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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.'"
I read that as Gates kills Jobs (Steve)
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.
But default installations of his company's closed-source software kills systems.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Apple to remain unaffected, release 35" computer screen.
Visual Basic generates jobs. The kinds where real professionals are called in to fix a big mess.
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.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
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!
Will Stokes Album Shaper http://albumshaper.sf.net
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!
More nonsense from Gates.
He's on the losing side, but he still knows how to fight. Notice his sales pitch to the asian governments:
FTA:
In the case of software piracy, Gates said Microsoft is having "good dialogues" with Asian governments, one area being their loss of tax revenue "when people don't pay for software".
The obvious corollary to this is that if you're using free (as in beer) open source software then you aren't paying taxes either. The technological solution to both of this problem and the piracy one is the same: trusted (by Them not You) Computing.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
...that the company I'm working for now, The Ladders (theladders.com) finds great $100k+ jobs (kind of ironic that) and provides a weekly newsletter, and we have used almost exclusively open-source software to grow our business. Yes, I'm dropping a plug, but I want to emphasize that open-source software definitely provides jobs rather than takes them away. This is a fallacy that needs to be corrected and understood by business people--you can build businesses with open-source, and a lot of times, you can't build them without it.
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.
Gates: "Open Source kills MY job."
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
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
In 10 years he will be eating out of a dumpster Maybe a platinum dumpster filled with caviar. Tens of billions don't disappear that easily.
Open Source Sushi
It does kill the job market for MCSEs.
My rights don't need management.
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.
Your '80s DOS program will probably run fine under Linux as well. In both cases, the 16-bit environment runs in a VM.
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.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
Gates is showing once and again that he is a smart guy who will take any advantage he can to get what he wants.
I remember a settlement Microsoft made with some school district. But instead of sending a check to the school, Microsoft offered them computers with the windows operating system. By negotiating a settlement in such a way, it is like getting free advertising. Most people do not want to learn 2 or 3 operating systems, they just want one they know how to use. How many of those high school students went on to use Windows based PC's in college and beyond? I don't know the anwser, but I do bet some would have used Apple if they had Apple computers in their lab.
I think the problem with Gates and Microsoft is they are unethical. It is one thing to make a product and sell it, another thing to use strong arm tactics to force people to use it. It has been said many times, but my local CompUSA and Circuit City only sell computers with Windows on them. And what is worse, my Sony Vaio laptop came with Windows, but not the CD to install it as I wish. Instead it reformats the hard drive into pre-determined partitions. And I can not pick what programs to install from that CD, it installs everything as it was when I first turned the laptop on. Getting some of that unwanted software off the PC was real work. Yuck.
But there are things Gates can do to be more friendly. Don't force windows to want a whole drive all to itself. If I have drive, and want to have a small partition for linux, don't force windows to reformat that partition to ntsc or fat. Let it be. It is a pain to have to do everything after windows is installed.
I think Bill Gates is obsessed with controlling the entire market share for computer operating systems, and now is moving into media control with his DRM technology and windows media player 9. What people really want is choice. What Windows does is take away choice.
Also from the article, and this scares me:
Earlier, Gates talked about the contributions Windows has made to the Asian economy. "Windows has opened up opportunities for computers and chips to be built in Asia. This will continue to be true for [such] software in providing high-paying jobs," he said.
Can we expect many of these high paying jobs to leave the USA? Is this Gates master plan. Make the USA dependant on Windows based software, then move as much of the production outside the USA?
Also:
Gates said Microsoft is having "good dialogues" with Asian governments, one area being their loss of tax revenue "when people don't pay for software".
Does this mean Gates will want some terrif imposed on all software, then work out some exemption for Microsoft? He has proven to be smart and creative in making thinks work out the way he wants it to, and he has proven to be unethical. I would not be suprised if he tried to stifle competition.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
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.
- Copyrights: open source software is still copyrighted as much as closed source software. He can't be talking about this sort of intellectual property.
- Patents: can also apply equally well to open or closed source software - indeed, some people call for software patents to explicitly include source code showing how the claimed "invention" is implemented.
- Trademarks: not really relevant; they're concerned with brand names and don't depend on if one chooses to share the underlying source code to a program or not.
- Trade secrets. Ah. We might be onto something here! Yes, something isn't a secret if you share it openly. Gee whizz - who'da thunk that?!
