On Fri, 3 Mar 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> In a message dated 3/3/00 11:08:09 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
> << We all have to compete with guys like WebMD, who frankly have much
more
> money and man-power than any of the groups working on free projects. But
I
> think we have a better way of doing things, and if we don't all kill
each
> other or committee everything to death, we have a good chance of being
able
> to change the world of electronic medicine. >>
>
> Manpower and intellectual capital are not the same thing. A smart person
can
> outperform a hundred (or more) mediocre ones in generation of good ideas
and
> good results. Big companies and their non-technical managers often seem
to
> reject or marginalize (interfere with, micromanage, or otherwise annoy
the
> heck out of) the very brightest people, due to a perception of them as
"too
> threatening" to ego or position. This is a good strategic point to
> understand, an Achilles' heel of current corporate America, as it were.
>
> For example, as author Bob Lewis points out in his book IS Survival Guide
> (Sams Publishing, 1999, p. 247), three decades ago Harold Sackman
researched
> the performance gap between programmers. He found that the best ones were
> able to write programs 16 times faster and debug then 28 times faster
than
> those created by "average" programmers, and when they were done their
> programs were six times more compact and ran five times faster. This is
a
> huge indicator of the need to seek and keep the very best.
>
> I contend that Linux itself could never have been created by a large
company
> -- at least, not with today's business ideologies and tyranny of the
mediocre.
No, but who currently owns the biggest market share of the lucrative
desktop market? Once they became entrenched in their position, it became
almost impossible for anyone else to obtain even a small share of their
market. I don't agree with their methods or their development cycle, but I
think we should all learn from the mistakes IBM and Caldera made when
competing with a monopoly like that.
Perhaps the lesson is to move in and grab a niche *before* there is a
monopoly.
Then again, maybe not.
> On committees, in medicine we have a saying. "In a code situation, there
ARE
> no committees." If you want to sit around and COMPUTATE, use
committees. If
> you want to do COMPUTING and get results, keep committees to an absolute
> minimum.
I agree. But once again, they also have an enormous marketing engine at
their disposal. Whether we like it or not, the world runs not on the
reality of something but on the perception of reality. If they become the
de-facto standard within large institutions, everything will be an uphill
struggle, as I virtually guarantee they have some very proprietary, very
closed way of transferring data, which they are not about to share with
their competition.
I wish this was about intelligence or a sense of community, but it isn't --
we're going head to head with heartless corporations who have a distinct
advantage in that they have free access to the guts of our code, whereas we
have to reverse-engineer anything we want from them, if we don't get sued
first.
Everyone seems to like committees around here for one reason or another. I
believe very strongly that they serve some purpose in organizing and
planning -- but don't spend too much time in committee and not enough time
coding. Everything in moderation.
*************************
jeff b
system administrator
university communications
university of connecticut
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
