Reminds me of mid-90's Seattle when suddenly "tip jars" started appearing everywhere. Of course the barrista at the coffee shop has a little more leverage than a mere web site ("Tip me or next time I spit in your latte.")
I agree. In addition, no one says that it has to be an "either/or" world. Any web site could have a free, banner-suported and micropayment-support "path". Maybe, as a user, you check out the banner-supported side first since you're just browsing. Later, you need to really dive into the content without distractions (and with, hopefully, a more responsive connection since there are no banner ads) so you authorize the micropayment.
I am curious where you ever got the idea that Powerpoint should ship for free.
PowerPoint was bundled with all versions of Office when there was (past tense) competition in the market for business presentation software.
Now that there is no (or very little) competition in the market for business presentation software PowerPoint is no longer bundled with the most common versions of Office. Microsoft now gets two payments from the user for the same functionality that used to be one payment. A great business plan if you can get away with it.
My point has never been that PowerPoint should be free, but that choosing to bundle software with Office (as in the earlier versions of Office) is another tool of the monopoly to crush competition just as bundling software with the OS is a tool to crush competition. Do you see this?
If the above paragraphs were too complicated here is the step-by-step on how to monopolize a market the MS way:
1. Build OS and gain monopoly. 2. Use monopoly power to force OEM's to bundle office suite with your OS. 3. Where there is competition in the marketplace, bundle your own versions of the software with the office suite (PowerPoint and Access). 4. When competition has been destroyed, gently remove your products from the office suite over the next couple of versions so that they have to be bought seperately.
Gee whiz, Sherrif, ya caught me... I didn't realize they still had a "standard" version; most of big computer companies (Gateway, DELL, Micron) sell either Small Business (even for Home systems) or Professional (add at least $200 bucks if you want Professional). Since very few people, go out and buy Office since it is bundled with their computer and since they are unlikely to spend an extra $200 on Office, for all intents and purposes PowerPoint is not available for "free" for the average user who needs to occassionally make a presentation for his or her boss. In fact, many users were probably suprised as surprised as I was that Powerpoint didn't come with their computer since it was in thier versions of Office 95 and Office 97.
However, Bwanna, you are correct that of four potential office bundles, three do include PowerPoint. The fact that the most common version no longer includes it, and that it only stopped including it once the competition had been destroyed, is, I am sure, not your concern.
I have been utterly defeated, I must conceed... however I would be even more defeated if someone could point to a web site that shows that even 10% of the copies of Office sold or bundled in that last two years were Standard, Professional, or Premium and not the Small Business version.
WordPerfect? Novell? Caldera? Hell, even Iomega... I don't know about liquor laws, but if they indicate the historical success rate of a high-tech company in Utah, I don't think any software company would move there...
"Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Location?"
This, in a perfect world, would be an irrelevant question for many people in a high-tech company. The Iomega should have been able to hire the very best and brightest programmers if they fully supported telecommuting. I'd happily work a schedule anywhere in the country (or world) if the company flew me in for regualarly scheduled meetings (maybe a couple days a month for F2F with the managers and the other programmers) and I was able to work the rest of the time from home.
Similarly, notice how "bundled" software no longer is bundled once the competition is destroyed. It seems to me Access used to be a standard part of Office and now you have to pay through the nose to get a copy, but PowerPoint is the first example that springs to my mind.
I used to work for a Service Bureau that produced slides from PowerPoint, Persuasion, Harvard Graphics, etc.. At the time of greatest competition ('93 to '95), PowerPoint was bundled with the standard version of Office. Now that Persuasion, HG, and the others are nearly extinct ("PowerPoint" has basically entered the English language as the generic term for computer slides) PowerPoint must be purchased separately.
Now, I don't keep up with every possible Office bundle that MS sells so I'm sure that some MS-defender will flame me for forgetting that MS-OFFice 2000(B) Sub-19 For Macintosh 8 still has PowerPoint bundled for free... but I still think the point is valid as a real-life example of MS tactics.