Yes, what Gates is saying is that you can't have trade secrets if you have open source software - only that's far too obvious a statement to make and any audience would see straight through it. So he uses the meta-FUD term "intellectual property" instead. What a sham. As with the RIAA and MPAA, what Microsoft really needs is a law that forbids circumventing an "effective" business model...
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.
Great. Even our quotes are getting outsourced to India.
Sad as it is, some unions do use that argument. There is a nearby state park that has unionized maintenance workers. It is a several thousand acre park, which, due to budget cuts, only has two full time maintenance employees. Both guys work hard (maintaining roads grass, trash, buildings, etc,) but there is only so much two guys can do, and the parks trails are in terrible shape. Not just in need of mulch or stone, but washed out or nearly impassible due to overgrowth, downed trees, etc.
Some local businesses offered to donate tools and materials and some local Sierra Club (et al) members offered to volunteer their time to get the trials back into shape. Since it is a public park and is currently not useable for hiking by the public, I thought that was a great gesture from the community. Can you guess what heppened?
The state union told them to go stick it somewhere. Despite the fact that the two employees couldn't and wouldn't work on the trails - which is part of their job description - they wouldn't let anyone else do a "union job."
So the trails are still crap, now two years later.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Also interesting is that Cringley has often written about Microsoft's technology making "full employement" for msft technicians. Interestingly, though, he thinks Apples kill more IT jobs than Linux.
"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.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
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
1) Open source gives away software for free.
2) Giving something away for free is anti-capitalist.
3) Anti-capitalism is Communism!
4) Communists don't think like you and I do.
5) You or I would never kill a puppy.
6) As neither of us would kill a puppy, and communists don't think like you or I do, communists will kill puppies.
7) Therefore, Open Source Kills puppies.
8) Hence: Chewbacca.
(It's satire people...)
It is not a bad thing per se if jobs are eliminated. Open source software can be looked at as simply a technological improvement, with improved efficiency over proprietary software. Now, if this happens to eliminate the jobs of some proprietary developers, that is a good thing for the economy. Previously wasteful labor is no-longer being employed, so resources are being used more efficiently. The former-programmer must find a new job, doing something that the market values more highly than what he formerly did.
For example, consider the following situation:
Microsoft employs 100 people to work on Internet Explorer and all of its problems. These individuals work 40 hours a week and are paid $50,000 a year. All is well. Microsoft has a team which works on fixing problems in IE, the team-member get paid, and customers get a security update in IE every blue moon or so.
Now, along comes another group, Mozilla. They give away source code to the gecko core and get a small group of volunteers to work on Phoenix for free. These individuals choose to do this in their spare time, off of the job. They produce a browser which is arguably superior to IE.
Now, lets say that Phoenix drives IE out of the market, and Microsoft thus has to can it's IE project, meaning the workers get fired. Is this a bad thing? Well, obviously MS and their employees don't like it. But it is still good for society over-all.
Previously, customers had to pay money to MS for a browser. Now, they don't. They can conserve the resources (money) that they would have spent on the browser, and spend it elsewhere, on their highest valued use.
And what of Microsoft and the workers? Well, either they can make their product good enough that people will pay for it over a free alternative, or they have to eliminate the product-line or sell it off to whoever will buy it. What about the former MS employees working on IE? Well, it is unfortunate for them, but no-one has the right to be employed. Certainly, consumers in such a case would have demonstrated that they aren't willing to pay a higher price for an inferior product.
If they are laid off, they can find jobs else-where, where their labor will go towards a use more highly valued by consumers than what they had been doing. This is simply the reallocation of labor from less highly-valued uses to more highly-valued uses, resulting in greater overall efficiency.
If any programmer here is going to complain, I would ask you this: Given two computer-systems, both of the same quality in your estimation, would you buy the one that is priced higher or priced lower? The answer is you'd buy the one that's priced lower. Now, why would you expect anyone to pay more for a product of the same or lesser quality, when they can pay less for a product of the same or greater quality? It is hypocrisy to ask others to pay more money for inferior products.
