expands, driving more demand for software (and leaving customers with extra money to spend on software which can now be more expensive.)

Sun's enthusiasm for WORA is, um, strange, because Sun is a hardware company. Making hardware a commodity is the last thing they want to do.

Oooooooooooooooooooooops!]

The only conclusion is...

[Anonymous Coward]

We must kill every nigger we see. Soon the world shall be freed from the chocolate menace.

Inch time foot gem

[jcsehak]

There's this zen koan:

A lord asked Takuan, a Zen teacher, to suggest how he might pass the time. He felt his days very long attending his office and sitting stiffly to receive the homage of others. Takuan wrote eight Chinese characters and gave them to the man:

Not twice this day
Inch time foot gem.

The day in which you coded that software you gave away for free will not come again. A small bit of your time is more valuable than the largest diamond. It's limited and you can never buy more. Never put a price on your time. It cheapens it.

(BTW, if anyone knows exactly which characters Takuan wrote down, I'd be eternally grateful if you told/showed me, email is jcsehak.at.yahoo.com)

Your post is a big swing and miss...

[Carnage4Life]

The article tries to build from basic economic principles, but conveniently misses one, the problem of free riders.

Actually this is not a failing of the article but a failing of the people the article references. Many people like to think that the reason that Open Source is popular among businesses is because it is "free as in speech" which although being a nice fuzzy-feelgood reason is not a BUSINESS reason. On the other hand, trying to commoditize a certain market while making money of off its complement "giving away the razor and charging for the blades" is a well known tactic amongst business types and is something that can fully be brought to bear with Open Source. In this case Joel's article clearly articulates this point with numerous examples.

However the problem of Free Riders tends to be orthogonal in well executed versions of the "give away razors" strategy. In well executed versions of this strategy, the business is uninterested if the market it has commoditized now has a low barrier to entry as long as there is still a significantly barrier to entry in the market for its complement. Specifically, IBM doesn't care that any Johnny Come Lately can enter the Linux distro business because the same doesn't apply to their consulting or hardware businesses that benefit from the commoditization of the OS.

It's almost ironic that the author pics such dead or dying companies like Netscape, Transmeta, IBM, etc for his examples.. Look, I like these companies as much as anybody for their past, but let's face it..

Anyone who considers IBM to be dead and dying knows nothing about the current state of the software industry.

Re:Your post is a big swing and miss...

[Zimm]

However the problem of Free Riders tends to be orthogonal in well executed versions of the "give away razors" strategy. In well executed versions of this strategy, the business is uninterested if the market it has commoditized now has a low barrier to entry as long as there is still a significantly barrier to entry in the market for its complement.

This is why it is curious that Sun pumps money into Java. Sure they sell "razors", but their blades fit into other companies razors as well. IBM, HP, etc have got to love java, Sun pumps millions into it and they sell more hardware.

Contributing to Joel

[sbalneav]

So, I notice, after an entire article on how people don't contribute to Open Source because of a desire to contribute to the common good, but rather because there's money to be made off of it, he's begging for people to contribute to him by translating his articles into other languages for him.

Hey, Joel, would that be lowering the price of your compliments, or what?

Always nice to see people maintaining internally consistent viewpoints. Pheh!

Re:Contributing to Joel

[jjohnson]

Always nice to see poor reading comprehension on Slashdot.

He didn't say that people contribute to OSS because there's money to be made, he said that companies invest money in OSS because it furthers their business strategy, and pays itself off as a result.

How could you confuse IBM/HP/SUN with Linus/ESR/RMS?

Pheh!

Wow, now I won't get flamed...

[TweeKinDaBahx]

Finally, somone who stood back and took a long look at the realities of the software industry.

For those of you who either slept through or didn't even take an economics class, this article provides enough of a basic intro into micro/macro economic theory to not only allows the author to make some fairly advanced points, but also to allow the reader to fully understand some of the greatest misconceptions surrounding the OSS movement as well as modern computer-based industry as well.

One of the biggest points that I think the author made in his article (without saying it directly) was that OSS programmers are not business analysts. Sure, what seems very simple and straight forward, free software, sonds like a good idea, but I'm glad the author pointed out that while the software my be 'free' there are many costly issues and circumstances that surround such software, such as re-training (sorry kiddies, most business-people have no desire or will to RTFM, so the reality that is created is costly training seminars), support (since it's open source, other than usenet and a few other forums, there is no free support availible, which means someone has to foot the bill to get one of you LUNIX D0oDz out of your mama's basement and into the server closet), hardware costs (yeah, linux and other OSS support SOME hardware, sometimes even cheap hardware, but not ALL hardware), and of course incompatibilities with exdisiting systems.

With all this build up, even the cost of the systems analysis for a change to OSS becomes prohibitive.

To expand on the author's analogy of chicken to beef (chicken being OSS and beef being something proprietary); sure, the chicken might be free, but in this situation, you have to butcher the chicken yourself and hire a chef to prepare it for you, whereas you can simply walk up to a the counter and order a hamburger.

It's what it keep saying over and over again: No one wants to have to re-invent the wheel to get the job done, and as per my own experience, using Linux in a non-technical environment is like trying to invent the shelby cobra when all you have to work with is a dull bronze chisel and a little water.

Re:Wow, now I won't get flamed...

[Tony]

To expand on the author's analogy of chicken to beef (chicken being OSS and beef being something proprietary); sure, the chicken might be free, but in this situation, you have to butcher the chicken yourself and hire a chef to prepare it for you, whereas you can simply walk up to a the counter and order a hamburger./I.

Uhm.... Bullshit.

The secondary costs of installing and using MS-Windows is about the same (or perhaps more) than installing and using Linux. That, coupled with the primary costs of using MS-Windows (licensing and media fees) puts MS-Windows at a higher cost than Linux.

To extend *your* extension of the analogy, it's like you can walk into a diner and order a hamburger, or you can get a chicken sandwich for a couple of bucks less, because the chicken costs the restaraunt nothing.

This idea that MS-Windows has no secondary cost because it has a primary cost is stupid.

Re:Wow, now I won't get flamed...

[emil_nikolov]

How is that informative. The author is swithing the sbujcet from Linux to Solaris. Solaris is even more expensive than Windows.

Re:Wow, now I won't get flamed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article. It shows a Solaris setup is actually cheaper than a corresponding Windows setup. Since Linux is cheaper than Solaris for all except the really big systems, the math becomes pretty easy.

Software as a commodity

[javilon]

What I most like of this theory is that hardware is a commodity today. If open source can turn software into a commodity, the real value will be in the people putting systems together (as the IBM example shows).

