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29 Comments
- MarkByers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+38"Profit is THE strongest way to preserve industry competition."
Microsoft makes lots of profit, but I'm not seeing much competition... - kalphegor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Well, where is Google Search Source, Earth Source, Picasa Source, etc?
- borchard76, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Profit alone is not enough, however, and neither is open source. There is a moderating variable that must exist before competition will exist, and that is the presence of competitors. This catalyst is absolutely necessary. Competition can exist without current profit (witness the game console wars--the consoles frequently lose money, but they enable compensating revenue in other areas), but generally requires the potential for profit.
The best way to preserve competition in any industry is to make sure that viable competitors exist. This is the reason that the RIAA and the MPAA are able to do atrocious things: they have no competition, since they are a cartel of all the major players. The minor players don't even get name recognition. Sure, the members 'compete', but not in the way that AMD and Intel compete, nor in the way that Walmart and Target compete.
Open source, I would argue, forces the industry to compete on a different level. Instead of focusing on making the next thing any way they can and then riding it until someone finally manages to catch up, it makes sure that companies compete on things like customer support and service, constant innovation, price, and code quality. Price is the toughest one because in the OSS community is generally seen as a null variable, but in reality, there is a HUGE segment that would pay $50 for a program that had support v. downloading for free just for the support and the promise of help from a big company that has experts. Sure, the geeks will support themselves, but if (and I mean _IF_) Adobe Opened Photoshop, they could _still_ charge 500+ just because of the name recognition and the willingness to rely on a known player. Sure some folks would switch to the free version, but they would be the majority. The advantage would be that the OSS community would step in, make changes, and the program would jump way ahead in it's utility.
THis won't happen because Adobe knows it would require them to innovate faster, provide better support, and to all around be a better player.
This is, of course, why I oppose software patents, and think that copyrighting software is counter-productive for the US industry. - nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Yahoo's a big fan of Open Source too (in fact, most big internet sites are; even if they aren't active contributers they practically all run Open Source software with the exception of Microsoft.. but who are we kidding..), but they're no match for Google, who's actively marketing the benefits of OSS.
Oh, and the story is a PC Mag story, I have no idea why it's on Yahoo other than syndication. - evilTak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I find it ironic that this story is on Yahoo! News!
Go Free Software! Also, props to DiBona for endorsing the GPL. - apotropaic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Not next to nothing in the area of payroll open source software:
http://www.treshna.com/paymaster/screenshots/
http://www.sql-ledger.org/cgi-bin/nav.pl?page=about.html&title=About
http://www.paythyme.com/
http://www.openpro.com/propr.html
http://epayroll.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-payroll/
I'm sure I could find more too! The question is like I was saying in my previous post... why aren't these guys working together? - Zelex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Anything that is not open source requires blind trust in what you are using to do what you expect and give you the results you expect. The problem is that this is rarely true. Ask any programmer how much fun they have when they are dealing with black box coding. Its never any fun. Open Source (GPL or not) is really the only way to achieve maximum productivity and efficiency.
- ilovenicotine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love how everyone here with "capitalist" ideas has low to negative diggs regardless if they had an educated response or not. this world is filled with a bunch of communist hippies.
bury me you french loving vegtable eaters. - ManiacMac, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I disagree, for profit proprietary software's goal is to try to carve out a majority share of it's market. Eventually pushing out most other players in this market. This practice is most definately the inverse of industry competition.
Open Source Software (OSS) on the other hand is more about giving back the community. The motivations for this move can be almost anything, however being able to see the code and continue to develop for it and/or fork it into your own software package at any time allows for diversity and specialization. Now most of this specialization will eventually work it's way back into the parent package, furthering the entire community around this package as a whole.
Also note that competing software packages can see how the developers for software package X implimented function Y and then they themselves can tailor their own packages in that direction, therefore furthering their market. - Kamaji, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"Some 48 percent of those projects had chosen the GNU GPL [...]"
That summary is really terrible... -- Which projects!?
