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A Cynic Rips Open Source 330

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the everybodys-a-critic dept.
AlexGr writes to tell us that Howard Anderson chaired an interesting meeting the other day with senior executives from Cisco, Agilent Technologies and Novell. The discussion took a look at whether or not enterprise users really want open source. "Naturally, I disagreed -- partially because I am a naturally disagreeable person. Any idiot can make friends -- but can you make some really serious enemies? I disagreed, however, because allegiance to open source depends on who you are. Let me give you an example. If you are No. 1 or No. 2 in your industry, you hate open source. You make your money by selling proprietary solutions: Microsoft and Cisco. If you are No. 3 to No. 10, you look at open source as a way to get back to those serious RSEUs, because they are where you make money."
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A Cynic Rips Open Source More

A Cynic Rips Open Source

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  • A cynic might suggest that the people writing open source software are the ones who are making their daytime living working for a proprietary-solutions vendor and spend their nights tearing down the very house they live in. And that if open source replaced proprietary solutions, these people would not be able to make a daytime living that supports their night time hobby.
    The author's most important statement is in his second-to-last paragraph. And it's almost certainly wrong in most cases. After all, wouldn't an employer require their programmers to sign a noncompete clause which would inherently preclude them from participating in OSS projects that compete with their employer's products?

    • Re:Most important point at end of article (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Wordplay ( 54438 ) <geo@snarksoft.com> on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:55PM (#19210047)
      It's not a completely invalid point. I'm not working on an open source product that competes directly with my own day job, but I might be working on one that competes with your job, and you might be working on one that competes with my job. With two people, it's a coincidence, but with a wide open source community, it's probable. If you're talking about a movement that theoretically changes the distribution model of software as a whole, then everyone with a software job is theoretically affected.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Lockejaw ( 955650 )
        I'm sure the change in the distribution model can be dealt with. CentOS doesn't seem to be driving RedHat out of business. Of course, there may be a rather uncomfortable adjustment period (kinda like the current state of the music and film industries). Perhaps that will a good time to step out of the work force for a bit and get a master's degree.

        • Re:Most important point at end of article (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Znork ( 31774 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @02:25PM (#19211289)
          "Of course, there may be a rather uncomfortable adjustment period"

          As free software tends to replace instances where duplication of effort is the norm rather than the exception, I'd say the adjustment period would be going from doing the same thing over and over and over again to writing actual new things.

          Instead of writing a new menu button on the word processor and changing the file format to be incompatible, getting paid, rinse, repeat ad nauseum, we might actually be writing better systems to accomplish other things.

          Somehow I think programmers in general could live with that. And, really, I have yet to experience any situation where the real need for programmers was less than the availability.
        • No need to go that far. Most programmers work for companies that do not sell software.

          If your employer sells pants then removing the cost of Operating systems Accounting software and Fabric CAD software (yes, I made that up) would lower your cost of operation without undermining your employer's business model at all.

          • Re:Most important point at end of article (Score:4, Insightful)

            by DavittJPotter ( 160113 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @08:00PM (#19215303) Homepage Journal
            Except you're not playing fair, here.

            Commercial Application FabricCAD = $2,000 per seat, for 10 users. $20,000. Yearly maintenance, say 20%. So $4k/year. 5 year costs: $40,000. IT Support Technician; including initial deployment, patching, and maintenance: 10% of admin time; say $50,000/annual, $80,000 w/ bennies. 10% of his time for FabriCAD: ($8,000*5)=$40,000. Total FabriCAM investment: $80,000 for 10 users over 5 years, or $1,600/user.

            Programmer to recreate all of the features of FabricCAD via Open Source: $75,000/yearly salary, plus bennies, perks: Say $100k for a round number. 5 year costs: $500,000.

            Sure, you can create OpenFabricCAD in say ... a year? Fair? Due Diligence, feature comparison, coding, revisions, testing, revise, test, revise, deploy, train, patch ... there, now you're at version 1. Expect MORE time if you're going to read/write proprietary data files to be compatible with suppliers and vendors.

            Let's say you spend 30% of your time per year maintaining and improving OpenFabricCAD - $33,000/year. Again, give 10% of the above admin for supporting your application.

