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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.
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