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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."
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?
which is totally what she said
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.
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.
the Political Inquirer
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.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
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.
- 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
how long until
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?"
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
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.
My work here is dung.
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?
AccountKiller
"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.
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.
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.
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
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
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.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
...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."
Living With a Nerd
I once bet my friend a million pounds that I'd become a billionaire before him.
Sorry, what were we talking about again?
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.
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.
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.
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.
All running on GNU/Linux, of course.
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.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
You mean all running on an internal, proprietary fork of GNU/Linux, right?
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.
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.
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
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.
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?
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.
Easy. Because money is not the only measure of value and success. WTF is wrong with you people?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
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.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
"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.
Says the man with a sig linking to a scammy late-night informercial style site.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
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
Nothing, although I'm also confused as to what point you are ultimately trying to make.
>- 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?!
how long until
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.
Seastead this.
- 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.
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.
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.
--
make install -not war
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.
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
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.
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.
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
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.
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
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...
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.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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 /.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
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.
Palm trees and 8
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Wish I had mod points today. This is the most insightful thing I've seen here in weeks. Thank you!
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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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).
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.
"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?
Palm trees and 8
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.
... if open source indirectly implies 10x productivity increase.
Google produces a lot of proprietary software: an email program, an office suite, an instant messenger...
Palm trees and 8
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.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
...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.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Paraphrased somewhat more concisely: "Sorry about ruining your life, your country, and your world, but hey - it's just business.".
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
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.
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
WALSTIB!
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.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Stop with the evil bullshit. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, they were evil. A company not doing what you wish is not being evil.
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 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:
Nathan's blog
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.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.
Absolute bullshit. Your claim is not reflected in reality in any socialist country.
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.
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...
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?
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.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
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?
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
If only my business could achieve 3 to 4 million a year for 5 to 6 years, I'd be very, ...comfortable.
It's been reflected in every socialist country in history.
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
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.
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.
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.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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.
Running on Linux. Maybe GNU, maybe not.
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?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
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
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
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.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
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./
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
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 ?
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.
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?
/. summary writers to stop chasing billion dollar payments for sensational headlines.
I think it might be better for
You sir, loose: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
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.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
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.
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
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?
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
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.
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
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You sir, loose: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
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".
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.).
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.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
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.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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.
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.
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).
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.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
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.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
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?
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?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
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.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
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.
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.
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
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> 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".
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.
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)
That's quite a big if.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As evidenced by all those Cubans in their Bentleys and the North Koreans in their yachts.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
"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.
Palm trees and 8
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?
Max.
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.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
You sir, loose:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
YOU, sir, lose. You misspelled 'lose'.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
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.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
=P
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.
Be seeing you...
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.
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.
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.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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.
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
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?
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
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.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
Let's eat Grandma!
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.
AccountKiller
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.
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....
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
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.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
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.
What will an entrepreneur prefer? Open source or Closed source software to start his company.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
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.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
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.
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.
This is the most idiotic comment I have ever witnessed on slashdot. For fuck's sake...
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....
Ogre Wedding Planners llc.
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.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.