Wrong wrong wrong.... and more wrong!
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| kdwmusoiakjr Jan 04, 2008 4:18 AM EDT |
There are so many problems with your arguments it is hard to know where to start. Your primary fault is in defining innovation, innovation has nothing to do with humanity. Try googles define:innovation to see how wrong you are. Humanity need not benefit from an innovation, see the nuclear bomb or chemical weapons. These are surely innovative. Anyway, regardless of your definition, the primary problem is that people that innovate WANT to be rich. Its human nature. Every inventor/innovator wants to make a million dollars or more... and that model is completely incompatible with open source, at least at the moment. You can see this by the proportion of millionaires created by releasing their product open source vs closed source. And do believe me, its much more common than you think. Your walk in "open land" may cloud you a little, but its easy to make $$$ out there with closed source software. Real easy. Another thing, while something may take advantage of open source (infrastructure), the innovative part (e.g. pagerank, facebook, twitter etc) are not open source, nor will they ever be. Thats what open source is for in my opinion, to allow "little" guys to innovate. Years ago it cost big $$$ to create software, now its cheap as anything. Thats NOT innovative though, its just market pressures. The same thing happens in every industry. Linux just happened to be the vehicle. This point answers your point about the OLPC - price was the only sticking point. Innovation in my mind is doing something that hasn't been done before. Mythtv doesnt cut it because this is illegal (according to some), is a straight copy of you know how, and if it becomes popular you watch it get shut down. I have never seen a game-changing innovation happen that wasn't just about price in open source. Again the problem is, if you are truly first (define:innovation) then $$$ light up your eyes. Please, feel free to point to the top 1000 truly original concepts that open source has brought to the table that are innovative in concept, not price/freedom. I could easily do this with commercial software. Oh, I know this will probably be deleted and people will ignore the challenge, but just think about it. Dont kid yourselves, open source is for infrastructure - innovative on price alone. "almost all other software companies have embraced open source by now." What a laugh. People embrace free infrastructure. It lowers their costs and increases their profits of selling CLOSED source software. Why do you think google won't embrace GPLV3, along with many other companies? Because then they will have to release their code.... FFS! |
| kdwmusoiakjr Jan 04, 2008 4:21 AM EDT |
Also, I wonder how many web2.0 sites are open source, or do they keep the innovative part to themselves, leaving open source infrastructure? I still dont understand how articles like this get popular. |
| NoDough Jan 04, 2008 10:06 AM EDT |
Quoting:Please, feel free to point to the top 1000 truly original concepts that open source has brought to the table that are innovative in concept, not price/freedom. I could easily do this with commercial software. Oh. Well, since it's easy, you start. P.S.: I reserve the right to point out where your "innovations" were created in open source first. |
| Abe Jan 04, 2008 10:45 AM EDT |
Quoting:Your primary fault is in defining innovation, innovation has nothing to do with humanity. Try googles define:innovation to see how wrong you are. Humanity need not benefit from an innovation, see the nuclear bomb or chemical weapons. These are surely innovative. I wonder what you consider all of the innovations and discoveries made by mankind over its history and before patents laws were created (PTSO). May be you ought to read the definition of Innovation instead of re-inventing one yourself. Here is a link just for you. May it be of some enlightenment to you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation#Types_of_innovation And here are some snippets in case you are feeling lazy today: Enjoy Innovation: - new idea, method or device. - change that creates a new dimension of performance - the process of making improvements by introducing something new Sources of innovation There are several sources of innovation. In the linear model the traditionally recognized source is manufacturer innovation. This is where an agent (person or business) innovates in order to sell the innovation. Another source of innovation, only now becoming widely recognized, is end-user innovation. This is where an agent (person or company) develops an innovation for their own (personal or in-house) use because existing products do not meet their needs. Eric von Hippel has identified end-user innovation as, by far, the most important and critical in his classic book on the subject, Sources of Innovation.[2] Innovation by businesses is achieved in many ways, with much attention now given to formal research and development for "breakthrough innovations." But innovations may be developed by less formal on-the-job modifications of practice, through exchange and combination of professional experience and by many other routes. The more radical and revolutionary innovations tend to emerge from R&D, while more incremental innovations may emerge from practice - but there are many exceptions to each of these trends. Regarding user innovation, rarely user innovators may become entrepreneurs, selling their product, or more often they may choose to trade their innovation in exchange for other innovations. Nowadays, they may also choose to freely reveal their innovations, using methods like open source. In such networks of innovation the creativity of the users or communities of users can further develop technologies and their use. Whether innovation is mainly supply-pushed (based on new technological possibilities) or demand-led (based on social needs and market requirements) has been a hotly debated topic. Similarly, what exactly drives innovation in organizations and economies remains an open question. More recent theoretical work moves beyond this simple dualistic problem, and through empirical work shows that innovation does not just happen within the industrial supply-side, or as a result of the articulation of user demand, but though a complex processes that links many different players together - not only developers and users, but a wide variety of intermediary organistions such as consultancies, standards bodies etc. Work on social networks suggests that much of the most successful innovation occures at the boundaries of organisations and industries where the problems and needs of users, and the potential of technologies can be linked together in a creative process that challenges both. |
| ColonelPanik Jan 04, 2008 2:07 PM EDT |
WTF Somebody left the gate open in Redmond. |
| kdwmusoiakjr Jan 04, 2008 7:32 PM EDT |
Well i could start listing the top 1000 sites/companies, patents or registered designs if you really wanted? I know that doesn't go over well here, but if someone has an idea first, thats innovation. NEW IDEA = innovation, COPY IDEA = copy. Whats so hard to understand? Open infrastructure promotes innovation, enabling less resource input for the same output. A lower bar if you will. Google, ibm, sun, yahoo understand this but will never open source their money makers. Can you imagine google EVER open sourcing their ads platform or gmail? IBM open sourcing DB2, websphere, DB2 miner, lotus etc? The reason they are never going to be open sourced is something that most linux heads dont understand, to run a business and make money requires a revenue stream. I still don't understand how the worlds perception has changed, but its simple to make money from closed source software these days. Especially because of open source. And abe, just because wikipedia takes your opinion (which is an open source techie opinion) doesnt mean its a fact. Show me the numbers. Show me the decline in patent applications (hahah!!!) or startups (hahah!) or venture capital (hahah!) that prove that MORE innovation is being open sourced. More often than not its because the company failed to make money on the project, or needs the infrastructure for themselves and needs free labour!!! Here is evidence in support of my view: - Rate of patent applications is increasing - Rate of startups is increasing again - Venture pool is increasing - Number of "open source" startups is less than 0.1% (cant find the link sorry, was zdnet i think) - The primary open source startups are trying to compete on price with established market leaders - the number of software millionaires is steadily increasing - Desktop linux still sucks (ubuntu cant even drive my 2 monitors in dual view wtf!!!) - The vast majority of popular open source is infrastructure or copies trying to compete on price (linux, open office, mozilla, eclipse). - the number of closed source software vastly outweighs open source. EVERY website is closed source (the backend)... think about that!!! Stop drinking the ibm coolaid - open source is for infrastructure apps, and will never compete with commercial software in user-centered software/sites due to the lack of a revenue stream. Why you all want to give away your work when you could be rich instead is beyond me. /me returns to spa... |
| gus3 Jan 04, 2008 10:34 PM EDT |
Quoting:The reason they are never going to be open sourced is something that most linux heads dont understand, to run a business and make money requires a revenue stream.And access to files THAT I OWN be damned: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?stor... This borders on criminal, pure and simple. New Shiny Office considers older file formats a "security risk" and refuses to open them, without major registry editing. Why don't they simply make New Shiny Office also a New Secure Office, and warn about risky behaviors in older-format files? All the more reason to use Open Office.org. Quoting:Why you all want to give away your work when you could be rich instead is beyond me.How about, "to get a superior program/system, one that's done right, instead of slapped together in the name of reducing time-to-market"? Quoting:EVERY website is closed source (the backend)... think about that!!!Apache is closed? News to me. Oh, maybe you mean the HTML that goes into the actual web page designs... which means you haven't yet discovered "View HTML Source" in your browser. /me hands off the troll to Carla for further Pwn4g3... |
