What it means when open source is no longer the underdog
Summary: The days of "open source good" and "closed source bad" are over. The knees won't jerk that way any more. Questions are going to be raised. Motives are going to be challenged.
There has been a sea change in public opinion.
Google is now seen as the evil empire. Microsoft, they're the feisty little guys up in Washington state.
The change has also been marked by a new attitude toward open source. Google's delivery of open source code for Living Stories is treated as ho-hum. The donation of $2 million to Wikimedia is quickly followed by snark. Is that all they're giving? Well, their search engine likes Wikipedia best.
Forget how cool Living Stories is, or the effort that went into creating it. There must be some hidden agenda.
It reminds me of the Monty Python "Dennis Moore" sketch (above). The poor become the rich, the rich poor. This redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought.
The initial impacts of this changed attitude are being felt by Google, which has long used open source donations to maintain goodwill, a vital asset in a business environment that can abandon you at the click of a mouse.
The game is no longer working.
Every donation is now questioned. The attitude that Google wants to "control the Internet," along with its content and access, has spread beyond its Bellhead lair and into the general public, making anti-Google acts like France's "online ad" tax seem more acceptable.
I predict these anti-Google rumblings are going to start hitting open source, too, and soon. There are always dual motives in open source -- it's part of the business world after all. There is an assumption that open source steals jobs, and drives down tech wages, which is growing.
It may be too late to put the open source genie back. And it's true that the gains of open source, its value, accrue mainly to customers large and small, not to open source companies, and not even to programmers.
But the days of "open source good" and "closed source bad" are over. The knees won't jerk that way any more. Questions are going to be raised. Motives are going to be challenged.
I count this as a sign of success. What do you think it is?
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Talkback
Dead Wrong.
That assumption is dead wrong.
What 'steals jobs' is the wholesale practice of rewarding Corporate America with tax loopholes for moving jobs offshore.
The Federal Tax system has got to stop that practice and reduce tax obligations of American entrepreneurs who create jobs in America.
And penalize those corporations who continue hire offshore labor.
Open source saves money in software research and development and provides low- or no- cost software to run a business concern.
P.S.
I happen to know a VP in NYC whose 'clerical' telemarketing staff are currently training a 'business process outsourcing' staff who are ultimately going to replace their jobs and work from none other than India.
Now, these poor people who are eeking out a living in NYC are just getting tossed aside for what?
That practice is just wrong and must stop.
Yo, DTS ...
The Federal Tax system has got to stop that practice and reduce tax obligations of American entrepreneurs who create jobs in America."
Missed the State of the Union Address this year Huh?
The president everyone seems to love to hate made no bones about the fact that he was going to put a stop to that crap.
That is assuming, of course, the Republicans aren't making too much money off of the policy and shoot it down.
We'll see, my friend.
And have I discussed with you my view on Protectionism?
Peace.
No, don't start ....
RE: What it means when open source is no longer the underdog
RE: What it means when open source is no longer the underdog
You DO know there are countries OUTSIDE the US, right?
For all your prominent promotion of OSS as the saviour of our combined futures, you seem to conveniently ignore the fact that most successful OSS projects are largely (and in some cases entirely) funded through corporate donations of cash, time and resources.
OpenOffice would be a shadow of what it is today without Sun & Novell's contributions. Linux would barely be anything more than a toy without enormous contribution from Novell, IBM, Corel, etc., not to mention the colossal contributions of Mark Shuttleworth.
Be careful that you don't bite the hand the feeds your beloved utopian dream.
Now, imagine you had an idea to build a new business which required a great deal of software development. Would you opt to do so using:
a) American programmers paid at market rates
b) Open-source developers' contributions
c) Cheap foreign labor
d) Some combination of the above
If you were smart, you'd do d).
Knowing you, you'd opt for b) and b) only. And then you'd promptly go out of business.
I wrote nothing about FOSS and how it governs itself.
The lack of jobs didn't happen overnight, nor did it happen because of Open Source.
It's NAFTA, CAFTA, Free-Trade, WTO, all of which have had their part in creating the huge trade deficit and have resulted in the mass exodus of jobs right out of our country.
Those jobs are not going to come back, ever, unless some real hard decisions are made about governing our country and taking action to rescind our Free Trade treaties.
Free Trade is not FREE.
You need to focus on the BIG picture.
Open Source is one small aspect of our national economy.
In the meantime, may I interest you in a BIG straw? ;)
RE: What it means when open source is no longer the underdog
Fair commentary
We all know that democracies are the worst and least effective form of government, "except for all the alternatives". The benevolent dictator is probably the most effective form of government, but the world has not had one yet. Open source, if it ever starts to dominate, will in a sense be the first benevolent dictator ever, but it will of course also be democratic, since you can decide for yourself how/if you wish to use it.
Sounds like a pretty good solution to me.
The problem with benevolent dictatorships
benevolent. The problem here is twofold:
1) The tendencies of power to corrupt people makes sure that any such
dictator will not be benevolent for very long. For example, in the USSR,
the "dictatorship of the proletariat" under Lenin did not last very long
after Lenin's demise, quickly becoming an authoritarian regime under
Stalin.
2) The attitude it takes to become a dictator is not typically found in
those who are benevolent. Authoritarian tendencies tend to be in those
who should probably not be elected to anything higher than associate
paper-pusher 3rd-class.
Google ads positive values
People would embrace Google over M$ any day.
How do you think most OSS contributors are paid?
Most OSS developers are paid by corporations that make their money from selling closed-source products to paying customers.
If those corporations didn't make any money, they'd go out of business and their former employees would be out of work and no longer receiving an income. Guess how eager they'd be to continue to spend 8+ hours a day writing software that they give away to freeloaders around the globe?
One day, when you have to support a family, pay your bills, pay for rent, food, clothing, insurance, etc., you'll understand.
Until then, PLEASE think before you type.
There are other reasons to contribue to OSS
I'm not the only one facing the set of problems I have. Others in similar situations, are facing the same problems as well. We need solutions to keep the equipment running as it should. OSS allows us to each contribute a little here and a little there, tackling what annoys each of us the most, and making everything better for each of us. If we had to do all of the work ourselves, we could never afford the teams and our companies would soon go bankrupt.
But because the equipment works, our clients pay us.
If profiling and assigning unfair attributes were against the law
Microsoft will once again wear the crown...
10. Drum roll....rim shot....cymbal smash....
Hehe
Your rep needs a life
Closed source fills certain niches. Open source fills different niches. Each relies and requires the other.
(Don't believe me? Windows still uses BSD code for its TCP/IP stack and BSD is OSS.)
Saying one is dead and the other lives is like saying that humans can live without plants or animals as food.
You hooked one Mike !
+ 10