The students-teaching-students technique works
here too. My sister teaches at an alternative
public elementary school in Santa Monica that
requires kids in the older grades to spend an
hour a week teaching the younger kids. A
sixth grader will read for an hour to some first graders.
As anyone who's been a teacher or TA knows, you learn
far more from teaching than being a student.
Scott Ferguson
In practice, you can't use a more restrictive license. Anything that's not quite open source will confuse everyone. You'll waste half your support time answering questions about the license. MySQL could get away with it because they had already established sufficient market share.
Unfortunately, "open source" was created by the distributors and is clearly biased towards Debian, RedHat, and VALinux.
So you've got the following dilemma, either go closed source, or use an open source license and let the distributors make money from your work without paying you.
It's like the music industry. The artists make diddly and the distributors clean up. Scott Ferguson
I've seen servlet users change their deployment machines fairly frequently. Several develop on NT/IIS or even Win98/PWS (the horror), but deploy on Linux or Solaris.
One of the reasons that some ASP users are changing to JSP is so they'll have more flexibility in deployment servers (performance is also better). It's hell to be stuck with NT. For example, Cobalt RaQs running Linux are very nice at the low end. Or if you really need to go with the big iron, you can buy a big Sun box.
So, really, Java and JSP/Servlets are helping migrate users from closed NT shops to using Linux on the server side. Scott Ferguson
Agreed. Actually, object creation is even worse, because most objects will incur a GC penalty. In the old days, C++ was routinely blasted for poor performance. Eventually it caught up.
Poor programming seems to make more of a difference in Java performance. For example, the web-server/servlet-engine performance varies by a factor of 3 or 4 depending on the implementation (here's a simple benchmark).
I've also seen differences of 2x or 3x for JDBC drivers. Unfortunately, I don't have benchmark numbers available. Scott Ferguson
But usually customers really don't know what they want until they see it. Sure, we can all say we want an Excel-compatible spreadsheet for Linux or an open-source spreadsheet, but no customer had the foresight to request a spreadsheet in the first place.
So, in the real world, some developer with an idea has to take the risk of six months to a year unpaid labor to implement her vision. Maybe people will care and maybe the idea is garbage. Look at how many games don't even make back their development costs.
Even if she posts her idea, how many companies will take the risk of funding the idea? I'd guess not many want to take that risk. Companies would much rather wait to see the final product. So the developer will take the risk, not the customer.
But if the developer takes the risk herself, how will she recoup her costs? Remember, we're talking about people who program for food, not students or people on grants. Also, if the probability of success is 10%, she'd need get 10x her opportunity cost for a success to break even.
I've rambled, but my point is that both CodeSource and your amendments neglect the added cost of the risk of software development. And, in your example, $25k pays for about 3 months of development time assuming no risk. It's not a good deal. Scott Ferguson
Actually, Sun is one of the few companies where open sourcing makes sense. Sun makes all its money off hardware. The software side is really just a loss-leader to sell more sparcs. Since the software is already a loss, why not open source it? (Yes, I know Sun doesn't think that way, but it should.)
Something like the SCSL does make sense for a pure software company.
Besides, the QPL, as I read it, satisfies most of your arguments and it's open source. Competitors can't use QPL code in their commercial products.
On the other hand, since Open Source was created by distributors like Debian, any Open Source product must allow distribution by commercial companies like RedHat without any royalties going back to the original developer. Scott Ferguson
Maybe properly enforced copyright/parents could help companies open (but not free) their source.
In the medical case, the freeware and group development of open source don't matter. It's the thousands of eyeballs hunting for bugs that would help. So making medical source open would improve the quality.
But, to make that work, the original developers of the code need protection for the development costs. Patents helped innovation by opening trade secrets. Can we do the same for source?
Of course, that doesn't work if "open source" is really "free software" dressed in a costume. Scott Ferguson
Opera has, what, If it weren't for Microsoft's predatory tactics, we could have 4-5 viable browser competitors, including 1 or 2 open source projects. In a truly competitive browser market, where each competitor had to fund development based on their revenues there's more opportunity for growth. Opera has a very limited opportunity for growth.
Open source projects would benefit from the competition too. Apache is doing well on Unix in part because commercial servers cost money. It's doing less well on NT because IIS it free. If IE had to charge $20-30 per copy, Mozilla would have an advantage because it's free. It's hard for even an open source project like Mozilla to compete when the competition is free and funded by a large corp.
As to the theory of entrenched competitors discouraging new competition by taking away cash flow. That's not a new theory. It's not even my theory. Intel specifically adopted that approach in early 90's competition with AMD. They had allowed a gap in the product line that allowed AMD to earn enough money to really compete with x86. They filled the gaps in the product line so AMD wouldn't have any solid support base. And it worked throughout most of the '90s. That's not speculation.
