McVoy Strikes Back 777
cranos writes "Fast on the heels of his previous article claiming the kernel is at risk of Bad Things over the BitKeeper fuss, Daniel Lyons has released a new article where Larry McVoy attacks the Open Source movement as non-innovative and dependent on the kindness of corporations. The following quote says it all: 'The open source guys can scrape together enough resources to reverse engineer stuff. That's easy. It's way cheaper to reverse engineer something than to create something new. But if the world goes to 100% open source, innovation goes to zero. The open source guys hate it when I say this, but it's true.'"
McVoy doesn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
To begin with, software these days is quite complex and it really is impossible to have a full-blown operating system with all the applications people expect and not have some sort of issues. Secondly, the vast majority of people out there are not computer savvy and are going to need help regardless of how well built their OS/applications are. Red Hat isn't dead yet so I wouldn't be so quick to proclaim them as such, although their demise wouldn't entirely surprise me.
"The other problem is that the services model doesn't generate enough revenue to support the creation of the next generation of innovative products.
That's one of the great things about open source software; it doesn't have to. Companies like Red Hat are packagers, not necessarily creators. What they provide is a nice, neat package of what others are already creating.
But if the world goes to 100% open source, innovation goes to zero. The open source guys hate it when I say this, but it's true."
Honestly, what is this guy smoking? We are creative beings... It really doesn't matter what people decide to do with their source code, there will always be innovation because it is human nature to think of new ways to do things.
But McVoy says open source advocates fail to recognize that building new software requires lots of trial and error, which means investing lots of money.
But none of them can show me how to build a software-development house and fund it off open source revenue. My claim is it can't be done."
This statement really says everything about why McVoy feels the way he does; he's only thinking about money. He has completely forgotten that open source software doesn't require a profit to exist or be innovative. People write free/open source software because they enjoy it not because it is going to make them rich.
"Nobody wants to admit that most of the money funding open source development, maybe 80% to 90%, is coming from companies that are not open source companies themselves. What happens when these sponsors go away and there is not enough money floating around?
Nothing. I will continue to use Firefox, OpenOffice, X Windows, and all the other software I have come to rely on. This is another great aspect of open source software; it isn't going away because someone else can always pick up a dead project and run with it themselves.
It's true because I say so (Score:3, Insightful)
People don't seem to realize... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's unfortunate that many people - even open source advocates - don't realize that "open source" is a methodology. Software freedom is the goal and the end result of the FSF/GPL.
Counter examples (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact I think the situation that will kill innovation is one where only one proprietry vendor wins. Without competition there won't be the need to innovate. Bring on software rental and patent protection and then innovation in the industry will die. That scenario will bring about legally enforced vendor lock-in with the vendor able to just sit back and rake in the rentals.
Don't believe me? Look at how Internet Explorer stagnated when Microsoft thought it had no competition. Look at the innovation in Firefox.
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
No innovation? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a curse of open source, just the way things are made.
Not that these things matter, since Free software is about making good software available to everyone, not about innovations.
Chortle... (Score:4, Insightful)
importance of git (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Linus is a limited resource, and if he takes time to work on a development tool, kernel releases are delayed, but that doesn't mean overall kernel development has delayed overall.
But the importance of git should not be overlooked.
Linus and friends have been making a custom tool designed to fit their hands perfectly and accompany them in the way that they (the developers) work. In the long run, git will be a better tool for them because they designed it to meet the way they work instead of using an existing tool and changing how they work to match the functionality and nuances of that tool.
Look forward to more efficient development in the next year, that's what I say.
Re:He's right (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, wait:
uptime
9:01am up 252 days, 11:23, 1 user, load average: 0.15, 0.03, 0.01
That's just silly. And here's why. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you hadn't noticed, but a LOT of the products you're describing -- eg., the browser -- existed in the OSS sphere before it did in the closed-source sphere. Let's list the "killer apps":
Spreadsheet
Word Processor
Database
E-mail
Browser
Of those five, only the spreadsheet and word processor got their starts as closed source. (Well, okay, the database is a tough one; see Ashton Tate v. Fox Software for details.) Regardless, there are damn few ideas for software these days that didn't exist ten years ago. In other words (and here's the whole point, so pay attention) MOST ALL SOFTWARE, REGARDLESS OF LICENSE, IS DERIVATIVE THESE DAYS. Or, in a nutshell, your argument is specious, ill-informed, and simply dumb.
