For anything computer related, sure. The field is incredibly over-packed with suppliers. What we'll see in the computer* retail industry will be a very big shakeout of primarily online-only companies. That being said, I think that we'll see a LOT of retail reverting back to local stores, which, as I see it, is a win for everybody.
I expect a lot more etailers will have to run free shipping promotions if this law passes.
I doubt it. Shopping online has already degraded to the lowest common denominator. For any product, you'll find *somebody* (usually somebody selling out of their house) that is selling the product for at or just barely above cost. Most online retailers have already slit their own throats, as far as margins go. Most of them simply don't have anywhere left to go. What we'll see is more people buying locally again, which I see as a supremely positive thing. Shopping online hurts local businesses, local economies, and right now, local tax coffers. Maybe this law will force towns and cities to start actually being communities again, as opposed to what they are now: groups of Big Box Stores and UPS hubs.
Good point. Most retailers doing more than $5 million a year have probably advanced beyond Quickbooks (Peachtree Accounting, maybe?). Still, I think that whatever similar type of service that they use will probably already have this worked out. Heck, I'd be willing to bet that most large accounting packages probably have this worked out already, and are just waiting to implement it. I know that we'll have to buy a service like that when it happens.
I think that this isn't really a big problem. It's not that it's difficult to do; it's just time-intensive. Any medium sized software company will have the manpower to do this. I'd put my money on Intuit having a product ready the day a law like this is enacted (and it will happen).
Intuit will be all over this ASAP, I'm sure. Since I, along with many other small business owners already use their stuff, I'll just pay whatever their subscription will be for it and do it that way. But you're right... if so many people were'nt already using something like Intuit with their payroll tax service, then this would be an excellent opportunity.
Innovation lowers expenses and creates new products for resale
Not necessarily. It depends on if that is a useful innovation that can be applied to a business setting. I could have the most innovative paperweight on the planet, but that's entirely useless to me from a business standpoint. I could have the most innovative web server on the planet, but if it's expensive or difficult to use, then it's also useless to me from a business standpoint. Innovation for the sake of innovation is the goal of academia, generally. The free market then determines if there's any value to that innovation.
I realize that this post came off sounding harsh... I didn't intend for it to be argumentative. I just *hate* this kind of meaningless terminology. I don't have time for it. I guess the assumption by the author is that every business owner is just sitting around in an office, thinking about "innovation" and "leverage" (that one actually is useful, but in a completely different context), and "synergy" and other such nonsense. I own a business, and a sample of what I'm concerned about right now is: getting through the rest of the holiday season with my sanity intact (short term), and paying down debt (long term), employee retention (long term), whether I need to get a toilet replaced (short term) and possibly whether my front door is going to break again any time soon (short term). I'm not sitting back in a Herman Miller chair talking with my board in a $50/sq ft. office thinking about "innovation". I'm busting my ass. I know a lot of other business owners that are in similar situations, and I don't know a single one that would care about "innovation" or "freedom", or any other such nonsense.
You're right. Many of the most successful organizations aren't explosively innovative, just subtly innovative. Wal-Mart, for example, is a great example of innovative business processes that simply tweaked existing processes. There's a lot more money and productivity that's just waiting to be grabbed in almost every organization; "low-hanging fruit" as it were, but you're right... it's simply not exciting to innovate, say, a billing system, or a production line.
"Leveraging innovation". C'mon. I'm a business person, and even I have no clue as to what "leveraging innovation" is supposed to mean. The only reason that I'd choose Open Source is if it improved my bottom line, in some way. I can't pay my bills with "innovation". I can't sell "innovation".
This book sounds like a salesman trying to convince you that you really, really do need this product. If it's not blatently obvious why I need that product, then I generally don't need it. This sounds like a solution looking for a problem. Explain to me in a sentence or two what the problem is that I'm apparently missing (we don't use any open source software other than VNC, and even that's being replaced soon). I shouldn't need an entire fucking book (that I have to buy) trying to sell my on something that I really doubt that I need.
That's clear enough and so easy to find out, so why the FUD?