The assumption is, I think, that the shear volume of data being sent ("10 million million [random numbers] per second") would be too great to feasibly store enough data to decrypt the message. What does that work out to? 40 terabytes per second with each random number in the range of 0 to 4 billion? If you miss your evesdropping by 10 seconds, your've got a lot of work to do to recreate the message.
This, of course, begs the question of what kind of sattelite is availble to constantly stream 40 terabytes of data per second? It also doesn't seem to answer the question of how you and your friend manage to synchronize your watches closely enough to begin the creation of your "one-time pad" at the same point in the stream. But these are mere "technical" questions; the hard work has been done.
Question: has anyone closely monitored one of those DISH TV satelites to see if there is a constant stream of random numbers embedded in the information (perhaps the Game Show channel -- who would notice if the quality is degraded;) perhaps the CIA is already using this system? It seems to me that even if the volume of random numbers was much smaller (maybe a megabyte a second) it would still be a useful system for short term messages. Hell, we could build a system right now by generating a stream of random numbers off of some public sattelite broadcast (maybe you and your friend build your one-time pad off of the number of red pixels in the Game Show TV channel from PST 02:23:23.0 to 02:23:24.0 )
If Orrin Hatch and the late, lamented Sonny Bono where true to their capitalist roots, at the very least, the copyright would revert to the creator for the period of time that they are extending the copyright. In other words, if I sold my rights to the song I wrote to Time, for example, I made that deal based upon X number of years. If the copyright is extended, I never got paid for those additional years. Even on a purely theoretical basis, this law looks like another example of corproate welfare.
Well, technically the record labels didn't create anything but the distribution media. This seems to call into question whether or not intelectual property can be sold (record companies buy the rights to the songs).
Since everything else is considered different/special because it's on the web, why not pass a law declaring that the recording industry must renegotiate with the artists (or the estates of artists) for the internet distribution rights of thier music. This would bring the musicians and creators of digital content back into the argument.
Maybe even Metalica would be happy if they could negotiate independently with MP3.com or Napster or even force the record companies to pay them more to do that negotiation for them.
If nothing else, maybe some of the artists that got totally screwed back in the 40's and 50's might finally get the money they deserve.
I vaguely remember that some bill passed (or nearly passed) that automatically assigned these rights to the record company without any compensation to the artist. Does anyone know the status of this?
Remember, Utah is a staunchly conservative state, possibly the most in the Union.
This is probably why he is making the statements he is.
Record Companies == rock and roll == California == long-haired, godless hippies == "everything that's wrong with this country, and why aincha doin' sumtin about it". While I happen to agree with him on this issue, I don't necessarily think this is a "pro-freedom" stand as much as it is an "anti-liberal record executives" stand.
On the other hand the enemy of my enemy may be my friend (for a while a least...)
I don't know if I agree than software and business practice ideas should be under the auspices of the patent office rather than the copyright or trademark offices, but as long as the patent office is where these things are going to be determined I agree that there does need to be some kind of domain expert peer review.
Here is my suggestion:
ONE: Flush out the cr*p. Any patent that can be disqualified due to prior art except that it contains the words "web", "internet", "computer", "network", is immediatly tossed out. In other words, if the idea already exists but a patent was granted based upon that idea being on the "internet", the patents is tossed (and the applicant is beaten with a rubber hose.)
TWO: Any software patent that makes it through the normal patent granting process is issued on a probationary basis. Within 6 months, the patent holder must be able to get the idea behind the technology published in an independent journal (maybe C/C++ User Journal or Dr. Dobbs for algorithm type patents). If the idea is accepted for publication (even if it's not published within that 6 month period.) the patent is accepted. If the idea is rejected, the probationary patent is revoked on the basis of obviousness. In this situation, the domain experts are the independent journals that follow the industry. In addition, the publication might flush out prior art before the patent becomes too entrenched.
Patents are public information. It's not as if the patenting company can keep it secret, only to announce the existence of a patent when they decide to file the lawsuit.
If the other companies are in fact infringing the patents in question, they should have known about it beforehand.
I know, because I do patent searching for a Fortune 500 company precisely to make sure there aren't competing patents on a technology before we begin development.
Did you happen to catch BT's patent on hyperlinks? I hope you kept your company from wasting any development time and money on that patented technology. Did you happen to discover AltaVista's patent on search engines and keep your company from wasting any time and effort on search engines?
