Heretical as this may seem, McVoy wants to be on the side that innovates and makes money.
That sounds like capitalism. And working on products with no hope of profitability sounds like socialism. There's not a lot of suspense here about the outcome...
And that's part of the reason why China likes LINUX so much. Soon all open software development will only be done in China.
I've been assembling a project out of all open source and I just adore the open source community. Of course, one reason that I adore them is that I could not possibly afford to buy a system with the capabilities of the one I am building, essentially for free (except for sleep), from open source. I estimate that I am already talking in the low six figures for a commercial system to do what I am attempting. The downside of course is that the open source is poorly documented and is a far cry from "plug and play". The open source community banks on this to land consulting contracts to install and maintain these systems. Nonetheless, open source makes it possible at all for me to do what I am doing.
If IBM donates a foundation that makes a product under GPL that IBM will turn around and use are both not profiting from it?
1. The programmers don't understand the business side.
2. The business folks don't understand what technology is/isn't needed.
For many years, all too many IT folks have been selling crap --either crap that doesn't work or crap that users simply do not need. Someone will end up getting skinned. It probably will be those (software makers) that will get it up the wahzoo. And, besides, the margins the software makers have been making over the last years have been overinflated. Some of this is just the market figuring out that the price has been too high. As well, now there are market (cheaper) alternatives that present the same (or perhaps better) results...hence, a better value.
Which is what most of these arguments come down to: value.
If the software product or service provides the value to the customer, they are happy. And, while there are many examples, the whole "Microsoft-REALLY-REALLY-not-paying-attention-to-their-customer-needs" has become one of the more stark examples of a company that thinks it is providing value when it isn't.
Firefox didn't just happen. Microsoft was asleep at the wheel. Spyware, malware, and pop-ups were out-of-control. So, some folks that had some know-how didn't reverse engineer IE...they built a better app. Plain and simple.
The "Linux folks" (in their various stripes) finally started to put a GUI on the front-end of a powerful, secured, operating system. They didn't reverse engineer the OS. If the "Linux folks" have reverse engineered anything, they reverse engineered the "windows" GUI which, I would hasten to point out, is what Microsoft did with Apple's MacUI. (And, yes, there's the argument that Apple ripped MacUI off from XPARC. Course, there is notable evidence that Apple didn't steal the XPARC stuff. Read more here, here, here, and here).
Is Microsoft evil? No.
Have they been stupid in the last 7 (or so) years? Yes.
Whose to blame? Lawyers.
[Aside]Look, it isn't an easy issue.
When MSFT started issuing their defense for giving away IE, they said it was because IE was tied to the OS. It wasn't...at least not to the degree that their lawyers argued. After that, MSFT started to tie-in IE directly to the OS.Result: The tie-ins provided the channels for spyware and malware to infect client systems.
Result: An innovative product like Firefox, which is a browser that runs as an application on top of the OS. [End Aside]
That's not value. Value is what you do with those tools.
Heretical as this may seem, McVoy wants to be on the side that innovates and makes money.
That sounds like capitalism. And working on products with no hope of profitability sounds like socialism. There's not a lot of suspense here about the outcome...
It's somewhat amusing to listen to the hard core pro and con open source evengellists go at it... "Open Sourcers are commie bastards, intent on overthrowing the capitalist system AND the United States!" or "Open Source will be the savior of our way of life..."
The simple fact is that there is going to be some money to be made in open source, but it's doubtful that it will be enough to actually run a corporation, although little "mom & pop" startups will probably thrive. And quite often, those startups will be innovators.
The thing to remember is exactly where open source started. You had hobbiests and enthusiasts who created the software because it's something that they loved to do. It didn't start off as a money making venture, and it's silly to think that in the long run, as a whole, it will be a huge moneymaker.
Mark