It's not FUD. It just doesn't make any sense. That clause is irrelevant, because if you're looking to OS your software, then of course you're going to give it away. I know that I'm free not to distribute our custom apps. I don't need GNU or whoever it is this week to tell me that. My question was why would I want to release my company's code out to the public? A finger-crossed, "I hope that somebody decides to modify the code AND GPL it", is worth exactly $0. So still, there doesn't seem to be any benefit to most companies to release code. You absolutely give up your competitive software advantage, but you might get somebody to fix a bug for you? You certainly don't have to be a businessperson to see that that's a bad deal for the code writer.
You're hilarious. I knew DBA's that were like you. They thought that they knew everything about everything, and people who said otherwise were shouted down. Sure, they were in charge of lots and lots of important data, but that didn't make them any less the assholes that they were.
1. I used to be an enterprise-class developer. I got bored, and now I do this. So fuck you very much, Mr. Smug. I'm not getting into some pissing contest.
2. I'm simply pointing out that I'm not some IT wonk who knows about nothing outside of his cubicle. I'm a real world business user.
Sounds like you're compensating for something...
But, to the point, ID Software does it for goodwill among a *tiny* percentage of their uber-geek customers. That's useless for *most* businesses. Somehow, I really doubt that any of my customers would know or care if I released my code to the pubic. Whether or not that helps their sales is another question, altogether.
They frequently release it open source because they know that they'll be able to benefit from the expertise of their competitors (and every college student who notices their software) and they'll gain MORE competitive advantage as a result. This is because they're not hamster food salesmen and they actually know that "competitive advantage" is more about providing good service for a reasonable price than having some magic piece of software sitting around.
MORE competitive advantage? How about a REAL WORLD example? Would you know the real world from a hole in the ground?
Sorry, I'm just a lowly hamster-food salesman with a REAL job and a REAL business. Our business is so simple, that we don't have competitive advantages over competitors, because that's all we do: sell hamster food. Apparently, I know nothing about software and business. I should really go get a Masters Degree in Comp Sci, because then I'll know EVERYTHING (and I'll be able to be a smug son of a bitch).
Business power is bad, so globalizing it is worse.
He's completely ignoring the fact that without "business power", there'd be no cheap computers for his software to run on, there'd be nobody to pay for him to speak, and we'd be living in a society in which "free software" would not even be feasable. He spits in the face of all of the businesses that are allowing him to live his free lifestyle. He simply doesn't have a leg to stand on.
But more importantly, there are more important concerns than business.
It's called Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Right now, I run a business. Everybody who is not in government or academia is involved with business. I need to be able to feed and clothe myself and my family. What he's talking about, pie-in-the-sky, give-everybody-a-Coke ONLY makes sense on an academic level. It simply doesn't mean squat to a mother trying to feed her kids. That's why he's in his ivory tower spouting this idealistic nonsense. He gets paid for doing essentially nothing, and his assumption is that the rest of the world can work this way. It can't. It's been tried, and it's failed. Every single time in human history. He thinks that he's some great visionary, but all he really is is an unbelievably naive academic espousing a philosophy that works for him, and his other trust-fund buddies and perpetual academics, but doesn't do squat for a normal guy like me trying to make a living. He thinks that business is bad, which is an absolutely ridiculous and untenable base for a philosophy. Nothing is more important than business if you're hungry.
Also, most proprietary software distributors aren't making a lot of money. They all want to be Oracle, Apple, or Microsoft, but they can't pull it off. This too puts the lie to the idea that secrecy builds profit. Large organizations like IBM are finding out that returning to services is a more profitable endeavor, and one that doesn't require the monopoly powers the government is all too willing to grant. The advantage here is one we can all implement if we have patience and skill--listening to clients, knowing enough to implement their requests, and talking to them in a way they can understand (particularly with non-technical clients).
I know of lots of small software companies that also make money hand over fist. Right now, I'm using an Intuit product, a Ipswitch product, and Helios Software product. None are free or OS, and all of them are profitable companies.
The whole "advantage we can all implement" is the antithesis of business. It's called "collusion", and it's illegal. If an academic wants to spend their time writing software to save me money, good for them. I'll exploit it. But my goal, as a businessperson, is to get a bigger piece of the pie than my competitor, so that I'm more likely to be able to pay my mortgage next month. I'm not looking out for my competition, and in fact, I hope that as many competitors as possible do fail, and I'll step in to fill that void. This isn't rocket science. The whole OSS thing is purely an academic endeavor created by people for whom "competition" is completely irrelevant. That's great for them, but the rest of the non-academic world simply doesn't work that way.
