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Gates: Open Source Kills Jobs
theodp writes "On the Malaysian leg of a whirlwind Asian tour, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates voiced his concerns over the growing goodwill towards open source, especially in Asia, emphasizing how damaging open source software can be. 'If you don't want to create jobs or intellectual property, then there is a tendency to develop open source. It is not something you do as a day job. If you want to give it away, you work on it at night,' he said. Gates, who apparently has never contended with the horrors of a VB upgrade, when on to say that '[Open source] doesn't guarantee upward compatibility.'"
This comes up again and again. The basis of it is the idea that if people write their own software then there will be no market for others to sell it to them.
This seems true in general, but there are three important points.
The software industry has to face up to the fact that programming is no longer such a specialist skill. A good parallel to this might be writing. It was once quite mystical to the majority of the population. But I think we can all see that our world has benefited from the skill not remaining the part of a small guild or group.
And yes, I have read the article already (I'm a subscriber). Billy Gates seems to be falling back to his old tactics of targeting schools with US$20 million in cash grants in Asia. Can't see it working myself.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
this is one of the most stupid arguments that gates is saying.
this is like saying "volunteer work is causing unemployment for people who wish to do the same work for pay"
open source doesn't create jobs but the ultimate end result will benefit mankind as a whole. gates either knows nothing about economics or is really trying to push some BS onto us.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
It's true that while open source is taking off it will have many of the characteristics that Gates is describing, but ultimately all software needs skilled people to install it and maintain it. An entire infrastructure for a business, city, or government is not going to run itself and generate no jobs just because the development of the software itself was done for free.
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Open Source doens't guarantee upward compatability? Puhlease! Neither does Microsoft with their proprietary office suite. Didn't Office 97 break compatability with older versions forcing companies to upgrade ALL machines in their workplaces at the same time? Talk about a horrible leg to stand on!
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Objectively speaking for a moment.
Surely he has just said that open source is more efficient.
If fewer people are having to be employed to do something, that must mean that the process of sharing and having standards is working more efficiently. Surely that's more economical for a business, as they're having to fork out less for these things.
What he's advocating is creating a false economy of software and 'technology' by having a hideously ineffective development and business process.
Or is that an oversimplified concept of economics?
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
I'm not even sure I understand what that means. I understand when something isn't backward compatible -- like when Windows XP can't run software written for Windows 95. But upward compatible? Is he talking about the failure of today's software to run on tomorrow's systems -- like how Windows XP won't run on Intel Nocoma chips?
Breakfast served all day!
Open source helps an economy, especially a developing one. It helps people learn about their computers by giving them the tools to understand how to make them operate. It helps them grow tech skills. What, no paying programming jobs any more for them to take? Well sure there will be jobs. There are plenty of businesses that need in-house custom software (often built in conjunction with open source tools or foundations). Those programming skills learned will come in handy. Or perhaps they will join a growing software services company, where knowing how software works will prove most useful.
The Microsoft model is to create an economy where people have to shovel money to them, and individuals don't get to see how their software really works. Yeah, they can get jobs programming yet another VB (sorry, C#...sorry, .NET) report for management. But it's not the only way to go. The open source way leads to an increasingly tech literate population, and creates its own jobs. And oh yes, in this model not all the money gets shoveled back to Redmond. That's why Microsoft is squawking, but that's only natural. Doesn't mean anyone has to listen to Bill, though. After almost three decades of his self-serving words, we know better.
So hang on giving something away is wrong because good will donations of time and effort stop paid work from happening?
Bill Gates and Microsoft are involved with a lot of charities. Should they stop contributing to them because the good will prevents people from going out and earning the money for themselves? By Bill's argument, Microsoft should never give away an educational copy of Windows or Office to a school or university - after all that's a copy of software a competitor could sell to that institution.
But wait it must be okay, because they can write off their contributions for tax breaks. That's good for the economy.
