Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies?

Glyn Moody writes "If open source is such a success, why aren't there any billion-dollar turnover open source companies? A recent briefing by Red Hat's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, to a group of journalists may provide an answer. Asked why Red Hat wasn't yet a $5 billion company, as he suggested it would be one day, he said getting Red Hat to $5 billion meant 'replacing $50 billion of revenue' currently enjoyed by traditional computer companies. If, as is likely, that's generally true for open source companies, it means they will need to displace around $10 billion of proprietary business in order to achieve a billion-dollar turnover. Few are likely to do that. Perhaps it's time for managers of open source startups to stop chasing the billion-dollar dream. If they don't, they will set unrealistic ambitions for themselves, disappoint their investors, and allow opponents of free software to paint one of its defining successes — saving money — as a failure."

Comments

What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't google a multi-billion dollar company with multiple open-source projects?

Re:What about Google?

[Lunix Nutcase]

You mean the same multiple open-source side projects that add little to nothing to their bottom line? Google gets it's money from it's proprietary search engine and ad platform.

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

So? That's just showing how they are using the Open Source Software to help their main source of income. The point is to give away the abundant and infinite goods (How many copies of Google Chrome can you give away? About as many computers are there are in the world).

But how many ad spots can you sell to the specific people that want to sell to the specific people that want to buy? That is VERY SCARCE. Google has found a very valuable yet scarce resource, and uses the very valuable but abundant software to promote it and make it easier for people to access the scarce ones.

Open Source is a means to an end. You'll starve to death if the only thing you do is create things to go away. You have to make it work for you, while keeping it open source.

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google gets it's money from it's proprietary search engine and ad platform.

Built on their multiple open source projects. I say.. they ARE their bottom line.

Re:What about Google?

[xoundmind]

All running on GNU/Linux, of course.

Re:What about Google?

[Lunix Nutcase]

You mean all running on an internal, proprietary fork of GNU/Linux, right?

Re:What about Google?

[Lunix Nutcase]

So what? This article wasn't about multi-billion dollar companies leveraging open source for their bottom line. It was about companies selling and supporting open source products that they create.

Re:What about Google?

[wealthychef]

A relentless focus on profit over all else is the scourge of capitalism in our nation. We have forgotten that business exists to serve people, people do not exist for the sake of money. There are other business models other than focusing purely on profit. For example, ask Muhammad Yunus: 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner; Founder, Grameen Bank.

Re:What about Google?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Neither. I'm merely pointing out the facts which are that the Linux kernel they use is an internal, proprietary fork, their GoogleFS is proprietary, and the version of Ubuntu they use is an internal and proprietary fork. Why would it make me a troll to make sure that the entire story is heard?

Re:What about Google?

[Lunix Nutcase]

That's great and all but it doesn't change the fact that Google's actual business is in it's proprietary search engine and ads platform. They'd ditch their open source projects long before they'd over ditch those core business.

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

they're talking about revenue, not profit.

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU/Linux ?? If that is the case, please show me the massively distributed modified version that they currently run please. I'd like to compete with Google.

Re:What about Google?

[GigsVT]

Says the man with a sig linking to a scammy late-night informercial style site.

Re:What about Google?

[srussia]

A relentless focus on profit over all else is the scourge of capitalism in our nation. We have forgotten that business exists to serve people, people do not exist for the sake of money. There are other business models other than focusing purely on profit. For example, ask Muhammad Yunus: 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner; Founder, Grameen Bank.

From the Grameen Bank FAQ: "Does Grameen Bank make profits?
Since its inception, Grameen Bank made profits every year, except for the years 1983, 1991 and 1992. For detailed information take a look at the Data & Reports section."

The fact is, the only way you would know that your business is serving people is if it makes a profit. Loss-making enterprises mean that there are better uses for your capital.

Re:What about Google?

[Renegade88]

Nothing, although I'm also confused as to what point you are ultimately trying to make.

Re:What about Google?

[wealthychef]

Perfect! You dismiss my main point and focus back on business being solely for profit. Inside of that world, yes, absolutely, Microsoft, Apple, Google, they are the heroes of the world. Have you ever noticed that under that paradigm, businesses get more and more evil? The search for power and profit as an end in itself is a short-sighted context. I'm a scientist and a darwinist and I understand the arguments for it. I'm just saying it does not work -- it causes pathologies and we need to keep our humanity even as we use money to serve our needs as human beings.

Re:What about Google?

[wealthychef]

PS I forgot to mention. The possessive "its" does not have an apostrophe.

Re:What about Google?

[DJRumpy]

Google is not an 'open source company', although they do have open source products. Even Microsoft has open source initiatives (granted theirs is rather pitiful), as does Apple (apple tends to release far more to the open source community and open standards of the two however). Google get's it's revenue from web ads, and unless they open the source code and algorithms for the web their proprietary web search, they are not an Open Source company. Projects like Chrome, and Android don't make them any money.

"Built on their multiple open source projects. I say.. they ARE their bottom line."

I find it funny that you mention "Bottom Line" when neither of those adds to their bottom line.

Re:What about Google?

[gothzilla]

So when you grow a garden, you only grow exactly how much food you need to eat an no more, because producing extra profit is evil right? You seem to not understand what capitalism and free markets are.

You're leaving out the part that says anyone, regardless of class, race, sex, or anything can, if they choose, pursue as much profit as they wish. You don't even have to work if you don't want to. You can choose to sit on a corner and beg like a lot of people do. Capitalism and free markets are essential to freedom.

When government takes my work away from me in the form of taxes and uses it for schools, police, or fire departments, I don't really mind. It beats going out and actually helping build a road myself. Instead of working on a sewer system, I can do other work that I freely choose to do and trade that work in the form of money for a sewer system. Everyone benefits, including me, and I get something in exchange for my work.

Under socialism, when government takes my money and gives it to another person without giving me anything in return, that is no different than forcing me to work for that person for free, getting nothing in return. That is the very definition of slavery.

Unfortunately, there are lots of people out there who believe slavery is superior to freedom.

Re:What about Google?

[labradore]

And what is the problem with that?  Google's internal OS is not something that a lot of outsiders are envious of.  Google has open-sourced their internal protocols, their page and app-building tools, their filesystem, their database.  The list goes on.  They contribute to the Kernel and they most likely have some level of integration between their custom kernel and their core algorithm.  It may be located in a Kernel module.  Whatever their reason for not giving you a copy of their server OS on a platter, I think you have very little moral ground to stand on, demanding that they share anything more.  Frankly, they're not required to share anything they've made for themselves.  Too bad that companies like Apple, Cisco and Microsoft aren't as generous as Google.

Re:What about Google?

[wealthychef]

LOL. It is an infomercial looking site, but I do not consider them to be scammy. The AMP program itself is very cool, and yes, I think that if they focus on money they will become a bunch of corrupt assholes. Just because I shop at Walmart doesn't make my point invalid.

Re:What about Google?

[pitdingo]

Ah a faux news watcher. Where did the OP say "...extra profit is evil..."? "Under socialism..." wow. how did you get to this point?

Re:What about Google?

[wealthychef]

This is the excuse that people give for focusing EXCLUSIVELY on profit. I did not say "profit is evil." I said what I said. Re-read it. I understand free markets, capitalism etc. YOU sir seem to not understand what it means to be a human being. Are we supposed to be slaves to money? Is your life's purpose to maximize shareholder's value so you can buy another ski jet and park it in your garage? What is money for? These are not simply idle questions for a conversation over beer.

Re:What about Google?

[wealthychef]

the only way you would know that your business is serving people is if it makes a profit.

Obviously and demonstrably false. And the profits from the business goes back to the people it serves. The Grameen bank does not use its profits to enrich its owners at the expense of the poor. It does not seek to maximize shareholder value above all else. It's a matter of recognizing that a business exists for something MORE than just making a profit. Money should not be the end goal. If you don't get this, keep thinking about it. Maybe when you are over your cynicism about your life, you can start to understand that the worth of a company cannot be measured purely in dollars.

Re:What about Google?

[drsmithy]

The fact is, the only way you would know that your business is serving people is if it makes a profit. Loss-making enterprises mean that there are better uses for your capital.

That's an awfully circular sounding definition.

Re:What about Google?

[Surt]

That's not true. You could lose a lot of money shipping food to starving people in Africa. The notion that the lack of profit there means there are better uses for your capital is ridiculously capitalism-centric thinking.

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now ask yourself how much it would have cost them to develop all of those from scratch, if they didn't have the open source codebases to work from.

Alternatively, ask yourself how much it would have cost them to buy or license proprietary software (if they could even find any suitable ones) and how much it would cost them for the contractual rights for access to source code and the right to modify each of those pieces of software, the way they could with the open source versions.

Gee, open source looks pretty good in comparison, doesn't it?

There's a reason all these big companies pay their own employees to work on open source projects even though their competitors can make use of the results from those same projects. This stuff is plumbing, its just infrastructure. Making it cheaper for everybody is good for everybody -- sharing their efforts on one open source project is better than wasting all of the resources to independently re-invent each one. They compete on higher-level stuff, not this commodity stuff that is the foundation of their businesses.

Re:What about Google?

[dave420]

They don't release the code they make, that makes them money, to the public. They use open source like Microsoft does in that respect - sure, they benefit from it, and they even create and release some open source software, but they are not an open source company. Not even close.

Re:What about Google?

[dave420]

Socialism is the realisation that a large proportion of a population are so self-centered and selfish that they simply don't realise the benefit of helping everyone in their society. "Without giving me nothing in return" - what are you smoking? If I have to give you examples, then you clearly don't have a fucking clue about what you're talking about. Your logic is a fucking joke.

Re:What about Google?

[ffreeloader]

That's not true. You could lose a lot of money shipping food to starving people in Africa. The notion that the lack of profit there means there are better uses for your capital is ridiculously capitalism-centric thinking.

What you really mean is greed.

Capitalism does not require greed to succeed, and exists everywhere, including all left wing ideologies and left wing governments. Take a look at how the rulers of hard-core communist countries live in contrast to the people they govern to see the truth of this.

Greed is the problem. It is greed that causes people to think that the only measure of success for a company is profit, and even more specifically short term profit. It is greed that causes businessmen to cheat their employees out of wages and benefits. It's greed that causes them to cheat each other. It's greed that causes them to charge "what the market will bear" rather than a reasonable price at which they still make reasonable profit. The starvation and extreme differences in wealth between the rulers and the people in all totalitarian countries are caused by the same thing. Greed.

As greed is a problem that springs from the human heart, not a political ideology-driven problem you cannot point to a political ideology as the cause, nor for the cure.

Re:What about Google?

[ffreeloader]

Well, at least that's what the socialistic activists and leaders of socialistic governments want you to believe. In reality the outcome is much different. You end up with a serf class and ruling class, and never the twain shall meet on any economic level.

Re:What about Google?

[Surt]

Well, I think you can, actually. Capitalism is often described as 'greed is good'. Socialism at least ATTEMPTS to set up a system that actively resists the greed impulse. It may not succeed, and greed will exist no matter what system you set up, but that doesn't make every system equal in terms of how much greed is encouraged.

Re:What about Google?

[shriphani]

Oh yes, Western Europe is deep in slavery and Americans are living the dream aren't they? Wake up dude, a serious commitment to higher education in America now costs equal to more than the income for the average family. Sometimes you do the sharing so that you live in a society of educated and cultured people. If there was no redistribution of wealth, the people who are the worst off in our society would have no chance of improving their situation and would have to resort to crime. Socialism != no recognition of merit. There is far too much in modern society that is out of an individual's control and the elements can put an individual at a significant disadvantage.

Re:What about Google?

[rumith]

Even according to RMS, AdSense and Google search cannot be considered proprietary in the same sense as e.g. Photoshop since they are not distributed (JavaScript notwithstanding). Google runs them on their servers, not you. And it is popular knowledge that Google started based on Linux, MySQL, Apache and many other open-source projects. Without them, there would be no Google, at least not in the past decade.

Re:What about Google?

[iceaxe]

So when you grow a garden, you only grow exactly how much food you need to eat an no more, because producing extra profit is evil right?

Nobody said that.

You seem to not understand what capitalism and free markets are.

Too easy, I'll pass.

You're leaving out the part that says anyone, regardless of class, race, sex, or anything can, if they choose, pursue as much profit as they wish. You don't even have to work if you don't want to. You can choose to sit on a corner and beg like a lot of people do. Capitalism and free markets are essential to freedom.

This is where my BS meter went into the red. This would be true ONLY in a condition of true equality, which condition cannot exist in the real world. In the real world, a noticeable percentage of people lie, cheat, steal, commit violence against each other, discriminate unfairly against people who look, sound, or act different from themselves, and generally are complete bastards whenever they think they can get away with it.

This is why idealistic ideology falls apart in the face of actual events, whether it's capitalism, communism, libertarianism, or benign authoritarianism. All of these theoretical ideals offer important insights, and should be pursued, but should be recognized as measurements, not goals. The human experiment thus far tends to suggest that a balance of competing ideals is the most workable solution. We must learn to recognize that going too far in ANY direction causes more problems than it solves.

Luckily, most of humanity realizes this, and acts accordingly, with local variations and frequent missteps. You know this, yourself, as you proceed to demonstrate:

When government takes my work away from me in the form of taxes and uses it for schools, police, or fire departments, I don't really mind. It beats going out and actually helping build a road myself. Instead of working on a sewer system, I can do other work that I freely choose to do and trade that work in the form of money for a sewer system. Everyone benefits, including me, and I get something in exchange for my work.

Aha! So, what you are saying, I think, is that in some cases the collective good outweighs personal freedom and absolute capitalism. An interesting twist of phrasing, working "freely choose" in there. But an essential recognition of truth at some level.

Under socialism, when government takes my money and gives it to another person without giving me anything in return, that is no different than forcing me to work for that person for free, getting nothing in return. That is the very definition of slavery.

Oh dear, now you contradict yourself. If your house does not catch fire, was your tax money wasted on the fire department? Please step away from the loaded words for a moment. Notice that, sans the "S" word, you just described the same situation as your previous statement, only this time instead of "freely choose" we have "Socialism" (shudder).

Newsflash: Collective action, in the form of taxation and government services, OF ANY KIND, is a form of "Socialism". Here's a useful set of definitions. See especially definition number one.

So, your defense system, court system, fire service, police service, border guards, etc. etc. are all part of the socialist side of the balance scales, along with the usual "evil socialism" suspects of public financial assistance and health care. It's amusing, in a "makes me want to vomit" sort of way, to hear otherwise generally intelligent people decry one sort of socialism while practically worshiping another sort.

Unfortunately, there are lots of people out there who believe slavery is superior to freedom.

More unfortunately, there are far too many people out there who believe in a fantasy world where you get to, or

Re:What about Google?

[gtall]

Stop with the evil bullshit. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, they were evil. A company not doing what you wish is not being evil.

Re:What about Google?

[drsquare]

Actually, it's capitalism that takes people's money away, and hands it over to the owners of the means of production. Like most right-wingers, you have no idea what socialism actually is.

Re:What about Google?

[dave420]

Absolute bullshit. Your claim is not reflected in reality in any socialist country.

Re:What about Google?

[LifesABeach]

If only my business could achieve 3 to 4 million a year for 5 to 6 years, I'd be very, ...comfortable.

Re:What about Google?

[logjon]

It's been reflected in every socialist country in history.

Re:What about Google?

[mh1997]

Well, I think you can, actually. Capitalism is often described as 'greed is good'. Socialism at least ATTEMPTS to set up a system that actively resists the greed impulse. It may not succeed, and greed will exist no matter what system you set up, but that doesn't make every system equal in terms of how much greed is encouraged.

It's not how much greed is encouraged that makes socialism good or bad, it is how greed is tolerated that makes it bad. The ruling class only tolerates their own greed.

Re:What about Google?

[harlows_monkeys]

Running on Linux. Maybe GNU, maybe not.

Re:What about Google?

[Attila Dimedici]

That's not true. You could lose a lot of money shipping food to starving people in Africa.

And current evidence suggests that by doing so you would make the problem worse. By shipping food to starving people in Africa, you make it so that those in Africa who were farming can no longer generate enough captial to be able to continue to farm. Which means that there will be even less food available locally.
You would better serve the starving people of Africa by finding something they can do to generate capital so that they can buy and/or grow food. This does not mean that charity is bad, it means that it is much harder to actually do good with charity than most people think.
In a post further down you say that Capitalism is describes as "greed is good". It may be true that some people describe Capitalism that way, but that isn't true. Capitalism says, "greed is." Socialism does not "resist the greed impulse", it ignores it. Socialism pretends that people will take on the undesirable roles in society just because someone has to do it. If everyone has their needs met on an equal basis, how are you going to get enough garbage collectors or sewage treatment workers? Do you really think that any society has enough people who want to be garbage collectors or sewage treatment workers just for the job satisfaction to meet the need for those types of workers?

Re:What about Google?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

A relentless focus on profit over all else is the scourge of capitalism in our nation. We have forgotten that business exists to serve people, people do not exist for the sake of money

Which includes the people who own them. Who generally want money.

Re:What about Google?

[Surt]

Yeah, the African food thing is a tired meme. Lose money shipping them capital equipment to improve their farming techniques and distribution instead if that's what you believe. You missed the point entirely with your response though.

And your response to socialism seems to have been mistaken for communism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

Re:What about Google?

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, it's capitalism that takes people's money away, and hands it over to the owners of the means of production. Like most right-wingers, you have no idea what socialism actually is.

No, in capitalism, people give their money to the owners of the means of production in order to get what is produced. If people do not value what is produced more than the money, they keep the money. If those who own the means of production charge more than a reasonable amount for a good (based on cost of production and availabilty of raw materials), someone else will produce a good that meets the same need or desire at a lower price. The only time this doesn't happen is when the government intervenes to prevent the second party from producing a competing product. When that happens, you no longer have capitalism (what you have depends on the nature of the government intervention, but whether it is socialism, fascism, or full-blown communism, it is still a restriction on the freedom of the individual to make his or her own decisions about what is best).

Re:What about Google?

[ffreeloader]

No. Capitalism is not often described as greed is good. The "greed is good" mantra is moral issue, not a political issue. That the mantra was first coined in a capitalistic society is irrelevant. Go take a look at how the leaders of the Soviet Union crushed their own people while making themselves rich. They most definitely thought greed was good as they lived and governed by the principle of greed. They lived high on the hog while their people starved and drank themselves to death in hopelessness.

I believe in capitalism because I believe in the freedom of the individual, and I soundly reject the "greed is good" mantra. Greed is self-destructive to all who practice it, as well as destructive to any capitalistic society as a whole. This has been well-illustrated in the financial meltdown of the US economy. Greed pushed business people to violate every sound business practice in existence. Greed so blinded them that they cut their own throats, so to speak, and our economy will be decades in recovering, if it ever does.

Re:What about Google?

[oblio_one]

You seem to be confusing communism with Socialism. Think Sweden or Canada, not 1980's Russia. Furthermore; even taking your point. Consider how wealth distribution tends to work in modern capitalist countries, very focused on the top. If the "serf" class in communism had a better quality of life (access to more resources, more leisure time, however you define that) then 90% of the free capitalist society members, would that really be such a bad deal ?

Re:What about Google?

[GasparGMSwordsman]

You sir, loose: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Re:What about Google?

[ffreeloader]

Absolute bullshit. Your claim is not reflected in reality in any socialist country.

Really? Point me to one socialistic country in the world where the politicians and working class have absolutely equal standards of living. Not a one exists, or ever will exist.

Re:What about Google?

[dave420]

What the fuck are you smoking? Most of (if not all of) Europe is socialist, and even the US has major socialist streaks (the military, highways, heck, any Federal initiative that requires money, including the government itself). None of what ffreeloader said is true in any of those countries. You might be confusing socialism with communism, which seems to be an all-too-common occurrence in the US, which is certainly not helped by most talking heads on TV, and definitely talk radio. I can't believe I have to tell anyone this.

Re:What about Google?

[Lyrael]

How is parent a troll? Promoting good grammar and educating people is never trolling. Just because you dislike being corrected, don't mod the grammar nazis trolls.

- Your Friendly Neighbourhood Grammar Nazi

Re:What about Google?

[dave420]

No countries exist at all that have the exact same living standards or wages between executives and workers. Capitalism, communism, socialism, whatever - there will always be a discrepancy. I completely fail to see how that has anything to do with this discussion, apart from further showing your complete lack of knowledge on the subject.

Re:What about Google?

[chilvence]

So is there some example where politicians and working class have equal standards of living elsewhere in the civilised west? Because your implement for attacking socialism is pretty weak. You can find a rich ruling class and a poor working class anywhere you look, and it is not a useful measure of anything other than the fact that rich people will happily lord it over poor people no matter what they believe.

Re:What about Google?

[GasparGMSwordsman]

You sir, loose: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Re:What about Google?

[dave420]

The irony being, at least with regards to the point ffreeloader was trying to make, is that in socialist countries the standard of living for poorer people is greater than in, say, the US. He seems to be highly confused about nearly everything in this discussion, apart from, that to him at least, "socialism == evil".

Re:What about Google?

[ffreeloader]

That is exactly my point. And who is it that sets the wages for both sets of people? The executives. The leaders. In socialism that's the politicians, the government. And just what in socialism guarantees that those politicians are honest and actually give a rip about the people over whom they rule?

Show me honest politicians. By politicians very nature they are prone to corruption for who seeks power except for those who desire power? And once they are in power, under socialism just how are governments abuses to be controlled? They won't be because the government controls everything.

Saying socialism will cure the ills of society and abuses of power is foolish. It can't. It simply institutionalizes all abuses of power as they are now governmental abuses of power.

And what is it that gives anyone in any situation real power? Money. Thus, those in power accrue to themselves the money as it perpetuates their power. That's human nature and no political system is going to change that.

Re:What about Google?

[JesseMcDonald]

the only way you would know that your business is serving people is if it makes a profit.

Obviously and demonstrably true. Of course, if you (as a person or group with significant ownership and decision-making power within the business) know that the business could make more (monetary) profit, but instead choose to pursue other goals, then effectively the business is making a profit; you're just spending that profit toward your own non-financial ends. It would be more straightforward to simply accept the money and then spend it on charitable programs of your choice, particularly since you would then know that there is a surplus to be spent rather than simply guessing, but that's nothing but a minor procedural difference. The effect is the same.

If you could not bring in enough profit to cover your opportunity costs—if you truly do not make an economic profit—then you are wasting resources better spent elsewhere. In this the GP is entirely correct; an unprofitable business serves no one.

If you don't get this, keep thinking about it. Maybe someday you will understand that there is nothing cynical or unfair about expecting a company—any endeavor, really—to earn a profit.

Re:What about Google?

[naoursla]

I think he means the open source software that Google used to develop their lucrative search and ad business. If they ever distribute those binaries outside of the company they will be required to release the source code as well.

Re:What about Google?

[dave420]

I didn't claim any of that. Your argument is drifting, and rambling, into obscurity. Give it a rest. But, as I pointed out in another post, the standard of living in socialist countries is generally higher than in non-socialist countries, especially for the poor. That lessens the gap. But, as that's contrary to your "socialism is evil!!!eleventy" argument, I'm sure you'll ignore it, or make a completely different argument in a vain attempt to paint socialism as bad.

Re:What about Google?

[ffreeloader]

And that is why socialism will always fail. It limits incentives to excel and will never be able to stop abuses of power. Both problems are bad for society because limiting incentives to succeed limits the prosperity of the country as a whole, and places all the power and incentive to abuse power in the hands of the government where it can and will be used to enforce government mandates, not limit governmental abuses of power.

Re:What about Google?

[dave420]

Again, your claims are not backed up by any socialist country I'm aware of, and please bear in mind correlation does not imply causation. Socialism doesn't "limit incentives to excel" - far from it. It gives everyone, regardless of background or upbringing, the ability to succeed. A poor person in a non-socialist country (one where there is no welfare or support for the poor) will always stay poor. They will spend all their time merely trying to survive. If they are taken care of, they have the ability to get an education, and actually make something of themselves. It also protects those who are wealthy from having to deal with hoards of poor people wandering around trying to steal their stuff simply to make ends meet. If what you say is true, then all of Europe would be stuck in the middle ages, with no doctors or scientists, with no innovation, with everyone simply glued to their sofas waiting for their next dole check. Which it isn't. Your argument is completely bogus. Did you hear it from Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, or Glenn Beck by any chance?

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you and I are clawing our way in this rat race, trying to get scraps from the master's table while he destroys the economy and gets a billion of yours and everyone's tax dollars as a bailout. I call it welfare. Its simply socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us.

Too big to fail means you and I are too little to succeed.

Re:What about Google?

[ffreeloader]

So, you don't deny any of my arguments, but you still claim socialism is the answer to wealth being held in the hands of a very few people?

Ummm...Show me where your claims of standard of living are true.... Greece? Italy? Spain? Portugal?

Also show how these economies are sustainable. Right now the EU is showing that these economies are not sustainable. They are going broke in a hurry and degenerating into major civil unrest. And, don't argue that the US is going broke too. It is. And it's because our politicians have been following the European model for the last few decades. Before that, before we adopted the failed model we were the strongest economy on earth for more than 100 years.

Re:What about Google?

[dave420]

No socialist bail-outs were required to get the US economy back on track? You can read about standards of living here, seeing as you are so woefully uneducated about them. The EU is not showing signs of economic instability, in fact it's doing rather well. They are not "going broke", and the major civil unrest you speak of has not materialised, and there are no signs of it doing so. And I find it rather funny that you forgot the great depression. Cute.

You are so ridiculously uneducated about what socialism means, and definitely what Europe is, that I feel awfully sorry for you. Some decent education, paid via socialism, would have fixed that, but you seem to be happy.

Re:What about Google?

[ffreeloader]

I'd say you need to start reading the news from Europe.

The Euro has dropped 22% when measured against the dollar in the last 6 months. There are unemployment rates from 10 - 20% across Europe. Even the strongest European economy, Germany, has initiated an austerity plan, and Germany forced budget cuts on Greece, Spain, and Portugal after having to bail them out so they wouldn't default on their debts and take down the entire European economy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100608/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_europe_financial_crisis

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google gets it is money from it is proprietary search engine and ad platform.

WTF?

Re:What about Google?

[Tubal-Cain]

We have forgotten that business exists to serve people, people do not exist for the sake of money.

What tripe. Businesses exist to serve their owners. If the owner wants money, that's what the business exists to make. If the owner wants to improve the world without much out-of-pocket expenses (or to make his own pockets deeper so that he can do it out-of-pocket), that's what the business exists to do.

The only way "serving the people" comes into it is if:

a) that's what the owner(s) want
OR
b) the company needs to in order to pursue its other goals (i.e. they can't make money if everyone is alienated enough to boycott them)

Re:What about Google?

[Hognoxious]

If the "serf" class in communism had a better quality of life (access to more resources, more leisure time, however you define that) then 90% of the free capitalist society members, would that really be such a bad deal ?

That's quite a big if.

Re:What about Google?

[Hognoxious]

But, as I pointed out in another post, the standard of living in socialist countries is generally higher than in non-socialist countries, especially for the poor.

As evidenced by all those Cubans in their Bentleys and the North Koreans in their yachts.

Re:What about Google?

[tattood]

The point is that Google is not an "Open Source Company" like RedHat. RedHat makes money by selling software and support for open source products. Google does not sell their open source products directly (unless you count the Google Appliance, and with that you still don't get access to the source code). Google uses open-source based products to do business, which is sell ads to people using their web search. They are equivalent to the people who buy RedHat to run their infrastructure and web servers.

Re:What about Google?

[Infernal Device]

You sir, loose:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

YOU, sir, lose. You misspelled 'lose'.

Re:What about Google?

[GasparGMSwordsman]

=P

Re:What about Google?