HOWEVER: Larry might be right, but for the wrong reason. The ONLY thing that drives corporate (as opposed to individual) innovation, as far as I'm concerned, is competition. If competition goes away, innovation stops. See myriad Microsoft cases (eg., DOS 3.x vs. DR DOS, IE vs. Firefox, etc.).
Open Source doesn't make money (Score:3, Insightful)
To be sure, a few open source companies are successfully generating revenue and even (possibly) profits. But none of them generates enough money to do anything really innovative, says McVoy, 43, an industry veteran who has developed operating system software at Sun Microsystems, SGI and Google.
Of course, having working at Google, he would know what a curse open source is. No wonder Google make no money with all that OSS they use (and create).
Re:I can't disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
And so is the case of a text editor: you will always have a place where to put your text, etc... Of course, some softs will try to challenge this and will provide new ways of doing this, and I bet there are more OSS taking "risks" than commercial applications.
You can say that about softwares, but this includes also kernels (which is a software of course).
Re:I think it's true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya know... he hasn't really said many things lately that deserve our respect. Does being a friend of Linus really demand all that much respect? This guy seems to have his head up his ass so why should I show him anything but contempt?
Non-innovative? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see... BitTorrent?
Hmmm... that sounds pretty innovative to me.
OpenBSD's pf? CARP?
Hmmm... that sounds pretty innovative to me.
Rsync? SpamAssassin? Encrypted file systems, such as cgd? Zope? Stable journaling file systems, such as ReiserFS and ext3fs? Or even Arch, Monotone and other source management programs?
Well, I guess some innovations come from the Open Source community, after all...
Frankly, big corporations (Microsoft comes to mind) do not 'innovate' either. They slavishly copy whatever worked for the competition.
I think this gentleman is just angry that some people decided to copy his precious SubVersion. But guess what? That is the nature of Open Source. If the 'community' likes something, it is going to copy it, and then improve on it.
And, in the case of OpenSSH (for instance) the copy actually is better than the original. I rest my case.
Necessity is the mother of. . .what? (Score:5, Insightful)
$ is not the only motive in the universe (Score:5, Insightful)
Later, Doug McIlroy would write of this period [McIlroy91]: "Peer pressure and simple pride in workmanship caused gobs of code to be rewritten or discarded as better or more basic ideas emerged. Professional rivalry and protection of turf were practically unknown: so many good things were happening that nobody needed to be proprietary about innovations". But it would take another quarter century for all the implications of that observation to come home.
There really are other motives besides money!
As a troll... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, it's true. (Score:2, Insightful)
What people like Larry McVoy seem to be unable to understand is that any innovation in computer science takes years and sometimes decades to be easily available to the end user and it usually happens in the academia with no press releases and conferences.
For example, there is a lot of innovation in the Hurd kernel and that is why it is not ready yet. And I'm sure that when it is ready and stable then Larry McVoy will complain that those ideas are old and obviously he'll be correct.
I'm sorry, Larry, but once again you complain that you don't have innovative mature systems. Do you want innovation? Use Debian GNU/Hurd. Do you want a mature system? Use Debian GNU/Linux. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Sad but true.
Re:Yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
Please do. Because though he's not 100% right, I do think McVoy has a point, and the two projects you mention are not so overwhelming as to prove him completely wrong. For all our talk of innovation, very little open source software is innovative -- much of it exists to mimic some proprietary alternative. Even the linux kernel was created as a project to get a unix-like system on x86 hardware. Firefox, though built from the ashes of Netscape, was mainly driven as an alternative to I.E. -- it just had new and innovative features added along the way. But that's no different from the "embrace and extend" that we give MS so much hassle for.
I use open source software on a daily basis, and I love the freedom it provides, but McVoy is right that it is very hard to monetize. Labors of love don't pay the bills. That doesn't mean it's impossible, and McVoy's opinion has obviously taken a ridiculously extreme conclusion, but there is a grain of truth in his words.
