Slashdot Mirror
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."
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Let me give you an example. If you are No. 1 or No. 2 in your industry, you hate open source.
What if your industry is open-source software?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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.
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.
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.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I first read this article on an Australian site (http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;8103 29453/) last week and it has been syndicated and is doing the rounds. This guy, Howard whoever he is, clearly has done zero research and has no facts to back up his comments - especially the finale.
At the end of last year the EU Commission released one of the most comprehensive reports on the impact, spread and use of Open Source, around the world. They found that, in actual fact, only around 10% of those who contribute to Open Source projects (the software engineers) are employed by proprietary vendors - the overwhelming majority are employed by the enterprises Howard so cynically believes are using FLOSS purely to beat down the cost of proprietary systems.
You can download the entire report from the EU itself here: http://flossimpact.eu/
There are many other reports from major research organisations that are concluding similar things. Forrester research has recently found that over 50% of large enterprises are using FLOSS in mission critical applications and this is growing.
A quick Google would lead Howard to many of these findings.
Alanhttp://www.theopensourcerer.com/
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.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Software itself violates the free market. For an item to have value, it must have utility and scarcity. As the marginal cost of production of a unit of software is damn near 0 (its fractions of a penny of electricity), software does not have scarcity. Thus it has no value. The rules of economics don't apply to it (or more correctly, an entirely new model needs to be created, but does not currently exist).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It existed back in the day when programmers were paid for their time and the software they produced was the result of that effort.
When people started selling software, instead of their services as developers of software, things got weird.
My twitter
"He is also founder of The Yankee Group.."
Surely you all remember miss Didio and her corperate horse whispering.
The marginal cost is how much it takes to create any additional product. After you've written the first copy of the software, there are no man-hours required to write the second copy.
The GP stated that the _marginal_ cost is 0, not that the entire cost or even the amortized cost is zero. The marginal cost is the additional cost of producing one extra unit. Your development costs are the same whether you sell 1 license or 1000 licenses; therefore the additional cost of those extra 999 licenses is zero. Thus the GP is exactly right, and software itself breaks the current economic model.
In neoclassical economics, where value is measured relative to supply, you may be correct. However, there are other definitions of value (which is part of why this thread branch has gone around in circles)
However, if you go back to classical economics and then to Marx, you will find the concepts of use-value and exchange value. Software would generally have a non-zero use-value (because using it creates economic efficiency and therefore produces benefits to the user) and an exchange value (the cost in money) that should approach zero (to your point about marginal cost of production).
However, we find that isn't true (go look at the cost of Microsoft Office). This is true due to the cost of performing a transition to a new software program (file compatibiltiy, training, etc.). Due to these costs, Microsoft (and others) can value price their product. As long as the (classical economic) value provided by their product is greater than that of an open source/free solution, companies will continue to purchase Office.
On the other hand, I agree that we need a new model. Classical economics handles software just fine; it's just that neoclassical economics (heavily dependent upon scarcity) doesn't handle software well. It's not that classical economics doesn't have its own problems... so I agree there is a place for a new model.
No it doesn't. Artificially limiting the distribution of software via copyright, might, but software itself does not. Software development as a service (as open source business models use it) is classic capitalism. It is only capitalism as it applies to services (programming) as opposed to a commodity.
Thus it has no value.Having a clean floor has no inherent value, but still capitalism accommodates the selling of cleaning services, just fine.
I would disagree that the "marginal cost of production of a unit of software is damn near 0," when you take into account the man-hours required to create the software in the first place.
You're partially correct. The cost to develop a piece of software is called the sunk cost. It's a good term, just what it sounds like. You sink money into development and it sinks out of sight. It's gone. The cost to duplicate and distribute the product after that is, essentially, 0.
Not like a car. You have sunk cost in auto design as well, but the bulk of the cost is in the components. Cars have intrinsic value as any chop-shop can demonstrate. Software does not have intrinsic value. It can be duplicated for nothing.
Many economists disagree, but my opinion getting away from an economy based on making things with value and relying on things with no intrinsic value is a really bad idea. An economic Pearl Harbor. Maybe we won't be around long enough for something really bad to happen, but if it ever does it could well be an unimaginable disaster.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Moderators! Help! He's calling me an econo-sexual!! Is this not abuse?
:)
PS: we are straying from the point, and wading in the murky waters of the fascist nitpickers. And if you provoke me further, the only thing I shall sodomize will be YOU! Go away
Dealing with ClearCase is a major part of everyone's job there. It was forced on everybody with a top-down executive decision- all version control is handled with ClearCase since they paid for the license. (The "benefit" is that a team in the bioinformatics division can have access to a repository maintained by, say, the oil exploration division.) Everyone who has to use ClearCase hates it. The processes are weird and the tools that you're forced to use are buggy. I've heard people cite ClearCase as a good reason to look for another job. The guy in the next cube had three weeks of work destroyed by a ClearCase update one morning. He smashed his keyboard into 101 pieces on the floor.
There are tiny version-control rebellions all the time- small teams set up little secret CVS repositories here and there- just known to a few guys who then have to keep them a secret from management. Once the top brass inevitably finds out about them, the phagocytosis begins: the team has to stop whatever it's doing and help migrate their entire CVS repository into ClearCase. This was always an abnormally large, painful undertaking for some reason. It was a real tragedy every time it happened- really demoralizing for everyone, even the people in the next row of cubicles just rubbernecking another version control disaster.A cynic might suggest that the people breathing in oxygen are the ones who are exhaling carbon dioxide and destroying the very atmosphere they're breathing. And that if carbon dioxide completely replaced oxygen, these people would not be able to inhale the oxygen that turns into the carbon dioxide they exhale. A cynic would be right.
Well, rather than "artificial scarcity", which applies well to DeBeers' diamonds, I think it would be more accurate to describe the proprietary software situation as "fictional scarcity". That is, it is a scarcity that only exists in the mind of the least attentive and most uncritical shareholder. Any bittorrent user can tell you that this alleged scarcity doesn't actually exist in reality.