| kdwmusoiakjr Jan 05, 2008 4:17 AM EDT |
Gus, Im not trolling. I offer evidence in support of my views. Not anecdotes. I completely agree about micro$oft, they are terrible. I still believe that in the end, market forces should be enough. Consumers when given an option will choose the best product in the end, over time. Capitalism, like open source is evolution in action. And yes, I do use OO, but only to open others OO documents due to its terrible handling of large documents. "How about, "to get a superior program/system, one that's done right, instead of slapped together in the name of reducing time-to-market"? I have yet to find a superior "desktop" app in linux. Granted, all the command line (infrastructure) apps are great, but why can't open source produce a stable product? Release early means you often get untested, unstable features. Commercial software has a very big incentive to "feature freeze" that open source doesnt - support. We pay our support teams well, but want to minimise this. If we have a bug, how expensive is it to redeploy? Hugely! Avoid at all costs. The barrier to open source is little to none. Why is it that we release slower? I believe that the QA is much, much higher for commercial products than the majority of "desktop" apps that are open source. e.g. i have used ubuntu regularly for a few years now, and regularly find bugs that good QA would solve. Why isnt it done? QA is boring as %$IT and takes a long, long time. Regardless, there is nothing special about open source. Most projects (statistically speaking) have |
| kdwmusoiakjr Jan 05, 2008 4:23 AM EDT |
hmm got cut off. Regardless, there is nothing special about open source. Most projects (statistically speaking) have less than 2 active developers. See sf.net stats. Are they supposed to do everything, qa, usability, ui, db, scaling, documentation, website, everything themselves? WTF? No wonder you get poorly documented, hardly tested steaming piles of crap. Sure, there are more developers on more important (read infrastructure) projects, or ones where companies want to destroy another (sun, ibm vs microsoft in openoffice), but seriously.... how often have you downloaded an app and not have it work at all from sf.net? How about from download.com? See the difference? I really would love someone to provide some non-anecdotal evidence that commercial software is dead and that open source is really being embraced as readily as you think. Ive never seen any, which is why it reads like a preachers sermon rather than a scientists study. Lastly: Apache is closed? News to me. Oh, maybe you mean the HTML that goes into the actual web page designs... which means you haven't yet discovered "View HTML Source" in your browser. ---- umm... show me how to reverse engineer googles ranking algorithm by looking at the source of google.com and you win. |
| ColonelPanik Jan 05, 2008 6:35 AM EDT |
The gate is STILL open. |
| hkwint Jan 05, 2008 7:00 AM EDT |
OK, there we go:Quoting:Humanity need not benefit from an innovation I didn't say that, you brought up the word benefit. I said innovation brings something new, and I meant 'to humans' as in the 'human species'. Quoting:Anyway, regardless of your definition, the primary problem is that people that innovate WANT to be rich. May be true in general, however Mr. Negroponte could earn more money by working somewhere else than OLPC. Quoting:Every inventor/innovator wants to make a million dollars or more... and that model is completely incompatible with open source, at least at the moment. A false assumption; Philips and Sony use open source (software) in their newer products because it saves them money million dollars or more. Contact Arnout Engelfriet (from Royal Philips) if you don't believe me. Also, IBM makes lots of money with open source. In the early days, IBM sold the software it just made, and the ones who bought it were the new 'owners'. Therefore, IBM couldn't sell the same software again, because it wasn't the owner of the software anymore, the buyer was. That was one of the reasons to start selling open source software: They couldn't sell the software itself anymore, but they could _give_ the software to ten different customers and sell those ten different customers support. Of course, it's easy to make money by selling closed source software, but that's mainly because people don't know there's an alternative. As an example, yesterday a guy came to me with a screwed up FAT-partition (USB). Since all clients run Windows at our school, I tried finding something to repair FAT partitions. My Google-search only turned up demo's for Windows, for which I had to pay if I wanted to use all their capabilities or use them for longer than thirty days. However, for Linux there's just fsck.msdos, which is free software, doesn't cost a single cent, andcomes standard with most Linux distributions but doesn't run on Windows. Now please tell me how those people earning dollars for those 'trial- demo- etc. ware' are going to keep earning the same amounts of money if everyone knew the same could be done for free, not costing a cent? What goes for FS-repair goes for any average job; most of the time for Windows only paid closed-source software or demo's are available, if there are free programs doing the same they're usually open source, for Linux there are free programs which don't cost a cent. Quoting:its easy to make $$$ out there with closed source software. Real easy. It is. For the ones selling the software. But then your viewpoint is wrong. It's easy to save $$$ out there with open source software. Real easy! Quoting:Thats what open source is for in my opinion, to allow "little" guys to innovate. Indeed, it's what Google did. And, open source is what allowed them to grow from a "little guy" to a big guy. That wouldn't have been possible if their clustered system runned an closed source EULA-licensed operating system; it would have been to expensive and they couldn't have changed the source code to work on dozens of "old PC's" running in clusters. To scale up page-rank to be able to index the percentage of the internet that it does now wouldn't have been possible without open source software. In other words, page-rank would have been useless without open source software, at least for a startup company like Google. In other words: Page rank is only half of the most important innovation of Google, the other is how to cluster cheap software together, thereby not needing expensive hardware and software to index as much of the internet as possible. Microsoft could have used page-rank without the other half of the innovation though. Quoting:This point answers your point about the OLPC - price was the only sticking point. No, you're wrong; that's a false assumption. If the price was the only sticking point, Microsoft would have gave Windows away for free - and look at Nigeria to see how they offered to do so. In fact, there were several sticking points to choose Linux: -Negroponte wanted something where the 'fat could be left out', which wasn't possible with closed source software. Linux however, was easy to adapt because it's open source. -Negroponte wanted the children to be able to 'learn' about software; by means of loking at the code and being able to fiddle with it. That would only be possible if the children were able to study the software they used themselves. Quoting:Mythtv doesnt cut it because this is illegal (according to some), is a straight copy of you know how, May be. Nonetheless, MythTV offers features you know how doesn't offer. Quoting:I have never seen a game-changing innovation happen that wasn't just about price in open source. There are several; usually security and preventing vendor lock in is what drives those migrations. Look at the story about the German Auswartiges Amt for example: They stopped using you know who because they were being spied, IIRC, and because they didn't want to be locked in anymore: http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/2204/470 Quoting:Please, feel free to point to the top 1000 truly original concepts that open source has brought to the table Everything MULTICS, to start with: MULTICS mainly was about concepts looking back at it, since the implementation was not that good. Several of those concepts have been used for the past 40 years, in almost all OS'es. CTSS - the first time-sharing operating sytem and Inferno OS in the '90s is another example regarding concepts. Quoting:NEW IDEA = innovation, COPY IDEA = copy. Whats so hard to understand? I'm afraid you didn't understand what I was trying to say in my article. When combining existing ideas, one is also able to create innovation. So, copying ideas and combining them is innovation too. For example, let's take a point in history where the wheel, the axle and a plate existed. Someone copied those ideas, mounted the wheels to the axle and put the plate on it, and there was a new innovation, a kind of 'car'. Quoting:Google, ibm, sun, yahoo understand this but will never open source their money makers. Are you sure? When it comes to sun: Java, Solaris, StarOffice (under the brandname "OpenOffice") and the architecture of their Niagara 2 architecture all are open source now. IBM released Lotus Symphony under an open source, and for example the Eclipse IDE is open source too. Moreover, IBM earns money with selling open source software others created. Yahoo got rid of its own proprietary scripting language in favour of the open scripting language PHP. Therefore I said 'most' companies are embracing open source. Quoting:Can you imagine google EVER open sourcing their ads platform or gmail? IBM open sourcing DB2, websphere, DB2 