As for this "competitive advantage", I think we're quickly discovering that this doesn't exist in the way most people believe it to exist--that by keeping the source code to the program a secret, one can retain some advantage over others. Once someone learns what the program does, other programmers can write suitable replacements that will suffice for most, if not all, of one's needs. Those who find themselves facing a competitor seek government-granted power to preclude competition, hence software patents are all the rage among those organizations wealthy enough to afford them. Thus, this "competitive advantage" sells a myth based on a free market that doesn't really exist for computer software.
Of course, something can be re-written and copied. It happens all of the time. But why, exactly, would I want to spend time and money writing something only to hand it to somebody else? So I spend $10,000 writing a piece of software, I hand it to a competitor, and then they instantly have a $10,000 advantage over me. That still doesn't make any business sense at all. Software can be a HUGE competitive advantage. Every aspect of business involves competition. The garbage collection company I use. The phone company. The company that washes my windows. My locksmith. It ALL makes a difference. Just because everybody has to do the same thing doesn't mean that it should all be free.
The whole idea that "everybody benefits" works great at an academic level, but falls flat on its face on a business level.
This reminds me of a phone call I got about a year ago. Somebody called me and said that she wanted to do a business just like mine, but close enough to take any customers. She asked if she could have my vendor list. I said "no". Of course she could replicate it. That would be relatively easy. But it still takes time. That's time that I already invested. Why should I hand it over to her? If we ever do compete, then she already has an xxx hour advantage over me, because she didn't have to spend that time finding vendors. Sure, I may get a vendor or two out of the deal from her, but that's still a net loss for me, any way you look at it.
Open Source software is just bad business. The only OSS software we use is stuff that people already developed. We will not ever open source our software, any of our procedures, buying methods, or anything else.
If companies did share their code between each other, it would only lead to a steady improvement of the code base. Better tools will lead to increased ability to produce which can allow you to overtake your competitor (assuming you are better in the other important areas like marketing as well), even if he is using the same tools.
And this is the key point... if my software is better (ours is, actually), then why would I want to give that up? Our software allows us to sell more, and make more money. What's the point of improving my competitors' systems when all I get is parity with them? The pie isn't getting bigger (or if it is, it doesn't have anything to do with software), but my piece of the pie would certainly shrink. That's something that no business wants.
You seem to think that not being a businessman is to exist in a cesspit. Does it occur to you that there are many who do not admire businessmen, to whom the word evokes an image of a mean little shopkeeper ripping people off, or of a magnate fiddling the books on a grand scale? To whom the word "business" itself does not give good vibes?
And to those people, I say, "Get a grip on reality." Without the engine that we call "business", I wouldn't be typing this on a $100 computer over a $30 Internet connection.
Oh dear, I don't know where to start. The "zealot's" understanding is quite a few levels deeper than that. We (I assume you will include me) understand only too well. Microsoft have become the most successful company in the world on the basis of competitive advantage given by software. The difference is that you lean back and say that's a good thing, but we don't - in Microsoft's case at least.
I'm not talking about companies that sell software. Companies that sell software are a tiny fraction of the global economy. I'm talking about virtually every other business on the planet that uses computers and software in some way.
Because improvements can result, for example in security and interoperability, that lead to improvements that will sell to the public more all round. As things are, the public are becoming disillusioned with computers and the internet.
Security doesn't sell me software. Security doesn't have any influence at all in my pet supply business choosing software. It's irrelevant to me, as it is to many businesspeople. Security is something that is simply not critical to many businesses, and is something that is the subject of much FUD coming out of the geek camp. "Interoperability" is also a moot point for many businesses. Do I want to "interoperate" with my competitors? No. Do I need better "interoperatbility" with vendors? Not really. Our primary method of "interoprating" with our vendors is a good ol' fax machine and the telephone. If there are any very critical interoperability standards, proprietary software will pick those up as quickly (if not quicker) than open source. We "interoperate" with our merchant bank via a set of standards that are included in every credit-card accepting device or piece of software.
