Open-source companies see profit aplenty

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Take away value?

Actually that assumes there is some value. Personally, I think there is a lot of value in a software industry. If a company can offer products of evident value to the marketplace, customers will buy. If they will not, then I would question the societal value of the company or industry. The WPA was before my time, but I would not argue to bring it back or to institute "thought police" that would penalize anybody that undertook to develop on their own.

You appear to actually believe the dogma that the OS should be ?commoditized?.

I don't believe any dogma in this regard, although you appear to subscribe to a dogma that the phenomenon is immoral or somehow otherwise 'wrong.' For the record, I don't believe in the dogma that f=ma. It does, however, turn out to be pretty useful knowledge.

If I take an application for Linux, I cannot easily run it on any of the literally tens or hundreds of Linux distributions out there.

You should have a serious discussion with your software suppliers. Mine do not have the difficulty you seem to have encountered. Admittedly, a software version developed for 2.6 might have trouble with 2.4 if that is what you are running, but restrictions on backwards compatibility is not a uniquely Linux phenomenon.

Again, it is a fallacy that innovation is not taking place in proprietary OSs. Apple is doing some nice work, not only in the UI department, but in other areas as well. The same is true for MS and several others.

If MS and several others are making value-added innovations to their OSs that differentiate their product from that which is available on a shared-development basis, then we need not fear the destruction of value, right? The question is, when is Microsoft going to make the world aware of these great advances, so that we are motivated to buy the product?

I don?t believe Mr. Carroll was advocating the ?commodization? of the OS. All he did was note the type of technology OSS programs tended to focus on ? those that are well known.

Agreed. I was pointing to an observation, not an advocation. This phenomenon is occurring or it is not. You agree that it is occurring or you do not (well, apparently you agree if you categorize Linux as a threat). I will continue to state that well-understood functions tend toward commoditization. And we've had operating systems for about 50 years and they are well understood.

Bottom line is this. Either the software industry continues to provide value to the community or it dies a well-deserved death. I neither advocate nor care.

Posted by: IT_User   Posted on: 05/20/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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