[Man On Pink Corner]

Have you ever noticed that under that paradigm, businesses get more and more evil?

You keep using that word. I do not believe you know what it means.

Re:What about Google?

[j-beda]

The only time this doesn't happen is when the government intervenes to prevent the second party from producing a competing product. When that happens, you no longer have capitalism (what you have depends on the nature of the government intervention, but whether it is socialism, fascism, or full-blown communism, it is still a restriction on the freedom of the individual to make his or her own decisions about what is best).

What do you call it when the "first party" has such a stranglehold on the industry that no second party can form? Without some external intervention, is not the stable state for such a system to have only a single, very rich and powerful monopoly?

Once a monopoly is created, they have the ability to set prices, and "exploit the workers" to any extent desired, since the workers have no body else to go to since they control no capitol, and nobody else does either.

Seems like some sort of external regulation is necessary.

Re:What about Google?

[wealthychef]

I think of pure capitalism as an oversimplification of what motivates humans. As a chemical engineer, we used to have a joke about estimating the milk a cow can produce: "Assume the cow is a perfect sphere radiating milk in all directions." Capitalism assumes that human beings act in their own self interest at all times in matters of goods exchange. This is just not the case, and it's a significant error.

Re:What about Google?

[wealthychef]

Who said anything about socialism? I'm talking about businesses that are not motivated purely by greed, and you assume I'm a socialist. I think you have been indoctrinated into a very narrow mindset.

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand free markets, capitalism etc.

Elsewhere you wrote:

Capitalism assumes that human beings act in their own self interest at all times in matters of goods exchange. This is just not the case, and it's a significant error.

This indicates that your understanding is deficient, IMO. An economics model may assume self-interested actors. And self-interest is one of the theories for why free markets/capitalism works (use this link for capitalism as you preface your comment with "free markets"). From my wiki link: "Proponents of economic liberalism believe political freedom and social freedom are inseparable with economic freedom, and use philosophical arguments promoting liberty to justify economic liberalism and the free market." THAT is what free-market capitalism assumes. Freedom. Which, btw, is not "free" since creating a society with a rule of law is difficult and fraught with peril and the liklihood of exceeding the mandate for which it was created. That is not a flaw of any economics system, per se, but rather a flaw in human nature. People value their own freedom to varying degrees. People value other people's freedom to varying degrees. Many will value their freedom while seeking to restrain others from practicing the same.

Re:What about Google?

[gangien]

We have forgotten that business exists to serve people

No. Most businesses exist to trade with people. But you're free to start up a business for some other reason, if you can finance it.

Re:What about Google?

[Attila Dimedici]

If said monopoly prices their goods above what people think is reasonable, an alternative will arise, unless the government intervenes.
Actually, monopolies almost always are a result of government regulation. Historically, I am only aware of one "monopoly" that arose without help from government regulation (and even there there may be government regulation assisting that I am unaware of): Microsoft.

Re:What about Google?

[Attila Dimedici]

Socialists are merely Communists who don't have the courage of their convictions (or who are trying to fool people into thinking they aren't). On a political spectrum socialism is just to the right of fascism which is just to the right of communism. All of which penalize productive members of society in order to reward the unproductive.

Re:What about Google?

[MaskedSlacker]

Moderator must have been a linguist, since people who actually study language universally frown on prescriptivism.

Only self-righteous assholes are grammar nazis, not people who actually know anything about language.

Re:What about Google?

[MaskedSlacker]

Let's eat Grandma!

Re:What about Google?

[j-beda]

I am not so sure about that. My kid in the third grade just did a whole bit about the California gold rush and the dudes at the Sacramento train museum presented a pretty damning picture of the monopoly formed in transportation around the time of the intercontinental railway system. Once a railway is put through, it is pretty hard to displace that monopoly, regardless of how abusive it gets.

Pricing about "what people think is reasonable" is the least of the issues. Once the company owns the factory, and the store, and the farms, it is pretty hard to displace them. Unfettered "capitalism" naturally tends in this direction.

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

The human experiment thus far tends to suggest that a balance of competing ideals is the most workable solution. We must learn to recognize that going too far in ANY direction causes more problems than it solves.

Maybe you should join the tautology club as political philosophy is not your game. You have just exalted as your political philosophy the world exactly as it is, pretty much has been, and damn-well may always be. Like a TV pundint, you embrace what is to avoid your woeful knowledge of what ought. I once asked a fellow student why she voted for somebody. Her response, "He was going to win anyway." I'm a polite person - in person - and left it at that. She did not invite a political debate and I did not give one. These days, I don't ask people I am not friends with or willing to debate/discuss the issue.

That person would be better off not voting just as you would be better off not posting. Let's look at another quote from you:

Newsflash: Collective action, in the form of taxation and government services, OF ANY KIND, is a form of "Socialism". Here's a useful set of definitions. See especially definition number one.

This next quote is from your link. I added some bold and CAPS.

Main Entry: socialism
Pronunciation: \s-sh-li-zm\
Function: noun
Date: 1837

1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership AND administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is NO private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned AND controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Defintion 3 can apply to almost anything so it can be disregarded as non-descriptive (it is a "stage" not a philosophy in that context). Definitions 1 & 2 do not mean "Collective action, in the form of taxation and government services, OF ANY KIND". You just made up fucking bullshit and linked to a dictionary. Now, you fuck up because the definition you reference clearly states "goods" and "means of production". What you are thinking of (taxation + police/military/courts = a little socialism), is services (specifically "dispute resolution" which is where the link takes you).

I will grant that the definition of socialism - as practiced today - can mean services. After all, education and healthcare are a fucking huge portion of our mixed economy (in addition to the already-mentioned dispute resolution services). That aside, there is a clear, idealogical distinction between a government of laissez-faire capitalism and socialism (by almost any definition). To pretend like everything is a little-bit-of-this and a little-bit-of-that you are not engaging in thought but pointless regurgitation. I don't know if you need an education or to have your ass kicked. Maybe you are a non-cognitivist or something. That would imply you need an ass whooping!

Re:What about Google?

[ffreeloader]

Really? Hmmmm.... Taking money away from the top earners by force, taxing at rates of 78%, is not a disincentive to invest, to earn more, to work harder? Giving money to people who don't earn it is an incentive to work, to improve ones self?

Sounds to me as if you have zero understanding of human nature....

Re:What about Google?

[ffreeloader]

Where did I accuse you of socialism? My comments have been in response to the usual slamming of capitalism, and the claim that socialism is the solution to greed. Take a look at the next couple of posts in line after yours to see what I mean.

I agree with you. Capitalism doesn't require greed to succeed, nor does it require profit to be the only goal of doing business. Greed is in fact destructive to capitalism just as it's destructive to all other forms of government and to all societies.

Re:What about Google?

[Attila Dimedici]

The railways got their monopoly status because of government action in their favor (usually state and local government).

Once the company owns the factory, and the store, and the farms, it is pretty hard to displace them. Unfettered "capitalism" naturally tends in this direction.

If "capitalism" naturally tends in that direction, how did Europe end up not being that way? What you described is known as Feudalism, which was displaced by Capitalism. So, no, unfettered Capitalism does not tend in that direction.

Re:What about Google?

[j-beda]

If "capitalism" naturally tends in that direction, how did Europe end up not being that way?

Perhaps governmental regulation? Certainly Europe cannot be pointed to as an example of "unfettered Capitalism" at any time in their history.

Look, I agree with you that it is very difficult to regulate commerce in such a way that it does not have unintended consequences. I also very strongly feel that completely unregulated commerce has similar dangers, and there are numerous examples to show some validity to this argument - from stock market manipulations to anti-trust abuses.

Re:What about Google?

[tuomoks]

Right! That's what the article was. Now, of course, we could ask is that even important? Help one company to make a lot of money or many companies to make a lot of money, which one seems more fun?

Unfortunately, at least I don't see the world going that way. Computers and computer usage is becoming more and more commodity, buy cheap, proprietary "solutions", even if they are not optimal, don't always work, are not very beneficial for user on long run, etc instead of using own skills and knowledge (sorry, what are those??)

Maybe that's the way in future? Make things unnecessarily complicated, tell users / customer that it's for their benefit and sooner or later they start believing it - profit! They will not waste their small brains on these very difficult and complicated issues, they buy those.

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry - but that is a pretty good description of "liberal capitalism" - in the US often related to the late president Reagan.
Few countries are better regulated than the Land of the Brave, and no other country makes such a staggering effort to shield its individuals to the right of own decision in most aspects of life. That also comes to what OS to select. Since Microsoft is a US "Corporation" it is "unpatriotic" to install Linux.

Re:What about Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

A truthful, unbiased, reply to a very emotive subject. Iceaxe has given a very informative answer to the post.

Ali Waqas

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason may be is this that they are not more interested in money matters.

www.microsol.biz

Re:Ali Waqas

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat is a for-profit publicly traded company. They had better be interested in 'money matters' - it is the reason for their existence.

Re:Ali Waqas

[labradore]

It's absolutely correct that corporations are legally obligated to attempt to maximize the return for shareholders.  However, abiding by the law isn't the same as being a good citizen.  The legal obligation to maximize returns in conjunction with the demi-personhood of the corporation has led to the increasingly common comparison of corporations with sociopaths.  They exist only to satisfy their own needs and desires and are not designed or operated to benefit society.  Management can take the enlightened, modern, view that they can do well by doing good, but there's no requirement for this and competition does tend to breed ruthlessness over generosity.

The fact that there are no enormously rich and successful open-source software companies speaks to the fact that maximizing concentration of capital is an activity that is done more efficiently by predation than by symbiosis.  Profit in itself is not an evil.  We require profit to survive because it is both the measurement of how well we use our resources and how much wealth we are creating.  Wealth is vitally important for every kind of progress.

Perhaps it's time to think very deeply about how we want to organize our economic activity so that the rewards of our hard work are more diffused and mutually beneficial than the model that we have created which encourages vice in pursuit of profit.  The question shouldn't be, "Why are there no billion-dollar open-source companies?"  but rather, "Are business models based on generosity more or less useful for creating and distributing wealth than those which place value only on scarcity?".

To that end, I have a proposal:  develop a set of metrics that measure the wealth generated by open-source activities.  I don't think we should be focusing on the dollar-equivalent of the developer hours.  We need to look at the contribution to the standard-of-living.  That is, after all, the real purpose of economic activity.  Once we start measuring these things in a way that is not biased toward our current system, but gives us a good idea of how useful these various activities and organization really are, we can start thinking about how we're really going to increase our wealth instead of just how we're going to make profits.

Re:Ali Waqas

[ibsteve2u]

Paraphrased somewhat more concisely: "Sorry about ruining your life, your country, and your world, but hey - it's just business.".

Re:Ali Waqas

[Rolgar]

Tell me, are the companies going to get sued by the owners? Surely an ethically acting company would win based on an argument that conducting business in an unethical manner might yield short term profits, it might lead to the medium term destruction of the company.

Put it another way, did Lehman Brothers maximize profits? Maybe for a few years, but in the end, their stupid business practices did just the opposite. Surely the law (or judgment) isn't written in such a way that a company must decide profit over ethics, just profit over a clearly unprofitable alternative assuming all other aspects of the decision are equal.

Re:Ali Waqas

[labradore]

Public corporations are obligated to file performance reports quarterly. The numbers in these reports are a large determinant of short-term stock prices. Therefore, management is usually given the incentive to make short-term gains. This inevitably leads to conflicts between long-term and short-term strategies. It limits investment that has long-term payoff and especially limits long-term research which may not ever pay off. But none of this even speaks to the fact that there is no substantial incentive for the majority of economic activity in the U.S. to be conducted with regard to the interests of the society. Corporations benefit from a good public image and from good branding, but there's a reason that we equate advertising with lying and theres a reason that our government and media are corrupt beyond measure. Companies pay to keep their images clean while doing whatever it takes to keep the bottom line growing.

It can't be legislated away. Part if it is simple human nature. But I think that if you establish the right rules and if you prove that there are better ways to conduct business, we will find the reforms or at least direct the revolutions that are necessary to build much more healthy, sustainable economies and societies. If you don't think that both spheres are utterly broken today, I suggest that you are ignorant or have a very dim view of what possibilities we are leaving unrealized in pursuit of the current brutalism.

Pftt

[somersault]

they will [..] paint one of its defining successes — saving money — as a failure.

Hmm.. so they're bringing in 10% of the revenue of non open source equivalents - basically meaning that their clients need to spend 90% less.. how is that not saving money?

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

To most, the lack of support isn't worth the 90% off tag. People like having a number to call where they can talk to an outsourced employee and complain that their "Winders is broken."

Re:Pftt

[PatHMV]

Well, the idea behind open source companies is that the software is free, and the company pays for support. Thus, no licensing fees for the development, and ONLY the support costs associated with being able to call and talk to a support personnel. That's where the savings comes in to the end-user client.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

because we all know that closed source programs require zero administration time.

Re:Pftt

[mcvos]

And the advantage of this is that customers who call with a problem actually get a useful answer. They're paying for that support, rather than for the license.

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

I think you'll find the same thing is happening in the Media industry. People's ability to download movies, songs, books for free is devaluing the time and wages of the creators. The media companies won't completely disappear - they'll just earn 10-20% as much money as they did before 1999.

It appears to me the software industry is heading along the same path, and just like the RIAA, Microsoft is fighting it tooth-and-nail because they don't want to see their income reduced.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally speaking I get the feeling that when my company calls Redhat support they are running the same Google searches I am.

Re:Pftt

[Culture20]

Open Source is only 90% cheaper if your time is worth 10%.

Best joke ever.
If I had to rate difficulty of OS maintenance and setup, it would be:
Microsoft (Any), Most difficult
Solaris
Mac OS X
Linux (Any except gentoo), easiest

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

>>>the software is free, and the company pays for support.

What if I don't need support? That's why Red Hat and other liberated software companies will probably never see 1 billion. Bottom Line: A lot of us are cheapasses. ;-)

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

That must be why you need 10 windows admins in a company to 1 unix or 1 mainframe equivalent?

Re:Pftt

[quantumplacet]

you're right, that's not what it means. It's a completely meaningless meme that gets tossed around every time there's an article about open source.

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

Why do you rate Windows the worst and Linux the best? What makes Windows so horrible to maintain? All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install. After that the system usually has everything the user needs (web browser, Microsoft Office, etc).

And what makes Linux so easy? In my experience it's a pain in the ass - for example my Linux laptop refuses to execute flash websites (like disney.com or tv.com). And I can't get it to talk to my Netscape ISP.

Re:Pftt

[tthomas48]

In my office we have Windows, Mac, and Linux machines. Pretty much evenly split between the OSes. We hired a support person for Windows. So in this case, Windows is both more expensive and requires more support.

I don't know where you get your numbers.

Re:Pftt

[LWATCDR]

So there is less of an incentive to produce easy to use and bug free software? My company doesn't pay support for many of the programs we use. They just work and do what we need them to do.
Honestly this is a problem for FOSS development. In the long run I have to wonder if FOSS OSs only real chance in the consumer market is through hardware makers. By not having to pay for an OS and be dependent on an OS maker they can increase profits and control.

In the end I feel that there will always be both closed source programs and FOSS. Each will fill a need and I hope work well together.
The zealots that say that all software must be free I feel are at best out of touch.

Of course as far as Free as in Speech software goes I feel the real battle and enemy is NOT closed source software.
It is software patents.
Those must be stopped.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting Anonymously for the obvious reasons... And we continue paying due to the *quality* of the support. The (mumble) millions paid annually to Redhat and Covalent is nothing compared to the (mumble mumble) millions paid to the other top ten largest software companies. It's not a fair comparison as the product categories are different, but the support from Redhat and Covalent is good and sometimes great, the support from the big guys is sometimes good and regularly worse than nothing because they waste our time.

Re:Pftt

[olau]

So there is less of an incentive to produce easy to use and bug free software?

Well, I think many pure support contracts are fixed-price, e.g. x $/month. So actually, it does make a lot of sense to cut down on the silly problems. I don't think you could sell it either, if it were crap - the open source world tends to be much more open, mistakes are slammed in public googleable forums.

Another thing is what goes under the hat "support". It's not just answering questions, it's also development of new features and integration, no different from the closed-source equivalent.

Re:Pftt

[HyperQuantum]

No, you need to take the total cost of ownership (TCO) into account.

Open source has the advantage that you're not locked in to a single vendor. You can switch easily whenever some other vendor offers lower prices.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install. After that the system usually has everything the user needs (web browser, Microsoft Office, etc).

I don't know where you're getting your Windows CD's but I've never seen one that came with a preinstalled copy of Office. However, practically every copy of Linux comes with OpenOffice.org.

my Linux laptop refuses to execute flash websites (like disney.com or tv.com)

Which Linux? Which Browser? I've never seen Ubuntu fail to install and run Flash and version 6 of the Chrome Browser comes with Flash nowadays.

And I can't get it to talk to my Netscape ISP.

I can't get Windows 7 to talk to my scanner. I'll talk to my scanner manufacturer and you talk to your ISP.

Re:Pftt

[shadowrat]

That's a good point. It's hard to sell support when you are providing:

• a good stable product
• all the inner workings of the product
• all the tools required to support the product

to make matters worse, your customers are predisposed to being the kind of person who will roll up their sleeves and support the product themselves.

to use a car analogy, it's like red hat is giving away cars hoping to make money on service, but the car comes with a shop and all the tools needed to do anything to it, and all your customers are mechanics.

i'm surprised they can make any money at all. RedHat should

Re:Pftt

[pitdingo]

So you compare installing an OS to running a plugin? I can take a Ubuntu cd and install it faster and with fewer steps than Windows 7. Just did it last weekend. I not only have more software, but better software by default. I do not need to install anti-virus, intrusion detection, anti-spyware software, etc... So yes, installing Ubuntu Linux is easier than Windows 7. My windows desktop refuses to play WoW crashing the second it launches. Guess i need a "driver" or something. And it wont connect to my Router beacause i need to install some "network" driver or something for my motherboard. Funny how the Ubuntu has no such issue with the networking.

Re:Pftt

[somersault]

That maybe used to be the case, but I've been using Ubuntu for almost everything the last couple of years, and it's a very hassle free system.

Re:Pftt

[MacGyver2210]

meme:

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

I've very interested in reading the study that supports your numbers. Could you provide a link?

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

That's the system working. If, as in the summary says, a 50 billion dollar software company can be replaced with a 5 billion dollar one then that 45 billion in capital that businesses would have spent on bits can be reallocated for employee's salaries, business upgrades, etc. making for a more efficient economy. I've always seen this as one of the primary benefits of open source and have a hard time seeing how it can be realistically spun as a net negative.

Re:Pftt

[Jaysyn]

Maybe he covers making the OS secure with the setup part.

Re:Pftt

[betterunixthanunix]

Except that Red Hat support also includes expertise that may be difficult to find within your own IT department, and goes beyond just bug fixes and workarounds. For example, the number of people in the world who can create useful and secure SELinux policies is not very large, but Red Hat does employ many such people, and if you pay for it, one of those people can literally come to your company's IT department and create or update those policies as needed. Granted, only large businesses or companies that process highly sensitive data (or the government) would actually require such a service, but they certainly do provide it. It is not just the quality of the software, or the completeness of the software, it is a matter of the skills to effectively use the software.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

If they wanted to rob you blind, they'd be working for Microsoft (or Apple or Sony, take your pick) in the first place!

Re:Pftt

[westlake]

People's ability to download movies, songs, books for free is devaluing the time and wages of the creators. The media companies won't completely disappear - they'll just earn 10-20% as much money as they did before 1999.

What really happens is that production shifts to other markets.

The P2P demographic is young adult male. Geek.

Which means no more $200 million budgets for films like Iron Man and The Dark Knight.

No more low-budget Sci-Fi in HD.

No more Dr. Who. Battlestar Galactica. Babylon 5. Firefly.

Disney and Pixar should make out just fine.

The Incredibles and Wall-E have impeccable geek-cred. But more importantly a cross-over appeal that reached male and female audiences of every age.

For the quick buck, Disney can always put out another "High School Musical."

   

Re:Pftt

[Lennie]

This is the reason why RedHat targets the enterprise market.

Re:Pftt

[Hijacked Public]

If what you write is true, why, during the most difficult worldwide economic climate in the past 50 years, did more individuals and companies not move to open source?

If your answer is some variation on a grand conspiracy by Microsoft and the like, I don't really want to read that. But if anyone has any actual, verifiable ideas, I've been wondering. The people I know who work for big companies have told me about the seemingly ridiculous lengths they've gone to to cut costs. It seems like if their IT department pitched a project that would save 90% of their software costs it would have been promoted ahead of cutting bottled water and having people drink from the tap.

Re:Pftt

[silverglade00]

All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install. After that the system usually has everything the user needs (web browser, Microsoft Office, etc).

my Linux laptop refuses to execute flash websites

Which version of Windows comes with Office and Flash right on the disk?

Re:Pftt

[grumbel]

All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install.

Followed by a few hours of search for the newest drivers and another few hours of search for the apps you want to use and another few hours to get all your games patched up to the current revision. Getting Windows to work from scratch takes ages, especially when you use anything that a is a bit non-mainstream.

Now given, Linux avoids the game patching problem mostly by not having games, but getting all the apps you want to run is a hell of a lot easier when you can just do "apt-get install " instead of googling around.

Re:Pftt

[b4dc0d3r]

Very large companies need to have a disaster recovery plan in place, and contacts to call when downtime is costing money. Especially outsourcing or service providers. If you run linux in this environment, "my team knows linux" is not going to cut it. You want to be able to place the blame on the "vendor" as opposed to being responsible yourself. So you don't modify the code, and you buy the support package.

Red Hat should be very profitable, given that, except Microsoft makes sweetheart deals with the big companies to keep them using microsoft tools. I have a full MSDN subscription, which would cost me piles of money but most likely costs my employer very little per head. I can download and use and develop with anything I want, for free. It only costs money because the production servers have to be fully licensed and legit.

Microsoft is everywhere, so they can afford to give away freebies, charge for just the production installs, and still make boatloads of cash. If you take a look at the revenue compared to actual software usage, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Microsoft is giving away as much or more software than Red Hat. Direct end-user sales are just the icing on the cake - someone paying full price for Windows is very rare, it's usually OEM cost, which is approximately 10% of the cost. So Red Hat's numbers are probably not far off Microsoft's numbers, it's just reported as software sales vs. support costs. And even that difference is a technicality - Microsoft still charges for support depending on what you need and where you got the software.

Fundamentally, it's the same business model. Give lots of software away and make up for the sales losses with support charges - but with OEMs in the middle it's not transparent to the end users. Only the businesses see how the model truly works.

Re:Pftt

[Lennie]

It's negative for RedHat, they get less money per user/company in the field. So you have to convince more companies/users to use your product.

This is also a negative for the shareholders in this publicly traded company.

On the other hand it does attract customers, which is good for RedHat and the shareholders.

Re:Pftt

[Retric]

Instillation is not maintenance. I have used Linux systems that where 5 years old and had never been rebooted and you can't say that about windows.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolling I guess but I'll bite.

Judging enterprise scale systems on the basis of your own single user experience. -1 internet for you, sir.

In my experience MS Windows maintenance scales fairly linearly with the number of systems while */Linux/BSD scales logarithmically.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and my Linux box won't run all those worms I can easily run on my laptop. No, Linux is much more difficult...how can a newbie even hope to get a virus running properly?

And the fact that a Linux company is only making millions proves that Open Source is more expensive than Microsoft stuff.

If only I could get rid of all my Linux machines, I'd save a lot of money buying Microsoft software, as it's cheap, secure, and non-buggy. And since they make billions, it proves they are cheaper.

Re:Pftt

[Culture20]

Why do you rate Windows the worst and Linux the best? What makes Windows so horrible to maintain? All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install. After that the system usually has everything the user needs (web browser, Microsoft Office, etc).

Microsoft Office does _not_ come on the Windows installation DVD. Not that it's difficult to install, but it is an extra $$$ license.

And what makes Linux so easy? In my experience it's a pain in the ass - for example my Linux laptop refuses to execute flash websites (like disney.com or tv.com). And I can't get it to talk to my Netscape ISP.

You're obviously looking at it from an end-user (home) perspective. I'm arguing from a sysadmin perspective for medium/large companies. I have much more experience with Microsoft systems, but there's just so much that needs constant attention and futzing with Windows. And there are annoyances like "We need to reboot system after any logoff" that can be researched and solved in less than an hour on systems with an open source history where configuration is prized, but with Windows has been a real pain*. I've got probably 1/2 split between MS and POSIX systems, but MS seems to be always taking up more of my time, managing 3rd party patches remotely, virus scanner remote monitoring, or just making a new image secure. With Linux, configuring a base image is as tough as tweaking a few files and opening a firewall port or two. With Windows, I've got to set registry settings in the Default User registry hive to prevent the systems from going to sleep if a new local user logs in (the ADS policy to keep a machine awake only runs on login for ADS users, not local ones). And those reg entries aren't human readable either (reg_binary), so I have to use a GUI to create them, then export them with regedit, then edit the .reg file into a .bat with reg.exe syntax... Once default preferences are set, there's still all of the extra software to install: MS Office, Visual Studio, Adobe CS4/5, all of which take at least an hour each, as well as time and reboots for patches.


*You can't do it in a logout script because logout (a shutdown state) supersedes any other shutdown state from being enacted. So far the only method I've tried that works is creating a service that constantly checks whether a user is logged into the console session, and reboots when the user's no longer logged in. Use ADS GPO to allow any user to start that service. Start the service in a logIN script (because even services can't be started during logout).

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

Exactly. It's a negative for Red Hat but better overall as the economy runs just that much more efficiently and we all benefit just a little bit. Hence a net positive.

Re:Pftt

[betterunixthanunix]

"So there is less of an incentive to produce easy to use and bug free software?"

Actually, there is, it is just not as clear as you might expect. If a large company has to choose between retraining costs for a system that is not easy to use but which carries a much lower up front cost, versus not retraining and sticking with their proprietary system, they are probably going to save a lot of money sticking with the proprietary system. If an open source company cannot produce software that requires minimal retraining -- basically, software that is easy to use -- then they will have a lot of trouble with their business.

Likewise with bugs -- if the software has so many bugs that a company is spending more time calling for support than actually get work done, the company is not really saving money. Thus, an open source company is forced to produce software with a certain level of quality, or else the company is going to die.

Finally, there is the big one: open source companies get a lot of code from "the community," who may be driven by completely different motivations than the company. Thus, even if an open source company on its own could not produce software that meets the demands of the business world, the community at large can. Red Hat actually maintains a pretty good relationship with the rest of the community, and commits bugfixes or new features upstream as a matter of policy.

"Of course as far as Free as in Speech software goes I feel the real battle and enemy is NOT closed source software."

What about devices like the iPad? The PS3? The Kindle? Proprietary software taken to those extremes is frightening -- imagine if PCs were like the iPad, and whatever company produced your computer had the power to decide how you used it, or perhaps if PCs were like the Kindle, and files could be removed without your consent. Software patents are a problem, yes, but they are just a fraction of the monster.

Re:Pftt

[davester666]

Why would Apple not be considered an "open source". They use and contribute to a large amount of open source software...

Re:Pftt

[hal2814]

Or many of us have found that paying for support is merely giving money to someone who will blame someone else. Hardware vendor says it's an OS issue. OS vendor says it's a hardware issue. If you're not buying a pre-configured machine or a brand such as Apple or Sun who handle both the hardware and the software, I've found paying for OS support to be a colossal waste of time and money.

Re:Pftt

[kaiser423]

Have you ever had to load any specialty drivers in Windows XP at install time? Floppy drives suck.

