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Andreesssen: Why Open Source Will Boom - in 103 Words
An anonymous reader writes "You gotta love Marc Andreessen's 12 reasons why Open Source is set to boom: can anyone use fewer than 103 words and still adduce as many reasons as he does?"
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"The Internet is powered by open source."
"The Internet is the carrier for open source."
"The Internet is also the platform through which open source is developed."
"It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software."
"Open source benefits from anti-American sentiments."
"Incentives around open source include the respect of one's peers."
"Open source means standing on the shoulders of giants."
"Servers have always been expensive and proprietary, but Linux runs on Intel."
"Embedded devices are making greater use of open source."
"There are an increasing number of companies developing software that aren't software companies."
"Companies are increasingly supporting Linux."
"It's free."
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." -- Thomas Jefferson
just because they aren't new doesn't mean it isn't true.
some of them are stronger now e.g. IBM and Novell/SUSE.
but linux actually being good is also required. linux is constantly improving. conversely (imo), windows is getting worse (activation BS, DRM, unTrusted computing pushes).
while MS might be able to push all this DRM BS on home users via stupid DMCA-style laws, flexible computing is too important for business and education institutions to let the BS in. and these places have the resources to use linux and make it even better.
1. "The Internet is powered by open source."
Anybody who can exhibit a counterexample can say this is not true.
That's not how counterexamples work. If I claim my car runs on petroleum, and someone points out that it also has a electrical cell-battery providing a tiny bit of power, the existence of a 2nd power source doesn't eliminate the first. "is powered by" is not an exclusive phrase.
4. "It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software."
This can be proven wrong, and you'll look stupid.
The fact that secrecy harms security is becoming increasingly well-documented (and that applies not just to software, but in general)
How can software which can be changed or withdrawn at a whim from Microsoft ever be considered secure? To be dependent on Microsoft is to be insecure (in the same way that the US subsidizes unneeded farming production for "national security"). Furthermore (and more related to tradional ideas of software-security), Microsoft claims that Windows has exploits that those with access to the source code can see and use. They're essentially saying "We could hack your box, if we wanted."
Some good points have been made already.
The balance of payment situation has been mentionned, but I think it also has something to do with security concerns as well as countries wanting to develop an indigenous software sector.
Basically, your whole economy is dependent on outside investments to keep running, and that's hurting your currency. Some have suggested using the Euro for petroleum sales to hurt the dollar further, possibly causing a recession in the US (obviously aiming to affect the next elections).
If you are unsure how deep anti-American sentiment runs, consider the last Pew Research Center annual survey on attitudes towards Americans. The percentage of people that think suicide bombings against the US are justifiable is just plain scary.
So while the BOP, security and protectionnism all play to a certain extent, I wouldn't underestimate the sheer resentment against the US.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
1. You can not play games on it.
Playing games rarely makes money. But it will run office suites and internet browsers
2. It cannot be used by my grandma.
My grandmother uses it. Perhaps yours just needs a little help from her geek grandchild.
3. It lacks a GUI of any usabillity
KDE and Gnome work pretty well. better than the default for XP in my opinion
4. There is no support available for it.
Red hat and SuSE would beg to differ.
5. It is an assortment of fragmented distros.
But you only have to run one of them!
6. It cannot be run on the TCPA platform.
IBM is a member of TCPA so you never know but until then I'm gonna stick with AMD
7. You have to compile everything and know C++.
Granny hasn't compiled anything thanks to Yast
I use Apt-get my self
8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor.
Which hardware? It runs on most $400 boxes and has plug an play support my usb camera and palm work
9. It is incompatiable with Windows/OSX
You mean you can't run Open office... uhm wait.
10. It is shit!
No. It's software. Feces is shit
Bleep
I am a professional software developer, and program often in C/C++ on both windows and linux.
when programming device drivers on linux, i was often frustrated at the lack of up to date specifications of functions and interfaces. for example the documentation about PCI functionality is hopelesly out of date, and specifies functions that are mentioned in other places as 'they are obsolete and you should not use them. EVIL EVIL'.
the old functions did have man and info pages. how nice. the new functions did not have them.
compare that to developing on windows. not everything is nice, but the MSDN documentation collection for developers is the best documentation ever, and includes not only a complete function reference, but also tons of samples that -shock horror - actually work.
even on mandrake 10, the developers documentation is crap.
regards,
Interfacer.
"7. "Open source means standing on the shoulders of giants."
I don't even understand this."
I am not sure if this helpful, but I think that this is supposed to be a paraphrase of what Isaac Newton supposedly said about his accomplishments in science.
So I guess he means that because open source works like science ideally is thought to work, with everyone else sharing in others works, that you can do more.
For example, if you want to make some new kind of web commerce engine or something. You can stand on the shoulders of linux/bsd, apache, mysql/postgresql, perl/python/php, and concentrate on your webcommerce code, instead of having to reinvent all of that other stuff first. And theoretically those "giants will always be there to stand on, unlike non open software.
Windows is very well documented, both for developers and users. The availble APIs are fully documented in a consistent manner, and Microsoft does an excellent job of making sure future operating systems properly support all documented APIs.
