First off, just about any company named E* isn't going to be a company worth doing business with. Didn't anybody learn anything from the dot-bomb bullshit just a few years ago?
Secondly, this will fly when somebody comes out with a gadget that will accept all kinds of organic household waste, not just some product that you have one source for. If there's a device that'll take all of the stuff I normally throw on my compost pile, I'll buy one.
Oh please. Are you serious? The President routinely ignores laws that apply to him already, via "signing statements". You really think that our Congressmen wouldn't include a loophole that their communications couldn't be archived? C'mon.
Is that the NYTimes did this analysis and published it.
They had been as much a cheerleader for the war as anybody else. Huh? Are you serious? The Murdoch war-mongering propaganda machine is constantly lambasting the Times for being anti-war. The NY Times is one of the last respectable bastions of journalism. Anybody with a brain isn't going to be a cheerleader of this war.
No, it actually isn't. Free is defined as the lack of compensation.
Artists donate their work, musicians perform in open venues for free, doctors run free clinics, even stinking lawyers do pro bono work.
And none of these industries have a large enough number of workers willing to work for free to have any impact on the industry as a whole. Just because some lawyers do pro bono work doesn't mean that other lawyers have to adjust their prices or worry about competing with them. Completely different.
In other words, it is making the overall market more efficient. That's just Economics 101.
I don't know where you took Economics 101, but at my school, Economics 101 didn't cover a large segment of an industry's workers giving away their work for free. That's a new one.
Sure, some of the money will be saved and go into profit or other budget priorities, but this is the very definition of efficiency in a capitalist economy.
Capitalism assumes that everyone wants to be compensated for their work. FOSS exists because there are people willing to give away their work for free. That's not capitalism at all. FOSS is screwing with the software industry in a way that no other industry has seen or had to deal with. I can't think of another industry that has a large group of participants handing away their work for free. Call it altruism, stupidity, whatever, but it's not capitalism.
Another interpretation of these results is that IBM is still bitter about the dos and os/2 issues from way back, and they're finally gearing up to give the big blue finger to Microsoft.
That would be a valid interpretation if "IBM" were an individual with too much time on his hands. As it is, IBM is a large multi-national corporation that is incapable of holding grudges.
So my 8 year old sister and I were walking through Office Depot looking for printer ink when we ran across a pink Toshiba laptop ($1300). She says she loves it and wants it for her birthday. So I ask her what she needs a computer for and she says to write stories and surf the internet. This sounds like the perfect fit if it comes in pink or with the pics of some show from Disney, like Hannah Montana. Get a $3 can of pink spray paint. Works for me.
As for J#, C#, VB and WebDev, we're back to the same "How do I keep giving Microsoft money" question again. Those are not standards. They're proprietary solutions and stuff you build on them will obsolete every time Microsoft decides it needs more of your money. It's a trap. Don't fall into it. If you must program in those soon-to-be dead languages then you've created your own predicament and nobody can help you.
I'm working in VB6 right now. Still works fine as far as I can tell. What's the problem, exactly?
You're absolutely right. But these businesses wouldn't be around and doing this shit if the customers weren't lined up handing over their hard-earned cash to these companies, looking for nothing but the cheapest widget or the cheapest book. It's not just businesses. It's individuals, too.
I don't have any book stores or music stores left in my town as of this week. I'm not blaming Amazon and Apple. I blame my neighbors.
Prism is Mozilla's shot at busting apps out of the browser. Part of the Prism project is making the browsing core available to apps developers so they can build products like Zimbra Desktop (review) that are essentially Web apps, but that don't look like it. "
Mozilla, welcome to 2008. What you're trying to do was called "Active X", and it was done about a decade ago.
Just discovered last week... NBC has the entire season 4 of The Office online, watchable in full screen, with traditional TV-like ads interrupting the shows. Of course, nobody likes ads, but it's worth it to me, at least, and I'm glad to see some of the old-school media companies like NBC FINALLY starting to "get it".
That's physically impossible to be a positive financial move. One company pays for initial development. That money is gone and spent. They're not getting it back, ever, but every competitor will get that initial development for free. No matter how much community help is provided, that company that gives away code ALWAYS spends more than competitors who get their hands on the code, and it wipes out any competitive advantage that caused the company to pay to develop the software in the first place.
