..stop official development, hoping that suckers (aka "volunteers") within the open source community will do any necessary bug fixes and extensions...
I think this is most illuminative of the attitude of software vendors toward open source projects. They see it as a cheap way to get development done. Why pay for developers when they'll do it for free? The vendor gets product which, while they can't sell at Microsoftian price levels, they can sell "official" versions, ostensibly charging for putting the distribution process together and for such support as you get... and then they can direct the effort toward their own ends. "Suckers"? From the strategic viewpoint of a Sun - or a Netscape - for sure.
Lots of these formerly powerful dinosaur-era computer makers have been taking this approach - countering their own declining profitability (and all that that drives, such as their ability to attract capital and talent) by using whatever resources they still have - mainly "intellectual capital" - to take whatever they can get.
The Wang lawsuit has already been mentioned. Another is Datapoint, which has pretty much dropped off the scope in computing these days, but used to be a very innovative company (first real LAN [ARC]; influenced the development of the first mass-market microprocessor; had real desktop computers in the '70s [the 2200 series, and later the 1500 and 1800]; kept Ted Nelson of Xanadu (in)fame around for a while; etc.). I learned programming on Datapoints in the early '80s; back then they had a pretty impressive, albiet proprietary, environment. (though their proprietary DATABUS language sucked jagged rocks).
Like most of the other proprietary vendors they lost bigtime as Unix and killer micros took over in the late 80s. Datapoint refocused on video conferencing technology, and picked up a number of patents on video compression technologies (that's not my field so I can't provide details). As their revenues from their old-line areas declined, and as they haven't become a force of consequence themselves in the video market, these patents have become their chief revenue earners through licensing. And they've become very litigious in enforcing them.
Pepsi spun off KFC, Taco Hell, and Pizza Hut a few years ago (company's called "Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc. for true trivia collectors).
One of their reasons was that other fast food operators were viewing them as competition (rightly so) and they were having trouble competing in the core soft drink biz. Whether things have improved since the spin off are debatable. (I prefer Pepsi myself).
What you're talking about isn't any different from any other small startup. You've got some people together with nothing but an idea and some talent (one hopes) to realize it. What you don't have is the money to make it happen. You want an audience; the audience wants quality (among other things). Quality costs money.
Maybe, if your band is good enough, you can attract financial backing. Startup capital. Sell shares of your future earnings for what you need to get going now. If you have commercial promise, why wouldn't investors go for this?
Of course, most bands suck, just like 90% of everything sucks. Investors need to spread the risk around, so maybe a group of them will wind up backing 100 bands, and a couple make it and make up for the rest. Everyone's happy, everyone gets paid, the bands get to do their thing, except for those who couldn't even make the initial cut (keep the day job..) Investors will get together and form some company that supports bands with at least some promise in the that some, even a tiny few, will pop. And since there are so, so many bands, the people with the money would have enormous leverage in any deal. Bands need them much more than they need any single band. It's venture capital plain and simple.
Of course that's the music industry. Why would - or should - it be any different than, say, tech?
It may suck, but for those of us who still have to "suit up", act corporately attentive in meetings, and generally drone away - and still often pull those sorts of hours, companies that let you take some of your life with you when you work don't look all that bad. A case of "the grass is always greener..." perhaps?
From looking at their announcements about the ongoing problem, looks like they've got database corruption issues. I'm not an Oracle guy (Sybase..), but I have to wonder how good, or bad, their disaster recovery planning is - what they do for failovers, that sort of thing. You really shouldn't be able to knock an entire "e-business" out like that, if things are set up properly. I wonder if this is more a case of too fast growth, not enough real hardcore planning and work on the robustness of their back-end.
When I first started programming, the equipment I had access to was a bunch of Datapoint minis (you know Datapoint - the people who invented ARCnet - they were actually pretty innovative for their day - back in the 70s they had networked micros, only they never realized what they had and never escaped the proprietary mindset. Ted Nelson (Xanadu, "hypertext", etc.) worked for them for a while). Anyway, the Datapoint OS was called "RMS" ("Resource Management System"). Probably still hold the trademark too. Datapoint nowadays (at least till very recently) branched into video equipment and makes such money as they make mostly through patent infringment litigation. So, I might stay away from "RMS". Bad vibes.