            So in 5 years, OpenFabriCAD has cost the company ($100,000+($33,000*5)+($8,000*5))=$305,000 for 10 users for 5 years, OR - $6,100 per user. You've also got a product that very few people understand, and your userbase is a handful of people that use it.

            Where's the value proposition, again?

      • It's not a completely invalid point. I'm not working on an open source product that competes directly with my own day job, but I might be working on one that competes with your job, and you might be working on one that competes with my job. With two people, it's a coincidence, but with a wide open source community, it's probable.
        That's not a side effect of open source, that's a side effect of a free market. It's no different from both of us holding two different paying programming jobs in different fields, where my primary job competes with your secondary, and your primary job competes with my secondary.

        Likewise, in a large enough economy, this becomes probable.

        If you're talking about a movement that theoretically changes the distribution model of software as a whole, then everyone with a software job is theoretically affected.
        The movement started hundreds of years ago with the concept of the free market.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by aichpvee ( 631243 )
        While that's certainly true, just because it would change how someone makes money doesn't make it a bad thing. It's sort of like someone who works at a prison who spends their weekends volunteering with at risk youth to help them grow up to have successful, productive careers instead of getting involved in gangs, drugs, or other criminal activity. Sure it would, if successful, put the prison guard's job at risk if they helped decrease the number of future inmates. But could anyone really say it would be
      • It doesn't affect all software jobs. It may affect many software development jobs, but most jobs in the IT field are to create and/or implement software solutions internally. For these jobs open source is often a boon (if its good code, but that goes for proprietary even more so). Open source software allows the IT departments implementing a solution to tailor the application to their own needs. They can also often go back to the community for assistance, if support isn't supplied by the vendor (Red Hat, No

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TXG1112 ( 456055 )
        It's not a completely invalid point. I'm not working on an open source product that competes directly with my own day job, but I might be working on one that competes with your job, and you might be working on one that competes with my job. With two people, it's a coincidence, but with a wide open source community, it's probable. If you're talking about a movement that theoretically changes the distribution model of software as a whole, then everyone with a software job is theoretically affected.

        I don't thi
      • Note in advance: I don't disagree with your point. However I would like to point out that some people are employed as OSS developers. Also some people like myself are employed wholly by writing custom software for target markets far too small to ever be of any use other than for the entity for which it was originally written (except that if it were leaked in advance, it'd be quite abusable from a corporate espionage perspective).

        Essentially I write software to support internal company procedures and exter
    • IP-related stuff too -- a typical employment contract has the employer claiming rights to all work the employee does unless it's done without company resources and doesn't relate to company business.
      • So that means you have to put your companies name in the credits file of GPL work you do as well?
        • And get their permission to distribute it under the GPL, since their the ones with rights to it.

          The common solution to this dilemma is to limit yourself to software development that meets the requirements for retaining the rights yourself.

    • Re:Most important point at end of article (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kebes ( 861706 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @01:01PM (#19210125) Journal
      That paragraph caught my eye, too. But the author knows what he's doing: he's a troll.

      After all, near the beginning of the article, he admits to being a troll:

      Naturally, I disagreed -- partially because I am a naturally disagreeable person. Any idiot can make friends -- but can you make some really serious enemies?
      I'm all for "playing devil's advocate" and having an intelligent debate where both sides are properly represented... but this guy basically admits that he just likes making people mad. So the way he ends his article is no surprise. In fact the whole article is filled with subtle (and not so subtle) jabs at both sides of the debate, such as:

      Open source is not a movement; it's a religion.
      Moreover, like any good troll, he creates arguments that are full of holes, thereby inviting angry "True Believers" to fight the good fight and tear his arguments apart. (And as a by-product he gets page views of course.)

      I'm fully in favor of a reasoned debate on any issue... but I'm not clear on exactly what new insights this guy's article brings to the debate.

  • maybe? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:47PM (#19209955) Homepage
    Let me give you an example. If you are No. 1 or No. 2 in your industry, you hate open source.

    What if your industry is open-source software?

    • Re:maybe? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Daniel_Staal ( 609844 ) <DStaal@usa.net> on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:55PM (#19210053)
      Better yet: What if your industry isn't computer-related. Computers then are just a tool to help you support your actual business. Open Source then means that you can rely on the software working in the future, for as long as you need it to (not just as long as the company who wrote it finds it profitable), and that you can switch computer support services whenever a better deal comes along. You don't care if it is closed or not: You just want it to work. Now and in the future.

