Microsoft sees sales hurdles ahead

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The way you guys beat on one another

Proprietary! Open source!

Maybe we need to get clear what we mean here. Mr. Stallman's idea that all software should be free is, to put it charitably, stupid. So do we wipe all open source and sharing of ideas off the planet? That's equally stupid and impracticable.

Software is a manifestaion of intellectual property, and follows the same life cycle as any intellectual property. Innovation can mean profit, if the innovator has the means and motive. After some period of time, that new idea or implementation is no longer fresh, others have the means to accomplish the same end, and the product family becomes commoditized. The innovator, if he hopes to keep making money, brings something new to the table. What will not work in the real world, and will no longer work with software, is a monopoly on a commodity (ask the king of Portugal about that one).

It's funny how hysterical some people are about the long-overdue maturation of the software industry. We went through something similar with hardware about 20 years ago, and passions ran just as deep, I think (we didn't have the internet to exchange ventings). One of my staff refused to look at anything that wasn't PS/2 microchannel. But key players refused to go along with the monopolist, and guess what - an "open source" architecture. But nobody has died (to my knowledge), and there seem to be plenty of jobs.

From both a consumer viewpoint and an economic viewpoint, I consider the opening of the operating system to be beneficial. What is the point in having some IBM programmers, some HP programmers, some SGI programmers, some Sun programmers, some Dell (or whoever) programmers all working on solving the same problem? Only one solution will be best (and perhaps not as good as the collaborative solution), and the cost is embedded in all the hardware solutions. Better, in my opinion, they collaborate on the base (like GM, Ford, Toyota sharing standards) and put their talents to use on stuff that sits atop that base (like GM, Ford,... still make their own products).

Apparently, you can tell. I like open source. I like proprietary. I buy both.

Posted by: IT_User   Posted on: 01/29/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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