Gartner Says Open Source "Impossible To Avoid"

alphadogg writes in with a Network World article that covers a Gartner open source conference, in which VP Mark Driver seems to be going out of his way to be provocative. "You can try to avoid open source, but it's probably easier to get out of the IT business altogether. By 2011, at least 80% of commercial software will contain significant amounts of open source code..." After this lead-in, in which open source seems to be regarded as some kind of communicable disease, the rest of the article outlines a perfectly rational plan for developing an open source strategy.

Comments

sounds good to me

[bakamaki]

You won't hear me complaining, 80% sounds great.

Re:sounds good to me

[moderatorrater]

The problem that I see is that the 80% isn't necessarily meaning that more code is going to be open source, just that more of it's going to get used. Look at the network stack for vista to see what I mean.

Sounds right

[Selfbain]

It's infectious, it's growing and all attempts to stop it have failed.... sounds like a virus to me.

Re:Sounds right

[ttapper04]

Just like any good idea. Open source just might be the right way to get the best product to the end user. If that proves to be true then nothing can stop it. Gallaleo was right, the Earth goes around the Sun, nothing could stop the idea. Of coarse this hinges on weather open source really is the best way. I do not have the answer to this.

Re:Sounds right

[Anonymous Coward]

i bet those coarse hinges make a horrible squeaking noise.

Re:Sounds right

[mpapet]

I agree the idea can't be stopped. But I think the unintended consequence is tons of copyright/distribution license violations or Tivoization.

A business will use gpl'd libraries to avoid having to make their own and then pass the whole thing off as their own. From there, they've got an advertising budget so they can easily drown out the buzz from a community-based solutions.

I know it happens in windows because some of the commands for a particular ssh server my employer was using were 1:1 openssl. I asked someone in the vendor's support and their canned response was "they made a clean-room implementation." Openssl is a shed-load of code. Tough coding too. I have serious doubts.

Re:Sounds right

[mcmire]

You missed a semicolon. It should read "Of coarse this hinges on weather; open source really is the best way." Sorry, couldn't resist. :)

Re:Sounds right

[hitmanWilly1337]

Well, isn't that the whole point of viral licensing like the GPL? And as far as I'm concerned, this is a very good thing.

Re:Sounds right

[Lord Bitman]

It depends on weather.

Re:Sounds right

[walt-sjc]

Openssh is BSD licensed, so there are no GPL concerns. They may be lying about the "clean-room implementation," but in the end it doesn't matter due to the fact that it is BSD licensed.

Re:Sounds right

[init100]

because some of the commands for a particular ssh server my employer was using were 1:1 openssl

Despite their similar names, OpenSSH and OpenSSL are different projects. Or did you mean that the SSH server used OpenSSL?

Re:Sounds right

[MancunianMaskMan]

bless the spell checker in firefox!

Standard

[ttapper04]

1. Say something provocative and be sure to mention open source.
2. Post on slashdot.
3. Sneak in something insightful.
4. ???????
5. Profit!!!1

Re:Standard

[epedersen]

4. ??????? is put ands on the article.

Well that's an understatment...

[beatbox32]

Hard to avoid? I'm in the process of securing a restraining order as we speak.

Already here.

[Aladrin]

The article says that some say that day is already here. I agree.

Try to do -anything- on the web without having to deal with Firefox, Apache, PHP, etc, etc... Good freaking luck. Even Safari uses open source components, so there goes all compatibility with Mac as well. (Meaning you can't test it on Mac, because then you'd be dealing with open source.)

Now, try to have a successful business without the internet. Sure, it's possible on a small scale, but I can't name a single business I deal with that doesn't have at least a 'contact us' page on the internet with a phone number.

And that doesn't even get into interacting with other companies that happily use open source in their daily functioning.

Re:Already here.

[hackstraw]

The article says that some say that day is already here. I agree.

Try to do -anything- on the web without having to deal with Firefox, Apache, PHP, etc, etc... Good freaking luck. Even Safari uses open source components, so there goes all compatibility with Mac as well.

I could quote more, but I would bet that almost 100% of the sane people on the planet would agree with both the parent post and the linked article.

I'm just confused as to the point of the article. This article seems as relevant as saying air in the Earth's atmosphere contains 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent argon, 0.03 percent carbon dioxide, with trace gasses and this is impossible to avoid.

Is there something I missed? Is open source a problem or something? I don't understand the point here.

Re:Already here.

[SpaceLifeForm]

The point is Gartner getting their name out there.

Otherwise, they might as well be dead and useless.

Oh, wait.

Re:Already here.

[kebes]

In addition to the domains where open-source is already firmly established (the Internet, as you mention, and many embedded device spaces, too), there are indeed many new domains where open-source is becoming more and more "necessary." Consider this (admittedly brief) writeup on a talk given by "Intel's Chief Linux and Open-Source Technologist." The writeup says:

He also mentioned that a major OEM is requiring that by next year their hardware suppliers must either have an open-source driver available or be able to provide an open-source driver within the next twelve months. The likely company that comes to mind is Dell but Dirk refused to comment any further.

If the speculation is correct (that Dell wants all hardware to have open-source drivers available within 12 months), that's a big deal. Such a push is an example of the benefits of open-source being pushed into a new market (in this case, the desktop commodity hardware space).

Re:Already here.

[jimicus]

Is there something I missed? Is open source a problem or something? I don't understand the point here.

Gartner's company line for years was "Avoid open source, it's risky".

That's changed slightly. Reading the article, it looks like they're now saying "It's still risky but you can't avoid it".

Re:Already here.

[EpsCylonB]

including 3D graphics drivers ?

Re:Already here.

[BlueParrot]

Of course the difference is that the atmospheric composition is known from reliable sources, with great accuracy, and is actually a useful thing to know. The claims in this article on the other hand...

Re:Already here.

[fwarren]

You do realize that Dell is already being queezed on the laptop front?

They are good at what they do, they can turn a profit on desktops. Laptops, have a smaller profit margin on the low end. It is really hurting them. MS being 10% to 25% of cost on systems. It would not hurt Dell to be able to sell without Microsoft.

Dell is still a big name. Nvidia, Western Digital, etc, all have warehouses within a few blocks of where Dell puts systems together. Dell does not keep but 6 or 7 days worth of parts on hand. They just call Nvidia and they drive a palet of parts on a forklift a few blocks to Dell.

Dell moves enough stuff, that if the choice between selling to Dell or not selling to Dell is LINUX drivers not OPEN SOURCE drivers. I think companies will either go open source or binary drivers with open-source hooks. Dell still has the clout.

Re:Already here.

[nmos]

I can't imagine Dell requiring open-source drivers. Even if to support their Linux offerings.

The problem isn't the lack of drivers, it is what the Chinese will do with an open-source driver.

I really don't understand why Dell would care. They arn't hardware designers, just system integrators using (mostly) comodity parts.