Most of the slashdot crowd are technical heads so I would say that it is in the best interest of most of us to get GPL'd stuff working, with the possible exception of packaged closed software developers, about 5% of all developers.

This way the money will go to us, instead of CEOs or marketing departments.

Re:Software as a commodity

[Lord Omlette]

Assuming we don't nuke Pakistan and get nuked in return, I'm willing to bet none of the money will go to you and all the money will continue flowing to us Indians.

Enjoy!

no dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

trolling is bait for responses like yours.

Re:... browsers complement servers? Big picture!

[dwheeler]

When Netscape started up, the "world wide web" was NOTHING like its current size or influence. When Netscape started, Mosaic was showing people that the web had great POTENTIAL, but for many non-technical people there weren't enough services to make it worth using. Netscape wanted to sell servers; if it wanted to sell other people servers, there needed to be a lot of potential users of those servers. Netscape "gave away" the browsers so that there would be a market. Although it didn't work, this actually made sense at the time. After all, when you sell one server, you can (in theory) charge a big initial fee, plus lots of support fees, and each sale brings in lots of money. Client sales are a pain; each one only makes a little money, and supporting each user can cost more than the sale. A business strategy of selling where the profit margin would be largest seemed like a good idea. I suspect Netscape thought that once they owned the browser market, they could create proprietary extensions to their server so that users of other browsers would have a poorer experience (if it worked at all).

However, the big picture intervened here, in many ways. First, I think Joel is right, companies want to commoditize complementary products, because it leads to more sales for them. But different organizations will want to commoditize different things, because it's in their interest. As a result, sometimes the interaction of different players can result in the commoditization of many product categories. This can have a very beneficial result to the consumer, because commodity products are often in the consumer's best interests.

Looking at the Netscape case, Netscape had an interest in a commodity browser to support a proprietary server. But server administrators, using open source software approaches, managed to commoditize the server (Apache), ruining that approach. And Microsoft exploited its monopoly hold on Windows and OEM licensing agreements to prevent Netscape from getting their product on many PCs (as well as eliminating any possibility of selling Netscape for a profit). (In this case, some of these actions have been found illegal, but I believe similar things can happen even without illegal activity). As a result, Netscape ended up open-sourcing Mozilla. Now both the client and server sides can be viewed as commodity products: the server certainly is a commodity product, and Mozilla certainly limits what Microsoft could charge for a web client. This is a result neither Microsoft nor Netscape would have wanted, but it's better for the consumer.

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly explains his incoherent rants about OpenSource software. Gay people are always incoherent.

NOTE: If you don't get my sarcasm, you're probably gay.

Joel the Troel. Free software is cheaper for all.

[Erris]

Thanks for the basic economic lecture, Joel. While I hardly consider your big two intro economics classes impressive, your thinking is clear. It should be, the concepts you dwell on are simple enough.

It's presumptious of you, however, to tell us why IBM, RMS, and everyone and their dog is doing what they do. The spin is a little nausiating. Let's examine some of the nasty ones:

At this point, it's pretty common for people to try to confuse things by saying, "aha! But Linux is FREE!" OK. First of all, when an economist considers price, they consider the total price, including some intangible things like the time it takes to set up, reeducate everyone, and convert existing processes. All the things that we like to call "total cost of ownership."

What confusion? You forget that studies consistently prove the lower cost of ownership of free software? Not that it's what I tell people. I generally point out freedom, control, security and then cost. Now I see the confusion, it's a straw man. What else does this silly Sallmanist say?

Secondly, by using the free-as-in-beer argument, these advocates try to believe that they are not subject to the rules of economics...

Wrong again! If you keep economic priciples in mind while reading free software organization pages, you will note and remember many economic reasons offered support software freedom. It's the makers of propriatory software that would like to make themselves beyond the reach of economic laws. They attempt to do this by abusing copyright and patent law, and engaging in other anti-competitive behavior. RMS rightly noted that the results of such behavior is economic waste in the form of double work and the inability to use software as you would.

The rest of the article is inconsequential after the false frame work has been applied. Free software advocates are not ignorant of economic laws and one of the main advatages to free software is lower total cost of ownership. Only propriatory software concerns have a financial intrest to deliberatly waste the efforts of users.

Free Software and Marxism

[Carnage4Life]

Except that with Free/Open Source software, you are being paid: you are being paid with fantastic programs that would be impossible for any one individual or company to replicate. Releasing software Free is the appropriate expression of gratitude to the community.

It is interesting to me that an argument using Capitalist concepts as a base to critique Free Software was modded down and a reply that used Marxist (Communist) ideas was modded up. Funny enough, most Slashdotters probably wouldn't realize how much they agree with Marx and Engels Manifesto of the Communist Party and probably would take offence to being described as having communist leanings. I guess it goes to show you how negativity in the popular media can alter perception of ideas that may have some worth in them.

The really interesting thing about Free Software is that it seems to be a microcosm of the only scenario where Communism can be truly workable; when the cost of replication of goods or services of value tends to zero.

step 2=

[oliverthered]

Make the world a better,
Less gready,
More liberal place.

Step 3= Go to heaven ( or wil a nobel prize?)

Re:step 2=

[TWR]

You have just given two greedy reasons to write Open Source software: getting an Eternal Reward or getting $1,000,000 (which is what a Nobel Prize is worth).

-jon

I think operating systems will become comodities

[bsharitt]

My future plans depend on operating systems become comodities. I think open source will make them somthing that OEMs form to fit to their specific systems like Apple does, and the cost will become more tranparent with no MS tax, and the OS will be like the BIOS is now, just something that OEMs make, or licence without much thought or cost, and is just part of that particular system.

I plan on putting this into use as soon as I get AtheOS ported to the PowerPC architecture, and get it cleaned up and end-user ready.

SUN and GNU

[oliverthered]

SFAIK,
Sun are intending to use GNU tools for there Unix.
because GNU is now more-or-less de-facto Unix standard.

Now all Sun need to do is change there name to UNG and everything will fit perfectly inplace.
Now if HP were to use GNU then maybe there Unix wouldn't have buffer limits of cat etc.....

Good read, but what about Apple?

[madro]

The article offers some neat ideas about the strategic area various companies focus on ...

• HP: hardware, I guess (after merging with Compaq, I don't know what their strategy is -- I hope they're planning on more than economies of scale chasing after commodity hardware markets)
  
• IBM: long ago it was PCs before Microsoft changed the rules on them. Now it's consulting, and they're hoping to press forward by helping everyone implement 'free' software solutions in a way that improves business bottom lines. HPQ has a lot of catching up to do if it wants to beat IBM at this game.
  
