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O'Reilly on the Commoditization of Software
Iorek writes "International Data Group/Sverige has a great interview with Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly & Associates Inc. From predictions of eBay's purchase of Oracle to discussions of the failings of open source licenses, O'Reilly's certainly not reserved. I couldn't help but be reminded of the rise of this site and slashcode."
How well is Andover/OSDN, owner of Slashdot, doing? Honestly.
...Apple. Look at what Apple did with OS X. Apple took an Open Source OS and pinned it up with a proprietary front-end. The system benefits from all of the Open Source advancements in hardware control, while at the same time, the user has all the benefits of a modern, easy-to-use interface.
Perhaps the article should have pointed out that the commoditization of Open Source largely involves the things the user never sees. What hasn't evolved yet is a fundamentally easy-to-use Open Source GUI for the whole slew of commodity parts in the back-end.
Other companies have taken a similar path with commodity software, Red Hat for instance. However, their business plan involves capitalization on commodity products, not in the interface department, but rather in the support department. In theory, these two branches aren't that far separated. Interface and support both help the user accomplish the same thing, that is, getting work done on the computer.
I think we're nearing the turning point where we decide there aren't that many tasks we haven't managed to code on the computer. In comparison, we have a much larger area to cross in making things easier for the user. It would make perfect sense, business-wise, to assume that the area that is most open for development is the area that is most profitable. Therefore, I imagine this is the next area that software, internet, and computer manufacturers will flourish.
What's wrong with this picture? Well, one thing is that one of the fundamental premises of open source is that the licenses are all conditioned on the act of software distribution, and once you're no longer distributing an application, none of the licenses mean squat.
One of the things that was criticized about the APSL was that it covers deployment as well. And they define deployment as anything other than R&D and personal use. Check it out in Section 1.4.
simon
home page
hinderances to OSS is the image. I say this because ive met people who will use macs but they wont use linux because of the people who promote it as an anti business anti capitalist vehicle. The mozilla logo doesnt go very far in helping remove that image. then there those who genuinely belive that through linux they can bring a revolution of a politicla nature. its unlikely to happen it wil just hurt linux
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
To condense, O'Reilly says that licenses which allow you to modify and use code without releasing it because you aren't distributing it -- as is the case with Amazon and eBay -- are failures, because they don't force those changes and possible improvements back to the community.
He does not, however, provide a solution or an alternative, or get into the question of whether Amazon and eBay actually are "distributing" the code by having millions of people outside their organizations use it every day. I believe this (the "ASP loophole") is one of the things being addressed by version 3 of the GPL (the current version dates to 1991, before the birth of the web). If the GPL does change to define, say, execution of programs via CGI interface, as distribution, it's hard to fully imagine what the repercussions will be.
Posted with Mozilla
Very soon, everyone would have lathes. The market for lathes would be nil. The new market would be for what you could produce with your lathe. Even that market would wane, since anything that was produced for market could be quickly copied by others.
I think eventually, the market would shift again. Now, the lathe owners would create new proprietary tools that would be used to produce goods and services.
It seems the IT industry is going through those evolutions now.
The PC is our lathe, and the software is the first tier of production from these lathes.
When a new application comes out, such as the browser, it's just a question of time before the concept is copied to the point of market saturation.
Open Source is the recognition of this inevitability, and is providing the templates for this first tier.
Now, the challenge is to take these tools and make our own, custom applications and profit from them.
Amazon and Ebay have done this for themselves, but are wisely cooperating with individuals who are making new tools to profit with them.
If Bucky was right, the wealth that can be created by such cooperation has no limits.
I think O'Reilly is right, but it points to a very disturbing trend, especially if you are someone who makes a living writing code.
What he is saying is that business solutions in the immediate future are no longer going to be development and integrated applications (basically, code), but ideas. Why is this disturbing? Because it removes the an entire industry from the equation, or at least, it shifts the software industry down in terms of relevance and importance.
He is saying that innovation will no longer come from companies like IBM or Oracle, but from the development of new business processes.
In fact, if you replace the word commodity with the word marginalization in his interview, you'll better see my point. And as software becomes more and more marginalized, the value of the software as well as those of us who write the software drops.
Frankly, it scares me to think that the skills I've worked so hard and spend so much to develop (and continue to develop) have nothing but marginal value.
Actaully, that never even came up. The choice to use linux as a platform for projects is based on whether or not it can deliver, and how easily the developers involved in the project can work with it, and the cost/benefit ratio of using it.
Complying with the license, in this case, sharing source again, is simply part of the cost of using it, and not that hard in practice to deal with.
So while what you say about linux treating information freely is very true, and quite important from an overall viewpoint, it is not the reason why people, or companies, use it.
I can guarantee that the company I work for didn't decide to use linux just so they could "give back" to the world... they picked it becuase it got the job done.. giving back is part of the cost.
Yes, IBM claims to be selling Linux solutions, and I am certain they are responsible for many installations of Linux. Also see their PDF of software available for Linux.
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But IBM has not ported a critical piece of their own software to Linux clients.
GOOD
Clients for DB2 seem to have been ported to Linux.
Tivoli clients have been ported to RedHat and SuSE.
Rational seems to have been ported only for RedHat. It also works for SuSE if you are running IBM hardware. (Is this a marketing ploy or because of technical difficulties?)
