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The Riches of Open Source

Posted by michael on from the filthy-lucre dept.

Daniel Dvorkin writes "This BusinessWeek article argues convincingly that Linus Torvalds has more resources at his disposal than Bill Gates. Not only is it a nice overview of Why Open Source Really Matters pitched to a non-technical audience, but it makes a solid argument in favor of OSS in general and Linux in particular, from a solidly capitalist perspective."

4 of 693 comments (clear)

  1. Ask VS Order by BadCable · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But there is a huge difference.

    Linus can ASK the world to do something, but if they don't like the way he's thinking, they won't do it. Linus controls the world as long as the world likes the orders. So in a sense he's just a way to focus the desires of the majority of developers.

    Gates on the other hand can ORDER everyone in his employ to jump around and shout "I'm a little idiot!" and they'll have to do it wether they like it or not. Thats a huge difference. Gates has the world as his playground.

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  2. Really? by FreeLinux · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If this is true then one must wonder why Linus doesn't utilize more of these available resources. Why does he instead have a relatively small group of hackers working on only a kernel? Why, with all his resources, is he not developing, embracing and extending a plethora of other operating system components and applications?

    The fact is that while open source does offer the potential of having a very vast number of developers owrking on a project or multiple projects, the reality is that few developers actually participate. Combine this with the fact that they are driven to participate based on their interest or itch and we end up with a fine kernel, a few great apps and an abundance of mp3 players.

    The potential is there for Linus to have more resources than Bill Gates but, the reality is that Linus has no where near the resources of Bill Gates.

  3. I don't think so. by Orien · · Score: 5, Interesting
    They could easily make loads more money if they focused instead on a model closer to the Open Source model.

    Do you honestly believe that? Look, I would LOVE to see MS adopt a more open model, but that is because I know how much it would benefit me, and the rest of the tech community, not because I believe for a minute that it would actually be better for Microsoft. Do you really think they would have 90% market share with open source products? Of course not. They got where they are by not sharing the pie with anyone. If they opened up, others would take what they have done and run with it. People would release 100% compatible versions of Windows, Office, IIS, etc that were more secure with less bug fixes, and Microsoft would have to work harder, spend more money in development and QA, and still end up with less of the market, thus less money. For that matter why would anyone buy XP if Windows NT 4 was still under active development by an open source community that made it just as modern and up to date? Would all this be good for the rest of the world? Yes. Would it make MS "loads more money"? Absolutely not.

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    1. Re:I don't think so. by Osty · · Score: 5, Interesting

      For that matter why would anyone buy XP if Windows NT 4 was still under active development by an open source community that made it just as modern and up to date?

      Why would anyone buy Quake 3 if Quake 1 was still under active development by an open source community that made it just as modern and up to date?


      There have been many projects based on the GPLed code of Quake 1, like Quake Tenebrae which adds graphical capabilities that surpass Quake 3 and are nearly on par with Doom 3. Yet people still buy new games. Maybe it's an unfair comparison, since the single-player gameplay of Quake 1 is different than that of Quake 3, but then again the multiplayer can be extremely similar.