So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, what happens to all the programmers in the world when everything goes open source and free? Are you all willing to take jobs flipping burgers at McDonalds to pay your rent while you do your old job for free at night to "support the cause"?
-Eric
Re:I think it's true... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, he should be treated with respect just because he's a friend of Linus? Regardless of the fact that he acted like a whining and annoying brat during the whole BK-debacle? His behavior was downright moronic, and he kept changing the license under wich BK was released. then he pulled the BK-license for OSDL, because one independent contractor of OSDL happened to Telnet in to the BK-server.
Linus and McVoy might be friends personally. But that does not mean that McVoy should earn respect because of his professional activities. Just because he's friends with Linus does not mean that he's a great guy. This whole debacle has shown that he is in fact a grade-A asshole.
He started to whine when others tried to "reverse-engineer" his precious BK. Well, too bad for him that reverse-engineering is allowed. Looking at his comments, it seems to me that he wanted BK to have similar protection a patent would give him. Of course he couldn't say that he supports software-patents, so he started bitching and moaning and being a real jerk hen people didn't like his constant license-changes and *shock and horror* tried to reverse-engineer BK.
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that getting the prototype up and running is the interesting bit - getting it polished, fully QAed and packaged is the dull slog that no-one really wants to do. Witness all the incomplete projects on sourceforge. Once it's got just enough function to scratch the author's itch they move on to other things.
There's a wide gulf in what people will do because they want to and what they'll do because they're paid to - or at least in how many people you'll get at each end of the spectrum.
Re:Chortle... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, indeed, any developers, other than to fix any bugs are revealed by using Linux as a free stress testing tool.
Define innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
There are truely innovative apps that began as open source. But there are also a lot that have been created specifically to provide an alternative to commercial equivalents. Every new application is not meant to be about innovation. It's meant to fill a need. Clearly open source fills a need, otherwise it wouldn't exist.
This guy's an idiot.
Here's what he really doesn't get (Score:3, Insightful)
Non-OSS companies like IBM fund OSS because they benefit from it. IBM makes tons of money by packaging Linux as part of their business solutions. They package Apache as IBM HTTP Server as part of their Websphere solution. They aren't going to stop funding projects that help them make money because when those projects die, IBM will need to take over development or switch to new software while maintaining patches for the old software. Either way it will cost them more if an OSS project dies than it would to fund it to keep it alive.
Re:Yeah (Score:2, Insightful)
Which was made as an alternative to Netscape. Open source software is no less innovative than closed software.
Corporate Think (Score:2, Insightful)
The wheels really come off when some corporate busybody has such a bad case of Cranial-Rectal Insertion Syndrome, that he thinks the same rules apply everywhere else in the world.
Because companies won't innovate without a profit motive, that does not mean that *people* (or organisations) won't innovate without a profit motive. All you need are some intelligent, creative, and driven people.
What we don't need are money-grubbing blowhards who think that the world should revolve around money.
Corporate guys hate it when I say that, but it's true.
wouldn't need to (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously.
That's the IBM model, and why they're so eager to support OSS. Don't pay money for licenses, just our army of Global Services.
Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost all the software written in the world
Anti-OSS idiots (that's you) think that the world revolves around the shiny boxes whereas the rest of us know that the first two are an order of magnitude more important
As long as the middle one exists then people will need
components - this is the OSS stuff : apache, libgtk, mozilla, linux
customisers - hey that's me, unless I'm too busy flipping burgers
The idea is that any customisation done to apache, libgtk, mozilla & linux are shared with everyone and, by this token, everyone wins : as laid out in the GPL.
If you want to build a bespoke web server, feel free.
If you want to pay for IIS, feel free.
If you want to feel free, use one of Apache, thttpd, etc.
It is in the interests of larger companies to have in-house developers for the components and likewise in their interest to offer their changes back to the pool.
For the life of me I can't understand why so many people confuse this simple principle. It is almost self-evident !!