Software is built in companies to make money. *Every* piece of software in a company is created to either make or save money. Companies don't do any of it for fun. Why would they want to give away that work for free? They'll never recoup their initial expenses, and as such, they will ALWAYS be at a financial disadvantage of at least the cost of the development when they give away software. Depending on the competitive environment, it's possible that a company loses more money than that when giving away software because their competition may be able to leverage it even better than the initial developers could.
It's always a lose-lose situation for a company to open source their software.
There is a lot of software in use today which is used in various niche applications. Quite often such software is custom built for a company, and their competitors also use custom built software. This software is not really a point of competition between these companies, just something they need in order to do business. What Mr. Whitehurst is saying is that Redhat can be more proactive in going to these companies and getting them to open source this code and allow all the companies that need that niche application to share the development costs, rather than each of them paying to develop their own version. This leads to many advantages for the companies including: lower overall development costs, more competitive bidding on development, and standardization within the industry for interoperability.
Where's the advantage to the company that does the initial software development? It doesn't lower their development cost one cent, but it greatly lowers the development costs of their competition.
And I'm sorry, but every piece of software is a point of competition. If one company can save money by using something as simple as a better email client, that's a competitive advantage over other companies that don't use the better email client.
Neither you, nor anybody else in this thread has expressed a single, logical, positive financial reason why a company should open source software that they develop in house.
You're right. What does this have to do with a company giving away code it paid money to have developed? How does that generate wealth for them? It generates wealth for their competitors, but not them. So why do it?
Well, what's an advantage? How does a company that pays Joe Blow to write something, then give all of that code to competitors who did not have to pay Joe Blow, possibly benefit? It makes no business sense, whatsoever, other than PR.
The joint development projects would be designed to cover non-competitive parts of an industry, with individual companies still focused on their own competitive business applications.
No such thing as non-competitive parts of an industry. If two companies say, make toilet paper, and one of them has a custom program that let's say, saves energy by turning off unused lights in their buildings. That company saves money on their power bill. That is still a competitive advantage over the other company, even though it has nothing to do with the industry. Why would the company that developed that give that to a competitor, and allow that competitor to improve their bottom line? Every piece of doing business is a competitive advantage. There are no insignificant parts of any business.
So, what you're saying is that regular people will have to buy a new router. Excuse me if the prospect of spending $50 on a new router in a few years doesn't make me wet my pants.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, just about any company named E* isn't going to be a company worth doing business with. Didn't anybody learn anything from the dot-bomb bullshit just a few years ago?
Secondly, this will fly when somebody comes out with a gadget that will accept all kinds of organic household waste, not just some product that you have one source for. If there's a device that'll take all of the stuff I normally throw on my compost pile, I'll buy one.
Bring on the tiny satellites!
Oh please. Are you serious? The President routinely ignores laws that apply to him already, via "signing statements". You really think that our Congressmen wouldn't include a loophole that their communications couldn't be archived? C'mon.
The military exist to serve the people, not the other way around.
Free is a type of compensation.
No, it actually isn't. Free is defined as the lack of compensation.
Artists donate their work, musicians perform in open venues for free, doctors run free clinics, even stinking lawyers do pro bono work.
And none of these industries have a large enough number of workers willing to work for free to have any impact on the industry as a whole. Just because some lawyers do pro bono work doesn't mean that other lawyers have to adjust their prices or worry about competing with them. Completely different.
In other words, it is making the overall market more efficient. That's just Economics 101.
I don't know where you took Economics 101, but at my school, Economics 101 didn't cover a large segment of an industry's workers giving away their work for free. That's a new one.
Sure, some of the money will be saved and go into profit or other budget priorities, but this is the very definition of efficiency in a capitalist economy.
Capitalism assumes that everyone wants to be compensated for their work. FOSS exists because there are people willing to give away their work for free. That's not capitalism at all. FOSS is screwing with the software industry in a way that no other industry has seen or had to deal with. I can't think of another industry that has a large group of participants handing away their work for free. Call it altruism, stupidity, whatever, but it's not capitalism.
Another interpretation of these results is that IBM is still bitter about the dos and os/2 issues from way back, and they're finally gearing up to give the big blue finger to Microsoft.
That would be a valid interpretation if "IBM" were an individual with too much time on his hands. As it is, IBM is a large multi-national corporation that is incapable of holding grudges.
their 80's-era Compact Discs
As opposed to crappy MP3's from iTunes? Um, I'll gladly take CD's, thank you. I like to listen to music.
