It seems to me that the microsoft approach to software is to put all the intelligence into the software so a somewhat trained monkey can run a network. I think this would lead to decreasing personel costs as a portion of IT expenses.
It seems to me that the F/OSS approach to software is to design many intelligent components which must be put together by someone who understands their intelligence and can link them together to do what is needed. It seems that this sort of approach would lead to decreasing software costs as a portion of IT expenditure.
I think buisnesses will in the future be switching to F/OSS solutions for IT infrastructure for two reasons.
* The task microsoft is attempting to undertake is monumental. To write software so good as to make user intelligence obsolete is going to require a LOT of intelligent automation in a very complex and rapidly changing environment. A brain is a very powerful tool and not quite obsolete yet. Perhaps however the microsoft approach has its advantages when it comes to naturally low intelligence activities such as impulse media consumption. (no to say that people who do this are unintelligent but rather that the act itself does not require much intelligence)
*Competition! When using a F/OSS solution in an IT environment there is a pricing structure which corresponds to the relative demand for IT the relative number of skilled F/OSS IT providers and the relative expertise of these individuals. One very skilled F/OSS provider can administer a large portion of an IT infrastructure. when more of these people are hired more workers will have an incentive to learn this profession and the skill level of the average administrator will rise. This in turn leads to an abundance of market regulated IT resources. Microsoft on the other hand is beholden to its shareholders desire for maximum profit. As infrastructure deployment and maintinence costs are born by the customer the marginal cost of production is essentially zero. In the absence of competition microsoft has virtually no incentive to lower prices. Companies invest in IT because it increases productivity and will continue to do so as long as the productivity gains are worth more than the cost of IT. With a microsoft solution much of these gains are siphoned away to microsoft shareholders. A monopoly is both in a very strong and very weak position. It is strong in that it can control market pricing but weak in that it CANNOT compete on price with non monopoly entities as it would destroy their pricing structure, in fact in the face of a limited amount of price competition they are probably better off just ignoring it as they gain much more from monopoly prices than they do from a small increase in market share at non monopoly prices. The best way for microsoft to maintain their profits is to slow the growth of competition as much as possible and they spend quite a lot of effort "innovating" in this area. Whitness things like proprietary formats, massive FUD campaigning (it works), hiding the extent of monopoly pricing in forced upgrade schemes etc. The general effect of this is to try and split the market into microsoft and non microsoft IT solutions by maxing the cost of migration, lowering the effectiveness of competitors by crushing their economies of scale and future pricing the cost of their goods. Taken together microsoft has a very strong but ultimately unstable position.
Companies are beginning to comercialize F/OSS IT solutions, as this market matures it will become more and more cost effective. Eventually companies using a F/OSS IT solution will begin to outcompete those locked into monopolistic pricing. At this point microsoft will have to start competing on price and we will have a race to the bottom. I think many companies are aware of the costs of microsoft solutions, and this is why we see so many companies interested in F/OSS.
"The problem with Stallman is that he is incredibly stubborn (no kidding), and made mistakes early on that he was unwilling to fix. Hence FSF Emacs and even XEmacs is crippled as an editor, a language, and a platform, though people who only make simple use of it might not understand why"
I wonder if you could explain this a little more or provide links where I can find out more as to what mistakes were made and how they are crippling. I am one of the "simple use" people:)
In searching for "crippled emacs" I find people saying the key bindings are retarded or that the use or regular expressions in emacs is bad, is this what you are meaning?
I am very interested in computer science, linux, computer architecture etc, but I do not think I can afford to be paying for people to be teaching this to me when I do not have a way to recoup this cost. I Think I will have to live as cheaply as possible in order to maximize the time available for me to educate myself in these fields. Thank you F/OSS community for allowing me the possibility of doing this.
why dont they just raise the prices for licencing spectrum. As a monopoly they should be able to maximize profit by charging huge amounts. The unlicenced spectrum resulting from the high prices could be open to use by the public. Licencing corperations would naturally seek to reduce bandwidth usage as much as possible. No need to force everyone to buy special equipment legislatively. We may even see diversification of roles in broadcast industry, where content providers would select amongst content distributors on the basis of cost of transmissons vs audience of transmission. I suppose then the FCC could price spectrum competitively with cable/dsl further increasing benifit for consumers.
I think this would ensure that americans received the best possible return on their scarce spectrum resource. Perhaps it would be necessary to legislate somewhat on acceptable usage of unlicenced spectrum so its benifits are equally available to all e.g. one person does not prevent 1000 people form using spectrum.
Tangentially, Does anyone know why a digital to analog receiver would cost 50 dollars? That seems awfully expensive to me, but i am mainly ignorant of the technology involved and the costs of production associated with this.
