The Low Point--a view from the Valley: The innovation game
Summary: Innovation these days is being used as a code word for large, corporate controlled research and development, regardless of any results it might produce.
Commentary--Innovation is a weasel word. It used to earn an honest living, but now it's been hijacked by marketing people for dishonest purposes. It's now in the same category as "rich". Does anyone now hear the words "rich user experience" or "rich client" without thinking of a bloated, Windows-only client that doesn't use open or standard protocols? Controlling the language like this is power. Whoever defines the words we use can control the way we think about things. Our knowledge of language limits how we can express our thoughts. Innovation these days is being used as a code word for large, corporate controlled research and development, regardless of any results it might produce.
People often criticize free software/open source for lack of innovation. This is usually expressed as a complaint that free software only copies existing proprietary software, and doesn't invent anything new. The historical reasons for this can be understood when you look at the origins of free software. When Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation and began the free software crusade, he was starting from scratch. Nothing existed, not even a compiler to create other free software programs. So one of his first tasks was to create such a compiler, which has become the modern gcc (GNU Compiler Collection).
The first ten years or so of free software by necessity was re-creation of much proprietary software, such as the shells and command line tools needed for a complete UNIX environment. All of this software was created on top of existing proprietary operating systems (usually Sun's SunOS or Solaris). The culmination of this was the creation of the operating system kernel itself, Linux (although FreeBSD would have done just as well, Linux became mature first). But even in this re-creation of UNIX, much work was done that could truly by called innovative.
The removal of arbitrary limits in all of the utilities rewritten for the GNU project lead to most UNIX system administrators replacing the vendor-shipped programs with the GNU versions as their first act after installing a new UNIX system. Some of this re-creation is still being done, especially in the desktop space. Creating graphical utilities to control every aspect of an operating system is a tedious job, but is necessary as proprietary software itself hasn't stood still over time and user expectations of what a system should contain have rightly risen.
But since this time, some astoundingly innovative free software has been written and been made available for everyone to use, for any purpose. I'm going to list just some of the ideas I know about, although it's been a long time since I was able to keep track of all the free software available out there.
Andrew Tridgell's rsync has revolutionized large scale data transfer. The algorithms used are subtle, and the subject of his PhD thesis (I still remember him trying to explain them to me as he was developing them, but I was too stupid to understand :-).
The git distributed source code control system is spreading like wildfire in the free software community, and I believe will ultimately change the way software engineers collaborate when developing software. This is Linus Torvalds’ second success at capturing lightning in a bottle (Linux itself being the first of course) and will cement his name as one of the greatest software engineers of our time.
Julian Seward's valgrind program has done more to create secure and bug-free software than any other tool software engineers’ use. The idea that modern processors are fast enough to emulate themselves in software and so allow software being debugged to run within a fully controlled environment was a stroke of genius. Valgrind helps engineers fix the impossible bugs that otherwise plague software development.
Let's not forget the Free Software Foundation itself, whose autoconf toolset taught a generation of programmers that testing for features, not specific platforms is the only way to build truly portable software. The autoconf tools are the reasons that free software can run on almost every computing platform in use today.
These are just a few examples I was able to remember whilst writing this column. There are so many others I'm not going to try and enumerate everything and would only offend people by leaving them out. But remember that these advances are available to everyone willing to abide by the license, and have been an incredible boon to civilization, which increasingly depends on complex software. Companies have been founded, fortunes have been made, and will continue to be made, on top of the innovation created by free software.
So who could possibly be against this wealth of the commons ? People wishing to own innovative ideas, that's who. Not just one specific implementation of an idea, but the very ideas themselves. I'm referring to software patents, which have recently been used in a very direct threat against free software development. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft recently made more direct threats against Linux and free software, warning Red Hat users specifically, "People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us". Three days after making these threats a lawsuit was filed against the two most successful Linux distributors, Red Hat and Novell, by IP Innovation LLC, a known patent troll (a company who creates nothing and whose business model is to threaten others over patents). Mr. Ballmer's timing is, as always, impeccable.
Many companies own software patents, but Microsoft is the only software company that has so utterly rejected the free software ethos that every new piece of free software that others welcome and immediately attempt to commercialize is seen by them as a blow to their survival. Microsoft has painted themselves into a corner where they feel that for them to continue to be successful, free software must die. I don't mean cease to exist of course, that'd be impossible. But die in the sense that Microsoft would like to be paid for every commercial use of free software, thus destroying the very principle behind the movement, and destroying any innovation it creates. No one wants to be an unpaid employee. It's not enough for them to take this common wealth and make money on it the way all others do, they want to be able to bleed it dry without having to participate on the same terms as everyone else.
The danger posed by software patents to free software cannot be underestimated. I remember well these words of wisdom from one of the leading figures in the software industry.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors," said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in 1991.