Everyone in SW industry wants to get rich fast (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe that software is service. This guy complains that if you make some program easy to use, most of the users will never call you for service. Ok, they will not call you, but how they hurt him? They use his software, but does that takes money from his pocket? Did they burned his house using his product?
Let us make some example. Guy 'A' spends 1000 hours making some program, for general purpose. His software is somewhat complicate to use, so his user base is 1000 people, but every 10th has to call him to for some kind of support. It makes him, say, 100 x 2h x(his rate) per month of possible income. There is second guy with his own program, which is better, so only every 100th user needs some support. But as a result, his user base is larger, so he may have 100.000 users, so he may get more consulting hours. We cannot say for sure, but it may also happen to him to have actually less consulting hours comparing to the first guy. But as a result (not taking into account initial investment of time spend for writing code[*]) both of them get paid for time they spent working.
What's wrong with that concept? Why should I expect for someone to pay me for doing nothing? When they spend an hour for their costumers, costumers pays them. Is this guy McVoy too noble to be paid per workhour?
[*] Initial time investment could be significantly decreased if you use open source development model, as we know.
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Whoa... isnt that a business model?
*sigh*
It's hard to predict the future... (Score:4, Insightful)
... but I'll give it a shot. I think that there is plenty of room in the world for both OSS and commercial software. FOSS will continue to develop free alternatives to commercial products. One of the things that drives people to create FOSS is the wish to have an alternative to commercial software. That is a good thing.
Commercial software has a niche, as well. Sometimes you need a pile of money to develop a new idea. In order to get that money, you usually have to promise some kind of return to investors. So you need to make profits. That's cool too. I don't mind paying money for things like games and innovative applications. I want software engineers to live comfortably since I'm married to one.
Down the road, I think we'll see that OSS will takeover the common applications. It will be used for the OS, obviously, basic productivity applications, software to run governments and schools, voting machines, security applications, all the kinds of applications where it makes little sense to duplicate effort and where budget constraints are tight. There will continue to be commercial applications that introduce new ideas, but eventually, those will also find their way into FOSS, as they should.
Attacks on either system are silly. Just as it makes sense to have competition in products, it also makes sense to have competition between ideas. You can't have a good democracy if everyone has to march in lockstep. We should all welcome new ideas that move us forward, regardless of where they come from.
he really *is* a twit (Score:2, Insightful)
In any case, to say McVoy understands open source as well as anyone on the planet is plainly bullsh*t.
"We believe if we open sourced our product, we would be out of business in six months" - the key words there are "we believe". This is nothing more than flimsy opinion which does not seem borne out by a survey of the open source marketplace. Again, the article puts this rubbish forward as gospel.
"One problem with the services model is that it is based on the idea that you are giving customers crap--because if you give them software that works, what is the point of service?" - again, this is simply nonsense. It's hard to imagine someone who's spent his career in software not grasping the 'free software/paid support' model. Certainly plenty of customers understand and use it. It sure makes sense to me. Then again, maybe all those years just closed his mind.
McVoy says ... building new software requires lots of trial and error, which means investing lots of money. - Perhaps he can try his hand at explaining the success of Linux? Sure, today there is some corporate sponsorship, but there is plenty of 'trial and error' going on that is not directly paid for. And in its early years, before sponsorship, how does McVoy explain its high quality and consequent success?
'Hey dude, if you have a heart attack, here are all the tools you need--and it's free,'" McVoy says. "I'd rather pay someone to take care of me." - Well, Larry, you can live in your world where Windoze runs everything including your heart defibrillator. Good luck to you but I won't be joining you. "Quality software + support" beats "Crap software + support" any day. Try getting a bug fixed in an Adobe or M$ product, Larry. I have had many experiences in the past year where open source developers have fixed bugs within 48 hrs of me reporting them (thankyou JavaSVN developers, Subclipse developers, and others!) Larry, you cannot get bugs fixed by Adobe or M$ unless you are God himself - and I invite you to try. Furthermore, the trend is to charge the user for bugfix releases (thanks Adobe). That's just nonsense.
most of the money funding open source development ... is coming from companies that are not open source companies themselves - he clearly doesn't realise that funding open source (for instance, on the scale IBM does) means you are an open source company - a viable participant in the community. Does Larry think IBM would be doing this if it were losing them money? Guess what runs on their servers (Linux). Guess what applications people want to run (Apache, OSS databases, etc, etc).
