Actually, sharing patents is a perfectly legal way of creating a legally enforcable cartel.
David Friedman (a renowned economist by himself, and son of Nobel laureate economist, Milton Friedman) has a chapter on on it in his book, "Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life".
The recipe is simple. You cross-license patents so that you pay your competitors a fixed price per unit you produce and they and they pay you for your patents.
Now, if you raise your production level, your cost goes up - you have to pay more for the patents - and your competitors sell less, which reduces your income. Hence, your net marginal cost is higher.
Therefore, each firm has a strong incentive to charge more for each product and produce fewer units. After this, it is just a matter of raising the patent-licensing fees to the cost that maximizes the profit...
So, maybe there is a simple reason for these software patents anyway - the software companies are starting to learn the tricks of the old industrial companies. If this is the case we can look forward to them entering politics (lobbying) to get the governments to help them keep competitors at bay. That's when we should start worrying for real, especially if it happens on an international scale.
FYI you will find a lot of these "uniquely Korean" game-cafés in Europe, too. I live in Denmark and LAN-parties here died out five years ago. Nowadays, people just go to a game-café and play on the latest hardware while being served cold drinks.
There's nothing "basement" about these places - some of them are in very fashionable locations.
To have a peek check out Boomtown in central Copenhagen, just across from Tivoli Gardens.
Most programmers I know think managemers are clueless PHBs and act accordingly. That's the root cause of most of the project mgmt problems I've seen in the industry.
However, seeing the PM as someone to fend off all the "noise" of the organisation - meetings, budgets, change requests etc. gives a healthy perspective that is mutually beneficial.
I've recently worked with a great PM, Anders. He is great at eliminating disctractions.
Here's what he does:
- handles all calls from customers etc. This means the developers get a batch of change requests every now and then instead of an unending, uncoordinated mess of interruptions and changes.
- keeps everyone posted on progress, all the time (and if we're behind schedule, he lets everyone know early and immediately notifies the customer and starts renegotiating the timeline, resources or requirements). The customers respect him even when budgets slip - because they know early, they know why it happens and are able to influence how it is resolved.
- keeps colleagues from the company interrupting, for example, when the CTO wanted people to go to a demo of a new version of the content management server he stopped it since it was not relevant to current project and everyone on the team saved a few hours of glorified Powerpoint slides with little technical content. He also made sure to go there himself so that if anything relevant came up with the new version he could have the team check up on it.
- fences off other PMs trying to steal his resources - so, if you work on his project you don't get dragged to irrelevant meetings or to play fireman on someone elses burning project.
- he keeps you focused. This is a bit of a bitch since most programmers have their pet features but it really speeds up project completion a lot. He will say "focus on this", "cut that feature", "this is good enough" etc. even when you would prefer spending another day gold plating a particular feature. Gradually, however, most people realise the benefit of this approach - even though some people enjoy firefighting working on projects were problems don't grow big is a great experience. And you get to go home from work on time.
- finally, he handles all the red tape and suits of the organisation. That means - reporting, budgets, meetings, strategies, gantt charts etc. He handles that and let the developers focus on developing.
Quite easy, really, but it takes a lot of modesty to be a great project manager. I think many PMs have too big of an ego to be really successful - Anders, on the other hand, would always admit when he was clueless and ask experts (developers) for advice as needed.
How this helps. If you would like to go into PM make sure to read Steve McConnell's classic book, "Rapid Development". It's a gold mine of best practises and cases show how to - and not to - run a project.
Also, a book like Bill Jensen's "Simplicity" is highly recommended - it is a simple yet valuable treatise on how to make it simple to do the important things.
Please: Read Lester Young and companions' "State of the World Reports" from the World Watch Institute. These reports are the market leaders in the "greenie segment". If you read them you will also notice that they are highly biased interventionist pieces and scientifically dubious.
Lomborg, on the other hand, brings a refreshing, cool-headed perspective to this. By comparison, a big step forward.
There has been some critique from domain experts arguing that statistics (Lomborgs field) cannot be used to prove domain result, only indicate correlation or causality. While this is correct there is a significant case to be made for statistics: if the numbers falsify the postulates of the World Watch Institute and friends the burden of proof is switched back to them.
From that perspective, Bjørn Lomborg's work is a significant contribution that will hopefully help increase the scientific/factual level of the environmental debate.
(Disclaimer: I have not read the English language version of Lomborg's book refered to in the review, only the original Danish version).
I missed to make clear that I was talking about SGI's market entry strategy. In the 1980's when they were founded they faced heavy competition in the high-end workstation market - back then the "Evil Monopoly" was assumed to be IBM, not Microsoft, like today.