      And Open Source is better for that.
      • Mod parent right up there. The only people who don't benefit from open source are those selling off-the-shelf, proprietary software. Their business model relies on one of two things:
        1. The market continuing to expand, or
        2. New versions of their software solving new problems for their users.

        The first will not happen indefinitely, although it will for at least another decade or two. The second also has a finite potential. Eventually, an operating system, word processor, or whatever is 'good enough.'

        Once F

      • This works when you have a bunch of standalone applications, but when they have to all interoperate not only with themselves but with third-party applications, especially industry-specific ones that don't have a wide audience, you start having problems.

        Large companies like software monocultures because all of the pieces are designed to work together right out of the box and most of the third parties will work within that structure because they have to. It also means that you can pretty much roll up all of s

        • ...Or, alternatively, you can get a lot of applications that are designed to work to common standards and are easy to modify to your needs.

          As for support: There are a number of companies that sell Open Source software support. In fact, that is the main business model of Red Hat (and, largely, of IBM's custom services...)

          It is actually easier to do what you describe in Open Source software: They have a desire/need to be interoperable, and there is usually competing projects for any problem domain. You can

      • Better yet: What if your industry isn't computer-related.


        And best of all, I'd bet that most open source developers are in one of these two categories, plus one additional: either they work in the open source business they code in (Alan Cox, Linus Torvalds), or they work for themselves (Eric Allman, Hans Reiser), or they work for an unrelated industry (Donald Becker, myself).

      • Open Source then means that you can rely on the software working in the future, for as long as you need it to (not just as long as the company who wrote it finds it profitable)...

        Hmm, I'd be careful with the word 'rely' here. Open Source software will only work as long as someone maintains it. Many an Open Source project has fallen by the wayside. I understand that someone COULD still be maintaining it because the source is available, but you mentioned a scenario where a company was just a user of the s

        • Hmm, I'd be careful with the word 'rely' here. Open Source software will only work as long as someone maintains it. Many an Open Source project has fallen by the wayside. I understand that someone COULD still be maintaining it because the source is available, but you mentioned a scenario where a company was just a user of the software.

          A company can reply upon it, because if needed they can maintain it (or pay someone to do so), at least long enough to migrate at their own pace. It is reliable because it is not going to be cut off because of someone else's whim or mistake. (Which proprietary software could be.)

          And yes, OSS isn't always the best choice for a particular situation. But it does have a set of advantages that are often overlooked and undervalued.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )
        Open Source then means that you can rely on the software working in the future, for as long as you need it to (not just as long as the company who wrote it finds it profitable),

        That's assuming that there is "someone else" that finds it profitable to support. Quite unlikely, if the original company with all the brand recognition and intimate knowledge of the source code can't. Not to mention the inevitable loss of customers that'll lead to, which might turn a struggling market into a dead one. While many com
    • This article is chock full of misconceptions. Cisco hates open source. (Wrong, just look at http://www.openfabrics.org/ [openfabrics.org]. They have developers contributing to linux kernel full time.) Open Source is a religion. BS. Open Source is a way of developing software. Open Source developers do it for a nightime hobby. Wrong again. Most linux developers I know do it for their day job.

      Thanks for posting a very poor article.
      • I spent 2 years contracting at Cisco doing nothing BUT open source, our entire team was dedicated to the task. Including releasing utilities and patches to the community.

      • Take it from a Rational ClearCase customer (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @03:29PM (#19212079)
        I used to work at one of these companies (not Cisco or Novell- you figure it out) and know this for a fact: their opinion of enterprise software is worthless. Especially at the management/executive level where they make the incompetent IT decisions they don't have to live with. I probably shouldn't say this during trading hours, but they have a site-wide license for Rational ClearCase at that place. So they should just shut the hell up.

        Dealing with ClearCase is a major part of everyone's job there. It was forced on everybody with a top-down executive decision- all version control is handled with ClearCase since they paid for the license. (The "benefit" is that a team in the bioinformatics division can have access to a repository maintained by, say, the oil exploration division.) Everyone who has to use ClearCase hates it. The processes are weird and the tools that you're forced to use are buggy. I've heard people cite ClearCase as a good reason to look for another job. The guy in the next cube had three weeks of work destroyed by a ClearCase update one morning. He smashed his keyboard into 101 pieces on the floor.