miner, lotus etc? Yes, I can imagine. As an example, IBM just open-sourced lotus, as far as I know. Therefore, I can imagine more of those will be open source in the future. But on the other hand, my imagination my be rather big. Quoting:The reason they are never going to be open sourced is something that most linux heads dont understand, to run a business and make money requires a revenue stream. Sun does make money after they open sourced all their 'old closed source cash cows'. Red Hat makes money too. This shows they have a working open-source market model leading to a revenue stream. You might be right I don't understand it, but I do not _need_ to understand it if it works in _practice_. Quoting:I still don't understand how the worlds perception has changed, but its simple to make money from closed source software these days. Especially because of open source. Nowhere did I state the opposite. However, it is almost as simple to save money using open source software these days. When customers understand the latter, closed source revenue will decline, is my prediction. So, you're basically looking from the 'seller' perspective: They are able to sell a lot of closed source software, why I'm looking from the 'buyers' perspective: They can save money. Looking only from the seller perspective is one of the biggest problems of closed-source software sellers in my opinion, and one of the reasons they their innovation is only conservative. For example, Microsoft doesn't have to listen to its customers at all: Their software sells anyway, since it is pre-installed on 99%+ of all PC's and laptops sold. Since they don't have to listen to their customers, they don't have to innovate either. Same for AutoDesk (though AD Inventor and AutoCAD are still innovating on the other hand). But look at where Microsoft _does_ have to listen to its customers: The web browser market. There are viable alternatives to MS Internet Explorer. Together, Firefox and Opera brought some innovations, like plugins (FF), tabbed browsing (Opera, FF followed) and a browser that's able to pass the ACID2 test (Opera again, FF followed). For a long time, Microsoft didn't even want to copy this innovations to its product, but when their market share declined, they came with what's almost a Firefox-copy; IE7. I have to admit Opera is closed source and still they brought a lot of innovations to web browsers. However, a lot of people - including myself - switched to Firefox because of the plugins. And there are a lot of innovative plugins available for Firefox! Some of them, while not all of them I believe, are open source. Quoting:Show me the decline in patent applications (hahah!!!) or startups (hahah!) or venture capital (hahah!) that prove that MORE innovation is being open sourced. Patents don't have to do much with innovation. Moreover, the number of patents is not equal to the number of valid patents, and the number of patents is not equal to the number of enforceable patents. A lot of those patents are not valid because they are not innovative in first place. USPTO and EPO should test for innovativeness of those new patents, but because they are being overwhelmed they don't have time to test this for all new patents. Moreover, they earn from granting patents. The number of startups isn't necassaraly related to innovation also. If I start a company and start selling closed source software to repair FAT partitions, ten open source startups may do the same, thereby copying my innovation. So, one innovation may lead to ten or more startups. However, if there's somebody who writes a program which repairs FAT partitions for free which also works on Windows, and the public becomes aware of this, all ten companies will probably go bankrupt. The reason why the number of little startup selling closed source software isn't declining, is that most people who use Windows are used to paying for software, or cracking it. I was used to it five years ago, and I thought it was a normal thing back then. Now, when using Linux, looking in my software repository full of free (as in 'not costing any cent') programs, I know it isn't normal having to pay $10 for a program that's able to repair FAT partitions. As a technical sidenote: If all people didn't use Windows, FAT partitions wouldn't be used anymore. The FAT FS is about the only FS that is corrupted if you pull out your USB stick before 'safely deleting' (unmounting). If you were to put Ext3 on your USB-stick, it wouldn't crash in first place after you pulled it out before safely deleting. Therefore, if people didn't use Windows those ten startups mentioned earlier wouldn't have existed in first place. And you know the funny part? FAT is an ancient technology. After that, people invented a new innovative filesystem less prone to corruption. Because of backwards compability this innovation is not being used in USB sticks, and because this innovation is not used, ten new companies could start a business of 'repairing FAT partitions'. So, because of a _lack_ of innovation, there are new startups! And then you want to measure innovation by the number of startups? That's quite problematic. Quoting:Number of "open source" startups is less than 0.1% (cant find the link sorry, was zdnet i think Less than 0.1% of what? Compared to what? On its own, this is a useless statistic. Also, if you make something open source, everyone can use that software, so there's no need to start nine new companies who sell software that does the same. Quoting:the number of software millionaires is steadily increasing So what? Earning money isn't related to innovation that much. I can tell you the number of oil-millionaires is increasing just as rapidly. People engaged with real innovative technologies, like 'foil solar cells' are not becoming a millionaire. And you know why? Because by being conservative it is easier to become a millionaire than by being innovative. Bill Gates became millionair by selling an already existing system (CP/M), not because he was innovative (innovative in his ways of copying existing stuff, that's true). Quoting:- Desktop linux still sucks (ubuntu cant even drive my 2 monitors in dual view wtf!!!) That's a shame. The most probably reason is because video-card manufacturers are conservative and don't want to open source their specs. Quoting:The vast majority of popular open source is infrastructure or copies trying to compete on price (linux, open office, mozilla, eclipse). OpenOffice dates back to 1984, about the same year (1983) Microsoft _Word_ (that's, not an office suite) was released. Mozilla used to be based on Netscape. MS Internet Explorer is a copy of Netscape, not the other way around. IE7 is a copy of Firefox, not the other way around. Open Office has features not found in MS Office. Same for KOffice, which also consists of a lot more applications than MS Office. Linux - if a 'copy' at all, is a copy of MINIX, which was not a copy of anything, but meant as 'learning material'. Quoting:- the number of closed source software vastly outweighs open source. EVERY website is closed source (the backend)... think about that!!! I don't understand how closed software relates to websites? Anyway, like told before, if there's one open source application doing something, there's no need to sell nine others doing the same. One of the reasons is probably because when working with Linux, it's easier to find a program that does something, and there aren't different adds on each site for different programs which do the same. For Windows, there are usually ten programs doing the same thing. That's why the number of closed source programs outweighs the number of open source programs being available. Quoting:Why you all want to give away your work when you could be rich instead is beyond me. Because for companies not earning from selling software licenses, giving away your software is a way to _save_ money. For example, Sony and Philips don't earn money by selling software (only a little maybe), but they do save millions by giving away their software to each other! As said, this is what they do in practice. Hard to grasp, even for me, but like I said ask Arnout Engelfriet from Royal Philips if you don't believe me. Quoting:Release early means you often get untested, unstable features. Then you should be using the 'stable' branches instead of the 'testing' branches. Quoting:Commercial software has a very big incentive to "feature freeze" that open source doesnt - support.[quote] You shouldn't be using Ubuntu if QA is of much concern to you, in my opinion. You should be using Debian stable, RHEL or SLES. Ubuntu basically is a kind of testing branch of Debian, as far as I'm aware. Quoting:Most projects (statistically speaking) have less than 2 active developers. The same is true for most closed-source projects, like the "applications to repair a FAT filesystem mentioned several times before". However, with most closed source applications, it remains unknown how many developers are behind it. Quoting:how often have you downloaded an app and not have it work at all from sf.net? Linux users don't download from sf.net. They use their package managers instead (that's on the top 1000 list of open source innovations by the way). Only Windows users do download from sf.net. As a Linux user, you are warned by yor pakcage manager if downloading crap: 'This package is masked because it's not stable'. Extra actions have to be taken to still download it. As for the question how often I installed an app using my package manager that didn't work, I'd say |
| hkwint Jan 05, 2008 7:01 AM EDT |