WebSphere has a developer client for Linux. I first thought it was not available, then I found this mention of it. But I could not find it in the Buy Now area.
BAD
Lotus does not have Linux clients. IBM recommends running the client under WINE, but this is not acceptable for Fortune 500 companies with tens of thousands of desktops.
This is the killer. DB2, Rational, and WebSphere are used by developers. Tivoli is used by administrators. Every employee needs to use the mail client and information resources and collaboration abilities of the Lotus Notes client. Without a Linux version of the Lotus Notes client, many companies cannot migrate to Linux desktops. Also, Lotus Notes is the only commercial software with significant marketshare to compete with MsOutlook
So, yes, IBM is pushing Linux for servers. But they control one of the major blocks for the Linux desktop in the corporate world, and they are letting us down.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Yes, but given back very little in comparison to what they've got. The projects Apple has "borrowed" from would exist without apple, OS X most likely would not without them. But then again, they've chosen their licenses so that they allow this, and it's entirely okay if Apple takes everything and never gives anything back.
/BSD users are these day jumping to Apple because the only motivation they ever had for using it was the utility value (which the OSI advocates) and they see more of that value in OS X with all it's non-free programs. Fine if you'd like that to be the future of operating systems but I sure as hell wouldn't. Go ask someone who was around about the old UNIXes.
The impression I get from Slashdot is that many GNU/Linux
What we have with GNU (/Linux/*BSD/Hurd) is a free OS which can change the way people think about software completely and bring the copyright law (at least for software) eventually back to reality. Even if you can't do everything you can with Apple's proprietary stuff right now, if it feels like the right thing you should refuse to sponsor the software companies that choose to license their software non-free.
I for one think that a future where all software was free would be better for the society. Not necessarily for the same reasons Stallman has, I'm not sure I see how non-free software is "morally wrong" but you can accept that idea even on lighter grounds, just like the current copyright law has accepted that we should not have these freedoms by default.
...O'Reilly's point. Commoditization is not the same as marginalization.
He is comparing the current situation to 1980 when Wang could charge $40,000 for a minicomputer word-processing system. IBM commoditized the market with an open architecture for microcomputers. Tim's saying the same thing could happen in software with its commoditization (which is coming whether programmers like it or not).
The '80s didn't produce a "marginalization" of hardware engineers (except those who insisted on continuing to sell word-processing for $10,000 a station). It produced a golden age for hardware engineers.
Tim's also noting that the ultimate winner in those hardware wars was not the company which commoditized it (IBM), nor the company which first took advantaged of the commoditization (Compaq), but the company that realized the ultimate goal of commoditization was build-to-order (Dell).
It might not be totally clear who O'Reilly's comparing to IBM in the software commoditization process (maybe he's thinking of Microsoft or even Red Hat). But he explicitly states that IBM is filling the role of Compaq with its Websphere package. And he suggests the ultimate winner will offer something like Websphere with no proprietary components and make their money customizing it to each user.
Not a bad idea. I'm putting my small personal fortune behind it and finding it's not costing much more than Michael Dell spent in his college dorm room. I hope to be announcing just the kind of product he's talking about at OSCON.
So maybe I'm a little biased.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Linux is just Linux and Perl is just Perl. They are just two nice little pieces of software that Amazon is using. Sure, they are making a lot from what they have built on top of that. But that is their right. Wasn't opensource about freedom? I think we should be glad if Amazon reports a Linux bug if they find one.
O'Reilly is right that data collections like Yahoo maps, E-bay and Amazon are the future. However, he is wrong about the answer. We will have to collect our own data. And just as with the software it may take some legal experimenting before we find the right formula.
There will be some setbacks like CDDB, but we can overcome that.
Also I am not very worried about the fact that the first implementations of such collections are commercial. The power of the opensource/opencontent is not in being first. It is in being with many and in being volunteers who provide things for free. We are a herd: slow to react, but impossible to resist.
Let me just do some guesswork how the answers might look like:
- Amazon: for the book evaluations we might have some open alternative that gets supported by a lot of smaller vendors. Just as with Netscape one vendor (maybe Borders) might pay the bills and let the others have a free ride just to get access to a wider public.
- Yahoo maps: at some point all software about maps will be standardized. At that point it might very well happen that the real providers of the data in the maps - mainly government agencies - take over.
- E-bay. E-bay doesn't have a real data collection. It is just the place where everyone goes, just as Slashdot is the place where everyone goes when they want a certain type of discussion. But this is a rather delicate position. It is just as with pubs or search websites: for years one is the most popular and then at once there is a shift.
The space is there because the BSDs generally (with the exception of Debian GNU/FreeBSD) try not to use GNU tools wherever possible.
I think people miss Stallman's point with the whole GNU/Linux thing more often than not. He started a project to assemble together a operating system called GNU in 1984. When Linux came around, thanks to the GNU projects efforts there was _everything_ ready to make a complete free operating system except the kernel. People then grabbed all the GNU tools and the ones GNU hadn't had to develop because they already were there and combined them with Linux to get an operating system. They then continued to call this Linux. Stallman had been working to achieve this from the 80's and now his project wasn't getting any kind of credit even though it had been a main player in making this possible.