When Think Tanks Attack

x1048576 writes "The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is only one of a dozen different think tanks that have attacked Open Source. Why are all these think tanks so down on Open Source? Well, the Small Business Survival Committee is concerned that using open source will expose small business to the risk of lawsuits. Citizens Against Government Waste is concerned that the government might waste money on Open Source. Defenders of Property Rights is concerned that Open Source might be a threat to intellectual property rights. However, I was able to detect a common theme to all their criticism. They all seem to be funded by Microsoft."

Comments

Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one think that the public criticism of the Open Source developer community is healthy. While we never like being ridiculed or having our flaws pointed out, it does have one advantage: increased introspection.

M$ is playing the same card every corporation and goverment has done in history: taking advantage of people's fears of what they don't understand.

Which is nice.

the good text

[mandalayx]

the good text is at the bottom, imho. start here:

They have a word in Washington for the corporate-sponsored outcry, the grassroots movement that isn't: AstroTurf. By far the most comical example of this is to be found at the Freedom to Innovate Network (Fin), a "non-partisan, grassroots network of citizens and businesses who have a stake in the success of Microsoft and the high-tech industry". Fin doesn't try particularly hard to appear independent--its website, after all, is housed on Microsoft's own--but it has as its online centrepiece a lengthy collection of testimonials from activist groups with vaguely alarming names: the Centre for the Moral Defence of Capitalism, Frontiers of Freedom, Defenders of Property Rights. Their comments appear unsolicited and independent: it certainly looks like there is a groundswell of support for the beleaguered computer giant.

In the spirit of fair use, visit the website for the full story. It's interesting but don't take it as a rallying cry. Just remember to wonder why you see a think tank write a paper next time. In fact remember to wonder why the next person you see says something, in general.

Re:why now?

[Conor Turton]

Because back then, people innovated in order to create a revenue stream. Nowadays companies seem unable to come up with fresh ideas that people will buy into so instead they take the easy way out and use IP to generate an income.

I had a talk with ADTI's Ken Brown

[fw3]

Shortly after the first ADTI report on oss / GPL.

This isn't going to come as any surprise but he's *not* the brightest bulb on the tree. However he's far from alone in that, more's the pity.

Brown sees MS as a *miracle*, like many he looks at the phenomenal financial success, adds the fact that it's nominally 'technology' sector and draws his conclusions.

Now the place I'm working for (which has posted market performance in the same range as MS) just did a celebration of thier 25th anniversary. The founders of the company are both very well off and pretty damned bright guys. One jokingly referred to his early talks with Wall street where he said "we're in the business of being a profitable philanthropy". The other mentioned that "we're in the business of doing the right thing" (does this sound like Google's founders?).

Shortly after, the chief financial officer got up and (predictably -- he's a fan) compared us to Microsoft. The reason is he's a money guy and all he can see is the money / financial success.

In fact if we acted in our markets the way MS does, our clients would show us the door. As it is they respect our engineering, and even our sales force, which is trained very hard to serve the *clients* needs.

Iff OSS follows that model, all the ADTI's in the world won't matter. The fact is that some oss projects (see the recent article linked on /. about why users are 'wrong' in not likeing the new Nautilus 'spatial' design) *don't* think this way, and more's the pity.

Fortunately, those are the exceptions.

Re:It amazes me on so many different...

[lennart78]

Since when does quality matter, especially in IT?

A few weeks back I read an article on the register that stated that 2/3 of IT personel do not have the competence that is required by their function.
Everybode who has ever written a resume knows that lying about what skills and experience you have are commonplace. Because the interview is done by a manager with no in-depth knowledge of the field you're working in. How different is that from a softwarecompany telling you that their product is the best out there? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, but once you've bought a piece of software, and have spent 3 months (or more) on installing, configuring, testing, are you then willing to take your loss if you're not a 100% satisfied? I've seen project being dragged on for a year or more (!!!) because a vendor still had to resolve a bug.

It isn't about quality, it's about marketing. If you buy MS once, it's only logical you keep buying it. Enforce a decision on the executive level. Take a manager out for a meal, or a game of golf, send him a nice bottle of wine at christmas, and pummel him to death with expensive looking reports about how GNU/Linux/OSS is a baaaad idea. He'll bend over eventually. That way, they don't have to take the pepsi-challenge. The executive won't know the difference anyway.