IBM. HP, Novell, Red Hat, Apple and Sun are. That's every major company involved in Operating Systems development except Microsoft. The reason - they want to get (back in most cases) into the Operating System market, and Open Source is the most promising way.
Again, these are all businesses that sell software. Of course they're going to hype whatever the New Thing is. That's what they sell. And again, I'm talking about businesses that are NOT software companies (the vast, cast majority), but instead USE software to run their businesses.
And Wal-Mart and Amazon are not doing anything different from other businesses. Neither is the plumber on the corner, or the barber, or any other business for that matter. It's a matter of putting all of the pieces together correctly, and doing it BETTER than the other guy. For many, many businesses (like mine), software is a part of that. Those "novel combinations of known programming commands" are not quite as simple as you make them out to be, and in many cases, is the reason why one business fails and another succeeds.
And my little business just happens to fall in that "0.0001%"? I find that hard to believe. There's TONS of software that provides a competitive advantage. You think that Wal-Mart is going to "share" their software that runs their JIT supply system? You think that Amazon is going to "share" their recommendation software with their competitors? That's absolutely ridiculous. Saying that software "should" be a commodity is even more ridiculous.
... because if he was, he wouldn't be espousing that businesses throw away any competitive advantage that they may have, and instead throw it away by giving their software away to their competitors. That's one thing about this whole OSS thing that the zealots don't understand... software can be, and often is used as a competitive advantage. Why would a company (say mine) "share" it's code for it's custom apps with competitors, with the *hope* (and that's all it is) that one of my competitors will contribute enough to the project to make their contribution outweigh the loss of my competitive advantage via my software? It makes -zero- sense from a business standpoint, which is why businesses are, by any large, not interested.
Of sure, I wouldn't mind using any free/OSS tools that were already built. If they offer more value than their proprietary counterpart, then it's my obligation to also use this software to my advantage, as well. However, I have no incentive to open up a single line of code that I own.
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5% is a pretty good profit margin these days.
For anything computer related, sure. The field is incredibly over-packed with suppliers. What we'll see in the computer* retail industry will be a very big shakeout of primarily online-only companies. That being said, I think that we'll see a LOT of retail reverting back to local stores, which, as I see it, is a win for everybody.
I expect a lot more etailers will have to run free shipping promotions if this law passes.
I doubt it. Shopping online has already degraded to the lowest common denominator. For any product, you'll find *somebody* (usually somebody selling out of their house) that is selling the product for at or just barely above cost. Most online retailers have already slit their own throats, as far as margins go. Most of them simply don't have anywhere left to go. What we'll see is more people buying locally again, which I see as a supremely positive thing. Shopping online hurts local businesses, local economies, and right now, local tax coffers. Maybe this law will force towns and cities to start actually being communities again, as opposed to what they are now: groups of Big Box Stores and UPS hubs.
Good point. Most retailers doing more than $5 million a year have probably advanced beyond Quickbooks (Peachtree Accounting, maybe?). Still, I think that whatever similar type of service that they use will probably already have this worked out. Heck, I'd be willing to bet that most large accounting packages probably have this worked out already, and are just waiting to implement it. I know that we'll have to buy a service like that when it happens.
I think that this isn't really a big problem. It's not that it's difficult to do; it's just time-intensive. Any medium sized software company will have the manpower to do this. I'd put my money on Intuit having a product ready the day a law like this is enacted (and it will happen).
If a 5-7% sales tax will make you or break you, I'd say that you already can't afford what you're buying.
Intuit will be all over this ASAP, I'm sure. Since I, along with many other small business owners already use their stuff, I'll just pay whatever their subscription will be for it and do it that way. But you're right... if so many people were'nt already using something like Intuit with their payroll tax service, then this would be an excellent opportunity.
Innovation lowers expenses and creates new products for resale
Not necessarily. It depends on if that is a useful innovation that can be applied to a business setting. I could have the most innovative paperweight on the planet, but that's entirely useless to me from a business standpoint. I could have the most innovative web server on the planet, but if it's expensive or difficult to use, then it's also useless to me from a business standpoint. Innovation for the sake of innovation is the goal of academia, generally. The free market then determines if there's any value to that innovation.