OK, there we go:Quoting:Humanity need not benefit from an innovation I didn't say that, you brought up the word benefit. I said innovation brings something new, and I meant 'to humans' as in the 'human species'. Quoting:Anyway, regardless of your definition, the primary problem is that people that innovate WANT to be rich. May be true in general, however Mr. Negroponte could earn more money by working somewhere else than OLPC. Quoting:Every inventor/innovator wants to make a million dollars or more... and that model is completely incompatible with open source, at least at the moment. A false assumption; Philips and Sony use open source (software) in their newer products because it saves them money million dollars or more. Contact Arnout Engelfriet (from Royal Philips) if you don't believe me. Also, IBM makes lots of money with open source. In the early days, IBM sold the software it just made, and the ones who bought it were the new 'owners'. Therefore, IBM couldn't sell the same software again, because it wasn't the owner of the software anymore, the buyer was. That was one of the reasons to start selling open source software: They couldn't sell the software itself anymore, but they could _give_ the software to ten different customers and sell those ten different customers support. Of course, it's easy to make money by selling closed source software, but that's mainly because people don't know there's an alternative. As an example, yesterday a guy came to me with a screwed up FAT-partition (USB). Since all clients run Windows at our school, I tried finding something to repair FAT partitions. My Google-search only turned up demo's for Windows, for which I had to pay if I wanted to use all their capabilities or use them for longer than thirty days. However, for Linux there's just fsck.msdos, which is free software, doesn't cost a single cent, andcomes standard with most Linux distributions but doesn't run on Windows. Now please tell me how those people earning dollars for those 'trial- demo- etc. ware' are going to keep earning the same amounts of money if everyone knew the same could be done for free, not costing a cent? What goes for FS-repair goes for any average job; most of the time for Windows only paid closed-source software or demo's are available, if there are free programs doing the same they're usually open source, for Linux there are free programs which don't cost a cent. Quoting:its easy to make $$$ out there with closed source software. Real easy. It is. For the ones selling the software. But then your viewpoint is wrong. It's easy to save $$$ out there with open source software. Real easy! Quoting:Thats what open source is for in my opinion, to allow "little" guys to innovate. Indeed, it's what Google did. And, open source is what allowed them to grow from a "little guy" to a big guy. That wouldn't have been possible if their clustered system runned an closed source EULA-licensed operating system; it would have been to expensive and they couldn't have changed the source code to work on dozens of "old PC's" running in clusters. To scale up page-rank to be able to index the percentage of the internet that it does now wouldn't have been possible without open source software. In other words, page-rank would have been useless without open source software, at least for a startup company like Google. In other words: Page rank is only half of the most important innovation of Google, the other is how to cluster cheap software together, thereby not needing expensive hardware and software to index as much of the internet as possible. Microsoft could have used page-rank without the other half of the innovation though. Quoting:This point answers your point about the OLPC - price was the only sticking point. No, you're wrong; that's a false assumption. If the price was the only sticking point, Microsoft would have gave Windows away for free - and look at Nigeria to see how they offered to do so. In fact, there were several sticking points to choose Linux: -Negroponte wanted something where the 'fat could be left out', which wasn't possible with closed source software. Linux however, was easy to adapt because it's open source. -Negroponte wanted the children to be able to 'learn' about software; by means of loking at the code and being able to fiddle with it. That would only be possible if the children were able to study the software they used themselves. Quoting:Mythtv doesnt cut it because this is illegal (according to some), is a straight copy of you know how, May be. Nonetheless, MythTV offers features you know how doesn't offer. Quoting:I have never seen a game-changing innovation happen that wasn't just about price in open source. There are several; usually security and preventing vendor lock in is what drives those migrations. Look at the story about the German Auswartiges Amt for example: They stopped using you know who because they were being spied, IIRC, and because they didn't want to be locked in anymore: http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/2204/470 Quoting:Please, feel free to point to the top 1000 truly original concepts that open source has brought to the table Everything MULTICS, to start with: MULTICS mainly was about concepts looking back at it, since the implementation was not that good. Several of those concepts have been used for the past 40 years, in almost all OS'es. CTSS - the first time-sharing operating sytem and Inferno OS in the '90s is another example regarding concepts. Quoting:NEW IDEA = innovation, COPY IDEA = copy. Whats so hard to understand? I'm afraid you didn't understand what I was trying to say in my article. When combining existing ideas, one is also able to create innovation. So, copying ideas and combining them is innovation too. For example, let's take a point in history where the wheel, the axle and a plate existed. Someone copied those ideas, mounted the wheels to the axle and put the plate on it, and there was a new innovation, a kind of 'car'. Quoting:Google, ibm, sun, yahoo understand this but will never open source their money makers. Are you sure? When it comes to sun: Java, Solaris, StarOffice (under the brandname "OpenOffice") and the architecture of their Niagara 2 architecture all are open source now. IBM released Lotus Symphony under an open source, and for example the Eclipse IDE is open source too. Moreover, IBM earns money with selling open source software others created. Yahoo got rid of its own proprietary scripting language in favour of the open scripting language PHP. Therefore I said 'most' companies are embracing open source. Quoting:Can you imagine google EVER open sourcing their ads platform or gmail? IBM open sourcing DB2, websphere, DB2 miner, lotus etc? Yes, I can imagine. As an example, IBM just open-sourced lotus, as far as I know. Therefore, I can imagine more of those will be open source in the future. But on the other hand, my imagination my be rather big. Quoting:The reason they are never going to be open sourced is something that most linux heads dont understand, to run a business and make money requires a revenue stream. Sun does make money after they open sourced all their 'old closed source cash cows'. Red Hat makes money too. This shows they have a working open-source market model leading to a revenue stream. You might be right I don't understand it, but I do not _need_ to understand it if it works in _practice_. Quoting:I still don't understand how the worlds perception has changed, but its simple to make money from closed source software these days. Especially because of open source. Nowhere did I state the opposite. However, it is almost as simple to save money using open source software these days. When customers understand the latter, closed source revenue will decline, is my prediction. So, you're basically looking from the 'seller' perspective: They are able to sell a lot of closed source software, why I'm looking from the 'buyers' perspective: They can save money. Looking only from the seller perspective is one of the biggest problems of closed-source software sellers in my opinion, and one of the reasons they their innovation is only conservative. For example, Microsoft doesn't have to listen to its customers at all: Their software sells anyway, since it is pre-installed on 99%+ of all PC's and laptops sold. Since they don't have to listen to their customers, they don't have to innovate either. Same for AutoDesk (though AD Inventor and AutoCAD are still innovating on the other hand). But look at where Microsoft _does_ have to listen to its customers: The web browser market. There are viable alternatives to MS Internet Explorer. Together, Firefox and Opera brought some innovations, like plugins (FF), tabbed browsing (Opera, FF followed) and a browser that's able to pass the ACID2 test (Opera again, FF followed). For a long time, Microsoft didn't even want to copy this innovations to its product, but when their market share declined, they came with what's almost a Firefox-copy; IE7. I have to admit Opera is closed source and still they brought a lot of innovations to web browsers. However, a lot of people - including myself - switched to Firefox because of the plugins. And there are a lot of innovative plugins available for Firefox! Some of them, while not all of them I believe, are open source. Quoting:Show me the decline in patent applications (hahah!!!) or startups (hahah!) or venture capital (hahah!) that prove that MORE innovation is being open sourced. Patents don't have to do much with innovation. Moreover, the number of patents is not equal to the number of valid patents, and the number of patents is not equal to the number of enforceable patents. A lot of those patents are not valid because they are not innovative in first place. USPTO and EPO should test for innovativeness of those new patents, but because they are being overwhelmed they don't have time to test this for all new patents. Moreover, they earn from granting patents. The number of startups isn't necassaraly related to innovation also. If I start a company and start selling closed source software to repair FAT partitions, ten open source startups may do the same, thereby copying my innovation. So, one innovation may lead to ten or more startups. However, if there's somebody who writes a program which repairs FAT partitions for free which also works on Windows, and the public becomes aware of this, all ten companies will probably go bankrupt. The reason why the number of little startup selling closed source software isn't declining, is that most people who use Windows are used to paying for software, or cracking it. I was used to it five