        There are tiny version-control rebellions all the time- small teams set up little secret CVS repositories here and there- just known to a few guys who then have to keep them a secret from management. Once the top brass inevitably finds out about them, the phagocytosis begins: the team has to stop whatever it's doing and help migrate their entire CVS repository into ClearCase. This was always an abnormally large, painful undertaking for some reason. It was a real tragedy every time it happened- really demoralizing for everyone, even the people in the next row of cubicles just rubbernecking another version control disaster.

        A cynic might suggest that the people writing open source software are the ones who are making their daytime living working for a proprietary-solutions vendor and spend their nights tearing down the very house they live in. And that if open source replaced proprietary solutions, these people would not be able to make a daytime living that supports their night time hobby.

        A cynic would be right.
        A cynic might suggest that the people breathing in oxygen are the ones who are exhaling carbon dioxide and destroying the very atmosphere they're breathing. And that if carbon dioxide completely replaced oxygen, these people would not be able to inhale the oxygen that turns into the carbon dioxide they exhale. A cynic would be right. /snark

    • Re:maybe? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by schon ( 31600 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @02:05PM (#19211013)

      If you are No. 1 or No. 2 in your industry, you hate open source.
      I think if he checked his facts, he might discover that the world's largest computer hardware company [ibm.com] absolutely *loves* open source.
  • ...and now the seasoned veterans of sarcasm and IT acrimony at ./ will rip him back! Enjoy the rest of the thread!
    :)

  • How can we take this guy seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:49PM (#19209977) Homepage Journal

    From TFA:

    Open source is not a movement; it's a religion. It is a set of principles and practices that let everyone share nonexistent or semi-existent intellectual property.

    Nonexistent intellectual property? Semi-existent intellectual property? WTF?

    Any article about whether enterprise users really want to use Open Source software that starts of like this isn't worth reading any further. The guy isn't a cynic. He's someone with an axe to grind.

    • Whether my FC5, FC6, Xubuntu, openSuSE and Gentoo installations, my Apache webservers, or any of the approx. 80,000 packages on my 7 machines are "nonexistent" or "semiexistent"... whichever they are, they're chugging along pretty well.

    • Any article about whether enterprise users really want to use Open Source software that starts of like this isn't worth reading any further. The guy isn't a cynic. He's someone with an axe to grind.

      You missed an even bigger point. The guy's objection applies (if to anything) to Free Software, not Open Source Software, between which there is an entire universe's worth of difference.

      Anyone who cannot separate these two concepts in their head is clearly unqualified to hold forth on either subject.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Infonaut ( 96956 )

        You missed an even bigger point. The guy's objection applies (if to anything) to Free Software, not Open Source Software, between which there is an entire universe's worth of difference.

        Absolutely right, of course. His Stallman-bashing makes it obvious that he conflates the FSF with OSI.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by B'Trey ( 111263 )
      Nonexistent intellectual property? Semi-existent intellectual property? WTF?

      Without agreeing with his point, I think he was pointing out that it's somewhat contradictory to call open source software "intellectual property." The whole point of open source is, in essence, to prevent software from being treated like property.

  • enterprise (end) users DON'T CARE @ open source (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:51PM (#19209997)
    Enterprise (end) users don't care one way or the other about open source. All they want is something that is:
      1) Reliable
      2) Doesn't (ever?) change its user interface (in part, because they "develop" screenshot-based training materials too)
      3) Etc.

    It's only the enterprise I.T. technicians ("administrators") that care one way or the other, and then (in most cases because they're spending other people's money) because budget, deployment or licensing disputes are making their job more challenging that they feel it should be.

  • So, in the first few paragraphs:

    Open source is not a movement; it's a religion... Remember the Communist Manifesto..."

    then

    The vendors were tripping over themselves swearing allegiance to the open source movement. It was like Republicans genuflecting at the graven image of Ronald Reagan.

    So, open source guys are Republican Communists?

    I don't think this guy's a cynic. I think he's a schizophrenic.

    • So, open source guys are Republican Communists?