I realize that this post came off sounding harsh... I didn't intend for it to be argumentative. I just *hate* this kind of meaningless terminology. I don't have time for it. I guess the assumption by the author is that every business owner is just sitting around in an office, thinking about "innovation" and "leverage" (that one actually is useful, but in a completely different context), and "synergy" and other such nonsense. I own a business, and a sample of what I'm concerned about right now is: getting through the rest of the holiday season with my sanity intact (short term), and paying down debt (long term), employee retention (long term), whether I need to get a toilet replaced (short term) and possibly whether my front door is going to break again any time soon (short term). I'm not sitting back in a Herman Miller chair talking with my board in a $50/sq ft. office thinking about "innovation". I'm busting my ass. I know a lot of other business owners that are in similar situations, and I don't know a single one that would care about "innovation" or "freedom", or any other such nonsense.
Now, back to hauling dog food...
You're right. Many of the most successful organizations aren't explosively innovative, just subtly innovative. Wal-Mart, for example, is a great example of innovative business processes that simply tweaked existing processes. There's a lot more money and productivity that's just waiting to be grabbed in almost every organization; "low-hanging fruit" as it were, but you're right... it's simply not exciting to innovate, say, a billing system, or a production line.
"Leveraging innovation". C'mon. I'm a business person, and even I have no clue as to what "leveraging innovation" is supposed to mean. The only reason that I'd choose Open Source is if it improved my bottom line, in some way. I can't pay my bills with "innovation". I can't sell "innovation".
This book sounds like a salesman trying to convince you that you really, really do need this product. If it's not blatently obvious why I need that product, then I generally don't need it. This sounds like a solution looking for a problem. Explain to me in a sentence or two what the problem is that I'm apparently missing (we don't use any open source software other than VNC, and even that's being replaced soon). I shouldn't need an entire fucking book (that I have to buy) trying to sell my on something that I really doubt that I need.
That's clear enough and so easy to find out, so why the FUD?
It's not FUD. It just doesn't make any sense. That clause is irrelevant, because if you're looking to OS your software, then of course you're going to give it away. I know that I'm free not to distribute our custom apps. I don't need GNU or whoever it is this week to tell me that. My question was why would I want to release my company's code out to the public? A finger-crossed, "I hope that somebody decides to modify the code AND GPL it", is worth exactly $0. So still, there doesn't seem to be any benefit to most companies to release code. You absolutely give up your competitive software advantage, but you might get somebody to fix a bug for you? You certainly don't have to be a businessperson to see that that's a bad deal for the code writer.
You're hilarious. I knew DBA's that were like you. They thought that they knew everything about everything, and people who said otherwise were shouted down. Sure, they were in charge of lots and lots of important data, but that didn't make them any less the assholes that they were.
1. I used to be an enterprise-class developer. I got bored, and now I do this. So fuck you very much, Mr. Smug. I'm not getting into some pissing contest.
2. I'm simply pointing out that I'm not some IT wonk who knows about nothing outside of his cubicle. I'm a real world business user.
Sounds like you're compensating for something...
But, to the point, ID Software does it for goodwill among a *tiny* percentage of their uber-geek customers. That's useless for *most* businesses. Somehow, I really doubt that any of my customers would know or care if I released my code to the pubic. Whether or not that helps their sales is another question, altogether.
They frequently release it open source because they know that they'll be able to benefit from the expertise of their competitors (and every college student who notices their software) and they'll gain MORE competitive advantage as a result. This is because they're not hamster food salesmen and they actually know that "competitive advantage" is more about providing good service for a reasonable price than having some magic piece of software sitting around.
MORE competitive advantage? How about a REAL WORLD example? Would you know the real world from a hole in the ground?
Sorry, I'm just a lowly hamster-food salesman with a REAL job and a REAL business. Our business is so simple, that we don't have competitive advantages over competitors, because that's all we do: sell hamster food. Apparently, I know nothing about software and business. I should really go get a Masters Degree in Comp Sci, because then I'll know EVERYTHING (and I'll be able to be a smug son of a bitch).
Business power is bad, so globalizing it is worse.
He's completely ignoring the fact that without "business power", there'd be no cheap computers for his software to run on, there'd be nobody to pay for him to speak, and we'd be living in a society in which "free software" would not even be feasable. He spits in the face of all of the businesses that are allowing him to live his free lifestyle. He simply doesn't have a leg to stand on.