• Microsoft: Windows and Office has carried them far, but now it seems like their strategy is to throw stuff at the walls and point to whatever sticks and say, "We did that -- we're still innovative and capable of leading the industry." XBox, set-top boxes/Ultimate TV, mobile phones, PocketPCs, embedded Windows ... sheesh. On second thought, I guess they deliver value by making sure whatever they do integrates well with their monopoly product. It worked for AT&T, for a while. But people finally got tired of it.

Apple has the right idea. Their current ad campaign talks about switching -- how you can do the same things on a Mac as a PC, except on a Mac it's easier. This tries to make software a commodity while keeping the UI separate (not the core OS, Apple wants that to be a commodity, too). It also emphasizes that it's easy to switch -- low switching costs are really, really important.

Apple's core advantage is the amount of integration it can offer between hardware and software. It looks like they're trying to de-emphasize anything that's purely software (unix, apache, browser, for sure ... but office suites and other applications, too) in favor of solutions that require hardware and software to work together well (iPhoto and digital cameras, iTunes and iPod, Airport's WiFi support).

The only problem is that Apple is still going it alone on some of their hardware components -- maybe because they've decided they can't make money trying to offer the same ease of use and integration across so many possible hardware configurations. Such a task either represents a real opportunity for the open source community, or a black hole of wasted effort trying to keep up. I'm not really sure which.

Re:Good read, but what about Apple?

[LinuxParanoid]

Microsoft: Windows and Office has carried them far, but now it seems like their strategy is to throw stuff at the walls and point to whatever sticks and say, "We did that -- we're still innovative and capable of leading the industry." XBox, set-top boxes/Ultimate TV, mobile phones, PocketPCs, embedded Windows ... sheesh. On second thought, I guess they deliver value by making sure whatever they do integrates well with their monopoly product

Um, you're missing something. Microsoft's strategy is still Windows. All the things you mentioned (XBox, set-top boxes/Ultimate TV, mobile phones, PocketPCs, embedded Windows) are either Windows-based or non-Windows alternatives designed to prevent low-end substitutes for Windows from arising or taking significant market share. MS cannibalized the "big iron" above it, and they're merely being wisely paranoid, attempting to control the platforms 'below' them so they don't fall victim to the same dynamics. Preserving the OS monopoly is still strategy #1.

--LP

What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

You expect slashbots to look at pictures of women?

It is about freedom too

[KjetilK]

Well, many of Joel's myths are straw men, but I think he ignores some important things in his eagerness to tell us that it isn't about freedom.

The point he misses is that freedom is good for economy too. Freedom is what makes the jump onto the bandwagon a no-risk jump. Freedom is what makes the legal implications so clear, that you're not risking a lot by joining. When HP chose Debian as their basis for Linux development, it was because of the pains Debian developers go through to make sure their distro is truly free. It makes it very FUD-resistant, and that is something very important.

Why is it that people often assume that whats good for freedom is bad for economy, and whats bad for freedom is good for economy? While most of the IT industry may think that way, it doesn't need to be so.

Vladimir Butenko had said that already

[Anonymous Coward]

Vladimir Butenko had posted

similar comments
on comp.mail.imap.

I always use this post to show that everything has a price.

Re:Mozilla conclusion? f6 = alt-d !!!

[jeremyp]

He may even know that. The point wasn't that Mozilla has fewer features than IE but that they are implemented differently such that you couldn't sit a n average IE user in front Mozilla and not have them complain about how everything is so different (or vice versa). There's always a learning curve (however slight) involved in moving from one software package to another. Ergo software is hard to commoditize.

Sun & Java...

[Steveftoth]

IMO, java is the way it is because Sun wants you to entice you with switching to their HW. They saw that many many people were writing windows applications and that windows applications would never be easily ported to their hardware. So in order to increase the sales of their HW, they wanted to reduce the cost of entry to their platform. Creating java and making it popular increased the chance that their HW would be bought.
Since Java is 'fastest' on their new SunFire servers (the top end model has like 106 procs), they get you to code/develop your app on your PC, then when you want more power, you go to their servers.
How well this plan has worked is debatable, but that's my opinion that the author has missed when talking about Sun.

Joels hidden motives?

[ip_free]

If every company has a hidden motive than- Joel must have one, since he is writing this article. He owns his company (I think) wouldn't his time be better spend writing code, running it ? Or is it possible that sometimes we do things whether we get paid for it or not. I like to write code. You like to collect stamps. These are hobbies that take time and we enjoy. I do agree most big companies don't do things because it is morally the right thing to do. They do it to make money.

JAVA Commoditizes Developers!!

[Black-Man]

Software companies think they can get Java developers right out of school for half the salary they would have paid an experienced C/C++ developer to write software just as efficient, in half the time!

Re:JAVA Commoditizes Developers!!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Software companies think they can get Java developers right out of school for half the salary they would have paid an experienced C/C++ developer to write software just as efficient, in half the time!

And they've thought/wished they could get VB developers for 1/5 of Java programmers' salaries.

Companies have *always* wanted to commoditize labor costs.

Re:JAVA Commoditizes Developers!!

[sql*kitten]

Software companies think they can get Java developers right out of school for half the salary they would have paid an experienced C/C++ developer to write software just as efficient, in half the time!

You are absolutely right, and not just Java but all of "open source" too. A lot of the college-age /. crowd are going to hit their 30s in a few years and discover that it will be impossible (or at least very difficult) to make a decent living as a programmer or a sysadmin - partly because the upfront cost of the software is minimal, and partly because the ongoing costs have been eroded by the constant stream of college-age workers with Linux boxes in their bedrooms who have little choice but to work cheaply because there are so many of them competing for jobs. Once you lower the barriers to entry, the market becomes a commodity, and no-one makes any money apart from those who have moved up the value chain (which means into non-technical roles, which the typical /.'er professes a great reluctance to do).

Re:Time, Money and Sex

[Brazzo]

Time does equal money. The question is, do you charge for your time?

Let's revisit your sexual example again. Two people decide to have sex. In that decision to have sex, there is plenty of unspoken negotiation over the "price" of that sex.

The difference between lovemaking and prostitution is the price. In lovemaking between two people, you've decided to have sex for "free" - not counting the other variables, such as the possibility of an unspoken agreement for fidelity, the possibility of "free love" a la the 1960's and early '70's. You've also decided to have sex because, in this situation, it's "fun" to have sex for free. It's something you enjoy doing, especially when there's no financial responsibility.

Prostitution, aside from the legal issues, is the same situation - there's an agreed-upon price for sexual relations. However, the difference is that in the case of prostitution, one of the two members entering into the sexual agreement has decided to make sexual relations the source of their livelihood.

