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Interclue and What Going Proprietary Can Do
Linux.com (which shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) has an interesting look at what going proprietary can mean for your overall effectiveness. Using Firefox extension "Interclue" as the object lesson, the piece looks at both the engineering and social difficulties surrounding the project. "Even more significantly, the efforts to commercialize only detract from the software itself. The basic idea behind Interclue would make for a handy Web utility, but seems too slight to build a business around. The effort to do so only leads to complications that do nothing to enhance the basic utility, and to pleas for donations that can only annoy. The result is that, if your position on free software doesn't lead you to avoid Interclue, the efforts to monetize it almost certainly will."
are doubleplusbad.
With all those attempts to monitize with all those ads and giving subscribers first dibs on the high-quality Slashdot editorial output.
I know it is tough to give up all the quality worldview and technical analysis, but I feel I have to.
I'm off to a windows desktop near me.
After all, OS_X is the merging of proprietary and open source as well.
I think this current example presented the way it has is a bit propagandistic.
Both OSS and Proprietary have their virtues and vices, and it's a question of the project manager's competence whether or not a project brings out more of the former or the latter.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Angel capital is money invested in a business to provide equity capital, not debt which must be repaid regardless of the success of the business. More often than not angel investments are combination of funds and the business expertise of the investor(s). Angel investment transactions are made with the expectation of a very large financial return to the investor per dollar invested if the business succeeds. Angel investments are also made with the expectation of psychological rewards for the investors. These are obtained from their personal contributions to the growth of the business, time and business expertise. The investment decision is thus both financial and personal. Risk and reward take a more complex form than in almost any other financial transaction. It is risk and rewards.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
What's with the incoherent summary? Nowhere in the summary did this even mention what "Interclue" was supposed to do, and why we should care about attempts to "monetize" it (lame corporate speak when applied outside the finance world).
Editors must be sleepwalking through the end of '08.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
If the a lack of a Creative Commons license for linux.com content doesn't lead you to avoid the website, their efforts to indoctrinate you certainly will...
Software history tends to repeat itself. I remember back in the 1980s, when software distributed on floppy disks often had copy protection. Legitimate users voted with their feet, because it was too much of a nuisance -- e.g., you couldn't back up your software. Software houses eventually got the message and stopped doing it. Now, a generation later, we seem to be going through the same silliness again, except that now they call it DRM.
Similar deal with these little proprietary pieces of crapware. Back in the 90s, there was a period when the internet had gained quite a bit of mindshare, but OSS hadn't. During that time, you'd get people posting lots of trivial little pieces of software on the web, with various schemes intended to extract some small amount of money from the customer: nagware, adware, shareware, crippleware, ... That whole scene was a total dead end. In most cases, programmers found that the amount of revenue they got was essentially zero; this was the users indicating that although the software was somewhat useful to them, it wasn't useful enough to pay money for. Then OSS started getting popular, and most clueful users started to realize that it was a better way to go. Now we have some new software platforms -- firefox+xul, browser+ajax, and the iPhone -- and everyone seems to need to learn the same lesson all over again. At some point, the users who didn't go through this in the 90s are going to realize some of the same things. They're going to realize that spending $5 or $10 on lots of little pieces of software will eventually add up to real money. They're going to realize that it's a hassle to have to keep track of all the software, registration numbers, etc. They're going to realize that it's no fun to have to go back and reproduce this whole set of proprietary apps every time they buy new hardware.
Find free books.
You know what makes a good proprietary conversion of an open source or free product? Succeeding.
There is no certain way to succeed in *anything*.
There are always going to be thousands of failures for every success in the software world, and thousands of moderate or short term successes for every 'killer app' class of success.
I don't want to hear about also rans being analysed to prove a point that was arrived at before the article was even begun.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Does it really surprise anyone that Linux.com would be against any project going closed source? That would be kind of like being surprised the Westboro Baptist Church put out a statement denouncing homosexuality.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Would it be overly mean of me to say I've read slashdot comments a quarter the size of TFA that communicate both more information and a more coherent analysis of a similarly complex issue?