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I think this is most illuminative of the attitude of software vendors toward open source projects. They see it as a cheap way to get development done. Why pay for developers when they'll do it for free? The vendor gets product which, while they can't sell at Microsoftian price levels, they can sell "official" versions, ostensibly charging for putting the distribution process together and for such support as you get... and then they can direct the effort toward their own ends. "Suckers"? From the strategic viewpoint of a Sun - or a Netscape - for sure.
Lots of these formerly powerful dinosaur-era computer makers have been taking this approach - countering their own declining profitability (and all that that drives, such as their ability to attract capital and talent) by using whatever resources they still have - mainly "intellectual capital" - to take whatever they can get.
The Wang lawsuit has already been mentioned. Another is Datapoint, which has pretty much dropped off the scope in computing these days, but used to be a very innovative company (first real LAN [ARC]; influenced the development of the first mass-market microprocessor; had real desktop computers in the '70s [the 2200 series, and later the 1500 and 1800]; kept Ted Nelson of Xanadu (in)fame around for a while; etc.). I learned programming on Datapoints in the early '80s; back then they had a pretty impressive, albiet proprietary, environment. (though their proprietary DATABUS language sucked jagged rocks).
Like most of the other proprietary vendors they lost bigtime as Unix and killer micros took over in the late 80s. Datapoint refocused on video conferencing technology, and picked up a number of patents on video compression technologies (that's not my field so I can't provide details). As their revenues from their old-line areas declined, and as they haven't become a force of consequence themselves in the video market, these patents have become their chief revenue earners through licensing. And they've become very litigious in enforcing them.
Pepsi spun off KFC, Taco Hell, and Pizza Hut a few years ago (company's called "Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc. for true trivia collectors).
One of their reasons was that other fast food operators were viewing them as competition (rightly so) and they were having trouble competing in the core soft drink biz. Whether things have improved since the spin off are debatable. (I prefer Pepsi myself).
What you're talking about isn't any different from any other small startup. You've got some people together with nothing but an idea and some talent (one hopes) to realize it. What you don't have is the money to make it happen. You want an audience; the audience wants quality (among other things). Quality costs money.
Maybe, if your band is good enough, you can attract financial backing. Startup capital. Sell shares of your future earnings for what you need to get going now. If you have commercial promise, why wouldn't investors go for this?
Of course, most bands suck, just like 90% of everything sucks. Investors need to spread the risk around, so maybe a group of them will wind up backing 100 bands, and a couple make it and make up for the rest. Everyone's happy, everyone gets paid, the bands get to do their thing, except for those who couldn't even make the initial cut (keep the day job..) Investors will get together and form some company that supports bands with at least some promise in the that some, even a tiny few, will pop. And since there are so, so many bands, the people with the money would have enormous leverage in any deal. Bands need them much more than they need any single band. It's venture capital plain and simple.
Of course that's the music industry. Why would - or should - it be any different than, say, tech?
It may suck, but for those of us who still have to "suit up", act corporately attentive in meetings, and generally drone away - and still often pull those sorts of hours, companies that let you take some of your life with you when you work don't look all that bad. A case of "the grass is always greener..." perhaps?
The man tells it like it is, without the hype. He lets the results speak for themselves. I'll take boring over bogus any day.
From looking at their announcements about the ongoing problem, looks like they've got database corruption issues. I'm not an Oracle guy (Sybase..), but I have to wonder how good, or bad, their disaster recovery planning is - what they do for failovers, that sort of thing. You really shouldn't be able to knock an entire "e-business" out like that, if things are set up properly. I wonder if this is more a case of too fast growth, not enough real hardcore planning and work on the robustness of their back-end.
When I first started programming, the equipment I had access to was a bunch of Datapoint minis (you know Datapoint - the people who invented ARCnet - they were actually pretty innovative for their day - back in the 70s they had networked micros, only they never realized what they had and never escaped the proprietary mindset. Ted Nelson (Xanadu, "hypertext", etc.) worked for them for a while). Anyway, the Datapoint OS was called "RMS" ("Resource Management System"). Probably still hold the trademark too. Datapoint nowadays (at least till very recently) branched into video equipment and makes such money as they make mostly through patent infringment litigation. So, I might stay away from "RMS". Bad vibes.
I don't remember where I found this site - might have been here, but check out
http://www.duh-2000.com/
.. for piles of Yk2-compliant humor (the Y2k-ready bread slicer wins my vote).
/rs