Let's now take Free Software. In your case, you're writing free software because you enjoy writing it, and have decided, along with others, that the "cost" of writing free software is getting free software in return. Software Prostitution, with more software as the cost.

In the case of companies (or programmers) making their livelihood off of software development, they have two choices: don't charge and starve, or charge for their software.

If they don't charge for their software, they have no income coming in. Unless they live in a truly socialist state, they have bills to pay that will go unpaid. Life's necessities will dictate that they begin to charge for their software.

That's the core problem with "making money" off of free software. You can't. You have to make money off of something else - support is usually the choice of large corporations that don't write off the costs as the cost of doing business, and another job is usually the choice of the small programmer working on Free Software in their spare time.

Time ALWAYS equals money because, until everything is free, living costs money. If you choose to do things without expectation of income, it's because you've negotiated other forms of "payment" with someone else - perhaps even yourself - that outweighs the money you'd gain by charging for your time.

Sometimes, the payment is the sanity gained by taking some "time off", sometimes it's the joy of working on something you love, and sometimes it's the pleasure of "spending" time in the company of someone you enjoy.

But, saying that time isn't always money is just plain wrong.

If Java were faster..

[Steveftoth]

then you actually would be able to write an application for Windows, Linux and Solaris all at the same time. And have people use it. People do it ( I'm one of them), but it's not for the general public consumption yet.

Re:If Java were faster..

[mattdm]

I *do* write applications for Windows, Linux, and Solaris, all at the same time. And people use them. What language? C. No sharp, not even any plus plusses. (Although I could do that too if I wanted to.) What's the big deal?

Re:If Java were faster..

[Steveftoth]

But debug time with Java is much faster then with C. especially when you are doing multiplatform (since Java is supposed to be one platform, though you still get an odd bug).
Are you doing GUI? Which widget library are you using? It's much easier if your application is non-gui.

Re:If Java were faster..

[TWR]

So, you're shipping identical code on Win32 and *NIX? What's the installed base for your applications? What's the interface like? What networking API do you use?

-jon

Re:If Java were faster..

[mattdm]

Debug time might be faster, if you didn't have to spend so much time debugging Java quirks. My program uses SDL and does have a gui, although it doesn't use an external widget set (you can download it from my web site if you want). The fact that I can do it isn't really my point, though -- the fact is that it can be done without too much effort by anyone, since the core, difficult work has already been done.

Re:If Java were faster..

[mattdm]

Almost identical code, with some little bits of compatiblity wrappers. On Win32, *nix, BeOS, and OS X. My particular program (which you can download from my web site if you want) uses SDL, and if it did any networking, would use SDL_net. But there are several other good cross-platform libraries to choose from if you want, depending on your application -- my point isn't that I am so special in my ability to do this, but that it's not difficult for *anyone* to do.

Re:If Java were faster..

[sql*kitten]

then you actually would be able to write an application for Windows, Linux and Solaris all at the same time. And have people use it. People do it ( I'm one of them), but it's not for the general public consumption yet.

If Java were faster, you wouldn't need to buy large, expensive Sun hardware to run it. There is a theory that running C applications to simply too efficient to justify large purchases of Sun equipment, and they needed to find a way to make people buy more.

Why opensource commercial software?

[uncoveror]

Why opensource commercial software? Won't you lose your ability to sell for a profit? Not neccesarily. The open source community will give you free testing and debugging. A real savings over paying people to do it, and many will do it with a passion, not just as drones working on the clock at a saltmine. When it comes time to sell the finished product, some will take the free version online, but most will want a colorful shrinkwrapped box with CDs inside. That is something tangible. Open source does not have to turn software into something you give away, and you never have to give away technical support.

Re:Joel the Troel. Free software is cheaper for al

[rcs1000]

There is truth in your comment. But you devalue it by not providing examples, and making even more unsupported claims than Mr Joel.

"...studies consistently prove the lower cost of ownership of free software."

Really? Which software and which studies? Compared to which propreitary applications? I can believe Apache is cheaper (not to mention better) than IIS. But what about Star Office vs MSFT Office? Is this a study of technically proficient users, or not?

"The rest of the article is inconsequential after the false frame work has been applied."

OK. Now that is frankly ridiculous. Even if you disagree with some of his comments about OSS, that does not make the rest of the article meaningless. Indeed, the rest of the article is thought provoking, and contains more than a sliver of truth. (Ie, IBM wants OSS to be a success because then it can make money running your Apache server for you.)

It seems there is way too much religion in your post: "if you point to flaws in the OSS model [which I don't believe his does] then you must be against OSS. and those who are against OSS are ignorable."

I was right after all

[Anonymous Coward]

when I first read the last sentence in the posting, I thought it said "Stalinism" but now I realize that the author was making a humorous pun. Stallin (besides being a communist) was so irrational and illogical that he failed to understand how is actions caused even MORE harm to the common man/worker. Those that tried to tell him of this (who cared a bit more about the welfare of their kinsman than Stalin) were ousted or killed.

This article that I have read in a long long time

[forgoil]

I think that it really hit the nail. I am sure the slashdot community will bitch their asses off because what Joel wrote, or try to make fun of him and thus making him go away. I was very impressed what with he wrote, and it makes a lot of sense.

cost != money

[xdroop]

The greatest lie of our market-based system is that time equals money, in all circumstances.

At one point Joel points out that just because there isn't money involved does not mean that there are no costs. Chosing one thing always costs you the "opportunity cost" of potentially making a different choice. For example, if you are chosing to spend (note the word spend) time writing some piece of software, it costs you the opportunity to do something else with your time (like beg someone for sex).

thank goodness I'm not alone

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought for a while I was the only slashdot reader that thought Joel S. was a pretenious, idiotic, blustering fool. The man's writing, much like that dithering gasbag Katz, is little more than an officially-sanctioned troll.

Xbox as a commodity?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if M$ allowed hackers to open up the x-box and develop open-source software for it, would that be "commoditizing" the x-box?

And...if this is true, wouldn't M$ stand to sell more x-boxes and possibly gain marketshare from the Sony PS2?

Huh?

[DG]

I don't think even the most rose-glassed optimist thinks that IBM hase jumped on the Linux bandwagon so enthusiastically out of "the goodness of their own heart"

OF COURSE IBM is doing so out of a business/profit motive. I defy you to find any actual person who thinks otherwise.

But the point is, it doesn't matter what IBM's motivation is - as long as IBM plays by the rules that govern Free Software, everybody benefits (including IBM)

Do I care if my neighbour acts nice to me because he likes me, or if he's buttering me up for future favours, or because his God commanded him too and he's in fear for his soul if he does not? No. All that matters is that he be a good neighbor.