I wouldn't be surprised if next thing, Bill Gates is going to file lawsuite against FOSS developers. After all, they are undercutting their competitors, and this is an evil anti-competitive strategy. Of course, if they price their products at the same price, they can be accused of collusion; and heaven forbid if they price them higher, then they're accused of price-gouging.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Again, it comes down to the IT Department Full Employment Act. Adopting Linux allows organizations to increase their IT efficiency without requiring the IT department to increase ITS efficiency. It takes just as many nerds to support 100 Linux boxes as 100 Windows boxes, yet Linux boxes are cheaper and can support more users. The organization is better off while the IT department is unscathed and unchallenged.
It's funny that you quote that. At my last job, we made the opposite change. Went from about 100 linux boxes/x-terminals to a 100 windows boxes. There were two of us techs, and our workload increased significantly. We no longer had time to work on "fun" projects that people wanted - web access to e-mail, trying new products, etc. We spent all of our time patching OSs, fighting viruses, and reinstalling hosed systems. Sure, we still used the same two techs, but I finally quit from the tedium of the job. It was no longer fun.
I think it all depends on what you want your IT people doing. Use windows, and they'll spend a lot of time fixing windows boxes. Use unix/linux, and there's a good chance that you'll be able to assign interesting projects that improve everyone's effectiveness and efficiency.
What kind of jobs, Mr. Gates? Point-of-sale software programming jobs seems to be the only possibility--a mere fraction of programming jobs out there--which just happens to be the business that you are in. It diminishes Bill's field and invigorates the industries that have anything to do with customization, localization, and face-to-face service and support.
"[Open source] doesn't guarantee upward compatibility or do that kind of integration [for seamless computing to work]."
"We certainly will have open-source apps that compete with and that run on Windows. But when it comes to a guarantee or having someone who stands behind your software, [open source] is typically not something done in a capital approach."
Hail, Prince of the Obvious! More obvious information: Microsoft doesn't exactly specialize in guarantees either. Open Source doesn't do all those things, but companies can. Bill's statment is like me saying that closed-source doesn't guarantee free croissants. Of course it doesn't, but Microsoft sure would if it meant keeping Linux out of Paris.
As for the integration thing, he's right. Open Source environments don't integrate like Microsoft does. And is probably better off for it. Isn't that what got us into all this IE trouble in the first place? How frenzied integration is somehow an advantage is a mystery to me.
He's stating a few half-truths and presuming that his fragment of the truth leads everyone to his MSFT-centric conclusions. He makes about as much sense as a Linux zealot might. His only advantage is that he knows the business vocabulary that will get the attention of the bureaucrats. That, and he's Bill Fucking Gates and what he says goes. Outside of Slashdot, the man is perceived as a technological messiah.
Their current dividends are basically meaningless. They're "token" dividends meant to keep investors complacent. The unofficial rule is that a publicly traded company is to retain profits for the purpose of increasing corporate growth in the near future (e.g. new hires, purchases, etc.) and as a security reserve (e.g. to cover lawsuits). Any money which is saved just for the sake of saving is supposed to be given to investors as dividends. That's the purpose of dividends: to share profit. Microsoft witheld profits for over a decade and their dividends today barely touch the $50 billion they have saved up.
What are those savings for? To buy a small nation? To buy all the companies left in the software industry? To buy another industry? To buy favor with government officials? They're not spending it, so it's owed to investors.
Developers: We can use your help.
"Open Source Kills Jobs"
-- Bill Gates, 2004
"You shouldn't get overly paranoid thinking that Microsoft's a broad competitor and it's not possible to work with us."
-- Bill Gates, 1997
"The Internet? We are not interested in it"
-- Bill Gates, 1993
"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."
-- Bill Gates - OS/2 Programmer's Guide 1988
"The next generation of interesting software will be made on a Macintosh,
not an IBM PC."
-- 1984
"640 Kilobyte ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981
"Microsoft programs are generally bug-free."
-- Bill Gates, on code stability, from Focus Magazine
One of MS's biggest vulnerabilities is that the financial model for the company has always been based on revenue growth and zero control of costs. When growth stops, the model will collapse. We're already seeing that in Balmer's latest memo.
Not sure that it is so tied to growth. If it stops growing, but remains constant, then Microsoft's growth will come from new markets and will be slow.
The bigger problem is this: Microsoft has been so successful because no other proprietary software maker can touch them on scale. They can therefore leverage a huge economy of scale, sell their products at prices which make their competitors go bankrupt, and still make a profit. This works up to a point untill.....
You guessed it.... Free Software.
