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Tetris Creator Claims FOSS Destroys the Market
alx5000 writes "In an interview conducted last week with Consumer Eroski (link in Spanish; Google translation), the father of Tetris Alexey Pajitnov claimed that 'Free Software should have never existed,' since it 'destroys the market' by bringing down companies that create wealth and prosperity. When asked about Red Hat or Oracle's support-oriented model, he called them 'a minority,' and also criticized Stallman's ideas as 'belonging to the past' where there were no software 'business possibilities.'"
from a Microsoft employee?
Oddly, I see FOSS as an extreme example of capitalism. Reductio ad absurdum with a twist.
In a given market with profits, more competitors will enter until profits are driven down to the point the cost of entering just isn't worth it. With software, this set point is a bit lower than many industries, because less capital is needed for production. FOSS lowers it further by reducing the barriers to entry (you get to reuse older code). Some people derive a non-financial benefit (and sometimes financial) that exceeds the cost of contributing, so there is a negative cost (a benefit). It's still worth it to them to enter the market no matter what. So even assuming no profit, you get plenty of competitors.
The capitalist version of superconductivity. Against the rules except in unique circumstances.
What this guy misses are controlled markets with barriers to entry.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Not only that, but his complaint about software companies generating wealth is mostly bogus as well. They are able to generate income, but that is much different than wealth. When a software company goes under, typically the code is sold of at rock bottom price and then forgotten about. Look at BeOS as an example. Open source generates true standing wealth.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
When he says that companies like Red Hat are in the minority, well he's right on technical grounds, but one of the biggest hardware developers in history, IBM, has done all that R&D and sales for the past half century because the real value isn't in selling the mainframe or supercomputer, but rather in the deliciously monsterous support contracts.
What does a company like IBM care who develops whatever open source products it markets (and we all know it has, for many years, given a good many utilities away for nothing, even before Linux was a dream in Torvald's twisted, geekish mind)? What it needs is software solutions and hardware solutions (preferaby coupled) so that it can collect support fees.
What Open Source isn't going to do is to keep a specifically software-writing house going. But I don't see a lack of proprietary software out there, so this guy sounds like a complete idiot. "Look, I'm the guy that made Tetris, and open source is BAAAAAD!"
Fucking moron.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I disagree. At a minimal level, what FOSS does is put pressure on the non-free products to become better. You gave the example of MS Office. You are correct that OpenOffice.org (arguabley) doesn't offer much more to the user other than just being FOSS (dont' forget it runs on Linux too). However, what it does do, is put pressure on MS to justify their high price tag. If you are going to charge me $300 for an office suite that I could otherwise get for free, it better be worth $300 more. It also puts the pressure on MS to bring the price down. Is Office really worth that much money? Considering there is a free alternative, no it's not. The extra features I will get for $300, is not worth $300 to me. Maybe to some, but not to me. That's for the consumer to decide. Just look at the latest version of Office. It's the most radically different version we've seen (for better or worse). This is a direct response to OpenOffice.org.
Firefox and IE7 are another example of this. IE didn't have any significant improvements until Firefox came along, and now IE is being very actively improved upon. It took five years to go from IE6 to IE7, yet now IE8 is already being developed. However, in this scenario, the FOSS product was actually a major improvement over the existing non-FOSS product. Many want all software to be FOSS. I'm still not completely sold on that. I think everyone should have the choice and sometimes it takes a well payed developer to get the job done because its hard to find someone to volunteer their time for a rather uninteresting (yet necessary) application. Right now, I think the two complement eachother. FOSS creates competition in areas that otherwise would be dominated by monopolies. FOSS makes applications available that would otherwise be too expensive for a single person or a small business to afford. This is quite empowering. Think about it for a minute. Thanks Apache or MySQL the singular person with modest budget can implement an enterprise class web server or database. The playing field has just been leveled.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
OpenOffice is an even worse example, it was a non-free program (StarOffice) until it was "liberated" by Sun in order to spite a corporate enemy. If anything, StarOffice is an example of the duplication going on in the non-free world. Unfortunately, apart from a few apps (Apache, maybe Linux), I don't see where
much has been "created" with the open source methodology...I just see programs that offer rough approximations of the apps they are trying to mimic. The keyword is "I see" because it just tells about the path you have gone. Some of us have traveled a different path, and seen more. The Internet and the Web started from "open source methodologies". The commercial IDE's mostly borrow their ideas from free predecessors. Most of games just add polish to ideas that were tested out with free software.
Not to mention stuff like TeX which have had a huge influence on computerized typesetting (and is yet unsurpassed). TeX is open source, even if not "open source methodology". Like the original BSD (also hugely influential) was "open source methodology" but not "open source".
Alas, I made the mistake of picking a few expensive examples. I should have used things like "a fountain pen" or "a pair of hiking boots". Wealth is THINGS. It's not money. "Creating wealth" is MAKING THINGS. Whatever you make - software, music, steel, bricks. All of them are wealth. Selling something is NOT creating wealth, though.
Yes, not everything is of value to everyone. If I'm starving on a mountaintop in Canada, a Hybrid Prius will do me little good, if any. Unless its upholstery is edible. But a bag of wheat will mean quite a lot. But, all in all, wealth is about THINGS.
Income, on the other hand, is about IOU's. Which can be redeemed for things, but which aren't things in themselves. Note that high income doesn't imply high wealth, though the two are closely tied in a "normal" economy. In a place like Zimbabwe, the two are almost completely disjoint - all the income in the world can't buy non-existant maize, gasoline, anasthetics, etc.
And if all the factories that make things stop doing so, all the income in the world won't stop everyone from becoming neo-neolithic savages.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"