Because, ouch.
The basic idea behind Interclue would make for a handy Web utility, but seems too slight to build a business around.
To rephrase: If your product isn't valuable enough for people to spend money on, it will be hard to make money selling it. The rest of the article is a fairly well-written review of an obscure add-on, with very little insight about open vs. proprietary software.
/...
Does anybody really write applications using XUL?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
If all Linux distributions were to cost the same amount as Vista all of a sudden, the desktop marketshare they have would disappear almost instantly.
There are a few interesting facts about free software's largest competitive advantage (namely, it's zero price):
(1) It's not important to FOSS advocates at all.
(2) The definition of free software actually demands the availability of an option to charge for the software.
(3) But on the other hand, if you have a compiler which can quickly compile all the different programming languages that free software is written in, all free software is free (or almost free).
(4) If someone were to take all free commercial software and compile it, producing binaries identical to those that the companies distribute, and that person intends to distribute the binaries for free, you had best hope the companies trying to sell the software will be able to survive on support (and their other services) alone.
Slashdot does have a tendency to spin everything into a "TEH FOSS IZ TEH ONLE SULUZION!!!11!!" direction, and to either distort stories, or select cherry picked stories.
The truth is, to which I agree with the OP on this, that every single idea isn't something to build a business around. Kind of like web browsers- it's perfectly acceptable to me, and millions of other computer users throughout the world, that anyone making an OS would view that as a feature to be bundled. And yet... teh FOSSies still can't forgive MS for competing with their beloved Netscape, no matter how horrible that browser (and company) was in reality.
However... there actually ARE ideas which are not only economically viable, but will thrive as a commercial enterprise. Would you REALLY trust a FOSS tax program? I wouldn't. Would you trust a FOSS app which converts documents to PDF? Sure!
Both software models have their place. The sad fact is, there are zealots on both sides who are more interested in commercial vs. free than in using the right tool for the right job. It's always seemed to me that the FOSSie outcry over commerical software was really just their justification for MS hatred, rather than opposition to commerical software- that's why Slashdot grants Apple their "most favored monopoly" status, despite the fact that Apple is not just a commerical product company... but is so with brutally impunity.
This is actually true. I have a Linux site and a Windows site and the Windows site is filled with a couple of cheap apps that I wrote and the Linux site is all GPL free stuff. I've found that the Linux site actually makes me more money off of advertising revenues and I can leverage that as some experience on my resume for more work. Now in between contracts, what I'm going to do is refocus my Linux site and my Windows site into a single site that gives out a bunch of free stuff, and then, if I do want to charge for something, it won't be some crappy utility that noone registers anyway. Small utilities are advertising, in their own right.
This is my sig.
Windows isn't a cheap utility. It's an operating system that has any number of components that a developer could leverage and use. Yeah, Windows isn't free as in beer or in open, but, the developer generally doesn't pay the cost of the libraries that get bundled with it, consumers do.
So, in essence, Windows is a tax on consumers for developers to get nearly free stuff to write for. This model makes it impossible for third party library providers to actually succeed unless they deliver some niche that Windows won't do. Like, GUI kits for Windows are stagnant largely because there's no way developers will pay for a library when MS will tax Windows users for the same library for free, and consumers already being taxed, won't want to eat the tax of a competing library.
This is good and bad. It means that Windows has a single set of widgets to write for, in USER and COMMON. But, it also means that end users do not have the benefits of multiple GUI toolkits that you get in Linux, which manages to stay in the game because really, Microsoft doesn't want to spend too much money making widgets when that only collects the tax... only enough to stay ahead of Linux, and so, GUIs stagnate overall.