Obviously, I have no idea what your company does or where they might fit in the more controversal patents of the last couple of years. The point is, when patents are overly broad no amount of research is going to discover whether or not something infringes until it gets through the court system. And, while I hate to be cynical, the only people who can win in court are those that can afford huge teams of lawyers.
As a windows user about to take the plunge into the rarified air of Linux, I'm curious about where to start?
For my, and the rest of/.'s edification, which distribution(s) of linux do you use? Debian, RedHat, SuSE, other? Why did you choose the distribution?
If its a commercial distribution, could you email me in advance so I can buy stock in the company before your preference is revealed, I'd really appreciate it.:)
I don't know about the legal stuff, but Google has been a shining light among internet search engines.
The don't "wrap" their page around the searched page (e.g. Ask Jeeves)
They haven't lost their search functions amid a useless stream of portal "features" (e.g. Excite)
They are fast, fast, fast!
Their "I'm feeling lucky" option can sometimes introduce the user to new areas of the web that you never would have discovered on your own (and it doesn't seem to send you to pr0n sites inadvertently which is a nice feature here at work).
They didn't buckle under to the pressure and try to manually override their site after that "GWBush is a f-ing idiot" link issue last month. Nevertheless, this type of highjacking of a search seems to be very, very rare.
A quick test for "codewarrior" in their newsgroup search returned the first 10 of 10,000 responses in less than a second over my 36.6 connection.
If they can incorporate Deja with this level of expertice, I will be completely impressed. I don't think I've ever said that about an web company before.
Communism is not doomed to failure, if resources are properly allocated. Unfortunately, greedy human nature is what dooms this to failure.
I'm not a rabid, "capitalism uber alles", right-winger, but your argument seems to boil down to: the idea was correct, reality just got in the way. You might want to rethink the argument seeing how we happen to live in this reality.
There is a subset of things that this might be useful for, though I don't know if there is enough of a demand to replicate the Napster model.
The little plastic pieces that always seem to get broken on laptops. The little piece in front of the CD drive has broken, I could send the laptop to DELL or download the design file and build my own. Or, the top of my travel mug has finally worn down to where it leaks continuously; buy a new mug ($19.99 at Starabucks) or build a new lid.
Nicknacks - "you should see the new Regis Filbin model that Sue-Ann Magruder has posted and how about Mary-Joe's 'Jesus-on-a-cross' it's soooo spiritual. I heard that FabberTech (tm) is now selling glow-in-the-dark plastic for their 234xl model. That would really be cool."
Hobbiests: build a custom guard for your paintball gun, build a custom body for your RC car, etc. etc...
I'm sure, given the bandwidth and access to the fabbers, people will find a use for them that we can't even think of now. You're right, it may be more expensive and less convienent than buying the mass-produced product, but that's was makes it a hobby, right?
The only thing to prevent mass starvation...
on
Spidergoats
·
· Score: 1
The only thing to prevent mass starvation is genetically modified rice or grain that acts like birth control. Less children = more food!
I can see your point, but on the other hand, an individual or small company determined the need, took the risk, developed the product, and built a customer base (even if that customer base was 'hot dogs'). If they were unsuccessful, they suffered the consequences. If they were successful, the operating system platform (whether it's Windows,.NET, or whatever) incorporates their idea and puts them out of business.
In the context of this thread, the question is not whether MS is good or bad but whether the Corel CEO's vision of small companies able to make a profit from designing plug-ins and utilities to interoperate with.NET is valid or not. My contention is that his vision is not valid in the future for the same reasons it wasn't valid in the old/current OS-centric world.
There are, of course, exceptions. MS doesn't bundle a competitor to ArcInfo or AutoCAD with their OS and there will be some companies that will develope a product that either fills a small-enough niche that it's only competition is other small companies. In the.NET world, don't expect to make a living writing useful extensions to Word, EXcel. If they are really useful, they'll be included in the next release and you'll be out of a job.