You could've at least identified what this is about... It makes no sense.
Yes, you could follow the link to get the details, but there needs to be something compelling to get me to click the link, and a jumbled mess of text for a summary doesn't do that. - nerditup, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1lolol Mario Trumped. The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross.
- bieber, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2They like "Open Source" software, they just don't like the Free Software ideals. They're not a whole lot different from Redhat or Novell, except that proprietary software is only a small part of what they do, instead of the bulk of it.
- JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"They like "Open Source" software, they just don't like the Free Software ideals."
Basically, everybody likes free stuff. But that doesn't mean that they give their own stuff away for free. - EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I've got a crazy idea. Could it be open source software and commercial software BOTH bring something worthwhile to the table? Nah, that's just silly. There's never room for more than one philosophy.
- macewan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1some of these were companies so their may be other reasons for not releasing the code.
- apotropaic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think now a days its community that makes for the best way to preserve industry competition. I believe open source is one way to go with that, but I see a big problem with open source too. There are to many projects open sourceforge.net, for example, that are just so freakin repetative. Like the programmers disagree on 1 matter and it causes people to start their own smaller projects. Open source needs to come together and start making projects with larger communities to really give them folks in redmond something to throw a chair about!
- howardro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Here's an open source project that aims to merge Google's Checkout with commercial or any other php storefronts. http://www.phpgcheckout.com
- JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"Not next to nothing in the area of payroll open source software:"
Yes, next to nothing.
First, note that I did say *US* payroll. Second, a project in it's early stages with a 0.2.1 release doesn't exactly qualify as "production ready". Especially considering that there are legal and monetary penalties for incorrect payroll and taxes. Third, a quick glance suggests that some of what you posted is accounting related but payroll is missing. SQL- Ledger for example does not list "payroll" as a feature. Fourth, in the few cases where payroll is addressed, the capabilities are rather rudimentary and leave a lot to be desired. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1In the software industry, everyone is trying to do this; they are all trying to win. They are, as I would say, competing.
- JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0"This practice is most definately the inverse of industry competition."
Not only does Open Source and commercial software have dissimilar ideas and goals but apparently they don't even speak the same language. - Sukino, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1www.openoffice.org
- Scruffydan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Dibona likes open source... who would have thought
- JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1"Microsoft makes lots of profit, but I'm not seeing much competition..."
Microsoft has had lots of competition, just none of it has been recently successful. But Microsoft is the exception rather than the norm.
To see the effects that profit has on competition, let's take my favorite example --- software for US payroll. Every business with employees needs it. Commercially, there are lots of different options with varying levels of sophistication to fit almost any need. Next to nothing available as Open Source. Where's the competition from Open Source?
To see the effects that lack of profit has on competition, let's take your favorite example --- Linux based operating systems software. There are over 500 active distros with new ones popping up all the time. About the only thing that the majority of these have to offer
is that they are slightly different and slightly incompatible with the remaining 499. In a real profit based competitive environment, most of these "me too" distros would be wiped out in short order. Again, where's the competition within Open Source?
- ilovenicotine, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0@MarkByers
1. Mac....sort of, not strong competition but competition none the less
2. Linux...even less so but very predominant in the hosting world...
3. Firefox...the newest internet explorer has taken a lot of it's new features from the Fox (tabs for one)
4. Piracy...big competition considering i'm typing on a stolen copy of windows now. i'll call piracy open source because it's a free "project"
5. blah blah blah - JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -7/+0(removed and posted in-line. We need a "delete" option here)
- Technopundit, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Since Windows is the only real OS we have for desktop PC's (except for Apple's systems), pretty much anything promotes competition.
- novaneil, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1Hi Craig.
- Huevoos, on 10/12/2007, -19/+1Step 1 "Start an Open Source Project"
Step 2 "???"
Step 3 "Profit!!!" - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -33/+4"open source is one of the strongest ways to preserve industry competition"
Profit is THE strongest way to preserve industry competition.
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