Hardware manufacturer spends lots of time (read: money) developing software-instead-of-hardware approach to make a given computer peripherial lower cost to the consumer.

While I'm sure there are exceptions for the most part I'd say I'm happy to see those pursuing that approach go. Forget Linux etc. even on Windows these types of hardware tend to be the buggiest pieces of garbage available and are the first to become obsolete when a new version of Windows, or even sometimes a service pack, comes out. What's wrong with hardware makers competing based on making better hardware?

You release the hardware specs (or better yet, a real working driver) and you now enable somebody to duplicate all that work in a couple of weeks just reusing (yes, stealing) the software. No R&D time. Much, much cheaper product.

Well, they still have to duplicate the hardware which is IMHO a lot harder than copying the software, be it open or closed.

Re:Already here.

[Just Some Guy]

I can't imagine Dell requiring open-source drivers. Even if to support their Linux offerings. [...] You release the hardware specs (or better yet, a real working driver) and you now enable somebody to duplicate all that work in a couple of weeks just reusing (yes, stealing) the software. No R&D time. Much, much cheaper product.

Yes, I can hardly imagine Dell wanting to see their suppliers in a price war. I'm sure it would break their heart if all their components were suddenly "much, much cheaper".

Re:Already here.

[fat_mike]

You mention Apache, PHP, and a bunch of other crap that weren't built because of Linux. They were created, just like everything else, because people were unhappy with what they had to work with.

Gnome is celebrating its 10th birthday today and that blew me away. I got to thinking, Linux has been around for 14 years now. It still has has the game with penguin sliding down the mountain to prove it can do GL with. Hmm, lets look at all the "linux" companies that went under or changed there name:

Pretty much all of them

What has actually been accomplished. The window manager is still based on X.

Re:Already here.

[Bert64]

The west already can't compete on price with the chinese...
So perhaps they should stop trying, stop producing buggy software to emulate operations that hardware should be doing, and produce proper hardware to do it, which they can sell as premium quality goods, instead of competing with the low end cheap stuff coming from china.
Most of the software based devices i've ever used have been incredibly buggy, less compatible and/or slower than their hardware based counterparts. Some of them improved in reliability once third parties had reverse engineered them and produced better drivers.

As an example, the original alcatel speedtouch usb dsl modems... The official drivers were horrendous and suffered from heaps of problem, the windows drivers were very late to support xp, and at least the early versions didnt work at all on multiprocessor machines, and the drivers would often lock up (i witnessed this on windows 2000) more often when the machine was under load but quite randomly otherwise, requiring you to reboot the machine. The official linux drivers were just as bad, incredibly unstable tho they did work with multiple cpus and didnt become noticeably more unreliable under load.
They also had all kinds of problems with various USB chipsets, they worked reasonably well with 2 VIA chipsets i had, but an old Intel chipset (pentium pro FX chipset i believe, one of the first to support usb) could barely stay up for more than 5 minutes.

Later some third party drivers came out for linux, which improved the situation massively, but the devices themselves were never all that great.
Replacing the usb device with a hardware based dsl router that connected via ethernet removed all the problems, and everything worked well after that (all my ethernet cards are decent quality ones, not ones where most of the processing is done by the cpu).

Disease?

[Kelson]

After this lead-in, in which open source seems to be regarded as some kind of communicable disease

Sir, you appear to be confusing "open source" with "open sores." I realize they sound similar, and English spelling isn't entirely logical, but this one ends with an "S" sound, not a "Z."

Is Gartner warning us?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It's almost like they're talking about herpes, the way you can't escape it.

Re:Is Gartner warning us?

[Braino420]

It's almost like they're talking about herpes, the way you can't escape it.

Oh whatever, you can escape it, just read /. and you won't have to worry about such problems :)

It is a disease, and that's why it works!

[BobMcD]

Of course Open Source is a communicable disease. All freedom is. That's why they call it freedom, and that's also why those in control fear it so much.

DUH!

I fault YOU, dear comment submitter, for attaching a negative connotation to it. There's nothing wrong a viral idea, and there's nothing wrong with admitting that an idea is viral. There is something wrong with being ashamed of perfectly decent things.

What this says, in my view, is that 80% of the developers that are, um, developing will see freedom as beneficial. And in my world, that ROCKS!

Re:It is a disease, and that's why it works!

[arun_s]

There's nothing wrong a viral idea, and there's nothing wrong with admitting that an idea is viral. Your comment made me think of what first attracted me to the Free Software world. To any one who's discovered the elegant beauty of Darwin's evolutionary theory, there is an equal attractiveness in the way the GPL license is framed.
The very fact that the GPL attaches itself to the code its released under, and survives into the downstream modifications that are made to the code.. there are beautiful resemblances to the way successful life itself evolves.
I'm inclined to believe that licenses that are not viral (e.g. BSD) and depend on altruistic reasons to survive, are somehow doomed to extinction (i.e. will be swallowed by proprietary licenses that couldn't care less about perpetuating the BSD cause). In the long run, the GPL will emerge as the fitter license that made its way into the larger user base while retaining pefect copies of itself.
(Of course I'm neither a biologist nor a programmer, so apologies if I sound like I'm talking outta my ass.)

Re:It is a disease, and that's why it works!

[Braino420]

(i.e. will be swallowed by proprietary licenses that couldn't care less about perpetuating the BSD cause)

That is the BSD cause: free code to be used anywhere.

Re:It is a disease, and that's why it works!

[yt.rabb at gmail]

(Of course I'm neither a biologist nor a programmer, so apologies if I sound like I'm talking outta my ass.) You must be new here.

Re:It is a disease, and that's why it works!

[init100]

Except in projects licensed under the GPL.

Re:It is a disease, and that's why it works!

[Bert64]

Free code to be taken by a commercial entity, changed just enough to render it incompatible, and then sold back to you for a ridiculous price.

In other news

[JackMeyhoff]

security of your product and business is not possible via obscurity. This just in...

Consider the Source

[FatMacDaddy]

This is the Gartner Group we're talking about. The only thing that amazes me is that anyone still pays them any attention at all. I still have some presentation materials around here somewhere where they warn that 30% of US businesses will fail due to Y2K problems.

Re:Consider the Source

[arun_s]

Heheh. I just did a search for 'site:slashdot.org gartner' and here are some weird analyses they've come up with in the past:
Gartner Says Linux PCs Just Used To Pirate Windows (2004)
Gartner Recommends Holding Onto The SCO Money (2003)
(Sure they got some better ones too, I just picked the funnies)

Re:Consider the Source

[greengrass]

Is this the same Gartner Group that in 1999 said that "Linux is the Hype Du Jour"?

Re:Consider the Source

[WindowlessView]

>> Uhm yeah, consultants. Their job is to whip up a fear frenzy and then sell the cure.

