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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.
The best/greatest standing part about open source isnt GNOME or KDE, or that we all have free speach software, its what we are DOING with that software. Amazon is built on perl, and look what it has accomplished.
Later in the artical he comments on Debian, and how the creator and his company Progeny dont view linux as a product, but "a set of commodity software components he can put together for different purposes."
What he's getting at is that if the OSS community wanted to push forward, you need an idea and then use linux as the tools for that idea, suhc as automated backup, or something snazy like amazon (where it is a tool, and not the product). Trying to market it as a free desktop platform (in which case linux is the product) just wont cut it. I've done projects for my university, and its worked before, and it will work again.
Disclaimer: Do I beleive that linux cant be a product? No, I'm just saying that *ONE OF* (and not limited to) the best ways is to use it as a tool, not a product.
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
...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.
I just finished attending a Molecular Biology Training class, and I couldn't help drawing parallels between Open Source and the public Research that is on-going, such as the Human Genome Project.
Like open source software, public research labs publish the data they found, such as mouse or yeast genome, into the public domain (Humor me, I know that Open Source is not public domain, but it's darn close in terms of availability and cost). In addition, when a lab creates a new genomic library, they are supposed to make it available to anyone who asks. Sounds a lot like Open Source.
However, privately funded research usually do not have such policy, and use patents, trade secrets, and Copyrights to protect the IP. This has some effect in slowly down advancement in science in many ways. Such research also lead to imporant, and profitable advances for the companies involved.
But, due to limited public funding, not all worthwhile projects are funded in a timely fashion. A grant request to the NIH may take years before approved. A private company, seizing an oppertunity, may choose to invest and jump start a new field of research.
It seems that both models can co exist, and maybe it's time to have a publicly funded, or even an industry funded, organization, the supports Open Source development. The group should focus on open standards, common tools and platforms, and anything else someone can make a good case for. Something that will advance our knowledge, and make life easier. Something that we all cooperate on, rather than having blackmails or mighty pissing contests.
Maybe we should begin to treat Computer Science like Science, and really advance it methodically, rather than "My code is faster than your code..."
According to Yahoo! Finance, EBay has a market capitalization of $34.9 billion, while Oracle has one of $63.6 billion. So unless Larry Ellison has "pocket change" on the order of tens of billions of dollars, he doesn't have a shot in hell of purchasing EBay. While it may be a stretch to assume that EBay will some day grow large enough to purchase Oracle, it is kind of suprising how large EBay has grown.
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
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I think that a lot of the dyanamics he's talking about hold true -- obviously, O'Reilley is a very smart guy.
But it seems to me that he's looking at service industries, and calling them software companies. In order to do that, he has to change the definition of a software company, and as a result he's able to announce this as a shift in the software industry.
My problem with what he says is mostly aesthetic. It's that same old silicon valley rich guy entrepeneur guru bs.
He's making a lot of points that most people know -- web applications are more exciting, in many respects, than desktop applications now. Web applications are being built out of commodity pieces. The data in eBay and the customer good will is worth more than the code. All of those are good points, if not exactly earth shaking.
But the way he's stiched them together is mostly a semantic trick, and he's out there like he's been given stone tablets on some moutaintop.
It's not evil or anything, just a little icky.
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
The fact of the matter is that the various open source or free products are good enough. As the software consumers become better educated, the market for traditional applications shrinks. OpenOffice.org is good enough that anyone who knows better won't buy MS Office. Opera is as good as any browser out there and can be run free of charge - with only a minor banner ad. One by one any major "shrink wrap" product will feel the pinch.
The future is in two places - integration and data critical mass.
Integration is really going to be two businesses - creating then supporting custom collections of free software and writing code to integrate free applications into custom solutions. The first business is already developing - with companies such as RedHat leading the way. The second business is in its infancy - but much of our future lay with workflow scripting.
Data Critical Mass is the business of becoming the big boy in a market with no natural barriers and doing it well enough that there is no reason for customers to look elsewhere. Very honestly, how long would it take a small group of decent programers to replicate "eBay"? I think about a week. But at the end of the week could we provide better value? Hell, no! Why would anyone list with us, and our "dozens of potential buyers" on day one when they can list with eBay and be seen by "millions"?
In the future, all general purpose applications will be written by bearded socialist hippies while smoking pot in their basements as the professional (in the sense of getting paid - not work quality) programmers write workflow scripts in the office. Meanwhile the eBays and Amazons are smart enough to keep the "goose laying the golden eggs" alive, content to dominate their marketplace and earn a decent margin rather than try to get a fat margin and instead create an opeing for a competitor.