But more importantly, there are more important concerns than business.
It's called Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Right now, I run a business. Everybody who is not in government or academia is involved with business. I need to be able to feed and clothe myself and my family. What he's talking about, pie-in-the-sky, give-everybody-a-Coke ONLY makes sense on an academic level. It simply doesn't mean squat to a mother trying to feed her kids. That's why he's in his ivory tower spouting this idealistic nonsense. He gets paid for doing essentially nothing, and his assumption is that the rest of the world can work this way. It can't. It's been tried, and it's failed. Every single time in human history. He thinks that he's some great visionary, but all he really is is an unbelievably naive academic espousing a philosophy that works for him, and his other trust-fund buddies and perpetual academics, but doesn't do squat for a normal guy like me trying to make a living. He thinks that business is bad, which is an absolutely ridiculous and untenable base for a philosophy. Nothing is more important than business if you're hungry.
And the sooner we stop being adversarial towards our fellow man and start working together, the sooner we might reach paradise.
I agree completely. Could you please point me in the direction of a fellow man that will pay my mortgage and feed my family?
Also, most proprietary software distributors aren't making a lot of money. They all want to be Oracle, Apple, or Microsoft, but they can't pull it off. This too puts the lie to the idea that secrecy builds profit. Large organizations like IBM are finding out that returning to services is a more profitable endeavor, and one that doesn't require the monopoly powers the government is all too willing to grant. The advantage here is one we can all implement if we have patience and skill--listening to clients, knowing enough to implement their requests, and talking to them in a way they can understand (particularly with non-technical clients).
I know of lots of small software companies that also make money hand over fist. Right now, I'm using an Intuit product, a Ipswitch product, and Helios Software product. None are free or OS, and all of them are profitable companies.
The whole "advantage we can all implement" is the antithesis of business. It's called "collusion", and it's illegal. If an academic wants to spend their time writing software to save me money, good for them. I'll exploit it. But my goal, as a businessperson, is to get a bigger piece of the pie than my competitor, so that I'm more likely to be able to pay my mortgage next month. I'm not looking out for my competition, and in fact, I hope that as many competitors as possible do fail, and I'll step in to fill that void. This isn't rocket science. The whole OSS thing is purely an academic endeavor created by people for whom "competition" is completely irrelevant. That's great for them, but the rest of the non-academic world simply doesn't work that way.
As for this "competitive advantage", I think we're quickly discovering that this doesn't exist in the way most people believe it to exist--that by keeping the source code to the program a secret, one can retain some advantage over others. Once someone learns what the program does, other programmers can write suitable replacements that will suffice for most, if not all, of one's needs. Those who find themselves facing a competitor seek government-granted power to preclude competition, hence software patents are all the rage among those organizations wealthy enough to afford them. Thus, this "competitive advantage" sells a myth based on a free market that doesn't really exist for computer software.
Of course, something can be re-written and copied. It happens all of the time. But why, exactly, would I want to spend time and money writing something only to hand it to somebody else? So I spend $10,000 writing a piece of software, I hand it to a competitor, and then they instantly have a $10,000 advantage over me. That still doesn't make any business sense at all. Software can be a HUGE competitive advantage. Every aspect of business involves competition. The garbage collection company I use. The phone company. The company that washes my windows. My locksmith. It ALL makes a difference. Just because everybody has to do the same thing doesn't mean that it should all be free.
The whole idea that "everybody benefits" works great at an academic level, but falls flat on its face on a business level.
This reminds me of a phone call I got about a year ago. Somebody called me and said that she wanted to do a business just like mine, but close enough to take any customers. She asked if she could have my vendor list. I said "no". Of course she could replicate it. That would be relatively easy. But it still takes time. That's time that I already invested. Why should I hand it over to her? If we ever do compete, then she already has an xxx hour advantage over me, because she didn't have to spend that time finding vendors. Sure, I may get a vendor or two out of the deal from her, but that's still a net loss for me, any way you look at it.
Open Source software is just bad business. The only OSS software we use is stuff that people already developed. We will not ever open source our software, any of our procedures, buying methods, or anything else.
If companies did share their code between each other, it would only lead to a steady improvement of the code base. Better tools will lead to increased ability to produce which can allow you to overtake your competitor (assuming you are better in the other important areas like marketing as well), even if he is using the same tools.