Not to mention unless you have a completely slip-streamed CD you have to be disconnected from the internet to keep it from being rooted, but you need to connect to the internet to get the updates, so you have to do some special firewall rules or have some other disk with the updates. Every time there's a patch you have to make a new install CD or something similar. Then their partition manager isn't quite as flexible as you would like if you're planning on segmenting some areas, etc.

Then there's the huge setup you have to do after first boot that is complex and long enough that users don't typically do it, or I get bored and it takes all day because I just check on it every hour.

Usually my graphics comes up all funky and I have to go grab the latest graphics drivers from the web manually to get a display with decent resolution, that's always fun.

Linux just kind of installs and does everything up front without lots of other steps after the up-front install, which is way more flexible to do special things with than the Windows install. That said, Linux distros typically don't ship with mp3, flash, etc which sucks.

But I've installed Windows about 15 times in the last 12 months on various machines, and every time I've had to bust out a floppy disk, do some security mumbo-jumbo to keep it from getting owned while updating, and then still have to download 3-4 drivers, and install a set of applications like pdf readers, office stuff, etc. It's horrible. Every machine did have different hardware since they were custom machines, so that's part of the pain. I guess if we weren't doing special stuff, then installs could just be a disk image that's pushed out or something, but I find that every machine with a different hardware configuration requires some new mumbo-jumbo upon install that I have to figure out to make it work.

Re:Pftt

[caseih]

Sounds like you've never had the pleasure of administrating Windows on a large scale. For that I envy you. I maintain about 700 Windows desktops, mostly XP, some Windows 7, and I can tell you that indeed Windows on the desktop is the hardest to administer and consumes most of my time. Even with Windows 7 there are no remote management capabilities outside of AD, hence the need for LanDesk or Altiris. I don't think a single, patched, XP system lasts more than a week without Malware. Windows 7 is much better in that regard. To do all this I have a crew of 4 people that work on fixing Windows installs constantly. And they are very competent technicians too.

My linux desktops are much easier to maintain. Without any specialized tools I can do standardized installs, perform maintenance and updates, and install software. In my previous job I maintained some 200 Linux workstations at a university all by myself. Without expensive third-party software, you just can't do that on Windows. Is it any wonder that Citrix-style solutions are popular? The fact that Windows in the recent past has been so bad that you have to buy all kinds of kludges (Antivirus, etc) just to get it to function is likely the reason for the size of the software industry, which has a highly inflated sense of its own value. I guess we can say Microsoft was only doing its duty to promote the economic well-being of the other players in this Software "ecosystem."

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

How did this get marked insightful? I don't think the author has ever installed a Windows OS himself.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

No, YOUR post is a joke.

How the hell can you rate MS products as the most 'difficult' to setup and maintain, and then throw something like Linux at the very top?

Oh, yeah...this is /.

Forgot.

Re:Pftt

[Pharmboy]

Assuming you are an experienced admin, Linux on the server is easier and faster (CentOS) to setup for most situations. On the desktop, I would argue that Windows is easier to setup and run, primarily because of the number of applications and auto-installing CDs made specifically for each brand of computer. The maintenance on Windows desktops is much higher, due to updates, AV, etc. Windows 7 is easier than previous versions, but still not as easy to update as Linux, from my experience, using both.

This is why that I (and many others) still use Windows on most desktops, but Linux exclusively on the servers.

Re:Pftt

[somersault]

People are idiots. It's not a conspiracy. I suggested moving a couple of people to Linux/OpenOffice recently and even the one other UT guy here said no, without even an explanation of why not and I couldn't be bothered to press it at that point in time. I think his main reasoning is probably because he'd be the one having to help them out if something went wrong. He's happy to use Windows 7 and iOS but when it comes to Linux, he hasn't even tried it out yet.

I've been using it to do my work here for the last couple of years, and while I'm a fairly unique case in that I'm developing web apps, there are some people who only use email and office suites who would be perfect candidates to switch. The main problem is just that people are scared of change, and even when they are aware of alternatives, if they hear that they are free they automatically assume that they are inferior. It's a pretty natural reaction because most people learn to be wary of "free" stuff in life.

As people become more aware of the alternatives, we will see a change. Small anecdote: my aunt bought a new computer recently and didn't realise that it didn't come with MS Office. I told her about OOo so that she could give it a test before deciding if she wanted to actually spend money on MS Office, and she thought it was great.

In the business world I've never been able to advocate OOo before as it didn't have a replacement for Outlook (and no other email clients I've seen had working Exchange integration), but I see that Evolution has a Windows version now, so I will start advocating this setup where I feel it is relevant and not too likely to freak people out :P

You also have to be aware that there are not decent OSS alternatives for every piece of software. If some Windows software doesn't have an OSS equivalent and won't run on WINE, then there is no way of using OSS to cut costs in that particular situation.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

We have some software at work where they won't sell us the software licenses without paying for support....open source software would eliminate that possibility.

Re:Pftt

[Pharmboy]

Red Hat has a market cap of over 5 billion. Doesn't that count as a multi-billion dollar company?

Re:Pftt

[Culture20]

I have used Linux systems that where 5 years old and had never been rebooted and you can't say that about windows.

I can. Just 5 years ago, I remember finding a Win98se box hidden behind a cabinet at a major company. Its role was to run a red-light-messageboard. You know the kind: the messages "pass" across a small window spelled out in red lights. It hadn't been on for 5 years, but 3 years straight is pretty good. It wasn't on the network, and IIRC it only had a modem, so I let it do its thing. If Windows isn't *used* (especially on the 'net), then it can be pretty rock-solid.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes Windows so horrible to maintain? All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install.

Do that in our datacenter. Try running many thousands of services and you'll quickly realize that you have to hire 20 windows admins to run the same stuff as of 10 Linux admins - without counting the security implications and how much storage and RAM you have to buy.

Re:Pftt

[Pharmboy]

Apple is a company that USES SOME open source software, yet keeps the most important bits hidden in secrecy, and the vast majority of their products are 100% closed source. IBM would be a better analog, although most of their products are closed source as well.

Re:Pftt

[Nadaka]

Windows does not come with office or easy to use software repositories. Many linux distro's do come with open office and software repositories.

Re:Pftt

[somersault]

Oops. I meant "other IT guy". Technically I'm the higher ranking IT staffer, but since he handles most of the IT support issues these days (leaving me with time to do programming and browse ./ !) then I'm not going to push too hard for something where I'm going to be getting phoned in the middle of the night with support calls.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes Windows so horrible to maintain? All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install. After that the system usually has everything the user needs (web browser, Microsoft Office, etc).

You're adorable. Don't forget to take your gout medication, nana.

And I can't get it to talk to my Netscape ISP.

Wait.. what?

Re:Pftt

[betterunixthanunix]

There is also more money in the enterprise market; Red Hat is not an exception here. It is pretty hard to convince home users to pay yearly fees for software, yet somehow companies manage to get away with that tactic when it comes to enterprise contracts.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

I think you'll find the same thing is happening in the Media industry. People's ability to download movies, songs, books for free is devaluing the time and wages of the creators.

Are you trying to say that downloading and using open source software is equivalent to mass copyright infringement of music, books, and movies? That's patently ridiculous.

Proprietary software writers aren't "losing" money because somebody chooses a competitor. It wasn't their money in the first place and historic profits do not grant you the undying right to future profits.

The only way closed source software writers lose money is if someone actually pirates their stuff that would have paid had the pirated copy not been available. FLOSS has absolutely nothing to do with that at all.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo is the "easiest" linux I've ever used. If you're an idiot YMMV.

Re:Pftt

[Skuld-Chan]

Windows is difficult to install? Do you drag your knuckles along the ground too? Its the only one on that list that actually goes out to a 3rd party driver repository to find drivers for my computer to make things work properly. Failing that it pops up notifications with links where I can get device drivers for my scanner or webcam or whatever.

Sorry but there are Linux installers out there still that don't work on my display adapter (Ubuntu on my Shuttle PC - works on the VGA port, but not the HDMI port...), can't figure out what kind of keyboard you have and most make zero effort to figure out if your scanner, network adapter or 3D video card are functioning at all. Windows 7 installed seamlessly on the same machine.

Solaris - I'll give that it works pretty well for actually getting it on the machine. Never mind when you have it installed and NOTHING WORKS properly without installing a lot of hotfixes/patches etc etc. Seriously - I think we should be beyond the problem that when I hit the backspace key - it should back up over the text I typed. Last I checked - that doesn't work out of the box in Solaris 10 in all apps. Heaven help you if you want to install Solaris X86 on anything but the exact specified hardware - I admit I haven't done that in ages, but last time it was a real pita.

Mac OSX Leopard wouldn't install on my G4 Powerbook - it claimed that I didn't meet the requirements (I more than did). The Apple tech told me I probably had 3rd party memory in the machine (which I did!) and it wouldn't install because of that. I has to use an openfirmware hack to make it install at all... That's bull-crap.

I run a bunch of labs at a local community college however - 200 misc dell Optiplex machines. Some are over 5+ years old (Optiplex 520). Windows 7 installed and runs like a top on every single one of them without me tweaking anything and they all support Aero - and Microsoft's image toolkit made it relatively easy to customize the installer.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary, if the source is open, you can fix (with in-house devs or paid for hire bug wranglers) and send the vendor a patch. This is priceless, because not only do you improve the product for yourself, you are making a social payment (How would you even quantify this? I think it's orders of magnitude greater than money.) to the vendor by allowing all of their customers to benefit with this patch.

If the vendor has crappy code, it's much easier to tell since it's open. In-house developers and those they can influence will discourage using those products.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeh, but you can't defy the laws of basic economics for that long and expect to get the same fiscal results of your proprietary counterparts. Sure, open source (and I'm a strong advocate of it) is about services vs. product license sales. But what most forget is that the cost of goods sold in the services business is directly linked to the income derrived (ie. one hour of labor sold = one hour of labor cost). Product sales, after R&D, manufacturing, etc. is completed, is only affected in cost of sales by the distribution costs (ie. packaging, delivery, etc.) and marketing/sales costs. With downloads being the primary method of distribution, its basically minimal cost of goods sold but higher advertising, sales, etc. Hence massive revenues for companies that actually get the product right and are able to succeed in sales/marketing at realistically low expense. But the cost of entry is high in that they have to fund the initial development work before any sales are realized.

I think its unrealistic to expect open source companies to be matching product sales based companies on revenue. However where they can be compared (and probably win out) is in the profit of the company. Since open source development doesn't necessarily have to be as high a cost to originate the product in the first place, and sales/marketing is mainly viral since you are giving away the product for free, they win out in that area.

Personally I couldn't care less about the revenue figures - its all about profit and that is where the financial comparison should be made. In this area, I think you'll find open source companies holding their own very well.

Re:Pftt

[certain death]

what the fuck is a netscape ISP? Is someone actually still giving free dialup out?

Re:Pftt

[ultranova]

Open Source is only 90% cheaper if your time is worth 10%.

Very good, Larry. Short, but pointless.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

That is 100% true!!!!
Now imagine situation, users(more like companies) of commercial software discover themselves in the world of open software, their next action is to drop their paid products once they "expire"!!!

And if they don't need support, than commercial software will also die out!

Re:Pftt

[ultranova]

Are you trying to say that downloading and using open source software is equivalent to mass copyright infringement of music, books, and movies? That's patently ridiculous.

Except from a software vendors point of view it is, in fact, equivalent. All competition is.

Proprietary software writers aren't "losing" money because somebody chooses a competitor. It wasn't their money in the first place and historic profits do not grant you the undying right to future profits.

They "lose" money in exactly the same way as they "lose" money when you pirate a program: in the form of potential profits.

The only way closed source software writers lose money is if someone actually pirates their stuff that would have paid had the pirated copy not been available. FLOSS has absolutely nothing to do with that at all.

This isn't true. Just like pirated copy of Photoshop is alternative to paying for it, so is Gimp. FOSS competes with proprietary software, just like pirated copies do, and competition lowers profits, which is apparently counted as "loss" by you.

Either FOSS causes losses to proprietary software vendors by giving people alternatives to paying for software, or piracy doesn't either. Either not getting as much profit as you might have in some hypothethical alternative reality is a loss or it isn't. You can't have it both ways.

Re:Pftt

[Retric]

"I can... only three years" so in other words you can't. Anyway, there have been windows boxes that sit around for about that long, but they don't get software updates etc.

PS: This was a backend database for a currier company. It was running Oracle 8i and some other miscellaneous software and saw fairly heavy use, (Dual CPU's at around ~80% for several hours a day with some peeks at 100.) It was patched and several new pieces of software where installed or updated with no major issues.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

I'm not even going to bother arguing with you but I will leave you with this thought experiment:

Go write some software and start a company. Charge whatever you want for your stuff. When tax time rolls around, I want you to claim all of these "losses" to the IRS.

Re:Pftt

[alexborges]

The incredibles and Wall-E are CRAP

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, let's play...

Why do you rate Windows the worst and Linux the best? What makes Windows so horrible to maintain? All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install. After that the system usually has everything the user needs (web browser, Microsoft Office, etc).

Until the user has a problem, which never seems to take very long after the initial install. I am referring to viruses, spyware, etc. Setting up the anti-virus and anti-spyware is not that tough, but sometimes they cause side effects that are almost as bad as the malware they are preventing. Let's move on to applications. Configuring Outlook can be dead-simple -- or it can be a nightmare of mysterious failures to shut down with a 45-minute "database rebuild" every time you start it up. Lastly, there is the registry. If you wanted to deploy a system to deliberately conceal problems from administrators, the registry would be a good start.

And what makes Linux so easy? In my experience it's a pain in the ass - for example my Linux laptop refuses to execute flash websites (like disney.com or tv.com). And I can't get it to talk to my Netscape ISP.

Flash is a bit tedious, and I have to waste a few minutes on it every time Firefox upgrades. Adobe could made easier, but for whatever reason they don't. If Flash is your top complaint, you're digging deep to find one. As for your "Netscape ISP", I am rather puzzled, since Firefox is the modern version of the original Netscape browser. Speaking of browsers and standards compatibility, it is MS in general (IE6 in particular) that causes non-standard browser behavior. Web designers are becoming less and less willing to hard-code their websites for the anomalies of IE6, so Firefox, Safari, Chome, (and yes, even IE8) represent the new generation of standards awareness. W3C standards go back to the beginning of the web itself. No one company has such amazing market share that they can do what MS did with IE6. And that's a good thing.

As for ease of installation, I see nothing in Ubuntu that is any more difficult than "popping in CD" as you would for Windows. Unlike Windows, there is only one prompt in Ubuntu that users frequently change from the default (include non-GPL software Y/N?).

Ubuntu aside for the moment, traditional Linux distributions are easier for professionals, especially those who want to deploy consistent settings across non-identical hardware. Sure, you can create a system image on Windows, but it quickly deteriorates when the latest laptop is slightly different than the one you started with. As for rogue users, administrative lockdown of user privileges is (a) easier and (b) less necessary on Linux.

Windows is easier for people who have never done anything else. There is an entire generation of IT people who don't know how to work any other way. We can only hope that some will mature into cross-platform professionals, for whom no OS presents much of a challenge.

Re:Pftt

[Culture20]

"I can... only three years" so in other words you can't.

Since the general implication is that Linux == never reboot and Windows == reboot weekly if not daily, then I think that 3 years can easily be equated with 5 years. I rarely see more than nine months uptime for most of my Linux boxes. BTW, unless that Linux machine was off of the 'net it was in serious need of a reboot for a kernel update. five years is a long time for a remote exploit (even just DoS from NIC drivers) to potentially not get patched.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah right. because everything works in linux. always. no driver workaround required.

just install vlc, open any video file and go fullscreen, and everything works magically.

or put an hdmi tv as a secondary screen, and then magically everything is just fine.

yeah right.

Re:Pftt

[badran]

You my friend do not have any relatives that need to be connected to The Internet.

With Ubuntu, most issues can be resolved via ssh.... And I have not had any issues at all.

Skype, works.
Firefox and Opera, work.
Flash, works.

Viruses and Malware, does not work.

Re:Pftt

[quantumplacet]

meme /mim/ Show Spelled[meem] Show IPA
–noun
a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.

I think it means exactly what I think it means.

Re:Pftt

[ultranova]

What if I don't need support? That's why Red Hat and other liberated software companies will probably never see 1 billion. Bottom Line: A lot of us are cheapasses. ;-)

A specialized technician will likely still fix the problem faster than a jack-of-all-trades, even if the jack can do it too. That's why division of labour exists in the first place.

So, as the company size grows, it will eventually become cheaper to call a specialist than try to fix things yourself, or even arrange one to come in periodically to ensure that everything keeps runnign smoothly. In the meantime, getting you used to using RHLinux will make it more likely that you keep using it until that treshold is reached.

Even a cheapass is likely to end up buying things rather than doing them himself, simply because the opportunity cost is greater.

Re:Pftt

[dnahelicase]

Why do you rate Windows the worst and Linux the best? What makes Windows so horrible to maintain?

AV Antirivus Pro, Windows Security Pro, and all the people-management time it takes to try and get them to NOT click on the flash player update that comes from "Your facebook friend" that sent you a video.

All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install.

And then run windows update/microsoft update 7 times (last time I did it) with reboots between each.

After that the system usually has everything the user needs (web browser, Microsoft Office, etc).

Again, providing you've run the updates, installed office, passed the genuine advantage for windows and then registered Office successfully. That is assuming you have a VLK and don't have to talk to a call center somewhere and read them a crazy long string of numbers hoping they don't ask you about the machine that crashed or you otherwise don't use the license on anymore.

And what makes Linux so easy? In my experience it's a pain in the ass - for example my Linux laptop refuses to execute flash websites (like disney.com or tv.com). And I can't get it to talk to my Netscape ISP.

Then you're doing it wrong. I can stick an ubuntu CD in any Dell or lenovo we have sitting around here, run the updates once, and have a fully functional, up-to-date system.

Re:Pftt

[Culture20]

Windows is difficult to install?

Ignoring the fact that this is a straw man (I never said install; I said setup and maintenance, of which install is only a small portion of setup)... yes, Windows can be difficult to install. I've had many occasions where NIC drivers didn't exist for a box I was installing windows on, so sneakernet was my only option for driver installation.

Do you drag your knuckles along the ground too?

Seriously? At least now I know you're trolling.

I run a bunch of labs at a local community college however - 200 misc dell Optiplex machines. Some are over 5+ years old (Optiplex 520). Windows 7 installed and runs like a top on every single one of them without me tweaking anything

Bully for you. I bet someone had to tweak ADS to get those lab machines running locked down and to prevent them from sleeping, install MS .msis, etc. Probably someone else? Regarding maintenance, does Windows regularly update all of the software on the system for you, or do you have to apply remote patches for Adobe/foxit/Firefox/whatever, or maybe reimage the labs semi-monthly? With the exception of reboots after kernel updates, there's no reason to touch the *nix machines; they update all of their own software. In fact, you could run a simple cron job to reboot if it detected a new kernel installed and no user processes (just like Windows' automatic update system, except usually only quarterly for kernel updates).

Re:Pftt

[DDLKermit007]

Actually that's part of it as well. Instead of paying for licenses, and support, people who work with open source software often make a good chunk more than their proprietary cousin's, and still have money left over for a support contract probably. People who can admin a Windows server are a dime a dozen (part of what I do sadly atm). People who can run an open source alternative are notably more scarce. You will pay about the same in either case, but in one, the money is going to someone you can hold accountable that can't say "it's not my fault, wait for patch Tuesday".

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

>>>The P2P demographic is young adult male. Geek.

I don't agree. Please provide proof to back-up your claim that downloading free movies, music, books is male only. And geek only

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is difficult to install? Do you drag your knuckles along the ground too? Its the only one on that list that actually goes out to a 3rd party driver repository to find drivers for my computer to make things work properly. Failing that it pops up notifications with links where I can get device drivers for my scanner or webcam or whatever.

Yeah, that's great and all, but after you install Windows, you have to install Office and Photoshop and Illustrator and Visual Studio and Matlab and Acrobat reader. It takes all day to make a functional Windows computer.

When I've had trouble with linux devices, it's because the hardware vendor doesn't support linux and doesn't make linux drivers. You may as well ask why you can't get AppleCare for your HP, or claim it's Windows' fault that you can't use your NuBus video card.

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

>>>Are you trying to say that downloading and using open source software is equivalent to mass copyright infringement of music, books, and movies?

Strawman argument.

>>>Proprietary software writers aren't "losing" money because somebody chooses a competitor

And again.

Please don't put words into my mouth I did not say. I was merely stating that when people can get stuff for free via download (whether it's movies or OS software) that will tend to drive down the wages of the people creating the product. It's the same way that wooden carriage makers' wages plummeted after most people switched to alternatives.

Re:Pftt

[Xacid]

"I can't get Windows 7 to talk to my scanner."

Not to be an ass...okay, well to be a little bit of an ass - are you sure it's plugged in? I'm a sysadmin for a Windows-based network and the hardware support under Windows 7 has been damned near amazing compared to trying to find a driver all across the internet for every little thing that Ubuntu doesn't come ready for.

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

My PC, when I run the restore CD, installs both Vista and Microsoft Office and a few other useful programs. It's ready to use out of the box with no modifications needed for the typical office or home user.

>>>Which Linux?

Ubuntu 9.0 - every time I try to install Flash, it goes to the 90% mark and then generates an error about not having root privileges. I've tried multiple times to log-in as root, but I just keep getting the same error. At this point I'll probably just wipe it clean with a fresh Ubuntu 10.0 install

>>>you talk to your ISP

"Sorry we don't support any OS but Windows 98, XP, Vista, and Seven." No Mac. No Linux.

Re:Pftt

[TheRealMindChild]

Have you ever USED OpenOffice productively? I say "used" intentionally, because you can't be productive in it, unless you are typing up a resume that you are going to fax to someone. So if you ever used it, you have already stopped. Almost all office suite users use MS Office of some sort. OpenOffice is LUCKY if it get even half of a Word document formatted correctly when opened up in MS Office. Calc is a joke and not even comparable to Excel. Evolution is a piece of garbage that constantly crashes... even on Linux.

I used to drink the same Kool-aid as you. Then I actually opened my eyes.

Re:Pftt

[rawler]

I have a full MSDN subscription, which would cost me piles of money but most likely costs my employer very little per head. I can download and use and develop with anything I want, for free. It only costs money because the production servers have to be fully licensed and legit.

Very insightful.

Just a reflection though; under Ubuntu, "I can download and use and develop with anything I want, for free.", except the CentOS production server software is also free.

The main holdout for Microsoft I think is still market inertia. Noone got fired for buying Microsoft. (Except perhaps the guys behind London Stock Exchange).

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

>>>what the fuck is a netscape ISP? Is someone actually still giving free dialup out?

I'm sorry, but was this really that difficult to figure out? If I said "AOL ISP" or "Earthlink ISP", would you be confused what I meant? Then neither should you be confused when I say "Netscape ISP". It's self-explanatory. - And no it's not free. It's what I use when I'm bouncing from hotel-to-hotel room, and therefore don't have access to my home DSL service:

http://www.getnetscape.com/

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

>>>Are you trying to say that downloading and using open source software is equivalent to mass copyright infringement of music, books, and movies?

Strawman argument.

Not at all. Here's the rundown: larrybagina started out with this flame:

Open Source is only 90% cheaper if your time is worth 10%.

To which you responded thusly:

I think you'll find the same thing is happening in the Media industry. People's ability to download movies, songs, books for free is devaluing the time and wages of the creators.

You said right there that p2p piracy is the "same thing" as open source being 90 percent cheaper blah blah blah thus equating piracy with using open source. How is me challenging exactly what you said a strawman? If you misspoke, just move on and do better next time.

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

>>>Why would Apple not be considered an "open source"

Where did I say it wasn't?

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

>>>No, you need to take the total cost of ownership (TCO) into account.

That's true. I've found that Ubuntu 9.0 has had a higher "cost" in terms of hours than Windows XP or Vista ever cost me. I like that Ubuntu Linux is free, but not that it's labor intensive.

Re:Pftt

[certain death]

Wireless?!? I don't understand how anything Netscape is still around, that was what threw the sand in my gears.

Re:Pftt

[egork]

Very large companies need to have a disaster recovery plan in place, and contacts to call when downtime is costing money. ... So you don't modify the code, and you buy the support package.

#
Very large companies would die if they loose their key personnel, because it's the very reason they grew big. I doubt any vendor can do enough to rescue such a company in a case of a disaster.

Re:Pftt

[samkass]

Actually, the vast majority of their products are some combination of open and closed source. Their operating system kernel is completely open source, as is the core of their browser (which has since become the core of a large number of other browsers) and JavaScript engine. Their WebDAV and CalDAV implementations are rather nice and they've open-sourced those. They contribute quite a lot to LLVM and created clang as a front-end to it, thus giving the open source community a choice besides the gcc toolchain. They open-sourced their new "FaceTime" video conferencing implementation. Bonjour, Quicktime Streaming Server, Grand Central Dispatch (along with the blocks extension to C), and a zillion contributions to smaller projects.

In general, Apple contributes more man-hours of development into open source than most companies that are given the "open source" label. But because they don't toe the FSF line and prefer BSD to GPL, a lot of the "free" software folks try to make it seen like Apple is some sort of draconian force in the FOSS community.

Re:Pftt

[antirelic]

A lot of company aren't cheap asses, but instead like to make the most from their money. Companies that provide support to open source products need to figure out better ways to generate cash. Our shop is heavily open source, but we also pay for software. We put the money we do not spend on things like operating systems into more hardware. The money doesn't "disappear" or go under some rich white guys mattress. It goes into more resources to accomplish the core goal of the company which is to sell a product (which isn't computer related, but the saved money still gets invested into IT).

Here is the secret that Red Hat is missing, and other open source companies are quickly figuring out. And since I dont ever plan on being an owner of a software company, I'll tell the world for free. Turning "open source software" into an "appliance" is where all the real money is going, and is the reason why Apple, a HUGE consumer of open source, is a multi-billion dollar company, and Red Hat is more and more becoming yesterdays news.

Re:Pftt

[TheCarp]

> Why do you rate Windows the worst and Linux the best? What makes Windows so horrible to maintain? All you have to do is
> pop-in a CD and install. After that the system usually has everything the user needs (web browser, Microsoft Office, etc).

Devil is always in the details. Actually, compared to a linux system, Windows is pretty, spartan. Everything a user needs? Office? Office is a separate product. Many linux distros install OpenOffice by default though, so thats a definite 1-up for Linux.

> And what makes Linux so easy? In my experience it's a pain in the ass - for example my Linux laptop refuses to execute flash
> websites (like disney.com or tv.com). And I can't get it to talk to my Netscape ISP.

Well, mine has no issue. It still doesn't execute much flash since I use noscript and tend to feel that removal of flash represents lossless compression of data and an overall improvement of my web browsing experience. However, in those rare moments when I am heading to youtube or want to play a flash game, it seldom lets me down.

And um...Netscape is an ISP now? still? I mean... really? Different Netscape?

-Steve

Re:Pftt

[oblio_one]

I'm no apple apologist, but OSX is obviously easier to maintain and setup then Linux (ANY) Both are within some threshold where it's basically the same, but OSX should be bottom on the list.

Re:Pftt

[hitmark]

ms office is lucky if it gets the format of a ms office file correct, the format is just that convoluted.

Re:Pftt

[dcavanaugh]

Very large companies need to have a disaster recovery plan in place, and contacts to call when downtime is costing money. Especially outsourcing or service providers.

So far, so good.

If you run linux in this environment, "my team knows linux" is not going to cut it.

"My team knows Windows" is not going to cut it either.

You want to be able to place the blame on the "vendor" as opposed to being responsible yourself.