And there is every indication that IBM is a good neighbor to Free Software.

The news flash here is that IBM has managed to convert itself into a company whose business plan is based around contributing to the common good, rather than locking everybody into proprietary, IBM-only solutions, as had been their modus operendi for the previous 40 or so years.

DG

Not Free For Me

[Anonymous Coward]

If you and your girlfriend are having sex (for free), do you regret it because you spent six hours making passionate love and didn't charge her for it? Does she regret it because she didn't charge you?

That's not fair. Your girlfriend charged me.

Re:Mozilla conclusion? f6 = alt-d !!!

[Slothrop]

Also, don't forget that Spolsky has written books on usability. He isn't being biased here, just realistic. Pragmatism over idealism seems to be the motto of his whole site(which contains a lot of interesting stuff to read). I'm sure that he knows that there are ways to do what he wants to do other than the way that he's used to doing it, but as he states over and over, the average user want's all applications to work like those that they're used to using. Read the sections of his book that are online, and I think that you'll have a better idea of what he's trying to say there.

Open Source Is Good for the Corporation

[blair1q]

As long as we can induce the developers to develop products that undercut our competitors' profits in markets we aren't willing to enter ourselves.

--Blair
"openAIX, anyone?"

Sun-Java and Transmeta-Linux

[MrRudeDude]

Joel holds forth the position that since Sun sells processors, it's against their interest for them to invest in Java, which allows people to write software for any processor, thus "commoditizing" Sun's product line.

A few paragraphs above that, he holds that is in Transmeta's interest to invest in software that runs on anything (Linux), because it commoditizes the "complement" of Transmeta's product (also processors).

Joel, why doesn't Linux and other Free Software commoditize Transmeta's processors as much as they do Sun's ? Why does linux make only make a "complement" a commodity in Transmeta's case, but Java makes the complement a commodity and the code product a commodity in Sun's case ?

The fact is, Joel got a little carried away. If the alternative is not having your product purchased no matter how good because of artificial constraints, then operating in a commodity market looks appealing. Both Sun and Transmeta believe they have superior products to Intel/AMD, even if those products are superior in a niche. They need the death of (or the splitting of) the Microsoft/Intel axis, so that they can compete on any grounds at all.

If everyone uses Linux, they may mostly use x86 chips most of the time but sometimes they'll need somthing really low power and low temp and buy Transmeta, and all their software will just re-compile no problem. If everyone write Java programs, they may use x86 chips most of the time but sometimes they'll need something really powerful and stable and reliable, and they'll buy a Solaris machine and just run their java code with no problem. (Of course they can also write Java and run it on Transmeta chips, and write for linux and run it on Sun hardware.)

So what is lacking in Joel's analysis is that therw are some things worse than competeing in a commodity market, and Free Software is sometimes funded to purposely give companies a chance at a commodity market.

More nitpicking

[MadAhab]

As anyone old enough to remember the Bloom County reference knows, Bill Gates does not have enough money to buy Sweden; it's Norway, and it's enough to get him a date with no kissing.

Actually Moshe Bar was correct

[Error27]

Making changes to the driver API in Linux is essentially free. Free as in "I don't have to pay for it".

The person who makes the changes in the API is responsible to make the changes in the drivers as well otherwise people start cursing at him. This person probably doesn't consider it free, but obviously must consider it cheaper than the alternative.

(This equation assumes that the few third party drivers that do exist are not a priority.)

two greedy reasons

[oliverthered]

Well more two objectives inspired by greed, see there must be profit in there somewhere.

Re:Mozilla conclusion? f6 = alt-d !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

i run in to the same problem, being a long time IE user trying to switch to mozilla. how much easier is it to keep your hands as they are on the keyboard and hit alt+d than go all the way up to f6? mix IE's alt+d with the ctrl+enter to fill in the www. and the .com, and it's a pretty cool system. one i'd love to see hacked in to mozilla somehow.

The commodity theory ...

[MilleniumUcita]

is definitely worth looking at. To some extent it does make sense: "Commoditize your complements." On the other hand, it should be a bit self-defeating as well, because your complements are doing the same to you; if they can. So, the whole thesis rests on the fact that it is more difficult to commoditize software, than it is to commoditize hardware. Or better, services (intimate knowledge of your customer's environment) is more difficult to commoditize than software.

Probably, this has always unknowingly been the reason why, as a developer, hence, service provider, I like free software.

So, we're busy and quite successful commoditizing Microsoft; which is nice. What would help me much more, however, is a commodity replacement for the SAP, Siebel, Oracle Financials, JDEdwards, Peoplesoft, Navision, Vantive and other ERP/CRM-type of applications. I would, out of pure self-interest, contribute heavily to this kind of software, if it would spare me from having to deal with these controlling behemoths.

Joel is right, but..

[zetzet]

Sun would alread be quite dead when they _didn't_ release Java to the developer community.

Without Java and the ever increasing PC Power (CPU for a long time, I/O catching up slowly) only a small minority (same size as the zOS/CICS/Cobol developers ;-)) would use Unix/Solaris as their development environment.

Given the cheap developer costs (PC with WinNT, Intellij and Oracle 8i), a large amount (if not most) people in the corparate (in house) software development are using Java.

Solaris is a good server OS, and everybody that has the money will prefer the high quality Sun hardware over 99,9% of the PC crap hardware, when it comes to 7/24.

I think Joel missed that (minor) point because he focus on his "shrinkwraped" business, where the rulese are sometimes quite different.

To sum it up: good article, Joel rules, but he won't win the nobel price for economics :-)

Bye,

Jürgen

Re:Joel is right, but..

[reflective recursion]

yes..

At first the article made perfect sense, but then he went into Netscape and browser wars and went into iffy territory.

I love the info about IBM using open source though. For awhile I was really confused about their push.. but it makes it perfectly clear now.

.sig almost

[Bigbutt]

To reply to your .sig

Consequences, schmonsequences... as long as I'm rich.

Re:.sig almost

[killmenow]

Ahh, my imperfect ear never heard it quite that way. I just listened to some .wavs of it and realize it clearly is shmonsequences. .sig fixed.

TCO

[Gleef]

Tony writes:

The secondary costs of installing and using MS-Windows is about the same (or perhaps more) than installing and using Linux. That, coupled with the primary costs of using MS-Windows (licensing and media fees) puts MS-Windows at a higher cost than Linux.
...
This idea that MS-Windows has no secondary cost because it has a primary cost is stupid.