Well, it's the open source concept, but one notch better, because the source wouldn't be open... so the companies that write them can keep them and sell them, but from the user's perspective you get the benefit of open source because you can have the content coming from a variety of companies. So I see that model as being a nice bridge between proprietary software on one side and open source on the other.
I think we've see this. It's called Windows and all of the small companies that tried to make a buck writing useful, "plug-in" utilities. For example, disk compression, internet browsers, etc.. If history is our guide, if your utility/plug-in is unpopular you make no money (of course), but if your utility/plug-in is popular the 800 lb. gorilla incorporates a rip-off version into the next release and you make no money anyway.
One of my favorite stories a few years ago (about 4 years after Java enters the marketspace), classified ad reads, "Wanted: Software Engineer with 10 years Java experience." I may be over sensitive, but that wasn't really a request for experience it was a request for an applicant that was at least 30 years old.
I've found, particularly on the East Coast, many ads are structured like this: X years of post-college work == applicant that is at least 22 + X years old. In the few interviews I've taken part in out here, there have been very little attempt to actually judge technical proficiency (through technical questions, quizes, or whatever where a younger person might actually prove their skills with only X - 2 years of experience). Age and the presence/absence of a degree seems to be the only determining factors out here.
I'm getting past the age where this affects me personally, but I still remember how frustrating it was trying to just get a foot in the door.
It also depends on the type of company. A lot of comments are coming from the context of a high-text employer where recent exposure to new technology and a gung-ho 80hr week attitude is everything.
In the government consulting/services companies I think there is a greater prejudice against youth since so much of the contracts (and therefore profits) come from professional contacts and friendships made at previous government jobs. It doesn't matter how technically proficient you are, if Col. Joe (ret) doesn't get you the contract you're not going to be coding anything.
Why do you think V.P. Cheney got his multi-million dollar job in the private sector? Mad Java skillz?
My question on some of these projects is this, "will they ever garner enough interest to make open sourcing worthwile." Let's look at some of the successful and potential projects.
Linux - motivation: understand the OS and fight the evil empire.
Perl - motivation: build a language that makes your work easier.
NSA imaging - motivation: kewl! I'm working on spy stuff.
Air-Traffic Control Software (minus the critical systems) - motivation: ???
I suppose if someone were designing a system that had a similar problem domain (and they were honest enough to make sure their modifications made it back into the OSS pool) it might eventually be a benefit to the DOT.
IvanM -- fixed bug that allowed the yellow running-dogs of American capitalism to use their sattelites to see the noble Russian Tanks on their mission to rescue the subjigated masses.
Slashdot Mirror
Reminds me of mid-90's Seattle when suddenly "tip jars" started appearing everywhere. Of course the barrista at the coffee shop has a little more leverage than a mere web site ("Tip me or next time I spit in your latte.")
I agree. In addition, no one says that it has to be an "either/or" world. Any web site could have a free, banner-suported and micropayment-support "path". Maybe, as a user, you check out the banner-supported side first since you're just browsing. Later, you need to really dive into the content without distractions (and with, hopefully, a more responsive connection since there are no banner ads) so you authorize the micropayment.
I am curious where you ever got the idea that Powerpoint should ship for free.
PowerPoint was bundled with all versions of Office when there was (past tense) competition in the market for business presentation software.
Now that there is no (or very little) competition in the market for business presentation software PowerPoint is no longer bundled with the most common versions of Office. Microsoft now gets two payments from the user for the same functionality that used to be one payment. A great business plan if you can get away with it.
My point has never been that PowerPoint should be free, but that choosing to bundle software with Office (as in the earlier versions of Office) is another tool of the monopoly to crush competition just as bundling software with the OS is a tool to crush competition. Do you see this?
If the above paragraphs were too complicated here is the step-by-step on how to monopolize a market the MS way:
1. Build OS and gain monopoly.
2. Use monopoly power to force OEM's to bundle office suite with your OS.
3. Where there is competition in the marketplace, bundle your own versions of the software with the office suite (PowerPoint and Access).
4. When competition has been destroyed, gently remove your products from the office suite over the next couple of versions so that they have to be bought seperately.