If you are IBM and you're paying 1000 programmers to write open source, you are an open source company. What part doesn't he understand?
the popular Linux operating system would suffer if hardware makers stopped their sugar-daddy support for its development - LOL! Linux thrives despite the obstructions of people like Larry who won't provide interoperability information. Thanks for nothing.
McVoy wants to be on the side that innovates and makes money. - All evidence seems to indicate that Larry only cares about the latter. To Hell with him.
Re:wouldn't need to (Score:5, Insightful)
See, that's my plan. I have a really great lightweight templating system for Apache that makes me design websites twice as fast and makes maintenance and updates even easier, especially sitewide changes which become O(1).
It's a pretty small piece of code (about 1500 lines), but definitely innovative in that it solves many of the problems larger content management systems try to address, but with the absolute minimum of overhead and sticking very close to the dominant Apache paradigm of static files.
If I thought there was a market for this sort of thing I would sell it in a heart beat, but it makes more economic sense to open-source it, build a small community around it to see where it can go, then it becomes a very powerful selling point to my consultant business. Much more so than if I just kept it proprietary and said, "Hey, I have this really cool software that will make your site twice as easy to maintain, but no one's ever seen it so you just have to take my word for it."
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
When you have to guess at the amount of money being spent by companies on a "project" as amorphous as "open source software" then you're almost certainly not correct about the numbers.
But if the world goes to 100% open source, innovation goes to zero. The open source guys hate it when I say this, but it's true.
And I agree, this is the biggest load of crap statement of all time. Everyone likes to bash the Linux/GNU "hippies", but seriously, what type of crack is McVoy smoking to make such a logically and technically impossible statement??? The open source guys hate it when he says this because it just doesn't make any sense and is such a one-sided statement that it's just preposterous.
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Other examples would be libz, libpng, etc.
GZip and PNG were "invented" for opensource use and now everyone uses them.
Well, let's take a look at the highest profile OSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux kernel = Unix knockoff
KDE = Windows knockoff
GIMP = Photoshop knockoff
Open Office = MS Office knockoff
Gaim = AOL knockoff
Firefox = innovative (sorta, see below)
Apache = innovative
PHP, Python, etc. = innovative
Firefox is shaky because tabbed browsing was introduced by Opera (a commercial comany). It didn't bring the browser into mainstream awareness like, say, Adobe did with graphics and DTP software. It is, however, the freshest face on the browser scene which has seen a much-needed revitalization as a result so I'll throw it in on the innovative side. Yes, IRC was around before AOL but AOL brought internet chat awareness to the masses so they get the credit. History is written by the victors
Don't get me wrong, open source is a fantastic and vital field in computing. Having access to a software library that is free in both the money sense and the libre sense is a big deal and in particular, those that cannot afford a quality commercial version such as developing countries.
On the other hand, commercial software is where most of the innovation and R&D takes place. They have to offer fresh and compelling reasons for us to part with our money. They have to be better than their competition (including open source). I know, I know, Microsoft isn't better than the competition nor are they innovative. True, but they are one company in a sea of thousands that would fall under the software industry umbrella and their monopoly status makes them an exception.
Open source needs commercial software and commercial software is recognizing the importance of and becoming more reliant upon open source. There is room for both. McVoy is right. 100% OSS would stagnate as its current model seems to be copying the work of others. Its strength lies in its license, not its feature set. As for the other extreme, we only have to look at Microsoft to see the effects of a commercial software dominated world.
Monoculture is bad and that goes for Linux as well as Windows.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
RedHat is a major contributor to both GCC and glibc, not to mention the kernel.
Regarding subversion, that is bollocks. The subversion people used to program CVS, which is opensource, and which larry also copied significantly to make his beloved subversion.
Nothing is created out of a vacuum.
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Note again that I am not saying that quality software can be or is accomplished by a student in a couple of weekends, but I'll bet that Innovative software often is.