Therefor, Windows does have a lot of value. You pay a modest tax to make it possible for shareware developers and corporate customers to use a lot of fancy controls that are just a step ahead enough of Linux and Mac to make it difficult for users to switch, but never really far enough ahead to make you really stand up and cheer at the edge of your seat, saying, "wow, Windows is really great."
I mean, come now, would it really be that difficult for Microsoft to go crazy and add a bunch of cool widgets to Windows that were easy to program in C?
This is my sig.
Many businesses are accustomed to signing site-wide or per-seat licensing fees for software. Many of the PHBs in these businesses are somewhat put off by free software because they feel kind of weird about simply downloading and using software. For this reason, free software that wants to "go proprietary" should instead do this: keep the free license but add a second license that can, at a user's option, apply simultaneously to the same software. This second license would be the most prohibitive thing you've ever heard of and would require licensing fees in the stratosphere. In return, the customer gets the right to use the software throughout their site and would have also have the right to receive setup assistance, training, and other technical support. Essentially, the price would cover this support, since the software is essentially free, but it would make these PHBs feel warm and fuzzy inside from having to sign an expensive and very official looking licensing contract. They (or anybody else for that matter) could always simply download the same exact software from the Internet and use it free of charge, though it would not come with the warm fuzzy feeling or with the technical support.
His latest MO is to promote a piece of proprietary software in a piece mistitled to sound critical.
But despite the title, this piece appears to be nothing more than an Interclue press release. Note that while it does casually mention that it's proprietaryness carries some vague baggage, most of the article just describes all the add-in's features in a positive light, and re-emphasizes it's usefulness.
The only thing I can't find is where he promotes Mono.
If you think Newspeak is next generation then you must be at least 90. I'll get off your lawn now.
If you're going to criticize somebody's education the first step is to get one yourself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
If you don't know what newspeak is you have a lot of fucking catching up to do before you can pretend to be smarter than anyone.
This isn't a "study" or "evaluation", neither a general one, nor of the specific Interclue program.
The first part of the article is a detailed description of the functionality of the Interclue program, the second one is various speculation about difficulties and problems they and their users may experience if they go proprietary. Effectively, it says "Avoid Interclue for this reason, because of the problems likely to appear".
It is in that way similar to Microsoft writing about some software, "They have a stated intent to go open source, which is likely to lead to a series of potential problem scenarios, so avoid them".
Chernobyl? What Chernobyl? Ther ish nno Chernoby. Alll iz gud.
(In Soviet Russia, newspapers read you!)
I seem to remember shareware houses doing quite well...
Ohhh, you've reminded me of Walnut Creek Simtel CDROM! I had one from 1993. It was nicely packaged. What nostalgia!
That reminds me of a joke from another CDROM in 1993.
Q: How do you teach a girl mathematics?
A: Add her to the bed, subtract her clothes, divide her legs, and start multiplying.
...and it looks like Interclue pops up an icon that tries to add information about a link as you hover over it. Kinda like those active links on crappy websites that pop up a little window either offering to transport you to a site to get the best price on 'SQL injection attacks', a reference site explaining 't-shirts', or offering to let you fill out a survey because YOUR opinion is 'important'.
Yeah. I need more spam in my life. Won't be paying for this add-on. I get enough crap on websites already.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Did anyone else notice the last comment attached to the article, which mentioned Mitt Romney in the title and contained gibberish that tried to mimic proper sentence structure? Sadly you won't find it now, because I blinked and refreshed the page and it disappeared before I could copy it. Normally such gibberish posts include a URL linking to a site hawking pharma, sex aids, or malware; this one, however, was JUST text. What could be the point? Are they trying to poison Bayesian filters, in preparation for a later spam attack that does contain URLs?
Anonymous Coward
We have a trio of applications. Two come from the opensource world, the third is proprietary (Actually, end customers are allowed to tinker with the code, it just invalidates support agreements and they cannot redistribute). We provide the source code back via our branch at the main development SVN. Very few of our changes have seen their way to the main trunk simply because our particular niche is so specific that it has little use out side of our primarily business.