How did they succeed in winning entry to this market? They built boxes with high-end graphics, a Unix OS and put all the relevant connectors for graphics in their machines. This was a bold statement, "We're serious about taking movie post-production digital and saving you lots of money". Their competitors needed extension hardware to do the same thing. Their niche-market picked up on that and SGI became the dominant early-day multimedia OS by dominating this niche market.
Eventually they leveraged this strength to move into the broader visualisation and scientific computing markets. They probably could not have entered these markets head-on without the power base of their initial niche.
That, precisely, is where Be failed. They tried to take on a mature mass market where customers buy based on the entire product offering including the OS but also all the software and hardware that's available in that market.
However, Be failed to address the "whole market" issue by offering only a "technically superior OS" - but in fact the customers in a mature market are not buying based on technological merit. Hence, "technologically superior" is not enough to disrupt the Windows and Apple-based markets in one step. It takes a radical improvement over the existing tech to make people switch, not just a gradual improvement like Be's. When computing speeds double every year even a 50% more efficient OS does not offer a significant advantage.
If you are interested in "to-market" strategies for tech products I can recommend Geoffrey A Moore's books, "Inside the Tornado" and "Crossing the Chasm". They are excellently written and address the problem of why some technologically superior products fail, and why others succeed.
What should Be have done? First of all, they have a nice OS and when they set up creating it it was probably superior to MS and Apple's offerings. Next set out on a similar mission - and failed, too. Maybe, just maybe, they could have taken the Apple market in the early nineties when Apple was performing poorly by offering Mac compatibility and some other significant advantage to lure users to their platform. This could have been the media-enhanced experience had the hardware of the day been able to support that at a low price.
However, I don't see a market for them any more. Apple and MS have improved their offerings "enough" in the media-rich desktop OS market and the developers - we're mostly running Linux.
So, what's left? They tried for Internet Appliances but the iMac took that market by leveraging its existing user and software base by a brilliant play.
Embedded devices could be an option - but this market is being taken by Linux and a variety of niche OSes. To sum it up, I think Be missed their market.
However, I think Apple is living proof that it is possible to gain marketshare from MS through excellently executed strategy. Hence, Be has no case.
Another interesting note is that Be initially targeted the Mac hardware platform, but they are not suing Apple - even though Apple effectively killed off its entire clone market a few years ago by terminating its OS OEM contracts. For consistencys sake, Be should by their own logic sue Apple as well, since Apple has a "monopoly" in the Apple/PowerPC market.
To sum it all up, just like you said, Be's problem is that there isn't a market for them. The correct strategy, in this case, is to save the money and effort and go do something else.
Attacking Microsoft because OS customers select Windows and Mac over Be is insane. The decision and spending power that creates the market is at the customers - not at Microsoft - and like Apple has proven, give customers a compelling bundle and they will happily switch to your platform.
Be went out of business because their of a lack of customers - not because of Microsoft.
Ironically, they are now trying to use a real monopoly - the DoJ - to beat up Microsoft: something they failed to do in the marketplace.
Be is claiming that the OEM contracts are at fault. However, Windows is Microsoft's product and they have the right to offer it at whatever terms they like. If some OEM manufacturer is not content with the terms they are free not to buy the product, or negotiate for better terms. Note that no use of force is involved. Hence the alleged "monopoly" is entirely fictive. Microsoft's large marketshare is just an indication that their customers think that this is where they get the best value for their money.
Be's strategy was flawed. Compare this to SGI. They initially created a media-centric platform (just like Be) with high-end graphics and sound and successfully grew their company. How? By targeting a niche market - movie production - and serving that market relentlessly. It worked, they grew big and branched into the visualisation, workstation and high-end server market.
SGI did not win by whining at the DoJ. They did it by solving real-world problems to the benefit of their customers.
As for myself? I was running Amiga in the eighties until I switched to Linux in 1992. Recently, I've started using Windows for a number of tasks - not because of any force of monopoly, but simply because its benefits exceed its cost. I tried Be and decided against it. In my opinion it was a solution looking for a problem.
Thomas Gold wrote a book about subterranean life a few years ago, "The Deep Hot Biosphere" (Springer Verlag, 1999). If this article caught your attention check out the book. It discusses the formation of hydrocarbons and the possibility of subterranean life on Earth and other places in the universe including evidence from some deep drillings on Earth.
It is an interesting read though not a must. Also, beware that his hypotheses are quite controversial and not universally accepted in the scientific community.
Next party is Dec 27-29th (Denmark, 4k people)
on
Dreamhack 2001
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The next big party is "The Party" in Denmark, Dec. 27-29. Some 4000 people will be there.
It seems like that article leaped out of stasis from five years back.