We, the /. crowd, allow ourselves to be infuriated about the plain and open FUD by AdTI and others. What you /should/ be doing instead of performing the /.-equivalent of AOL-like 'me-too-ing', is creating awareness among your managers, and helping them to find linux success stories.

Disinformation

[Dark Lord Seth]

In the name of Eris, some of those "think tanks" really are full of shit. For example, here's a nice article from the "Small Business Survival Committee" against the recent anti-SUV feelings among several key US people. Their motivation is to be doubted in the first place; why would a think tank that aligns itself with SMALL businesses care about SUV? Non "mom-n-pop" shop/small business will ever produce a SUV. Besides, look at some of their reasoning:

Data from the institute is quite revealing. In 2002, driver deaths, per one million passenger vehicles one to three years old, registered 162 in mini cars, versus 64 in four-wheel-drive SUVs weighing between 3,500 and 6,000 pounds.

Brilliant. Fucking brilliant. That's an ammount of misinformation that would make many a discordianist proud. I love that logic, how many people died in M1A2 Abrams tanks lately? Probably less then that. So clearly, everyone in the US should drive a M1A2 Abrams MBT. Also, more people die each year by drowning in water then by drowning in hydrochloric acid. Therefore, hydrochloric acid is safer to swim in then water. I'm not even going tom start on their anti-"EC penalty vs MS" article. Since when does MS count as a small business, anyways, to attract their concern?

kickbacks

[zogger]

I'd guess there's been some serious cash kickbacks over the years to some big companies (individuals in companies) to get them to stick with microsoft. I can't think of another reason why they would keep using their stuff. I've read all the legit reasons,OK, I can see a few of them, but I bet the REAL main reason is from massive and ongoing kickbacks, and because it's so profitable for *some* people to have very well paying "busy work" fix it daily and forever jobs.

Anyway, it will change. I know it will. Bound to happen. Several years ago now I noticed the young geeks all using linux. Not someone's nephew who can play video games so he's the family computer "specialist", nope, I mean the geeks. The young people in any industry determine the trends of the industry, sooner or later, because thats where the innovation comes from, and also that's where the next generation of decision making bosses comes from.

Microsoft is hosed now, ain't nuthin they can do other than try and get legislation passed to save them. I'm serious on that. they are right at the exact point they need protection, even though they are still raking in billions, it's coming, they know it, that's why you are seeing this sort of stuff. Part of that is to have "concerned consumers" lobby for them. What a crock. IF they do that they will struggle along making billions for a lot more years, but if they *fail to get legislation passed that protects them and their business model of no warranty and mediocre product but maximum profits*, they are hosed. It might take some time, but they will crash and burn right along the opposite side of the curve of their rise to success. That is my prediction.

Re:kickbacks

[itwerx]

I have moderation points and I am foregoing using them in this thread because I want to respond to this post. (And you can mod me up, down or sideways when you're done reading, my karma's been maxed for years :).
First, let me clarify that I hate MS with a passion. I have worked for them as a contractor and I have developed software which, while not in direct competition, nonetheless required negotiating licensing with them. I've been in IT for 15 years and dealt with their crap since DOS v2.x
I've also used various flavors of Unix and Linux over the years both professionally and personally and run Macs as my workstations at home now. (Linux on the servers of course :).
However, my employer at this time, and many businesses which I have consulted for over the years, run Windows.
Why?
Because most businesses under 200 employees have an over-worked one-man IT dept. and one or more wierd vertical applications.
99% of the time the cost of switching is simply not worth it!
This is why you only see two classes of business switching these days:
A - very small cottage-industry types who have no IT staff at all. If the engineer doing their work for them is Linux savvy and wants to do them a favor he'll switch them (I say "favor" because it means less income for him!).
B - Large enterprises with at least a half-dozen IT people where the long-term savings of switching begins to add up to enough to cover the hassle.
Which brings me to a different point of interest; consistency and support!
Linux apps are inconsistent as hell! If I'm going to expect a dept. to make the switch I have to at least be able to give them a consistent environment and that requires spending many hours on a "model" machine changing about a zillion attributes scattered all over the place. Not to mention the hours spent troubleshooting inconsistencies between libraries and whatnot!
It's getting better, don't get me wrong. That's why I keep using it at home and play with most of the major distro's on a regular basis. But as near as I can tell it's going to be a few more years before we really see wide-spread adoption simply because it takes too much time to configure a solid environment. Time which has to be amortised over the number of machines on the network. Time which admittedly is spent swatting Microsoft bugs right now. But y'know what? It's virtually impossible to get funds in the budget to hire an extra body just so you can try out something which might save the company a few bucks in the long term.
There's only 24 hours in the day. If all of your time is spent doing your existing job it's hard to investigate new things.
Like the old saw about alligators and draining the swamp. Once the swamp is drained the alligators will go away but in the meantime it's hard to concentrate on that while they're chewing on you! :)
So once Linux is a "super-swamp-drainer" we'll start seeing alligators dropping like flies.
(I'm hoping and praying Novell will do that for us on the technical side since they damn sure can't in marketing! :)

