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McVoy Strikes Back
cranos writes "Fast on the heels of his previous article claiming the kernel is at risk of Bad Things over the BitKeeper fuss, Daniel Lyons has released a new article where Larry McVoy attacks the Open Source movement as non-innovative and dependent on the kindness of corporations. The following quote says it all: 'The open source guys can scrape together enough resources to reverse engineer stuff. That's easy. It's way cheaper to reverse engineer something than to create something new. But if the world goes to 100% open source, innovation goes to zero. The open source guys hate it when I say this, but it's true.'"
So what exactly was it that products like sendmail, bind, apache, etc where copying from the closed source world? It also seems that Internet Explorer starts to rip off features, which where introduced with open source browsers. (Safe for Opera, but it was Firefox' success which finally convinced MS of tabed browsing and the implementation has yet to be seen).
I'd wager that the internet would be a duller place, would it solely be reliant on such engineering gems lik IIS and Exchange (which came later in the first place).
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
The other thing about the services model is this... Not everyone wants the same set of features. With proprietary software, if it doesn't have a feature you want, you might be able to submit a request, but usually, you just have to suck it up and deal. With open-source software, you can pay someone - usually the creator - to implement any features you need on top of their (presumably) mature codebase.
Never, ever underestimate the massive value of this.
Hee hee. Especially when you read the bit on bitmovers website about hosting the kernel sources...
All of this activity is hosted on a small relatively inexpensive PC. We build our own machines here and this one cost about $1500 in 2001; a similar rack mount machine would probably cost about $3000 today but be about 3 times faster. The fact that such an inexpensive machine can handle this level of activity underscores our message about total cost of ownership.
What a twat.
All in all, there are very few people (or companies) in the world making money from software, closed or otherwise. But there's HUMUNGOUS number of people and companies who earn money from USING software! Free software (both in speech and price) lower the cost of software. While it might reduce the amount of money software-companies make (although there are lots of people and companies earning money from free software), it will save alot of money for the people/companies who USE software.
Hell those companies that save money from free software could (and many do) hire a developer or two to customize/improve the software for their needs. And they would still save money.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
So, again, not open source, but the projects being hobby projects leads to incomlete projects. However, the great thing about open source is that everyone who feels like it can pick up those projects and work on them, even if the original developer isn't interested anymore.
Sure. I've had a few similar replies so maybe I needed to quote more of the guy I was replying to. Roughly:
Larry: Money drives software innovation
GGP: Hobbyist time works just as well
Me: Hobbyist time will only get you so far
As another AC pointed out, yes, the innovation often will happen in the hobbyist bit. But you're not going to get complete, visible innovative software unless you go full cycle. Sure, someone else can pick it up an run with it but it's hard to get those people to notice your project unless you've got it so far.
Yes, there are plenty of OSS projects that do go full cycle but they're often the popular-closed-source clones that Larry's complaining about. The ones you cite all are, arguably.
I will start out that I think the Bitkeeper open version was evil. The idea that if I used it I could not try and write a better CVS system was just wrong and should never have been accepted.
Frankly a lot of what he has to say makes perfect sense. The world will never be 100% open source. And unless you make it illegal "so much for freedom" to charge for software closed source will always be around. That is not a bad thing.
Open source will also never die.
I work for a company that produces closed source software. Not one of our customers has ever asked for the source code. They also pay us $600 a year for tech support and updates. Most of them are happy with our software and we provide documented file formats so their data belongs to them. There is not a single open source product that competes with us. So guys the market is wide open if you want to jump in.
One thing that really ticks me off in the FOSS community is the idea that OSS has to be free as in beer. It does not. What it does mean is if you pay for OSS you get the source and the right to give it and the source to whom ever you want. And yes you can charge them as much as you want.
The other thing is if you do not contribute code, money, documentation, or at least good bug reports to the project you are a freeloader. I want to smack people that I hear complaining that this free program or that lacks this or that feature or that the guy that wrote it is an idiot. SHUT UP AND ADD THE FEATURE YOURSELF! Or pay the developer to add it if you want it. But do not sit on a message board complaining about what you are getting for free.
Before any of you RMS fan boys jump on me let me say one thing. I have released a few FOSS programs I wrote. The first couple where not GPLd because the GPL was not written yet but I gave away the source. I have contributed to a few more GPL programs since then. The world will never be all open or closed source. People that think it should be are like those that think the world should forced to all be one faith.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Ok I'll bite... where is this mystery project of yours?
So, what happens to all the programmers in the world when everything goes open source and free?
My job consists of writing software that the company I work for will never earn a dime from. (directly) We don't write software for the sake of earning money from it. We write it to solve a business need.
The majority of our time is not spent doing software development. It's spent supporting our users, fixing bugs, adding small features, or modifications. All of which would still be required if we were using OSS.
I'm valuable to the company I work for not so much because I'm a programmer, but because I understand our business environment and can apply that knowledge to software. It's unlikely management would ever be able to surf over to Freshmeat and download something that could replace what I do.
Besides, I wouldn't work for McDonalds, I'm partial to driving trucks. I'm already used to long hours and low pay.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
In a free market, the price of most software will be zero:
1. It's free to make lots of copies of software and production cost is less than say writing a book or making an episode of Simpsons. In fact, people are willing to program as a hobby or, in 3rd world countries, for very low pay by our standards.
2. As McVoy pointed out, users of the software - big companies like Apple (hardware maker) or IBM (making money on service and support) - have interest in open source to free customer's money for themselves and soak up other people's contributions. There are more software users than software sellers. Oops!
3. On consumer side, intellectual property that has similar costs to software - TV shows and newspapers - has long been free and makes money on advertisement or convenient delivery (cable or newspaper subscriptions). There are all signs Google is trying to get into both models.
Microsoft and music record companies are seemingly beating this trend by selling IP which is relatively cheap to produce at increasing prices. I say it's because they operate under corpitalism - government rules that favor otherwise unsustainable business models of big corporations - rather than true capitalist open market.
For one thing, piracy is impossible to control without unreasonable laws like DMCA that prohibit studying mathematics and allows invasive snooping of Internet by private entities. In a normal society, content produces would have to come up with reasonable prices and attractive distribution channels to encourage honesty. Also, control of limited distribution channels - like buying all radio stations so that independent music can not be heard - would be illegal in a society that promotes free competition. So would be patent lock-in of trivial ideas, like Amazon's 1-click.
The most extreme case of corpitalism is bankrupt airlines that continue to operate as usual while being allowed to break any contracts that they voluntarily accepted (like employee pension plans). You would think if government gets into social protection, the target would be poor individuals rather than huge companies. PanAm ran out of money and folded and air travel is generally better/cheaper because of that.
Fortunately, it just takes one country in the world to switch to true capitalism instead of corpitalism. After a short time, everyone else would leach their software and domestic companies would have to switch to better business models to compete.
Alright, I just created the official announcement:
http://www.websaviour.com/templation/
Why would you invent "Yet Another Templating System" when there are about 3 dozen good ones out there for a variety of languages?
It's somewhere between a templating system and a content-management system, but it's core idea has very little to do with either. I just posted the announcement as a reply to the original reply, and that page explains the system better than I can in a brief response. The best analogy I can make is that the system is like database normalization for HTML sites, although the system leverages the natural site hierarchy more than set theory, so the parallel is not exact.
You're just attempting to lock your customers in to something for which no one else may even have the source or documentation.?
Although changes are most efficient to make when the system is run live, it produces static HTML or PHP files in its cache which can actually be deployed statically. The whole system is designed with the core goal of no lock-in, no new languages to learn, and no administrative tools necessary.