However, Bwanna, you are correct that of four potential office bundles, three do include PowerPoint. The fact that the most common version no longer includes it, and that it only stopped including it once the competition had been destroyed, is, I am sure, not your concern.
I have been utterly defeated, I must conceed... however I would be even more defeated if someone could point to a web site that shows that even 10% of the copies of Office sold or bundled in that last two years were Standard, Professional, or Premium and not the Small Business version.
WordPerfect? Novell? Caldera? Hell, even Iomega... I don't know about liquor laws, but if they indicate the historical success rate of a high-tech company in Utah, I don't think any software company would move there...
"Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Location?"
This, in a perfect world, would be an irrelevant question for many people in a high-tech company. The Iomega should have been able to hire the very best and brightest programmers if they fully supported telecommuting. I'd happily work a schedule anywhere in the country (or world) if the company flew me in for regualarly scheduled meetings (maybe a couple days a month for F2F with the managers and the other programmers) and I was able to work the rest of the time from home.
Similarly, notice how "bundled" software no longer is bundled once the competition is destroyed. It seems to me Access used to be a standard part of Office and now you have to pay through the nose to get a copy, but PowerPoint is the first example that springs to my mind.
I used to work for a Service Bureau that produced slides from PowerPoint, Persuasion, Harvard Graphics, etc.. At the time of greatest competition ('93 to '95), PowerPoint was bundled with the standard version of Office. Now that Persuasion, HG, and the others are nearly extinct ("PowerPoint" has basically entered the English language as the generic term for computer slides) PowerPoint must be purchased separately.
Now, I don't keep up with every possible Office bundle that MS sells so I'm sure that some MS-defender will flame me for forgetting that MS-OFFice 2000(B) Sub-19 For Macintosh 8 still has PowerPoint bundled for free... but I still think the point is valid as a real-life example of MS tactics.
This, of course, begs the question of what kind of sattelite is availble to constantly stream 40 terabytes of data per second? It also doesn't seem to answer the question of how you and your friend manage to synchronize your watches closely enough to begin the creation of your "one-time pad" at the same point in the stream. But these are mere "technical" questions; the hard work has been done.
Question: has anyone closely monitored one of those DISH TV satelites to see if there is a constant stream of random numbers embedded in the information (perhaps the Game Show channel -- who would notice if the quality is degraded ;) perhaps the CIA is already using this system? It seems to me that even if the volume of random numbers was much smaller (maybe a megabyte a second) it would still be a useful system for short term messages. Hell, we could build a system right now by generating a stream of random numbers off of some public sattelite broadcast (maybe you and your friend build your one-time pad off of the number of red pixels in the Game Show TV channel from PST 02:23:23.0 to 02:23:24.0 )
If Orrin Hatch and the late, lamented Sonny Bono where true to their capitalist roots, at the very least, the copyright would revert to the creator for the period of time that they are extending the copyright. In other words, if I sold my rights to the song I wrote to Time, for example, I made that deal based upon X number of years. If the copyright is extended, I never got paid for those additional years. Even on a purely theoretical basis, this law looks like another example of corproate welfare.
Well, technically the record labels didn't create anything but the distribution media. This seems to call into question whether or not intelectual property can be sold (record companies buy the rights to the songs).
Since everything else is considered different/special because it's on the web, why not pass a law declaring that the recording industry must renegotiate with the artists (or the estates of artists) for the internet distribution rights of thier music. This would bring the musicians and creators of digital content back into the argument.
Maybe even Metalica would be happy if they could negotiate independently with MP3.com or Napster or even force the record companies to pay them more to do that negotiation for them.
If nothing else, maybe some of the artists that got totally screwed back in the 40's and 50's might finally get the money they deserve.
I vaguely remember that some bill passed (or nearly passed) that automatically assigned these rights to the record company without any compensation to the artist. Does anyone know the status of this?
Remember, Utah is a staunchly conservative state, possibly the most in the Union.
This is probably why he is making the statements he is.
Record Companies == rock and roll == California == long-haired, godless hippies == "everything that's wrong with this country, and why aincha doin' sumtin about it".
While I happen to agree with him on this issue, I don't necessarily think this is a "pro-freedom" stand as much as it is an "anti-liberal record executives" stand.