Nowadays, with a net/LAN gaming café on every corner it is much easier just going there instead - the iron is faster, the network is already set up, everyone has a decent chair, and they have more games than I care to count. At 2-3 an hour for the cafés, spending hours getting things set up for a private party really does not make sense to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, sharing patents is a perfectly legal way of creating a legally enforcable cartel.
David Friedman (a renowned economist by himself, and son of Nobel laureate economist, Milton Friedman) has a chapter on on it in his book, "Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life".
The recipe is simple. You cross-license patents so that you pay your competitors a fixed price per unit you produce and they and they pay you for your patents.
Now, if you raise your production level, your cost goes up - you have to pay more for the patents - and your competitors sell less, which reduces your income. Hence, your net marginal cost is higher.
Therefore, each firm has a strong incentive to charge more for each product and produce fewer units. After this, it is just a matter of raising the patent-licensing fees to the cost that maximizes the profit...
So, maybe there is a simple reason for these software patents anyway - the software companies are starting to learn the tricks of the old industrial companies. If this is the case we can look forward to them entering politics (lobbying) to get the governments to help them keep competitors at bay. That's when we should start worrying for real, especially if it happens on an international scale.
Until then, it's just childs play...
There's nothing "basement" about these places - some of them are in very fashionable locations.
To have a peek check out Boomtown in central Copenhagen, just across from Tivoli Gardens.
Most programmers I know think managemers are clueless PHBs and act accordingly. That's the root cause of most of the project mgmt problems I've seen in the industry.
However, seeing the PM as someone to fend off all the "noise" of the organisation - meetings, budgets, change requests etc. gives a healthy perspective that is mutually beneficial.
I've recently worked with a great PM, Anders. He is great at eliminating disctractions.
Here's what he does:
- handles all calls from customers etc. This means the developers get a batch of change requests every now and then instead of an unending, uncoordinated mess of interruptions and changes.
- keeps everyone posted on progress, all the time (and if we're behind schedule, he lets everyone know early and immediately notifies the customer and starts renegotiating the timeline, resources or requirements). The customers respect him even when budgets slip - because they know early, they know why it happens and are able to influence how it is resolved.
- keeps colleagues from the company interrupting, for example, when the CTO wanted people to go to a demo of a new version of the content management server he stopped it since it was not relevant to current project and everyone on the team saved a few hours of glorified Powerpoint slides with little technical content. He also made sure to go there himself so that if anything relevant came up with the new version he could have the team check up on it.
- fences off other PMs trying to steal his resources - so, if you work on his project you don't get dragged to irrelevant meetings or to play fireman on someone elses burning project.
- he keeps you focused. This is a bit of a bitch since most programmers have their pet features but it really speeds up project completion a lot. He will say "focus on this", "cut that feature", "this is good enough" etc. even when you would prefer spending another day gold plating a particular feature. Gradually, however, most people realise the benefit of this approach - even though some people enjoy firefighting working on projects were problems don't grow big is a great experience. And you get to go home from work on time.
- finally, he handles all the red tape and suits of the organisation. That means - reporting, budgets, meetings, strategies, gantt charts etc. He handles that and let the developers focus on developing.
Quite easy, really, but it takes a lot of modesty to be a great project manager. I think many PMs have too big of an ego to be really successful - Anders, on the other hand, would always admit when he was clueless and ask experts (developers) for advice as needed.
How this helps. If you would like to go into PM make sure to read Steve McConnell's classic book, "Rapid Development". It's a gold mine of best practises and cases show how to - and not to - run a project.
Also, a book like Bill Jensen's "Simplicity" is highly recommended - it is a simple yet valuable treatise on how to make it simple to do the important things.
Cheers,
Martin
I've got four words for you: "Write once, run anywhere."
Come on, Sun, it's not that hard to deliver on that promise. The Perl and Python communities have done it for years...
Lomborg, on the other hand, brings a refreshing, cool-headed perspective to this. By comparison, a big step forward.
There has been some critique from domain experts arguing that statistics (Lomborgs field) cannot be used to prove domain result, only indicate correlation or causality. While this is correct there is a significant case to be made for statistics: if the numbers falsify the postulates of the World Watch Institute and friends the burden of proof is switched back to them.
From that perspective, Bjørn Lomborg's work is a significant contribution that will hopefully help increase the scientific/factual level of the environmental debate.
(Disclaimer: I have not read the English language version of Lomborg's book refered to in the review, only the original Danish version).
I missed to make clear that I was talking about SGI's market entry strategy. In the 1980's when they were founded they faced heavy competition in the high-end workstation market - back then the "Evil Monopoly" was assumed to be IBM, not Microsoft, like today.
