Long Live Closed-Source Software!

When you drop the wackos off both ends of the spectrum all that is left is the wackos in the middle!

Do not read this article!

And for me, I would say this is a must read article. From a person who by his reports was there with RMS at the inception of the GPL but comes to a different conclusion given the exact same facts.

We may not ever agree with each other, but it is as a valid view point as St. Stallman's.

Hmm, I was prepared to froth and foam, but he makes some interesting points. Funny how RTFA can change one's preconceptions. He rates the importance of originality (or "innovation", which is a perfectly good word that is nearly ruined for me, the poor thing) highly, and he also discusses at length the importance of focus and refinement. Though I think he's missing out on what's innovative; closed, proprietary tech vendors are mostly into "innovating" lockin, rather than anything truly creative and useful to their customers. They keep moving the walls in more tightly- the radical innovation of FOSS is blowing those walls apart.

The big point that I disagree with is that a closed-source, proprietary model is necessary for focus and refinement. And I think the iPhone is a poor example of a desirable result- it's not innovative, just a stylish repackage of not-new functionality, and it's closed from conception to implementation, and Apple is still blocking efforts by users to open it up. This trend of vendors forgetting who owns the device is continuing, and shame on the suckers who pay for the privilege of buying, but never truly owning, their products.

The author's real viewpoint towards F/OSS comes at the very-end of the piece

Quoting:the one thing I hope synthetic biology won’t import from the open-software world is the cultlike mania that seems to grip so many open-source enthusiasts.

There it is again, we "so many" Open Source supporters (aka "zealots, fanbois, ... etc) gripped by our typical "cultlike mania".

Funny how there's no mention at all in the author's piece about perhaps one of the key treatises actually ALLOWING for major innovation in the first place, namely ESR's renown 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar' (CatB) series of essays found at http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ As ESR quotes in his extreme Open Source pro-innovation stance "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (Linus's Law)

One easily conjectures that the author's omission of any reference to ESR's CatB was for a subtle reason; he is actually an advocate of the purportedly mightier "Cathedral"-edifice concept of software development. As all who are reading this may know by now, Netscape, ESR's prime example of the Bazaar model (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral...), has now officially folded.

Dana Blankenhorn & Paula Rooney already wrote a follow-up to the author's piece at ZDnet 's 'Lanier’s attack on open source religion', http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1850

Yep, the author Lanier surely and not-so-subtly timed his piece right!

I've worked in embedded computer design for many years, so I tend to see the iPhone as the sum of its parts, the hardware and software. It's a gadget, not a lifeform!

Thanks to electronics miniaturization, the iPhone happens to have the computing horsepower to run an operating system that hitherto required desktop realestate. As with most manufactured products, the design and implementation isn't about the "openness" of the components, it's about resources and project management.

The Apple corporate machine provided the necessary resources to an organized team of engineers. That the iPhone has a proprietary OS is irrelevant to its function or adoredness.

Look at TiVo, which changed the way many Americans schedule their TV time. The TiVo appliance is designed around open-source GNU/Linux and GPLv2. TiVo created a successful and profitable innovation just by orchestrating the necessary resources and a team of motivated geeks.

http://dynamic.tivo.com/linux/linux.asp

A person contacted within the last week or so also mentiioned this open vs. closed source critique by Jaron Lanier. After reviewing this critique, my opnion would lean much more on the side of ColonelPanik than to azertoth --- ignore it!!! Other than to attempt to praise how successful the TiVo and the iPhone are presumed to be, and to possibly counteract tuxchick's excellent points, telic seems to give no direct POV on the Sander loses Karma subject.

Questions for vanveenr and others are - Who else really and significantly cares that Jaron Lanier is obviously more pro Closed-Source than Open Source!!? - Is he currently this great closed-souce software developer like telic might be ? - How do the opinions touting the benefits of Closed Source (presumably your CatB "Cathedral" model) directly affect you or any key Open Source developers you may work with?

Hmm. Perhaps I was too kind. I give the author points for recognizing the value of both the free-for-all and the more focused development model, since both are necessary, but beyond that, yeah- it's big meh.

Lanier's argument is specious. The relevant "encapsulation" is resource management, not nonopenness.

Quoting:Sander loses Karma

Don't shoot the messenger. You can't compete if you don't know what the competition is thinking and doing. Putting on blinds doesn't make the competition go away.

If you disagree so strongly with the article, do what Dana & Paula did; Write a rebuttal (and post it here: http://lxer.com/module/newswire/stories/).

Yes, that rebuttal will be written and posted to LXer pretty soon. Coincidentally I was planning to write an article about why Microsoft can't keep up with open source anymore.

About Lenier's arguments: Some of it makes sense, but most of it? What a nonsense this guy is poring out...

Quoting:Coincidentally I was planning to write an article about why Microsoft can't keep up with open source anymore.

I've got a few (exernal) articles about that in the newswire pipeline already. Maybe you can take those into account and expand on them.

OK, will look at it. Story's almost done; so to keep up with new articles I'll need another day.