On the other hand the enemy of my enemy may be my friend (for a while a least...)
I don't know if I agree than software and business practice ideas should be under the auspices of the patent office rather than the copyright or trademark offices, but as long as the patent office is where these things are going to be determined I agree that there does need to be some kind of domain expert peer review.
Here is my suggestion:
ONE: Flush out the cr*p. Any patent that can be disqualified due to prior art except that it contains the words "web", "internet", "computer", "network", is immediatly tossed out. In other words, if the idea already exists but a patent was granted based upon that idea being on the "internet", the patents is tossed (and the applicant is beaten with a rubber hose.)
TWO: Any software patent that makes it through the normal patent granting process is issued on a probationary basis. Within 6 months, the patent holder must be able to get the idea behind the technology published in an independent journal (maybe C/C++ User Journal or Dr. Dobbs for algorithm type patents). If the idea is accepted for publication (even if it's not published within that 6 month period.) the patent is accepted. If the idea is rejected, the probationary patent is revoked on the basis of obviousness. In this situation, the domain experts are the independent journals that follow the industry. In addition, the publication might flush out prior art before the patent becomes too entrenched.
Patents are public information. It's not as if the patenting company can keep it secret, only to announce the existence of a patent when they decide to file the lawsuit.
If the other companies are in fact infringing the patents in question, they should have known about it beforehand.
I know, because I do patent searching for a Fortune 500 company precisely to make sure there aren't competing patents on a technology before we begin development.
Did you happen to catch BT's patent on hyperlinks? I hope you kept your company from wasting any development time and money on that patented technology. Did you happen to discover AltaVista's patent on search engines and keep your company from wasting any time and effort on search engines?
Obviously, I have no idea what your company does or where they might fit in the more controversal patents of the last couple of years. The point is, when patents are overly broad no amount of research is going to discover whether or not something infringes until it gets through the court system. And, while I hate to be cynical, the only people who can win in court are those that can afford huge teams of lawyers.
Well then he should patent it. Move along folks, no prior art to see here.
As a windows user about to take the plunge into the rarified air of Linux, I'm curious about where to start?
For my, and the rest of /.'s edification, which distribution(s) of linux do you use? Debian, RedHat, SuSE, other? Why did you choose the distribution?
If its a commercial distribution, could you email me in advance so I can buy stock in the company before your preference is revealed, I'd really appreciate it. :)
I don't know about the legal stuff, but Google has been a shining light among internet search engines.
The don't "wrap" their page around the searched page (e.g. Ask Jeeves)
They haven't lost their search functions amid a useless stream of portal "features" (e.g. Excite)
They are fast, fast, fast!
Their "I'm feeling lucky" option can sometimes introduce the user to new areas of the web that you never would have discovered on your own (and it doesn't seem to send you to pr0n sites inadvertently which is a nice feature here at work).
They didn't buckle under to the pressure and try to manually override their site after that "GWBush is a f-ing idiot" link issue last month. Nevertheless, this type of highjacking of a search seems to be very, very rare.
A quick test for "codewarrior" in their newsgroup search returned the first 10 of 10,000 responses in less than a second over my 36.6 connection.
If they can incorporate Deja with this level of expertice, I will be completely impressed. I don't think I've ever said that about an web company before.
Communism is not doomed to failure, if resources are properly allocated. Unfortunately, greedy human nature is what dooms this to failure.
I'm not a rabid, "capitalism uber alles", right-winger, but your argument seems to boil down to: the idea was correct, reality just got in the way. You might want to rethink the argument seeing how we happen to live in this reality.
There is a subset of things that this might be useful for, though I don't know if there is enough of a demand to replicate the Napster model.
The little plastic pieces that always seem to get broken on laptops. The little piece in front of the CD drive has broken, I could send the laptop to DELL or download the design file and build my own. Or, the top of my travel mug has finally worn down to where it leaks continuously; buy a new mug ($19.99 at Starabucks) or build a new lid.
Nicknacks - "you should see the new Regis Filbin model that Sue-Ann Magruder has posted and how about Mary-Joe's 'Jesus-on-a-cross' it's soooo spiritual. I heard that FabberTech (tm) is now selling glow-in-the-dark plastic for their 234xl model. That would really be cool."