Yes, and to add some figures behind your statements, Paul Murphy has done some extensive TCO studies of Windows vs Various unix systems, and found that in many cases, a sanely configured Solaris solution (far from the bargain basement of the *nix world) can often save over 60% compared to the comparable Windows solution. The real world numbers are likely even more slanted towards Unix, because he leaves out the expensive hardware replacement that Windows pushes on you to keep running their software.

A strategic comparison of Windows vs. Unix, LinuxWorld, October 2001

Re:TCO

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you for posting this, I was looking for something that discussed some of the reocurring
costs for microsoft.

No Shite, Joel

[mrcparker]

Kind of like most of his articles this one points out the obvious - companies do what is in the best intrest of their profit margin.

That being said, I always like his articles, and I think that sometimes the obvious needs to be pointed out for people to see it clearly.

I agree with what he says about linux kernel changes. The kernel should be backwards compatable (and also easily pluggable) - writing new drivers for a new release should be unnecessary for a 1.x+ release.

Nobel Prize

[Gleef]

TWR writes:

...or getting $1,000,000 (which is what a Nobel Prize is worth).

The cash award of the Nobel Prize is 10,000,000 Krona (Swedish Crowns), which is roughly $1,036,055 USD today (or 1,096,383 Euros)

Re:Mozilla conclusion? f6 = alt-d !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Mozilla conclusion? f6 = alt-d!!!

No, it's not. F6 is a completely different keystroke than Alt-D, one you'd have to learn if you were an IE user moving to Mozilla.

The point being, people would rather Mozilla completely emulate the IE interface rather than have to learn a new one just to use a browser. The same way all those spreadsheet programs emulated each other so that users would have a minimal (hopefully, zero) learning curve on the new spreadsheet.

People would rather stay with what they know how to use than spend time learning a different tool that does the same job. This can be seen as "People are lazy"; it can also be seen as "People don't want to waste their time."

Agreed, but strategy is not risk-free...

[Monkius]

I would say that Open Source products actually do lower barriers to entry in consulting services, in spite of IBM's current success selling them.

IBM relies on its premium reputation and size to deliver consulting at higher margins, and those are advantages that aren't going away, but they should slowly decline.

Herding the market into proprietary hardware solutions like Mainframe Linux fits Joel's model, but, this is condemned to be a niche-market, high-end strategy. IBM cannot transform a commoditized, PC computing market into a market for proprietary IBM hardware. Just ask Bill Gates.

Re:Agreed, but strategy is not risk-free...

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM's approach is significantly more nuanced than you make it out. It's not a matter of selling the hardware and giving away the software -- it's lowering the TCO of IBM's existing proprietary middleware (WebSphere, DB2) by commoditizing the other parts.

totally off subject

[j0b0o]

http://www.happenstance.org/ ......look familiar?

Please find a new adjective

[DaveAtFraud]

Just out of interest, how many books by Ayn Rand have you read? At least one, I would hope, before you would use her name in this way. If you read a few you will find that Rand argued primarily for people to be able to do what they choose, including not work for payment. I can site several passages in "Atlas Shrugged" where this is the case. What she argued against was government taking away what an individual had created and, above all, taking away an individual's right to choose.

**NOTE In case you missed the implication **

This would include our right to contribute to free software. Microsft cannot make it illegal to use free software; only the government can (possibly in response to campaign contributions from Microsoft, RIAA, et al). Personally, I contribute to open source because its in my own selfish best interest. With open source, I get better quality software, a lower price and, by contributing, I learn; very selfish of me.

BTW, in addition to a thesaurus (so you can find a different adjective), I suggest you also invest in a dictionary. The word is spelled "dinosaur."

Re:Mozilla conclusion? f6 = alt-d !!!

[nil_null]

Yeah, the ALT-D thing threw me off, too. I mean, its open-source, if you want to use different keyboard shortcuts, modify it to meet your needs (granted, that may take a little work). Customizable controls are completely a possibility.

After using Mozilla for a week, I got used to its keyboard controls, and now when I'm in IE I hit the wrong keys. But I can't modify IE keyboard controls to fit what I'm used to.

Hardware follows software?

[Slime-dogg]

Did anyone else notice this craziness?

"A complement is a product that you usually buy together with another product. Gas and cars are complements. Computer hardware is a classic complement of computer operating systems."

Since when did the operating system come before the hardware? I can understand that with the advent of Quake 3, a 3D card was a necessity. This would be an example of hardware following software, but not the operating system.

Maybe next time, I'll leave the CPU at home and run M$ windows from my car's CD player.

Can we please have a "Spolsky" category?

[g4dget]

I would like to be able to remove his columns from my Slashdot front page. In my opinion, he usually doesn't know what he is talking about, but because he is articulate, one still occasionally feels compelled to refute him when one comes across one of his columns.

What is Joel really saying?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah,

I read the article. Most of the points he puts across are obvious - except I think what he's trying to convince us "most people believe", most people do NOT believe.

I am -yet- to be convinced that the TCO for Linux is higher than Windows, yet strangely enough - i'm personally quite critical of Linux and the Linux zealots.

I work in an engineering environment (and have so far about 10 years) and I can guarantee you that MOST people struggle with Microsoft products on a daily basis, even for basic things like "page numbering" in Word.

Sorry Joel, you can keep your propaganda.

Re:Mozilla conclusion? f6 = alt-d !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Geez, Mom. If you really don't like using F6, just change the code and do the 5-hour recompile. Stop your complaining."

Human beings act in their own best interest

[leereyno]

Its nice to see someone who actually understands what I've been trying to tell people for some time now.

A lot of free software / open source idealogues have made the same mistake that the Marxists made, they've failed to understand that people act in their own best interest. What is in the best interest of others is only a concern to the degree that it either corresponds to a persons's interests or at the very least does not conflict with them. Those who do not follow this normal human pattern of behavior are known as saints, they're also so rare that trying to base a political, ideological, or economic model upon them just will not work. The Marxist idea best summed up by the phrase "From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs" simply doesn't hold water whenever those with abilities derive no benefit from supplying the needs of others.

If anything is the antithesis of Marxism, it is capitalism, and corporations are the embodiment and incarnation of capitalist ideals. They exist to make money. Any other goals or intentions they might have are either in line with making money, or at the very least not contrary to it. If a business is doing something you can rest assured it is because they either believe it will make them money in some way, either directly or indirectly. Even in the case of charity, which corporations donate to in no small measure, the public goodwill that is generated ammounts to yet another reason for a customer to choose to buy that company's products. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that human beings (or collective of human beings which is what a company is) are heartless or completely indifferent to the problems and difficulties of others. Human beings are social animals and we do care for one another. We will do things to help one another that we don't derive immediate benefit from, or that we may never benefit from. It's just that we don't tend to help others when doing so hurts us. We'll certainly give money or even donate our time and energy to help starving kids in some third world country, but not if doing so means our own kids are going to go hungry.