Wrong. You need to solve the problem. If you trust the vendors more than you trust yourself, go directly to fail. Even under ideal circumstances the "blame the vendor" excuse only works for about 15 seconds. Your employer does not view the vendor as the "last line of defense" -- you are. In the event of catastrophic meltdown, the vendor will probably survive (regardless of fault). Will you?

So you don't modify the code, and you buy the support package.

I wouldn't go rolling my own version of OpenOffice (or anything else). Fortunately, there is seldom any need to do this (on any platform). As for support, it's like prescription medication. If the doctor writes a prescription and the pharmacy gives you pills, maybe everything is fine. But not every health problem can be solved this way, nor is every IT issue resolved by vendor support. What happens then?

Red Hat should be very profitable, given that, except Microsoft makes sweetheart deals with the big companies to keep them using microsoft tools. I have a full MSDN subscription, which would cost me piles of money but most likely costs my employer very little per head. I can download and use and develop with anything I want, for free. It only costs money because the production servers have to be fully licensed and legit.

Microsoft is everywhere, so they can afford to give away freebies, charge for just the production installs, and still make boatloads of cash. If you take a look at the revenue compared to actual software usage, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Microsoft is giving away as much or more software than Red Hat. Direct end-user sales are just the icing on the cake - someone paying full price for Windows is very rare, it's usually OEM cost, which is approximately 10% of the cost.

MS does a nifty job of shifting the cost to the end user desktop (CALs and MS Office), along with the server side (MSSQL, etc.) Agreed, the cost of MSDN is not all that much, but the maintenance on everything really adds up. Red Hat can easily undercut MS on price, as they have so many products that are created at no cost to them. MSDN freebies aside, the average Windows PC has about $500-$1000 of software on board: Windows, Office, CALs (Exchange, MSSQL, Windows itself). There is SOME money to be saved on open source licensing, but the real savings are elsewhere...

So Red Hat's numbers are probably not far off Microsoft's numbers, it's just reported as software sales vs. support costs. And even that difference is a technicality - Microsoft still charges for support depending on what you need and where you got the software.

Fundamentally, it's the same business model. Give lots of software away and make up for the sales losses with support charges - but with OEMs in the middle it's not transparent to the end users. Only the businesses see how the model truly works.

To me, the final frontier is support [labor] cost. By that I don't mean the MS or Red Hat call center, but the local staff who take care of everyday operations. In many companies, an army of help desk technicians fights the daily fight with classic PC problems: user error, virus, spyware, Outlook, or (worst of all) helping users deal with the limitations imposed by the local IT department. I have worked in companies where an army of MCSEs is ready to pounce on every helpdesk ticket -- and yet downtime is a major issue on the server

Re:Pftt

[GasparGMSwordsman]

I don't know where you're getting your Windows CD's but I've never seen one that came with a preinstalled copy of Office. However, practically every copy of Linux comes with OpenOffice.org.

Oh so you are not actually talking about the OS. You are talking about nine different subjects and blaming the OS when you have to do work.

Look the OS setup is pretty easy for the entire list. UNTIL you get into some odd (or non-common) hardware configuration. Then they all go to hell (but some are much better than others).

If you want to have a separate discussion about APPLICATIONS or DISTRIBUTION PACKAGES then we can do that too. Ever look on HP or Dell's site, they sell Windows machines that come pre-installed with MS Office, or Open Office. The OEM install disc has an install image with everything included. There are DOZENS of OEM pre-installed setups you can choose from. How is that any different from some distro's set of pre-installed apps? Answer: It isn't, but that has nothing to do with the OS.

Re:Pftt

[tendrousbeastie]

I think in 2010 we're only going to go so far with the driver issues between Windows and Ubuntu.

For every person who had a Ubuntu install 'just work' on a clean install there is another who had the same on Win7. For every person who could find the driver from the manufacturer's site within 2 minutes on Windows there is a ubuntu user who didn't have to in the first place. For every person who had a wifi card not work on Linux there is a Win7 user who can't get their scanner to work.

My experience is that I have had a harder time with Ubuntu than Win7, but I accept that someone else may have quite legitimately had the exact opposite experience.

If you want to bring up specific instances of Windows not grabbing drivers properly you're opening yourself up to a hundred counter examples of Ubuntu doing the same (and it would be the same if the OSes were switched).

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

Your revision.

My PC, when I run the restore CD, installs both Vista and Microsoft Office and a few other useful programs.

Now, what you originally said.

All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install. After that the system usually has everything the user needs (web browser, Microsoft Office, etc).

Note the bolded words. Don't say one thing and then when you are challenged try to backpedal and pretend you said something else. You may have a special restore CD that has Office, etc. but that is extremely atypical. As a matter of fact, you are damn lucky to get any CD at all these days with a new PC much less a restore CD.

Ubuntu 9.0 - every time I try to install Flash, it goes to the 90% mark and then generates an error about not having root privileges. I've tried multiple times to log-in as root, but I just keep getting the same error. At this point I'll probably just wipe it clean with a fresh Ubuntu 10.0 install

When you get 10.04 installed, click on Applications in the upper left hand menu and then click Ubuntu Software Center. When it pops up, the search box will be auto-selected so just start typing Adobe Flash Plugin. When it finds it (and it will), click "Install". Works every time. Now, you can enjoy all the dancing monkeys and kitten videos your heart can endure.

"Sorry we don't support any OS but Windows 98, XP, Vista, and Seven." No Mac. No Linux.

I imagine my scanner OEM will say something pretty similar about Windows 7.

Re:Pftt

[DaFallus]

I don't know where you're getting your Windows CD's but I've never seen one that came with a preinstalled copy of Office. However, practically every copy of Linux comes with OpenOffice.org.

If Windows came with a full version of Office, people would, rightfully, be screaming bloody murder about monopoly abuse. However, I have seen certain manufacturers include a trial version of Office 2007 as part of the crapware in their default image.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have to do is pop-in a CD and install. After that the system usually has everything the user needs (web browser, Microsoft Office, etc).

I don't know where you're getting your Windows CD's but I've never
seen one that came with a preinstalled copy of Office. However, practically
every copy of Linux comes with OpenOffice.org.

If we're counting 3rd rate editors, Windows comes with wordpad. :p Face it Office >> OpenOffice

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, as long as Linux supports your hardware, and the software you want to use, and as long as you don't update it (since doing so with most package managers seems to break something or other), and as long as you don't write any software that tries to deal with the constantly moving targets of even the core Linux libraries, and so on and so on...

Windows may not be a popular choice here, but it's much easier to set up than Linux is. It's also easier to maintain, but Linux is much closer in this regard. You shouldn't let your fanatical support for Linux cloud the facts.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

Can I edit spreadsheets in Wordpad? If not then we're talking about two different classes of products.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

If Windows came with a full version of Office, people would, rightfully, be screaming bloody murder about monopoly abuse. However, I have seen certain manufacturers include a trial version of Office 2007 as part of the crapware in their default image

We all lie in the beds we make. Even the mightiest among us.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

Oh so you are not actually talking about the OS. You are talking about nine different subjects and blaming the OS when you have to do work.

I'm talking about what the person I replied to was talking about. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Pftt

[LWATCDR]

To me devices like the iPad and PS3 are choices.
They do not prevent me from writing code for a different device or even creating a different device.
Take the iPad. Right now there are many other tablets getting ready to go to market. They are going to be based on Linux and Linux plus Android. Maybe Palm/Linux
But if Microsoft or Apple can prevent them from coming to market with software patents...

To me they are the head, heart, and belly of the beast.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said. And might I add, that this puts you in a precarious position, i.e. vendor lock-in.

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

>>>You said right there that p2p piracy is the "same thing" as open sourc

No I didn't. I said the *falling value of wages* (time worth 10% as much) is the same phenomenon affecting both OSS and Media industries. Not immediately of course, but over time that's what will happen. Ease-of-access to free stuff by consumers will drive down the wages for the creators.

Next time try reading the WHOLE message, not just the first two sentences.

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

Yeah except it wasn't just this Vista PC. My Windows XP machine came with Microsoft Office, as does my Windows 98 laptop. I thought that was standard procedure - the restore disc includes BOTH Windows and Office - so I found it strange to hear someone say it doesn't.

>>>I imagine my scanner OEM will say something pretty similar about Windows 7

Doubt it. Since Windows 7 == NT 6.1 and Vista == NT 6.0, you probably won't have any problem. Seven is just Vista SP2 - it can use Vista drivers without any problem.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

Next time try reading the WHOLE message, not just the first two sentences.

It's one thing to have an intentionally ambiguous opening line as a hook and then elaborate on it with the rest of the message. That's not what you did. You stated in no uncertain terms that one thing was the "same thing" as the other when it is indeed not no matter how you try to spin it.

Maybe next time, make sure your entire message is coherent and self-consistent. Stating one thing in the first 2 lines and then trying to sculpt in into something entirely else in the rest of your message isn't fooling anybody.

Re:Pftt

[commodore64_love]

Wireless costs too much. We're talking $50/month versus $7. I'll stick with Netscape ISP
.
>>>I don't understand how anything Netscape is still around

At one point or another, you've used Firefox, seaMonkey or Flock haven't you? Their source (mozilla) was created by Netscape, so yes it's still around. As for the browser, its latest version is NN9 from 2008.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

Yeah except it wasn't just this Vista PC. My Windows XP machine came with Microsoft Office, as does my Windows 98 laptop. I thought that was standard procedure - the restore disc includes BOTH Windows and Office

No way unless you bought them specifically like that which, again, is a highly unusual scenario. Many computers come with a trial version of Office but that is as much "Office" as a shareware game is the game, i.e., it isn't.

Doubt it. Since Windows 7 == NT 6.1 and Vista == NT 6.0, you probably won't have any problem. Seven is just Vista SP2 - it can use Vista drivers without any problem.

The only drivers on the manufacturer's site are for 2k/XP and 7 couldn't "find" any.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't get Windows 7 to talk to my scanner. I'll talk to my scanner manufacturer and you talk to your ISP.

Not to spoil the joke, but Netscape ISP/dial-up is rebranded AOL and it works with my Linux everyday (no other ISP at home and yes I enjoy the $7/month price tag). All you require is a user name and password and standard PPP software

Re:Pftt

[Skuld-Chan]

I did kinda go strawman there, but honestly - my point was Windows is easier to actually setup in most cases. That was my argument. I've never had to

And on the lab machines - many of the policies I was using for the existing XP/Vista machines worked on 7. All the updates are handled by Microsoft System Center, and I think that's pretty easy to use, but it seems to scare some people. Anyhow the daily maintainence window is 11pm - 7am (although it usually is not that long) and sometimes earlier depending on the lab and the classes scheduled in there. I actually do all the system center config stuff myself - its a small school, same with gpo's - none of this stuff is hard.

And no - Unix doesn't just update all of its software. We have a HP-UX mini (running Unisys on Itanium CPU) that if it updated itself I'd be without a database and a lot of angry staff. Reason being - not a single update I've seen for that goes smoothly and usually requires a fair amount of downtime. Saying Unix just updates itself is really a generalization. Every single update for HP-UX same thing - usually requires some assistance from a support engineer (for liability if nothing else).

Re:Pftt

[Skuld-Chan]

Not really - I image everything using Sysprep and WAIK (basically the front end for sysprep). You can reboot the machine and bootstrap off system center remotely and deploy the entire PC without touching the system itself - assuming you know its MAC address.

Not kidding here guys - MS has made this really convenient. Yes there are bugs and work-arounds with this process, but I honestly can't think of anything like this for any of the OS's mentioned above, and I've been in the business for a while.

Re:Pftt

[somersault]

Evolution did used to crash a lot when searching in Ubuntu 9. It's been solid in 10 though.

I use OpenOffice from time to time to append data to spreadsheets yes, but no I don't have any real use for word processors and such. I know a few people who use it though and they seem to like it. Going between MS Office and OOo isn't perfect for sure, but neither is going between different versions of Office. If OOo works consistently in itself then it's fine, the rest is the usual MS bullshit.

I'm very happy with Ubuntu. Maybe not as happy as my Amiga days, but it's the best option for me at the moment.

Re:Pftt

[Undead Waffle]

I'm not a huge fan of OpenOffice myself but I prefer Writer to Word. I can't stand the ribbon for one. Also, when you put an image into Word it tries to be "smart" about the placement and as a result moves everything all over the place. Writer lets me put the image exactly where I want it without trying to "help".

And Calc is a decent replacement for 90% of Excel users, though it does break down when you try to do more advanced things.

Re:Pftt

[Undead Waffle]

ms office is lucky if it gets the format of a ms office file correct, the format is just that convoluted.

At work we have a bunch of .xls files. We use Excel 2003 files because we have a mix of 2003 and 2007. Every time you save these files in 2007 it complains that some things are incompatible with 2003, though most of the time you just used a color 2003 doesn't support so people just ignore the error. On one of them someone managed to save the file such that when you open it in Excel 2003 all of the formatting and coloring is gone. So yeah... not even Microsoft can save their files in a compatible format.

Re:Pftt

[Skuld-Chan]

Er Unidata, not Unisys - its been a long week.

Re:Pftt

[Luke has no name]

A Fortune 500 running a RHEL server farm processing 100,000 bank transaction queries per minute and a JBoss front end is getting millions of page visits a day would want support for RHEL. And JBoss. They can have it in-house, but hiring Software Company itself (or other third party sources, usually with at least some ex-employees of Software Company) is usually the most secure option.

Re:Pftt

[51mon]

Apple get called draconian because of the things they do.

Being a good citizen in free software doesn't just mean doing those things in your own self interest to do, of which we agree Apple do a lot, but also not doing things that might be perceived as in your own short term self interest that are unethical (of which Apple also do plenty).

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

He can't be serious. If he bought a computer with GNU/Linux installed from a company that targeted non-technical users like ThinkPenguin does he wouldn't have that problem. Even though those systems might not ship with Flash they do ship with everything ready out of the box so users have a seamless experience. If users visited a site with flash it would just work or ask them to install flash just as a MS Windows user would be prompted to do-but it would be even easier because they wouldn't have to figure out which version of flash to download! They wouldn't need to figure out how to download .exe or a deb or a rpm, or a targ.gz. No, because ThinkPenguin ships software that handles all that and users just get prompted with a message saying something like "This site requires flash, would you like to install flash?" and I think it might say something about flash being non-free and explaining why they might not want to install non-free software. The whole point is GNU/Linux is easier to use than MS Windows ever was and the fact that you can point out example of shit not working has nothing to do with GNU/Linux. You can do the same with MS Windows. The problem is the manufacturers who ship it half the time. The other half is the non-free software providers of which only the free software supporters have really made an effort to do anything about to fix the problems.

Re:Pftt

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Driver wise I've had good luck with Windows 7. As long as there's a functioning network interface Windows update will pull in drivers for almost any attached devices.

Getting Windows to work from scratch takes ages, especially when you use anything that a is a bit non-mainstream. . .

getting all the apps you want to run is a hell of a lot easier when you can just do "apt-get install " instead of googling around.

Getting non-mainstream things going on linux is a lot harder than "apt-get install"

Re:Pftt

[shutdown -p now]

Just a reflection though; under Ubuntu, "I can download and use and develop with anything I want, for free."

You can, but will those free things be as good?

Re:Pftt

[eee_eff]

That is exactly right--free libre open source software (FLOSS) saves the entire economy money--everyone benefits--by producing a good for much less than it used to be produced for. That money is available to the companies that use FLOSS to spend on salaries, R&D or whatever. Incidentally, the lack of centralized projects in the FLOSS world means that it is more likely any big effort (like the Linux kernel) will be developed in many places, by many different companies, so there is no need for software companies to be so big. Remember, that is a feature, not a bug.

Re:Pftt

[vuffi_raa]

I don't know where you're getting your Windows CD's but I've never seen one that came with a preinstalled copy of Office. However, practically every copy of Linux comes with OpenOffice.org.

Office support isn't your OS, and to tell you the truth- I don't even have office installed on my main PC (well I guess that is a lie because it is on my ubuntu partition as opeoffice) because I don't use it unless I am redoing my resume or somesuch. Also preinstalling apps like that sets you up for anti-trust *koff*interneteplorerr*koff*

Re:Pftt

[rawler]

"good" is a fuzzy metric.

To the one searching for MSDN-style-tools, Linux-development is probably alien, strange and crude.

For one like me, Microsoft-centric development is mostly bloated, crippled, slow and comes with a straight-jacket I do not like to wear.

Basically, people look for familiarity most of the time. Most of the Linux criticism I hear is of the "not like Windows"-kind, which is exactly how I feel when I'm forced to deal with the corporate Microsoft environment at work. "This stupid thing doesn't work like Linux."

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, no company whose health depends on their computers wants it to stop working one day and then have no one to turn to (within 15 minutes).

Re:Pftt

[shutdown -p now]

"good" is a fuzzy metric.

"Good" may be that, but productivity is objective - defined as the number of man-hours needed to complete a given task with a given quality.

I wonder also, "Linux development" also includes things like Qt Creator for C++ (which even has keyboard shortcuts largely identical to Visual Studio), and KDevelop, and Eclipse, and NetBeans... I wouldn't say that they have some major differences from VS in terms of how you use them. So what is alien there?

I can understand if one codes strictly in C, using Vim and makefiles - then, yeah, the concept of IDE itself is already alien. But that is not a particularly productive environment, especially for in-house line of business apps.

Re:Pftt

[rawler]

I can understand if one codes strictly in C, using Vim and makefiles - then, yeah, the concept of IDE itself is already alien. But that is not a particularly productive environment, especially for in-house line of business apps.

Why specifically C? I code JavaScript, C, D Java, Python, Ruby, Shell-scripts, CSS, HTML / whatever in VIM or Kate, depending on scope.

My measured productivity (in LOC/hour) stands well to industry averages (according to COCOMO) for the languages where data is available. And I ususally complete given tasks before the consultant hired to do the job is finished configuring his/her IDE.

Sorry, I don't get your argument. Yes, an IDE may be favourable to some people, yet unfavourable to others. It depends on the projects, the person, experience, operating system...

Claiming it's generally more productive with an IDE sounds strange in my ears.

Re:Pftt

[shutdown -p now]

My measured productivity (in LOC/hour) stands well to industry averages (according to COCOMO) for the languages where data is available.

Measuring productivity in LoC is a bad practice to begin with, but if you're using Python or Ruby, and comparing to the industry average (which is mostly C/C++/Java), that's downright cheating.

nd I ususally complete given tasks before the consultant hired to do the job is finished configuring his/her IDE.

IDE configuration is a one-time job, and, frankly, it takes a few minutes at most (with VS, the only thing I do these days is change the editor font, and same for Qt Creator). So, unless you're in the business of writing "Hello, world" apps, or you hire consultants who are drop-outs from Indian universities, your claim doesn't sound realistic.

Sorry, I don't get your argument. Yes, an IDE may be favourable to some people, yet unfavourable to others. It depends on the projects, the person, experience, operating system...

Claiming it's generally more productive with an IDE sounds strange in my ears.

Yes, that is the claim, and it shouldn't sound strange to you. I mean, you don't find it strange that going by car is a faster way to get somewhere than walking - except for really short distances ("Hello, world"), right? That's because the car is explicitly designed to be faster. Similarly an Integrated Development Environment is explicitly designed to enable a developer to be more productive than a plain text editor.

Re:Pftt

[tehcyder]

Now given, Linux avoids the game patching problem mostly by not having games

It's a security feature!

Re:Pftt

[tehcyder]

If a company "loses" a sale, it has "lost" money even though it never physically had the money in the first place.

If someone downloads and uses Open Office for free-as-in-beer instead of Office, then certainly from MS's point of view they have lost a sale of Office.

It's just playing with words to say that this hasn't actually cost MS money.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

I obviously disagree. I think it's playing with words to say they have lost money. Not only that but it engender a dangerous sense of entitlement.

Re:Pftt

[oakgrove]

Crap. Posted from my phone so I'm sure you'll forgive my "i" tag bungling.

Re:Pftt

[b4dc0d3r]

"My team knows Windows" is not going to cut it either.

Who would say this? Lots of people know Linux like they know Windows, but your team has a lot of work to do before they can know Windows like someone can know Linux. If Linux is broken, you can go fix the code and not have to wait for vendor support, you don't have the option in Windows. My point is that no large company would roll their own if they could avoid it - they would go to the vendor for support, whether it's open source or not.

Wrong. You need to solve the problem. If you trust the vendors more than you trust yourself, go directly to fail. Even under ideal circumstances the "blame the vendor" excuse only works for about 15 seconds. Your employer does not view the vendor as the "last line of defense" -- you are. In the event of catastrophic meltdown, the vendor will probably survive (regardless of fault). Will you?

Of course I will. Have you ever had to deal with a client who has a contractual SLA? Whether it's down or not is the client's only concern, they don't care who is at fault. They want it fixed. They may blame you for picking a vendor that screwed up, rather than for you screwing up, but they want it fixed now. That is why you want to blame the vendor. It pushes most of the incompetence off on someone else, and you can say "we will switch vendors" if your client goes apeshit.

MSDN freebies aside, the average Windows PC has about $500-$1000 of software on board: Windows, Office, CALs (Exchange, MSSQL, Windows itself). There is SOME money to be saved on open source licensing, but the real savings are elsewhere...

I should have specifically mentioned this as a percentage, not absolute dollars, and exclude copyright infringement. Including copyright infringement I'd say Microsoft has more freebies being used. The average PC does not have Exchange nor MSSQL, and the value might be $500-$1000 but the cost to the user is nowhere near that. That's my whole point. I got offers to upgrade my productivity suite (aka Office) for maybe $100 when I bought a $300 computer. That would have been $120 for Windows Vista and Office. Value of maybe $500, cost $120. And free Works, and free other stuff I don't remember. That's my point.

Regarding your wrap-up I'll just leave this. The post I was replying to was:

What if I don't need support? That's why Red Hat and other liberated software companies will probably never see 1 billion. Bottom Line: A lot of us are cheapasses. ;-)

And I replied with "Lots of individuals don't need support, but large businesses do." I also countered "They give the software away free" with "Microsoft does too" along with my own opinion that it's all ultimately just support costs, that's why OEM deals are such great deals. The OEM has to support the customer instead of Microsoft.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

well, if you put open source applications in the cloud and offer it as on demand service - then there's real value that can be monetized. check out eazyBusiness.com - thy have brought togther a bunch of leading open source apps (CRM, ERP, Email Collab, CMS etc.) and have integrated them in the form of an ondemand business management suite and they charge only $19.95 / month for the entire suite.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the same thing. Open Source software is not illegal. However, I agree that in both cases what is really being fought is competition. FLOSS, Creative Commons, etc are an affront to the affronts to a free market that currently dominate our economy. And for that, they will meet opposition of the highest order.

Re:Pftt

[coerciblegerm]

I've actually "used" OpenOffice for about 6 years now, and I've been very productive with it. Even when opening .doc or .docx files, I rarely run into the issues you describe, and when there are problems they're minor formatting issues that are easily fixed. Just because you switched Kool-aid flavors doesn't mean you have to piss in everyone else's.

Re:Pftt

[Anonymous Coward]

Driver management is easier in Windows, especially Vista/7. Period. I have been a *n*x user for 8 years now (which of the not so many years I've been alive, is a large portion of my life) and I can say that with full confidence. It's the same reason more websites are compatible with IE than Opera (server-side; obviously FF, Opera, Chrome, etc, have work arounds to a lot of this) and that reason is that waaaay more people use it. If you're going to sell ice cream in a town where 90% of the population is allergic to chocolate ice cream, that is probably the last flavor you make sure you have. For that same reason, OEMs want to make sure they can license a driver for doze first. Combine that (driver availability) with the fact that the automatic installation is often more successful with doze at specific configurations than *n*x and overall, it is easier.

As for everything else, I agree that Ubu is probably easier, but people's experiences are so attuned to Windows that things in *n*x seem not to work when they are in fact simply not familiar. Installing something from a .deb instead of a generic executable .exe, etc.

All of that being said, I can furthermore say that I hope Windows remains incredibly familiar and easy to use, I hope that Mac and Ubu bring valiant competition and perhaps supplant it, but I furthermore hope that Linux as a whole (excluding Ubu, obviously) is as difficult to use as possible. Linux apps for linux users enhances the experience. I want more vims and fewer "draw smiley on a flash video lol"s. I want oddly specific drivers that I have to hunt for and understand, a command-line that isn't two floating heads and a mouse cursor, direct control of my OS, and all of the other things that Linux is supposed to be about. It happened to the internet when it became accessible. It started being made for the average internet user and that became the average person and those have a lot of leashes (understandably) around their necks.

just remember:

[Anonymous Coward]

the biggest linux failure of all was none other than va linux/va research/OSDN/sourceforge.net/geek.net. CAnt' wait to see what they rebrand themselves as next in an attempt to stay one step ahead of bankruptcy.

Re:just remember:

[Mathinker]

Most of us non-troll Slashdotters are also pretty curious about that. Funny, eh?

Ah, and thanks for the reminder that I was going to become a subscriber for my birthday!

Government collusion

[genrader]

Many businesses that reach billions of dollars in revenue often rely on government contracts and monopoly protection--patent law being the biggest of these. Without government interference in the economy businesses would probably be less likely to hit "billionaire" status. I don't doubt that there would still be some, just not as many. In the open source world this is (to some extent) playing out.

Re:Government collusion

[icebraining]

Exactly: it's not a bug, it's a feature. It means a healthier market were everyone can compete fairly.

Re:Government collusion

[DarrenBaker]

Competition is thriving in the open-source market, hence the lack of massive market-cap non-specialised companies. FOSS is showing capitalism how it's done.

Re:Government collusion

[drsmithy]

Many businesses that reach billions of dollars in revenue often rely on government contracts and monopoly protection--patent law being the biggest of these. Without government interference in the economy businesses would probably be less likely to hit "billionaire" status. I don't doubt that there would still be some, just not as many.

More likely there'd be just one or two, at trillionaire status, and everything else would be subsidiaries of them.

In the open source world this is (to some extent) playing out.

Open Source software (at least the GPL or similar, which is typically what people mean) is utterly dependent on the "government monopoly protection" of Copyright. Without that, you don't have "Open Source", you have "Public Domain".

Re:Government collusion

[ckaminski]

The vast majority of companies to ever reach a billion dollars have done so either through acquisition or merger. I personally can't recall a single firm that did so through organic self-growth.

Re:Government collusion

[hitmark]

some interference is better then others.

patents, in this rapidly changing world, are a weight around the neck (tho strictly speaking, software patents came into being thanks to judges, not politicians), but government regulations on business practices, while technically also being a interference, is a welcomed thing (as long as one cant just loophole around them).

Re:Government collusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Corruption. Many people never think about this.

It is a very very common practice for many big blue chip companies to hand chunky percentages of multi-million contracts to buyers.

Re:Government collusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Sure. Government is to blame.

No.

Open source has a hard time displacing higher priced, lower quality software because the executives at large companies often have a vested interest in keeping the hig dollar contracts in place. I work for a Fortune 500 that has a close relationship with a certain vendor. My company bought the software I use from at vendor, sight unseen, for millions of dollars. There is a far superior open source alternative. The support from the vendor is abysmal. (Basically a constant run around to avoid giving meaningful support, and there are so many bugs we're effectively acting as a QA team for the vendor.)

All of this after a CTO with little actual technical knowledge told us to use this vendor's product without letting us evaluate any alternatives.

So gross waste needs no government involvement at all.

Re:Government collusion

[ultranova]

More likely there'd be just one or two, at trillionaire status, and everything else would be subsidiaries of them.

And The One would, of course, control everything, and thus be an archetypical instance of a totalitarian government. In fact wasn't that the goal of fascism?

Open Source software (at least the GPL or similar, which is typically what people mean) is utterly dependent on the "government monopoly protection" of Copyright. Without that, you don't have "Open Source", you have "Public Domain".