The difference, of course, is that Intel didn't engage in predatory pricing. There's nothing wrong with having a strong product line. Microsoft's Word competes on its own merits, but IE and IIS don't. Scott Ferguson
Now, Microsoft can dominate any market it wants to by bundling software for "free". IE and IIS are examples. If Microsoft had real competition in the Office space, it would bundle office as well.
Companies, especially small companies, need cash flow to survive and grow. Microsoft's bundling, like IIS/ASP, can kill all server products until it achieves market dominance. Microsoft has the cash to lose money for years until it achieves dominance over the server market.
If Microsoft is split into OS, Office and Internet, then the IE and IIS/ASP company must charge for its products. Then you would have competition. Little companies like Opera or Spyglass or Caucho could compete with the browser or the server. It's very hard to compete against "free" software.
Only huge companies like IBM, Sun and Netscape can wait out Microsoft. And, frankly, Microsoft is more competent than the other big boys. What it really fears are the little companies no one has heard of. And a breakup would change that competitive market drastically. Scott Ferguson
Freeing the Microsoft source would be an extremely dangerous precedent. Essentially, that would be a government 'takings' of Microsoft's property. Suppose in the Standard Oil case, the government had seized the company's oil rights and drilling equipment and put them up for auction. That would be the same as seizing Microsoft's source. Scott Ferguson
What about other browser companies? The ones who never started because Microsoft killed the market? That's the real issue, not Netscape. You've only mentioned big companies. Even slashdotters have now accepted the media's belief that only huge companies matter. But it's the smaller companies that were hurt most by Microsoft.
Microsoft's predatory behaviour killed dozens of browser companies you've never heard of. It killed all the small competition, and let it compete with one or two big companies. It stole the air from any company thinking of competing. Imagine if Opera could actually make money off its browser. Remember in the beginning, there were more than two browsers. How many bright developers wanted to make a better browser, but gave up because Microsoft had already killed them?
That's the point. The missing companies that never even tried. The great ideas we've never seen. That's what competition would have created. Scott Ferguson
I haven't tried it, but doesn't Opera already support most of the standards?
Opera already has a committed and competent full-time programming team. Much more competent than Netscape and much further along than Mozilla. It would certainly give more choices and add more browser competition.
Opera can certainly compete with IE if it only gets market share. Of course, it's not open-source. I wonder if the Stallman inspired attitude of some Linux devotees has scared Opera away from supporting Linux. I mean, they chose to support BeOS before supporting Linux! Scott Ferguson
Making source availiable is valuable: the company may go under, you may need to solve a critical bug, the source may be easier than the docs:-), or you may need to add a proprietary feature.
But there's a large step from making the source available to giving up redistribution rights. Giving up distribution rights is like telling an author she can't make money off her novel, but "you can always make money working in a bookstore or on the lecture circuit."
We make the source to our product, Resin, available to the user for the reasons above. But you can't snag our code and sell it or incorporate it in your product without our permission.
My understanding of the slashdot ideology is that we're just as evil as a closed source software company because we're not giving away all our rights for free. I've never understood that. Scott Ferguson
Of course I make this stuff up. That's what having an opinion means. I'll admit my statement was overly brief. Yes, spirituality is key to Marx. Marx claimed you couldn't gain spirituality if the product of your labor was stolen by The Man. That's my point.
Take "alienation of labor" and exploitation. A Linux volunteer donates time to fix a few bugs for a device driver. Suppose the donation is small enough that she doesn't even get credit. Does she benefit economically? No. RedHat does, though. Is that exploitation? Once she's donated the code, she loses any control over it. Is that alienation of labor?
Yes, the economic structure is fundamental. That's why communism has to be a revolution. You can't have partial communism in a capitalist society. The open source gift culture is not communist; it doesn't change the underlying economics. Last time I checked, open source hasn't eliminated my rent or grocery bill. In a sense, it's just a unilateral disarmament. Can you imagine Marx advising a worker in a pin factory to donate his time, establishing a gift culture to bring about the revolution? I don't think so.
You really need to read Marx philosophical works, the early Marx, to see his brilliance. You can't just cut and paste the political advocacy of Marx in the Communist Manifesto and apply the conclusions to programmers. The preconditions don't match. Programmers aren't proletariat. In fact, we're mostly in control of the means of production!
Now, I've gotten carried away because I like Marx. I don't mean to criticise open source (I'm happily typing on a Linux box.) It's just that you can't use Marx to promote open source. All his arguments go the other way. Scott Ferguson
Actually, Sun benefits greatly from open source. Sun makes money off hardware, not software. If they can developers to fix their code, they can just concentrate on the hardware.
