Bug hunters, software firms in uneasy alliance

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Maybe it IS wishful thinking...

...but nothing in your response invalidates anything in my original post. You've simply reasserted your definition of "proprietary", and then offered more arguments as to why the current "proprietary" model is broken.

But I already know it's broken. I'm not disagreeing that it's broken. Neither am I disagreeing that open source is capable of producing better products. I'm writing this using the Mozilla browser, and I write all my mail in Mozilla's mail app. I built my web site using Mozilla's composer. In my opinion (meaning, for my purposes), the only other products that come close are also open source...other Mozilla-based apps. I use other open source stuff too.

I want to defuse the rhetoric a bit at this point. You've written two intelligent posts, both of which contain excellent points that accurately describe real problems. Actually, I think you're way more than "half right". In fact, you're mostly right; the current system under which companies create commercial software titles is probably doomed. And I think you're probably right about the "wishful thinking" thing, too. It's not likely that a huge company that doesn't acknowledge the natural intellectual property rights of its own coders is going to have an epiphany someday and suddenly begin rewarding them, but it's not because that kind of compensation system doesn't work. Rather, it's because they don't know how to DESIGN it so that it will work.

You wrote:

>Once a company grows above a certain size the coders' -
> no matter how competent - are relegated down the
>hierarchy along with product quality.

You're saying that that's not a good thing. I agree. The pivotal concept in your argument still seems to be based on the company's size. I get what you're saying about size, but unless you've got a statistically significant sample, all you can say is that company size is correlated with the problems you've described. I don't doubt that there's a correlation, but correlation does not establish causality.

The problems you've mentioned are perfectly predictable results under the non-proprietary model that you define as "proprietary", regardless of company size. They can just as easily happen in a tiny company; they happen in any situation wherein the people who create the value lose their incentive. Compensation structures that are designed in a way that yanks incentive away from the creative process destroy the desire to create and excel. That's the more fundamental problem.

As long as the current non-proprietary (my definition) model exists, I don't doubt that many people who don't want to get stuck in that meat grinder will perceive open source as a preferable choice. In fact, I'll retract my earlier statement about open source withering into obsolescence...or rather, I'll clarify it. I think that open source as we currently know it will evolve toward a model that is increasingly better integrated with a more reasonable and sustainable monetary compensation structure. After all, coders still have to pay the bills.

Already, open source is certainly closer than the current non-proprietary (my definition) commercial model -- at least in principle -- in one very important respect. Look at the details in GPL; it accommodates the concept of primary accreditation -- the identification of the author, the original owner of the intellectual property -- something that you very rarely find in commercial software. That's the key concept. How to integrate that primary accreditation with the secondary accreditation measured by money is a complex systems theory problem. It's not easy, but it's doable.

Posted by: native alien   Posted on: 09/06/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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