And that's just fine, since any specialized version you might make is also in public domain. GPL exists to hack around copyright law.

Re:Government collusion

[drsmithy]

And The One would, of course, control everything, and thus be an archetypical instance of a totalitarian government. In fact wasn't that the goal of fascism?

Yes. Hence why removing laws and regulations to prevent that would be a bad thing.

And that's just fine, since any specialized version you might make is also in public domain.

Except for when it's tied down with hardware dongles, DRM, and phone-home schemes. Oh, and you can't get the source code any more, either.

GPL exists to hack around copyright law.

The GPL exists to ensure source code is available to anyone whom binaries are distributed to. It uses Copyright to achieve that goal.

No Copyright == no GPL == no source code available with distributed binaries. If the "source" part of "open source" is important to you, you need Copyright.

Re:Government collusion

[Anonymous Coward]

a single firm that did so through organic self-growth.

Bloomberg LP, for a fairly recent example.

Re:Government collusion

[tehcyder]

Competition is thriving in the open-source market, hence the lack of massive market-cap non-specialised companies. FOSS is showing capitalism how it's done.

This might be a valid point if the combined profits of all FOSS companies approached that of non-FOSS companies. Otherwise, why should capitalism care about FOSS?

Re:Government collusion

[DarrenBaker]

Capitalism shouldn't. FOSS companies are merely functioning in the manner in which capitalism should be. With concepts foreign to capitalists, such as 'competition', and 'choice', and 'failure of irrelevant companies'.

Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[linzeal]

There are almost too many to count when it comes to billion dollar companies involved in open source. They are the main motivator in new Linux kernel development and amongst 100's of other projects including Apache, Perl, MySQL etc you will find @email's from dozens of billion dollar companies in the dev-lists. O'Reilly himself squashed some of these rumors about open source himself over 11 years ago now, so why discuss this? It is just going to turn into a flame war about licenses and corporate responsibility.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[NervousWreck]

Agreed. People assume open-source means twelve-year-olds in basements and "commies." Very few think about the fact that multi-billion dollar companies are involved.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[BradleyAndersen]

I think the point here is that IBM, Intel, Xerox and the like did not start out as open source. Being involved in open source many years and many billions of dollars into running a company is not the same as starting out as open source, and leveraging that into a billion-dollar company.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[quantumplacet]

The article is talking about companies that are exclusively open source. IBM, Intel and Xerox are all involved in open source products, but all of them make three of them make their money selling proprietary, closed source hardware.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[bernywork]

Every company your talking about seems to have another business, hardware or otherwise which they derive profits from. Yes, IBM sells services for open source, they also have a HUGE mainframe business and.... actually... nope, I can't think of one industry they don't have a foot in from some angle. Intel is involved with open source, but then again, their biggest money spinner is x86 chips. Xerox makes photocopiers and printers.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[linzeal]

This is like asking why stores that only sell Organic food aren't billion dollar companies. The important part is there is Organic food and that billion dollar retail stores along with everyone else is willing to sell it to consumers and therefore purchase it from farmers, isn't it? Linux would be a far less robust and some would say elegant project if the likes of IBM and Intel were not so heavily involved.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[linzeal]

What would an open source company do, sell 1 billion dollars in software services, custom programming and support ? That is not going to happen.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[morgan_greywolf]

The article is talking about companies that are exclusively open source. IBM, Intel and Xerox are all involved in open source products, but all of them make three of them make their money selling proprietary, closed source hardware.

Okay, well, in that case there aren't any companies that are exclusively open source. Even Red Hat itself sells closed-source products. Canonical has the closed-source Ubuntu single-sign on service. You can't have a billion-dollar open source-only company if there aren't any open source-only companies. QED. We can all stop posting now, right?

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[Chris Mattern]

I think the point here is that IBM, Intel, Xerox and the like did not start out as open source.

Actually, IBM pretty much did. It wasn't until the late 1970s that they started copyrighting their code and restricting distribution of the source.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[bernywork]

Why not? There is enough government contracts and other stuff all over the world. You would end up being the size of MS to do it, but given enough time, it's plausible. As long as you don't screw up majorly and keep most of your customers happy, there is no reason why this couldn't happen.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[Jaysyn]

Horrible example. Whole foods market cap is well over 6 billion.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[Monchanger]

This is like asking why stores that only sell Organic food aren't billion dollar companies.

I think that analogy is more fitting to how Apple sells a premium product to Microsoft's Warlmart junk. Open Source doesn't see itself as being an inferior product despite providing a lower price.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[linzeal]

Great Example, Whole Foods does not sell exclusively Organic food.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[hitmark]

i wonder tho, until the 1970s, could anyone build a IBM compatible product without being lawyer stomped?

no need to worry about copyright, if the only hardware it can run on is a IBM.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[Jaysyn]

Business Summary
Whole Foods Market, Inc. engages in the ownership and operation of natural and organic food supermarkets. The company offers seafood, grocery, meat and poultry, bakery, prepared foods and catering, coffee and tea, nutritional supplements, and vitamins. It also offers specialty products, such as beer, wine, and cheese; and body care and educational products, such as books, as well as floral, pet, and household products. As of September 27, 2009, the company operated 284 stores comprising 273 stores in 38 U.S. states and the District of Columbia; 6 stores in Canada; and 5 stores in the United Kingdom. Whole Foods Market, Inc. was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.

You're picking nits.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[assertation]

Those companies are hybrids. They also make money from selling their own proprietary products.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[Anonymous Coward]

You're picking nits.

The article is picking nits. That's the point of the example!

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[Attila Dimedici]

Can you name one billion dollar company that is exclusively a software company?

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[Anonymous Coward]

"Every company your talking about seems to have another business"
You mean, like selling xbox's, music devices, phones and search engines?

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[Chris Mattern]

To a large extent that's true, and why IBM didn't bother to protect their source code. It's significant that IBM started locking up their source code when Amdahl successfully braved the legal challenges to launch the first IBM mainframe clone in 1975. However, when the source code was free, the IBM user community bore a great resemblance to today's open source scene, with lots of patches and utilities written and improved by users, who traded them freely.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[hitmark]

and the same happened with the combo of pdp-11 and unix, no?

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[shutdown -p now]

There is an obvious conclusion here.

From company's perspective, "doing OSS" is a business strategy. As any other strategy, it may be the optimal one in some cases and under some conditions, but it is very unlikely that it is optimal in all cases.

(To clarify, "optimal" from a point of view of a for-profit corporation means strictly "making most money"; there's nothing else to it.)

Furthermore, there are many scenarios in which OSS is clearly suboptimal. If you can sell boxed software for profit, and restrict people from sharing it (and most, or at least the significant part, comply - piracy is a separate issue, and the effect differs depending on the market) - then why wouldn't you do that? This is especially true of monopolized markets, obviously (historical dominance, niche software etc), but applies elsewhere as well.

The result is that you have successful companies that sell or otherwise directly profit from OSS, among other things - IBM is the most obvious example. But they hide the source and/or restrict redistribution where they can get away with that.

So, the question in TFA can be boiled down to: "why companies which don't always choose the most optimal (maximizing their profits) strategy, whatever it may be, aren't as successful as those that do?". Well, duh.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[DerekLyons]

Doubly so when 90% of the hardware market is IBM's anyhow...

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[tehcyder]

There are almost too many to count when it comes to billion dollar companies involved in open source.

"Involved in" covers such a wide variety of levels of involvement as to be meaningless.

I mean, even teh evil M$ is "involved in" open source to some extent, you certainly wouldn't say it was a good example of a successful multi billion dollar open source company.

Re:Um, IBM, Intel, Xerox

[linzeal]

The question is, is where does most of the investment in open source come from and who profits the most from it. In both cases you are going to get fortune 500 companies. It might only be 2-3% of a large company's budget but it still will outspend any purely open source shop out there.

Here are my thoughts

[JamesP]

- Open Source is (relatively) new
- Open Source is not tame. It's not easy to use (as even Windows tried to be - and sucked - at the beginning) Remember Windows NT?!

- Open Source shines when it's hidden. Infrastructure, mainly. Even though Oracle had lots of success (and money) there

Now for the business side

- It's hard to sell OSS. IMHO Red Hat did it the best, but see other companies. Novell got mixed results, the others, well...

Now for the OSS crowd

OSS people get a lot of things in sw, but what they don't get: usabiliy, focus on customer, what it means to be 'shippable'.

How many times you try to argue with an OSS developer that a bug is a bug, not a feature?!? Or that things must work and something is preventing it to work and the developer refuses to fix it?!

I'm not saying that Apache should get a next,next,next interface, but some things are ridiculous.

And guess what, MS does not know that either, that's why WinCE sux

Huh?

[PopeRatzo]

Why no building dollar bicycle-pump manufacturers? Why no billion-dollar indie record labels? Why no billion-dollar oil companies that have not polluted? Why are there no billion-dollar hockey franchises?

Asking why there are no "billion-dollar" open source companies is kind of stupid. Considering how much of the very fabric of the Internet and the web are open source, I'd suggest that if "open source" disappeared tomorrow, a lot of "billion-dollar" companies wouldn't be worth anywhere near a billion dollars.

This story is the Slashdot equivalent of "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

Re:Huh?

[kent_eh]

Asking why there are no "billion-dollar" open source companies is kind of stupid.

That's kinda my reaction too.
Why does success need to only be defined as "more profitier every quarter... to infinity".
Small and medium sized businesses are, and always have been, the core of every economy. They are where the creativity is. That's where most jobs are. They are more agile and able to react.
Those few billion dollar companies are almost always bureaucratic, bloated, predatory bullies, who ultimately cause more damage to the economic environment then any good they ever did. (see "big energy", "big pharma", "too big to fail", etc)

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

i like this ....."If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

just look google, facebook, etc......they're used open source.....and just imagine if there is no open source in this world......

Re:Huh?

[DrgnDancer]

I think the point of the article is not to decry the lack of billion dollar Open Source companies, but rather to point out to Open Source companies that they are unlikely to ever be billion dollar companies. So stop trying to be, do what you do, do it well, and carve out your niche. Companies can kill themselves by aiming too high, as well as by aiming too low. Do your research, figure out exactly what you'll need to ship for a billion dollars in revenue. Is it realistic to expect to ship that? No? What about 500 million, is that realistic? etc.

Re:Huh?

[HyperQuantum]

This story is the Slashdot equivalent of "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

Smart people know that they don't need to be rich in order to be happy or successful.

Re:Huh?

[Surt]

But what's the point of the article? Are there a lot of slashdotters trying to build their small open source business into a billion dollar enterprise? Does anyone other than the red hat guy really aim that high?

Re:Huh?

[nine-times]

I agree. Even if it's true that there are no "billion dollar open source companies", so what? What are we trying to prove here?

The first question that pops into my head is, why isn't it enough that there are profitable open source companies? I mean, that's enough to prove that developing open source software can be a viable business. Oh, right, viable businesses that build good products aren't good enough. It's like, "Oh, you only provide a valuable service at a reasonable price, creating a win/win situation for both you and your customers while adding millions/billions of dollars in productivity to our economy, but you don't make $5 billion a year yet? Well screw you, buddy. You're a shoddy businessman. You should be doing a better job of screwing over your customers!"

I don't know if this is fair, but I often feel like everyone is looking for money-for-nothing get-rich-quick schemes where everyone walks away from every business deal with billions of extra dollars. This is the stuff that causes economic bubbles and leads otherwise smart people to invest with Bernie Madoff. The reality is that good businesses who don't screw anyone over are generally not going to make ridiculous profits forever. In a well functioning market and under fair conditions, successful businesses will usually make only modest profits relative to the investment they put in (excepting rare cases of extreme innovation). We should stop expecting otherwise.

Of course, I'm not a wildly successful businessman or a Nobel Prize winning economist, so... whatever.

They get bought out

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick search on the Internet revealed that a lot of them get bought out.
http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/02/06/the-seven-largest-open-source-deals/

Sun buys MySQL, $1 billion, 2008
Sun now has their hands on the world’s most widely used open source database.

Red Hat buys Cygnus Solutions, $675 million, 1999
Red Hat started the open source acquisition race early when they bought Cygnus Solutions, providers of open source software support.

Citrix buys XenSource, $500 million, 2007
Considering how hot virtualization is right now, we can see why Citrix bought XenSource, the company behind the Xen virtualization software.

Yahoo buys Zimbra, $350 million, 2007
Yahoo already have their own email services, and with Zimbra they got an integrated email, messaging and collaboration software.

Red Hat buys JBoss, $350 million, 2006
Red Hat strengthened their SOA offerings by buying the JBoss Java application server.

Novell buys SUSE, $210 million, 2003
Novell got their own Linux distribution by buying SUSE.

Nokia buys Trolltech, $153 million, 2008
Trolltech is the company behind the Qt GUI framework which is used by the popular Linux desktop environment KDE.

Re:They get bought out

[Fnkmaster]

There's a good reason for that too. As the original post suggests, it's hard to generate that much revenue as a standalone open source company. But if you really are saving your clients 90% over what they spent before, you are generating a lot of *value* in the marketplace.

It's often easier for a large company with lots of product lines to capture some of that value by bundling hardware and software, or software and their brand-name services, or layering their proprietary software with your open source software, or simply using the software to power their own service offerings. A standalone company whose only products are open source has a lot fewer paths to generate revenue and capture some of that value they create.

Re:They get bought out

[Anonymous Coward]

The same thing happens to closed source companies. Don't cherry pick data when trying to make a point; it only makes you look foolish.

Re:They get bought out

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun buys MySQL, $1 billion, 2008
Sun now has their hands on the world’s most widely used open source database.

That's like gettting 2 for 1 Maid-Rites. You think it's a bargain but then you have to eat them.

Re:They get bought out

[colinrichardday]

The GP didn't say that open-source companies were more profitable than closed-source companies, only that there is value in open source.

You make more money using open source than selling

[number6x]

Just ask Google.

Why should your profits go to Adobe, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and all those other closed source companies? Look at the .com companies that survived the 'dot bomb' era. They used open source.

Using expensive proprietary solutions is a sure way to increase your expenses and decrease your profits.

How do you become an open source billionaire? Ask Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

The targetted audience requires less support

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple,

The target audience for open source software requires less support as they are to my opinion smarter, more resourcefull engineers than their commercial product colleagues.
Open source software offers more room for tinkering and plain old engineering so offering engineers the freedom and tools to use their brains to solve common problems.

Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[eldavojohn]

Copyright laws and software patents make traditional closed source business models too lucrative. And while copyright and patent infringement may still occur, it is a better model to chase in the eyes of investors because a company like Microsoft will offer them reports on how much money is lost to such things and claim that as potential profit or unrealized profit or put it on the balance sheet to make investor's eyes light up. How much "theft" (don't jump on me for using it, that's what Microsoft calls it) do you think Red Hat suffers from? Not a whole lot, I'd imagine as I believe the bulk of their profit comes from support and that support is kinda hard to steal.

Anyway, if copyright laws didn't exist for software? Well, you'd see companies like Microsoft fall apart and companies like Red Hat thrive. Because the business model would shift from protecting your source code through litigation to making it available for free since that would be the only way to effectively combat piracy. Right now, the system is so screwed up that even when the original Windows becomes public domain, no one is going to have the source code and if they do they're not going to release it. I almost wish the Library of Congress kept a proprietary source library if that didn't leave to government abuse and a multitude of problems with huge security concerns.

As a young idealist, I once thought that open source should be welcomed by all since there's an infinite amount of code that the populations will always need written. If they don't need an operating system, they need a web server. If they don't need web server software, they'll need the specific application on a per company basis. Ad infinitum. And therefore you shouldn't fight open source when you're generating revenue from such a general purpose and widely used tool. Unfortunately I came to understand copyright, marketing and how Microsoft keeps making bank on Windows despite it being -- in my opinion -- an inferior product. And so my logic was inherently flawed--especially in the eyes of stockholders and lawmakers. Such skewing of profits between open and closed source companies reveal this.

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[Garwulf]

"Anyway, if copyright laws didn't exist for software? Well, you'd see companies like Microsoft fall apart and companies like Red Hat thrive. Because the business model would shift from protecting your source code through litigation to making it available for free since that would be the only way to effectively combat piracy."

You really don't understand what copyright is, do you? Copyright is a legal framework that defines how creators and distributors interact with one another. All that stuff about file sharing, that's maybe 5% of what copyright does. Copyright allows creators to set reasonable terms of how their creations are used, and have them enforced.

So, guess what? Open source exists and continues to exist because it is protected under copyright. It's copyright that allows open source creators to say "this must be used under an open source license," and have it stick. The public domain is defined by copyright - it's the flip side of it. If you remove copyright, you don't just have everything fall into the public domain - the public domain ceases to exist. What you get instead is a free-for-all where you keep what you can protect. You think DRM is bad now? Imagine what would happen if there were no legal limitations to it, because that's what you'd get without copyright. You think the open source model would become the standard business model for software? Sorry, but it would disappear - it's a lot more profitable to copy somebody's code, make it your own, and slap a bunch of protection on it to prevent somebody else using it than it is to share it - and without copyright, there's nothing to stop anybody from doing that.

So, I think you need to do a lot of research - and among other things, you need to learn the difference between patent law and copyright law, and understand the difference between theory and implementation (the latter of which is not always perfect, and sometimes quite bad, such as the DMCA).

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[Anonymous Coward]

So, guess what? Open source exists and continues to exist because it is protected under copyright.

You might be technically correct. That's usually discerned to be "copyleft" vs "copyright".

So, I think you need to do a lot of research - and among other things, you need to learn the difference between patent law and copyright law ...

Another asshole author. Say it ain't so.

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[Endo13]

it's a lot more profitable to copy somebody's code, make it your own, and slap a bunch of protection on it to prevent somebody else using it than it is to share it

Because protecting your code and preventing anyone else from ever seeing and using it works perfectly right?

There's a reason he's modded up and you're not.

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[Anonymous Coward]

You really don't understand what copyright is

When the parent wrote "if copyright laws didn't exist for software" we all understood that he meant "if pay-per-license didn't exist for software". Your lecture was boring and redundant. Are you a teacher?

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[Garwulf]

You mean besides my posting less than an hour ago? Aside from which, I can't recall where I said that it worked perfectly. Perhaps you'd like to quote that bit?

For that matter, do you have ANYTHING to add to this discussion besides ill-placed sarcasm that requires you to put words in my mouth? Any points on the subtleties of copyright law? On economic theory?

I don't see you modded up right now either, by the way. I wonder if that will change.

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason he's modded up and you're not.

Actually, I thought he wasn't modded up because OSS is a little cult and when you disagree with them, regardless if you're right or not, you get the beat down. Kind of like The Inquisition but with less power.

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[drsmithy]

Anyway, if copyright laws didn't exist for software? Well, you'd see companies like Microsoft fall apart and companies like Red Hat thrive.

The GPL is utterly reliant on copyright to function as it does. Without it, the most useful GPLed code would be "proprietarised" in short order. Everything GPL proponents criticise the BSDL for would be applicable to GPLed software.

Because the business model would shift from protecting your source code through litigation to making it available for free since that would be the only way to effectively combat piracy.

No, the business model would shift to more effective piracy deterrents like hardware dongles and better DRM.

There is very little piracy of source code, most of it is binary distributions. Companies would probably lock their source code repos up a little tighter, and segregate them more so fewer (if any) employees had access to everything, but most big vendors will be doing this already. The removal of copyright would hurt open source (particularly GPLed) software far more - because while proprietary software vendors are used to dealing with piracy, OSS vendors always work under the assumption that no other OSS vendor will be able to gain a meaningful software-based competitive advantage.

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[HeckRuler]

Anyway, if copyright laws didn't exist for software? Well, you'd see companies like Microsoft fall apart and companies like Red Hat thrive.

Well, yes the COMPANIES, if they maintained their current business model, would meet those fates. But who cares about the companies? I care about the code, productivity, and getting things done. You know, progress. But as for the actual product, businesses would probably go get windows and all MS's products, because they're now free. The best argument for Linux is now gone.

In time, sure, microsoft might go bankrupt, and the windows line phased out. But more likely, they'd release a new version with their best attempt at a restrictive DRM to force people to pay for their product.

You're logic wasn't flawed, you just decided to put on a suit when you got old.

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, copyright laws protect open source software as well as commercial software. You're confusing three different things: Copyright, which is the right of the producer of a work to control that work, Licensing, which is the specific rights given by the work's copyright holder to others, closed-source vs open-source licensing and software patenting. Open source is protected by copyright; as an example, this is how the GPL prevents Microsoft from simply copying GPL'ed code and claiming it as their own. No copyright laws, no GPL, no protection for open source software; corporations could steal your code willy-nilly without any means of redress. Patenting is different, as software patents cover not actual works, but the *idea* underlying a work. It's as if you stated that you could hold a patent on the idea of a play having as a lead character a major historical figure, as opposed to holding a copyright on "Henry V". That's why patents are so insidious.

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for explaining why there are no BSD-style license open source projects. I am sure they will all promptly disappear in a puff of logic.

Re:Because of the Concept of Intellectual Property

[Anonymous Coward]

businesses would probably go get windows and all MS's products, because they're now free. The best argument for Linux is now gone.

You haven't used Windows & Linux side by side lately, have you?

Other big recent players in the software market?

[Vellmont]

Normally you might compare one business model with another on a somewhat equal basis. When comparing open source to closed source, doesn't it make more sense to compare the performance of the open source software company with that of the close source software company that started around the same time?

So can anyone name any large close source software companies that have started up rather recently that are billion dollar companies? I can't personally think of any. Can anyone else?

Nice..

[jrowlingson]

"If, as is likely, that's generally true for open source companies, it means they will need to displace around $10 billion of proprietary business in order to achieve a billion-dollar turnover." No wonder IT is on the bottom end of the totem pole. I can't think of any other industry that works as hard as we do to devalue/put ourselves out of a job.

Re:You make more money using open source than sell

[Lunix Nutcase]

How do you become an open source billionaire? Ask Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

You mean create a hugely successful proprietary search engine and ads platform? Sure they may have leveraged open source in creating these proprietary products but they didn't make their money through selling open source products.

Think products not companies

[erik.martino]

There are billion dollar products. I presume the value of the Linux OS, Mysql, Apache HTTP server are several billion dollars if we sum up the value of each installation. However no single company has the monopoly right to sell it, so it is spread around on many many companies where some of them takes part in the development, some not, but many of them are actively contributing by supporting other users in forums.

False Premise

[yoshi_mon]

Perhaps it's time for managers of open source startups to stop chasing the billion-dollar dream.

I love it when authors use a false premise to setup their stories. Of course every one wants to make it big but the idea that there is some mythical number that every open source CFO is reaching for is just stupid.

Further if they want to look for a company that uses the FOSS model and has billions: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AIBM

Re:False Premise

[shutdown -p now]

Google does not use FOSS model - last I checked, they do not write open source software and make money from charging for support. They use others' open source software, and they do improve it (and share those bits), but most of their own software isn't open source.

A company that truly uses the FOSS model is RedHat, and they aren't doing bad, so it is viable at least for some. But you probably won't make $1B off it.

Re:False Premise

[yoshi_mon]

Next time click on the link before you reply. It will save you from having to look foolish.

Re:False Premise

[soppsa]

IBM hardly uses the FOSS model. They do when it suits them, and dont when it doesnt. Thats like saying Sun uses the open source model...

Margins...

[Bert64]

The issue is that proprietary software allows ridiculous profit margins (close to 100% since the software costs nothing to distribute and economies of scale are pretty much linear since the upfront costs remain the same regardless of volume)... Now no industry could possibly achieve such margins if there is any competition, so proprietary vendors stifle competition through lock-in..

Open source vendors are unable to rip their customers off by selling zero cost goods at ridiculous markups because if they did someone else could come along and offer the same code for a cheaper price, instead they must make their money selling services... Services have a constant ongoing cost to actually provide the service, and these costs increase as you provide service to more customers.

The proprietary software market is effectively a scam, which sooner or later will come to an end... Customers will wake up and realise just how badly they're being ripped off, but until then the fraudsters will make as much as they can out of it.

The services market on the other hand is far more reasonable and although competition may eventually result in consolidation and razor thin margins, there is a lower limit.

Re:Margins...

[instagib]

Excellent comment. I'd like to add that the software business has another really specific characteristic which is unique among all product businesses: the customer pays for a product which has flaws, which (perhaps) will be (sometime) adressed by the vendor. Isn't it hilarious?

Re:Margins...

[kz45]

"The issue is that proprietary software allows ridiculous profit margins (close to 100% since the software costs nothing to distribute and economies of scale are pretty much linear since the upfront costs remain the same regardless of volume)... Now no industry could possibly achieve such margins if there is any competition, so proprietary vendors stifle competition through lock-in.."

It costs nothing to distribute (which still isn't nothing. There are bandwidth costs). However, applications like adobe photoshop cost millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to create. You are also leaving out the cost of support. As volume increases, support costs also increase.

"Open source vendors are unable to rip their customers off by selling zero cost goods at ridiculous markups because if they did someone else could come along and offer the same code for a cheaper price, instead they must make their money selling services... Services have a constant ongoing cost to actually provide the service, and these costs increase as you provide service to more customers."

How is software "zero-cost"? Nothing is zero-cost. Unless you have a machine that can magically create complex software at the push of a button.

"The proprietary software market is effectively a scam, which sooner or later will come to an end... Customers will wake up and realise just how badly they're being ripped off, but until then the fraudsters will make as much as they can out of it."

Are you serious?. Selling software is a way for small businesses to stay in the market, because they don't have to pay for more hardware or employees as volume increases. If proprietary software was gone, we would end up with a few big software companies.

Open source is actually devaluing developers. Because many open source apps give businesses mostly what they need (the carefully engineered parts are given away for free), they can get away with hiring someone at a low-wage to make some additions (who doesn't need to have as much experience).

I think of it like the auto industry. Before, you needed to hire an engineer to work on a car..and now, you only need a mechanic. The difference is that instead of taking many years for this to happen, it's happening right now.

Open source developers that have a regular day job programming shouldn't complain when their job is outsourced to India or the Philippines or they are replaced by an inexperienced/lower-paid/less educated person.

I also don't know how people are being "ripped off". Would you rather pay me $39.99/month for my software or a flat-fee of $99?

"The services market on the other hand is far more reasonable and although competition may eventually result in consolidation and razor thin margins, there is a lower limit."

so if I convert my proprietary app to a web service and charge a monthly fee, I am no longer "ripping my customer off"?

Eventually this will happen anyway. Because of rampant piracy (which is only getting worse), I could see many proprietary application companies converting everything to a service.

I guess this is what you want? The inability to install any piece of software and having all of your data stored on another server?

Re:Margins...

[westlake]

The issue is that proprietary software allows ridiculous profit margins (close to 100% since the software costs nothing to distribute

The cost of development - production - is never zero even in open source.

Service is labor-intensive. Supporting the IT pro in the enterprise can be profitable. But supporting the home and SOHO user? That's a much tougher proposition.

Not least because the apps themselves are often second-tier.

They don't have IBM or Google or Oracle to provide money, staffing and discipline.

Re:Margins...

[drsmithy]

The issue is that proprietary software allows ridiculous profit margins (close to 100% since the software costs nothing to distribute and economies of scale are pretty much linear since the upfront costs remain the same regardless of volume)...

That the upfront costs remain the same does not mean they disappear. The proprietary software still needs to make up for its development cost before it's profitable.

You also assume said proprietary software is not maintained and updated after its initial sale (thus incurring more expense), which is patently false.

Open source vendors are unable to rip their customers off by selling zero cost goods at ridiculous markups because if they did someone else could come along and offer the same code for a cheaper price, instead they must make their money selling services... Services have a constant ongoing cost to actually provide the service, and these costs increase as you provide service to more customers.