Open source is bad for innovation: The proof! (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, how insightful! What wisdom!
There are plenty of examples to prove the man right. Take a look, for instance, at the unfortunate, stagnating world of physics. For some silly macho reason, all physicists have to provide their experiments, their data, their calculations, their data and their conclusions in excruciately detailed papers that are submitted to journals for all to see. This process is glorified with noble-sounding terms such as "peer review", "refutability" and "sound science". Physicists pretend this allows them to build on their predecessors' results.
But, as you have guessed, this is just another example of open source. That's right, folks, physics is plagued by a generalized use of the dreaded open source! The source is not code here, it's data, theories and calculations, but the principe is the same: let's face it, physicists don't know how to keep things proprietary.
Which explains why the field is so totally devoid of innovation. Ah, if only physics was practiced with a decent proprietary attitude, like back in the good old time when Galileo taunted his colleagues by hinting about wonders he had observed with his new expensive telescope! Or when alchemists jealously kept their recipes and processes a secret! By now, we would have wonderful machines, such as vehicules flying in the air, devices carrying your voice on a wire, and calculators weighing only a fraction of a ton!
Verily, physical sciences needs to get rid of its openness to finally become innovative. And that is also true for computer sciences, of course.
Re:I think it's true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Less resources wasted reinventing the wheel, because you can re-use everyone else's software without paying them a dime.
The fact that software programmers only earn money with opensource by actually working (i.e. doing support or adding new features with contract work) mean software will move forward in stability and/or features instead of being milked to death by the creator company (Quark XPress anyone?)
Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Never a Friend of OS (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people are lazy whether they are payed or not.
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
You didnt quite nail it - so lets see if I can...
The reason us "open source guys" hate it when he says that is because its a fucking insult straight to our face. You basically just told me that I cant innovate, my software is reverse engineered from others, and if it wasnt for others my software would suck. I dont spend thousands of hours of my time in order to be told that I cant innovate.
And the twit wonders why we hate it.
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Absolutely. But it's hard to get people sit up and notice your itch-scratching project until you've taken it further than that.
who is actually paying for innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Software companies don't make those investments at all. The institutions that make those investments are the government and a few large private research labs. Almost all the software and almost all the innovation you see around you ultimately comes from those sources.
People like McVoy and other self-proclaimed innovators are adding little gimmicks and tweaks on top of that massive, publicly funded innovation. The question we should be asking is why we should let people like McVoy continue to leech off the investments that taxpayers and a few private labs are making.
He DOES get it, but this is PR. (Score:2, Insightful)
$500k a year? (Score:2, Insightful)
he's just jealous (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a feeling (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no problem with commercial software. I think it's a good thing. I think ol' Larry was just absolutely stupid for the way he has handled this whole thing. The guy is obviously a smart and innovative programmer, he is just business stupid. It's why you keep real techie types out of the board room. (most of the time anyhow)
It's like when all those companies release versions of products for other countries not realizing their logo, trade mark phrase or whatever else is "inside" is insulting to that culture. Larry wants the OSS community to use his product. His view and OSS view didn't line up. instead of working to get something worked out (beyond the half assed attempt made) He insulted the OSS community and he is getting burned in the process.
Cause and effect Larry. "Think before you speak" isn't just a word jumble. It's how you are supposed to conduct yourself.
Look, I kinda hate saying it... (Score:3, Insightful)
He had this tool he teased the OSS crowd with. When some of them decided there were other fish in the sea, he got royally pissed because his tease no longer held any power. So not only did he run away pouting, he literally joined up with some of the worst hacks out there...specifically, Daniel Lyons. Mr. Lyons is well regarded as a talentless hack who hates anything that brings to light the truth of the matter: his relevence is waning and soon he can fade to black and nobody will miss him.
Can't say that I blame them. If my career were pinned to the software publisher business model of the 80's and 90's, I'd be scared as shit right about now and willing to say anything, stretch any number, exaggerate any claim, and basically claw and scrape as long as I could to maintain my position before I found myself out of work, out of money, and out of options.
Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs? (Score:4, Insightful)
I probably continue at my work, getting paid to write Open Source software. And some customized stuff based on our OS tools.