That is very close to the truth. I have a good friend who worked for Gartner and now works for a major competitor. It's not so much fear/cure they are selling as the latest hyped trend and how (for a fee) you can jump aboard and gain a competitive advantage. The whole business plan of these guys is basically to be a CYA vehicle for IT management.

Re:Consider the Source

[MickDownUnder]

The Gartner group is like any other company, they create material for the purpose of making profit. Their criteria for selecting topics are as follows:

1. The topic must be topical and something people are extremely interested in
2. It must be purely speculatory to make it impossible for anyone to dispute any information they manufacture.
3. It must be loaded and contraversial.

All the topics you've listed and this topic fall into those 3.

Gartner reports are nearly always ridiculous in hindsight, they're just taking shots in the dark like most other people. But that doesn't really matter as everyone who was going to purchase their paper has already done so well before it's ludicrousness ever fully makes itself apparent.

However in this case I think the veracity of this report is probably easier to determine than most, seeing as most software is semi-redundant after 3 years, you would simply need to conduct a slashdot pole and find out what the percentage of time developers are working on closed source as opposed to open source. If that pole showed 80% of development time was currently being used to write code that would be licensed as open source then Gartner would have it right.... 80% of the non-redundant source code out there 3 years from now would be open source.

Re:Consider the Source

[Elektroschock]

Sure Gartner is low-quality research, today I found some interesting comments on the Gartner report for a reform of the European Interoperability Framework. When you read the original Gartner report it is simply a mouthpiece of CompTIA's Hugo Lueders (a Microsoft proxy) and his "multiple standards" advocacy. Note that the European Interoperability Framework is the most advanced open standards promotion tool in public administration.

So here Gartner is clearly a Microsoft proxy.

http://gotze.eu/2007/07/gartner-and-the-european-interoperability-framework-20.html

I represented Denmark in the comittee that created the EIF and maintained the AG, so of course I read the Gartner-report with a biased view. Then again, I always tend to read documents from Gartner with a biased view. [..] If the Gartner consultants were my students, they should fear the exam, because I would confront their problem understanding, their methods, their empirical depths/shallowness, and not least their pseudo-theoretical analysis and model-amok. Having said that, I admit to finding some of their proposals pretty interesting, for example, their Generic Public Services Framework is conceptually interesting, but not very well explained and motivated.

Researchwise, the Gartner report does not go into much if any detail with respect to the national interoperability frameworks that have been established in several member states: Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom.

EIF presented a pretty clear definition of open standards. EIF 2.0 will, Gartner suggests, "allow open standards and other recognized standards to coexist", and Gartner recommends not to focus on the use of open standards per se.

Bruce Perens: Confusion of Tongues

Gartner's advice to IDABC is so fundamentally flawed that, if followed, it would break down the interoperability that has been achieved via EIF 1.0 and set back any prospect of achieving improved interoperability in the future. Their findings are unbalanced to weight the desires of an IT vendor over the good of IT customers and the fundamental goal of interoperability. This unbalance is so fundamental that Gartner mis-states the very character of standards and the conditions that provide interoperability, and confuses mere formats with standards.

This comment counters Gartner's report with a simple explanation regarding the conditions necessary to achieve interoperability while being fair to all parties. The recent overpowered push for acceptance of Office Open XML in ISO made it clear that the proper conditions for interoperability must be explained to many nontechnical people, if political pressure is not to overwhelm technical reality. Thus, this comment defines basic concepts and uses terms that nontechnical people can be expected to understand. The more technical are requested to bear with us.

Re:Consider the Source

[sgtrock]

Back then, you could argue it was. :)

Tivolization

[prxp]

I guess that depends on that GPLv3 thingy...

Re:Tivolization

[morgan_greywolf]

WTF is Tivolization? Is that like, embedding support for IBM's Tivoli management suite into your software? What? Does the GPL V3 forbid that, too?

Re:Tivolization

[maxwell demon]

No, GPLv3 disallows to run your software in Tivoli. :-)

If Gartner ways it, bet the opposite.

[GnarlyDoug]

My opinion of Gartner is so low that I can only assume that through some miracle Open Source will be discarded as a bad idea by 2011.

Re:If Gartner ways it, bet the opposite.

[Maximum Prophet]

My thoughts exactly. Gartner is always wrong, so when they say everyone will be using Open Source, my head explodes.

Open source in commercial software?

[EricR86]

By 2011, at least 80% of commercial software will contain significant amounts of open source code

If these predictions are correct (which they probably aren't) how do these products stay "commercial"? If at least half of that Open Source software is GPL covered, then %40 of that commercial software will have to be open as well.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[Rycross]

Its entirely possible to make commercial GPL software. You can't really charge for the software (yeah yeah, I know Stallman *claims* that you can charge for GPL software, but the reality is that free copy and distribution drives the price of the software to $0), but you can charge for the services in writing or supporting the software, or provide other services for running the software (software is free, hardware costs cash, factor cost of software into the hardware).

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[MrCrassic]

In all honesty, I would not be surprised if more companies went the way of distributing free (as in beer) components of their larger software. Quick examples I can think of are VMWare's server product and Adobe Photoshop's free fork.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[p0tat03]

Open Source != GPL

LGPL, BSD, etc, licenses exist also. Almost all of the commercial software I've ever programmed for had open source components, but the companies were always diligent enough to pick libraries that did not require open sourcing of the entire app.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[Orange Crush]

If these predictions are correct (which they probably aren't) how do these products stay "commercial"?

For mostly the same reasons I just bought lunch at the cafe downstairs. The salad I'm eating is fully "open source" and I have plenty of know-how and experience to make my own salads by growing the component vegetables in my garden and bring in my own lunches for little if any money.

For my money, I get "ready to eat" convenience taking only a few minutes of my time and full product support--if it's not to my liking, I can take it back and get it fixed.

Open Source != written by anti-commerce hippies. The software may be free, but there's plenty of money to be had providing and supporting solutions.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[seebs]

There's commercial efforts based on or working with open source right now.

$DAYJOB for me these days is Wind River Linux. Yes, it's all GPLd. Yes, source is available. We are still offering something people are willing to pay for, and people continue to pay us money for stuff. It's clearly a commercial product; it's just a commercial product that happens to have a lot of GPL'd code in it.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[moderatorrater]

Your math assumes that 50% of open source being GPL'd will carry over to the 80% of software, which it won't necessarily. Businesses who want to close their source will choose the code with less restrictive licenses, or they'll only link to LGPL code, etc.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[pembo13]

Nothing about the GPL says you can't sell software

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[dilute]

Especially components. Why write a parser, for example (say, an XML parser), or get a budget for licensing one, when you can grab a FOSS one under a permissive license and dynamically link it as a library (hopefully without compromising your company's proprietary product)? This type of thing is happening all over. Already. So is corporate participation in open source projects, purely out of a self-interested economic calculation.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[walt-sjc]

In fact, Red Hat makes most of its money off of Enterprise Linux licenses while still being able to give away the source allowing Centos to exist.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[bvankuik]

That's because some software has open source components that are not linked (as in linking as the last stage of compiling) with the closed source parts. Oracle for instance has distributed Apache for years. But the only thing they use it for is as a frontend for their Java application server.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[davidsyes]

Watch the let us and the to-yu-fu.. You don't wanna get open sores...