We pay RH somewhere in the ballpark of fifty grand *per year* for our RHEL licenses. In the last 5 years, we've used maybe 10 hours of support time. I'm pretty sure they've made a lot of profit off us.

Re:Margins...

[dkleinsc]

The proprietary software market is effectively a scam, which sooner or later will come to an end... Customers will wake up and realise just how badly they're being ripped off, but until then the fraudsters will make as much as they can out of it.

Well, not exactly. I expect the proprietary software market to remain in a couple of areas:
  -Niche products. For instance, the navigation system of a Boeing 757 will likely remain proprietary, because for any organization who can buy a 757 the cost of the software for it is tiny by comparison, and the potential pool of interested developers is not much larger than the group of developers that can be easily hired by Boeing to write navigation systems. Similar sorts of stories will exist for other software geared to very specialized uses.
- Games with low-ish replay value. For instance, open source teams can build a really top-notch and competitive Civilization clone, because the same game can be replayed gazillions of times with different configurations and approaches, and still be an interesting challenge. By comparison, most people don't play Final Fantasy XXXVII (or whatever they're up to) more than a couple of times through.

But where you're right in thinking open source will likely eventually take over are on tools that really ought to be commodities: office suites, email systems, operating systems, web browsers, web servers, etc.

Re:Margins...

[Bert64]

Upfront costs are one off costs, and if software was to start expensive and rapidly reduce to near zero cost as the initial costs were covered that would make a lot more sense. Instead, it starts expensive and remains expensive until superseded, the upfront costs are rapidly recovered and then its pure profit from there on.

You may only have used 10 hours of support time, but you have support time available to you should you need it. Sure they make a profit, but they still need to have support staff on hand to answer your calls. Just because you aren't calling right now doesn't mean the call centre staff can pack up and go home.

Re:Margins...

[bws111]

So your position is that closed software costs nothing to develop, market, etc and the only expense is actual distribution? The only way that could be true is if they get people to develop for free, but that isn't the closed source model, is it? Do you have anything to back up your statements? Here are some facts for you:

Microsoft (2009) had income of $14.5B on revenue of $58.5B, about a 25% margin.

IBM (2009) had income of $13.5B on revenue of $96B, about a 14% margin.

Oracle (2009) had income of $5.5B on revenue of $23B, about a 24% margin.

None of those appear to be 'close to 100%'. Which is the closed source vendor who has close to 100% margin?

Re:Margins...

[bws111]

The upfront costs are amortized across the entire expected lifetime of the product. Having a price structure that decreases over time just leads to customers delaying purchases until the price drops, which leads to no price drops because no-one is buying, which leads to no sales.

Re:Margins...

[Bert64]

If you allow open distribution (ala gpl) then even the bandwidth costs are minimised because users can distribute among themselves, and third parties can redistribute for you (eg mirror sites etc)...

Support costs are *rarely* included in the purchase price of software, and if they are the support options are extremely limited. Support usually costs extra, sometimes a lot more and there is no reason this support couldn't be offered alongside freely available software (see redhat).

I would rather not pay $39.99/month *or* $99 for your software... I would pay monthly for a service, and expect the service to continue being provided for as long as i continued paying. Wether that service is worth the price you try to charge is another matter.

I would also expect you to provide security fixes for as long as i was paying, no leaving me stuck with abandonware.

If you convert your app to a service and charge a monthly fee then no you're not ripping users off, because in exchange for the fee you have to provide servers, bandwidth, electricity etc on an ongoing basis and ensure that the service remains available and usable. It's a far cry from providing a one off download or even just a "license code" for a huge sum of money.

I would also demand that you provide an exit strategy before signing up for your service, ie you must make all the data stored in your service available to me in a standard format appropriate to the type of data so that i can move to a competing provider.

What i want is for the vast majority of software to be commoditized, and reduced to reasonable costs with similar margins to other business areas. Like hardware, the margins on that are razor thin and you can't possibly argue that the relative openness of the x86 hardware has been detrimental.... Or would you prefer a return to the days when proprietary vendors could charge thousands for a mediocre workstation?

Re:Margins...

[drsmithy]

Upfront costs are one off costs, and if software was to start expensive and rapidly reduce to near zero cost as the initial costs were covered that would make a lot more sense. You may only have used 10 hours of support time, but you have support time available to you should you need it. Sure they make a profit, but they still need to have support staff on hand to answer your calls. Just because you aren't calling right now doesn't mean the call centre staff can pack up and go home.

No, the costs of initial and ongoing development are amortised across the expected lifetime of the product, and the "up front" pricing set accordingly.

You may only have used 10 hours of support time, but you have support time available to you should you need it. Sure they make a profit, but they still need to have support staff on hand to answer your calls.

Actually it's the updates I consider myself paying for - which is essentially the same situation as proprietary software, only a (higher) annual expense rather than a once-every-few-years cost.

Just because you aren't calling right now doesn't mean the call centre staff can pack up and go home.

Just because $SOFTWARE has been released doesn't mean all those developers can pack up and go home.

Re:Margins...

[kz45]

"if you allow open distribution (ala gpl) then even the bandwidth costs are minimised because users can distribute among themselves, and third parties can redistribute for you (eg mirror sites etc)..."

If you are basing it off of GPL software, you are required to offer users the ability to download it. You can't just use upstreams. I seem to remember a company getting in trouble over this a few years back.

"Support costs are *rarely* included in the purchase price of software, and if they are the support options are extremely limited. Support usually costs extra, sometimes a lot more and there is no reason this support couldn't be offered alongside freely available software (see redhat)."

Another problem for small companies is that they could spend a couple of years building a great piece of software. They release it as open source, for free, and try to make money on support. Since it's free and anybody can make money on it, a much larger company, with more resources could come along and start taking over the market before the smaller company even has a chance.

"I would rather not pay $39.99/month *or* $99 for your software... I would pay monthly for a service, and expect the service to continue being provided for as long as i continued paying. Wether that service is worth the price you try to charge is another matter."

It's SaaS. Maybe you have heard of it? Many companies are starting to do this.

"I would also expect you to provide security fixes for as long as i was paying, no leaving me stuck with abandonware."

Since I'm running all of the software on my servers, you wouldn't really have any say in the security fixes. Abandonware also wouldn't really even come into play, because you wouldn't have anything on your servers to be abandoned. My service may shutdown, but then I won't be charging you anymore.

"It's a far cry from providing a one off download or even just a "license code" for a huge sum of money."

The free market decides this. If software is too expensive, people won't buy it (and the company will be forced to lower their prices). This isn't scamming anyone.

"I would also demand that you provide an exit strategy before signing up for your service, ie you must make all the data stored in your service available to me in a standard format appropriate to the type of data so that i can move to a competing provider."

Good luck with that.

"What i want is for the vast majority of software to be commoditized, and reduced to reasonable costs with similar margins to other business areas. Like hardware, the margins on that are razor thin and you can't possibly argue that the relative openness of the x86 hardware has been detrimental.... Or would you prefer a return to the days when proprietary vendors could charge thousands for a mediocre workstation?"

I would like the market to decide, not a group of open source zealots or the government. I also don't really know what more you want from the current industry. Pretty much every software market has tons of competition and cheap prices.

"Or would you prefer a return to the days when proprietary vendors could charge thousands for a mediocre workstation?"

If the market could bear it, I don't really see a problem with it. Proprietary vendors could charge thousands for a mediocre workstation, and they might actually get some people to pay for it.

Re:Margins...

[kz45]

"Upfront costs are one off costs, and if software was to start expensive and rapidly reduce to near zero cost as the initial costs were covered that would make a lot more sense. Instead, it starts expensive and remains expensive until superseded, the upfront costs are rapidly recovered and then its pure profit from there on."

Your problem seems to all be about profits. Profiting isn't illegal, immoral, or wrong, as long as you aren't misleading your customers.

Re:Margins...

[jmcvetta]

Supporting the IT pro in the enterprise can be profitable. But supporting the home and SOHO user? That's a much tougher proposition.

Are you asserting that IBM, Google, & Oracle do manage to make money selling support to home users?

Re:Margins...

[Bert64]

Perhaps not illegal, but extortionate profit margins are immoral and wrong... And the only other lines of business where it's possible to make profit margins anywhere close are most definitely illegal (and even then, the high profits are offset by high risks).

Any line of business where such extortionate profit margins exist needs government regulation to ensure that competition occurs and pushes those margins back to levels in line with other markets. There should be a cap on how much profit can be made relative to investment, noone should be able to do minimum work and receive massive payments on an ongoing basis.

Re:Margins...

[tehcyder]

The proprietary software market is effectively a scam, which sooner or later will come to an end... Customers will wake up and realise just how badly they're being ripped off, but until then the fraudsters will make as much as they can out of it.

Ripping customers off by selling them overpriced crap they don't actually need is pretty much the definition of capitalism in my book.

yeah...

[Pojut]

...my response to this is "Why should I care?" The very purpose and idea behind open-source flies in the face of profits. That's not to say these companies shouldn't be trying to make money, but the purpose behind open-source is to spread knowledge and capability...not to acquire wealth.

"It's in the fucking charter."

Billions!

[dandart]

I once bet my friend a million pounds that I'd become a billionaire before him.

Sorry, what were we talking about again?

Re:Billions!

[russotto]

I once bet my friend a million pounds that I'd become a billionaire before him.

Wouldn't it be smarter to bet your friend a million pounds that he'd become a billionaire before you? That way, either way, you win -- if you become a billionaire first you need merely pay off a small bet; if he becomes a billionaire first, you become a millionaire.

Re:Billions!

[dandart]

I was going for the "we're both billionaires so it doesn't matter" approach actually. But that's a fair point, well made.

Look what happens when you value them up

[jeffmeden]

We gave VA Linux their shot... And look what happened. I'm not going to point blame but Eric S Raymond did happen to issue the most epic "who would have thought" letter to the world proclaiming how gifted he was, shortly before his share of the company dropped in value from some $40 Million to about $4 Million (and falling).

Open source simply isn't about the money, after all. Try to muddle it up with dollars and cents, and you will end up with Windows.

Ask the opposite and get the same answer

[SpazmodeusG]

Try asking why are there no billion-dollar companies using 100% CLOSED source software?

The answer is simply because billion dollar companies dabble in a bit of everything. Oracle has a lot of open source products. It also has a lot of closed source products. Same with IBM, Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc etc. If you don't consider these billion dollar companies to be open source companies then you can't consider them to be a closed source companies either. They all dabble in a bit of both because they are all really big.

Re:Ask the opposite and get the same answer

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the answer is because if somebody offers you something reasonably good for free, you take it rather than build a new version of it at your own cost. IBM et al were billion dollar companies (adjusting for inflation) before open source and they'd be billion dollar companies without open source -- open source is just a minor tweak to their overall proprietary software, service, or hardware-based profits.

It's a completely different answer from why there are no billion dollar open source companies.

Re:Ask the opposite and get the same answer

[tepples]

Try asking why are there no billion-dollar companies using 100% CLOSED source software?

Nintendo.

Re:Ask the opposite and get the same answer

[SpazmodeusG]

They wrote the ES operating system (an open source OS). Amongst other things.

Re:Ask the opposite and get the same answer

[tepples]

They wrote the ES operating system (an open source OS).

I imagine that ES was originally written for use on Wii's IOP, but Nintendo dropped it in favor of the secretive company BroadOn's closed-source IOS.

Amongst other things.

Which are they? Nintendo bans copylefted software from games even if the license allows excluding system libraries from the required source distribution; witness the Pajama Sam debacle.

Re:Ask the opposite and get the same answer

[snowwrestler]

You think Nintendo wrote their own TCP/IP stack from scratch?

Re:Ask the opposite and get the same answer

[jimicus]

Quite a few console games these days use the odd F/OSS library here and there, I'd be astonished if Nintendo never have.

Re:Ask the opposite and get the same answer

[tepples]

Quite a few console games these days use the odd F/OSS library here and there, I'd be astonished if Nintendo never have.

Sure, Internet Channel's Operations Guide lists a bunch of BSD-licensed software, but Nintendo prohibits publishing the Corresponding Source for a Wii game's modifications to "the odd F/OSS library here and there". See the case of Pajama Sam .

Because $Bn's means exploitation

[petes_PoV]

You can make a few $Mil on the basis of your own hard and honest work. However to get to the next step requires the "entrepreneur" to start exploiting people, using coercion, marginally honest (I'm being polite here) tactics, restrictive contracts - in short no longer being a "nice person".

Once you get into the $Bns you become responsible for causing suffering, hardship, using litigation and loopholes, throwing your weight around, metaphorically "knifing" people in the back and being a nasty PoS. By then any of the attributes that attracted you to Open Source have withered and died.

do we need any more fauxking billionerrors?

[Anonymous Coward]

aka; deceptive/gottiesque 'business practices', like monkeys on crack, etc... likely not. but we would likely be well served by being more open & honest & less greedy, in ALL of our dealings. so long fuddles?

the corepirate nazi illuminati is always hunting that patch of red on almost everyones' neck. if they cannot find yours (greed, fear ego etc...) then you can go starve. that's their platform now. they do pull A LOT of major strings.

never a better time for all of us to consult with/trust in our creators. the lights are coming up rapidly all over now. see you there?

greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of our dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children. not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one, & the terminal damage to our atmosphere (see also: manufactured 'weather', hot etc...). see you on the other side of it? the lights are coming up all over now. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be your guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. we now have some choices. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on your brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.

"The current rate of extinction is around 10 to 100 times the usual background level, and has been elevated above the background level since the Pleistocene. The current extinction rate is more rapid than in any other extinction event in earth history, and 50% of species could be extinct by the end of this century. While the role of humans is unclear in the longer-term extinction pattern, it is clear that factors such as deforestation, habitat destruction, hunting, the introduction of non-native species, pollution and climate change have reduced biodiversity profoundly.' (wiki)

"I think the bottom line is, what kind of a world do you want to leave for your children," Andrew Smith, a professor in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, said in a telephone interview. "How impoverished we would be if we lost 25 percent of the world's mammals," said Smith, one of more than 100 co-authors of the report. "Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," added Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general. "We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."--

"The wealth of the universe is for me. Every thing is explicable and practical for me .... I am defeated all the time; yet to victory I am born." --emerson

no need to confuse 'religion' with being a spiritual being. our soul purpose here is to care for one another. failing that, we're simply passing through (excess baggage) being distracted/consumed by the guaranteed to fail illusionary trappings of man'kind'. & recently (about 10,000 years ago) it was determined that hoarding & excess by a few, resulted in negative consequences for all.

consult with/trust in your creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." )one does not need not to agree whois in charge to grasp the notion that there may be some assistance available to us(

boeing, boeing, gone.

If you make billions...

[Anonymous Coward]

on as comparatively little work as many of those companies who actually make billions do, you're exploiting a monopoly or otherwise gaming the market. They're NOT doing approximately a fair amount of work with regards to what they're paid.

Re:If you make billions...

[tehcyder]

If you can make billions by doing little or no work, you are a good capitalist. If you think capitalism is a system designed to reward hard work and fair play, you're deluded.

Because it's about cooperation....

[cptdondo]

There may not be any "billion dollar companies" but open source allows small companies to play the big leagues. No one can play with MS - they're too big, too powerful, and too locked up. But open source allows a small firm with a single developer to put out a "best of breed" linux based widget - because that developer can leverage the work of hundreds of thousands of developers.

So while our closed source competitors built stuff that looked like it was stuck in the 80s - 300 baud modems for communication? We had ethernet, wifi, and a web interface.

No, we weren't a billion dollar company, but we sure looked like one.

Easy

[SolitaryMan]

If open source is such a success, why aren't there any billion-dollar turnover open source companies?

Easy. Because money is not the only measure of value and success. WTF is wrong with you people?

Re:Easy

[russotto]

Easy. Because money is not the only measure of value and success. WTF is wrong with you people?

It's not ME. It's the mortgage company, the jet-rental company (travel without flying commercial is an indicator of success), the electronics companies (geek toys are indicators of success), the escort companies (being seen with attractive women is an indicator of success), the jewelry companies (another way of keeping attractive women around), the car companies, the book companies (a good personal library is a measure of success), even the organic food companies (if you're into that sort of thing). They all want money. Which seems to indicate that if I want to be successful, getting money is part of it.

It's the term Open Source Company

[Errol backfiring]

So, in short, open source projects are supported by many companies that do not purely exist for one open source product. I think the term "Open Source Company" is therefore to blame here. Even Microsoft contributed to the Linux kernel, but hardly anyone would call them an open source company.

That's a crock

[SwashbucklingCowboy]

"getting Red Hat to $5 billion meant 'replacing $50 billion of revenue'"

Cow manure. Red Hat isn't one tenth the cost of proprietary software, not even close.

The real problems are:

1. It's hard to scale services.

2. You have to have the demand for the services.

3. In nearly all cases, proprietary solutions have first mover advantages.

IBM HP where are they now

[RichMan]

http://www.cioupdate.com/news/article.php/1574431/Can-You-Make-Money-Selling-Linux--Try-35-Billion.htm

In 2002 HP claimed $2B in Linux revenue and IBM claimed $1.5B. I would expect that has ramped up considerably since then. I can't seem to find recent numbers perhaps they are embarrassed by the riches.

On the server hardware side, sales are booming. You have to think there are service contracts with those.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-984010.html

Re:Drunken response

[JamesP]

>- Open Source is (relatively) new

For cereal? GCC is 23 years old at this point. DJGPP (Dos port of GCC) is 21 years old. The Apache webserver came out in 1995. Perl came out years before in 1987. I'm sure i could go on.

What I meant is that "'selling' OSS is a new thing". As such, the business model is not still 100% set. Wow, I didn't know DJGPP was that old !

>- Open Source is not tame. It's not easy to use (as even Windows tried to be - and sucked - at the beginning) Remember Windows NT?!

This is a crappy analogy. Some of the shit is definitely difficult (sendmail, weirder nagios configs). But if you can't figure out how to set up an basic Apache install, I'm sorry, you're kind of retarded. Anyhow, "easy to use" is not respective of quality.

I don't mean Apache really, but yeah, sendmail, qmail, etc, etc. And even sometimes "too easy to use" is complicated, see IIS 6

>- It's hard to sell OSS. IMHO Red Hat did it the best, but see other companies. Novell got mixed results, the others, well...

You obviously have no idea what you're fucking talking about at this point.

Maybe, do you know people that work for RedHat, Mandriva and Novell as I do?! Do you know their customers, how they work, etc, etc?!

The Reality of Open Source...

[Baldrson]

There is a class of people who can take advantages of intellectual property rights and that class of people rarely includes programmers or even engineers. The few times it happens can be likened to the noises that casinos make whenever someone wins. That is the entire impetus behind open source.

Think about it..

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source is FREE.. And if someone were to put ads in it, people would just take them out..

Knowing the price of everything

[jandersen]

- and the value of nothing.

If open source is such a success, why aren't there any billion-dollar turnover open source companies?

It is not a question of if - open source is a resounding success; just look at how the GNU project has become the defining standard for much of UNIX, to the extent that companies like IBM, HP etc offer the GNU toolset on their proprietary systems. And GNU is only one part of open source - GNOME and KDE are other prime examples. And of course, there is Linux; need I say more?

Money isn't everything; it is certainly not the best measure of success.

Re:Knowing the price of everything

[bsDaemon]

GNOME is official GNU software, so its not "another prime example"

Answer is simple

[rattaroaz]

One of the features of open source/software freedom, is to benefit the users, not the corporations. Red Hat often commented that they turned a multi-billion dollar industry into a multi-million dollar one. Why no billion dollar open source companies? Because users are cutting costs, competition is rising with more players, and there is less gouging going on. From a non-software corporation point of view, that's a good thing.

Because They're Not Monopolies

[Doc Ruby]

The whole point of open source is sharing the assets. Which doesn't mean "free" (except when it's FOSS).

Red Hat isn't the only Linux corp, the way that Apple is the only Mac corp and Microsoft is the only Windows corp. Add together all the Linux OS corps, including the biggest, Red Hat, and you've got something that's bigger than, say, Sun (was), or any of the Unix corps before it.

Linux's open source means that the corporate model is different, fundamentally. The model doesn't capture every penny in a single corp the way it did with Microsoft. A lot of the monetary value is held by the customers, and by people all along a very shaded gradient all the way to kids downloading OS'es they don't even install, trading them like baseball cards.

All of which means that the market gets the most efficient use out of all the value. Which you'd think would be good for business, better than the monopolistic model that does create $5-$50 billion corps like Microsoft, except for the business of stock market speculation (that does practically nothing good for business except speculators and brokers). Meanwhile, OSS is also capable of growing corps as big and valuable to stock traders as Red Hat, which is also valuable to business and even its competitors.

Open source is a new model for business. Measuring it by the old model isn't going to make sense to a lot of people. Even though it can make a lot of dollars.

Sales and relationships and the IBM factor

[Anonymous Coward]

A few things that many geeks seem to not get:
Salesmen make the world go 'round. They are pounding the pavement every day. They are making relationships with CIOs every day. They have convinced those CIOs that the low-risk path is to buy name brand stuff. It's proven. Plus, if there's a disaster, the CIO can tell his board he bought the best stuff. That's the old IBM line: you never get fired for buying IBM.

CIOs and other management types like the whole sales process. They like the kind of people they have to mingle with. They like the idea of contracts, and terms and conditions, and so forth. It makes them feel like 'real' businessmen, and that they are worth something.

unrealistic ambitions

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it's time for managers of open source startups to stop chasing the billion-dollar dream. If they don't, they will set unrealistic ambitions for themselves,

When is chasing the billion-dollar dream not an unrealistic ambition ?

Seriously, yes, it happens but not very many people... And I'm fairly sure that there's a lot who tries and fails...
It's always an unrealistic ambition... Not saying that such ambitions are bad... It's good to aim high, and failing only reminds you that you're alive...

Does BP count?

[noidentity]

I think BP is pretty open-source at the moment. They're sharing their good with every living thing in the Gulf right now, for free, though they might not remain a billion-dollar company for long...

Re:Does BP count?

[domatic]

I think BP is pretty open-source at the moment. They're sharing their good with every living thing in the Gulf right now, for free, though they might not remain a billion-dollar company for long...

And the Valdez incident killed Exxon...

Hmm, I wonder

[MacGyver2210]

Gee, I wonder how companies who give away software for free and whose software is largely maintained by the user community could ever make less money than the companies that lock their software down and charge hundreds of dollars per copy?

It's almost like people aren't paying for it!

Most "duh" article I have ever seen on /.

"Linux" is not a single operating system

[betterunixthanunix]

People need to stop saying "Linux" as if it were one operating system. A Linux distribution is an operating system; different distributions are similar, but not identical, and the problems you have with one distribution may not be reproduced with a different distribution. You say you cannot get Flash to work? Which distribution are you using? Which architecture? Adobe does not maintain a Flash plugin for every single distribution, and they only compile the plugin for x86. I know, it may seem pedantic to question whether or not you are using x86, but when dealing with operating systems other than Windows and (the current) Mac OS X, that is a relevant question -- I myself own an ARM desktop that runs Ubuntu.

I think that you might have been joking, at least judging by what you said about Windows installation. In all seriousness though, the sooner people stop treating "Linux" as if it were a single operating system, and the sooner they stop expecting everything they want to be installed by default (which is not the case with any other operating system -- so why should a Linux distribution be any different? Yes, you need to install the Flash plugin separately after installing Windows!), the sooner we can get back to having "productive" conversations about the relative merits of different operating systems.

Re:"Linux" is not a single operating system

[Caerdwyn]

And that's part of why Linux (collectively) is failing as a desktop operating system.

(flame retardant suit on)
(flaming retard resistant suit on)

Hear me out. For nontechnical or even somewhat technical users, "Linux" has been represented as a monolithic entity, with different distributions of Linux seen as badge-engineering at most. It's certainly true that under the hood, Linux has forked dramatically... and in the end, Linux is just the kernel. However, when only a very small number of people (compared to the pool of computer users in general) understand what that really means, and what you have to do differently depending upon your Linux distro, there's a problem. Mass adoption simply cannot occur when an end user has to concern themselves with nuances like that, especially when all the outward-facing information and evangelizing presents Linux monolithically.

I assume we're all familiar with Emo Phillips' routine on religious sectarianism. Linux distros are like that (sometimes right up to the punchline). It's intimidating enough as an end user who has only used Windows to make the big step into a whole new operating system (and God help you if you're hoping to preserve your data while doing so). When the Night of a Million Zillion Distros raises its ugly head, and when you go onto the web to try to get support for a problem with your distro or an app you want to install into your shiny new Linux box... and you discover that the answers are different for the various flavors of Linux... yeah. That's a problem. And it's one which the Linux community has created for itself.

Go pick one of your non-technical friends who is running a Linux desktop of some sort (probably on a netbook). Ask her/him/it what operating system it is. "Linux!" Now ask "which distribution?" Blank stare. Okay, assume they answer correctly. Now ask "Do you know why that question matters?" and see what answer comes back.

"User-friendly" distros like Ubuntu and the various flavors of netbook-optimized Linux are easy enough to install. It's three months down the road when you're wrestling with trying to get an app that works fine on Fedora to work on Debian that the real depth of the problem becomes apparent. "It shouldn't be this way!" True. And being told that by following advice on manual installs on various websites they have transformed their system from Ubuntu into some weird nondiagnosable hybrid (and therefore unsupportable) is only going to add to the frustration. Nontechnical users cannot administer their own systems, technical users cannot diagnose a problem without administrative access to that individual system, and getting help requires a technical buy-in which a non-technical user does not have the time, inclination or (to be bluntly honest, since we all have different gifts but not all of us have a computer-facing gift) ability to master.

"But it's still all Linux!" Well... no. Not really, at a user-level. And that's the problem. We either label it all as Linux (incorrectly) and have the situation we have right now with unsupportability and deep confusion, or we fragment the "brand" and suddenly we have dozens of little islands, none of which is large enough to warrant the attentions of major software providers or of end users who want their efforts in learning to be portable.

And worst of all, "open source" has been improperly conflated with "free", and by people who should have known better. The two are not the same! "Why are you charging me for open source software?" That's a long conversation, and the conversation is usually cut short with "I don't have time for this. It's more trouble than it's worth, and I shouldn't have to consult an intellectual property lawyer to select a software package." Then they go off to Microsoft or Oracle or some other commercial provider which has an up-front price list, boilerplate licenses, and a huge community of people who know how to use and maintain their s

Do I get more value from a multi-$B corp

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had a $k to spend on software, what value do I get if I spend it at a $50 billion company verses a $500 million dollar company?

In other words, what does capitalization have to do with value from the customer's perspective?

Hardware support

[tepples]

How is Linux easier than Windows if you're buying peripherals? With Windows, you know that any peripheral you buy that needs a unique driver will come with a driver on a disc that is compatible with the major versions of Windows listed on the product's box. (Windows 2000 and XP are 5.x; Vista and 7 are 6.x.) Consumer peripherals tend not to include Linux drivers on the disc. True, Linux distributions include some drivers on the disc or in a repository, but then you might need a smartphone and data plan with which to check the products in stock in your local electronics store against your distro's HCL. And even then, some device manufacturers have been known to make incompatible chipset changes in a revision to a given model, so check the return policy carefully.

Re:Hardware support

[IANAAC]

...but then you might need a smartphone and data plan with which to check the products in stock in your local electronics store against your distro's HCL.

Implying that you don't know what you're out to buy in the first place?

Honestly, I've never had that problem. But then, I tend to buy a lot of my peripherals online. I've already done the research to figure out if something's going to work with my particular setup or not. I can't imagine it would really be any different if I were running some version of Windows (or a Mac).