As far as I'm concerned, if someone wants to give away their time and effort they can do so and you just have to deal with it. You can't have it both ways.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
And US Democrats, who he gives just about the exact same amount of money to.
Oops, sorry, did I let facts get in the way or your ignorant political ranting. Republicans are always evil, Democrats are always good. Ignorance is knowledge.
Finkployd
tell it to the cathars.
Seriously; just because india won during a point in history when the british empire was already declining does not mean that it is set in stone that open source is going to win against MS, the patent system and all of the legislation and dirty tricks that MS and Intel can buy.
The battle is by no means certain, and I believe that it's not unconcievable that open source will be (for all practical matters) legislated out of america (and probably western europe and australa as well). Which, as an american (who does NOT have thousands to funnel towards anyones campaign coffers) troubles me deeply.
So drop the pithy crap; the situation is a LOT more dire than your hippy-dippy sentiments take into account.
Do these messages sound contradicting:
"Linux has a greater TCO than windows systems! use our windows systems and you need less admins and coders! And you don't need so well trained admins and coders, you can outsource the jobs!"
"Linux and open source will take away your jobs!"
Of course, Gates is just hoping that your Boss hears the first message and you (and the goverment) hear the second message.
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Microsoft employs about 55000 employees, most of them NOT programmers, and the ones that are barely see a fraction of the money that's earned off of their products. Open source helps to replace the overpriced commodity software that's created by a fraction of a percent of the world's developers and pulls in a majority of the world's software spending.
The maturation of microsoft's products in the late 90s lead to microsoft developers adding stupid bells and whistles (like extensive VB programming support in all MS products, yay viruses) that didnt add value to the software. Microsoft SHOULD have entered the maintenance phase with all of their desktop products about 5 years ago. There are probably 10-20k developers sitting around performing development work at MSFT that will not drive further sales.
Meanwhile, Open source has slowly been catching up to where microsoft was 5-10 years ago. This would ordinarily be a devastating disadvantage, even for a software package that doesnt need to make money but the problem is that when microsoft's products matured, they also became commoditized- since microsoft's products havent become any more compelling in the past 7 years, microsofts existing products compete with the old ones and 7 year old open source software competes successfully as well.
The end result of this is the "cost cutting" measures that microsoft is undertaking now. It will mean a lot less "new development" for microsoft products, and a lot more outsourced maintenance contracts to fix bugs in existing ones. The real cause to blame for unemployed microsoft developers is microsofts fear of breaking into new markets and trying different things to make use of those developers. They would rather defend the rotting carcass of Office and Windows than go off boldly in search of fresh meat.
Then of course there's the cost issue. Who the fuck can afford Microsoft licenses? Even American businesses, who have a lot more cash than Asian consumers have been bitching about the cost of MIcrosoft licensing, especially when it has become blatantly obvious to even the dimmest of PHBs that most new Microsoft products add little in the way of useful functionality but do succeed in introducing incompatible file formats and siphoning cash off to Redmond.
Then of course there's Microsoft's arrogance in offering crippleware such as XP starter edition and XP home. Explain to me what the differences are between these products and XP pro again (other than registry hacks to turn features off, missing DLLs and different packaging). Explain to me why I can't buy a CD with an installable image at retail and have to purchase OEM copies of the OS or deal with Microsoft's fucking annoying upgrade copies. Explain to me what the new version of Office does that I couldn't do with Office 98. Fortunately for me my step-bro works at Microsoft, so I can get the software through him for cheap, other than this, or getting educational discounts I can't see how anyone affords buying Microsoft products or why anyone would continue to do so.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
"Gates...when on to say that '[Open source] doesn't guarantee upward compatibility.'"
He's right - it doesn't. I'd say it guarantees it evenly with the way Microsoft guarantees it - if you just happen to have the correct version of the correct software, you'll have upwards compatability. If you chose the wrong end of the fork, then you're screwed.