      Not true of the open source movement, I would say, but its not that incoherent of an idea. While the rhetoric of Soviet Communists and American Republicans are very much opposed, the Republican Party, since neoconservatism became an important force within it (and even moreso as it reached its zenith in the present Bush Administration) has adopted quite a bit, tactically, of the Leninist model.

      Which probably shouldn't be a surprise given the Trotskyite origins o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Maudib ( 223520 )
      Dont knock Republican Communism. Any smart Marxist would vote Republican as concentrating wealth in the fewest possible hands is a prerequisite for the proliteriat revolution.
  • ...and the lack of oxygen really affects them. The environment where I work is very Cisco-heavy, and fairly MS-heavy, and most people's grasp of what open source even *means* is tenuous at best. I do a lot of coding for the tools for our web-based reporting, and what *I* do is all-too-often called "open source". These people are too concerned with margins to learn about things like technology.

  • Throw the baby out (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:55PM (#19210049) Homepage Journal
    Is it just me, or is this guy throwing the baby out with the bathwater? While it's understandable that some of the fanaticism and philosophies associated with the OSS movement might turn him off, that shouldn't stand in the way of the fact that there is quite a bit of great OSS software*. Perhaps tellingly, much of that great software has no ties back to the GNU philosophies. Mozilla, Apache, BSD, etc. have become the underpinnings of the market without directly supporting Stallman's vision. Even Linus takes a cool approach to his ties with the GNU, speaking against decisions when he disagrees.

    The truth is that if this guy is as cynical as he's making himself out to be, then he's guilty of the very fanaticism that he's accusing the OSS community of. Because no OSS means no Firefox, no OpenOffice, no Apache, no PHP, etc. If he's really extreme about it, then he can forget about buying products from big names like Apple, Cisco, or Novell. Even Microsoft would be on his list for having dabbled in OSS!

    Will he really cut his nose off to spite his face, or will this cynic turn hypocrite?

    * Doubled up just to annoy the grammar nazis! :P
  • From TFA:

    A cynic might suggest that the people writing open source software are the ones who are making their daytime living working for a proprietary-solutions vendor and spend their nights tearing down the very house they live in. And that if open source replaced proprietary solutions, these people would not be able to make a daytime living that supports their night time hobby.

    A cynic would be right.

    A cynic obviously can't see that there are other business models other than "proprietary-solutions vendor."

    A cynic can't see that if open source replaced proprietary solutions, their daytime living would be their night time hobby.

    • A cynic obviously can't see that there are business models other than "proprietary-solutions vendor."

      Actually, my take after RTFA was that this guy was saying something along the lines of "how can you trust a proprietary solutions vendor with an open source solution?" Isn't it tempting for them to sabotage the open source solution in an attempt to poison public opinion against it? A bad experience with open source would redirect people back to the proprietary solution which the vendor would perceive as better for their bottom line.

      I don't think he's warning his readers away from open source. I think

  • I've Always hated Howard Anderson (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:57PM (#19210079) Homepage Journal
    Since time immemorial the Yankee Group has made its money pretending to be smarter than everyone else in the room. They literally make up shit out of whole cloth in order to be the only guys with this 'new' idea whatever it is. The fact is that Yankee group gets paid by the largest customers and the largest vendors. Are they unbiased? Sort of, not really. They know full well who their own customers are. If not for the myth of self anointed 'expertise' not only would there be no closed source, there would be no market analysis consulting firms like Yankee.

    To their credit though they're at least not a PR arm of Microsoft like Gartner.
    • You hit the nail on the head. Most of this article is dressing up widely understood facets of open source in a trenchant tone and some vapors of controversy and acting like it's a brand new idea. Nothing to see here, folks...

  • If you are No. 3 to No. 10, you look at open source as a way to get back to those serious RSEUs, because they are where you make money.

    WTF - is Jack Welsh* a contributor to SlashDot now?