Re:kickbacks

[zogger]

well, I certainly appreciate your points. Not sure on production business apps because I most likely don't use them, not being a business or working in an office, but I will take your observations on them being true.

I feel though, that one of my major points-kickbacks, along with other unethical behavior, was how this whole empire came about. I can not prove it, so I will say I am just guessing. I dare anyone to dispute that cash "consultation fees" are not a major part of most large international business now, no matter the product. It HAS been proven they did other medium despicable things to get and stay inside computers all over, most notably vendor lock in, IMO. I'll grant they produced products, some decent, some mediocre, some pretty dismal. The differences between small medium and large shops are somewhat becoming moot with automated tools that are available now. Scaling is a reality, although yes, there is always a series of customised whatevers that require hands on, no matter the scale. I have to dork with a single box all the time, so I appreciate how hard it must be to keep *many* of them going. I was more speaking of the medium and long term, short term-the next few years-I expect them to continue with their dominance (inside the US, outside, no I think they'll lose steam faster), and to especially push legislative actions as much as software, which is the major topic of the thread, semi phony "citizen action groups". That's an opening of panic desperation move, clear as day. Whether or not they are entirely successful I don't know, but they have billions of dollars and thousands of people to throw at it, if they choose to. I am cynical to the max about it. I can't see them just giving up, or allowing their carved in stone pay us forever and a day business model to go away, because they simply cannot conceive of any other model to work for them, it's outside the huge money all the time reality they have gotten used to now. I see them as almost identical to the movie and music industries in this aspect. An established monopoly is hard to give up, so anything goes on keeping it-anything. No rules. And at their size, very few laws except laws in their favor apply to them. On paper they do, in the real world, they don't.

Whether linux or mac or bsd or whatever "takes over" I think is moot, what is more important is whether or not our society will be best served by one company doing it all. I think not. Computers are tools to do the real stuff, not the real stuff all by themselves, although WITHIN the industry that is the real stuff, OUTSIDE the industry they are just tools. and that "outside" part is way bigger than the inside part, taking planetary scale of hukan endeavor into consideration. Microsoft seems to want every company,government or person to be working for them, instead of the other way around. it's weird but that's what it looks like to me. like your regular job is just there for microsoft, you must keep paying them tribute or something to keep in business. WHY people got sucked into that mindset is beyond me.

I also think that the folks actually doing the real work with computers will gradually, gradually, gradually wear down the marketing guys and PHBs on this subject, choosing function over form whenever they can get their way on it, and that the mass users segment of the market will just use whatever happens to be on their desks or on sale at the computer store, same as they do now.

And yes, I will agree somewhat with the assessment that in specific "linux" needs to have a lot more consistency to be used past a few percent niche. HOW to do that, no idea. Unified packaging might be a good start. HOW to do that, no idea. Not my gig really. Less skins, more function wouldn't hurt either.

Re:Like the with the BSA

[kyz]

And please, get off this 'lock in' bullshit.

Tell me how many people at this LAN party were running Linux instead of a pirate copy of Microsoft Windows.

We'll get off the 'lock in' bullshit when games companies use open, cross-platform standards like OpenGL and SDL in preference to sugar-coated lock-in Microsoft only technologies like Direct3D and DirectX.

Microsoft court the game dev community to, you know... they want you to use their proprietary technologies so gamers have no choice but to use Windows to play games, pirated or not.