What's "right" and "wrong" in regards to what I do to my own body has nothing to do with society. It's nobody's business but my own.
You're right. I wouldn't be surprised if the shareholders file a class action against the board on this one. That's a huge premium to walk away from.
That's part of the reason why anybody with half a brain uses a credit union.
As for J#, C#, VB and WebDev, we're back to the same "How do I keep giving Microsoft money" question again. Those are not standards. They're proprietary solutions and stuff you build on them will obsolete every time Microsoft decides it needs more of your money. It's a trap. Don't fall into it. If you must program in those soon-to-be dead languages then you've created your own predicament and nobody can help you.
I'm working in VB6 right now. Still works fine as far as I can tell. What's the problem, exactly?
You're absolutely right. But these businesses wouldn't be around and doing this shit if the customers weren't lined up handing over their hard-earned cash to these companies, looking for nothing but the cheapest widget or the cheapest book. It's not just businesses. It's individuals, too.
I don't have any book stores or music stores left in my town as of this week. I'm not blaming Amazon and Apple. I blame my neighbors.
Prism is Mozilla's shot at busting apps out of the browser. Part of the Prism project is making the browsing core available to apps developers so they can build products like Zimbra Desktop (review) that are essentially Web apps, but that don't look like it. "
Mozilla, welcome to 2008. What you're trying to do was called "Active X", and it was done about a decade ago.
What's more, it will include web browsing capabilities.
Only text-based, though.
Just discovered last week... NBC has the entire season 4 of The Office online, watchable in full screen, with traditional TV-like ads interrupting the shows. Of course, nobody likes ads, but it's worth it to me, at least, and I'm glad to see some of the old-school media companies like NBC FINALLY starting to "get it".
That's physically impossible to be a positive financial move. One company pays for initial development. That money is gone and spent. They're not getting it back, ever, but every competitor will get that initial development for free. No matter how much community help is provided, that company that gives away code ALWAYS spends more than competitors who get their hands on the code, and it wipes out any competitive advantage that caused the company to pay to develop the software in the first place.
Software is built in companies to make money. *Every* piece of software in a company is created to either make or save money. Companies don't do any of it for fun. Why would they want to give away that work for free? They'll never recoup their initial expenses, and as such, they will ALWAYS be at a financial disadvantage of at least the cost of the development when they give away software. Depending on the competitive environment, it's possible that a company loses more money than that when giving away software because their competition may be able to leverage it even better than the initial developers could.
It's always a lose-lose situation for a company to open source their software.
There is a lot of software in use today which is used in various niche applications. Quite often such software is custom built for a company, and their competitors also use custom built software. This software is not really a point of competition between these companies, just something they need in order to do business. What Mr. Whitehurst is saying is that Redhat can be more proactive in going to these companies and getting them to open source this code and allow all the companies that need that niche application to share the development costs, rather than each of them paying to develop their own version. This leads to many advantages for the companies including: lower overall development costs, more competitive bidding on development, and standardization within the industry for interoperability.
Where's the advantage to the company that does the initial software development? It doesn't lower their development cost one cent, but it greatly lowers the development costs of their competition.
And I'm sorry, but every piece of software is a point of competition. If one company can save money by using something as simple as a better email client, that's a competitive advantage over other companies that don't use the better email client.
Neither you, nor anybody else in this thread has expressed a single, logical, positive financial reason why a company should open source software that they develop in house.
You're right. What does this have to do with a company giving away code it paid money to have developed? How does that generate wealth for them? It generates wealth for their competitors, but not them. So why do it?
Well, what's an advantage? How does a company that pays Joe Blow to write something, then give all of that code to competitors who did not have to pay Joe Blow, possibly benefit? It makes no business sense, whatsoever, other than PR.
The joint development projects would be designed to cover non-competitive parts of an industry, with individual companies still focused on their own competitive business applications.
No such thing as non-competitive parts of an industry. If two companies say, make toilet paper, and one of them has a custom program that let's say, saves energy by turning off unused lights in their buildings. That company saves money on their power bill. That is still a competitive advantage over the other company, even though it has nothing to do with the industry. Why would the company that developed that give that to a competitor, and allow that competitor to improve their bottom line? Every piece of doing business is a competitive advantage. There are no insignificant parts of any business.
So, what you're saying is that regular people will have to buy a new router. Excuse me if the prospect of spending $50 on a new router in a few years doesn't make me wet my pants.