And for the sibling poster who claimed documentation is not free, check out the following links.
I've been developing for Windows for 15 years and have never purchased API documentation. I used to purchase books for examples and ideas, but I haven't done as much of that over the last five years - online sites, both Microsoft sponsored and others, have filled the need.
1. "The Internet is powered by open source."
Sorry, but this statement is a little too broad. As far as I am aware (and I'm open to being proven wrong - bait!) a large amount of "The Internet" is powered by Cisco routers which run the proprietary operating system IOS. I accept that there are a large amount of Sendmail/Postfix/Exim/Qmail boxes around pushing email, but there are also a hell of a lot of MS Exchange Servers and IBM Lotus servers pushing email as well powering corporate email.
Sendmail, Apache, BIND. Three Opensource programs each with over 50% market share on the internet at large. Not at all an overgeneralization. All of the root servers save three are running BIND. Thats the majority of the internet being powered by opensource.
2. "The Internet is the carrier for open source."
As it is for proprietary systems.
Not always, and less so. While WinZip might be distributed online, generally proprietary software is sold in retail chains, through corporate purchasing agreements, etc. Not the internet.
3. "The Internet is also the platform through which open source is developed."
That is because open source is largely decentralised. Business itself is decentralising to some degree (although not to the same level as Open Source - but this can be as much a strength as a presumed weakness).
He was mentioning it as a strength - just because it can also be a weakness doesn't change his statement.
4. "It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software."
This is the one that erks me the most. Lets take a look at the nuts and bolts of the O/S rather than the user interaction. There have been probably (if someone has stats, I would love to see them) as many Linux (think SSH + FTP + Telnet etc...) exploits out there as there have been on Windows (think IIS).
Generally not true. By numbers, Linux generally has fewer. However, more importantly is the impact - how severe is the risk (priv escalation, or remote root compromise?), and how widespread is the impact? (A single OS version has a 60% penetration worldwide).
The more the Linux front-end bloats like Windows has over the years and the more "features" that get added to various products introduce security risks.
But the fundamental design decisions (seperation of priveldge, power users, non-root users by default) ensure LESS impact. Not to mention the many-eyes theory has proven generally true to date (with notable failures).
The fact that the source is open means that people can exploit it rather than by trial and error or just hacking around than by actually analysing the source and finding weaknesses in it like people did with the Windows leaked source code.
Which do you see more worms for - Apache or IIS? The code is available for Apache, its more widely deployed, and yet FAR more exploits exist for IIS than Apache. Its not source availability making it less secure - its poor programming.
Most of the bad security press (especially recently) has been Outlook (Express) based Worms and this was do to introducing a good idea (feature) that turned sour.
No - it is (continuing - not past tense) due to a fundamental design choice. Microsoft products treat DATA and CODE as one and the same - the result being that there is no seperation between them, and content can be active. In almost all unix systems, the exact opposite choice is made.
That's why you don't see it happen on unix/linux systems - design decisions.
6. "Incentives around open source include the respect of one's peers."
At our (proprietary) office peer respect amongst coders is pretty high too. Are we an exception?
How many people are in your office? That you hear the opinions of on a daily basis? The kernel mailing list alone has 100x the number of *notable* people I encounter on a daily basis - its about scope, volume, quality, and im
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Are you trying to say there is no censorship in America. What do you call Fox News?
I just read an article on Chinas abortions. Youre right that is pretty bad. My argument still stands on an economic level though.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
Yes there are success stories, you may have heard of a small search engine called Google, though admittedly they are a company built on Linux, not one switching over. For a list of other success stories see IBM's website and yes it is true that some of these companies have only switched a portion of their computers to Linux, but I think you'll find that when any switch is being made it gets done a few computers at a time, I know of companies that do this even when upgrading their chosen OS ie. MS 2000 to MS XP.
When it comes to switching OS's two basic rules apply:
1. The switch will go much smoother if the technical knowledge base already exists in your company.
2. The larger number people the switch affects the larger the problem of switching. I think the latter in particular applies to the case of the German government, though their IT guys may be well have experience with Linux, it may not be on the scale that they are working on now, and when you add in the training that need to be done to get the large number of users up and running on Linux it starts to become clear that there will be extra unforeseen expenses and delays.
The company I work for just switched a large number of people over from using IBM's OS2 to using Mac OSX an OS know for being relativity user friendly and we have had many unforeseen setbacks, so this is not just a Linux thing, it can happen with Windows, Unix, BSD, even Mac.
Change may be a good thing in the long term but it can have severe short term effects and the challenge is to not let the short term disrupt business for longer than is necessary.
"Napalm is nature's toothpaste" - Chef Brian
Do web developers test a pages on a T1 connection?
No, I think they generally use their local filesystems. Sorry. *shrug*
Then again, the actual html document is only ~26KB, and if you're using a "real" browser, it should be able to do the layout and display the text before loading the other objects.
It should even be able to do incremental layout, displaying the text before it's even finished loading the html. Though in this case, the text you want to see is 14KB (!) down, so you're definitely waiting for that.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}