On the other hand, Open Source, by definition, allows unlimited forking. And if there's a compatibility break between versions, you can be sure that someone, somewhere is going to start up a backwards-compatability fork, or write a backwards-compatibiltiy patch; if the problem is enough to bug you, it's probably enough of a problem to bug other people. And, if there's no backwards-compatibility fork available, you can always Do It Yourself, or put up a note on the proper mailing list, letting people know that the demand is out there, and asking if anyone else has the same need/desire.
With propritary software, the user is basically under the company's control. Unless you're a huge corporation with massive buying power and enough pull in the management level of Microsoft, all you'll wind up with is a "You're screwed, buy our other newer, more expensive software."
Overall, I'm pretty sure Open Source Software is more compatible, and that there's more old versions of software available to reduce the need for backwards compatibility.
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I used to hang out at the MS SQL server newsgroups back in the day. In those days you'd have periodic flamewars with the oracle proponents. The MS people always ended up saying that SQL server might not be as good as oracle but it was "good enough for what you need to do" and "a hell of a lot cheaper".
It gives me warm and fuzzy feelings to see the same argument now being made against them. Not just in databases but virtually every other product they make too.
Oracle survived but lost a lot of market share to SQL server and I predict the same will happen to MS.
evil is as evil does
OK, probably not much point posting this deep into a thread, but here goes:
What the hell is wrong with losing jobs, so long as something is done to keep the general public's standard of living up? Everytime you lose a job to progress, that's less work that needs to be done. The problem with people is they can't think of a society in any other terms but economic. All anybody wants to know is how to get more money. Nobody ever asks the more important question behind that: how do we improve our standard of living?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The point is, they don't see the truth because they don't WANT to see the truth. Redmond is in severely deep denial of the reality that FLOSS is taking over, that the paradigm has already shifted and that all that is left is the shakeout which follows. They will fight, kick and scream, because they see the market as territory they have conquered, and they aren't about to give it up without a fight. A more accurate analogy is that the market is a vein of ore that is quickly depleting and they need to find new prospects instead of chasing the poor prospectors from the surrounding area and cracking the whip on their serfs.
No one at Redmond is going to see or say that the Emperor has no clothes. They get paid too much money not to bolt on the rose colored glasses. (welding helmet?) So don't accuse Microsoft of being clueful. If they were, we would have seen some evidence of it by now.
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Open source software reduces the amount of duplicate work solving the same problem over and over again. This is good for society because it lets developers get on with creating something new
This may have been true about ten years ago when a mediocre computer was $2000, but its not really true anymore. Anyone who wants a computer can easily get one these days (unless maybe in the third world). If you can't afford a new one, find someone who wants to get rid of an old one. Anyways, a large part (sometimes the majority if you build it yourself) of the price of a computer is software, so your argument that free software doesn't help poor people is flawed.
There is a bigger issue here: how does society function when there's not enough useful work to go around? I don't think abandoning OSS is the solution, though.
-jim
I think it's a little more subtle than that. I suspect that what really led them into their current financial box-canyon is Bill setting his stamp on all of the original participants, and the next generation inheriting that, and so on. This is a thing which happens a lot in network marketing: your more enthusiastic "downline" tend to act/think/look more and more like you as time passes. Role modelling writ large.
Read Bill's original "open letter to hobbyists" and you can quickly see why Microsoft is as it is today. All of the markers are laid down in that one short letter, including the kind of blindness we're describing here. Key line:
Of course, in FOSS he has his answer. He just doesn't want to see it. I leave you to consider his now-sidesplitting closing line in the context of ex-Microserfs and there comments here about MS whipping the people they have rather than hiring enough to get the job done at a humane pace:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I'd like to ask the question: Will Microsoft guarantee its software in any way or provide indemnification to end users against claims of infringement?
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Unfortunately, it turns the software market into a service market. Many of the programming jobs today will go away and be replaced with support jobs, which are typically lower paying.