No, it is not a way to make millions. But an all right living, and some extra job satisfaction.
Re:importance of git (Score:3, Insightful)
disrupt the kernel development process by pulling
BK he has engendered a much more capable competitor.
Smart move Larry!
Re:Oh please (Score:1, Insightful)
1. The projects I mentioned (and other projects) show that hobbiest do follow through, thus contradicting his original claim.
2. He than added as an additional argument, that all the projects I mentioned weren't innovative. However, this of course has nothing to do with his original argument.
3. Now you try to rationalise his incoherent argument with:
"...while the people who do follow through don't innovate"
The problem is, he never said that and even if he did, it wouldn't make any sense, as his first argument was based on the projects being hobbiest projects, not being innovative.
Larry Must Be a Bad Programmer (Score:4, Insightful)
Git's done [kerneltrap.org]. Linus thinks it needs some polish, but he calls it "Feature Complete". If Linux can do in weeks what McVoy took 5 years to do, just imagine how mature and innovative BitKeeper could be.
Proprietary guys (Score:3, Insightful)
Most new ideas in software are incremental improvements in processing. There is little real innovation, ever. All improvements in software are inevitable. Someone, somewhere will get peeved enough with the status-quo to change how something is done, and the state of software will creep forward. That is the nature of having conscious thought.
Money is not going to create an idea. Nor will the absence of money destroy an idea. A programmer with a software idea will pursue the idea regardless of most circumstance.
What McVoy is really pissed about is the fact that he isn't all that creative, and he's watching the scientific process shatter his perfect little delusion.
Writing software is physically cheap, and has only one natural scarcity: time. All physical resources for writing software come at essentially no cost by comparison, and that is one of the reasons that software as a revenue generating product is not naturally sustainable in the long term. McVoy must be ignoring this to sustain his perfect little delusion.
The services model is a naturally sustaining model in the absence of artificial constraints such as software patents. People are lazy, and they don't want to know how to use their software. However, they know they have to have that same software to make their (non-software) operations run. More than not are perfectly willing to pay other people to keep that software in order. That is the whole impetus for maintenance subscriptions.
Open Source, however, addresses the one big issue people have with subscriptions to proprietary software: control.
People don't want to have to maintain their own software (and hardware, for that matter), but they also hate the overbearing cruelty imposed upon them by proprietary vendors. Open Source gives customers the best of both worlds. Someone else takes care of the headaches, while the customer retains all the power in the form of the ability to switch service providers. This keeps vendors honest.
None of this is a replacement for keeping knowledgable staff on the payroll, but it's the next best thing.
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs? (Score:4, Insightful)
We use money as an instrument to guide what is made and where we should spend our effort. Money in itself is useless. If Free Software can make the same (or equivalent) software than Microsoft, but cheaper, that is good. It means that our economy as a whole just got more efficient.
Yes, thay may mean less money for programmers and computer scientists (I am one), but on the other hand, we all benefit from the additional efficiency (Ford can make cheaper cars, as it spends less money on Word. Wal-Mart can drop prices as their database backend is cheaper. Microsoft....ok, dies ;-).
Re:wouldn't need to (Score:2, Insightful)
... you want software that works (Score:2, Insightful)
You must not be a programmer or sysadmin. This is the attitude of the former COO of the company for which I used to work. A few years back a former Director of IT started building the company's web site and business on apache and php (albeit with a closed-source sybase db driving the backend). The COO thought that the company was paying too much for consultants and decided to hire someone to reimplement everything with MS SQL and IIS.
He thought that because it was easy for him to use MS (tm)(c) Windows(tm)(c) on his home computer, it would make development easier and cheaper to get rid of linux. He thought that the company would effectively be able to get the software developed and then get rid of the IT staff and then things would just continue to run with no need for maintenance b/c the company would be running "good software" for which they wouldn't have to pay someone to administer.