How did they succeed in winning entry to this market? They built boxes with high-end graphics, a Unix OS and put all the relevant connectors for graphics in their machines. This was a bold statement, "We're serious about taking movie post-production digital and saving you lots of money". Their competitors needed extension hardware to do the same thing. Their niche-market picked up on that and SGI became the dominant early-day multimedia OS by dominating this niche market.
Eventually they leveraged this strength to move into the broader visualisation and scientific computing markets. They probably could not have entered these markets head-on without the power base of their initial niche.
That, precisely, is where Be failed. They tried to take on a mature mass market where customers buy based on the entire product offering including the OS but also all the software and hardware that's available in that market.
However, Be failed to address the "whole market" issue by offering only a "technically superior OS" - but in fact the customers in a mature market are not buying based on technological merit. Hence, "technologically superior" is not enough to disrupt the Windows and Apple-based markets in one step. It takes a radical improvement over the existing tech to make people switch, not just a gradual improvement like Be's. When computing speeds double every year even a 50% more efficient OS does not offer a significant advantage.
If you are interested in "to-market" strategies for tech products I can recommend Geoffrey A Moore's books, "Inside the Tornado" and "Crossing the Chasm". They are excellently written and address the problem of why some technologically superior products fail, and why others succeed.
What should Be have done? First of all, they have a nice OS and when they set up creating it it was probably superior to MS and Apple's offerings. Next set out on a similar mission - and failed, too. Maybe, just maybe, they could have taken the Apple market in the early nineties when Apple was performing poorly by offering Mac compatibility and some other significant advantage to lure users to their platform. This could have been the media-enhanced experience had the hardware of the day been able to support that at a low price.
However, I don't see a market for them any more. Apple and MS have improved their offerings "enough" in the media-rich desktop OS market and the developers - we're mostly running Linux.
So, what's left? They tried for Internet Appliances but the iMac took that market by leveraging its existing user and software base by a brilliant play.
Embedded devices could be an option - but this market is being taken by Linux and a variety of niche OSes. To sum it up, I think Be missed their market.
However, I think Apple is living proof that it is possible to gain marketshare from MS through excellently executed strategy. Hence, Be has no case.
Another interesting note is that Be initially targeted the Mac hardware platform, but they are not suing Apple - even though Apple effectively killed off its entire clone market a few years ago by terminating its OS OEM contracts. For consistencys sake, Be should by their own logic sue Apple as well, since Apple has a "monopoly" in the Apple/PowerPC market.
To sum it all up, just like you said, Be's problem is that there isn't a market for them. The correct strategy, in this case, is to save the money and effort and go do something else. Attacking Microsoft because OS customers select Windows and Mac over Be is insane. The decision and spending power that creates the market is at the customers - not at Microsoft - and like Apple has proven, give customers a compelling bundle and they will happily switch to your platform.
Ironically, they are now trying to use a real monopoly - the DoJ - to beat up Microsoft: something they failed to do in the marketplace.
Be is claiming that the OEM contracts are at fault. However, Windows is Microsoft's product and they have the right to offer it at whatever terms they like. If some OEM manufacturer is not content with the terms they are free not to buy the product, or negotiate for better terms. Note that no use of force is involved. Hence the alleged "monopoly" is entirely fictive. Microsoft's large marketshare is just an indication that their customers think that this is where they get the best value for their money.
Be's strategy was flawed. Compare this to SGI. They initially created a media-centric platform (just like Be) with high-end graphics and sound and successfully grew their company. How? By targeting a niche market - movie production - and serving that market relentlessly. It worked, they grew big and branched into the visualisation, workstation and high-end server market.
SGI did not win by whining at the DoJ. They did it by solving real-world problems to the benefit of their customers.
As for myself? I was running Amiga in the eighties until I switched to Linux in 1992. Recently, I've started using Windows for a number of tasks - not because of any force of monopoly, but simply because its benefits exceed its cost. I tried Be and decided against it. In my opinion it was a solution looking for a problem.
Thomas Gold wrote a book about subterranean life a few years ago, "The Deep Hot Biosphere" (Springer Verlag, 1999). If this article caught your attention check out the book. It discusses the formation of hydrocarbons and the possibility of subterranean life on Earth and other places in the universe including evidence from some deep drillings on Earth. It is an interesting read though not a must. Also, beware that his hypotheses are quite controversial and not universally accepted in the scientific community.
The next big party is "The Party" in Denmark, Dec. 27-29. Some 4000 people will be there.
Their web site is http://www.theparty.dk
It seems like that article leaped out of stasis from five years back.
Nowadays, with a net/LAN gaming café on every corner it is much easier just going there instead - the iron is faster, the network is already set up, everyone has a decent chair, and they have more games than I care to count. At 2-3 an hour for the cafés, spending hours getting things set up for a private party really does not make sense to me.