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[grcumb]

By 2011, at least 80% of commercial software will contain significant amounts of open source code

If these predictions are correct (which they probably aren't) how do these products stay "commercial"? If at least half of that Open Source software is GPL covered, then %40 of that commercial software will have to be open as well.

You seem to be confused about the meaning of 'commercial software'. It appears that you're actually referring to off-the-shelf software. The vast majority of commercial software is custom-developed for particular business needs, and is often never distributed. As long as it's never distributed, it's possible to integrate proprietary and GPL software without having to GPL the entire application.

Gartner seems to think that kind of thing will become standard corporate procedure in the near future. I would like to applaud Gartner on their vision, because for once they seem to have correctly identified that the thing they are holding, with both hands, is indeed their ass.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[Braino420]

Oh I like where this analogy is going, pretty soon the FSF will be boycotting Coca-Cola until they open-source their formula :)

[flame]You are right, Open Source wasn't written by anti-commerce hippies, the GPL was. [/flame]

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[ucblockhead]

LGPL libraries. Plus, my suspicion is that that 80% is from a few particular open source projects. Usually, it is not a matter of taking an open source project an modifying it. It's mostly trying to find an open source library that can plug in to your application. (Like, for instance, Sqlite.)

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[Bert64]

I think a lot of people would pay good money for a hardware/software bundle which is built together as a cohesive whole...
This removes driver problems, since the hardware configuration is known up front. Apple already do this, they sell bundles of standard x86 hardware running mostly open source code. There's also all the high end vendors who do the same, people like Sun and IBM etc.

And don't forget appliances, most people don't want to build their own video recorder, manufacturers can save a lot of money and attract certain types of customers by using open source, and still sell huge numbers of units to the mass market.

Re:Open source in commercial software?

[Trinn]

I am an anti-commerce hippie, you insensitive clod :-P

A conversation

[Kelson]

--Dude, where've you been? I haven't been able to reach you for days!

--I was in the hospital with (whispers) *Linux*. They wouldn't let me get online. They were afraid I'd install it on the computer. They even found it on my cellphone.

--Man, that's harsh!

--You're telling me! At least they put me in a room with Windows.

Re:A conversation

[Bemopolis]

Well, he was asking for it. An Apple a day keeps the doctor away.

So when were you able to avoid it?

[BBPursell]

Can you name an OS that doesn't have Open Source code in it? (over the last 30 or so years) ... anyone? ... Okay, one that people actually use? Now, there may be a few users that have never used an operating system, and I can't speak for every application out there, so I'm pretty sure that you never could avoid it.

Re:So when were you able to avoid it?

[pak9rabid]

Doesn't any OS that implements TCP/IP rely on the open source TCP/IP stack from BSD?

Re:So when were you able to avoid it?

[init100]

No, there are multiple implementations of a TCP/IP stack. I've heard that e.g. Linux uses its own implementation, and Microsoft claims to have reimplemented the stack for Vista.

I've also read that the IETF wouldn't accept a protocol specification as an internet standard if there aren't at least two independent implementations of the protocol, which wouldn't be the case if everyone was using the BSD stack.

Gartner is a joke ...

[douggmc]

Anything coming from any of the Gartner clowns' mouth should be considered suspect. They are a joke.

What does DiDio say?

[bogaboga]

Isn't this the same Gartner that Laura DiDio worked for and suggested that Open Source software and especially Linux had no place in the then "today's world?" I guess things have changed a lot. But what does she say now? An slashdotter wants to know.

Re:What does DiDio say?

[antifoidulus]

Gartner's "opinions" have always been, "pimp whatever we are selling and call it 'research'"

Re:What does DiDio say?

[init100]

Isn't this the same Gartner that Laura DiDio worked for and suggested that Open Source software and especially Linux had no place in the then "today's world?"

I guess that you are referring to this gem:

The thing about Linux is, you can talk about a free, open operating system all you want, but you can't take that idea of free and open and put it into a capitalist system and maintain it as though it is some kind of hippie commune or ashram, because if you can do it like that, at that point I'm like, 'Pass the hookah please!'

But no, she didn't work for Gartner, she worked for the Yankee Group.

I think Hell is freezing. Wrap the pipes.

[thatskinnyguy]

Dear Slashdotters,

Considering this recent revelation of the future from this prophet, we here at Microsoft want a piece of the action too. We have been dodging this bullet for too long. It's time to sink our teeth in and bite it.

We have been holding secret negotiations with Torvalds and starting next year, the NT kernel will be scrapped in favor of the Linux kernel. Windows will cease to be an operating system. Instead, Microsoft will develop something to be known as "the Windows Desktop Environment", or WDE for short. WDE will have all the user-friendly features you have come to love in Microsoft Windows operating systems with the exception that everything about it will be open source.

Help us make WDE and our new distribution become a success and continue your support for Microsoft.

Your Friend in Redmond,
William Gates III

Re:I think Hell is freezing. Wrap the pipes.

[AndyCR]

Please mod parent +1 Wish-it-would-happen.

How to be Open Source yet Commercial

[KWTm]

Open Source and Commercial are not intrinsically mutually exclusive. The opposite of Open Source (OS) is Proprietary, while the opposite of Commercial is Zero-Cost (0$, one of the meanings of "Free", but "Zero-Cost" resolves the ambiguity).

Having said that, it is indeed difficult to make software both Open Source and Commercial, since the software recipients can then freely redistribute it. There are only two true ways I can think of:

1. The market is so small or specialized that it would not be practical to redistribute. For example, OS software for some specialized research might have such a scattered market that it would not be practical for a potential customer to say, "Gee, let me just find a web site and download it from someone else!"
   
2. The implementation is customized for the client in such a way that it would not be practical to grab a redistributed version. This is a special case of the above, since by customizing you are fragmenting the market into small segments, each of which will not redistribute to another.
   

Otherwise, you're looking at selling something else to go with the software. You could sell the hardware, as Linksys does with their Linux-based routers, or sell support services, as Red Hat does. You could offer to customize the software for a fee, which would be a specialized case of selling support.

You could also sell proprietary data that goes with your OS software. For example, you might have some GPS mapping software which is OS, but you would sell the maps themselves. I also imagine that Google might be able to sell their web-searching software as open source, but you wouldn't have the same networking hardware and the accumulated data that they have.