In a sense they already have. Perl, sendmail, and Apache help sell Sun boxes, as opposed to NT boxes.
Marx's communism is not like open source at all. The whole point of Marx is that you must get paid for the full value of your work, or you become alienated from it. A wage-slave might invent a product making the company millions, but if she gains $100 and a pat on the back Marx would claim that she may as well have done nothing at all.
Personal gratification is worthless to Marx; only hard cash has value. So Marx would say that open source volunteers are suckers, being scammed by corporations to do work for them.
Of course, Marx's view is flawed. People do benefit from spiritual rewards. Hegel (Marx's precessor) would agree with you, but Marx explicitly claimed that only material rewards mattered: "I want the money, not the title" is actually Marxist.
Slashdot Mirror
As anyone who's been a teacher or TA knows, you learn far more from teaching than being a student.
Scott Ferguson
Unfortunately, "open source" was created by the distributors and is clearly biased towards Debian, RedHat, and VALinux.
So you've got the following dilemma, either go closed source, or use an open source license and let the distributors make money from your work without paying you.
It's like the music industry. The artists make diddly and the distributors clean up.
Scott Ferguson
The numbers are ops per second for a P-266 running RedHat 6.2 and Resin 1.1 as a standalone HTTP/servlet engine and using 4 clients.
The Apache 1.3.12 number is just for comparison.
Scott Ferguson
One of the reasons that some ASP users are changing to JSP is so they'll have more flexibility in deployment servers (performance is also better). It's hell to be stuck with NT. For example, Cobalt RaQs running Linux are very nice at the low end. Or if you really need to go with the big iron, you can buy a big Sun box.
So, really, Java and JSP/Servlets are helping migrate users from closed NT shops to using Linux on the server side.
Scott Ferguson
Poor programming seems to make more of a difference in Java performance. For example, the web-server/servlet-engine performance varies by a factor of 3 or 4 depending on the implementation (here's a simple benchmark).
I've also seen differences of 2x or 3x for JDBC drivers. Unfortunately, I don't have benchmark numbers available.
Scott Ferguson
So, in the real world, some developer with an idea has to take the risk of six months to a year unpaid labor to implement her vision. Maybe people will care and maybe the idea is garbage. Look at how many games don't even make back their development costs.
Even if she posts her idea, how many companies will take the risk of funding the idea? I'd guess not many want to take that risk. Companies would much rather wait to see the final product. So the developer will take the risk, not the customer.
But if the developer takes the risk herself, how will she recoup her costs? Remember, we're talking about people who program for food, not students or people on grants. Also, if the probability of success is 10%, she'd need get 10x her opportunity cost for a success to break even.
I've rambled, but my point is that both CodeSource and your amendments neglect the added cost of the risk of software development. And, in your example, $25k pays for about 3 months of development time assuming no risk. It's not a good deal.
Scott Ferguson
Something like the SCSL does make sense for a pure software company.
Besides, the QPL, as I read it, satisfies most of your arguments and it's open source. Competitors can't use QPL code in their commercial products.
On the other hand, since Open Source was created by distributors like Debian, any Open Source product must allow distribution by commercial companies like RedHat without any royalties going back to the original developer.
Scott Ferguson
In the medical case, the freeware and group development of open source don't matter. It's the thousands of eyeballs hunting for bugs that would help. So making medical source open would improve the quality.
But, to make that work, the original developers of the code need protection for the development costs. Patents helped innovation by opening trade secrets. Can we do the same for source?
Of course, that doesn't work if "open source" is really "free software" dressed in a costume.
Scott Ferguson
Open source projects would benefit from the competition too. Apache is doing well on Unix in part because commercial servers cost money. It's doing less well on NT because IIS it free. If IE had to charge $20-30 per copy, Mozilla would have an advantage because it's free. It's hard for even an open source project like Mozilla to compete when the competition is free and funded by a large corp.
As to the theory of entrenched competitors discouraging new competition by taking away cash flow. That's not a new theory. It's not even my theory. Intel specifically adopted that approach in early 90's competition with AMD. They had allowed a gap in the product line that allowed AMD to earn enough money to really compete with x86. They filled the gaps in the product line so AMD wouldn't have any solid support base. And it worked throughout most of the '90s. That's not speculation.
The difference, of course, is that Intel didn't engage in predatory pricing. There's nothing wrong with having a strong product line. Microsoft's Word competes on its own merits, but IE and IIS don't.
Scott Ferguson
Companies, especially small companies, need cash flow to survive and grow. Microsoft's bundling, like IIS/ASP, can kill all server products until it achieves market dominance. Microsoft has the cash to lose money for years until it achieves dominance over the server market.