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It seems to me that the microsoft approach to software is to put all the intelligence into the software so a somewhat trained monkey can run a network. I think this would lead to decreasing personel costs as a portion of IT expenses.
It seems to me that the F/OSS approach to software is to design many intelligent components which must be put together by someone who understands their intelligence and can link them together to do what is needed. It seems that this sort of approach would lead to decreasing software costs as a portion of IT expenditure.
I think buisnesses will in the future be switching to F/OSS solutions for IT infrastructure for two reasons.
* The task microsoft is attempting to undertake is monumental. To write software so good as to make user intelligence obsolete is going to require a LOT of intelligent automation in a very complex and rapidly changing environment. A brain is a very powerful tool and not quite obsolete yet. Perhaps however the microsoft approach has its advantages when it comes to naturally low intelligence activities such as impulse media consumption. (no to say that people who do this are unintelligent but rather that the act itself does not require much intelligence)
*Competition! When using a F/OSS solution in an IT environment there is a pricing structure which corresponds to the relative demand for IT the relative number of skilled F/OSS IT providers and the relative expertise of these individuals. One very skilled F/OSS provider can administer a large portion of an IT infrastructure. when more of these people are hired more workers will have an incentive to learn this profession and the skill level of the average administrator will rise. This in turn leads to an abundance of market regulated IT resources. Microsoft on the other hand is beholden to its shareholders desire for maximum profit. As infrastructure deployment and maintinence costs are born by the customer the marginal cost of production is essentially zero. In the absence of competition microsoft has virtually no incentive to lower prices. Companies invest in IT because it increases productivity and will continue to do so as long as the productivity gains are worth more than the cost of IT. With a microsoft solution much of these gains are siphoned away to microsoft shareholders. A monopoly is both in a very strong and very weak position. It is strong in that it can control market pricing but weak in that it CANNOT compete on price with non monopoly entities as it would destroy their pricing structure, in fact in the face of a limited amount of price competition they are probably better off just ignoring it as they gain much more from monopoly prices than they do from a small increase in market share at non monopoly prices. The best way for microsoft to maintain their profits is to slow the growth of competition as much as possible and they spend quite a lot of effort "innovating" in this area. Whitness things like proprietary formats, massive FUD campaigning (it works), hiding the extent of monopoly pricing in forced upgrade schemes etc. The general effect of this is to try and split the market into microsoft and non microsoft IT solutions by maxing the cost of migration, lowering the effectiveness of competitors by crushing their economies of scale and future pricing the cost of their goods. Taken together microsoft has a very strong but ultimately unstable position.
Companies are beginning to comercialize F/OSS IT solutions, as this market matures it will become more and more cost effective. Eventually companies using a F/OSS IT solution will begin to outcompete those locked into monopolistic pricing. At this point microsoft will have to start competing on price and we will have a race to the bottom. I think many companies are aware of the costs of microsoft solutions, and this is why we see so many companies interested in F/OSS.
"The problem with Stallman is that he is incredibly stubborn (no kidding), and made mistakes early on that he was unwilling to fix. Hence FSF Emacs and even XEmacs is crippled as an editor, a language, and a platform, though people who only make simple use of it might not understand why"
:)
I wonder if you could explain this a little more or provide links where I can find out more as to what mistakes were made and how they are crippling. I am one of the "simple use" people
In searching for "crippled emacs" I find people saying the key bindings are retarded or that the use or regular expressions in emacs is bad, is this what you are meaning?
I am very interested in computer science, linux, computer architecture etc, but I do not think I can afford to be paying for people to be teaching this to me when I do not have a way to recoup this cost. I Think I will have to live as cheaply as possible in order to maximize the time available for me to educate myself in these fields. Thank you F/OSS community for allowing me the possibility of doing this.
why dont they just raise the prices for licencing spectrum. As a monopoly they should be able to maximize profit by charging huge amounts. The unlicenced spectrum resulting from the high prices could be open to use by the public. Licencing corperations would naturally seek to reduce bandwidth usage as much as possible. No need to force everyone to buy special equipment legislatively. We may even see diversification of roles in broadcast industry, where content providers would select amongst content distributors on the basis of cost of transmissons vs audience of transmission. I suppose then the FCC could price spectrum competitively with cable/dsl further increasing benifit for consumers. I think this would ensure that americans received the best possible return on their scarce spectrum resource. Perhaps it would be necessary to legislate somewhat on acceptable usage of unlicenced spectrum so its benifits are equally available to all e.g. one person does not prevent 1000 people form using spectrum. Tangentially, Does anyone know why a digital to analog receiver would cost 50 dollars? That seems awfully expensive to me, but i am mainly ignorant of the technology involved and the costs of production associated with this.