Still other solutions include judicious use of proprietary versus open source software. ESRaymond's web site suggests that you can sell proprietary software while keeping the source in escrow to be opened in case the company fails. The author of QCAD sells the latest version as proprietary, which become open-sourced when a newer version supercedes it. Also, you can have multi-licensing deals: you have code that is licensed under the GPL, but re-license it under a proprietary license for money because someone else wants to reuse it in a proprietary work.

Oh, yeah, there's one more. You just plain sell your OS software. Some people might buy it even though it's available for free elsewhere. I remember when I bought the latest Borland C++ compiler at the local computer store for what I thought was a cheap price (this was in late 2000 when the sun was already setting on Borland). Later, I found out that it was available as a free download. But at US$30, hey, I was happy with the value for the money. Yes, I could have gotten it cheaper, but I was willing to pay $30 for it. (Not that Borland C++ is an example of Open Source software.) Also, you make money due to brand name (which is what Red Hat is famous for protecting): people might buy from you just to get the reassurance that it's The Real Thing.

So, there are ways to do it, just not the straightforward way that the MAFIAA is drooling about, which is that people pay you big bucks just to make copies of your 1's and 0's.

Re:How to be Open Source yet Commercial

[init100]

the opposite of Commercial is Zero-Cost

I'd say that the opposite of commercial is non-commercial. Examples which (to me) are clearly commercial but still zero-cost are Internet Explorer and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Re:How to be Open Source yet Commercial

[Hucko]

I like the idea of compelling secondary/trinary versions releasing the source code. I don't have a problem with buying software, but I do have trouble with completely proprietry products. Maybe we should fork/upgrade GPL2 to say something like this. Then we could have top level competition, commercial viability, but reasonable openness and transparency for obsolete products.

"Strategy" is Not Rational

[Erris]

Making an "open source strategy" is silly. No one has an "EULA" planning session where they try to make general guidelines for what kind of non free screwing they will and won't take. They consider the options available and take the best. This is a panic by non free software vendors and their pawns. The same people who used to tell you to always use the "best" tool for the job realize that the best tool is often a free one. Open Software planning sessions are a waste of time designed to heap FUD on free software. The time waste itself will put you at a competitive disadvantage, using the wrong tools will too.

It's never been rational to ignore free software. Every significant non free program has roots in some kind of free software. The people telling you to ignore free software have been plundering it themselves all along.

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[dedazo]

Every significant non free program has roots in some kind of free software.

That's quite a sweeping statement. Since you're using it to back up your implied argument that free software is inherently superior, could you provide some examples of this?

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[PHPfanboy]

Making an "open source strategy" is silly. No one has an "EULA" planning session where they try to make general guidelines for what kind of non free screwing they will and won't take.

Much as you might find it silly, many companies *are* doing it.

If they are not going with "Zero Indemnification" policy of Microsoft, they need to know what sort of open source licenses they will use, what sort of support packages they feel their businesses need. An example: in the UK, Financial Services companies **must** have support contracts on all software which is not built in house, otherwise their auditors make them put money aside to insure against the risk. Should your company use GPL software or only BSD license? What if you make and sell software like System Integrators do and need to supply your own support agreements?

I would love to call it silly and say no one is doing it, but when top Global companies are doing exactly this (I'm dealing with the people who are doing it on a daily basis), you're just ignorant.

And as for saying that open source planning sessions are just to heap FUD on Open Source, you're plain wrong. Often we (open source companies) push for them to make sure customers do have a policy for how and where they use open source, otherwise they'll just take whatever Microsoft or Oracle push to them - nobody likes to change, it's a right pain. But we (open source companies and other interested/stakeholder individuals) need to push for these battles, because we win. I'll ignore your last paragraph which is just utter nonsense.

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[masdog]

Every significant non free program has roots in some kind of free software.

I thought it was the other way around - free software has its roots in creating free alternatives to non-free software.

Forex:
GIMP - Photoshop/PSP
Scribus - Pagemaker/Indesign/Quark
OpenOffice - MS Office/Star Office/Corel/Lotus/etc
Linux - AT&T Unix

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[cfulmer]

There's a significant distinction, though. Not only is open source software available under a different license, it's also easy to get -- you don't have to go through purchasing to get open-source software; you just download it. As a result, companies sometimes find themselves using, and sometimes selling, open source software when they didn't intend to. It just gets added in by some engineer who doesn't think much of it. That's a lot harder to do that when the software has to be approved by some manager.

A significant part of my law practice is advising clients about what they need to do to comply with a bunch of open source code that has, somehow, made its way into their software. On occasion, I have had clients using open source and proprietary software where the licenses conflicted -- one license says that they have to disclose the source code, and the other one said that they cannot. Those cases are always a lot less painful to deal with up front.

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[Erris]

I can provide examples, but that won't satisfy you.

Browser history, if not the web itself, and symbolic manipulation are good places to start. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing you can do with a computer that someone has not used for their PhD and created a free, working copy. Often, there will be a great big pool of public domain code from government sponsored research, but some of that has been stolen and given to private interests. The great wave of source code theft that happened in the 1980s was the exception, not the rule.

I did not imply that free software is inherently superior for every person. It is mostly is if value performance. It's always superior if you value freedom and flexibility. I value freedom and have not given up much to have it. There are a few cases where you might have to keep a Windows machine around, but most people can do without it and be better off.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, so I can't help you anymore than that.

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[Yaa 101]

I know a few...

Let's start with the algorithms that make up software programs, all of these are math and for free.
Most of the techniques used in modern programming like multitasking, compiling, unix and so on came from Universities and were mostly free until the landscape changed in the 70's, ask Richard Stallman why he founded the Free Software Foundation.
Most commercial programs are derived from this base so GP is right in that claim.

Besides, do you have polio? you can check these facts yourself all over the internet, GP does not need to provide them.

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[jc42]

> >Every significant non free program has roots in some kind of free software.

>I thought it was the other way around - free software has its roots in creating free alternatives to non-free software.

Actually, of course, it's both ways. But free -> private happens a lot more than private -> free, for fairly simple and obvious reasons. The non-free, private software owners generally don't let us see their source, so building on their achievements is difficult (and lawsuit-prone). The free, open-source software developers make their stuff available, so anyone can build on it, making life easy for the private developers. And they tend not to sue, partly because it's difficult to prove that someone has used your code unless you can see their code.

I've always liked the comparison with the rest of the science/engineering enterprise. Historically, scientific and engineering methods have been developed independently over and over again, in every society. But most of this has been dead-end development, because new discoveries and techniques are kept secret in "guilds" and other similar organizations. The big explosion in science and technology in Europe a few centuries ago wasn't due to discovery of new research methods. It was the result of a population that developed an "open publication" ethic. This made it possible for researchers and engineers to build on each others' knowledge. Isaac Newton expressed it well with his famous remark that "If I have seen farther, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants". (Actually, what he really wrote was "Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident. ;-) And historians have pointed out that he even did this in that sentence, which is a variant on things said by others in previous centuries.

