The Microsoft Killers [FR as "Open Source/Access"?]

Prospect Magazine UK ^ | February 2004 | Azeem Azhar

[CharacterCounts]

Is the law a good example of open source?

No!

Trust me on this. I'm a lawyer.

99% of the law (the common law) is created by lawyers and judges in an adversarial system. The end law may be available to anyone, but no lawyer or judge created it for free.

[CharacterCounts]

Your's is the best explanation of Open Source vs. paid for software I have heard to date.

Thanks.

[PAR35]

I do know a place that sells Cokes brought in from Mexico. They retail at just over $6.00 for a 6 pack. The same store has the Dublin, Texas Dr Peppers (made with real sugar, sold in tall glass bottles). They are a little cheaper.

Coca Cola could make big money if they would sell a premium Coke, made the old fashioned way, for a premium price.

[Old Professer]

Where's my Coke?

[jpsb]

I'll have to look into kiwi's not familar with them. I have a hardly ever used forum, modeled after FR that I am putting into the public domain. Just ziped up the source code and linked to it. Did the same with the on-line trivia game so maybe folks will help develop cool forum software and a trivia game. We shall see. I've lots of servlets that I built to run my hardly used web site, it is even SOAP enabled! That the heck here is the URL Haven't done much with it lately but does work.

[King Prout]

didn't you get reduced to your component molecules on thursday?

[nuconvert]

Enough of this talk....I need a Coke.

[SauronOfMordor]

But I can't afford to work for free - I have afamily to support.

Think of open-source software as advertising. You put out some open source software for a particular area. People use it. Your name becomes better known. When they want special customization, or a special project in that specialty, who are they going to think of asking first?

[SauronOfMordor]

The other thing I am having trouble with is the concept of one person or group developing software for free and another company such as Big Blue maintaining and customizing it for profit. It sounds like Big Blue is trying to strip the gravy off of other peoples efforts. This doesn't sound like a concept with a long term future to me.

If I'm using a product for commercial purposes, my senior management wants the warm feeling of knowing that, if a bug is found which affects production, that some competent organization is going to take responsibility for fixing it NOW, not when somebody happens to feel like it would be a fulfilling experience. Companies WILL pay for the IBM safety net and hand-holding

[Nick Danger]

Open source can work in certain situations, but there are software products that I don't believe will ever be open source. Think of vertical market applications...

I think you have the right answer here, but not in response to the question that was asked. The original poster had the idea that if a corporation paid IBM (or Accenture, or me) to modify some open source package that they wanted to use in their business, they would have to open source the modifications and then all their competitors would have it, too. But that's not really how it works. You can do anything you want for your own use, and keep it secret. The only time you have toss the improvements back on the pile is if you go into business as a provider of that kind of software, using GPL'd code as a base (to get to market more quickly than writing the whole thing yourself).

Many open source licenses (the BSD license, for example) do not even have that restriction. You can (and Microsoft has done this) take BSD code and incorporate it into your commercial products.

You are absolutely right about the vertical market apps. The sort of people who do these projects do stuff because it's fun. The guy who slogs all day on a hospital administration package wants something a little more exciting for his hobby activities. With linux he gets to work on as OS kernel, which is really cool. Or a web browser like Mozilla. But start an open source project and say, "Let's all write a package for a veterinarian's office!" and watch people stay away in droves. Somebody actually tried this. Here is a link to an open source project to do an app for veterinarians. It drew 2 -- count 'em -- two developers, who were last heard from in August of 2003.

Most non-programmers do not understand the extent to which open source software is driven by the same impetus that causes people to join community symphony orchestras. If you have the music in you, you have to play. You think it's fun. Going to practice twice a week isn't a chore, it's associating with other serious musicians and improving your skills and an all-around fun thing. The very best programmers are like that. Circumstances (like having two kids to feed) may require them to spend their days maintaining the gas company's billing operations, but by night they can become Kernel Man, coding at the bleeding edge of OS development. They have the music in them; they have to play. It's fun.

Vertical-market apps are not fun. They're just work.

[Future Snake Eater]

My programmer fiance wants to know what language that is--you've stumped her!

[Mr. K]

That is a nice fairy tale, but I need to buy food in the mean time....

[Nick Danger]

Looks like Flash "ActionScript".

[Joe Bonforte]

Vertical-market apps are not fun. They're just work.

To each his own, I guess. I get more of a charge out of solving a complex business problem with a clever use of technology than working on generic system-level functionality.

[palmer]

One aspect of open source I haven't seen mentioned is the competition of architectures. There are many people reinventing the wheel and the result is inevitably a better wheel. Undoubtedly that happens at MS too, but the open source community has lots of students with lots of extra time and energy.

The neat thing about inventing a new architecture to do something is you can become indespensible for maintaining it, which is one of things the proprietary companies hate (they want to keep their employees in their place). So some of the more successful inventors have grabbed a chunk of power to do the right thing, or cash in, or screw up. But even if they screw up the design or maintenance, other people will step in to take over.

[stylin_geek]

Yeah, but anyone who signs a long term contract with IBM should have their head examined.

[js1138]

Vertical-market apps are not fun. They're just work.

I don't know. I worked in Mortgage Banking software for fifteen years. Programming is programming. The difference in satisfaction is related to whether you are give a goal and allowed to reach it on your own, or whether you are given specs in pseudocode and required to be a human compiler. Been both places.

[Askel5]

===
Of course you can't work for free, that's why your job will soon be going to Honduras or India.

Ouch. too true.

[SauronOfMordor]

That is a nice fairy tale, but I need to buy food in the mean time....

That's cool, I understand. What I'm pointing out is that having a widely popular open-source app on a college student's resume doesn't hurt his job-seeking prospects.