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ESR on his trip to Microsoft
Thanks to Norm J for the pointer over to ESR's post-Microsoft interview. Fairly typical situation, but it's interesting to comments from "the inside".
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I saw the talk and thought it was pretty interesting, but several points were not fully addressed.
ESR made the point that developers working on open source care about making their product "better", and I don't think anyone was debating that point. In my mind, the central issue is "what do you mean by better".
The problem, of course, is that different people have different opinions of what makes something "better". If I am running a web server, I might care mostly about uptime and use Linux. But if I am a home gamer, all I care about is "are the latest games going to play on my machine?" In that case, I would use Windows. Thus, a blanket statement saying that "Linux is better than Windows" or vice-versa makes no sense.
The problem for many of us techies is that we often do not respect the opinions of the users. End-users often want things that are abhorrent to developers - a super-simple sugar-coated GUI, for example.
This gets us to what I think is the main concern for the general public about Linux: everyday users are not convinced that open-source-devs are going to work on the features that the users care about. So, the public could clamor the Linux community for a simple GUI, but if all the Linux people think that is stupid, it is never going to happen - or at best, it will not have the cream-of-the-crop putting hours towards it.
This is where the code-for-profit model works so well. People know that MS is motivated by the customer's idea of what is best - the profit-model works well for assuring this. Users can "vote" for new features and improvements with their dollars. If the typical end user cares more about desktop decorations than uptime, MS is not going to say "hey, you users are idiots - UPTIME is REALLY more important". Rather, MS is going to put their best people on desktop decorations, even if the best would rather work on something else. People understand the notion of paying (and being paid) to get stuff done, and as soon as money enters the scene, it is pretty hard to argue with the MS approach.
ESR's answer to this was basically to say that "well, you can make money off of open source software". But as the MS people know, you can make money off of closed-source as well. I mean, Linus will never have to look for work, but hey, neither will Bill Gates.
In my opinion, the most interesting part of the talk came at the end, when ESR conjectured that we are approaching the limits of being able to make money from software as a product, and that in the future, all software will be free (as in, will cost nothing), whether open (like Linux) or not (like IE5). He then gave a plausible argument that as long as the software is free, it is better to have it open-sourced.
All I can say is that it should be interesting to see what lies in the years ahead!
I'll end with two disclaimers: 1) I work for Microsoft, but my opinions are not necessarily those of my employer, and 2) I've had a linux system at home for 2 ½ years, so I am pretty familiar with it.
At last, hard evidence supporting the hypothesis that all those moronic Anonymous Cowards are actually in the pay of Microsoft!
"This is where the code-for-profit model works so well. People know that MS is motivated by the customer's idea of what is best - the profit-model works well for assuring this. Users can "vote" for new features and improvements with their dollars."
Maybe. Unless the market is moving too fast for the customers to control through their dollar votes. Or the customer's need conflicts with the vendor's strategic view. Or any reasonable size group of customers is too small to influence the vendor's actions.
Case in point: customers have been asking, demanding, and begging Microsoft for five years to improve interoperability with Novell products. Customers have been "voting", too, by continuing to buy Novell products. Has Microsoft responded to it's customers' requests? No. In fact, some of us suspect that new dis-interoperability with Netware is included with each version/service pack for Windows. Is Microsoft likely to respond to their _customers'_ requests? Help me understand why not.
sPh
Well, that's an interesting data point. Since Microsoft's products clearly aren't seven times better or their employees seven times more productive than Oracle's, all that goes to show that the market is either not efficient or not in equillibrium, and that means that customers are paying inflated prices for Microsoft products.
For customers of Microsoft, it makes no sense to keep paying those prices, and one way for them to equillibrate is for them to join together in a consortium and develop their own operating system software.
Open source and Linux provide one mechanism by which that can be achieved, and it seems to be working well. It's a convenient, simple, mechanism for sharing development effort.
Open source doesn't mean the end of commercial software or commercial software companies, it simply is one of several ways in which the market can equillibrate and become efficient and approach the true incremental cost of producing additional copies of software, which is near zero.
For Microsoft, it means that Microsoft can't use Windows as a cash cow forever, unless they distort the market by using monopolistic practices.
> Well then, grab a copy of the Linux source code and fix it!
In logic class, there was a fallacy called "Missing the point". Well, this has nothing to do with logic, but my point was looking down over your head and saying "gee they look like ants down there".
Did it penetrate through yonder cranium that my entire point was that sometimes you just gotta start over? Linus's rants against microkernels are particularly instructive here. Apparently he hasn't noticed the microkernel BeOS, which is even written in C++ (yet somehow small and fast).
I noticed cracks in the structural walls in my apartment, but I guess I'm not qualified to point that out since I can't put up a new wall.
Jesus, how about nonblocking I/O for one? Maybe a little structured exception handling too? A journalled filesystem with metadata support (oh but hey, in true vapor fashion, that'll be coming Real Soon Now).
But I guess I'm not qualified to complain about those things because I can't write them myself.
Linux: Do it your damn self and stop bothering us.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
A friend of mine at the Borg was able to sneak me in. Luckily they weren't checking badges. :)
It was interesting to watch the two cultures collide -- though not all of the Microsofties were hostile to ESR. Most just didn't seem to quite get it, though. Kept bringing up Mozilla as proof that Open Source doesn't work.
Best exchange:
Q: But why would someone work for free when they could be getting paid for the same work?
A: Because they want to live in a world where software doesn't suck?