years ago, and I thought it was a normal thing back then. Now, when using Linux, looking in my software repository full of free (as in 'not costing any cent') programs, I know it isn't normal having to pay $10 for a program that's able to repair FAT partitions. As a technical sidenote: If all people didn't use Windows, FAT partitions wouldn't be used anymore. The FAT FS is about the only FS that is corrupted if you pull out your USB stick before 'safely deleting' (unmounting). If you were to put Ext3 on your USB-stick, it wouldn't crash in first place after you pulled it out before safely deleting. Therefore, if people didn't use Windows those ten startups mentioned earlier wouldn't have existed in first place. And you know the funny part? FAT is an ancient technology. After that, people invented a new innovative filesystem less prone to corruption. Because of backwards compability this innovation is not being used in USB sticks, and because this innovation is not used, ten new companies could start a business of 'repairing FAT partitions'. So, because of a _lack_ of innovation, there are new startups! And then you want to measure innovation by the number of startups? That's quite problematic. Quoting:Number of "open source" startups is less than 0.1% (cant find the link sorry, was zdnet i think Less than 0.1% of what? Compared to what? On its own, this is a useless statistic. Also, if you make something open source, everyone can use that software, so there's no need to start nine new companies who sell software that does the same. Quoting:the number of software millionaires is steadily increasing So what? Earning money isn't related to innovation that much. I can tell you the number of oil-millionaires is increasing just as rapidly. People engaged with real innovative technologies, like 'foil solar cells' are not becoming a millionaire. And you know why? Because by being conservative it is easier to become a millionaire than by being innovative. Bill Gates became millionair by selling an already existing system (CP/M), not because he was innovative (innovative in his ways of copying existing stuff, that's true). Quoting:- Desktop linux still sucks (ubuntu cant even drive my 2 monitors in dual view wtf!!!) That's a shame. The most probably reason is because video-card manufacturers are conservative and don't want to open source their specs. Quoting:The vast majority of popular open source is infrastructure or copies trying to compete on price (linux, open office, mozilla, eclipse). OpenOffice dates back to 1984, about the same year (1983) Microsoft _Word_ (that's, not an office suite) was released. Mozilla used to be based on Netscape. MS Internet Explorer is a copy of Netscape, not the other way around. IE7 is a copy of Firefox, not the other way around. Open Office has features not found in MS Office. Same for KOffice, which also consists of a lot more applications than MS Office. Linux - if a 'copy' at all, is a copy of MINIX, which was not a copy of anything, but meant as 'learning material'. Quoting:- the number of closed source software vastly outweighs open source. EVERY website is closed source (the backend)... think about that!!! I don't understand how closed software relates to websites? Anyway, like told before, if there's one open source application doing something, there's no need to sell nine others doing the same. One of the reasons is probably because when working with Linux, it's easier to find a program that does something, and there aren't different adds on each site for different programs which do the same. For Windows, there are usually ten programs doing the same thing. That's why the number of closed source programs outweighs the number of open source programs being available. Quoting:Why you all want to give away your work when you could be rich instead is beyond me. Because for companies not earning from selling software licenses, giving away your software is a way to _save_ money. For example, Sony and Philips don't earn money by selling software (only a little maybe), but they do save millions by giving away their software to each other! As said, this is what they do in practice. Hard to grasp, even for me, but like I said ask Arnout Engelfriet from Royal Philips if you don't believe me. Quoting:Release early means you often get untested, unstable features. Then you should be using the 'stable' branches instead of the 'testing' branches. Quoting:Commercial software has a very big incentive to "feature freeze" that open source doesnt - support. That's worth another article; support is the most overtouted feature of closed source software. While I heard from people using commercial software support it isn't really good - and free help from open-source software forums is better many times, there are more points to why this is a false assumption: With most commercial software vendors selling closed source software, I don't know how my problem is being handled, and it's difficult to find out the status. Also, I can't communicate with the developers of the sofware, they're 'behind the helpdesk'. With open source software projects however, there's usually a kind of bugzilla, at which I can track the status of my 'bug', and I can communicate with the developers. Moreover, open source software also comes with support if you want it. Canonical supports Ubuntu, Red Hat offers support, Sun offers support for StarOffice, and so on. Quoting:Why is it that we release slower? I believe that the QA is much, much higher for commercial products than the majority of "desktop" apps that are open source. e.g. i have used ubuntu regularly for a few years now, and regularly find bugs that good QA would solve. You shouldn't be using Ubuntu if QA is of much concern to you, in my opinion. You should be using Debian stable, RHEL or SLES. Ubuntu basically is a kind of testing branch of Debian, as far as I'm aware. Quoting:Most projects (statistically speaking) have less than 2 active developers. The same is true for most closed-source projects, like the "applications to repair a FAT filesystem mentioned several times before". However, with most closed source applications, it remains unknown how many developers are behind it. Quoting:how often have you downloaded an app and not have it work at all from sf.net? Linux users don't download from sf.net. They use their package managers instead (that's on the top 1000 list of open source innovations by the way). Only Windows users do download from sf.net. As a Linux user, you are warned by your package manager if downloading crap: 'This package is masked because it's not stable'. Extra actions have to be taken to still download it. As for the question how often I installed an app using my package manager that didn't work, I'd say Quoting:Oh, I know this will probably be deleted and people will ignore the challenge Well, I hope your glad with my reaction. It's (one of) the longest I've ever seen at LXer! |
| Abe Jan 05, 2008 10:23 AM EDT |
I am sorry, long posts make me dizzy, but sometimes they are necessary. So, let me summarize your original point for the benefit of keep things in perspective.Quoting:the primary problem is that people that innovate WANT to be rich. Its human nature.A widely generalized and very inaccurate statement. You yourself stated that FOSS is an infrastructure built as a foundation for more innovations to be built on. You yourself admit that commercial companies are adopting it to build new products on. You consider these money making new products as innovations yet, you refuse to admit that this infrastructure itself is not innovative, why?! Just because it is Free/free and people who built don't make money?! Sorry, your statement is false and your argument just does not making sense. You might say that FOSS infrastructure is not original. I say you are wrong because innovations includes taking an idea and expand it, improve it, enhance it and advance it. The major innovation of FOSS is building innovative infrastructure for more innovations to be built on it in an open and collaborative environment. IOW, Free, as in Freedom, environment. Quoting:"almost all other software companies have embraced open source by now." What a laugh. People embrace free infrastructure. It lowers their costs and increases their profits of selling CLOSED source software.So what, does that make free infrastructure NOT innovative? Don't be silly. New ideas, improving methods and advancing processes don't have to make money to be called innovative, they are innovations by their own merits irrelevant whether they make money or not. As for applications, what do you think of TCP/IP, X-Window, Kerberos, Postgresql, KDE 4 environment (Plasma, Solid,etc..), Samba, K3B, and many other applications. And don't tell me those are copies of existing ideas, just remember that innovations also include improvements and enhancements of ideas and methods. Quoting:And abe, just because wikipedia takes your opinion (which is an open source techie opinion) doesnt mean its a fact.I don't need to go through stating the facts for you because many other people already did do due diligence and came to the conclusion of defining innovations. Your own definition of innovation being money driven is short sited and absurd. Quoting:Show me the decline in patent applications (hahah!!!) or startups (hahah!) or venture capital (hahah!) that prove that MORE innovation is being open sourced.Just because some see an opportunity to make money of their innovations doesn't mean everyone innovate just to make money. As I said before, you have a very long history of mankind innovations that wasn't done for money before patents and after patents. You obviously don't want to see that. For your information, it is being done all around. The progress of FOSS over the years should be a hint for you. It is being done in commercial companies, governments, schools and in public. I don't know how you could ignore that, just look around and broaden you scope a little beyond the commercial sector. Quoting:Here is evidence in support of my view: ...All this doesn't prove anything but business as