    Anyway, if you're #3-10 in your industry, you're ranked there because of market share or total sales, not because of IT expenses or even profitability. Just cutting licensing costs may get you a pat on the back and a promotion, but in the infinitely more complex context of running a business and competing in the marketplac

  • He wanted to make enemies. Posting his poorly thought out article here is making his wish come true.
  • MS is a software shop they fear free software as it cuts into there margins. Cisco is mostly a hardware shop with enough software to glue things together. OSS is not going to replace core network routers anytime soon. The other side of the shop is support and there is no OSS that is even close. Granted smaller shops will use OSS products that work as well or better. I'll take OpenNMS over whats up gold or whatever Cisco works is coming bundled with for real time monitoring. But I still want CW for it'
    • It's funny how I remember cisco was responsible for most people learning tcl at one point. I wonder how much marketing posture and spin is trying to deny the inner workings, and tech, at Cisco and other places. Trying to pretend you own something open source to drive up shares, for instance.

  • Worn-out metaphor ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @01:07PM (#19210201) Homepage Journal
    Time to once again introduce the old comparison with the auto industry. Every auto manufacturer automatically makes and sells full shop manuals for their vehicles. They accept this, and understand that if they didn't, they wouldn't sell many vehicles. Few customers would want to buy a car that can't be repaired by anyone but the manufacturer. Granted, they might not want a shop manual themselves, but they expect that their friendly local independent mechanic would be able to get one.

    So why would computer customers be stupid enough to buy computer systems whose inner workings are hidden and inaccessible to anyone not working for the manufacturer? This doesn't make any sense, and we should expect that eventually users will wise up, as they long ago did with vehicles.

    It's especially baffling that people are purchasing software that is so full of "exploits", and when a new bit of malware appears, users have to wait for the software's manufacturer to come out with a patch. You wouldn't tolerate this with other purchases, why would you accept it with software? Just as you expect your local mechanic to have repair information available, you should expect that your local software hackers would have access to the information to fix problems. That is, they should have access to your software's source.

    It's especially baffling that, if I want a failing gadget to be fixable, someone would call my attitude a "religion". If the term applies at all, it should be applied to the people who accept the idea that "there are mysteries" behind their purchases, and we mere mortals shouldn't be permitted access to the inner workings of the universe. That's what a "religion" is. The idea that things in our world should be open to examination by us isn't religion; it's rationality and science, which is the opposite of religion.

    Or, in the case of manufactured articles like cars or operating systems, it's just good engineering.

    • Re:Worn-out metaphor ... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday May 21, 2007 @01:26PM (#19210425) Homepage Journal

      So why would computer customers be stupid enough to buy computer systems whose inner workings are hidden and inaccessible to anyone not working for the manufacturer? This doesn't make any sense, and we should expect that eventually users will wise up, as they long ago did with vehicles.

      There's still a ton of functionality undocumented and unavailable to owners/users, such as the ability to modify values stored in the vehicle's PCM. A great deal of tuning is available in software, but they still don't give that information out.

      For example, I have a Subaru with DFI (Distributor-Free Ignition). It's got a waste spark system with two coils, each of which serves two cylinders. And it has crank and cam sensors, and you never adjust the timing. Unfortunately, this also means that you can't adjust the timing without installing a complete engine management system.

      (There are exceptions to this rule, for example pre-1996 DOHC nissans tend to have a CONSULT port interface which is basically just a snazzy, externally-clocked serial port. You can bump timing up and down in 0.5 deg increments. But someone figured this out using a factory tuning tool...)

      The automotive industry has made it easier to fix cars by making them largely self-diagnosing (if you know what to look for, of course, they're not always correct and "MISFIRE IN BANK 1 CYLINDER 2" doesn't tell you what caused the problem) but they've made it much harder to customize them by moving the workings of the vehicle from the physical world, where they are exposed, to a black box.

      If anything should be Open Source, if not Free Software, it is the programs in automotive ECUs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ozborn ( 161426 )
      Nice post, wish I had mod points today...

      You know they are in trouble when they start calling "open source" a religion, it doesn't get much more bizarre.
  • Just another neo-con who wants us to think laissez-faire is communism. If OSS is communistic then this guy is the reincarnation of McCarthy.
  • He's founder of the Yankee Group. Yep, since the didiot is completely disgraced at this point, they're pulling out the big guns. Well, at least the bigger guns.

    He says nothing in the article, and doesn't really understand what he's talking about. Just like a certain underling.

    Nothing to see here....