It was very crowded at the presentationl; for some reason it wasn't in an auditorium of any sort, just a largish room. Standing room only, and there were several clots of people in halls watching the 'live' feed. (I don't know what they were using, but it was 15 seconds lagged, the audio wasn't synched with the video and it flashed every other frame.)
In one of the offices across from the presentation I noticed several Linux Journal's and O'Rielly Linux manuals...
Overall it was a good presentation. ESR spent most of the time giving a sociological explanation for why OSS works, or exists at all. Unfortanately he didn't have time to talk too much about what is currently happening. He got bogged down by arguments over his assumption that OSS creates better software instead.
He did make a very good point that 95% of software development is for internal use only -- and an amussing moment when his survey of the audience did not reflect this. He should have emphasized to the money hungry ones that this implies OSS won't put them out of business. I also wish he has empahsized that fact that most profit from software is the support of it, not in the sale. He did mention Zope, but never explicitly made any conclusions.
Hrm. I had been thinking of submiting a review to Slashdot. Well, here it is, I guess.
At last, hard evidence supporting the hypothesis that all those moronic Anonymous Cowards are actually in the pay of Microsoft!
.. come on now, you can't prove that. Your OUTLOOK on the situation is clouded by the fact that you are unwilling to act as a true INTERNET EXPLORER and try somebody else's stuff. Heh .. take my WORD for it and try some commercial software that will really make you EXCEL at everything that you do. CNN and other such prominent MEDIA PLAYERS consistently give good reviews to our software. It lets you ACCESS a whole new world of productivity .. yes, sirree ..
Heh
Come on, get your credit card ready and call 1-800-MS-TRASH. Tell 'em BOB sent you.
The ignorance comes from the fact that, by jumping to that conclusion, the employee implied that Microsoft's income is directly related to the technical merits of their products. This is false, even by Microsoft's own lights. Microsoft keeps their income up via superior marketing. Note that by all reports, Bill Gates concentrates more on the marketing of his products than the development of them. This shows the relative importance of both efforts, more so since Gates was once a software developer.
The employee was critical, but based that criticality on false assumptions. Thus, the employee was acting out of ignorance.
--The basis of all love is respect
*shudder*
So micro~1.oft releases all of the NT source code under the M$GPL, giving everyone a chance to play Linus.
Imagine you are a snot-nosed teenage programmer. You know you are good, very good, and you have already done some clever hackish things. Now you have decided to make a name for yourself, and you have a choice, hack linux or hack nt.
You know linux is a good tight small system, but *nix has been around for 30 years. It reeks of something your parents spent their time coding, and they talk about how great the 70's were, and they still listen to disco music.
You know NT is on 10 times as many machines as linux, it is modern and is full of bugs waiting to be fixed.
So you decide to tackle some existing problem in NT.
You grab something; disk drivers, cpu scheduling, networking code, it doesn't matter. You have before you a steaming pile of the worst spaghetti code ever inflicted on a programmer. You dive in, undaunted by the repulsive use of gotos in the middle of object libraries, and start hacking away. You set up a web site to chronicle your progress, with mailing lists and an FTP site.
Since you are good, and everything you do is an improvement, you soon have people flocking to your site, and hundreds of testers using your code or adding their own improvements. You make it modular, streamlined, commented clearly, and it is good.
Micro~1.oft takes your code and puts it back into their codebase, and it makes release NT2000-M2.
Now you have the job offers streaming in, and the big bad company in redmond is offering you stock options to join.
And within two years, NT is as stable as linux, thanks to 50,000 new programmers throwing their time and skill into the code. So consumers have a choice, micro~1.oft or RedHat or Slackware NT, each comes with a different GUI or several.
And Bill Gates is no longer worth $90Billion, just $20Billion, and still has 75% of the market.
*shudder*
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Alright, I'll hope I won't reveal anything my NDA covers... :)
:)
This is the first time I've ever watched one of ESR's talks. Pretty interesting, he's pretty quick on his feet, so to speak.
I don't really have anything to say, but someone out there might want to know my impressions.
Some observations:
-He's right, there were some "conflicting views". It was kinda funny watching the 2 sides assert their OS was better. I love Linux as much as the next guy, and I think that both OSs have their relative merits.
-ESR's talk gave you a little something to think about, but a lot of his arguments weren't backed up. I think that if they were, it would've lent more weight to his ideas. (Maybe there wasn't enough time to present them, or maybe there simply weren't good examples behind some of his points)
eg. One of his examples was DOOM. Mentioned how they benifited from open-source. Did not say what exactly was the benifit. (To my knowledge, the only thing that came out of releasing DOOM was glDOOM, which, if kinda neat, is not all that fabulous)
-Microsofties are also pretty quick on their feet, and I think that ESR probably lost a few more arguments than he's used to.
-IMHO, ESR's talk was not extremely convincing - I think there's a lot more money to be made by keeping "private source."
-I don't think he was convincing enough to change anybody's mind. Although I haven't talked to anyone else who also saw the talk.
Ah, before I get massively flamed here, I'd just like to say that I happen to probably like open-source more than most people. (even helped a couple GPL projects) And I find it kinda disgusting that people are releasing unproffesional, unpolished nagware programs, with no real customer support, for a fee. (for instance, a lot of small win32 apps/toys, winCE, Palmpilot programs)
Bottom line, corporations are formed on the premises of making money.
#include "disclaimer.h"
Views are my own, not my employers, yadayadayada...
Incidentally, before someone thinks I'm someone from "high and above", I'm just a MS intern. I don't really know anything about how things are run around here. Just my summer job to keep my busy
--
--
#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);