Well, after paying developers $50,000 to design and build part of the redesigned corporate web backend, buying a new MS Exchange and paying some totally ignorant windows admins about $10,000 to migrate to it from the old exchange 5.5 (really, it was scandalous, they couldn't accomplish this after weeks, it should take no more than 1 week -- TOPS), and buying new hardware for the new systems, the projects eventually got abandoned. They continued to go overbudget. The consultants working on them couldn't finish the job. The company spent probably $100,000 in development, software and hardware costs (and they continued to pay the COO to "manage" it all).
Then he got laid off, all the incompetent windows admins got laid off, and they hired me. I continued to develop and maintain all the linux stuff and add more open source solutions. The company spent zero for support and software costs (I ran everything on Debian. All software was free as in speech and beer). THey just had to pay the salary of one guy to manage the open source website, database, and do continued development in free languages like php, perl, python, ruby...
The argument that companies should "buy" "software that works" instead of get free software and pay someone to implement and support it is 100% BS. Companies that depend on their computer systems to work WILL ALWAYS need to pay SOMEONE to support their systems SOMEHOW (whether they hire on a full-timer, pay consultants, or enter a service agreement).
I heard some companies are paying $5,000/license for multiple BK licenses. This strikes me as being a tremendous waste of resources. Hire ONE consultant to work 5 hours a week to support everyone who needs to use the source management tools and go with a free solution like subversion, darcs, monotone, or, now, git.
I bet in 5 years BK will cease to exist because the free open source solutions will be just as good or better. The international community of open source programmers will outpace BK's innovation and develop a better solution.
Re:wouldn't need to (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all software is a shrink-wrapped product you know. What "product" can GM use to keep track of inventory, sales, and the success of new advertising campaigns?
Software products are tools to many of us. We use Apache, Linux, Windows, IIS, Perl,
commercial isn't the only knid of success (Score:2, Insightful)
It will continue to be successful even if commercial support dies off.
Why you Ask?
Because it does the job better. Plain and simple.
Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs? (Score:1, Insightful)
Sometimes they like to call these things boxed solutions, but somehow they still require a multi-month "roll out period" full of lots of developers running around writing custom "agents" or "reports" or "interfaces"... Boils down to the same thing... months of post-purchase programming.
This is the honest truth, and so far, all I see of your counter arguments is you sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "LALALALLALA"...
Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs? (Score:3, Insightful)
For many custom apps, they're just so custom that no one else would probably be interested. That's why OSS works better for software which lots of people use: OSes, media players, office software, etc. It provides enough of a base of interested people who will submit bug reports, bugfixes, etc. to keep the project going. OSS just isn't that useful if one person/company releases it and no one else uses it or contributes.
Re:McVoy doesn't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe your OS software is different, but I would say that most OS software has little innovation in it. A majority of the time its an "embrace and extended" version of some closed source code.
Offhand, I cannot recall a GNU licensed product that is innovative. OK, I'm trying hard here. Maybe rsync, could be seen as innovative in its day. I'm still trying, and I can't think of anything else offhand. For the record, I'm a UNIX/Linux admin, and have been for a few years now. I use and often prefer OS products over commercial ones, but I believe that I prefer the lack of innovation and the tools are more simple and chainable for scripts and whatnot.
Now that I was frank about the situation, mod me as a troll like always.
Re:I think it's true... (Score:3, Insightful)
because alot of people felt that being at the mercy of McVoy was not a smart thing to do. By creating a free altnernative that could interoperate with BK, they would have eliminated that dependancy. And looking at McVoy's behavior in this case, they were 100% correct! Being at a Mercy of someone who can take your tools away from you at will, is NOT a smart thing to do! The one good thing McVoy did was to show what it can mean to be at the mercy of a vendor of proprietary software! What McVoy did could NOT happen with free software!
Sure. But the fact remains that reverse-engineering is still allowed and legal. What McVoy wanted was for BK to have similar protection as software-patent would have given it, without actually patenting it. He wanted all the "benefits" of patents, without the downsides (bad blood with developer-community for example).
like I said, they did it because they felt that being at the mercy of McVoy was not a smart thing to do. And McVoy kept on changing the license. Hell, the license said that if you USED BK, you are not allowed to work on SCM-systems for several years! What if Microsoft added a clause to their EULA which said "if you use any software written by Microsoft, you are not allowed to use or contribute to open-source-projects"?