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Don't Be a Sharecropper
An anonymous reader writes "Tim Bray, best known as an XML Heavy, has an
entertaining rant about why you should be developing for *n*x, OSS, or (especially) the Web. Because if you're on a proprietary platform, you're a "sharecropper"."
I support open source 100% but the analysis in the article is very flawed.
If I have an application for any os, I have the same set of worries no matter what. If its windows yes I do have to worry about microsoft developing their own and giving it away. However how many times has microsoft decided to give away stuff ? If its linux I have to worry about someone reverse engineering my product and making an open source knockoff. In the linux case if their is damage to my IP rights, who am I going to sue college kids with no money ?
His scenario is further destroyed by the fact that almost no one is upgrading with every release anymore. Theres alot of people that run win95 still even more that run win98 and a heck of alot running win2k. So if microsoft decides to include your product as a giveaway it could be a very long time before it harms your sales.
The only thing that comes close to sharecropping in the software industry is working for large software companies where you don't have a stake or a say in the management. In that case the platform doesn't matter, youre still screwed.
If you're doing something I don't approve off (ie; developing software for a closed system) you're dumb and I'll use a whole page on this here interweb to tell everyone.
Okay. so he has one or two points, the first is that the corp that owns the OS can develop their own software and give it away to push you out of business. Funny, I can't say I see that MS Paint or even Adobe PhotoShop (btw, by his logic, Adobe are sharecroppers) have prevented PaintShopPro from becoming successfull... I don't see how the inclussion of CD-burner functionality in the latest OS from the softwaregiant we love to hate has slowed down the sale of for instance Nero... and despite the fact that a certain company bundles a browser with their OS, Opera and other alternative browsers seems to be gathering followers by the minute.
His second point is more strained; that the one controlling the OS is the one in controll of all sotware that runs on it. This is, as even I can see, stupid at best and FUD at worst. If this held even remoptly true, each and every firm that makes any sort of software, be it wordprossessors, MP3-rippers or graphicsmanipulators, would provide their own underlying OS to stop others from using it to something else... No one can controll what people run on their computers, no matter what OS.
There will always be a marked for second- and thirdparty developers on all operatingsystems, both closed and open source. The difference is, if you develop for closed source, it's more accepted to actually ask for some money to compensate for the time you too to write the code.
So in the end, I'll say he is plain wrong. There are a number of good reasons to develop for OSS, but this is not one of them.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I just had a conversation about this topic with one of my co-workers: Seems Microsoft just lets new software markets run until a clear victor is decided by the end users, then they completely redo it and destroy the competition taking the valuable ideas from the previous victor.
One way to go is to cross-platform develop. Most of the development I do is for games and as such I use allegro:
http://www.allegro.cc/
If you go to the site you'll see plenty of mediocre games, but once you realize the power and dev-friendliness behind the allegro library you'll be hooked.
One could create an OpenGL accelerated game (using AllegGL) without changing a line of code! Realistically, you would want to change some code anyway, but everyone interested in game development should check it out.
The only thing it's missing is a bonified network library. It has some out there, just none that I would consider complete or complete & useful.
Can't wait to finish the game and then release it for DOS, Windows 98, ME, 2K, XP, Linux -- possibly Mac and even BeOS! (stability issues with the last two, I believe.)
And Microsoft has recently acquired an anti-virus company, so I'm guessing they're going to try to put Norton and McAfee (or whoever owns them now) out of business.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
Bray jumps from the Watson/Sherlock experience to branding everyone who uses proprietary tools as a sharecropper. His argument would be more convincing if he cited more than this single case of a big company pulling the rug out from a little company. (Yes, they exist, but they are few compared with the number of working developers.)
In any case, what Bray is really saying is that if you develop for open source and/or the web, then no one is going to come along with a new product that mimics or competes with yours.
Of course, that's wrong. Competition exists. In fact, a case could be made that opportunities for competition in the open source arena is greater than in the proprietary arena because the cost of entry, development and distribution are much lower. (E.g., see Gnome vs KDE)
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
However, my Java code is portable. Same goes for LispWorks Common LISP: build once and deploy on all of the OS platforms that I am interested in. Python code is portable.
So, Bray's argument should be don't use proprietary APIs.
I do agree that writing web services avoids lockin problems. I hardly ever write standalone GUI apps anymore - everything is either a web service (SOAP, XML-RPC, or XML over HTTP) or has a web based front end.