So if businesses promote open source because they are going to derive a benefit from it, why do independent open source programmers contribute their own time and money? Because they derive benefit from it as well. Take our imaginary programmer "Gnubert." Gnubert spends his days (and nights) working on free software and advocating the creation and use of free software to others. He doesn't get paid to do this although he may have a job that allows him to do it, but then money is not what motivates him. Gnubert works on free software because it is what he enjoys doing and because the programs that he creates are useful to him in some manner. The fact that others use this code and also find it useful is also something that makes him happy. When others contribute to this code and provide him with their changes that code becomes better and is a more useful tool to Gnubert as well. Gnubert is behaving in a self interested manner.

Here is where the problems begin. Some people, and perhaps even Gnubert himself, start making the argument that everyone should behave as Gnubert does because it is the "right" thing to do, completely ignoring the fact that moral issues are not what motivate the behavior in the first place. As such these arguments make little sense to those who do not benefit from creating open source code, or who do not benefit from creating open source code in the same manner that Gnubert does. They make even less sense to those who would NOT benefit from creating open source code but would in fact stand to suffer because of it. The people making the arguments don't understand those who disagree. Ideology only prospers in the absence of a reality check. Open source is a good idea where it works and benefits those who are in a position to create or promote it. It is not such a good idea where it does not work, and it doesn't work everywhere. When was the last time you saw an open source medical imaging program? You don't because those who want and need an imaging program aren't programmers, and programmers have no want or need for a medical imaging program, except to the extent that creating one will put food on their table. Said programmers might need tools that help them create a medical imaging program, or a flexible and stable OS upon which to run this program, and this is why tools such as GCC and OS's such as Linux have been created as open source projects, developers benefit from their existence and because developers are self interested they have created them.

Lee

Re:Human beings act in their own best interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source isn't about programmers making money, its about programmers programming because they enjoy it. If someone is programming for money they are not creating the best code possible. Managers, marketing departments, and deadlines combine to create a situation where programmers are unable to do their best work. Free software solves this problem by taking money out of the equation. No money means no managers, no marketing departments, and no deadlines. The code ships when it is ready. I'm a writer of free software. I'm not motivated by money. I have everything that I need, mommy and daddy say I can stay as long as I want so there!! You're just a greedy burgeois capitalist swine! The red army^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HThe Free Software foundation will crush you beneath the boot of the proletariat! Comrade Stalin^H^Hllman will lead us to our future in paradise!

Bobby

P.S. This IS a joke in case anyone wonders

Re:Mozilla conclusion? f6 = alt-d !!!

[nil_null]

"Geez, Mom. If you really don't like using F6, just change the code and do the 5-hour recompile. Stop your complaining."

Actually, it's not too hard. It doesn't involve recompiling, it just involves adding a few lines to your user.js file. Maybe in the future they'll add a nice GUI for your mom to use.

My point wasn't that your mom should change the code, but that someone who is capable of such a thing should do so when they want a particular feature and contribute it to the project. And the author of this article is a software developer. But I know he was just trying to make a point, it just wasn't a good example.

Re:Joel the Troel. Free software is cheaper for al

[Erris]

Let's see some examples?
Look for yourself. As Joel himself admits, life is never as simple as economic theory. This might be a good starting point for TCO study. It does not take much brains to figure out that cheaper alternatives are available when PC's that cost as much a mainfraims used to, then doubled in cost while hardware became much cheaper.

OK. Now that is frankly ridiculous. Even if you disagree with some of his comments about OSS, that does not make the rest of the article meaningless.

Not meaningless, unimportant. There is plenty of meaning to all of the details there, but the lie that is told is that USER ECONOMICS are behind the shift at many companies. Unethical people and companies have a hard time grasping that some people try to make their livings honestly by doing what is best for their friends and neighbors. The unethical just can't see beyond extortion. The proof is left as an unpleasant exercise for the reader.

I disagree with your father

[Max the Merciless]

I think your father's view is pretty sad. time=money is too simplistic

Seems that you initially calculated in terms of the satisfaction you personally gained from the coding and your beneficial contribution to others.

If you started to charge, then it would no longer be a hobby and become a job, and you'd feel obligated to code even when you didn't feel like it.

Not everything has to be framed in money. Indeed most things that people do for joy (sport, hobbies) cost (a lot of) money.

If it were as simple as TIME=MONEY then we'd all work 14 hours a day everyday.

Boomshanka man

Cost of adoption

[CaptainCarrot]

Despite the fact that Mozilla has all the features I want and I'd love to use it if only to avoid the whack- a-mole pop-up-ad game, I'm too used to hitting Alt+D to go to the address bar. So sue me. One tiny difference and you lose your commodity status.

He's got a good point here, you know. I stayed away from Opera for a long time for no better reason than that the Back button was in the wrong place. Yes, thank you, I know there are many useful keyboard shortcuts in Opera, but I don't want to be forced to learn them to use the product comfortably. The Back button goes on the left side of the tool bar, which itself is just below the menu bar -- and that's the way I likes it, dad-gummit!

"And that's why Bill Gates can buy Sweden and ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, Bill won't be able to buy Sweden until 2016 assuming: 1) Microsoft outperforms Sweden by 10% year, 2) a price to GDP ratio of 1, and 3) Bill's worth to be 50 Big ones.

(The GDP of Sweeden is $197 billion.)

Very limited thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Joel misses two important facts here. First is that the corporate non-linux contribution to the whole is not all there is. There is alot more development happening outside IBM, HP, etc. Where is the motivation for that? Could it be as simple as a group of people who had a need not filled by the current marketplace decided to create their own? The stupidity of the market leaders created a very large group of unfulfilled people with a need.

I think the open source / free software movement is more an indictment of the computer software industry. I thank all the developers that I no longer need to deal with the various scum that make up the software vendors.

Second. Sun and others have adopted gnome as an almost complete project. IBM adopted linux as an almost completed project. Lindows has taken an almost complete suite of graphic tools to make a package they can sell. The licences permit them to add what they need on top of a huge already existing infrastructure. It is cheap. It is popular. It is destroying markets where they once made huge profits. Either join or get crushed. This of course is the server market. The desktop saga has yet to play out.

And yes, IBM can commoditize their competition's crown jewels. So much the better.

Joel, you should really get out more.