  • Clearly Ignorant of the facts (Score:4, Informative)

    by lord_alan ( 1105191 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @01:17PM (#19210307)

    I first read this article on an Australian site (http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;8103 29453/ [computerworld.com.au]) last week and it has been syndicated and is doing the rounds. This guy, Howard whoever he is, clearly has done zero research and has no facts to back up his comments - especially the finale.

    At the end of last year the EU Commission released one of the most comprehensive reports on the impact, spread and use of Open Source, around the world. They found that, in actual fact, only around 10% of those who contribute to Open Source projects (the software engineers) are employed by proprietary vendors - the overwhelming majority are employed by the enterprises Howard so cynically believes are using FLOSS purely to beat down the cost of proprietary systems.

    You can download the entire report from the EU itself here: http://flossimpact.eu/ [flossimpact.eu]

    There are many other reports from major research organisations that are concluding similar things. Forrester research has recently found that over 50% of large enterprises are using FLOSS in mission critical applications and this is growing.

    A quick Google would lead Howard to many of these findings.

    Alan
    http://www.theopensourcerer.com/ [theopensourcerer.com]
  • This is actually a pretty insightful article - half of it is, anyway. The cynical view of large companies, as they interact with "open source" (Free software) is correct. They talk the talk, and manipulate it in other ways, self-interestedly. The article would have stood pretty well if he'd stuck to Microsoft, Sun, Novell, and Cisco and their motivations.

    However, his curt dismissal of Free software is blinkered. Open source ran, and runs, a huge chunk of the Internet. Take away bind and Apache and what have

  • Okay, there are open source religious zealots. Just like the proprietary-software zealots. But neither is representative of the mainstream of users in either category.

    What particularly irritates me is the suggestion that because a company has some open source offerings, that they've given up on their proprietary business. It is more likely that said business is simply attempting to capitalize on the open-source movement. It gives them an additional revenue stream where none existed before.

    Further

  • The entire article can be summed up as "crappy OSS copies wonderful proprietary inovation, and is going to lead to all programers being unemployed". It's like we're in 1999 all over again.

  • Users want to use what works, and is cheap.

    Integrators and developers decide what that consists of, and deliver it to their customer (the user).

    If the Integrator picks correctly, he succeeds, and is more likely to get repeat business.

    If the Integrator chooses poorly, he fails. This failure can come in the form of a steep bill due to bundled licensing, or due to unreliability and other hidden costs due to architectural constraints (license servers, vendor lock in, copy-protection, and other issues not relat

  • Without open source, pricing for web hosting would be far higher. Because hosting has become a commodity, with little or no proprietary lock-in, it's cheap and getting cheaper. So every business can afford a web site. Open source made that possible.

  • I don't really care about the article and I haven't RTF'd it. I take exception with this kind of shite, though:

    Any idiot can make friends -- but can you make some really serious enemies?

    If I start walking around town wearing a sandwich board that says "LESBIANS MUST BE HANGED FOR THEIR WICKEDNESS" (randomly selected), I will rapidly make a large number of quite serious enemies, without making any further effort. If instead I write on that sandwich board "I AM NICE AND LIKE PUPPIES", I am unlikely to make

    • You can't build a lifelong friendship in a couple of seconds.
      Sure you can! You just have to know where and when to introduce yourself. Giggity giggity giggity goo!

  • Yankee Group (yawn) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ricin ( 236107 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @01:49PM (#19210783)
    "He is also founder of The Yankee Group.."

    Surely you all remember miss Didio and her corperate horse whispering.

    • Surely you all remember miss Didio and her corperate horse whispering.

      Not really, no. Didn't she hold a seance at the Amityville Horror house?

  • A cynic might suggest that the people writing open source software are the ones who are making their daytime living working for a proprietary-solutions vendor and spend their nights tearing down the very house they live in. And that if open source replaced proprietary solutions, these people would not be able to make a daytime living that supports their night time hobby.

    If the world really moved over to an open source model rather than a proprietary model (presumably because open-source software was more

  • You make your money by selling proprietary solutions: Microsoft and Cisco. If you are No. 3 to No. 10
    Sure, Cisco has a lot of legacy, closed source software - and probably some non-legacy too - but that also use a lot of Open Source software too. So how does that fit into his argument? (Or at least the posters?) Likely, it doesn't - thereby breaking down the entire argument, no?

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