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Alan Cox on The Risks of Closed Source Computing
cd-w writes "Alan Cox has written a column for osOpinion regarding the risks of using closed source computing.
A sample quote:
'No company now would commit to a closed hardware strategy. It would cost them more than using commodity components. Just as importantly, it would commit them to a single source for support and parts. Why then do they commit to a single software supplier? A closed source strategy exposes the company to serious business risk. As many telephony companies have discovered, your OS supplier might suddenly decide to be your competitor.'
" As always, Alan writes well and explains why the commodization of information has critical bearing on the success of the open source movement.
However, he's addressing managers and techies at large here, and notice how he doesn't try to sell Open Source, but rather outlines flaws in the Closed Source model. That's the best way to go about it: point out a loss opportunity for profit, then propose an intelligent alternative.
Is it FUD? Well, no. FUD spreads ideas that are barely grounded in fact. This is advocacy: it is a clear argument with a definitive target audience, and it exposes a flaw of Closed Source quite simply.
I think all OS advocates should take note. Selling advantages of OS may not be the way to do it, because managers believe they already have a system that fulfills all their needs, and will be wont to change for the simple promise of more features. Managers won't switch from NT to Linux for the same reason they take forever to upgrade, say, from Solaris 2.6 to 7: they want to play it safe, and new features won't come into play unless they know they have a definite disadvantage.
However, when you present an OS advantage as a shortcoming in CS, you're speaking their language. You're showing them where they're not making money, and to a manager or CEO, not making money is worst than losing money.
The problem is that we geeks and them managers speak a different language. Contrast the following statements:
"Linux offers greater stability than NT."
"NT suffers from outages that cost money to the enterprise. One solution is to use a more stable platform, such as Linux."
Sure, we'd love to sell OS's merit on its own. Someday, when OS has gained mainstream recognition, we'll be able to. But for now, I think Cox's strategy is very sound.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
But strange things are afoot.
I work in an extreemly beurocratic pro-Microsoft environment. When it comes to IT, decisions are made here that can match any PHB anywhere else. But there are strange undercurrents.
The other day I was happily doing my own thing. From the office behind me comes "Damn this Windows - damn Microsoft". Another admin. doing some trendy Microsoft-bashing? Nope. This was uttered from a decisively non-tech-oriented budget analyst. A year ago, it probably would have been "damn computers". Now Microsoft is getting the blame for her system crashing. The claim is made that the "masses" accept buggy software and computers crashing... that they don't understand the problem. I think this is an example of a change in understanding. The backlash towards Microsoft is coming.
Our organization has had an interesting history. One IT director kicked a hornets nest when he tried to route out Apple from the environment. The Mac fans faught back. It was messy. In the end, the Apple contingent took some hits... but apples are still on site. With this kind of history, what hope does Linux have? One organizations has built their own "standard load" consisting of a dual-boot site-standard Windows and Linux (not sure which distro). Meanwhile, the contractor for the majority of our IT resources has gotten requests to design a linux-based "standard load".
This doesn't mean that life here has dramatically changed for the IT worker. Its still tightly controlled by PHBs with Microsoft sales brochures firmly grasped in their fists. But even here... small cracks are evident. One can't help but muse whether these are signs that the damn is about to burst. Maybe the industry is ready to change how it does business.
Notice : pushed by a vendor. They want to lock you
into their higher ram prices, their higher scsi
disk prices.
Who is getting annoyed - you the customer. Its up
to you (or more likely your boss) to spot the problem.
Alan
The Microsoft's, the IBMs, the Novells of this world have a lot to lose, in terms of customers who are no longer tied to their existing products
The number one reason for a large company like this to go Open Source is customer demand (I'm guessing IBM took on Apache because they realised that Apache was what the customer wanted).
Moral? -- keep evangelising. We have advertising budgets up against us.
--
I've put a copy (not as nicely formatted tho) on
http://www.linux.org.uk/FEATURE/risk.html to help
spread the load a bit.
Alan
Generally, I agree with Alan Cox. The advantages of proprietary, closed-source software (e.g., having a corporate entity to call or sue) are dubious at best, and the advantages of open-source software (e.g. community and multi-vendor support) are typically not understood by corporations.
However, I can't agree with his conclusion. He argues that running a proprietary OS is untenable. This isn't really realistic. At my last company, we had problems when we had to bounce important machines because they had been up so long (~2 years), that no-one had been around or could remember what to do when they came down (this was a problem of poor planning). The point is that, despite the fact that we were running a proprietary, closed-source OS (Solaris) on proprietary hardware (from the same company as the OS, no less!) we had as much stability as anyone has the right to expect.
The advantages of open-source are both obvious and important. There is a great support mechanism (the community itself). However, that mechanism, while typically very responsive, isn't truly "responsible", in that no-one is required to support anything. The formalized, "responsible" support mechanism for open-source software, of which Alan writes, is new, and I have yet to see a comprehensive review of the OSS support companies. When these companies reach a level of maturity (both experience + time) comparable to that of very good proprietary software company, they will be able to add much more to the community than simply saying, "Hey, we exist."
The best thing we can do is, of course, OSS advocacy. I selected my most recent job in part because it leans to OSS instead of the proprietary. But closed-source is, for now, the way some organizations and individuals will go, and I have trouble saying to them, "You're wrong."
I know many will disagree with me, so if you must, flame on.
-Josh
Just yesterday I experienced a good examples of the kind of craziness Alan Cox is describing. A colleague asked me a question about LaTeX, which he said he was using on one of our Suns. My boss, listening in, said he should quit using LaTeX and start using a "real" document format. "In this country," he said (we're in Germany), "there is a de facto document format, and it's called .doc!"
Now my boss is not your everyday PHB -- he's pretty clueful on technical matters, in fact, and didn't mean that this is a good situation, but just a fact of life, albeit an unfortunate one. I can see what he means, but nevertheless I've been muttering to myself with anger ever since that conversation. This so-called document standard (he's talking about MS Word, in case you didn't get it), is a secret! And not only that, the secret gets changed, secretly, at least once a year, so you have to shell out hundreds year after year, just to keep using the "standard"!
I think this exemplifies just what Alan is saying. It's simply crazy that businesses put up with such a situation. In any traditional manufacturing business, no vendor could ever get away with it, and yet millions of businesses tolerate this kind of treatment with their office software, paying billions for nothing and all the while insisting that they're being economically rational.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind