A Cynic Rips Open Source

AlexGr writes to tell us that Howard Anderson chaired an interesting meeting the other day with senior executives from Cisco, Agilent Technologies and Novell. The discussion took a look at whether or not enterprise users really want open source. "Naturally, I disagreed -- partially because I am a naturally disagreeable person. Any idiot can make friends -- but can you make some really serious enemies? I disagreed, however, because allegiance to open source depends on who you are. Let me give you an example. If you are No. 1 or No. 2 in your industry, you hate open source. You make your money by selling proprietary solutions: Microsoft and Cisco. If you are No. 3 to No. 10, you look at open source as a way to get back to those serious RSEUs, because they are where you make money."

Comments

Most important point at end of article

[Short Circuit]

A cynic might suggest that the people writing open source software are the ones who are making their daytime living working for a proprietary-solutions vendor and spend their nights tearing down the very house they live in. And that if open source replaced proprietary solutions, these people would not be able to make a daytime living that supports their night time hobby. The author's most important statement is in his second-to-last paragraph. And it's almost certainly wrong in most cases. After all, wouldn't an employer require their programmers to sign a noncompete clause which would inherently preclude them from participating in OSS projects that compete with their employer's products?

Re:Most important point at end of article

[Wordplay]

It's not a completely invalid point. I'm not working on an open source product that competes directly with my own day job, but I might be working on one that competes with your job, and you might be working on one that competes with my job. With two people, it's a coincidence, but with a wide open source community, it's probable. If you're talking about a movement that theoretically changes the distribution model of software as a whole, then everyone with a software job is theoretically affected.

Re:Most important point at end of article

[Short Circuit]

It's not a completely invalid point. I'm not working on an open source product that competes directly with my own day job, but I might be working on one that competes with your job, and you might be working on one that competes with my job. With two people, it's a coincidence, but with a wide open source community, it's probable. That's not a side effect of open source, that's a side effect of a free market. It's no different from both of us holding two different paying programming jobs in different fields, where my primary job competes with your secondary, and your primary job competes with my secondary.

Likewise, in a large enough economy, this becomes probable.

If you're talking about a movement that theoretically changes the distribution model of software as a whole, then everyone with a software job is theoretically affected. The movement started hundreds of years ago with the concept of the free market.

Re:Most important point at end of article

[kebes]

That paragraph caught my eye, too. But the author knows what he's doing: he's a troll.

After all, near the beginning of the article, he admits to being a troll:

Naturally, I disagreed -- partially because I am a naturally disagreeable person. Any idiot can make friends -- but can you make some really serious enemies?

I'm all for "playing devil's advocate" and having an intelligent debate where both sides are properly represented... but this guy basically admits that he just likes making people mad. So the way he ends his article is no surprise. In fact the whole article is filled with subtle (and not so subtle) jabs at both sides of the debate, such as:

Open source is not a movement; it's a religion.

Moreover, like any good troll, he creates arguments that are full of holes, thereby inviting angry "True Believers" to fight the good fight and tear his arguments apart. (And as a by-product he gets page views of course.)

I'm fully in favor of a reasoned debate on any issue... but I'm not clear on exactly what new insights this guy's article brings to the debate.

How can we take this guy seriously?

[Infonaut]

From TFA:

Open source is not a movement; it's a religion. It is a set of principles and practices that let everyone share nonexistent or semi-existent intellectual property.

Nonexistent intellectual property? Semi-existent intellectual property? WTF?

Any article about whether enterprise users really want to use Open Source software that starts of like this isn't worth reading any further. The guy isn't a cynic. He's someone with an axe to grind.

enterprise (end) users DON'T CARE @ open source

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Enterprise (end) users don't care one way or the other about open source. All they want is something that is:
  1) Reliable
  2) Doesn't (ever?) change its user interface (in part, because they "develop" screenshot-based training materials too)
  3) Etc.

It's only the enterprise I.T. technicians ("administrators") that care one way or the other, and then (in most cases because they're spending other people's money) because budget, deployment or licensing disputes are making their job more challenging that they feel it should be.

I've Always hated Howard Anderson

[gelfling]

Since time immemorial the Yankee Group has made its money pretending to be smarter than everyone else in the room. They literally make up shit out of whole cloth in order to be the only guys with this 'new' idea whatever it is. The fact is that Yankee group gets paid by the largest customers and the largest vendors. Are they unbiased? Sort of, not really. They know full well who their own customers are. If not for the myth of self anointed 'expertise' not only would there be no closed source, there would be no market analysis consulting firms like Yankee.

To their credit though they're at least not a PR arm of Microsoft like Gartner.

Worn-out metaphor ...

[jc42]

Time to once again introduce the old comparison with the auto industry. Every auto manufacturer automatically makes and sells full shop manuals for their vehicles. They accept this, and understand that if they didn't, they wouldn't sell many vehicles. Few customers would want to buy a car that can't be repaired by anyone but the manufacturer. Granted, they might not want a shop manual themselves, but they expect that their friendly local independent mechanic would be able to get one.

So why would computer customers be stupid enough to buy computer systems whose inner workings are hidden and inaccessible to anyone not working for the manufacturer? This doesn't make any sense, and we should expect that eventually users will wise up, as they long ago did with vehicles.

It's especially baffling that people are purchasing software that is so full of "exploits", and when a new bit of malware appears, users have to wait for the software's manufacturer to come out with a patch. You wouldn't tolerate this with other purchases, why would you accept it with software? Just as you expect your local mechanic to have repair information available, you should expect that your local software hackers would have access to the information to fix problems. That is, they should have access to your software's source.

It's especially baffling that, if I want a failing gadget to be fixable, someone would call my attitude a "religion". If the term applies at all, it should be applied to the people who accept the idea that "there are mysteries" behind their purchases, and we mere mortals shouldn't be permitted access to the inner workings of the universe. That's what a "religion" is. The idea that things in our world should be open to examination by us isn't religion; it's rationality and science, which is the opposite of religion.

Or, in the case of manufactured articles like cars or operating systems, it's just good engineering.

Mod it down yourself

[cbreaker]

What do you term "exchange?" When I submit any GPL code, it allows everyone to use it. In trade, I get your GPL code.

It's not a direct hand-to-cash deal but there IS a return on open source/free software. If you can't see that, this late in the game, then you MUST be brainwashed.

ps. Nearly all "significant" OSS/GPL/Linux software is developed by paid programmers. If you're a programmer, you will have a job even if OSS becomes the #1. Besides, the vast majority of code written today is for in-house use, not for sale.