Software is human thought, human ideas. It's as pure as music or mathematics or physics. People who promote software patents want to own the very thoughts in your head. A world with widespread software patents, globally enforced, is best described in the very prophetic words of George Orwell in "1984" describing "Big Brother":
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever."
No unauthorized innovation allowed in Oceania, all ideas must have an owner. For the good of "innovation", with its original meaning, free software must be free of software patents.
Jeremy Allison is one of the lead developers on the Samba Team, a group of programmers developing an open source Windows compatible file and print server product for UNIX systems. Developed over the Internet in a distributed manner similar to the Linux system, Samba is used by all Linux distributions as well as many thousands of corporations worldwide. Jeremy handles the co-ordination of Samba development efforts and acts as a corporate liaison to companies using the Samba code commercially. He works for Google, Inc. who fund him to work full-time on improving Samba and solving the problems of Windows and Linux interoperability.
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Talkback
M$ is a dying dinosaur
I'm sure that some corporation will pony up that money and buy a world wide license for the Linux community, and end M$ FUD threats.
Are you truely this clueless?
EVERY copy of a Linux distro containing MS IP MUST pay MS to use it. It MUST include a EULA for the open source user to agree to.
I suspect that as Linux is distribuited in many ways other than buying it, it will now have to "phone home" to record the use and the distro will have to PAY MS for it. Even if the person doesn't use Linux in the long term.
Yeah, what a victory... FOR Microsoft !!!
clueless...read the GPL!
So then the GPL stops you from using it.
Bottom line, it IS patented to Microsoft, it DOES have to be paid for (even if its a small amount) and it WILL carry a MS EULA. My best suggestion, learn to deal with it...
Ah, more of your complete BS
I know you're an idiotic shill who just doesn't get it, and I'm sure you and your corporate masters would prefer all open source to be released under the BSD license so they can use the masses as a large collection of unpaid developers, but despite all the screaming about it, it just ain't gonna happen. Either get with it, or go home.
The Low Point
Corporations are paid for open source.
Though consultants may be more necessary, as you indicate, the cost of the software is significant.
But when the code doesn't do what you really
There's plenty of savings if OSS is leveraged appropriately
Sounds fine in theory, but doesn't happen that way in practice. Most of the time, I come up with a good idea while I'm trying to solve a problem. I'm not trying to make money off the idea itself; I'm trying to make money off my business, and solving whatever individual problem my business tends to have gets one less roadblock out of the way of being able to focus on my core competency -- and I certainly don't have time or resources to start a new business focused around trying to mine this one idea for money, or even to file for a patent and then go through the process of trying to find a buyer for it. (I'm senior development staff. I have lots of ideas; having ideas and making them happen is my job).
From that perspective, the open source model works perfectly: Non-core-competency-related improvements get contributed to the commons, in return for receiving like improvements from others (and free maintenance of my code, to the extent that it's contributed to an externally maintained project).
As for the proposition that it's cheaper to have work done externally, that's simply not always true. To give you an example, we're using the open source HylaFAX fax server in conjunction with the Asterisk telephony server to build a large-volume faxing solution which would have cost far, far more buying from a commercial vendor. We've done some integration work in-house to tightly couple this to our product, and outsourced other parts to one of the project's maintainers at an extremely reasonable price. Paying the vendor of a commercial fax server to do that same work would have been vastly more expensive -- we couldn't have done any of the work in-house, and the prices for custom work by the developer wouldn't have been constrained by competition (while an open-source project maintainer needs to keep their consulting prices reasonable because they're not the only people who can do the work). Further, to the extent that I'm an in-house expense, I do customization work an an exceedingly wide range of open source products we use in addition to work on developing in-house, proprietary software and infrastructure. It doesn't take very many cases where I can do work in-house as opposed to paying a supplier $10K+ for custom development (if they're willing to do it at all) to justify my paycheck.
Using open source in a small business doesn't make sense if you're stupid about it, sure. If you want something that your office staff can install and administer, don't run Gentoo on your workstations -- use Ubuntu instead, or buy Red Hat's RHEL or Suse's SLES with a nice support contract and a phone number you can call when a question comes up. If you're trying to do innovative things on a shoestring budget, on the other hand, having an in-house geek-of-all-trades can be essential to making it happen. If you're doing things nobody has done before, you're going to be doing development work in either case -- might as well leverage the commons for what you can and have the ability to modify the 3rd-party pieces in-house to better create components for which new development is necessary.
Innovation inflation
and for incremental improvements. I prefer "disruption."
Or, as I like to put it to any company or group: If you
aren't disrupting, you aren't innovating.
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2007/
02/innovation_and.php
Innovation and invention
The reward for innovation is more sales of the software. The reward for invention is the payment guaranteed by a patent, should the inventor want such reward and should the invention be useful enough to be purchased.
Bill Gates's 1991 comments were part of a warning that Microsoft should obtain and store patents for trade, as a means to avoid having to pay cash for ideas. That initiative was not fully implemented until fairly recently.