usual. Companies are created to make money. Yes they do innovate, but that doesn't mean they are alone. Governments spend an awful lot of money giving grants in academia and research centers to innovate. Many volunteers spend lots of their time to innovate. So what is your point? Quoting:Stop drinking the ibm coolaid - open source is for infrastructure apps, and will never compete with commercial software in user-centered software/sites due to the lack of a revenue stream.The facts indicate otherwise. Red Hat built a service business around FOSS and competing in the market. There are many FOSS applications that already competing with commercial applications. Just because commercial companies have the momentum, it is doesn't mean they are going to retain it. Business around FOSS is growing and there is no need to cite all world adoptions of FOSS. It is only a matter of time to over take that momentum. Quoting:Why you all want to give away your work when you could be rich instead is beyond me.No thank you, I am not a FOSS developer and I wish I was so I try to participate and innovate. On the other hand, I am content and happy making good living. I really don't need to get rich. To me, it is happiness that counts not making money. Besides, I feel good and comfortable by not having to take away the chances from poor people to make their money and live decently. You know, sort of like, live and let live! I hope you appreciate that. Innovation in open environment is good for mankind. It creates opportunities and level the playing field for dynamically competitive society. I guess greedy people see it otherwise. I guess your last statement shows where you stand and coming form. It is your choice and I don't care to share it. |
| kdwmusoiakjr Jan 05, 2008 3:11 PM EDT |
Ok, so we can agree to disagree. Thanks for the reply. I still hold the belief that open source is only really going to cut it in infrastructure applications (db's, os's, networking, development tools, browsers etc) or well defined niches (word processors), and also academic apps (scientific discovery support). Most of what you have said actually confirms this view. I will also call you out on this point: "With most commercial software vendors selling closed source software, I don't know how my problem is being handled, and it's difficult to find out the status. Also, I can't communicate with the developers of the sofware, they're 'behind the helpdesk'. With open source software projects however, there's usually a kind of bugzilla, at which I can track the status of my 'bug', and I can communicate with the developers. Moreover, open source software also comes with support if you want it. Canonical supports Ubuntu, Red Hat offers support, Sun offers support for StarOffice, and so on." You are still thinking like a developer. Consumer's dont want a mailing list. 99% of people dont understand what a bug "is" - and don't care. Think like a consumer who knows nothing of computers, because this is the market that counts. They want simple support. Someone to call. Someone to email. Have you seen the response on a mailing list to "how do i print something" or other stupid questions --- hostility! As a developer its probably hard to grok, but developers are a TINY proportion of the worlds software users, and are a terrible model for basing your assumptions around. If all you spend time with are developers/technical users, you will never understand the people who matter: those you are trying to help (the other 99.9%). The people you are trying to win over want: 1. Simplicity 2. Convention over configuration 3. Point of contact 4. Shiny 5. Handholding On all but the most popular projects, few open source "alternatives" provide these things. More often than not it is: 1. Complexity 2. Configuration over convention 3. No points of contact 4. Ugliness (starting to get better e.g. tango, but very few good designers work on open source) 5. Hostility towards "dumb" users The cost of open source to most of the population where this is true is much higher than a trivial amount to buy some software. Would you rather buy a car or assemble one with help via a mailing list? Now thats an extreme example, but thats what it's like to end-users using open source. The initial cost is much lower, but time, effort and frustration cost a lot more. I have seen users struggle to use a scrollbar or find an icon on their desktop. What do you think these people care about - cost or simplicity? Lastly, the website thing was simply about the new model of closed source software. Facebook, google, yahoo, myspace, twitter etc etc .... all have the smart software hidden behind a web server. You cant go back from view-source to how that source was created. My point is that now open source is being used to create EVEN MORE closed source software, and you seem to be in complete denial of it. These websites will never be open sourced, because there is no practical difference to the end user. the future of software is in SAAS/web2.0 models - open source will never be able to compete with that because there are fixed and variable costs associated with these services to keep them running, which open source could never recoup. If you attempt to rebut this point, please state how: A company/individual could open source their website code and profitably run a SAAS/web2.0 website such as facebook, backpack etc If you don't consider the future of software to be "in the cloud" then please say why |
| hkwint Jan 05, 2008 4:01 PM EDT |
Quoting:You are still thinking like a developer. I'm not, I'm only a user. I don't know why you think I'm a developer? If I'm a developer at all, I'm a developer of touchable things, not software. I'm a user; having struggled more than average with software probably. Just like the 99% of the people you refer to. Quoting:They want simple support. Someone to call. Someone to email. I have been a Windows user for a long time comparing with my age ('96 to '03 and still using it, but only for work now). When using Windows as a consumer, you are not entitled to simple support. Worse, if you have a virus, you're on your own. You're the one who should fix it. You're the one having to download, install and run stuff, and then decide if the programs the 'spyware removal-tool' comes up with are spyware or not. No matter if you know anything about computers or not. If you don't trust your Windows system, you're the one scanning the application list for strange processes. You're not going to get useful help via the telephone, as far as I know. The developers I spoke with in the past were willing to help me out if I had any problems, but most of the problems I solved myself. Both when I used Windows, and now I use Linux. However, Linux documentation was far better, and in contrary to when working with Windows, I knew what I was doing. Also, finding out what's wrong on Windows is much harder than on Linux. What goes for Windows goes for a lot of other closed-source software too. Same thing for editing the Windows register: It's something you learn by doing. I see a lot of people doing it. Most of them aren't on the phone for help. Those people are also able to configure Linux, since editing text-configuration files is easier than using regeditor. As for working with mailing lists: It's something you have to learn. Just like you have to learn how to install & operate virus, anti-spy and malware-scanners when using Windows. So, here's the point: Most support at this moment comes from neighbours, cousins, acquaintances etc. They are the ones knowing how to 'regedit', use SpybotSD, BDO-Deamon etc. When using open-source software, one should find some neighbour, cousin etc. to help out with problems, which is a bit harder to find than someone who can help you out with Windows at this moment. However, since a normal Linux-distro has far more monitor / repair tools installed in the standard file-base (and no demo-ware crap which I should download from sites I don't know and then go to AstalaVista.box.sk which surely installs new crap, like in my old Windows days) it's far easier to help someone out with problems on a Linux box than on a Window box. Also, almost ALL people here on LXer who installed Linux for acquaintances, told me people almost never call back with questions, they found out everything on their own. In other words, they don't need that much support. Most current MS Office users have less problems working with OpenOffice than when working with the newest versions of MS Office with the changed interface (2007 I believe it's called; haven't been using it yet). There were also lots of pilot projects which showed normal office-workers didn't have much problems switching to open source applications (including Linux and OpenOffice). If they still have problems, they can use Linux-questions.org, the people over there are very friendly, use the forums of the particular distro, depending on the distro the people over there are rather friendly too, if and only if it can't be solved in this way and concerns a bug, they can file a bug report (someone able to operate regedit has the capabilities to do this!), and if all else fails, they can go to a LinuxUserGroup meeting at which other people will be glad to help them out, and they can meet other members which they might call in case of problems. Quoting:Would you rather buy a car or assemble one with help via a mailing list? That question is oversimplified. Here's one for you: Would you rather buy a car which is known to be really unreliable, expensive and unsafe, which is going to have difficulties you can't repair and if the mechanic sees it, sighs because it is difficult to repair and is broke everytime with no apparent reason? And if this car only gets worse; degrades over time? And are you going to buy this car if the vendor keeps the measures of the threads, bolt and nuts secret and doesn't allow the mechanic to measure it, and if the mechanic does, sues him? In fact, if the vendor doesn't allow a mechanic you can hire to look under the hood? And also if this vendor is known to stop support for old types of tires and