-Mark
If Sherlock was someones open source/free software, then it would not be distributed and "integrated" into the OS. Thus both apps would have to compete on fair grounds. On OS should be a totaly open and application agnostic foundations. An OS needs to have all of its internals available for anyone to build upon and not as a means for a monopoly to take over another part of the playing field. Look at how much MS is controlling and how much more they are taking. They "integrated" a browser to suck up that market and broke away from being standards compliant to lock 90% of the desktop market into using thier browser. They are now "integrating" media player to steal the market way from WinAmp and RealPlayer. They have now purchased an anti-virus app to "integrate" into the os to kill off McAfee and Norton. The sad thing is that Norton and McAfee have put all thier eggs into the MS platform and then MS does a move like this and will render Norton's and McAfee's offerings almost worthless. This is the major problem with a monopoly and this is why I don not support them. I am amazed at how many people continue to be blind to this fact. If people started moving to an OS that was open and agnostic to what applications a user wants to run, then the hardware and software vendors would follow and have thier products on those platforms in no time. They will go where the demand is. For the most part they have stayed with the MS platform because of the monopoly. Every new consumer PC that has been sold for years has only been allowed to have an MS OS on it. MS will not stop until they own every major IT market or we stop them. The government will not stop them because all MS has to do us up thier bribes like they did during thier anti-trust case and they will be fine. Start to learn Linux and/or *BSD now. Get your friends and family members to do the same. Email hardware and software makers demanding support for Linux/*BSD. This is the only way to bring choice back.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Shifts in the IT industry don't happen overnight. Even "the Internet" took years to become widely adopted. That is, years after it managed to hit the mainstream. And this is a sector of technology whose association with radical and fast adoption coined its own "Internet time" phrase. Open Source, and its poster child Linux, are very similar.
This sort of article isn't a call to arms and demand for radical change. It doesn't expect you to mass in to your work's datacenter and reformat everything to *BSD, Linux, or whatever is your favorite OS platform. It doesn't expect you to stomp in to your boss' office and demand "give me OS projects, or give me a pink slip."
But it is a call for change.
If you code on your own, look at OS alternatives. If you have any chance to comment on choices of technology or new trends, mention OS alternatives. If a new project comes up and you have a chance to work with OS technology, jump at the chance.
The environment I'm working now used to be a very conservative Windows shop. Sure there was Unix and Open Source architecture hiding out in the wings. But whenever management's gaze hit on some aspect of the IT infrastructure, it was inevitable that a Windows solution was to follow. Not anymore.
We are currently replacing key pieces of architecture with a mix of OS infrastructure and proprietary applications that run on that infrastructure. We are critical of solutions that are based on Windows. And even in situations where Windows is the safer bet, we are also deploying Linux systems to compare and provide perspective.
Our infrastructure is still involves a lot of Windows. It probably will for years. And there are still a good number of Windows bigots and zealots around pushing for that status quo. But over the years, our environment has changed. Management's outlook has changed. And the scope of available projects have changed.
But it took years to happen.
Hey, I cashed in on it. Open Text got to be a successful vendor of content management software largely because we were the first to do it all through the browser, with no client software. Our stuff didn't do all that much more, but given a choice between client and browser, the people wanted the browser.
People want the browser not for the fact it makes for a simpler application in a GUI sense but for the fact you do not have to install and run it from a desktop. We do nothing but web apps in my company now and the reason is we have 18 different branches and no one wants to push an application out to that many individuals each time there is a fix. A thriving industry has been created by the need to install applications locally on desktops and insure the correct licensing of that software. As a consumer of software, I don't want to pay for those things. In addition, users don't want to have install an application on their desktop when they can go to a website and do the same thing.
The reason this trade-off between functionality and universal access has occurred is that people find more value in server-centric management and universal access today for those simple applications where I am entering some information or retrieving it. I think we will see the rise of "richer" web applications over the next few years because there is a need for better controls if for no other reason then productivity and efficiency gains. Working with large blocks of information on a web page can be very cumbersome to the user. Client-Server computing (VB, Delphi, insert your favorite GUI-centric language here), GUIs became much more functional in what they could do over time, the browser-based application will follow the same path, but now with the added convenience of server-based management and fixes, and universal access for all users. The user, the administrator, and the developer all get what they want. Of course as the author has pointed out we may start seeing web-based GUIs become more unusuable, but that is a design flaw of the developer and can occur on any platform.