I would have difficulty believing Mr. Gates would ever advocate giving IP - and associated gains in sales - away because of the harm of paying for them.
Where you are completely wrong.
2. Microsoft didn't do much with patents for decades, until they stated getting sued over them and they woke up and decided they had no choice but to build an arsenal of patents to fight back with. By the way, they also learned that to "compete" they also had to start making campaign contributions. Sad as that is, and even though Bill Gates hated it, they had no choice.
3. Have you had your head in the sand the last two years? I ask because I have been saying (repeatedly) that it would not be MS or anyone else with patents that would file the suit and start a patent war. I have said all along it would be an individual or a patent holding company that nothing to fear from retaliation. What part of that escaped you all this time? Let me ask you this, do you now assume it was me that convinced this company to file suit? Do you think in some mysterious way its my fault? I mean after all, like Ballmer I have been saying it loud and clear for a very long time.
4. And finally the bullshat about patents stopping innovation. Pure bull, they stop one person from copying another person's work. nothing more. If you have an ORIGINAL idea there is NOTHING stopping you from using it and selling/giving it away. The only thing you are not allowed to do is use someone else's patented ideas.
5. In closing, I agree fully that the current patent system needs overhauled (and MS is leading the charge to get it done) and major changes are needed. In fact I have made several suggestions in this very forum on how to do it and maintain the "fairness" so many seek. Perhaps one day you will open your eyes and ears (like my saying this suit was coming) and not reject an idea simply because I am not an open source zealot and will never worship at Stallman's feet. Believe it or not, very often the best ideas come from your adversary, if your listening that is...
What really makes me sick...
What annoys me is that it comes from every post that No-Fax writes. Every post is a personal attack on the article or the post he's replying to.
Just remember when you're attacking Jeremy, No-Fax, that the EC decision against Microsoft, that you said would be thrown out when it got to a "real court", was NOT thrown out largely due to the intelligence and efforts of Jeremy.
Pick your targets, and more to the point, try to be civil when disagreeing with someone. It seems to be your weakest skill.
An OPINION piece IS about the person
And as an FYI, I never predicted what the courts would do, I said let it get to a real court with real judges and see what happens.
Liar
Liar. Oh, BTW, what's up with the SCO lawsuit these days? Pounding IBM into the ground, was it?
Dear Axey,
The Constitution says nothing about transferring these rights to another person, let alone a fictitious person.
The major problem with patents, as I see it, is that the limited time does not start with the first use of the invention. This means that even five years after the first use, or in the case of using a playground swing sideways, well over 50 years after I first used this trick, the U. S. Patent Office will still grant a patent.
How many patents have been granted for vehicle stability control systems in the last 15 or so years. If the U. S. Patent Office had properly disqualified these for prior art, such patents would not exist. The prior art to which I refer is the "Curve Master" which was invented by Mr. Arthur Vogel, in Columbus, Ohio in the early 1950s. It was demonstrated at Lockbourne AFB with two Ford sedans. They both ran a marked circle on the runway, or taxiway, at increasing speeds. The sedan not equipped with the "Curve Master" rolled over. The one equipped with the "Curve Master" banked into the turn and eventually spun out without rolling.
I know that Mr. Vogel had applied for patents on his invention. Done your way, Mr. Vogel, or his descendants could either be very rich now, or they could have prevented the current safety of the current stability control systems.
Of course the saving grace of the system as it was used then was that the implementation of the hardware was what could be patented, not the idea. So current electronic stability controls would still exist. in effect, at that time and all prior times, a patent could best be described as a hardware copyright. The idea was free for everyone to build upon as long as they did not copy the originator's hardware within the short limited time. Software patents should be treated the same way. They should be converted to copyrights, with short limited lifetimes.
Or perhaps we should just redefine a patent as a copyright on hardware. That is really what it was until someone managed to obtain a patent on software.
Low Point
Do me a favor
Link me to where you can get paid support on Windows from Microsoft. Oh, yeah, they don't offer it; apparently, support is the job of the hardware vendor selling the computer, and if there's something wrong with Windows, the vendor gets bitched out by the customers while Microsoft twiddles their thumbs and says they're working on it, but it won't be out until the next service pack.
Windows appears cheaper, but you're paying $500 for a licence to run one copy of Windows on one computer with no support at all. Quite frankly, I'd feel better paying a bit for support from the guys who actually put the system together and know it inside and out if I were using a system in a critical situation, rather than banking the company on vague unfulfilled promises from a certain monopoly...
RE: The Low Point--a view from the Valley: The innovation game
Open source needs to beef up its own IP efforts so they can fight fire with fire! I cross-posted on your piece to http://blog.innovators-network.org The Innovators Network is a non-profit dedicated to bringing technology to startups, small businesses, non-profits, venture capitalists and intellectual property experts. Please visit us and help grow our community!
Best wishes for continued success,
Anthony Kuhn
Innovators Network
Yes, but also just the trail of prior art really helps. Also, most