If people want to look at our code and , it's there. Now if they have a question and haven't paid for support, shit out of luck. As it stands right now we're working 10 hour days 5 days a week to support paying customers. The code's there, you can figure it out. If you don't want to invest the time to learn/figure it out for yourself, you can hire others (or us) to do it for you. That's how we make our money.
Leveraging FOSS, we can undercut our competitors by 20 - 35% and still make just as much if not more than they do. We don't have to pay for Linux and PostgreSQL. We don't have to pay for $800 a seat for our IDE's (Netbeans & Eclipse). Our service and support costs are the exact same as our competitors, maybe even a little more. But they have to add the licensing fees they have to charge per user or per terminal to cover the software costs. That's $3500 per user and $650 per terminal not including the cost of windows.
Our sole proprietary application took several thousand hours to development and binds the other two together to complete that package. That's our main competitive advantage at the moment. So we have a reason to keep it under wraps for now.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
MrNaz: I am having a fantabulasticallygreaseddildoupmyass day
MrNaz means: This is the best time of my life
What it sounds like to everyone else: MrNaz has gayness in his anus
This posting seems to have a lot of smart writing that I can't get to a conclusion on.
I need to bring up a huge point here that there is a lot of failed hardware because there are influencial coders completely blowing on the code for standardization. Init, PS2-3, 360. There is a lot of code floating over lanes world wide that it is amazing that a purchase or banking system even works over the "crypto internet."
There is actually no scenarios where proprietary software is better for it's user. NONE. It's only good for the one who produced that code to hold on the know-how. And you cannot create know how out of nothing, you are always gonna ALWAYS stand on someone's shoulders, be it the creater of binary code or the author of some common algorithm, thousands of whom did their work to archieve this level of science. The users of proprietary software are mostly 1: forced to upgrade at some point 2: left in the rain 3: will be pushed and milked as much as they can. What is wrong with expecting a source of a programm when I BUY one. If I am the knowledgeble one I can fix the problems or quirks I don't like, if I am not, someone else will, or I can pay someone to do it. Why should I depend on someone if I don't have to. I just don't see the logical proof that shows me that proprietary software is better model. Sure, alot of proprietary software is better, because people are ignorant and pour money into it. But why should I omit the source when I can have it. It is so typical of humans to take the short turn gain today and a disaster tomorrow over better long turn strategy. I mean look around - oil, global warming, pollution, in the end it'l bite us in the ass, but no, we still want a quick one today and leaving our children to deal with the shit tomorrow, pretending nothing is wrong. I don't want to sound like a hipocret, I don't always adhere to the principle above, but at least I am aware of it and try to choose the right direction if possible and not pretend that nothing is wrong and advocate the illogical.
The way I remember it is that (especially on Mac System 7) Netscape was better for the most part up until IE (5?) surpassed them at the end of the Mac browser wars... IIRC Netscape had the better browser for years (till about the middle of the anti-trust lawsuit?)
:) I do remember that Netscape was faster until Mac IE beat it and that was the best for a while until Firefox came out and kicked Mac IE 5's and IE 6's asses.
Don't ask me to go into too much detail... I was ~12 at the time
What I do remember well is that Netscape was the better browser for years (on both Mac and Windows), until MS realized that they had a real threat to take care of, because of the lawsuit, and kicked their browser into high gear for a few years.
Haven't used IE 7 yet... still pretty sure MS has always been playing catch-up in the "browser wars" (and still is).
OK in Slackware Linux and possibly others: Ubuntu?
More?
Yes, there is a fix, but not so straightforward.
But it boggles the mind, how can a site directed for Linux users, not be tested under a few common Linux distros.
The content management system for Linux.com seems to be written with Xaraya.
Do they test and develop the site under Windows though?
Linux.com developers. Kindly develop your site - with your main target audience in mind: Linux users.