Hobbiests: build a custom guard for your paintball gun, build a custom body for your RC car, etc. etc...
I'm sure, given the bandwidth and access to the fabbers, people will find a use for them that we can't even think of now. You're right, it may be more expensive and less convienent than buying the mass-produced product, but that's was makes it a hobby, right?
The only thing to prevent mass starvation is genetically modified rice or grain that acts like birth control. Less children = more food!
I can see your point, but on the other hand, an individual or small company determined the need, took the risk, developed the product, and built a customer base (even if that customer base was 'hot dogs'). If they were unsuccessful, they suffered the consequences. If they were successful, the operating system platform (whether it's Windows, .NET, or whatever) incorporates their idea and puts them out of business.
In the context of this thread, the question is not whether MS is good or bad but whether the Corel CEO's vision of small companies able to make a profit from designing plug-ins and utilities to interoperate with .NET is valid or not. My contention is that his vision is not valid in the future for the same reasons it wasn't valid in the old/current OS-centric world.
There are, of course, exceptions. MS doesn't bundle a competitor to ArcInfo or AutoCAD with their OS and there will be some companies that will develope a product that either fills a small-enough niche that it's only competition is other small companies. In the .NET world, don't expect to make a living writing useful extensions to Word, EXcel. If they are really useful, they'll be included in the next release and you'll be out of a job.
Well, it's the open source concept, but one notch better, because the source wouldn't be open ... so the companies that write them can keep them and sell them, but from the user's perspective you get the benefit of open source because you can have the content coming from a variety of companies. So I see that model as being a nice bridge between proprietary software on one side and open source on the other.
I think we've see this. It's called Windows and all of the small companies that tried to make a buck writing useful, "plug-in" utilities. For example, disk compression, internet browsers, etc.. If history is our guide, if your utility/plug-in is unpopular you make no money (of course), but if your utility/plug-in is popular the 800 lb. gorilla incorporates a rip-off version into the next release and you make no money anyway.
One of my favorite stories a few years ago (about 4 years after Java enters the marketspace), classified ad reads, "Wanted: Software Engineer with 10 years Java experience." I may be over sensitive, but that wasn't really a request for experience it was a request for an applicant that was at least 30 years old.
I've found, particularly on the East Coast, many ads are structured like this: X years of post-college work == applicant that is at least 22 + X years old. In the few interviews I've taken part in out here, there have been very little attempt to actually judge technical proficiency (through technical questions, quizes, or whatever where a younger person might actually prove their skills with only X - 2 years of experience). Age and the presence/absence of a degree seems to be the only determining factors out here.
I'm getting past the age where this affects me personally, but I still remember how frustrating it was trying to just get a foot in the door.
It also depends on the type of company. A lot of comments are coming from the context of a high-text employer where recent exposure to new technology and a gung-ho 80hr week attitude is everything.
In the government consulting/services companies I think there is a greater prejudice against youth since so much of the contracts (and therefore profits) come from professional contacts and friendships made at previous government jobs. It doesn't matter how technically proficient you are, if Col. Joe (ret) doesn't get you the contract you're not going to be coding anything.
Why do you think V.P. Cheney got his multi-million dollar job in the private sector? Mad Java skillz?
My question on some of these projects is this, "will they ever garner enough interest to make open sourcing worthwile." Let's look at some of the successful and potential projects.
Linux - motivation: understand the OS and fight the evil empire.
Perl - motivation: build a language that makes your work easier.
NSA imaging - motivation: kewl! I'm working on spy stuff.
Air-Traffic Control Software (minus the critical systems) - motivation: ???
I suppose if someone were designing a system that had a similar problem domain (and they were honest enough to make sure their modifications made it back into the OSS pool) it might eventually be a benefit to the DOT.
I can see the changelog now...
build 1.0.3
IvanM -- fixed bug that allowed the yellow running-dogs of American capitalism to use their sattelites to see the noble Russian Tanks on their mission to rescue the subjigated masses.
P.S. Even as a joke that sure sounded dated...