Bingo.
Don't think that O'Reilly doesn't know this either. Check out how many books, articles, and so forth they have published since OS X came out. I had the privilege a few months ago to have a sit down with the current editor of the Apple books, and from the way he talked it seems that O'Reilly is nothing short of ecstatic about the OS.
O'Reilly, IMHO, publishes by far the best books on the market. This is because they have excellent editors and scouts (for lack of a better word) to find very intelligent, very insightful people to write their books. I suggest people check out there dev sites more often; they are treasure troves of info
The O'Reilly Network
MacDevCenter.com
OnDotNet.com
OnJava.com
OnLamp.com
openp2p.com
osdir.com
Perl.com
XML.com
100% Crunchier
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.
Linux vs Windows was never the proper battle, it was always a battle over what you DO with these things, and how you do them more effieciently than the other guy. Lots of companies NEED something like Exchange, so they by an Active Directory and Windows by default, and so on and so on.
O'Reilly is dead on right. All this shit is just commodity for the applications built upon it that actually generate income. Superiority of one platform over another is a moot point. No one decides to buy a book at Amazon because of Linux, instead of Barnes and Noble because they run on IIS, so get over it.
Windows against Linux is now like Goodyear versus Michelin. Who gives a shit? Only tire makers, not CAR makers. So, it is time to focus on building shit that rides on these things, instead of so much focus on the things themselves. No side has an advantage right now, but that could change overnight. Suppose Microsoft buys Amazon, or EBay buys Oracle? Same players, whole new battle, and all this crap over which OS is better doesnt mean a thing.
What if Microsoft buys Macromedia; takes Flash and does interesting remoting stuff with Web Services tied only to .NET? What is the competing solution from IBM going to look like?
I've got no answers, but I agree with O'Reilly that things are going to get very interesting over the next few years, and things are never going to be the same.
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.
Having read the article twice I'm not qutie sure I get O'Reilly's point.
What he's saying is correct, but it's not exactly earthshattering in anyway. Amazon puts together some services that rock. They patent them. And then they sell the service to others. That just seems logical.
How that ties into driving Open Source I'm not sure. If they're only devleoping proprietary things (services) on top of an open source backbone, they're not really driving Open Source devlopment. Just because I compile my program with gcc or use a perl script doesn't mean I'm driving open source development in anyway. They're just using it as the foundation to build on.
Open Source is by definition controlled by anyone who wants it to be. Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems like he's just stating the obvious and it has little to do with Open Source.
What's going to happen on the home level is what's already happened to the hardware market. Everyone is looking for the lowest price. When the PC first came out, a lot of people were concerned about the brand/reputation, et al., and were willing to pay a premium for an AT&T, IBM, or other high-line product. That's where the software market is right now. The high-end hardware makers got slaughtered by price. And now the high-end software market is about to get slaughtered. Microsoft (and lots of others) are going to have to compete against the software equivalent of incredibly cheap clone hardware... and they are going to lose.
IAAL
I'm happy for the change, so we can get over these stupid platform wars, and focus on things that actually do something besides send bits back and forth. Now we get to focus more on the value of those bits, and I think that is a good thing.
Amazon and all the others are free to build and deploy using the same tools everyone else uses, and playing by the same rules. They are not to blame for being successful enough that their data being manipulated by those tools is more valuable than someone elses. Or for having the money and foresight to employ programmers to use those tools to create new tools for the company's own personal use.
There's nothing to "fix" here because nothing is broken. Should you have to license hammers from Black & Decker because you build houses for a living?
I'm not sure what kind of point you're trying to make, but making a living in my basement home office coding applications while high sounds a lot better than writing TPS workflow scripts for a faceless corporation in a partitioned rat maze.
O'Reilly is WRONG about the license thing. He seems to think it was an oversight, or mistake, that allowed Amazon, Google, etc to work the way they do. As IF. /is/ possible to make money with it"). I think I was there for like 5 minutes sometime in '96.
It was no oversight at all. It was design. Seems liked he's been believing OpenSource as described by its opponents, like it's communism or something, as opposed to what it is. Those are successes, not failures!
Actually, I'm a little surprised -- I mean where is that on the 5 stages of understanding the GPL? ("OH its NOT communism, it
Plenty of companies have been screwed by not getting the source, and getting straight-jacketed into dealing w/ only 1 company.. not just individuals. I see that as the point of opensource, take away the power to abuse that the software industry has, but not to be anti-industry in general. More of a return to the pleasant past, before PC's tookover.
regarding an open source gui...