Derek

Re:I think operating systems will become comoditie

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the big reason that Microsoft (and UNIX) got popular was because the traditional oppressors in IT were the hardware companies. Microsoft delivered complete standardization across 1000s of hardware manufacturer's stuff while UNIX did not.

The last gasp of this strategy was IBM OS/2 & PS/2 10 years ago -- and it was virulantly rejected by customers. Apple, as cool as their shit is, is barely treading water marketshare-wise.

In short, good luck -- the slightest tinge of hardware company incompatibility in your software, and everyone's going to be running back to Microsoft.

Huh?

[alexburke]

Joel On The Economics of Open Source

Yes, but what does Steve have to say about it? And, more importantly, what's Bob's opinion?

sorry, but you just don't get it

[g4dget]

Free software is a way for end users to share development costs with other end users. That is, it's a way for an existing money-making business to reduce its costs. If you don't already have a money-making business, creating free software may not make much sense for you. I.e.:

• Step 1: have a money making business
• Step 2: develop software to support that busines
• Step 3: reduce your software/development/support/marketing costs by sharing the software with others

Some people may be able to make a living providing free-software related services (consulting, support, documentation), and some people may even create free software as part of that. But ultimately, the way money gets into the free software economy is the same way it gets to Microsoft: from other money-making businesses.

Spolsky is seriously confused

[g4dget]

Spolsky looks at the last three years of software and comes to the conclusion that free software is a consequence of this principle:

Smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements.

Sorry, but Spolsky reasons like he was born yesterday. There are a few companies whose actions could be interpreted that way and there have been a few fast-talking CEOs hungry for venture capital that have made such arguments, but this is not why or how most free software gets created.

The real driving force behind free software is end users and efficient sharing of development costs. People look at their annual budget for some piece of software, and they conclude that it is cheaper if they develop equivalent functionality themselves and in collaboration with others. Free software and its licensing methods are simply a low-overhead way of achieving that kind of collaborative development; the cost of setting up a commercial venture to carry out the collaborative development would be too high.

Occasionally, companies pursue the strategies that Spolsky points out. These companies are easy to spot: either they don't have true open source licenses at all (Sun Java), or they have some kind of dual licensing arrangement (Troll Tech) with some kind of agenda. In those cases, the smart end user holds on to his pocketbook and usually passes the "free" offer by. These kinds of arrangements are, however, uncharacteristic for open source software.

I won't even dignify a howler like the following with an analysis:

When computers become cheaper, more people buy them, and they all need operating systems, so demand for operating systems goes up, which means the price of operating systems can go up.

Even Spolsky can probably figure out why that kind of relationship between demand and price is completely bogus for software like Microsoft Windows. If he can't, he should have been paying more attention in his economics classes.

Re:Spolsky is seriously confused

[sql*kitten]

The real driving force behind free software is end users and efficient sharing of development costs.

That is only true in the cases where the end users are the developers. It works for GCC and Apache, for example. It doesn't work for any software that isn't directly useful to the people writing it. The way our economy deals with situations like that is to pay people to write software, thereby making the writing of software directly useful to the people doing it. If the people aren't paid - for example, by selling shrinkwrapped, licenced CDs - then the software simply doesn't get written and the economy as a whole is worse off.

Re:Spolsky is seriously confused

[g4dget]

It doesn't work for any software that isn't directly useful to the people writing it. The way our economy deals with situations like that is to pay people to write software,

Yes, of course: companies hire programmers and consultants to write or enhance open source software for them.

thereby making the writing of software directly useful to the people doing it. If the people aren't paid - for example, by selling shrinkwrapped, licenced CDs - then the software simply doesn't get written and the economy as a whole is worse off.

No, false. Just because you hire people to do your programming doesn't mean you have to put the results under onerous licenses. Most companies that have software created for them don't want to be in the software business, and many of them find it easier and less costly to just release the software freely. That's how open source software gets created in the real world and how programmers get paid for creating it. It really isn't that complicated.

contradictions

[loz]

somewhere at the end he states that it's incredibly hard to commoditize software (i.e. impossible). I agree with that.

yet he started with the theory that the big companies spend millions of dollars because they're trying to commoditize software.

seems like a waste of money then, as it's simply not possible to commoditize software.

that's why I think his theory about the reasons why big companies spend bug bucks on open source is incorrect.

loz

What is the value of Joel's writing?

[Alex Belits]

I mean, really -- a lot of stuff he writes ends up referenced from slashdot, but why? He writes articles that mostly consist of:

1. Things that every programmer knows already, and Joel just recently learned.

2. Various biases that Joel has -- an unfortunate result of working at Microsoft, and a reminder for the rest of us to never go there.

Other than that I have seen high school essays with more original and useful content.

This is not funny

[anandsr]

People who make such jokes don't understand the
reason behind the existance of linux or other free
software. They don't understand that it couldn't
have existed without GPL or FSF or Stallman.
Stallman sometimes goes beyond limits but still
somebody who wrote GPL cannot be equated with
Stalinism, or Communism.

GPL allows authors to control their software. It
protects them from Leaches(TM). It even allows them
to make money by dual licensing. It makes sure that
no body will take over the stewardship of the
project without performing much better than the
originator. It protects against forks.

If you look at open softwares that are not GPL,
you will find that they some have had many
commercial forks, that never gave any
acknowledgement to the original authors. The BSD
license did have one article for acknowledging the
regents, so it was done but others were as good as
in public domain.

Would you want to create a software and then have
somebody come in with a new feature which although
is small but very useful and starts distributing
it without proper attribution to you. Like the
MySQL case. MySQL only survived because they were
using GPL. If they were using BSD like License
they would have had no recourse.

Linux wouldn't have been possible without the many
utilities made by the FSF. Same applies to lot of
other free software. As an aside I don't agree
with FSF on renaming linux to GNU/linux. I think
that GNU should associate only to Free Software.
Linux distributions can have a lot of commercial
software, so the name only applies accurately to
Debian GNU/Linux.

I don't say that there is no use of other kinds of
licenses. BSD License was useful for the BSD unix,
but that was because there was no internet at the
time and BSD wouldn't have succeeded or become
popular without the support of unix vendors.
Likewise a library needs a more relaxed license
like the libGPL, and probably a system like MONO
needs an even more relaxed license.

But IMNSHO, anybody calling GPL viral or otherwise
bad names is a person who wants to be a leach and
cannot do so due to the GPL, and hopes that people
will not use it so that they can take over projects
of other people and make some money or name. I
would point at MicroSoft as a prime example. They
dread GPL because they cannot misuse GPL software
and they know they are being squeezed, slowly but
surely, and there will be little space left for
them when GPL is done expanding.

-anand