I started out reading this thing in the hope that I would see a well done study of the possible limitations of the OS development model. Instead I find the usual, crappy and unsustained semi-arguments that we see whenever somebody claims to have given the OS-movement a serious, critical look.
I found Mr. Lewis to be full of himself, and this finding was substantiated when I went to the website http://www.friction-free-economy.com that promotes his book. In the section called "about the book", he goes on and on about how science and technology joined economy in the industrial revolution, and how the current powers that be/were didn't understand what was going on. Let me point to a couple of phrases that I found particularly amusing, given his stance on OS's role in the current "revolution":
- "Drucker's Law still applies: the people in the midst of the revolution don't know what is hitting them. And they won't know until after the IPO1 is over. Like passengers in a speeding boat, spectators in the software age know the river's current is swift, but they don't know where the raging falls lie."
Too true. But I you find it rather pathetic to rant about how people failed to understand the industrial revolution, and then commit an article which thoroughly demonstrate that he hasn't properly understood the networking revolution that he claims to be preaching? Mr. Lewis has no idea what's hitting him, and thus serves as a poor guide for others.
- "It may be too fast for royalty [drawing a parallell to the powermongers of the Industrial revolution, here], but the software economy is on its way. It may be a mystery to the establishment, but it is well understood by the Netheads2 in Wired World3 . It may violate the doctrine handed down by classical economists, but it does follow a set of laws. It may be just in time."
A mystery indeed, Lewis, and indeed one that you don't grasp the way you claim. Oh, and by the way, we apologize for violating your doctrine. The final sentence in the previous paragraph points to the next:
- "The late 20th century marks the beginning of the end. Within the next 20 years we will discover the new laws of the software economy. We have early warning signs - Netscape Communications Corp. parleyed 16 months of software development work into an IPO valuation of $3 billion. Companies like Microsoft and Adobe Systems which were unknown a decade ago are now the darlings of the stock market, and the nouveau riche telecommunications industries like 3COM, Cisco Systems, and Bay Networks have turned from small-cap industries into powerhouses of the new century."
Okay, people: This guy is a friggin Ph.D., he holds degrees in Mathematics and Computer Sciences, so let's not write him off as an idiot (even though he claims Microsoft was unknown a decade ago). His angle is just skewed. He has published numerous books, and the one that probably sheds the most light on his skewed vision on computing, is the one from 1976 called "How To Profit From Your Personal Computer".
From this, we may postulate that Mr. Lewis is probably hooked on the income side of computing. Don't get me wrong, though, I have no problem with anybody making money by facilitating my work. However, this places Lewis among the current day's power-mongers (I may be inflating his ego here, but the guy is Chairman of Computer Science at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Califorina, which may or may not be a big deal - kind of hard for me to know from where I sit), and if we were to allow a parable from his own account of the industrial revolution, he should thus be one of the last to know what hits him in this revolution. According to his recent writings, he appears dead on schedule...
Far from being discouraged by Mr. Lewis futile attempts to discredit the OS movement (some of his points are valid, though, had they not drowned in the rest of his rubbish), we should see this as a confirmation that OS is on the right path. This path will need some adjustment from time to time, and some of the necessary adjustments may stem from people with no better understanding of the cause than that of Mr. Lewis.
Those who don't know their history, are doomed to repeat it...
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I found Mr. Lewis to be full of himself, and this finding was substantiated when I went to the website http://www.friction-free-economy.com that promotes his book. In the section called "about the book", he goes on and on about how science and technology joined economy in the industrial revolution, and how the current powers that be/were didn't understand what was going on. Let me point to a couple of phrases that I found particularly amusing, given his stance on OS's role in the current "revolution":
- "Drucker's Law still applies: the people in the midst of the revolution don't know what is hitting them. And they won't know until after the IPO1 is over. Like passengers in a speeding boat, spectators in the software age know the river's current is swift, but they don't know where the raging falls lie."
Too true. But I you find it rather pathetic to rant about how people failed to understand the industrial revolution, and then commit an article which thoroughly demonstrate that he hasn't properly understood the networking revolution that he claims to be preaching? Mr. Lewis has no idea what's hitting him, and thus serves as a poor guide for others.
- "It may be too fast for royalty [drawing a parallell to the powermongers of the Industrial revolution, here], but the software economy is on its way. It may be a mystery to the establishment, but it is well understood by the Netheads2 in Wired World3 . It may violate the doctrine handed down by classical economists, but it does follow a set of laws. It may be just in time."
A mystery indeed, Lewis, and indeed one that you don't grasp the way you claim. Oh, and by the way, we apologize for violating your doctrine. The final sentence in the previous paragraph points to the next:
- "The late 20th century marks the beginning of the end. Within the next 20 years we will discover the new laws of the software economy. We have early warning signs - Netscape Communications Corp. parleyed 16 months of software development work into an IPO valuation of $3 billion. Companies like Microsoft and Adobe Systems which were unknown a decade ago are now the darlings of the stock market, and the nouveau riche telecommunications industries like 3COM, Cisco Systems, and Bay Networks have turned from small-cap industries into powerhouses of the new century."
Okay, people: This guy is a friggin Ph.D., he holds degrees in Mathematics and Computer Sciences, so let's not write him off as an idiot (even though he claims Microsoft was unknown a decade ago). His angle is just skewed. He has published numerous books, and the one that probably sheds the most light on his skewed vision on computing, is the one from 1976 called "How To Profit From Your Personal Computer".
From this, we may postulate that Mr. Lewis is probably hooked on the income side of computing. Don't get me wrong, though, I have no problem with anybody making money by facilitating my work. However, this places Lewis among the current day's power-mongers (I may be inflating his ego here, but the guy is Chairman of Computer Science at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Califorina, which may or may not be a big deal - kind of hard for me to know from where I sit), and if we were to allow a parable from his own account of the industrial revolution, he should thus be one of the last to know what hits him in this revolution. According to his recent writings, he appears dead on schedule...
Far from being discouraged by Mr. Lewis futile attempts to discredit the OS movement (some of his points are valid, though, had they not drowned in the rest of his rubbish), we should see this as a confirmation that OS is on the right path. This path will need some adjustment from time to time, and some of the necessary adjustments may stem from people with no better understanding of the cause than that of Mr. Lewis.
Those who don't know their history, are doomed to repeat it...