But we still have a problem with private, proprietary information. Many people support this, for various reasons. But it is almost always a dead end, because it prevents others from building on your development. And, as has happened over centuries in the rest of science and engineering, the future will belong to the software people who are willing to open their code for others to build on. Reverse engineering is possible, but it's expensive to "reinvent the wheel" all the time. It's usually easier to take something that someone else has developed, and extend it to do what you need. And, if such extension are made available, the result tends to be something that's much more useful for everyone.

But this isn't a concept that software people just invented. It's the entire basis of modern science and engineering. Without open publication, we'd still be back at the level of 15th- or 16th-century technology. And, as others have observed, private software tends to be low-quality parodies of something that the open-software crowd did years ago (but the commercial world never noticed). Either that, or the private developers just take the open software and use it without attribution, something that I've personally seen over and over in lots of corporate contracting jobs.

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[tjstork]

Most of the techniques used in modern programming like multitasking, compiling, unix and so on came from Universities

Everything that is Unix ultimately came out of Bell Labs. Bell Labs gave us C and Unix and I think even sh. Before that, much multitasking and research in software development was lead by IBM, as, they were the reigning hardware company and had monopoly power. So really, all of the innovation which you describe came about because the big companies could afford to fund these lavish research facilities because they were gigantic monopolies and had genuinely anti-competitive business practices.

Sure, MIT puked up emacs, and MIT honestly, along with many American universities, are uniquely situationed in that they are essentially subsidized by BOTH corporate America and the federal government. They get paid by the government to do research, on the taxpayer dime, and THEN get to keep the work product, in the form of patents, and THEN SELL that. All the while, they complain about how broke they are, crank up tuition, and then get the Feds to step even with EVEN MORE money for student loans, grants, and what not.

The amazing thing is, universities don't really pay anyone crap that works for them... most tenured professors have a good life, but are by no means rich, and I've yet to see a Postdoc with a decent place to live, let alone car. So you have to ask the question, where does all that money go? Hmmm.... and suddenly, we find, endowments...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._colleges_and_universities_by_endowment

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[dedazo]

I can provide examples, but that won't satisfy you.

You'd need to provide a *lot* of examples, given your sweeping generalization that all commercial software is derived from something GNU came up with.

Browser history, if not the web itself

Mosaic was software funded by the government of the United States and made available under a BSD-style license. It has nothing to do with your concept of "free software".

I did not imply that free software is inherently superior for every person

That's funny, I remember you doing nothing else for the past four years or so.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make

Oh, let me re-state it then: Your claim that "Every significant non free program has roots in some kind of free software" is false. Does that help?

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[dedazo]

I know a few...

You better know *a lot* since that's what twitter claimed.

Let's start with the algorithms that make up software programs, all of these are math and for free.

Most of that predates Richard Stallman by far. Try again.

Most commercial programs are derived from this base so GP is right in that claim.

No, he's not, and neither are you. The basis for modern software was laid out by people working at universities and US government agencies in the 60s and 70s, mostly paid for by research grants from the government itself. All that has nothing to do with his concept of "free software". Nothing whatsoever.

Besides, do you have polio? you can check these facts yourself all over the internet, GP does not need to provide them.

What are you, twelve? The GP made a sweeping generalization to prop up his argument. He needs to put up or shut up. But then this is twitter, so I'm not really expecting that any time soon.

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[Carewolf]

That's quite a sweeping statement. Since you're using it to back up your implied argument that free software is inherently superior, could you provide some examples of this?
No it is inherently older. Back when the money was made on hardware, almost all software was open source.

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[WindBourne]

Interesting that you picked these. In particular, ATT Unix actually started out open source; That is ALL of the source was given out. They freely spread it around, which lead to BSD AND GPL licensing. It was only after the ATT breakup that it changed. Much of ATT Unix/Sys V owes it life to BSD. In addition, the entire underlieing architecture of the Internet itself was 100% open source. Continuing on, Mac OSX IS BSD API on top of MACH all of which was Open source.

As to the specific apps mentioned, no good examples. In particular DTP started with Aldus (later owned by Adobe), so that one WAS a pure business start-up. As to photoshop and office apps, well, that history is so mired it is hard to tell who starts who in that world.

The vast majority of software out there owes it life to some form of open software for 1 simple reason: few businesses start things DUE to high costs. Once a market is shown (typically via free software (either source or price)), then the business world jumps on it. Heck, good example of this would be MS creating MSN. Even with billions backing it, they stopped in no time flat and jumped on the internet. Why? Because of the cost of creating MSN was going to be too high AND difficult to compete against the internet (ask AOL about that).

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[Ami Ganguli]

No amount of data can prove the assertion, but you can disprove it with a single counterexample. (But the test isn't whether or not it's GNU, but rather whether or not it has Free Software roots.)

So do you have a counterexample?

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[dedazo]

So do you have a counterexample?

Of course, as long as you define "Free Software" for me first.

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[duh P3rf3ss3r]

I did not author the GP but I would suggest this as an excellent definition. Those pesky wascals also make available a list of free software licenses if you care to evaluate the offerings in that way. (For example, consulting that list will show that things licensed under the FreeBSD licence are, by their definition, free software.)

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[blackest_k]

Ahem, you have an interesting viewpoint, regarding Unix.
The origins of Unix are not with Bell Labs, but with individuals including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, and many others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson_(computer_programmer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kernighan

There are a number of sources available that show unix wasn't a commercial project initially and was developed as a hobby project with numerous free contributions.
Bell commercialized unix and locked out many of the original contributers.

A lot of code was written and contributed because the authors wanted to, not because they wanted to get paid for it.

If you examine Unix history it is hard to ignore the free contributions to unix.

Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational

[J0e3gan]

100% agreed. Erris is simply wrong. Thanks for showing it.

Straw-man: Their rhetorical hyperbole

[siglercm]

The 80% comment is a form of reverse rhetoric. They are trying by themselves to build unrealistic expectations which they can then knock down to prove the failure of OSS and Linux. That's called a straw-man argument.

This is all they have to wield as a weapon against quality software that challenges the proprietary vendors and shops that pay their bills. It's official. Their efforts are now pathetic.

Re:Straw-man: Their rhetorical hyperbole

[Technician]

They are trying by themselves to build unrealistic expectations which they can then knock down to prove the failure of OSS and Linux. That's called a straw-man argument.

It isn't working. Try avoiding OSS software. Some of it is GNU, some of it is BSD. Speaking of BSD, know of any commercial software using any internet connections using the BSD TCP/IP stack? Avoiding OSS is like trying to avoid the internet and most networking standards.

Bespoke Software Won't disappear

[MrSteveSD]

Shrink-wrapped commercial stuff like Word and Excel might be under threat, but there will always be jobs for people working on bespoke business projects. For example, I can't imagine an altruistic bunch of people getting together to write a special flight booking system for British Airways.