What makes you say that? I suspect that a good many programmers are hired to maintain projects such as Apache. In the end, I suspect that there are as many programmers paid to work on the Linux *kernel* as there are in Microsoft working on all of Windows.
Also, I suspect that ESR is probably right in that the vast majority of software development occurs exclusively for in-house line of business apps. Of course in the context above, most of the Apache programmers are probably hired to maintain it as a line-of-business app.
I don't see most of the programming jobs go away anytime soon.
Add this to the fact that most of the USA's (I live there, so it is relevant in this way to me) "export" is actually intellectual property.
How much of this is software? There is a BIG difference between exporting a copy of Windows and a VCD of Matrix (most of Asia at least uses VCD's for such). Yet they are both intellectual property exports. And secondly, what makes you think that most of this work can't be outsourced? Of course, with movies, it won't be because people expect them to be set in the US, Australia, etc. and you can't just move that to India and expect a seemless transition. But the programming jobs not only can be outsourced, but they are being outsourced.
At the same time, OSS increases competition from abroad in that the code that you write will be and is used by your competitors to get a leg up on you.
This is why my company uses the GPL for everything we do. If a competing project were to come out, they could not legally use our code without giving us access to it or paying us royalties. But you are right. This is a problem.
Also, aside from a few well supported projects, many projects (just check Sourceforge) do not get updated or bug fixed that often. What I've seen in the OSS field (aside from the few well supported "glamorous" projects) is that initially, there is some interest in the application so it is kept up to date.
How is this different from buying software from a small proprietary software house except that you would not even have the option of hiring someone to fix the program later?
Most OSS advocates seem to think that there is or will be some magical job market or product that they will come up with that will keep them fed. In truth, this is a very optimistic prediction.
Sure, it is optimistic. Approaching any hobby with the idea that it will create a job for you is optomistic. Just the way it is.
On the other hand, if you approach it as a business, then you have to look at it very carefully, evaluate the very real traps that OSS poses (IMO, the traps of making proprietary software are just as big or bigger), and carefully formulate your strategy. In this case, you work hard to create your job.
My company (http://www.metatrontech.com) has contributed a number of open source applications. We do this for a number of strategic reasons. But they all boil down to "how can we create a market for our services?"
These services include support, programming, and many other sorts of work. Open source works, but not all work can be done by hobbiests. Indeed, it works best when we are paid to do it.
One final point. You seem to feel that programming is somehow a commodity which can be shipped around the world with no ill effect. In that case, I am not sure that anything you have said about OSS does not go for proprietary software as well. You might want to look at the outsourcing trends at the moment and ask if your job might be next.
In reality, outsourcing our jobs to India might be argued to make great long-term global economic sense (a more affluent India can afford to buy more American products), and it works great as a cost-cutting measure, bu
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What Microsoft is doing is right. They have profits and invest those profits to get more profits.
... and so on. This is their biggest problem. A more liberal and open attitude towards what is happening 'out there' would be good. And this exactly may slowly be happening. Future will tell us.
MS now has 50 billion USD, but "in their place" I'ld do the same. This money is a war chest to be able to fend off sudden changes in the industry, invest quickly in new opportunities, and to be sure they won't have a cash problem any time soon. It's not stupid, it is smart.
The only real problem we might have with Microsoft is their conservative nature. They are innovating, and making products better. But they also missed some opportunities because they were too conservative. They didn't see the internet coming, XML, open source,
On a personal note, whilst I used to work 36 hour stretches at the drop of a hat (not at MS) and often did 24 runs and long weekends for the companies I worked for, I simply won't now. The ugly truth is that these stretches are always a result of poor project management, or a company trying to increase it's profits by understaffing projects. This is usually to stay "competitive" in the market. The managers would rarely ever pitch in on those weekend efforts :-/ Nowadays I work my contracted hours, and the project can be late for all I care. Bad management is someone elses problem, not mine - they can pay me for my loyalty, not exploit me for my naievity.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.