The problem with FLOSS is that it spreads the cost of development more efficiently than even Microsoft's model. Therefore, it has a much lower critical mass than Microsoft. Hence as the software beginst to grow, it undermines the scale which makes Microsoft competitive.
I used to work for Microsoft. Personally I think that they are not agile enough to come out of this with their business model in tact because they are too successful. They cannot just move to greener pastures like, say, Intuit. There are no greener pastures.
They will survive no doubt, but not as the company they are today. Expect to see them go through an extremely painful transition resembling the finest medieval torture techniques.... What comes out may not resemble what went in....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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/
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
If not for open source technologies, I would not have a job.
Because of my exprience in Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl and various other technologies, I have a job at a company that uses these technologies exclusively. And the company is able to be competitive because it doesn't have to pay all of those licensing fees that would have to be paid if we used Windows Servers running IIS, ASP, SQL server, etc...
And of course, the entire internet runs on technologies that are open to everyone, http, tcp/ip, ftp, ssl, etc... many businesses would not exist if not for open source technologies.
Long live open source.
-- Does anybody know where the 'any' key is on the keyboard?
... that the jobs I've had for the past 5 years or so have all been primarily developing software that runs on linux systems?
;-) You can't get software to work without a good understanding that computers don't respond to positive thinking or marketing, and such people will always be a tiny minority.
Funny thing is that these jobs have been paid for mostly by non-US companies who are trying to get out from under the thumb of either IBM or Microsoft (or both). And they're hiring Americans like me to help them do it.
A big selling point has been that N years from now I can guarantee that the software will still run and they'll still be able to read all their files. They've learned the hard way that this isn't always true with proprietary systems.
And I can easily explain to them how they can verify that there are no hidden tricks (trojans, backdoors, etc) in my code or in any of the lower-level software. Neither my code nor anything in "the system" can be sending their data off to some stranger's data warehouse. Granted, they'll have to keep around a staff of unix/linux geeks, who will both study the code and monitor the appropriate online fora. But they don't need to hire as many such geeks as they have on site now to keep their IBM/MS stuff running, so even that's a win.
Maybe eventually we'll see the day when all software has been written and no more is needed. But I suspect that day's still a long way off. And the world is growing more and more dependent on smaller and smaller computers to keep everything running.
So for the forseeable future, they'll still need lots of people who understand that, no matter what managers or marketing people say, 2+2 is always 4, not 5 or 3.95 or something desirable. (Except when it's 3.99999999998 of course, but any true geek will understand that, too.
So I'll predict that people with the twisted (i.e., logical) minds required by programming will continue to have jobs until long after all of us are gone.
Of course, we may all have to move to India or China, as the patent system shuts down software development in the Western world.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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
* Burger King announces burgers cooked on a griddle are inferior to flame broiled; increased consumption of griddle-cooked burgers will result in major job loss in "manufacturing sector"
* Head of the republican national party criticizes John Kerry
* Donald Trump names another building after himself
* GAP spokesperson lauds the success of NAFTA
* Bill O'Reilly accuses Michael Moore of being "un-American"
* Humvee automaker claims proposed fuel consumption standands are a danger to society
* Larry King interviews Martha Stewart's pool guy and asks the tough questions everyone's dying to know. Chlorine or Bromine?
* Clear Channel Communications questions the integrity of smaller radio radio stations insisting, "They don't have the resources to report news according to established journalistic standards."
* Consensus at 2004 annual meeting of Zoologists confirms: "Bears do shit in the woods."
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.
As a Mac/Unix programmer, I'd love to find a job in or around Seattle. But for obvious reasons, almost everything up there is Windows-oriented. As far as I can tell, jobs for someone with my set of skills are few and far between.
From my point of view, it's Microsoft that's bad for the job market.
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
If Bill wants to stop open source, he should hire away the open source programmers who have proven their abilities.
I've always thought that setting out to design and code up a project from thin air is a big risk. Much better to find an open source project that is nearly what you want, and hire the team who produced it to turn it into the product you want.
A viable open source project already has most of the risk removed because you know it works and you know it's wanted.
This would solve the problem caused by the two opposing forces; companies like microsoft who want to charge for software, and programmers who have too much time on their hands, who write open source projects to add to their portfolio.
Face it, a lot of open source projects are started by programmers just looking to get some credibility and get a real job. Everyone has to have an incoming for food, shelter and whatever.
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.