If Microsoft is split into OS, Office and Internet, then the IE and IIS/ASP company must charge for its products. Then you would have competition. Little companies like Opera or Spyglass or Caucho could compete with the browser or the server. It's very hard to compete against "free" software.
Only huge companies like IBM, Sun and Netscape can wait out Microsoft. And, frankly, Microsoft is more competent than the other big boys. What it really fears are the little companies no one has heard of. And a breakup would change that competitive market drastically.
Scott Ferguson
Freeing the Microsoft source would be an extremely dangerous precedent. Essentially, that would be a government 'takings' of Microsoft's property. Suppose in the Standard Oil case, the government had seized the company's oil rights and drilling equipment and put them up for auction. That would be the same as seizing Microsoft's source.
Scott Ferguson
What about other browser companies? The ones who never started because Microsoft killed the market? That's the real issue, not Netscape. You've only mentioned big companies. Even slashdotters have now accepted the media's belief that only huge companies matter. But it's the smaller companies that were hurt most by Microsoft.
Microsoft's predatory behaviour killed dozens of browser companies you've never heard of. It killed all the small competition, and let it compete with one or two big companies. It stole the air from any company thinking of competing. Imagine if Opera could actually make money off its browser. Remember in the beginning, there were more than two browsers. How many bright developers wanted to make a better browser, but gave up because Microsoft had already killed them?
That's the point. The missing companies that never even tried. The great ideas we've never seen. That's what competition would have created.
Scott Ferguson
Care to back up that claim with some data? Servlets can be just as fast as mod_perl or mod_php. See this benchmark.
Besides, Java isn't really interpreted any more. Thinks of the Java bytecodes as a (mostly) platform-independent distribution language.
Scott Ferguson
Opera already has a committed and competent full-time programming team. Much more competent than Netscape and much further along than Mozilla. It would certainly give more choices and add more browser competition.
Opera can certainly compete with IE if it only gets market share. Of course, it's not open-source. I wonder if the Stallman inspired attitude of some Linux devotees has scared Opera away from supporting Linux. I mean, they chose to support BeOS before supporting Linux!
Scott Ferguson
Making source availiable is valuable: the company may go under, you may need to solve a critical bug, the source may be easier than the docs :-), or you may need to add a proprietary feature.
But there's a large step from making the source available to giving up redistribution rights. Giving up distribution rights is like telling an author she can't make money off her novel, but "you can always make money working in a bookstore or on the lecture circuit."
We make the source to our product, Resin, available to the user for the reasons above. But you can't snag our code and sell it or incorporate it in your product without our permission.
My understanding of the slashdot ideology is that we're just as evil as a closed source software company because we're not giving away all our rights for free. I've never understood that.
Scott Ferguson
Take "alienation of labor" and exploitation. A Linux volunteer donates time to fix a few bugs for a device driver. Suppose the donation is small enough that she doesn't even get credit. Does she benefit economically? No. RedHat does, though. Is that exploitation? Once she's donated the code, she loses any control over it. Is that alienation of labor?
Yes, the economic structure is fundamental. That's why communism has to be a revolution. You can't have partial communism in a capitalist society. The open source gift culture is not communist; it doesn't change the underlying economics. Last time I checked, open source hasn't eliminated my rent or grocery bill. In a sense, it's just a unilateral disarmament. Can you imagine Marx advising a worker in a pin factory to donate his time, establishing a gift culture to bring about the revolution? I don't think so.
You really need to read Marx philosophical works, the early Marx, to see his brilliance. You can't just cut and paste the political advocacy of Marx in the Communist Manifesto and apply the conclusions to programmers. The preconditions don't match. Programmers aren't proletariat. In fact, we're mostly in control of the means of production!
Now, I've gotten carried away because I like Marx. I don't mean to criticise open source (I'm happily typing on a Linux box.) It's just that you can't use Marx to promote open source. All his arguments go the other way.
Scott Ferguson
In a sense they already have. Perl, sendmail, and Apache help sell Sun boxes, as opposed to NT boxes.
Marx's communism is not like open source at all. The whole point of Marx is that you must get paid for the full value of your work, or you become alienated from it. A wage-slave might invent a product making the company millions, but if she gains $100 and a pat on the back Marx would claim that she may as well have done nothing at all.
Personal gratification is worthless to Marx; only hard cash has value. So Marx would say that open source volunteers are suckers, being scammed by corporations to do work for them.
Of course, Marx's view is flawed. People do benefit from spiritual rewards. Hegel (Marx's precessor) would agree with you, but Marx explicitly claimed that only material rewards mattered: "I want the money, not the title" is actually Marxist.
Scott Ferguson