Windows users get driver CDs; Linux users don't

[tepples]

And it wont connect to my Router beacause i need to install some "network" driver or something for my motherboard.

At least a Windows user can install a network driver from the disc packed in the box. If your motherboard's network chip has no available Linux driver because the manufacturer has declined to reveal essential hardware specs to the maintainers of Linux networking, you're [smurf]ed.

Re:Windows users get driver CDs; Linux users don't

[oakgrove]

At least a Windows user can install a network driver from the disc packed in the box.

I have a scanner and a video card that both came with Windows CD's yet will not work on Windows 7. I'm sure you can deduce why. Both of those hardware devices are humming along perfectly with Ubuntu 10.04 no CD required.

Re:Windows users get driver CDs; Linux users don't

[tepples]

I have a scanner and a video card that both came with Windows CD's yet will not work on Windows 7.

They work with the versions of Windows that are listed on the box: probably Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The boxes for scanners in Best Buy doesn't list any version of Ubuntu.

Both of those hardware devices are humming along perfectly with Ubuntu 10.04 no CD required.

I haven't been as lucky as you. The scanner I bought for use in Windows (Microtek ScanMaker 4850 USB) turned out to be listed as unsupported in SANE, a component that all major desktop Linux distributions share, when I tried to switch to Linux. It's still unsupported.

Re:Windows users get driver CDs; Linux users don't

[oakgrove]

They work with the versions of Windows that are listed on the box: probably Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Thanks for the clarification. The fact that hardware works only for specific versions of Windows is very pertinent to techies like ourselves. I can't say the same for everyone else. My brother's girlfriend was "working" on her sister's computer which was having some XP problems. So she installed Win7 (admittedly of dubious origin but that isn't my business) on it. Everything was great except the graphics weren't working right. I looked at it and sure enough, it was in VESA mode. Looked around for drivers and there were none. I tried to explain that to her but she didn't really care about the details. In her mind, Win7 "sucked". So, XP is back on. But to what end? A functional computer for a while until it gets gummed up with malware again. And XP support is fast coming to an end. What then? If Ubuntu had been installed, not only would the graphics card work (I tested it) but it would have kept on working and Ubuntu is vastly more secure than XP OOTB with built-in MAC via apparmor, all ports default off, etc.

The boxes for scanners in Best Buy doesn't list any version of Ubuntu.

Who buys just scanners? A combo printer/fax/scanner is less than 50 dollars. BB sells mostly HP and Lexmark. I was there very recently and practically every single one has either "universal" (HP code for Linux) or Linux (Lexmark) printed right on the box.

I haven't been as lucky as you. The scanner I bought for use in Windows (Microtek ScanMaker 4850 USB) turned out to be listed as unsupported in SANE, a component that all major desktop Linux distributions share, when I tried to switch to Linux. It's still unsupported.

That's too bad. I'll be sure to avoid Microtek and buy a scanner from one of the myriad other scanner makers in the future.

Re:Windows users get driver CDs; Linux users don't

[tepples]

If Ubuntu had been installed, not only would the graphics card work (I tested it) but it would have kept on working

But would the applications still work? A lot of Windows applications still have no equivalent in Ubuntu main/universe, especially games. Or has Wine already improved to the point where it can run Windows XP apps more reliably than Windows 7 can?

Who buys just scanners?

Someone who already has a working printer and has no need for a POTS fax machine.

A combo printer/fax/scanner is less than 50 dollars.

Plus how much for the ink? A Canon inkjet printer separates the ink tank and print head, allowing me to replace a print head only every few ink tanks, but HP and Lexmark cartridges tie every ink tank to a new print head. I've been considering a color laser printer to cut down on consumable costs; are those also available in multifunction?

"universal" (HP code for Linux)

How is the end user, even one who knows that Ubuntu and Fedora mean Linux, supposed to know that "universal" on an HP product means Linux and not, say, NBC?

Re:Windows users get driver CDs; Linux users don't

[oakgrove]

But would the applications still work?

There were no applications on that computer that didn't have functional or identical Linux equivalents.

But would the applications still work? A lot of Windows applications still have no equivalent in Ubuntu main/universe, especially games. Or has Wine already improved to the point where it can run Windows XP apps more reliably than Windows 7 can?

I doubt that would have bothered her very much.

It wasn't my sister so I didn't take it upon myself to suggest Linux. However, I did switch my mother over and she has never been happier with her computer. She's not computer literate at all (double clicks hyperlinks) and she got only the most basic use from Windows XP. I finally got tired of the quarterly virus removals and said, "you know what? I got something for ya" I put Ubuntu on her computer, set up a nice theme, replaced the nautilus desktop with plasma so she could have the beautiful widgets that comes with it. Customized k3b so she could easily burn her CD's (within 5 minutes, she was burning CD's, no joke) something she was never able to do with Windows no matter how many times she was shown how. Set up openoffice so she could "write her book", set up evolution to sync with her Google calendar so she could actually use it. And so on. I haven't heard a peep out of her other than how much she loves it and how she's telling all of her friends.

Of course, you might say, well, yeah, but where would she be if you hadn't set it up? True that but I didn't do anything a half-decent OEM couldn't do.

Someone who already has a working printer and has no need for a POTS fax machine.

Pay for the scanner, the printer is a freebie. Who knows, it might come in handy when your other one dies.

How is the end user, even one who knows that Ubuntu and Fedora mean Linux,

I don't think it's as much of a secret as you seem to believe.

supposed to know that "universal" on an HP product means Linux and not, say, NBC?

Then they'll buy Lexmarks until HP gets a clue.

Red Hat isn't worth the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat isn't that good of a Linux distro. There are so many flavors of Linux out there for free so why would anyone pay for Red Hat? Ubuntu is better than Redhat and its free

Re:Red Hat isn't worth the money

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you partially on that, but there is more to it than that. I'm pretty sure everyone has already covered everything so I'm not going to waste my time repeating myself. :D

What's the point of open-source?

[virtualflesh]

Don't be alarmed by the title, it's sarcastic. I'm on the side of open-source. And in my opinion the point is to enable humans to be creative without being taken advantage of, a place for human ideas to flourish without being tied down by a subset of greedy humans whose only purpose is to profit monetarily off those ideas. Ideas were meant to be set free for the benefit of humankind. Now, actually DOing something is different, and the skilled should be paid handsomely for their actions. When such a form exists that provides both ideas and action, then the idea should be shared, but the action is unique. The argument is appropo to decoupling the person from what is right or wrong (subjective vs objective). When someone says "I'm right, you're wrong," then they tie themselves down to the problem and stagnate. If instead they say "that's right, or that's wrong," then the problem stands on it's own and doesn't hold hostage the human who so desperately wants to be right and be recognized for it. So, decouple ideas from action for money's sake. But attempt in all cases to develop both from within, and I project both you and the royal "I" (the rest of humanity) will be both rewarded. Live on open-source.

Cartman

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because they're poor, Kenny. THEY POOR!

May be it's about Adam Smith?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations hated corporations. He believed in small to medium companies competing with one another to bring products to market and providing profits for those companies.

The open source community seems to be aligned with this philosophy over a more corporate "profit for nothing" mentality. A true Adam Smith free market company would be profitable but not so stupidly profitable they could rule over an entire nation. I think a lot of open source companies are profitable but they don't have the same characteristics that a large corporation would have.

 

Individual distros are commercially insignificant

[tepples]

People need to stop saying "Linux" as if it were one operating system.

Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE, etc. individually will never become popular enough to attract developers of certain kinds of software for which free software has been shown not to make business sense, such as games and game-capable 3D video card drivers. The only way to make a market for non-free programs that run on Linux is to have a single ABI for user space. Linux Standards Base was supposed to ensure that.

You say you cannot get Flash to work? Which distribution are you using?

The fact that you feel the need to ask that question illustrates the problem. Should a program require different binaries for Windows Starter vs. Home Basic vs. Home Premium vs. Professional vs. Ultimate vs. Server?

Which architecture?

There are only two architectures left for consumer products: x86 and ARM. Given "laptop" as opposed to "smartbook", I'll take an educated guess of x86.

Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies?

[John Hasler]

Because we don't need any.

> If open source is such a success, why aren't there any billion-dollar
> turnover open source companies?

That's not how we define success.

The existence of gigantic companies in the "closed-source" market is not a mark of success: it is a mark of failure. They only exist because government policies (insanely long copyrights, software patents, overly-broad trademark laws...) allow them to create and control choke points. And no, this is not "market failure". Quite the contrary: it is "regulation failure". The policies in question purport to encourage innovation and competition. They do the opposite.

The Free Software world is about the closest thing we have to a truly free market. The absence of huge, enormously profitable monopolies is evidence of that.

Re:Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies?

[DaveV1.0]

That's not how we define success.

Then, do not complain or get upset when the rest of the world, which does define success in that way says "open source companies are not successful". And, do not complain or get upset when they do not take open seriously or want to invest in them. I swear your post reads like something out of 1984: success is failure.

Your logic is the same as a 400lbs woman stating she is not fat because that is not how she defines fat. Your personal definition of something does not change the definition used by or the opinion of the rest of the world.

Re:You make more money using open source than sell

[Thantik]

I thought this was the whole POINT of OSS in the first place. Not to be "for-profit" but to be *USED* to make your profit in whatever field you desire. TFA is basically one big troll, OSS' goal isn't about direct profit, it's always been about secondary profit by the money saved.

Why I wouldn't know what I'm out to buy

[tepples]

Implying that you don't know what you're out to buy in the first place?

I'm out to buy "a color laser printer for home use", not a specific make and model, because if I pick a specific make and model before going into the store, it more than likely will not be one that the store happens to carry.

But then, I tend to buy a lot of my peripherals online.

And then pay how much for shipping, and how much for return shipping and restocking if it turns out not to be compatible? I happen to live where a Best Buy is almost next door to the grocery store.

I've already done the research to figure out if something's going to work with my particular setup or not.

Do you expect a median user to have or to easily acquire the skills to do this research? If not, that's why there are no billion-dollar open source companies.

I can't imagine it would really be any different if I were running some version of Windows (or a Mac).

If you have Windows 7, look for the four-color flag and "Compatible with Windows 7". I haven't seen a lot of peripheral boxes with a cute little penguin on them.

Re:Why I wouldn't know what I'm out to buy

[IANAAC]

Going "out to buy a color laser printer for home use" without knowing exactly what you're looking for sounds kind of impulse-ish to me, but like I said, I tend to do research before I buy anything.

Which, btw, I *do* expect people to do when they purchase something. Nobody has any trouble doing any research when something doesn't work, there's no reason the research can't be done beforehand.

Shipping on almost everything I buy is free. Yes, I usually have to wait a few days for delivery. I'm OK with that. I've only had to return one piece of defective hardware, and I didn't pay for it. The company I purchased it from paid for it, and that's quite common.

I'm glad you can find everything you need or want for your Windows machine at your Best Buy - you are their intended customer. I am not. But don't make it out like it's exceedingly difficult to buy stuff for a Linux machine, because it's not.

And to your "no billion dollar open source companies" comment - I have no problem with that either. I'd much rather give my money to a smaller local company that to a huge multi-national. Same goes for my food consumption.

Re:Why I wouldn't know what I'm out to buy

[tepples]

I tend to do research before I buy anything.

Which, btw, I *do* expect people to do when they purchase something. Nobody has any trouble doing any research when something doesn't work

By the time a user discovers that something doesn't work, the user has a make and model number and an error message. But when finding something to buy, the keywords aren't as easy to come by. What web site do you recommend for reliable reviews of printers, scanners, and similar peripherals that work in Ubuntu? Or what keywords should I use to remove irrelevant and unreliable results from a Google search for buy a home color laser printer for ubuntu? Even Consumer Reports covers Windows and Mac to the exclusion of Ubuntu.

Re:Why I wouldn't know what I'm out to buy

[IANAAC]

What web site do you recommend for reliable reviews of printers, scanners, and similar peripherals that work in Ubuntu?

You said it in your first response: HCL. There are scores of them available and easily searchable. Doing a quick Google search for Ubuntu+PSC+compatible (just an example) brings up the Ubuntu hardware compatibility list as the first link for me.

*shrug*

I realize you're asking for the sake of the argument here, but people are able to help themselves every once in a while when it comes to purchase decisions. Or at least I'd like to think so.

Re:Why I wouldn't know what I'm out to buy

[tepples]

You said it in your first response: HCL.

HCL doesn't say anything about whether a product is still made or discontinued. Do you want me to change the standard whine to "I looked at the first two dozen products on the HCL and none of them were for sale"?

people are able to help themselves every once in a while when it comes to purchase decisions. Or at least I'd like to think so.

I'm just trying to make sure so.

FOSS predictions vs. actual outcomes

[Jodka]

There are a few distinct concepts which have been conflated:
- The size of the Open Source software market as measure in dollar revenues.
- The total number of Open Source software deployments.
- The value of Open Source software to its users, as measure in revenues of its users (e.g. Google)
- The size of the largest corporation operating in the Open Source software market.

The assumption that with Open Source software those measures would be in the same relation as with closed-source software markets is probably incorrect. In particular, using the sizes of the largest corporations as a proxy for the "success" of Open Source software is bogus. The Open Source Software business might tend to fragment into multiple vendors because the license permits that, whereas in the closed source market services cohere around large corporations, the software copyright holders.

The failure of predication here was not to overestimate the success of Open Source software. It has been a wild success. Rather, the failure was to to predict the specific forms which that success would take, which Open Source business models would succeed and particularly which corporations would be winners and which losers. Some predicted that companies which rigidly devoted themselves to vending purely Open Source solutions would prosper the most. That prediction has proven incorrect. The actual outcome seems to be the Open Source adoption is broad but the biggest winners are not strict adherents to the ideology. Significantly, Google, current market cap. 154.65B, runs on Linux. Apple is thriving and its machines run the Open Source Darwin in combination with proprietary layers on top. IBM provides Linux on its servers.

Conclusion: Open Source software is a muti-billion dollar business but the winners in that market were not the Open Source purists.

Re:You make more money using open source than sell

[Monchanger]

Wish I had mod points today. This is the most insightful thing I've seen here in weeks. Thank you!

Uh... No

[DesScorp]

Competition is thriving in the open-source market, hence the lack of massive market-cap non-specialised companies. FOSS is showing capitalism how it's done.

I'm a huge supporter of both capitalism and the open source movement, but please, lets not pretend that the latter has much to do with the former. The reason why open source doesn't make much money is because it's essentially a volunteer effort. The vast majority of people that do FOSS work do it unpaid, and on their own time. I've yet to find a stockbroker that works for "the love of the game". Capitalists are in it for the money, first, last, and always. The open source movement is basically a bunch of voluntary communes. If they make some money, hey, that's nice, but the software is what's important to them, and they're willing to work for free to see it happen.

The two ideas have little to nothing in common, save the idea of voluntary participation.

Re:Uh... No

[AusIV]

I disagree. I would argue that FOSS is the pinnacle of free market capitalism.

In a free market, price is dictated by supply and demand. With software, supply is effectively infinite, so the price should trend towards zero. Only by introducing artificial barriers are companies able to profit by selling software. If you assume that the costs of development can be covered without charging for software (which FOSS demonstrates to be the case) the per-unit price of software should fall to zero in a free market.

Also, I'm not sure I agree that the majority of people that do FOSS work do it unpaid on their own time. This may be true if you consider the sheer volume and variety of FOSS, but if you look at the most popular and widely used projects you'll see a different trend. The main contributors to the Linux kernel are paid by Novell and Redhat. The GNOME project is funded by the GNOME foundation, which charges for-profit corporations to be part of the advisory board. MySQL was funded by selling alternative licenses to customers who did not wish to be bound by the GPL. OpenOffice.org was developed primarily by Sun employees. Mozilla gets revenue from an ad deal with Google.

I could go on, but I think I've gotten the point across. The large open source projects that typical end users interact with are funded by companies because it helps their bottom line. Certainly, there are projects run by volunteers, and there are volunteer contributors to the projects I've just mentioned, but I believe a significant portion of the work is done by paid contributors.

Re:Uh... No

[hitmark]

didnt many, if not all, of the payed contributors to the kernel start out doing it in their spare time, and then got hired because of their knowledge and skill with the kernel code?

also, how many of them act as a kind of "signature" for various changes coming from inside the company they work for, rather then it being the code they have personally written?

also, openoffice started out as staroffice. Sun bought the company making it, then released the code.

Re:Uh... No

[selven]

Actually, 74% of Linux was written by people with a profit motive. It's not a volunteer effort, it's the realization that there are reasons for writing software that do not involve directly making money from it.

Re:Uh... No

[Kitkoan]

The reason why open source doesn't make much money is because it's essentially a volunteer effort. The vast majority of people that do FOSS work do it unpaid, and on their own time.

Total BS. 75% of Linux code now written by paid developers. Just because the software is free to use, doesn't mean its made for free. Its like free public areas and events. Sure, if it's your town then your taxes paid for it (if you pay taxes). But people that don't pay taxes are also able to join and use them for free like people on welfare, visitors out of town/country, children... they don't pay anything and if you've ever gone to an event out of town, odds are it was paid with the taxes collected by that town which isn't your taxes and that means it was free too.

Re:Uh... No

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why open source doesn't make much money is because it's essentially a volunteer effort. The vast majority of people that do FOSS work do it unpaid, and on their own time.

Not really. If you look at major open source projects - Linux kernel, OpenOffice, Firefox, Chrome, etc., then the majority of coders are in fact employed and paid. If you look at all open source projects - including tiny one-man projects on sourceforge/google code - then sure, most of that work is hobbyist. But of the code actually being used by lots of people, most development effort is funded these days. Which is a sign of maturity in FOSS. (Not that volunteer efforts are not important - they remain crucial.)

For example, look here.

Re:Uh... No

[jmcvetta]

The vast majority of people that do FOSS work do it unpaid, and on their own time.

False.

I've yet to find a stockbroker that works for "the love of the game".

Can't talk about stock brokers per se -- they're a dying, dinosaur breed anyways -- but I've met plenty of investors who play the markets because they find it fun/exciting/fascinating/etc.

Re:Uh... No

[jimicus]

Now I'd disagree with that, largely because the great majority of (though I realise not all) successful F/OSS projects have a substantial amount of corporate sponsorship.

Generally this takes the form of either compan(y|ies) paying one or more developers to dedicate some of their time to working on a particular F/OSS project - which may or may not receive any serious input from outside developers (eg. the Linux kernel) or the original developer has set up their own dedicated company to provide custom functionality and support to their pet project (eg. Bacula, CUPS before Apple bought ESP).

AFAICT, the majority of projects which don't have substantial corporate sponsorship are either not terribly successful or are dedicated to solving a problem that is so simple that they don't require corporate sponsorship.

Re:Uh... No

[tehcyder]

If you assume that the costs of development can be covered without charging for software (which FOSS demonstrates to be the case) the per-unit price of software should fall to zero in a free market.

To assume a zero cost of development, you would have to have devlopers working for free. There is no reason why they should do so for a commercial enterprise.

In reality, the cost of development is covered by part of the revenue from the non-software sales that the business makes, basically from support.

I don't know why for-profit companies think they can just ponce off the hard work of FOSS developers.

OT: Windows an inferior product?

[ckaminski]

I'm going to digress - Windows is not an inferior product. It had it's moments in the whole "user as admin" miasma. But were Microsoft to add support for some Posix compliance - basically get bash to run without cygwin, I'd drop Linux in a heartbeat.

Microsoft doesn't WANT to be open, and for that, I *choose* to hate them. Windows is not inferior. It's just not open (and by open I don't mean open source, I mean open standards).

Re:You make more money using open source than sell

[Anonymous Coward]

they didn't make their money through selling open source products.

True, as far as search goes, but that seems to be changing. Android, much?

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why make a billion when we can make... a million!!!!!

( Austin Powers/Dr Evil music in the background )

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[betterunixthanunix]

"Should a program require different binaries for Windows Starter vs. Home Basic vs. Home Premium vs. Professional vs. Ultimate vs. Server?"

No, but those are really the same operating system with different levels of user restriction, or at least that was the case last I checked. Now, should Fedora and TiVO be able to run the same unmodified binaries? What about Mac OS X and FreeBSD?

The fact that the operating systems happen to have the same kernel does not mean that they are the same operating system. Fedora and Ubuntu do not ship identical versions of libraries, nor do they have the same default access controls (sudo is not the default in Fedora, for example). They look similar because they both use GNOME by default, but "under the hood" there are substantial and relevant differences.

Sure, it would be nice if a single binary would run on many operating systems. Historically, there were attempts to do such things, but the attempts were not very successful, because the differences between operating systems wound up being too substantial. Different operating systems have different philosophies and target different user types -- different Linux distributions are not an exception to that statement. RHEL ships older (but more stable) libraries than Ubuntu does -- should Red Hat be forced to change its philosophy so that unmodified binaries can be run on both RHEL and Ubuntu? Should Canonical create a new policy of installing compatibility libraries by default? All for the sake of maintaining a common ABI between different operating systems that target different needs?

Re:Other big recent players in the software market

[drsmithy]

So can anyone name any large close source software companies that have started up rather recently that are billion dollar companies? I can't personally think of any. Can anyone else?

VMware.

I expect several of the computer game companies would also make the cut, though acquisitions and such might make that hard to figure out.

Government should listen....

[grumpyman]

... if open source indirectly implies 10x productivity increase.

Re:Government should listen....

[DaveV1.0]

Please explain how you came to the conclusion that making 10 times less money on a product is a 10 times increase in productivity.

Google?

[betterunixthanunix]

Google produces a lot of proprietary software: an email program, an office suite, an instant messenger...

Re:You make more money using open source than sell

[Anonymous Coward]

The implication behind "Where are the billion-dollar OSS companies?" is that open source software is 'small time' and useless compared to the 'big boys' of the software world. Stating that companies have become billion dollar companies on top of an open source stack goes to disprove that assertion.

An example: IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

An example: IBM.

Duh.

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[tepples]

Now, should Fedora and TiVO be able to run the same unmodified binaries?

OK, then maybe "Linux" isn't an operating system, but "Desktop Linux" (aka GNU/Linux) should be. Otherwise, it won't be an acceptable platform on which to run software that must remain non-free by its nature. Say I want to sell copies of a video game to users of the Fedora operating system, users of the Mandriva operating system, users of the Debian operating system, users of the Ubuntu operating system, and users of the SUSE operating system. It would be a support nightmare to maintain five different SKUs.

RHEL ships older (but more stable) libraries than Ubuntu does

And in some people's mind, Windows XP ships older (but more stable) libraries than Windows 7 does.

All for the sake of maintaining a common ABI between different operating systems that target different needs?

A user of a single desktop computer has many different needs, but users usually don't want to have to reboot the computer to switch to another need-specific operating system.

It depends on your definitions

[ClosedSource]

As others have said, it depends on how you look at success. But Red Hat currently enjoys the "best case" scenario for an open source software company to be financially successful.

New F/OSS companies aren't likely to be able to leverage as high a percentage of unpaid work as Red Hat has with Linux.

So it's not unreasonable to predict that new F/OSS companies return on investment will be less than Red Hat's. So for those who are interested in starting their own profitable software business, Red Hat's performance is important.

OTOH, if the goal isn't to make money, then Red Hat's performance isn't really relevant.

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[oakgrove]

I wanted to reply to you but I couldn't make any sense out of what you were trying to say. Could you clarify basically all of it for me?

I'm Pleased...

[pandrijeczko]

...because in this 21st century world of ours where just about everything is driven by money, it's great to see a huge, world-wide collaborative project confusing the hell out of accountants and marketing types who simply cannot grasp the simple concept that *sometimes* things happen just because enough people *want* to making it happen, rather than being paid to make it happen.

And what's even better about the whole Open Source movement is that it benefits *everyone*. Nowadays, there's no justification for software piracy just because commercial software is overpriced in some parts of the world because now there are truly free alternatives that can, in most cases, give enough functionality - for example, about 10% of MS Office users use enough of its functionality to not be able to use an alternative package, but for the remaining 90% OpenOffice.org provides more than enough functionality.

Even if you don't use or support Open Source, there's no denying that its presence means that commercial software publishers now have a benchmark that they need to be better than, and that, in turn, can only mean better quality software all-round.

Open Source Development is Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's hard to make money working for nothing. Simple! Open source development is stupid. And if you disagree with me, then you're stupid too. Sincerely, Capitalist Pig

Selling service versus products?

[assertation]

Companies whose main business is FOSS products are likely tied to selling services, not products.

Selling products is harder when anyone can see/compile/redistribute the source code, binaries etc.

Maybe it is hard to earn as much money providing services rather than selling software.

Bull and shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull and shit. Copyright is subourned by GPL and FOSS to remove its effects. Copyright is a raping of capitalism. Closed software requires copyright be restrictive. Therefore FOSS is far far FAR more capitalist than CSS.

IBM do it in work time. Red Hat. Mandriva. Novell. Oracle. etc, etc, etc.

How many companies write for Microsoft Windows 7?

size isn't important

[tverbeek]

What a bunch of size queens. Bigger isn't necessarily better. In many ways, big companies are what's wrong with our economy, while small companies provide more and better jobs.

Ever heard of IBM ?

[Anonymous Coward]

They do > a billion in Linux related business

in the past _50_ years?

[Mathinker]

I don't think you used FOSS 50 years ago. The GPL and BSD licenses were only "conceived" in 1989, a little over 20 years ago. As anyone who actually uses FOSS can tell you, its quality has been constantly increasing (on the average), and even 10 years ago it was much, much harder to use and had many more bugs and problems.

So, your question reads like, well, a strawman. If you want my answer, I'd say, yes, I see more and more individuals becoming aware of Linux and FOSS in general and using them (perhaps not comprehensively), compared with even 5 years ago. And I do not associate this with economic hardship, since there is almost always the "crackware" card you can play instead if you really want. I do associate this with the quality of FOSS having risen over a certain threshold of usability.

And this is only in 20 years. It's hard for me to believe that the quality/usability of FOSS will ever decrease as time goes on. Given that assumption, you can make your own conclusions.

The way FOSS gets adopted in corporate environments is quite different than in the individual adoption scenario, because often (my workplace is an example) there are both political reasons why FOSS doesn't get adopted (the head honcho doesn't like it) and real business reasons (which can include the fact that retraining a large workforce is expensive, or the intensive use of proprietary software which cannot be ported to FOSS platforms and/or easily be integrated with FOSS in the business's workflow, or merely the fact that FOSS availability is far from comprehensively covering the whole range of needs which some businesses have).

I foresee that both the political problems with FOSS adoption, and the retraining problem will decrease with time as FOSS is adopted by more and more individuals. As for the other problems, I have no idea (I'd like to imagine that FOSS will eventually solve all problems, but I have a feeling that not all problems are globally important enough so that they can spawn a FOSS project which can maintain the required level of volunteer interest and/or contributions by private industry of money and manpower).

Open Source Solves the Broken Window Fallacy

[npsimons]

Open source solves the broken window fallacy in the software market. Seriously. Does anyone believe that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs are ridiculously rich because their companies' software is that much better? That they really earned all the money they have? Linux and other OSS has saved the world probably on the order of trillions of USD which has been put to other uses (curing cancer, researching alternative energy, feeding the poor, etc, etc). On top of that, it has made it possible for people who could never afford the outrageous prices of Microsoft or Apple to be able to use a computer.

Coding Horror already answered the question of this article over three years ago:

The lack of open source software billionaires is by design. It's part of the intent of open source software -- to balance the scales by devaluing the obscene profit margins that exist in the commercial software business. Duplicating software is about as close to legally printing money as a company can get; profit margins regularly exceed 80 percent.