windshield wipers after a few years, forcing you to buy new and more expensive ones? Or are you going to "assemble" a safe car with help via a mailing list (normally one would use the documentation, not the mailing list, or buy a computer with Linux pre-installed), when knowing what you are making won't degrade but only becomes better, is more reliable than the car you can buy, is much more easy to repair for the mechanic if problems would arise you can't repair on your own? Quoting:The cost of open source to most of the population where this is true is much higher than a trivial amount to buy some software. The biggest problem of closed software these times is, let's face it, MS Windows. The cost of closed source to most of the population is true much higher than a trivial amount to buy some software; look at the cost of virusss, malware and spyware, and editing a silly register which always becomes hosed. Look at how much it costst to re-install Windows from time to time, which is usual practice when using Windows. Look at how much it costs a company if someone breaks into their systems and steals their designs (IP). Look at the malware people get when cracking their 'demo-versions', which they wouldn't have needed when using Linux in first place (I am one of those having cracked tons of demo-versions back when using WinXP, so I know what I'm talking about). Quoting:. What do you think these people care about - cost or simplicity? Again, experiences from other LXer members confirm most of those people don't have that much problems when using open source software; at least not more than they had back when using closed source software. Quoting:You cant go back from view-source to how that source was created. My point is that now open source is being used to create EVEN MORE closed source software, and you seem to be in complete denial of it. No, I'm not in denial of it. I don't know where I denied that, apart from pointing out most of those servers run on open source software. But true, the backends are closed source. However, this software is usually not sold. When saying closed software is dead, I was referring to software for which you buy a license and which comes with an EULA. Quoting:open source will never be able to compete with that because there are fixed and variable costs associated with these services to keep them running, which open source could never recoup. Those companies providing services via web2.0 etc. could save tons of money if they used open source software instead of developing their own closed source software. That's the reason why a lot of them in fact _are_ using open source software, at least when it comes to general software. Google runs on Linux, though there are closed source parts in the Linux they use. Most other websites also run on Linux and Apache, and a lot use MySQL. The custom-made 'backend' which distinguishes them from other sites, their services, may be closed source. It still remains unknown, at least for me, if this will stay that way in the future or not. Could be possible. Also, check out Zonbu, which offers Software As A Service to consumers; which offers exactly what you say open source does not: Simplicity, a point to call, convention over configuration, point of contact, handholding and shiny. http://www.zonbu.com/home/index.htm I didn't see any closed source vendor have an innovative user friendly offering like this, taking care of all the hassle a computer user might have. Since I read general software news about Microsoft, Apple etc. everyday this is probably because they don't offer it in first place, but let me know if I'm wrong. Quoting:If you don't consider the future of software to be "in the cloud" then please say why Not entirely. People already start complaining about privacy issues, and people want confidential data to be theirs. Also, if one datacenter or service or the internet is down, you are not able to reach your documents. And what if the SAAS provider goes bankrupt? How will policies change if it is bought by - for example - a Chinese company (looking at how Seagate almost was bought by the Chinese, that scenario is not quite imaginary)? There are a lot of problems associated with SAAS which I feel haven't been addressed as of yet, at least as far as I know. But time will tell, and most people go for convenience and don't share the concerns I have. |
| kdwmusoiakjr Jan 05, 2008 11:05 PM EDT |
I disagree you are like the 99.9%, as you have used regedit which would make you one of the 0.01%. Agree on your points about windows as a linux user myself, but I am not talking about windows in general. I am talking about closed source vs open source. Not in the difference between selling shrinkwrap either - in my mind closed source is closed source, open is open. A simple black and white line. Your argument about virus's will be interesting to see if linux ever gets up to >33% market share. When a user is asked about an admin password and doesn't understand why, the same sorts of issues will come up. Grandma will never understand why a program is asking for permission to do something, and more often than not will be harmed by the software in the end. The same as zonealarms much hated "should i let this process have access to the internet", its often the user that is at fault. Yes windows is less secure by design, no argument there. You misunderstood this: "open source will never be able to compete with that because there are fixed and variable costs associated with these services to keep them running, which open source could never recoup." I meant that open source can never do an application like twitter, google adsense or facebook because the costs with RUNNING the service are so high. If a competitor can come along and spend 0$ on software, then the costs associated with running the service (storage + bandwidth + infrastructure) will not be able to be recouped by the company who developed the software in the first place. Surely you can't disagree...? No company in their right mind would bet the company on such tight margins. Zonbu is cool. I stand corrected on that point! I agree with you - people will go with convenience and do not value privacy at all. That is why the future is in the cloud. Soon even more closed source, proprietary personal data will be around (as standards are always well behind the game-changer) so it seems the opposite is happening to what this article claimed. If you don't believe that facebook, google, yahoo etc don't utilise open source WHEN IT SUITS THEM, and abuse it WHEN IT DOESNT(e.g. their proprietary GFS, ranking algorithms, infrastructure code etc)... then we are on completely different planes. I wish the GPL had of been done correctly in the first place, making these companies who build on linux but keep their internal extensions proprietary release their source code. Would have certainly changed the computing landscape. It will be interesting to see what these companies do in the medium term as things move GPL3. |
| hkwint Jan 06, 2008 4:18 AM EDT |
Quoting:Your argument about virus's will be interesting to see if linux ever gets up to >33% market share. Almost all Linux distro's at this moment aren't hardened yet, because virusses are no concern at this moment. However, there are tools to lock Linux down. I have used a hardened kernel in the past - using PaX, which prevent potential buffer overflows. Sometimes, this was a pain, but in the future if virusses might be a concern to Linux, I'm sure it's easy to harden Linux. Quoting:meant that open source can never do an application like twitter, google adsense or facebook because the costs with RUNNING the service are so high. So are the cost of maintaining Java or OpenSolaris, and still it's open sourced. I agree Sun doesn't have cost 'running' that services. Note, the value of facebook and Google is in my opinion NOT in the code, but in network effects, goodwill and in the brand. Facebook is used because other people use it. In my country, nobody uses it because everybody uses Hyves. In my country, nobody uses or has ever used AOL messenger because their friends don't. Everybody in my country uses MSN, because all their friends do. People started using MSN because they started using Hotmail, and people started using Hotmail because they gave away stuff (mail-addresses) for free. So basically, their code is not of much value, but their brands and customers using their services are. Therefore, it wouldn't matter if Google were to open source their 'page-rank algorithm'; people would still use Google, because it's the search engine they know. I agree however, when a company starts up, there are benefits in keeping the source closed. When nobody knew what Google meant, anybody with Google's code could have become what's now Google. In the same way, I don't believe the value of Windows is in the closed source code. If there were a competitor laying their hands on the source code, they wouldn't be successful because 99% of all computers come pre-installed with Windows. It's in the willingness of OEM's to blindly install Windows no matter what where the real value of Microsoft resides, but that's my opinion and I'm fine if anyone disagrees. The same goes for MS Office: most of the value isn't in the code, but in MS Office's ability to open other MS Office documents; which 90% of the world is working with. Therefore, 90% of the world needs MS Office to open each others documents - which is called a 'network effect'. So, most of the value is in the Microsoft brands; a lot of people just want to use 'Internet Explorer', "The Blue E" on the desktop. They don't want to use Firefox, because they say it can't do what IE does. If you give their Firefox shortcut another name and change the icon to the blue E however, they don't complain and don't know the difference. So you can't say the value is in the source code of IE; again it's in the brand. Quoting:If you don't believe that facebook, google, yahoo etc don't utilise open source WHEN IT SUITS THEM, and abuse it WHEN IT DOESNT(e.g. their proprietary GFS, ranking algorithms, infrastructure code etc)... then we are on completely different planes. I agree. However, I intended the article to concern shrink-wrapped software. Closed source software isn't dead when it comes to custom-made software. Nor will it be the coming few years. On the other hand, following governments, I predict more and more companies asking custom made software made for them to be open source - because of vendor neutrality. Look at the 'escrow' business, and you see this is a serious concern to companies. Quoting:I wish the GPL had of been done correctly in the first place, making these companies who build on linux but keep their internal extensions proprietary release their source code. That would mean the GPL decides what they should do with code/software they don't distribute. However, if they don't distribute their software, it remains unknown what software/code they have at all, so that would probably be unfeasible from a practical viewpoint. |