Re:Bespoke Software Won't disappear

[amber_of_luxor]

> For example, I can't imagine an altruistic bunch of people getting together to write a special flight booking system for British Airways.

The company that wrote that booking system might open source it. (There can be extremely sound legal reasons to open source your software code.)

Amber

Re:Bespoke Software Won't disappear

[amber_of_luxor]

>I could see it. IT in each airline contributing to the project.

In the early days, that is what happened. The code was closed source, not open source. A couple of companies that didn't contribute to the code discovered that they were locked out of that system. So they created their own closed source system. IIRC, the upshot of the ensuing court cases was that the programs had to play nicely with each other.

Amber

Re:Bespoke Software Won't disappear

[Bert64]

Airlines aren't always in direct competition with each other...
Very few airlines offer a totally global service, often they will have deals with other airlines to carry their passengers onwards to other destinations, for instance a european airline might only offer direct flights to a few major cities in the US, and then have deals with a local american airline to carry their passengers onwards...
For this to work smoothly, they need to be using the same or a compatible booking system, so it would make sense for one to be collaboratively developed by several airlines.
There is also a company called SITA (www.sita.aero) that handles airport networks, and interconnects between airlines, i would imagine they have a centralized bookings system for just the purposes i mentioned above.

Gartner, eh?

[Mathness]

So the gartner said that? Interesting. What did the poolman and the postman have to say about it? :p

Re:Gartner, eh?

[maxwell demon]

No, it was a gartner snake. You know, the same kind which told Eve about that business opportunity of being god-like by just eating an apple.

Re:Gartner, eh?

[mjwx]

So the gartner said that? Interesting. What did the poolman and the postman have to say about it?

Are you insinuating that gartner are smarter than the poolman and postman? I think you owe an apology to the pool cleaning and postal industries.

Why get out?

[Yuioup]

Why should I get out of the IT business? I don't make my money out of selling software but by charging hourly rates to write software for clients. Open Source will only lead to more possibilities and more work.

Because software will more reliable and easier to get means that it will be used more and thus more clients will need my services.

This is actually a Good Thing (TM).

Y

Oh but you can...

[Kadin2048]

Actually, I have found that the amount of open source you use and your chances of getting herpes are, strangely, inversely proportional. ;)

Re:Oh but you can...

[init100]

Actually, it is not related to the use of open source, but rather to the use of Unix and Unix-like operating systems. For users of Windows-based open source software, there is no such connection. :)

Re:Oh but you can...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's this about open sores?

Amen

[dedazo]

You beat me to that.

Re:Sounds right They.. will... be....

[davidsyes]

ass-emo-lated...

(captcha: airbag)

By 2011, at least 80% of readers will be out of IT

[scottsk]

(Sorry, this turns into a rant:) I wonder what percentage of readers -- 80% ? -- will not be in IT any longer by 2011, and what percentage will remember this prediction? If I'm not mistaken, Gartner is primarily a business to business research firm. If I was paying them dump trucks of money to say obvious things like this, I would question myself. I mean, by 2011 you know 80% of applications will use SAX or some open-source XML parser. Wondering if the report was bogus or not, I decided to break with tradition & read the article. These people have a grasp of the obvious: "You've got to know what's in your organization." They suggest four steps that are somewhat blindingly obvious. The first is to use software the fits the purpose. Then use mature software. (I don't have any statistics in front of me, but wouldn't Gartner also do a report saying some new technology is the best thing that ever happened?) The third factor is a buzzword, your "technology adoption profile" -- I don't know what that means, but it sounds important. Is there a UML diagram for that? The fourth factor is whether the software is 24/7 mission critical. Since earlier in the article the advice is not to throw out Windows for Linux, I can't quite harmonize them. So I'm just kind of in a daze at the vacuity of this stuff. The Gartner guy actually describes the motives of IBM for supporting Linux. (Can he back this up with research? Does he have quotes from IBM management proving that his ascribed motive is correct? Gartner is a research firm, right?) So that this stuff is being reported as "news" is mind-boggling. That this stuff is being done at all is mind-boggling. What happened to real reporting, anyway? Printing some quotes from a talk is not reporting. Why don't they ask what percentage of application development plans to use open-source components in the immediate future, or an open-source middleware and presentation layer stack? Why don't they ask why 20% would not be using open source by 2011, when the number of all-Microsoft shops that use the .NET stack (C#, SQL Server, ASP.NET) is most likely going to remain significantly higher than that. What is the definition of using open source, anyway, here? A Perl script in a unit test? Firefox and Apache? An XML parser? The quality of news reporting is getting pretty grim.

Obligatory

[PPH]

Personnaly, I welcome our waddling, flightless overlords.

You have used it for years anyway

[realdodgeman]

Windows contains BSD-licenced software. It has been in there for more than 10 years now. Mac OS X has a BSD based kernel. The rest of today's OS is mostly open source or at least uses some BSD or GNU software.

Re:You have used it for years anyway

[jc42]

Actually, if you count installed copies of OSs, the overwhelming majority of them are open source. This is because the leader world wide, by a very wide margin, is the TRON real-time OS, which is installed in the majority of electronic devices manufactured in Asia. This OS started as a project at Tokyo University, led by Dr Ken Sakamura, and it was open source from the start. Of course, there are all sorts of proprietary packages added to it by various manufacturers. But as with linux, the core and the primary system libraries remain open-source, free software, developed in parallel at a large number of universities and corporations.

I've read that Microsoft predicts that Windows will reach a billion installations some time next year. TRON is installed in more (mostly tiny) computers than that each year. You probably have a number of them in your home, or in your pocket if you have certain models of cell phone.

Desktop and laptop computers may be the most noticable computers, but they're a rather small part of the computer market. The biggest part of the market went open-source several decades back. And it was done with full knowledge and approval of the manufacturers, who wanted a standard, portable real-time OS with a population of programmers who know how to use it effectively.

BTW, there is a linux-on-TRON project. Google for "MontaVista" or "T-Linux".

You might also read the article about TRON that Linux Insider just published.

It's sorta sad that the US government has cooperated with blocking widespread familiarity with this here in the US. It's keeping American software people from getting involved with what's probably the most significant development in the industry in recent decades. (I've read a few comments about similar blocking in Europe, but I don't know much about that.)

Simple example

[Technician]

Jut try to avoid TCP/IP in any IT camp. The BSD license is very hard to avoid. 80% is way too low a number. I know of a few cars, microwave ovens and other appliances without it.

Re:80%

[Technician]

Does 80% of companies using open source necessarily mean less profits. In my experience it means more time/cost efficient projects.

Not in the least. Microsoft has done very well..

MS and open source you ask?

Check the license for TCP/IP. For a long time they used just netbui for workgroups, but it didn't scale to the internet.

They like the BSD license. It's the GNU license they have an issue with.