To ask where the open source billionaires are is to demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of how open source software works. If you wanted to become obscenely rich by starting an open source software company, I'm sorry, but you picked the wrong industry. You'll make a living, perhaps even a lucrative one. But you won't become Bill Gates rich, or Paul Allen rich, by siphoning away the exorbitant profit margins commercial software vendors have enjoyed for so many years.

Re:Open Source Solves the Broken Window Fallacy

[Anonymous Coward]

On top of that, it has made it possible for people who could never afford the outrageous prices of Microsoft or Apple to be able to use a computer.

On top of that, FOSS keeps the prices of closed-source software in check. My EeePC (which dual boots now), likely cost very little due to XP Home. In fact, it was cheaper than alternatives ($288 no sales tax / free shipping). For the simple-needs consumer, software costs may be limited to a small fraction of a seemingly-falling hardware cost. FOSS has also brought the software industry to the realization that copyright infringement is preferable to obscurity. The service model is likely to dominate the software model. No doubt, many offerings will have DRM but those who seek a path around such will find it.

Re:Open Source Solves the Broken Window Fallacy

[tehcyder]

Linux and other OSS has saved the world probably on the order of trillions of USD which has been put to other uses (curing cancer, researching alternative energy, feeding the poor, etc, etc)

I have clearly strayed into an alternate universe, please excuse me while I bang my head against the wall. Those tears are tears of pain, I'm not laughing, honest.

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[ultranova]

The fact that you feel the need to ask that question illustrates the problem. Should a program require different binaries for Windows Starter vs. Home Basic vs. Home Premium vs. Professional vs. Ultimate vs. Server?

Those are the same OS with different add-on bundles. And as it happens, getting older programs to work in newer Windows versions can be quite a problem.

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[tepples]

There aren't enough users of the Fedora distribution to make it worthwhile for a company to develop and market products specifically for Fedora. Nor are there enough users of the Ubuntu distribution to make it worthwhile for a company to develop and market products specifically for Ubuntu.

Programming - Profits at the core

[jrouleau]

Look I don't want to start a flame war here but I am going to say some things that are going to make some zealots angry. Lets be 100% honest here - Open Source, Closed Source, whatever it is makes no difference - the name of the game is MAKING MONEY. If your programming Open Source to prove how smart or how idealistic you are then congratulations, you have achieved the pinnacle of your success when you publish a product that everyone can use for free AND wants to, however, most people are not out to prove how smart or idealistic they are. They are doing it to make a real living (aka money). In addition, at the end of the day, most people want to get paid for their efforts, ideas, and thoughts (including people who invent Intellectual Property). To berate companies because they are turning a profit is foolish just because YOU may not agree with the amount or that profit or how they make that profit. That's the beauty of America - people vote with their dollars - Product no good, Product over priced, product not a value - I KEEP my dollars. If I agree that the product offers value, fills a NEED, and is reasonably priced - I SPEND my dollars (aka help the company make a profit). So, the companies that capitalize on the back of open source contributors are in my opinion just plain smart - they have pieces of code that are freely available but somehow they make it a proprietary item (usually by adding their bits of code and changing the core structure), turn around sell it, and make profits. So to blindly adhere to the tenets of FOSS and Open Source, then complain about IP laws, profits, or whatever is just stupid. At the end of the day contributing to better, more secure code is yes noble, however, it ultimately does nothing to advance YOUR position in life from a monetary standpoint. So, A lot of people here that are flat out complaining about companies that have made profits, about business models, costs of software, technology, etc. - I say to you - Figure out how to contribute and make some money in the process so you have the ability to do whatever you want, However, then you will have nothing to complain about so this will ultimately fall on deaf ears and dense skulls I think.

Re:Programming - Profits at the core

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Too bad this wasn't closer to top post. Mod parent WAY up, if you've got mod points. It is the the different between art and business.

Demand

[U8MyData]

This would all boils down to demand. Where MS has made its fortune is creating demand however you want to look at that; innovation, marketing, shrewd business, etc. No flame wars please!

Really, most open source systems are very well tailored to the background or back office applications. They run great as the engine for things that have already been mentioned: SQL servers, web servers, and general mission critical pieces of the network we call the internet. However, what open source certainly suffers from is front office issues.

Although it has been talked about, adopted in some places, and explored in others we have not seen (or at least I have not seen) a widely successful implementation of open source technology at the desktop. The detail I will leave to others but a very simple point is that it is NOT easy or viable for the end user to use. Hell, even Windows and to some extent OS X gives people grief let alone expecting any kind of success with Linux w/ Gnome/KDE as they currently exist.

Open Source still needs polish, attention, and some degree of standardization on the desktop in order to compete for the home/office market. Back office markets are doing well, just ask RedHat, but the front end has far more numbers thus profits to be had. However, as has been the case since this argument started many years ago, open source is and continues to be the venue of the ultra-tech who still lives and dies by the command line. The end user does not.

Dawning my fire retardant suit...

Re:Demand

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I have seen an Open Source Desktop that *MAY* yet take the world by storm. But if it does, the reason it will is because it's being pushed by a major hardware company that is trying to beat Microsoft at their own game- make the software free and the hardware expensive, instead of the other way around. And the fact that company is Intel, the OS is Metoo, and the core processor is a low-power deal that makes a laptop battery actually last for an 8 hour workday, they might have half a chance.

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[tepples]

Those are the same OS with different add-on bundles.

As are Debian and Ubuntu and Easy Peasy and Mepis and Super OS. So how can the publisher of a Linux distribution make it worthwhile for companies to develop and market products specific to that distribution?

Glyn, why talk of selling rather than using?

[SgtChaireBourne]

It's 2010, why is Glyn of all people still talking about selling software instead of using it? Is this a fumble like in 1999 when he mistook deIcaza for a FOSS developer? Are we all so far down the Microsoft money pit that no one is even allowed to think about using the software?

That's what it's all about as far as many are concerned: using the software. Even the opening stipulation in the GPL and the GNU Manifesto are about using the software.

Volkswagen, last I checked, was a contributor to the linux kernel and a user of many other components. It has a market cap of over 32 billion. Amazon, though recently targeted for knee-capping by Microsoft goombas, has a market cap of around 55 billion. Juniper Networks was using open source, at least prior to taking on Microsofters, and had a market cap of around 10 billion. Even Apple, which seems to be succumbing to Microsoft made its comeback around GNU/Darwin. How long they can keep doing that before Microsoft party members can sabotage the company or inject their toxic personnel is anyone's guess.If you look around, it's not hard to find large companies with market caps in the range of many tens of billions of dollars that are using Free and Open Source Software to make lots of money.

Re:Glyn, why talk of selling rather than using?

[Pharmboy]

Darwin isn't GNU, it's FreeBSD based. They do package GNU/GCC but most of their tools are BSD/NextStep/Unix in origin. And just "using" the software isn't enough to be a OSS company anyway. Google, Yahoo, Facebook and even Microsoft uses some form of OSS. If you are talking about 'users' of OSS, you have pretty much made a list of every company in the world. I think the goal was talking about business who OSS is a critical part of how they make money, which is what every company is there to do.

Re:Glyn, why talk of selling rather than using?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think at least part of the point was that all these companies are actually developing the software as well. Proprietary companies are based around making the software all by themselves and then selling it as a product, while FOSS tends to be more about using software to support the company's services. In that sense, FOSS itself doesn't need to be a ‘critical’ part except in the sense of computers themselves being critical to the operation. And if you consider the main value of FOSS in business to be saving money as the article suggests, companies using FOSS to save money would be as much FOSS companies as those that are actually centered around the software. I mean, most FOSS companies don't actually ‘sell’ the software, so the distinction between companies that develop the software for the sake of selling support and companies that develop the software and make money by other means is more just the extent to which FOSS is helping their business.

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing different versions of Windows to Linux distros is like comparing apples vs oranges, peaches, grapes and pears. Linux distros all have different package management utilities, not to mention different views on how the OS should run. You may see it as a problem, others see it as a god send. Never have their been so many options for OS selection. Also, the binaries are all the same... its the package formats that are different... rpm,deb,tarball, etc. They all contain the same binary files.

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[oakgrove]

I still don't quite get your point. Why would anybody market proprietary software to just one distro? VMWare sells Workstation for 189 dollars (last I checked) and it isn't marketed to any one distro in particular. When Valve releases Steam later this year, it's unlikely to be just for Ubuntu or anybody else. So, what you say is demonstrably true however, what exactly is the point other than the self-evidence?

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[tepples]

Why would anybody market proprietary software to just one distro?

That's exactly my point. If betterunixthanunix wants to treat "Fedora", "Ubuntu", and other popular distributions as separate platforms, as shown in this comment, he needs to deal with how this choice would fragment the market for software for those platforms.

But almost nobody installs Windows or OS X

[snowwrestler]

Most people buy a computer on which someone else has already installed Windows or OS X.

The easiest install is the one that you don't have to do.

I would rather make a million than work for a $B

[bhlowe]

Billion dollar companies I don't aspire to be part of. I am more interested in the ease or difficulty of using open source software to make my small team of programmers millionaires. For me, I decided to offer something of value (software) and charge for it. I decided I didn't want to give it away and hope someone pays me to support it. (Well written consumer software shouldn't need a lot of support! Mine certainly doesn't.) For me, GPL is a poison pill. BSD/MIT licenses make me happy. My customers are happy. My family is happy that I can support them. And I'm very happy I no longer have to work for a billion dollar company.

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[oakgrove]

That's exactly my point. If betterunixthanunix wants to treat "Fedora", "Ubuntu", and other popular distributions as separate platforms, as shown in this comment

Hold on there, Tiger. I just read that comment in its entirety and he didn't actually use the word "platform". He said operating system which is valid. Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora are not the same operating system, however, they do share the same platform. Just like Windows 2k/XP and Vista/7 aren't the same operating systems, they do share a platform and can all run most of the same programs more or less. The only real difference is Windows all comes from MS and Linux comes from whoever feels like putting a distro together or http://www.kernel.org./

Apple is an Open Source company

[some0ne]

With proprietary hardware model.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

The Darwin code is licensed as open source and is used on a large percentage of the physical products sold by Apple.

RedHat could be a larger company by offering special purpose hardware for large database or indexing server clusters. Or create a cluster management that is a lot better than what is happening now in the open source world.

   

Strange and odd summary

[GasparGMSwordsman]

Perhaps it's time for managers of open source startups to stop chasing the billion-dollar dream.

Exactly who *IS* chasing a billion dollar anything?! Is there a wealth of money driven open source mangers out there that I just have never heard of?

I think it might be better for /. summary writers to stop chasing billion dollar payments for sensational headlines.

I guess we need to check revenue per employee

[egork]

If this is higher at Red Hat than it is at MS or some other closed source OS player - then they are fine.
Why bothering with the market cap?

It's sad

[morgauxo]

It's sad that this matters. IMHO a successful company is any that bring it's employees a stable income. A good one actually produces a product or service that somehow makes the world a little better in the process. Unfortunately in today's reality companies are measured by investments not earned profit and with so many multi-billion corporations around the investors will naturally flock towards those, not the multi-million dollar companies.

No, not the case with me.

[egork]

If we need to by anything, best chances gets the poduct, which:
        * is a good stable product
        * has all the inner workings of the product
        * has all the tools required to support the product

Let's move on to applications

[tepples]

Let's move on to applications.

Yes, let's do, because the end user will need Wine to run anything not in the repository.

As for your "Netscape ISP", I am rather puzzled, since Firefox is the modern version of the original Netscape browser.

"Netscape browser" and "Netscape ISP" are two different products in the same way that "Microsoft Internet Explorer" and "MSN ISP" are separate products. Read this explanation.

Ubuntu aside for the moment, traditional Linux distributions are easier for professionals, especially those who want to deploy consistent settings across non-identical hardware.

Until I find that the non-identical hardware also turns out to be non-supported hardware.

The Big Picture of Open Source

[Bullstocks]

Redhat is a bad example, they are focusing on a small niche market, that unfortunately for them, is comprised of technically inclined individuals who can and do choose the fork they want. If you are looking for potential candidates to reach the big B, Mozilla (Yes non-profit, but 76 million in revenue in 08 to me is a success of open source.) or Canonical will most likely be the first Billion dollar open source company. They unlike Redhat, are aiming at main street and are succeeding with 10 million plus users. If they can capture even a portion of the savings the open source os gave to the users, think apps, music, video downloads, advertising, etc.. they could easily surpass the Billion mark, it will just take time, and a bit of innovation. The success of open source is in the quality of the product. If you run a server that makes money by the second, you run LINUX or you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

It's about being the price leader

[Animats]

Why should there be "billion dollar open source companies?" Most have nothing that valuable to sell. Red Hat is a packager; they don't implement much.

Remember VA Linux, the people behind Slashdot? Biggest first-day runup in the history of the NASDAQ. Where are they now? Down from 233 to 1.33.

Craigslist is the price leader in local ads, and they're a small company. Jimbo Wales thought Wikia was going to be a big deal (he wanted a private jet, like the Google people), but Wikia turned out to be merely a free hosting service for fancruft (the Star [Wars|Gate|Trek|Craft} wikis, etc.).

Saving money my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source software just moves the money in different ways and is almost always more expensive for businesses. This is common knowledge.

Now, causing people to _incorrectly_ assume open source software will cost them less money is an accomplishment.

Actually costing less money has not been accomplished unless you believe very strangely compiled reports released by ... guess who ... commercial open source software companies! LOL

I could list 100 reasons why getting all your software written by me personally _could_ save your business a ton of money. Yet I know for sure that it probably will not.

Re:You make more money using open source than sell

[naoursla]

Right. The people who use the software get to make as much money as they can. The people who write the software get to make as much as they can providing support (and since there is a larger pool of support than authors the supply/demand price curve says that isn't very much).

hybrid model

[Gary W. Longsine]

Mostly agreed. A related point is that people seem to be assuming that an "open source company" is something like RedHat, which charges money for support for an open source software product, typically under a GPL license, apparently because the people behind the project and/or the company fear being crushed by a fork that doesn't share back.

There are no examples of raging success of that model, but some modest successes.

A slightly different model is pursued by Apple. It supports a number of interesting open source projects. Sure, Darwin doesn't really seem to be used by anybody other than Apple and it's customers, but WebKit and LLVM, for example are widely used by others. The licenses for these projects tend to be BSD-style licenses, and the projects receive substantial support not only from Apple but other profit seeking enterprises as well.

Perhaps it's time to re-think the business approach to open source software, and the open source project's approach to business. There's an alternative model which seems to be worth pondering.

a billion dollars

[Gary W. Longsine]

Well, a billion dollar a year company really isn't all that big, and there are several examples of software companies in that range, unlike "bicycle pump manufacturers". The question is realistic. What it really amounts to is, "Why hasn't RedHat been more successful?" The nature of the fragmentation in the Linux market is an obvious issue, but is fragmentation and project forking the only limiting factor in the growth of these companies?

Re:a billion dollars

[PopeRatzo]

Well, a billion dollar a year company really isn't all that big, and there are several examples of software companies in that range

So, "Why isn't RedHat as big as Microsoft" is a fair question?

Seriously? For who is that a fair question besides someone trying to create anti-Linux FUD?

And just how many "billion-dollar" software companies do you think there are?

Bad economics...

[metrometro]

There are plenty of billion dollar open source businesses. The problem is how the business community is counting the money. More precisely, how they're measuring value. There are a number of open source projects with adoption rates and value-to-customers that multiply into the multiple billions -- web servers to Wordpress. The "problem" is that almost all of that billions of dollars of value is given back to the users. This is a problem for would-be billionaires, but pretty fucking ideal for the rest of us.

Stuff'n

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I hate to say it, but "installers of other peoples' stuff" isn't the most magnificent of business models.

The upside, that you get all this extra, free effort from "the community", is also its downside, since it says you can't charge for the "stuff" directly.

Obvious answer

[Zoxed]

> If open source is such a success, why aren't there any billion-dollar turnover open source companies?

Because the making of money is not the only measure of "success".

Re:Obvious answer

[kz45]

"ecause the making of money is not the only measure of "success"."

The entire purpose of a business is to make money, so this is the measure of success. If this isn't your goal, then you shouldn't be in business.

Re:Obvious answer

[Zoxed]

"The entire purpose of a business is to make money, so this is the measure of success. If this isn't your goal, then you shouldn't be in business."

Cycling is my hobby: if I owned a bike shop and I provided a good service and I enjoyed working there, and people enjoyed shopping there, and I just broke even, then I would definitely say it is a "success".

An Unworthy Goal

[sherriw]

Why this obsession with an arbitrary numerical goal. I would think that a company which is able to pay it's employees and owners very well, and provide excellent benefits and reasonable or even shorter work hours would be much more of a 'success' to me than one that pushes and pushes and squeezes every drop out of it's employees just to reach a $5 billion dollar goal.

Our society is better served by having multiple smaller companies who treat their staff well. It gives the consumer more choice, and employees more freedom to seek out a different or better employment situation. If there's only one big company to work at... you as an employee have fewer choices and less bargaining power. I'm all for big sales and profits- but I'm more interested in where it ends up. In the CEO and board's pockets? If that's the case then the $5 billion is practically worthless.

Interesting you include IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know they're a Linux vendor, right?

Different business models

[Tubal-Cain]

Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies?

Open source companies make money from support. What software companies make billions in just their support contracts? Maybe Microsoft? And who can compete on a level playing field with Microsoft for supporting MS's products? A too-expensive OSS company can and will get dropped like a brick.

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[betterunixthanunix]

"A user of a single desktop computer has many different needs, but users usually don't want to have to reboot the computer to switch to another need-specific operating system."

Although, considering that most desktops these days have hardware assistance for virtualization, perhaps it would be worthwhile to push virtualization instead of dual booting. Instead of rebooting to switch, just change between windows or switch to a different VT, and you have the environment you needed all along. It would take some work to ensure that the user interface was simple enough for common users though.

Nokia?

[dwater]

Nokia is an Open Source company too - ref: Symbian, Qt and Maemo/MeeGo.

In fact, (IMO) it is a prime reason many of the current employees work there - well, engineers anyway; they really believe in Open Source.

Revenue 40.99 billion (2009)
Operating income 1.197 billion (2009)
Net income 891 million (2009)
Total assets 35.74 billion (2009)
Total equity 14.75 billion (2009)

What criterion is the article using?

Re:Nokia?

[Pharmboy]

Not sure what they are using, since they ruled out Red Hat with a market cap of $5 billion. It is pretty damn hard to get more "open source" than Red Hat. I am thinking they are referring to companies that sell and support software rather than just use it. Red Hat doesn't sell hardware, for example, just software and services. IBM is heading in that direction as well, making less on hardware and software and more on services.

If a tree falls in a forest ...

[Infernal Device]

I would much rather have lots of small companies each contributing toward the industry, as a whole, making a billion dollars a year, as opposed to one company making a billion dollars a year.

If one company out of a thousand fails, burns, gets trampled by elephants, etc., it is a minor thing in the larger scheme. If only a few companies are propping up the industry and one goes down, gets trampled by elephants, doused in acid, etc., it's a freaking disaster.

We should never again hear the words "too big to fail" applied to any company.

When does success = $1billion?

[Nyder]

Um, really.

So these companies, that make millions of dollars a year, aren't successful?

Seems to me, any companies that pays it's bills, pays it's employes and still make any profit is doing good.

Sure, some might argue that the shareholders (if it's a corp) might not be making much, but i don't give a fuck about them, it's been really obvious they don't care about me.

Because "billion-dollar" is not the point!!

[Hurricane78]

What is it with you and the perverse fixation on money.
There are better goals out there.

If you have lots of children, and you die, you will survive trough them.
If you have great ideas and people follow your mindset, you will survive trough them.

If you have lots of money, and you die, some brat or dick will get your money and do whatever he likes. Especially what you did not want him to do when you were alive. And shortly thereafter nobody will even remember you existed.

Why should it exist?

[dmbasso]

Call me communist or whatever, but I think companies shouldn't be that big. What is the problem in existing thousands of smaller companies that cooperate, fostering their local economies? Why does everything need to grow without limits?

Re:Other big recent players in the software market

[Vellmont]

I think VMWare might be about the only one. Game companies? Maybe. But a few examples proves my point.

The point being, there's not this enormous list of software companies that've risen to become billion dollar companies in just 10 or 15 years or so. Asking the question "why isn't their an OSS software company making billions" is irrelevant when there's only a few software companies PERIOD that've started in the last 10-15 years making a billion dollars.

Re:You make more money using open source than sell

[shutdown -p now]

I thought this was the whole POINT of OSS in the first place. Not to be "for-profit" but to be *USED* to make your profit in whatever field you desire.

Not quite. The point of OSS is to be used, yes, but the point is further that those using it also improve it and contribute back.

Quite obviously, "writing code to be used by someone else to make their profit" is not a viable business plan on its own.

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu has 75% of the linux desktop now, and when we finally fix our non-Firefox useragents, it will become easier to verify the fact. Fragmentation is a myth.

If wiping Windows out means wiping Fedora and Suse out first, you better believe we'll do it. We have removed all mention of linux from ubuntu.com (go, hit ctrl+f and find out for yourself), and we have no objections to doing whatever it takes to get the job done. Our next approach will be loading the Ubuntu Software Center with proprietary applications and letting Fedora wipe themselves out with their own free software purism.

The sum of all verified OS share for non-ubuntu platforms is about 10% of the linux desktop, according to statowl It's irrelevant. Has been for years.

And

[mahadiga]

What will an entrepreneur prefer? Open source or Closed source software to start his company.

Er...wha?

[brunes69]

Red Hat, Inc. (Public, NYSE:RHT) Watch this stock Find more results for RHT Dow 10,211.07 0.38% S&P 500 1,091.60 0.44% Technology -0.65% RHT 31.35 4.26% 31.35 +1.28 (4.26%) After Hours: 30.96 -0.39 (-1.24%) Jun 11, 4:56PM EDT NYSE real-time data - Disclaimer Range 29.56 - 31.37 52 week 18.11 - 32.19 Open 29.56 Vol / Avg. 4.08M/2.86M Mkt cap 5.92B P/E 69.54 Div/yield - EPS 0.45 Shares 188.71M Beta 1.34 Inst. own 90%

It's Margins and Scaling

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh. It's pretty obvious if you know accounting or have run a business. It comes down to margins and how they scale (or don't) in the typical OSS business model. This is simply the nature of the beast.

On one hand software has the potential for insanely nice scaling: write once, sell many. The problem comes down the nature of the OSS license and what you can charge for in GPL (less a problem with a BSD license). In general this usually comes down to media distribution and support consulting and services. Media distribution is like running a grocery or restaurant in terms of margins - basically low and labor intensive except for the write-once-sell-many leverage aspect (you really can, but not necessarily will, "make it up in volume"). This is just about the only situation where that phrase can actually work.

Support can have better margins but it still labor-skill-limited. Say you are genius at your application market - great, you can charge high prices (get good margins) but there is a problem with scaling. You can only deliver 2000 hours a year and then you hit a brick wall: see humans don't scale well if they are the bottleneck of product delivery. This is why the industrial revolution occurred by substituting human labor with machine labor: you can scale machine-based factories over several orders of magnitude output growth without changing the inputs much beyond the cost of goods themselves. Human can not and never will have that kind of scaling. But to grow a company from a "garage" to $1B company, you must have that kind of scaling in your business model!.

Well, why not just hiring more skilled bodies? Well, there's the rub: as skill required increases, the ability to find someone who actually can substitute for you, the genius founder, decreases combinatorially and probabilistically. Building an entire team of clones in terms of skills, temperament and drive is pretty much impossible at some sufficiently high technical level. Machines can be cloned thus, but people generally can't if they have any worthwhile skills that give competitive advantage. That's largely the point of skills as competitive advantage: skills are a barrier to entry because competitors can't find people like you either (presumably - maybe what you know isn't really as much of a competitive advantage as you'd like to believe).

One labor trick that partially scales (logarithmic scaling though, not the power law or the ideal of exponential scaling required for compound growth of the firm's ROI), is to use the hierarchal trick used by LLP type companies that are labor driven. This includes lawyers, accountants and doctors: have senior partners who are the geniuses and who are the justification for high prices by skills at the top and then populate the rest of the hierarchy with progressively lower cost junior partners, pre-professionals (pre-CPA/Bar law grads) and sub-professionals (bookkeepers/paralegals) which do the real work but who's time is charged to customers at the full or nearly-full senior partner rate - the partners split the difference. This scales better than a pure "throw bodies at the problem" business model but it doesn't scale better than machines.

The last issue comes from competitive advantage limitations of a pure software model. If you can do both hardware and software, you have considerably better competitive advantage which allows you to both control end-user value better and (thus) charge more. This is basically Apple's take on computing. The same is true for other markets that involve hardware with a software component as well. But not even smart companies can do hardware sometimes: Microsoft's Xbox and other hardware products like WebTV are notoriously fail as businesses or products; regardless of how much you may love the Xbox - Microsoft has and is losing money hard over fist on it. As a financial investment it's negative ROI. Part of this is necessary because they grew so fast that they outgrew the growth potential of their core markets long ago so only market extension into non-core business is viable for growth needs imposed on them by being a public company.

Re:You make more money using open source than sell

[eots]

This is the most idiotic comment I have ever witnessed on slashdot. For fuck's sake...

backwards logic

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bizarre claim, that the lack of multi-billion-dollar open source companies "allows opponents of free software to paint one of its defining successes -- saving money -- as a failure". Since the obscene wealth of software companies comes precisely from exploiting customers, and the "saving money" that users of free software achieve inevitably cuts into those profits, isn't this exactly the evidence of "saving money" we'd expect to see, and wouldn't a multi-billion-dollar Red Hat suggest that their customers were not saving any more money than Microsoft's? What a crazy, ridiculous argument, that free software users should somehow save money while giving more of it to software companies at the same time.

Even if the logic of that claim weren't already standing on its ass, it also takes the limited "success" of "open source" (presumably a success measured in terms of business profit) and presents this as a possible argument against "free software". "Open source" and "free software" are clearly not the same thing. The GPL was not designed in order to provide greedy developers with another way to get rich: it was designed to provide developers who actually care about the purposes and effects of their code a better, less restricted path to development, unhindered by the greed that withholds knowledge from other people purely in order to exploit them. If greedy developers want to borrow some of the "open source" advantages from the free software movement, fine, but whether or not this pathway to profit works for them as well as the far better established pathway via proprietary closed-code software is a separate issue from the merits of free software. After all these years of the "not just free as in free beer: free as in free speech" idea being spammed all over the Net, it's amazing that people still don't get that "free software" is more than "freeware" or "open source". Just because software doesn't immediately rape you like Microsoft's doesn't make it benevolent. Freeware and "open source" solutions that don't respect software freedom are just potential offenders grooming you for the opportunity.

Re:You make more money using open source than sell

[soppsa]

Look at the .com companies that survived the 'dot bomb' era. They used open source.

Open source had nothing to do with it. Just as many non-open source using companies survived as open source....

Uaing and contributing

[SgtChaireBourne]

Many heavy FOSS users end up contributing and occasionally leading development efforts. The myopic focus on companies that 'sell' software is not a metric that helps. If you compare the amount of licenses bought or sold, then FOSS won't show up on the chart. We saw that in the late 1990's when Microsoft marketeers went around to Fortune 500 and other companies and asked the CFO if, based on purchasing, any FOSS was used in-house. That's just letting Microsoft Marketeers (or as they now call themselves, Researchers) mince words to block out the rest of the universe. To that point, there are probably ten thousand companies that use software for every one that markets itself as a development house.

Keep focus on using the software. FOSS is more flexible and wins hands-down when the discussion is about the advantages of using the software.

huh??

[Anonymous Coward]

last time I heard.... NOVELL was worth approx 2 billion

Re:Individual distros are commercially insignifica

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have forgotten the x86_64 architecture, for yes it's different from the x86, and almost as little supported as the ARM.