| kdwmusoiakjr Jan 07, 2008 6:13 AM EDT |
Ummm.. so you agree with me? Facebook, google, all the big, new innovative companies are closed source? Nearly every web2.0 site would be in this category. I called you out on your claim that closed source is dead. I provided real stats (rather than anecdote) to back up my claim. The reason shrinkwrap software is dying (yes dying) is because EVERYTHING is moving online. Who cares about the desktop market anymore? Where is the place for open source innovation in web2.0? INFRASTRUCTURE. Price. It enables me, and every other web2.0 site to make more money with essentially free labor. Look at the new computers: browser is ALL that is needed, everything else is online. And to run an online site you need... you guessed it, $$$. Big $$$ if you are running a popular site, much more than an open source developer can provide for free. Innovation is definitely increasing, because of open source infrastructure, but the majority of innovation IS closed source, behind company firewalls. It enables google to use thousands, millions of hours of developers code, build on it for their entire infrastructure, and not give back *a single thing* to the community unless it chooses. And it chooses: no. |
| theboomboomcars Jan 07, 2008 7:00 AM EDT |
kdwmusoiakjr- Are you saying that the only innovation that is in computers right now is web2.0, what ever that means, web sites? It seems that what hkwint is saying is that with out the open source technologies that this new web2.0 is based on, none of the non distributed technologies would work. And you are replying since these new technologies are not distributed that there are no open source innovations. As to whether there are open source innovations or not, that is hard to say since innovation does not hold any meaning any more. Every one has a different definition and none of them fit together and most don't make sense, just like web2.0, as far as I can tell this whole new web 2.0 thing is forums and video, both of which are not new and have been online since there has been an online. One of my favorite innovations from open source is the wrist watch that runs linux. That is just cool. |
| Sander_Marechal Jan 07, 2008 7:49 AM EDT |
Quoting:all the big, new innovative companies are closed source Tell that to Wikimedia, Slashdot, Sourceforge and a host of other sites who's source is fully open. |
| hkwint Jan 07, 2008 1:34 PM EDT |
Sander: Please add the Wikia search engine, curious what will become of it in the future.Quoting:The reason shrinkwrap software is dying (yes dying) is because EVERYTHING is moving online. As a consequence of that, only _more_ processing power is needed. Still, the same amount of hard-disk space is needed, and still, an operating system and office suite are needed. So, to run an online site, you need BIG$$$, like if you run Google Writely on ASP.NET on Windows, like Google did when it started. However, these days, Google Writely servers run on Linux, which means Google doesn't need BIG$$$ anymore, just $$$. That's also because lots of open source software runs on hardware their closed source competitors can't run on (lower hardware requirements) and usually eat up less power. Moreover, open source flash / application (especially Java) servers (flash is the first to come to my mind when thinking of Web2.0) exist which are cheaper than the proprietary competitors. The Mozilla team is working on a flash competitor, though not sure what will come of it. You could call those server software 'infra' if you wanted. But these are the important pieces that are not easy to replace. Personally, I think it's not that hard to rebuild the applications on top of this infrastructure, but I might be totally wrong. I mean, if you have the infrastructure, how hard would it be to rebuild Facebook? Quoting:It enables google... ...not give back *a single thing* to the community unless it chooses. And it chooses: no. They do indirectly, in their Summer of Code project. Anyway, like said before, when claiming closed source is dead, I was really meaning closed source development leading to innovation, mainly when it comes to shrinkwrap software (far too long for a title), but open source is also making its way into web2.0. The entire web2.0 revolution would have been impossible without open source innovations of the past, like clustering Linux which was the most important enabling technology for Google. Writely - the Google office writer - is also only possible because the servers run Linux. Also, I don't agree everything is moving online. Private data probably isn't, or at least shouldn't be. Hospitals, military personnel, authorities and schools shouldn't use online apps in my opinion, but that's just my opinion. So I wouldn't say closed source is dead, but it's losing momentum when it comes to developing innovative software. I'm sorry, but I cannot see how GMail, Facebook or GoogleDocs or Youtube are innovative software. Facebook software isn't that much software (profile-pages are probably as old as I am), and GoogleDocs is just an existing office application delivered over the web. Youtube is the same as SMB-protocol over ethernet + file indexer we had at university, only with more content available and slower connections and far more users. So frankly I don't see how these are innovative. They are a bit - especially the social networking part, but only a tiny bit. The software-part which handles the social networking part isn't that innovative I'd say. However, the distributed software (infrastructure) enabling millions of people to watch vids via Youtube, now that _is_ innovative in my opinion. Parts of that, I agreed earlier, are not open source. Software for MeshCommunication via the ethernet, software for environment aware systems, the hassle free computing Zonbu offers, online portals where citizens can do all their business with the government, OpenWRT which enables customers to do more with their hardware than was possible when using the same device with proprietary software, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about when referring to innovations. |
| kdwmusoiakjr Jan 08, 2008 5:00 AM EDT |
I stand corrected again... good examples. I still believe these are in the minority though but perhaps you are correct - perhaps open source websites can actually make money. Of course opening the source would limit your business model (e.g. fewer people would pay for a subscription if they could set it up themselves, and you would get competitors quickly). If the commercial shrinkwrap market were dying you should do your research properly and look at: 1. Total number of desktop applications at sf/fm etc 2. Total number of desktop applications at download.com/zdnet etc (assume 10-20% overlap?) 3. Find stats for year-on-year applications If your hypothesis is correct you will see a trend down in the shrinkwrap software market, and a trend up in the open source applications. Now THAT would make an interesting article, something based on numbers not anecdote. To get even more fancy you could look at not only projects but download counts. Easy to get from sf, but harder from the other sites. I would probably take a sample of the top 20 commerical apps vs the open source equivalents and compare their market penetrations. My guy feeling is that unless you are first you need big $$$ or dumb luck to penetrate the market, but it sure would be an interesting article. |
| hkwint Jan 09, 2008 12:25 AM EDT |
Quoting:I would probably take a sample of the top 20 commerical apps vs the open source equivalents and compare their market penetrations. OK, that's a good idea. However, I'm afraid stats are hard to collect, but I might give it a try. Nonetheless, Linux users don't use sf, so they are not in these statistics, but they are a minority of the total number of desktop users. Also, free software can be shared; so after somebody downloads free software from sf they can share it with the rest of the world without being counted on sf. These are the usual problems one encounters when dealing with statisticts and open source; for example some Linux distributions permit to make your own 'package mirrors'. In that manner, a company could mirror a Linux 'ftp' repository - which means downloading only once - and thereafter from every of their PC's download the packages from their 'own' mirror. Anybody could also roll out the same software(package) on a plethora of PC's using just one Linux cd, so again they're only counted once. Most of the time, closed software forbids redistribution. Basically, collecting statistics about the market share / penetration of free software (and open source software which permits redistributing) is really hard. The most repersentative way would be go out on the street or use a phone and randomly ask people, but can't do that I'm afraid. |
| kdwmusoiakjr Jan 09, 2008 3:14 AM EDT |
Well you could assume that stats such as downloads of x applications are the lower bound. Perhaps get repository statistics etc. Would still be interesting and much better than "linux is innovative because i say so and so do the people i asked!". :) |
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