And this is the key point... if my software is better (ours is, actually), then why would I want to give that up? Our software allows us to sell more, and make more money. What's the point of improving my competitors' systems when all I get is parity with them? The pie isn't getting bigger (or if it is, it doesn't have anything to do with software), but my piece of the pie would certainly shrink. That's something that no business wants.
You seem to think that not being a businessman is to exist in a cesspit. Does it occur to you that there are many who do not admire businessmen, to whom the word evokes an image of a mean little shopkeeper ripping people off, or of a magnate fiddling the books on a grand scale? To whom the word "business" itself does not give good vibes?
And to those people, I say, "Get a grip on reality." Without the engine that we call "business", I wouldn't be typing this on a $100 computer over a $30 Internet connection.
Oh dear, I don't know where to start. The "zealot's" understanding is quite a few levels deeper than that. We (I assume you will include me) understand only too well. Microsoft have become the most successful company in the world on the basis of competitive advantage given by software. The difference is that you lean back and say that's a good thing, but we don't - in Microsoft's case at least.
I'm not talking about companies that sell software. Companies that sell software are a tiny fraction of the global economy. I'm talking about virtually every other business on the planet that uses computers and software in some way.
Because improvements can result, for example in security and interoperability, that lead to improvements that will sell to the public more all round. As things are, the public are becoming disillusioned with computers and the internet.
Security doesn't sell me software. Security doesn't have any influence at all in my pet supply business choosing software. It's irrelevant to me, as it is to many businesspeople. Security is something that is simply not critical to many businesses, and is something that is the subject of much FUD coming out of the geek camp. "Interoperability" is also a moot point for many businesses. Do I want to "interoperate" with my competitors? No. Do I need better "interoperatbility" with vendors? Not really. Our primary method of "interoprating" with our vendors is a good ol' fax machine and the telephone. If there are any very critical interoperability standards, proprietary software will pick those up as quickly (if not quicker) than open source. We "interoperate" with our merchant bank via a set of standards that are included in every credit-card accepting device or piece of software.
IBM. HP, Novell, Red Hat, Apple and Sun are. That's every major company involved in Operating Systems development except Microsoft. The reason - they want to get (back in most cases) into the Operating System market, and Open Source is the most promising way.
Again, these are all businesses that sell software. Of course they're going to hype whatever the New Thing is. That's what they sell. And again, I'm talking about businesses that are NOT software companies (the vast, cast majority), but instead USE software to run their businesses.
And Wal-Mart and Amazon are not doing anything different from other businesses. Neither is the plumber on the corner, or the barber, or any other business for that matter. It's a matter of putting all of the pieces together correctly, and doing it BETTER than the other guy. For many, many businesses (like mine), software is a part of that. Those "novel combinations of known programming commands" are not quite as simple as you make them out to be, and in many cases, is the reason why one business fails and another succeeds.
And my little business just happens to fall in that "0.0001%"? I find that hard to believe. There's TONS of software that provides a competitive advantage. You think that Wal-Mart is going to "share" their software that runs their JIT supply system? You think that Amazon is going to "share" their recommendation software with their competitors? That's absolutely ridiculous. Saying that software "should" be a commodity is even more ridiculous.
... because if he was, he wouldn't be espousing that businesses throw away any competitive advantage that they may have, and instead throw it away by giving their software away to their competitors. That's one thing about this whole OSS thing that the zealots don't understand... software can be, and often is used as a competitive advantage. Why would a company (say mine) "share" it's code for it's custom apps with competitors, with the *hope* (and that's all it is) that one of my competitors will contribute enough to the project to make their contribution outweigh the loss of my competitive advantage via my software? It makes -zero- sense from a business standpoint, which is why businesses are, by any large, not interested.
Of sure, I wouldn't mind using any free/OSS tools that were already built. If they offer more value than their proprietary counterpart, then it's my obligation to also use this software to my advantage, as well. However, I have no incentive to open up a single line of code that I own.
Stallman would say that you shouldn't take that kind of software engineering job.
somehow, I sincerely doubt that RMS has ever had to actually *work* a day in his life. RMS doesn't know what in the hell he's talking about.