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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."
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?)
:wq
Anyone else misread that as "Stalinism"?
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.
~ kjrose
step 1: make a inovative open source product that will benefit all involved and distribute it freely.
step 2: ???
step 3: Profit
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!
My poetry site welcomes the unusual.
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.
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
Soccer Goal Plans
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
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
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?
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?).
Joel "read me I'm the next Jon Katz" Spolsky wrote, inter alia:
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.
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.
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
Remember Amalek.
The greatest lie of our market-based system is that time equals money, in all circumstances.
... like going out to dinner because you enjoy eating out, and enjoy a woman's company, etc.).
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
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.
It's almost ironic that the author pics such dead or dying companies like Netscape, Transmeta, IBM, etc for his examples
.. in order to dominate the server market. This would have been plausible in, say, 1997.
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
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).
Anyone else misread that as "Stalinism"
... 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).
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
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
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!]
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
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.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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)
c-hack.com |
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.
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.
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?
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.
Linux is dead.
LU
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.
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.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
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.
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!
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
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.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
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.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
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.
Make the world a better,
Less gready,
More liberal place.
Step 3= Go to heaven ( or wil a nobel prize?)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
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.....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
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
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.
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.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
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.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
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.
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!
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.
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).
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."
--- My dad's political betting
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.
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).
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
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
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
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?"
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.
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.
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.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
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.)
Well more two objectives inspired by greed, see there must be profit in there somewhere.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Sun would alread be quite dead when they _didn't_ release Java to the developer community.
;-)) would use Unix/Solaris as their development environment.
:-)
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
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
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
----
Open mind, insert foot.
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.)
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)
----
Open mind, insert foot.
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.
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.
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
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
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.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
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 the brethren went away edified.
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?
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.
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:
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.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.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.