,or change it's behavior.. but, in general, it's built to behave a certain way, and you can go around to macs everywhere, and the machine behave the way you expect them to. The developer knows what the user expects, and doesn't have to account for a dozen different ways to interface with things. More importantly, he has somewhre to start.. look how many windows applications have varied interfaces. To really understand this, in case anyone is doubting it, just sit down with a fresh mac and mac user for a few hours and learn how to install software, work with files, etc... you'll get it.
(agree with everything you said, btw)
As a long time hardcore technical guy, and let me back that up by saying I'm a unix nut, I've been using linux heavily for 10 years now, solaris before that, and I get right into the guts.. I like assembly, circuit boards, and whatnot. I like a command prompt and I don't like microsoft.... anyway....
as a hardcore technical guy, open source liker, and a recent convert to OS-X... the comment about a gui got me thinking.
I like open source. I like open everything. I don't like being told what to do with my computer. Yet, I LOVE OSX, and I recognize that the one strength MacOS really has is that apple controls the desktop. It's not that you can't skin it,
So.. we want an open source gui. Here's the thing... the only reason the mac has the "world class gui" feel to it is BECAUSE of a certain lack of openness.. we're talking about a benevolent dictator here. Apple developers know what to expect on the desktop, know how the mac user expects it to behave... and that's the main attraction. If you don't want that, you might as well go use linux.
Yes, we can do stuff in linux that OSX can't do. Yes, open is good, no argument here...I'm just tossing out the thought that, when it comes to providing a rock solid user experience, for a general purpose computer... a lack of choice is sometimes what's needed.. to get people thinking and doing the same thing.
You can sit someone down and show them windows -vs- mac.. and invariably, the mac people get more done, and are more comfortable with their gui.. and it's not because one is more customizable, or more flexible.. in fact it's the opposite.
If they ever grew tired with it, they would simply let the market decide. I can almost see it now:
"ORACLE CORP. MIB - FREE SHIP W/ BIN - LQQK!!!"
(For the eBay fanatics, that is a full 45-character auction listing.)
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.
...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.
The FreeBSD folks get some benefit as well. Besides having another big company using their code, testing it (and supplying patches) they kind of avoid the tug of war that part of Linux is going through - the whole "is it for geeks or the masses?" The coders who are good at one tend not to be as good in the other. So the FreeBSD coders can concentrate on the lower level bits, and have the Apple folks worry about getting the real fancy GUI on top of it.
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.
.
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.
...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 difference isn't always clear. I use these factors...
Integrations are much lighter weight than applications.
Integrations are very specific to a particular environment, whereas an application is more generally useful.
Integrations tend to use higher level languages, frequently interpretted. They rarely use C.
Code that triggers an application to generate a TPS report, then opens the TPS coversheet template in a wordprocessor, then bundles the whole thing and uses the email app to ship it off is an integration.
There are plenty of the places where the line is very ambiguous. The most important fact is that the center of gravity in the programming world is moving away from commercial software producers and writing big generally useful apps to customizers working directly for the users building small narrowly focused solutions.
That is a profound change. Imagine, if you would, that groups of volunteers around the world collaborated to design and build a car - then gave the cars away free. Instead of going to your local car dealership, you instead visit your local OpenCar.org Users Group, where they hand you the keys no questions asked. The auto manufacturing business would be in big trouble, but some of the assembly line workers might find new work doing custom configurations - new paint jobs, engine enhancement, installing moon roofs, etc.
That is what is going on now. For a long time, OSs and applications were written by larger and larger organizations. Like physical commodities, mass production was used to spread the capital and R&D cost over a larger and larger market. OSS changed that, however, because it effectively made the those costs zero. The industrial production model is no longer valid. IT is changing back to a craft production model with local producers and local consumers meeting face-to-face. The economics of that model work again because the producers aren't being asked to write new applications requiring tens of thousands of hours, but to customize an existing application, at a cost of tens of hours.
But, the individual consumer buying an Apple product really doesn't care about licenses. Apple's relationship with open source is, almost certainly, unknown to that consumer. It is relevant only because it allows Apple to market an attractive product.
O'Reilly noted that keying a license to distribution rights and obligations loses impact when the application is something like Amazon ot Yahoo, i.e. an app that won't be distributed. That applies, too, to millions of consumers of open source code who will never modify or distribute any code.
The GPL and other open source licenses assume that code consumers are also code producers, i.e., developers. That is no longer the case.
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