Most IT should not care.

[Erris]

A significant part of my law practice is advising clients about what they need to do to comply with a bunch of open source code that has, somehow, made its way into their software.

So how many people really need to worry about this? I was under the impression that the vast majority of IT work is implementation that will never be distributed. That would make "Open Source" planning is mostly FUD.

For the few companies that do need to consider the issue, things should be much easier than what they are used to. Yes, they should understand things up front, but that should take all of five minutes.

Gartner prints what it's readers want to read

[jesterzog]

I'm just confused as to the point of the article. This article seems as relevant as saying air in the Earth's atmosphere contains 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent argon, 0.03 percent carbon dioxide, with trace gasses and this is impossible to avoid.

To me it seems that Gartner published it for similar reasons that television news media has sports news. 90%+ of sports news isn't actually news, is irrelevant the day after it was broadcast, and a lot of it is just filler before it even airs. For example, getting sound-bytes from prominent players and coaches to create a lead-up to a weekend game, ignoring that the sound-bytes are nothing more than clichés that are suspiciously similar to what interviewees said the previous week.

That said, people expect television news media to provide sports news and they like to watch it -- so much so that it'll fill up to half of a typical news bulletin. When there's nothing to say, Gartner makes it up with clichés and pointless re-stating of things that are obvious. If the sports bulletin wasn't full of something to do with sports that people are interested in, people wouldn't watch it, and eventually they might even move away from the channel. It gives people something to watch in their spare time, it stretches out the entertainment value of a game by giving them more time when they can think about it, and it helps them feel like they're up-to-date with something that's important to them... even if they really haven't been given any meaningful information.

Gartner is expected to provide commentary on things like Windows and Linux; when there's nothing to say, they make it up with clichés and pointless re-stating of things that are obvious. If Gartner's publications aren't full of something to do with topics that people are interested in, people wouldn't read them, and eventually they might even move away from Gartner. It gives managers something to read in their spare time, it stretches out the time they can say they've been considering a particular decision, and it helps them feel like they're up-to-date with parts of their job on which they have a major influence... even if they really haven't been given any meaningful information.

Re:Stallman's FOSSie agenda

[Hucko]

I agree! I hate monopolies where everyone is allowed to compete equally. They are terrible.

Software was NEVER free

[tjstork]

Bottom line is, all of this "free" software was provided by the likes of Bell Labs, which in turn was funded on the backs of every citizen in the USA. In effect, you raised the phone of bills of everyone in the USA to get the first C compiler and Unix, so grandma that had no desire to ever have anything more than phone, wound up footing the bill for the development of an operating system. Notice that as soon as AT&T got real competition, the lavish funding for Bell Labs came to a close, so, if anything, the creation of the likes of Unix was actually a theft in its own right, and rightfully, there ought not to be a thing called the GPL, because everything that is in the GPL, rightfully belongs in the public domain!

Somehow I don't think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows users may get a lot of viruses, but I doubt herpes is one of them....

Re:By 2011, at least 80% of readers will be out of

[MrKaos]

(Sorry, this turns into a rant:)

Well you could format your rant so it's easier to read, but it's an ok rant so you can be forgiven!! ;-)

The Gartner guy actually describes the motives of IBM for supporting Linux. (Can he back this up with research? Does he have quotes from IBM management proving that his ascribed motive is correct?

Unlikely, the more realistic motive is simply money. By replacing their file and print servers alone with linux they've slashed a significant amount of revenue going to M$. OSS fits their service based business model and increases their profits, the exec's see what it does for the bottom line, and in turn, support the process further. More OSS adoption, greater potential for revenue generation, I doubt M$ even factor into the equation.

The difference is IBM has an Open Source Policy and M$ is dragged kicking and screaming to develop one.

Even so what is being discussed here is basic I.T infrastructure planning and should realistically be a non-issue. ANY CIO worth the money being paid should be asking technology staff "What ways can you identify open source can save us on our operating costs?" and improve their credibility. The bottom line is understanding the ramifications of the licence agreements (GPL) which are benign in most cases. The legal department (if there is a legal department) signs off on contracts but is rarely presented with the/a GPL. They don't understand their obligations under the GPL because they haven't read it AND no-one presents it to the legal department so it can be reviewed. This is as much a problem for technologist's who are not presenting the management with the GPL as management who buries their head in the sand and say's "I know it's there I just don't know how to deal with it". If the GPL's are presented regularly to legal teams they should be saying "Oh, this is just another GPL" and respond accordingly so that the obligations wrt that business are understood. The application of the license is as important to the business as the benefit that comes from using it. (known risk vs reward)

What is the definition of using open source, anyway, here? A Perl script in a unit test? Firefox and Apache? An XML parser? The quality of news reporting is getting pretty grim.

From working within IBM the process of creating and using GPL software AND the process that you had to go through to implement it was made very clear (which is why I always thought SCO's claims were bogus). I doubt it is much different with other market leaders like HP or Sun. In any commercial organisation implementing OSS into their IT Policy, the direction must be clear so executive, management and shareholders will understand it, not technologists. This is why Gartner is paid to say obvious stuff like this, rather than making predictions about specific technologies, so that a board can point to it and say "This is another reason why we made this decision".

This is very much a "For management" type of article, an enabler for management to allow innovation to occur. It's a technologist job to innovate, it's managements job to ensure complience with the business rules, an executives job to define rules that increase revenue and a boards job to provide direction to executives and returns to shareholders.

It's a good thing because innovations like OSS have always ushered in cycles of growth into the I.T industry, anyone still around in 2011 should be rewarded accordingly.

Re:It is clear without the FUD

[Bert64]

Well, your best support is a competitive market...
A proprietary product can only be properly supported by the company that produced it, any third party support will be restricted by lack of access to code (not just to read, but to modify) and internal documentation.
And since only one company can support it, there is no competition for providing support for that product, giving them no incentive to improve the support quality or lower the price.

With open source, third parties can easily open up to offer support to the same level as anyone else, if all the support companies for a product offer an expensive and poor service, that leaves an opportunity for someone else to operate in that area.

80% based on open source is still proprietary

[angus_rg]

I agree with the statement, and have said similar things to justify the whole niether open source or closed is better, but to say it is opensource is ludacris. Think you'll get support when you apply an opensource patch that has been released, will be sucked up by the money grubbing company and eventually issued, but they haven't "fully" tested yet? Granted, companies are getting quicker to release, but it doesn't change the fact.

Once it goes closed source, you have no quality control open to the public to see what changes they've made. It may be a Picasso when they get it, but it could end up mangled into a genital wart by the time it is released to the public.

Re:80% based on open source is still proprietary

[danpsmith]

I agree with the statement, and have said similar things to justify the whole niether open source or closed is better, but to say it is opensource is ludacris.

Oh, it's ludacris is it? I thought maybe they just think they can become chamillionaires by claiming so. =P